The Winter Rose (58 page)

It was nearly ten o'clock at night now. Joe had been campaigning at a
nearby union hall when word came in that Freddie Lytton was in the pub
across the street with reporters in tow. Joe's supporters, eager for a
debate, had practically picked him up and carried him into the Bells.
His voice was hoarse, he'd had no rest, and yet he did not hesitate.
Anger was fueling him, and there was so much of it inside of him, he
felt like he would never run dry.

He was angry all the time now. Angrier than he'd ever been in his
life. The rage drove him. It kept him knocking on doors, talking to
voters, giving interviews, making speeches, long after other men would
have dropped from exhaustion.

He was angry at East London. Angry at the deprivation and crime, the
despair, the bleak, unending poverty. It had been years since he'd
shivered in a patched jacket. Years since he'd seen his father skip his
breakfast so that he and his brother and sisters could have a bit more
to eat for theirs. He and Fiona were wealthy. They'd left poverty
behind, but he saw now that it would never leave them.

Poverty tore families apart. It didn't matter how far you got from
it, it would still catch up with you. He knew this for a fact now. It
had torn his apart. He and Fiona were no longer together. He had left
her three weeks ago and was now living in the Coburg. She was at 94
Grosvenor Square with Katie. And it was all because of Sid Malone, her
brother. Because once--long ago--poverty and despair had worked on him,
changed him, pulled him into a dark underworld, and Fiona could not
accept it.

Joe wanted to stamp it out, that poverty. He wanted to crush it as
fiercely as its brutal legacy was now crushing him, forcing him to spend
day after day apart from those he loved best in this world, his wife
and daughter.

"Those are fine, high-flown words!" Freddie mocked now, as Joe
finished speaking. "But words are cheap. It's experience that counts in
government. The ability to work within the system, to get things done."

"Experience?" Joe shot back. "I'll tell you what my experience is,
mate. Being hungry. Being cold. Working sixteen-hour days in all kinds
of weather. What's your experience? You know what it's like to work
hungry, Freddie? You know what it's like to be cold? Of course you
don't!"

"Let's speak to the issues, Joe, shall we?" Freddie blustered.

"I thought I was!" Joe said, provoking laughter.

"I think you should tell these good people your plans for controlling Whitechapel's terrible crime. Have you any plans?"

"Yes, I do. I plan to build more schools."

Freddie burst into laughter. "Schools? We don't need schools, if any-thing we need--"

"What? More prisons?"

"I didn't say--" Freddie began, but Joe didn't give him the chance to finish.

Joe was goading him, leading him, but he didn't have him quite where he wanted him. Not yet.

"Can I tell you why Mr. Lytton thinks prisons are more important than
schools?" he asked. "It's because he'd rather jail you than educate
you! Ed-ucated people ask too many questions. You might start asking why
you're working fourteen-hour days for only a pound a week. Why your
kids have to go into factories and mines and sculleries, while other
people's children go to Oxford and Cambridge."

"Why, that's nothing but a load of Marxist claptrap!" Freddie
shouted, outraged. "If government determines more schools are needed,
then more schools will be provided. Of course they will. I promise you
that..."

Freddie railed on, and for the first time that evening Joe smiled. He
turned to a man sitting close by, a reporter who was scribbling in a
notepad.

"You getting all this?" he asked him.

"Every word," the man said, still writing.

The newspapers were all covering the Tower Hamlets contest, and they
put into print every barb and insult the candidates tossed at each other
and every promise they made. In his heart of hearts, Joe doubted he'd
ever see the inside of Westminster, but when the election was over, he
would make it his business to see that every promise made by the winner
and documented by the press was a promise kept. And maybe come the new
year, with a new government, there'd be a few more schools in
Whitechapel, a few more health visitors, a few less broken homes, a few
less desperate men.

Joe took a swallow of the pint someone had brought him. The porter
was soothing to his raspy throat. He licked foam from his lips and
waited for his chance, waited to jump in and challenge his rival to fund
more clinics, build another soup kitchen, another orphanage, another
widows' home.

