The Ragged Heiress (35 page)

Lucetta ran to his side, dragging him out of the path of an approaching horse and cart. ‘Lennie, what’s the matter?’ She led him to the safety of the pavement. He was breathing heavily and in obvious distress. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I hates them bleeding birds. They gives me nightmares.’

‘They’re just crows, Lennie. They were only doing what was natural to them.’

‘I has terrible dreams of them picking me bones.’ He shuddered and turned away from the gory sight. ‘Let’s move on. It ain’t far now.’

Brandishing his cane at the crows as they gathered ready to swoop again, he limped off and Lucetta had to run to keep up with him.

‘Where are we going, Lennie?’

‘You’ll remember it when we get there,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s the same drum we took you to in the first place, although a basement room in Black Raven Court ain’t what Miss Froy was used to.’

‘I’m sure it will suit Lucy Guthrie.’

‘You’ll be all right, girl. I won’t let no harm come to you.’ Guthrie paused for a moment, pointing with his cane. ‘See that church spire? That’s All Hallows and just beyond is Seething Lane. We’ll soon be home.’

The entrance to Black Raven Court was almost opposite the police station, the irony of which was not lost on Lucetta as she recognised her grim surroundings. It was here that she had been kept prisoner, but now it was to be her sanctuary. The soot-blackened buildings were a raggle-taggle mixture of warehouses and three-storey dwellings that had known better days. Despite the heat of the day, it was cold in the shadows and the stench of sewage and animal excrement was sickening. Guthrie led the way down the slime-encrusted stone steps and he unlocked the door.

Lucetta followed him into the dank-smelling pit of a basement room, waiting in the doorway until he had lighted the stub of a candle stuck to the table top. Unpleasant memories of the time she had spent in captivity flooded back to her and she had to curb the desire to retreat and run away. The worm-eaten rafters were festooned with cobwebs as thick as lace curtains and the floor was carpeted with dust and rodent droppings. It was quite obvious that Guthrie was no housekeeper; remnants of past meals were scattered
across the table and spilling onto the floor where ants and flies feasted on the mouldy scraps.

‘This is disgusting, Lennie. How can you live like this?’

He shook his head, sinking down onto a stool at the table. ‘There don’t seem to be much point in tidying up, and I wouldn’t know where to start. I ain’t been feeling too good, Lucy. Me leg plays up something chronic and I can’t get work.’

She covered her nose and mouth with her hand in an attempt to keep out the noxious smells. ‘How have you managed to live?’

‘No one will hire a man with a gammy leg. I tried down at the docks but they just sent me away and I was forced to go back on the dip.’

‘What is that?’

He looked away, hanging his head. ‘Picking pockets. I learned it as a youngster. It’s all I knows and me leg ain’t healed like it should. I gets eaten up with fever, specially at night.’

‘I’m not surprised if you live like this.’ Lucetta closed the door behind her. ‘I can’t live in such a mess. Where is the broom?’

Guthrie stared at her with a blank expression. ‘I dunno. I don’t think I got one.’

‘Then you’ll have to go out and buy one,’ Lucetta said with a determined twitch of her shoulders. ‘And we need coal for the fire, a bucket and a scrubbing brush and some washing soda. I’ll write a list.’

‘I can’t read,’ Guthrie said humbly. ‘And I got no paper nor a pen. I used to leave all that to Norman.
Like he always said, he had the brains and I had the muscle. Afore I got injured, that is. Now I’m no use to anyone.’

She stared at his bowed head and was suddenly overcome by pity. He was a big man physically but she now saw him for what he was – a child inhabiting a man’s body. Without Stranks to guide him he was lost. Disregarding the filth on the floor, she knelt by his side, hooking her arm around his shoulders. ‘You mustn’t say that, Lennie. I might not be alive now if it weren’t for you. Stranks would have killed you too if he had found out that you’d let me go. You did a brave thing and now I‘m going to look after you.’

He raised his head and his eyes met hers with an incredulous look bordering on delight that reminded her of a pet dog she had had when she was a child.

‘You’d do that for me, Lucy?’

