Two for Sorrow

(untitled)

by Josephine Tey

First Draft

Whitechapel to Islington, Friday 14 November 1902

The clock on the steeple of St Mary’s was just striking four when Annie Walters trudged across Whitechapel High Street towards Lockhart’s Cocoa Rooms, her eyes fixed on the double row of painted white letters which left no one in any doubt as to what was served inside. The broad thoroughfare was busy—she had never seen it any other way—but she cut a determined path through the clutter of a Friday afternoon and hurried the last few yards to avoid a tram which was moving more quickly than she had anticipated. Safe on the pavement, she leaned against a lamppost for a moment to catch her breath and watched the tram go past, wishing her own life were as anchored to a fixed route as those wheels were to the curling lines in the road.

There was a smoky, dingy quality to the November air and Lockhart’s—while it was never going to be the most coveted of eating places—looked welcoming enough from the outside. Having walked the streets for most of the day, Annie was glad to step out of the cold for a bit before getting rid of the baby. She shifted the weight of the bundle on to her left arm and pushed open the door, adding her own marks to the layers of grease and dirt which gathered relentlessly on the brass, a reminder that the restaurant catered for people who worked with their hands and weren’t likely to stand on ceremony where food was concerned. The downstairs rooms were already full but, in any case, she preferred the comparative anonymity of the first floor and chose a table in the corner, as far from the counter as she could get. It was the usual mix of clientele—dockers, cab-drivers, stall-holders, street women and a few people who, like her, seemed not to have a job as such but who could always find the price of a meal. She sat down, nodding to one or two familiar faces, confident that her business was her own.

The service at Lockhart’s was reduced to its bare essentials, and a mug of cocoa was slapped down on the table in front of her as soon as she was settled at her table. ‘Anything to eat?’ the woman asked gruffly, hardly seeming to care what the answer was.

‘Just the usual,’ Annie said, and the woman nodded.

The cocoa was sweet and hot enough to burn her lips. Annie sipped it absent-mindedly, wondering if she had imagined the knowing look that passed between the women at the counter, but when the waitress returned a few minutes later with her meal, the plate of sausage and mash was delivered without a word and she was left to eat in peace. The food was the same as it always was, straightforward and tasty, but she ate with less enjoyment than usual, conscious of the weight on her lap and sensing that the unspoken rules of the establishment were about to be broken: the staff at the counter were chatting amongst themselves, apparently oblivious to their customers, but somehow Annie sensed that she would not be allowed to leave the premises without some sort of confrontation. Sure enough, no sooner had she laid down her fork than the younger of the two women came over.

‘What’ve you got there?’ she asked, picking up Annie’s empty plate but making no move to return it to the kitchen.

Annie put her arm protectively across the baby but, in so doing, unwittingly dislodged the shawl that she had wrapped so carefully around the tiny body. She looked down in horror at the face which was now revealed, still and pale under the bright lights. ‘It’s a baby,’ she said, knowing it was pointless to lie.

‘Not very lively, is it?’

Annie laughed—an unnatural, stifled sound—but, in her panic, it was all she could manage. ‘No, poor little thing, but he’ll be right as rain soon enough. I’m a nurse, you see,’ she added, as the woman’s disbelieving eyes tore into her. ‘I’m taking him back to Finchley—that’s where his mother’s been confined.’ She stood up and fumbled in her pocket for the money that Sach had given her on Wednesday night. ‘I’d better be on my way.’

‘I’d like to see him awake,’ the waitress said, and went to stroke the baby’s cheek.

Hurriedly, Annie turned away. ‘Oh, I don’t think you would,’ she said, tidying the shawl. ‘He’d be screaming the place down, and I don’t know what your customers would think to that.’

A handful of coins spilled out on to the table, more than enough for the meal, but Annie made no attempt to retrieve the surplus change. Instead, she drew the baby closer to her and walked towards the door, trying not to hurry. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw the younger girl take a step towards her, but she had reached the stairs by then and flew down them as fast as she could, no longer caring if she drew further attention to herself. Once out in the street, she headed east towards St Mary’s, scarcely thinking about where she was going but desperate to get as far as possible from the searching eyes of those women. When she got to the crossroads, she turned left into Commercial Street and leaned heavily against the wall of the building on the corner. Her heart was pounding so fiercely that she almost believed it capable of throwing life back into the dead child which was clutched to her chest, and she had to take several deep breaths to calm herself. She knew she had said too much, and it was stupid to have mentioned Finchley, but her nerves had got the better of her. Anyway, why should she protect Sach? Annie had been a martyr for too much of her life, and there was no way that she was going to carry the blame for this on her own.

When she was feeling calmer, she walked on down Commercial Street. The vegetable market had long since packed up for the day, relinquishing its meagre shelter to the lost and the homeless, and the street in general—always so full of energy by day—had now lost its passion, and seemed pallid and lethargic. She knew how it felt. Even in her younger days, when she worked all the hours God sent, she could never remember being quite this tired, and the faint but melancholy smell of Russian cigarettes which drifted out from the alleyways seemed to underline her sense of the pointlessness of her life. She looked up at the Peabody Buildings on the corner of White Lion Street, and it reminded her of her own tenement days in Drury Lane, where she had lived for twenty-four years with her husband; that building—which had also been part of the Peabody Trust—had the same crude angles as this one, its main triumph appearing to be the elimination of beauty which characterised all buildings for the poor. She had spent her life in such places—orphanages, hospitals like the one where she had first met Sach, tenement blocks—and it seemed to her that the benefactors behind all these institutions seemed hell-bent on keeping the poor bound in ugliness, as if their lives weren’t ugly enough already. Still, at least those rooms in Drury Lane had had a sense of community about them. Since her husband died, she had become just another of those shabby, transient women who moved from one narrow bed in London to another, changing their names as they went and leaving their debts behind them—so many names, so many hurried departures with the doors closed firmly on so many secrets. And for what? Perhaps it would have been kinder if someone had done for her all those years ago what she had done for the lifeless child in her arms.

