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  Percy gave him a sharp smile. “Fifty fifty, and we don’t trouble Horace with the sordid details.”

  “Come off it. Seventy thirty. I’m doing the work and taking all the risk.”

  “Sixty forty?”

  “Done,” Gil said, mentally adding not including Jonathan. “Since it’s for the good of the family.”

  Percy’s eyes brimmed with happy malice. “There. I knew you’d be reasonable.”

  PACKING UP THE PRODUCT was more of a laugh than Gil had anticipated having in Wealdstone House ever again. Percy worked with him, piling books and photographs and lithographs haphazardly into crates. It took the rest of the day to get it all boxed, and they chatted and laughed the whole time, including while they ate supper together in the kitchen, since Gil wasn’t welcome at the dining table that had once been his father’s.

  He had no desire to mix with decrepit Jessamy or his covetous son anyway. He didn’t want the contrast to remind him of this place as it had been, to hear his father’s voice down the empty hallways, or mistake the tap of Jessamy’s cane for Pa’s. And if he had to spend all this time here, packing books and photographs into box after box, it wasn’t too bad doing it with Percy. This was the longest they’d spent together in years, since Gil didn’t precisely go out of his way to seek out anyone named Lawes. He hadn’t seen hide or hair of his relatives after he’d been turfed out of school, and he’d never have spoken to any of them again, except that Percy had gone out of his way to find him.

  Not that they were close. Percy held a respectable sort of position in Somerset House, so of course he didn’t want to be seen visiting the depraved environs of Holywell Street, and since Gil generally didn’t respond to his invitations, they rarely met. But still, he’d made the effort to look Gil up and do him a devil of a good turn once. Gil had asked why he’d bothered, and Percy had said, You’re family.

  Gil took that for what it was worth, which was to say that it and two pennies would get you tuppence worth of tobacco. He knew precisely how much family he had, and what family had meant when he’d found himself at sixteen with nowhere to go, no help, no friends, no name. His family had damn near destroyed him once; he wasn’t going to give any of them that opportunity again, not even Percy. When it came down to it, you couldn’t rely on anyone but yourself, and you forgot that at your peril.

  All the same, it was good to have this time together now. Gil told a few stories about his work as they packed, and Percy ended up laughing so hard that the miserable stiff-rump Horace came in, outraged, to remind them this was a house of mourning, and not one Gil belonged in. Take your filth and get out, was the message, and that was a lot more what he was used to from the Lawes.

  So he did just that the next day, another wet November morning, leaving Wealdstone House for what would doubtless be the final time, with Jonathan safely stowed about his person in case of accidents.

  The drive from Wealdstone House to the road took an unnecessary loop to give carriages a clear view of the Jacobean building in its magnificence. Gil didn’t look back.

  THE CRATES WERE SENT up to London by carter, arriving at Gilbert Lawless Bookseller on Holywell Street early on Thursday afternoon. It was a cold, wet day, the air thick with smoke and mist and noisome smells, since the shop was close to Pissing Alley, which served as an escape route onto the Strand in the event of a police raid, and an impromptu privy for less dramatic needs. The wind was blowing from that direction, driving rain onto the cobbles and splashing into the puddles of filth and black mud. It stank like a wet dog out there, and nobody with sense would be shopping for gentlemen’s literary entertainment in weather like this, so Gil awarded himself a half holiday, shut up the shop, and settled himself to look at Matthew Lawes’ collection. He started with the loose photographs, since they were the easiest carried up the stairs to where he had a fire going.

  Gil had been a writer and purveyor of obscene books to the discerning gentleman (and occasionally lady, and a few who stretched the definitions in their own ways) for eleven years now, counting his apprenticeship, and he’d seen a lot. There was very little surprised him any more when it came to what people liked. He didn’t make many demands of his own on the occasions he shared a bed, requiring only that his partners should treat things lightly and not expect him to be there the next day; he didn’t have the time, the energy, or the spinal flexibility to do a quarter of the things that featured in the books he wrote. But when it came to other people’s tastes in copulation, he’d call himself as easy-going as any man in London. It was all just flesh, in the end.

  He would not have expected his sour, shrivel-souled half-brother to take that view, but after half an hour he concluded with some astonishment that when it came to fucking, Matthew Lawes had had a mind as open as the sky. There were men with women, men with men, women with women; women dressed as men, men painted as women. Every kind of pairing, and more than pairs because one picture had nine people in a heap. There was speciality stuff too. Plenty of flagellation, carried out with all sorts of implements—whips and canes; leather straps; prickly holly and bunches of furze. There were chains and cuffs; dildos and ticklers; champagne bottles and glasses used for everything but drinking champagne.

  It was well outside Gil’s professional expertise. He was a bookseller, handling photographs only on the odd occasions they came his way, and he had no idea how to shift this quantity of product without getting nabbed.

  He considered the matter. If he took the most valuable sets out, he could probably arrange to sell the rest as a job lot to Arnott on Wych Street. This was an unpalatable prospect, since he didn’t much enjoy Arnott’s company and indeed considered him highly likely to end up on the front page of the Illustrated Police News at some point, but he would prefer to get rid of Matthew’s stock as fast as possible even if it meant accepting a bargain price. Percy would doubtless be glad of whatever he got from the sale; Gil just wanted it gone.