She was already regretting her rash promise but she couldn’t go back on it now. She smiled and nodded. ‘I won’t leave you until I know that you can look after yourself.’ She stood up and moved away. The stench of his unwashed body and the sight of lice running through his hair and beard made her stomach churn. She was beginning to itch and the thought of being infested with fleas and lice was enough to galvanise her tired limbs into action. ‘I’ll go and get the things we must have. You stay here and see if you can get the fire going. We’ll need hot water and plenty of it.’

He scrambled to his feet and hobbled over to the grate where ashes spilled all over the cracked tiles in the hearth. ‘There might be a bit of coal left at the
bottom of the sack. I’ll do me best, and perhaps you could get us something for our supper.’ He turned to gaze helplessly at the clutter on the table. ‘I think the rats must have ate the last of the bread.’

‘Just light the fire,’ Lucetta said, moving swiftly to the door. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

He gave her a gap-toothed grin. ‘I got a terrible hankering for cheese. I ain’t had none since Stranks got took by the coppers. Bread and cheese would go down a treat.’

Lucetta had to force her aching legs to climb the steep and slippery stone steps to street level, but she was filled with renewed purpose and the determination to survive. At least she had a roof over her head and she was not alone. Lennie might not be the person she would have chosen as a companion, but she could not abandon him now. By some strange quirk of fate they needed each other. She hurried through the narrow passage that led into Seething Lane and she turned her face up to the sun. It was high in the sky, and energised by its warmth she went in search of provisions. In Crutched Friars she discovered a hardware shop crammed in between a public house and a shop selling second-hand books. She stopped outside to take out her purse and count the coins. The train fare to London had depleted her savings considerably but she did a quick calculation in her head and decided that she could afford to purchase the bare essentials. She went inside prepared to haggle.

Less than an hour later Lucetta arrived back in Black Raven Court with the shop boy staggering along
behind her toting a bag of coal on his skinny shoulders. He set it down with a sigh of relief and she tipped him a penny for his trouble, which sent him racing back up the steps with a wide grin on his face. At least someone was happy, she thought as she opened the door and stepped inside. The stench almost knocked her backwards and the polluted air outside seemed like a breath of spring compared to the squalor of Guthrie’s lodgings. She did not see him at first, and she wondered if he had gone out to look for her, but a loud snore led her to the back of the room, where she found him in Stygian darkness, lying flat on his back with his hands crossed on his chest like the effigy of a Knight Templar on his tomb. She was tempted to rouse him and set him to work, but she relented. He had managed to get a fire going after a fashion, and he looked so peaceful that she had not the heart to wake him. She rolled her sleeves up and set to work.

She banked the fire with coal before going out to fetch water from the pump in Great Tower Street. This, she decided, would be a job for Lennie when his leg was less painful, but she found it oddly comforting to have someone who needed her so desperately. She returned to the basement room ready to begin battle with dirt and disorder. She put the kettle on the hob and began sweeping the floor, shovelling up mounds of dust and filth and tipping them outside into the corner of the area. Clearing that away would be another job for Lennie. She had a mental list of chores that would keep him gainfully occupied while she looked for paid employment. She poured boiling water into
one of the buckets and added washing soda and a sliver of carbolic soap. For the first time in her life, Lucetta got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed the floor. Guthrie woke up as she tumbled him off his bed in order to scour the flagstones beneath the two straw-filled palliasses, which she took outside and hung over the railings to air. When she returned she found that he had made a pot of tea and it was brewing on the newly swept hearth.

‘You done wonders, Lucy,’ he said, gazing around the room. ‘I wish I could do something to help.’

‘You’ve made a pot of tea,’ she said, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. ‘I bought some sugar but I didn’t have a jug so I couldn’t get any milk.’ She saw his gaze flicker towards the newly scrubbed table top where she had left her purchases from the grocer’s shop. She smiled. ‘And there is bread and cheese for supper, but we will have to make it last, Lennie. I haven’t much money left and it will have to do until I can find paid work.’

His mouth drooped at the corners. ‘It ain’t right that you should have to support me. I never had to rely on a woman afore, let alone a slip of a girl like you.’

‘Then you must hurry up and get better,’ she said briskly. ‘Let me look at that leg. I’m no nurse but maybe I can bathe it or something.’

Reluctantly he rolled up his tattered trouser leg and Lucetta recoiled in horror at the sight of maggots writhing about on an angry-looking wound. She knew nothing about such matters but it was obvious that the bones had not mended as they should and fragments
of it had pierced the skin. She frowned, shaking her head. ‘You must see a doctor, Lennie. I don’t know how to treat something like that.’

