When Hannah and Sally emerged from their second incarceration in Holloway, tired and pale but triumphantly pleased with themselves and their fellow suffragette prisoners, who between them and under the most adverse of circumstances had managed to defy the system and produce a sense of solidarity and camaraderie that might have shamed the Scots Guards, it was to find the adult complement of the Bear unexpectedly depleted, a circumstance of which the younger members of the small community were taking full and understandable advantage. Kate had left, fiercely and resentfully silent, leaving poor Bron to cope almost single-handedly with the marauding urchins when they were not directly under Ralph’s indulgent eye. The Welsh girl was almost tearfully glad to see Sally.
‘Oh, terrible it’s been without you! Young Annie almost bit the finger off little Betty – and your Toby’s been runnin’ that wild – winds them up, he does, like little clockwork toys, then sits back an’ watches the devilment.’
Sally, sighing in relief to be stretched out upon her own bed at last, reflected in passing that Bron was perhaps more astute than most would give credit for. ‘So where is everyone?’
‘Well! Such upheaval there’s bin!’ Bron settled herself comfortably on her chair for a little earnest gossiping. ‘Kate was sacked, she was! By Doctor Ben, of all people. Bye – I thought she’d explode with rage, mind! No—’ she added at the climbing of Sally’s brows, ‘—no, I don’t know what happened exactly. Kate wasn’t saying, an’ I wasn’t pushing her, mind. An’ now Doctor Ben’s gone off to put Miss Charlotte on a boat.’
‘A boat?’ Sally looked blank.
‘To Belgium, see?’
‘Belgium?’
In full flow Bron hardly even stopped for breath. ‘Yes, Belgium. Somewhere near France it is, I think. She had a letter, see? Seems she’s got an aunt out there an’ she asked her to visit. Well – off she was like a shot from a gun, I don’t mind telling you. Taken the baby and that Nurse Winterbottom with her. An’ what with you an’ Miss Hannah being—’ the torrent of words faltered delicately, ‘—away, like – well, it’s bin a madhouse here, I don’t mind tellin’ you!’
Bron’s overly excitably Celtic nature had in fact this time, as Sally very quickly discovered, led her to exaggerate less than might have been imagined. The children, sensing the lack of a firm hand, were indeed in that excitable and anarchic state that invariably leads to trouble, and their leader, inevitably and as Bron had guessed, was the graceless and subversive Toby, who perfectly obviously had not enjoyed himself so much for years. On her first night back Sally broke up two far from friendly dormitory pillow fights and intercepted a raiding party on its way to the kitchen.
‘Hey, you!’ She caught with ungentle fingers a tangle of fair curls. ‘I want a word. The rest of you – hop it, and quick. Back to bed. Another word – another deep breath! – an’ you’ll have me to answer to. Now scarper!’
Back in her room she faced him, sighing. The beguiling blue eyes were innocent as ever and clear as summer skies. ‘Tobe – for heaven’s sake! I’m tired! I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in a fortnight! I can do without you leadin’ a bloody revolution around here!’
‘I’m not,’ he assured her with ready earnestness, and then in the same breath, eagerly, ‘what was it like in Holloway?’
‘Tough. And you are. You think I don’t see your sticky little fingers in what’s going on around here?’
He shrugged a little, tried tentatively his sweetest smile.
‘Less of that. Answer me.’
He fiddled with the fringe of the counterpane.
She reached for him, drew him forward until he stood at her knees. With their eyes on a level she took his shoulders in firm hands, forcing him to look at her. ‘Toby Jug, listen.’ she said, her eyes intent upon his. ‘This was your idea, remember? You wanted to stay. Well—’ she hesitated for a moment, ‘well – you were right. We’re both better off here. And we’d both bloody miss it if we lost it. But Tobe – you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You’ve got to learn to behave. Is Mr Ralph still talking about that scholarship?’
He nodded.
‘Well – think on this. If you’re going to some posh school you’re going to have a pretty rough time of it if you don’t know how to behave, if you can’t tell the difference between fun and real mischief, if you get yourself a reputation as a trouble-maker. You got no rich dad to back you, remember. You’ll be out on your ear and with no feather bed to land on.’
He watched her in a silence she deliberately lengthened. Then she smiled.
‘All right – I know a lad needs a bit of spirit, and you’ve certainly got that.’ The look that flashed between them contained all of the old affectionate conspiracy, but Sally’s strong fingers had not relaxed their grip. ‘But you’re going to need something besides. You’re clever, and you’re a lot tougher than you look. But that won’t be enough in a fancy school where the other kids have got what you’ve never had. Money. Manners.’ He was looking at her now with sudden rapt interest. She made a fist and, grinning, grazed it against his smooth jaw, ‘Sense.’
He smiled a little too, but his eyes were attentive.
‘Now’s the time to learn. Don’t fight us – join us. You can handle those kids better than anyone. Keep them in order – oh, I don’t mean never a laugh, never a bit of mischief – but know when to stop. It might be fun to wreck things, Tobe, but believe me you’ve got to learn that it’s a bloody sight harder to put things back together than it is to take them apart.’ She waited then, her narrowed eyes studying his face, and was rewarded after a moment by a brilliant, unflawed smile of understanding.
‘Right?’ she asked.
