If either of them had insisted she do it, or belittled her for being such a prude, Hope might well have backed away. But they’d become her new family and they were the kindest and most generous people she’d ever known. Betsy’s teeth were chattering, the thin shawl around her shoulders was no protection against the icy north wind, and Gussie had a bad chest. Last night Hope had heard him coughing his very lungs up. He didn’t look at all well, his face was chalky-white and his chest rattled, yet these two who had grown up without any of the advantages she’d had were prepared to share anything they had with her.
‘All right, I’ll do it,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘Go away; wait for me at the top of St Nicholas’s steps.’
For a moment they just looked at her in silence, their expressions reminding Hope sharply of how Nell used to look at her when she wasn’t convinced she could really manage something on her own. But then Betsy slapped her on the shoulder and smiled. ‘Be brave and quick. Don’t run when you get it; that just draws attention to you. But if someone chases you, go like stink and dodge in and out of the alleys.’
Gussie just grinned weakly, but the way he fiddled nervously with his muffler suggested he wasn’t entirely happy to see Hope joining the ranks of criminals.
Once her friends had walked off up Wine Street in the direction of Corn Street, Hope crossed the street and went down towards the pie shop.
Slater’s Pies was unique, not only for the dark green and gold frontage or the splendid mahogany counters, but because it had a reputation for making the best pies in the West of England. Just looking in the window was enough to make your mouth water: game, chicken, beef or pork pies arranged on green and white checked cloths, the shiny golden-brown pastry glinting under the gas lights.
Hope always stopped to look at them when she passed. She loved the cleanliness of the shop and the delectable smells, and she admired burly Mr Slater in his sparkling white overall and tall starched hat. His face was as shiny as his pastry, his hands as big as hams, yet he wrapped his pies in white paper and placed them in his customers’ baskets as delicately as a woman.
The pies she and her friends normally ate were small with only a scraping of meat in them, and the pastry was dull and soggy and as far removed from Slater’s as Lamb Lane was from Briargate. Slater’s pies, four or five inches high, stuffed with high-quality meat and brushed all over with beaten egg, were intended for a big household of ten or twelve people. Hope had seen the old cook at Briargate make similar ones for harvest suppers and parties and they were usually served cold with chutney.
But what Hope wanted today was one of the hot pork pies. She had lain awake last night imagining eating one, till she could almost taste the buttery pastry, feel her teeth sinking into that rich, delectable pork. When she told her friends this morning what she intended to do, Gussie had warned her that few people he knew dared steal in Wine Street because it was so smart. But Hope’s view was that this gave her an advantage because Mr Slater probably wasn’t used to keeping an eye out for opportunists. But what if she was wrong?
It seemed a very good omen that an organ-grinder was playing just along from the pie shop. The man had a little monkey wearing a red jacket and little cap, which jumped up and down to the music. Everyone was stopping to look at him, so Hope didn’t seem out of place lingering by the window of the shop as she kept an eye on Mr Slater.
The wonderful smell of the cooking pies made her drool and her hunger pains came back stronger than ever. Mr Slater was packing four very big game pies into a box and tying it up with string. As she watched, he handed the box to a young lad who was clearly going to deliver it to a customer. He appeared to be cross with the boy as he was wagging a finger at him, perhaps telling him not to dawdle on the way.
The lad came out carrying the box and rushed off down Wine Street, not even pausing to look at the organ-grinder’s monkey. Mr Slater was alone in the shop now, and he was looking at a notebook, as if he had orders to fill.
There were five big pork pies at the end of the display, still steaming from the oven. Mr Slater came to the door and looked out, frowning; Hope thought he was irritated that the organ-grinder was spoiling his trade.
He stood in his doorway for a minute or two, checked his pocket watch, then turned and went straight out of the door at the back of the shop.
Hope’s heart began to race for she knew this was the moment and she had to seize it before any customers came in. Pulling a piece of cloth from around her waist, she took a deep breath and walked in. She deftly put the cloth over the pie nearest to her and scooped it up. But just as she was turning to leave the shop she heard the sound of returning footsteps and rushed out of the door.
