Rose (22 page)

“I understand. Bill, the last thing I want is to put you in a position. You’re the champion here, ruler of the nether world. I’m not even a challenger.”

“You’re not a fighter.”

“Or a lover. I’m a mining engineer, and there are some mines calling to me from the other side of the world right now, but I can’t go until I’ve found what happened to Maypole.”

Rivulets of water ran down his neck and under his collar. Under his cap, Bill’s face was blank as marble. He looked down at Blair’s feet.

“What are you wearing?”

“Not clogs. I’m not going to fight.”

“Afraid?”

“Yes.”

Bill seemed to think the problem through. “I wish I had a choice.”

“You do.”

“But you got the clogs?”

“I got your gift. No, thanks. I gave the clogs to Rose to give back to you.”

“So you did see Rose again.”

An unanswerable question. Blair had the sense—the
sense of falling from the top of a tall ladder—that words, no matter how glib, would never replace wings.

“To give back—”

He didn’t see the kick. His left leg felt paralyzed from the hip down. Bill bounced back quickly, lightly for a big man, and using his other foot like a scythe, scooped up both Blair’s legs. Blair landed on his side and rolled away from a kick that raked his back.

“I told you to stay away from Rose, didn’t I?” Bill said.

Blair got to his knees, his left leg numb. Bill feinted from side to side, and Blair ducked as a clog swung at his face and crawled backward from the kick that followed that. There was something ignominious about the situation, he thought. He had survived attacks with spears and guns in the most exotic parts of the world, and here he was on the verge of being kicked to death in an English coal town.

A clog caught him above the ear and he saw beads of blood fly to the side. Jaxon skipped playfully from right to left, maneuvering Blair so that he slipped over the edge of the grass with one knee in the slag. Wind stung his eyes with carbon dust.

“Bill, if you kill me, they’ll come right after you.”

“Not if you disappear.”

“You want me to leave Wigan, Bill? Give me a couple more days and I’ll be gone.”

For a moment, Bill Jaxon seemed genuinely uncertain. His gaze traveled down the slag to the water at the bottom. “They won’t find you,” he said.

Bill pretended to pull his foot back. Blair dodged and the move sent him sliding over the lip of grass and down the slag, which was warm, almost hot. When he half swam, half clambered up, Jaxon stomped his hand.

“You should have brought clogs,” Bill said.

Blair grabbed Jaxon’s ankle. Instead of merely stepping back, Bill tried to kick free, and Blair changed his grip to the cuff of the other ankle. The harder Bill kicked,
the more off-balance he became, until he toppled next to Blair onto the slag and the two slid down together through waves of black dust. Flames touched them briefly, harmlessly. They rolled down to the bottom of the slope, by the edge of the water.

The slag pit was like a cup, boggy at the base, worse footing for clogs than shoes. The chimney rose like a sunken cannon aimed at the sky. When they stood, Blair didn’t let Jaxon get room to kick. He hit Bill in the face, moved forward and hit him again until Bill backed into the water and went under, because the underwater dropoff was immediate. It was a tall chimney, Blair thought.

Jaxon struggled in the water and gasped, “I can’t swim!”

Blair gave him a hand, and as he was pulling him up, hit him and watched him sink a second time.

Bill surfaced. “For God’s sake.”

Blair let him bob for a while before waving him out. He offered Bill help, and as Jaxon swung up the bank he hit him harder than before.

A minute passed before Bill floated to the surface again, facedown. Blair fished him out by his hair and dragged him up on the sandbank. He wasn’t breathing. Blair turned him over and pumped his back until Bill’s mouth discharged an eruption of rank water. Satisfied that he was alive enough, Blair removed Bill’s clogs and threw them in the pool.

Blair crawled up the sand, wearing a second skin of black dust, losing half his progress in sliding for every inch he rose. On either side, flames popped out of the slag like flowers, and as quickly disappeared. His left leg was not functioning well; neither was the hand Bill had stomped on. At the end he was feebly clawing his way toward the same ridge of grass he had fallen from. He saw waiting for him, obscured by rain and dark, the roofline of row houses and chimney pots and what appeared to be a looming, headless figure.

“Is ’e dead?” it asked Blair.

Blair gained the ridge and swayed to his feet. “No.”