‘Right,’ he said.
By the time Ben arrived back from seeing Charlotte safely on her way, the home was once again running like clockwork.
‘It’s young Sally Smith,’ his father tamped down a pipeful of tobacco, took a long and leisurely moment to light it. ‘She’s magic with those youngsters. Straightened them out in twenty-four hours. You did a good day’s work the day you found her.’
‘Uncle Will’s right.’ Ralph, sitting on the opposite side of the fireplace, looked up from his book, peering shortsightedly over the wire rims of his glasses. ‘Since she’s been back we haven’t had half the trouble. Mind you, we’re still very short-handed. We’ll have to take on at least another girl to replace Kate. We’ve more children, and less people. Hannah’s more and more involved with her suffragette work, as well as the health visiting and the baby clinic. Charlotte – well, Charlotte’s never been terribly interested, has she? I’m on hand some of the time, of course – but I have the school too – they need more than that. A matron, perhaps? Someone to take on the day-to-day running of the place, to be there for the children if she’s needed. It really is all getting terribly disorganized.’
Ben shook his head. ‘We can’t afford a trained matron.’
Will puffed his pipe thoughtfully.
‘Well, we’re going to have to do something,’ Ralph persisted. ‘We can’t take the children off the streets and then let them run wild here – it simply doesn’t work. We need someone in charge who can control the kids, look after them, gain their trust.’
‘Weren’t we just telling Ben’, Will said tranquilly between puffs, ‘what a find he’d made in Sally Smith?’
The other two looked at him. ‘Sally?’ Ben asked doubtfully. ‘But Pa – she has no training – no experience.’
Will raised mild eyebrows. ‘Oh? I’d have said experience is just what she has had. She knows those children – who better? They trust her. She’s one of them. That’s why she can handle them so well. Damn’ sight better than some prissy Miss with a diploma, I’d have thought.’ The pipe went back between his teeth and he settled deeper into the armchair.
‘Sally,’ Ben said again. And then after a long and thoughtful moment, ‘Do you really think she could do it?’
His father surveyed the battered pipe, tapped it, lifted shrewd, twinkling eyes. ‘Only one way to find out.’
‘What do you mean, “in charge”?’ Sally asked warily.
‘Just that. A kind of – house mother. Running the place – well like a proper home. Making sure the youngsters behave, making sure they’re happy. Keeping them occupied and out of mischief, watching their progress. Liaising with Ralph, of course, and with me. Ralph and Hannah both think it a splendid idea.’
She cocked a narrow, repressive eye.
Realizing what he had said, Ben grinned, a sudden boyish smile that took years from him, ‘And so do I.’
She shook her head, thoughtfully, determinedly tamping down a rising excitement. ‘I don’t know – Bron’s been here longer than I have.’
‘Hannah’s spoken to Bron. She doesn’t mind a bit. She thinks it’s a good idea. She’d throw a fit if we asked her to take it on. No, Bron’s very happy as she is, so long as we get another couple of girls in to help, which of course we will. Please – will you give it a try? With Hannah so busy and Ralph involved in the Schools’ Committee with me we desperately need help here. It’s very important to all of us.’
Sally would not allow her pleasure to show in eye or voice. She shrugged. ‘All right, then. If you really mean it. I’ll give it a go,’ and then spoiled the effect entirely by answering his smile with a wide grin of her own that lit her face like sunshine.
Nothing had ever given her so much pleasure; so much satisfaction. Within a month, with the verve and enthusiasm of any convert she had immersed herself in the reorganization of the children’s home. She pestered Ralph, she pestered Hannah, she pestered anyone who would listen, who would advise, who would discuss the changes she wanted to make. At first, lacking in confidence, she always took the smallest innovation to one of the family before she implemented it. She split the children into small groups of a similar age, each group with its own timetable and its own tasks. She organized rotas, encouraging the children themselves to participate in the day-to-day running of their home – a venture in which Toby was her willing lieutenant. She reorganized the dormitories to give each child more privacy, a small patch to call his own upon which no one trespassed except at invitation. The younger children and those not yet skilled enough to go to school she supervised in the tasks that Ralph set them, and each afternoon there was a story session in the schoolroom to which all were invited, and to which most came. Most importantly she got to know each child individually, gaining their confidence, guarding the weak where she could and curbing the strong; no hand was heavier than hers on a bully’s shoulder. Two new girls were hired to help – Maude, a fifteen-year-old orphan from Bow with a quick tongue and an unruly mass of black curls who could hold her own with the most intransigent of the children, and Betsy, a little mouse of a thing whose origins were uncertain and who within a week had become Toby’s willing slave, thus unknowingly assuring herself of a privileged place in the children’s hierarchy. As the autumn moved into what promised to be an especially miserable winter even Sally’s suffragette activities came second to her new responsibilities. She was up at dawn and the last in bed at night; and often even then as much time would be spent worrying away like a terrier at a problem as sleeping. Her confidence grew. Gradually she came to rely less on the advice and opinions of others.
‘Well, well.’ Ben Patten, after one of his routine health inspections of the children, one November day paid a visit to the cubbyhole Sally had requisitioned as an office, ‘How’s it going?’
‘I’m enjoying it.’
‘You’re doing a very good job indeed. I’ve never seen everything so shipshape.’
