Southwark, that “vast and melancholy property” south of the Thames, would never have been Sebastian’s first choice for an area in which to lodge his family. In any ranking of desirable London boroughs, it could not be placed much above the lowest. But at least it wasn’t the East End. And for a weekly rent that might just have covered the meanest garret in Bloomsbury, they had a suite of rooms with clean water and relatively honest neighbors. Compared to the squalid courts and alleys and the tenement blocks that surrounded them, they had hygiene and comfort. But that was only in comparison. One day he hoped to move the household to some better address across the river.
One day.
Sebastian tried not to look too far ahead. Ambition was a young man’s game. These days he was more concerned with the continuing survival and security of those he loved. It was no longer so much a matter of dreaming of how high he might climb, as of always keeping in mind how far they might fall.
Every morning, beginning at around five A.M., the population of Southwark began to move. To the breweries and the printing shops, to the wharves and the warehouses. To the vinegar works, to the iron manufacturers in Union Street, to the leather factories in neighboring Bermondsey, and across the bridges into central London and the City.
They were all kinds of people. Butchers, laborers, compositors, office cleaners, and artisans. Their hours were long and their pay was small. At the end of the day, when all were coming home, the Thames bridges grew so dense with bodies that it was hard for one person to cross against the flow.
Most were honest. Many were not. Almost all shared the same thought: to better themselves, and to leave.
On his way home that evening, Sebastian stopped by the pie stand under the railway bridge on Southwark Bridge Road. Though he had an office of sorts in the nearby Bethlem asylum, the accommodation was in a basement room that he shared with the unclaimed belongings of deceased inmates. He visited it as infrequently as possible. The pie stand opened all hours to cater to the cab trade, and he had an arrangement to pick up his messages there. He was given three, including a note from Sir James Crichton-Browne.
Crichton-Browne was one of three Lord Chancellor’s Visitors-two eminent doctors, and one lawyer-who carried out a yearly examination of every detained psychiatric patient of significant means. Their remit covered those in institutions as well as those, like Owain Lancaster, in private care. Any deemed incompetent to manage their own affairs were placed under the control of a Master of Lunacy appointed by the Lord Chancellor. Sir James was the busiest of the Visitors; even at the age of seventy-two, he kept a punishing schedule.
Sebastian was the first of the family to arrive home that evening. Their rooms over the shop were empty. The fire was laid, so he lit it.
Frances and Robert arrived shortly after. Frances acknowledged his greeting and then busied herself preparing the evening meal, leaving Sebastian alone with his son.
Observing the boy’s mood, he said, “A good day today, Robert?”
“The best, father,” Robert said. “Absolutely the best. Even though Frances was late and I had to wait.”
Sebastian glanced toward the kitchen. “Is she upset about something?”
“I don’t know,” Robert said. “Is she?”
“Hang up your coat.”
Robert had turned eighteen now. Almost a grown man, and not so much a boy anymore. He attended a private institution in South Hampstead where he received an education designed around his needs. Here, for once, his talents were recognized, and his abilities explored and developed in ways that no one else had ever considered. The only advice they’d received, when Robert had been small and manifestly strange, had been to treat him as feebleminded and hide him away.
After he’d hung up his coat, Robert said, “I’d like to read for a while if I may, Father.”
“Wait until after supper.”
“But that will leave me with nothing to do now.”
“Ask Frances if she needs any coal brought up.”
Last year, under the supervision of the college principal, they’d tried Robert in a brief period of employment. Very brief. Placed in a job as a waiter in a middle-sized commercial hotel, he hadn’t lasted a morning. He’d taken everyone’s orders and then sat down to his own breakfast.
Returning from the kitchen, Robert said, “Frances says she brought in coal this afternoon. What else can I do?”
“Tell me what you’re reading.”
“There’s a serial in the
Ah. No wonder Frances seemed irritated. Elisabeth’s sister was a saint, but Robert’s obsessions could wear out the patience of one. In America, he’d collected dime magazines. Here he’d transferred his obsession to the likes of Rider Haggard, Verne, and Wells.
He said, “May I read my serial now, father?”
Sebastian gave in.
“Be sure to stop when your mother gets home,” he said.
Robert settled in a chair by the window with his magazine, and Sebastian took a letter opener and started on the day’s post. When Elisabeth arrived a few minutes later, Robert didn’t even notice.
When he saw her coat, Sebastian said, “Is it raining?”
“When is it not?” Elisabeth said, and went into the kitchen.
Within a minute he heard voices being raised. Then he heard Elisabeth’s affronted cry of “Mince?” Moments after that, Frances emerged from the kitchen and stamped up the back stairs to their attic rooms.
Sebastian went into the kitchen.
“What’s this about?” he said.
For no reason he could see, Elisabeth was moving all the evening’s raw food from the place where Frances had laid it out to another. She said, “The butcher gave our order to someone else. So forget your chops, it’s mince.”
“I don’t mind mince.”
“What’s the matter with her? I can’t trust her with the simplest task. I have to do everything myself.”
Sebastian knew better than to defend one sister to the other right now, but he was still at a loss to see the younger woman’s crime.
Elisabeth added, “And if there’s a shirt you want to wear again, you’d better go and rescue it from the wash.”
He went upstairs. Frances heard him and, when he entered the larger of the attic bedrooms, stepped back from the laundry basket with her hands lifted in the air in an end-of-the-tether,
He said, “May I speak?”
Frances waited without moving, looking down.
Sebastian said, “Forgive your sister, Frances. She spends all her days being harsh with people. It takes her a while to return to herself.”
For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to reply.
Then she said, “Then perhaps we should move away from the borough.”
“Why?”
“So she’ll have a longer walk home and more time to adjust her foul mood.”
Then she gave him a glance, to see how that had gone down. He realized that she was making a joke, of a kind. It was hard to tell with Frances. She was the quiet sister, the younger one. But she was in her thirties now, with a gray hair or two that she didn’t bother to conceal. Somehow along the way, without anybody planning it, the younger woman’s practical room-and-board arrangement had turned into a spinster’s life.
He said, “It could be worse. Wait until she next sees the butcher. I wouldn’t want to be in his apron.”
That drew another look, and a rueful smile. Or a half smile, anyway, which he suspected came more out of politeness than anything else.
As he descended the attic stairs to the smell of frying mince, it seemed to Sebastian that such fallings-out
