care whether she ever found her way home or not. But she didn’t bother to run after him like a little girl. She didn’t need him. She knew what she was doing. And she was not about to leave this place until she had done something about that little boy.
She went into one of the small shops and bought vegetables, then went into a bakery that looked neat and bought bread and cookies in a big blue box. They had passed a pawnshop at the start of the street and there she found a wooden horse and cart. The paint was chipped a little, and the horse had once had more hair for manes and tail. But at least you could see what it was without guessing trice. She bought it as well and returned to the house on the corner.
She laboured up the steps once again to the fourth floor and banged on the door.
As the voice came, she repeated what Dubois had said. ‘Three for the fisherman, two for the priest.’
The door opened again, and she stepped in.
Instead of the old man seated at the table, there was a younger man with wild hair and red-rimmed eyes, staring back at her like she was some vision. The little boy had seemed to become even smaller, huddling in his corner as if he was not there.
Alkmene quickly dropped the bread and vegetables on the shabby couch, clutching the box with cookies and the horse and cart.
‘Whatdoyouwant?’ the dishevelled man growled.
‘I am here to make payment,’ Alkmene said in a firmer voice than she felt. She went to the boy and smiled down on him. ‘This is for you. A horse and cart to play with and some cookies to eat.’
She held them out to him, but the dishevelled man moved with lightning speed. He slapped the items from her hands, so that the horse and cart tumbled to the floor.
The box with cookies, being lighter, first sailed up to the ceiling, hitting a beam. It burst open, and cookies rained down over Alkmene’s head and shoulders.
Staring at the mess at her feet, anger raged through her. ‘Why did you have to do that?’ she asked the man.
But he was staring at the boy. ‘What did you do?’ he howled. ‘What made this fancy lady want to reward you? Have you been to the church again, speaking to that vicar who thinks he can change the world? Our world never changes, never…’
He came over to Alkmene, kicking at the horse and cart. The fallen cookies crunched under the soles of his coarse boots.
The boy yelped and cowered against the wall, throwing up his arms to protect his face.
Suddenly a tall figure filled the door. ‘Enough.’ Dubois walked in. He was glowering, not at the man, but at Alkmene. ‘What are you doing here?’ he hissed.
‘Bringing some food to these people,’ she retorted, ‘and making sure this little boy has something decent to play with instead of that.’ She nodded in the direction of what passed as tin soldiers.
‘We don’t want your charity,’ the man snarled.
Dubois raised his hands. ‘I was here this afternoon. Your father looked up a few important things for me in his books. This lady was with me. She misunderstood and believed she had to pay for your father’s help. Therefore she bought these things. It is not her fault.’
His tone belied what he said, and the man laughed. ‘Not her fault? Everything here is her fault. People like her have made my life miserable. People like her have killed…’
He began to cough, staggering into a corner and hanging against the wall.
Dubois signalled Alkmene with his eyes to leave, quickly. She wasn’t about to argue with him now. She fled through the door and raced down the steps, the cookie crumbs still crunching under her soles.
In the landing of the second floor she halted and held her hands against her face. Dubois was so right. She knew next to nothing. She had wanted to help the little boy and she had only hurt him even more. She was almost certain that madman would beat him as soon as Dubois left the two of them alone.
Footfalls came down behind her, and she turned, shouting, ‘Why do you leave that miserable drunk alone with the little boy?’
‘He is his father. Ever since the mother died, he started drinking. They lost their home and moved in here with the old man.’
‘If there is a child in the house, it should be clean and neat. He should have nutritious food, clean clothes and toys to play with.’
Dubois laughed softly. ‘I would almost say: try taking him home, Lady Alkmene. Give him a nice guest room with a big bed and clean, whole clothes and see how he turns them into a big mess in no time. How he takes the ball you give him to knock down your precious vases like it is a game in itself. This child has never had anything. He doesn’t understand any language but that of physical violence.’
‘And you accept that?’
Dubois’s jaw tightened. ‘I do not accept anything. But I am realistic enough to see I cannot change it overnight. Your sweet little gesture…’ his voice dripped acid ‘…has only served to push that drunk man into a rage. The boy will be beaten because of you. Because of some cookies and a horse and cart.’
Alkmene’s eyes burned. Her voice croaked as she said, ‘Please go back and make sure he does not beat him. Please.’
Dubois caught her shoulders. For a moment she thought he was going to shake her and scream at her some more about her ignorance and her disastrous good intentions.
But he just squeezed for a moment, then dropped his hands. ‘I can’t, Alkmene.’ His voice was soft and weary. ‘I cannot protect the boy.’
Alkmene wet her lips. ‘I am sorry for what I did. I only wanted to help them.’
Dubois nodded. ‘I know.’ His voice was even more bitter now than she had heard it before.
She looked up the steps. ‘Shall I go back and try to explain…’
‘Don’t you see that your presence has only made it worse?’ Dubois inhaled slowly. ‘Your kind of people are what caused all their misery to begin with. I can only hope for the boy that his father will collapse soon, to sleep off his haze, and that he won’t remember a thing when he comes to.’
He took her arm. ‘And now we leave.’
Alkmene did not resist.
‘I would sure like to know what happened to all of my soda,’ Cook said the next morning as she bustled into the breakfast room. When Father wasn’t home, she believed she had to look after ‘the young lady’ and scurried in and out with extra bacon or fresh apple sauce. Father would never allow a cook in his dining room, sticking to a strict order of Brookes serving and Cook not leaving the kitchen unless it was on fire.
But Alkmene actually enjoyed a little liveliness, plus Cook’s never-ending stream of gossip, gathered mainly via her laundering niece.
‘I needed soda to clean up something that had gotten stained by accident,’ Alkmene said, and when Cook gave her an incredulous look: ‘It wasn’t mine, you know, so I felt kind of responsible for the staining. But it is all solved now.’
She hoped that it was when she’d get to the men’s wear store later that day and see if the clerk had found her the perfect substitute.
Just as Cook was at the door, Alkmene said quickly, ‘I was wondering. The people who live in places like Tar Street, is there any form of help for them?’
‘My heart, Lady Alkmene, what would you want in a place like that?’ Cook gave her a suspicious look.
‘I happened to end up there, by coincidence really, and I saw this very sad little boy whose mother died and his father is drinking and beating him and… He doesn’t have any decent clothes or toys to play with.’