The Last Pleasure Garden (7 page)

N
ot a half mile distant from the Perfitts' home, Mrs. Bertha Featherstone lies in her bed. It is unusual for the bells of St. Mark's chapel to wake her during the night and the mere fact of being conscious at such an ungodly hour rather disturbs her. She blinks, listening to the seemingly endless peals, estimating that it must be midnight.

Then she hears footsteps outside.

It is perhaps rather foolhardy of her to put on her dressing-gown, without alerting her husband in the adjoining room. Nonetheless, she does so, and proceeds into the narrow hallway outside her bedroom. In a matter of seconds, she reaches the door that leads into the cloisters and swings it forcefully open.

‘Who's there? Show yourself!'

She peers round the darkened quadrangle. She can hear the sound of footsteps again, clicking on the stones.

‘Don't skulk in the shadows – I know you are there.'

‘Ma'am?'

Mrs. Featherstone turns, startled, to face the figure of Jane Budge. The maid-servant is wrapped in a tartan shawl, a crumpled white bonnet upon her head.

‘I weren't skulking anywhere, ma'am,' says the maid emphatically.

Mrs. Featherstone looks a little relieved. ‘What in heaven's name are you doing?'

‘Going home, ma'am, as it happens,' she replies, her voice rather tart. ‘We don't often see you at this hour.'

The clergyman's wife pulls her dressing-gown tightly around her body. ‘No, indeed. I was asleep. I thought I heard something.'

‘Likely it was me, then.'

‘Yes, I see. Well, good night. Go carefully.'

‘I always do, thank you, ma'am,' she replies. ‘Good night to you.'

And, with a glance at Mrs. Featherstone, and a haughty look rather unsuited to her position in life, Jane Budge cuts across the courtyard, out onto the cobbled drive towards the gate-house.

The gate-keeper himself, whose nights are spent in a small wooden hut by the entrance, is nowhere to be seen. Only the sound of his snoring announces his presence to any would-be intruders. Miss Jane Budge, therefore, does not trouble to wake him, but lets herself out, and walks briskly eastwards along the King's Road.

Jane Budge's walk home takes her past the gates to Cremorne Gardens, as it does every night. She herself has little doubt that the pleasure gardens are not quite so bad as they are painted. True, she notices a couple of hansom and clarence cabs waiting by the gate. And it may be that some of those getting in or out of the vehicles are somewhat the worse for drink – but there is nothing so unusual in that. And if the women whom
certain gentlemen have upon their arms are not their wives or daughters – well, who is to know? It does not matter to her, in any case.

A mile down the road, she comes to the old World's End inn, then walks down to Lindsey Row, which runs along the river. The end of the row is where the Thames Embankment begins: a grand gas-lit carriageway stretching eastwards, on to Westminster and beyond. But Jane Budge's journey takes her south – to Battersea Bridge.

To anyone unfamiliar with the crossing, it might seem a bold move. Built upon rickety-looking wooden pilings, sloping at a steep angle, the bridge gives the impression of an altogether makeshift affair, thrown together in haste. Admittedly, it boasts a quartet of lamps, mounted on the iron railings that run along either side; but it is principally a timber construction; and old timber at that, nailed together in odd proportions and angles, occasionally giving out a mournful groan, complaining in vain at the shifting waters below. Still, it is safe enough; Jane Budge knows the bridge of old. She pays the toll-keeper and crosses the Thames, alone in the moonlight.

On the Surrey shore, the Battersea Road is devoid of activity. The handful of public houses along its length have, by and large, dispersed their customers into the night, and the labourers and factory workers who inhabit the area are mostly in their beds. Further from the river, it becomes quieter still: the houses diminish in number, and the gas-lights disappear; for Battersea is still a half-finished suburb, a place where clay soil is being churned up to make bricks, and where plots of ground, once fields, are marked up with lengths of rope, in anticipation of putative terraces and villas. It is, moreover, a rather hazardous place in darkness: trenches and pits
abound upon either side of the road, and there are odd turnings, barely visible in the nocturnal gloom. But Jane Budge seems perfectly familiar with the Battersea brick fields, only slowing down when she comes to a dirt-path known in the vicinity as Sheepgut Lane, a lonely road in the shadow of the railway lines that crisscross nearby Lavender Hill. She trudges along, passing several old cottages – where there is a not a single light visible – until she comes to a slightly larger building, set back a little from the road. It resembles an old, rather dilapidated farm-house, with a solitary candle that burns in the parlour window. The light faintly illuminates a handwritten sign upon the front door: ‘Budge's Dairy'. Jane Budge lets herself in.

‘That you, Janey?' says a voice from the candle-lit parlour.

‘Who were you expecting, you old whore?'

There is a laugh from the parlour, as Jane Budge unwraps her shawl. She opens the connecting door and walks in.

