The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (80 page)

For his part, Austen simply didn’t know how to behave. Until a year ago he had never spoken to a black man in his life – let alone lived with one under the same roof. He liked the man well enough, and in a way he even respected him. But he couldn’t relax with him. It would be like relaxing with one’s butler.

Awkwardly, Mr Walker deposited the
Daily Mail
on the tea table, rose to his feet, and rubbed the back of his head. ‘The tea’s gone cold. D’you want me to ring for some more?’

Austen reddened. It would be dire for them both if he sat down to tea. ‘No, no,’ he murmured, ‘I wouldn’t dream of disturbing you.’

Downstairs the front door slammed, and moments later Austen saw his employer coming up the stairs. He breathed a sigh of relief.

His employer glanced from Austen to his business partner, and he grinned. ‘What’s up, Austen? You been squabbling with Isaac again?’

Austen’s cheeks burned. ‘Oh, I say, sir, I wouldn’t dream—’

His employer touched his shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean it.’ He went over and poured himself a cup of cold tea and drank it off in one go, then threw himself down into a chair with his usual grace. ‘So what you been up to, mate?’ he asked Mr Walker. Sometimes with his business partner he lapsed into his old mode of speech. Austen suspected that he did it to tease his secretary.

‘Been down the docks,’ said Mr Walker, with an embarrassed glance at Austen.

‘Bloody hell, Isaac, what for?’

Mr Walker shrugged. ‘I dunno. I went down the COS, too. Least, the COS as was.’

‘But what for?’

‘I dunno. Old times.’

His partner shook his head. ‘God Almighty, Isaac, you got to start leaving it behind.’

Isaac grinned, and his partner reached over and gave him a good-natured cuff.

Austen felt obscurely left out. He liked his employer and he wanted his employer to like him. But this reminded him of school, when the other chaps used to send him to Coventry for enjoying Greek. From the doorway, he cleared his throat.

His employer turned his head. ‘What is it, Austen?’

‘Erm. Not “God Almighty”,’ said Austen gently. ‘Might I suggest – “Dear Lord”?’

His employer studied him for a moment, then burst out laughing. ‘Why don’t you stop prossing about in that doorway and come and have some tea? And if you ever catch me saying “Dear Lord”, you can shoot me. All right?’

Austen permitted himself a shy smile, and edged towards the sofa. ‘Very well, Mr Kelly,’ he said.

It’s Sunday morning, and Ben’s gone down the bakehouse with his big sister to fetch the dinner, and everything’s topper.

The weather’s a bit sharp, but the big tin of batter pudding’s warming his hands nicely, and the smell of the meat pieces is twisting his belly into knots.

It’s the best time of the week, as he’s got Kate all to hisself. She says that when he’s ten he can go to the bakehouse on his own, but not before, or some basher will give him a thrashing and click the lot. But Ben knows that’s just an excuse. Truth is, she likes coming with him.

She’s topper, is Kate. She’s got bright blue eyes and hair like copper wire, and freckles all over, which she hates, but Ben thinks are bang-up. She can be a right Tartar, making him sluice his head every Sunday and walloping him if he don’t. But she’s the sharpest bit of muslin you ever met, and she’s got the loudest laugh in East Street. And when she cracks a joke, she always looks at Ben before the others, like she knows he’ll catch on first. Pa hates that, but it makes Ben so proud that it hurts.

Today she’s all poshed up to meet her sweetheart. She’s got her blue frock out of pledge, and she’s even put on her stays. Which means that Jeb Butcher can’t be far away.

And sure enough, he’s waiting for them on the corner of Walworth Place. He’s a costermonger, and until Kate got sweet on him Ben wanted to be a costermonger too, and wear a velveteen jacket, and kicksies that flare out below the knee like a candle-snuffer. But over the last month, Kate’s been talking of going to live with Jeb. Of course she’s only joking. But it gives Ben a pain in his chest just to think of it.

So now they’ve reached East Street, and when they’re nearly at number 39, Jeb shoves off home. That’s when Ben says to Kate, ‘I got you a present.’

‘A present?’ She grins at him. ‘That’s nice.’

‘Here you are,’ he says proudly. It’s a pipe, a proper white clay pipe with a long stem for a good sweet smoke, just how she likes it. He’s been waiting for a chance to give it her for days.

