Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [80]
“Yes … thank you.” She made it almost an apology. “We were in the area … because …”
He glanced at Tallulah and did not recognize her. He looked back at Emily, waiting for her to continue.
“Because of the death of poor Ada McKinley …” Emily went on desperately. “It touches us closely … because …”
“Because my brother is suspected of the crime,” Tallulah finished.
“I don’t think …” he began, then frowned, studying her face in the light. “Tallulah?” His voice was high-pitched with incredulity. Even as he said it he could not completely believe. It was a question rather than a statement.
“Hello, Jago.” Her voice was rough with emotion. “Did you not know they suspected Finlay?”
“Yes. Yes, I did know, but I can’t believe he’s guilty. It’s too …” He did not finish. Whatever he had been going to say, he changed his mind. His face hardened, the pity or the tenderness forced out of it. “There really isn’t anything you can do here. You had better go home before it gets dark. I’m going ’round to Coke Street to serve out soup, but I’ll walk with you up to a place where you can get a hansom first. Come on.”
“We’ll help you with the soup,” Tallulah offered.
He dismissed the idea contemptuously. “Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t belong here. You’ll get dirty, your feet will hurt standing, and the people will smell and it will offend you. You’ll be tired and bored.” Anger hardened in his eyes and his mouth. “Those people’s hunger is not entertaining. They are real, with feelings and dignity, not something for you to come to look at so you can tell your friends.”
Emily felt as if she had been slapped. Tallulah had not exaggerated his scorn of her.
“Why do you imagine you are the only person who can wish to help from a genuine desire, Mr. Jones?” Emily said tartly. “Is compassion solely your preserve?”
Tallulah’s mouth dropped.
Jago drew in his breath sharply and the skin tightened across his cheeks. It was too dark to see if he blushed.
“No, Miss …”
“Radley,” Emily supplied. “Mrs. Radley.”
“No, Mrs. Radley, of course not. I have known Miss FitzJames for several years. But I had no right to judge you by her past nature. I apologize.”
“I accept your apology,” Emily said with considerable condescension. “But you should extend it to Tallulah as well. It was she who offered to help. Now, if you would lead the way, we shall come with you. I am sure more hands would make the task easier.”
Jago smiled in spite of himself, and obeyed, moving to the outside of the narrow footpath and walking beside them towards Coke Street.
He was right. The work was hard. Emily’s feet hurt, her arms ached and her shoulders and back felt as if they would never adjust to their natural position again. The people were noisy and the smell of hot, unwashed bodies and stale clothes was at times almost sickening. But far more than that she was oppressed by the hunger, the hollow eyes in the lamplight, the spindly limbs and skin pitted and dark with ingrained dirt. She saw tired women with sickly children and no hope. She looked across at Tallulah and saw the shock in her eyes. In the space of a couple of hours, poverty had become a word with a whole realm of meaning. It was reality, pain, people of flesh and blood who loved and had dreams, who got frightened and tired just as she did, only it was most of the time, not merely once or twice a year.
And Jago Jones had become different also, not an idealization but a man of flesh and spirit who also felt, who was occasionally clumsy and dropped things, whose knuckles bled when he scraped them against the wall while maneuvering the cart that carried the soup, who laughed at a child’s silly joke and who turned away to hide his grief when he was told of a woman’s miscarrying her baby.
Emily watched him and saw his contempt for Tallulah slowly soften as she worked to help, stifling her disgust at the smell of dirt and stale sweat, and smiling back at people with blackened or missing teeth, at first with an effort, at the end almost naturally, forgetting