The front parlour of Budge's Dairy is a low-ceilinged room, thick with smoke, emanating from a small brick-built hearth that gives out more fumes than heat. As for the room's decoration, there is little to speak of: some plain-looking crockery sits upon an old oak table that has seen better days; a couple of wicker baskets lie heaped up in a corner. There are, however, two persons inside. One is a woman of about sixty years, seated upon a chair by the fire. She is a little plump, with grey hair pulled tightly back from her face, and wears a voluminous russet-coloured dress that balloons out from her legs, entirely concealing their very existence. Almost hidden in her arms is the second inhabitant: a baby of some three months, swaddled in a grey blanket.

‘What's the fire going for?' asks Jane Budge.

‘The little 'un's got a chest,' replies Mrs. Budge.

‘I ain't surprised with you smothering him like that.'

Mrs. Budge tuts. ‘I looked after you, Janey girl, didn't I? I knows what I'm doing.'

Jane Budge walks over to the baby and looks at his face, touching his cheek with her finger. ‘It ain't his chest, Ma. He's got a fever.'

‘That's his natural complexion. Quite healthy.'

‘If you like.'

Mrs. Budge purses her lips. ‘Well, did you see your father on the road?'

Jane Budge shakes her head.

‘How about Madam? Did she pay her dues today?'

‘No, she wrote us a letter, though,' replies Jane.

‘Did she now?'

‘You won't like it. She wants to see the boy. Won't take no for an answer.'

Mrs. Budge lets out a long breath. ‘Is that what she said? Well, I'll be blowed. After all this time.'

As Mrs. Budge speaks, the movement wakes the baby in her arms. The child lets out a pitiful cry, halfway between mewling and choking, its face reddening. Mrs. Budge looks down at the infant, then stands up.

‘Bring that light, will you, Janey?' she says, nodding to the candle. Her daughter obliges.

‘That's enough of you, little 'un,' she says, walking towards the back of the parlour. With her daughter holding up the candle, she pushes open a low wooden door with her foot. Jane Budge follows idly behind her.

The second room is a little cold and lacks a single window. Once, it most likely was a store-room of some kind. Mrs. Budge lays the infant down in a simple cot that lies upon the stone-flagged floor.

‘She wants to see the child,' repeats Jane Budge.

‘Then she'll have to see him,' replies her mother. ‘Seeing is believing, ain't it? What about Mary Whit's boy?'

‘You wouldn't!'

Mrs. Budge smiles, showing the rather irregular contours of her teeth. ‘I'll send her a note. Here, come and have a proper sit. I've got a drop of something strong that your Pa got hold of.'

‘If you like,' says Jane Budge. As she follows her mother, she raises up the candle, casting its meagre glow on half a dozen similar cots that lie arranged in twin rows upon the flag-stones.

‘How many today, Ma?' says Jane Budge, peering at the infant face in each cot.

‘Five little angels,' replies Mrs. Budge. ‘None of 'em a bother. Two is ailing, though. Won't be long.'

‘That's a shame.'

‘Ah, it is, Janey,' replies Mrs. Budge, complacently. ‘Terrible.'

‘G
ood morning. Your number?' asks the warder.

‘D4-3-10. Ticket-of-leave,' replies the young man.

‘Sign here or make your mark, 4-3-10,' says the warder. The young man obliges.

The warder looks down at his papers. ‘Nelson, is it?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘You have your freedom, Nelson. Do not squander it.'

‘No, sir. I don't intend to.'

‘Very well,' continues the warder, handing the young man a small book from a pile of identical volumes upon his desk. ‘The chaplain wishes to give you this, for your moral welfare. You can read, I take it?'

The young man nods.

‘Good,' continues the warder. ‘I commend it to you. It has the address of the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society; you will find them at Charing Cross – make that your destination and you will not go far wrong.'

The young man casts a cursory glance over the gift.

‘Be on your way, then. Next!'

It is a little past nine o'clock on a Monday morning when George Nelson quits the confines of Pentonville
Prison. There is no mass exodus of freed inmates from the gaol. Instead, they trickle through in ones and twos during the morning, at carefully timed intervals, to avoid any possible disturbance. Thus Nelson is quite alone as he passes the Warden's lodge and walks beneath the rather fanciful portcullis of the prison's gate-house. In fact, as he goes down the avenue that leads to freedom, beside the yellow brick of the outer wall, his footsteps echo on the stone pavement, a strangely solitary, lonely sound.

The guard who stands at the prison's perimeter looks at him sternly as he passes.

‘Mind you don't come back, eh?' says the man in question.

George Nelson looks at the official, pauses for a moment, then spits on the ground.

‘Hook it,' says the guard, a look of unconcealed contempt on his face.

Nelson does not reply but walks on, round the corner of the gaol, onto the Caledonian Road. He pauses, standing in the shadow of the prison walls. Perhaps his only reason to stop is the ill-fitting discharge suit, which, he discovers, obliges him to adopt a somewhat shuffling gait. Or it may simply be the sight of the traffic – the waggon that slowly passes by; the omnibus in the distance; the dozen people making their way along the pavement – the ebb and flow of daily life he has not seen for five years. Regardless, he stands there, seemingly frozen, for a good few minutes, before he recovers, and directs his steps to the opposite side of the road, where the Bull in the Pound public house is conveniently situated.