The toff was drunk. He could hardly stand
straight, let alone find his way from the Strand Theatre to the cab rank outside
St Clement’s Church. He teetered on the edge
of the pavement and then staggered into the road.
Judging by the state of him, the masher must have spent most of his time in the
theatre bar. Clemency flexed her cold fingers – she needed supple hands and the
lightest of light touches to dip into the flash cove’s pockets.
He might not know what day of the week it was, but he could still turn nasty
if he caught her picking his Lucy Locket.
A bitter east wind brought with it tiny flakes of snow.
Her ragged clothes were no protection against the cold, and her teeth were
chattering like a pair of magpies. The wind
funnelled between the buildings on either side of Fleet Street, bringing with it
the damp chill from the
Essex
marshes. It snatched at the man’s opera cloak, causing it to billow out behind him:
this gave Clemency the perfect opportunity to slip her hand into the pocket of his
dinner jacket. But just as she did so, he
lost his footing on the icy pavement and stumbled against her.
‘What the hell?’ His voice was slurred, and
he glared at her through bloodshot, half-closed eyes.
‘Help, police! I’m being attacked.’
‘It’s all right, mister.
I was just trying to save you from falling.’ Clemency’s fingers curled around
the bulging leather wallet. She allowed her
shawl to slip to the ground, exposing her thin cotton blouse with the buttons open
almost to her slender waist. She might be
skinny and underdeveloped for an eighteen-year-old, with a boyish flat chest and
just a hint of budding titties, but some blokes liked it that way. Not that she
ever let them go too far, but if it distracted their attention for a few seconds,
then that was all she ever needed to make a getaway.
She smiled up at him. ‘Want a hand across the road to the cabstand, guv?’
He gave her a shove that sent her sprawling
on the ground. ‘Get off me, you little whore.’
He staggered crabwise across the
Strand
, hiccuping and cursing as he went. Clemency
scrambled to her feet, snatched her wet shawl from the pavement, and raced off towards
Fleet Street with his wallet clutched in her hand.
She hardly felt the cold as her bare feet skimmed over the paving stones.
She ran until her lungs felt as though they would burst.
She had not heard the dreaded shout of ‘Stop thief’ or the piercing blast
from a police whistle, and, as she reached Ludgate Hill, she fell into a dark doorway. She huddled in a corner, sheltering from the
snowstorm and gasping for breath. Apart from
the muffled sound of horses’ hooves on the cobblestones, and the rumble of carriage
wheels, there was blessed silence. No one
was chasing her. The poor bugger probably
hadn’t even noticed that his wallet was missing.
He would only discover his loss when the cabby delivered him to his door.
She chuckled. Serve him right, the
dirty dog.
She opened the wallet and stifled a gasp
of dismay. It had felt fat and she had imagined
that it was stuffed with fivers or even tenners, but the only paper inside was a
programme for the comic opera at the Strand Theatre.
She frowned as she attempted to read the large print, holding the crumpled
sheet of paper so that it caught the dim glow from the street lamp.
It wasn’t that her eyes were weak; she could spot a gold watch, a full purse
or a bobby’s uniform a mile off, but she had spent more time wagging school than
attending classes. She could read, but it
was a struggle, especially if there were big words.
She threw the programme out onto the slushy pavement.
Either the toff wasn’t a music lover, or the production had been so boring
that it had driven him to the bar. She tipped
the wallet upside down and a small photograph fell out onto her lap.
She recognised the simpering face of the voluptuous leading lady, Dorabella
Darling, which only confirmed Clemency’s opinion that the chap was a masher. Well, tonight hadn’t been his night, had it? He’d obviously been turned down by the
darling Dorabella and got himself sozzled into the bargain.
She shook the wallet again – but there was no money, not even a halfpenny
or a farthing. The bloke would have had trouble
getting home anyway, silly sod. Her first
reaction was to toss the wallet in the gutter, but she thought better of it and
tucked it into her skirt pocket. It would
fetch a couple of shillings at the pop shop when old Minski opened up in the morning,
but that wouldn’t buy supper tonight. Wrapping
her shawl around her head, she went out into the swirling snow.