‘Thank you.’ Sally nodded to the teapot that stood on a side table. ‘Cup of tea? It’s a bit stewed, but drinkable.’
He nodded. ‘Please.’
She eyed him as she poured. There could be no doubt about it – something had changed Ben Patten in the past month. His step was lighter, his smile more ready, the straight mouth in repose did not look so grim. ‘Well, don’t be daft!’ Bron had said a few days before when she had mentioned it, ‘Of course he’s different! Miss Charlotte’s away, isn’t she, then?’
‘Bron!’
‘Well, everyone knows it, don’t they? Not made in heaven, that one, as it’s turned out – mind, not many are that I can see. All I hope is it lasts after she comes back – why I went down to the schoolroom the other day and there he was on the floor with the children all over him! Having the time of their lives they all were!’
She handed him his cup. It always astounded her that he never by so much as a word or a glance gave the slightest indication that he remembered – as he so surely must remember – the circumstances of their first meeting. And, oddly, as time slipped by even for her the memory was dimming. She sometimes found it difficult to believe that the Sally Smith who could sit here sipping tea with Doctor Ben Patten could possibly be the same fierce and ragged girl who had defied Jackie Pilgrim and so nearly died for it.
‘Penny for them?’
She laughed, faintly embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I was daydreaming.’
‘Never a bad thing. The odd daydream doesn’t do any of us any harm.’
Did she detect a certain rue in his voice? She watched him over the rim of her cup. He was an interesting man, this doctor with the prizefighter’s jaw and hands that she knew could be gentle as a woman’s; a man of contrasts, paradoxes even. Harsh, self-centred she suspected, often too certain of himself and his opinions, yet she had seen him intuitively gentle with a sick child, knew from experience how deeply – sometimes uncomfortably – perceptive he could be. And the humour that lurked so often in those dark eyes seemed as natural to him as the fierce temper and perilous moods that impatience could prompt. A complex and intriguing man at best, provoking and difficult at worst; and the man that pretty, silly Charlotte Bedford had married, to save herself from disgrace.
I would not have done that, she found herself thinking with certainty. Not in a million years. And then the sheer absurdity of the thought hit her and her lips twitched almost to laughter. Very likely, that Ben Patten would have offered his name to save Sally Smith from disgrace.
‘Is little Bessie’s skin complaint clearing up?’ she asked soberly.
‘Oh yes. She’ll be fine.’ He had perched himself easily on the desk, his leg swinging. ‘And young Tom’s coming on well too. He’ll be up and about in a day or so. Let’s see – how many children do we have that Ralph’s still schooling here?’
‘Seven. A couple of them are too young yet, the others will be at school next term. There are a couple he’s giving some extra tuition to, and of course he’s coaching Toby.’
‘For the scholarship?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ralph tells me he has a good chance.’
‘I hope so.’
Ben stood, leaving his mug on the desk. ‘Right – no rest for the wicked – keep up the good work.’
‘I will.’
The door closed behind him. Sally reached for the pencil and the column of figures she had laboriously been working on. Though she would never have admitted it figurework was still far from her strong point. Beyond the door she heard a child’s piping voice and Ben Patten’s cheerful greeting. The child squealed, laughing as he was obviously swept into strong arms.
She was smiling as she set to work.
A moment later she was interrupted again as Hannah’s head popped around the door. ‘Sally – can’t stop – just to remind you that we’re meeting at Clement’s Inn tonight before – oh, Sally! You can’t have forgotten?’
Sally hastily rearranged her startled expression. ‘Why no. Of course not.’
‘You are coming? It won’t be the biggest meeting in the world, nor the most exciting I don’t suppose – but Christabel’s going to be there, so you never know – and you promised you’d sell Votes for Women with me.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. I’ll be there.’
The door closed again. Sally sighed. Damn! She had in fact forgotten the meeting and her promise to sell the Union’s new magazine with Hannah. She would have to put off talking to Maude about the little ones’ revised timetable. She leaned back for a moment, thoughtfully, in her chair. If Christabel Pankhurst were to be at the meeting there might after all be fireworks. Well, one thing she’d be damned sure not to do. She would not let them arrest her. Not this time. There was altogether too much to do.
Ben Patten was in the parlour by a dying fire when he heard the noise. Outside the wind blew like a fury, rattling the panes in the ancient windows and sending scurrying draughts about the old building. Rain hammered on the glass, teemed from the gutters.
He lifted his head, listening again. A small and stealthy sound had come from the room across the corridor that was his and his father’s surgery. Very quietly he opened the parlour door. A lamp burned dimly in the surgery where none should be. Again there was quiet movement.
He stepped to the door, pushed it open. ‘What the devil – good God! Sally! What on earth are you doing?’
Sally stood frozen in the act of opening a cupboard door. She turned her head.
‘Sit down.’ He was brisk. ‘At once. And here – take this – you’re bleeding all over everything.’
She did as she was bid, holding the clean towel he had handed her to her lower lip which gaped from the gash opened in it by a thug’s brass-ringed knuckles. She was trembling with cold, with shock and with an almost uncontainable rage. Her clothes were drenched in blood from her lip and she was soaked through from the storm. One eye was closing painfully.
