London Lodgings Read online

  Also by Claire Rayner

  First Blood

  Second Opinion

  The Meddlers

  A Time to Heal

  Maddie

  Clinical Judgements

  Dangerous Things

  THE PERFORMERS

  Gower Street

  The Haymarket

  Paddington Green

  Soho Square

  Bedford Row

  Long Acre

  Charing Cross

  The Strand

  Chelsea Reach

  Shaftesbury Avenue

  Piccadilly

  Seven Dials

  THE POPPY CHRONICLES

  Jubilee

  Flanders

  Flapper

  Blitz

  Sixties

  Festival

  LONDON LODGINGS

  Claire Rayner

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-84982-029-5

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

  IM2 4NR

  United Kingdom

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  email: [email protected]

  M P Publishing Limited.

  LONDON LODGINGS. Copyright© 1994, 2010 by Claire Rayner.

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

  e-ISBN 978-1-84982-029-5

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  For Julie

  with a mother-in-law’s love!

  Acknowledgements

  The author would like to thank: London Library; Victoria and Albert Museum; Museum of London; Harrods Ltd; Transport Museum Covent Garden; Public Records Office; GPO Archives; Meteorological Records Office; Kensington and Chelsea Library; and other sources too numerous to mention.

  Prologue

  TILLY DIDN’T KNOW how long she’d been sitting underneath Mamma’s special small table, the one with the long lace cloth that touched the floor all round. She couldn’t tell the time yet (‘and neither can you,’ she whispered to her doll, Charlotte, who was as usual tucked under Tilly’s arm with her head dangling down. ‘So don’t you laugh.’) which was a terrible thing to admit when you were as old as seven. Dorcas had laughed and laughed at Tilly when she’d found that out, because she’d been able to tell the time for ten years now, she’d said scornfully; which meant she’d learned it when she was two.

  Tilly had sighed when she’d heard that. How could she ever be as clever or as accomplished or as – well, everything – as Dorcas? And she peered again through the lattice of the tablecloth to see if there was any sign of Dorcas. Not that Dorcas came into Mamma’s boudoir when Mamma was there, usually, but you never could tell with her. If she got in a temper and made up her mind to find Tilly and punish her, she’d not care a whit about Mamma being asleep on the sofa. She’d just come and –

  Tilly shivered and drew back again into the shadows in the middle of her lace tablecloth tent. She didn’t like thinking about Dorcas in one of her tempers, when she would twist Tilly’s arm behind her back or stamp on her feet and throw Charlotte about. That was why Charlotte’s head had to dangle downwards. When Tilly held her up the right way she looked like that horrid picture of the man hanging on a tree that Dorcas had shown her and which was the worst picture Tilly had ever seen. Dorcas had done that to Charlotte, twisting her head round till it nearly came off altogether. One day maybe Dorcas would do it to Tilly, if she got really nasty. And inside her head Tilly whimpered at the thought and wondered again what the time was. If it was after five o’clock Dorcas would have had her supper with Mrs Leander, her mamma, in the kitchen, and she was always in a better humour after supper. Dorcas in a happy mood was wonderful. She told the best stories, dreamed up her best games and was the nicest person in the world.

  Tilly heard the clock tinkle again and knew that all she had to do to tell the time was count the chimes, but she also knew it would go all wrong if she tried. She could count as far as four, easy, but after that it got tangled in her head. Sometimes six seemed to come next and sometimes it didn’t, and when she tried to remember what it should be, she forgot how many she’d already counted and by then the clock would have stopped chiming anyway; so she never could be sure of telling the time that way. It was awful to be so stupid, she thought forlornly. She could just hear how Dorcas would laugh in her loud cold way if she knew.

  The clock had stopped chiming by now, and Tilly hadn’t even begun to count and she could feel tears collect inside her throat, deep down, where they could prickle at her and make her feel horrid, and she tried to swallow them away. But they wouldn’t go. She hugged upside-down Charlotte close, to see if that would help. It didn’t.

