A Christmas Promise Read online

  “Well, c’mon, then!” Gracie said aloud, grasping Minnie Maude’s arm and half-pulling her away from the bowlegged man and striding along the street as fast as she dared on the ice.

  “Yer gonna ’elp me find Charlie?” Minnie Maude asked breathlessly, slipping and struggling to keep up with her.

  It was a little too late to justify her answer now. “Yeah,” Gracie conceded. “I ’spec it won’t take long. Someb’dy’ll ’ave seen ’im. Mebbe ’e got a fright an’ ran off. ’e’ll get ’isself ’ome by an’ by. Wot ’appened ter yer uncle Alf, anyway?” She slowed down a little bit now that they were round the corner and back in Brick Lane again.

  “Dunno,” Minnie Maude said unhappily. “They found ’im in Richard Street, in Mile End, lyin’ in the road wi’ the back of ’is ’ead stove in, an’ cuts an’ bangs all over ’im. They said as ’e must ’ave fell off ’is cart. But Charlie’d never ’ave gorn an’ left ’im like that. Couldn’t’ve, even if ’e’d wanted to, bein’ as ’e were tied inter the shafts.”

  “W’ere’s the cart, then?” Gracie asked practically.

  “That’s it!” Minnie Maude exclaimed, stopping abruptly. “It’s not there! That’s ’ow else I know ’e were done in. It’s gorn.”

  Gracie shook her head, stopping beside her. “’oo’d a done ’im in? Wot’s in the cart, then? Milk? Coal? Taters?” She was beginning to feel more and more as if Minnie Maude were in her own world of loss and grief more than in the real one. “’oo’s gonna do in someone fer a cartload o’ taters? ’e must a died natural, an’ fell off, poor thing. Then some rotten bastard stole ’is cart, taters an’ all, an’ Charlie wif ’em. But ’owever rotten they are,” she added hastily, “they’ll look after Charlie, because ’e’s worf summink. Donkeys are useful.”

  “It weren’t milk,” Minnie Maude said, easing her pace to keep in step. “’e were a rag an’ bone man, an’ sometimes ’e ’ad real beautiful things, treasures. It could a bin anyfink.” She left the possibilities dangling in the air.

  Gracie looked sideways at her. She was about three inches shorter than Gracie, and just as thin. Her small face had a dusting of freckles across the nose, and at the moment it was pinched with worry. Gracie felt a strong stab of pity for her.

  “’e’ll mebbe come back by ’isself,” she said as encouragingly as she could. “Unless ’e’s in a nice stable somewhere, an’ can’t get out. I ’spec someone nicked the cart, cos there were some good stuff in it. But donkeys in’t daft.” She had never actually known a donkey, but she knew the coal man’s horse, and it was intelligent enough. It could always find a carrot top, whatever pocket you put it in.

  Minnie Maude forced a smile. “Course,” she said bravely. “We just gotta ask, afore ’e gets so lorst an’ can’t find ’is way back. Actual, I dunno ’ow far ’e’s ever bin. More ’n I ’ave, prob’ly.”

  “Well, we’d best get started, then.” Gracie surrendered her common sense to a moment’s weakness of sympathy. Minnie Maude was a stubborn little article, and daft as a brush with it. Who knew what would happen to her if she was left on her own? Gracie would give it an hour or two. She could spare that much. Maybe Charlie would come back himself by then.

  “Fank yer,” Minnie Maude acknowledged. “Where we gonna start?” She looked at Gracie hopefully.

  Gracie’s mind raced for an answer. “’oo found yer uncle Alf, then?”

  “Jimmy Quick,” Minnie Maude replied immediately. “’e’s a lyin’ git an’ all, but that’s prob’ly true, cos ’e ’ad ter get ’elp.”

  “Then we’ll go an’ find Jimmy Quick an’ ask ’im,” Gracie said firmly. “If ’e tells us exact, mebbe takes us there, we can ask folks, an’ p’raps someone saw Charlie. Where’d we look fer ’im?”

  “In the street.” Minnie Maude squinted up at the leaden winter sky, apparently judging the time. “Mebbe Church Lane, be now. Or mebbe ’e in’t started yet, an’ ’e’s still at ’ome in Angel Alley.”

  “Started wot?”

  “’is way round. ’e’s a rag an’ bone man, too. That’s ’ow come ’e found Uncle Alf.”

  “Rag an’ bone men don’t do the same round as each other,” Gracie pointed out. “It don’t make no sense. There’d be nuffink left.” She was as patient as she could be. Minnie Maude was only eight, but she should have been able to work that out.

