The man turned in at the gate next to theirs, stepped up the path, and hurried inside, closing the door behind him without looking around. When he had disappeared, the street seemed to shake itself like a dog caught napping, and activity was renewed all the more vigorously.
“Do you see-that is why I must speak with Mr. Astley immediately,” Miss Pelham declared to John Fox. “It’s bad enough living next door to a revolutionary, but then to be forced to take in strangers from Dorsetshire-it’s too much, really!”
Maggie spoke up. “Dorsetshire an’t exactly Paris, ma’am. I bet them Dorseters don’t even know what a bonnet rouge is-do you, Jem, Maisie?”
They shook their heads. Though Jem was grateful to Maggie for speaking up for them, he wished she wouldn’t rub his nose in his ignorance.
“You, you little scamp!” Miss Pelham cried, noticing Maggie for the first time. “I don’t want to see you round here. You’re as bad as your father. You leave my lodgers alone!”
Maggie’s father had once sold Miss Pelham lace he claimed was Flemish, but it unraveled within days and turned out to have been made by an old woman just down the road in Kennington. Though she hadn’t had him arrested-she was too embarrassed that her neighbors would find out she’d been duped by Dick Butterfield-Miss Pelham spoke ill of him whenever she could.
Maggie laughed; she was used to people berating her father. “I’ll tell Pa you said hallo,” she simpered, then turned to Jem and Maisie. “Bye for now!”
“Z’long,” Jem replied, watching her run along the street and disappear into an alley between two houses. Now she was gone, he wanted her back again.
“Please, sir,” Maisie said to John Fox, who was just setting out with the circus boys to return to the amphitheatre. “What’s a bonnet rouge?”
John Fox paused. “That’ll be a red cap like what you just saw your neighbor wearing, miss. They wears it what supports the revolution over in France.”
“Oh! We did hear of that, didn’t we, Jem? Tha’ be where they let all those people out of the Bastille, weren’t it?”
“That’s the one, miss. It don’t have much to do with us here, but some folks like to show what they think of it.”
“Who be our neighbor, then? Is he French?”
“No, miss. That’ll be William Blake, born and bred in London.”
Miss Pelham cut in. “You leave him be, you children. You don’t want to get in with him.”
“Why not?” Maisie asked.
“He prints pamphlets with all sorts of radical nonsense in them, that’s why. He’s a stirrer, that man is. Now, I don’t want to see any bonnets rouges in my house. D’you hear me?”
5
Maggie came to see the Kellaways a week later, waiting until she judged they were well settled into their rooms. She had passed along Hercules Buildings a number of times, and always looked up at their front window, which they had quickly learned to keep shut so that the dust from the road wouldn’t get inside. Twice she had seen Anne Kellaway standing at the window, hands pressed to her chest, looking down at the street. When she caught sight of Maggie, she stepped back, frowning.
This time no one was looking out. Maggie was about to throw a pebble at the window to get their attention when the front door opened and Maisie came out carrying a brush and dustpan. She opened the front gate and with a twist of her wrist emptied the pan full of wood shavings onto the road, looking around as she did. On spotting Maggie, she froze, then giggled. “Ar’ernoon, Maggie! Is’t all right just to throw it in the road like that? I do see others throw worse.”
Maggie snorted. “You can chuck what you like in the gutter. But what you doing throwin’ out wood shavings? Anyone else’d burn them in the fire.”
“Oh, we’ve plenty for that-too much, really. I throw away most of what I sweep up. Some of this be green too an’ don’t burn so well.”
“Don’t you sell the extra?”
Maisie looked puzzled. “Don’t reckon we do.”
“You should be sellin’ that, you should. Plenty could do with shavings to light their fires with. Make yourself a penny or two. Tell you what-I could sell it for you, and give you sixpence out of every shilling.”
Maisie looked even more confused, as if Maggie were talking too fast. “Don’t you know how to sell things?” Maggie said. “You know, like that.” She indicated a potato seller bellowing, “Lovely tatties, don’t yer want some tatties!” vying with a man who was crying out, “You that are able, will you buy a ladle!”
“See? Everybody’s got summat to sell.”
Maisie shook her head, the frills on her mop cap fluttering around her face. “We didn’t do that, back home.”
“Ah, well. You got yourself sorted out up there?”
“Mostly. It do take some getting used to. But Mr. Astley took Pa and Jem to a timber yard down by the river, so they’re able to start work on the chairs he wants.”
“Can I come up and see?”
“Course you can!”
Maisie led her up, Maggie keeping quiet in case Miss Pelham was hovering about. At the top of the stairs, Maisie opened one of two doors and called out, “We’ve a visitor!”
As they entered the back room that served as his workshop, Thomas Kellaway was turning a chair leg on a lathe, with Jem at his side, watching. He wore a white shirt and mustard-colored breeches, and over that a leather apron covered with scratches. Rather than frowning, as many do when they are concentrating, Thomas Kellaway was smiling a small, almost silly smile. When at last he did look up, his smile broadened, though to Maggie it seemed he was not sure what he was smiling at. His light blue eyes looked her way, but his gaze seemed to fall just beyond her, as if something in the hallway behind caught his attention. The lines around his eyes gave him a wistful air, even as he smiled.
Jem, however, did look directly at Maggie, with an expression half-pleased, half-suspicious.
Thomas Kellaway rolled the chair leg between his hands. “What’d you say, Maisie?”
“D’you remember Maggie, Pa? She held Mr. Smart’s horse while we was unloading our things here. She lives-oh, where do you live, Maggie?”
Maggie shuffled her feet in the wood shavings that covered the floor, embarrassed by the attention. “Across the field,” she mumbled, gesturing with her hand out of the back window, “at Bastille Row.”
“Bastille Row? There be an odd name.”
“It’s really York Place,” Maggie explained, “but we call it Bastille Row. Mr. Astley built the houses last year with money he made off a spectacle he put on of the storming of the Bastille.”
She looked around, astonished at the mess the Kellaways had managed to make in the room after only a few days. It was as if a timber yard, with its chunks and planks and splinters and shavings of wood, had been dumped indoors. Scattered among the wood were saws, chisels, adzes, augers, and other tools Maggie didn’t recognize. In the corner she could see tin pots and troughs, filled with liquid. There was a smell in the air of resin and varnish. Here and there she could find order: a row of elm planks leaning against the wall, a dozen finished chair legs stacked like firewood on a shelf, wood hoop frames hanging in descending size from hooks.