  It was getting darker now, and she could barely see anything under the lace cloth. Just a sort of dimness on the other side of the pattern, a dimness where Mamma breathed her rather thick, bubbly breaths as she slept, while downstairs in the basement kitchen Mrs Leander rattled dishes – Tilly could hear her easily all the way up here – and outside in the street horses and wheels went rattling and creaking past.

  Not past; Tilly cocked her head to one side and listened hard, the forgotten tears sliding away down inside her and leaving her throat comfortable again. Horses had stopped outside; she could hear the jingle of a harness and a man’s voice as footsteps rattled on the cobbles, and now Tilly tried to make herself very small indeed, wanting to shrink away till she was smaller even than Charlotte and no one would ever be able to see her, even if they looked under the lace cloth, lifting the edge to peer under at her. No one, not even Papa…

  If only she’d been able to tell the time, she’d have gone long ago. She’d have known when it was safe to crawl out, in that special little time between Dorcas having her supper and Papa coming home. It was dreadful to be caught between them both, Dorcas and her laughing and stamping on feet and Papa with his shouting and bigness and well, general Papaness. If only Mamma hadn’t been frightened of Papa as well; then Tilly would have had someone to help her; but Mamma was and, Tilly sometimes thought, she was also frightened of Mrs Leander. She certainly let her say very saucy things sometimes and never complained. Tilly knew they were saucy, because she’d heard the housemaid tell the bootboy so, giggling about it, and Mrs Leander had heard her and thrown her out into the street, bag and baggage. Tilly had wondered about that; she knew what a bag was, and indeed saw the one the housemaid had, but she hadn’t a baggage, which Tilly expected to be an even bigger bag; and she had almost asked Dorcas about it, until she’d seen the way Dorcas was looking at the weeping housemaid, with her face all still and staring and sort of laughing, so she’d said nothing.

  No, Mamma wouldn’t help. All Tilly could do was stay very still and hope Papa didn’t think to look under the edge of the lace tablecloth. She would have to stay and think her own thoughts and not listen to Papa.

  But it was impossible not to listen. He talked too loudly.

  The light lifted suddenly as he pushed open the door and came in and Tilly peeped through the lace cloth and saw him holding an oil lamp in each hand, standing there by the door and staring across the room at the sofa. He looked even bigger from where she was. It was like looking up at a mountain. She knew about them from the pictures in her story book about saints who were killed because they loved God and were martyrs. Lots of the martyrs seemed to spend all their time walking about in places where there were mountains, and
she tried to imagine people, very little people, all martyrs of course, walking about on Papa. It almost made her giggle out loud, and she put her fist inside her mouth to stop it. It wouldn’t make Papa laugh to find her there.

  ‘Good God, Madam!’ he shouted. ‘Asleep at this hour of the afternoon? Have you no better way to occupy yourself?’

  He came in, marching across the room and putting down the lamps, one over Tilly’s head on the small table (and the lace cloth shivered as the table rocked under the impact, and she tried again to make herself very small; but it still didn’t work) and the other on the table beside Mamma’s sofa. Then he stood there with his hands in his breeches’ pockets and his boots set apart on the red Turkey rug staring down at Mamma, who had woken up and was looking up at him, wide-eyed and startled, and murmuring in a mixed-up sort of way. Tilly could hear her voice, soft and jerky, like a lamb bleating. She often heard the lambs in the yard behind Mr Spurgeon’s butchers shop across the other side of the village, bleating sadly. Dorcas had told her it was because they knew Mr Spurgeon was going to cut their throats and turn them into cutlets for her Papa’s dinner and that was why they cried. Mamma sounded just like that. Was Papa going to cut her throat? Tilly wondered suddenly and then shivered. Of course not. All he was going to do was shout, and bad as that was, it wasn’t as bad as making a person into cutlets.

