Birdcage Walk (3 page)

George had risen and was pulling his jacket back on, grimacing as he smelt the grease that had permeated the weft of its fabric.

“I’m off to the pub to spend a bit of my own money that I earned this week, if I’ve got your say-so, that is,” he snapped.

“Oh, don’t be angry, George. We’ve just been so short recently. I don’t begrudge you spending your money and having an evening out. I’m sorry.”

Just fifteen, she sounded more like a mother than theirs had ever been, and his temper dissolved as he realised it.

“Look, there’s four shillings from my wages,” he said, handing over the coins. “I’m keeping a bit back for tonight. I’m not angry really. I said I’d take Charlotte out, and I’m going to be late, that’s all.” He pressed his hand to his sister’s pale cheek and, with one more futile glance in the direction of his father, headed out into the night.

When he reached Charlotte’s place, less than a minute’s walk from his own, he saw that the door stood ajar. Beyond it he could hear the grizzling of the baby mingling with Annie’s voice as she sang softly to soothe him. George knocked, and after a pause stepped inside, looking cautiously about in case Annie’s husband Ted was slumped in his armchair, having a nap before he took up a stool in the Rosemary Branch.

In fact, there was no one in the room, though the amount of furniture crammed into it made it seem crowded; hulking items of dark wood that Annie had taken when her mother died, even though they couldn’t spare the space. A round face appeared in the doorway to the tiny scullery at the back of the house.

“That you, George?” asked Annie. “Have I left the door open again? Ted’s always telling me off about it. Says I’m going get us all robbed or worse one of these days. Are you after Charlotte?”

George nodded, his mood darkening as he realised she wasn’t there.

“She’s gone down the Rosemary Branch already, love. Ted said he’d buy her one if she walked down with him for company and she was gasping so off she went. She said to tell you she’d see you inside.” George was cross but he didn’t want Annie to see it.

“Will you be coming down later, once you’ve got Eddie off?’ he asked. Annie sighed and shook her head.

“Chance would be a fine thing. No, I won’t leave him alone. I heard of a woman up Stepney who did that, went and got tight with her bloke in the pub. When she come back there’d been a fire. Three kiddies all burned and dead. I never liked the taste of drink much anyway. Go on now, George, they’ve only been gone half hour.” She retreated to where she’d put the baby down, who was clamouring for her again.

“Oh, and shut the door behind you, will you love?” she called over her shoulder.

As George retraced his steps up Avebury Street, he thought about simply going home. The sky had mellowed to a soft gold at the horizon now that the sun was no longer visible, and deepened to darkest blue high above, where the first stars could be seen. If he lay on his bed, he would be able to see a sliver of this same sky through the window. He often lay there as the last of the daylight leached away and the moon’s reflection shone true upon the oily surface of the canal below.

If he went back now, he could sit with Cissy and work on his drawings, copied from the plates they set at the print, while she did her mending. Lit by candle once it was dark, the mean rooms took on an almost cosy aspect, and you got used to the smell of tallow. But even as he sighed for it his feet were crossing the bridge over the canal and making for the pub.

Trade was brisk for so early in the week. George stood in the doorway for some time, peering at the jumble of faces crammed in around the wooden tables, trying to spot Charlotte’s. It occurred to him that he could still turn around and not bother, show her that he didn’t like her going on ahead without him when they’d had an arrangement, but then he saw her. He should have thought of it; she was perched on a high stool next to her brother-in-law, who had taken up his usual spot at the bar, the publican’s skinny dog curled up beneath him.

George stayed where he was for a few more moments, waiting to see if she looked around, keeping an eye out for him. She was deep in conversation with Ted and another man, who stood between the two stools, balancing on his heels and resting his half-drunk pint against his chest. George couldn’t hear their conversation but even from the back Charlotte seemed unusually animated, not her usual guarded self.

As he watched, she gestured with her hand and knocked against the other man’s glass, making the contents slop against his shirt. Charlotte let out a laugh that became a shriek as her stool almost went from under her. The man with the spilt drink steadied it, his free hand clamping briefly on her waist before moving down to steady the wooden seat. Charlotte barely reacted to his touch and soon resumed talking, but Ted seemed to feel George’s gaze from across the room and glanced over at him. Now he’d been spotted at the door, George strode over to the group, lunging in to peck Charlotte on the cheek before addressing any of them.