  “I tol’ yer ’e were a lyin’ git,” Minnie Maude replied, unperturbed.

  “Well, we better find ’im anyway.” Gracie had no better idea. “Which way d’we go?”

  “That way.” Minnie Maude pointed after a minute’s hesitation, in which she swiveled around slowly, facing each direction in turn. She set off confidently, marching across the cobbles, her feet clattering on the ice and her heart in her mouth. Gracie caught up with her, hoping to heaven that they would not both get as lost as Charlie.

  They crossed Wentworth Street away from the places she knew, and had left them behind in a few hundred yards. Now all the streets looked frighteningly the same, narrow and uneven. Here and there cobbles were broken or missing, gutters swollen with the previous night’s rain and the refuse from unknown numbers of houses. Alleys threaded off to either side, some little more than the width of a man’s outstretched arms, the house eaves almost meeting overhead. The strip of sky above was no more than a jagged crack. Gutters dripped, and most hung with ice. Some of the blackened chimneys belched smoke.

  Everyone was busy on errands of one sort or another, pushing carts of vegetables, bales of cloth, kegs of ale—rickety wheels catching the curbs. Children shouted, peddlers called their wares, and patterers rehearsed the latest news and gossip in singsong voices, making up colloquial rhymes. Women quarreled; several dogs ran around barking.

  At the end of the next road was the Whitechapel High Street, a wide thoroughfare with hansom cabs bowling along at a brisk clip, cabbies riding high on the boxes. There was even a gentleman’s carriage with a matched pair of bay horses with brass on their harness and a beautiful pattern on the carriage door.

  “We gone too far,” Minnie Maude said. “Angel Alley’s back that way.” She started along the High Street, then suddenly turned into one of the alleys again, and after a further hundred yards or so, she turned into a ramshackle yard with a sign at the entrance.

  “I fink this is it,” she said, peering at the letters. But looking at her face all screwed up in uncertainty, Gracie knew perfectly well that she was only guessing.

  Minnie Maude took a deep breath and walked in. Gracie followed. She couldn’t let her go in alone.

  A lean man with straight black hair came out of one of the sheds.

  “There’s nothing ’ere fer kids,” he said with a slight lisp. He waved his hands. “Orff wif yer!”

  “Ye’re Jimmy Quick?” Minnie Maude pulled herself up very straight.

  “’oo are you, then?” he said, puzzled.

  “Minnie Maude Mudway,” she replied. “It were me uncle Alf as yer found in the street.” She hesitated. “An’ this is me friend,” she added.

  “Gracie Phipps,” Gracie said.

  “We’re lookin’ fer Charlie,” Minnie Maude went on.

  Jimmy Quick frowned at them. “I dunno no Charlie.”

  “’e’s a donkey,” Gracie explained. Someone needed to talk a little sense. “’e got lost, along wif Uncle Alf’s cart, an’ everyfink wot was in it.” She glanced around the yard and saw three old bicycles whose wheels had missing spokes, several odd boots and shoes, kettles, pieces of china and pottery, some of it so beautiful she stared at it in amazement. There were old fire irons, a poker with a brass handle, ornaments, pots and pans, pieces of carpet, a cabin trunk with no hinges, unwanted books and pictures, all the things a rag and bone man collects, in with the actual rags or bones for glue.

  Minnie Maude stood still, ignoring the scattered takings around her, just staring solemnly at Jimmy Quick. “’ow’d yer find ’im, then?”

  Jimmy seemed to consider evading the quest
ion, then changed his mind. “’e were jus’ lyin’ there in the road,” he said sadly. “Like ’e fell off, ’cept o’ course ’e’d never ’ave done that, if ’e’d bin alive. I’ve seen Alf as tight as a newt, an’ ’e didn’t miss a step, never mind fell. ’e knew ’ow ter wedge ’isself, like, so ’e wouldn’t—not even if ’e were asleep.” He shook his head. “Reckon as ’ow ’e must ’ave just died all of a sudden. Bin took, as it were. Visitation o’ God.”

  “No ’e weren’t,” Minnie Maude contradicted him. “If ’e ’ad bin, Charlie’d ’ave brought ’im ’ome. An’ wot were ’e doin’ way out ’ere anyway? This in’t ’is patch.” She sniffed fiercely as if on the edge of tears. “Someone’s done ’im in.”

  “Yer talkin’ daft,” Jimmy said dismissively, but his face was very pink. “’oo’d wanter ’urt Alf?” He looked uncomfortable, not quite meeting Minnie Maude’s eyes. Gracie wondered if it was embarrassment because he did not know how to comfort her, or something uglier that he was trying not to say.

