London, 1890s
The week after the visit to The Thrawl was Ma’s birthday. Daisy and Joe were going to take her out to supper at the Cock & Sparrow, and Lissy and Vi and their husbands were coming as well. Lissy’s Lita was making a whole batch of mutton and onion pies for the evening. Daisy was greatly looking forward to it.
‘Shall I turn up and give a surprise performance for her birthday?’ Madame asked.
‘Oh! Could you? She’d love it,’ said Daisy, delighted. ‘They’d all love it.’
‘I’ll do it, then. The twins can go up to the Thumbprints’ for the evening – they like that, and the Thumbprints like having them. Thaddeus is reading The Adventures of Pinocchio to them. And Rhun can go along later to get them back down here to their beds. See now, what shall I sing …?’
Ma was pleased to see Daisy and Joe, and thrilled to her toes when Madame came in and threw off her velvet cloak to reveal one of her saucy costumes. Bowler Bill was there, of course, delighted to be playing an accompaniment, and Old Shaky was in his corner, happily strumming his banjo. He mightn’t be able to stand up for more than five minutes at a time on account of his bad legs, but he could join in and play any music you cared to sing, could Shaky.
Madame gave them the Marie Lloyd song, ‘A Bit of a Ruin That Cromwell Knocked About a Bit’, performing Miss Lloyd’s dance, in which she pretended to be tipsy for the last line about, ‘Outside the Cromwell Arms last Saturday night/I was one of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit.’ Everyone applauded and roared out the lines with her. After that, she did, ‘Oh, Mr Porter’, which was very saucily meant, with everyone delightedly roaring the lines.
Then Bowler Bill struck up, ‘For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow’, with Old Shaky plunking away at his banjo. Everyone got up to sing, Peg the Rags stood on a table and pretended to conduct, and people cheered. Daisy was pleased to see what good friends Ma had around her, and proud of her family. Lissy’s girl was taking round the trays of mutton pies, and everyone was eating and laughing. Joe did not say very much – he never did – but Daisy could see he was enjoying it all in his quiet way, drinking in the scene; probably, when he got home, he would draw it all.
The party was still going on when Daisy and Joe, together with Madame, left, laughing when Bowler Bill shouted across the room that it was raining, and he would lend them his umbrella. Madame retorted that they would not melt from a drop of rain, but Daisy took the umbrella, and in fact they were glad of it because when they got out to the street it was raining quite heavily.
The three of them walked in silence, Daisy and Joe on each side of Madame, all sharing the umbrella. It was a companionable silence, though. Once or twice Joe slowed his steps, looking up at a building or peering down a dimly lit alley, and Daisy smiled. One day, she would see Joe having a proper display of his work in an expensive gallery. That was a very good thought.
They were nearing the Commercial Road, when they heard the shouts.
‘Fire! There’s a fire!’
‘Get help! Fire!’
‘Where?’ said Madame, looking about her in bewilderment. ‘I can’t see any fire.’
‘Nor can I …’
But Joe had run back to the corner of the street, and was beckoning. ‘Over here,’ he said. ‘Across from Fossan’s Yard. Flames and smoke.’
Huge clouds of smoke, shot with crimson and scarlet flames, were already billowing into the night sky. There was no need to ask where it was coming from. There was only one building hereabouts that was large enough to give forth that amount of smoke and flames.
The Thrawl was burning.
People were starting to run towards it, shouting for help to be brought, and Joe went forward with them. But there was a moment when Daisy and Madame hesitated, and looked at one another, and Daisy knew they were sharing the same thought. You did not, of course, run away from something so disastrous, something where people might be needing help, but—
But this was The Thrawl. And inside it were secrets that needed to remain secret. Then the moment passed, and they were going after Joe, becoming swept along with the rest of the people running towards the fire, because of course they must do what they could.
Black, evil-smelling smoke gusted into Daisy’s face as she ran, making her cough, and half blinding her. The flames were lighting up the sky now, and people were shouting and clutching at children to keep them away from the flames.
They rounded the corner on the edge of Fossan’s Yard, and there it was – The Thrawl, with its rearing walls glowing from the heat. Bricks and huge chunks of stone were falling into the street, showering down everywhere, and men who seemed to be in charge were shouting to everyone to keep back – couldn’t they see it was bloody dangerous? You’d get crushed to fragments by a bit of falling wall if you didn’t look out.
