Jonesy’s sandals have left ghost prints on the Old Stairs where he once waited to greet his straw-headed sailor at the end of a voyage. Rafe holds a Chinese urn filled with his ashes. He lifts the lid and scatters a portion of Jonesy into the lapping water. Willa adds an armful of bright pink peonies. Finn almost drops the urn when he sees a small piece of bone protruding from the top of the remaining ashes. Tossing a portion, bone fragments and all, he then offers it to Clovis.
Reluctant, and with an awkward distaste, Clovis empties the last portion. But Jonesy will not go so easily. The breath of the Thames works against her, lifting Jonesy’s dust and billowing it back into his mistress’s face and hair. It enters her mouth. She spits and rages, while straggling peonies trap her feet. Black-headed gulls swoop down beside Clovis to fight over a fish carcass, their conversation quarrelsome and loud. She is trapped by dead things.
‘I need a drink,’ she shouts, retreating to the stairs.
‘Just a minute,’ Finn says to her.
‘It stinks here and I’m cold,’ she says, but she stops and turns back.
‘We’ll catch up with you.’ Finn motions for Rafe and Willa to go on ahead.
‘I’m sure you told us that you knew exactly how many phials we had. I remember how specific you were,’ Finn says.
Clovis shrugs. ‘I must have missed one. He obviously hid one from me.’
‘That day, when you collected them from us, you were satisfied that every delivery was accounted for.’
‘As I said, I must have miscalculated. Let’s go.’
Unspoken suspicions trill in the dank air. The tide washes in fast. With each great, slosh of brown water, the mud grows thicker. Clovis is quick to climb the slimy stairs.
No. She is not so careless, Finn thinks. His feet broker small agreements with the stones of the foreshore as the remains take flight on the Thames, the parentations of Jonesy Ling concluded.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
‘Sometimes, I feel my bones jangling when I walk the streets of London. I catch an image of myself and all I see is a skeleton and wonder if everyone else sees the same,’ Constance says to her sister.
‘You’re tired. Let’s go home.’ Verity takes her arm.
The sisters lumber along amid the evidence of decay, in their bleak return from St Martin’s Gardens. Another year of disappointment leaves a bitter aftertaste.
‘I really didn’t expect to see him today,’ Constance says, unconvincingly. ‘Perhaps he believes his lying mother and thinks we’re dead.’
‘Never mind, sister. You’ll feel differently next year.’
‘Will I? I don’t know.’
The desolate landscape of Camden Town mirrors their dragging skeletons. Earlier in the year the last horse-drawn cargo travelled on the canal, bringing an end to a way of life forever. Small factories, foundries, and all the supporting trades fall obsolete. Families packed up and moved out of the area to find work elsewhere.
Constance and Verity traipse down the high street where the facades of the dirty, blackened, old buildings still suffer the wounds of bomb damage, where shops are boarded up and vagrants display cupping palms. Everyone, everything is weary of time.
When they make the final turning into their street, the bridge that once crossed the canal at Gloucester Road appears as a strange folly. Under its arches where the boats once navigated towards the Cumberland Basin the soil and rubbish are piled up so high that it rises almost as tall as the bridge. Below its arches, the garden of Lawless House overgrows like a deep wooded dell.
Lawless House is in disrepair. Its famous and long deceased architect was more celebrated for his designs than for the quality of the build. It is the reason that James Fitzgerald sits in his car awaiting the return of his great aunts. He cannot remember how many greats are attached to their names. When he made the obvious decision to join the eponymous law firm, for the law runs through his blood thick and fast, his dying father Theo anointed him with the great family secret, just as Theo’s father Percy had anointed him. That he must keep such an outrageous secret from his wife and children is not really very difficult, for his family are practical people, even the little ones, and they would certainly never believe him. He wouldn’t care to worry them over his sanity.
James keeps the sisters as safe and secure as it is within his power to do; as safe as each generation of Fitzgeralds are wont to do. His aunts insist on paying him an exorbitant amount of money for his services, and he lives at peace with it now. Besides, he has five children to feed, clothe and educate. Ah! Here they come now. Good Lord, how Verity can possibly see in those dark glasses on a sunless December afternoon is beyond him.
Then he notes their slow ambles and their demeanours. They are flattened once again. Year after year he is witness to the crushing disappointment they endure.
Gathering his briefs and papers into his case, James greets the sisters and offers his condolences. He realizes this is damned bad timing on his part.
‘James. You should have let yourself in,’ Verity tells him.
Constance wrestles with her keys and shakes the gate in a small fit of temper.
‘You know I’m not comfortable doing that,’ says James.
After they’re settled in the drawing room, he broaches the subject in the only way he knows. He’s a straightforward man, without flourish.
‘Your house is literally crumbling around you.’
‘Well, great. Just bloody great,’ Constance mutters.
‘You really have