  Partly he didn’t much like having several years’ worth of imprisonment with hard labour on the premises, of course. But there was also something about the collection that made him uncomfortable, and he wasn’t sure what. It couldn’t be the content, which was nothing new. Perhaps it was just the idea of his miserable, stiff-necked prick of a half-brother enjoying himself at all, let alone with such variety. Gil had a buyer, a fellow called Ashbee, who was putting together a collection of every obscene book in the land. Perhaps Matthew too had wanted to own everything possible. Or perhaps it had been a job lot put together by someone else and bought in bulk, and anyway Matthew was dead and gone, so who gave a damn what he’d liked to toss to?

  It was irritating to be even thinking about the vicious miserly sod. Gil set back to work, sorting rapidly through photographs, daguerreotypes, and stereoscopic slides in search of dirty gold—and then he stopped.

  The image he was holding wasn’t particularly noteworthy, just a young man, no more than seventeen, smiling at the camera with his half-full prick hanging out. What caught Gil was that he knew the lad, and he was dead.

  Errol, that had been his name. A cheerful cocky sort, always ready with a smart remark, made a fair bit using his mouth in other ways. And he’d been found in Clare Court, a little maze of alleys just a few minutes’ walk from Holywell Street, maybe three weeks ago, face battered, skull caved in.

  They hadn’t found the culprit, and Gil doubted anyone had looked very hard. Errol had spent a fair bit of his short life skittering in and out of cells for indecent behaviour; the police probably thought he’d had it coming. He’d doubtless said the wrong thing to the wrong man at the wrong time, that was all. It happened.

  Poor old Errol, though. Gil hesitated over the image, not sure what to do. It seemed disrespectful to sell it on for fist-fucking. Of course Errol wouldn’t know, and when he thought about it, how many of the people in these pictures would be dead now? Filthy, foggy London was a maw with iron teeth. People came in their thousands and were consumed. And of course those who sold thei
r bodies were at more risk, girls because they were immoral, boys because they were illegal. They were just product, like the photographs, bought and sold and discarded.

  Well, life was hard and there wasn’t much to be done about it. Gil stacked up the print with a few more in the series, which showed Errol had made the most of his short term on this earth, and moved on.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Let me clarify the situation for you, Mr. Aylesford, Mrs. Aylesford.”

  Vikram didn’t consult papers; he didn’t need to. The facts of the case were all too familiar. The couple who sat opposite him in Mr. Glaister’s office were familiar types too. He was red-faced from years of Indian sun, she had clearly taken care to preserve her complexion with a parasol; neither was used to engaging with an Indian as an equal rather than a subordinate. Vikram was used to that; it was why he dressed with such formal perfection, and let his Oxford education show so clearly in his speech.

  He looked from one to the other of the couple. “You engaged ‘Flora’ as an ayah fifteen years ago, in Calcutta. So beloved and invaluable was she that you had her accompany you back to England, at your request, on the agreement that you would pay her return passage to India. And now that your youngest child is at school and you have no more use for the woman who has cared for your offspring for fifteen years, you propose to abandon her, unwaged, unhelped, on the other side of the world from her home, because it no longer suits you to meet your obligations. A woman who took care of your children all their young lives, who crossed the world because, I quote from your own letter, Mrs Aylesford, you could not bear to make the journey without our dear Flora—and what? You will let her eke out a living in a foreign land, if she can, and die in the streets if she can’t?”

  Mrs Aylesford stared rigidly ahead. Mr. Aylesford was bright red from embarrassment as well as sunburn. Their solicitor looked much as one might expect. Vikram was not making friends.

  “There are homes for ayahs,” Mr. Aylesford mumbled.

  “There is a home for ‘Flora’,” Vikram said. He couldn’t help emphasising the English name, doubtless bestowed on the ayah for the Aylesfords’ convenience. She used it herself, after fifteen years. He hated that. “It is in Calcutta, and you will pay her fare according to the offer you made her when you took her from there for your benefit.”

  “You can’t prove we offered that,” Mr. Aylesford said. Mr. Glaister winced very slightly.

  “No,” Vikram said. “I only have her word, and she is only a woman and only a servant and only an Indian. I dare say you thought it would be very easy to cheat her, under the circumstances.”

  “I resent that remark,” Mr. Aylesford said. “I see no reason we should foot the bill for a passage to India when I have a family to provide for. Is a man forever responsible for every servant he may employ? She no longer has a position in my household and must make her own way.”

  “You see no reason to foot the bill. Not honesty? Not British fair play? Not loyalty to a woman who has always been loyal to you? Then try this: I shall represent ‘Flora’ in court, pro bono, to sue you for her passage.” Vikram loved appearing in court; it was his greatest regret about his chosen path in life that he could only do so rarely. “I shall make her case,” he went on, slipping into courtroom tones, letting it build. “I shall read extracts from letters written by you; I shall tell the story of how she saved little George, just five years old, from a jackal’s jaws; I shall make the jury weep with the tale of her love and faithfulness. And then I shall tell them how you propose to reward it by throwing her on a dust heap, and perhaps I will not be able to take the cost of passage from you, but I promise that I will take your reputation. I will have reporters in court, ready to repeat every pathetic detail in tear-wringing fashion. I will make you the most reviled couple in London for your ingratitude.” He planted his knuckles on the desk and leaned in, ignoring the tears spilling over Mrs Aylesford’s cheeks. “So tell me. Can you afford that?”

