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Chapter Eleven
‘The most important things are always the hardest to talk about, Jim, especially if you are scared, but things are always easier when you do.’
The boy lay staring out of the infirmary window, speaking when spoken to, but answering mostly in non-committal grunts. He refused to talk about his past or his future, his hopes or his fears. Three visits in and he still wasn’t inclined to trust her no matter what she said or did, and Hattie couldn’t blame him. The poor thing had had such a hard life and in his mind, even that was over. She had been to that dark place and wouldn’t wish it on a soul, let alone a child.
‘You do know that you do not have to stay in bed, don’t you?’
‘There ain’t much point in getting out of it, now, is there?’
‘Apart from lying down all day and staring at the ceiling being as dull as dishwater. You must be very bored, Jim.’ She left her chair to walk to the window, using opening it as an excuse to talk to his face rather than the back of his head. She sniffed the warm breeze and sighed, smiling. ‘It is such a lovely spring day... I could take you out in it if you want.’
‘No thanks.’ He lifted his eyes long enough for her to witness the belligerence in them. ‘I can’t walk, remember?’ That was said as if she were a blithering idiot, in the sort of tone that had it come from one of her siblings she would have bitten back. As almost every response she had received in the hour she had been there had been delivered in much the same hostile way, her patience was wearing thin. So she swallowed the pithy retort on the tip of her tongue, that he likely would be able to walk if he stopped being such a stubborn fool and allowed Dr Cribbs to help him. Losing her temper with Jim wouldn’t convince him and would only alienate him further.
‘We could use the wheeled...’
‘I’m not going in that stupid chair!’ He spat that, his freckled face contorted with sheer venom. ‘Not that you could push it anyway, you ugly, lame cow!’
Hattie counted to ten and forced another smile as she perched beside him on the mattress, determined not to allow him to force her away no matter how hard he tried. ‘I could get one of the porters to push it and we could go feed the ducks. I saw some the other day not too far from here on the way to a friend’s, in a lovely little park just off Beaverbrook Square. There are ducklings too and it’s a quaint, secluded spot where nobody would bother us. I find a change of scenery always improves the mood.’
‘I said no!’
‘Maybe tomorrow then?’ She hadn’t planned on coming to the infirmary again so soon but as she had nothing else on except her mother’s knitting circle and she was proving to be the world’s worst knitter, she might as well. It wasn’t as if she was ever likely to produce a wearable sock. ‘If you can be dressed and ready by eleven then...’ Out of nowhere, two furious hands lunged with such force that Hattie was thrust from the mattress before she could brace herself, landing hard on her bottom on the floor. The jarring caused pain to shoot up her damaged leg, acute enough to wind her.
‘I said no, cow! Didn’t you hear me, or are you stupid as well as lame?’ His hands curled into fists on the blankets. ‘You ugly, limping, worthless, do-gooding hag!’
She tried to get up, using the mattress for support and he smacked his fist on her hand, leaving her beached like a whale and feeling so helpless again something snapped inside. She hated being a victim. Loathed feeling powerless with every fibre of her being.
‘I might be lame but at least I am not a miserable, pathetic coward! I am not stupid either, because I had the good sense to accept the doctor’s help and I did that because I knew I was worth more than wasting my life in a bed. You make me sick lying there so bloody minded and angry at the world! As if you are the only person who has ever suffered bad luck!’
Hattie used her good leg to shuffle her bottom around so she could use the windowsill as support, then summoned every ounce of strength to drag herself upright. It wasn’t pretty but she managed it, and by the time she was standing, she was so furious she couldn’t calm down even if she’d wanted to.
‘So your bones got broken? Boo-hoo, poor you, so did mine—then the subsequent infection nearly killed me!’ Tit for tat probably wasn’t the best way to deal with him, but she was past caring. ‘But do I go around talking to people like dirt or thumping them? Of course I don’t because I am not a martyr who feels hard done by but does nothing to help himself!’ Her own fists were clenched now. So tight she could feel her nails digging into her palm. The distant voice of reason cautioned her to count to ten again, but she was so furious she ignored it.
