Dido and Pa Page 13

  ‘Did Pa’s music really cure that monkey of summat?’ Dido asked the doctor, who was now replacing his instruments in the black bag. He gave her a cool glance.

  ‘Yes, miss, most certainly it did; the animal was at death’s door with Mishkin’s disease – weighed only five ounces, and all its fur had fallen out. I had your father playing to it for twelve hours a day. I hope that information will encourage you to behave towards your father with proper respect; which he certainly deserves!’ Finster gave Dido another quelling look, then reclaimed his monkey from the head of Mr Twite (who was not looking particularly respect-worthy) and remarked to the latter in a low tone: ‘Do not neglect to continue the treatment with his excellency, whether he asks for it or not! It is most necessary. At least three hours a day. I cannot overstress the importance of this.’

  ‘Aye, aye, aye, I’ll not forget,’ replied Mr Twite, nodding so many times that his wig, already knocked awry by the monkey, fell off completely. He put it on again back to front. The doctor frowned, stuck out his lower lip, looked as if he thought of saying something more, then sighed, shrugged, and ran downstairs.

  Dido had a sudden idea and scurried after him.

  ‘Hey, mister!’ she called.

  Dr Finster, in the act of stepping into the coach, paused and looked at her impatiently.

  ‘Well? What?’

  ‘Could you go and look arter a boy called Podge Greenaway who’s been painting the sign of the Feathers pub, down Wapping High Street? He had his leg kicked by a mobster – could a broke the bone, easy. Anyone’ll tell you where to find him – his dad is blind and keeps the apple-stall.’

  ‘Have you taken leave of your wits, child? Such people are not the affair of a physician such as myself. Let him find himself an apothecary. Good day.’

  A footman slammed the carriage door and the horses broke into a trot.

  And slumguzzle to you, thought Dido, looking after him; then she turned back into the house, shut the door, and began walking slowly back up the stairs.

  Maybe I oughta write to the king, she thought. I could write a note, give it to Wally, he’d give it to Podge – if his leg ain’t broke he could get it to Simon who’d pass it along to King Dick – but would he ever believe it? It’s bezants to barleycorns he’d take no heed . . . Or he’d fetch in his dear cousin the Margrave and ask him about it all; and the Margrave ’ud deny everything. ‘How could you listen to such wicked tales about me?’ And then the fat ’ud really be in the fire.

  I’ve got to think of some plan.

  But what?

  Mr Twite had retired once again to the frowzy nest he shared with Mrs Bloodvessel; the exquisite notes of ‘Three Herrings for a Ha’penny’ floated up the stairs. Too bad the monkey ain’t in the house still, that’d make his fur grow twice as fast, ruminated Dido, continuing to climb the stairs. It’s right rum that Pa’s music does the monkey so much good, while that poor little morsel Is can’t stand it . . . What was the doctor saying to Pa, just afore he left? Something about His Nabs?

  Dido came to the door of the Dutchman’s room and stood still in wonder.

  Van Doon had produced a little set of travellers’ dominoes from his baggage and laid them out on top of his smaller valise. Across this improvised board he faced the Slut, who, cap laid aside, hair combed, face washed, and cheeks pink with interest, squatted like a gargoyle, chin on elbows, studying the pieces. After a moment or two, very slowly and hesitantly, she brought a piece up from the floor and laid it at the end of the pattern.

  But it was the Dutch gentleman’s face which really riveted Dido’s attention. And his attitude. He was watching the little Slut as if she were some long-lost, long-loved book that he had had not a hope of ever reading again.

  When she laid down her domino and looked up at him, half proud, half doubtful, he gave her a little smiling nod. Then very gently he leaned across and patted her small head.

  8

  THE STREET CHILDREN were flocking earlier and earlier to the forecourt of Bakerloo House as the days went by. This morning they had come well before daylight, and were playing their games by the light of the gas flares that blazed outside in the King’s Road.

  It was a freezing, foggy morning, and the snow, by now several inches deep, glowed like dusty gold as the children kicked and pranced and sang their rhymes.

  ‘Mingle, mangle, mingle,’ they sang, running and crissing and crossing, catching and swinging round one another if they met, then loosing and running on again.

