Ruby scuttled across the floor to retrieve the head. ‘It was an accident, Father.’
Snatching it from her hand, Father Brennan held the head up to the light. ‘You wicked girl! This is a doll’s head. A shameful waxen travesty of a human infant!’
‘Please, Father, let me explain.’
Father Brennan strode towards the doorway. ‘I’ll be having words with your father.’
Ruby ran into the street after him. ‘No, please don’t. Poppa is very poorly. It was all my fault.’
Turning on her in a fury, Father Brennan seized her hand, folding her icy fingers around the doll’s head. ‘Dwell on your sins, Ruby, and when you have had time to contemplate your wicked deeds, you will come to confession.’
‘But, Father!’
‘And don’t expect to receive payment!’ Father Brennan strode off, disappearing into a flurry of snow.
Ruby stared after him with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that had nothing to do with the fact that she had forgotten to eat her slice of bread and dripping at dinnertime. She was not afraid of the penance that Father Brennan would hand out in the confessional, but she was afraid of telling Mum that one of Poppa’s strange outbursts of temper had been the cause of them losing money. Ruby shivered as the snowflakes settling on her thin cotton blouse began to melt, sending cold trickles down her neck. She hurried back inside the workshop, blew out the candle and wrapped Rosetta’s wet shawl around her head and shoulders, barely aware of the chill striking through her bones. She would have to think of some way to break the news so that it didn’t sound quite so bad; at least there was the money due from the wholesalers for the dolls. After all, they must sell well, it being so close to Christmas. There must still be plenty of well-off folks prepared to spend good money on their little daughters’ presents.
Ruby locked the gates and started for home. Hopefully her concern for Poppa would mellow Mum’s attitude to the unfortunate accident; after all, she wasn’t going to be upset that Father Brennan was put out. Mum had little or no time
for popery in general and Father Brennan in particular, and neither had Granny Mole, who never passed up an opportunity to have a go at Catholics, Eyeties, Russians and Jews and in fact anybody whom she considered was a foreigner. Ruby sighed and wrapped her shawl more tightly around her head. Not only was she going to have to tell Mum that they weren’t going to be paid for the Christ Child, but also she would have to break the news that Rosetta had gone to stay with Aunt Lottie. Perhaps the bit about dancing in the chorus at the Falstaff could wait a while.
It was dark by the time Ruby reached Spivey Street, passing the lamplighter as he lit the last lamp, filling the dark canyon with oily pools of yellow light reflecting off the snow. Halfway down the road, a large snowball caught Ruby smack between her shoulder blades and another hit her square in the face, half blinding her. Surrounded by a crowd of jeering boys, no more than six or seven years of age, Ruby blinked the snow out of her eyes, holding her arm in front of her face as she was bombarded by a further hail of snowballs. One of the urchins tugged at her shawl, tweaking it from her shoulders, and was about to make off with it when someone lifted him clear off his feet, holding him by the scruff of his neck and shaking him so that his skinny legs swung, kicking in mid-air.
‘No you don’t, sonny!’
Blurrily, Ruby saw her tormentors scatter in all directions as Billy dropped the culprit onto a pile of slush.
‘Let’s get you home afore you catches your death of cold,’ Billy said, retrieving her shawl from the wet ground. He handed it to her, staring hard. ‘Red shawl. I was hoping I might bump into Rosetta, but it’s Ruby, ain’t it?’
‘Same difference,’ Ruby said, wiping the snow from her face and drawing herself up to her full height. ‘Anyway, it’s okay, ta. I can get meself home. They caught me unawares but they won’t get away with it a second time.’
‘You’re the stubborn one, you are, Ruby,’ Billy said, clicking his tongue to bring his old horse ambling forward with the cart and, without a by your leave, he hoisted Ruby onto the driver’s seat. ‘Wrap that around you.’ Billy tossed her a hessian sack from beneath a pile of tea chests.
It smelt awful but at least it was dry and Ruby huddled beneath it as Billy led the horse down Spivey Street towards Tobacco Court. Normally she would have leapt back down again, thanked him politely and gone on her way, but Ruby was wet, cold and too worried about what she was going to say to Mum to act proud and independent. Thankfully, Billy didn’t seem to want to chat or ask questions and, when they neared
Tobacco Court, she called out to him to stop. ‘I can walk the rest, ta.’
Billy grinned at her beneath his peaked cap. ‘Afraid the neighbours might talk, ducks?’
‘No, I was just saving you the trouble, that’s all.’