‘I am not sure how to break this to you, Jim, but bad things happen all the time to the rest of the inhabitants of this planet too. Tragic things. Unfair and unjust things. Deaths, poverty, hunger, accidents, abandonments, illnesses and injuries! But thankfully, for every snivelling, gutless coward like you who fills every waking moment with self-pity and takes it out on people who do not deserve it, the rest work tirelessly to find a small triumph in that adversity. They rise above it, make the best of it, adapt, work, help others and fight! And thank goodness, as I shudder to think what this earth would be like if it was filled with bitter and twisted surrendering imbeciles like you!’
She wanted to shake him. Punch a wall. Kick something. Hard. But as kicking something would end up with her on her bottom again she settled for a scathing look of absolute disgust. ‘Shame on you, you horrid, spiteful and lame little boy!’
Hattie didn’t wait for a response and dragged her dratted right leg kicking and screaming out of the room, clomped down the stairs and shoved her arms into the sleeves of her pelisse. Then, angrier than she had been since her own accident had crushed all her dreams, she slammed the front door of the infirmary closed behind her.
She ranted to herself all the way to Long Acre and as she skirted the shabby streets which bordered Seven Dials, and was still fuming by the time she hit Great Russell Street where she realised that she was less than five minutes from Jasper’s house. As neither he nor Izzy deserved to entertain such a grumpy guest, and because she was likely a good hour earlier than they expected, she took herself to the small green in the centre of the square and sat on a bench to calm down. She might have managed it too until she spied her brother’s phaeton leaving the vicinity of the house she was about to visit.
In case he saw her, Hattie darted behind a bush as more anger bloomed afresh when she recalled his lecture at this morning’s breakfast table and put two and two together. If Freddie had done what she thought he had done, then she was going to break his interfering nose for a second time!
‘What did my insufferable big brother want?’ Hattie hadn’t bothered shrugging out of her coat before she marched into Jasper’s study. Behind her Mrs Mimms gave him a wary look as she quietly closed the door and left them to it. ‘And don’t you dare try to tell me the wretch wasn’t just here because I saw him!’
‘And a cheery good morning to you, my friend.’ He should be tickled to have an excuse to use the exact same greeting to two separate angry Fitzroy siblings in the space of half an hour, because such coincidences usually raised a smile, but he was still in the midst of the doldrums caused by the eldest who had only just left. Or at least it seemed as if he had, but with all the fog in his brain and his current tendency to stare blankly at nothing for hours at a time, he could be mistaken. To confirm it, Jasper turned to the clock where the minute hand had only moved on five minutes from when he had last checked it at noon as Freddie left. ‘You are early. I thought we said one?’
‘We did but...’ She let out a frustrated growl as she tossed her gloves on to his desk. ‘It has been one of those mornings, and my idiot brother is, frankly, the last straw.’ In another quirky, ironic coincidence, her pretty straw bonnet also hit his blotter with a thud. ‘I am not angry at you.’
‘I am relieved to hear it as I have already been shouted at by a Fitzroy this morning and it wasn’t pleasant.’
‘Let me guess!’ Angry fingers made short work of the buttons of her pelisse. ‘You sitting beside me again at the Renshaws’ following our cosy tête-à-tête at Lady Bulphan’s has caused idle tongues to wag, and he doesn’t want to see my flawless reputation tarnished by my ill-considered association with a notorious scoundrel with more notches on his bedpost than I have had hot dinners.’ She wagged her finger frowning, mimicking Freddie to perfection in both manner, tone and expression.
‘While society accepts and understands that the male of the species are at the mercy of their urges, Harriet, it holds its females to a different standard and no decent gentleman will marry a girl who appears to have such loose morals and flouts the rules of propriety so openly as to entertain an infamous and unrepentant rake.’ She rolled her lovely eyes heavenwards as she tossed the garment aside and slumped in the wingback opposite.
‘Words to that effect.’ Good grief it was good to see her, and perhaps, because this seemed doomed to be the last time he ever had her alone, Jasper drank in the sight. ‘A tad politer, with no reference to notches and infamy, but perhaps delivered with more malice.’
‘But the gist is you are to stay away from his sister.’
