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Synopsis
India’s family, fiancé and the general medical establishment object to her position as a female doctor but she insists on defying convention, finding a post in London's East End. There she meets a gang boss called Sid Malone.
Criminal he may be but he also has a hidden charm... But Sid has a past and enemies, including India's ruthless fiancé whose intention is to marry into the family money...
A W. F. Howes audio production.
Release date: January 1, 2009
Publisher: Hachette Books
Print pages: 720
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The Winter Rose
Jennifer Donnelly
Part One May 1900
Prologue
Lily Walker could smell a copper a mile away.
Chapter 1
“Jones!”
Chapter 2
Joseph Bristow bounded up the steps to 94 Grosvenor Square,…
Chapter 3
Sid Malone stepped out of his carriage at 22 Saracen…
Chapter 4
“Liverpool Street!” the conductor barked. India felt the train slow…
Chapter 5
Fiona Bristow sunk her hands into a wooden tea chest,…
Chapter 6
“Guv!” Frankie Betts yelled. “Guv, we’re through!”
Chapter 7
“Condoms?”
Chapter 8
Freddie Lytton turned heads wherever he went. As he loped…
Chapter 9
Fiona stood in her nightgown in front of her mirrored…
Chapter 10
“Home Rule is defeatist politics, that’s what it is! It’s…
Chapter 11
“You still here, Dr. Jones?” asked Bridget Malloy, matron of…
Chapter 12
Short Susie Donovan, the Taj Mahal’s colorful madam, put her…
Chapter 13
There had to be a way to let go. A…
Chapter 14
“Do you love her?”
Chapter 15
“Jesus Christ!” Joe shouted. “Jesus bloody Christ!”
Chapter 16
India heard birds. Sparrows, she thought. Nasty things. They were…
Chapter 17
“Let me get this straight,” Joe’s brother Jimmy said. “Alf…
Chapter 18
“India! For God’s sake stop!” Freddie shouted.
Chapter 19
Maud Selwyn Jones sat at the vanity table in her…
Chapter 20
“Mel, what’ll I do?” Fiona asked the foreman at Oliver's…
Chapter 21
“Mary Ellerton, the little girl with TB, had a bad…
Chapter 22
“Good afternoon, Mr. Lytton.”
Chapter 23
Sid lay splayed out on his bed in his flat…
Chapter 24
“What do you mean he walked out, Des? We was…
Chapter 25
Outside the Varden Street surgery, India buttoned her jacket against…
Chapter 26
Freddie Lytton was backstage at the Gaiety Theatre, sitting on…
Chapter 27
“Ah, Whitechapel in the summer,” Ella said, sidestepping a heap…
Chapter 28
“Jesus, Frankie, what the hell happened?” Sid Malone asked, looking…
Chapter 29
Freddie, seated by the fire in the large sitting room…
Chapter 30
“What a week,” Ella said, stuffing folders into her filing…
Chapter 31
“And then I sez to Old Bill, I sez…Oi!…
Chapter 32
Fiona Bristow stood quietly inside a squat brick warehouse on…
Chapter 33
“Did you know Sunny’s uncle shot a dachshund once?” Bingham…
Chapter 34
“No!” the man wailed, stumbling away from the bed. “Not…
Chapter 35
Ella, basket in hand, jumped off the omnibus as it…
Chapter 36
“How long has she been this way?” Sid asked.
Chapter 37
Freddie lifted his whisky glass to his lips and drained…
Chapter 38
“Where are they?”
Chapter 39
“Well, well, well. If it ain’t young Francis Betts.”
Chapter 40
India set her teacup into its saucer. She gave a…
Chapter 41
India stood on the steps of 40 Myrtle Walk, a…
Chapter 42
“Lytton, get the door, will you?”
Chapter 43
The ancient hackney cab Fiona Bristow was riding in slowed…
Chapter 44
India sat on an overturned tea chest in the Moskowitzes’…
Chapter 45
Joe Bristow, tired, haggard, and sick with worry, ran up…
Chapter 46
“You know, I think old Florrie Nightingale was sniffing the…
Chapter 47
Sid was lying on his bed, eyes closed, waiting for…
Part Two London, September 1900
Chapter 48
“Gentlemen, gentlemen! Is this Utopia? Or is this Whitechapel?” Freddie…
Chapter 49
Sid could see her—India. His India now. She was hurrying…
Chapter 50
“Mummy?”
Chapter 51
Frankie heard the voices from the street. He was surprised…
Chapter 52
“The boxes are here, Joe! Get up!”
Chapter 53
“Holy cow, Albie, that’s Norman Collie!” Seamie said.
Chapter 54
“Damned shame about the election, Lytton,” Dougie Mawkins said. “Labour…
Chapter 55
Seamie Finnegan wanted a hot cup of tea like he’d…
Chapter 56
India woke where she had fallen asleep—in the crook of…
Chapter 57
“You have to tell her!” Willa Alden shouted at a…
Chapter 58
“Frankie?”
Chapter 59
Seamie, Albie, and Willa were lying on their backs in…
Chapter 60
Frankie Betts knew what had to be done. And he…
Chapter 61
“India, you can’t possibly be serious,” Harriet said. “You just…
Chapter 62
Sid Malone stood at the open window of his bedroom…
Chapter 63
India stopped dead in the middle of Dean Street. She…
Chapter 64
Fiona stood in front of her armoire, frowning. She was…
Chapter 65
Freddie Lytton closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and…
Chapter 66
“You’re going to have to get off the game,” India…
Chapter 67
The cab stopped halfway up Richmond Hill, at the mouth…
Chapter 68
“Bonjour, Madame,” India said breathlessly to the woman behind the…
Chapter 69
“Madam, please! Do allow me. It’s a terribly unsafe hour,”…
Chapter 70
Ella looked at her friend, who was lying on her…
Chapter 71
In a bedroom at the top of 94 Grosvenor Square,…
Chapter 72
“Katie has four more teeth and she’s talking a blue…
Chapter 73
Sid’s sixth sense told him that someone was watching him.
Chapter 74
Seamie stopped outside a stationer’s shop, ripped his bag open,…
Chapter 75
“Something is strange, Ella.”
Chapter 76
India stared at the door to Freddie Lytton’s flat. He…
Chapter 77
Fiona’s baby kicked. His movements were getting stronger. She had…
Chapter 78
“Sid is it? Sid what?” the chief engineer asked.
Chapter 79
“India? Are you all right? What’s going on in there?”…
Part Three London, 1906
Chapter 80
Sir David Erskine, sergeant at arms for the House of…
Chapter 81
“Another one, Maggs?” Sid Baxter said.
Chapter 82
“It’s a blasted money sink,” Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the prime minister,…
Chapter 83
“It’s so good to see you, Seamie. I wondered sometimes…
Chapter 84
It was quiet on Tower Bridge. The evening rush was…
Chapter 85
Fiona Bristow, pregnant again, lumbered into her study and sat…
Chapter 86
India Lytton took off her eyeglasses and rubbed her temples,…
Chapter 87
Nairobi was a swamp.
Chapter 88
“Oh, just look at it, Seamie! Did you ever dream…
Chapter 89
“Horses?” Maggie Carr asked. She was sitting at the small…
Chapter 90
“Mummy, do we really have to take our teeth out?”…
Chapter 91
The tall, silent boy heated the needle in the flames…
Chapter 92
“Four children sleeping on wooden pallets the mother scrounged from…
Chapter 93
“Bloody hell,” Willa swore.
Chapter 94
Charlotte Lytton gazed at the creature at her feet, lying…
Chapter 95
Sid felt the riders before he saw them. He was…
Chapter 96
Sid gazed at the torn, mauled carcasses on the ground…
Chapter 97
Joe sat in the visitors’ room of Wandsworth Prison, waiting.
Chapter 98
India and Charlotte Lytton climbed the steps to Sid Baxter’s…
Chapter 99
“Bloody hell,” Seamie swore. He threw his gloves on the…
Chapter 100
“Will be good harvest, no?” Wainaina, Sid’s head field worker,…
Chapter 101
For a few seconds, India was senseless. She could not…
Chapter 102
Seamie stopped dead, placed his hands on his knees, and…
Chapter 103
Joe rapped on a frosted glass door on the ground…
Chapter 104
Freddie shaded his eyes from the blazing sun and gazed…
Chapter 105
Seamie felt Willa’s head, hot and heavy on his back.
Chapter 106
“It was the McGregors’ stallion that was here around lunchtime,…
Chapter 107
India stared at the plains of Thika for the last…
Chapter 108
“This is hopeless. Totally hopeless,” Dr. Rosendo Ribeiro, Nairobi’s one…
Chapter 109
Tom Meade poked his head into Freddie Lytton’s borrowed office…
Chapter 110
Can you smell despair? Joe wondered. Can you see it?…
Chapter 111
Sid knew.
Chapter 112
“Why did you do it, Freddie? Why?” India cried, striding…
Chapter 113
Seamie stood on the porch of Dr. Ribeiro’s surgery, peering in…
Chapter 114
Sid sat on the dirt floor of his jail cell,…
Chapter 115
Seamie returned to the Norfolk at noon in a state…
Chapter 116
“This is preposterous! Outrageous!” Herbert Gladstone sputtered, throwing a document…
Chapter 117
India sat on the veranda of the house where she…
Chapter 118
India grabbed Charlotte’s arm so tightly that the little girl…
Chapter 119
“Good morning, George,” Maggie Carr said as she walked by…
Chapter 120
India lay in bed. The house was silent. The clock…
Chapter 121
Freddie held the flaming match to the wick of a…
Chapter 122
Tom Meade ran down the long corridor and up the…
Chapter 123
Charlotte, her cheek swollen where Freddie had slapped her, her…
Chapter 124
By the time Sid had reached the Wiltons’ house, he’d…
Chapter 125
India held Charlotte tightly against her. Between them, they had…
Chapter 126
Seamie had wanted flowers, but there was no florist in…
Chapter 127
It was night on the African plains, the darkness hung…
Chapter 128
Sid kicked out the last remaining embers of his campfire…
Chapter 129
India had died.
Chapter 130
India smelled roses. Their warm, spicy scent delighted her.
Chapter 131
Joe lowered his weary head into his hands and let…
Chapter 132
Nearly five weeks after Seamie’s telegram arrived at 94 Grosvenor…
Chapter 133
India sat in the drawing room of 45 Berkeley Square,…
Epilogue
Juan Ramos, stationmaster at Point Reyes, crossed his arms and…
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
Other Books by Jennifer Donnelly
Copyright
Lily Walker could smell a copper a mile away.
Cops reeked of beer and bay rum. They walked as though their shoes pinched. In poor neighborhoods filled with hungry people, they looked as plump and glossy as veal calves, fattened up from all the free meals they cadged.
Cops scared Lily. It was a cop who’d taken her kids away from her and put them in the workhouse. It was another cop, a man named Alvin Donaldson, who’d put her in jail after she’d gone on the game to get them back.
And now there was one sitting at the bar right in front of her. Inside the Barkentine, the Firm’s own stronghold. Pretending to be a regular bloke. Talking. Drinking. Reading a paper. Ordering food.
The bloody cheek.
What did he want? Was he looking to nick Sid? To shut the place down?
The thought of the Bark closing more than scared Lily; it terrified her. She had her kids with her now. They had a room. It was small, but it kept them warm and dry. If she lost her barmaid’s job, and the wages it brought, she would lose the room. And her kids. Again.
As she stood behind the bar, nearly paralyzed with worry, a sudden movement caught her eye. It was Frankie Betts, Sid’s right-hand man. He’d been sitting down, knocking back glass after glass of whisky, but now he was on his feet. He stubbed out his cigarette and pushed back his sleeves.
He’s sussed the cop, Lily thought, he must have. And now he’s going to do for him.
But before Frankie could make a move, a fresh drink appeared on the bar. Desi Shaw, the publican, had put it there.
“Not leaving yet, are you, mate?” Desi said. “You only just got here.” Desi was smiling, but his eyes flashed a warning.
Frankie nodded. “Ta,” he said tightly, sitting back down.
Desi was right to have stopped him. Sid would be angry. He would say he was disappointed. Frankie knew better than to disappoint Sid. They all did.
Desi turned to Lily. “Look lively, darlin’. Bloke down the end needs a refill.”
“Sorry, Des. Right away,” she said.
Lily served her customer, barely smiling, her nerves taut. It was a tense time. For Sid. For the Firm. For all of them. A dangerous time. The rozzers were all over Sid. He and his lads had robbed a wages van last week and had made off with more than a thousand quid, prompting Freddie Lytton, the local Member of Parliament, to declare war. He’d had Sid arrested. Frankie and Desi, too. But the beak had let them go. Turned out there were no witnesses. Two men and a woman had seen the robbery, but when they’d learned it was Sid Malone they’d be testifying against, they’d suddenly been unable to recall what the robbers looked like.
“A mistake’s been made. The police arrested the wrong man,” Sid had said to the press on the steps of the Old Bailey after he’d been released. “I’m no villain, me. Just a businessman trying to make an honest living.” It was a phrase he’d used many times—whenever the police raided his boatyard or one of his pubs. He said it so often, in fact, that Alvin Donaldson had christened him the Chairman and his gang the Firm. Lytton had been furious. He vowed he’d have Sid’s head on a platter. He swore he’d find someone, some honest man, who wasn’t afraid to speak the truth, who wasn’t afraid of Malone and his pack of thugs, and when he did, he’d lock them away for life.
“He’s just blowing smoke,” Sid had said. “Wants his picture in the papers. It’s almost election time.”
Lily had believed him, but now this cop was sitting here, as bold as brass, and she was no longer sure he was right. She picked up a rag and wiped the bar with it, stealing glances at the man.
Is he one of Lytton’s? Or someone else’s? Why the hell is he here?
Lily well knew that where there was one cop, there were usually more. She scanned the room, looking for more unfamiliar faces.
If ever a pub deserved to be called a den of thieves, she thought, it’s the Bark.
Dark and low-ceilinged, it sat squeezed between two wharves in Limehouse, on the north bank of the Thames. Its front touched Narrow Street and its back sagged brokenly over the river. At high tide you could hear the Thames lapping at the rear wall. She recognized almost every face. Three local blokes were standing by the fire, passing bits of jewelry back and forth. In a corner, four more played cards while a fifth threw sharks’ teeth at a dartboard. Others sat clustered around rickety tables or at the bar itself. Smoking and drinking. Talking too loudly. Laughing too hard. Bragging and swaggering. Minor villains, all.
The man this cop was after, well…he didn’t brag and he didn’t swagger, and there was nothing minor about him. He was one of the most powerful, most feared criminal bosses in London, and Lily thought that if this barmy rozzer knew what was good for him, he’d get up and leave now. While his legs still worked.
While she continued to watch the man, Desi came bustling out of the kitchen and banged a bowl down in front of him, sloshing broth on his newspaper.
“One Limehouse hotpot,” he said.
The man stared at the steaming horror. “It’s fish,” he said flatly.
“Proper Sherlock Holmes, you. What was you expecting? Rack of lamb?”
“Pork, I guess.”
“This is Limehouse, innit? Not the bloody home counties. That’ll be tuppence.”
The man slid a coin across the bar, then stirred the gray broth with a dirty spoon. Bits of bone and skin whirled through it. A scrap of potato, some celery. A chunk of white flesh.
“Oi, Lily!” Frankie shouted, pointing at his empty glass.
“Right away, luv,” Lily said, taking the glass from him. As she put the new pint down, Frankie caught her hand, pulled her toward him, and kissed her cheek. She batted him away. It was an act. They were both laughing, but there was no mirth in their eyes. He kissed her again. “Find out what he’s after,” he whispered in her ear, then he let her go.
Lily knew what to do. She served a few more customers, then took a handkerchief from her pocket and made a show of mopping her neck with it.
“It’s like a bloody furnace in here tonight,” she said aloud. “You lot have me run off my feet.”
Then she unbuttoned the top of her blouse, fanning herself with her hand. Her soft, freckled bosom was large and firm—so large, in fact, that Sid often joked he could hide his dosh down it. She walked over to the man, placed her hands on the bar, and leaned forward, giving him an eyeful.
“Something wrong with your supper, luv?” she asked, smiling warmly. “You ain’t touched it.”
The stranger put his spoon down. He hesitated.
This ought to be good, she thought.
“Can’t eat a bloody thing no matter how hard I try,” he finally said. “Been livin’ on porter. Anything else and me stomach just heaves at it.”
“What? Nothing at all?” she asked, feigning concern.
“Porridge. Milk. Sometimes an egg. Screws did it. Kicked me guts in. Haven’t been right since.”
Lily nearly laughed out loud, but she kept her face straight. “Sent down, was you?” she asked.
“Aye. Smash-and-grab. Jewelry shop up Camden way. Had a clasp knife in me pocket so the coppers said I was armed. Beak gave me five.”
“You just come out?”
The stranger nodded. He pulled his cap off, revealing what looked like a prison-issue haircut.
“You poor bloke,” Lily said. “Think your stomach’s bad, you should see your head. What nick was you in? Reading?”
“Pentonville.”
“My late husband did a bit of bird there. Warden’s a right hard case. Willocks, his name was. He still giving everyone gyp?”
“Oh, aye.”
Drummond, you git, Lily thought. Should have asked round. There was no Willocks at Pentonville; there never had been. The bollocks was pretending.
“Well, that’s all behind you now,” she said brightly. “Like another pint, would you?”
The man said he would. As she moved off to get it, Frankie’s eyes caught hers. Take care of this, they said.
Lily nodded. She pulled a pint, then returned to her customer. “Here you are. On the house.” As she set the glass down, she purposely sloshed some of its contents onto his newspaper.
“Oh, how clumsy!” she said. “I’m so sorry. Between me and Desi, we’ve soaked your paper.”
“No harm done,” the man said, smiling. “Mopping spills is about the only thing this bloody rag’s good for.”
Lily laughed prettily and the man took her false good humor for an opening—just as she’d known he would.
“Name’s Michael Bennett,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Lily Walker. Likewise.”