‘Damned if I’m not beginning to feel there’s a war on!’ Ben growled, clattering at the sink. ‘Who the hell did that to you? Here – hold this—’
She took the dish, held it beneath her chin, clenching her teeth against their chattering. ‘Di-n’t wann – get – ’rested—’ she said, the words slurred, the gashed lip hanging and flopping obscenely.
‘What?’ He was cleaning the wound swiftly and efficiently.
‘I – didn’t – want – get – arrested—’ she enunciated a little more clearly.
‘I’m going to have to put a couple of stitches in it. Hold on. This is going to hurt, I’m afraid.’
It did. Despite all her efforts tears of pain started to her eyes. He worked quickly, his face intent. Then, stepping back he eyed the lip with professional satisfaction. ‘There you are. You’ll have a bit of a scar, but not too much. Anything else?’
‘Only the eye.’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing I can do about that, I’m afraid. You’ll have a shiner and a half by morning.’
‘Sods!’ she muttered savagely under her breath, unable to contain herself. ‘Vicious sods! Bloody spoiling for trouble.’ She was still trembling like a leaf.
He could not prevent a small smile at the heartfelt, unladylike language. ‘Doctor Patten prescribes a fair to middling shot of good brandy. Follow me. Where’s Hannah?’
‘She’s all right.’ She was talking gingerly, touching her sore lip with her fingertips. ‘Ralph got her away. They’ve probably gone back to Clement’s Inn. That was the plan.’ The headquarters of the WSPU were situated at Clement’s Inn and all operations were co-ordinated from there. Very shakily Sally followed Ben into the darkened parlour.
‘God – you’re dripping all over Pa’s best carpet! Wait a minute—’ He disappeared for a moment, came back carrying two blankets. ‘Get out of those wet clothes. No point in giving yourself pneumonia.’
She clutched the blankets to her, but did not move.
He grinned lopsidedly. ‘I’ll wait outside. Two minutes.’
She scrambled from her uncomfortable, sopping wet clothes and with enormous relief swathed herself in the warm blankets. The fire glowed comfortingly. Her lip throbbed and stung, but at least it felt better than it had as she had hurried through the winter streets holding the gash together with her fingers, her hand slick with blood. She tucked herself comfortably into the big old armchair that was normally Doctor Will’s. She could smell the pipe tobacco in the fabric of the upholstery.
‘Are you decent?’
‘Yes.’
He came into the shadowed room, went immediately to the fire, fed it with kindling until it flared brightly then tucked a small log and a few pieces of coal on top of the dancing flames. ‘There. Soon be warm.’
To Sally, chilled to the bone, the room was already warm as the womb. She snuggled further into the chair.
With movements remarkably quiet and contained for a man of his bulk, Ben went to the sideboard. She heard the clink of glass, the splashing of the brandy.
‘Here.’ He towered above her, his face in shadow, ‘Drink this.’
With hands that still shook she took the heavy, wide-bowled glass. Tilted her head. Choked. Her lip screamed.
He laughed a little. ‘Steady on. You don’t drink it like medicine, you know!’
But like medicine it was doing her good. The pain in her lip was bludgeoned to numbness, her trembling had eased. He leaned forward, watching her. ‘Slowly now. What happened?’
She sipped the brandy. Held it up between her eyes and the firelight. It glowed like dark molten gold. ‘We had a meeting. In Marylebone. Nothing special, just a meeting. Organized by the local branch; it was no big affair. There should have been no trouble.’
‘But – there was?’
‘Yes. There certainly was.’ With a swift movement she tossed back her brandy.
Ben thoughtfully swilled his around the glass, then he too tilted his head and took the last of his drink at a mouthful, savouring it. ‘Go on.’
‘There were trouble makers in the audience – young men – planted I think—’ She twirled the empty glass in her hands. ‘They heckled the speakers – I mean really heckled – they didn’t ask questions, they didn’t want to listen to answers. They shouted. Abuse, mostly.’ Her mouth was tight with anger.
‘I can imagine,’ he said.
She turned an impassioned face to him. ‘It’s impossible when they do that! In men’s meetings, the political meetings that we attend to ask questions, they have stewards – men, strong men – who can stop people – haul them out – and they damned well do!’ She was almost inarticulate with fury and with the pain of her lip. ‘But what can we do against such—’ she tried to stop herself but could not contain the words ‘—bloody-minded hooligans?’ she finished, fiercely. ‘Our stewards, if that’s what you can call them – what are they? What would you expect them to be? – Nice, well-brought-up young ladies who’ve never said “boo” to a goose until now – what can we expect them to do about a hulking great brute who’s just out to make trouble? Ask him politely to leave? The police won’t help us, and alone we don’t have the force—’ The tone of her voice suggested clearly to her listener that on this occasion at any rate Sally Smith would have been happy to provide the force single handed. She did not, perhaps fortunately, catch the sudden faint gleam of amusement in his eyes.
‘What happened?’
