Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [14]
“Well, a bit o’ apple pie won’t do you no ’arm. An’ we’ve some cream, thick as butter, it is. Could stand yer spoon up in it, an’ all.” Without waiting for him to accept or decline, she swept into the pantry, swinging the door wide open.
Charlotte smiled across at Pitt, and got him a clean spoon and fork out of the drawer. Just then, eleven-year-old Jemima came racing down the stairs and along the passage.
“Papa!” She threw herself at Pitt and hugged him with enthusiasm. “What happened in the East End? Gracie says the anarchists should all be shot. Is that true?”
He tightened his arms around her, then let her go as she remembered her dignity and pulled away.
“I thought she said to send them to the treadmill?” he replied.
“What’s a treadmill?” Jemima asked.
“A machine that goes ’round and ’round pointlessly, but you have to keep walking in it or you lose your balance and it bruises you.”
“What use is that?”
“None at all. It’s a punishment.”
“For anarchists?”
Gracie returned with a large wedge of apple pie and a jug of cream and set it on the table.
“Thank you,” Pitt accepted, helping himself. Perhaps he was hungry after all. Anyway, it would please all of them if he ate it. “For anyone put in prison,” he answered Jemima’s question.
“Are anarchists wicked?” she asked, sitting at the other side of the table.
“Yes,” Gracie answered as Pitt had his mouth full. “O’ course they are. They bomb people’s ’ouses and smash things up. They ’ate people who’ve worked ’ard and made things. They want ter spoil everything that in’t theirs.” She filled up the kettle and set it on the stove.
“Why?” Jemima asked. “That’s stupid!”
“Usually because nobody will listen to them otherwise,” Charlotte answered her daughter. “Where’s Daniel?”
“Doing his homework,” Jemima replied. “I’ve done mine. Does smashing things up make people listen? I’d just get sent to bed without any supper.” She looked at the apple pie hopefully.
Charlotte controlled her smile with an effort. Pitt saw it in her eyes, and looked away. The warmth of the kitchen was unknotting the pain inside him; violence was retreating from his thoughts to some dark place beyond the walls. The pie was crisp-crusted and still had some of its heat, the cream thick and smooth.
“Yes, you would,” Charlotte agreed with Jemima. “But if you were certain something was unjust, you’d be terribly angry, and you might not stay silent or do as you were told.”
Jemima looked at Pitt doubtfully. “Is that why they broke things, Papa? Is something unjust?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt replied. “But bombing ordinary people’s houses isn’t the answer.”
“ ’Course it in’t!” Gracie added forcibly, stretching up onto her toes to reach the tea caddy off the shelf. “If summink’s wrong, we ’ave police and laws ter put it right, which most times they do. Adding another wrong don’t ’elp, an’ it’s wicked.” She kept her small, square-shouldered back to the room. She opened the teapot lid with a snap. She had grown up in the back streets, begging and stealing to survive. Now that she was respectable, she was yielding to no one on the rule of law.
Charlotte, who was well-born, schooled to be a lady—before she had been wild enough to fall in love with a policeman—could afford a more liberal outlook.
“Gracie’s quite right,” she said gently to her daughter. “You can’t hurt innocent people to make your point. It is wicked, no matter how desperate you think you are. Now go upstairs and let your father have his supper in peace.”
“But Mama…” Jemima began.
“We’ll have no anarchy in this house,” Charlotte told her. “Upstairs!”
Jemima made a face, slipped her arms around Pitt’s neck again, and kissed him. Then she went out the door and they heard her feet lightly along the corridor.
Gracie warmed the teapot and made the tea.
Pitt ate the last of his apple pie, and sat back, letting the brightness and the warmth anchor