“You hear about this?” Bennett asked, pointing to a story on the paper’s front page. “It’s about that wages robbery. They say Sid Malone done it. That he got away with ten thousand quid.”
Doesn’t Sid wish, Lily thought. Those flipping papers always exaggerated.
Bennett touched the back of her hand. “I heard Malone stashes some of his dosh on a barge in the Thames,” he said. “And some in a sugar warehouse.”
“Did you?” Lily asked, leaning in to give him a better look at her breasts.
“Aye. I also heard he keeps some here in the Bark. Why, we might be sitting on it right now,” he said, tapping his foot on the floorboards. “Don’t happen to have a prybar in your pocket, do you?”
Lily forced another laugh.
“Wherever he stores it, it must be a big place. The Firm don’t go in for any tuppenny-ha’penny Fagin rubbish. One bloke told me their bullion thefts alone have brought them thousands. Thousands! Cor, can you imagine having all that money?”
Lily felt anger flash inside of her. Her fingers twitched. She wished she were a man; she would break this bastard’s nose. It would teach him to keep it out of other blokes’ business.
“I’ve also heard Malone frequents this pub,” Bennett said. “Heard it’s his headquarters.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Lily replied.
Bennett leaned in close. He took her hand in his. “I need a word with him. Just a word, is all. Know how I can find him?”
Lily shook her head. “I’m sorry, luv, I don’t.” She leaned over farther and bent her head to his. “What do you want with him anyway? Good-looking man like yourself…just out of the nick…seems to me it’s a woman you’d be wanting, not a bloke.”
Bennett mulled over her offer. “How much?” he finally asked.
“I usually get a pound.”
The man snorted. “A bloody pound?” he said. Too loudly.
Typical rozzer, quibbling over money, she thought. Villains never did. She placed a finger on his lips. “For you, darlin’, fifty pence.”
Bennett’s eyes flickered back to her chest. He licked his lips. “All right, then,” he said. “Where do we go? Upstairs?”
Lily shook her head. “Meet me outside. By the river. There’s a stairway round the side. It’ll be quiet there this time of night. Quiet and dark.”
“When?”
“Give me fifteen minutes.”
She winked at him, then disappeared into the kitchen. Once there, she swiftly climbed a flight of wooden steps that led from the kitchen to the upper floor. Her fake smile was gone now; her expression grim. She ran down a dingy hallway and knocked twice on a locked door. It was opened by a rangy man in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat who made no effort to hide the cosh he was holding. Behind him, in the middle of the room, another man sat at a table, counting money. He raised his emerald-green eyes to hers.
“Trouble,” she said. “One of Lytton’s. Must be. Says his name is Bennett. I’ll have him out back in a few minutes.”
The emerald-eyed man nodded. “Keep him there,” he said, resuming his counting.
Lily shot back to the kitchen and made her way down to the basement. She let herself outside through a rickety door and crept behind a cluster of pilings. It was low tide. She could barely see the river in the darkness, but she could hear it—lapping at the hulls of barges moored midstream, hissing about the lines and buoys, gurgling in tiny, whirling eddies. Bennett was already there. Lily watched him as he took a long piss. When he finished, he lit a cigarette.
Good, she thought, that’ll take up some time. She didn’t want to do this. Not with him. Not with any man. She didn’t want to go back to what she’d been.
She bit her lip, remembering what it was like to be on the game. To give herself to any man who asked her. She’d done it so many times she’d lost count. She’d done it for her children.
She’d lost them a few weeks after her husband died. He’d been a tanner, working fourteen-hour days in the yards in all sorts of weather. The coroner had written pneumonia on his death certificate, but Lily knew it was the work that had killed him.
She’d taken what she could find after he’d died—a bit of charring, a few hours behind the counter of a tuckshop. And then a full-time job had come along at a jam factory. It paid, but not enough. She got behind on the rent, and then the factory went under. It was wintertime when the place closed. People were hungry and cold and desperate for work. Every job in East London was taken. When she was two months in arrears, the bailiff evicted her. She slept rough with her children for a few days, but then a pair of cops had caught her begging and they’d taken the children to the workhouse. Sometimes, in her sleep, she still heard them screaming, still saw their little hands knotted in her skirts as the officers pulled them from her.
Desperate, she’d done the only thing left to do—she went on the game. She forced herself to go numb while she was with the men, and she let herself cry afterward—but she made money, for unlike a lot of women on the streets, she still had her looks. She’d managed to earn a few shillings, and was just beginning to have hopes of renting a new room, a place to bring her children, when she’d been arrested.
Alvin Donaldson’s men had done it. Word had it Lytton leaned on him to clear the streets. She and a dozen other women had been rounded up and kept overnight. They’d been let go the next day—all of them except for Lily, for Donaldson had taken a liking to her.
He’d had her brought up from the cells to his office. He’d closed the door, and then he told her what he wanted. He said he’d send her down for good if she refused him. He knew she needed money badly. And he knew she couldn’t earn it if she was in prison. He’d taken her then and there, and many times afterward. In filthy alleys and lodging houses. Behind pubs. And he’d never given her a penny.
One night, after she’d been on the streets for a few months, Sid had caught sight of her.
“Lily?” he’d called out. He knew her from when she’d worked at the tuckshop. She’d tried to hurry away, but he’d run after her. “Tell me you’re not on the game,” he’d said.
She hadn’t answered. She couldn’t; she’d been too ashamed.
“Don’t do this, Lily. You’re not the type. You’ll never survive it.”
“I’ve no choice. I’ve lost me job. Me kids are in the spike,” she’d said, her voice cracking. He’d given her a new job on the spot. Barmaid at the Barkentine. He’d told her a girl had just quit and Desi was shorthanded. It was a lie; she’d known it was. The fact that he’d taken the trouble to tell it had made her cry.
“Here now, none of that,” he’d said sharply, for he didn’t like tears. Then he’d marched her to the Bark, pointed at pile of dirty glasses, and told her to get busy.
Lily Walker knew who Sid Malone was; she knew what he did, but she didn’t care. He’d done more for her than any cop, any priest, any Sallie Army do-gooder ever had. He’d given her her children back, and as long as she lived, she would never forget it.
“Bloody woman! Where the hell are you?” Bennett suddenly yelled, startling her.
He’d finished his smoke. There was no more putting it off. She took a deep breath, then stepped out from behind the pilings.
“What took you?” he asked.
“Had to wait till me guv’s back was turned,” she answered. “He’s not too keen on his help sneaking off.”
“Come on, then,” Bennett said, reaching for her.
“Not so fast, luv. Business before pleasure,” she said, stalling.
Bennett reached into his pocket. He counted out fifty pence and gave it to her. She counted it again, then pocketed it. He pulled her close and kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. She nearly gagged. His rough hands were everywhere—inside her blouse, between her legs. It was all she could do not to push him away.
Bloody hell, Sid, where are you? she wondered desperately.
She twined her arms around his neck. Bit his ear. Whispered dirty things to him. Did anything and everything she could think of to play for time. But he was getting impatient.
“Lift your skirts, girl,” he said. “Quick, or I’ll have my money back.”
Lily did as he asked. There were only four people she cared for on this earth, only four people she’d do anything for, anything—her three children and Sid Malone.
And then, just as Bennett had dropped his trousers, a match flared behind him. He spun around. Lily looked past him and saw Sid and Frankie. They were standing at the bottom of the stone steps. Frankie was lighting a lantern.
“That’ll do, Lily,” Sid said.
Lily spat the man’s taste from her mouth, then ran back into the Bark’s basement to fix her clothing. The door was half off its hinges. She peered around it as she buttoned her blouse. If Sid was in trouble, she wanted to know.
“Michael Bennett, is it?” she heard him say.
Bennett, holding his trousers up with both hands, stared, but made no reply.
“My guv asked you a question,” Frankie said.
“Are you…are you Malone?” he stammered, buttoning his fly.
“What do you want?” Frankie growled. “Who sent you?”
“I’m not looking for any trouble,” he said. “I only came to pass on a message, that’s all. A woman I know wants to see Sid Malone. She’ll meet him anytime, anywhere, but she’s got to see him.”
“You a cop?” Frankie asked. “Did Lytton send you?”
Bennett shook his head. “It’s nothing to do with Lytton. I’m a private detective. That’s the truth.”
Malone cocked his head, appraising Bennett.
“You’ve got to give me an answer,” Bennett said to him. “You don’t know this woman. She won’t stop. She’ll come herself.”
Malone still hadn’t said anything, but he was listening. Bennett seemed to take encouragement from this. He grew bolder.
“Never takes no for an answer, that one. Can’t tell you her name. She don’t want it known. She’s a right pushy bitch, though, that’s something I can tell you,” he added, venturing a laugh.
Later, Lily would remember that Sid’s mouth had twitched at the word bitch. She would remember how he had walked up to Bennett, slowly, easily, as if he were going to shake his hand, grateful for the information. Instead he grabbed the man’s forearm, and in one quick, fluid motion, broke it with a cosh. The pain dropped Bennett to his knees, but it was the sight of his bones protruding from his skin that made him shriek.
Sid grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head back, choking off his noise. “That’s me answer. Loud and clear,” he said. “You tell Fiona Finnegan the man she’s after is dead. Dead as you’ll be if I ever see you again.”
Sid released him, and he crumpled into the mud. He turned and walked away. Frankie followed.
“Who is this girl, guv?” Frankie asked. “She up the duff?”
Sid made no response.
“She a relation, then?”
In the darkness, Lily could only hear Sid’s voice; she couldn’t see his face. If she had, she’d have seen the pain there, deep and abiding, as he said, “She’s nobody, Frankie. No relation. She’s nothing to me at all.”
“Jones!”
India Selwyn Jones turned at the sound of her name. She had to squint to see who’d shouted it. Maud had taken her eyeglasses.
“Professor Fenwick!” she finally shouted back, beaming at the bald and bearded man hurtling toward her through a sea of bobbing mortarboards.
“Jones, you clever little cat! A Walker grant, a Lister, and the Dennis Prize! Is there anything you didn’t win?”
“Hatcher got the Beaton.”
“The Beaton’s a humbug. Any fool can memorize anatomy. A doctor needs more than knowledge, she needs to be able to apply it. Hatcher can barely apply a tourniquet.”
“Shh, Professor! She’s right behind you!” India whispered, scandalized. The graduation ceremony was over. The students had exited the auditorium’s small stage to the strains of an inspiring march and were now posing for photographs or chatting with well-wishers.
Fenwick flapped a hand at her. Nothing scandalized him. He was a man who spoke freely, pointedly, and usually at the top of his lungs. India had firsthand experience of his scorching invectives. They’d been directed at her often enough. She remembered her first week in his classroom. She’d been assigned to question a patient with pleurisy. Afterward Fenwick had called on her to open her case book and describe her findings. She could still hear him roaring at her for starting with the words “I feel…”
“You what? You feel? You are not in my classroom to feel, Jones. This is not Early Romantic Poets. This is diagnosis, the taking of cases. You are here only to observe, for you are far too ignorant to do anything else. Feelings cloud judgment. What do they do, Jones?”
“They cloud judgment, sir,” India had replied, her cheeks blazing.
“Very good. Feel for your patient and you harm him with foolish preconceptions. See him, Jones…see the oedematosis of heart disease and know it from kidney failure…see the colic of gallstones and know it from lead poisoning…only see him, Jones, with clarity and with dispassion, and you will cure him.”
“Well, come on, come on, let’s have a look,” Fenwick said now, motioning impatiently to the leather folder tucked under India’s arm.
India opened it, eager herself to look again at what it contained—a buff-colored document with her name written in copperplate, the date—26 May 1900—the seal of the London School of Medicine for Women, and the proclamation there for all the world to see. She had earned her degree in medicine. She was now a doctor.
“Doctor India Selwyn Jones. Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?” Fenwick said.
“It does, and if I hear it a few more times I might actually start to believe it.”
“Nonsense. There are some here who need a piece of paper to tell them that they’re doctors, but you’re not one of them.”
“Professor Fenwick! Professor, over here…,” a woman’s voice shrilled.
“Ye gads,” Fenwick said. “The dean. Looks like she’s got the head of Broadmoor with her, the poor devil. Wants me to convince him to hire some of you lot. You’re damned lucky you got Gifford’s job, you know.”
“I do, sir. I’m very eager to start.”
Fenwick snorted. “Really? Do you know Whitechapel?”
“I did a bit of clinical work at London Hospital.”
“Any house calls?”
“No, sir.”
“Hmm, I take it back then. Gifford’s the lucky one.”
India smiled. “How bad can it be? I’ve done house calls in other poor areas. Camden, Paddington, Southwark…”
“Whitechapel’s like nowhere else in London, Jones. Be prepared for that. You’ll learn a lot there, that’s for certain, but with your mind, your skills, you should have a nice research fellowship at a teaching hospital. And your own surgery. Like Hatcher. Private practice. That’s where you belong.”
“I can’t afford to open my own surgery, sir.”
Fenwick gave her a long look. “Even if you could, I doubt you would. One could hand you the keys to a fully furnished Harley Street office and you’d hand them right back and scuttle off to the slums.”
India laughed. “I’d like to think I’d walk, sir.”
“Still dreaming your pipe dreams, eh?”
“I prefer to think of them as goals, sir.”
“A clinic, is it?”
“Yes.”
“For women and children.”
“That’s right.”
Fenwick sighed. “I remember you and Hatcher talking about it, but I never thought you were serious.”
“Harriet isn’t. I am.”
“Jones, have you any idea what’s involved in that sort of thing?”
“Some.”
“The raising of monies…the hunt for a suitable location…why, the administration alone simply boggles the mind. You need time to get a clinic off the ground, oceans of it, and you won’t have a spare minute. You’ll be worked off your feet at Gifford’s practice. How will you manage it all?”
“I’ll find a way, sir. One must try to make a difference,” India said resolutely.
Fenwick cocked his head. “Do you know you said the same thing to me six years ago? When you first came here. What I’ve never understood is why.”
“Why?”
“Why an aristocratic young woman from one of Britain’s wealthiest families feels she needs to make a difference.”
India colored. “Sir, I’m not…I don’t…”
“Professor! Professor Fenwick!” It was the dean again.
“I must go,” Fenwick said. He was quiet for a few seconds, seeming to study his shoes, then added, “I don’t mind telling you that I’ll miss you, Jones. You’re the best student I’ve ever had. Rational, logical, unemotional. A shining example to my current crop of ninnies. I also wish I could tell you that the hard part is over, but it’s only beginning. You want to make a difference, to change the world, but the world might have other ideas. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do, sir.”
“Good. Then know this—no matter what happens out there, remember that you are a doctor. A very good one. No one can take that from you. And not because it’s in here”—he tapped on the diploma—“but because it’s in here.” He tapped India’s forehead. “Never forget that.”
It was India’s turn to study her shoes. “I won’t, sir,” she whispered.
She wanted to thank him for all that he’d done, for taking a know-nothing girl of eighteen and making her into a doctor, but she didn’t know how. Six years it had taken. Six long years of hardship, struggle, and doubt. She’d made it only because of him. How could she thank him for that? Where would she even begin?
“Professor Fenwick…” she said, but when she looked up he was gone.
Feelings of loss and loneliness swept over her. Around her, fellow graduates laughed and chattered, surrounded by friends and family, but she was alone. Except for Maud. Freddie was away on government business. Wish was in America. Her parents were at Blackwood, hundreds of miles away, but even if they’d lived next door to the school they wouldn’t have come. She knew that.
For an instant, she thought of the one person who would have come if he could—a boy who would have walked all the way from Wales to be with her today. Hugh. She saw him in her mind’s eye. He was running up Owen’s Hill, laughing. Standing on Dyffyd’s Rock, head thrown back, arms outstretched to the wild Welsh skies. She tried to push the images from her mind, but failed. Tears burned behind her eyes. She hastily blinked them away, knowing Maud would be looking for her, to take her to tea. Knowing, too, that Maud had little patience for tangled emotions.
“Stop it, Jones. Right now,” she hissed at herself. “Feelings cloud judgment.”
“So does champagne, old girl, but that’s why we like it!” a male voice boomed, startling her.
India whirled around, astonished. “Wish?” she exclaimed, as her cousin kissed her cheek. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in the States!”
“Just got back. Ship docked yesterday. Got the car off it and drove hell for leather all night. Wouldn’t have missed this for the world, Indy. Didn’t you see me in the back? I was clapping like a lunatic. Bingham, too.”
“Bing, is that really you?” India asked, peering around her cousin.
George Lytton, the twelfth Earl of Bingham, was standing behind Wish. He shyly raised a hand in greeting. “Hullo, Indy,” he said. “Congrats.”
“This is such a lovely surprise! I didn’t see either of you. Maud swiped my specs. Oh, look at you, Wish! So suntanned and handsome. Was your trip a success? Are you a billionaire?”
“Not quite yet, old mole, but soon,” Wish said, laughing.
“Oh, for God’s sake, darling, don’t encourage him. His head’s fat enough.” The voice, her sister’s, was heavy with boredom.
“Maud! Give me back my glasses,” India said.
“Certainly not. They’re beastly. They’ll ruin the photographs.”
“But I can’t see.”
Maud sighed. “If you insist,” she said. “Really, though, India, if your specs get any thicker you’ll be wearing binoculars.” She wrinkled her nose. “Can we leave now? This place has the stinks.”
“Listen to your much older sister and get your things, Windy Indy,” Wish said.
“Very funny, Wish!” Maud said.
“Don’t call me that horrible name, Wish!” India scolded.
Wish grinned. “It is horrible, isn’t it? I gave it to you, remember? When you were ten and holding forth on the nesting habits of wrens. A proper boffin even then. And such a wordy old thing.”
“That nickname doesn’t make her sound wordy, it makes her sound flatulent,” Bing said, blinking owlishly.
