Fallen Grace - Mary Hooper [28]
Grace showed the business card. ‘I’m looking for Mr James Solent.’
‘Mr Solent is not available,’ said the grey-suited man disdainfully. ‘At least, not to such as you.’
‘But he said I could call upon him. Please can you tell me where to find him?’
‘Certainly not. Haven’t you heard of the confidentiality of the courts?’ He looked over Grace’s shoulder and saw Lily. ‘Be gone, both of you,’ he said. ‘We don’t allow the likes of you in here.’
Grace flushed. ‘Could I just –’ She wanted to ask if she could leave a message for Mr Solent, but the man was looking at her with such disgust that, knowing what he was thinking, her voice trailed away.
The door was shut in her face, the man gestured for her to clear off and stood glaring through the glass to make sure she did so.
Slowly, Grace went back down the steps.
‘Was that the man who was going to help us?’ Lily asked.
‘No! No, of course it wasn’t.’
‘Isn’t he here?’
Grace shook her head wordlessly. Had he been there? She’d seen several pairs of eyes looking out of the windows. Had he seen her and told the pinstriped man to send her away? Was he ashamed that he’d offered to help her?
‘What shall we do now?’
‘Well . . .’ Grace fought to control herself. It would do no good at all to start crying, for then Lily would start and there would be no stopping her. ‘We’ll try and find the place where they give people soup, then . . . and then . . .’ Then, perhaps, something else might occur to her. She fingered the other card in her pocket, thinking of Mrs Unwin’s offer of work and lodging. She hadn’t liked the woman, but if it came to it, she would have to go and seek her out.
x
Finding the soup kitchen at long last (for it was far away over the river in Southwark), they discovered that they were not allowed to have any actual soup, for all persons applying were required to bring with them a letter from their home Parish explaining why they were in need of such charity.
By this time, however, they were so hungry that Grace decided they should use two of their precious pennies to buy a hot potato each. They began eating these in the relative comfort of a pew in Southwark Cathedral, but after being moved on by a verger, ended up sitting on the stone steps that ran from the top to the bottom of London Bridge. It was not the most comfortable venue, for despite it being well past the end of the working day there were still a great deal of people around, and many purveyors of ham sandwiches and beers, so that with every mouthful they took they were jostled and hassled to buy this and that, and accidentally kicked more than once. Grace wondered very much at the enormous number of people there, but was not to know that a few years previously Mr Charles Dickens had set a gruesome murder scene from his most popular and famous book on these very steps, and the site now attracted the literary, the ghoulish and the plain curious in equal measure.
Darkness had fallen by the time they’d finished eating and Grace, knowing prices were cheaper on the Southwark side of the river, set herself the task of finding somewhere for them to stay for the night. After asking in a tavern (and turning down the offer of a shared room at four pence as being too expensive), she was directed to an old warehouse standing just by the Thames. The tattered, peeling advertising hoardings in the streets, the broken bottles and rubbish underfoot, and the ravens and seagulls squawking overhead made the area even more uninviting and dismal than Seven Dials, but Grace resolved to go on, for they had to sleep somewhere. The warehouse, when found, was a rickety building constructed of rusty corrugated iron. On the ground floor during the day animal bones were boiled to make glue and the nauseating smell permeated the first floor, which was divided by thin curtains into small, separate units at a charge of tuppence per night.
On being shown to