It was too late to trudge back to the
Strand
and, anyway, the theatre crowds would have dispersed and gone home by now.
She would catch her death of cold if she were to hang round outside the boozers
in the hopes of begging a copper or two.
She was good at acting the waif, pleading for money for her sick mother and starving
brothers and sisters, but that only worked in the summer when the living was easy
and there were geezers with their pockets jingling with hard-earned wages, and their
bellies filled with beer.
She put her head down and broke into a jogging
run, ignoring offers from men loitering in pub doorways who were looking for an
uncomplicated tumble in a back alley. Clemency
was not going down that path. She had seen
her mother go that way and witnessed the effect that it had had on her.
She was prepared to steal, cheat and lie, but she was not going to sell herself
for money.
By the time she reached
Cheapside
, she was wet and chilled to the bone. She
couldn’t feel her feet or her fingertips: she knew if she did not get home soon
she would join the rest of the stiffs that regularly froze to death in doorways,
and under the bridges that spanned the
Thames
. She forced her legs to move in stumbling
steps; she was getting near now, very close to
St Paul
’s Church and
Knightrider Street
. She just had to go a hundred yards or so
down the street, turn left into
Stew Lane
, and then feel her way in the dark to the steps leading down to the damp basement
room she called home. The snow had funnelled
into drifts at the end of the alleyway, and the wooden steps that led to the area
were outlined with crisp snow, like the icing on buns in the baker’s shop window. Clemency trod carefully, not wanting to end
up at the bottom of the steps with a broken ankle, or worse.
As she opened the door and went inside, the
stench of unwashed bodies, cheap tallow candles and stale alcohol caught her at
the back of the throat, making her retch. Slumped on a pile of sacks, her mother
lay sprawled liked a broken doll, her mouth hanging open and her lips vibrating
with drunken snoring. On the floor beside
her was an empty gin bottle, and cockroaches swarmed over her bare legs and feet. A large Norwegian rat was sitting on the upturned
tea chest that served as a table, finishing off a stale crust of bread.
It turned its head to look at Clemency with small, ruby eyes, and ambled
off with a swish of its tail when she hurled the wallet at it, missing it by inches.
‘Hello, Clemmie.’ In the flickering light
issuing from the stub of a candle, Clemency could just make out the pale face of
her elder brother Jack as he sat, propped up against the damp brick wall, his crippled
legs sticking out at unnatural angles from his emaciated body.
‘Any luck today?’ His deep, man’s voice was at odds with his child-sized
frame, but there was neither self-pity nor resentment in his tone and he was smiling.
His braveness in the face of their dire poverty
and his own pitiful state never failed to bring Clemency close to tears.
Sometimes she wished he would shout and storm at the cruel illness that had
left him unable to walk or even to stand on his withered limbs.
She went to retrieve the wallet and placed it in his hand.
‘Not much. I got this from a drunken
masher outside the theatre: there was nothing in it but a rotten old theatre programme,
and a photograph of that singing woman.’
‘I bet she don’t sing no better than you,
Clemmie.’
‘Maybe or maybe not - but she’s rich and
we’re poor. Worse than that, we ain’t got
nothing for supper.’ She jerked her head
in the direction of their mother. ‘Looks
like she spent that money I give her this morning on booze.
She promised me she’d get food.’
‘He come here again,’ Jack said, his cheerful
smile fading into a scowl. ‘Said he had a
friend what was eager to make her acquaintance.
And we all knows what that means.’
‘The bastard!
One day I’ll get him, Jack. I’ll catch
him when he ain’t looking and I’ll stick a knife right through his black heart.’
‘Don’t talk like that, girl.
If anyone was to kill the geezer it ought to be me.
If I wasn’t just half a man I’d do it meself.’
Clemency went down on her knees in front
of him and took Jack’s face between her hands.
‘You’re more of a man than he is, Jack Skinner.’