Annie cut through Brushfield Street as the quickest route to the railway station. Across the way, a small girl stood in a doorway, dark-haired and pale in the light from the street-lamp, and staring out into nothing. The child must have been about five or six, Annie guessed, and she was beautiful, although it would only be a matter of time before stress and hunger would corrode her self-respect and banish the loveliness as if it had never been. Just for a moment, she understood what drove those childless women to Sach’s door—the impulse to seize this fragment of childhood and take it away before contact with the streets left its permanent mark—but the understanding wasn’t strong enough to block out the memory of those children who weren’t adopted, who were disposed of by other means. As the child across the street looked towards her, she seemed to represent the spirit of all the lives that had been taken away. Whether her stare was accusing or thankful, Annie couldn’t say.

It was heading towards rush hour at Liverpool Street, and hundreds of men and women were already pouring down the slope to the main-line and suburban trains. Annie stood for a moment on the footbridge which spanned the platforms and looked down on to the black-coated crowd. It was time now, she knew that, and, in any case, the strange kind of peace which she had sometimes found in the hours spent alone with a child was getting harder and harder to come by; in her heart, she knew it couldn’t last. The ladies’ waiting room was over near Platform One, and she took advantage of its privacy to remove anything from the baby’s body which might identify it later, then walked quickly through the arches and into the station yard. It was dark, and the air was thick with smoke and dirt, so she chose the mound of coal nearest to her. Looking back over her shoulder to make sure that no one had followed her, she placed the bundle gently on the ground, then took a nearby shovel and disturbed the bottom of the heap sufficiently to bring a stream of coal tumbling down, covering the tiny form.

She left the station without looking back, and walked around for a while with no purpose other than to put off the moment when she would have to return to Danbury Street without the child. Unable to face an evening alone in her room, she moved from public house to public house, determined to spend every penny of Sach’s money on the one comfort available to her. When the only thing left in her pocket was the price of a ticket home, she caught the bus back to Islington and got off by the canal. It had just started to rain, and she hurried down Noel Road, wanting now to get to sleep before the numbing effect of the alcohol wore off. The narrow passage that led to the back of the house was dark but she felt her way along the fence, counting the gates carefully to make sure she chose the right one. She found the yard without a problem, but the tiny space was crammed with clutter and she stumbled against a policeman’s bicycle, knocking it to the floor with a crash and scraping her shin badly on the pedal. She swore to herself and rubbed her leg, but she had already seen a light on downstairs and knew that there was no chance of returning home unnoticed. Reluctantly, she climbed the three stone steps to the back door, aware that she stank of gin but long past caring.

‘Is that you, Mrs Walters?’ called a voice from the kitchen, and Annie knew she had no choice but to brazen it out. Her landlady was sitting at the table with Mrs Spencer, one of the lodgers from the first floor. The women were drinking tea, and Annie didn’t have to try very hard to work out what the main topic of conversation had been. ‘The baby not with you, then?’ Mrs Seal added, as if reading her thoughts.

‘No. I’ve taken it to its new home—I told you I was going to.’ Without thinking, she took the clothes that she had removed from the baby’s body and threw them across the table, enjoying the shock on the women’s faces. ‘Here you are—you can have these for your little one. Mine won’t need ’em any more.’

Mrs Seal picked up one of the knitted booties and looked at Annie. ‘Poor little thing, carted round from pillar to post,’ she said. ‘What sort of a start in life is that?’

‘Huh,’ Annie scoffed dismissively. ‘There’s no need to feel sorry for the child. She’s gone to a titled lady in Piccadilly who paid a hundred pounds for her, and she’s going to be an heiress.’

‘I thought you said the baby was a boy?’ Mrs Spencer said, glancing across at Mrs Seal.

Annie was thrown for a moment; she had completely forgotten that she had lied about the baby’s sex when she first brought it back to the house, although why she had ever thought that would protect her, God only knew. ‘I didn’t say anything of the sort, Minnie,’ she said defiantly. ‘You must have misheard.’

‘I must have done,’ Mrs Spencer said. ‘My mistake—sorry, I’m sure.’

Annie muttered a gruff goodnight and went through to her room in the back parlour. She could tell instantly that someone had been through her things while she was out: the baby’s clothes on the bed were not as she had left them, and she was sure that she had closed the drawer in which she kept the feeding bottle and the Chlorodyne. There was nothing else for it—she would have to move on soon, although judging by the look of the girl at Sach’s, it wouldn’t be long before she was needed again and she doubted she’d be able to find another room in time. It was dangerous, but she would have to bring one more child here and risk the consequences. If Sach knew how close they were to being discovered, she’d be horrified—but Annie had to admit to a certain pleasure in the thought of taking Sach down with her. Edwards, too, if she had the chance: she knew that Sach and that girl were up to something, that Edwards’s duties were more than just cooking and cleaning. She wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to cut her out altogether, but she’d be damned if she’d let them—not now, not after everything she’d done. There were plenty of other women who wanted her services.

She picked up the rest of the milk which she had bought the day before and poured it into a mug, then added a couple of drops of Chlorodyne to help her sleep. But as she lay down, she knew it would take much more to blot out the noises in her head, the roar and clamour of a train about to depart, and the sound of a child choking in the night.