She shrugged, a muffled movement in the enveloping blankets. ‘The meeting broke up – as I s’pose our visitors had intended. When we got outside the police were there. They’d obviously been warned. Tipped off. They were hustling the women – pushing them – saying things – they were arresting us! Not them – not the trouble makers.’ She stopped, gritting her teeth against anger. The fire flared. Ben threw another log to the flames, gently relieved Sally of her glass, moved to the sideboard, came back with the brandy bottle in his hand. She watched as he splashed the clear amber liquid into the glasses. Remembering what had happened earlier this evening, the quiet suddenly seemed extraordinarily quiet, the warmth and comfort extraordinarily warm and comfortable. She blinked a little, took the glass he held out to her in smiling silence. The quiet settled easily about them.
‘Then what?’ he asked at last.
‘Oh – well, Hannah and me – we’d been selling the magazine—you know, Votes foi Women. I suppose it made us targets in a way. Like I said, the coppers weren’t arresting them.’ She tilted her glass and sipped, holding the burning liquid on her tongue before letting it slip like mellow fire down her throat, ‘They were arresting us. Or trying to.’ Her smile was quiet, a swift flash of wanton mischief, a movement of the eyes as much as of the damaged mouth. Ben stirred in his chair, and was still. ‘I’d decided I wasn’t ready for another stretch. Too much going on here. So – I dodged out. Mr Ralph had already got Miss Hannah away. I saw them go.’
‘And?’
She shrugged again. ‘Some fancy lad decided he didn’t want to see me get away.’
‘So – he blacked your eye and split your lip?’ Anger smouldered, seething beneath the light tone.
‘That’s right,’ she said, placidly enough.
In the silence they drank.
He watched her. Some small gleam in her face tilted his head in question. ‘And what did you do to him?’
She grinned her damaged, abrasive grin, ‘I doubt he’ll be pleasing his girlfriend too much for the next few weeks.’
His chuckle was warm. ‘Another brandy?’
They were sitting there still an hour later, the soaked heap of Sally’s discarded clothes steaming in the warmth of the now-roaring fire. The bottle was all but empty. For the last few minutes an easy silence had fallen. A little hazily Sally found herself wondering what on earth they could have found to talk about for that long. Or had she been talking and he listening? She could not be sure. She eyed him from beneath lowered lashes. He looked like a rock in the shadows, strong and still and utterly sure. Mischief stirred in her. ‘They tell me’, she said, looking at him through her raised and almost empty glass, ‘that you want to build Jerusalem?’
He laughed a little. ‘Is that what they say?’
She nodded slowly and pensively.
With sudden attention, the ease of the indolent moment gone, he looked at her, interest in his eyes. ‘You don’t approve?’ he asked.
The acute perception took her aback. Her question had been light, anything but disapproving. Her mouth twitched to a small, sore smile; who in the world cared if Sally Smith approved of anything or not?
‘Please. Tell me.’
She regretted having opened her mouth. ‘’Tisn’t for me to say, is it?’
He leaned forward, his face intent. ‘But yes. Of course it is.’
Cornered, she shrugged. ‘Well – all right then—’ she paused for a second, knowing her thoughts, suddenly painfully aware of her limitations in expressing them. ‘I can see what you’re after. Better now than before because – well, because I know you, I s’pose. And yes, I think you’re probably right. But what I wonder is—’ she stopped.
He gave her no help, no escape. He watched her, waiting.
‘What I wonder is what Joe down the road thinks of your Jerusalem. Your—’ she hesitated, glancing at him beneath lowered lashes, smiling self-consciously ‘—your tomorrow Jerusalem. I mean – you can see, can’t you? – if you spend the best part of your life keeping body and soul together, hanging on like grim death to the roof over your head, fighting for work, not getting it more often than not, nagged by the wife, your kids going shoeless and hungry, no decent bed to sleep on, the workhouse threatening – well—’
‘Yes?’
‘Then p’raps you’d swop Jerusalem tomorrow for bread today. For coal in the bucket, tuppence in your pocket for a trip to the boozer. It’s hard for a bloke like Joe down the road to see that – well, that a dream’s worth fighting for.’ She stopped, oddly embarrassed at the emotive words.
He picked up the brandy bottle, eyed it against the flames, proffered it across the space between them. ‘And does that mean that no one should? Fight for the dream – the principle – I mean? That comes a bit oddly, doesn’t it, from a girl that’s been to Holloway twice and just taken two stitches in her lip for – a principle?’
She had never met anyone who argued so, sharply and thoughtfully. For the moment it was beyond her. She thought about it as she held out her glass, watched as he splashed the two last measures out. ‘I suppose—’ she said at last, ‘—I suppose that that’s what you know and I don’t. And neither does Joe. And’, she added with a touch of mild asperity, ‘I’m not saying that makes Joe and me wrong.’
With a small, guarded and appreciative smile he leaned back. ‘I should say not. Now, tell me, Sally Smith. How long did it take for you to decide not to tell us all to piss off?’
She hesitated for just a moment. Decided upon honesty.
‘So tell me,’ Ben said, ten minutes later, lifting his head, the granite-sharp features softened by firelight, ‘you aren’t sorry that you came back that day?’
Sally shook her head. Her lip was swollen now, and the stitches pulled. ‘Like I said – it was the Jug that did it. But for him I’d have gone. But – I’ve told him – I would have been wrong.’
‘It would have been our loss as much as yours.’
She smiled. Winced.
He leaned forward. ‘Your lip. It’s painful?’
‘Yes.’