‘Get on with you, silly mare.’ Jack’s brown
eyes filled with tears and his lips trembled.
He pulled her hands away from his face and clasped them to his chest. ‘You’ll have
me weeping like a girl if you carry on like that.’
She squeezed his fingers and leant over to
kiss him on the forehead. ‘You’ll do, fellah. One day we’ll be rich and we’ll eat breakfast,
dinner and tea with supper thrown in. We’ll
live in a proper house, not just one stinking basement room with cess coming up
through the floor. We’ll get Ma away from
the drink and that pimp what’s ruined her life.’
Patting his hands, Clemency got to her feet.
She looked round the dank room and shivered.
The grate was filled with ash, but they had not had enough money to buy coal or
even firewood for over a week. It was so
cold in the basement room that the windows were frosted on the inside.
Her mother’s bare arms and legs were mottled and purple, although she probably
had enough alcohol in her bloodstream to keep her from dying of the cold.
Clemency shot a worried glance at Jack: he was alarmingly pale and drowsy-looking. She must get him something to eat, and some
fuel for the fire, or he might slip into the permanent sleep that claimed so many
of the undernourished poor in midwinter.
‘I couldn’t get up the steps today, they
was too slippery. So I never got to play
me tin whistle outside of
St Paul
’s.’ Jack’s dark eyes burned like lamps against his pallid skin.
‘The other buskers will wonder what’s become of me -
the crippled boy.’
‘Don’t speak of yourself like that, I won’t
have it. You’re a wonderful player, Jack.’
‘It’s the only thing I can do.’ Jack picked
up the penny whistle that lay at his side, and he stroked it as tenderly as if it
had been a kitten or a puppy. ‘I can make
a hatful of coppers when the worshippers comes out of the cathedral.’
‘Well, they’re all tucked up in their nice
cosy homes tonight, so don’t you fret. I’ll
pop out and get us some supper and you sit tight.
I’ll be home in a couple of ticks.’
‘You can’t go out again tonight, Clemmie.
Not in this weather.’
‘Don’t you worry about me, Jack. You keep
an eye on Ma.’ She bent over her mother and began searching her pockets.
Edith made a noise that was halfway between a snort and a groan, but she
did not wake up. Her pockets, as Clemency
had feared, were empty, but she dared not tell Jack.
She knew he would rather starve to death than allow her to go out on the
dip again at this time of night. She closed
her hand into a fist and held it up for him to see.
‘She ain’t spent it all. The bastard,
Hardiman, must have missed this little threepenny bit.
I’ll run to the pub get us some supper.’
She left the room, closing her ears to Jack’s
protests. The snow underfoot was so cold
that it burned her feet, but Clemency was impervious to the weather.
She was on a mission and no one and nothing was going to stop her.
There was a respectable pub in
Carter Lane
used by reporters from Fleet Street, bank clerks and businessmen.
It was not as rough as the pubs nearer to the docks and wharves, and they
sold hot pies and buttered rum punch. She
went inside and gasped as the heat hit her in the throat like a punch, and the thick
pall of tobacco smoke made her cough. The
bar was packed with men, smoking, drinking, eating and chatting.
She received a few cursory glances, but none of them seemed interested in
a ragged girl who had not the strength to elbow her way through the forest of men
in order to make her way to the bar.
Hunger growled in her empty stomach like
an angry tiger. She was
desperate, and she would not stand for being ignored: Jack was close to death
from cold and starvation, and Ma would need something other than gin in her belly
when she awakened from her stupor. A burly
market porter got up from his seat to make his way to the bar, and, seizing her
chance, Clemency jumped up on his chair and began to sing ‘Home Sweet Home’
in a clear soprano. Gradually, table
by table, the men stopped talking and turned their heads to stare at the girl who
sang with the sweetness of a nightingale.
She brought such pathos to the words that, by the end of the song, many of them
were left with tears in their eyes. There
was an emotional silence, broken only by sounds of men clearing their throats or
blowing their noses, and then someone started clapping.
