It was three weeks from the day that Paris was cut off from the rest of the world that Kitty and Jem at last discovered the whereabouts of the square with the dolphin statue – three weeks during which the first battle of the siege was fought and lost to the demoralization of beleaguered citizens and soldiery alike. As the French attack failed in face of superior Prussian arms and military discipline, deserters from the defending army fled back to the city in their hundreds. Panic spread through the streets and the wildest of rumours flew. The National Government had surrendered – had fled the city – were treating for peace – had been shot out of hand. When the disastrous two days of the sortie were over, Parisians found themselves facing the simple, grim fact that nothing had changed; except that they, and their government, were more tightly penned in than ever – 2 million souls encircled by the iron and fire of one of the most efficient military machines the century could produce, an army that with the short sight of supreme self-confidence the French had publicly laughed to scorn just three years before. On 20 September, Prussian Uhlans took Versailles with no shot fired, and the fearsome encirclement was complete. There were after that a few skirmishes of no great import except to those who were killed in them. In the last days of the month as the oddly peaceful streets and boulevards still sweltered beneath a blazing sun a strange quiet descended on the city, a quiet disturbed only by the optimistic stir caused three days after the fall of Versailles by the successful launching of the hot air balloon Neptune in a triumphant attempt to communicate with the outside world. Kitty and Jem were among the crowds that cheered the gallant Douroff as he lifted from the high ground at the foot of the Solferino Tower in Montmartre, his hastily patched balloon gracefully bobbing in the clear air as it drifted in proud defiance over the flabbergasted enemy encampments.
Within days a new industry had blossomed in the besieged city as in the now useless and silent vast station buildings of Paris men, women and children laboured to produce more balloons and to patch up those others existing in the city – most of them sad souvenirs of the Great Exhibition. In a remarkably short time a ‘balloon post’ was established, with balloons flying two or three times a week: and if it could not be denied that their destinations were uncertain – for no one had devised a way to guide the things – the effect on the morale of the city’s defenders was understandably substantial. Paris was not, after all, totally cut off from the civilized world, even though the traffic was entirely one-way. On 8 October Léon Gambetta, Minister of the Interior, bravely volunteered to be ballooned out of the city to help organize resistance in the rest of France and effect the raising of the siege. As the balloon Armand Barbès lifted, the unstable basket spinning and swinging, Gambetta unfurled the gallant banner of the Tricolour and the watching crowds cheered him to the echo. But then once more the silence of siege descended and, as it became increasingly obvious that the Prussians had no intention of wasting men and resources in trying to take the city by direct assault, the boredom of anti-climax and forced incarceration depressed spirits and once more lowered morale. The theatres were closed and a ten o’clock curfew imposed upon the dark and all but deserted streets of what had been just a few months before acknowledged as the gayest city in the world. Troops cooped up in barracks and temporary encampments with nothing more to do but endlessly reinforce the city’s defences and to keep watch over an enemy well dug-in, secure and apparently perfectly happy, drank and gambled and quarrelled and listened in idleness to the left-wing agitators for whom such a captive audience was the answer to a prayer. On the day in October that Jem burst into Kitty’s apartment, the tattered sketch in one hand and what proved to be a bottle of very fine champagne in the other, disaffected National Guards and enraged citizens had marched for the second time in seven days upon the Hôtel de Ville to demand action – any action – from the government of General Trochu, who not for the first and most certainly not for the last time was faced with as much of a threat from within as without the city.
Kitty, standing by the window, turned in surprise at Jem’s obvious excitement. ‘Champagne? Jem – what on earth are you up to?’ She stopped, her eyes wide. ‘Jem! You haven’t – you haven’t found something?’
‘I have, my Songbird, I have, I have, I have! And in such a way that I could kick both of us for not having thought of it before! Fetch the glasses.’
Kitty ran to the tiny kitchen, returned with two glasses. ‘What? Oh, Jem – don’t be a beast! – what?’
The champagne cork popped loudly. With a flourish Jem poured the foaming stuff into the glasses. Smiling teasingly, he offered her a glass. Uncharacteristically she all but stamped her foot in wild impatience. ‘Jem! If you don’t want this poured down your silly neck—’
He lifted his glass, still grinning. ‘A toast,’ he said, ‘to Miss Lily Daltrey.’
‘Who’s—’ She stopped. ‘You haven’t discovered her name?’
‘Her name – and where she lives. The square with the dolphin statue is over the river, in Montparnasse, near the cemetery. So far as my informant knows, the lovely Miss Daltrey still resides there. Your champagne’s going flat.’
Staring at him, she had not even tasted it. ‘How? How did you find her?’
‘I went to Le Chat Fou, off St Germain. Idiot I was not to have thought of it before! It’s a great hang-out of the street-artists. I asked around and – voilà! Sure enough someone recognized the style. A guy called Hugo Sanchon drew the picture. I found him and he remembered the ladies very well. Especially the lovely Lily. She was his model for a while. And more, I suspect. Lord, woman, don’t expect me to buy you champagne again! It’s wasted on you!’
Laughing, she sipped the sparkling drink and in her excitement almost choked. ‘Champagne! With the Prussians camped on our doorsteps! It’s ridiculous!’
‘Outrageous. But very Parisian, non?’ He topped up her glass and his own, ran a hand through his thick, untidy hair. ‘Butter – if you can discover any – may be upwards of ten francs a pound, we may be eating horsemeat, fresh vegetables may have run out already; but the city, thank God for His mercy, is absolutely awash with alcohol. The story is that we’ve food for six weeks and alcohol for six months – so the outlook isn’t so bad after all, is it? It might have been the other way round – perish the thought!’ With that boyish, incorrigibly cheerful smile he tossed back the drink in his glass, took a quick swig from the bottle. ‘Get your coat. We’ve got a call to make.’
She entered the small, shabby square with an odd and unexpected shock of recognition. She had studied its image so frequently, imagined the moment of finding it so often that it seemed to her that the place was as well known to her as her own back garden. The face, too, of the young woman who opened the door to Jem’s jaunty rapping was uncannily familiar; the wide, feline eyes, the pouting mouth, the luxurious, heavy hair – the artist had captured her beauty perfectly. What he had not succeeded in getting onto paper – perhaps indeed he had not tried – was the hard, rapacious set of that luscious mouth, the calculating look in the light, heartless eyes.
‘Oui?’ Her look was suspicious.
‘Miss Daltrey?’ Jem turned on his most spectacular smile, ‘Miss Lily Daltrey?’ Half exasperated, Kitty noted the faint, charming exaggeration of his already attractive accent, saw the gleam of interest in the cat-like eyes.
‘’Oo’s askin’?’ The girl’s voice was unpleasantly and incongruously harsh.
‘My name’s Jem O’Connell. This is Miss Daniels. We wondered – could you spare us a moment of your valuable time?’
The girl did not move. Nor did the calculating gaze flicker. ‘What for?’
‘We’re looking for someone,’ Kitty said. ‘A – mutual friend I think – Lottie Smith?’
The girl did not conceal well enough the flicker of wariness that crossed her face. ‘Never ’eard of ’er.’
‘Oh, but surely—’ Jem, still pleasantly smiling and radiating the most irresistible charm, moved a foot to block the closing door. He fished in the inner pocket of his jacket, pulled out the battered sketch and held it out to her. ‘I spoke to Hugo just this morning. He remembers you as being the best of friends—’
‘Sod Hugo,’ she said. ‘What’s it got ter do with ’im? Or you?’
