‘I don’t.’
‘Why, Verity?’
‘It is not enough to keep telling each other stories of their short lives. It is not bearable.’ Verity’s voice rises. ‘The absent bodies … When we visit their empty graves and read aloud their names …’ Her voice breaks.
‘But you don’t!’ Constance shouts. ‘You never say their names. You won’t speak of them.’
‘And you never cease! I hear you in your room late at night. You talk to them as if they were sat beside you. It really is unsettling, Constance. You treat them as if they are ghosts.’
‘They are ghosts. And what of you? You retreat to your prayers to saints and clutch your beads and yet you still walk down to the water’s edge. You would be dead if I had not found you.’
‘That is not fair.’ Verity stands. ‘Do not dare speak of that one, single moment on an awful, awful night.’
They have drained their beakers and the flask, and the fug in the room makes Verity dizzy. Her burning eyes stream.
‘Not fair? To even consider leaving me here on my own?’ Constance accuses.
‘I was not going to do it.’
Constance stands, too, and as they face each other their frames create exaggerated contours against the barrels in the light of the lanterns. Shadow play catches Constance inching towards her sister.
‘William,’ Constance says. ‘My dear, lovely husband, William Fitzgerald.’
‘Don’t.’ Verity walks away.
‘Say it. Say his name, Verity.’ She stalks her sister down the aisle. ‘Say your husband’s name.’
‘Stop it.’
‘Say it!’
Stunned by Constance’s forcefulness, it tumbles out of her.
‘Sterling. Sterling Fitzgerald.’ Verity throws the words at her sister. ‘My husband, Sterling.’
‘Jack. My darling boy. My son, Jack Fitzgerald!’ Constance holds her sister firmly by her shoulders, yet she too is trembling. ‘Say it, Verity. Say your son’s name.’
‘Henry,’ Verity whispers. ‘Henry Fitzgerald, my lost son.’
The sisters, who had loved and married brothers, who had brought sons into the world, stagger after their roll call of the dead.
Leaning against a barrel, in the freedom of their trousers they slide to the floor, spent. It can take years for the purest bit of grief to crawl up out of its deep home.
‘Look at us,’ Constance says. ‘What would they say if they could see us here in this corner dressed as lightermen, reeking, our limbs spread like drunks.’
She offers Verity a weak smile, but it is met with sombre thoughts.
‘The lost bodies of our husbands and sons … it was like blotting out all traces of their existence.’ Verity’s frustration drops to a whisper. ‘We needed their bodies, Constance.’ She rests the back of her head against the cold, brick wall. ‘Otherwise, there is only a haunting. Dead – yet not dead.’
‘We will have our father’s body – in burial,’ Constance says.
‘It is not enough for me.’
Still a little drunk and dry-mouthed from the tobacco, they have lost track of the time. Neither speaks while they vacate the building.
The guard sits up against one of the outdoor sheds fast asleep. Verity relishes these last few moments when she can walk the streets without wearing her dark spectacles. She gazes upon a different sort of darkness. Sharper, almost blunt images cavort before her. A cat slinks by in a brilliant stripe of orange. The lettering painted across the boats and barges is surprisingly shiny. The rift between the sisters is made small against the power of night.
‘Constance, look there,’ Verity whispers. ‘Is that not Mrs Fowler from Three Colt Street?’
A woman in a long, dark cloak stands on a nearby boat, deserted but for the man who embraces her. The cloak’s hood has fallen away leaving her red mane shooting like a flare into the black night.
‘Indeed, it is. But that is not Mr Fowler who holds her close.’
Clovis jerks her head towards them as if she has heard the whispers. Her attention fully upon them now, she is struck by the familiar. These two men she has seen before, here or there, but no, not in this form. She has made it her business to know the wealthy widows on sight; trousers and a cap do not fool her.
Clovis throws her hood over her head and the sound of her laughter clings to the sisters’ backs as their footsteps recede.
Constance settles into her spot before the window on Fore Street, where she casts her gaze beyond the sail-less masts that look like crucifixes jutting up into the hovering mist. She shivers as the reliable London fog pushes in from the sea and travels above the water like a full sail, with only the single pane of glass between her and its wicked danger. She fears there is another danger to which Verity seems oblivious, and so she must grab it by the collar on her own.
When they go about their morning errands that lead them outdoors, and in the afternoon when the sisters take the air, Constance senses they are being watched. With that ever-present in her mind, she goes out alone today with the excuse of needing an item urgently from Mockett’s Apothecary. But Constance does not go to the Commercial Road. She ambles through the neighbourhood’s streets with no clear route. She makes herself seen on Three Colt Street and wends her way finally to St Anne’s churchyard where she waits by a distinctive pyramid monument. The church clock chimes in the tower outlined against the sky, its angles and corners in perfect symmetry. Every fifteen minutes it rings and it is not five minutes past the current chiming before Clovis Fowler appears.
‘Mrs Fitzgerald.’ Clovis is slightly breathless. ‘I have been looking forward to meeting you properly.’
‘Mrs Fowler.’ Constance’s voice cuts the air.
‘I was quite astonished to catch a glimpse of you and your sister a few nights ago.’
Constance is not drawn to reply.
‘There may be several reasons why you choose to wear men’s clothing. And really, it is of no concern to me. Although, I dare say others might attach a queer and abnormal