Soon the taproom was echoing to the sound of appreciative cheers.
Taking advantage of her success, Clemency leapt down from the chair, snatched
a cloth cap from a drayman’s head, and went round to each punter in turn until the
cap was filled with coppers.
‘Well done, little girl,’ the young barman
said, grinning down at her with an appreciative sparkle in his hazel eyes.
Clemency tipped the contents onto the bar and tossed the cap to the drayman. He caught it with a whoop of appreciation
and stuck it back on his head. She gave the
barman her best smile, ignoring the insult of being referred to as a “little girl”. There were times when it paid to be thought
of as a child, and this was one of them.
‘I’ll have three of them hot meat pies, mister.
And a jug of buttered rum punch, if you please.’
‘That’ll be twopence deposit on the jug,
missy.’
‘That’s all right.
I got enough here. I’ll bring it back
tomorrow, first thing.’
The barman wrapped three hot pies in a piece
of butter muslin and handed them to her.
‘You got a fine singing voice.’ He poured
rum into an earthenware jug, added a dollop of butter, a generous helping of sugar,
and some lemonade. He went to the fire, took
a poker from its blazing coals and thrust it into the liquid where it sizzled, sending
up clouds of fragrant steam. ‘You can give
us another song tomorrow,’ he said, handing the jug to Clemency.
‘You brought tears to me eyes, girl.’
‘Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t.’ She flashed
him a smile.
‘You got the voice of an angel, miss.’ An
old man with gnarled fingers and skin wrinkled like a prune patted Clemency on the
shoulder.
‘Ta, Granddad.’ His rheumy eyes were either
watering from the smoky atmosphere or filled with tears, Clemency did not know which,
but she kissed him on the cheek anyway. She
carried the precious bundle of food and the pitcher of rum punch carefully so as
not to spill a drop, and the men who had previously ignored her stood aside to let
her pass. As the pub door closed behind her,
Clemency was conscious of a feeling of elation that was not just due to the anticipation
of a good meal. She had felt a connection
with those men as she sang to them, a sharing of emotion that she could not explain. The snow was falling in earnest now.
The streetlights were almost obliterated in the swirling, dancing flakes
that floated down so pure and white from the dark night sky.
She quickened her pace. She must get
home before the food cooled and the heat went from the punch.
She slept well that night with a full stomach
and a head that swam pleasantly from the unaccustomed alcohol.
She did not feel the cold seeping up through the crude stone slabs that were
laid on bare earth, nor the bites of the fleas and lice that inhabited her bed of
straw. She dreamed that she was on stage
in the Strand Theatre, singing her heart out, and the toffs in the audience were
clapping and cheering. She awakened with
a start, and she realised that the sound of flesh on flesh was not clapping, but
slapping. She sat upright, blinking and shaking
off the remnants of sleep.
‘Get off me, you sod,’ Edith screamed, lashing
out with her feet and fists at the man who was standing over her, slapping her about
the face and body with the flat of his huge hand.
‘Get up then, you idle slut.
I got work for you.’
Clemency leapt to her feet, making a grab
for his arm in an effort to stop him hitting her mother.
‘Leave her be, Hardiman.’
He threw her off so that she staggered and
fell back on the pile of straw that served as her bed.
She struggled to her feet as Jack dragged his withered limbs across the stone
floor. ‘Get off her, you bastard.’
‘Don’t,
Jack,’ Clemency cried, terrified that one blow from Hardiman could kill him. She threw herself between them.
‘Leave Ma be. Can’t you see she’s
sick?’
‘The bitch is still drunk.’ Hardiman caught
Edith by the hair and dragged her to her feet.
She screamed but she did not attempt to fight
him off. ‘For pity’s sake, Todd.’
‘Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.’
Still holding Edith by her fiery red hair, Hardiman turned to Clemency with a threatening
scowl. ‘You stay back.
Your ma has to earn her living like the rest of us.
Say another word and I’ll give you what for.’