But already some form of order was being established. People had formed a line across the main part of the square, and buckets were being filled from a nearby pump, and passed from hand to hand, then flung on to the flames. Daisy saw Madame go over to join them, and she saw Joe helping to pump the water. She went to stand with Madame, taking her place in the line, but churning in her mind was the fact that Pa had been inside this place, and that he might have escaped in the confusion. What if he was somewhere in this throng of people, peering into their faces, searching for the daughter who had nearly killed him, and who had then got him shut inside a madhouse? He might be quite close this very minute.
And what about that other one – that one who had sung his own version of ‘Listen’ and who chanted the names of all the murder sites to himself in the dark quiet of his room? Daisy shivered and looked nervously about her, but everyone seemed intent on the fire.
Police constables had come running to help, their shrill whistles blowing to summon others. They were already rounding up people who were clearly the asylum’s residents – ragged, bewildered-looking creatures, they were, wandering around in fearful puzzlement. Several of them had been wrapped in what somebody told Daisy were called restraining jackets, and the warders were leading them away from the square. A woman next to Daisy said the church and a mission hall had been opened up as a temporary shelter. They would all be looked after, she said comfortably, but one of the men further down the line said this was rubbish – it was a safe bet that not all the lunatics would have been found, poor sods.
‘Too many of them,’ he said. ‘That place was stuffed to the attics with them. Ask me, not even the warders knew everyone who was in there. Mark my words, there’ll be some strange ones wandering the streets for many a night to come.’
‘But what happened?’ said Daisy, frantically passing the heavy buckets along. ‘How did it start?’
‘Somebody said there was a doorkeeper took to smoking a pipe near the main doors,’ he said. ‘Took a drop too much whiskey one night – although God alone knows how he could afford whiskey! – and fell asleep with his pipe burning. Place’d go up like a tinderbox.’
Daisy stared at the man in horror, understanding that the doorkeeper had only afforded the whiskey because of Madame’s half-sovereign, and that this fire was the result of it. No time to think about it now, though – they all had to concentrate on getting the fire under control and getting people to safety.
More and more people had joined in, and people had come running out of the Cock & Sparrow. Bowler Bill had organized a second bucket-and-pump line – Daisy saw Lissy and Vi and their husbands helping. Even Old Shaky had done his best to carry buckets, although he soon had to give up, and he told Daisy he was a useless old wreck who could not help out in trouble. Fortunately, Madame heard this, and said Shaky was not a wreck at all, in fact he could be extremely helpful to her, because here was the fare for a hansom cab for him to go out to Maida Vale and explain to Rhun and the Thumbprints what had happened and that she would be late home. Rhun would be sure to give him a drop of whiskey when he got there, she said, at which Shaky went off, feeling that he might not be so useless after all.
By midnight the fire had been quenched almost entirely, although it was clear that the ruins would smoulder for some time. There were heaps of blackened rubble everywhere, and great pieces of masonry and chunks of chimneys that had fallen away. Most of the main walls were still standing, although the windows had fallen out, and the rooms were open to the sky where ceilings and great sections of the roof had fallen in.
‘I think we can safely leave it now,’ said Madame, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead. ‘We should be able to pick up a cab – there’ll still be plenty around. Where’s Joe got to? Oh, there you are, Joe. We’re going home now – you going to come with us, are you? Good. We’ll get you taken to your lodgings first.’
As they walked away, they could still hear the clattering of buckets and swooshing of water hosing on to the walls, but after they had turned a couple of corners, the sounds faded, and the ordinary night street noises of London started to take over. There was the rattle of carts and the clop of hooves from the cabs in the main thoroughfares. A cab would come past them at any minute, and Daisy thought they would all be very grateful to climb in and get home. They could hear people who had not known about the fire calling goodnight to one another, and a snatch of drunken singing from a tavern somewhere. Once a brace of cats yowled, and there was the sound of a window being flung up, and angry shouts to the cats to clear off. The word used was not actually ‘clear’. There were the sounds of footsteps, as well, so other people could not be far off.
Footsteps. Daisy glanced over her shoulder, because it was not sounding like several sets of footsteps – it was a single set.
‘Nothing wrong in a few footsteps,’ said Madame, very softly. ‘There’re plenty of people around.’
‘Tisn’t all that late anyway,’ put in Joe.
But it seemed to Daisy that, as they walked on, the footsteps walked with them. It did not mean someone was following them, of course – simply that someone was walking in the same direction.
They were nearing the Commercial Road, when Joe suddenly said, ‘The footsteps – they’re still there. Somebody is following us.’
