Running away to London was not the first idea that Freda had when considering her future. Her first idea actually had been to join a circus. She had no circus skills, but could it really be so difficult to hang from a trapeze or walk a tightrope or even stand on the back of a horse while it ran around the ring? After all, she had excellent balance. It was, perhaps, the sparkling, glittering costumes that attracted her more than the acts themselves, but it didn’t matter as, alas, there was no circus in town and nor did Freda have any idea how to go about finding one. Failing the circus, she had to fall back into the unsatisfactory safety net of family.
There had been a half-sister for Freda from her father’s first marriage—a resentful daughter called Cissy, already in her teens when Gladys ensnared her father. It wasn’t too long before Cissy went to France to nurse in the war and she never returned to their house. “Glad to see the back of her,” Gladys said. Cissy was married now with several children and lived on the other side of town. Cissy had “ideas above her station,” according to Gladys. Freda thought that seemed like a good thing—how else did you elevate yourself out of a lowly little life?
Freda had overheard Cissy telling Gladys that Freda was “a show-off brat.” She had been wounded by her sister’s judgement on her character. I am not a brat, merely unusually confident, she thought, observing herself practising port de bras in the narrow cheval mirror in her bedroom. She could also see the reflection of her dressing table, on which were proudly displayed her many little trophies won in dance competitions. Swimming, too—she always won the breaststroke in the Rowntree’s swimming competitions in Yearsley pool. She took pride in her achievements, particularly as no one else seemed to—apart from Florence, who was always to be found on any sideline, cheering her on.
* * *
—
“Move in with us?” Cissy said doubtfully. “Well, you know, Freda, our house isn’t exactly roomy—it’s just three bedrooms and there’s six of us living here already.” Freda’s sister’s home was a new semi-detached house in Acomb. It seemed plenty roomy enough to Freda.
Freda perched on the edge of a chair at the kitchen table, ankles politely crossed, back straight. She was minding her manners and working hard to keep a smile on her face and not appear as a “show-off brat” (the remark still stung). Freda was playing a desperate part—that of the charming younger sister.
“I could help you with the children. As payment, you know.” Freda couldn’t even remember all of Cissy’s children’s names. The first one was Barbara, she was fairly sure of that. Barbara was currently at school. Two more—twins—were playing on the linoleum of the kitchen with wooden bricks. If they had been kittens she would have adored them, but sadly they bore no resemblance to kittens.
“I am their aunt, after all,” Freda said, smiling benevolently at the twins in an effort to be aunt-like, although, in truth, she didn’t think she had ever come across an aunt. “And I can bed down anywhere. On the settee in the lounge, for example?” She cocked her head to one side, attempting winsomeness.
Cissy had been performing an awkward little ballet, pouring boiling water from the heavy kettle onto the tea leaves in the pot while holding the struggling baby on one hip. (“Bobby,” Cissy reminded Freda.) Both tea and baby seemed to be in peril.
“Can you take him?” Cissy asked. A reluctant Freda held out her arms to an equally reluctant Bobby, who made a great show of refusing the invitation. What a fusspot! Freda took a firm hold of him and after a quick tug-of-war secured his release from his mother.
“I’d be like a lodger,” Freda said, jiggling a mewling, fidgeting Bobby around. She thought of Dorothy, the doll that Vanda carried for the Knits. Much easier. Freda wondered where Dorothy was now, and, perhaps more pertinently, how Vanda was coping with motherhood. Grantham. If she knew where that was Freda would consider going there right now and throwing herself on Vanda’s soft, rabbit-furred mercy, baby or no baby.
“Just for a bit, Cissy,” Freda had persisted, “while I work out what to do.” She could hear the pleading note in her voice. She hated herself for it.
“I don’t really need help,” Cissy said placidly. She was one of those women, Freda thought, who took to motherhood like sainthood. How different from her own mother.
“And even if you stayed here for a bit…” Cissy seemed to be puzzling as to whether there was a cupboard or trunk somewhere that she could stuff Freda into, like a doll being put in a box or a suitcase, Freda thought. She felt an unexpected kinship with Dorothy.
She watched Cissy hefting the kettle back onto the hob and thought, The same blood runs in both our veins, isn’t that supposed to count for something? Was it too late to start being a family? Freda felt suddenly and unaccustomedly feeble.
“Well, let’s have tea, just now,” Cissy said. “You can put Bobby down.”
A grateful Freda abandoned Bobby on the rug, where he lay on his back, waving his arms and legs around like a struggling beetle while Cissy poured the tea and laid out scones. Gladys never baked. Mr. Birdwhistle kept her in constant provision of cakes, which Freda refused to eat on principle. The thought of Mr. Birdwhistle and his specialities made her wince. Of course, Freda knew that she could tell Cissy about Mr. Birdwhistle’s lewd approaches, but she was used to being blamed for the bad behaviour of others and suspected it would be no different in the case of the octopus’s wandering tentacles.
“And you will still need to find yourself a job,” Cissy said. “Earn a living,” she added, as though Freda might not know what a job was. “I’m surprised you didn’t take to the millinery. I would have thought that it was quite artistic. Perhaps my friend Gwen could get you a job in the Library.”
“The Library?” Freda echoed, unable to keep the horror out of her voice. A library—the deathliest place on earth.
“Yes, the Library, stacking shelves or something.”
“I’m not really a reader,” Freda said.
“Well, you don’t have to be a reader to put a book on a shelf,” Cissy chided. “You can read, can’t you?”
“Yes, of course I can.” What a cheek! She had read the entire book of Greek myths, cover to cover.
The twins started throwing their wooden bricks at each other. One caught Bobby on the head and he started to shriek, an unearthly, piercing sound that could have been used as a weapon of war. The enemy would have given in immediately. Cissy merely laughed and, scooping Bobby up, said, “No rest for the wicked,” which was exactly the kind of thing that people like Cissy said. And it was a stupid saying, in Freda’s opinion. The wicked were undoubtedly getting a great deal of rest, idling about drinking sherry from the wood and eating éclairs and iced fancies.
“Come on,” her sister said, “you can help me fetch Barbara from school.”
A tribe of Bedouins preparing to cross the desert with a caravan of camels probably took less time to get underway than Cissy and her brood.
“You know what,” Freda said, halfway through these interminable preparations, “I should be getting home, Mother will be wondering where I am.”
“Will she?” Cissy said dubiously. She dithered for a moment and then said (without any conviction, in Freda’s opinion), “You know, if you really wanted to come and live here, Freda, I suppose you could always share a room with Bobby.”
The Fisher King
Strangely, in all his time in the force, Frobisher had never had the need to visit the Dead Man’s Hole, as the morgue beneath Tower Bridge was known. The way the currents ran in this stretch of the Thames meant that the piers of the bridge snagged the dead on their way downriver and the Dead Man’s Hole was where the bodies were grappled out and temporarily stored. Some drownings hooked out of the water were accidental, usually drunks, occasionally murders, but many were suicides. Frobisher was not unacquainted with would-be suicides—his wife had been one.