Wish and Maud roared. Bing cracked a smile and India tried not to. They’d all grown up together and tended to revert to old ways the minute they were reunited. She watched them—all three were nearly breathless with laughter now—half expecting Wish to thump Bingham with a serving spoon or Maud to pour ink in the teapot. Finally, unable to help herself, she dissolved into giggles, too. Their sudden appearance had made her forget her earlier sadness and she was very happy they’d come. As children they’d all been inseparable, but now they were rarely in the same place at the same time. Maud tended to swan off to exotic destinations on a whim. Wish was forever starting up new ventures. A banker turned speculator, he was known to make a fortune in a matter of days—and lose it again just as quickly. Bingham hardly ever left Longmarsh, preferring its quiet woods and meadows to the noisy streets of London. And Freddie—India’s fiancé and Bingham’s brother—practically lived at the House of Commons.
“Look, we’ve got to shake a leg,” Wish said impatiently, “so get your things, Lady Indy.”
“Don’t call me that, either,” India warned.
“How about we call you late for lunch, then? We’ve a reservation for half one at the Coburg—a little party for you—but we’ll never make it unless we get started.”
“Wish, you mustn’t—” India started to say.
“No worries. I didn’t. It’s on Lytton.”
“Bing, you shouldn’t—”
“Not me, Indy,” he said. “My brother.”
“Freddie’s here?” India asked. “How? When? He said he’d been summoned to C-B’s for the weekend.”
Wish shrugged. “Dunno. S’pose he got himself unsummoned. He was just trotting down the steps when I called at his flat so I gave him a ride.”
“Where is he now?”
“Outside. Bringing the car round.”
“No, I’m not. I’m right here,” a young blond man said. He was tall and slender, beautifully dressed in a cutaway coat and cheviot trousers. A dozen female heads turned to admire him. A few—a doddery aunt, a younger sister—might have asked who he was, but most recognized him. He was a Member of Parliament, a rising star whose bold defection from the Conservatives to the Liberals had his name constantly in the papers. He was Bingham’s younger brother—only a second son—yet Bing, shy and retiring, faded beside him.
“Freddie, what took you?” Wish asked. “You had me worried.”
“I’m touched, old man. Truly.”
“Not about you. About the car.” Wish’s motor car, a Daimler, was brand-new.
“Mmmm. Yes. Had a spot of trouble with the car,” Freddie said. “Couldn’t get the damned thing in reverse. Or neutral. Couldn’t shut it off, either.”
“Freddie…” Wish began, but Freddie didn’t hear him. He was kissing India’s cheek.
“Well done, my darling,” he said. “Congratulations.”
“Freddie, you ass!” Wish shouted. “What do you mean you can’t shut it off? What’s it doing? Driving itself?”
“Of course not. I told the porter to drive it. Last I saw, he was headed for King’s Cross.”
Wish swore, then dashed out of the auditorium. Bing followed.
Freddie grinned. “Car’s perfectly safe. Parked it out front. Did you see Wish’s face?”
“Freddie, that was awful! Poor Wish!” India said.
“Poor Wish, my foot,” Maud said, lighting a cigarette. “Serves him right. He’s gone absolutely car mad. Now, can we please go, too? I can’t bear the smell of this place. Really, Indy, it’s awful. What is it?” she asked.
India sniffed. “I don’t smell a thing.”
“Have you got a cold? How can you not?”
She sniffed again. “Oh, that. Ca—” She was about to say cabbages. A nearby church ran a soup kitchen for the poor and cooking smells were always drifting over, but Freddie cut her off.
“Cadavers,” he said. “Indy told me about them. The best go to Guy’s and Bart’s. The women’s school gets all the ripe ones.”
Maud paled. She pressed a jeweled hand to her chest. “Dead people?” she whispered. “You’re joking, Freddie, surely. Say you are.”
“I’m not this time. I’m being most grave. I swear it.”
“Good God. I feel quite ill. I’ll be outside.”
Maud left and India turned to her fiancé. “Most grave?” she said. “Must we always become twelve years old again when we’re all together?”
“Yes, we must,” Freddie said. He gave her a golden smile and India thought then, as she had a million times before, that he was the most gloriously handsome man she had ever seen.
“You are awful, Freddie,” she said. “Truly.”
“I am. I admit it. But it was the only way I could get five minutes alone with you,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Now get your things, old stick. We’re off to the Coburg.”
“Wish said. But really, Freddie, you mustn’t.”
“I want to. It’s not every day of the week one becomes a doctor, you know.”
“This is so lovely. So unexpected. I thought you’d be at C-B’s all weekend.”
C-B was short for Henry Campbell-Bannerman, leader of the Opposition. There was talk that Lord Salisbury, Britain’s prime minister and head of the incumbent Conservative Party, would call a general election in the autumn. Campbell-Bannerman had called his shadow cabinet together to prepare the Liberal Party’s platform. A handful of prominent backbenchers, including Freddie, had also been summoned.
“The old boy canceled,” Freddie said. “Felt a bit punky.”
“When did you find out?”
“Two days ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” India asked, hurt. She’d been so disappointed when he’d said he couldn’t be here today.
“I was going to, darling,” Freddie said contritely. “And perhaps I should have. But as soon as I knew I was off the hook, I decided to surprise you with a party. Now stop looking daggers at me, will you, and get your things.”
India felt ashamed. How could she have scolded him? He was always so thoughtful. She led the way out of the auditorium down a narrow hallway to a lecture theater where she and her fellow graduates had stowed their belongings. It was quiet in the room when she and Freddie entered it, quieter than she’d ever heard it. Freddie sat down in one of the wooden seats and busied himself with a bottle of champagne he’d swiped from the drinks table. India looked around—not for her things, but at the room itself. She looked at the raked benches and the dissection table, at the bookcases crammed with heavy texts, at Ponsonby the skeleton dangling from his stand—and realized that it was the last time she would do so. The sadness she’d felt earlier overwhelmed her again. She walked over to Ponsonby and took his lifeless hands in hers.
“I can’t believe it’s over. I can’t believe I’ll never sit here again,” she said.
“Hmm?” Freddie was frowning at the cork.
“This place…this school…all the years I spent here…it’s all behind me now…”
Her voice trailed off as images came back to her. Bright fragments of time. She saw herself and Harriet Hatcher in anatomy lab bent over a cadaver. They were peeling back the derma, naming and drawing muscles and bones as fast as they could, trying to stay ahead of the rot. Trying not to vomit. Sketch and retch, they’d called it. Professor Fenwick had been there, calling them ham-fisted bumblers one minute, bringing them bicarb and a bucket the next.
He’d been there again, materializing out of thin air like a guardian angel, when a group of drunken first years from Guy’s had surrounded herself and Harriet outside the school’s entrance. The men had exposed themselves, demanding to have their members examined.
“Unfortunately, gentlemen, my students cannot comply with your request,” he’d said, “as they are not permitted to take their microscopes out of the building.”
And Dr. Garrett Anderson, the dean. She was a legend, the first woman in England to earn a medical degree and one of the school’s founders. Brisk, brilliant, stronger than Sheffield steel, she had been a constant inspiration to India, a living, breathing rebuttal to those who said women were too weak and too stupid to be doctors.
“This foil is a bugger,” Freddie muttered, fiddling with the champagne bottle. “Ah! There we are.”
She looked at him, wanting so much to tell him what this place meant to her, wanting him to understand. “Freddie…,” she began. “Never mind the champagne….”
It was too late. He aimed the bottle at Ponsonby and popped the cork. It glanced off the skeleton’s head.
“Poor Ponsonby,” India said. “You’ve hurt his feelings.”
“Stuff Ponsonby. He’s dead. He has no feelings. Come and have a drink.” Freddie patted the chair next to him. When India was seated, he handed her a glass. “To Dr. India Selwyn Jones,” he said. “The cleverest little brick in London. I’m so proud of you, darling.” He clinked her glass, then emptied his. “Here,” he added, handing her a small leather box.
“What is it?”
“Open it and see.”
India eased the lid up, then gasped at what was inside—a beautifully worked gold pocket watch with diamond markers. Freddie took it out and turned it over. Think of me was engraved on the back.
India shook her head. “Freddie, it’s so beautiful. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Say you’ll marry me.”
She smiled at him. “I’ve already said that.”
“Then do it. Marry me tomorrow.”
“But I start with Dr. Gifford next week.”
“Bugger Dr. Gifford!”
“Freddie! Shh!”
“Run away with me. Tonight.” He leaned toward her and nuzzled her neck.
“I can’t, you silly man. You know I can’t. I’ve work to do. Important work. You know how hard I fought for that job. And then there’s the clinic….”
Freddie raised his face to hers. His beautiful amber eyes had darkened. “I can’t wait forever, India. I won’t. We’ve been engaged for two bloody years.”
“Freddie, please…don’t spoil the day.”
“Is that what I’m doing? Spoiling the day?” he asked, visibly hurt. “Is my telling you that I want you for my wife such a dreadful thing to hear?”
“Of course not, it’s just that…”
“Your studies have come first for a long time, but you’re finished now and a man can only be so patient.” He put his glass down. There was a seriousness to him now. “It’s just that we could do so much good together. You’ve always said that you want to make a difference—how can you do that working for Gifford? Or in some ill-funded clinic? Do something bigger, India. Something huge and important. Work with me on health reform. Counsel me. Advise me. And together we’ll make that difference. A real difference. Not just for Whitechapel or London, but for England.” He took her hands in his and continued talking, giving her no opening to reply. Or to object. “You’re a remarkable woman and I need you. At my side.” He pulled her close and kissed her. “And in my bed,” he whispered.
India closed her eyes and tried to like it. She always tried to like it. He was so good and so kind and he loved her. He was everything any woman could want, and so she tried to warm to his kisses, but his lips were so hard and insistent. He knocked her spectacles askew with his fumblings and when he slid his hand from her waist to her breast, she broke away.
“We ought to go,” she said. “The others will be wondering what’s become of us.”
“Don’t be cold to me. I want you so.”
“Freddie, darling, this is hardly the place.”
“I want us to set a date, India. I want us to be man and wife.”
“We will be. Soon. I promise,” she said, adjusting her glasses.
“All right, then. Coming?”
“I’ve got to find my things,” she said. “You go. I’ll only be a minute.”
He told her to hurry, then went to join the others. India watched him go. He’s right, of course, she thought.
It had been two years since he’d gotten down on bended knee at Longmarsh and proposed to her. She would have to decide on a wedding date soon, and she knew what would happen when she did—they’d be required to attend an endless round of dinners and parties and to listen to incessant chatter about dresses, rings, and trousseau. And he would press her again to give up her hopes of a clinic and work with him on health reform. It was a noble cause, she knew it was, but healing was her calling, not committee work, and she could no more give it up than she could give up breathing.
India frowned, upset at herself. Freddie was so good to her and she was being unkind to him; she knew she was. She should have decided on a date by now. It should have been so easy for her to simply pick a day. Some lovely summer Saturday.
Should have been. Would have been.
If only she loved him.
She sat for a bit longer, simply staring at the empty doorway, then shrugged out of her robe. The others were waiting; she mustn’t keep them any longer. She folded the robe and placed it on the chair beside her, then ran her hands over her hair. It was a disaster. Her blond curls, brushed into a neat twist only a few hours ago, were already corkscrewing loose. Try as she might, she could never keep them under control. She started to smooth them, then stopped. Her fingers found the jeweled comb she always wore and pulled it free. She turned it over in her palm. It was a Tiffany dragonfly, one of a pair, and worth a small fortune. Worked in platinum and embellished with dozens of flawless gems, it was completely at odds with her plain, sober clothing: the gray skirt and waistcoat, the crisp white blouse.
She had taken the comb the day she’d left Blackwood—the day she’d turned her back on her home, her parents, and their godforsaken money.
“If you leave, India, I shall cut you off,” her mother had said, her beautiful face white with anger.
“I don’t want your money,” India had said. “I don’t want anything from you.”
There were three swirling initials engraved on the underside of the comb. She traced them with her finger—I S J, not hers, but her mother’s—Isabelle Selwyn Jones, Countess of Burnleigh. India knew that if it were not for this comb she would not be here today. If her mother hadn’t left it in her carriage. If Hugh hadn’t picked it up. If, if, if.
She closed her hand around it, pressing the teeth into her palm, trying to stop herself from remembering. Don’t, she told herself, don’t think about him. Don’t remember him. Don’t feel him. Don’t feel anything. But she did. Because Hugh had made her feel. More than anyone in her entire life.
She could see him again in her mind’s eye, only this time he wasn’t laughing. He was running through the trees with his sister Bea in his arms. Bea’s face was white. Her skirts were crimson with blood. He’d bundled her into the trap and crooned to her all the way to Cardiff. Never stopping, not once. Never even faltering. She could still hear his beautiful voice, soft and low, Paid ag ofni, dim ond deilen, Gura, gura ar y ddor; Paid ag ofni, ton fach unig, Sua, sua ar lan y mor. She’d known enough Welsh to know what he was singing. Fret you not, ’tis but an oak leaf, Beating, beating at the door. Fret you not, a lonely wavelet’s, Murmuring, murmuring on the shore. “Suo Gan,” a lullaby.
India looked at the comb still, but didn’t see it. She saw only Hugh, his face riven with grief as the police came to take him away.
“You’re thinking of him, aren’t you?” said a voice from the doorway now, startling her. She turned. It was Maud. “Poor Indy,” she said. “Couldn’t save Hugh. So you’ve decided to save the world instead. Poor world. It doesn’t know what it has coming.”
India didn’t answer. She wished that for once Maud could talk about sad things without mocking them.
“I’ve been sent back into this charnel house to fetch you, so stop holding seances and get your things,” Maud continued. “I can’t control the pack any longer. Wish is trying to talk the poor dean into investing in some mad land scheme. Freddie’s arguing with a creaky old Tory…and, oh, India…have you been blubbing?”
“Of course not.”
“Your nose is all red. And look at your hair. It’s an absolute tangle. Give me that comb.” Maud raked her fingers through India’s blond mane, twisted it, and secured it. Then she stepped back to assess her work. “Very nice,” she said.
India smiled and tried to accept the gesture gracefully. It was the sort of thing that passed for love between them.
Maud’s eyes traveled over India’s clothing; she frowned. “Is that what you’re wearing to the Coburg?”
India smoothed her skirt. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I thought you might have brought a change of clothes. These are so…dreary. You look like you’re going to a funeral.”
“You sound exactly like Mother.”
“I do not!”
“You do.”
As Maud continued to deny any similarities with their mother, India put her jacket on and then her hat. She gathered her black robe and her doctor’s bag, then followed her sister up the steps. When she reached the doorway, she turned around for one last look at her classroom, at the books and charts and specimens, at Ponsonby, and then she whispered a soft good-bye. Her eyes were clear now, her expression calm. She’d boxed the pain away. She was herself again. Cool and unflappable. Brisk and sensible. Feelings firmly in check.
“Keep them that way, Jones,” Ponsonby seemed to whisper. “Never forget: Feelings cloud judgment.”
And so much more, old chap, India thought, and so much more.
Joseph Bristow bounded up the steps to 94 Grosvenor Square, his towering Mayfair mansion. His train had arrived at King’s Cross early. It was Sunday, and only one o’clock. Cook would have just sent up dinner. He hoped it was a leg of lamb or a roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. He’d been in Brighton for a week scouting a site for a new Montague’s shop. He missed his home. And home cooking. Most of all, he missed his family. He couldn’t wait to see Fiona and their little daughter, Katie. He raised his hand to ring the doorbell, but before he could, the door was opened for him.
“Welcome home, sir. May I take your things?” It was Foster, the butler.
“Hello, Mr. Foster. How are you?”
“Very well, sir. Thank you for inquiring.”
Joe was about to ask Foster where Fiona was when two fox terriers flashed by. “Since when do we have dogs?” he asked.
“They are recent acquisitions, sir. They were abandoned in the park. Mrs. Bristow found them and took them in.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Joe said, shaking his head. “Do they have names?”
“Lipton and Twining,” Foster replied. “Mrs. Bristow says they are like her competition. Always yapping at her heels.”
Joe laughed. He watched the dogs as they circled the foyer, yipping and tussling. One broke away, trotted to an umbrella stand, and was about to lift his leg on it until a swift kick from Foster persuaded him otherwise. The second dog leaped into a large potted fern and began to dig furiously.
“If you’ll pardon me, sir…”
As Foster advanced on the animal, two blond children came charging into the entry, brandishing walking sticks like spears. They were Susie and Robbie, his sister Ellen’s children. They were dragging a small silk rug behind them. Its ends had been knotted to form a pouch. Sitting in it was a pretty blue-eyed toddler—his daughter, Katie. She was nibbling a biscuit. He knelt down and kissed her.
“Hello, my lovelies,” he said to the children. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Kidnapping Katie for ransom,” Robbie answered. “We’re Kikuyu. Katie’s not. She’s Masai. Those are tribes. From Africa. I read about them in Boy’s Own.”
“Did you now?”
A loud whoop was heard from the drawing room.
“A war party! Head for the Ngong Hills!” Robbie shouted.
Katie waved bye-bye as she was skidded off to the dining room. Two more children—twins belonging to Joe’s brother, Jimmy—came todding after them. Jimmy’s wife, Meg, was hot on their trail, scolding all the way. She blew her brother-in-law a kiss as she ran by.
Joe shook his head. A quiet afternoon? A peaceful meal? In this house? What had he been thinking? “I wonder what it’s like at me neighbors’ homes,” he said aloud. “I wonder if it’s half the madhouse it is here.”
“At the Granville Barkers’? The Walsinghams’?” Foster said, reappearing with one of the terriers tucked under his arm. “I shouldn’t think so, sir.”
“Where’s me missus, Mr. Foster?”
“In the garden, sir. Hosting a party.”
“A party?”
“A fund-raising luncheon for the Toynbee Mission Girls’ Vocational School.”
“She didn’t tell me we were having a party today.”
“Mrs. Bristow didn’t know herself until three days ago. The Reverend and Mrs. Barnett approached her. It seems a portion of the school’s roof fell in. Water damage, I believe.”
“Another hard-luck story.”
“Those do seem to be her specialty.”
“Any chance of getting something to eat round here?”
“Refreshments are being served in the garden, sir.”
