The Canary Keeper, page 27
‘Is it bad?’
‘Cholera,’ Fedelm says.
Uncle Dennis steps back to the door. ‘I thought they said there wouldn’t be another outbreak.’
‘They say all sorts of things. And most of it’s rubbish. It’s in the air, they’re saying now. The miasma.’
Uncle Dennis’s hand goes to cover his mouth and nose.
‘Your mitt ain’t going to make no difference,’ she says.
Uncle Dennis drops his hand to his side, though he still looks nervous at the thought of what he might catch. ‘This place. You can smell the air is bad. I’ve told Gerald enough times.’
‘He’s a good man.’
Birdie likes Fedelm for defending Da.
‘Is she in a bad way?’
‘She won’t last much longer.’
Uncle Dennis is silent for a moment. Birdie watches him out the corner of her eye. She isn’t sure what to make of Uncle Dennis; he’s always bossing Da about.
He nods at Birdie. ‘I brought this over to keep you entertained.’
‘What is it?’
‘A magic lantern.’
She’s heard of those; Aidan told her he’d seen a travelling showman who made pictures of far off places like Africa and India come alive on the wall. Perhaps Uncle Dennis isn’t so bad after all.
‘I’ll show you how to use it.’
Da appears then, pale and haunted.
‘I can’t stop her pain,’ he says.
‘I’ll go to her,’ Fedelm says. ‘You stay here. There’s nothing you can do now.’
Uncle Dennis puts his arm around Da’s shoulder. ‘I’ve put a word in for you with the foreman down at St Saviour’s. He was understanding, but he says you need to be there tomorrow.’
Da nods, though he is far away.
‘Here. Help me with this magic lantern.’
They crouch on the floor, and Uncle Dennis removes the contraption from the crate and lights the oil lamp. The glow burnishes the room with an enchanting shimmer. Uncle Dennis shows Birdie how to project the slides on the peeling wall, and he spins the carousel. Vivid colours flood the room and Birdie is no longer in Bermondsey; she’s surrounded by sapphire sky and up ahead a scarlet sun burns and white ice gleams.
‘The North Pole,’ Uncle Dennis says, ‘the land where the sun never sets.’ He moves the carousel, and a figure appears. ‘Here’s an Esquimaux.’
She squeals with excitement.
Fedelm enters the room. ‘She’s gone.’
Dennis crosses himself; he and Da quit the room and go upstairs together. Fedelm stays with Birdie.
‘Show me how the magic lantern works,’ she says.
Birdie does as she is told, moving the wheel to project the pictures of the Esquimaux. When the slides are done, she looks in the crate, finds another carousel and fits it with her tiny fingers. The lamp projects a bright yellow bird in a cage.
‘Canary,’ the woman says.
Birdie spins the carousel. The door of the cage opens and the yellow bird flies away. She hears the canary chirping the sweetest melody, a soothing trill of birdsong.
‘I can hear the canary singing.’
‘Can you now?’ Fedelm seems impressed. ‘Well, you should think of your ma whenever you hear the birds singing. She’s flown with them and she’s free from the troubles of this world. But she’ll always be there to guide you if you reach for her in your thoughts.’
She likes the way Fedelm explains Ma’s death. It’s better than the priest’s threats of Hell and damnation.
She doesn’t realize Da and Uncle Dennis have returned until she hears Uncle Dennis talking behind her.
‘You should get the family away from here, Gerald. The air’s no good.’
Da shouts, for once. ‘How can I take my family away from here? I can’t afford to go anywhere else.’
‘You know that’s not true.’ Uncle Dennis is shouting too.
They seem to have forgotten that she and Fedelm are still in the room, and that Ma is lying upstairs.
‘And you know why I don’t want to do it,’ Da argues back. ‘It’ll be the death of me.’
Birdie doesn’t understand what they are talking about, but she can hear the anger and desperation in Da’s voice.
‘You think he can do you more harm than these rotten streets?’
‘I’ll find another way.’
‘You’ve been saying that for years. He’s seen me good, Gerald.’