There was momentary stupefaction in the dark. A latch swung open and the focused light of a bull’s-eye lantern blinded him, though he glimpsed the pit girl Flo, her head and shoulders covered with a shawl that sparkled in the rain.

“Then tha best run,” she said.

Blair kept his weight on his good leg; he could just picture himself hopping on one foot through the alleys. “I don’t think I’m running anywhere.”

“Ah’ll help.”

Flo offered her back to lean on; it was like holding on to an energetic locomotive that carried him as much as led, the beam of her lantern aimed ahead. It made sense to him that she chose the alley instead of staying anywhere near the sand, but she continued to guide him between backyards rather than cut to the streets even when they had the chance. Through fence boards he saw the white flash of a dove cote. At this point, he didn’t need a compass to know she was not taking him toward his hotel.

“Where are we going?”

Flo didn’t answer. Like an engine, she pressed forward on a track of mud, slats and perpendicular turns until she pushed open a gate Blair never would have noticed. A pig squealed and scurried around its corner sty. Brick steps led between washtubs to a back door that Flo rushed him through.

Inside, she let him sink into a chair. The room was dark except for a fire grate and she played the lantern on him. “You’re black an’ bloody, too. But you’re safe now.”

Blair’s leg was numb and vaguely throbbing. He put fingertips to the side of his head and felt matted hair and a spongy flap of scalp. A little safety sounded good. While Flo lit the lamp he leaned back and let his eyes
close. He listened to her stoke the grate. The smell of warm sugar and sweet milk penetrated his headache. He sat forward and looked. The grate was in an oven. A pot simmered on the range. By the stairs stood a full-length mirror that was familiar. From her knees, Flo turned to footsteps descending the stairs.

Rose Molyneux came down into the kitchen in a plain muslin blouse and skirt that made her hair, unbrushed and damp from a bath, appear like coppery knots. Her eyes were dark, charged with anger.

“What’s he doing here?”

“Ah followed Bill, like tha said. They had a brawl an’ ah didn’t know where else t’take him, ah didn’t. He’s hurt.”

It was a wonder to witness, Blair thought. Rose dominated the room in a way that made the bigger girl quail. “You were stupid t’bring him. Mr. Blair looks black as a miner, is all. He only needs water and soap t’change back.”

“Believe me, this is the last place I want to be,” Blair said.

Rose said, “You’re the last person I want t’see, so we’re even.”

“Rose, all you had to do was give the clogs to Bill, as I asked you to, and tell him that you’re his and his alone, and that I didn’t want to fight. Then Bill wouldn’t have tried to kill me and I wouldn’t be here now.”

“I’m not a maid t’do your errands.” She pointed with the poker to a corner of the kitchen. “There are the clogs. Take them yourself.”

Flo said, “He’s not walkin’ anywhere. Take a look at ‘is head.”

Rose took the lantern from Flo and ran her hand though Blair’s hair, roughly to begin with and then with more care. He felt her stiffen at the sight of something. “Maybe water and gin,” she said.

* * *

Flo fed the fire to heat water. Rose fed Blair the gin. One item of trade you could always get in Africa was good Holland gin, so there were constants in life.

“Why don’t you get a doctor?” he asked.

“You need a surgeon. At this hour he’s so drunk I wouldn’t trust him t’sew up a cat.”

Blair felt light-headed. The scene of the two women and the bright oven grate seemed to float around him. The lid of the pot began to rattle.

“Water’s ready.” Flo pulled a zinc tub across the floor to the oven.

Rose tied on an apron and waited, hands on hips. “Well?”

“I can bathe myself.”

“You’ve more than dirt t’worry about. Anyway, I’ve seen naked men before. And you’ve seen me.”

Which was true, although Blair was sure that she was far more attractive undressed than he was. He pulled off his boots and socks and stood shakily, supporting himself with the table to unbutton his shirt. Looking down, he saw how coal dust had collected down the center of his chest. He opened his pants and long johns and stepped out of them, feeling not so much bare as embarrassed. In the Gold Coast he had always been aware of how pale and scrawny he appeared. In Wigan, too, as it turned out.

Moving made him dizzy. Flo gave him an arm to help him kneel on the ribbed bottom of the tub. Rose opened the oven grate. With a hotpad she took an iron pan from the coals and from the pan she removed a needle glowing orange that she dropped into a bowl of water. He heard the hiss.