Joe started toward the back of his house. He walked into his sundappled garden, thinking he might see twenty or so people there, and was surprised to find more than a hundred. Strangely, they were all quiet. He soon saw why. At the far end of the garden about forty girls aged ten to sixteen stood together, surrounded by a breathtaking flush of pink roses. They were scrubbed and combed, wearing hand-me-down skirts and blouses. One of them began to sing, sweet and clear, and the rest joined in, serenading their listeners with “Come into the Garden, Maud.” Every single person had gone as still as stone and a few were dabbing at their eyes.
“Fiona, lass, you are shameless,” Joe whispered. He scanned the sea of people, searching for her. He didn’t see her, not immediately, but he spotted many famous faces. Captains of industry, titled ladies, politicians—Fiona mixed them all. Merchants mingled with viscounts, actresses with cabinet ministers, socialists with socialites. The society pages called Joe and Fiona ’Arry and ’Arriet—a snide reference to their Cockney roots—and sniffed that 94 Grosvenor Square was the only house in Mayfair where the butler spoke better English than his employers. And yet all of society clamored for invitations to the parties Fiona gave, for they were nothing short of stellar.
People enjoyed themselves at 94. They talked and laughed, gossiped and argued. They ate good food and drank the best wines, but what won even the snootiest critic over was Fiona herself. She was direct and disarming, equally at ease with charladies and duchesses. As head of an international tea empire—and as one of the wealthiest women in the world—she was an object of fascination. People talked about her constantly. How she’d come up from nothing. That her dockworker father had been murdered. Her mother, too. How she’d fled London and caught the eye of a robber baron in New York, but married a viscount instead. He had died, but she still wore his diamond. “There were no children, darling. He was that way, don’t you know.” Eyes grew even wider as her daring takeover of a rival’s tea company was recounted. “She did it for revenge, my dear. The man killed her father. He tried to kill her! Can you imagine?”
Sargent hounded her to sit for him. Escoffier named a dessert after her. When Worth christened a jacket and skirt ensemble the Fiona Suit, women flocked to their seamstresses to have it copied. It was whispered in drawing rooms over tea and cakes that she wore no corset. It was shouted in gentlemen’s clubs over port and Stilton that she had no need of one for she was really a man—she must be—she had the biggest balls in London.
Joe finally spotted his wife sitting off to one side of the garden. As the girls finished their song, she stood and addressed her guests.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “The beautiful voices you have just heard belong to the children of the Toynbee Mission Girls’ Vocational School. Now I beg you to listen to a far less lovely voice…my own.” There was laughter and fond heckling, then Fiona continued. “These girls come from families whose incomes are less than one pound a week. Imagine a family of six existing for a week on what some of us spend on magazines or chocolates. Because of their exceptional intelligence, these girls have been chosen to attend a school which will train them into a trade and afford them a way out of poverty. When the Reverend and Mrs. Barnett told me that the children must huddle together to avoid the rain that pours in from a damaged roof, I knew each and every one of you would be as outraged as I am.” She paused again, this time for a volley of “Hear! Hear!”s. “A new roof is needed desperately, but the roof is only the beginning. Once we have it, we will need more desks. And blackboards. And books. We will need more teachers and the money to pay them. Most of all, we will need you. We will need your continued help, your kind generosity, in order to expand the number and type of courses we can offer. We have turned out housekeepers, governesses, and cooks. Now we must do more. We must turn out shop owners instead of shop girls, managers instead of secretaries, presidents of companies rather than the pieceworkers they employ. Perhaps even a woman tea merchant or two, eh, Sir Tom?” she said, winking at Thomas Lipton.
“Good God, not another one!” Lipton cried.
“Mathematics, economics, accounting…yes, those are unusual courses for girls, but what should we teach them? Why are we educating them? So that they can read Shakespeare in a cold room by candlelight when the sweatshop closes? No, if they are to break the cycle of deprivation, they need better jobs, better wages, better opportunities….”
Joe looked at his wife as she spoke, and thought—as he had a million times before—that he had never seen a more captivating woman. He had known her since they were children, and it seemed to him that her beauty never diminished; it only grew richer. She was wearing a white blouse and a sky-blue silk jacket. Its matching skirt had been cleverly cut to hide her growing belly. She was three months pregnant with their second child, and radiant. Her black hair, thick and lustrous, had been swept up and secured with pearl combs. Her cheeks glowed pink with the warmth of the day and her incomparable sapphire eyes flashed with feeling. No one chatted or fidgeted as she spoke. Every eye was upon her.
Pride surged in him as he watched her, but beneath the feelings of pride, worry gnawed. There were smudges under her blue eyes and her lovely face looked thin. She does too much, he thought. She kept a punishing work schedule, rising at five, working in her study until eight, breakfasting with Katie and himself, then departing for her Mincing Lane offices. She was almost always home in time for the nursery tea, and then it was back to work until nine, when she and Joe met to share supper, a few glasses of wine, and details of their day. And somehow she still found the time to work tirelessly on behalf of her charitable foundation—the East London Aid Society—and the schools, orphanages, and soup kitchens which it funded.
He often told her that the problems of East London were far too huge for one woman to solve, and that she was only sticking her finger in a dike. He told her that real help had to come from above, from government. Programs had to be devised to help the poor and monies allotted by Parliament to fund them. Fiona would smile sweetly and tell him he was right, of course he was, but in the meantime, the such-and-such soup kitchen had a line down the street and around the corner, and if she sent a wagon to Covent Garden would he and his mates donate some fruit and vegetables? He would tell her yes and then he’d tell her to stop working so hard, or at least slow down, but she never listened.
Fiona finished her speech—to a burst of applause—and was engulfed by people eager to contribute. Joe was still clapping loudly himself when he felt a hand on his back. “Old chap!”
It was Freddie Lytton, Member of Parliament for Tower Hamlets, a district which included Whitechapel, where the girls’ school was located. Joe wondered what he was doing here. He doubted Freddie was making a contribution. Fiona had met him many times in the hope of getting government funds for her various causes, but all she’d ever received for her trouble were a few vague promises.
“Hello, Freddie,” Joe said now. “Glad to see you here.”
“Fantastic do,” Freddie said, swigging champagne. “Thought I heard someone say Fiona had raised two thousand. Splendid sum.”
Joe decided to put him on the spot. “It is a nice sum, isn’t it?” he said. “Be even nicer if the government was to kick in. Any chance of that?”
“As it happens, the Reverend and Mrs. Barnett came to see me, too. I put forth a request for funds in the Commons—five hundred quid—and made a damned good case for it, if I say so myself,” Freddie said smoothly. “Been pushing hard. Should have an answer any day.”
Joe was not placated. In his opinion, his wife worked harder on behalf of the children of Whitechapel than Whitechapel’s elected representative did, and it angered him.
“The morning papers said Parliament just approved the sum of forty thousand pounds to refurbish the queen’s stables,” he said. “Surely it can find five hundred quid for a school. Are children less important than horses?”
“Of course not.”
Joe gave him a shrewd look. “No, not children per se. Poor children, well, that’s another matter. Their fathers don’t vote, do they? Can’t vote. They don’t make enough money. God help you all when they can. You’ll all be out of a job.”
“It’ll take another Reform Act to extend the vote to the entire working class. And that won’t happen. Not on Salisbury’s watch,” Freddie said dismissively.
“The prime minister’s knocking on. He won’t be around forever and neither will his old hat policies,” Joe said, bristling at Freddie’s patronizing tone. “Perhaps one day government will allow all of its citizens to have a voice. Poor as well as rich.”
“The policies of government should be determined by those who best understand them,” Freddie said.
“The policies of government should be determined by those who have to suffer them, mate.”
“So what you’re saying is that any man—any shiftless know-nothing—should have a voice in government?”
“Why not? Plenty already do.”
“Oh, touché, old man. Touché,” Freddie said. There was a smile on his mouth, but there was a sudden flash of something hard and menacing in his eyes. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone, and he was his polished, affable self again. “Listen, Joe, we’re on the same side, essentially.”
Joe snorted.
“No, we are. We’re both concerned about East London, its people, and its prospects, are we not?”
“Yes, but…”
“I knew we were. That’s why I’m here, Joe. I’ve been wanting to talk to you. There’s talk of a general election being called in September, you know…”
Ah, that’s it, Joe thought. He knew Freddie hadn’t turned up to hear “Come into the Garden, Maud.”
“…and the Tories are certain to win it. I need your help. I need your support to keep Tower Hamlets a Liberal seat. We must all of us stand together as a bulwark against the Tories.”
Joe raised an eyebrow. “Who’s we?”
“The upper class.”
“Don’t count me in that group.”
“Don’t count you in what group?” said a female voice. Fiona had joined him. She squeezed his hand and smiled at him, her eyes shining.
“Your husband’s being very modest, Fiona—lovely do, by the way—I was just telling him that he’s a member of the upper class now. One of society’s leaders.”
“Freddie, I’m not—” Joe began.
“But you are,” Freddie said, as if reading his mind. “You’re from the working class, but no longer of it, Joe. You’re a self-made man. Owner of the biggest chain store in the country and the biggest produce concern as well. And you’ve done it all under your own steam. By harnessing the forces of private enterprise.”
“Blimey, Freddie, hop off your soap box, will you?” Joe said. “What do you want?”
“I want your endorsement. Yours and Fiona’s.”
“Mine? But I can’t even vote!” Fiona exclaimed.
“But you wield influence,” Freddie replied. “You have factories and warehouses in East London, both of you. You employ hundreds of men there, many of whom are eligible to vote. I need those votes. I won the seat as a Conservative then crossed the floor. The Tories want it back. Dickie Lambert’s their man and he’s damned aggressive. Means to give me a proper fight. He’s already canvassing in the pubs on the mere rumor of an election.”
“What makes you think the working man won’t vote Labour?” Fiona asked.
Freddie laughed. “You must be joking! They’re a bunch of potty Marxists! No one takes them seriously.”
“I think our workers can sort out the candidates for themselves,” Joe said. “They don’t need us to tell them how to vote.”
“Ah, but they do. You’re an example to them. They look up to you. They want to be like you and they’ll do as you do.”
“And what will you do for them?” Fiona asked.
“Work with private enterprise to bring more capital into East London. More refineries. Breweries. Factories. We’ll offer incentives to businessmen—tax relief, for example—to get them to relocate.”
“All that’s going to do is make the factory owners richer.”
“That’s beside the point,” Freddie said dismissively. “There’ll be more factories and more factories mean more jobs.”
Joe shook his head, astonished. Freddie’s lack of understanding about the lives of his own constituents was astonishing. Even offensive. “Yes, but what kind of jobs?” he asked, his voice rising. “The jam factory, the match works, the tannery, the docks—they pay nothing. The poor bastards taking those jobs work from dawn till dark six days a week and still have to decide between coal and food.”
Freddie gave Joe a pitying look, as if he were a backward child. “It certainly isn’t government’s fault if a man can’t manage his money,” he said.
“But there’s no bloody money to manage!” Joe nearly bellowed.
“There’s money enough to keep the public houses busy. I know that for a fact,” Freddie said. “I’ve overseen the closure of some of the worst. And that’s another thing the Liberals will do for East London—enforce law and order. I’m personally going to oversee a crackdown on crime. I’ve already started. I’ve put more officers on the streets and started river patrols as well. I’m pushing for harsher sentences for offenders.”
“Every politician says that,” Joe said.
“Not every politician means it, though. I’m after Sid Malone, you know. Yes, Malone.”
Joe’s heart lurched at the sound of that name. He stole a glance at Fiona. She caught his eye, warning him to say nothing. He looked away again quickly, not wanting Freddie to see what had passed between them. If Freddie had noticed, he gave no indication. He kept on talking.
“I haven’t got him yet,” he said, “but I will. I’m going to make an example of him. He’ll slip up. They all do. He’ll maim someone in a robbery, or kill someone, and then I’ll hang him. You have my word on that.”
Fiona was now so pale that Joe was afraid for her. He took her arm and was about to steer her toward a chair when Foster suddenly appeared at her elbow. Joe heard him quietly tell her that she had a visitor.
“Please ask him to join us,” she said.
“I think not, madam,” Foster replied. He inclined his head toward the glass-walled conservatory.
Joe followed his gaze and saw an unfamiliar man standing there. He was wearing an ill-fitting suit and what looked like a sling on one arm. Joe took an instant dislike to him and was about to ask Fiona who he was, but she was already excusing herself.
“A bit of business to attend to,” she said briskly. “Won’t be a minute.”
An uneasy feeling gripped Joe. He was protective of his wife—overly protective, she always said. Though he had no idea why, he wanted to stop Fiona and almost went after her, but then Freddie said something to him and Joe saw Fiona shake the man’s good hand. He told himself he was being silly.
“I’m sorry, Freddie, what was that?” he said.
“I said if Malone were hanged, it would send a strong message to the rest of East London’s thieves and cutthroats.”
“Law and order’s all well and good,” Joe said, “but it’s not the whole answer. Drunkenness, violence, crime…they all come from the same thing—poverty. Fix that and you fix the other problems, too.”
Freddie laughed. “You know, old mole, you’re sounding increasingly like one of those crackpot socialists. How exactly would you have the government fix poverty? Perhaps we should just open the doors to the Royal Mint and hand out guineas?”
Joe’s simmering irritation with Freddie flared into anger. He reminded himself that Freddie was a guest in his home, then he said, “How about this, mate? Offer working men and women decent wages for their work. Offer them compensation if they’re hurt on the job so their families don’t starve. Offer their children a proper education so they have something better to look forward to than a factory or the docks. You really want to win this election, Freddie? It’s easy. Offer your voters some hope.”
He excused himself, glancing toward the conservatory again. Fiona and her visitor were nowhere to be seen. The uneasiness he’d felt became alarm. He went into the house and collared Foster. “Where’s Mrs. Bristow?” he asked tersely.
“In her study with her visitor, sir,” Foster replied.
“Who is this bloke? Why’s he here?”
“His name is Michael Bennett, sir. He would not state his business.”
Joe headed toward the staircase. He didn’t like the sound of that. No respectable visitor would hesitate to state his business. He took the steps two at a time, wishing he’d followed his instincts instead of staying to argue with Freddie. The door to Fiona’s study was closed. He knocked, then opened it without waiting for an answer. Fiona was at her desk. Her eyes were red; she was clutching a handkerchief. Michael Bennett was seated across from her.
“Fiona, what’s going on? Are you all right?” Joe asked. He looked at Bennett. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m fine, Joe,” Fiona said. “This is Michael Bennett. He’s a private detective.”
“A detective? Why do you need a detective?”
Fiona looked away, then said, “To find Charlie.”
Joe’s face hardened. He turned to Bennett. “How much do we owe you?”
Bennett shifted in his chair. “There’s fifty quid outstanding. That’s what we agreed to, but that was before me arm and all. There’s doctor’s bills and…”
“Will a hundred do it?” Joe asked.
Bennett’s eyes widened. “Aye. Quite nicely,” he said.
Joe paid him. He pocketed the money and said, “As I was telling your wife—”
“That’s all, Mr. Bennett, thank you,” Joe said.
“But I haven’t told Mrs. Bristow everything yet. I was just—”
“Thank you, Mr. Bennett,” Joe said. The study door had closed. He opened it again.
Bennett shrugged and left. When he was gone, Joe turned back to Fiona. “What happened to his arm?” he asked her.
“It was broken. Charlie did it. He told Mr. Bennett to tell me that that was his answer. Loud and clear.”
Joe was furious. “Damn it, Fiona!” he yelled. “I thought we’d talked about this. I thought we agreed that it was much too dangerous to try to contact him. What were you going to do if he did agree to see you? Invite him to Sunday dinner? Have him dandle Katie on his knee? Maybe he could fit in a bedtime story between cracking safes and breaking heads.”
“I want to see him, Joe.”
“Well, I don’t want to see him. I don’t want him within ten miles of us. You know what he does. What he is. Bloody hell, Fiona! What were you thinking?”
Fiona’s beautiful blue eyes had filled with tears. There was a raw and wild sadness in them. “He’s my brother, Joe. My brother.”
“Fiona, Sid Malone is a criminal.”
“That’s not his name!” she said angrily, slapping her hands on the desk. “His name’s Charlie. Charlie Finnegan.”
“Not anymore it isn’t.”
“If I could just see him,” she said. “If I could just talk to him…”
“You could what? Convince him to go on the straight and narrow? Become an upstanding citizen? Not bloody likely. There are some fights you can’t win, luv. Even you. You’ve got to bury the past. He made his choice. He told you so himself.”
She looked away. He could see that she was struggling with herself.
“Fiona, I know what you’re thinking. Do not go after him yourself. It’s too dangerous.”
“But Joe, you heard Freddie Lytton. You heard what he said. He means to arrest Charlie. To hang him!”
“Fiona, promise me you won’t—” His words were interrupted by a knock on the door. “What is it?” he yelled.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but the Reverend and Mrs. Barnett are leaving and wish to say their good-byes,” came Foster’s voice.
“I’m coming, Mr. Foster,” Fiona said. She wiped her eyes, avoided Joe’s, and hurried out of the study, ending the discussion.
Joe sighed. He sat down on the desk. He didn’t want to rejoin the party. Not just yet. The argument with Fiona had rattled him. He looked around the room and his eyes fell on the tall piles of folders on top of her desk. He knew what they were—dozens of applications to the East London Aid Society. Fiona used the same hard-headed approach toward her charitable endeavors that she did to make business decisions. Applicants were required to submit a dossier on their organization and its administrators, and a detailed plan of how funds were to be spent. Visits were then made and interviews conducted. The foundation was well endowed, but its funds were not limitless and Fiona was adamant that every penny be well spent. Joe knew that she spent hours reading the applications. He often found her in here at one or two in the morning.
“Come to bed, luv,” he’d say.
“I will. Just one more,” she’d reply, knowing that another check written meant fewer hungry children.
There were reasons for her dedication. She had a good heart for starters, and couldn’t stand to see a stray dog go hungry. Plus, she was from East London, as was he, and they both wanted to see the place that had made them made better for the ones still there. But Joe knew there was more to it. If only she could change ten…a hundred…a thousand East London lives, they might begin to make up for the one life she couldn’t change—her brother’s.