She takes it, and her face goes still.

His heart sinks. Bugger. She don’t like it.

‘Where’d you get this, Ben?’

‘Found it, didn’t I?’

‘You mean you clicked it.’

‘I never.’

‘You did. This is old Mrs Hanratty’s pipe. I seen her smoke it.’

Ben don’t say nothing. Him and Jack clumped the old biddy a few days ago, and clicked her savings that was sewn into her drawers. Laugh! Did they laugh! There she is lying in the gutter, yelling blue murder, and thrashing her skinny yellow pins like a beetle.

Turned out she only had a couple of bob and her lucky pipe, and a twig that Jack said was heather. So Jack took the rhino and give Ben the pipe, and chucked the rest down the drain. But afterwards Ben wished they’d left the old biddy her bit of heather.

Kate gives him back the pipe without a word, and they go indoors. She’s well narked. But there’s no time for him to say nothing, because they’re home.

Kate shoves the pudding on the table and everybody grabs a spoon and digs in: Jack and Lil and Pa, and Ma with the baby asleep under her lotties. Robbie’s off in his corner as per usual, watching the spider. He does that all day. Maybe he thinks the spider’s going to do something, instead of just prossing about in its web.

Ben tries to catch Kate’s eye, but she won’t look at him. She’s narked, and he knows why. Mrs Hanratty’s a neighbour. You don’t click from the neighbours.

He’s all hot and prickly inside. And that makes him narked at Kate, cos she’s the one making him feel like that. What’s he sposed to do, say sorry? Well, bugger that.

Pa scrapes the last of the meat pieces out the tin, and shoots Kate a look. ‘You was a long time coming. Where you been?’

‘At the bakehouse,’ snaps Kate, ‘where d’you think?’

Jack and Lil and Ben keep their heads down. Ma looks from Pa to Kate, and twines a lock of orange hair round her skinny finger. Any moment now and she’ll start snivelling.

Ben puts down his spoon – quietly, so as not to nark Pa. If only Pa could be in a good mood today, and tell stories and crack a laugh, like he does sometimes. If only he didn’t fancy Kate.

‘You been with that Jeb Butcher,’ goes Pa, watching her.

‘I never,’ goes Kate.

‘You was,’ goes Pa.

Kate gets up and goes to stand at the window, with her arms round her waist. Pa looks at her. He looks at the way her skirts swell over her hips, and her lotties push up under her frock. Ben knows that look. It’s the same as Jack give Lil last summer, when it was so hot that they slept in the altogether.

Oh well. After Jack got into Lil, they was friends again soon enough, so maybe it’ll be like that with Pa and Kate? A bit of a blow-up, then everybody friends again. And then Kate won’t go off and live with Jeb.

‘You was out with that Jeb Butcher,’ goes Pa again.

‘She never,’ goes Ben, covering for her. ‘We come the long way home on account of – there was dray-horses in Walworth Place.’

Pa’s green eyes turn on him like a searchlight. ‘What you on about?’

Ben swallows. ‘See, I don’t like dray-horses. I get scared.’ It’s true, he does. Except there wasn’t no drays in Walworth Place. Only Jeb.

Pa leans across the table towards him. He’s so close that Ben can smell the coal on him, and see the black dust in the deep lines from nose to mouth. That mouth. Lips like a statue’s, and the edges so sharp they could be knife-cut. He can give you a smile with that mouth that’ll make you feel ten feet tall, or he
can give you such an earful that you’ll want to crawl down a sewer. And you can never tell which is coming next. You just know that you’d do anything to make him like you, if you only knew how.

‘
Scared?
’ goes Pa, in a sneery voice that makes Ben’s belly clench like a rat trap. ‘Scared of a couple of nags?
’

‘They got big feet,’ mumbles Ben.

‘Big feet!’ goes Pa. ‘They’ll stomp all over you with them big feet if they catch on you’re scared! But if you don’t
show
them you’re scared, you’ll be all right. Don’t you know that yet?’

Ben shakes his head. He hates for Pa to think he’s yellow, but he’s got to cover for Kate. ‘It’s not that I don’t like horses,’ he mutters. ‘It’s just that I don’t like
dray
-horses.’

Pa snorts. But all of a sudden he’s not sneery no more, he’s laughing. ‘Oh, so it’s just
dray
-horses you got a down on?’

