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Dhruv
Dear Dhruv,
You say I am the heroine, yet you do not know me. You speak of trust, but without understanding, trust is a fairy tale. Perhaps that is my story, a fairy tale which can’t exist in real life.
You are wrong about Jess, she was not found, she is the finder. She is the action heroine, the sleuth, the adventuress. She is who I want to be when I grow up, and we are all lucky that she found us.
I never thought I wanted a child of my own. Childhood was hard, and I had no wish to relive that experience vicariously through someone I loved. And yet Jess and the other children she brought into the house have taught me to trust … life, I suppose. To trust that hardship is not the only mold that shapes us, that love and kindness can build us into the kind of people who can put hardship into a box rather than live inside walls built of it.
I have worked very hard to break free of the walls, but until I met the children – until I met you – I did not control my hardship. It still loomed large out there, somewhere, waiting to trap me inside again. My experiences of hardship are not the total of who I am, and I do have the ability to fashion a box for them. I wonder, is there a substance that is clear, like glass, yet not brittle or fragile? I’d prefer to be able to see the things that shaped me without having to hold them in my hands again, or risk them breaking free.
I love listening to you speak – your voice calms me even as it makes my heart beat faster. It is perhaps ironic that the only way I am able to admit that out loud involves no speaking at all.
Please be safe as you follow Brian Desmond. He is creative, crafty, more intelligent than he lets on, and above all, he is mean. He learned to hide it as a child, and has obviously gotten good at concealment as an adult. Jess told me that people with no one to care about are the most vulnerable, because there’s no one to watch their back. I care, and would be at your back in a heartbeat if you would let me.
Standing in front of you is harder.
Olivia
There was no return letter from Dhruv, and I forced my own insecurity down behind my fear for his safety. His landlady hadn’t seen him since he’d collected his post the day before, and when I asked for Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard, I was informed that he had taken a few days off from work and was not expected back until the following week.
From there I went to find Jess in the Regent’s Park where she was sitting guard in her tree above the children playing at the pond. She dropped down and joined me on the bench.
“Any word from the inspector?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Only that he learned where the man with the buttons lives and planned to follow him today.”
Jess sighed. “We’re goin’ about this wrong. Ringo would start with the question why, and the possible answers would give ‘im a direction to look.”
I tried the logic on for size. “Why would Brian Desmond take South Asian children from the street and shove them into a cab, never to return?”
She shook her head. “Not just brown kids,” she said. “Boys. The sons of lascars.”
“The English like their classifications,” I said to myself before meeting Jess’s eyes. “Dhruv said Desmond would have taken you without hesitation because at first glance, your appearance fits into a category. That category is South Asian and male – which, if you add “sailor” to the category, becomes lascar.”
“Children aren’t born lascars,” she said, “but they can become lascars if someone puts them to sea.” She looked over toward the pond where the nannies were chatting amongst themselves while the toddlers played. “Children are barely seen, and they are invisible among other children,” she said.
“Brown children stand out, so Desmond wouldn’t hide the boys among English children.”
“No, but they would be invisible in South Asian populations,” she said.
I stood, suddenly anxious to go. “Like down at the docks.”
She stood to join me, and we began to walk toward the Underground station at Baker Street. “Why does the copper Desmond wear East India symbols on his buttons?” she asked as we crossed the street.
“The buttons belonged to his father. He began wearing them after his father was lost at sea.” She glanced up at me with a question in her eyes, and I answered her with vague words that were the merest tip of the iceberg. “I knew him when I was young.” Those buttons, sewn onto a school uniform waistcoat then, were the last things I saw before my eyes swelled shut from his blows.
She frowned as she took the steps down to the Baker Street Underground two at a time. I met her on the Circle Line platform, and when we were settled into our train, she resumed her questions. “If Desmond is takin’ boys to be lascars, ‘e’ll be puttin’ them on ships,” she said. “But whose ships need lascars?”
I shook my head. “Whose don’t? The South Asian sailors are paid half of what the English earn, and captains have no qualms dropping them off in India if they get sick or cause problems.”
“But ‘e’s workin’ with someone, because there was another person in that cab when AJ was taken.”
“Desmond always said that the only people he ever trusted were family, and he was the only child of a dead man.” I grimaced at the memory of the taunting face sneering down at me before each punch landed.
“Did Desmond ever marry?” she asked. “Because a wife brings family too.”
I looked at her in surprise. “He married the sister of a classmate – another captain’s son called Richardson. Clarence Richardson.”