‘I ain’t frightened of you,’ Clemency cried,
sticking out her chin. ‘You’re a pimp and
a rotten bully. She’s had enough of you making
her sell herself to dirty old buggers.’
Edith rolled her eyes, stretching her arms
out to Clemency in a pleading gesture. ‘Don’t get his temper up, Clemmie.
I’ll be all right.’
‘You’re coming with me,’ Hardiman said, twisting
her hair around his hand with a spiteful jerk.
‘And you’ll walk proper. No calling out for
help or making out you’re badly done to.’
‘You’re scum,’ Jack roared, trying ineffectually
to get past Clemency. ‘If I had me legs I’d
knock seven bells out of you.’
‘But you ain’t got no legs, have you, sonny?’ Hardiman grinned, displaying a row of blackened
stumps that had once been teeth. ‘You’re
a cripple what lives off the immoral earnings of his slut of a mother.
And it won’t be long afore your sister goes down that road too.
I got me eye on you, Clemmie. But
first we needs to fatten you up a bit.’ He plunged his hand in the pocket of his
pea jacket and producing a silver sixpence, he tossed it on the floor at Clemency’s
feet. ‘There’s an advance on your ma’s earnings,
not that she’s worth more than a threepenny bit, but you put on a bit of flesh,
chicken, and I reckon I could get a sov a time for you.’
Clemency fisted her hands and went to punch
him, but he fended her off with the toe of his boot.
‘Sparky little thing, ain’t you? Well,
the punters like a bit of spirit.’
‘Don’t touch her, Todd,’ Edith screamed. ‘I’m warning you.’
‘I’ll see you in hell,’ Jack said, beating
the flagstones with his fists.
‘Very likely.’ Hardiman hoisted Edith over
his shoulder and slammed out of the basement.
‘I will kill him, Clemmie.’ Jack punctuated
his words by punching the ground. ‘One day
I’ll get him, if it’s the last thing I does.’
‘He’s a devil, Jack.
I hates him.’ Clemency stared at the frosted windowpanes, watching helplessly
as Hardiman hefted her mother up the area steps.
Her body hung slackly over his shoulder like a rag doll and her hair trailed in
the snow.
‘Why does she let him treat her like that? She could set the rozzers on him for what
he’s done to her.’ Jack ground his knuckles into his eyelids as if he were trying
to gouge out the sight of his mother’s helplessness.
‘Why?’
‘I dunno. But for all he’s done to her, I
think in a funny sort of way that she still loves him.
Don’t ask me why, but whenever I’ve tried to talk to her about Hardiman,
on the odd times when she’s sober, she says he weren’t always like this.
She says he can be kind and loving.
If that’s kind and loving, then I don’t want none of it.’
Jack sniffed and wiped his nose on the frayed
sleeve of his jacket. ‘I hates being so bloody helpless.
I hates meself for being a cripple, Clemmie.
I’m no use to man nor beast.’
‘No, don’t you never say that, Jack. You’re a better man than any I know. One day
you’ll walk proper, I’m sure of it.’
Jack took a deep breath and gave her a wobbly
smile. ‘You know that ain’t true, poppet.
But I swear to God, I will do for Hardiman.
One day, I will.’
‘You’re not to talk like that.’ Clemency
bent down to retrieve the sixpence. ‘I’d like to ram this up his bum so far that
he coughed it up out of his mouth, but seeing as how that’s impossible, I’ll go
out and spend it on candles, coal and something to eat.’
‘No!’
Jack’s deep voice reverberated round the bare walls.
‘It’s blood money. Help me up the
steps, Clemmie. I’ll beg in the streets rather
than take anything from him.’
‘It’s freezing outside.
You wouldn’t last five minutes out there.
Be sensible, Jack.’ Clemency snatched up her damp shawl and wrapped it around her
head and shoulders. ‘I got to take the pitcher
back to the pub and they’ll give me back me deposit.
I’ll see what I can get with it, but only if you promises to stay here until
I gets back.’