He went on his knees in front of her, his hands upon either side of her face, lifting and turning her head to the light of the fire. ‘It’ll get worse overnight, I’m afraid. But it’s clean. It’ll get better.’
She laughed softly, holding her mouth still in his protective hands. ‘As I remember, that’s what I told Hannah about Holloway. Well – more or less.’
He smiled, still holding her narrow face in his hands. Then, very abruptly he released her and sat back in his chair. For a long moment they both watched the fire. The silence that had been so easy was suddenly oddly and subtly charged. Sally’s none-too-clear mind danced like a butterfly, settled capriciously, fired by the brandy. ‘Can I ask you something?’
He turned his head. ‘Of course.’
All at once, clearly aware of possible affront, she hesitated.
‘Well?’
‘I – just wondered – someone saw off Jackie Pilgrim. Made a damn’ good job of him by all accounts. Someone who – sounded a lot like you.’
He rubbed his jaw.
She had gone too far to retreat. ‘Well? Was it?’ she asked bluntly.
And as bluntly. ‘Yes,’ he said.
There was a moment’s silence then she gurgled with laughter. ‘Oh, good for you!’ she said. ‘Good for you!’
He slanted a glance at her. ‘No one else knows. No one.’
She toasted him with her empty glass, blood trickling in a thread from her sewn lip. ‘And no one shall.’
He made her a small bow in his chair. ‘Thank you.’
Suddenly intolerably, overwhelmingly tired she leaned her head against the back of her chair. ‘I think I need my bed.’
‘I’ll take you.’
He was beside her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should bend to her, lift her in those strong arms as if she had been no more weight than a child. She laid her head contentedly on his shoulder.
In silence he walked the darkened house, the light, tough burden in his arms. In her small room, bare as a cell it seemed to him, he laid her gently upon the bed. Blood still seeped on to her chin. He wiped it with his handkerchief. Rain hammered upon the windows. The wind tossed the branches of the tree in the courtyard.
‘You’re sure you’re all right? I could bring you a sleeping draught.’
‘I’m fine.’ The strange, slanting eyes opened suddenly, for a moment no longer narrowed in their usual defensive way, but wide and clear as a child’s. ‘Thank you.’
For the space of a heart-beat the back of his hand rested against her cheek, then without a word he left her.
His face shuttered he went back down to the parlour, picked up the brandy bottle that stood by the hearth. It was empty. A full one stood on the sideboard. He picked it up, looked at it for a moment before, very precisely, replacing it unopened. Then, with his usual contained and efficient movements he gathered up Sally’s damp, discarded clothes, delivered them to the laundry room and took himself to bed.
Charlotte did not want to go home. She did not want to go back to England, let alone to the squalor of Poplar and the teeming activity of the Bear.
She had fallen in love.
She had fallen in love with Bruges. She had fallen in love with the van Damme family, and with their lovely, tall gabled house overlooking the canal on the Groenerei, which was like something from a fairy tale with its stepped gables and diamond-paned windows, its steeply sloping tiled roofs and tall chimneys. The orphanage – smaller and very much better organized than the Bear – was run with care and kindness by Aunt Alice, her husband Anselm, their son Philippe, who was about Charlotte’s own age, and their daughter Annette and her husband. Two younger children had been lost in an epidemic of typhoid three years before. They were the happiest of families, united in their dedication to each other and to the children in their care. Aunt Alice was a plump, motherly, warm-natured person, an ordinary-looking little woman of wisdom and perception whom, it seemed to Charlotte, no one could fail to love. Within days their relationship had blossomed to the confidences of mother and daughter, and within days Charlotte was too under the spell of the lovely old city in which Aunt Alice had chosen to live. She felt as if she had known the van Dammes all of her life. Rachel, of course, was made much of – particularly by Annette, who was herself carrying her first child, and by the lively Philippe, who delighted in Rachel’s gurgles of laughter as he bounced her on his knee or tossed her boisterously in the air, at risk to limb if not to life. He delighted too in showing off the beautiful little city that was his home. As the cobbled streets basked in the soft sunshine of a balmy late autumn he escorted Charlotte, Nurse Winterbottom and the bouncing perambulator containing a happily cooing Rachel upon walks along the banks of the picturesque canals that were lined so prettily with Hansel and Gretel houses and delicately spired churches. Ancient bridges spanned the waterways and willows bowed with grace, autumnal fronds drifting, like long-haired girls admiring their reflection in the still sunlit mirror of the water. They took coffee and cakes in the Market Square, to the mellow and lovely sound of the carillon housed in the Halles tower, the forty-seven bells pealing joyously across the spires of the city in the still and golden autumn air. Bruges was a city of bells, a city of quiet cobbled streets, of markets gay with flowers, of shimmering, peaceful water that reflected the lovely façades of the medieval buildings like an illustration from an ancient romance. A city from the dreams of childhood, enclosed by its ancient walls and embankments, watched over by its windmills. And Charlotte was enchanted. She regained her spirits and her looks. The exercise she took brought the bloom back to her cheeks and brightened her eyes. Her figure grew trim again. She laughed with a wholehearted delight she had not felt in years, joined in the games and the musicales of which the van Dammes, were so fond, flirted light-heartedly with Philippe – a game of their own in which he joined in with enthusiasm.
She did not want to go home.