‘Yes, but you sit in an office. You do the books. That’s not what he’d want me for, and you know it. He’d want me because I can keep the stevedores and the warehouse watchmen in line. He’d have me down the docks overseeing…’
Da lets the sentence slide.
‘Think about it.’
‘I won’t work for him.’
Uncle Dennis digs in his pocket, removes a coin. ‘He pays good money.’
‘He takes a hefty cut as well. Skin for a skin.’
‘He’ll look after you. And your family.’ He nods at Birdie and then he flips the coin, and it spins around and around, up and up. ‘Catch it.’
Da lets the coin drop on the floor. ‘Keep your bloody coin. This is a respectable family.’
‘You live here in this pigsty…’ Uncle Dennis waves his hand around the mouldering walls, ‘and you talk about being a respectable family?’
Da looks away.
Birdie decides she’ll take the coin Uncle Dennis tossed and she reaches over, but Fedelm snatches it away before her fingers touch the metal, though not before she sees the etched letters on its upturned face. One she knows – it’s a B, like the letter at the start of her name. The other letter she doesn’t recognize.
‘You won’t be needing that,’ Fedelm says.
She passes the coin back to Uncle Dennis and he pockets it, and heads to the door without another word.
Da stands head bowed, shoulders hunched, the weight of it all defeating him.
Fedelm says, ‘I’ll go and wash her.’
She leaves Birdie alone with Da.
‘Da, can we get a canary?’
He looks down at her and she can see the tears in his eyes. ‘That’s a grand idea,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell you what, maybe we’ll take Uncle Dennis’s advice and move away from here and find ourselves a place to live further from the river where the air is cleaner, and where we’ve got more room. Then we can keep lots of canaries.’
*
The cormorant croaks. Birdie feels something cold against her palm and realizes she is clutching her brooch.
‘Are you feeling ill?’ Solomon asks. ‘I thought you were about to faint.’
‘She’s fine,’ Fedelm says. ‘She won’t keel over.’
It’s true, Birdie thinks; she might go into trances quite regularly, but she’s never fallen or had a fit.
‘It’s not a malady, it’s a gift,’ Fedelm says. ‘It’s the truth she sees, and sometimes the truth is hard for others to accept.’ She gives Solomon a sideways glance. ‘The words of men are often lies, and they’ll say you’re mad or evil rather than allow you to contradict them.’
Birdie gazes at the old woman, the smooth curves of her youth still visible beneath the wrinkles.
‘Don’t fight your gifts. Use them to see beyond the trickery of this world.’
Birdie reaches for Fedelm’s hand. ‘Thank you for all your help.’
Fedelm smiles sadly. ‘I’ve done what I can.’
Solomon looks uncertainly from Fedelm to Birdie. ‘We should visit this orphanage,’ he says. ‘We can take a cab from outside the station.’
Chapter 19
The driver leans over from his seat at the back of the Hansom cab and shouts through the hatch in the roof. ‘Which street did you say?’
‘Bermondsey Wall,’ she replies.
The Bermondsey Hospital for Foundling Girls. Birdie knows it well. She always ran past the forbidding building as a child, scared because Frank had told her it’s where she would be sent if she gave him any lip. Orphanages, homes for fallen women or wayward children, places for the sick and destitute. All were viewed with dread by the inhabitants of the squalid alleys and tenements surrounding the docks – only marginally better than the workhouse. Nobody believed these charitable institutions cared for those that entered their stern doors. Girls in orphanages were often kicked onto the streets when they reached fourteen, or else they were farmed out as domestic maids and ended up being abused or tricked into prostitution. She considers herself to have been lucky; the regime at the school she attended was spartan, the matron spiteful and the children, including herself, regularly beaten, but she had been taught maths and learned the skills that helped her gain respectable employment. And nobody disappeared mysteriously in the night.
The Hansom cab judders to an abrupt halt.
‘I ain’t going no further,’ the cabbie shouts. ‘These streets is bad enough when you can see where you’re going.’
No point in arguing. Solomon passes the fare up through the roof hatch. The driver unlocks the cab doors, lets them out and cracks his whip. The horse trots away, leaving them in the fog and already fading light.