He rose from his chair now, his forehead c. . .
Prologue
Lily Walker could smell a copper a mile away.
Chapter 1
“Jones!”
Chapter 2
Joseph Bristow bounded up the steps to 94 Grosvenor Square,…
Chapter 3
Sid Malone stepped out of his carriage at 22 Saracen…
Chapter 4
“Liverpool Street!” the conductor barked. India felt the train slow…
Chapter 5
Fiona Bristow sunk her hands into a wooden tea chest,…
Chapter 6
“Guv!” Frankie Betts yelled. “Guv, we’re through!”
Chapter 7
“Condoms?”
Chapter 8
Freddie Lytton turned heads wherever he went. As he loped…
Chapter 9
Fiona stood in her nightgown in front of her mirrored…
Chapter 10
“Home Rule is defeatist politics, that’s what it is! It’s…
Chapter 11
“You still here, Dr. Jones?” asked Bridget Malloy, matron of…
Chapter 12
Short Susie Donovan, the Taj Mahal’s colorful madam, put her…
Chapter 13
There had to be a way to let go. A…
Chapter 14
“Do you love her?”
Chapter 15
“Jesus Christ!” Joe shouted. “Jesus bloody Christ!”
Chapter 16
India heard birds. Sparrows, she thought. Nasty things. They were…
Chapter 17
“Let me get this straight,” Joe’s brother Jimmy said. “Alf…
Chapter 18
“India! For God’s sake stop!” Freddie shouted.
Chapter 19
Maud Selwyn Jones sat at the vanity table in her…
Chapter 20
“Mel, what’ll I do?” Fiona asked the foreman at Oliver's…
Chapter 21
“Mary Ellerton, the little girl with TB, had a bad…
Chapter 22
“Good afternoon, Mr. Lytton.”
Chapter 23
Sid lay splayed out on his bed in his flat…
Chapter 24
“What do you mean he walked out, Des? We was…
Chapter 25
Outside the Varden Street surgery, India buttoned her jacket against…
Chapter 26
Freddie Lytton was backstage at the Gaiety Theatre, sitting on…
Chapter 27
“Ah, Whitechapel in the summer,” Ella said, sidestepping a heap…
Chapter 28
“Jesus, Frankie, what the hell happened?” Sid Malone asked, looking…
Chapter 29
Freddie, seated by the fire in the large sitting room…
Chapter 30
“What a week,” Ella said, stuffing folders into her filing…
Chapter 31
“And then I sez to Old Bill, I sez…Oi!…
Chapter 32
Fiona Bristow stood quietly inside a squat brick warehouse on…
Chapter 33
“Did you know Sunny’s uncle shot a dachshund once?” Bingham…
Chapter 34
“No!” the man wailed, stumbling away from the bed. “Not…
Chapter 35
Ella, basket in hand, jumped off the omnibus as it…
Chapter 36
“How long has she been this way?” Sid asked.
Chapter 37
Freddie lifted his whisky glass to his lips and drained…
Chapter 38
“Where are they?”
Chapter 39
“Well, well, well. If it ain’t young Francis Betts.”
Chapter 40
India set her teacup into its saucer. She gave a…
Chapter 41
India stood on the steps of 40 Myrtle Walk, a…
Chapter 42
“Lytton, get the door, will you?”
Chapter 43
The ancient hackney cab Fiona Bristow was riding in slowed…
Chapter 44
India sat on an overturned tea chest in the Moskowitzes’…
Chapter 45
Joe Bristow, tired, haggard, and sick with worry, ran up…
Chapter 46
“You know, I think old Florrie Nightingale was sniffing the…
Chapter 47
Sid was lying on his bed, eyes closed, waiting for…
Part Two London, September 1900
Chapter 48
“Gentlemen, gentlemen! Is this Utopia? Or is this Whitechapel?” Freddie…
Chapter 49
Sid could see her—India. His India now. She was hurrying…
Chapter 50
“Mummy?”
Chapter 51
Frankie heard the voices from the street. He was surprised…
Chapter 52
“The boxes are here, Joe! Get up!”
Chapter 53
“Holy cow, Albie, that’s Norman Collie!” Seamie said.
Chapter 54
“Damned shame about the election, Lytton,” Dougie Mawkins said. “Labour…
Chapter 55
Seamie Finnegan wanted a hot cup of tea like he’d…
Chapter 56
India woke where she had fallen asleep—in the crook of…
Chapter 57
“You have to tell her!” Willa Alden shouted at a…
Chapter 58
“Frankie?”
Chapter 59
Seamie, Albie, and Willa were lying on their backs in…
Chapter 60
Frankie Betts knew what had to be done. And he…
Chapter 61
“India, you can’t possibly be serious,” Harriet said. “You just…
Chapter 62
Sid Malone stood at the open window of his bedroom…
Chapter 63
India stopped dead in the middle of Dean Street. She…
Chapter 64
Fiona stood in front of her armoire, frowning. She was…
Chapter 65
Freddie Lytton closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and…
Chapter 66
“You’re going to have to get off the game,” India…
Chapter 67
The cab stopped halfway up Richmond Hill, at the mouth…
Chapter 68
“Bonjour, Madame,” India said breathlessly to the woman behind the…
Chapter 69
“Madam, please! Do allow me. It’s a terribly unsafe hour,”…
Chapter 70
Ella looked at her friend, who was lying on her…
Chapter 71
In a bedroom at the top of 94 Grosvenor Square,…
Chapter 72
“Katie has four more teeth and she’s talking a blue…
Chapter 73
Sid’s sixth sense told him that someone was watching him.
Chapter 74
Seamie stopped outside a stationer’s shop, ripped his bag open,…
Chapter 75
“Something is strange, Ella.”
Chapter 76
India stared at the door to Freddie Lytton’s flat. He…
Chapter 77
Fiona’s baby kicked. His movements were getting stronger. She had…
Chapter 78
“Sid is it? Sid what?” the chief engineer asked.
Chapter 79
“India? Are you all right? What’s going on in there?”…
Part Three London, 1906
Chapter 80
Sir David Erskine, sergeant at arms for the House of…
Chapter 81
“Another one, Maggs?” Sid Baxter said.
Chapter 82
“It’s a blasted money sink,” Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the prime minister,…
Chapter 83
“It’s so good to see you, Seamie. I wondered sometimes…
Chapter 84
It was quiet on Tower Bridge. The evening rush was…
Chapter 85
Fiona Bristow, pregnant again, lumbered into her study and sat…
Chapter 86
India Lytton took off her eyeglasses and rubbed her temples,…
Chapter 87
Nairobi was a swamp.
Chapter 88
“Oh, just look at it, Seamie! Did you ever dream…
Chapter 89
“Horses?” Maggie Carr asked. She was sitting at the small…
Chapter 90
“Mummy, do we really have to take our teeth out?”…
Chapter 91
The tall, silent boy heated the needle in the flames…
Chapter 92
“Four children sleeping on wooden pallets the mother scrounged from…
Chapter 93
“Bloody hell,” Willa swore.
Chapter 94
Charlotte Lytton gazed at the creature at her feet, lying…
Chapter 95
Sid felt the riders before he saw them. He was…
Chapter 96
Sid gazed at the torn, mauled carcasses on the ground…
Chapter 97
Joe sat in the visitors’ room of Wandsworth Prison, waiting.
Chapter 98
India and Charlotte Lytton climbed the steps to Sid Baxter’s…
Chapter 99
“Bloody hell,” Seamie swore. He threw his gloves on the…
Chapter 100
“Will be good harvest, no?” Wainaina, Sid’s head field worker,…
Chapter 101
For a few seconds, India was senseless. She could not…
Chapter 102
Seamie stopped dead, placed his hands on his knees, and…
Chapter 103
Joe rapped on a frosted glass door on the ground…
Chapter 104
Freddie shaded his eyes from the blazing sun and gazed…
Chapter 105
Seamie felt Willa’s head, hot and heavy on his back.
Chapter 106
“It was the McGregors’ stallion that was here around lunchtime,…
Chapter 107
India stared at the plains of Thika for the last…
Chapter 108
“This is hopeless. Totally hopeless,” Dr. Rosendo Ribeiro, Nairobi’s one…
Chapter 109
Tom Meade poked his head into Freddie Lytton’s borrowed office…
Chapter 110
Can you smell despair? Joe wondered. Can you see it?…
Chapter 111
Sid knew.
Chapter 112
“Why did you do it, Freddie? Why?” India cried, striding…
Chapter 113
Seamie stood on the porch of Dr. Ribeiro’s surgery, peering in…
Chapter 114
Sid sat on the dirt floor of his jail cell,…
Chapter 115
Seamie returned to the Norfolk at noon in a state…
Chapter 116
“This is preposterous! Outrageous!” Herbert Gladstone sputtered, throwing a document…
Chapter 117
India sat on the veranda of the house where she…
Chapter 118
India grabbed Charlotte’s arm so tightly that the little girl…
Chapter 119
“Good morning, George,” Maggie Carr said as she walked by…
Chapter 120
India lay in bed. The house was silent. The clock…
Chapter 121
Freddie held the flaming match to the wick of a…
Chapter 122
Tom Meade ran down the long corridor and up the…
Chapter 123
Charlotte, her cheek swollen where Freddie had slapped her, her…
Chapter 124
By the time Sid had reached the Wiltons’ house, he’d…
Chapter 125
India held Charlotte tightly against her. Between them, they had…
Chapter 126
Seamie had wanted flowers, but there was no florist in…
Chapter 127
It was night on the African plains, the darkness hung…
Chapter 128
Sid kicked out the last remaining embers of his campfire…
Chapter 129
India had died.
Chapter 130
India smelled roses. Their warm, spicy scent delighted her.
Chapter 131
Joe lowered his weary head into his hands and let…
Chapter 132
Nearly five weeks after Seamie’s telegram arrived at 94 Grosvenor…
Chapter 133
India sat in the drawing room of 45 Berkeley Square,…
Epilogue
Juan Ramos, stationmaster at Point Reyes, crossed his arms and…
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
Other Books by Jennifer Donnelly
Copyright
Lily Walker could smell a copper a mile away.
Cops reeked of beer and bay rum. They walked as though their shoes pinched. In poor neighborhoods filled with hungry people, they looked as plump and glossy as veal calves, fattened up from all the free meals they cadged.
Cops scared Lily. It was a cop who’d taken her kids away from her and put them in the workhouse. It was another cop, a man named Alvin Donaldson, who’d put her in jail after she’d gone on the game to get them back.
And now there was one sitting at the bar right in front of her. Inside the Barkentine, the Firm’s own stronghold. Pretending to be a regular bloke. Talking. Drinking. Reading a paper. Ordering food.
The bloody cheek.
What did he want? Was he looking to nick Sid? To shut the place down?
The thought of the Bark closing more than scared Lily; it terrified her. She had her kids with her now. They had a room. It was small, but it kept them warm and dry. If she lost her barmaid’s job, and the wages it brought, she would lose the room. And her kids. Again.
As she stood behind the bar, nearly paralyzed with worry, a sudden movement caught her eye. It was Frankie Betts, Sid’s right-hand man. He’d been sitting down, knocking back glass after glass of whisky, but now he was on his feet. He stubbed out his cigarette and pushed back his sleeves.
He’s sussed the cop, Lily thought, he must have. And now he’s going to do for him.
But before Frankie could make a move, a fresh drink appeared on the bar. Desi Shaw, the publican, had put it there.
“Not leaving yet, are you, mate?” Desi said. “You only just got here.” Desi was smiling, but his eyes flashed a warning.
Frankie nodded. “Ta,” he said tightly, sitting back down.
Desi was right to have stopped him. Sid would be angry. He would say he was disappointed. Frankie knew better than to disappoint Sid. They all did.
Desi turned to Lily. “Look lively, darlin’. Bloke down the end needs a refill.”
“Sorry, Des. Right away,” she said.
Lily served her customer, barely smiling, her nerves taut. It was a tense time. For Sid. For the Firm. For all of them. A dangerous time. The rozzers were all over Sid. He and his lads had robbed a wages van last week and had made off with more than a thousand quid, prompting Freddie Lytton, the local Member of Parliament, to declare war. He’d had Sid arrested. Frankie and Desi, too. But the beak had let them go. Turned out there were no witnesses. Two men and a woman had seen the robbery, but when they’d learned it was Sid Malone they’d be testifying against, they’d suddenly been unable to recall what the robbers looked like.
“A mistake’s been made. The police arrested the wrong man,” Sid had said to the press on the steps of the Old Bailey after he’d been released. “I’m no villain, me. Just a businessman trying to make an honest living.” It was a phrase he’d used many times—whenever the police raided his boatyard or one of his pubs. He said it so often, in fact, that Alvin Donaldson had christened him the Chairman and his gang the Firm. Lytton had been furious. He vowed he’d have Sid’s head on a platter. He swore he’d find someone, some honest man, who wasn’t afraid to speak the truth, who wasn’t afraid of Malone and his pack of thugs, and when he did, he’d lock them away for life.
“He’s just blowing smoke,” Sid had said. “Wants his picture in the papers. It’s almost election time.”
Lily had believed him, but now this cop was sitting here, as bold as brass, and she was no longer sure he was right. She picked up a rag and wiped the bar with it, stealing glances at the man.
Is he one of Lytton’s? Or someone else’s? Why the hell is he here?
Lily well knew that where there was one cop, there were usually more. She scanned the room, looking for more unfamiliar faces.
If ever a pub deserved to be called a den of thieves, she thought, it’s the Bark.
Dark and low-ceilinged, it sat squeezed between two wharves in Limehouse, on the north bank of the Thames. Its front touched Narrow Street and its back sagged brokenly over the river. At high tide you could hear the Thames lapping at the rear wall. She recognized almost every face. Three local blokes were standing by the fire, passing bits of jewelry back and forth. In a corner, four more played cards while a fifth threw sharks’ teeth at a dartboard. Others sat clustered around rickety tables or at the bar itself. Smoking and drinking. Talking too loudly. Laughing too hard. Bragging and swaggering. Minor villains, all.
The man this cop was after, well…he didn’t brag and he didn’t swagger, and there was nothing minor about him. He was one of the most powerful, most feared criminal bosses in London, and Lily thought that if this barmy rozzer knew what was good for him, he’d get up and leave now. While his legs still worked.
While she continued to watch the man, Desi came bustling out of the kitchen and banged a bowl down in front of him, sloshing broth on his newspaper.
“One Limehouse hotpot,” he said.
The man stared at the steaming horror. “It’s fish,” he said flatly.
“Proper Sherlock Holmes, you. What was you expecting? Rack of lamb?”
“Pork, I guess.”
“This is Limehouse, innit? Not the bloody home counties. That’ll be tuppence.”
The man slid a coin across the bar, then stirred the gray broth with a dirty spoon. Bits of bone and skin whirled through it. A scrap of potato, some celery. A chunk of white flesh.
“Oi, Lily!” Frankie shouted, pointing at his empty glass.
“Right away, luv,” Lily said, taking the glass from him. As she put the new pint down, Frankie caught her hand, pulled her toward him, and kissed her cheek. She batted him away. It was an act. They were both laughing, but there was no mirth in their eyes. He kissed her again. “Find out what he’s after,” he whispered in her ear, then he let her go.
Lily knew what to do. She served a few more customers, then took a handkerchief from her pocket and made a show of mopping her neck with it.
“It’s like a bloody furnace in here tonight,” she said aloud. “You lot have me run off my feet.”
Then she unbuttoned the top of her blouse, fanning herself with her hand. Her soft, freckled bosom was large and firm—so large, in fact, that Sid often joked he could hide his dosh down it. She walked over to the man, placed her hands on the bar, and leaned forward, giving him an eyeful.
“Something wrong with your supper, luv?” she asked, smiling warmly. “You ain’t touched it.”
The stranger put his spoon down. He hesitated.
This ought to be good, she thought.
“Can’t eat a bloody thing no matter how hard I try,” he finally said. “Been livin’ on porter. Anything else and me stomach just heaves at it.”
“What? Nothing at all?” she asked, feigning concern.
“Porridge. Milk. Sometimes an egg. Screws did it. Kicked me guts in. Haven’t been right since.”
Lily nearly laughed out loud, but she kept her face straight. “Sent down, was you?” she asked.
“Aye. Smash-and-grab. Jewelry shop up Camden way. Had a clasp knife in me pocket so the coppers said I was armed. Beak gave me five.”
“You just come out?”
The stranger nodded. He pulled his cap off, revealing what looked like a prison-issue haircut.
“You poor bloke,” Lily said. “Think your stomach’s bad, you should see your head. What nick was you in? Reading?”
“Pentonville.”
“My late husband did a bit of bird there. Warden’s a right hard case. Willocks, his name was. He still giving everyone gyp?”
“Oh, aye.”
Drummond, you git, Lily thought. Should have asked round. There was no Willocks at Pentonville; there never had been. The bollocks was pretending.
“Well, that’s all behind you now,” she said brightly. “Like another pint, would you?”
The man said he would. As she moved off to get it, Frankie’s eyes caught hers. Take care of this, they said.
Lily nodded. She pulled a pint, then returned to her customer. “Here you are. On the house.” As she set the glass down, she purposely sloshed some of its contents onto his newspaper.
“Oh, how clumsy!” she said. “I’m so sorry. Between me and Desi, we’ve soaked your paper.”
“No harm done,” the man said, smiling. “Mopping spills is about the only thing this bloody rag’s good for.”
Lily laughed prettily and the man took her false good humor for an opening—just as she’d known he would.
“Name’s Michael Bennett,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Lily Walker. Likewise.”
“You hear about this?” Bennett asked, pointing to a story on the paper’s front page. “It’s about that wages robbery. They say Sid Malone done it. That he got away with ten thousand quid.”
Doesn’t Sid wish, Lily thought. Those flipping papers always exaggerated.
Bennett touched the back of her hand. “I heard Malone stashes some of his dosh on a barge in the Thames,” he said. “And some in a sugar warehouse.”