Jack bowed his head, saying nothing, but she could see his shoulders heave and she
winced, feeling his pain. There was nothing
she could say, and she hurried from the dingy basement, and set off for
Carter Lane
.
The taproom of the Crown and Anchor was empty
except for a couple of old men crouched by the fire in the inglenook.
The potman was busy collecting tankards that had been left from the previous
night’s drinking session, and a whey-faced girl of twelve or thirteen was wiping
the wooden tables with a damp rag. Clemency
marched up to the bar and set the empty pitcher on the polished oak counter. ‘Shop!’
The door behind the bar opened and a middle-aged
woman wearing a mobcap and a frown gave her an appraising glance.
She hesitated, and then bustled up to the bar counter wiping her hands on
her apron. ‘Yes?’
‘I come to claim back me deposit, missis. Twopence it was.’
‘I doubt if the jug is worth twopence. Who give it you?’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’
‘We’ll see.’
The woman went to the inner door. ‘Ned, come here.’ She turned back to face
Clemency, folding her arms across her ample bosom.
‘Ned was serving last night. He’ll sort you
out. And what’s a child like you doing in
a place like this, I ask myself? And you
with barely any clothes on your back and bare feet too.
In this weather! What is your ma thinking
about letting you go out like that?’
Clemency shifted from one foot to the other. She did not want to admit that her mother
was always dead drunk, or else flat on her back beneath some punter, or the bastard,
Todd Hardiman. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m an orphan, ain’t I?
Not that it’s any of your business, lady.’
‘Mrs Hawkes to you, girl.’
‘What’s the problem, Ma?’ Ned Hawkes poked
his curly head round the door. A smile of
recognition lit his face as he looked past his mother and saw Clemency.
‘Why, if it ain’t the youngster what sang like a lark last night and had
hard men weeping into their beer.’
‘So you know her then, Ned?’ Nell Hawkes’s
expression softened as she looked at her son.
‘Give her what’s due to her and then send her round to the kitchen.
The poor little scrap looks perished, and I daresay a cup of tea wouldn’t
do her no harm.’
She disappeared through the door leaving Ned to take two pennies out of the till,
which opened with a loud kerching.
He handed them to Clemency with a friendly grin.
‘There you are young ’un.’
‘Ta!’ Clemency seized the money and was about
to leave when Ned called her back.
‘Don’t go, nipper.
Didn’t you hear what me mum said?
She don’t give out cups of tea to every waif and stray what comes begging.’
‘I ain’t begging.
And she can keep her tea for them what is.’
Ned threw back his head and laughed. ‘Hoity toity!’ He lifted the flap in the bar
counter and stood looking at her with a mixture of admiration and amusement. ‘What’s
your name, nipper?’
Clemency shot him a sideways glance. He was not exactly good-looking, but he had
an open, pleasant face with a snub nose and a generous mouth.
He was not much above average in height, but he looked as though he could
heft a barrel of beer on his broad shoulders without too much difficulty.
Last night it had served her purpose to be thought of as a child, but now
it was mortifying. ‘Me name is Clemency Skinner
and I’ll have you know I ain’t a nipper.
I’ll be nineteen in September.’
He executed a mock bow, chuckling. ‘Sorry,
Miss Skinner. But whatever age you happen
to be, you sing like an angel. How would
you like to come along tonight and give the punters another treat.’
She was not sure if he was serious or simply
teasing her. She eyed him suspiciously. ‘What sort of treat, mister?’
‘It’s Ned, Ned Hawkes.
And I meant a song or two, of course.’
‘Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.
Tell your Ma I thanks her for the offer of tea, but I got business to do
what won’t wait.’ Clemency met his eyes and
relented when she read genuine hurt and disappointment in his frank gaze.
She smiled. ‘I might just happen along around nine o’clock.’
She had the satisfaction of seeing his features relax, and she left the pub
with the coins jingling in her pocket. The
cold outside hit her like a smack in the face, and she gasped as the icy air seemed
to freeze in her lungs. She had secreted
the toff’s wallet in her skirt pocket and now she headed for Minski’s pawnshop in
Fish Street
.
