Трейси Шевалье - Falling Angel

I cannot help but think that he said yes in part because he prefers my company to Maude’s. Certainly I was the livelier one in the cab over. But how could I not be-we were to see the inside of a prison! I couldn’t think of anything more deliciously exciting.

The only dampening element (apart from the rain, ha ha!) was that as the cab drove past our house I saw Ivy May had pulled aside the net curtain and was looking out of the window. She seemed to look right at me, and I had to pray that she would not tattle on me-Mama thinks Maude and I were at the library.

I had never seen Holloway prison before. As we walked up to the arched wooden doors of the main entrance, I squeezed Maude’s arm. “It looks like a castle!” I whispered.

To my amazement Maude wrenched her arm away. “This isn’t a fairy tale!” she hissed.

Well. I was a little put out, but soon recovered when I saw the woman who opened the side door to let us in. She was short and fat and wore a gray uniform, with a big bunch of keys hanging at her waist. Best of all, she had a huge mole on her upper lip. She was just like a character out of Dickens, though I didn’t say so to Maude. I had to clap my hand over my mouth so the woman wouldn’t see me laughing. She did, though, the troll.

We went into a reception room, and Maude and I sat on a narrow bench while Troll opened a ledger book and took down Mr. Coleman’s details. I was amazed she could read and write.

Troll looked up at us. “Only one of youse can come in,” she said. “Only three visitors allowed at one time, an’ one’s already there. One of youse’ll have to wait here.” She fixed a yellow eye on me.

“Another visitor?” Mr. Coleman looked puzzled. “Who?”

Troll put her finger on a page in the ledger. “Miss C. Black.”

“Damn her! What the devil’s she doing here?”

“She arranged a visit, same as you.”

“She’s no relation to my wife. Tell her she has to go.”

Troll smiled slyly. “She’s a right to see ‘er, same as anyone else. It’s your wife decides who she sees an’ don’t sees.”

Poor Mr. Coleman was furious but there was nothing he could do. “You two wait here for me,” he said to us.

“But I’ve come to see Mummy!” Maude cried.

“It’s best if you stay here with Lavinia. We can’t leave her alone.”

He turned to the woman. “Can the girls wait here for me?”

Troll just grunted.

I smiled, relieved by his chivalry.

“But Lavinia will be fine here on her own,” Maude insisted. “Won’t you, Lavinia?”

I opened my mouth to protest, but that nasty woman jumped in. “I don’t want two of youse cluttering up my bench.” She pointed at Maude. “You go with your da, and you”-pointing at me-“wait where you are.” She went to the door and called out something into the corridor.

I was so shocked I couldn’t speak. Being left alone in a prison with a horrid troll? And for such a silly reason as the space needed on a hard bench? Clearly Troll was saying this simply to get at me. I turned to Mr. Coleman for help. Unfortunately he then revealed that he is not so gallant as I thought-he simply nodded at Troll.

Another woman came in, tall this time, also wearing the gray uniform, and jangling her keys in a most irritating manner.

“H-fifteen, second division,” Troll said to her. “Another un’s already there.”

The wardress nodded and gestured for Mr. Coleman and Maude to follow-which they did, neither of them giving me even a backward glance.

Well. When they were gone, Troll grinned at me from behind her table. I was surprised to see she had a full set of teeth-I would have expected them to be black and falling out. I ignored her and sat very quietly, like a little mouse. For I was rather terrified.

The thing about a little mouse, though, is that it can’t help but look around for some crumbs to munch on. There was not much to see in the room just the table and a few benches, all empty-and I found myself studying Troll. She was sitting behind the table, writing something in the ledger. She really was quite repulsive, even worse than something Dickens would have thought up. Her mole positively gleamed on her lip. I wondered if there were hairs growing out of it. The thought made me giggle. f didn’t think she could see me spying on her-I was looking at her through my lashes while pretending to study my fingernails-but she growled, “What you laughing at, gal?”

“My own little joke,” I said bravely. “It’s nothing to do with you. And really, you had better call me Miss Waterhouse.”

She had the impudence to laugh, so I felt obliged to explain that I was almost certain we were related to the painter J. W. Waterhouse, even though Papa thinks not, and that I had written to him to discover the connection. (I didn’t tell her that Mr. Waterhouse never responded to my letter.) Of course I was assuming far too much of a prison gatekeeper with a mole on her lip, even if she can write-she clearly had never heard of J.W W, not even when I described his painting of the Lady of Shalott that hangs in the Tate. She hadn’t even heard of her! Next she would be asking who was Tennyson.

Fortunately this fruitless conversation was interrupted by the arrival back of yet another wardress. Troll said she was glad the other had come because I could “talk the ear off an elephant, an’ all of it rubbish too.”

I was very tempted to stick out my tongue at her-the longer I sat there the less terrified I was. But then a bell rang, and she went off to answer the door. The other wardress just stood there and stared at me as if I were a piece in a museum exhibition. I glared at her but it didn’t seem to put her off. I expect they don’t often see girls like me sitting on that bench-no wonder that she stared.

Troll came back with a man in tow, dressed in a dark suit and bowler hat. He stood at the table while Troll looked in her ledger and said, “She’s already got her visitors for today. Popular lady. Did you write ahead to arrange it?”

“No,” the man said.

“You have to write ahead for permission,” Troll said gleefully. She did delight in others’ misfortunes. “And then it’s up to her to say she’ll see you.”

“I see.” The man turned to leave.

Well. I was rather beyond surprise by that time. So when he glanced over at me and started like a skittish horse, I simply smiled my sweetest smile and said, “Hello, Mr. Jackson.”

Luckily he left before Maude and her father returned or there would have been an awkward scene. For once Troll held her tongue rather than make everyone’s misery worse, and I kept quiet as well. It was very odd indeed that Mr. Jackson should want to visit Maude’s mother.

It was such a trying day that when I got home I had to have a long nap and a bowl of bread-and-butter pudding to comfort me, as if I were ill. All the while there were thoughts racing around my head that kept trying to fit themselves together. They were to do with Maude’s mother and Mr. Jackson. I tried very hard not to let them fit together, however, and I think I succeeded.

Daddy and I followed the wardress down a corridor and into a large internal courtyard. From the ground we could see all the way up to the roof. The walls were lined with tier after tier of doors. Outside the rows of doors were gangways of black ironwork, along which other wardresses dressed in gray were walking.

Our wardress led us up two flights of stairs and out along one of the gangways. From the iron railing at my side to the other across the courtyard a wire net had been stretched over the empty space. There were strange things caught in it-a wooden spoon, a white cap, a cracked leather shoe.

In the center of each cell door hung a leather flap. As I passed one I had an overwhelming urge to lift it. I slowed down so that Daddy and the wardress were several paces ahead, then quickly lifted the flap and put my eye up to the peephole.