Little Bones (13 page)

The woman laughed. ‘The best?’ she said. ‘Who told you that?’

Jane was surprised to see how well the woman looked. She had pale hair, sharp green eyes, and around her neck she wore a thin gold chain. She reminded Jane of the medieval paintings in Father Boyd’s
Book of Olde History
.

‘Now, what’s the problem?’ the doctor asked, seeming unperturbed and sitting closer to the bed. ‘How might I help you?’

‘How might you help me? What about my name?’ she said. ‘You have not even asked for my name. What kind of doctor are you? A pedlar? A quack? Do you always treat your patients without asking such a fundamental question as their name?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ snapped Mr Treble, ‘just tell the man your name.’

With a very surly expression the woman said her name was Julia Lincoln. ‘And though it might seem shocking to you, I am expecting a baby.’

‘I have never been easily shocked,’ said the doctor.

‘But I have had pains, excruciating pains,’ she said, looking anxiously towards Mr Treble, who was now leaning very close to the window frame. ‘The baby isn’t expected for months. Is there something terribly wrong with me?’

The doctor sucked in his lips. ‘I really don’t know,’ he said. ‘You must try not to worry. Let me take a look at you.’

Jane stepped closer. She handed the doctor a towel. The woman looked horrified. ‘Where on earth did you spring from?’ she said.

‘This is Jane, my assistant. She is a very able nurse.’

‘Nurse?’ said Miss Lincoln. ‘That girl is really a nurse?’

Sighing, and curling her lip, Miss Lincoln suddenly gave in to everything as the pain began to grip her. ‘You see,’ she breathed. ‘Here it comes again.’

‘Now these pains,’ said the doctor, looking very warm, ‘might have nothing to do with the child. They might be digestive. Have you eaten anything bad, or unusual?’

‘No,’ she told him. ‘I’ve had coffee, bread and butter, a bowl of soup and some fruit. Now I feel worse. Johnny? Won’t you take my hand?’

Appearing reluctant, Mr Treble did as he was told, closing his eyes when the doctor pressed firmly on the sides of Miss Lincoln’s swollen abdomen. ‘I’m afraid the baby might be coming,’ said the doctor. ‘I know it’s much too soon, and I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ Miss Lincoln sat a little higher, pulling at the doctor’s shirtsleeve. ‘Isn’t there something you can do? Something that might save it? I have money.’

Calmly, the doctor opened his bag, producing a bottle of the tincture. Jane had never known him to give another dose. ‘This might possibly do the trick,’ he said, giving it a shake, ‘though I’m not making any promises.’

Jane, who could hardly bear to look at the scene, perched on the end of the bed. ‘You’ll be all right, miss,’ she heard herself saying. ‘He’s a very good doctor. He’ll do all he can.’

‘Has it worked before?’ asked Miss Lincoln, wincing at the taste of it. ‘Has it stopped a baby coming?’

‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘It has stopped a baby coming.’

‘Johnny, come and lie with me,’ Miss Lincoln said. ‘Please?’

Shuddering, Mr Treble started rolling down his sleeves. ‘I’m quite all right where I am.’

The doctor looked at Mr Treble, then at Jane. ‘Perhaps Mr Treble could do with a breath of fresh air. Why don’t you take a stroll around the yard?’ he said.

‘Don’t leave!’ said Miss Lincoln. ‘I’m frightened.’ But Mr Treble was already pulling on his jacket and heading for the door.

‘Why don’t you go with him, sir,’ said Jane. ‘We’ll be all right for ten minutes.’

When they left, the room felt hollow. ‘He couldn’t wait to go,’ said Miss Lincoln. ‘Did you see him?’

‘He was nervous, miss, that’s all. It happens.’

It was a plain, shabby room. Jane looked at Miss Lincoln in her fine lace nightdress, her monogrammed case propped against the wall. She must love him very much, she thought, to want to keep the baby, to leave her good life and family, to stay at this down-at-heel hotel in a room smelling of damp, mothballs and other people’s sweat.

‘It feels like a knife,’ said Miss Lincoln. ‘Like someone might be stabbing me.’

‘Perhaps walking might help?’

Gritting her teeth, Miss Lincoln said she’d try anything, gingerly swinging her legs off the side and getting tentatively to her feet. Jane took her clammy hand and they moved towards the window, where
Miss
Lincoln slumped into the sill, telling Jane the pains were like those she’d had with her monthlies, and that had to be a bad sign.

‘Mr Treble is something of a vagabond,’ said Miss Lincoln. ‘Or he was. He’s a theatrical now, quite famous, did you know?’