‘We’re looking for Lottie,’ Kitty said. ‘She’s in Paris. We thought she might have got in touch with you?’ She had reached into her pocket and pulled out a small roll of banknotes, stood tapping them idly with the tips of her fingers.
Lily Daltrey shook her head, but her eyes displayed interest.
‘What a pity.’ Very deliberately Kitty fingered the notes, then made as if to tuck them back into her pocket.
‘Wait. You might as well come in.’ Ungraciously the girl moved back to let them pass. ‘Straight on. Through the curtain.’
As they entered the small sitting room Kitty and Jem exchanged a swift, half-amused glance. The room was like a cheap and gaudy stage set for The Arabian Nights. Garishly coloured shawls were flung across low divans, an enormous, moth-eaten tigerskin rug, the head glaring lopsidedly with one filmed glass eye, lay upon the floor. Long-fringed lamps and beaded curtains completed the bizarre illusion. ‘What you buyin’?’ the girl asked from behind them, bluntly.
‘What are you selling?’
She eyed first Jem, then Kitty. ‘Somethin’ you want I guess.’ She held out a flat, shapely hand.
Ignoring Jem’s quickly-cast, warning look Kitty peeled a note from the roll and laid it upon the girl’s open palm. The long fingers curled, signalling greedily. Kitty peeled off another note. Both disappeared without trace into the shadowed cleft between the girl’s full breasts. Kitty saw Jem watching the deft movement with interest.
Lily Daltrey lifted her head. ‘All right. Yer entitled to what bit I know. Yes. She came ’ere. ‘Er an’ them bleedin’ nippers.’
‘Nippers?’ Kitty asked sharply, trying to quell the sudden, shocking turmoil in her stomach. ‘What nippers?’
‘’Er nippers. Girl an’ a boy. ‘Ere – I thought yer said yer knew ’er?’ She peered at Kitty suspiciously.
‘We do.’ It was all that Kitty could do to control her shaking voice. ‘The little girl – Poppy?’
‘Yeah. That’s right.’
‘And the little boy? Is it – Michael?’
The girl nodded. ‘Mick they call ’im.’
Kitty thought for a moment that she might faint. Relief and terror fought within her – relief that, through it all, she had been right, Lottie was with Michael in Paris – and terror that after coming so close something still might prevent her from finding her son.
Jem slid a light supporting arm about her waist. ‘Where are they now?’ he asked, quietly.
It seemed an age before the girl answered. ‘I dunno,’ she said.
Kitty caught a shocked breath. ‘But – surely! Please! You must know! I’ll pay you! Anything you want!’
The girl shook her head, the mercenary regret in her eyes obviously and shatteringly genuine.
‘What happened?’ Jem asked.
She shrugged. ‘They stayed ’ere for a bit. It was all right at first, though the kids was a nuisance. It’s difficult ’avin’ nippers about when yer tryin’ ter earn a decent livin’ – fellers don’t like knowin’ there’s kids in the place. But then she got sick.’
‘Lottie?’
‘Yeah – well – I wasn’t ’avin’ that, was I?’ The lovely face was the very picture of injured innocence. ‘I mean – I could ’a’ caught somethin’, couldn’t I? An’ I’ve got a livin’ to earn. Gotta be careful, you know? An’ what with ’er gettin’ so thin an’ all – she looked a bleedin’ bag o’ bones. Wasn’t bringin’ in a sou. An’ I mean – I’m not a bleedin’ charitable institution, am I?’
‘You threw her out,’ Kitty said.
‘Yeah – well, I ’ad to, didn’t I? Like I said, I got meself ter think about. Be sure no other bugger does—’
‘When?’ Kitty asked.
The girl considered. ‘Oh, I dunno – two, three weeks ago – somethin’ like that. Just after the bleedin’ pickle-stickers arrived.’
‘Pickle-stickers?’
‘The Germans,’ Jem supplied. His eyes on her face were full of sympathy.
She tightened her jaw. In her head, furiously, beat the knowledge that Michael had been here – here in this very apartment – whilst she had been hunting on the other side of the city. The thought almost physically nauseated her. ‘Have you no idea where she went?’
‘Nope.’ The girl made a brief, sour grimace that might have been a smile. ‘We didn’t exactly part the best o’ friends. She didn’t leave no forwardin’ address.’
‘Did she have any money?’
Lily shook her head, and rightly interpreting Kitty’s look of bleak anger lifted her shoulders in a shrug. ‘Ain’t my fault, is it?’
‘You threw her out, sick, with two children to care for and no money?’
‘Seems like it, don’t it?’
Appalled, Kitty recognized in the girl’s attitude not bravado but an injured certainty that she was in the right, an absolute lack of anything of regret or conscience.
Jem took her arm. His face was shadowed with disgust. ‘Come on, Kit. We’ll get nothing else here.’
She pulled away from him, still facing the girl. ‘The little boy – Michael – was he all right?’
Lily eyed her curiously. ‘Last time I saw ’im – yeah, ’e was fine.’
‘If you hear or see anything of them – anything! – will you come to me?’ Kitty was hastily scribbling her address on a corner of the sketch. She tore if off and handed it to the girl. ‘If you help us find them I promise I’ll make it worth your while.’
‘’Ow much?’
Kitty did not hesitate. ‘Fifteen hundred francs.’
The girl whistled between her teeth. ‘You really want ’em, don’t you?’
‘Just one more thing. If you do see Lottie – I don’t want her to know. I want to – to surprise her.’
The girl smiled, craftily. ‘That’s all right by me.’
Blindly and with no farewell Kitty turned and pushed her way back through the beaded curtain to the front door.
This time the disappointment was crushing; for now there were no more straws, no more flimsy hopes to cling to. Yet she would not, could not, give up. Michael was here, in the beleaguered city, in the charge of a sick and penniless woman; and though she knew that her chances of finding him had surely plummeted to nothing, doggedly and despite Jem’s fiercely worried warnings she walked the blighted streets, ignoring the dangers. She visited the overcrowded convents where scores of lost and homeless children had found refuge, she loitered outside schools, hunted through the all but empty market places, but all, of course, to no avail. As she walked the unnaturally quiet streets she found herself scanning the faces that passed her. The cry of a child would set her heart racing, her eyes searching for that one small gypsy-dark head.
The weather now had broken at last, and broken with a vengeance. In the place of the blazing heat a chill cold had enveloped the hard-pressed city, unseasonally early. Time trickled on, and the strange, nervous strain of inaction and ever-present threat strung tempers to breaking point once again. Acting too late, in mid-October the government at last rationed meat – but by now supplies were so low that only a hundred grammes a week could be allowed. Jem, Kitty and the little Louise ate frugally of the supplies Kitty had laid in, supplementing them wherever possible with food bought from outside. When Kitty was not engaged on her obstinate and hopeless search for the child, she and Louise stood in endless queues in the damp, bone-chilling cold while Jem, in a remarkably short time, became adept at being the first to track down a black market source for meat, or fish, for fresh vegetables or even, on one memorable occasion, for fresh milk, which few people in Paris had tasted since the siege had begun. In the way of such things, despite disaster and extraordinary circumstance, life assumed a pattern that oddly parodied normality; by day the simple necessities of existence took up most of their combined time and effort, in the evening, after Louise had left to join her own family – usually with some small supplement for their store cupboard – Jem and Kitty, in a happy echo of those peaceful times at La Source, would sit before the meagre fire in Kitty’s apartment and play cards, or talk, sipping the wine of which there still seemed to be an unending supply – indeed, it was as Jem had predicted the only thing in the city of which there was no shortage.
