The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (10 page)

Hypocrite, he told himself. You don’t give a damn about Rose Durrant or her bastards. You can’t even think of them without anger.

He knew it was outrageous to blame her in any way for Ainsley’s death, and yet he did exactly that. If it hadn’t been for Rose . . .

And what would she do now? Would she haul her bastards out to Jamaica and make the old man’s life a nightmare of shame?

Another man might come to accept them in time, might learn to overlook the irregularity of their birth. Not Jocelyn.
Death before dishonour
was the ancient motto of the Monroes. It was what he lived by.

‘I have no son,’ he had declared when Ainsley left Jamaica, and in the years since then he’d never mentioned him again. Time hadn’t mellowed him, it had burned him down to his fierce, metallic essence. It would be the final blow to learn that ‘that Durrant woman’ had produced a brace of bastards to drag his name through the mud. He wouldn’t bend. He would break.

But why, thought Cameron suddenly, must he be told of them just yet? Surely that can wait a couple of months? Surely Rose can be persuaded to do that much? After all, she’s had no contact with Fever Hill for over a decade. What difference would a few more months make?

He thought about the little girl in the snow.
Tell them they’re dead to me
, he had said. He had frightened her. A despicable thing to do, to frighten a child.

But God damn it, why think of her at all? Why think of any of them? What’s the use?

Once again the cockroach emerged and started feeling its way down the wall. Cameron let it go. He was sick of killing.

He went back to the desk and picked up the sheet on which he had written about Rose and her bastards. All he cared about was Jocelyn.

He folded the sheet in half and tore it up.

It was the third day since Cousin Lettice had arrived at Cairngowrie House, and Madeleine was putting the last of her things in her trunk.

If it hadn’t been for the shell, she would have been angry. All morning she’d had her mother’s favourite song running through her head, and she couldn’t get rid of it.
Oh soldier, oh soldier, will you marry me? Oh no, my sweet lady, that never can be. For I’ve got a wife at home in my own country. Two wives and the army’s too many for me.

At last she understood what it meant. It was yet more evidence of her mother’s lies. She had lied about being married, and she had lied about the taint. She had lied about everything. ‘Always seek the truth,’ she would say when she talked about taking photographs. But all she did was lie.

Were all grown-ups like that? Did everybody lie?

Madeleine thought of Baby Jesus in his crib, so tidy and clean – and of how baby Sophie had actually looked when she arrived. She thought of her mother lying in the scarlet butterfly of blood. Was there always this ugliness underneath, which everybody knew about, but nobody ever mentioned?

Was that why she had found it so easy to lie to Cousin Lettice?
Tell the truth
, Cousin Lettice had told her.
If you tell a falsehood I shall know it.
But she had not known it. She had believed what Madeleine had told her. Even Cousin Septimus had believed.

The Reverend McAllister would have said that Madeleine was wicked for telling lies. Her mother on the other hand had said that she was splendid, magnificent and brave. But Cousin Lettice said that her mother was tainted. So who was right? Was she wicked or magnificent? Who
was
she?

Madeleine had looked up ‘taint’ in the dictionary. It said,
a defect or flaw. A trace of contamination or pollution.

A defect or flaw.
It is in the blood.
She pictured the crumbly grey blotches floating in scarlet. Maybe that was why the officer in the Forbidden Kingdom had been angry with her. Because of the taint.

Downstairs the front door slammed. She heard men’s voices on the path; the crunch of snow; the creak of a wagon. She went to the window and saw a large, black-curtained carriage moving slowly off down the coast path, followed by Mr Ritchie’s wagon, piled high with furniture. It was a brilliantly sunny morning, and the wagon cast cartwheel shadows on the snow.

Madeleine went downstairs to ask Cousin Lettice where the furniture was going.

She found Cousin Lettice alone in the drawing room, which had been stripped of everything but the footstool. This Cousin Lettice had pulled up to the fire, to use as a seat.

She was surrounded by papers stacked on the bare boards, and these she was feeding into the flames, stabbing them savagely with a poker. ‘All of it, all of it,’ she muttered between her teeth. Her narrow face was flushed, and a coil of false hair had escaped its combs and swung limply against her cheek.