‘No, miss.’

‘He doesn’t have a house, or even rooms of his own,’ she smiled thinly. ‘He lives in lodgings. “Digs” he calls them. He travels all over the country. He talks about seeing America. It’s a wonderful sort of life, but when the baby comes, we will have to settle somewhere.’

Jane nodded as Miss Lincoln screwed up her eyes. ‘We’re only staying in this wretched hotel because Johnny says his landlady would not approve of my visits. I mean, what business is it of hers?’

‘It’s not her business,’ said Jane, watching Miss Lincoln bend in half as a trickle of blood ran down her leg and fell between the ridges of her toes. ‘It’s not her business at all.’

When the two men returned, Mr Treble sat on the floor with his head in his hands. Miss Lincoln was biting the edge of the pillowcase to stop herself from calling out, and the doctor was grateful as the walls looked very thin.

Afterwards, Miss Lincoln was quiet as the doctor wrapped the mess in one of Mr Treble’s shirts and whispered for Jane to fetch the boot box from the corridor, and to be very quick about it.

‘Was there any breath at all?’ said Miss Lincoln. ‘Any heartbeat?’

‘I’m sorry, there was nothing.’

‘A boy, or a girl?’

‘It was much too early to say,’ said the doctor, arranging the bloody shirtsleeves and tucking them into the box.

Mr Treble made fists and covered his eyes. ‘It’s all over now, isn’t it?’

Jane glanced towards the window. The clouds were heavy. They could hear a distant rumble of thunder. ‘Listen to that,’ said Mr Treble. ‘I’m doomed.’

As soon as Miss Lincoln’s eyes were closed and she appeared to be sleeping, Mr Treble pounced on the fine leather case, pulling out a bottle of whisky. He filled a toothglass. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he whispered. ‘Both of you. Send me the bill and I’ll see that she gets it.’

The doctor winced. ‘I’m in no hurry,’ he said.

The heavens opened. The thunder sent the horses rearing, and dogs fell to their haunches, hackles rising. Jane and the doctor hurried through the streets. The doctor had removed his overcoat and wrapped the boot box in it. He was carrying it in his arms. His jacket was sodden. Jane could feel the water running down her back. She kept wiping her eyes as the lightning jumped across the rooftops.

At the house they stood inside the kitchen. Edie and Alice had left. It was past eight o’clock. They were breathless. Pools of water ran from their fingers. Their feet were rooted to the floor tiles, the doctor still gripping the box, Jane’s fingers still tight around her collar, as if the rain might reach her through the ceiling.

Eventually, they came back to life. Jane could hear her teeth rattling. Her jawbone was unstoppable as the
doctor
placed the bundle he’d been clutching on the table, where it sat like a dark, bleeding dog.

‘Do you think the box has melted?’ Jane asked.

‘I could still feel the corners.’

‘What are you going to do with it, sir?’ The rags were usually burnt, the encumbrances were usually small enough to wrap inside a flannel, or a small piece of towel. Jane had never looked at them.

‘We could put it on the fire,’ he said. ‘Or we could throw it out with the ashes.’

‘No.’ Jane pressed her cold fingertips into her eyelids. ‘Perhaps I could bury it, sir?’

‘Bury it?’ The doctor looked surprised. ‘Would that make you feel any better?’

‘It would not make me feel any worse.’

‘Then I will remove it,’ he told her. ‘I will place the box inside the coal shed. Yes. I’ll lock the door, it will be quite safe until morning. You can’t go back outside. Not now. The rain,’ he said. ‘There’s too much of it.’

All evening the rain continued making rivers of the pavements. Mrs Swift, still rooted to her chair in the parlour, had heard from Edie that in places the Thames was bursting its banks. ‘And I asked her, did you see Mr Noah hastily building his ark? Were the animals coming down the Mall in pairs?’

Jane made Mrs Swift her supper. Toast and honey. Cocoa. She mopped puddles and banked up the fire. She caught sight of herself in the mirror. Had she changed? Her face looked the same. Her eyes seemed dull. There was a strange metallic taste in her mouth, like she’d been chewing dirty pennies.

*

That night the attic felt like her own cold boot box. She pictured the world outside, dark and full of water. She thought about the coal shed. The rain pounding on its small slate rooftop. When she lived with her family, the rain often felt comforting. She would watch it through a window as she settled by the fire. Her father would sing songs about the fine Irish rain, and though the songs were melancholy, most seemed to celebrate that great wash of water. Her mother would curse that her boots were leaking. Agnes would slump. The rain seemed to drain all her sister’s energy.