Often Jem would sketch as they talked and, over her laughing protests, his thick pad soon became filled with a succession of pictures of Kitty – curled into an armchair, huddled against the cold, laughing, frowning, talking, staring pensively into the flames of the small, precious fire. The life of Paris too, despite the exigencies of a besieged city – the shortages, the barricades, the lack of freedom, the tensely quiet streets – paralleled their own and had achieved a strange sense of normalcy. Some of the theatres had re-opened. The cafes were full again. The smarter restaurants even still managed to produce passable meals and varied menus – though it did not pay for the squeamish to enquire too far into the ingredients of the more exotic dishes. As always it was the poor who suffered most as prices soared and winter closed in. Beyond the ring of defending forts smoke from the enemy campfires rose, whilst within the walls the strange combination of stress and tedium was disturbed only by the usual wild rumours that everyone had on the highest authority. The Prussians were about to shell the city. A French army was advancing from the south – the north – the east – the west. The Reds were planning open revolution.
Beneath the surface disaffection and dissatisfaction with the ‘popular’ government that had been swept to power in the coup of less than two months before was growing. Resentment in the working areas at the comparative affluence of the better-off flickered like a small, angry fire in undergrowth tinder-dry and ready to flare. At the end of October the boredom and frustration felt by the besieged forces were personified by an idiotic attack upon the village of Le Bourget. The attack – on an indefensible and strategically useless hamlet occupied a little shakily by the Prussian army under the French guns of the Forts de l‘Est and Aubervilliers – was ordered by a brigadier so ambitious to achieve personal glory and advancement – and to ease the crushing boredom of inaction – that he did not bother to inform the government of his intended action. The result was disaster; an early, comparatively easy victory turning to punitive and ignominious defeat. From their eyrie above the city Kitty and Jem watched the distant flicker of flame, the rise of smoke, listened to the echo of cannon and rifle fire. As reports of the atrocious casualties sustained by the French reached the city, fury at the waste and incompetence blazed and, once again, in one of those troubled and bewildering swings so characteristic of Parisian politics rebellion flared and the chanting mobs were on the streets again.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ Kitty said to Jem, helplessly, ‘I just don’t believe it! They’re all on the same side, aren’t they? I mean – the Germans are at the very gates of the city – and still they fight amongst themselves?’ She shook her head. ‘I’ll never understand it.’
‘Change is never easy to understand.’ Jem was on his knees by the fireplace, feeding into the flickering flames slithers of a precious packing case that he had – Kitty had not enquired too deeply how – acquired for fuel. ‘The politics of the world are close to upheaval, Kitty – and the roots of that upheaval are right here in Paris. The working people here have learned their lessons in a hard school. They have learned not to trust their masters. They have learned – a little – their own strength, and that is the most dangerous of all. And in Paris itself they have learned that if you rule the streets you rule the city, and if you take the city you take the country.’ He sat back on his heels, rubbing his dirty hands thoughtfully together. ‘One day,’ he said, ‘there will be a revolution somewhere that will change the balance of the world.’
She looked at him, surprised at his unusual solemnity. ‘Here. Now?’
He shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t think so, though they might try. But it’s too early. There are no real leaders. And perhaps, too, a nation that has experienced the trauma of one bloodbath in the name of equality and freedom is reluctant, underneath it all, to instigate another.’
‘What is going to happen then? Now, I mean?’
He pulled a funny, rueful face. ‘My dear girl, if I knew that then I’d make a fortune as a clairvoyant!’
What did happen was that another chanting, screaming mob marched yet again on the seat of government, the Hôtel de Ville, and – after charge and counter-charge, threat and counter-threat, betrayal and counter-betrayal – there was yet another mob-inspired change of government. On Tuesday 1 November Paris woke up on a dismal, streaming morning to another day of siege and privation and a new set of masters. On the same day the grim news – several times vehemently and officially denied over the past few days – was confirmed that Metz had been starved into submission, another French army was captured and more Prussian troops were free to join those encamped in comfort about Paris. It was on that day that Jem announced his entirely unexpected decision to serve with the American Ambulance, the field hospital that had been, with strange foresight, purchased lock, stock and barrel and kept in the city by a rich and philanthropic American after its showing at the Paris Exhibition. Its reputation was fabled: it was said that half the ranks and most of the officers of the defending forces carried into battle cards to the effect that, if wounded, they would be happier surrendered to the ministrations of the American Ambulance than of some other rather less efficient medical establishment.
‘But—’ Kitty, unexpectedly, found herself shamingly piqued that he should consider doing such a thing. The Ambulance would take his time, would be bound to distract him from – from what? From her. The plangent voice of honesty, long ignored in the matter of her relationship with Jem, suddenly refused to quiet. ‘But won’t it be awfully dangerous?’ she asked, a little lamely; not at all what she had started to say.
He shook his head. There was a new lightness in his step, a new purpose in his boyish voice. Fiercely, and she had to admit thoroughly unreasonably, she found she resented it. ‘It’s only dangerous if there’s a real battle. And the way things stand at the moment that doesn’t seem very likely.’
Irritated, she did not miss the tinge of dissatisfaction at that state of affairs. ‘Well don’t sound so put out about that,’ she snapped. ‘You’d rather get yourself killed?’ Her voice was irrationally tart. She flushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, unsuccessfully attempting a smile. ‘Siege nerves.’
He looked at her for a long moment, and once again, as so often despite his apparent openness and charm, the strange shadow of reserve that she found herself so frequently and usually successfully having to ignore lay between them.
The days that followed were days of bitter cold, of a noticeable diminution of supplies of all kinds, of communal depression and of the beginnings of a new fear. In the first week in November smallpox claimed 500 lives in the city. Other diseases too had begun to attack the weakened population. Food was running out; the meat ration – when it could be obtained at all – was reduced by half. Prices had become outrageous. Kitty, as with others rather better-off than their fellows, still managed not to deplete her emergency store too severely: the way things were going, who knew how vital those provisions might eventually become? And, always and without let, the thought of Michael – increasingly of Lottie, Poppy and Michael – haunted her. Where were they? How were they surviving? Were they even still alive? Smallpox. Typhoid. Pneumonia. Starvation.
On Christmas Day Michael would be three years old.
Jem’s duties with the Ambulance turned out in fact not to be too demanding, and she still saw him frequently. In mid-November, as belated news reached the city of an isolated victory for French arms west of Orléans, just seventy miles from the beleaguered capital, and the weary population defiantly found the energy to celebrate, Kitty, determinedly, bought her first skilfully butchered and prepared cat and they ate more satisfyingly than they had for weeks.
‘I can’t help hating the thought of it,’ she admitted ruefully to Jem. ‘Though why pretending it’s lamb should have made it easier to cook and eat I really don’t know! What’s the difference, for heaven’s sake, between a poor little dead lamb and a cat! Still, I must say that somehow – I don’t know why – I just don’t ever see myself being able to eat dog, no matter how hungry I get.’
He grinned, and quite suddenly she noticed how thin his face had become. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder about her own looks. Her fingers strayed to her face, sensed the drawn skin, the sharp line of bone. ‘I’m sorry—?’
