Jane Steele(32)
Nick spat; Nick finished his beer.
“I’ll oblige ye, after I’ve rounded up the other fares what have already paid.” He took my coins and dropped them straightaway upon the bar as he nodded to the serving lass. “But if ye thought the world was hard before . . . cor, will Lunnon ever throw ye to the wolves. She were suckled by a wolf mother, they say,” he added with a faint flash of his old dire humour.
“At least she was fed,” I muttered as Nick called for the bill to be settled.
When he departed, I returned to our table and passed a gentle hand over Clarke’s pallid brow, promising to return upon the instant after using the privy and imploring her to be patient as she finished her modest meal. The pressure within my cranium had grown nearly unbearable by then; half-frantic with fear, sidling behind her so that my semi-conscious friend might not see, I bore my trunk to the outhouse, barred the door, and deposited my bloodied uniform therein. It was not a perfect solution—but it was foul enough to serve, and anyhow, I reminded myself grimly, it seemed that most of my solutions to conundrums fell considerably shy of the mark.
? ? ?
By nightfall, Clarke and I were seated together upon the same threadbare object masquerading as a cushion on which I had ridden to Lowan Bridge seven years previous. Across from us sat a lean farmer and full-bosomed girl with a fresh cap and apron who I thought must be seeking domestic employment, as she looked such equal parts terrified and jubilant.
“London,” Clarke whispered, resting her head upon my shoulder. The meal had thoroughly drained her, her body flummoxed by bounty; lacing our fingers together, she settled our hands in her lap. “We’ll find a new home, a better one. Anyhow, you’re home.”
Wincing freely since Clarke could not see me with her head tucked under my chin, I squeezed her fingers. I ought to have felt trepidatious, reader; I ought to have felt both culpable and contrite.
I felt thrilled in knowing that upon the morrow, a worthy battle could be fought—even if I, poor leaky vessel of the devil’s and never of God’s, was chosen as its champion. No less, I felt achingly grateful, and I watched the blue sweeps of blood through Clarke’s emaciated wrist for an hour or more. Knowing that home was hateful to us both, I imagined that her calling me by the word meant I was expedient, or sturdy; but if I could only keep her hand in mine, I knew I would give my four limbs and my heart for the privilege, becoming instead four walls and a roof.
ELEVEN
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.
Shortly, reader, you shall experience chronological leaps which may startle the timid. Jane Eyre contains the delightful passage, A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play, thus I likewise embrace abrupt shifts even as I abhor the imminent subject matter.
We arrived in London, Clarke and I, homeless and horridly inexperienced, as coral dawn lit the charred air draped over the centre of the British Empire.
“Oh!” Clarke snatched at me as we crossed a deep wheel gouge, further slowing the already painfully lethargic Chestnut.
I steadied my friend, but said nothing; for never had I fathomed such a sight as passed before me like a parade through the coach window.
Some cities bustle, some meander, I have read; London blazes, and it incinerates. London is the wolf’s maw. From the instant I arrived there, I loved every smouldering inch of it.
A lad hunched against a shoddy dressmaker’s dummy slumbered on, cradled by his faceless companion. The atmosphere was redolent—meat sat piled up to a shop door’s limit of some six feet, the butcher sharpening massive knives before his quarry. Yesterday’s cabbage was crushed underfoot, and tomorrow’s cackling geese were arriving in great crates, ready to kill. So early, the square we passed through ought to have been populated only by spectres. Instead, sounds reverberated from all directions—treble notes from a bamboo flute; the breathy scream of a sardine costermonger; the bass rumble of a carrot vendor, his cart piled with knobby red digits, shouting as his donkey staggered in the slick.
It was not welcoming, but it was galvanising. Arguing with London was useless; she was inexorable, sure as the feral dawn.
“Where are we?” Clarke fretted. “This is nowhere near where my parents live.”
“I haven’t the faintest notion.” Bending, I touched my brow to hers. “Are you ready, though?”
Clarke grinned—an easy grin which made me long to buy her hearty sausage and pastry breakfasts. The carriage halted before a dingy public house with a small paved yard. Clarke stumbled out with her carpetbag and I followed, sharp pinpricks running up and down my legs.
“Thank you,” I called up. Nick sat like a turtle in his shell on his high plank seat. “I hope that one day—”
“Neither of us hope to see t’other again, ye mad child.” He took a long pull from his flask.
“I’m grateful, though. With all my heart, I am.”
“Then let it be fer this advice. I’ve food enough and drink enough to keep what they call a life, but that’s all’s I can say on the subject. Treat yerself better—keep yerself a good girl, and sleep in a bed wi’out interruptions. Can ye manage that?”