“Oh George, here you are!” she said. Her words didn’t slur, but her eyes were slightly glazed, her cheeks aflame in the close, smoky pub. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you but Ted said he’d treat me to one if I went along with him.”

At this, Ted raised his glass in George’s direction, his eyes glittering.

“Annie did give you the message, didn’t she, George?” Charlotte twittered on.

“I need to get myself a drink,” he said gruffly in reply. He looked quickly at Ted and Charlotte’s glasses and saw they were full enough. He wouldn’t buy the stranger a drink. The stolid barmaid was polishing glasses at the other end of the bar, so George made his way over to her. As he waited for her to put down her filthy cloth and acknowledge him, a small hand pulled on his arm.

“Are you cross that I went on, George?” Charlotte had followed him and was now looking up at him meekly. “I won’t do it again; I didn’t think it would matter. I said to Annie to—“

“Who’s that feller you’re with?” George interrupted. Charlotte shook her head dismissively.

“Oh, he’s one of Ted’s mates. He works on the railways with him. He’s nice enough.”

“Looks like he don’t mind you too much either. I saw him touching you.” He saw the softness leave her face as she absorbed his accusation, her strange-coloured eyes narrowing. She tutted and turned her face away.

“Don’t be daft. He’s friendly like that to everyone, he don’t mean any harm by it.”

With that, she went back to her seat, her little boots disturbing the sawdust on the floor as she went. George ordered his pint and drank half of it alone, too angry to join them. Eventually the heat of his temper left him and, feeling foolish on his own, he made his way back over. Charlotte was all smiles at his arrival.

“You took your time over there,” she said, clutching at his arm and smiling her forgiveness. He felt anger prickle again.

“Now Johnny, this is my feller George,” Charlotte blithely continued. “I told you he was coming. George, Johnny works with Ted, like I said. We bumped into him when we came in and he joined us for one.”

George reluctantly shook the newcomer’s hand, who smiled warmly at him even as George gripped his hand like a vice.

“Johnny here has got ever so many funny stories,” said Charlotte as she led the three men over to a corner table that had just been vacated. “He’s had us in stitches. Johnny, tell George that one about the bloke with the wooden leg. Do you know, he used to twist it round so it was on backwards and then pretend he’d broken it and start groaning and all sorts. Go on, Johnny, tell him.”

“Well, you’ve told it for him now, haven’t you?” asked Ted.

“I have an’ all! Sorry, Johnny. Tell George the other one, then, about your aunt getting herself stuck in the bath. This one’s hilarious.”

During the anecdote, which was long and rambling and lost much of its comic effect in the second telling, George smiled as politely as his mood would allow, fiddling with his now empty glass. In a short lull he got to his feet to buy another pint, only to realise that the story hadn’t finished. Eventually, bored, Ted went back to the bar to speak to the publican and reclaim his stool and Johnny, not insensitive to George’s dark countenance despite his intoxication, soon weaved his way after his older friend.

“Alone at last,” exclaimed Charlotte once he’d left. “God, I thought they were never going to go. That Johnny can’t take his drink.”

“You weren’t acting like you minded them being there before,” George observed, the sour taste of his pint rising up into his mouth like the petty jealousy in his voice.

Charlotte laid her hand on his arm and reached over to kiss him, catching the edge of his chin as he held his distance.

“Oh, for god’s sake!” she said, suddenly exasperated. “How long are you going to keep this up for? If you’re just going to sit there looking like thunder then I may as well be off.” She went to stand, but George pulled her back down and kissed her clumsily on the mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just like it better when it’s the two of us, that’s all.” Mollified, she rubbed his hand with her thumb.

“Yes, it’s nice when we’re on our own. Last week we had a really good time, didn’t we? Shared all our secrets. You’re quite the romantic when you’ve had a few, George. I liked it.” She pulled him closer. “Do you remember what we planned together?”

Their most recent evening out together, he knew, had been spent in the opposite corner of the same pub. More than that, he could barely recall. Certain images flitted through his mind—colliding with the door to the gents’ and the laughter that followed when he looked at the offending wood with surprise; the cool porcelain of the tiles he’d leaned his head against as he relieved himself. Of what had passed between him and Charlotte he couldn’t remember more than the grain of the wooden table as she spoke on and her sudden kisses, which were dry and insistent. After the first few pints he had switched to spirits to match Charlotte but he wasn’t used to it: he’d been sick outside work the next morning, though there had been nothing in him to bring up but bile, which stung his throat. Charlotte was looking at him now with a strange half-smile.

