Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [13]
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Chapter Five
The lodgers at Mrs Macready’s house were a disparate bunch. The top floor comprised a fairly large area divided by a thin board wall, with a married couple on each side of it. Both the men were costermongers with street stalls; their wives worked alongside them. One couple sold cheap fish – herrings, sprats and whelks – the other specialised in apples or potatoes according to season. If they ever had rotting or substandard stock on their hands then they’d share it amongst Mrs Macready’s lodgers, all of whom were always more than happy to take it.
One flight down from the costers, on the third floor, lived Mr Galbraith, who came and went at strange times in the night, usually in full evening dress, while in the room next to his were the Cartwrights, an Irish family with a brood of seven or eight noisy children. The Cartwrights worked as match sellers, pickers-up of cigar ends, errand runners, and the youngest, a boy aged two, as a decoy. He would attract attention by ‘getting lost’ while his older sister picked the pockets of those sympathetic souls who stopped to help him. Grace and Lily were on the second floor in a small room next to a frail old couple, Mr and Mrs Beale, who were both nearly blind and went out selling bootlaces in order to keep from being parted in a workhouse. They suffered dreadfully from living just underneath the noisy Cartwrights, who were in and out at all hours.
In the first-floor rooms, next to each other and all the more convenient for fighting, were two families, the Wilsons and the Popes. The Wilsons – mother, father and three children – worked as crossing sweepers and had the best pitches in Seven Dials under their control. Next door, the Popes had four children still at home who took whatever work they could get: rag gathering, collecting horse dung, tumbling to amuse people or, if times were hard, begging or outright thieving. Mr Pope also had a good line in bird-duffing and many a pale finch had entered the Popes’ room only to emerge as a newly painted, multicoloured bird of paradise. (‘Most rare, madam. Brought over to this country by a seaman cousin of mine.’)
After the trauma of the teapot, Lily returned to their room, feeling dreadfully gloomy. She turned to her treasures – a polished oyster shell, a foreign coin and some other near-worthless possessions she kept in an old cigar box – but even these failed to comfort her. Almost another day gone by and still no Grace. Whatever was she going to do? Should she tell Mrs Macready? Her old fear returned: suppose Grace didn’t come back ever? She’d have to go to the Parish and tell them. She’d have to go to the beadle, that big, frightening man, and say that she didn’t have any money to pay the rent, then he’d make her go into the workhouse – and once she was in there she’d never get out. She’d be locked up for ever, her head shorn, living on turnips and wearing smocks made out of sacking which itched her to death. If Papa came back, he’d never find her. Someone would find her, though, she thought with a shiver: that man who’d come in the dead of night and got into bed beside her. Why hadn’t she screamed? Why hadn’t she told Grace about it? Thinking about him now, she worked herself up into a fright and began crying lavishly and uncontrollably.
Grace, hearing sobs as she was coming through the front door, ran up the stairs as fast as her skirts and delicate condition permitted.
‘Lily! Whatever is it?’ she cried in alarm. She took her sister into her arms. ‘What are you crying about? I’m home now . . . I’m here. Hush! Tell me what’s happened.’
Lily sniffed and sobbed, enjoying being comforted. The one-handed man was in the past now and she didn’t want to talk about him, but of course there were other, more recent things to cry about. As sometimes happened with Lily, the distinction between truth and stories became somewhat blurred.
‘I was crying because . . . because