  Gracie interrupted at last. “It in’t daft,” she told him. “Wot ’appened ter Charlie, an’ the cart? ’e di’n’t go ’ome.”

  Now Jimmy Quick was deeply unhappy. “I dunno. Yer sure the cart’s not at yer aunt Bertha’s?” he asked Minnie Maude.

  She looked at him witheringly. “Course it in’t. Charlie might get lorst, cos this in’t where ’e usually comes. So why was ’e ’ere? Even if Uncle Alf died an’ fell off, which ’e wouldn’t ’ave, why’d nobody see ’im ’ceptin’ you? An’ ’oo took Charlie an’ the cart?”

  Put like that, Gracie had to agree that it didn’t sound right at all. She joined Minnie Maude in staring accusingly at Jimmy Quick.

  Jimmy looked down at the ground with even greater unhappiness, and what now most certainly appeared to be guilt. “It were my fault,” he admitted. “I ’ad ter go up ter Artillery Lane an’ see someone, or I’d a bin in real trouble, so I asked Alf ter trade routes wi’ me. ’e’d do mine, an’ I’d do ’is. That way I could be where I ’ad ter, wi’out missin’ an ’ole day. That’s why ’e were ’ere. ’e were a good mate ter me, an’ ’e died doin’ me a favor.”

  “’e were on yer round!” Gracie said in sudden realization of all that meant. “So if someone done ’im in, p’raps they meant it ter be you!”

  “Nobody’s gonna do me in!” Jimmy said with alarm, but looking at his face, paler now and a little gray around his lips, Gracie knew that the thought was sharp in his mind, and growing sharper with every minute.

  She made her own expression as grim as she could, drawing her eyebrows down and tightening her mouth, just as Gran did when she found an immovable stain in someone’s best linen. “But yer jus’ said as ’e were alone cos ’e were doin’ yer a favor,” she pointed out. “If nobody else knew that, they’d a thought as it were you sittin’ in the cart!”

  “I dunno,” Jimmy said unhappily.

  Gracie did not believe him. Her mind raced over how it could matter, picking up people’s odd pieces of throwaway, or the things they might buy or sell, if they knew where. What did rag and bone men pick up, anyway? If you could pawn it for a few pence, or maybe more, you took it to the shop. She glanced at Minnie Maude, who was standing hunched up, shaking with cold, and now looking defeated.

  Gracie lost her temper. “Course yer know!” she shouted at Jimmy. “’e got done in doin’ yer job, cos yer asked ’im ter. An’ now the cart’s gorn and Charlie’s gorn, an’ we’re standin’ ’ere freezin’, an’ yer sayin’ as yer can’t tell us wot ’e died fer!”

  “Cos I dunno!” Jimmy said helplessly. He swung his arms in the air. “Come on inside an’ Dora’ll make yer a cup o’ tea.” He led the way across the yard, weaving between bicycles, cart wheels, milk churns without lids, until he came to the back door of his house. He pushed the door wide, invitingly, and they crowded in after him.

  Inside the kitchen was a splendid collection of every kind of odd piece of machinery and equipment a scrap yard could acquire. Nothing matched anything else, hardly two pieces of china were from the same set, yet it was all excellent, the most delicate Gracie had ever seen, hand-painted and rimmed in gold. No two saucepans were the same either, or had lids that fitted, but all were handsome enough, even if there was little to put in them besides potatoes, onions, and cabbage, and perhaps a few bones for flavor.

  In the far corner stood a magnificent mangle, with odd rollers, one white, one gray; a collection of flatirons, most of them broken; and several lanterns missing either sides or handles. Perhaps the bits and pieces might make two usable ones between them?

  Mrs. Quick was standing expectantly by the stove, on which a copper kettle was gleaming in the gaslight, steam whistling out of the spout. She was an ample woman wearing a blue dress patched in a dozen places without thought for matching anything, and she wore a marvelous old velvet cape around her shoulders. It was vivid red, and apart from a burn on one side, appeared as good as new.

  “Ah! So you’re Bert Mudway’s girl,” she said to Minnie Maude with satisfaction, then turned to Gracie. “An’ ’oo are you, then? In’t seen yer before.”

  “Gracie Phipps, ma’am,” Gracie replied.

  “Never ’eard of yer. Still an’ all, I ’spec yer’d like a cup o’ tea. That daft Jimmy kept yer standin’ out there in the cold. Goin’ ter snow, like as not, before the day’s out.”