It took Madeleine a moment to realize that Cousin Lettice was burning her mother’s photographs. She had dragged in the boxes from the darkroom and was methodically emptying them into the fire. The albums, too, were stacked beside her on the floor. One lay open on her lap. She was neatly gutting it.

Madeleine watched a fresh stack of photographs thrown onto the fire. She watched them curl and smoke and blacken, then flare into brilliant orange, and finally disintegrate into little flakes of darkness which disappeared up the chimney.

The shell began to crack. She started to shake. She tried to keep out the snap of the flames and the chemical smell of the burning photographs, but they kept coming through.

She looked to where the piano should have been, but of course it was gone. She thought of the photograph of Eden, crumbling to darkness in the fire: the beautiful ruined house, the tree-fern in the window; her father’s fair head. All carried away in a flurry of darkness.

Cousin Lettice spun round with a start. Their eyes met.

Madeleine’s heart hammered in her chest. ‘I’m going to tell on you,’ she muttered. She turned and thundered up the stairs.

Her mother would know what to do. She would stop this horrible dried-up witch lady from burning the photographs.

She burst into her mother’s room. It was empty. Everything was gone. The bed. The wardrobe. The dressing-table. All that remained were bare walls and naked boards and an empty grate.

Her mother was gone.

The shell cracked wide open. The world came crashing in on her. The stink of Lysol and the freezing cold. The footsteps pounding up the stairs.

She screamed.

Cousin Lettice appeared in the doorway, breathless and frightened.

Still screaming, Madeleine pushed past her.

She ran down the stairs and out of the house and through the snow-covered garden and onto the beach.

The chill wind buffeted her screams back to her. The grey seals slipped off the rocks and disappeared beneath the pewter sea.

Part Two

Chapter Eight

London, March 1894 – ten years later

Ben should of never gone near that shop. If he hadn’t, his whole bloody life would of been different. And Robbie’s too.

But it’s half after six and they’re up the Portland Road prossing about in that fog, and it’s freezing cold and the black smuts are raining down like dirty snow, and there’s bugger all to click – so what’s he to do? Here’s this nice little empty shop, door unlocked, gas on low, like the shopkeeper just nipped out.
Rennard & Co
, it says in the window, P-h-o-t-o-g-something-or-other. So in they go. And that’s his first big mistake.

Queer kind of shop it is, and all. Golden chairs, and this plaster column with red velvet hanging over. ‘Lovely,’ says Robbie, stroking it. He’s always been one for the colours. Last year Ben took him up the Paragon, play about soldiers, penny a go in the gallery. Robbie loved it. All the glittery lights and the colours and that.

But right now Ben’s got an eye for a click, and straight off he spots this box, and inside it this little Box Brownie. Get a bob for that at the coffee-house down Endell Street. But then he spots the bowl of apples on the counter, and that’s his second big mistake. Should of just clicked the sodding Brownie and cut the lucky
out
of there.

So him and Robbie are stuffing their pockets with apples when all of a sudden this nobby voice goes, ‘Stop thief!’ and there’s this bint behind the counter with a rifle, sodding
rifle
, pointed straight at him. And then this second bint, a little one, pops up beside her.

Ben’s never seen a gun before except up the Paragon, so him and Robbie stay put. Next big mistake.

‘What have you got in your pockets?’ says the bint with the rifle. She’s a pretty bit of muslin, nineteen or twenty, cloudy black hair and big black eyes, and a curvy red mouth like a plum; like it’d be juicy if you took a bite. But she puts Ben in mind of his big sister Kate, and that gives him a pain something horrible in his chest, cos Kate’s dead, and he swore he’d never think of her again. So now he can’t click the sodding Brownie, can he? It’d be like clicking from Kate.

‘What have you got in your pockets?’ goes Black-hair again.

So him and Robbie put the apples on the counter. Well, she’s got the gun, and all.

She frowns. ‘What were you going to do with those?’

‘Eat them,’ snaps Ben. ‘What d’you think?’

‘But they’re rotten. We were going to throw them away.’

‘Shows how much you know,’ he goes.

Something flickers in her face, like he’s hit a nerve. Then she darts a look at the little bint, who’s well twitchety, and the little bint gets out this big paper bag and pours out these new apples and pears. ‘They’re props,’ she mumbles. ‘We use them for photographs.’

She’s ten or so, with long yellow hair. She’s nothing like Black-hair, but he can tell straight off that they’re sisters. They got that way of talking without talking.

