Трейси Шевалье - Falling Angel

“Don’t blame her!” Maude cried. “It was you who wanted so badly to come on the march!”

“Your mother,” I repeated. “You don’t know the half of it about her.”

“Don‘t, Livy,” Simon warned. “Don’t you dare.”

Maude looked between us. “I don’t want to hear it, whatever it is,” she said to me. “Don’t you ever say a word of it to me.”

“Go home, both of you!” Simon said. I’d never heard him raise his voice before. ‘There’s an omnibus there.“ He even pushed us toward it.

“We can’t leave Ivy May,” I declared, stopping in my tracks. “We can’t just jump on a bus and leave her at the mercy of this awful city.”

“I’ll go back and look for her,” Simon said.

For that I could have kissed him, but he was already off at a run, back down along the Euston Road.

Never did I expect to see such a sight.

I didn’t know who it could be, ringing the bell on a Sunday evening. I’d just returned from Mum‘s, didn’t even have my cap and apron on yet. I weren’t even there normally-I usually came back later, after Jack was asleep, but today he were so tired from running about that after tea he just fell into his bed.

Maybe it were the missus and Miss Maude, had their key pick-pocketed in the crowd. Or a neighbor meaning to borrow a stamp or run out of lamp oil. But when I opened the door, it were the man from the cemetery, carrying the missus in his arms. Not only that-she weren’t wearing a proper skirt! Her legs were bare as the day she was born. Her eyes were just open, like she’d been woke up from a nap.

Before I could say a word but stare with my eyes popping, Mr. Jackson had pushed inside, with that suffragette lady Miss Black fluttering behind him. “We must get her to her bed,” he said. “Where is her husband?”

“At the Bull and Last,” I said. “He always goes there after his cricket.” I led the way upstairs to her room. Miss Black was wearing some sort of metal suit what clanked as she went up the stairs. She looked so strange I began to wonder if I were dreaming it all.

Mr. Jackson laid the missus on her bed and said, “Stay with her-I’ll get her husband.”

“And I’ll fetch a doctor,” said Miss Black.

There’s one on the Highgate Road, just up from the pub,“ I said. ”I can…“

But they were gone before I could offer to go so Miss Black could stay with her friend. It were like she didn’t want to stay.

So it were just me and the missus. She lay there staring at me. I couldn’t think what to do. I lit a candle and were just about to close the curtains when she whispered, “Leave them open. And open the window.”

She looked so silly in her green outfit, her legs all naked. Mr. Coleman would have a fit if he saw her like that. After I opened the window I sat on the bed and began to take off her little green boots.

“Jenny, I want to ask you something,” she said real quiet.

“Yes, ma‘am.”

“Does anyone know about what happened to me?”

“About what happened to you, ma‘am?” I repeated. “You’ve had a little accident, is all.”

The missus’s eyes flared and she shook her head. “Jenny, there is no time for this silliness. For once let us be clear with each other-does anyone know what happened to me two years ago?”

I knew what she were talking about the first time, even though I acted like I didn’t. I set the boots on the floor. “No one knows but me. And Mrs. Baker-she guessed. Oh, and Simon.”

“The cemetery boy? How could he know?”

“It were his mum you went to.”

“And that is all-no one else knows?”

I didn’t look in her eyes, but tugged at the green cap in her hair. “No.” I didn’t say nothing about Miss Livy’s letter. There seemed no point in agitating her in her state. Simon and Mrs. Baker and me, we could keep our counsel, but there was no guessing what Miss Livy might say one of these days-or said already, like as not. But the missus needn’t know that.

“I don’t want the men to find out.”

“No.” I reached round and began to unbutton the back of her tunic.

“Promise me they won’t.”

“They won’t.”

“Promise me something else.”

“Yes, ma‘am.”

“Promise me you won’t let my mother-in-law get her claws into Maude.”

I pulled off the tunic and gasped. Her chest was one big black bruise. “Lord, what happened to you, ma‘am?”

“Promise me.”

Now I understood why she was talking like that. “Oh, ma‘am, you’re going to be just fine in a day or two. The doctor will be here soon and he’ll sort you out. Miss Black’s gone to fetch him. And Mr.-the gentleman’s gone to get your husband.” The missus tried to say something, but I wouldn’t let her-I just ran on and on, saying whatever popped into my head. “He’s down the pub just now, but it won’t take him a minute to get back. Let’s just get this nightgown on before they come, shall we? It’s ever so pretty, this one, what with the lace at the cuffs and all. Let’s just pop this over your head and pull it down. There. And your hair, that’s it. That’s better now, ain’t it?”

She lay back again, like she were too weak to fight my words. Her breathing were all wet and ragged. I couldn’t bear to hear it. “I’ll just run and light the lamps,” I said. “For the master and doctor. Won’t be a second.” I ran out before she could say anything.

Mr. Coleman came home as I was lighting the lamps in the front hallway, and then the doctor and Miss Black. They went upstairs, and then it went all quiet up there. I couldn’t help it-I had to go and listen outside the door.

The doctor had such a low voice that all I could hear was “internal bleeding.”

Then Mr. Coleman laid into Miss Black. “Why in hell didn’t you find a doctor the moment the horse kicked her?” he shouted. “You were boasting there would be a huge crowd-surely among two hundred thousand people there was a doctor!”

“You don’t understand,” Caroline Black said. “It was so crowded it was difficult to move or even speak, much less find a doctor.”

“Why didn’t you bring her home at once? If you had shown any sense whatsoever she might be all right now, with nothing more than a few bruises.”

“Don’t you think I didn’t beg her to? You clearly don’t know your wife well if you think she would have done what I asked her to. She wanted to get to Hyde Park and hear the speeches on such an historic occasion, and nothing I nor anyone else-not even you, sir-said could have dissuaded her.”

“Hyperbole!” Mr. Coleman shouted. “Even at a time like this you suffragettes resort to hyperbole. Damn your historic occasion! Did you even look at her chest after it happened? Did you even see the damage? And who on God’s green earth told Kitty to lead a horse? She’s a disaster around horses!”

“It was her idea. No one forced her. She never told me she didn’t like horses.”

“And where’s Maude?” Mr. Coleman said. “What’s happened to my daughter?”

“She‘s-she’s on her way home, I’m sure.” Caroline Black was crying now.

I didn’t stay to hear more. I went down to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Then I sat at the table and began to cry myself.

Over his shoulder I saw a star fall. It was me.

I never seen a dead body before. That sounds strange coming from a gravedigger. All day long I got dead bodies round me, but they’re in boxes, nailed shut tight and covered with dirt. Sometimes I’m standing on a coffin in a grave, and there’s only an inch of wood ‘tween me and the body. But I ain’t seen it. If I spent more time out of the cemetery I’d see dead bodies all the time. Funny, that. Our ma and sisters has seen hundreds, all them women and babies died in birth, or neighbors, died of hunger or the cold.