  ‘Mingle, mangle, mingle.

  Poor King Dick is single –

  Not a chick, not a wife

  To cheer his lonely life,

  Not a sweetheart, not a friend

  To cheer his latter end!’

  Then they all turned and raced for the plane tree that grew by the porter’s lodge. The last one to reach it was given the part of King Dick, and sat sorrowfully on the fountain in the middle of the court.

  ‘Let us choose, let us pick,’

  sang the others

  ‘Pick a wife for lonely Dick

  Is she nimble, is she quick

  Can she jump over a walking stick?’

  Then they began setting each other a series of trials, leapfrogging, jumping over sticks held higher and higher, balancing along the rails of the fence, turning cartwheels, handstands and somersaults, until one could be judged the best, suitable to marry the bachelor king. But then, just as one was finally chosen, an outsider arrived, singing,

  ‘I’m the queen from over the sea –

  Before you wed him you’ll have to fight me!’

  The two ‘queens’ fought until one of them gave in, and the other was married to the ‘king’ in a mock ceremony. Then it all began again.

  One of the children, seeing Sophie at the window, waved vigorously and held up a hand with something white in it. Sophie ran down to the front door and met the child, a round-faced, cheerful little girl of not more than seven or eight, with untidily braided tawny hair and a great many freckles.

  ‘’Tis a letter for the lady Sophie – from Podge. When’s your birthday? Mine’s some time in June.’

  ‘Thank you, my love. I’m the lady Sophie and my birthday’s in April. The tenth. Have you no father nor mother, my poor child?’

  ‘Nary a one! But I manages! In summer I sells cresses, and in winter pincushions.’

  ‘Bring a pincushion next time you come and I’ll buy it,’ Sophie promised as the small creature raced back to her companions.

  ‘My dear Sophie,’ said the letter from Podge. ‘I am sorry not to come and see you myself, as the sight of your pretty face is like a Tonic. But wished to lose no time in telling you that I have seen your friend Dido & she is well & living with her dad in Wapping. She said she feared she could not vist you as it wd be too Dangerous (as you & I thought). Her father is working for You know who (also as we thought). Hope to see you in a Day or two, but have a bad leg just at present. Yr very affct friend,

  D. Greenaway.’

  Sophie ran upstairs with this epistle to find Simon pulling on his boots. He was already dressed in riding costume. Mogg was greasing his flintlock.

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Sophie in dismay. ‘Must you go out after wolves again?’

  ‘I fear I must, love. The king has asked me to most particularly. Blackheath and Dulwich are quite overrun; poor old ladies are being pulled out of their beds and children devoured on the way to school.’

  ‘Then can’t I come too?’ eagerly demanded Sophie.

  He said reluctantly, ‘I don’t think you ought. What about the poor king? One of us should stay at hand to cheer him up, don’t you think?’

  Sophie made a face at her brother.

  ‘Besides, it is quite dangerous,’ he went on apologetically. ‘I got this gash on the arm, and one of the brutes bit clean through my boot yesterday – you are safer here in Chelsea. But, of course, if you really insist on coming –’

  She sighed.

  ‘No, you ar
e right. Just do me a favour, and don’t get eaten!’

  ‘I’ll be home late again – probably long after you have gone to bed.’

  ‘I daresay you will . . . Simon, Podge writes that he has seen Dido. Is not that good news?’

  ‘Oh, famous!’ he said, his face brightening wonderfully. ‘Where?’

  ‘In Wapping.’

  ‘I will find some way of getting to see her,’ he said. ‘In disguise, perhaps. The very minute that we have these wolves under control –’

  Half an hour after Simon had gone, another note arrived from the Margrave.

  ‘My dear Battersea: I am reluctant to make a second call upon your time, knowing how busy you are; but I have a small point regarding the Royal Route that needs confirming. I am wondering if I can tempt you to a recital of Tea Music by my excellent Chapelmaster this evening, at eight? We could have our small chat, and then I can promise you a rare musical treat. Dare I hope to see you?

  Your friend, Eisengrim.’

  ‘Oh, drat the man,’ muttered Sophie, chewing the end of her quill pen as she considered what her answer should be. ‘I wish Simon had not gone off. Or that Podge didn’t have a bad leg; then I could get him to escort me.’