“Did you?” Lily asked, leaning in to give him a better look at her breasts.
“Aye. I also heard he keeps some here in the Bark. Why, we might be sitting on it right now,” he said, tapping his foot on the floorboards. “Don’t happen to have a prybar in your pocket, do you?”
Lily forced another laugh.
“Wherever he stores it, it must be a big place. The Firm don’t go in for any tuppenny-ha’penny Fagin rubbish. One bloke told me their bullion thefts alone have brought them thousands. Thousands! Cor, can you imagine having all that money?”
Lily felt anger flash inside of her. Her fingers twitched. She wished she were a man; she would break this bastard’s nose. It would teach him to keep it out of other blokes’ business.
“I’ve also heard Malone frequents this pub,” Bennett said. “Heard it’s his headquarters.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Lily replied.
Bennett leaned in close. He took her hand in his. “I need a word with him. Just a word, is all. Know how I can find him?”
Lily shook her head. “I’m sorry, luv, I don’t.” She leaned over farther and bent her head to his. “What do you want with him anyway? Good-looking man like yourself…just out of the nick…seems to me it’s a woman you’d be wanting, not a bloke.”
Bennett mulled over her offer. “How much?” he finally asked.
“I usually get a pound.”
The man snorted. “A bloody pound?” he said. Too loudly.
Typical rozzer, quibbling over money, she thought. Villains never did. She placed a finger on his lips. “For you, darlin’, fifty pence.”
Bennett’s eyes flickered back to her chest. He licked his lips. “All right, then,” he said. “Where do we go? Upstairs?”
Lily shook her head. “Meet me outside. By the river. There’s a stairway round the side. It’ll be quiet there this time of night. Quiet and dark.”
“When?”
“Give me fifteen minutes.”
She winked at him, then disappeared into the kitchen. Once there, she swiftly climbed a flight of wooden steps that led from the kitchen to the upper floor. Her fake smile was gone now; her expression grim. She ran down a dingy hallway and knocked twice on a locked door. It was opened by a rangy man in shirtsleeves and a waistcoat who made no effort to hide the cosh he was holding. Behind him, in the middle of the room, another man sat at a table, counting money. He raised his emerald-green eyes to hers.
“Trouble,” she said. “One of Lytton’s. Must be. Says his name is Bennett. I’ll have him out back in a few minutes.”
The emerald-eyed man nodded. “Keep him there,” he said, resuming his counting.
Lily shot back to the kitchen and made her way down to the basement. She let herself outside through a rickety door and crept behind a cluster of pilings. It was low tide. She could barely see the river in the darkness, but she could hear it—lapping at the hulls of barges moored midstream, hissing about the lines and buoys, gurgling in tiny, whirling eddies. Bennett was already there. Lily watched him as he took a long piss. When he finished, he lit a cigarette.
Good, she thought, that’ll take up some time. She didn’t want to do this. Not with him. Not with any man. She didn’t want to go back to what she’d been.
She bit her lip, remembering what it was like to be on the game. To give herself to any man who asked her. She’d done it so many times she’d lost count. She’d done it for her children.
She’d lost them a few weeks after her husband died. He’d been a tanner, working fourteen-hour days in the yards in all sorts of weather. The coroner had written pneumonia on his death certificate, but Lily knew it was the work that had killed him.
She’d taken what she could find after he’d died—a bit of charring, a few hours behind the counter of a tuckshop. And then a full-time job had come along at a jam factory. It paid, but not enough. She got behind on the rent, and then the factory went under. It was wintertime when the place closed. People were hungry and cold and desperate for work. Every job in East London was taken. When she was two months in arrears, the bailiff evicted her. She slept rough with her children for a few days, but then a pair of cops had caught her begging and they’d taken the children to the workhouse. Sometimes, in her sleep, she still heard them screaming, still saw their little hands knotted in her skirts as the officers pulled them from her.
Desperate, she’d done the only thing left to do—she went on the game. She forced herself to go numb while she was with the men, and she let herself cry afterward—but she made money, for unlike a lot of women on the streets, she still had her looks. She’d managed to earn a few shillings, and was just beginning to have hopes of renting a new room, a place to bring her children, when she’d been arrested.
Alvin Donaldson’s men had done it. Word had it Lytton leaned on him to clear the streets. She and a dozen other women had been rounded up and kept overnight. They’d been let go the next day—all of them except for Lily, for Donaldson had taken a liking to her.
He’d had her brought up from the cells to his office. He’d closed the door, and then he told her what he wanted. He said he’d send her down for good if she refused him. He knew she needed money badly. And he knew she couldn’t earn it if she was in prison. He’d taken her then and there, and many times afterward. In filthy alleys and lodging houses. Behind pubs. And he’d never given her a penny.
One night, after she’d been on the streets for a few months, Sid had caught sight of her.
“Lily?” he’d called out. He knew her from when she’d worked at the tuckshop. She’d tried to hurry away, but he’d run after her. “Tell me you’re not on the game,” he’d said.
She hadn’t answered. She couldn’t; she’d been too ashamed.
“Don’t do this, Lily. You’re not the type. You’ll never survive it.”
“I’ve no choice. I’ve lost me job. Me kids are in the spike,” she’d said, her voice cracking. He’d given her a new job on the spot. Barmaid at the Barkentine. He’d told her a girl had just quit and Desi was shorthanded. It was a lie; she’d known it was. The fact that he’d taken the trouble to tell it had made her cry.
“Here now, none of that,” he’d said sharply, for he didn’t like tears. Then he’d marched her to the Bark, pointed at pile of dirty glasses, and told her to get busy.
Lily Walker knew who Sid Malone was; she knew what he did, but she didn’t care. He’d done more for her than any cop, any priest, any Sallie Army do-gooder ever had. He’d given her her children back, and as long as she lived, she would never forget it.
“Bloody woman! Where the hell are you?” Bennett suddenly yelled, startling her.
He’d finished his smoke. There was no more putting it off. She took a deep breath, then stepped out from behind the pilings.
“What took you?” he asked.
“Had to wait till me guv’s back was turned,” she answered. “He’s not too keen on his help sneaking off.”
“Come on, then,” Bennett said, reaching for her.
“Not so fast, luv. Business before pleasure,” she said, stalling.
Bennett reached into his pocket. He counted out fifty pence and gave it to her. She counted it again, then pocketed it. He pulled her close and kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. She nearly gagged. His rough hands were everywhere—inside her blouse, between her legs. It was all she could do not to push him away.
Bloody hell, Sid, where are you? she wondered desperately.
She twined her arms around his neck. Bit his ear. Whispered dirty things to him. Did anything and everything she could think of to play for time. But he was getting impatient.
“Lift your skirts, girl,” he said. “Quick, or I’ll have my money back.”
Lily did as he asked. There were only four people she cared for on this earth, only four people she’d do anything for, anything—her three children and Sid Malone.
And then, just as Bennett had dropped his trousers, a match flared behind him. He spun around. Lily looked past him and saw Sid and Frankie. They were standing at the bottom of the stone steps. Frankie was lighting a lantern.
“That’ll do, Lily,” Sid said.
Lily spat the man’s taste from her mouth, then ran back into the Bark’s basement to fix her clothing. The door was half off its hinges. She peered around it as she buttoned her blouse. If Sid was in trouble, she wanted to know.
“Michael Bennett, is it?” she heard him say.
Bennett, holding his trousers up with both hands, stared, but made no reply.
“My guv asked you a question,” Frankie said.
“Are you…are you Malone?” he stammered, buttoning his fly.
“What do you want?” Frankie growled. “Who sent you?”
“I’m not looking for any trouble,” he said. “I only came to pass on a message, that’s all. A woman I know wants to see Sid Malone. She’ll meet him anytime, anywhere, but she’s got to see him.”
“You a cop?” Frankie asked. “Did Lytton send you?”
Bennett shook his head. “It’s nothing to do with Lytton. I’m a private detective. That’s the truth.”
Malone cocked his head, appraising Bennett.
“You’ve got to give me an answer,” Bennett said to him. “You don’t know this woman. She won’t stop. She’ll come herself.”
Malone still hadn’t said anything, but he was listening. Bennett seemed to take encouragement from this. He grew bolder.
“Never takes no for an answer, that one. Can’t tell you her name. She don’t want it known. She’s a right pushy bitch, though, that’s something I can tell you,” he added, venturing a laugh.
Later, Lily would remember that Sid’s mouth had twitched at the word bitch. She would remember how he had walked up to Bennett, slowly, easily, as if he were going to shake his hand, grateful for the information. Instead he grabbed the man’s forearm, and in one quick, fluid motion, broke it with a cosh. The pain dropped Bennett to his knees, but it was the sight of his bones protruding from his skin that made him shriek.
Sid grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head back, choking off his noise. “That’s me answer. Loud and clear,” he said. “You tell Fiona Finnegan the man she’s after is dead. Dead as you’ll be if I ever see you again.”
Sid released him, and he crumpled into the mud. He turned and walked away. Frankie followed.
“Who is this girl, guv?” Frankie asked. “She up the duff?”
Sid made no response.
“She a relation, then?”
In the darkness, Lily could only hear Sid’s voice; she couldn’t see his face. If she had, she’d have seen the pain there, deep and abiding, as he said, “She’s nobody, Frankie. No relation. She’s nothing to me at all.”
“Jones!”
India Selwyn Jones turned at the sound of her name. She had to squint to see who’d shouted it. Maud had taken her eyeglasses.
“Professor Fenwick!” she finally shouted back, beaming at the bald and bearded man hurtling toward her through a sea of bobbing mortarboards.
“Jones, you clever little cat! A Walker grant, a Lister, and the Dennis Prize! Is there anything you didn’t win?”
“Hatcher got the Beaton.”
“The Beaton’s a humbug. Any fool can memorize anatomy. A doctor needs more than knowledge, she needs to be able to apply it. Hatcher can barely apply a tourniquet.”
“Shh, Professor! She’s right behind you!” India whispered, scandalized. The graduation ceremony was over. The students had exited the auditorium’s small stage to the strains of an inspiring march and were now posing for photographs or chatting with well-wishers.
Fenwick flapped a hand at her. Nothing scandalized him. He was a man who spoke freely, pointedly, and usually at the top of his lungs. India had firsthand experience of his scorching invectives. They’d been directed at her often enough. She remembered her first week in his classroom. She’d been assigned to question a patient with pleurisy. Afterward Fenwick had called on her to open her case book and describe her findings. She could still hear him roaring at her for starting with the words “I feel…”
“You what? You feel? You are not in my classroom to feel, Jones. This is not Early Romantic Poets. This is diagnosis, the taking of cases. You are here only to observe, for you are far too ignorant to do anything else. Feelings cloud judgment. What do they do, Jones?”
“They cloud judgment, sir,” India had replied, her cheeks blazing.
“Very good. Feel for your patient and you harm him with foolish preconceptions. See him, Jones…see the oedematosis of heart disease and know it from kidney failure…see the colic of gallstones and know it from lead poisoning…only see him, Jones, with clarity and with dispassion, and you will cure him.”
“Well, come on, come on, let’s have a look,” Fenwick said now, motioning impatiently to the leather folder tucked under India’s arm.
India opened it, eager herself to look again at what it contained—a buff-colored document with her name written in copperplate, the date—26 May 1900—the seal of the London School of Medicine for Women, and the proclamation there for all the world to see. She had earned her degree in medicine. She was now a doctor.
“Doctor India Selwyn Jones. Has a nice ring, doesn’t it?” Fenwick said.
“It does, and if I hear it a few more times I might actually start to believe it.”
“Nonsense. There are some here who need a piece of paper to tell them that they’re doctors, but you’re not one of them.”
“Professor Fenwick! Professor, over here…,” a woman’s voice shrilled.
“Ye gads,” Fenwick said. “The dean. Looks like she’s got the head of Broadmoor with her, the poor devil. Wants me to convince him to hire some of you lot. You’re damned lucky you got Gifford’s job, you know.”
“I do, sir. I’m very eager to start.”
Fenwick snorted. “Really? Do you know Whitechapel?”
“I did a bit of clinical work at London Hospital.”
“Any house calls?”
“No, sir.”
“Hmm, I take it back then. Gifford’s the lucky one.”
India smiled. “How bad can it be? I’ve done house calls in other poor areas. Camden, Paddington, Southwark…”
“Whitechapel’s like nowhere else in London, Jones. Be prepared for that. You’ll learn a lot there, that’s for certain, but with your mind, your skills, you should have a nice research fellowship at a teaching hospital. And your own surgery. Like Hatcher. Private practice. That’s where you belong.”
“I can’t afford to open my own surgery, sir.”
Fenwick gave her a long look. “Even if you could, I doubt you would. One could hand you the keys to a fully furnished Harley Street office and you’d hand them right back and scuttle off to the slums.”
India laughed. “I’d like to think I’d walk, sir.”
“Still dreaming your pipe dreams, eh?”
“I prefer to think of them as goals, sir.”
“A clinic, is it?”
“Yes.”
“For women and children.”
“That’s right.”
Fenwick sighed. “I remember you and Hatcher talking about it, but I never thought you were serious.”
“Harriet isn’t. I am.”
“Jones, have you any idea what’s involved in that sort of thing?”
“Some.”
“The raising of monies…the hunt for a suitable location…why, the administration alone simply boggles the mind. You need time to get a clinic off the ground, oceans of it, and you won’t have a spare minute. You’ll be worked off your feet at Gifford’s practice. How will you manage it all?”
“I’ll find a way, sir. One must try to make a difference,” India said resolutely.
Fenwick cocked his head. “Do you know you said the same thing to me six years ago? When you first came here. What I’ve never understood is why.”
“Why?”
“Why an aristocratic young woman from one of Britain’s wealthiest families feels she needs to make a difference.”
India colored. “Sir, I’m not…I don’t…”
“Professor! Professor Fenwick!” It was the dean again.
“I must go,” Fenwick said. He was quiet for a few seconds, seeming to study his shoes, then added, “I don’t mind telling you that I’ll miss you, Jones. You’re the best student I’ve ever had. Rational, logical, unemotional. A shining example to my current crop of ninnies. I also wish I could tell you that the hard part is over, but it’s only beginning. You want to make a difference, to change the world, but the world might have other ideas. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do, sir.”
“Good. Then know this—no matter what happens out there, remember that you are a doctor. A very good one. No one can take that from you. And not because it’s in here”—he tapped on the diploma—“but because it’s in here.” He tapped India’s forehead. “Never forget that.”
It was India’s turn to study her shoes. “I won’t, sir,” she whispered.
She wanted to thank him for all that he’d done, for taking a know-nothing girl of eighteen and making her into a doctor, but she didn’t know how. Six years it had taken. Six long years of hardship, struggle, and doubt. She’d made it only because of him. How could she thank him for that? Where would she even begin?
“Professor Fenwick…” she said, but when she looked up he was gone.
Feelings of loss and loneliness swept over her. Around her, fellow graduates laughed and chattered, surrounded by friends and family, but she was alone. Except for Maud. Freddie was away on government business. Wish was in America. Her parents were at Blackwood, hundreds of miles away, but even if they’d lived next door to the school they wouldn’t have come. She knew that.
For an instant, she thought of the one person who would have come if he could—a boy who would have walked all the way from Wales to be with her today. Hugh. She saw him in her mind’s eye. He was running up Owen’s Hill, laughing. Standing on Dyffyd’s Rock, head thrown back, arms outstretched to the wild Welsh skies. She tried to push the images from her mind, but failed. Tears burned behind her eyes. She hastily blinked them away, knowing Maud would be looking for her, to take her to tea. Knowing, too, that Maud had little patience for tangled emotions.
“Stop it, Jones. Right now,” she hissed at herself. “Feelings cloud judgment.”
“So does champagne, old girl, but that’s why we like it!” a male voice boomed, startling her.
India whirled around, astonished. “Wish?” she exclaimed, as her cousin kissed her cheek. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in the States!”
“Just got back. Ship docked yesterday. Got the car off it and drove hell for leather all night. Wouldn’t have missed this for the world, Indy. Didn’t you see me in the back? I was clapping like a lunatic. Bingham, too.”
“Bing, is that really you?” India asked, peering around her cousin.
George Lytton, the twelfth Earl of Bingham, was standing behind Wish. He shyly raised a hand in greeting. “Hullo, Indy,” he said. “Congrats.”
“This is such a lovely surprise! I didn’t see either of you. Maud swiped my specs. Oh, look at you, Wish! So suntanned and handsome. Was your trip a success? Are you a billionaire?”
“Not quite yet, old mole, but soon,” Wish said, laughing.
“Oh, for God’s sake, darling, don’t encourage him. His head’s fat enough.” The voice, her sister’s, was heavy with boredom.
“Maud! Give me back my glasses,” India said.
“Certainly not. They’re beastly. They’ll ruin the photographs.”
“But I can’t see.”
Maud sighed. “If you insist,” she said. “Really, though, India, if your specs get any thicker you’ll be wearing binoculars.” She wrinkled her nose. “Can we leave now? This place has the stinks.”
“Listen to your much older sister and get your things, Windy Indy,” Wish said.
“Very funny, Wish!” Maud said.
“Don’t call me that horrible name, Wish!” India scolded.
Wish grinned. “It is horrible, isn’t it? I gave it to you, remember? When you were ten and holding forth on the nesting habits of wrens. A proper boffin even then. And such a wordy old thing.”
“That nickname doesn’t make her sound wordy, it makes her sound flatulent,” Bing said, blinking owlishly.
Wish and Maud roared. Bing cracked a smile and India tried not to. They’d all grown up together and tended to revert to old ways the minute they were reunited. She watched them—all three were nearly breathless with laughter now—half expecting Wish to thump Bingham with a serving spoon or Maud to pour ink in the teapot. Finally, unable to help herself, she dissolved into giggles, too. Their sudden appearance had made her forget her earlier sadness and she was very happy they’d come. As children they’d all been inseparable, but now they were rarely in the same place at the same time. Maud tended to swan off to exotic destinations on a whim. Wish was forever starting up new ventures. A banker turned speculator, he was known to make a fortune in a matter of days—and lose it again just as quickly. Bingham hardly ever left Longmarsh, preferring its quiet woods and meadows to the noisy streets of London. And Freddie—India’s fiancé and Bingham’s brother—practically lived at the House of Commons.