‘I said, “You English!” You and your dogs! You treat them better than you treat your—’ He stopped, the teasing laughter leaving his face.
She looked down at her plate, eyes blurring.
‘Kitty! – Oh, damn it! – Kitty – I’m sorry—’ He was beside her in a moment, his arm about her shoulders.
She shook her head. ‘It’s all right. It’s just—’
‘God, when will I ever learn to keep my big mouth shut! Of all the stupid, insensitive—’
‘No.’ In a perfectly natural gesture of affection she leaned her head against his shoulder, lifted her hand to stroke his face. ‘No, you aren’t—’
She sensed the change in him, the stiffening, the drawing away. She lifted her head, hurt in her eyes. ‘Jem?’
He stood up, dropped a quick, brotherly kiss onto the top of her head and stepped back. ‘I have to go. I’m on duty at eight.’
She had to face it. And, huddled miserably in bed that night, cold to the bone, shivering, alone, she finally did. In the past weeks her feelings for Jem, slowly, almost imperceptibly, had changed. Until that moment this afternoon she had not herself suspected the extent of that change: in face of his adamant refusal to acknowledge it had not, perhaps, wanted to admit to it. But it was there, and she could no longer ignore it. Over these past few weeks of close contact with Jem had grown a longing for more than his friendship, more than the easy camaraderie that they had shared for so many years. She closed her eyes, tried to think honestly. She was lonely, and she was frightened. Out there in the darkness lurked, horribly, the permanent threat of violence; of bombardment, of attack, of God knew what nightmares. Somewhere in the city her small son starved – might indeed already be dead. The anguish of that was a constant in her life. She knew the danger of those pressures, understood the influence they may well have had on her feelings for Jem. But she knew also, very certainly, that although they may, like the warmth of a hothouse, have forced the swifter growth of something that under normal circumstances might have taken more time, in no way were they the root cause of her feelings. She wanted Jem, wanted him beside her; thin, warm body, thin strong hands, thin dearly loved face—
But he did not want her.
There was no denying it now, in the honesty of the bleak, dark small hours of a November morning. Incident after incident, stubbornly ignored, proved it – a hand withdrawn, a touch deflected, that infuriating, light, friendly kiss. Always the gentle, considerate withdrawal from her.
She turned restlessly, stared into darkness, the tears ice-cold on her cheeks before they ever reached the pillow.
When Jem arrived the next day she found herself looking at him with new eyes. Always slight, he was now downright thin, though that in her eyes in no way detracted from his physical attraction. The privations of the past few weeks had in fact produced a wiry toughness which had never been in evidence before. The boyish looks, enhanced as they were by the thatch of invariably untidy hair were, she knew, deceptive. The wide, sensitive mouth, that still smiled so readily, had yet firmed and hardened since those first days she had known him in London, when they had danced in the Cremorne Gardens on the night of Luke Peveral’s birthday. Covertly now she watched him as, like a brigand with his loot, he displayed the results of his latest foray.
‘Violà! Potatoes – one, two, three – what do you think of that?’
‘Wonderful!’
‘And – two carrots and a cabbage. A cabbage?’ He held up the sorry-looking object, grimacing comically, then shrugged philosophically. ‘A cabbage.’
‘Where on earth did you get these?’
Secretively, he touched the side of his bony nose with an equally bony finger. ‘I know a man.’
She laughed.
He put his hand into the sack again. ‘Sugar. Just a few spoonfuls.’ He gently laid the precious twist of paper on the table, then shook the sack. That’s the lot.’ He tousled his hair in a characteristic gesture, then stopped suddenly, snapping his fingers. ‘Say – I’ve just thought of something I kept meaning to ask—’
‘Mmm?’ She was watching him again, hardly listening, watching the play of winter light from the window on the long, straight, fair lashes that shaded his light eyes.
‘That old feller that used to shadow Luke – what was his name? The one with a face like a walnut—?’
She blinked. ‘Spider?’
‘That’s the one.’ He unwound his long, threadbare scarf from about his neck, rubbed his rough, reddened hands briskly together in front of the small fire. ‘Tell me – he likely to be in Paris, would you think?’
‘Spider? In Paris? Of course not.’
He hunkered in front of the fire, trying to warm himself. ‘That’s what I thought. I must have been mistaken. Yet – I’d have sworn it was him.’
‘Where?’
‘In the road outside. I was past him before it struck me who he reminded me of.’
‘You didn’t speak to him?’
‘Nope. When I went back, he’d gone.’
‘You must have been mistaken.’
‘Guess so.’ He eyed the vegetables hungrily. ‘Looks like the makings of some fine warm soup there?’
She gathered them into her apron. ‘Better get used to a vegetarian diet – they’ve issued the last of the fresh meat, so the butcher said.’
He grinned. ‘Not quite.’
‘What do you mean?’
He quirked a fair eyebrow. ‘When did you last visit the zoo?’
She stared at him in fascinated dismay. ‘Oh, no!’
‘Oh, yes! Elephant – camel – rhinoceros – all on next week’s menu, Madame!’
Her face was a picture of almost comic repugnance. ‘Jem! I couldn’t!’
He nodded, undisturbed. ‘Oh, yes you could. If you were hungry enough.’
The laughter died a little. ‘And – do you think we will be?’
He lifted a shoulder. ‘Who knows?’
‘But – it can’t go on for much longer, surely? Everyone’s saying that something big’s going to happen very soon – that the army’s going to break out and join up with the reinforcements coming with Gambetta—’
His movements stilled. ‘Where in hell’s name did you hear about that?’
‘It’s all over the city. The butcher told me. Jem – do you know anything about it?’
He turned back to the fire. ‘The Ambulance has been told to stand by for the twenty-ninth. It’s supposed to be a secret.’
‘There’s no such thing as a secret in Paris.’
‘Ain’t that the simple truth?’ Shaking his head he stood up and walked to the window, stood looking, sombrely thoughtful, across the frost-covered roofs to the enemy lines in the distance. ‘If you know,’ he said after a moment, ‘and I know, and the butcher knows, and presumably the best part of Paris knows – I guess it’s too much to hope that our Prussian visitors haven’t heard?’
The operation known as the Great Sortie began on a foul-weathered day at the end of October in an atmosphere of the wildest confidence and optimism and in forty-eight hours collapsed in a welter of mismanagement, incompetence and sheer bad luck. From the start the Fates were against it. The message sent to Gambetta from the city was entrusted to the balloon the Ville d’Orléans – no one could possibly have foreseen that, incredibly, it would land not in unoccupied France but would fly nonstop across the face of northern Europe to distant, inaccessible Norway – so ensuring that Gambetta and his forces would not discover until too late where and when the breakout from the city was to take place. The lines of communication to the Prussian camp, however – as Jem had suspected – suffered from no such disadvantage as adverse winds and capricious air currents. Days before the Great Sortie was due to begin Prussian troops were quietly redeployed to face it. Even the weather proved to be on the Prussian side as torrential rain washed away the pontoon bridges by which the French were to have crossed the River Marne. At the last moment, uneasily, the French High Command considered calling off the whole operation; the uncertain temper and high expectations of the Paris mobs, however, proved forceful if mistaken arguments against that. On the night of 28 November a tremendous cannonade shook the city as the forts opened fire on the German entrenchments, and the Prussian guns replied in kind. Kitty stood at the window and looked through rain that was showing signs of turning to driving snow to the small, flickering spots of flame that were the cannon mouths, listened to the faint, reverberating crash of the bombardment and the frantic barking of the city’s dogs and thought of Jem, standing by with the others of the American Ambulance awaiting the morning and the blood and bone and broken bodies that would be the inevitable consequence of it. She thought too, with the dull pain of an old wound, of Michael, somewhere there beneath her in the rain-drenched city. Was he afraid? Was he hungry?