  She decided that she must accept, and penned a polite note to that effect.

  Simon and his companions rode across Chelsea Bridge, east through Lambeth village, and so on up to the wooded hills of Kent – Streatham Hill, Sydenham Hill, Forest Hill, Hilly Fields, Blackheath, Shooters Hill. All these forested summits were now infested by wolves, which, singly, might not have been dangerous, but they ranged in large packs and, ten or twenty together, could easily bring down a horse.

  The weather made hunting them more difficult. Snow fell continually, blinding the huntsmen and their mounts, giving good cover for the wolves to slip away among ancient oaks and thickset hazel and thorn coppices.

  Towards mid-afternoon, somewhere in the region of Blackheath Edge, when the light was already beginning to fail, Simon became separated from his companions. His horse had strained a fetlock, stumbling on a concealed rabbit hole that was masked by snow; it limped badly and could not keep up with the others. Soon Simon was alone, among great barricades of thorn trees.

  Plague on it, he thought. I had best turn for home. At this pace, Lochinvar won’t get me back to Chelsea before dark. Where can the others have got to? Will they have the sense to know that is what I have done?

  It was a desolate, silent region where he found himself. The gnarled ancient thorn trees grew close together. He had not passed a house for miles. London seemed far away, though he knew that the villages of Greenwich and Deptford must lie somewhere in the valley below and to the north.

  ‘Hold up, poor old fellow!’ he said, as Lochinvar stumbled again. ‘I’d better lead you through all these tangled thorn trees. It’s lucky there aren’t any wolves about.’

  During the day, the hunters had accounted for several hundred of the creatures, and their mates, limping, bleeding and cowed, had been driven southwards and eastwards.

  Simon had no sooner dismounted, however, than he heard a faint scream ahead of him, and the familiar, ominous sound of snarls, growls and high-pitched howls.

  Cursing the flutter of snow that obscured his view, he struggled on, tugging the reluctant Lochinvar after him, and came out into a small clearing where there was a wooden cabin. In front of the building he could see the black, ragged shapes of six or seven wolves, leaping, crouching, and darting as they attacked a human figure that tried to defend itself with no weapon but a metal pail.

  The faint cry came again: a thin, despairing sound.

  ‘Hold on! I’m coming!’ Simon shouted. ‘Get away, you brutes!’ he yelled at the wolves, who took no notice.

  Simon did not dare discharge his loaded gun, for fear of accidentally wounding the wolves’ victim, so he flung Lochinvar’s bridle over a thorn bough, and crept closer, until one wolf spotted him and turned; then he was able to shoot it at almost point-blank range. The rest, frightened by the report, reluctantly retreated; Simon was able to kill two more of them, one with his second musket, the next with the short sword, called a Save-All, which every hunter carried.

  Then he turned to assist the person he had rescued who, all this time, was crouched trembling in the snow. She seemed to be an elderly woman.

  ‘Have they hurt you badly?’ Simon asked her. ‘Can you walk? If so you had best get inside. I’ll just chase away the last of those beasts.’

  But the woman seemed unable to walk, whether from fright or injuries, so he picked her up and carried her into the hut. This proved to be a roomy place, as big as a barn. Indeed, a donkey was stabled at one end. Simon deposited the woman in a hammock, which was slung across a corner.

  ‘I’ll just fetch in my horse, too, by your leave,’ Simon said. ‘Else the wolves are likely to attack him, tethered as he is.’

  The woman made some faint sounds of agreement. ‘Were you fetching water?’ Simon asked, remembering the bucket. ‘I’ll get you some.’ He had noticed a well-head and stone trough outside.

  Several of the wolves, which had gone no farther than the edge of the cleared space, were now on the attack again, creeping back towards the terrified Lochinvar. Simon, who had reloaded his guns, was able to dispatch another two wolves; the others, giving up, loped away into the wood.

  Returning with the horse and pail of water, Simon discovered that the woman had managed to pull herself together, get out of the hammock, put brushwood on a fire that smouldered in a brick hearth, and light a lamp.

  ‘Do you live here all alone, ma’am?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m obliged to,’ she replied shortly. ‘I’ve got nobody.’

