Shanghai Sparrow (12 page)

The blonde girl flushed and fixed Eveline with a glare that should have pinned her like a butterfly.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to inform Miss Cairngrim,” the blonde girl said. “She doesn’t permit
language
.”

Eveline opened her mouth to say something about how funny it was that the blonde girl was able to talk, then, and thought better of it. She was going to be in for a slapping as it was.

The other girls returned to dressing, buttoning the pantaloons and stepping into flat boots that laced up the front. Reluctantly, Eveline put on the pantaloons and pulled on the boots.

They fitted.
Two
pairs of footwear – the button boots she’d been issued with her gown and apron, and these. And both fitted. She’d not owned a pair of shoes that fitted for as long as she could remember, never mind
two
pairs. Everything else forgotten for the moment, she vowed that whatever happened, she was keeping them.

The bodice, even laced as tight as she could get it, was too loose on her. She wondered if it had been made for someone else. She shuffled into the room after the other girls. At least they all looked as absurd as each other.

“You, new girl, what is your name?” Miss Laperne said.

“Eveline Duchen, miss.”

“Have you heard of Bartitsu?”

“No, miss.”

“Good,” she said. “Then you will have no misconceptions. There are those who consider it inappropriate, or unpleasant, that young women should be taught to fight. You, however, are to be trained servants of the Empire and as such, you will be valuable assets, not to be thrown away because you lacked even the most basic ability to defend yourselves. If you have any objection to being taught to fight, endeavour to rid yourself of it.”

“I got no objection, miss.” Fighting was fine. Fighting she’d done plenty of, one way and another.

“Have you ever been in a situation where you had to defend yourself?”

“Yes, miss.”

The blonde girl gave a quiet snort of derision, which Miss Laperne did not appear to hear.

“Tell me what happened,” Miss Laperne said.

“There was quite a lot of times, miss.”

“Excellent. Describe one.”

Feeling inclined to take the blonde girl down a peg, Eveline described a fight with a man who had made a grab for her outside a pub in Clerkenwell. “I kneed him in the... the trousers, miss. Went down like a felled tree.”

“Can you show me how he approached you?”

“He just reached out and grabbed me, miss.” Eveline held her arms out.

“From in front?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Stand there.” The woman moved behind her.

The hairs on the back of Eveline’s neck shivered, and she almost got away, but the next thing she knew she was flat on her face on the floor, with Miss Laperne’s knee in her back.

“Unfortunately,” Miss Laperne said, her voice absolutely calm, “one’s opponent does not always approach in so convenient a fashion. Nor will they always be vulnerable at the groin, especially if they have the least idea of what they are doing.” The blonde girl giggled; again, Miss Laperne appeared not to notice. She got up. Eveline breathed floor-dust. She wasn’t hurt, but she was humiliated and startled.

“You may stand up, Duchen. Now, I will show you some basic methods for dealing with someone approaching from behind. The rest of you, practise your grapples, as I showed you last week. Oh, and Treadwell?”

“Yes, miss?” said the blonde girl.

“The equipment cupboard is a disgrace. Restore it to order, if you please.”

Treadwell gave Eveline a glare as she passed, keeping it carefully out of Miss Laperne’s sightline. Eveline pretended not to see, and wiped dust from her face.

B
Y THE END
of the lesson Eveline was panting, sore, and filthy. Miss Laperne looked her over, and gave a single, brisk nod. “You are small, and like many of the class, must rely on quickness where others can use weight. However. Girls? Your attention, please.”

They lined up. Eveline was pleased to see that they all looked as dirty and sweat-streaked as she felt. Miss Laperne said, “Duchen here has learned a lesson that I endeavour to teach you over and over again and which some of you still have not embraced. What is the first thing you should do in any fight?”

A few hands were raised.

“Yes, Calendar?”

“Disable your opponent, miss?”

“No. Hastings?”

Hastings proved to be the girl with the curly brown hair who had served Eveline’s breakfast. On closer expression she had a determined nose, grey eyes and a slightly distracted air; she jumped when addressed as though she had forgotten why her hand was up.

“Oh! Try not to be there, miss.”

“Correct.” Miss Laperne looked around at her class. “I do not know, nor have I any interest in, your individual histories. But it is obvious that Miss Duchen’s life has taught her something of value. You would do well to follow her example in this. The most important thing in a fight is to try and prevent it from happening in the first place, or at least, prevent it from happening to
you.
Fight only if you cannot run.

“Tomorrow we will be covering the use of the parasol. And why will we be using parasols?”

Another girl put her hand up. “Because they won’t let us have guns, miss?”

“No. Anyone else? No? Parasols are something that ladies may carry, indeed are
expected
to carry. Less useful than a cane or swordstick, but still of worth. Remember this, girls – always adapt, always be alert. There will almost always be something in your immediate vicinity that you can use as a weapon if you have to.

“Those of you who wish to practise with the parasol may take one from the cupboard, but work outside, please. A sufficient number of innocent lampshades have already been sacrificed.”

There were a few subdued giggles.

“Now go wash before your next lesson. Dismissed.”

Eveline splashed her dusty face with almost equally dusty water – as the new girl she had last go at the basin. Damn, she hurt; skinny as she was, she bruised easy. She’d be as colourful as a rag-rug by tomorrow.

It had been so busy she had hardly thought of leaving. When would Holmforth come back? And what would he say when he did? His watch lay safely tucked in one of the secret pockets in her drawers. At least she’d been allowed to keep her own underwear – though given needle, thread and a couple of handkerchiefs, she could make near-undetectable pockets in almost anything. Not to mention false arms that could lie innocently folded in the lap while hands delved about elsewhere. She wondered what Miss Cairngrim would think of ‘mending time’ being used for such purposes.

