Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

The transaction now completed, Newman pocketed his gain and left the shop feeling flush and hopeful. He didn’t notice the jeweller lingering at the door to make certain that Newman didn’t pass by the place where some woman named Penny invited people to dine with her for a price.

To the jeweller’s satisfaction, Newman stepped inside the restaurant that had been recommended to him. He took a seat at one of the tables and read through the menu and then asked for a chicken sandwich, as the jeweller had suggested he should, and a lemonade, which sounded as if it should taste as good as had the orange juice he’d imbibed two mornings ago, and then something called “onion rings,” because he was curious to know what such things could be. Because he was so excited about his first restaurant meal in the Outland, Newman did not even mind the odd look that the waitress gave him. Perhaps she thought him strange because of the dirty, baggy clothes he was wearing, or the fact that he sat up so straight in his chair (all Dinglian children having been taught to avoid a drooping posture for it was exemplary of rough manners).

The chop-house (for it most resembled one of the chop-houses of Milltown’s East End, except that there was more glass and more light, and the tables were shiny and metallic and there were bright colours all about) was fairly empty at this late afternoon hour and for this reason it was quiet save the faint sound of a little music playing. The music came from someplace Newman could not determine, and it sounded a bit cacophonous to his Dinglian ears. He wondered if there was a sound box somewhere about, like the sound box that had produced the voice in the Ryersbach dine-in kitchen.

Newman adjudged his sandwich to be most tasty and he enjoyed the deep-fried loops called onion rings, which were crispy and flavourable, though quite salty (as he was discovering all Outlander food to be). The lemonade was sweet, yet also sour, just as he had predicted. All in all, Newman quickly concluded that this first Outland meal procured solely through his own efforts was really quite good, and that he would not mind having another one just like it as he made his way back to Dingley Dell.

Ruth Wolf entered the restaurant quite breathless, though she tried not to give the picture of one who had trotted nearly all the way from where she had spoken to the jeweller Phillips. The young woman, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, greeted the waitress as if the two were old friends and seated herself at the table next to Newman’s.

Newman glanced up at her as she sat down and thought that he had seen her somewhere before. The puzzled look on Newman’s face gave Miss Wolf all the information that she required. She rose from her chair and moved to sit across the table from Newman.

“You think that you know me, don’t you?” she asked, pulling a strand of her long red hair away from her grey-emerald eyes.

“I’m not sure if I know you or not,” said Newman, whose hand was cupped round the glass of lemonade but was now staid from lifting the beverage to his lips.

“But I look familiar to you.”

Newman nodded. “I know not why.”

“I’ll tell you why. May I sit here? May I speak with you?”

Newman shrugged.

“I’ll tell you where you’ve seen me and then you should feel better. I am Miss Wolf. I work at Bethlehem Hospital upon Highbury Fields in Dingley Dell.”

“Bedlam. You’re a nurse at Bedlam.”

“Yes.”

“I remember now. You came to speak to my fellow classmates and me at Miss Clickett’s school.”

“That’s right. I came to talk about the work that I do on behalf of the unfortunate inmates of Bedlam.”

Newman took a sip of his lemonade and swallowed. He set down the glass and looked at Miss Wolf, studying her young face, the face of a Dinglian, who, now drest in Outland clothing, could be thought just as easily to be an Outlander. “What are you doing here?” he now asked. “Have you escaped from Dingley Dell as well?”

Miss Wolf was just about to answer when the serving girl suddenly made her appearance to ask what Miss Wolf would have. “Just a cup of coffee,” answered the nurse.

After the girl had walked away, Miss Wolf resumed, “No, Newman. I haven’t escaped.”

“You remember my name.”

“Of course I should remember the name of a boy as bright as you. Newman, there is much that you don’t know and there isn’t time right now to tell it all. But I’ll say this : I come and go from the Dell as I please. I am, in fact, the only Dinglian who enjoys that privilege. There are things that I do at the hospital — important things having to do with the care of the inmates there. And then there are things that I do out here .”

“Were you born in Dingley Dell?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“I don’t understand. You came from the Outland?”

“Yes. I’ll be happy to tell you my story someday and how things came to be, but—” Miss Wolf glanced nervously over her shoulder. “But as I say, we haven’t time right now. There are people here — and I don’t wish to alarm you, Newman, but you must know the truth — there are people whose job it is to find boys like you, to seek out anyone who has escaped from the Dell, for that matter, and to remove them so that they won’t speak of your homeland. So that these other people whom you see all around you should never know the truth about it. Now these bad people have been informed of your escape and they are out here looking for you. As luck would have it, I happened to find you first.”

“Why is that a lucky thing?”

“Because it is my job, or rather the job that I have chosen for myself among all the others that have been assigned to me — to keep those bad people from finding you. Because if you fall into the hands of those people, well, I won’t sugarcoat it, Newman: they’ll kill you. That’s their job: to silence you in the best way they know.”

A jolt of panic suddenly struck at Newman’s breast. He started to rise from his chair as if he would bolt. Miss Wolf caught him by the arm. “Please. Listen to me, Newman. If you run, if you try to hide, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll find you. But if you’ll only trust me, I can keep them from you. I can take you home. Will you trust me, Newman?”

Newman didn’t answer. He knew not how to answer this strange redheaded woman who gave him a soft, warm smile, whilst telling him with great urgency the danger that he was in. What he had been told made him feel light in the head. He wanted to believe her. He wanted to trust her. Yet had he not decided that he should trust no one, believe no one? Had not Mr. Ryersbach brought in a policeman and a woman with grasping hands to take him away? Was it their intention to kill him? Even the jeweller had tried to cheat him. And Chad Ryersbach had assaulted him. No, Newman thought. He would take his chances with his own fleet feet and with his own strong fists, which had won him two pugilist medals. He was, after all — should he succeed in finding his bearings — only a three-day journey by foot from his home. That is how far he estimated that he had come over the last eight days. He could make it home under his own industry. He had money now and he would buy food along the way when he felt it was safe to do so.

Perhaps, thought Newman, there wasn’t anyone at all looking for him — especially someone who might wish to kill him. Perhaps this was a fabrication put forth by Miss Wolf to take him into her own custody so that she could rob him or take him to a work farm to pull up radishes all day, this being another Outland hazard speculated by Newman’s schoolmates.

And had it not also been said of Miss Wolf that she was the nurse who puts the inmates into their strait-waistcoats, who plies them with so much laudanum as to make them insensible or babbling? Had not the children in Miss Clickett’s school whispered amongst themselves after Miss Wolf had gone that she was a punishing witch without a broomstick but with a great syringe which she straddled and flew all about and used to stab all the little children of the Dell who refused to eat their boiled beef and pease pudding? It all came back to him now. In spite of the warm smile and the soft and sympathetic grey-emerald eyes, there were things about this woman — this fast-talking woman with one foot in the Outland and one in the Dell — that unsettled my nephew, that left him fearfully uneasy and uncertain.