“Look, we’ve got to shake a leg,” Wish said impatiently, “so get your things, Lady Indy.”
“Don’t call me that, either,” India warned.
“How about we call you late for lunch, then? We’ve a reservation for half one at the Coburg—a little party for you—but we’ll never make it unless we get started.”
“Wish, you mustn’t—” India started to say.
“No worries. I didn’t. It’s on Lytton.”
“Bing, you shouldn’t—”
“Not me, Indy,” he said. “My brother.”
“Freddie’s here?” India asked. “How? When? He said he’d been summoned to C-B’s for the weekend.”
Wish shrugged. “Dunno. S’pose he got himself unsummoned. He was just trotting down the steps when I called at his flat so I gave him a ride.”
“Where is he now?”
“Outside. Bringing the car round.”
“No, I’m not. I’m right here,” a young blond man said. He was tall and slender, beautifully dressed in a cutaway coat and cheviot trousers. A dozen female heads turned to admire him. A few—a doddery aunt, a younger sister—might have asked who he was, but most recognized him. He was a Member of Parliament, a rising star whose bold defection from the Conservatives to the Liberals had his name constantly in the papers. He was Bingham’s younger brother—only a second son—yet Bing, shy and retiring, faded beside him.
“Freddie, what took you?” Wish asked. “You had me worried.”
“I’m touched, old man. Truly.”
“Not about you. About the car.” Wish’s motor car, a Daimler, was brand-new.
“Mmmm. Yes. Had a spot of trouble with the car,” Freddie said. “Couldn’t get the damned thing in reverse. Or neutral. Couldn’t shut it off, either.”
“Freddie…” Wish began, but Freddie didn’t hear him. He was kissing India’s cheek.
“Well done, my darling,” he said. “Congratulations.”
“Freddie, you ass!” Wish shouted. “What do you mean you can’t shut it off? What’s it doing? Driving itself?”
“Of course not. I told the porter to drive it. Last I saw, he was headed for King’s Cross.”
Wish swore, then dashed out of the auditorium. Bing followed.
Freddie grinned. “Car’s perfectly safe. Parked it out front. Did you see Wish’s face?”
“Freddie, that was awful! Poor Wish!” India said.
“Poor Wish, my foot,” Maud said, lighting a cigarette. “Serves him right. He’s gone absolutely car mad. Now, can we please go, too? I can’t bear the smell of this place. Really, Indy, it’s awful. What is it?” she asked.
India sniffed. “I don’t smell a thing.”
“Have you got a cold? How can you not?”
She sniffed again. “Oh, that. Ca—” She was about to say cabbages. A nearby church ran a soup kitchen for the poor and cooking smells were always drifting over, but Freddie cut her off.
“Cadavers,” he said. “Indy told me about them. The best go to Guy’s and Bart’s. The women’s school gets all the ripe ones.”
Maud paled. She pressed a jeweled hand to her chest. “Dead people?” she whispered. “You’re joking, Freddie, surely. Say you are.”
“I’m not this time. I’m being most grave. I swear it.”
“Good God. I feel quite ill. I’ll be outside.”
Maud left and India turned to her fiancé. “Most grave?” she said. “Must we always become twelve years old again when we’re all together?”
“Yes, we must,” Freddie said. He gave her a golden smile and India thought then, as she had a million times before, that he was the most gloriously handsome man she had ever seen.
“You are awful, Freddie,” she said. “Truly.”
“I am. I admit it. But it was the only way I could get five minutes alone with you,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Now get your things, old stick. We’re off to the Coburg.”
“Wish said. But really, Freddie, you mustn’t.”
“I want to. It’s not every day of the week one becomes a doctor, you know.”
“This is so lovely. So unexpected. I thought you’d be at C-B’s all weekend.”
C-B was short for Henry Campbell-Bannerman, leader of the Opposition. There was talk that Lord Salisbury, Britain’s prime minister and head of the incumbent Conservative Party, would call a general election in the autumn. Campbell-Bannerman had called his shadow cabinet together to prepare the Liberal Party’s platform. A handful of prominent backbenchers, including Freddie, had also been summoned.
“The old boy canceled,” Freddie said. “Felt a bit punky.”
“When did you find out?”
“Two days ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” India asked, hurt. She’d been so disappointed when he’d said he couldn’t be here today.
“I was going to, darling,” Freddie said contritely. “And perhaps I should have. But as soon as I knew I was off the hook, I decided to surprise you with a party. Now stop looking daggers at me, will you, and get your things.”
India felt ashamed. How could she have scolded him? He was always so thoughtful. She led the way out of the auditorium down a narrow hallway to a lecture theater where she and her fellow graduates had stowed their belongings. It was quiet in the room when she and Freddie entered it, quieter than she’d ever heard it. Freddie sat down in one of the wooden seats and busied himself with a bottle of champagne he’d swiped from the drinks table. India looked around—not for her things, but at the room itself. She looked at the raked benches and the dissection table, at the bookcases crammed with heavy texts, at Ponsonby the skeleton dangling from his stand—and realized that it was the last time she would do so. The sadness she’d felt earlier overwhelmed her again. She walked over to Ponsonby and took his lifeless hands in hers.
“I can’t believe it’s over. I can’t believe I’ll never sit here again,” she said.
“Hmm?” Freddie was frowning at the cork.
“This place…this school…all the years I spent here…it’s all behind me now…”
Her voice trailed off as images came back to her. Bright fragments of time. She saw herself and Harriet Hatcher in anatomy lab bent over a cadaver. They were peeling back the derma, naming and drawing muscles and bones as fast as they could, trying to stay ahead of the rot. Trying not to vomit. Sketch and retch, they’d called it. Professor Fenwick had been there, calling them ham-fisted bumblers one minute, bringing them bicarb and a bucket the next.
He’d been there again, materializing out of thin air like a guardian angel, when a group of drunken first years from Guy’s had surrounded herself and Harriet outside the school’s entrance. The men had exposed themselves, demanding to have their members examined.
“Unfortunately, gentlemen, my students cannot comply with your request,” he’d said, “as they are not permitted to take their microscopes out of the building.”
And Dr. Garrett Anderson, the dean. She was a legend, the first woman in England to earn a medical degree and one of the school’s founders. Brisk, brilliant, stronger than Sheffield steel, she had been a constant inspiration to India, a living, breathing rebuttal to those who said women were too weak and too stupid to be doctors.
“This foil is a bugger,” Freddie muttered, fiddling with the champagne bottle. “Ah! There we are.”
She looked at him, wanting so much to tell him what this place meant to her, wanting him to understand. “Freddie…,” she began. “Never mind the champagne….”
It was too late. He aimed the bottle at Ponsonby and popped the cork. It glanced off the skeleton’s head.
“Poor Ponsonby,” India said. “You’ve hurt his feelings.”
“Stuff Ponsonby. He’s dead. He has no feelings. Come and have a drink.” Freddie patted the chair next to him. When India was seated, he handed her a glass. “To Dr. India Selwyn Jones,” he said. “The cleverest little brick in London. I’m so proud of you, darling.” He clinked her glass, then emptied his. “Here,” he added, handing her a small leather box.
“What is it?”
“Open it and see.”
India eased the lid up, then gasped at what was inside—a beautifully worked gold pocket watch with diamond markers. Freddie took it out and turned it over. Think of me was engraved on the back.
India shook her head. “Freddie, it’s so beautiful. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Say you’ll marry me.”
She smiled at him. “I’ve already said that.”
“Then do it. Marry me tomorrow.”
“But I start with Dr. Gifford next week.”
“Bugger Dr. Gifford!”
“Freddie! Shh!”
“Run away with me. Tonight.” He leaned toward her and nuzzled her neck.
“I can’t, you silly man. You know I can’t. I’ve work to do. Important work. You know how hard I fought for that job. And then there’s the clinic….”
Freddie raised his face to hers. His beautiful amber eyes had darkened. “I can’t wait forever, India. I won’t. We’ve been engaged for two bloody years.”
“Freddie, please…don’t spoil the day.”
“Is that what I’m doing? Spoiling the day?” he asked, visibly hurt. “Is my telling you that I want you for my wife such a dreadful thing to hear?”
“Of course not, it’s just that…”
“Your studies have come first for a long time, but you’re finished now and a man can only be so patient.” He put his glass down. There was a seriousness to him now. “It’s just that we could do so much good together. You’ve always said that you want to make a difference—how can you do that working for Gifford? Or in some ill-funded clinic? Do something bigger, India. Something huge and important. Work with me on health reform. Counsel me. Advise me. And together we’ll make that difference. A real difference. Not just for Whitechapel or London, but for England.” He took her hands in his and continued talking, giving her no opening to reply. Or to object. “You’re a remarkable woman and I need you. At my side.” He pulled her close and kissed her. “And in my bed,” he whispered.
India closed her eyes and tried to like it. She always tried to like it. He was so good and so kind and he loved her. He was everything any woman could want, and so she tried to warm to his kisses, but his lips were so hard and insistent. He knocked her spectacles askew with his fumblings and when he slid his hand from her waist to her breast, she broke away.
“We ought to go,” she said. “The others will be wondering what’s become of us.”
“Don’t be cold to me. I want you so.”
“Freddie, darling, this is hardly the place.”
“I want us to set a date, India. I want us to be man and wife.”
“We will be. Soon. I promise,” she said, adjusting her glasses.
“All right, then. Coming?”
“I’ve got to find my things,” she said. “You go. I’ll only be a minute.”
He told her to hurry, then went to join the others. India watched him go. He’s right, of course, she thought.
It had been two years since he’d gotten down on bended knee at Longmarsh and proposed to her. She would have to decide on a wedding date soon, and she knew what would happen when she did—they’d be required to attend an endless round of dinners and parties and to listen to incessant chatter about dresses, rings, and trousseau. And he would press her again to give up her hopes of a clinic and work with him on health reform. It was a noble cause, she knew it was, but healing was her calling, not committee work, and she could no more give it up than she could give up breathing.
India frowned, upset at herself. Freddie was so good to her and she was being unkind to him; she knew she was. She should have decided on a date by now. It should have been so easy for her to simply pick a day. Some lovely summer Saturday.
Should have been. Would have been.
If only she loved him.
She sat for a bit longer, simply staring at the empty doorway, then shrugged out of her robe. The others were waiting; she mustn’t keep them any longer. She folded the robe and placed it on the chair beside her, then ran her hands over her hair. It was a disaster. Her blond curls, brushed into a neat twist only a few hours ago, were already corkscrewing loose. Try as she might, she could never keep them under control. She started to smooth them, then stopped. Her fingers found the jeweled comb she always wore and pulled it free. She turned it over in her palm. It was a Tiffany dragonfly, one of a pair, and worth a small fortune. Worked in platinum and embellished with dozens of flawless gems, it was completely at odds with her plain, sober clothing: the gray skirt and waistcoat, the crisp white blouse.
She had taken the comb the day she’d left Blackwood—the day she’d turned her back on her home, her parents, and their godforsaken money.
“If you leave, India, I shall cut you off,” her mother had said, her beautiful face white with anger.
“I don’t want your money,” India had said. “I don’t want anything from you.”
There were three swirling initials engraved on the underside of the comb. She traced them with her finger—I S J, not hers, but her mother’s—Isabelle Selwyn Jones, Countess of Burnleigh. India knew that if it were not for this comb she would not be here today. If her mother hadn’t left it in her carriage. If Hugh hadn’t picked it up. If, if, if.
She closed her hand around it, pressing the teeth into her palm, trying to stop herself from remembering. Don’t, she told herself, don’t think about him. Don’t remember him. Don’t feel him. Don’t feel anything. But she did. Because Hugh had made her feel. More than anyone in her entire life.
She could see him again in her mind’s eye, only this time he wasn’t laughing. He was running through the trees with his sister Bea in his arms. Bea’s face was white. Her skirts were crimson with blood. He’d bundled her into the trap and crooned to her all the way to Cardiff. Never stopping, not once. Never even faltering. She could still hear his beautiful voice, soft and low, Paid ag ofni, dim ond deilen, Gura, gura ar y ddor; Paid ag ofni, ton fach unig, Sua, sua ar lan y mor. She’d known enough Welsh to know what he was singing. Fret you not, ’tis but an oak leaf, Beating, beating at the door. Fret you not, a lonely wavelet’s, Murmuring, murmuring on the shore. “Suo Gan,” a lullaby.
India looked at the comb still, but didn’t see it. She saw only Hugh, his face riven with grief as the police came to take him away.
“You’re thinking of him, aren’t you?” said a voice from the doorway now, startling her. She turned. It was Maud. “Poor Indy,” she said. “Couldn’t save Hugh. So you’ve decided to save the world instead. Poor world. It doesn’t know what it has coming.”
India didn’t answer. She wished that for once Maud could talk about sad things without mocking them.
“I’ve been sent back into this charnel house to fetch you, so stop holding seances and get your things,” Maud continued. “I can’t control the pack any longer. Wish is trying to talk the poor dean into investing in some mad land scheme. Freddie’s arguing with a creaky old Tory…and, oh, India…have you been blubbing?”
“Of course not.”
“Your nose is all red. And look at your hair. It’s an absolute tangle. Give me that comb.” Maud raked her fingers through India’s blond mane, twisted it, and secured it. Then she stepped back to assess her work. “Very nice,” she said.
India smiled and tried to accept the gesture gracefully. It was the sort of thing that passed for love between them.
Maud’s eyes traveled over India’s clothing; she frowned. “Is that what you’re wearing to the Coburg?”
India smoothed her skirt. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I thought you might have brought a change of clothes. These are so…dreary. You look like you’re going to a funeral.”
“You sound exactly like Mother.”
“I do not!”
“You do.”
As Maud continued to deny any similarities with their mother, India put her jacket on and then her hat. She gathered her black robe and her doctor’s bag, then followed her sister up the steps. When she reached the doorway, she turned around for one last look at her classroom, at the books and charts and specimens, at Ponsonby, and then she whispered a soft good-bye. Her eyes were clear now, her expression calm. She’d boxed the pain away. She was herself again. Cool and unflappable. Brisk and sensible. Feelings firmly in check.
“Keep them that way, Jones,” Ponsonby seemed to whisper. “Never forget: Feelings cloud judgment.”
And so much more, old chap, India thought, and so much more.
Joseph Bristow bounded up the steps to 94 Grosvenor Square, his towering Mayfair mansion. His train had arrived at King’s Cross early. It was Sunday, and only one o’clock. Cook would have just sent up dinner. He hoped it was a leg of lamb or a roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. He’d been in Brighton for a week scouting a site for a new Montague’s shop. He missed his home. And home cooking. Most of all, he missed his family. He couldn’t wait to see Fiona and their little daughter, Katie. He raised his hand to ring the doorbell, but before he could, the door was opened for him.
“Welcome home, sir. May I take your things?” It was Foster, the butler.
“Hello, Mr. Foster. How are you?”
“Very well, sir. Thank you for inquiring.”
Joe was about to ask Foster where Fiona was when two fox terriers flashed by. “Since when do we have dogs?” he asked.
“They are recent acquisitions, sir. They were abandoned in the park. Mrs. Bristow found them and took them in.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Joe said, shaking his head. “Do they have names?”
“Lipton and Twining,” Foster replied. “Mrs. Bristow says they are like her competition. Always yapping at her heels.”
Joe laughed. He watched the dogs as they circled the foyer, yipping and tussling. One broke away, trotted to an umbrella stand, and was about to lift his leg on it until a swift kick from Foster persuaded him otherwise. The second dog leaped into a large potted fern and began to dig furiously.
“If you’ll pardon me, sir…”
As Foster advanced on the animal, two blond children came charging into the entry, brandishing walking sticks like spears. They were Susie and Robbie, his sister Ellen’s children. They were dragging a small silk rug behind them. Its ends had been knotted to form a pouch. Sitting in it was a pretty blue-eyed toddler—his daughter, Katie. She was nibbling a biscuit. He knelt down and kissed her.
“Hello, my lovelies,” he said to the children. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Kidnapping Katie for ransom,” Robbie answered. “We’re Kikuyu. Katie’s not. She’s Masai. Those are tribes. From Africa. I read about them in Boy’s Own.”
“Did you now?”
A loud whoop was heard from the drawing room.
“A war party! Head for the Ngong Hills!” Robbie shouted.
Katie waved bye-bye as she was skidded off to the dining room. Two more children—twins belonging to Joe’s brother, Jimmy—came todding after them. Jimmy’s wife, Meg, was hot on their trail, scolding all the way. She blew her brother-in-law a kiss as she ran by.
Joe shook his head. A quiet afternoon? A peaceful meal? In this house? What had he been thinking? “I wonder what it’s like at me neighbors’ homes,” he said aloud. “I wonder if it’s half the madhouse it is here.”
“At the Granville Barkers’? The Walsinghams’?” Foster said, reappearing with one of the terriers tucked under his arm. “I shouldn’t think so, sir.”
“Where’s me missus, Mr. Foster?”
“In the garden, sir. Hosting a party.”
“A party?”
“A fund-raising luncheon for the Toynbee Mission Girls’ Vocational School.”
“She didn’t tell me we were having a party today.”
“Mrs. Bristow didn’t know herself until three days ago. The Reverend and Mrs. Barnett approached her. It seems a portion of the school’s roof fell in. Water damage, I believe.”
“Another hard-luck story.”
“Those do seem to be her specialty.”
“Any chance of getting something to eat round here?”
“Refreshments are being served in the garden, sir.”
Joe started toward the back of his house. He walked into his sundappled garden, thinking he might see twenty or so people there, and was surprised to find more than a hundred. Strangely, they were all quiet. He soon saw why. At the far end of the garden about forty girls aged ten to sixteen stood together, surrounded by a breathtaking flush of pink roses. They were scrubbed and combed, wearing hand-me-down skirts and blouses. One of them began to sing, sweet and clear, and the rest joined in, serenading their listeners with “Come into the Garden, Maud.” Every single person had gone as still as stone and a few were dabbing at their eyes.