M
ISS
P
RAYNE, WHO
taught Map-Reading and Navigation, had the look of something left too long in the sun. Her eyes, hair, skin and gown all appeared to be fading towards the same dull snuff-colour. She delivered her lesson in a drifting monotone, and when her pupils’ attention inevitably wandered, employed not the cane that lay on her desk but a put-upon sigh which made Eveline feel both guilty and intensely irritated.

Eveline already had a headful of maps and country names and looked at the work in front of her with a sense of mounting dread. Why did she need to know all this? Would they expect her to
go
somewhere? On a ship? She only knew one thing about ships. They sank.

And as for Navigation... the words
latitude
,
longitude
,
celestial
, and
sextant
flew past her ears. “Hand in your work from last week.” What work? She hadn’t been here last week. She stared at maps and charts in a state of increasing, furious frustration. She was used to being
good
at things. Ever since she’d joined up with Ma, she’d been Ma’s star pupil. Now she was faced with descriptions of things she’d never heard of, and as for stars, she’d barely seen them since she came to London. The constant smog made the sky one roiling smear that even the sun struggled to pierce. Luckily the daft bitch seldom asked questions – she simply pointed at things and told them, in her die-away voice, what page to look at. In fact, Miss Prayne seemed entirely unaware that she had acquired an extra pupil, although someone had provided Eveline’s battered, splintery desk with a slate and chalk.

Not that she had anything to write on it. Feeling as though her head were coming to the boil, Eveline sat back, trying to get some air, or space.

It was quiet, except for the squeaking of chalk on slates and the occasional cough or sigh. She looked around at the collection of bent heads. Some of the girls had made some effort with their hair, others had done the bare minimum, but all were neat with the exception of Hastings, who was muttering and pushing her fingers through her hair so that her curls fell out of their bun and around her face. Then, to Eveline’s amusement, she became exasperated, twisted them up out of the way and stuck a pencil in to hold them in place.
Bet Miss Grim won’t like that.
She had a strong feeling pencils in the hair were not something Miss Cairngrim would find acceptable.

She looked around for another source of entertainment, or information, or anything at all. The maps on the wall were all at least five years old; the books too were old, stained here and there with tea and other, unknown substances.

The windows were sash ones – one or two open a few inches at the bottom, and easy enough to get out of, if they hadn’t been barred on the outside. Air in, no-one out.

Miss Prayne’s monotone seemed to coat her eyelids, weighing them down. Her head drooped.

A sudden scuffling all around her and the squeak of chair legs on the floor roused her to the realisation that the class was over. She closed her book with a thud, feeling no better off than when she’d started.

She followed the rest of the girls back towards the room where they’d had breakfast. She had a good idea of the layout by now, at least of the ground floor. There wasn’t a window she’d seen that didn’t have bars.

This time it seemed she was to be permitted to eat with the rest of them. Miss Prayne sat at the head of one table; at the other was a slight man with a head that seemed too large for the sparse amount of oiled black hair scraped across it.

An unoccupied chair stood near him. Treadwell sat opposite. The blonde girl seemed subdued, her gaze fixed on the table.

Eveline sat herself down. The teacher gave her a nod, and a small smile. He was the first of the staff to smile at her. She gave him a cautious half-smile back, in case Miss Cairngrim had a thing about excessive smiling.

Lunch was watery stew whose main ingredient seemed to be cabbage, with elderly bread to sop it up. So far as Eveline was concerned, it was a feast. Ravenous as always, she had eaten more than half before she became aware that there was something going on across from her.

Treadwell was pushing her fork through the food, but so far as Eveline could tell not a morsel of it had left the plate. She was sitting oddly hunched, and the hands holding her cutlery were gripping it white-knuckled. She stared down at her plate as though she expected to find something in the mush of greyish gravy and pallid green leaves and stray fibres of mud-coloured meat.

The teacher turned to Eveline. “You are the new girl,” he said. “I am Monsieur Duvalier. I will be teaching you French. Your name is?”

He didn’t
sound
like a Frenchy to Eveline, just posh English, but for all she knew posh French people and posh English people sounded the same when they spoke English. The only Frenchies
she
knew were sailors, the onion-man and Bon-Bon.

“Eveline Duchen,” she said.

“You should address me as
monsieur
, but you are new, and have probably not heard the word before. It means the same as
sir
, you understand?”

“Yes, monsieur,” she said, doing her best to say it the way he did.

“Duchen? That sounds as though it might have been a French name. Did you know that names change over the years? Your great-grandfather, perhaps, was Du Chien.”

“Oh,” Eveline said. “How... interesting. Monsieur.”

“Shall I tell you what that means? Or perhaps Mademoiselle Treadwell can tell you? Mademoiselle?”

Treadwell shot Eveline a glance she couldn’t read. “It means something to do with dogs,” she said. “
Chien
is dog.”

“Indeed. Du Chien is of, or pertaining to, the dog. It is possible your ancestors were the lord’s kennellers, or some such thing – the men who trained his lordship’s dogs for the hunt.” He gave Treadwell a reproving glance. “Dogs are useful and necessary beasts, you know.”

“Yes, monsieur,” Treadwell muttered.

Eveline wondered if Duvalier actually thought he was being helpful. She glanced at her plate, where the remains of her stew was cooling, hoping he would shut up jawing long enough for her to finish it before Hastings whisked it away, as she was already doing with empty plates at the other table.

Duvalier lifted a forkful of stew, and sighed. “Ah, English cuisine. Well, it is only to be expected. If you are very good in class, and work hard, Mademoiselle Duchen, there may be bon-bons for you, to take away the taste.”