“Perhaps. Yet . . . why you, Devlin? Why?”
But he only shook his head and left her there, her attention once more captured by the pages of her book.
Chapter 9
“We costermongers is a proud lot,” the wizened old woman told Hero. “Ain’t no doubt about it. We all knows each other, and we keeps ourselves to ourselves.”
Her name was Mattie Robinson, and she sat perched on a three-legged stool behind an apple stall formed by laying a flat wicker tray across two upended crates. She’d been born, she said, in the year they sent poor Dick Turpin up the ladder to bed, which Hero figured made her somewhere in her seventies. She wore a man’s tattered greatcoat and had a plaid shawl knotted about her head, and still she shivered, as if the cold from all the decades spent sitting at her stall had irrevocably settled deep in her bones. She’d agreed to talk to Hero for two shillings—which was, she admitted, considerably more than an entire day’s take.
“I’ve kept me stall here at the corner of St. Martin’s Lane and Chandos Street e’er since me leg was crushed by a gentlewoman’s carriage.” She shook her head, as if the ways of the gentry were a puzzle to her. “Didn’t even stop to see if I was alive or dead.”
“When was that?”
“The year after me Gretta was born. Before that, I used t’ work the Strand.” Hero had learned enough by now to know what costermongers meant when they spoke of “working” a street or district.
“Me Nathan was alive then,” said Mattie. “He had his own handbarrow, y’know. We was doin’ grand, with two nice rooms and our own furniture.” Her watery brown eyes clouded with memories of a loss that was now some half a century in the past. “We was even sendin’ our boy, Jack, t’ school. But after I was laid up fer the better part of a year, we had to pledge all the furniture and move to an attic room in Hemming’s Row. And poor Jack, he had t’ leave school and start t’ work with his da.”
“How old was Jack?”
“Six. Afore that, Nathan used t’ hire a lad every mornin’ at the market. A coster needs a lad, you see, t’ help watch the barrow, else thieves’ll steal him blind when his back is turned. And a boy’s voice carries better’n a man’s. All them years of shoutin’ ruins a coster’s throat real quick.”
Hero checked her list of questions. “How many hours are you here, at your stall?”
“This time of year? I’m usually here from eight in the mornin’ till ten at night. My Gretta, she gets up early and goes t’ market t’ get me apples and things. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I can hobble down here by meself, but ’tain’t no way I could haul me basket of apples from market.”
“Is Gretta a coster as well?”
“Aye. She works Beaufort Wharfs with her da’s barrow. Ain’t many women can handle a barrow, but me Gretta’s always been a strappin’ lass. Course, she’s gettin’ on in years now herself; don’t know how much longer she’ll be able to keep it up. And then what’s t’ become of us?”
“She never married or had children?”
A gleam of amusement lit the older woman’s eyes. “’Tain’t one coster out of ten is married proper-like. Most see it as a waste of money could be better spent buyin’ stock. No parson never said words o’er me and Nathan, but it didn’t make no difference t’ us or t’ anybody else.”
“And Gretta?”
Mattie shook her head. “She always says costers treat their wives worse’n cheap servants, and ain’t no man ever gonna beat her.”
Hero suspected those sentiments spoke volumes about the behavior of the late Nathan Robinson, but all she said was, “What about your son, Jack? Is he a costermonger as well?”
The old woman turned her head to spit, as if needing to clear a foul taste from her mouth before she could speak. “Me Jack was impressed by His Majesty, back in the American War. Ain’t seen nor heard nothin’ from him since. I reckon he’s dead, but ain’t nobody ever told us fer certain.”
“I’m sorry,” said Hero.
Again, that faint sparkle of amusement. “What fer? Ye ain’t His Majesty, now, is ye?”
Hero laughed out loud. “No.” A donkey in the street beside them began to bray loudly. “What do you normally have for breakfast and supper?”