Tilly True Read Free Page B

Tilly?’
    â€˜Blimey, miss, I ain’t never been in a hired cab in me whole life.’
    â€˜Well, money for the omnibus then?’ Harriet picked up her purse and taking out some coins she pressed them into Tilly’s hand. ‘I won’t hear of you walking all that way in the pouring rain. Take it, just to please me.’
    Just to please Harriet, Tilly took the omnibus as far as the Monument and walked the rest of the way, saving a couple of pennies. At three o’clock on a wet January afternoon it was almost dark and the costermongers’ barrows in Petticoat Lane, illuminated by naphtha flares, made little islands of light and colour. Wading ankle deep through discarded vegetable matter floating in the gutters, mixed with straw and horse dung, Tilly pushed her way through the jostling crowds. Catching the eye of a saucy young coster selling fruit, she bought an apple from him, parried his cheeky comments and went on her way munching the sweet fruit. Closing her nostrils to the odour of unwashed human bodies, the stench of outdoor privies and the noxious smells from the manufactories that hung in a pall over the city, Tilly dodged down familiar side streets and alleyways making her way home. By the time she reached Red Dragon Passage, not far from the notorious Hanbury Street – the scene, less than ten years ago, of one of the Ripper’s horrific murders – Tilly was soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone. Although the lamplighters were busy in the main streets, Red Dragon Passage was neither rich enough nor important enough to warrant investment by the Gaslight and Coke Company. Stumbling over uneven cobblestones in the darkness, Tilly stifled a scream as a black shape shot out of an overflowing drain and scuttled across her feet. The sewer rats in the East End were as big as cats and twice as vicious. If you came across one in the privy, you didn’t corner the brute; tales of people attacked and dying from rat bites were legendary. Shuddering, Tilly hurried on, past unlit windows pasted over with old newspapers, and others that sent out flickering ghosts of light from a single candle. The dismal howling of a dog was drowned by the rumbling thunder of a steam train leaving Liverpool Street Station.
    The terraced houses in Red Dragon Passage had been built over fifty years ago to house the navvies who flooded into the area to construct the railway system. Old tenements and warehouses had been razed to the ground and red-brick terraces thrown together with little thought to comfort or beauty. The two-up and two-down dwellings lined a street that was barely wide enough to take a handcart. If the residents had so wished, they could have leaned out of the upstairs windows and linked hands with someone in the house opposite. Daylight rarely penetrated as far as the cobbled road surface.
    The door of number three Red Dragon Passage was unlocked, as always, and Tilly let herself into the living room, which opened directly off the street. The low ceiling was smoke-blackened, and a coal fire spluttering half-heartedly in the grate was the only source of light. Two little girls, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor, were peeling potatoes and dropping them into a soot-encrusted iron saucepan. They turned their heads as Tilly entered the room and a small, skinny woman erupted from the scullery clutching a saucepan in her hand.
    â€˜Who’s that?’
    â€˜Ma, it’s me, Tilly.’
    â€˜Tilly!’ The girls scrambled to their feet, sending a shower of potato peelings across the floor, hurling themselves at Tilly, demanding to know if she had brought anything for them.
    â€˜Lizzie, Winnie, let me get me breath,’ Tilly said, laughing and ruffling their hair.
    â€˜You’re wet,’ Winnie said, pulling away. ‘You’ll catch cold.’
    Nellie True put the saucepan down on the table and stood arms akimbo. She wasn’t smiling. ‘Don’t you