She wasn’t quite quick enough, for just as she crossed the threshold she heard Mr Slater cry out, ‘Stop thief!’
Her bowels contracted with fear. She’d seen people running after thieves before and they usually caught them. But though Mr Slater’s cry was loud, the organ outside was louder, and she darted through the crowd clutching the pie closer to her. It was very hot, and she had to use her cloak to keep hold of it. She could smell it, and she was sure everyone she passed by could too.
‘Thief!’ she heard him yell again, louder this time. ‘That girl in the grey cloak, stop her!’
Hope hitched the hot pie into her arms and ran up Wine Street, not even turning her head to see if she was being pursued. She turned into the Pithay, a very narrow lane which ran down to the river Frome. It was the area where most of the second-hand clothes and furniture shops were and the kind of customers they had were far less likely to want to help catch a thief.
But from behind her she could hear hobnailed boots striking out on the cobblestones. She ran like the wind then, her heart thumping so hard and fast with terror she thought it might burst. She knew she was dangerously close to the Bridewell and there could well be several constables out on their beat, but remembering what she’d been told she darted into alleys and kept running.
In the two months she’d been with Gussie and Betsy they’d been to the public gallery of the magistrates’ court three times to watch someone they knew being tried. One friend got five years’ hard labour just for stealing a couple of candles.
Almost every time they went to the Grapes they’d hear about someone being publicly flogged for minor theft – even children as young as eight or nine could be sent to prison. Hope hadn’t expected that she would ever get used to the filth, squalor and brutality of life in Lamb Lane, but somehow she had. But many people had told her prison would make Lamb Lane seem like paradise, and she’d rather drown herself in the river than go there and find out.
She had a stitch in her side from running up one alley and down the next, but the man chased her relentlessly. She didn’t think it was Mr Slater, he’d probably offered this man a reward to catch her, and anyone doing it for money would be very determined.
But Hope was determined too. The pie was heavy, but she had no intention of dropping it, and even less intention of being caught. She continued to run, trying hard to go faster so she could throw the man off, but the heavy pie was slowing her down, hunger had made her weak and the man was gaining on her.
As she came down Tower Lane, which was close to where she started from the Pithay, she glanced back and saw her pursuer was a tall, thickset, bald-headed man who looked like a prize fighter. He was less than fifteen yards from her now, and she knew she must find a way to outwit him.
As she turned the next corner she looked frantically around her for somewhere to hide, and like a gift from heaven there was an open street door. She darted in and shut the door behind her, then stood behind it quaking as she heard his feet go thundering by. Her breath was rasping now and she felt faint and shaky, expecting that any moment the man would guess what she’d done and come banging at the door.
‘Is that you, Tilda?’ a feeble old voice called out from down the dark passage, startling her still further.
Hope couldn’t see anything with the door shut, but the clean smell of the place told her it was home to someone of the middling sort, and the name the old lady called out was probably that of her maid. But a maid would only leave the door open if she was close by.
She felt sick with fright now, her heart thumping like a steam engine, and she didn’t know what to do. For all she knew, the man who was chasing her might be standing out in the lane and might even enlist the help of the maid. She was trapped.
As her eyes got used to the gloom of the hall, she saw a staircase in front of her, and several other doors. One of these was open just a crack and she thought the old lady might be in that room. It seemed logical that the door directly ahead of her might lead to a backyard and another way out, so she tiptoed towards it.
It was bolted, and the bolt creaked as she drew it back. She waited a second, fully expecting the old lady to call out again. When there was no frantic cry or movement, she opened the door, and there to her delight was a tiny backyard with a gate in the eight-foot wall. She slipped out, closing the door quietly behind her, and slunk across the yard. But the gate was locked and there was no key.
For a second or two she thought the game was up. She wasn’t just trapped but she’d lost her bearings too and had no idea what might lie beyond the wall. Like most of Bristol, this area was a rabbit warren of narrow lanes and alleys, the upper part of the houses jutting out over the lanes, almost touching the houses on the other side. But she’d never been behind the houses before, and there was nothing familiar in sight to tell her exactly where she was.