  “They come about Alf,” Jimmy explained.

  “Course they ’ave.” She took the kettle off the hob, warmed an enormous white and wine-colored teapot with half a handle, then made the tea, spooning the leaves from a caddy with an Indian woman painted on the front. “Got no milk,” she apologized. “Yer’ll ’ave ter ’ave it straight. Give yer ’alf a spoon of ’oney?”

  “Thank you,” Gracie accepted, and took the same for Minnie Maude.

  When they were sitting on a random collection of chairs, Mrs. Quick expressed her approval of Uncle Alf, and her sympathy for Minnie Maude, and then for Bertha. “Too bad for ’er,” she said, shaking her head. “That bruvver of ’ers is more trouble than ’e’s worth. Pity it weren’t ’im as got done in.”

  “Wouldn’t ’ave ’appened to ’im,” Jimmy said miserably.

  “I reckon as it were that golden tin, or wotever it were,” she said, giving Jimmy a sharp look, and shaking her head again. “’e said as ’e thought they never meant ter put it out.”

  Minnie Maude sat up sharply, nearly spilling her tea. “Wot were that, then?” she asked eagerly.

  Jimmy glanced at his wife. “Don’t go puttin’ ideas inter ’er ’ead. We never saw no gold tin. It were jus’ Tommy Cob ramblin’ on.” He turned to Minnie Maude. “It ain’t nothin’. Folk put out all kinds o’ things. Never know why, an’ it don’t do ter ask.”

  “A golden box?” Minnie Maude said in amazement. “’oo’d put out summink like that?”

  “Nobody,” Jimmy agreed. “It were jus’ Tommy talkin’ like a fool. Prob’ly an old piece o’ brass, like as not, or even painted wood, or summink.”

  “Mebbe that’s why they killed Uncle Alf an’ took the cart?” Minnie Maude was sitting clutching her porcelain teacup, her eyes wide with fear. “An’ Charlie.”

  “Don’ be daft!” Jimmy said wearily. “If they put out summink by mistake, then they’d jus’ go an’ ask fer it back. Mebbe give ’im a couple o’ bob fer it, not go off killin’ people.”

  “But they did kill ’im,” Minnie Maude pointed out, sniffing and letting out her breath in a long sigh. “’e’s dead.”

  “I know,” Jimmy admitted. “An’ I’m real sorry about that. ’ave some more ’ot water in yer tea?”

  That was all they would learn from him, and ten minutes later they were outside in the street again, and a fine rain was falling with a drift of sleet now and then.

  “I’ve still gotta find Charlie,” Minnie Maude said, staring ahead of her, avoiding Gracie’s eyes. “Uncle Alf doin’ Jimmy’s round jus’ makes it worse. Charlie’s really lorst now
!”

  “I know that,” Gracie agreed.

  Minnie Maude stopped abruptly on the cobbles. “Yer think as there’s summink real bad ’appened, don’t yer!” It was a challenge, not a question.

  Gracie took a deep breath. “I dunno wot I think,” she admitted. She was about to add that she thought Jimmy Quick was not telling all the truth, then she decided not to. It would only upset Minnie Maude, and it was just a feeling, nothing as clear as an idea.

  “I told yer ’e were a lyin’ sod,” Minnie Maude said very quietly. “It’s written clear as day on ’is face.”

  “Mebbe ’e’s jus’ sad cos ’e liked yer uncle Alf,” Gracie suggested. “An’ if Alf’d bin on ’is own round, mebbe somebody’d ’ave ’elped ’im. But ’e could a still bin dead.”

  “Yer mean not left lyin’ in the roadway.” Minnie Maude sniffed hard, but it did not stop the tears from running down her face. “Yer’d ’ave liked Uncle Alf,” she said almost accusingly. “’e’d a made yer laugh.”

  Gracie would have liked to have an uncle who made her laugh. Come to think of it, she’d have liked a donkey who was a friend. They’d known lots of animals in the country, before her mother had died and she’d come to London: sheep, horses, pigs, cows. Not that there was a lot of time for friends now that she was thirteen. Minnie Maude had a lot to learn about reality, which was a shame.

  “Yeah,” Gracie agreed. “I ’spec I would.”

  They walked in silence for a while, back toward Brick Lane, and then Thrawl Street. It got colder with every moment.

  “Wot are we gonna do?” Minnie Maude asked when they came to the curb and stopped, traffic rattling past them.

  Gracie had been thinking. “Go back ’ome an’ see if Charlie’s come back on ’is own,” she replied. “’e could ’ave.”