Was he, even, alive?
In the two days that it took for the attempted breakout to collapse in blood and terror and sheer, demoralized panic she saw nothing of Jem. Whilst the sounds of battle raged to the north, the city lay with bated breath beneath a bitter blanket of cloud that had turned rain to snow and froze the wounded to death where they fell. Little news was allowed to filter back to the city but, as always, rumour was rife and the steady flow of desperately wounded men and terror-stricken deserters through the chaotic streets did little to reassure the civilian population. Kitty hardly went out. There seemed no point. The shops were closed, the weather bitter and for the moment even the dreary everyday routine of siege life had been suspended. And anyway, Jem might come. She stood for hours at the window, staring out in the direction of the battle, apparent from where she stood as a harmless echo of sound, faint puffs of smoke on the horizon. Jem was out there, on the battlefield – not fighting, of course, but in the thick of the shells and the flying bullets. Did a piece of shrieking, hot metal know the difference between a combatant and a non-combatant? she found herself wondering, bleakly, and remembered that when she had first met him he had been a refugee from a war of his own, a war in which he had found it impossible to fight. The irony would be cruel indeed if his humane services in this war – a conflict in which he had no concern at all – should end his life.
He came late on the third afternoon, with cold early darkness closing upon the city. Louise had just left, having spent the afternoon scouring the streets for bread and for news. No, she had reported, no one knew how the battle had gone, but the guns were silent and the general feeling was that the silence was ominous. The mood in the city was not cheerful.
The first Kitty knew of Jem’s arrival was the oddly uncertain sound of a key searching for the doorlock. All afternoon she had huddled in layers of clothing and an old army greatcoat that Jem had acquired for her – the fuel shortage in Paris was now critical and she had but one hoarded bucket of coal and a small stack of what looked suspiciously like chopped up furniture, again the product of one of Jem’s scavenging expeditions. The apartment was as cold as an ice-cave, her breath clouding the air, ice patterning the inside of the windows. A single, precious candle flickered upon the mantelpiece. A chill, somehow threatening silence enveloped the city beyond the window. Finally, shivering, she had laid a tiny fire and set a match to it. If she could just get warm – perhaps heat the last of the soup – then she could crawl into bed and conserve both heat and energy. At the sound of the key fumbling at the lock she bent to put a couple of pieces of the priceless coal on the fire, straightening as Jem finally managed to open the door.
The first sight of him stopped her breath in her throat.
Beneath his carelessly open, filthy greatcoat his shirt and trousers were bloodsoaked, stain upon old stain, brick to vermilion. His hands were blue with cold, his face gaunt and stone-white. The blue shadows beneath his eyes were like the mark of death. He looked utterly exhausted.
‘Jem!’
As he stepped uncertainly towards her he staggered, and she flew to him. ‘Jem – you’re hurt!’
He shook his head. ‘No. Not hurt. No. All right,’ he mumbled, the words a little slurred.
Close to him she could smell it; he was as drunk as a lord. He stood watching her, swaying, frowning in fierce concentration.
‘It’s a good job,’ she said, her eyes uncertain, her voice tart, ’that I don’t have a rolling pin to hand.’
‘Cold,’ he said, shivering suddenly. ‘Jesus bloody Christ, I’m cold.’
‘Come to the fire.’ She pushed the chair she had been sitting in even closer to the flames, profligately shovelled more coal upon the fire. He huddled in the chair, hands extended to the sudden welcome blaze. He was trembling so violently that he could not hold them still. A wave of compassion all but choked her; what in God’s name had happened to bring him to this state? Almost without thought she leaned forward and brushed back the tousled, dirty hair from his forehead. One of his hands, so cold and claw-like it barely felt human, imprisoned hers. The nails were dark with blood, the skin stained. Fiercely he pressed his forehead against their clenched hands. His grip was painful. It was a full minute before she realized with a shock that the burning upon the chill skin of her wrist was his tears. He wept helplessly and soundlessly. She fought back the tears that rose in sympathy. He had begun to shake his head a little, his forehead still pressed against her hand, back and forth, back and forth, an endless denial, a desperate negation of what he had seen and done over the past days. ‘God!’ he whispered at last, ‘Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!’ A monotonous chant of failure and despair.
She put her arms about him as he sat, rigid and shivering, held him with every ounce of strength she possessed, her cheek pressed hard against the shaggy thatch of his hair. At last the trembling eased a little. She felt him take a great, gulping breath. She sat back on her heels, holding his hands firmly in hers. ‘Do you want to tell me?’
Tears welled again in his reddened eyes. He looked away, shaking his head dumbly.
‘Then – can I get you something?’ Despite all her efforts her voice shook.
‘A drink,’ he said.
In silence she stood and walked to a cupboard on which stood an open bottle of wine and some glasses. She poured some for him, then after a moment’s hesitation a glass for herself, and carried them back to the fireside.
He drank thirstily, half the glass in a gulp.
‘There’s a little soup left,’ she said, ‘if you’d like it?’
‘Later.’
She nodded, knelt beside him again, taking his hand in hers. He clutched her fingers, crushing them painfully, driving the blood from them. She did not move. He carried her hand to his face, rested his cheek upon their linked hands.
She waited.
‘Carnage,’ he muttered. ‘Bloody carnage.’
She said nothing. She was sitting on the wrong side of the armchair, away from the fire, and she had begun to shiver with cold, yet she could not bring herself to move.
He drank again.
A coal slipped in the grate, sending a shower of sparks up the narrow, soot-stained chimney.
‘The look on their faces—’ Abruptly he let go of her hand and dashed his knuckles across his eyes, shaking his head sharply, like a dog shaking free of water. ‘Not enough doctors. Not enough drugs. Not enough stretchers – They were dying in filth and fear on the bare ground. Boys. Christ Almighty, they were just boys—’ He shuddered, drank the rest of his wine at a draught. Unspeaking she held out her own untouched glass. He reached for it. Stopped. Shook his head. ‘No. I’ve had enough.’
‘Could you eat the soup?’
He lifted his tousled head. Sucked his lower lip. Tears stood still in his eyes. He shook his head again.
An irresistible impulse of compassion brought her up on her knees, and she took his thin face between her two hands. He made no attempt to escape her, nor to hide the weariness and pain. Very, very gently she kissed him, tasting the wine, the salt of their mingled tears.
