After the woman sashayed away to conduct her business with the post office—her progress followed by all the men and most of the women in a twenty-five-foot radius—Charlotte pulled herself together and left.
Perhaps it was nothing more than hunger. Feeling the pinch of imminent penury, she had saved two slices of buttered toast from breakfast. But she had wanted to see whether she would still be able to function as usual without eating them for lunch. It had been a long day of walking about London, and she had two and a half more miles to go before she reached her little room at Mrs. Wallace’s. She grew increasingly sure that if she could only set a kettle to boil, and put the slices of toast in her stomach where they belonged, she wouldn’t feel nearly so dispirited.
Not to mention that Miss Whitbread had kindly loaned her a half dozen magazines. Charlotte had already found two interesting travelogue pieces—one on the fjords of Norway and the other about the Canary Islands. A cup of tea, a bite to eat, even if it was from morning, and a chance to forget her troubles by vicariously living another woman’s holiday—
“A penny, mum? A penny please?”
The plaintive cry of a child beggar yanked Charlotte back to the unhappy here and now. The girl was small and hollow cheeked. Her face and her outstretched hand were coated with grime, her frock such a hodgepodge of brown and grey patches that Charlotte couldn’t tell what its original color had been.
But it was the woman holding on to the girl’s shoulder who made Charlotte’s chest constrict. She had seen beggars in London, but never one like this. The mother wore a black patch over one eye, her other eye the milky blue of the blind. Her face had the vacantness of a North Sea beach in the dead of winter; her arms, held close to the sides of her body, the stiffness of a marionette.
She did not look defeated. To look defeated was to suggest that one had recently strived for something. This woman was drained, whatever hope and energy she’d once possessed long ago permanently depleted.
The husk that she’d become was far more frightening than the sight of the down-on-their-luck-but-still-saucy beggars Charlotte was more accustomed to seeing, ones who accosted their passersby with a combination of pathos and bravado.
“A penny for me supper, mum?” The little girl, not yet entirely diminished by life, asked again.
Charlotte opened her reticule and pulled out not only a coin, but the two slices of toast, wrapped in brown paper. “Here’s a sixpenny bit for you. You look after your mum. Make sure she has her supper, too.”
The little girl looked with incredulity at the coin that had been dropped into her palm. She raised her face to Charlotte, let go of her mother’s hand, and wrapped her arms around her benefactor. And only then did she accept the toasts.
Charlotte walked on, feeling a little less in despair.
Her relief that she could still do something for someone evaporated before the display windows of Atwell & Dewsbury, Pharmaceutical Chemists. She had never walked so much in her entire life; her feet were in agony. She probably couldn’t afford to buy plasters for her blisters, but at least she could inquire into their prices.
She patted the hidden pocket on her skirt. In her reticule she kept only minor change, but in her pocket she had a pound note.
Mrs. Wallace’s place seemed safe enough and the lock on Charlotte’s door was sturdy. But what if the place burned down while Charlotte was out seeking employment? She didn’t want to lose all her money, along with all her other worldly possessions. The pound note in her pocket served as a crude form of insurance.
But it was not there. Through the broadcloth of her dress, she couldn’t sense the small but very real presence of that precious piece of paper, folded into a square. Surely she was mistaken. She dug her fingers harder against the fabric. Nothing. All she felt was the bulk of her petticoat—and beneath that, the form of her limb.
The little beggar girl who had embraced her. Charlotte should have known—she should have known that instant something was wrong. The girl hadn’t been anywhere near as emaciated as her face would suggest. And she hadn’t smelled of the sourness of lack of washing.
No, Charlotte should have known before then. The girl hadn’t left her mother’s hold—it had been the other way around. The mother had signaled her to go for the easy prey. The eye patch hadn’t covered some unsightly deformity: It had covered her good eye, the black cloth thin enough for her to make out something of her surroundings in good daylight.
Charlotte was vaguely aware that she was drifting along the street. At some point she might have entered Mrs. Wallace’s boarding home. Did someone attempt to speak to her? She had no idea. Nor could she be sure whether she had responded.