Belle - Lesley Pearse [237]
She saw Kent move from his seat, and then heard that incredible crash and tinkling of glass. Light suddenly streamed in and she saw a silhouette of another man with something big and heavy in his hands, then heard a thump and a howl of pain. Another dull thump and the man walked towards her.
The light was behind him so she didn’t know it was Jimmy, not until he spoke. She thought of how an entire police force hadn’t been able to catch Kent and arrest him, yet Jimmy had managed it all on his own.
‘My Jimmy, a hero,’ she murmured to herself.
He was shouting now to someone below the window. He was telling them to come to the back door. ‘Smash it down!’ he shouted. ‘I can’t leave this bastard. And one of you cut Miss Cooper loose when you get up here. She’s tied up.’
Suddenly the stink of this place and the terror she’d felt disappeared. It was almost as if she was floating among clouds, and she could look down and see her past spread out before her. Kent was the man who had caused everything, and now he was caught, she was free. Free to put it all behind her, free to make a life of her own choosing.
Jimmy was right in saying that one day she’d find herself realizing that some good things had come out of all she’d been through. She knew about people now, the wicked and the good and all those in between who were a bit of both because they’d been damaged by the bad things that had happened to them. She understood how greed could distort people’s thinking, and how lust without love would never completely satisfy anyone.
Truly wicked people were quite rare, she realized. Kent was one, Madame Sondheim and Pascal another two. But people like Martha, Sly and perhaps Madame Albertine in Marseille had probably become bad through greed and association with wicked people.
Yet on balance there were many, many more good people. Aside from Mog and Jimmy, there were Lisette, Gabrielle, Philippe, Noah, Garth and Etienne. Maybe some would argue that like herself, most of them were not entirely pure, but they stood up for right when it was needed.
Belle heard the sound of wood splintering, then the comforting tread of heavy boots on the stairs. It was all over now: she and Jimmy could go home very soon, and she could start her new life.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Epilogue
The Wedding March began, and as Belle turned to look at Mog coming into the church on Jimmy’s arm, her eyes began to prickle with emotional tears. She’d already seen Mog in her finery when she’d helped her to dress earlier. She’d fastened the long row of tiny buttons down the back of her pale blue dress, and placed the blue and white hat she’d made on Mog’s head, but to see her now, blushing and smiling like a young girl as she walked towards her man, was very moving.
It was early September and a glorious warm, sunny day. Outside All Saints Church on Blackheath families were having picnics; courting couples were strolling together, and old folks sitting on benches in the sunshine. And down the road, just waiting for Garth and Mog to become Mr and Mrs Franklin, was the Railway Inn, the public house of their dreams.
For three months now Mog and Belle had been living in a couple of rooms in Lee Park, a quiet, tree-lined road, so that Mog and Garth could be married here in Blackheath. Garth and Jimmy had remained at the Ram’s Head, not only to sell it and to wait for the legalities of the Railway Inn purchase to be finalized, but for propriety’s sake. Back in Seven Dials, no one worried much about such things. But they were all aware that starting a new venture in a very respectable area meant they must be seen to