He sat for a moment, very still, eyes closed, lips cool and soft and totally passionless beneath hers. Then slowly she sensed a change. His mouth hardened hungrily. She felt his hands upon her shoulders, almost demented in their sudden strength. She closed her eyes. Without taking his mouth from hers he stood up, roughly pulling her to her feet with him. His hands were under the heavy greatcoat, brutal upon her breasts, sliding to her buttocks, clamping her body to his. She felt a brief flash of fear; this was not the Jem she knew, but an urgent, savage stranger. And then she touched his tear-wet face with her cold fingertips and all doubts were drowned in a surge of mixed desire and pity that was as hurtful and as lovely as flame. Whatever he had seen, whatever horrors he had endured he was here now, and he needed her. Tenderness would surely come later. She slid her fingers into the dirty, wind-tangled hair and pulled his mouth down harder upon hers. He groaned against her open lips. His hands were again roughly at the bodice of her dress. Still within the vice of his arms and careless for the moment of the bitter cold, she shrugged the greatcoat from her shoulders. Her breasts were bare, nipples rigid in the cold. He forced her back, his hungry mouth at her nakedness, and she shuddered, afraid again at the violence in him. Yet as he pressed her down onto the rug before the flickering fire she did not resist. Pity was gone; her need rose now to match his. She it was who pulled the revolting, blood-stained shirt from him, who held him to her, arms and legs entwined fiercely about him, her hands moving frenziedly upon his thin back. The slight weight of his body was ice-cold against hers. His savage strength surprised her. The exquisite explosion of pleasure it engendered within her body brought helpless tears, and deep, deep within her happiness moved, warm and certain. He was hers. He loved her. She knew it.
In that moment she would have died for him.
She moved her head, resting her wet cheek upon his shoulder as he sprawled, exhausted, across her.
The abruptness of his movement as he flung himself from her shocked her more than anything that had come before.
She sat up, pulling the crumpled greatcoat about her bare, cold shoulders. ‘Jem—?’
He did not look at her. Vicious with haste he hauled the filthy shirt back over his head.
Stunned, she watched his movements in the flickering candlelight. Climbing into his trousers, standing on one leg, he lost his balance and almost fell; and with a cold premonition of utter disaster she at last realized just how drunk he was. She scrambled to her feet, the coat clutched about her naked body. ‘Jem – what are you doing?’ Her voice was sharp with anxiety.
Still he kept his eyes turned from her. His face was set in a deadly mask of distaste and self-disgust. She bit her lip, stepped forward and touched his arm.
He froze, his head bowed. ‘Don’t!’
She dropped her hand as if it had been burned. Stepped back from him. ‘Jem!’
He turned and looked at her at last. ‘I’m sorry. I acted like an animal. It was unforgiveable.’ He almost choked on the words.
‘No!’
He talked blindly on, the words blurred with weariness and drink and remembered evils. He was swaying a little on his feet. ‘I swore I wouldn’t. Years ago I swore it. Luke’s. You’re Luke’s and always will be.’
‘No!’ she shouted again and as if in nightmare realized that he hardly heard the word, let alone registered its meaning.
‘You came to me as a friend and I – oh, God!’ In despair he swung away from her and hit the wall with the flat of his open hand.
She flinched from the violence. ‘Jem, please! Listen to me—’ She reached for him again.
He shook her off fiercely.
She was crying now, and trembling with cold and with shock. He stumbled awkwardly towards the door.
‘Jem,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t go. Don’t leave me—’
He turned unsteadily to face her. His face was hard as rock and shadowed with misery. ‘Don’t fool yourself, Kitty,’ he said, ‘and don’t think to fool me. You don’t want me,’ and, stumbling, he left her there, bereft in a world as bleak and hopeless as death itself.
She slept at last, that night, for a few uncomfortable, restless hours, her face still tear-stained. She had lain for hours awake going over, minute by minute, the horrible scene with Jem, alternately shedding tears of misery and – more often as time moved on – burning with shame and humiliation. She had done nothing to stop him; worse, she had thrown herself at him, all but begged him to take her – she remembered the sound of her own voice, pleading, and her cheeks flamed again; God! How could she have so acted the whore? He at least had had the excuse – such as it was – of drunkenness and distress. She had none: and now, in face of his brutal rejection, the episode seemed sordid and shameful. Time and again his face rose before her eyes and she heard the faint and, it seemed to her now, contemptuous emphasis on the last pronoun when he had thrown those last words at her. ‘You don’t want me—’
What in God’s sweet name had he meant by that? Did he really believe that she had used him for some selfish purpose of her own?
Until the exhausted small hours she swung on a pendulum of unstable emotion. Tomorrow she would go to him. Convince him. Go on her knees if she must. She would make him see her love, her need of him.
Then damaged pride stirred. Damn him! Why should she?
How dare he treat her so? Was that what he expected – what he wanted? That she would crawl to him – beg him ? Freezing cold, curled tense as a steel spring beneath the damp bedclothes that seemed themselves to radiate cold rather than heat, she clenched her hands, bruising her palms with her fingernails. She would not. She bloody well would not. She’d die first.
She drifted in and out of sleep. Once she woke to a far-away crackle of gunfire, and then silence. She was a little warmer, but her feet were frozen and her back was cold. She was aware of a faint worm of hunger. Her eyes and her head ached. She took a long breath, staring into darkness. Tomorrow she would go to him. Sober, he would be more rational. His brutality this evening, his physical savagery, had obviously been brought on by drink. She would not beg, nor would she cry. She would explain to him, and the man she knew, the kind, sensitive, joyous Jem she knew would understand.
She went to sleep a little comforted and woke to broad daylight, a dead fire, frost-rimed windows and a tentative tapping on the door.
Jem. He had come back. Of course.
She scrambled from bed, pushed her arms into the cold sleeves of the greatcoat that she had been using as an extra blanket and ran to the door, smiling. He would be contrite, and hung-over and very very sorry for himself of course. And she would not forgive him straight away—
Lily Daltrey stood at the door, thinner than Kitty remembered her, the heavy hair untidy, blue shadows beneath the cat-like eyes. She gave no greeting as Kitty stood, gawping in astonishment. ‘That fifteen ’undred francs still on offer?’ she asked, flatly.
Lottie was alive and so were both the children: at least, Lily said, sourly cynical, they had been the day before. What had happened since was none of her business.
‘Came beggin’,’ she said, succinctly. ‘Looked in a bad way.’
‘And the children?’
She shrugged. ‘Didn’t see ’em. But Lot said they was both still with ’er.’ Her eyes slid about the small apartment, probing, calculating. ‘Comfortable enough ’ere, ain’t yer?’
‘Where are they?’ Kitty asked.
In answer a long, flat palm was held out.
Kitty hesitated. Then she walked to the kitchen door and opened it. ‘Would you mind waiting in here?’
Unconcernedly, eyes everywhere, the girl sauntered at her own pace through the open door. Kitty shut it sharply behind her and ran to the suitcase that stood in the corner behind the door. With cold, clumsy fingers she pulled out the white cotton petticoat and ripped at Pol’s firm, neat stitching. A few minutes later she opened the kitchen door. Lily was standing with her back to her, looking out of the window.
As she turned Kitty saw with a twinge of irritation that she had rifled the precious stores and was nibbling a small, sweet biscuit she had taken from a tin that lay open on the table. The sheer gall of the girl almost took Kitty’s breath away.
‘You got it?’ Lily asked, unconcernedly helping herself to another biscuit. ‘Gawd, ’ow in ’ell’s name did yer got ’old o’ these?’
‘Where are they?’
‘Over the river. The Left Bank.’ The hand extended again and the wide eyes watched expectantly.
Kitty hesitated for only one second longer. She had to trust the unlovable Miss Daltrey – she had no alternative. She pulled the money from her pocket and put it in the long white hand. ‘Where?’
‘Rue Devine. Off the Boulevard St Germain. Across the Pont St Michel, towards the university—’
‘Yes. Yes, I know where it is—’ Kitty’s heart was thumping erratically, and the sickness of excitement stirred her empty stomach.