  He was shouting again now. ‘If you were to bestir yourself about your affairs, Ma’am, you’d be a sight less given to sleeping your days away! Is this why you are never ready to come to my bed when I call you of a night? Always ready with reasons to be busying yourself then, are you not? But in the afternoons when there is no risk I shall speak to you of your duty as my wife, why then you are able to sleep well enough!

  ‘A headache, Austen,’ Mamma murmured. Tilly couldn’t see her, for Papa’s back was in the way, but she knew how she looked, staring up at Papa with her big pale-green eyes shining wetly and her hair soft and loose on her forehead, catching the light like wisps of yellow sewing silks. ‘I had such a dreadful headache.’

  ‘I’m sure you did,’ he said and went stamping away to the other side of the room where Tilly couldn’t see him so easily. She could see Mamma now, stretched out under her pale blue shawl, her face rather pink as though she was very hot and her mouth a little open and pouty. She looked as worried as Tilly felt, so Tilly knew how it was to be Mamma, and was very sad for her. It was horrid when people shouted at you. ‘It’s as good as any other reason for being so useless. You and your megrims!’ And he made that snorting sound that Tilly most hated, and she put her hands up to her ears, but Charlotte got in the way and she couldn’t reach them and was forced to listen. ‘It’s enough to drive a man to drink! You be grateful, Ma’am, that I remember my responsibilities and continue to work for your upkeep, yours and the brat’s – and what a brat it is, to be sure! No better than you are yourself, Ma’am, as milk and water as any mewling cat. May God help the man who marries her more than he helped me when I took you off your father’s hands. Much the worst bargain I had of it. Where are they all, for the love of Heaven? The house is like a morgue! Even your brat should be able to make itself felt as some sort of life about the place. Thank God for Mrs Leander is all I can say – without her a man could die of starvation in his own home, and not just for want of decent victuals either. I tell you roundly, Mrs Kingsley, you have only yourself to blame if I do turn to wherever I must to get a decent day’s provender and a decent night’s care! If you were any sort of a woman it would not be necessary for me to look beyond yourself, but what sort of a woman are you? A puling milk-and-water miss is all you have to show for six bites of my apple, and a fair healthy apple it is! Why, any cow in Spurgeon’s yard has done better than you! Six pregnancies and not able to rear more than one and that a heifer runt? It makes no sense to me. What’s a woman for? I ask you, what’s a woman for?’

  He was stamping about the room now, his boots passing in front of Tilly’s face and then moving away, only to come back again and she sat there with Charlotte clutched beneath her arm and stared out as they went by her line of vision, and she couldn’t move, not at all. She wanted to come out, to tell him to stop shouting, wanted to be like Dorcas and not be afraid to be pert and to shout on her own account; Papa would roar furiously when Dorcas stood up to him, but he laughed too, and he always laughed and was very happy when Mrs Leander did the same. They were forever laughing, Papa and Mrs Leander and Dorcas, but never Papa and Mamma and herself, Tilly. It made Tilly wretched to think of it and she tried not to, and sat and watched the boots go by and wished and wished she could be Dorcas instead of being Tilly.

  She must have said something aloud or moved or breathed or something while she was wishing, for suddenly there was Papa’s face peering down at her as he pulled the lace tablecloth out of the way, and he was staring at her and his face was twisted with anger and his mouth was opening to shout –

  Tilly always remembered as far as that, always dreamed the dream to that point, but then it would all be black and she couldn’t recall another thing. She would lie in bed and stare into the darkness of her room as she tried to continue the memory, would try to push the barriers down and climb over and into what happened after that, but she never could.

  Not even tonight, the last night of her life as Miss Matilda Kingsley, only daughter of Austen Kingsley Esquire and his wife Henrietta, of this Parish, in the Village of Brompton, not far from London. Tomorrow, 15 September 1855, she would become Mrs Francis Xavier Quentin and it wouldn’t matter any more what had happened to the small Tilly all those years ago. But she wished she could remember, all the same, though she could not for the life of her have said why it was so important. It just was. She lay awake for a long time trying to recall it all, but it was no use.