After a few seconds she decided that climbing up the wall was the only option open to her. She tied the pie up in the cloth and tied that to the strings of her cloak hood, then, getting a grip on a brick sticking out on the wall, she hauled herself up it.
If she hadn’t been desperate, one look at what lay behind the wall might have deterred her. It was an alley no wider than three feet which appeared to act as a drain, but she was beyond caring about jumping into human waste now.
When she finally got to St Nicholas’s steps she could see by the stiffness of Gussie and Betsy’s stance that they were sure she’d been caught.
‘Lookin’ for someone?’ she called out in an imitation of the foul-mouthed woman who lived in the room below them.
It was a treat to see their faces light up, and an even bigger one to wave her bundle under their noses so they could smell it.
‘We thought you was done for,’ Betsy said breathlessly. ‘We was that worried about you! I jist said to Gus we shouldn’t have let you do it.’
They slunk into St Nicholas’s church, and there on the same bench they’d led Hope to when they’d helped her on her arrival in Bristol, Gussie cut up the pie with a pocket knife.
Nothing had ever tasted that good as they gorged themselves, not even attempting to speak. The pie was still warm, the juices ran down their cheeks, and the rich pastry stuck to their teeth and gums.
‘I’m gonna eat one of those every day when I’ve made my pile,’ Gussie sighed when he’d eventually had enough. ‘It was the best thing I’ve ever eaten.’
Hope wrapped up what was left for them to eat next day. ‘Did it give you any ideas of how to make a pile?’ she asked teasingly. She felt faintly sick, she’d eaten so much, but she wasn’t going to voice that.
‘Not yet, but it’ll come,’ he laughed. ‘Now, tell us what happened.’
It felt so good to be the one that had provided for them, and as she told her tale she laughed merrily. ‘I was real lucky the ground was frozen in that alley,’ she finished up. ‘It don’t bear thinking about what was under the ice.’
During the afternoon, at Hope’s suggestion, the three of them set out towards Stapleton village to find some wood to burn. The pie had satisfied their hunger but they were all very aware they couldn’t spend another bitterly cold night without a fire.
All three of them were in high spirits when they set off with sacks to carry the wood home, but once the narrow streets of Bristol gave way to open countryside, Gussie and Betsy suddenly became oddly jittery.
‘The wind’s too strong and cold,’ Betsy complained, hugging her arms around her body. ‘And it smells funny!’
‘That smell is clean air,’ Hope said teasingly, aware her friends never normally ventured out of the town and suspecting that they were intimidated by the barren winter fields and skeletal trees. ‘Walk faster, you’ll soon get warm.’
‘They put me to work on a farm when I was eight,’ Gussie blurted out as they walked through a field of cows. ‘It were bad enough in the workhouse in Plymouth but it was a darn sight worse on the farm. I was so hungry I used to eat the pig swill.’
‘We aren’t going to stay out here,’ Hope reminded him. ‘Just think how good it will be to fill these sacks and go home and light a roaring fire. We might be able to find some potatoes too, and we can bake them on the fire.’
Betsy kept grumbling as if she was being taken to a place of execution and squealed with fright each time a cow walked towards them. Gussie was just silent, and Hope guessed that he was brooding on painful boyhood memories.
In an attempt to cheer her friends up, Hope told them about how she used to collect wood with Joe and Henry. She described the little cart their father had made them and how the boys used to let her ride in it when the ground was hard with frost like today.
‘I wonder what they are doing now,’ she mused, going on to explain that they’d been working in the foundry when she last saw them, but that they’d often boasted they were going off to London.
Hope rarely talked about her family; normally she avoided even thinking about them for fear of getting upset. But she was still glowing with pride at having got away with stealing the pie and was buoyed up with such new confidence that she felt she was past being pulled down by memories.
‘Mole and Shanks went to London but they was only there a couple of days and they was beaten up and robbed of their coats and boots,’ Gussie retorted, referring to his two male friends who shared the room in Lamb Lane at night. ‘They’re as ’ard as nails an’ all; so I don’t reckon your brothers would stand a chance up there!’