Chapter Ten 1893 #5
‘Theo, please—’
‘Oh, Ralph,’ Theo breathed. ‘Can’t you feel it? Can’t you feel how empty it all is, now?’
‘It will fill again, my love.’
He smoothed his hand over the slack skin of her abdomen. But she hadn’t meant that her womb was empty; she’d meant the world. She’d meant her heart.
‘Why? Why did she die?’
‘You must not blame yourself.’
Theo sat up abruptly, turning to him in the half-dark.
‘Blame myself? Why? What have you not told me?’
‘Nothing, Theo.’ He looked away, seeming undecided. ‘Only that, sometimes, stress and . . . nervous exhaustion in the mother can cause—’
‘Nervous exhaustion? But I haven’t been nervous – I’ve been fine. Better than fine!’
‘Truly? Even today?’ Ralph hesitated. ‘I . . . I cannot think that the date is a coincidence.’
Theo stared at him; she didn’t understand. ‘I don’t . . .’
She fell silent. The soft silver light outside, the warm breeze that had blown. It was the twenty-fourth of June. Midsummer’s Day.
She lay back, the weight of responsibility knocking her flat.
She hadn’t noticed the date – she was sure she hadn’t.
And yet, she was not sure. Because how could she forget it?
It was four years to the day since she’d brought them all together at the castle, and everything had been destroyed.
And now, somehow, she had made this happen, too.
Amelia. Gone, like the wonder out of the world.
Ralph fetched a tincture to make her sleep, and she swallowed it gladly.
Toby’s arrival in London was marked by equal measures of wonder and revulsion.
Durham had seemed huge after Hallewell; now London made Durham a speck.
He walked for miles, trying to get his bearings, somehow imagining that he could create a mental map of the whole city, as he had with Durham.
He soon admitted defeat, and simply walked to take it in.
He was frequently lost. The sheer scale of the place astonished him.
Whole rows of buildings that rose up and up, four storeys high, five, six; turning the street below into a canyon.
Every now and then he would stumble across some wonder at the end of such a channel – Westminster Abbey, or Big Ben, or the brand-new Tower Bridge, not yet open to traffic.
The roads thronged with more shapes and sizes of vehicle and person than he’d ever imagined.
Trams and omnibuses and wagons and traps; the rich, the poor, the shifty and strange.
There was a constant blare of noise; an assault on all his senses, not least his nose.
He soon learned that a butcher’s shop could be found by following the evil reek of rotting blood from three streets away.
A fishmonger’s the exact same way. The smell rising from the open sewer grates seemed to climb up his nose and into his throat, where it lodged.
On still days, a thick pall of smoke hung in the air.
All the buildings, however grand, were black with smuts, as were the shop awnings and park benches, and the hawker boys’ faces.
The city had endeavoured to clean up the Thames since the Great Stink of ’58, but the river still wound through it like a turgid, murky animal, thick with effluent.
Agglomerations of unidentifiable filth gathered wherever the current was slow.
At low tide the mud had a fishy, almost sweet aroma that Toby found particularly nauseating.
He sometimes wore a handkerchief over his nose, with drops of camphor.
As the weather got colder, and Womersley and the rest of Toby’s cohort took up their positions in law firms, financial institutions and family businesses, Toby was still walking, as though he might make a career of it.
He had his last bit of money from the Latin exhibition, plus a small engagement gift from the Womersleys, and was eking it out as slowly as he could.
But it wouldn’t last the winter. Toby felt chaos nipping at his heels.
He didn’t dare turn and look it in the face.
He didn’t want to rely upon connections to advance; he didn’t want to rely on anyone.
He felt, deep down, that nobody could be truly relied upon.
But no matter how far he walked, no solution presented itself.
He recognised that the abstract idea he’d had, of steadily increasing influence, had been a childish delusion of grandeur, and that he ought to have given more consideration to a career of some kind.
It was no longer enough to be an excellent scholar, but since that had defined him up to that point, it was hard to see beyond it.
Trying to formulate any kind of plan was like trying to stick pins in mist.