‘It’s further along the street, toward the river,’ she says.
Solomon steps closer. ‘I’d offer to take your arm, but you’re dressed as a man.’
‘You’ve no need to explain.’
There is a prickliness between them. Whether it’s coming from her or him, she cannot tell. They have not spoken much since they left the foreshore below London Bridge. She’s still mulling over the conversation with Fedelm. Solomon’s reaction – to the old woman’s account of Birdie’s history as much as the trade in girls – is difficult to read. They make their way in silence past blackened walls and rusty railings, terraces with cracked and papered window panes. The fumes of the river grow stronger.
‘There it is.’
The bleak premises lours over the street, more like a prison than an orphanage with its barred windows and menacing spear-headed railings. She proposes she should find an excuse to speak to the orphanage matron. Solomon says he would be less likely to raise eyebrows than Birdie in her sailor’s trousers and jacket.
‘I fooled you,’ she reminds him.
‘Not for long,’ he replies. ‘I saw through your disguise.’
She fears he is talking about more than her outfit, and wonders whether he can tell she is having second thoughts about returning to her husband; it might be the right thing to do, but is it what she wants?
‘You go on,’ she insists. ‘I’ll meet you by Mill Stairs.’
‘All right,’ he says. ‘Walk away if you sense danger.’
Their conversation is interrupted by a whistle that makes Birdie jump. A small jiggling flame glimmers through the fog. It brightens and a figure emerges from the vapour; a lamplighter. He doffs his cap as he nears. Solomon tweaks his bowler, watches him stroll toward the river before he turns back to Birdie.
‘If I’m not at Mill Stairs, wait for me,’ he says.
He recedes and vanishes before she has a chance to ask him where he is going.
*
Three stone steps lead to the dull black front door. She lifts and drops the anchor-shaped brass knocker. The clang sounds pathetic in the fog.
‘Hello, is anybody there?’ Her shout is shrill and nervous.
There is no answer. Her plan seems flimsy in the face of the impenetrable entrance. She lets the knocker thud again. Nothing happens. She might as well go and join Solomon by Mill Stairs. She descends the steps, and spies the bent figure of a woman in a grubby pinafore and mob cap hobbling along by the railings. The woman cranes her neck awkwardly at Birdie, her spine refusing to straighten.
‘What do you want?’ she asks
‘I’d like to talk to the matron.’
‘She ain’t fond of visitors.’
That much is already obvious.
‘I’m looking for my sister. I’ve been at sea, and while I was away my mother died and I believe she was brought here.’
The story is too neat. The woman rumples her nose, as if she can smell its fishiness.
‘You don’t sound like no sailor. You’re too posh.’
Birdie considers bolting. She decides to stand her ground; this crippled woman can do her no harm.
‘I was taken in by a school for those orphaned by the sea when my father drowned.’ This is partly true; her school had indeed been intended for the orphaned children of ships’ captains. ‘That’s why I sound educated.’
‘What can you do on a ship?’ She scoffs. ‘You’re too scrawny to haul a sail.’
‘I work as a cook.’
‘Cooking?’ The woman perks up. ‘That’s what I do.’
‘You cook for the orphans?’
‘Broth. That’s what the orphans get. And I cook proper stuff for the matron and all that… palaver.’ She flaps her hand in a dismissive gesture that perturbs Birdie. What palaver?
‘Are you going inside now?’ Birdie asks.
‘I would be if you weren’t standing in me way.’
‘Would you let me in?’ She digs in her pocket, retrieves a shilling, offers it to the cook. ‘I’m desperate to find my sister.’
The woman snatches the coin. ‘All right, but it’s no good asking me about your sister. I don’t know none of their names. They come and they go, and they’re all the same to me. You’ll have to talk to the matron, and I can’t promise she’ll answer cos, as I said, she don’t have much time for visitors.’