“You don’t bloody remember, do you? Well, I do. I remember everything about that night.” Her eyes had begun to fill ominously.

“I remember we was talking about our mothers,” he said wildly, regretting it as soon as the words were out. Their shared loss of the mothers they felt ambivalent about had made her precious when they first met, but he didn’t want to talk about his tonight. Looking at Charlotte’s expression, however, he knew it was too late to change the subject.

“Go on, tell me about yours again,” he said. “I’ll listen better this time.”

“Well, there ain’t much to tell, and what there is I told you before, and even though you weren’t giving much away in return,” she said, her tears gone and petulance spoiling her mouth. “You really were drunk, weren’t you? Well, what is there that’s worth repeating? She was never much of a mother, really. She was a bad drunk, picking fights with men in the street some nights.” George’s face must have registered embarrassment because she continued more impatiently, misunderstanding his look. “I suppose I loved her somewhere in me, if that’s what you want me to say. You have to love your parents, don’t you? But I didn’t like her much and I don’t miss her now she’s dead, just like I told you last time. People might think I’m wicked for saying it but I’m just being honest. She were no saint, my ma.

“It were Annie who more or less brought me up, and even though she’s only a few years older. Ma was always too busy with her friends, as she called them. They was all men, of course. One of them used to hit Annie when Ma weren’t looking and sometimes when she was, but he never hurt me, and even though I were the naughty one. He used to put me on his knee and never mind me being nine or ten by then, and too old for it; bounce me up and down and tickle me, stroke my hair and tell me I was his pet. I hated it, his breath stank. But he left in the end. They all did, couldn’t stand ma’s temper, but it was no better for me and Annie when they did, because then there weren’t no money.” She caught sight of George’s face again.

“No, it weren’t what you’re thinking, George. I was old enough to know if he’d been up to anything else. And Annie used to follow him around like a shadow if I was there. That’s probably why he hated her so much; she knew his game. But there were nothing funny going on like that. He just wanted there to be, dirty sod.”

George could feel the beer he’d drunk down so quickly sloshing around in his stomach. The memory of him vomiting outside the print and an image of Charlotte as a child on some man’s knee made him feel queasy. He tried to remember what he’d already admitted to Charlotte about his own mother but the conversation was lost to him. All he could retrieve was a fragmented image of what had happened after he and Charlotte had left the pub; the pair of them in the dark against the black sodden bricks of the canal tunnel. Remembering it now after Charlotte’s words, it seemed to George that their drunken lust and the tawdry ghost of Charlotte’s mother, shouting and bawling in the streets, would be forever melded as one memory. The beer rose up in his mouth again, and only the remnants of a stubborn will to hold onto the girl he’d liked so much kept him from excusing himself and leaving the pub.

Looking up at her, it struck him how like a stranger she had lately become to him. Those lazy, almond-shaped eyes of hers that had once seemed exotic now seemed almost sly, and belied her natural watchfulness. When someone came into the pub abruptly, or left it clumsily after taking too much drink, she always flinched, even when she’d drunk too much herself. Her changeable moods, so fascinating to him before, had started to grate, making him by turns sag with fatigue and rise quickly to anger.

He’d known who she was for weeks before she acknowledged him. His first glimpse of her was in early spring of that year, on the afternoon she came back with Annie from their mother’s funeral, the latter in torrents of tears and wringing her hands, while the younger sister stood erect at her side, her face white and her jaw set. She’d moved in her things, an oddment of hastily packed bags and keepsakes, the next day. George had lifted his cap at her as they’d passed in the street, but she was shielding her eyes from the sun and he couldn’t be sure that she’d seen him. He hoped she hadn’t chosen to ignore him. It must have been April by then, and the temperatures were already rising in the midst of the stinking city. Not that Charlotte ever looked hot; her self-containment apparently kept her cool.

He remembered seeing her early one morning not long after this, on his way to the print. The street was already busy with people intent on going somewhere else. She was the one still point in the milling crowd, leaning nonchalantly against her sister’s door, face lifted so the earliest rays of sunlight warmed it, arms crossed against the chill that lingered after the clear night. As he passed by her, his eyes stayed fixed on her face, which was as pale and smooth as alabaster but with a softness around the mouth left over from sleep.