Some nights he lay awake, spinning helplessly into that void Lily had alluded to. Robbed of the twin goals of studying and attaining the highest marks, with nothing left to structure his days, he did feel himself coming apart. It was terrifying.
Every couple of weeks Tom treated him to a steak supper, which was very welcome.
Most nights his evening meal was bread and dripping, with a slice or two of bacon or a hard-boiled egg if he was lucky, and a cup of cocoa or beer.
Some of this feast, provided by the landlady at his boarding house for an extra shilling a week, had to be saved for breakfast. By bedtime his stomach was always howling for more, and it took an iron-clad will not to polish off the lot.
‘Any plans?’ Tom asked.
Had he not been engaged to Tom’s sister, Toby might have broken down and told the truth.
‘I’m . . . exploring a few avenues,’ he said.
‘I hear there’s always call for tutors,’ Tom said. ‘To coach the sons of the wealthy for the Oxford entrance. And their daughters too, these days.’
‘Like Reverend Nimrod coached me.’
‘There you are, then. You should put out a notice.’
‘Perhaps.’
The sewers stank less once the frosts started, but the haze of smoke got worse.
People coughed, all the time. Toby noticed that born and bred Londoners were small and weedy; they had permanently blocked noses, and died young from lung disease and dysentery.
Young men fresh in from Ireland or the countryside stuck out like sore thumbs with their ruddy complexions and sturdy limbs.
If, in Hallewell, class was a question of whether you sat on a terrace at a fête or stood in the crowd, then in London it was a question of whether or not you ate.
Whether your children would live, or you would make it to the age of forty.
Slums were everywhere, and you could smell one upwind like you could a butcher’s shop.
In Hallewell, nobody went hungry for long.
In hard times, there was always a kindly farmer’s wife willing to give out milk and bread crusts.
The vicar’s wife would open a soup kitchen, or arrange a collection.
There were rabbits to snare, pigeons to net, apples to scrump.
In London, the poorest had nothing. Nothing to wear, nothing to eat, nothing to sleep on or warm themselves with.
However much Toby had read, nothing had prepared him for the reality of such hardship. There was no safety net.
He had no safety net, other than to make himself a burden to his friends.
He supposed the Womersleys might take him in if he fell into utter destitution; or else compel Lily to release him from their engagement.
Toby couldn’t tell what he felt about that.
It turned out that being engaged to Lily was very easy.
Once the initial shock of it had worn off, it appeared that not much was expected of him, or even needed to change.
He wrote to her every other day – tales of the city – and she wrote back about her studies, and the possibility of a position at a boys’ school when she finished, teaching physics and chemistry.
She was looking forward to it, she wrote, and might be sad to leave it off once they were married.
But she longed for that happy event, nonetheless. With love, I am yours, truly, Lily.
Her letters were always far longer than his.
For the first time in two years, Toby went back to Hallewell for Christmas.
He wasn’t able to buy gifts, or turn up laden with chocolates and Turkish delight as he’d imagined when a place at university was first mooted.
All he took with him was a head cold, which Mona promptly caught.
Toby was shocked by how small and frail his father looked, and how pinched his face had become.
He was shocked at Mona’s quietness – speaking only with a visible effort.
‘My boy,’ she said, taking his arms and gazing up at him. ‘My Toby.’
She seemed far away; not quite present in the room.
‘I’m sorry to come empty-handed,’ Toby said to his father.
‘Nonsense. You being here is all that matters.’
David patted his shoulder, and Toby saw him notice the frayed cuffs of his son’s shirt, his untrimmed hair, and the fact that his jacket had gone through at the elbows.
‘Any leads on a position?’
‘Some, yes,’ Toby lied.
He was getting used to lying about it. He had answered a few adverts, and been to a few meetings. But he never seemed to fit. His stellar education coupled with his lack of breeding; his obvious intelligence marred by the apathy he could not shake.
‘It will not simply happen of its own accord, I think,’ David said gently, cutting directly to the heart of the matter. ‘Not for a man of your . . . background.’
‘I have irons in the fire.’ Toby hated the doubt on his father’s face. ‘You don’t need to worry. I’ve been doing some tutoring, in fact.’