Anne Perry: A Christmas Promise

T HE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS, THE SMELL and taste of it were in the air, a kind of excitement, an urgency about everything. Geese and rabbits hung outside butchers’ shops, and there were little pieces of holly on some people’s doors. Postmen were extra busy. The streets were still gray, the wind still hard and cold, the rain turning to sleet, but it wouldn’t have seemed right if it had been different.

Gracie Phipps was on an errand for her gran to get a tuppence worth of potatoes to go with the leftovers of cabbage and onion, so Gran could make bubble and squeak for supper. Spike and Finn would pretty well eat anything they could fit into their mouths, but they liked this especially. Better with a slice of sausage, of course, but there was no money for that now. Everything was being saved for Christmas.

Gracie walked a little faster into the wind, pulling her shawl tighter around her. She had the potatoes in a string bag, along with half a cabbage. She saw the girl standing by the candle makers, on the corner of Heneage Street and Brick Lane, her reddish fair hair blowing about and her arms hugged around her as if she were freezing. She looked to be about eight, five years younger than Gracie, and as skinny as an eel. She had to be lost. She didn’t belong there, or on Chicksand Street—one over. Gracie had lived on these streets ever since she had come to London from the country, when her mother had died six years before, in 1877. She knew everyone.

“Are yer lorst?” she asked as she reached the child. “This is ’eneage Street. Where d’yer come from?”

The girl looked at her with wide gray eyes, blinking fiercely in an attempt to stop the tears from brimming over onto her cheeks. “Thrawl Street,” she answered. That was two streets over to the west and on the other side of Brick Lane, out of the neighborhood altogether.

“It’s that way.” Gracie pointed.

“I know where it is,” the girl replied, not making any effort to move. “Me uncle Alf’s bin killed, an’ Charlie’s gorn. I gotta find ’im, cos ’e’ll be cold an’ ’ungry, an’ mebbe scared.” Her eyes brimmed over, and she wiped her sleeve across her face and sniffed. “’ave yer seen a donkey as yer don’t know? ’e’s gray, wi’ brown eyes, an’ a sort o’ pale bit round the end of ’is nose.” She looked at Gracie with sudden, intense hope. “’e’s about this ’igh.” She indicated, reaching upward with a small, dirty hand.

Gracie would have liked to help, but she had seen no animals at all, except for the coal man’s horse at the end of the street, and a couple of stray dogs. Even hansom cabs didn’t often come to this part of the East End. Commercial Street, or Whitechapel Road, maybe, on their way to somewhere else. She looked at the child’s eager face and felt her heart sink. “Wot’s yer name?” she asked.

“Minnie Maude Mudway,” the child replied. “But I in’t lorst. I’m lookin’ fer Charlie. ’e’s the one wot’s lorst, an’ summink might ’ave ’appened to ’im. I told yer, me uncle Alf’s bin killed. Yesterday it were, an’ Charlie’s gorn. ’e’d ’ave come ’ome if ’e could. ’e must be cold an’ ’ungry, an’ ’e dunno where ’e is.”

Gracie was exasperated. The whole story made no sense. Why would Minnie Maude be worrying about a donkey that had wandered off, if her uncle had really been killed? And yet she couldn’t just leave the girl there standing on the corner in the wind. It would be dark very soon. It was after three already, and going to rain. “Yer got a ma?” Gracie asked.

“No,” Minnie Maude answered. “I got an aunt Bertha, but she says as Charlie don’t matter. Donkeys is donkeys.”

“Well, if yer uncle got killed, maybe she don’t care that much about donkeys right now.” Gracie tried to sound reasonable. “Wot’s gonna ’appen to ’er, wif ’im gone? Yer gotta think as she might be scared an’ all.”

Minnie Maude blinked. “Uncle Alf di’n’t matter to ’er like that,” she explained. “’e were me pa’s bruvver.” She sniffed harder. “Uncle Alf told good stories. ’e’d bin ter places, an’ ’e saw things better than most folk. Saw them fer real, wot they meant inside, not just wot’s plain. ’e used ter make me laugh.”

Gracie felt a sudden, sharp sense of the girl’s loss. Maybe it was Uncle Alf she was really looking for, and Charlie was just an excuse, a kind of sideways way of seeing it, until she could bear to look at it straight. There was something very special about people who made you laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. It had been a little while before she had really said to herself that her mother wasn’t ever coming back.

“’e were killed,” Minnie Maude repeated. “Yest’day.”

“Then yer’d best go ’ome,” Gracie pointed out. “Yer aunt’ll be wond’rin’ wot ’appened to yer. Mebbe Charlie’s already got ’ome ’isself.”

Minnie Maude looked miserable and defiant, shivering in the wind and almost at the end of her strength. “No ’e won’t. If ’e knew ’ow ter come ’ome ’e’d a bin there last night. ’e’s cold an’ scared, an’ all by ’isself. An’ no one but ’im an’ me knows as Uncle Alf were done in. Aunt Bertha says as ’e fell off an’ ’it ’is ’ead, broke ’is neck most like. An’ Stan says it don’t matter anyway, cos dead is dead jus’ the same, an’ we gotta bury ’im decent, an’ get on wi’ things. Ain’t no time ter sit around. Stan drives an ’ansom, ’e goes all over the place, but ’e don’t know as much as Uncle Alf did. ’e could fall over summink wifout seein’ it proper. ’e sees wot it is, like Uncle Alf said, but ’e don’t never see wot it could be! ’e di’n’t see as donkeys can be as good as a proper ’orse.”

Not for a hansom cab , Gracie thought. Who ever saw a hansom with a donkey in the shafts? But she didn’t say so.

“An’ Aunt Bertha di’n’t ’old wif animals,” Minnie Maude finished. “’ceptin’ cats, cos they get the mice.” She gulped and wiped her nose on her sleeve again. “So will yer ’elp me look for Charlie, please?”

Gracie felt useless. Why couldn’t she have come a little earlier, when her gran had first told her to? Then she wouldn’t even have been here for this child to ask her for something completely impossible. She felt sad and guilty, but there was no possible way she could go off around the wet winter streets in the dark, looking for donkeys. She had to get home with the potatoes so her gran could make supper for them, and the two hungry little boys Gran’s son had left when he’d died. They were nearly old enough to get out and earn their own way, but right now they were still a considerable responsibility, especially with Gracie’s gran earning only what she could doing laundry every hour she was awake, and a few when she hardly was. Gracie helped with errands. She always seemed to be running around fetching or carrying something, cleaning, sweeping, scrubbing. But very soon she would have to go to the factory like other girls, as soon as Spike and Finn didn’t need watching.

“I can’t,” she said quietly. “I gotta go ’ome with the taters, or them kids’ll start eatin’ the chairs. Then I gotta ’elp me gran.” She wanted to apologize, but what was the point? The answer was still no.

Minnie Maude nodded, her mouth tightening a little. She breathed in and out deeply, steadying herself. “’s all right. I’ll look fer Charlie meself.” She sniffed and turned away to walk home. The sky was darkening and the first spots of rain were heavy in the wind, hard and cold.