Minski was huddled behind the counter in
his cellar room beneath a tobacconist’s shop.
He was muffled in an army greatcoat with several scarves wound round his scraggy
neck, and his fingers protruded from greasy woollen mittens like bent twigs.
‘Hello, young Clemmie. What you got for me
today?’
She slapped the wallet down on the counter. She had been dealing with Minski, who was
a notorious fence, since she first started pickpocketing at the age of seven. Hardiman had started her in the business by
making sure that Ma was permanently drunk and incapable.
He had found Clemency one day, hanging round in
Stew Lane
, cold and hungry, having returned from the ragged school and finding herself locked
out of their lodgings. Jack had been out
selling bootlaces in the street, and Hardiman had promised that he would take her
to her mother. Instead, he had taken her
to
St Paul
’s Churchyard and left her with a group of urchins who worked the area picking pockets. Operating in pairs, they taught her how to
lift a handkerchief from a gentleman’s pocket so that he was quite unaware that
he had been robbed, and how to avoid capture if the victim raised the alarm. Clemency had learned quickly and had soon
become more adept and skilful than any of the boys.
She had graduated on to scarf pins and pocket books with no trouble at all,
and Minski was always waiting to do a deal.
‘How much?’ Clemency demanded.
‘It’s good leather and it’s nearly new.’
He examined the wallet, peering at it in
the glimmer of light from an oil lamp. ‘Empty, was it?’
Clemency nodded.
‘I’ll give you a tanner for it.’
‘You old villain.
It’s worth ten times that.’
‘Not to me it ain’t.
Take it or leave it, young Clemmie.’
She
thought quickly. She was used to bargaining
with Minski and she knew that he was trying to do her down.
She strolled round the dank cellar, rifling through the racks of clothes
that hung damply in the foul air. If she
were to oblige young Ned Hawkes, and she was considering it, then she would need
to dress up a bit. She fingered a pink satin
gown, stroking the cool, slippery material with the tips of her fingers.
It felt like a baby’s skin and it was the most beautiful thing she had ever
seen, but much too fine for her to wear, and not at all suitable.
The punters would think she was a harlot touting for business.
Reluctantly, she passed it by and found a navy-blue serge skirt and a white,
if slightly yellowed, cambric blouse with a high neck and full sleeves.
‘Throw in these duds and we got a deal.’
‘I ain’t the bleeding Sally Army, girl. This ain’t a charity.’
Clemency snatched the garments off the rail;
she knew by the whining tone of his voice that she was going to win.
‘And a pair of boots.’
‘Over my dead body.’
Clemency chuckled. ‘I’m sure Hardiman could
arrange it. Tell you what, Minski.
I’ll give you another twopence for the boots and I won’t tell Hardiman of
our little deal.’
She left the cellar wearing a pair of rather
down-at-heel, but quite serviceable, high-button boots, and with the skirt and blouse
wrapped in a tight bundle beneath her arm.
On her way home, she stopped at a shop in
Knightrider Street
, and purchased a bag of coal, some kindling, a bundle of candles, a poke of tea
and one of sugar, a loaf and a pot of beef dripping.
She gave the shop boy a halfpenny to carry the coal back to
Stew Lane
. He managed to heft it to their door but
slipped as he attempted to negotiate the snow-covered steps and scraped his shins. His flesh was mottled and so cold that, at
first, the wound did not bleed. He seemed
almost too weak to cope with the pain and his small face, covered with weeping sores,
puckered into a grimace. Tears spilled from his eyes and rolled down his hollow
cheeks. Stricken with pity, Clemency gave
him her last penny for his trouble. His simian
face cracked into a grin, and he scampered up the remaining steps as if the devil
were after him.
With her hand on the latch, Clemency was
about to go inside when she heard raised voices.
One was Jack’s and the other she did not recognise.
She burst into the room to find a brute of a man with his hands round Jack’s
throat.
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