  As the light burned brighter, Simon observed two things with surprise. One was the enormous number of toy animals, arranged on shelves, which covered one entire wall of the cabin. They were of all sizes; some of them had plaster heads, some china, some waxen, some papier mâché; the bodies were mostly made of cloth, or fur, standing, sitting, or lying; there were foxes, bears, rabbits, leopards, dogs, cats, sheep – besides more exotic creatures, lions, tigers, crocodiles, polar bears, some of them very fancifully shaped, but all made with great skill. Their glass eyes gleamed in the firelight; the whole wall seemed to be looking at Simon.

  The other thing that surprised him, surveying the woman he had rescued, was the discovery that she was by no means as old as he had first thought her; she was skinny, her face was lined and weather-beaten, and she walked with a limp, but after a minute or two he began to think that she was hardly out of her thirties, and then, as she went on talking, he decided that she must be younger still.

  ‘It was a bit o’ luck for me that you come along when you did,’ she remarked briefly; and then, after a moment or two, in a more doubtful tone, ‘maybe,’ as if, reconsidering, she was not so certain about the luck. This was all the thanks she gave Simon, but she filled a kettle from the pail of water he had brought in, and offered, ‘You’d best have a dram of tea. It’s only mint. I can’t afford the real.’

  ‘Thank you. I’d like that. Did the wolves maul you at all? Were you hurt?’

  ‘No; they only tore my dress.’ She sniffed. ‘It warn’t much before. Anyhow it’ll tear up for stuffing.’ She gave a sour smile. She was sharp-faced, with a bad scar over one cheekbone; her hair, which might once have been pale yellow, was now a yellowish grey, pulled back in a knot.

  ‘Did you make all those?’ Simon asked, sitting down on a tree-stump that did duty for a stool and looking at the display of toy animals.

  ‘Who else?’ she snapped. ‘You see any factory hands round here?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘O’ course I made ’em. Winters I works on ’em; the heads are fashioned in Hamburg and I buys ’em from Whites, in Houndsditch; and the wax and pappy mashy in Barbican; then I moulds and stuffs the bodies myself; I’ve a book with pictures –’ she nodded towards an old, tattered natural history book on a shelf;
‘and in the summer I sells ’em around Knightsbridge or Stuart Park. I used to hire a feller to do so, but he was a cheat and robbed me of a whole summer’s takings; so now I do it myself.’

  She poured hot water on to a bundle of crushed mint leaves. Then, with an acute glance at Simon’s handsome silver-mounted muskets, well polished boots, and well-fed horse, she added wheedlingly, ‘Have you any young ones, sir? I’ve some real fancy toys in stock – poodle dogs, lambs with real wool. Think how their little eyes would light up if you brought ’em home one o’ those.’

  And she waved a hand towards the wall glittering with eyes.

  ‘No, I haven’t any children. I’m not married,’ said Simon hastily, taking the cup of mint tea she handed him. ‘Do you never make dolls?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t care for people. Animals are better.’

  Her scowl at his reply was so very familiar that he cried out in astonishment, ‘I know who you are! You’re Penelope Twite! I thought I recognized your voice! Aren’t you Penny? Dido’s elder sister? Don’t you remember me? Simon, who used to lodge with your father in Rose Alley?’

  She was so taken aback that she dropped her own cup of mint tea and it smashed on the cobbled floor.

  ‘There!’ she said crossly. ‘Now look what you made me do.’

  ‘But aren’t you Mr Twite’s elder daughter Penny? Dido’s sister?’

  ‘What if I am?’ she said dourly. ‘That ain’t going to put any diamond rings on my fingers.’

  ‘Do you never see your father?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not since I left home.’

  Simon then vaguely recollected that she had run off with a buttonhook salesman.

  ‘I heard tell as how Ma died,’ Penelope added, without any display of grief. ‘Is Pa still alive, then?’

  ‘So far as I know; your sister Dido said she had seen him recently.’

  ‘I guess he’ll be up to his usual goings-on in that case,’ she said indifferently. ‘What’s Dido doing?’

  ‘She – she has been travelling. She is staying with your father in Wapping.’