She spent long hours in the big old kitchen with Aunt Alice, who herself cooked for the whole household, and within the first week had confided most of her troubles, although never did the secret of Rachel’s parentage escape her, for the thought of risking losing Aunt Alice’s good opinion was too awful to be contemplated. However, simply to have a sympathetic ear into which to pour her miseries was a balm beyond price.
‘Ben always could be a solemn little chap,’ Aunt Alice volunteered a little unexpectedly one day. ‘Very – intense – even as a small boy.’ She smiled fondly. ‘But such a mischief!’
‘Really?’ Charlotte was surprised.
Up to her elbows in flour, cheeks pink from her exertions and from the warmth of the huge stove, Alice laughed. ‘Oh, yes! The scrapes he got into! He used to drive his poor mother mad! She always used to say he could make a living in the circus!’
Charlotte pulled a mildly bemused face. She had never thought to imagine Ben as a child, let alone a mischievous one with a mother who thought he belonged in the circus.
‘It was when Henrietta died that he really changed, of course.’ Alice’s eyes were placid upon the dough she kneaded so expertly upon the board. ‘Poor lad. He was in an awful state. He blamed himself. They’d known each other – loved each other – for years. They were true childhood sweethearts. He adored her,’ she glanced at Charlotte. The full lower lip was out, prettily sullen. Charlotte picked with impatient fingers at the lace trimming of her skirt. Alice shook her head gently. ‘Don’t begrudge it to her, my dear. It lasted for such a little time, and ended so very tragically. She was dead within the year and his child with her. Can you wonder that he nearly went out of his mind? Or that, when he recovered, he was never quite the same young man he’d been?’
‘I remember a little,’ Charlotte conceded, trying hard not to sound grumpy. ‘I was about ten years old at the time, I think. Ben was so much older. I never really knew him.’
The kindly eyes met hers in silence: and she flushed very slightly at their gentle message.
The weeks slipped by. The weather chilled and broke. Four weeks. Five.
She did not want to go home.
‘Is that from Charlotte?’ Hannah asked Ben at the breakfast table. ‘Is she coming home?’
Ben shook his head, folding the letter. ‘No. She wants to stay for another week or so.’
Hannah looked doubtful. ‘It’s November already. If they leave it much longer the weather could be very bad for the crossing.’
He shrugged. ‘She’s enjoying the break. She sounds happier than she’s been for months. There’s no reason for her to hurry back.’ He applied himself to his toast and marmalade.
Hannah shot a small, doubtful glance at him, but said nothing.
Peter reached for his hat. ‘Good for her. Wouldn’t mind a few weeks off in foreign climes myself. But hey-ho for the daily grind – Hodges and Son, here I come.’ He perched the hat at a jaunty angle, grinned like an irrepressible child, ‘Only one thing keeps me going. There’s always the hope that this is the day I can persuade old Hodges to sack me – eh?’
Hannah tried unsuccessfully not to laugh at him. ‘Mrs Briggs was asking if you’d be in to dinner tonight?’
He breezed to the door, turned. ‘No. I’ve got—’ he tapped the side of his well-shaped nose secretively, eyes bright, ‘—a little business to attend to. ’Bye.’
Hannah shook her head ruefully as, humming cheerfully, he clipped off down the corridor. ‘Mother always swore he was a changeling,’ she said, ‘I sometimes think she might have been right!’
Ben smiled and stood up, folding the newspaper.
‘Ben?’
He looked at her.
‘How much longer do you think Charlotte will stay away?’ In her sisterly concern she could be every bit as stubborn as he was.
‘I don’t know. All I know is that the trip seems to be doing her some good. Another couple of weeks won’t hurt.’
‘But—’
‘Hannah—’ Very firmly he opened the paper and spread it in front of her. ‘Read the paper—’
‘And mind my own business?’
‘I didn’t say that. It’s just – Charlotte is my wife – you have to let me decide what’s best.’
Hannah nodded. ‘Sorry.’ She glanced at the paper, raised her brows at headlines an inch high. ‘What’s all this?’
He shrugged. ‘Whitehall paranoia I’d say, most of it. A disease Fleet Street is always very quick to catch.’
Hannah scanned the article quickly. ‘You don’t think the build up of the German Fleet is a threat?’
‘Who knows? Possibly. Possibly not. What I do suspect is that it makes a very convenient red herring.’
‘Oh?’ She looked up at him, interested. ‘In what way?’
He reached to take the last of the toast, munching it absently. ‘If there’s trouble brewing – and there is – I don’t think it’s coming from Germany. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Where then?’
‘Here. Right under our noses.’ He finished the toast, walked to the door. ‘Ask Ralph. There are men working the wharves who haven’t had a rise in wages since they won their “docker’s tanner” upwards of ten or twelve years ago. Have you seen the price of bread lately? Some employers are making noises about actually cutting wages – not just here in the docks, but in Wales in the mines, in the north in the mills. There’s a good few beginning to ask why they should spend their strength making money for the owners when their own children go shoeless and hungry.’ A memory flickered elusively. Where had he heard that phrase?
‘What can they do about it?’
He shrugged. ‘They can sit down under it or they can fight it. And there are plenty to encourage them to fight.’
‘Fight?’ Hannah looked at him in true amazement. ‘You mean – really fight? Physically fight?’