“Fiona, lass, you are shameless,” Joe whispered. He scanned the sea of people, searching for her. He didn’t see her, not immediately, but he spotted many famous faces. Captains of industry, titled ladies, politicians—Fiona mixed them all. Merchants mingled with viscounts, actresses with cabinet ministers, socialists with socialites. The society pages called Joe and Fiona ’Arry and ’Arriet—a snide reference to their Cockney roots—and sniffed that 94 Grosvenor Square was the only house in Mayfair where the butler spoke better English than his employers. And yet all of society clamored for invitations to the parties Fiona gave, for they were nothing short of stellar.
People enjoyed themselves at 94. They talked and laughed, gossiped and argued. They ate good food and drank the best wines, but what won even the snootiest critic over was Fiona herself. She was direct and disarming, equally at ease with charladies and duchesses. As head of an international tea empire—and as one of the wealthiest women in the world—she was an object of fascination. People talked about her constantly. How she’d come up from nothing. That her dockworker father had been murdered. Her mother, too. How she’d fled London and caught the eye of a robber baron in New York, but married a viscount instead. He had died, but she still wore his diamond. “There were no children, darling. He was that way, don’t you know.” Eyes grew even wider as her daring takeover of a rival’s tea company was recounted. “She did it for revenge, my dear. The man killed her father. He tried to kill her! Can you imagine?”
Sargent hounded her to sit for him. Escoffier named a dessert after her. When Worth christened a jacket and skirt ensemble the Fiona Suit, women flocked to their seamstresses to have it copied. It was whispered in drawing rooms over tea and cakes that she wore no corset. It was shouted in gentlemen’s clubs over port and Stilton that she had no need of one for she was really a man—she must be—she had the biggest balls in London.
Joe finally spotted his wife sitting off to one side of the garden. As the girls finished their song, she stood and addressed her guests.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “The beautiful voices you have just heard belong to the children of the Toynbee Mission Girls’ Vocational School. Now I beg you to listen to a far less lovely voice…my own.” There was laughter and fond heckling, then Fiona continued. “These girls come from families whose incomes are less than one pound a week. Imagine a family of six existing for a week on what some of us spend on magazines or chocolates. Because of their exceptional intelligence, these girls have been chosen to attend a school which will train them into a trade and afford them a way out of poverty. When the Reverend and Mrs. Barnett told me that the children must huddle together to avoid the rain that pours in from a damaged roof, I knew each and every one of you would be as outraged as I am.” She paused again, this time for a volley of “Hear! Hear!”s. “A new roof is needed desperately, but the roof is only the beginning. Once we have it, we will need more desks. And blackboards. And books. We will need more teachers and the money to pay them. Most of all, we will need you. We will need your continued help, your kind generosity, in order to expand the number and type of courses we can offer. We have turned out housekeepers, governesses, and cooks. Now we must do more. We must turn out shop owners instead of shop girls, managers instead of secretaries, presidents of companies rather than the pieceworkers they employ. Perhaps even a woman tea merchant or two, eh, Sir Tom?” she said, winking at Thomas Lipton.
“Good God, not another one!” Lipton cried.
“Mathematics, economics, accounting…yes, those are unusual courses for girls, but what should we teach them? Why are we educating them? So that they can read Shakespeare in a cold room by candlelight when the sweatshop closes? No, if they are to break the cycle of deprivation, they need better jobs, better wages, better opportunities….”
Joe looked at his wife as she spoke, and thought—as he had a million times before—that he had never seen a more captivating woman. He had known her since they were children, and it seemed to him that her beauty never diminished; it only grew richer. She was wearing a white blouse and a sky-blue silk jacket. Its matching skirt had been cleverly cut to hide her growing belly. She was three months pregnant with their second child, and radiant. Her black hair, thick and lustrous, had been swept up and secured with pearl combs. Her cheeks glowed pink with the warmth of the day and her incomparable sapphire eyes flashed with feeling. No one chatted or fidgeted as she spoke. Every eye was upon her.
Pride surged in him as he watched her, but beneath the feelings of pride, worry gnawed. There were smudges under her blue eyes and her lovely face looked thin. She does too much, he thought. She kept a punishing work schedule, rising at five, working in her study until eight, breakfasting with Katie and himself, then departing for her Mincing Lane offices. She was almost always home in time for the nursery tea, and then it was back to work until nine, when she and Joe met to share supper, a few glasses of wine, and details of their day. And somehow she still found the time to work tirelessly on behalf of her charitable foundation—the East London Aid Society—and the schools, orphanages, and soup kitchens which it funded.
He often told her that the problems of East London were far too huge for one woman to solve, and that she was only sticking her finger in a dike. He told her that real help had to come from above, from government. Programs had to be devised to help the poor and monies allotted by Parliament to fund them. Fiona would smile sweetly and tell him he was right, of course he was, but in the meantime, the such-and-such soup kitchen had a line down the street and around the corner, and if she sent a wagon to Covent Garden would he and his mates donate some fruit and vegetables? He would tell her yes and then he’d tell her to stop working so hard, or at least slow down, but she never listened.
Fiona finished her speech—to a burst of applause—and was engulfed by people eager to contribute. Joe was still clapping loudly himself when he felt a hand on his back. “Old chap!”
It was Freddie Lytton, Member of Parliament for Tower Hamlets, a district which included Whitechapel, where the girls’ school was located. Joe wondered what he was doing here. He doubted Freddie was making a contribution. Fiona had met him many times in the hope of getting government funds for her various causes, but all she’d ever received for her trouble were a few vague promises.
“Hello, Freddie,” Joe said now. “Glad to see you here.”
“Fantastic do,” Freddie said, swigging champagne. “Thought I heard someone say Fiona had raised two thousand. Splendid sum.”
Joe decided to put him on the spot. “It is a nice sum, isn’t it?” he said. “Be even nicer if the government was to kick in. Any chance of that?”
“As it happens, the Reverend and Mrs. Barnett came to see me, too. I put forth a request for funds in the Commons—five hundred quid—and made a damned good case for it, if I say so myself,” Freddie said smoothly. “Been pushing hard. Should have an answer any day.”
Joe was not placated. In his opinion, his wife worked harder on behalf of the children of Whitechapel than Whitechapel’s elected representative did, and it angered him.
“The morning papers said Parliament just approved the sum of forty thousand pounds to refurbish the queen’s stables,” he said. “Surely it can find five hundred quid for a school. Are children less important than horses?”
“Of course not.”
Joe gave him a shrewd look. “No, not children per se. Poor children, well, that’s another matter. Their fathers don’t vote, do they? Can’t vote. They don’t make enough money. God help you all when they can. You’ll all be out of a job.”
“It’ll take another Reform Act to extend the vote to the entire working class. And that won’t happen. Not on Salisbury’s watch,” Freddie said dismissively.
“The prime minister’s knocking on. He won’t be around forever and neither will his old hat policies,” Joe said, bristling at Freddie’s patronizing tone. “Perhaps one day government will allow all of its citizens to have a voice. Poor as well as rich.”
“The policies of government should be determined by those who best understand them,” Freddie said.
“The policies of government should be determined by those who have to suffer them, mate.”
“So what you’re saying is that any man—any shiftless know-nothing—should have a voice in government?”
“Why not? Plenty already do.”
“Oh, touché, old man. Touché,” Freddie said. There was a smile on his mouth, but there was a sudden flash of something hard and menacing in his eyes. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone, and he was his polished, affable self again. “Listen, Joe, we’re on the same side, essentially.”
Joe snorted.
“No, we are. We’re both concerned about East London, its people, and its prospects, are we not?”
“Yes, but…”
“I knew we were. That’s why I’m here, Joe. I’ve been wanting to talk to you. There’s talk of a general election being called in September, you know…”
Ah, that’s it, Joe thought. He knew Freddie hadn’t turned up to hear “Come into the Garden, Maud.”
“…and the Tories are certain to win it. I need your help. I need your support to keep Tower Hamlets a Liberal seat. We must all of us stand together as a bulwark against the Tories.”
Joe raised an eyebrow. “Who’s we?”
“The upper class.”
“Don’t count me in that group.”
“Don’t count you in what group?” said a female voice. Fiona had joined him. She squeezed his hand and smiled at him, her eyes shining.
“Your husband’s being very modest, Fiona—lovely do, by the way—I was just telling him that he’s a member of the upper class now. One of society’s leaders.”
“Freddie, I’m not—” Joe began.
“But you are,” Freddie said, as if reading his mind. “You’re from the working class, but no longer of it, Joe. You’re a self-made man. Owner of the biggest chain store in the country and the biggest produce concern as well. And you’ve done it all under your own steam. By harnessing the forces of private enterprise.”
“Blimey, Freddie, hop off your soap box, will you?” Joe said. “What do you want?”
“I want your endorsement. Yours and Fiona’s.”
“Mine? But I can’t even vote!” Fiona exclaimed.
“But you wield influence,” Freddie replied. “You have factories and warehouses in East London, both of you. You employ hundreds of men there, many of whom are eligible to vote. I need those votes. I won the seat as a Conservative then crossed the floor. The Tories want it back. Dickie Lambert’s their man and he’s damned aggressive. Means to give me a proper fight. He’s already canvassing in the pubs on the mere rumor of an election.”
“What makes you think the working man won’t vote Labour?” Fiona asked.
Freddie laughed. “You must be joking! They’re a bunch of potty Marxists! No one takes them seriously.”
“I think our workers can sort out the candidates for themselves,” Joe said. “They don’t need us to tell them how to vote.”
“Ah, but they do. You’re an example to them. They look up to you. They want to be like you and they’ll do as you do.”
“And what will you do for them?” Fiona asked.
“Work with private enterprise to bring more capital into East London. More refineries. Breweries. Factories. We’ll offer incentives to businessmen—tax relief, for example—to get them to relocate.”
“All that’s going to do is make the factory owners richer.”
“That’s beside the point,” Freddie said dismissively. “There’ll be more factories and more factories mean more jobs.”
Joe shook his head, astonished. Freddie’s lack of understanding about the lives of his own constituents was astonishing. Even offensive. “Yes, but what kind of jobs?” he asked, his voice rising. “The jam factory, the match works, the tannery, the docks—they pay nothing. The poor bastards taking those jobs work from dawn till dark six days a week and still have to decide between coal and food.”
Freddie gave Joe a pitying look, as if he were a backward child. “It certainly isn’t government’s fault if a man can’t manage his money,” he said.
“But there’s no bloody money to manage!” Joe nearly bellowed.
“There’s money enough to keep the public houses busy. I know that for a fact,” Freddie said. “I’ve overseen the closure of some of the worst. And that’s another thing the Liberals will do for East London—enforce law and order. I’m personally going to oversee a crackdown on crime. I’ve already started. I’ve put more officers on the streets and started river patrols as well. I’m pushing for harsher sentences for offenders.”
“Every politician says that,” Joe said.
“Not every politician means it, though. I’m after Sid Malone, you know. Yes, Malone.”
Joe’s heart lurched at the sound of that name. He stole a glance at Fiona. She caught his eye, warning him to say nothing. He looked away again quickly, not wanting Freddie to see what had passed between them. If Freddie had noticed, he gave no indication. He kept on talking.
“I haven’t got him yet,” he said, “but I will. I’m going to make an example of him. He’ll slip up. They all do. He’ll maim someone in a robbery, or kill someone, and then I’ll hang him. You have my word on that.”
Fiona was now so pale that Joe was afraid for her. He took her arm and was about to steer her toward a chair when Foster suddenly appeared at her elbow. Joe heard him quietly tell her that she had a visitor.
“Please ask him to join us,” she said.
“I think not, madam,” Foster replied. He inclined his head toward the glass-walled conservatory.
Joe followed his gaze and saw an unfamiliar man standing there. He was wearing an ill-fitting suit and what looked like a sling on one arm. Joe took an instant dislike to him and was about to ask Fiona who he was, but she was already excusing herself.
“A bit of business to attend to,” she said briskly. “Won’t be a minute.”
An uneasy feeling gripped Joe. He was protective of his wife—overly protective, she always said. Though he had no idea why, he wanted to stop Fiona and almost went after her, but then Freddie said something to him and Joe saw Fiona shake the man’s good hand. He told himself he was being silly.
“I’m sorry, Freddie, what was that?” he said.
“I said if Malone were hanged, it would send a strong message to the rest of East London’s thieves and cutthroats.”
“Law and order’s all well and good,” Joe said, “but it’s not the whole answer. Drunkenness, violence, crime…they all come from the same thing—poverty. Fix that and you fix the other problems, too.”
Freddie laughed. “You know, old mole, you’re sounding increasingly like one of those crackpot socialists. How exactly would you have the government fix poverty? Perhaps we should just open the doors to the Royal Mint and hand out guineas?”
Joe’s simmering irritation with Freddie flared into anger. He reminded himself that Freddie was a guest in his home, then he said, “How about this, mate? Offer working men and women decent wages for their work. Offer them compensation if they’re hurt on the job so their families don’t starve. Offer their children a proper education so they have something better to look forward to than a factory or the docks. You really want to win this election, Freddie? It’s easy. Offer your voters some hope.”
He excused himself, glancing toward the conservatory again. Fiona and her visitor were nowhere to be seen. The uneasiness he’d felt became alarm. He went into the house and collared Foster. “Where’s Mrs. Bristow?” he asked tersely.
“In her study with her visitor, sir,” Foster replied.
“Who is this bloke? Why’s he here?”
“His name is Michael Bennett, sir. He would not state his business.”
Joe headed toward the staircase. He didn’t like the sound of that. No respectable visitor would hesitate to state his business. He took the steps two at a time, wishing he’d followed his instincts instead of staying to argue with Freddie. The door to Fiona’s study was closed. He knocked, then opened it without waiting for an answer. Fiona was at her desk. Her eyes were red; she was clutching a handkerchief. Michael Bennett was seated across from her.
“Fiona, what’s going on? Are you all right?” Joe asked. He looked at Bennett. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m fine, Joe,” Fiona said. “This is Michael Bennett. He’s a private detective.”
“A detective? Why do you need a detective?”
Fiona looked away, then said, “To find Charlie.”
Joe’s face hardened. He turned to Bennett. “How much do we owe you?”
Bennett shifted in his chair. “There’s fifty quid outstanding. That’s what we agreed to, but that was before me arm and all. There’s doctor’s bills and…”
“Will a hundred do it?” Joe asked.
Bennett’s eyes widened. “Aye. Quite nicely,” he said.
Joe paid him. He pocketed the money and said, “As I was telling your wife—”
“That’s all, Mr. Bennett, thank you,” Joe said.
“But I haven’t told Mrs. Bristow everything yet. I was just—”
“Thank you, Mr. Bennett,” Joe said. The study door had closed. He opened it again.
Bennett shrugged and left. When he was gone, Joe turned back to Fiona. “What happened to his arm?” he asked her.
“It was broken. Charlie did it. He told Mr. Bennett to tell me that that was his answer. Loud and clear.”
Joe was furious. “Damn it, Fiona!” he yelled. “I thought we’d talked about this. I thought we agreed that it was much too dangerous to try to contact him. What were you going to do if he did agree to see you? Invite him to Sunday dinner? Have him dandle Katie on his knee? Maybe he could fit in a bedtime story between cracking safes and breaking heads.”
“I want to see him, Joe.”
“Well, I don’t want to see him. I don’t want him within ten miles of us. You know what he does. What he is. Bloody hell, Fiona! What were you thinking?”
Fiona’s beautiful blue eyes had filled with tears. There was a raw and wild sadness in them. “He’s my brother, Joe. My brother.”
“Fiona, Sid Malone is a criminal.”
“That’s not his name!” she said angrily, slapping her hands on the desk. “His name’s Charlie. Charlie Finnegan.”
“Not anymore it isn’t.”
“If I could just see him,” she said. “If I could just talk to him…”
“You could what? Convince him to go on the straight and narrow? Become an upstanding citizen? Not bloody likely. There are some fights you can’t win, luv. Even you. You’ve got to bury the past. He made his choice. He told you so himself.”
She looked away. He could see that she was struggling with herself.
“Fiona, I know what you’re thinking. Do not go after him yourself. It’s too dangerous.”
“But Joe, you heard Freddie Lytton. You heard what he said. He means to arrest Charlie. To hang him!”
“Fiona, promise me you won’t—” His words were interrupted by a knock on the door. “What is it?” he yelled.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but the Reverend and Mrs. Barnett are leaving and wish to say their good-byes,” came Foster’s voice.
“I’m coming, Mr. Foster,” Fiona said. She wiped her eyes, avoided Joe’s, and hurried out of the study, ending the discussion.
Joe sighed. He sat down on the desk. He didn’t want to rejoin the party. Not just yet. The argument with Fiona had rattled him. He looked around the room and his eyes fell on the tall piles of folders on top of her desk. He knew what they were—dozens of applications to the East London Aid Society. Fiona used the same hard-headed approach toward her charitable endeavors that she did to make business decisions. Applicants were required to submit a dossier on their organization and its administrators, and a detailed plan of how funds were to be spent. Visits were then made and interviews conducted. The foundation was well endowed, but its funds were not limitless and Fiona was adamant that every penny be well spent. Joe knew that she spent hours reading the applications. He often found her in here at one or two in the morning.
“Come to bed, luv,” he’d say.
“I will. Just one more,” she’d reply, knowing that another check written meant fewer hungry children.
There were reasons for her dedication. She had a good heart for starters, and couldn’t stand to see a stray dog go hungry. Plus, she was from East London, as was he, and they both wanted to see the place that had made them made better for the ones still there. But Joe knew there was more to it. If only she could change ten…a hundred…a thousand East London lives, they might begin to make up for the one life she couldn’t change—her brother’s.
He rose from his chair now, his forehead c. . .
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The Winter Rose
Jennifer Donnelly
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