Tomorrow would come soon enough. How would she manage? She would wrap the box in hessian and put it into her basket. She knew an abandoned public garden not too far away. If someone saw her, she would say, ‘It’s my poor pet kitten, sir, we called her Topsy, but she drowned.’ Most nice girls buried cats. Or else they sold them very quickly to the pet-meat man.

‘The coal-house key,’ the doctor said, pressing it into Jane’s hand. It was a damp, dismal morning, but at least the rain had stopped. ‘Do you know where you will take it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You are a good girl,’ he said, gently patting the top of her head. ‘Really. You put us all to shame.’

Jane found a large basket, a piece of hessian sacking, and a spoon she could use as a spade. Her chest felt crushed. Her shoulders were almost touching her ears as she walked towards the coal shed and slid the key in the lock.

The box was on top of the coal mound. It looked
damp
, but still intact. A dark stain was blooming into the label that read: Smart Ladies Tan. Jane put her hand towards it. She drew it back again. She did this seven times before she eventually took hold of the box, giving a small involuntary cry as her finger pierced the cardboard. By the time she had placed it into the basket, under the sheet of hessian, she was so out of breath she had to lean on the door jamb, panting.

Walking through the streets, she looked to all the world like a crippled serving girl out on her errands, and though the basket was cumbersome, she walked quickly, occasionally shifting the weight of it. At Shaftesbury Avenue she watched herself in the plate-glass windows of the shopfronts, her hips leading the way, and for a second it made her think of the small crabs scuttling at Margate. On a corner a breeze whipped through a bookseller’s awning, still dripping with rain, and a man came out wearing eyeglasses, blue lenses the size of halfpennies, holding an almanac to his chest.

She was almost there. The deserted garden was a tangled place, almost lost between rows of crumbling buildings, the lawn knee-high and overrun with bindweed. Looking over her shoulder in case of prying eyes, she stepped between the gateposts, circling the grass. Her boots sank as she looked for a burial plot, quickly thinking the border would be best. The soil was damp. When she tried it with the spoon it felt easy enough and she carried on digging, finding little stones, a buckle, a pile of broken oyster shells.

Blocking out the real world, Jane forced pleasant memories. Liza Smithson unwinding a sari from a trunk,
a
river of pale blue and gold. The trunk had been pasted with labels saying Majestic Hotel, Bombay, East India Company. She saw a circus parade. The ringmaster in a bright scarlet tailcoat. The Margate sea crashing noisily onto the shingle. And she could hear it now in the traffic, the rustling of the trees and the cries of the birds as they circled overhead.

At last the hole was ready for the box. Squeezing her eyes, she picked it up quickly, or she would never pick it up. She made a small moaning sound through her lips. Stepping back, she threw a handful of stones across the lid and a few bedraggled wildflowers, before covering it with dirt.

THE PRIEST SOMETIMES
stopped at the corner, straightening his cloak, or pressing down the fine black strands of his unruly hair. When the girls were out on an errand one day they found the church with its pale marble statue of St Joseph peering out of the brickwork. During a rainstorm, they sheltered inside, watching the smoke of the dying candles spiralling into the light. They admired the gold crosses and the pale blue dress worn by the plaster Mary Magdalene. The incense reminded them of Liza Smithson, though Agnes said the scent was different, it was not quite so pungent, or foreign.

A few days later, the priest appeared at the roadside, almost colliding headlong into Jane.

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he said.

‘We see you all the time,’ said Agnes, while Jane was brushing her sleeve. ‘I’m Agnes and she’s my sister Jane.’

The young priest smiled. ‘My name is Father Boyd.’

‘Are you Irish?’ asked Agnes.

‘Yes, I come from Enniskillen.’

‘Is it a nice place?’

‘It’s a place of mud and water.’

‘We’re almost Irish,’ Agnes told him.

‘Are we?’ Jane looked at her sister.

‘Our grandmother came from Sligo. Our pa is always singing songs about the place.’

‘Ah now,’ he said. ‘Sligo, you say? I’ve heard all the bandits come from that sorry place.’

‘We weren’t bandits,’ said Agnes.

‘Of course you weren’t,’ he smiled.

The following Sunday, Jane and Agnes stood at the roadside and watched the church procession. Linking arms, they tapped their feet to the music, giggling as two sandy-haired boys moved past, their pale eyes stretched towards the heavens as they carried the wide church banner. Women held prayer books like very small handbags. And then the girls appeared in white bridal rows, their snowy gloves pulled just above their wrists. Jane and Agnes sighed aloud with envy. The priests brought up the rear, two elderly and slow-moving, Father Boyd in between them acting as a crutch.