‘Don’t worry. They all know as how you wouldn’t give the likes of me the time of day. Now your sister Rosetta, well, she’s different.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’
‘She’s a bobby-dazzler. Nothing wrong with that, is there?’
‘You keep your eyes off me sister. You keep away from her.’
‘Whoa, there,’ Billy said, pulling gently on the reins until the horse clopped to a halt outside number sixteen. ‘Strikes me that your sister has a mind of her own.’
‘Rosetta is a good girl. You got a bad reputation, Billy. Leave her alone.’
‘That’s right,’ Billy said, grinning. ‘I’m a bad lot.’
Ruby jumped off the cart. ‘I ain’t joking. You steer clear of Rosetta.’
‘Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.’ Billy leapt down from the driver’s seat and patted the horse’s neck. ‘You done well, old boy. We’ll be home soon.’ He went to the back of the cart and hoisted a familiar-looking tea chest onto his shoulder, dumping it on the pavement.
‘Couldn’t sell your dolls, ducks. Hope you wasn’t relying on the bees and honey.’
Ruby’s heart sank into her high-button boots but she held her head proudly erect; she wasn’t going to give Billy the satisfaction of knowing just how much it mattered. ‘How do I know you took them to the wholesalers?’
‘I don’t cheat on friends, Ruby. I took them all right, but they didn’t want ’em. Said it was too late, the shops had bought their Christmas stock and didn’t want no more. Hard luck, girl.’
‘Hard luck?’ Ruby stared at him aghast. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Eh?’ Pushing his cap to the back of his head, Billy stared at her. ‘What’s up?’
‘Take them away, please, Billy. I can’t explain now, but just keep them for us until I can think of a way out of this mess.’
By the time she reached Aunt Lottie’s house in Shoreditch, Rosetta was soaked to the skin and she couldn’t feel her fingers or toes. She had no clear idea of the distance between Tobacco Court and Raven Street, but it must be three miles or maybe four, if her aching legs were anything to go by. Stopping on the corner for a moment to catch her breath, Rosetta rubbed her hands together and stamped her feet in an effort to bring them back to life. Raven Street, she thought, was a step up from the rookeries in Whitechapel but it had definitely seen better days. The terrace of red-brick, five-storey town houses had been built at the beginning of the century to house wealthy merchants, lawyers and City bankers and their servants. Now, almost a hundred years on, the rich families were long gone and their large homes had been turned into cheap boarding houses, illicit gaming hells and brothels. Aunt Lottie’s house was slap bang in the middle and its crumbling exterior was equal to anything in the Gothic horror stories that Rosetta loved to read. Hugging Ruby’s
sodden shawl a bit tighter around her shoulders she walked on, slipping on the slushy pavements and making a grab for the rusting iron railings outside the house as she climbed the stone steps up to the front door.
Lifting her hand to rap on the knocker, she took a step backwards as the door opened and a man pushed past her, his shoulders hunched beneath his green-tinged black suit and his face hidden by a battered top hat pulled down over his ears.
Throwing herself against the heavy oak door, Rosetta managed to stop it slamming in her face. ‘Hello,’ she called, stepping into the cavernous entrance hall. Her voice echoed eerily down the dark passageways, bouncing back off the high ceilings. ‘Aunt Lottie, are you there?’
‘Who calls?’
Looking upwards to the first floor landing, Rosetta saw a pale face, framed in mad grey hair, hovering above the banisters. ‘It’s me, Rosetta.’
‘Don’t loiter, girl. Come on up.’ The head disappeared and Rosetta navigated the stairs, taking care not to catch her feet in the gaping holes that pockmarked the carpet as she followed Lottie into her sitting room. Directly opposite the door, a four-poster bed draped in faded silk curtains took up most of one wall. A heavily carved wardrobe was crammed against a washstand. Next to it stood a side table littered
with framed photographs of Lottie in her heyday and a jumble of bric-a-brac.
At the far end of the room, two chintz-covered armchairs flanked a blazing fire and Lottie lowered herself into one of them. ‘So, run away from home, have you?’
Rosetta edged towards the fire. ‘Not exactly.’
‘Look at the state of you. Take those wet things off before you catch your death of cold.’
Rosetta peeled off her bonnet and shawl, dropping them onto a piano stool abandoned in the middle of the room, although there was no piano in sight.
‘Don’t drip on me carpet, girl.’
‘Sorry, Auntie.’
‘And don’t call me Auntie. You know I hate it.’ Picking up a stone bottle from a table by her chair, Lottie half filled a tumbler with clear liquid and took a mouthful, swallowing it with a satisfied sigh.
