‘I suppose it’s not exactly a lie, is it, Mr Tweadle?’ I said flatly. ‘That’s all there is – but you’ve a maid no longer. I resign.’
‘Cat!’ Frank vaulted the counter and gave me a hug. He then held me out at arm’s length. ‘You look terrible.’
‘Thanks.’
Despite having demanded that I be produced, Mr Sheridan was shocked to see me. I suppose I did not cut a very good figure in my shoddy clothes and I’d been living off scraps, thanks to the large appetites of my employers.
‘Cat, you’re not staying another moment under this man’s roof. I’ve a carriage outside,’ Mr Sheridan said. ‘Come along.’
‘Not without my manuscripts.’
‘I think you’ll find he no longer has them,’ he said, casting a disgusted look at Mr Tweadle. ‘They’ll be locked in the printer’s safe. That is now a matter for my lawyer. I’ll be instructing him immediately to take action on your behalf.’
He put a small magazine in my hand, the kind you can buy unbound on any street corner at a penny a time. London Life – Tales of Cat of Drury Lane, the mischievous orphan girl.
‘I’m afraid he’s made you quite sensational, Cat. I was surprised that you’d allowed it when I first heard of the success of the series – but now I see you had no say in the matter.’
So Mr Tweadle had not only stolen my stories – but my character too! The magazine trembled in my fist. This wasn’t at all how I had imagined my print debut: a cheap pamphlet with crude woodcuts. How I wished I was a big man like Syd and could punch his nasty face. But I wasn’t – I was a stupid fool of a girl who had fallen for so simple a trick. I’d even cooked the meals that my own work had bought him – he and Nokes must have been laughing themselves silly over me. I should have taken a leaf out of the last maid’s book and tried poisoning them.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said faintly.
‘Let’s get you out of here, Cat. We’ll leave this to Mr Sheridan’s lawyers,’ said Frank, steering me gently towards the door.
And shaking the dust of that foul place off my feet, I let myself be led out of Mr Tweadle’s shop.
ACT II
SCENE 1 – CORRESPONDENT
You may guess my feelings, Reader, as I sat in a corner of Mr Sheridan’s carriage watching St Paul’s Cathedral disappear behind me. I was heartily ashamed of myself. I had taken pride in being wise to the ways of the street but, once truly thrown on my own resources, I had fallen at the first hurdle. How could I have let a lowlife like Mr Tweadle get the better of me? He must have thought I was quite the Christmas goose, turning up on his doorstep and offering to pluck, stuff and cook myself for his dinner.
‘The first thing we need to do is get a square meal inside you, Cat,’ said Mr Sheridan in a fatherly tone. ‘There never was much of you but you seem to have diminished dangerously over the past few weeks.’
‘And a change of clothes wouldn’t go amiss,’ added Frank, smiling at me from the seat opposite.
I looked out of the window as we rattled down Fleet Street, gazing at the piles of books displayed on the booksellers’ stalls – stacks of respectable volumes bound in leather, produced by highly-regarded authors.
Mr Sheridan gave an awkward cough, finding my silence difficult after years of me speaking out of place. ‘Cheer up, Cat, it’s over now.’
But it wasn’t over for me – not till I had my manuscripts back. I felt like I’d left a part of me behind.
‘It was good luck that Lord Francis turned up this morning demanding to know where you were. I had thought of finding you myself as I wanted to ask you a favour, but I assumed that you would be too busy to see me in the bloom of your success.’
‘What success?’ I asked in a dull tone of voice.
‘The stories, of course. That man may have changed a few things here and there, but they were essentially yours. The public love them. I’ve heard of nothing else all week – you are quite the fashion. The Prince of Wales told me his favourite was the incident where you rampaged through Brook’s; mine was the boxing match, as I’ve always had a soft spot for the Fancy.’
I felt a glimmer of pride that my tales had made it into the hands of the most illustrious personages in the land. ‘How did Tweadle change them?’ I asked, feeling a flicker of curiosity. ‘You said he had made them sensational.’
Frank suddenly became very interested in his nails. Mr Sheridan avoided my eye and looked out the window.
‘Aside from massacring the language with a hurried print job, he . . . er . . . made you out to be rather less respectable than you are.’
‘What did he say about me?’ If my reputation was in tatters, I wanted to know the worst.
‘Well, the language was rather stiff for one – and you appear to spend your time in the company of some rather bad characters, criminals and the like.’
Perhaps Mr Tweadle hadn’t had time to change very much then, I thought sourly.
‘But it is not so much what was in the stories as the way he presented them.’ Mr Sheridan placed on my knee the pamphlet he had briefly shown me in the shop. I turned to the smaller print. ‘Read the next episode from the pen of this real-life moll, Queen of the London Underworld.’
‘I’m nobody’s moll!’ I said indignantly. ‘I’m not a thief, neither do I live among them!’
‘We know you’re not, Cat,’ interjected Frank, ‘but I’m afraid the damage is done.’
Mr Sheridan looked out of the window – we were approaching his house. You could always tell which one it was because it had a perpetual queue of creditors waiting outside in the hope of catching a few moments of the great man’s time.
‘You may find it best to lie low until the furore about your print alter ego dies down,’ Mr Sheridan said, patting me on the knee as the carriage came to a stop. ‘We writers can’t let the booksellers get away with this kind of sharp dealing, can we?’