  Chapter One

  SHE MUST HAVE fallen asleep eventually, for suddenly there was Dorcas, opening her bedroom curtains and whistling through her teeth the way she did when she was feeling particularly sharp, and Tilly stared at her, puzzled, and then remembered suddenly and sat up very straight.

  ‘Making the most of your last night of peace, were you?’ Dorcas came and looked down at her. ‘Poor wretch – what do you look like? As blotchy as the drayman’s horse. A fine handsome bride you’ll make and no error!’

  ‘Oh, I’m not, am I?’ Tilly’s hands flew to her face and she felt her cheeks all over; but they seemed to be much as usual, and she scrambled out of bed and ran over to her washstand to peer into the mirror. Her eyes, as green as Mamma’s but rather darker, stared back, round and anxious, and her brown hair lay in an unlovely tangle over her forehead, but there were no blotches that she could see and she peered closer and said with what indignation she could muster, ‘There’s nothing there!’

  ‘None so blind as those that won’t see!’ Dorcas said blithely. ‘But don’t you fret, I’ll make some sort of fist of you, see if I don’t.’ She came and looked over Tilly’s shoulder into the mirror and Tilly shifted her gaze to Dorcas’s bobbing dark curls and wicked brown eyes and the way dimples punctuated the corners of her rich mouth and wanted to weep, as she always did when she compared Dorcas to herself. Dorcas was so merry and lively and so altogether all a wench should be; Papa had said so ever since she and her mother had first come to the house all those years ago; and Tilly was so meek and quiet and stupid, as Dorcas had been telling her ever since – as indeed Papa had – and she could see for herself it was true.

  But not today, she told herself then and moved away from the washstand. Today was her wedding day, not Dorcas’s. Today she, not Dorcas, was to marry Francis Xavier Quentin, though Tilly knew that Dorcas would be glad to have him. She had seen the way Dorcas looked at Frank when she stood at the front door pretending to be the perfect demure servant while giving him his hat, had watched her waiting at table when Frank came to dine, and she knew. Oh, yes, Tilly knew. Dorcas would gladly have Frank Quentin for herself, she would, and knowing that had made him even more interesti
ng to Tilly. Not, of course, that there would be any chance of Frank being interested in Dorcas; she was after all only a housemaid, and never did aught but say meekly, ‘Oh, yes sir,’ and, ‘No sir,’ when he addressed her, which was not very often. When Frank came to the house in Brompton Grove all his spare attention was paid to Tilly, as it should be of course, for they had been affianced ever since Tilly’s sixteenth birthday. Papa had arranged it, and she had been entranced by the plan. He was so tall and handsome and so romantic, for he had no relations in all the world, being an orphan who had been reared by a friend of Papa’s, a man who had but recently died; a circumstance which Tilly found very touching and which gave Frank an added glow in her eyes. Yet in spite of such a sad history he was rather jolly when he sat with Papa and they shared their claret and laughed loudly. Above all, she was comfortable with him. When Frank was with them, Papa was positively benevolent and Mamma looked happy and not so peaky and all of them were so kind to Tilly it made her feel better than she ever had. Being sixteen and affianced to Frank had been the best time of her life. This morning was wonderful, of course, for it was her wedding day, but it would be a little sad to see this year end. It had been such a happy year. Papa being so – well, not affectionate precisely, but at least not angry all the time, and Mamma being quite lively sometimes. Oh, it had been a wonderful year.

  ‘And today will be a wonderful day,’ she said aloud and suddenly felt so light and bubbly that she twirled on the spot, letting her nightgown lift into a frill around her waist and Dorcas roared with laughter and said, ‘Save your wares to show the buyer – don’t waste them on me!’ And Tilly went scarlet with shame and felt dreadful as she realized how badly she had behaved, and at once pulled down her nightgown and scurried to the screen in the corner.