Wrinkling her nose at the unmistakeable whiff of gin fumes, Rosetta moved closer to the fireplace. They never had fires like this at home, but then Mum always said that Lottie was an extravagant cow and that was why she had ended up like she had.
‘Sit down, Rosetta. You making the place untidy.’
‘I give up me job at Bronski’s.’ Rosetta pulled up a footstool and sat down. ‘I got a job in the
chorus at the Falstaff theatre, starting tomorrow, and I thought as how you might let me stay here.’
Lottie’s face cracked into a crazy paving of lines as she threw back her head and laughed. ‘Good for you. You done right, cara; you was wasting your life working in that sweatshop. You got looks, Rosetta, and good legs. You can go a long way with a shapely leg and a pretty pair of titties. I’d love to have seen your momma’s face when you told her.’
Rosetta felt the blood rush to her cheeks and it wasn’t just due to the heat of the fire. ‘I never told Mum about the theatre. She don’t approve of …’ Rosetta broke off, biting her lip, stopping herself just in time from saying that Mum didn’t approve of the theatre, nor did she approve of her sister-in-law, for that matter, not in any way, shape or form.
‘You don’t have to tell me. I know what your momma thinks of me, but you going to be the new dark sheep of the family now, Rosetta.’ Chuckling, Lottie swigged her drink.
‘You mean black sheep, I think.’
‘You going to be famous like me,’ Lottie said, raising a bony hand and patting her hair, which must once have been her crowning glory, a mass of tumbling Titian curls, although now it flew about her head in a wild tangle of pepper-and-salt frizz. ‘I was the queen of the music halls.’
‘You think I could be like that?’ Wrapping her
arms around her knees, Rosetta searched Lottie’s face for an answer. ‘I want to better meself. I want nice clothes and a half-decent life. I don’t want to end up old before me time.’
‘You took the first step. Now you got to be tough.’
‘No one at home understands how I feel, not even Ruby.’
Lottie cocked her head on one side, watching Rosetta like a blackbird eyeing a juicy worm. A slow smile curved her lips. ‘I see myself in you, Rosetta, twenty, maybe thirty years ago. I had gentlemen fighting over me, showering me with gifts.’
‘You had lovers?’
Lottie poured herself another generous slug of gin. ‘More than I can remember. All of them crazy in love with me. Even the Prince of Wales himself.’
‘So it is true?’
‘It’s true. I was beautiful then and my lovers give me expensive presents: diamonds, gold, a racehorse or two.’
‘But,’ Rosetta said, frowning as she glanced around at the shabby room, ‘where did it all go? Surely you couldn’t have lost it all gambling like Mum says?’
Lottie pulled a face. ‘My one little weakness, cara. I couldn’t resist the gaming tables or a little flutter at the racetracks. All I have now is
what you see here, this house and my little mementoes. All the rest, sadly, gone to pay my debts, but I don’t regret one bit of it. I lived my life, cara Rosetta. You got to live yours too, the way you want to.’
‘And I can stay here for a bit?’
‘You can stay here as long as you like. I don’t know if we have a room free; I leave all that to your Uncle Sly. He’s my man of business now. He looks after the paying guests.’
‘I was nearly knocked down on the steps by one of them. A queer-looking geezer, all in black, like a crow.’
‘That would be our Mr Wilby, the professional mourner. I only take in professional gents. This is a respectable lodging house, contrary to what your momma thinks.’ Lottie lay back in her chair, closing her eyes. ‘I’m tired. Go and find Sly. He’ll sort you out a room and some food.’
‘Yes, Auntie. I mean, Lottie.’
Lottie opened one eye. ‘And get out of those wet things. Take what you need from my wardrobe. I don’t suppose you brought nothing with you.’ Waving her hand in the direction of the wardrobe, she closed her eyes and turned her head away. ‘You so like me, Rosetta, so like me.’
Going over to the wardrobe, Rosetta opened the door and gasped as the pungent smell of mothballs took her breath away. The garments were terribly old-fashioned, but she managed to
find a silk blouse, a black satin Spanish shawl, embroidered with scarlet roses, and a plain black bombazine skirt, which might have fitted Lottie ten or fifteen years ago, but certainly would not fit her now.
Leaving Lottie snoozing by the fire, Rosetta went in search of Uncle Silas. She found him in the steam heat of the basement kitchen where he stood by the range, stirring the contents of a large saucepan. The appetising aroma of vegetable soup made Rosetta’s mouth water, reminding her that she had eaten nothing since a slice of bread at breakfast.