Ben chucks him a doubtful look, then nods.

‘Well, well,’ goes Pa, looking round at the others. ‘We got ourselves a sodding attorney! A twisty-turny attorney, playing with words!’

Lil sniggers, and Jack and Ma join in, but it’s more out of relief than cos it’s funny. Kate comes back to the table and sits down again. And the spring in Ben’s belly loosens up.

Everything would be all right if Kate would only look at him again. But she’s still narked about old Mrs Hanratty’s pipe.

So after supper he slinks out for a bit. And an hour or so later when he gets back, the curtain’s down and Ma and Pa are in the back room, and the others are prossing about in the front. Jack’s curled up asleep, and Lil’s jiggling the baby on her lap, and Robbie’s in his corner, watching the spider.

Kate’s sitting by the window with her tray on her knees, making violets. She’s folded back a bit of newspaper off the window to let in the light, and she looks pretty as a picture. That coppery hair and the paper violets on the tray, and the blue glass pot of paste. All the lovely colours.

Ben sidles up to her, steering clear of the violets so as not to dirty them. He goes, ‘I took the pipe back to Mrs Hanratty.’

She finishes off another violet and puts it on the tray.

‘I didn’t say sorry,’ he mutters. ‘Just left it in her shakedown where she’ll find it.’

‘That’s good,’ she says without looking up.

Later, he’s sitting with Robbie watching the spider, when she comes over and squats down and puts a mug in his hands. It’s her own tin mug with the painted roses that Jeb give her. ‘Kettle broth,’ she says.

That’s his favourite. And she made it just the way he likes it, with the water well mashed into the bread, and a dot of lard on top for a relish. She must of gone next door to get the water hot.

He scowls at it. ‘This because of that sodding pipe?’

She puts her head on one side. ‘Maybe. Careful with that, it’s hot.’

‘
Piping
hot,’ he mutters.

She grins. ‘
Pipe
up, you idiot, I can’t hear you.’

‘
Pipe
down,’ he shoots back, ‘or you’ll wake the baby.’

She cuffs him round the head, and goes back to work.

Ben woke with a start as Norton drew back the curtains.

For a moment he didn’t know where he was. His heart was pounding. He lay still, fighting the pull of the dream.

Outside it was still dark. Rain pattered against the window panes. The street-lamp shone in his eyes. Seven o’clock, and a fire was already blazing in the grate. Some time around five, a housemaid would have crept in and made it up. She hadn’t woken him. Since coming to London, he’d slept like the dead.

And now he was dreaming of them, too.

Rubbing his face, he propped himself up on one elbow, and watched Norton setting the coffee tray on the table.

The dream clung to him. He couldn’t shake it off. All the little details. That blue frock of hers. The roses on the mug. His terror that she might leave. Twenty years on, and he hadn’t forgotten a thing. Christ.

The unflappable Norton poked the fire, turned the gas on low, then went through into the dressing-room to lay out his master’s clothes. He did it all without a word. Ben hated talking in the morning.

Ben got out of bed and shrugged on his dressing-gown, and stood looking down at the fire. Even without it the room would have been warm, for he always took houses with hot-water pipes in every room. What was the good of being rich if you couldn’t stay warm?

He turned to survey the bedroom. In the golden glow of the gaslight, the furnishings were opulent but not ostentatious. The deep patina of well-polished mahogany. The dark blue sheen of silk damask hangings. The rich gleam of morocco book-bindings. What would Jack have made of it? Or Lil, or Kate?

Christ
, why dream of them now, suddenly, after all these years?

Norton appeared at the dressing-room door and discreetly cleared his throat. ‘Shall you be going riding this morning, sir?’

‘No,’ snapped Ben.

‘Very good, sir.’

Ben went to the window and looked out. The sky was lightening, the rain easing off. ‘On second thoughts, yes.’ He’d just bought a three-year-old at Tattersall’s: a big flashy chestnut who needed taking in hand. It was a challenge, but he knew that when he sold her in a few months’ time he’d be passing on a much better horse.

‘Very good, sir,’ said Norton, and silently withdrew.

Norton was the perfect servant. Soft-spoken, soft-footed, and utterly unperturbed by his master’s moods. Of course, who knew what he really thought about Ben – a man he’d have crossed the road to avoid five years before? But who cared, so long as he did his job?