“You really make ten d. a day? Serfdom has not come to an end.”

“That’s none of your business,” Rose said.

“And pay three pounds a week in rent? How do you manage that? Maybe you’re tipping more than coal.”

“Drink this.” Flo gave him a second cup of gin.

Scissors appeared in Rose’s hand.

“You’re giving me a haircut?” This seemed the final indecency.

“Just t’see what I’m doing.”

He listened to the click of the blades and was aware of matted hair falling to the floor, but he didn’t seem to have any sensation on that side of his head. Nothing was making sense. He should be in a proper surgery, Blair thought. Wasn’t that one of the glories of civilization, trained medical men? He noticed that the gas lamps of the kitchen were suddenly turned to their brightest.

“You’re not going t’cry like a bab, are you?” Rose asked.

He was wrong; he did have sensation on that side of his head. When she tipped the bowl of cold water over it he had to lock a scream inside his teeth. Flo gave him a twisted rag to bite on, and handed Rose a needle and red thread.

Rose said, “Think about Africa.”

Blair thought about Bill Jaxon. If Jaxon had wanted to kill him before, how much more implacable an enemy would he be once he heard where Flo had taken Blair? The more he thought about it, he realized he couldn’t even go to the police. Chief Constable Moon would ask first what the fight was about, and second where he had gone afterward. It would sound like a sordid Wigan romance. As the needle tugged he gripped the edges of the tub.

Flo mixed hot and cold water in a pitcher. Rose cut the thread, put the needle down and again emptied the pitcher over Blair. Water felt like an electric shock. Then she began washing his hair, which was no worse than massaging a wound. He spat the rag from his mouth because he couldn’t breathe from the water running into his nose. He didn’t shake so much as quiver with every muscle in his body.

Flo refilled the cup of gin and said, “Ah best find ’im clothes.”

“Then hurry,” Rose said.

As Flo left, Blair reached for the cup and finished it in two swallows, trying to rush sedation. He felt isolated in a shroud of pain, trying to keep his balance, awash in water that was black and red.

Rose rinsed his hair, poured a pitcher of hot water over his shoulders and started to rub him with soap and a sponge. He rocked from the effort of her scrubbing. Steam rose around them.

“Flo says you beat Bill. You don’t look it.”

“I don’t feel it.”

“You could have left ’im for dead, she says.”

“Is that why you’re taking care of me, because I didn’t? Is he in love with you?”

“Quiet and sit up.”

Although her hands weren’t broad, they were strong, and when she washed his neck he let his head loll back drunkenly. In the mirror by the stairs he saw himself, tub and her. Her hair was loose and wild; all she needed in it, he thought, was a briar rose to be a muse of summer. Add a lute and a silvery stream and she could be a model. Between the steam and washing him, she was almost as wet as he was, damp muslin clinging to her arms. Her hair brushed his cheek. It was the sort of deep brown that became red with the looking. No fizzy orange but threads of sable, copper, sienna, gold.

She poured more water over him to sponge his chest. It was the heat of the water combined with the gin in his veins, but he felt himself start to harden. The tub water wasn’t so soapy that she couldn’t see. He was astounded and ashamed. The rest of him was bruised and dead, yet this single part was unmistakably alive, rising like Lazarus, a traitor from the water. He shifted on his side to make the physiological fact less evident. Rose washed around the bruise on his hip, a circular motion repeated
by her breasts against his back. From their friction he became aware that they had stiffened, too.

He felt his blood pound, but Rose didn’t break contact, as if they were both mesmerized and complicit in the steady rhythmic motion of the sponge in her hand and the heat of the stove.

“Understand, you can’t come here again,” she said. Her voice was thick.

“Too bad.” He had meant to say it sarcastically, but it didn’t come out that way.

“Bill won’t rest until he has you down.”

“It’s you and Bill, then?”

“In Bill’s mind.”

“Which is enough?”

“Enough for everyone else.”

“For you?”

He felt her breath on his neck as her hand came to a stop. He was amazed that through the pain and gin he could be so aware of her touch, of her heartbeat through the slight tremor of her breast, the very air of her.

“You don’t want the answer,” Rose said.

“I do.”

“Not really. You’re Nigger Blair. You make your mess and move on. Maybe you sneer at the Hannays, but you sneer at everyone. At least Bill left his mark on you, I’ll give him credit for that.”