Little Bones Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Janette Jenkins

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Prologue

  One: Arrivals & Departures

  Two: Before

  Three: The New-Born Year

  Four: Before

  Five: Like Nothing

  Six: Before

  Seven: Small Dark Eyes & Little Hands

  Eight: Before

  Nine: The Sky is a Dangerous Thing

  Ten: Prisoner

  Eleven: Letters

  Twelve: The Saint of Hopeless Cases

  Thirteen: Letters From Outside

  Fourteen: Showing Twice Daily

  Fifteen: Afterwards

  Copyright

  About the Book

  It’s 1899. London. A young girl is abandoned by her feckless family and finds lodging and work assisting a doctor. But Jane Stretch is no ordinary girl, and Mr Swift is no ordinary doctor ...

  Jane does her best to keep up with the doctor, her twisted bones throbbing, as they hurry past the markets, stage doors and side shows to appointments in certain boarding houses across town. The young actresses who live there have problems, and Mr Swift does what is required, calmly and discreetly. Grateful to her benefactor and his wife, Jane assists him and asks no questions – the desperate young women not minding that it is a cripple girl who wipes their brows ...

  When this unlikely pair become involved with a rakish music hall star, Johnny Treble, who calls on Swift’s help for his rich mistress’s predicament, it seems that Jane’s spell of good fortune is not going to last. The police come knocking – how will the doctor explain the absence of his medical certificates? How will they explain their connection to Johnny Treble’s sudden death? And how will Jane argue her innocence? It seems that no amount of wand waving will make their problems disappear.

  Little Bones conjures a tawdry, tantalising, troubling world of unclear morality and conflicting sympathies – richly evocative and full of curiosities. Two people act against their consciences simply to get by, and the choices we make are called into question. Is it possible to commit abhorrent acts without being corrupted by them?

  About the Author

  Born in Bolton in 1965, Janette Jenkins studied acting before completing a degree in Literature and Philosophy and then doing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where she was in Malcolm Bradbury’s final class, along with Toby Litt, John Boyne, Richard Beard and Bo Fowler. She is the author of the novels, Columbus Day, Another Elvis Love Child and Angel of Brooklyn. Her short stories have appeared in newspapers and anthologies, including Stand Magazine, and have been broadcast on Radio 4. In 2003 she was awarded an Alumni Fellowship by the University of Bolton. She lives in the city of Durham.

  ALSO BY JANETTE JENKINS

  Columbus Day

  Another Elvis Love Child

  Angel of Brooklyn

  For my daughter, Emily

  Little Bones

  Janette Jenkins

  Prologue

  Brighton, August, 1889

  Between shows they take in the briny, watching the sea as it shivers over the pebbles, like eggs, Mamie thinks, coming to the boil. A small group of boys runs towards them, asking Fred for a trick they can take back to their friends, and he pulls a coin from his pocket, placing it into his palm, making a fist, tap, tap, tap, and the coin disappears.

  ‘How’s it done, mister?’

  ‘Magic,’ says Fred, producing the penny from behind the boy’s small ear, and by and large they seem satisfied as he takes Mamie’s arm, strolling towards the kiosk with its jugs of lemonade.

  ‘Should we buy a glass?’ asks Mamie. ‘And what about some whelks?’

  ‘No time for whelks,’ Fred tells her, checking his watch, because it would not do to be late. He likes to be prepared, to lay out his tricks, his felt-covered table, and his dark starry cloak. Fred likes to say a little prayer to his father, God rest his soul, who got him into this line of business with his childhood box of tricks, and away from the wet-fish shop, where his brother will be ankle-deep in ice, gutting the catch of the day.

  Walking to the theatre, the sunlight bounces from the ornate metal railings, the flagpoles, and the hatpins of the women brushing sand from the folds of their skirts. As Fred takes her elbow, Mamie glances over the tramlines, where the streets beyond Dean’s Restaurant are always in the shade. It doesn’t feel like Brighton anymore.