‘’Ere.’ Lily handed her a slip of paper. ‘That’s the address. I wrote it down. Bet yer didn’t think I could write, eh? Comes of me ’igh class connections.’ She took another biscuit, put it in her pocket, then pushed past Kitty into the other room.
Kitty caught her arm as she passed. ‘You didn’t tell her?’
Lily shook her lovely head. ‘Nah. None o’ my business, is it?’
‘No. It isn’t.’ Kitty opened the outside door for her. A surprised Louise stood, key poised.
‘Mornin’,’ Lily said, pleasantly. ‘An’ ta—’ she added to Kitty, tapping her pocket, ‘Ta very much. That’ll see me through fer a bit—’
‘They’d better be there,’ Kitty said. ‘Or the police will hear something of it.’
The girl shrugged nonchalantly. ‘They’ll be there. They won’t be in good shape, but they’ll be there.’
She knew how perverse it was to decide not to tell Jem, but in the cold light of day his behaviour of the night before rankled badly, and hurt pride and feelings did not dictate prudence. Why should she run to him now, as if she could not do without him? There was faint, bitter satisfaction in the thought of succeeding alone where they had failed together. If – when – he came back to apologize, as he surely would, what triumph to have Michael here, hers again—
Kitty feverishly threw on layers of heavy clothing – fashion and elegance had long ago given way before the onslaught of the dreadful weather – issuing instructions to the bemused Louise as she did so. ‘Louise – I have to go out. I won’t be long, I hope. I want you to light a small fire in – oh, about an hour or so. I know we haven’t much fuel, but light it anyway. There’s some of that packing case left, and if it comes to the worst we can do without that rickety chest of drawers in the bedroom. There’s nothing in it anyway. I want a fire, a warm fire, to come home to. You understand?’
‘Yes, Mam’selle.’ Clearly Louise did not. It had been many days since they had allowed themselves the luxury of a fire in the morning.
Kitty headed off the inevitable questions. ‘My hat. Where’s my hat?’
‘In the bedroom, Mam’selle.’ The girl brought it, watched as Kitty slapped it on her hastily pinned-up hair. ‘Mam’selle?’
Raging to go, Kitty stopped. ‘Yes?’
‘If M’sieu Jem comes—?’
‘Tell him—’ Hand on the door, Kitty paused. Then, ‘Tell him nothing,’ she said, grimly.
As she hurried through the city it seemed to Kitty, even in her distracted state, that the smell of defeat hung about the streets as the winter mists, clinging and cold, hung low above the river. The setbacks of the past few days had been the worst of the siege – if the much vaunted Great Sortie had failed, what now could save Paris from the barbarians? With the battle over, the population had once more emerged onto the streets to pursue their own endless battle for survival; there were queues everywhere, long, sullen, straggling lines of people who stood in numbed silence or muttered, aggressively ill-tempered, of profiteers and the inequality of suffering. She crossed the Pont St Michel against a flow of wounded coming into the city, those that could walk supported by their fellows or staggering on improvised crutches, those who could not carried ashen-faced on makeshift stretchers. Their filthy bandages were blood- and pus-stained; empty sleeves and trouser legs flapped in the biting wind like the clothes of scarecrows. The faces were grim and grey and filled with a despair that chilled her heart as the wind chilled her body. Suddenly and brutally the memory of Jem’s terrible distress came back to her, but obstinately, as she turned her face from the pathetic procession and pushed on past the barricades across the bridge, she turned her mind from any softening towards Jem. No matter what he had suffered, no matter what he had seen, his treatment of her had been unforgivable. She would not think of him. She was going to find her son.
The Rue Devine was, as Lily had said, a small side road off the Boulevard St Germain. It was narrow as a canyon and straight as a ruled line, the buildings tall on either side. People hurried past, their collars turned up against the arctic weather – surely, Kitty thought bitterly, remembering Inspector MacAdam’s righteous, Presbyterian tirade against the hedonistic sins of the glittering, opulent Paris that now seemed a lifetime removed from the suffering city of today, the odious man must have been right in his opinion that God must be on the Prussian side, for after the hottest summer in living memory had followed the most punishing winter. She counted the houses. Stopped. Number twelve. She glanced at the piece of paper. Number twelve, Rue Devine. Her heart had taken up an awful erratic, sickly thumping; worse, much worse than any stage fright she had ever known. Blindly she stepped towards the door and was almost bowled over by a uniformed figure in the scarlet and blue of the National Guard as she stepped heedlessly in front of him. The man stumbled and cursed.
‘Pardon!’ she gasped, startled. ‘Pardon!’
The man scowled and snarled a curse. His uniform was motley – a worker’s shirt beneath the uniform jacket, a bright, if filthy, canary-yellow cummerbund gathering in the voluminous waistband of trousers made for a man several sizes larger than he. He strode on, scowling.
With slightly trembling hand Kitty jerked on the ancient bell-pull of number twelve.
Nothing happened.
She waited a moment, then pushed the tall, peeling door tentatively. Protesting a little it opened halfway and then stuck. She slid through the gap and found herself in an open courtyard, the cobblestones littered and dirty, an uncovered drain running down its centre. Flakes of snow were beginning to drift, whirling, down the tall shaft of buildings beneath which the yard lay, lightless and cheerless. On each side of the courtyard steep flights of wooden steps ran in the open from landing to landing. From a floor high above a voice called and a door slammed. She stood for a moment, nonplussed; the place was a warren. Then, determinedly, she made for the nearest flight of steps. If she had to break down every damned door in the place she would find Lottie Smith.
Her sharp knock on the door of the first floor landing produced no results at all. The sound echoed emptily. From nowhere a small child had sidled up behind her. She glanced at him sharply. Dirty face, sly grey eyes, tow-coloured hair. Catching her eye he stuck his tongue out and made an obscenely filthy gesture. He was, she estimated, all of five years old.
She set off up the next flight of ramshackle stairs.
A woman answered her knock this time, a slattern with a gaggle of half-clothed children at her ragged skirts and an infant at suck at her lined and sagging breast. She stared vacantly at Kitty’s stumbling questions, shook her head, shut the door in Kitty’s face.
Several more urchins had now joined the filthy, tow-headed child – as she set off for the third landing Kitty reflected with grim humour that she made a strange Pied Piper and had perhaps better keep a weather eye out for rats. In this place there certainly did not look to be any shortage— she stopped dead.
Sitting on the stair above her, watching her solemnly, sat a small figure, raggedly dressed, sturdily built. His jet-black hair was shaggily unkempt as a pony’s mane, his dark eyes, wide and warily interested, showed no sign of recognition whatsoever. He had a very dirty thumb in his mouth.
Michael.
She knew it was he; there was no doubt. She opened her mouth to speak his name, and could not. She cleared her throat. ‘Michael?’
At the sound of her soft voice the velvet-dark eyes widened a little, but the thumb stayed put and the child did not move.
She took a tentative step towards him, held out her hand. Like a small animal he was off the step and scampering away in one movement, disappearing through the door behind him, lost in the darkness beyond.
One of the children behind her giggled, another sniffed noisily and cuffed his nose. She turned and stamped a foot. ‘Shoo!’
They retreated two steps then stopped, watching her with interested, rapacious small eyes.