‘If it comes to it, yes. You know as well as I that the syndicalists in the docks have been advocating firm action for years. So have some of the more militant miners. What do you think will happen if they get together? Do you think the Government would allow working men to cripple the country with industrial action? Of course not. No – if things keep drifting the way they seem to be, then British soldiers are as likely to be used on the streets of England and Wales as they are against Germany, fleet or no fleet. What happened a couple of years ago in Russia could just as easily happen here.’
‘Oh, surely not! I can’t believe that! Why – that was almost full-blown revolution! And repressed so bloodily! Oh, no, Ben! That could never happen here!’
He shrugged. ‘Let’s hope you’re right.’ He stopped at the door an expression of deep and earnest thought on his face, ‘I don’t think it would be absolutely the first time, though I’m damned if I can actually remember the last time it happened.’
‘Pig!’ she said mildly, smiling her affection. ‘When brothers were handed out, didn’t I get a pair?’
The heavy November sky seemed to rest upon the pointed roofs of the fairy-tale houses. The wind cut across the flatlands of Flanders, scouring the countryside. Rain drove in gusts along the swollen canals, drenched the cobblestones, ran in small rivers in the gutters. In the warmth of the kitchen on the Groenerei Charlotte sat at the table, slicing cabbage. Stew bubbled on the hob and the savoury smell filled the room. Charlotte’s face was downcast, her mouth set miserably.
‘I’m sorry, my dear – we don’t want to lose you, you know we don’t – so far as we’re concerned you could stay forever. But it’s barely three weeks to Christmas. Your family—’
Charlotte nodded. ‘Yes. I know. I’ll make the arrangements. I’ll telegraph Ben today.’
‘But no!’ Philippe stood at the door, hands spread in a characteristic, laughing gesture. ‘Not today! It cannot possibly be permitted before Monday! For we have our musicale on Saturday night – and who will sing so sweetly for us if you go? We won’t hear of it! Next week, eh, Mama? Stay till next week!’
‘So Miss Charlotte’s coming home at last, eh?’ Bron tucked bedclothes and plumped pillows with the unthinking efficiency of habit. ‘’Bout time too if you ask me! It’s weeks and weeks she’s bin gone – and with Christmas just round the corner, mind! A pair of extra hands might have come in handy round here. It’s all very well to go off gallivanting, isn’t it – but at such a time of the year?’
Sally let her chatter. For herself she had come to admit, not without some difficulty, that if Charlotte never came home at all it would be too soon for Sally Smith. The house was so much easier without her moods and tantrums, her dull, resentful silences. There was more than enough work with the children without having a self-pitying semi-invalid taking up everyone’s time and energy.
She straightened, sighing, rubbing her back. That wasn’t it. Why pretend it was? How many times had she impressed on Toby – lying to others was one thing; lying to oneself was a fool’s game. She did not want Charlotte Patten back at the Bear because, quite simply, she did not want her near Ben. She did not want to see those lines of tension back in his face, the grim, unsmiling set of his mouth. And – to carry honesty to its cruellest extent – neither would she welcome back a changed Charlotte. If the break had truly helped her – if she came back the pretty, laughing girl she had been before Rachel’s birth, ready to make amends, ready to share her husband’s bed and board like any devoted young wife—
‘Bron, for heaven’s sake! What are you doing with that? It looks like a haystack!’ Ill-temperedly Sally pulled the sheets from the bed Bron had been making. ‘Here – take the other side. If you’d talk a bit less and concentrate a bit more on what you’re doing—’
Bron fell to injured silence. They made the bed. Sally pulled a rueful face, reached a hand to the other girl. ‘I’m sorry. I’m tired, that’s all.’
Bron could not have held a grudge for more than a moment if she had tried. She beamed. ‘That’s all right. We all have our off days, mind.’
Back in her cubbyhole Sally sat, elbows on her desk, face resting in her spread hands. An off day? Was that what you called it, she wondered with a twist of wry humour? An off day? When you could not get a man’s face from your mind? When you spent your days ridiculously listening for the sound of his voice, the rare peal of his laughter? When a smile could light a room like a lamp and a sharp word cut like a knife? Jesus, Mary and Joseph – had she taken leave of her senses? Or was it true – could it possibly be true? – that since the night Ben Patten had stitched her damaged lip there had been something between them? Something so nebulous, so fragile that to try to name it – almost to think of it – would be to destroy it, to dispel it like mist in the sun? Like a half-caught image at the corner of the eye that vanished at the turn of a head. Had she imagined over these past weeks the especial gleam in his eyes when he looked at her? The lightening of that craggy face when she walked into a room? Had she wanted so much to see it that she had created it in her own heart; a mirage, a lie? Certainly their rapport when they worked together was not in doubt – each seemed to understand the other’s view or idea before more than half a dozen words had been spoken. And a shared dry humour, an often hidden amusement at the perversities of life, acknowledged by a flicker of the eyes, a lift of the head, often created an odd bond, as if the two of them were alone together in a world that teemed with people.
An off day.
She lifted her head, stretched her neck tiredly, resolutely kept her mind from the absurd, all but lunatic longings that had kept her from sleep the night before.
No. Sally Smith did not want Miss Charlotte to come home.