  Fifty minutes later, swaying in the wings, Mamie can hear the chatter of the crowd, the little theatre bursting with folk hoping for respite from the sun, and if they haven’t bought a fan (oriental, over-priced), they’re using folded advertisements for Little Sally’s Tots and Brewster’s Dancing Ponies, a fine equine entertainment, though the smallest dropped dead in the heat. As the baritone makes his entrance, a few ale-soaked souls are drowsing, waking now and then with the cacophony of music and the ripples of damp applause.

  ‘Miserable bleeders,’ the baritone moans, pulling off his shirt as soon as his boots hit the wings. ‘Good luck, my friend, you’ll need it.’

  Next up they have the hilarious Monty Dale, all the way from Leeds, ‘a little man with a giant reputation’, though on this sweltering afternoon he can barely shuffle his way over the boards, never mind the jesting. As one sparky lad shouts, ‘Look, Ma, his face is melting!’ Those still awake squint their eyes to see Mr Dale’s greasepaint dripping slowly into his collar.

  By the time Fred the Magnificent and his voluptuous assistant Mamie appear, the audience is thinking of ice-cream cones, bottled beer or their limp salad suppers. A woman in the front row yawns loudly as Fred makes her husband’s watch appear from his own trouser pocket.

  Their Grand Finale: Mamie has to swish a large satin sheet, Fred will make a globe float above it, but now Mamie can feel the stage veering left and right, she’s tipping, the limelights are burning her ankles as she collapses in a heap, taking the shiny sheet with her. The audience are murmuring, though Fred, appearing unruffled, makes a few dramatic sweeps of his cloak, tapping the dark silky mound with his wand, until eventually Mamie stirs, rubbing her eyes as he pulls the sheet from her. With her head still lolling, she manages to stand, wobbling at first, the audience going wild, thinking perhaps this is what they call a trance. The globe appears to be hovering, and now they’re all on their feet, a few are even whistling. Fred feels ecstatic as they both take their curtain calls. He knows the manager is thinking of pulling some acts, but he has never heard such a thunderous ovation. She has saved them. For the rest of the season Mamie will faint every night; three times on Saturdays.

  One

  Arrivals & Departures

  Covent Garden, London, 1899

  THEY WERE NOT a pretty sight. Having left their lodgings three hours since, stopping off only for a pie at Mrs Brannighan’s (very dry and gristly), they had been walking through the cold November drizzle, their belongings stuffed inside a large pigskin bag and a tatty bed-sheet.

  ‘This is it,’ said Ivy Stretch, throwing down the bag. ‘I’m running out of boot leather.’

  Towards the end of Gilder Terrace a sign in the window read: ROOM TO LET, and after several loud knocks, a woman appeared at the door, looking somewhat dishevelled in her dressing robe.

  ‘We have come regarding the room,’ Ivy told her, in the refined voice practised after one too many gins. ‘Might it still be vacant?’

  The woman, who said her name was Mrs Swift, beckoned the family into a parlour, where a fire burned brightly and the cushions had been plumped. ‘You may sit,’ she said, sinking noisily into her own chair and easing her heels from her slippers. ‘Is there a gentleman with y
ou? A husband?’

  Shaking her sodden head, Ivy produced an almost clean handkerchief and a few short sniffles. ‘I am a widow,’ she explained. ‘My husband died last June in a very terrible accident.’

  ‘You can still manage the rent?’

  ‘I work at Tilling’s Coffee House. My eldest daughter, Agnes, takes in mending and runs errands.’

  ‘And the cripple?’

  ‘Jane works as hard as she can.’

  Mrs Swift, a wide doughy woman of indeterminate age, though she might be nearing forty, managed a sympathetic wheeze in Jane’s direction. The girl was certainly a curiosity, with her large head, enormous grey eyes and feathery brown hair, which seemed to fly in all directions. Her crooked body tilted, her hands were very small, and her legs, from what Mrs Swift could see of them, appeared to be so slight that for the girl to walk at all must be something of a miracle – yet the girl had walked, albeit with a tipsy kind of gait.

  ‘Why did you remove?’ she asked, reaching for a poker and stabbing it into the fire.

  ‘Oh, we had to,’ Agnes piped. ‘We were living over an offal yard and the stink was something terrible.’

