Miss Marley: A Christmas ghost story - a prequel to A Christmas Carol. Rebecca Mascull

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СКАЧАТЬ in finding the rightful owner of this fine purse, hmm? No, my boy,’ she said with a satisfied sigh, and tucked the purse into her bodice, ‘I’ll keep it safe. Be grateful it was me. A couple like you, spending money the way you have around here, attracts all the wrong sort. Could have had your pretty throat cut.’ She paused in the doorway. ‘You have until breakfast to get out.’ And with that, she was gone.

      Clara was too shocked even to cry. Jake just stared at the window and the distant, uncaring moon.

      They were back on the street again. With no address, they could not work. She would end up like Martha, crawling among the beggars, hoping for a few tea leaves.

      But when Jake turned to her, his expression was not one of rage or grief, but of granite-hard determination.

      ‘What is it?’ Clara managed to whisper, afraid of the answer.

      He rummaged in the front of his britches for a moment and she turned away.

      ‘Look,’ he said, and extracted another purse, much smaller than the yellow leather one but still healthily plump. ‘I have learned that a canny gentleman will always carry two.’

      She covered her mouth to stifle the shout of glee. They could get another room … somewhere with a lock on the door.

      ‘I can go back to the fish market,’ he said, ‘and you to the clothes stall, but only for a short while. We will earn enough to get a better room, and then we will find better situations for both of us. It will take some time, but we will be back where we belong. Eventually.’

      Clara considered this vision of the future. She would be an old maid by the time they became respectable. She thought back to Hampstead Street, and all they had taken for granted there. She thought of the prosperous visitors, and the dinners filled with laughter and wine and candlelight. And she thought, There must be a better way.

      ‘Jake,’ she said, ‘back home, who were the richest of Father’s friends?’

      ‘Why, the bankers, of course,’ he said, leaning back, hands behind his head.

      ‘Well, why should we not follow their example?’

      He sat forward, eyes sharp. ‘What do you mean? We cannot set up a bank.’

      ‘No, we cannot. But we know plenty of people who need to borrow money, whom the banks will not serve, whom even the Jews will not serve, because they are too poor.’

      ‘Money-lending?’ he said, with a grimace. ‘You suggest we lend money? To poor people? They’ll never be able to pay it back!’

      ‘We’ll lend to people like us, working people, who just need a hand. You and I could repay a small loan, if the interest were low enough. Is it not worth some consideration?’

      He was leaning back again, staring at the ceiling. She could almost hear the gears in his mind working. All he said was, ‘Hmm, I shall sleep on it.’

      She took her place beside him, tingling with a hopeful trepidation.

Chapter 3

      ‘Housewives, who’d have thought it?’

      Two months later, and Jake was counting their takings for the day. True enough, and contrary to what Clara had expected, almost all of their customers were women, desperate for housekeeping money. The condition was that they leave an item of value – a pocket watch, a locket, a silver comb – returned when they repaid the loan. Their new room on Shelby Street (complete with lock on the door) was becoming cluttered with the collateral, and their landlord, Mr Teckman, had already decreed that they must find a place of business or vacate the room.

      Given the nature of their clientele, it made most sense for Clara to front the operation, with Jake keeping the books. At first, people couldn’t believe that such young people were able to run a business, and they had a few unfriendly exchanges with the established competition. They were robbed twice, but then hired protection in the form of Max, a former boxer, and were left in peace.

      ‘Mrs Ketteridge is late. Their loan was due last week,’ said Jake with a yawn, tired eyes blinking at the ledger. He still put in a full day’s work on the fish stall. ‘She needs a visit.’

      ‘Oh, Jake, but it’s nearly Christmas.’ She put aside the sock that she was darning. Both of them wore socks that were more hole than sock and their feet were always freezing. Clara’s idea of paradise was warm feet. The fire sputtered but she daren’t put on more coal until morning. ‘Can’t we leave her until New Year? Her baby is ill and—’

      Jake looked up sharply and put aside his quill. ‘Christmas? Do we get a day off? No, we do not. Then why should our customers get to make merry at our expense? We lent them the money in good faith. The least they can do is repay us in kind. And on time.’ He shut the ledger and rubbed his eyes, smearing his cheek with ink. ‘You mustn’t get involved with them and their problems. Mark me, they will drag you down.’

      It gave him the look of a small boy again, and she smudged the ink away with her handkerchief. But he was becoming a man. A businessman, and a good one. All his energy, body and soul, was devoted to the goal of bettering themselves. He was doing it for her, for both of them, so they would never be hungry or cold again. She knew that and appreciated how hard it was. But still, there were times when it seemed that his heart had turned to copper.

      This is temporary. The struggle is so hard. When things get easier, he’ll turn back into the warm, caring individual than I know so well. I am sure of it.

      ‘I will visit her tomorrow. Now sleep, brother.’

      ‘Max will go with you. It’s not safe on your own.’

      Clara set off in heavy rain the next morning with the hulking, snuffling figure of Max by her side. As wide as he was tall, he cleared a path for her through the crowds. The snow had turned to dirty slush, which splashed her legs every time a carriage drove past. A sandwich board man passed her, advertising soap. Their steps turned off into the cramped, filthy alleys of the slums. Here were no fine carriages, no hawkers of sweets; just the smell of sewage and cabbage, the flutter of dingy washing overhead, and the sound of crying babies.

      Clara didn’t dare share with Jake that she not only was involved with their customers’ problems, but she knew them intimately. Mrs Gilvin had terrible gout that forced her to give up work as a flower-seller, with six mouths to feed, including a perpetually drunken husband. Mrs Bainbridge’s husband had worked on one of the river barges. He drowned one night when he was drunk, after running up debts with a very nasty money-lender known for smashing the kneecaps of his delinquent clients. Mrs Lee had had three children in four years, all of whom developed the whooping cough, yet she had no money for the doctor. And then there was Mrs Ketteridge. Three of her four children had died of malnutrition, and it looked like the last one was going the same way. Her house had been flooded again by the annual Thames overflow. They had nowhere else to go, so were living in the damp, mouldy remains of the house. Clara had not told Jake that Mrs Ketteridge had left no item of collateral for her loan.

      Clara stepped over an open sewer, the corner of her shawl over her nose, to arrive at her door during a welcome break in the downpour.

      ‘Wait outside,’ she instructed Max.

      Mrs Ketteridge – Lila – was sweeping the СКАЧАТЬ