She took a breath and walked to the door through which Michael had disappeared. It opened at her touch. She stepped into the darkness that made the dismal stairwell seem as bright as a summer’s day and for a moment completely blinded her. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she discovered herself to be standing alone in an all but empty room. In one corner, on the floor, lay a large, dirty mattress. There was a small, stained table and a wooden chair. The fireplace was empty and cold, and the place smelled of damp and of decay. On the floor near the mattress, abandoned and oddly pathetic, a tattered rag doll stared at her with one wide blue eye. The walls were running water, the ceiling stained and peeling. There was no sign of Michael.
‘Hello?’ she called, sharply. ‘Hello – is anyone there? Lottie—?’
There was a door in the wall opposite. Kitty watched it. ‘Hello?’ she called again, insistently.
Cold air blew through the open door at her back.
Very slowly then, the door she was watching opened. Framed in it stood a woman with two children clinging to her skirts. Michael’s thumb was still in his mouth. The little girl, who must be Poppy, her frail and delicate beauty obvious even beneath the ragged clothes, the ingrained dirt, the sores about her mouth, nervously clung to her mother’s heavy skirt with both hands. Lottie Smith – emaciated, haggard-faced, no longer beautiful – stared at Kitty in weary defiance edged with implacable hatred. In her hand she held a long, vicious-looking knife.
‘Get out,’ she said.
Kitty shook her head.
The woman took a step forward. The change in her was shocking; the bones stood from her face like a death’s head, the skin was sallow and covered in sores. Even from where Kitty stood she could see the woman’s deathly struggle for every breath. ‘Get out,’ she said again, harshly, ‘or I’ll stick yer, I swear it.’ The words ended on a cough, half-suppressed.
‘No.’ Kitty felt oddly calm. Her eyes were on Michael, who stared back at her with eyes still heartbreakingly devoid of recognition. ‘I’ve come for Michael. Nothing else. I won’t harm you.’
‘No!’ The woman reached for the boy and dragged him fiercely to her. ‘No!’
‘He’s my son.’
A skeletal, red-rough hand grasped the boy’s shoulder possessively. ‘Luke’s son,’ Lottie said. ‘Never yours. He’ll thank me. You see. I saved him for him—’
Kitty stared at her. ‘Lottie!’ She heard the tiny sound behind her at the very moment that Lottie, her glance flicking past Kitty, brought the knife up swift as a flash, her face contorted.
‘So – that’s it, is it? All right. I’ll take on the both of yer—’
Kitty turned – and for a moment it seemed that her wits had deserted her entirely.
There was a long, tense silence.
‘Spider!’ Kitty said, faintly.
He did not look at or acknowledge her. ‘’Ello, Lot,’ he said, and the two words, softly rasped, were infinitely threatening. Kitty felt the small hairs on her neck rise.
Lottie said nothing.
‘Bin lookin’ for yer,’ Spider said, gently.
Kitty stepped forward. ‘Spider – what are you doing here? How did you find this place?’
For a moment the little man’s eyes flicked to her and then away, warily back to Lottie and her knife. ‘Bin follerin’ yer. Reckoned sooner or later yer’d run ’er down.’
‘But – why?’
‘I’m gonna break ’er bleedin’ neck,’ he said, unemotionally.
Lottie moved a little. The knife glittered wickedly in the half-light. ‘Try it,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘I will.’
Kitty looked from one to the other. Too late she saw her foolishness in coming here alone. ‘Spider—’
Spider, ignoring her, lifted a wizened hand and levelled a small, pointed, brown-stained finger at Lottie. ‘You killed my Guv’nor,’ he said, his voice utterly calm and the more threatening for that. ‘You ain’t gettin’ away with that.’
The effect of the words was astonishing. Lottie, who had been crouched defensively, the knife held before her, very slowly and in the manner of one dazed by a blow straightened up, staring at Spider, the hand holding the knife dropping to her side. Her sallow face had taken on the colour of the dead ashes that lay in the hearth. ‘What d’yer mean?’
In the silence, Poppy caught her breath in a small sob.
‘Luke?’ Lottie asked, faintly, and then again, ‘Luke?’ And then Kitty knew for certain what she had begun to suspect a moment before Spider’s unexpected entrance; Lottie Smith had not known, had never discovered, that her madness had caused her lover’s death.
‘He died in the fire,’ Kitty said, quietly, ‘trying – he thought – to rescue Michael.’
Lottie shook her head. ‘No! Oh – no!’ Still moving in that odd, frozen manner she brought her two hands to her face. ‘Oh, no!’ she said again. She still held the knife, forgotten in her hand. Its blade gleamed lethally against the death-mask of her emaciated face.
Poppy had begun openly to cry. Michael, uncertainly, had moved closer to the little girl and had gathered a handful of her dirty dress in his small fist. His thumb was still in his mouth.
‘Luke,’ Lottie whispered, and the pain in the single word was so terrible that despite herself Kitty felt the beginnings of pity stir within her.
Not so Spider. ‘Luke Peveral.’ He stepped forward, crouching menacingly, hands crooked. ‘The best cracksman, and the greatest gentleman that ever drew breath. The best Guv’nor a man could ask for. An’ you done fer ’im, you stinkin’ little bitch. Like I’m gonna do fer you.’ And still the total absence of any obvious emotion in his voice added strange and threatening emphasis to his words.
Lottie had begun to tremble uncontrollably. The knife clattered to the floor. She wrapped her arms about her own thin body, shaking her head in despair and grief. ‘Not Luke, oh not Luke – I didn’t know – didn’t know ’e was there—’
Spider lunged. Lottie made no attempt to defend herself. Kitty, sensing the man’s move, had no opportunity to shield Lottie – Poppy, screaming in terror, was between the snarling Spider and her mother. Kitty threw herself forward and grabbed the child, hauling her out of the way as Spider and Lottie crashed to the floor, Spider’s hands locked about the woman’s thin throat.
Michael, still holding, limpet-like, his fistful of Poppy’s dress, was pulled over by the violence of Kitty’s action and, around his thumb, began to wail dismally. The two thrashing bodies on the floor rolled over, crashing into them. Poppy was by now screaming hysterically, white-faced, her eyes glazed. Lottie had somehow broken Spider’s hold and had scrambled free of him. As Spider grabbed for her she came to her feet at a run and dashed for the open door, hampered by her heavy skirt. Kitty, desperately trying to protect the terrified children, saw Spider’s hand reach out swift as a striking snake and catch the woman’s flying hair. Frantically Kitty tried to disengage small, clinging hands. Brutally Spider jerked Lottie from her feet. The woman screamed with pain. Then with vicious strength and murderous intent the little man began to push Lottie towards the rickety bannisters of the landing.
‘No! No, Spider! Don’t—’ Kitty leapt forward, reaching for Lottie’s flailing hand.
She was just a second too late.
With a final, terrible effort Spider almost bodily threw Lottie’s slight frame into the rotten bannisters that snapped like matchwood and showered down with the tumbling, screaming body to scatter in the snow in the sudden awful silence that followed its landing.
Poppy’s screams, distracted and hysterical, were renewed.
Doors opened. Voices called. But it was for the most part in silence that the inhabitants of number twelve Rue Devine gathered on their landings to peer into the dimly lit well at the body that sprawled beneath them in the snow.
Spider, with no glance at Kitty, walked calmly down the three flights of steps to the door. He looked back, once, at the broken figure of Lottie Smith before slipping through the door to the street.
No one made any attempt to stop him.
In the filthy yard Lottie lay like a broken doll, limbs grotesquely twisted, blood seeping, half-hidden by the thickening, swirling snow.