Unlike Freddie, Joe was fighting for more than the Tower Hamlets
seat, for more than the honor of sitting in Parliament. For more than a
career in politics.

He was fighting for justice for the people of East London. For
opportu-nities and rights. He was fighting for an end to poverty and
ignorance. An end to hopelessness.

And he was fighting--in the only way left to him--to get his family back.

Sid could see her--India. His India now. She was hurrying up Richmond
Hill ahead of him in the cool, darkening evening. One hand was pressed
to

her head, holding her hat in place. The other held a carpetbag. A wine bot-tle poked out from under its flap.

She was trying to walk, but kept breaking into a run. She turned the
cor-ner onto Arden Street and let herself into a small, three-story
house. He had insisted on this--on a flat far away from their own homes.
It was the only way he would see her. The only way to keep people from
finding out-- his people. The only way to keep her safe.

He found his key and let himself into the building's narrow foyer.
She was already pounding up the stairs to the second floor. He heard her
greet an elderly neighbor on the first floor. "Hello, Mrs. Ainsley. How
are you keeping?"

"Very well, dear, thank you. How's Mr. Baxter?"

Mr. Baxter. He smiled at that. It was how he had introduced them to
the landlady the day they'd inquired about the flat: "I'm Sidney Baxter
and this is me wife, Theodora." He'd gotten the name from an
advertisement for Baxter's cocoa on the side of a bus. He said he was a
traveling salesman and that his wife spent most of her time with her
mother in the country because she didn't like being alone. They wouldn't
be there much and they'd pay in advance. Would a year's rent do? The
landlady, astonished at her good luck, had let them the flat
immediately, no questions asked.

He heard India bid Mrs. Ainsley good day, run up the last flight of
stairs, and unlock their door. He followed her, letting himself in.
She'd dropped her bag and coat in the entryway and was moving through
the rooms, calling for him. He closed his eyes and listened, loving the
sound of his name on her lips. Loving the eagerness in her voice. The
happiness.

He knew it wouldn't take her long to find out he wasn't in any of the
rooms. The flat was modest, just a large, open sitting room with a
huge, sunny window, a bedroom, scullery, and loo. It had come with a few
pieces of furniture and she'd bought rugs and curtains. He closed the
door behind him. She came running out of the bedroom and stopped short
when she saw him.

"Hello, Mrs. Baxter," he said, smiling as he held out a bunch of
white roses. "Went out to get these. Planned to be back before you, but
I--"

He didn't get to finish because she ran to him, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him wildly.

"I was so worried," she said. "When I saw you weren't here, I was so worried you weren't coming."

He kissed her back, then turned away from her--just for a second--to
talk about something else. It was too much, this love. It would drown
him.

"You hungry?" he asked. "Must be, after working all day. I brought
food." He went to the scullery and came back with a basket and two
glasses. He set the basket on the table under the window and began to
take things out of it.

India shook her head no. "I want only you," she said, kissing him again.

"How about a drink? A glass of wine?" He fished the wine bottle out
of her carpetbag. As he did, the bag toppled over and a folder slid out,
spilling hand-tinted photographs of rolling green meadows, a cobalt
bay, and soaring sea cliffs. He picked them up and looked at them and
for a few seconds he was stunned into silence.

"What is this place?" he asked, still staring at the pictures.

"It's the land my cousin left me in California. Point Reyes. The land
I can't sell, at least according to the American estate agent. Sid?
What's wrong? You look so strange."

Sid shook his head and laughed. "I ...I don't know. Just had the
oddest feeling. As if I'd seen this place before. In my dreams, maybe.
Daft."

And then he remembered. It was when he first held her. In the
tunnels. That's when he'd first seen this place--Point Reyes. It was
when he'd wanted to keep walking with her. Out of London. To someplace
beautiful and new. To the sea. It was this place he'd envisioned. This
place exactly. He wanted to tell her that, but she was too busy kissing
him.

He put the pictures down and kissed her back. Then he uncorked the
wine and poured two glasses. India took hers from him. She drank half of
it, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then pulled him into the
bedroom.

