Eli Angel looked out of the study window onto a damp and chill October morning. The sky was a patchwork of sullen clouds and pale blues. Every now and then, a shy sun would inch its way out from behind a cloud, only to be smothered again almost immediately. The day looked like Eli felt inside, miserable and uncertain.
Things were not going well at the mill. The workers were unsettled and had not taken too kindly to the news that their futures were now in the hands of an eighteen-year-old boy. The mill manager, a fastidious little man called Ernest Wraith, was of the same opinion.
Although Eli had grasped the rudiments of running the business from evenings spent at his father’s side in the study, out in the real world, the day-to-day management, the bickering, the negotiations, and the finer points of it all, were just a fuddle in his brain. It didn’t help that since his father’s untimely death, his mother had taken to her room and as each day passed she was becoming more and more difficult. Whenever he was in the house, she demanded every moment of his attention. She would have him sit for hours at her bedside, holding her hand and reassuring her that she was still beautiful. She didn’t want to hear about the mill, or about Ernest Wraith, or the workers, or the stack of bills that were sitting accusingly on the desk in the study, waiting to be paid. All she cared about was the fading lustre of her hair and the lines on her face and how many calling cards had been left that day. If there were none, which was often the case, she demanded to know why, or she would weep and lament her disgrace and console herself with a draught of laudanum.
And then there was Alice. There was always Alice. She hovered on the edge of Eli’s thoughts all day and every night. She gnawed at his dreams, so he awoke bad-tempered and tired, and he couldn’t pass the door to her room without his heart contracting.
Temperance, however, seemed to have wiped Alice from her memory. Eli had learned weeks ago that it was futile to even mention Alice’s name in front of his mother. She would set her mouth in a tight thin line and turn her face to the wall, or worse, she would begin to shake and spit obscenities at him. It shamed him to his very core, but Eli had to admit to himself that he had been blind.
Alice had tried to tell him so many times. Since she had first been able to talk, she had tried to tell him. But he had never seen it. He had never seen the truth of it. He had bathed in the adoration of his mother. He had thought she was perfect. He had thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. But he saw her now for what she really was. As Alice had always seen her.
Eli sighed heavily and turned from the window to look at the pile of letters on the desk. The advertisement that he had placed in the Bristol Gazette had elicited a number of responses during the last few weeks. At first, it had seemed promising. A young woman answering Alice’s description had been seen in a lodging house in St Philips, Bristol. Eli had set out, full of hope and apprehension, to meet the writer of the letter. He had met the man, who gave his name as Samuel Wakefield, in a dingy inn on the outskirts of the district. He had been obliged to purchase a jar of ale and to furnish Mr Wakefield with a handful of coins before he would agree to take Eli to the lodging house.
They had set off walking through a network of courts, alleys and side streets, with Eli struggling to keep pace. He had never seen such places before. It was all so dim and filthy and the ground was thick with rotting vegetable peelings, stinking offal and ashes. The stench was unbearable and Eli had to pull his handkerchief from his pocket and hold it over his nose, just to stop himself from retching. Mr Wakefield had laughed and told him it was only the stink of the scavengers’ yards and the nearby alkali works, and he should be glad it was not a hot day.
Eli became distracted by the filth that was sticking to his shoes, and had stopped to scrape some of it off on the edge of a brick wall. When he looked up, Mr Wakefield had disappeared. Eli had not realised at that point that anything was wrong. He assumed they had just lost each other in the tangle of alleys. Eli had pressed on and had enquired of an old beggar woman as to the whereabouts of the nearest lodging house. She had pointed to a nearby doorway and Eli had taken a deep breath to ready himself for the state he might find Alice in.
The lodging house keeper made no effort to hide his scorn. After Eli had finished describing Alice, the man held out his fingers one by one. ‘We have a pedlar, a cordwainer, a laundry maid, a splint maker and a horsehair weaver, but I’m afraid I don’t recall no young lady.’ He’d winked at Eli and chuckled to himself.
It was only then that Eli realised he had been duped. He had been led on a wild goose chase and had been left with nothing but empty pockets and shit on his shoes.
After that, he’d been more careful. He’d kept his money in his pocket, refusing to hand over a single coin until he had proof of Alice’s existence. But of course, the letter writers had all been charlatans, snakesmen, vagabonds and thieves.
The worst of the lot had been the young girl with the head of tatty yellow hair who had sworn she was his long-lost sister. He had met a large-bellied man in a greasy suit on a street corner in Totterdown; a man who had written to say he had Alice. The man led Eli to a small room at the top of a crowded house in a place called Fox Court. On his way up the dark, winding stairs, Eli had to step over a least a dozen drunkards.
The girl had been sitting on the edge of an unmade bed and when Eli entered the room, she flung herself at him and begged to be taken home. ‘Brother. Dear brother,’ she kept saying. ‘You’ve come for me at last.’
Eli had to wrench her from him, and in his hurry to get away he had pushed her too hard and she had fallen backwards and hit her head on the iron bedstead. She didn’t scream or make a sound, but the man had roared at him and Eli had run, tripping and stumbling over the slumped bodies on the staircase until he was back out on the stinking streets. The sound of the girl’s head hitting the bedstead, the dull thud of bone on iron, had haunted him for days.
It had been the last time he had gone to look for Alice, and although the letters kept arriving, he couldn’t bring himself to open any more.
Eli picked up the letters from the desk and weighed them in his hands. Was Alice in there somewhere? Was he about to throw away his only chance of ever finding her? There was a knock on the door, and the maid, Sarah, came into the study and bobbed him a small curtsey. ‘Mr Wraith is here to see you, sir,’ she said. ‘And the mistress has been asking for you too.’
Eli sighed. Could he never have a moment to himself? ‘Thank you, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Please show Mr Wraith in. And I will attend to Mama shortly.’ As Sarah closed the door behind her, Eli tightened his grip on the letters until they bent and crumpled in his hands. Then he threw them onto the fire and watched for a moment as flames blackened the edges of the paper and the lies and deceits of strangers were turned to smoke and ashes.