Even as he was saying this, Madame’s hand was closing on Daisy’s arm, and she said, ‘He’s right. Someone’s creeping along behind us.’
Daisy listened, and although she could not hear footsteps, for a dreadful moment a snatch of singing reached her. Her heart leapt, because it felt as if the night of the fire was being replayed. Then she realized it was only a burst of song from the nearby tavern, and she relaxed and almost laughed with relief.
Madame laughed, as well. She said, ‘Lot of scared-cats, ain’t we? It’s only the people from the bar over there. Drunken lot, they are …’
She stopped, because a figure had stepped out from a side alley and was coming towards them at a lurching run. The glow from the ruins of The Thrawl was behind him, and his eyes were fierce with hatred. The familiar voice came to them.
‘Murdering bitch of a daughter! I got you at last! I been following you ever since you left the fire, an’ now I got you cornered!’ The eyes slewed round to Joe. ‘I got you as well, useless thing for a son that you are! Part of the plot, weren’t you!’
Daisy grabbed Joe’s hand, but Joe was standing stock-still, staring with horror at the man he had thought dead, and when Daisy tried to pull him back down the street, he seemed unaware that she was even there.
Pa came straight at them, seizing Daisy with one hand, and dealing her a hard blow across her face with the other. She fell back against a shop window, hitting her head on the stone frame. The pain of the fall spun her into dizziness, blurring her vision, but she saw Joe bound forward and attack Pa, and she understood at once that his mind had gone spinning back to those squalid years in Rogues Well Yard.
It took Pa by surprise. He almost fell back, but then he righted himself and fell on Joe, knocking him to the ground with almost contemptuous ease. He crouched over him, his thick fingers closing around Joe’s throat.
‘And you’re next, you bitch,’ he said in a dreadful snarling voice, not loosening his grip, but looking round to where Daisy was attempting to get up. ‘Di’n’t I say you wouldn’t escape me?’
‘Stop it!’ That was Madame, yelling fit to wake the dead. ‘Let him go, you madman. They’ll hang you if you kill him!’
‘Don’t hang madmen, darlin’,’ said Pa, leerily. ‘They’ll put me back in one of those places, that’s all they’ll do.’
Joe’s hands were flailing helplessly and his face was becoming suffused with crimson. Daisy struggled frantically to get up, but the street was spinning and tilting all around her, and she fell back again, sobbing with frustration and with terror for Joe. But through the sick dizziness she saw Madame run forward – Pa had disregarded Madame as a threat, in the way he would have disregarded any female, but Madame was already pulling at Pa’s arms, trying to loosen his grip on Joe’s throat. She would never do it – Pa was too heavy, too powerful – but then Daisy saw that Madame was clutching the umbrella, half jokingly given to them in the Cock & Sparrow. It was not very heavy, but Madame was raising it over her head, and from that height it would deal a telling blow. Even as Daisy was thinking this, the shaft came smashing down on the back of Pa’s head. He gave a kind of half grunt of pain or fury, but his hands did not loosen their grip. Madame, her face white, but her eyes blazing, dealt a second blow, and then a third. And with the third blow, there was a sickening crunch of bone splintering, and Pa let out a cry that echoed around the deserted square, then fell back. His body jerked a few times, then his head lolled to one side, and his eyes fell open, wide and staring.
Joe scrambled back from the prone figure, then turned to Daisy, his eyes frightened pits in his face. Daisy’s head was still throbbing from the blow and her mind felt as if it were stuffed with cotton, but she grabbed Joe’s hands and finally was able to stand up. Madame was bending over Pa’s prone form, and Daisy thought she was feeling for a heartbeat, which was what people did if they thought somebody was dead.
Then she sat back on her heels, and in a voice that shook, said, ‘He’s gone. There’s no heartbeat.’
‘He’s dead,’ whispered Joe, and before Daisy could speak, Madame was there, her arms about him.
‘Yes, Joe, he’s really dead now – he can’t hurt anyone again.’
Daisy was still holding Joe’s hands. She said, ‘Did you mean to do that? To kill him?’
‘No. Oh, God, no. But I’m not sorry for what I did.’
Daisy looked at her, and strongly in her mind was the knowledge of how, that long-ago night by the canal, she had not been sorry for what she had done, either.
‘But,’ said Madame, ‘I’m not sure what we do now,’ and for the first time Daisy saw that Madame really did have no idea what to do. She realized that she had no idea, either.
It was Joe who said, ‘We hide him. Now. Tonight.’
‘But where—?’
‘In the ghost river,’ said Joe.