Jane Steele(37)
TWELVE
“Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre: remorse is the poison of life.”
If early reading of the Newgate Calendar carved a mark upon my girlish character, I was for two years grateful for the scar.
We were housed thanks to me, kept in ribbons and pub fare thanks to Clarke, and when our presence leashed the mongrel inside Hugh Grizzlehurst, so much the better. Mrs. Grizzlehurst never failed to greet us with buttered porridge or Sunday eggs and herring, so I supposed that her scheme was working, despite occasions when the lilac circle beneath one eye looked darker than the other. Clarke and I hemmed loudly at the occasional nocturnal scuffle, stomping to fetch a glass of water, returning to bed in the widening pool of quiet.
There are households which would have considered this arrangement paradise—and in retrospect, at times, I did myself.
In the frigid January of the year 1845, Mrs. Grizzlehurst grew thicker about the middle and began to whistle when she was not speaking (which was nearly all the time). Jane Eyre insists, Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world, and I agree with her—but as Mrs. Grizzlehurst slowly swelled with child, I thought what a lucky chance it was that humans do not often suffer complete unhappiness either.
Mr. Grizzlehurst produced clownish smiles as he bent to kiss her cheek in the morning, his expressions tinged a helpless shade of ash when he went through his account books in the evening. He began to toss me worried glares, meaningless winks and clucks, a pleading slackness hanging heavy in his chops before he whispered:
Miss Steele, hadvantitious as this ’ere week has been, is there nary another penny we might’a misplaced somewhereabouts?
This verse is downright halliterative, Miss Steele, and I happlaud you. . . . Can we not keep it to a single page? Paper is that dear these days, and we don’t want to look ’eathenish.
Just before everything fell apart, he handed me this gem:
MOST BRUTAL STABBING RIPS HOLES IN NUBILOUS YOUNG VICTIM—.
Sighing, I dipped my pen; I sat at the rickety table in our garret in the coral glow of a February afternoon, preparing myself to rescue our native tongue from worse than death once more. The chipped yellow vase which I generally filled with weeds—Queen Anne’s lace and wild flowering parsley—sat empty in February save for some whimsical thistles Clarke had brought me to cheer my spirits when English had been dealt cruel blows.
We discover a most unforewitted tragedy struck in Church-lane, St. Giles’s, shocking even the most hardened of that irascilacious realm. A comely lass of seventeen years was most untimely struck down by a delinquitorious scallywag, a blade thrust twixt her ribs some scores and dozens of times, and left to bleed. Whilst chances the scurrible fiend will be brought to justice are most uncertificable, the humble author prays that he will be left to dangle like the most inconseterial string of garlic.
Since two years previous, “Grizzlehurst’s Daily Report of Mayhem and Mischief” had trebled in sales as far afield as Southwark and Deptford, thanks to my style and to Hugh Grizzlehurst’s genuine talent for scouting out the rankest misdeeds imaginable; had it occurred to me to be proud of the fact, I should have tried it out. Still—I watched Bertha Grizzlehurst gather up scattered flour from her breadboard as if it were gold dust, listened monthly for the sound of the landlord’s hobnailed boots and his rat-a-tat, and understood her husband’s wheedling for “Just an extra three days, guv’nor, as yer a charititious Christian.” I worked as many hours at the “Daily Report” as he, longer if it sold quickly, and there were four of us in that dear, dingy house, Clarke helping with laundry and mending and mopping, so our hosts never asked us for rent even if they wanted to. At the time, however, I had little notion of what a drinking habit cost, nor did I realise that some landlords considered the worth of their tenants more relevant to pricing than the square footage of their lodgings.
Small wonder, not knowing how hard the world truly was, I sat so peaceably over my paper and nibs in those final hours; small wonder that I lost something when I never knew what I had in the first place.
I felt Clarke’s graceful steps entering. Her feet sounded satisfied, her gentle shutting of the door weary; she had passed a good day in the Rotherhithe marketplace, crooning sweet ballads and the occasional comedic patter song. Her forearms met my collarbone as she rested her chin upon my head; I was ludicrously smaller than she when seated, for where the younger Clarke had grown tall and willowy, I had remained a slight, sparrowlike creature.
“How bad is it?”
I shut my eyes since she could not see me, simply grateful for her; I thought us sisters, partners, the perfect duo save that I was unworthy of her affections. Tapping my pen against the word irascilacious, I nuzzled my head against her neck like an overgrown cat. She chuckled into my crown.
“That is almost too inventive to edit out.”
“You’re an evil temptress and I shun your wiles,” I returned in a passable impersonation of the late unlamented Vesalius Munt. It thrilled me to call Clarke evil when the reverse was true—as if every time she laughed, I knew my own secrets remained buried.
Of course, murder was not the only secret I kept from Clarke.
By the time I was eighteen, I had read her father’s publication The Garden of Forbidden Delights an indecorous number of times—always in the sleepy midmorning, when Clarke was out singing and I had spent half the night replacing gibberish with words, dependent upon Mr. Grizzlehurst’s voluminous lungs to sell our goods each morn. Unlike Mr. Munt’s letters, the erotica printed by Clarke’s family failed to sicken, only caused a joyous, clamorous sensation I could not help but mistrust, since it meant that Edwin was right about me.