‘Take some,’ Black-hair tells him. ‘Go on. We can buy some more.’

That’s when he knows she’s not going to shoot; she never was. She’s scared of him. Shows some sense, that does.

So now there’s nothing to stop him cutting the lucky, except that Robbie’s pounced on the apples, and chomping away. His ugly little mug’s all scrumpled up, and the bints are staring at him with their mouths open. Well, he’s a bit of a sight, is Robbie, with his carrotty hair and his greasy old jacket stretched over his hump, and his kicksies that peter out at the shins, and his scabby black feet.

‘How old is he?’ Black-hair asks Ben.

‘Seven,’ he growls, ‘and he can speak for hisself.’ Just because Robbie’s one button short of a row, it don’t mean he’s a sodding idiot.

‘How old are you?’

‘I dunno. Thirteen? What’s it to you?’

He can’t make her out. Why don’t she just chuck them out or call the bluebottles? What’s she after? She curious? Some nobs are. They get a taste for the dirt and the smell and that.

And she’s a nob all right. Fancy white blouse with big puffy sleeves. Copper-colour skirt with all black braid and a fancy belt. Nobby as hell. And so clean. He wonders if she’s been got into yet, and thinks probably not. Though she could charge the earth, with a figure like that.

He goes, ‘You never work in a shop, you’re too posh.’

‘This is just a hobby,’ she says. ‘I help out from time to time but I don’t get paid. Mr Rennard couldn’t afford it. And besides, it wouldn’t be respectable for a lady to get paid.’ That mouth of hers twists in a smile, like she thinks that’s rum.

‘Bit early for helping,’ he goes. ‘Seven in the morning.’

‘Sometimes I take my own photographs before we open.’

‘And sometimes,’ chimes in Yellow-hair, ‘as a
special
treat, Maddy lets me come along too.’

Crikey, thinks Ben, that her idea of a treat?

Yellow-hair’s not as pretty as her sister, but she’ll do – although them eyebrows spell trouble. Not curvy like Black-hair’s, but straight and dark.
Watch out
, they seem to say,
or you’re in for a fight
.

She hasn’t been got into either, Ben can tell. Bet she’d be well narked if he asked. Funny what a fuss nobs make about it. Ben’s been getting into bints since he was eleven. So what?

Yellow-hair’s got on this red and white stripy pinafore and black stockings and shiny black boots, and Ben wonders if they got studs on the bottom; he always wanted boots like that, so when you skid on the pavement you make sparks. He saw a kid do it once, it was the best thing ever.

‘You ought to go now,’ says Black-hair. ‘Mr Rennard will be here soon.’

‘Oh, not
yet
,’ goes Yellow-hair.

‘Sophie . . .’

‘Oh,
please
.’ She turns to Robbie, and points at his woolly dog that Ben clicked from the toyshop, and goes, ‘What’s his name?’

Robbie looks well worried. He’s had the sodding thing a couple of years, but never thought to give it a name. ‘Dog?’ he mumbles.

She nods. ‘Dog. Well I’m Sophie, and that’s Maddy – Madeleine, actually. Maddy chose my name when I was born, she got it off a book, but we never told Cousin Lettice.’

Robbie’s got his mouth open, he can’t believe she’s talking to him like a proper person. And Black-hair’s watching him with this little half-smile; not sneery or nothing, just kind. Ben
hates
that. It makes him go all prickly and hot. So he decides to click the sodding Brownie after all. Just to prove that he can.

‘It was my birthday last week,’ goes Yellow-hair. She’s the talker, her sister’s the watcher. ‘I didn’t have a party, as we don’t know anyone. That’s why it’s so nice to meet you—’

‘Sophie, that’s enough—’ goes her sister.

‘– but Maddy gave me black beauty,’ goes Yellow-hair, regular chatter-basket, ‘it’s
brilliant
, I’ve read it twice already.’ She fetches this book from behind the counter.

It’s got a horse on it in gold, and Ben goes, ‘They got the bridle wrong.’

Yellow-hair’s impressed. ‘Do you know about horses?’

Robbie pipes up. ‘Ben had this job once at Berner’s Mews, and—’

‘Shut it,’ goes Ben. He turns on Yellow-hair. ‘So you can read. So what?’