"Blimey! If I'd known I was going to be molested, I would've brought
my men to protect me," he said, trying not to slosh his wine.

"They wouldn't have stood a chance. Not against me," she said,
unbuttoning his waistcoat. She opened his shirt and kissed his chest,
his throat, his mouth. She undid his trousers. They dropped to the
floor. She pushed his drawers down.

"Hold on, missus!" he protested. "How about a little sweet talk first? You know: �How are you, Sid? How was your day?'"

"Later. When I've had my way."

She took his wine away from him, then pushed him back onto the bed-- a
wide, ornately carved thing she'd found in a second-hand shop. He sank
into the plump feather duvet. She had her own things--or most of them--
off in a flash, throwing her jacket, blouse, and skirt onto the floor as
if they were rags, tossing her eyeglasses onto a night table. She
straddled him, still in her camisole and stockings, took his face into
her hands, and kissed him long and hard. He closed his eyes, remembering
their first time, the time she'd told him she was cold. Cold? She was
the most passionate lover he'd ever had.

She reached for his hands and pinned them against his pillow. She
kissed his cheek, his eyes, his lips. She buried her face in his neck,
breathing him in. Then she stretched her slender body against him and he
was suddenly inside of her. She was soft, so soft. And so wet. After
only a few seconds, she shuddered and cried his name.

Sid blinked at the ceiling. He'd barely had time to get hard. When
she opened her eyes again, he looked at her, laughing, and said, "That's
it? That's all? I feel so cheap." He sat up and kissed her. "I'm just
an object to you. That's all I am," he said, pulling a jeweled comb out
of her hair. Her blond curls fell down over her shoulders. He unbuttoned
her camisole, pushed it off her arms, and kissed her breasts, his hands
trailing over the silken skin of her back.

She moaned softly, buried her hands in his hair.

"I think you should say you're sorry," he said.

"Do you? For what?"

"For treating me like a plaything. Like a kept man."

She laughed out loud and he smiled, loving her laughter. He grabbed
her hips and thrust into her. And then again. Her smell made him
achingly hard.

"Oh, Sid," she whispered. "I'm ...I'm ..."

"Yes?"

"Not sorry in the least!" She giggled.

"Ah. Well, then. We'll just have to make you sorry."

He buried his face in her breasts, teasing her with his tongue and
teeth until he felt her grow wet again and breathless. He rocked into
her, back and forth, back and forth, until he felt her arch into him,
then he stopped.

"No, don't... oh, don't! Please..."

"Sorry yet?"

"No!" she cried, twining her slender arms around him, biting his ear.
He brought her to the edge of pleasure over and over, always stopping
just short, until she was mad with her need of him.

"How about now? Are you--"

"No," she said, stopping his mouth with a kiss. And then another. She
pulled away and looked at him, her gray eyes large and dark and
suddenly serious in the twilight of their bedroom.

"I'm not sorry, Sid," she said fiercely. "Do you hear me? Not for
making love to you. Not for loving you. I'm not now and I never will be.
Never."

He gathered her into his arms, overcome with emotion, and made love
to her as he had their first night together, passionately, desperately,
wanting only to lose himself in her. Afterward, as the night came down,
he pulled her to him and held her curled within the safety of his arms.
When he heard her breathing deepen, he rose, careful not to wake her. He
pulled the covers up over her shoulders, kissing the damp curls on her
neck, then frowned. She looked so pale in the darkness, so slight and
fragile.

He pulled on his trousers, then padded off to cobble together a meal.
She worried him. She was too thin. She worked too hard and ate too
little. The clinic was due to open in a month's time, and she and Ella
were working around the clock soliciting donations to keep the repair
work going, barking at builders and deliverymen, making sure every tile,
spout, lamp, and doorknob was just so. He had stopped by a few days ago
to see how things were going and found her sitting on the floor of the
lying-in ward, a chisel, screwdriver, and bucket of grout nearby,
resetting a drain cover by herself. The chisel had slipped and sliced
her finger open. She'd bandaged it and kept right on working.