‘I don’t want no doctor. They’ll cut me leg off and if that don’t kill me I’ll be a cripple for life.’

She laid a tentative hand on his shoulder. ‘But you’ll die of blood poisoning if you don’t have that leg seen to. First thing in the morning we’ll go to the nearest hospital and get that wound dressed properly. I won’t take no for an answer.’

Next morning Lucetta and Guthrie set off a good hour before the outpatients department of St Bartholomew’s Hospital was due to open. Guthrie was in a great deal of pain but he insisted that he was quite capable of walking the distance to West Smithfield, and with many stops along the way they arrived soon after the start of the outpatients’ clinic. They sat on hard wooden benches set in rows like a theatre audience, although there was nothing to view other than the nurses bustling about in their crisp white aprons and caps as they ferried patients in and out of the consulting rooms. As their turn drew nearer Guthrie became restive and it took all Lucetta’s powers of persuasion to prevent him from leaving. His nerve almost failed him when his name was called and he refused to move unless Lucetta accompanied him. Reluctantly, she took him by the hand and they followed the nurse into a curtained cubicle.

The young doctor looked up from writing his notes and he eyed Guthrie warily. ‘Good morning. I’m Dr Richards. What can I do for you?’

Guthrie opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water, and sensing his distress Lucetta laid her hand on his arm. ‘It’s all right, Lennie. Show the doctor where it hurts.’

Obediently, Guthrie rolled up his trouser leg, pointing mutely to the seeping, maggot-infested wound. The smell of putrefying flesh made Lucetta feel nauseous but the doctor did not flinch. He motioned Guthrie to lie on the examination couch. ‘If you would climb up here I can take a better look.’

For a moment Lucetta thought that Guthrie was going to make a bolt for it, but she gave him an encouraging nod and a smile and with the greatest reluctance he did as the doctor asked.

‘You ain’t going to chop me leg off, are you, sir?’ he murmured, wincing as the doctor examined the site of the infection. ‘I don’t want to end up a cripple begging on the streets.’

‘I don’t think it will come to that.’ Dr Richards turned to Lucetta. ‘Are you related to this man?’

‘I’m looking after him,’ Lucetta said truthfully, but seeing doubt in the doctor’s eyes she felt compelled to expand the statement. ‘I’m his daughter.’

‘I see.’ Dr Richards eyed her curiously. ‘You must forgive me for staring, but I never forget a face and I feel that I’ve seen you somewhere before.’

‘I don’t think we’ve met, doctor.’

He continued to stare at her, angling his head. ‘Have you ever been a patient at this hospital?’

‘I was once, but it was some time ago. Now could we get back to Mr Guthrie’s condition?’

‘Well, Miss Guthrie, the patient will need his wound cleaned and dressed daily. He must keep his weight off that leg as much as possible and have adequate rest and good nourishment.’

‘I understand.’

Guthrie moved restlessly on the hard leather couch. ‘I can’t hear you, mate. What is he saying, Lucy?’

Dr Richards turned back to Guthrie. ‘I was just telling your daughter that you must rest and have the wound treated daily, Mr Guthrie. If you will just lie there for a few moments longer I’ll get the nurse to attend to you.’ He opened the curtains and beckoned to Lucetta. ‘May I have a word, Miss Guthrie?’

Lucetta followed him into the busy outpatients department. Having instructed a nurse to attend to Guthrie, Dr Richards drew Lucetta aside. ‘If the wound does not respond to treatment there is a possibility that gangrene will set in.’

‘And he will lose the leg.’

‘It was a nasty fracture and has not been set properly. He might require a below-knee amputation, but that would be a last resort. I would hesitate to recommend such drastic action unless the patient’s life was in danger, particularly in the case of a labouring man such as Mr Guthrie.’

Lucetta digested this in silence. She had only thought to stay with Guthrie until he was able to fend for himself. The idea that he might be dependent upon her for life was frankly terrifying. ‘I understand,’ she whispered. ‘What are his chances, doctor?’

‘I can’t say for certain. He looks to be in a poor state
generally. Were he a younger or fitter man I would give him a fifty-fifty chance of recovery, although he would always be lame. As it is …’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Guthrie. We will do what we can for him.’