  ‘Offal?’ Pressing a hand against her bosom, Mrs Swift set down her poker and glanced at their boots. Were they clean? Had they left bloody entrails on her thick Turkey carpets? ‘As you can see, plain as daylight, this house is nothing like an offal yard, this house is the home of a doctor, a most respectable man.’

  ‘And I see it’s quite a little palace,’ said Ivy, with a painful-looking smile, because either Mrs Swift was in dire need of eyeglasses, or her own poor housekeeping skills were better than she’d thought. ‘It feels so cosy and heart-warming; nothing like those shabby billets we were shamed to call our home.’

  ‘You would be renting a small plain room upstairs.’

  ‘Which would more than suit our needs; we lead very simple lives.’

  ‘You do?’ Mrs Swift looked them up and down, wrinkling her nose, because perhaps they were not the kind of tenants she’d been hoping for. An office worker with ink on his fingers? A teacher of classics? Or a pious family of milliners? Still, for all its velvet drapes and high pretensions, the house was nudging Seven Dials, and the card in the window hadn’t moved in a fortnight. Pulling her ample chin into her floppy lace collar, Mrs Swift gave her new lodgers one last going over, before allowing them a smile.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ringing a little brass bell. ‘You had better follow Edie; she will show you to your room.’

  The room on the second floor had a wide iron bed with a picture of a bulldog in a cheap bamboo frame hanging over it. There was a leaking spirit stove and a rickety three-legged stool. The green plaster walls were speckled with so much soot and damp it looked like a swarm of giant fleas had settled there and melted.

  ‘Well,’ said Ivy, lying on the bed and circling her ankles, ‘we’ve had worse.’

  While Agnes sulked on the stool examining her fingernails, Jane leant out of the window to watch traders winding their way home or into the taverns. Boots dragged cabbage leaves and all manner of rotting vegetation. Girls wrapped like onions walked closely together. Men with hunched shoulders puffed damp clay pipes. Boys jostled. And through the crowds a man appeared, singing an old country ballad, chin tipped towards the window, a bunch of stringy violets in his raised left hand.

  ‘It’s Pa,’ said Jane. ‘He’s found us.’

  For a while the singing continued, the plaintive lyrics visibly affecting several passers-by, until eventually Ivy went out to her resurrected husband who, after gathering quite an audience, fell to his scrawny knees, presenting his paltry blooms. Arm in arm, they meandered their way towards a cheap-looking alehouse, while the girls were left with a row of guttering candles and a bottle of diluted lemon syrup they would not like to drink, because there were black things floating in it.

  ‘Where is he?’ Agnes asked a couple of hours later, when Ivy eventually returned. ‘Where’s Pa?’

  ‘Packing.’ She lurched, quickly grabbing hold of the mantelshelf. ‘He’s finally found employment, on a cow farm in Kent.’

  Agnes shuddered, saying she could not imagine a life of muddy fields, empty sky and cattle.

  ‘Thing is,’ said Ivy, swallowing a belch, ‘there’s only a place for a wife.’

  Leaving the pigskin bag (they couldn’t say she wasn’t generous), Ivy started wrapping her own things into the bed-sheet, saying she was departing that night for the sticks, London had never been good to her, she’d heard country people were warm-hearted, jolly, and there was always plenty of ale. ‘Oh, you’ll be all right here. Why, when I was your age I was very nearly married.’

  ‘More fool you,’ said Agnes.

  ‘Can we visit?’ asked Jane. ‘I’ve never seen the country. What’s it like?’

  Ivy grunted. She pushed a creased, sweaty blouse into the bed-sheet. ‘Well, it’s very wide and green.’

  ‘I’ve heard it stinks,’ said Agnes.

  ‘London stinks worse.’

  Jane, now pacing up and down, asked for an address. She would like to write. To ask if they had arrived safely and to share all their news. Ivy, now knotting the ends of the sheet, told them she wasn’t sure of the address, only that it was somewhere in Kent, which might, or might not, be a very small place.

  ‘Smaller than London?’ asked Jane.

  ‘Everywhere is smaller than London,’ said Ivy.

  ‘So if we go to Kent, we’ll find you?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Ivy. ‘Just look out for some cows and we’ll be amongst them.’

