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“Do you think Zenia loved him?” she asked Gladys. Was that a question that even made sense to the woman? Gladys lived, worked, and thought only to survive. Love was a luxury she would probably never be able to afford. Perhaps she had not even allowed herself to dream of it. In a hundred different disguises, that was probably true of millions of women of all ranks, from servant to aristocrat. Children would have much to do with it; neither Hester nor Gladys would have children, but Hester had love. She was perfectly sure of that.
But then many women believed they had love. Maybe even Dinah Lambourn.
She looked at Gladys again. She was sitting with her brow furrowed, a look of deep concentration on her face.
Hester waited.
Gladys looked up at last. “Mebbe. Don’t really matter,” she said slowly. “It were terrible wot ’appened to ’er. I don’t care wot she done, that weren’t right.”
Hester was not sure what to say. “Did she do something so bad?” she asked. She was afraid she would drive Gladys back into silence, but she was increasingly conscious that the other woman knew more than she had said.
“That’s it,” Gladys bit her lip. “She were kind o’ secretive, sometimes a bit la-di-da, like she were better’n the rest of us, but she were kind, in ’er own way. She acted like she’d come down in the world, but I thought that mebbe she ’ad. Something she said once. Tillie Biggs were drunk ’alf out of ’er mind. Lyin’ in the gutter like it were the only place left for ’er. Couldn’t fall out of it, likely. An’ Zenia were the only one wot ’ad time ter pick ’er up. Rest of us said the stupid cow brought it on ’erself, but Zenia wouldn’t ’ave it. Said we all brought things on ourselves, don’t mean we didn’t need ’elpin’.”
“What did she do?” Hester felt a tightening in her throat, the beginning of an emotion she could not control.
Gladys made a small, sad gesture. “ ’Eaved ’er up an’ dragged ’er into an alley doorway where it were dry, an’ nobody’d fall over ’er. Propped ’er up there, an’ left ’er. In’t nothin’ else yer can do. She knew that.” She stopped, struggling with whether to say more.
Hester did not know whether to encourage her or not. She drew in her breath to speak, then changed her mind.
“Reckon as maybe she’d fallen in a few gullies ’erself,” Gladys said quietly. “She told me once that she’d bin married. Mebbe ’e left ’er ’cos o’ the drink. Or she left ’im. Dunno.” She shook her head. “But she weren’t one o’ us, like from round ’ere.”
“Where did she come from, do you know?” Hester asked gently. Gladys’s answers had made Zenia far too real: a woman with dreams and sudden kindnesses, capable of feeling grief and pain.
“She never said. She were an odd one. Liked flowers. I mean she knew ’ow ter grow ’em, wot kind o’ soil they liked, that sort o’ thing, ’cos she used ter talk about it sometimes. Wot month they was out, an’ the like. Don’ get no flowers round ’ere. She used ter stand on the pier sometimes an’ look over the water, like mebbe she were from south o’ the river.” She shrugged. “Could a’ bin just ter be by ’erself, like; think a bit. Dream as yer could get on one o’ them boats an’ go somewhere. I think that, sometimes.”
Again Hester waited before she broke the moment.
Gladys looked up at her and smiled a little self-consciously. “Daft, eh?”
“No,” Hester replied. “We all need to dream of things, now and then. Who else knew her? What was Dr. Lambourn like? Did she ever talk about him?”
“No. But then I reckoned as she knew ’e were worth keepin’ for ’erself, like. Couldn’t share nothin’. Weren’t enough to go round.”
“Jealous?” Hester said quickly.
“Course we was, but Gawd, we wouldn’t do that ter nobody! Wot the bleedin’ ’ell d’yer think we are?” Gladys was indignant, even hurt.
“I didn’t think so,” Hester retracted. She really did not know what to ask next. Since finding Gladys and talking to her, she began to believe that perhaps Dinah had lost her sanity, temporarily, and maybe it was she, after all, who had ripped Zenia apart. Could an otherwise normal woman feel so betrayed that she would indulge the darkest, bloodiest side of her nature? Had the wounds been so deep-failure, self-disgust, hatred-that they drove her beyond sanity?
It no longer seemed unimaginable.
She changed the subject. “The shopkeeper said Mrs. Lambourn came to Limehouse looking for opium. Dr. Lambourn did, too, didn’t he? Asking questions, I mean.”
“I ’eard. ’E never asked me, but ’ow would I know anything?”
“Did you meet him?”
“Yeah, couple o’ times. I told ye
r, ’e were askin’ all sorts o’ things o’ people.”
“About opium?”
“Yeah. ’E wanted ter find Agony.”
Hester was taken aback. “What?”
“Agony Nisbet. Least I reckon ’er name is really Agatha, or summink like that, but everyone calls ’er Agony, ’cos she ’elps folks wot got real terrible pain.”