She removes a key from underneath her apron, fumbles with the lock, leans her hunched shoulder against the door, shoves, and hobbles inside. Birdie follows. The place reeks of boiled cabbage and sewage. Wisps of fog languish below the high ceiling. Birdie is surprised to see the fish-tail plumes of gas lights burning in their clear glass shades; it’s an unusual touch of luxury for a charitable institution. Gas lamps are common enough in the city’s streets, but only the wealthiest Londoners have them in their homes. Here, they throw a jaundiced glaze on the bare, tiled floor and draw attention to the grubbiness of the high ceiling and the greyness of the walls. Arched doorways lead, she supposes, to the refectory and offices for the staff. A narrow stairway cowers in a far corner. She listens for the shouts and chatter of children, but there is silence apart from the hissing of the gas lamps, and the wheezing of the cook.
‘How many girls stay here?’
‘Stay? None of ’em stays. Like I said, they come and they go. It’s a Hospital, you see, not long term care. We move them on when they’re cured.’
‘Cured of what?’
She shrugs. ‘Indolence. Pride. Criminal leanings.’
Criminal leanings? Birdie is incensed by the cook’s description of the orphans’ dispositions, but checks her indignation.
‘Do you know where they go when they’ve been cured?’
‘Eh?’
The woman cranks her head around and gives Birdie a filthy stare. She decides to change the subject.
‘Where’s the matron’s office?’
‘Over there.’ She waves her gnarled hand at the door furthest from the staircase.
‘And what about the girls? Where are they?’
‘In the dorms, I suppose.’ The gas plumes splutter and shrink. ‘Useless bloody contraptions.’
‘Shouldn’t you switch the gas supply off?’ Birdie can taste sulphur on her tongue. ‘Is there a mains tap somewhere?’
The cook ignores her, fusses with a taper and a candle on a console by the front door, lifts the candle and waves the flame in the direction of the stairs. ‘That’s where they stay most of the time. Up there.’ Birdie’s gaze follows the line of the bannister. Halfway up, her eyes are arrested by a crest decorated with heraldic creatures that seem to leap and snarl in the flickering light. She stares at the shield and her head feels woozy. Her skin creeps. Perhaps it is the gas, she thinks, and then she remembers Fedelm’s words and does not resist as her eyes blur and the room around her darkens and dissolves. She keeps her gaze fixed on the misting wall and when her vision clears she finds herself in a dull hallway she recognizes: she’s waiting for another matron in a different time and place. The class teacher has sent her to Matron’s office to account for her poor stitching – embroidery always did defeat her. But Matron isn’t there so she waits outside, and notices the door is slightly ajar. Her curiosity is roused. Hearing no sound of advancing adults, she nudges the handle and steps inside. The desk has been pushed to one side and, strewn across its dull surface, she glimpses a fur stole, a peach silk petticoat and a crimson ribbon sash from which dangles a crest decorated with strange rampant beasts. Leaning against the wall is the birch rod used to beat the pupils. Birdie doesn’t notice Matron returning until a sensation at the nape of her neck makes her jump. She turns. The sour-faced woman stands in the doorway, hands on hips. Birdie hardly dares breathe as she waits for her to reach for the rod. Matron doesn’t move. Birdie catches a strange look of embarrassment on her face before her thin top lip cocks in a triumphant sneer. She’s not going to punish Birdie, she says, because she’s got the satisfaction of knowing that one day, somebody would teach her the meaning of obedience, even if he has to beat her black and blue to do it. She smiles smugly as she watches Birdie leave the office.
*
‘Bloody nuisances, them girls,’ the cook says, and Birdie’s mind snaps back to her surroundings. Her head still feels heavy. She focuses on the dull shield hanging above the stairs, tries to make out the outline of its beasts and has to dig her fingernails into her palms to stop herself from reacting; the shield is identical to the crest she saw dangling from the ribbon in her apparition of Matron’s office. What’s more, it’s the same as the letterhead Margaret noticed on her school testimonial.
‘Is that a lynx?’
‘A what?’
‘Lynx. A big cat – like a lion.’
‘Where?’
‘On that shield.’ She points.
‘That? I thought you were talking about the ship.’
Birdie’s hands feel clammy. ‘The ship?’
