The Unseen(47)

‘Truthfully, no,’ George admits. ‘But I do keep ginger beer.’

‘Ginger beer?’

‘I’ve been fond of it since childhood.’ George shrugs, bashfully. ‘Would you like some, then?’

‘All right then. I will. My throat’s bone dry from coughing.’

‘What is that cough? I hear it sometimes, when you talk. That there’s a snag in your breathing, waiting to catch you.’ He takes a brown bottle down from a shelf, pours the contents into two tin mugs. Cat thinks before answering. She does not like to hear this – that others can detect the taint on her.

‘I caught pneumonia, when I was in gaol,’ she says, shortly. ‘It lingers. The doctor said it would, though I admit I’d hoped it would go sooner.’

‘It must have been a damp and dreary place, to give you an infection like that,’ George says, carefully.

‘It was. But that’s not what gave me it. It was the handling I was given. The way we were … treated,’ she says, sipping her ginger beer, eyes focused on the darkness at the bottom of the cup.

George puts out one thick, rough thumb, crooks it under her chin and lifts her gaze to meet his. ‘I would have words with any person who gave you rough handling,’ he says, solemnly. ‘More than words, in fact. And you nothing but a slip of a thing. I’ve no time for those that box below their weight.’

‘That’s something I would dearly love to have seen. Pitting you against the villains in there that called themselves guardians.’ Cat smiles. ‘They could have done with a taste of their own medicine.’

‘The job is one of cruelty and brutality, as I understand it. Small wonder that cruel brutes find their way into it. My father was gaoled once – and it was no bad thing for us kids, nor for my mother. He set about the rozzers that were trying to escort him home from the pub, drunk half dead as was his habit. They frogmarched him face down right past all his chums – that made his blood boil! I was glad they kept him in for we’d have felt the brunt of that indignity if he’d been allowed home.’ He shakes his head at the memory.

‘What was his profession, your father?’

‘His profession? That’s not the word for it. He did labouring, farm work, odd jobs. Whatever he could get. If there was something needing doing that was too hard or too dirty for anybody else, they sent for my old man. He used to dock the puppies’ tails, each time there was a new litter. He would bite them off.’

‘He bit them off? That’s horrible!’

‘It’s considered the proper way – the crushing of teeth closes the skin around the wound. But only a savage could do it thus, and so my father was called,’ George explains. ‘I remember hearing their poor little cries, all those pups. It made my blood run cold, but my father never flinched.’

‘But I was no drunken brute. I only did what I was told to do, in gaol.’

‘What the wardens told you to do? Always?’

‘Well … perhaps not always,’ she admits, dropping her face again. In truth she’d sought countless little ways to flout the rules, to pretend rebellion. It was her behaviour that brought Tess to the warders’ attention, when she had been good and quiet enough to go unnoticed, until then. Cat swallows convulsively. ‘Can we talk about other things?’

‘We can talk about whatever you wish to talk about, Cat Morley,’ George says, softly.

Cat looks around the cabin again, sips her ginger beer.

‘Why don’t you take rooms in town?’

‘I used to, but then Charlie Wheeler, who owns and runs this barge and three others between Bedwyn and Twickenham, said I could stop on board between jobs if I wanted, for no rent at all. It’s good security, to have a man aboard, and this way I get to save my money up.’

‘What are you saving it up for?’ Cat asks.

George thinks a while before answering, then reaches to a pile of papers on the shelf, passes her a creased and much handled flyer.

‘The canal trade is dying, Cat. Some stretches are so poorly kept up, you struggle to make headway for the growth of weeds and trees crowding in; and the locks leak so badly they scarce work. Few carriers still use it, now the railways are everywhere and so much faster. Charlie Wheeler is a traditional kind of man, and he keeps going with small loads and local trade, but soon enough even he will have to stop,’ George says.

Cat examines the flyer. There’s a grainy photograph reproduced on it, of a steamboat crowded with young girls in Sunday school uniform, all smiling at the camera man from beneath their straw boater hats.

‘Scenic Pleasure Cruises?’ she reads.