Averil grasps a hand of each of her two daughters and elbows her way through the bevy of people on the approach to the Duke Shore Stairs.
‘Do not remove them!’ Averil Lawless commands of Verity in her most formidable voice, which is very nearly as formidable as her bearing.
‘But I cannot see, Mammy!’ her youngest pleads.
‘Do not remove your spectacles.’
It is, indeed, dark. It was so dark at dawn that when the maidservant opened the door to a sharp rap there was nothing but a blank space on the doorstep. Then a scrawny hand protruding from the sleeve of a black coat gave the young maid a start when it appeared out of the mist. Pale, thin fingers presented new chapel tickets and without a word, after the tickets were accepted, the hand disappeared.
‘It were like a ghost hand, ma’am,’ she said as she handed the new tickets to her mistress.
Earlier this morning, when Averil heard Mass, she prayed to St Ignatius for guidance on all her decisions, as she does each day. The Lawless family make up only a handful of Catholics in Limehouse and they keep their secret close; papists on the inside, they are Protestants in public. The doorkeeper at the small mass house checked her ticket and then locked them in and guarded the door. The embassy chapels, the penny houses, none are truly safe. Since the Catholic laws had relaxed, hearing Mass had become even more dangerous.
Her twelve-year-old daughter adjusts the frames of forged iron that sit awkwardly at her temples and Averil bends down and holds the girl’s face in her hands. Two oval, glass lenses the colour of a dark, blue sea meet her gaze. Averil silently curses the condition that has plagued her daughter’s eyes since birth. Her youngest has suffered cold-water baths, fever therapy, herb-filled gauzes boiled in milk, and tinctures of belladonna drops, but the inflammation disease is stubbornly recurrent, leaving Verity’s sight weakened and sensitive to light.
‘The air is full of dirt today. You must protect your eyes,’ Averil says more gently.
As they wait at the Duke Shore Stairs to board the next wherry that will carry them upriver, the water rushes up almost to their shoes. The girls clasp hands, excited at the prospects of the day. The breadth and expanse of the Thames lifts their hearts. The busy port, the scores of moored barges and the glorious ship masts that pass in an endless queue stir the dreams of man, woman and child, and reminds all who lay eyes on this sight that London is the port of the world. The girls realize, because they have been told time and again how fortunate they are to be allowed these special excursions and patiently, but breathlessly, await their turn to board.
The clang of hammers hitting iron, the plonk of heavy-footed men carrying wooden planks, the foreign tongues, and cries of hawkers forge a mariner’s opera, and underneath it all is the incessant ticking of the clocks, the timekeepers of the seafarers.
There is, however, something queer in the air today.
The motley passengers are uncommonly subdued when greeted by the abnormal fog. This is not the damp, cool, slushy fog to which they are accustomed, but a dry one that sits heavily with blasting heat and leaves the cobblestones greasy.
Averil and her daughters congregate with others who stand waiting by the lapping water of the Thames to hear their destinations shouted, ‘This way for London Bridge!’ ‘Anyone for Westminster?’ But the ships’ bells and horns, and the cries of the watermen are heard in a muffled monotone, playing second fiddle to the overbearing heat and increasing darkness. The river is empty of waterfowl.
Quiet comments gurgle and skip across the landing.
‘There has never been a hotter, more stifling June.’
‘There have never been as many wasps as there are this summer.’
Averil Lawless despises both heat and wasps. In fact, it is so desperately quiet, even for this noisy river-hugging community, that she thinks perhaps she should listen to the nagging voice entreating her to take her daughters home, to carry out her appointment another day.
The pointed bow of a bright red wherry appears in the uncommon gloom. Then another. And another. So fierce is the competition that the watermen are yelping at each other to make way. A ship’s horn sounds out and a small boat’s bell clangs. As if the river’s life sings her to her senses, Averil glances at her eager daughters and calculates. ‘No, we will attend. The fog will lift and my mind will be at ease once this day is over.’
Constance and Verity Lawless remain quiet and still, leaving the fidgeting to the children and impatient adults who race past them on faster boats with sails. Their father helped them to understand that it is not how fast one travels, but how well. The wherry is clean and the seats are cushioned in leather. They understand too that the trading empire of the Thames affords them privileges, if not their very existence. Francis and Averil Lawless have impressed upon their daughters the concept of the consequences of a single moment, and there is no better teacher than the river’s majesty and its demand for respect for its waters, which can easily bring violence and ruin as well as wealth and peace. Today, the watermen expertly steer and manoeuvre through the traffic in the yellow fog. The air grows ever warmer.
When the wherry reaches the stairs at Temple wharf, Constance and Verity are pink-cheeked and damp with heat. Averil holds her daughters’ warm palms as they make their way up the stairs. Covered in a fine dust, they have never felt so parched. The midday sun hides above
