Belle - Lesley Pearse [2]
‘And your father?’
Jimmy shrugged. ‘He cleared off around when I was born. Ma said he were an artist. Uncle Garth called him an arse-wipe. Anyways, I don’t know him and don’t want to. Ma always said it was lucky she were a skilled seamstress.’
‘Or she might have had to come and work at Annie’s Place?’ Belle said impishly.
Jimmy laughed. ‘You’re quick, I like that,’ he said. ‘So can we be friends?’
Belle just looked at him for a minute. He was an inch or two taller than her, with fine features and a good way of speaking. Not posh like a gentleman exactly, but he didn’t have the rough speech peppered with London slang that most lads around Seven Dials adopted. She guessed he’d been close to his mother, and had been protected from the kind of excesses of drinking, violence and vice which went on around here. She liked him, and she was as much in need of a friend as he was.
‘I’d like that,’ she said, and held out her little finger in the way that Millie back at Annie’s Place always did when offering friendship. ‘You have to give me your little finger too,’ she said with a smile, and as his little finger wound round hers, she shook his hand. ‘Make friends, make friends, never, ever break friends,’ she chanted.
Jimmy responded with a soppy-looking grin which told her he liked what she’d said. ‘Let’s go somewhere,’ he suggested. ‘Do you like St James’s Park?’
‘I’ve never been there,’ she replied. ‘But I should get back really.’
It was just after nine in the morning, and Belle had done as she often did, slipped out for some fresh air while everyone else in the house was still sleeping.
Maybe he sensed that she wasn’t anxious to go home and was tempted by an outing because he caught hold of her hand and tucked it into his arm, then started walking. ‘It’s really early still, we won’t be missed,’ he said. ‘The park’s got a lake and ducks and it will be good to have some fresh air. It isn’t far.’
A little bubble of excitement welled up in Belle. All that was waiting for her at home was emptying slop buckets and hauling coal for the fires. She didn’t need any further persuading to go with Jimmy, but she wished she’d put on her best royal blue cape with the fur-trimmed hood. She felt so dowdy in her old grey one.
As they hurried through the back alleys to Charing Cross Road, then down to Trafalgar Square, Jimmy told her more about his mother, and made her laugh with little stories about some of the wealthy women she made dresses for.
‘Mrs Colefax was the one that used to make Ma really mad. She was colossal, hips like a hippopotamus, but she made out Ma charged her for too much material and used the leftovers to make something for herself. One day Ma couldn’t hold back any longer and she said, “Mrs Colefax, it takes all my ingenuity to make a dress for you out of six yards of crêpe. What’s left over wouldn’t make a jacket for a grasshopper.” ’
Belle giggled, imagining the fat woman standing there in her corset being fitted for a dress. ‘What did she say to that?’
‘ “I’ve never been so insulted.” ’ Jimmy imitated Mrs Colefax by speaking in a high, breathless voice. ‘ “You would do well to remember who I am.” ’
They paused to look at the fountains in Trafalgar Square, then hurried across the road towards the Mall.
‘Isn’t the Palace grand?’ Jimmy said as they walked through Admiralty Arch and saw Buckingham Palace in all its pale splendour ahead of them at the far end of the Mall. ‘I love to get away from the Ram’s Head and see beautiful places. It makes me believe I’m worth something more than being my uncle’s errand boy.’
Until that moment Belle had never considered that beautiful places might inspire anyone, but as they walked into St James’s Park and she saw how the frost had turned bare branches, bushes and grass into a glittering spectacle, she understood what Jimmy meant. Weak sunshine was breaking through the thick cloud, and the swans, geese and ducks on the lake were gliding effortlessly through the water. It was a different world