  Agnes laughed. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Whatever the farmer tells us,’ she said, pushing her hand into her pocket and leaving a small pile of coins on the shelf. ‘Now, let’s say our goodbyes, or your pa will be going without me.’

  ‘Don’t leave us,’ said Jane.

  Ivy paused. ‘Look at you both,’ she said. ‘All grown up. You’ll be better off without me. Without us.’

  ‘No we won’t.’

  ‘You will,’ said Ivy, picking up the bed-sheet and throwing it over her shoulder.

  The girls watched their mother as she weaved around the lamp-posts to where their father stood swaying with a broken cardboard suitcase and a filthy-looking sack. A few minutes later, a man appeared with a limping horse and cart, and after several attempts to winch their gin-hazed mother onto the back of it, the two men eventually managed to heave her onto the sorry-looking vehicle that would take them out of London and into the wide open space that was Kent. Jane waved. Agnes closed her eyes. ‘Why bother waving, when it might be the end of us?’ she said.

  For the next few days, the sisters crept in and out of the house, living off crackers, raisins and cheap bowls of soup. The girl called Edie was nowhere to be seen, though they could sometimes hear her whistling. It was easy to avoid Mrs Swift, a woman who spent most of her time in the parlour, and when they did collide on the landing, Jane beamed her best winning smile, saying, A very good morning to you, ma’am, which seemed to please their breathless landlady no end, and with the briefest nod of the head she would say, And the same to you too.

  Lying on the lumpy mattress, they talked about the future. Agnes would find a good position in a dressmaker’s or florist’s, or she would soon be taken on as a lady’s maid due to her dainty appearance, sewing skills and general fine nature. ‘Perhaps near a park,’ she mused, pulling a strand of hair and wrapping it over her finger. ‘Parks are very useful. I’ve heard Hyde Park in particular is full of opportunity.’

  ‘What kind of opportunity?’

  ‘The young man kind of opportunity; everyone knows a great London park is a respectable place to meet them.’

  Jane looked at her older sister, who seemed to know everything about young men, and was it any wonder? Agnes had shiny chestnut hair, deep dark eyes, a snub nose, a generous mouth, and straight-as-you-like bones, which Jane could only marvel at.

  ‘And what shall I do?’
<
br />   Yawning, Agnes picked at the last few cracker crumbs while staring at the ceiling and advised her sister that as the market was right on their doorstep, perhaps she should take herself over there and offer to sell potatoes or sweep flower cuttings, or do anything that might earn herself a living.

  ‘We could both do that. Couldn’t we?’

  Agnes frowned. ‘I don’t know, I’m just not suited to markets – the noise, those big carthorses, you know they have always unnerved me.’

  Three days later, on a damp grey morning, Jane opened her eyes to find her sister had gone, leaving a short scribbled note, a bent hairpin and their mother’s pigskin bag. Dear Jane, Please forgive me. I have to leave, to make my own way in this world. It won’t be easy, but for now we are better off alone. It will make us stronger. I won’t forget you. Until we meet again. Your loving sister, Agnes. Jane read the note seventeen times, before crushing it into her hand, where it sat for half an hour, like a stone.

  Jane wept. She kicked the end of the bed until her ankle throbbed. Why had Agnes left her? Why? she asked the painted bulldog and the walls. She cursed. Prayed. She pummelled Agnes’s pillow. For days Jane stared out of the window looking for her sister, thinking she’d return, just like those times she’d run away as a child, only to appear sheepishly at suppertime. Her eyes stung as they followed all the girls with the same coloured hair, or the same felt coat, and scanned every face in the crowd until they blurred into one grey wash. She smoothed out the note. Surely it was all a mistake. Her sister would soon change her mind. Agnes wouldn’t leave her to the wrath of Mrs Swift! She would be back before the end of the week. On Friday. On rent day.

  The room was cold and the fumes from the spirit stove made Jane’s head throb. She found the bent hairclip and straightened it, jabbing it into the frozen palm of her hand as yet another girl with chestnut hair pushed her way between the lamp-posts, turning her head, and looking so much like Agnes that Jane wondered if it really was her older sister, only changed.