he sees marriage, I wonder?’
We stepped onto the street to avoid a bent old woman carrying two great sack bundles over her shoulders. A bit of carpet was tied over her head; her filthy overcoat trailed along the greasy street. Behind her wandered a bloke sucking on the bones of a pig’s trotter.
‘Keep up!’ she croaked.
He darted after her, his black suit shining with filth under the gas lamps.
‘Walter’s temper worries me, Barnett. Was he really going to assault you?’
‘Looked like it.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that scar, either. Did Birdie confirm it was the mangle?’
‘She said, “I didn’t do it.” I don’t know if she meant she didn’t tie her hair up or that it wasn’t her fault.’
A boy turned into the street ahead of us, a tray of muffins hanging around his neck. His cap was torn and too big for him; his smock was stained.
‘Lovely muffins!’ he cried at the streams of tired folk trudging along with their carts and sacks.
‘Hello, lad,’ said the guvnor, a great smile lighting his face.
‘Mr Arrowood!’ cried the boy.
It was Neddy, the lad we used now and then when someone needed watching or messages needed taking. He was eleven or so, maybe twelve or ten, and always up for earning a bit of money: his ma liked a drink too much to bring in food regular so it was down to him to feed his two little sisters. Neddy lived on Coin Street, same as the guvnor, but we hadn’t seen much of him that winter. There’d been an arson attack on the guvnor’s building six month before, and him and his sister Ettie had been staying with his oldest friend Lewis as they waited for the builders to repair their rooms.
‘Oh, but it’s good to see you, my dear,’ said the guvnor, giving the lad’s shoulders a squeeze. ‘And how’s your family?’
‘Always hungry, sir. The more I get the more they want, far as I can see. The little one got right chesty over Christmas. Had to get the doctor in for her.’
‘Is she better?’
‘Still cries a lot, sir.’
The guvnor peered through his eyeglasses at the boy’s face. We were just between the light from two street lamps.
‘When’s the last time you had a wash?’
‘This morning,’ said Neddy, wrinkling his nose.
‘Ha!’ laughed the guvnor. ‘Here, give us a couple of muffins, you little imp.’
He took the muffins from Neddy and handed over a coin. Then he fished in his waistcoat and pulled out a shilling. ‘Take that in case you need to get the doctor in again.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Should have some work for you soon, my boy,’ he said, handing one of the muffins to me.
‘It’s rock hard,’ I said. ‘How old are these?’
‘Old enough, Mr Barnett,’ said Neddy with a smile. One of his front tooths was missing from the Fenian case; his hair fell into his eyes.
The guvnor laughed. He loved that little lad.
‘Mine’s still warm,’ he said, taking a bite. ‘You took the wrong one, Barnett. Anyway, we’ll let you know about that work, Neddy.’
‘Any time, Mr Arrowood. You let me know.’
We watched him dart after a couple of other punters.
‘So Birdie looked in low spirits in the train?’ he asked, shoving the last piece of warm muffin in his gob.
‘That’s what it looked like to me. And I felt she wanted to show me too. But I couldn’t swear by it. It was dark, and she only looked up quick.’
‘We can all recognize grief,’ he said. ‘Mr Darwin says it’s universal: raised inner eyebrows, furrowed forehead, lowered mouth corners. The Hindoos, the Malays, the ancient Greeks – all the same. If we couldn’t recognize sadness in others we couldn’t sympathize. And what would society be without sympathy, Barnett?’
‘Like London sometimes, sir.’
We reached St George’s Circus, where I was going to take a different road back to my rooms in The Borough.
‘Now, what of Mrs Barclay?’ he asked me, stopping by the church stairs. He uncapped his pipe and pushed down the tobacco with his thumb. ‘What restraint, though? Surely the greatest insult to a mother is to tell her she’s done wrong by her daughter?’ The guvnor was getting worked up now, his brow arched in excitement. ‘And then she passes that note.’
‘Who passes a note?’
‘Why Mrs Barclay. You didn’t see?’
He laughed at my surprise.
‘It was when they bumped: she slipped it into Miss Ockwell’s hand in the confusion. You didn’t see?’
‘I said I didn’t see.’
‘I thought it best not to ask her about it at the time. If she was hiding it from Mr Barclay, the chances are she’d deny it.’ He lit his pipe, his eyes a-twinkle under the gas light. ‘Meet me at London Bridge station tomorrow at half past midday, my friend. We’re going back to Catford. We’re going to help poor Birdie with whatever trouble she’s in.’
I watched him as he walked off towards the Elephant and Castle, his great behind juddering like a shire horse. I smiled to myself. The guvnor had finally got interested.
Arrowood was in a cheery temper the next day when I met him at the station. I could tell he’d been up to something but he wouldn’t say what; he just tapped his finger on his hooter with a wink. I wondered if maybe he’d been seeing a woman. I hoped so. I was sure Isabel wasn’t coming back, and him holding out for her so long only caused him frustration. He never once blamed her for leaving him: he knew he’d driven her away, but now the hope she’d come back kept him going and drove him mad at the same time. He was sure the lawyer she’d taken up with in Cambridge was pushing her into it. The lawyer was younger than him, more reliable, more comfortable. The lawyer gnawed at him as bad as Sherlock Holmes himself, eating him from the inside, giving him acid in his gullet and cramps in his belly. The man was a bleeding macer, a bug hunter, a pissening hound, and the very thought of him brought on the guvnor’s gout, made him itch his arse furiously when he sweated, caused him murderous headaches after a night in the Hog.
There were no cabs at Catford Bridge and the lad at the pub was out so we had to walk to the farm. Nobody passed us on the lane, and we had to stop regular for the guvnor to catch his breath and curse his shoes. The dogs started barking before we reached the gate, but we went the way the lad had taken us, round the back of the barn and coming into the farmyard at the far side. Still they ran at us, barking and snarling, wild and angry. The guvnor flinched as the ropes brought them up just short, his hand on my sleeve, taking care to stay behind me as we approached the house.
A man we hadn’t seen before answered the door. He had a jaw like a bootscraper, his face lined and weather-beaten, his head bald under his brown cap. One arm hung limp by his side, the hand cupped in his pocket. It had to be Godwin, the other brother.
‘Afternoon,’ he said, his eyes moving from the guvnor to me and back. He spoke like a drunk, with only one side of his face moving. The dogs kept up their noise behind us.
‘I’m Mr Arrowood, this is Mr Barnett. We’ve some official business with Birdie Ockwell.’
‘I know who you are, Mr Arrowood, but Birdie won’t see you.’ Though his words were slurred he spoke correct,