  “THAT DISPLAY WAS HARDLY necessary, Mr. Pandey,” Mr. Glaister said, somewhat stiffly, once the Aylesfords had gone.

  “On the contrary. I don’t have time to take every one of these miserly swine to court. Have you any idea how many of these women are left, abandoned—”

  “I dare say it is very terrible, but your manner to a respectable couple was scarcely what one would expect of—if I may say so—a gentleman.”

  “I give respect where it’s deserved,” Vikram said. “Is there anything else? I’ve work to do.”

  Faced with public shame for their private greed, the Aylesfords had agreed to pay for a second-class passage to Calcutta. ‘Flora’ would go home, unlike the dozens of other ayahs abandoned in a foreign land. It was a small victory but he’d take it in the face of what too often felt like a struggle of overwhelming futility.

  You can’t fight an empire! his father had shouted at him, during one of their many, many arguments, and Vikram had said, Yes I can. Perhaps I can’t beat it, but I can certainly fight.

  It had sounded better then, when he’d been young and fiery and full of belief that India would one day be free of the British yoke. He’d be thirty in a couple of months, and he didn’t feel young any more.

  Glaister’s chambers were in the Inns of Court, not far from his own rooms. He strode back—there was never time to dawdle—let himself in, greeted his clerk, and flopped down at his desk, with its piles of paper neatly squared and stacked for his attention, and the day’s post in the middle of the green leather top.

  It was the usual mixture. Begging letters. Communications from the various societies he supported—slum improvements, hygiene, universal suffrage, divorce law reform, independence. Requests to speak, requests to give money, requests to give time.

  And one scruffy, cheap envelope, addressed only to ‘Vikram Pandey’ (poorly formed letters but correctly spelled; many solicitors’ clerks did not do so well), evidently delivered by hand. Vikram opened it, and pulled out a single sheet of rough paper, inscribed in the same childish writing.

  Dear Mr. Pandey

  Please will you com my brother is gone away and ma and pa very sad please help us please. He is good boy but gone away.

  sincerly

  Arabella Gupta

  There was an address in Shad Thames. Vikram put the letter down with an internal sigh. He offered legal advice, intervened with the parish and police, and otherwise supported the work of the Shad Thames Eastern Association House, which attempted to provide for Indians who washed up on Britain’s shores without the wealth that had smoothed his own path. Lascars, ayahs, visiting students, people attempting to survive as street performers, cooks or carpenters, people who wanted to stay, people who wanted to leave. The displaced, underpaid or homeless souls who gathered there saw him as a beacon of hope, an Indian who was as superior and educated and English as any Englishman, and a protector when the law or the parish came knocking. Vikram felt nothing but despair when he walked through its doors.

  He was not an enquiry agent, or anything like, to go looking for missing boys, but this might fall within his purview. If the brother had gone for a lascar, working for a fraction of the pay given to white sailors in the hardest, dirtiest jobs on board ship, or had been caught in the meshes of the law, Vikram might be able to help.

  He had a meeting in Shad Thames in any case, regarding Association House’s lease. So he scooped up the letter, and a few other documents, and set off east.

  Some hours later, he was at Miss Gupta’s door, a poor, low, dark house on a poor, low, dark street. It would be a crowded home for six, and probably housed at least thirty.

  He knocked at the door, and was annoyed to see that action left soot-stains on his knuckles. The white woman who opened it looked at him with a combination of hostility and apprehension. “Who’re you?”

  “My name is Pandey.” He’d been told, often, that he ought to say I’m not with the police or I’m not here to cause trouble, be a little less towering in his manner and a little
less book-learned in his speech. He might as well put on a dirty coat and a cockney accent. “I am looking for the Gupta family. Arabella Gupta. Is she here?”

  “Couldn’t say,” the woman muttered, eyes skittering. “Best come back later.”

  Vikram glared at her. It had been a long day and there was no sign of it ending soon. “She sent me a letter. I want to speak to the family.”

  He pulled out the scrap of paper. The woman’s eyes moved over it without comprehension. Vikram sighed. “It’s from Arabella Gupta. She asked me to visit.”

  “Asked you.”

  Vikram didn’t know if the woman’s disbelief and distrust were due to his race or his class and didn’t care. The leasehold meeting had been exasperating beyond measure, attended almost entirely by dunderheads who couldn’t understand a simple legal document and dullards who wanted only to rehash the question of whether Association House was attracting unwanted sorts to an area that nobody wanted anyway. He wasn’t in the vein for any more negotiation. He drew a breath to say so, and almost choked as a piercing squeal came from right behind him.

  “Oh, it’s you,” the woman said. “What’s this about inviting gentlemen?”

  “Lay off, Meg,” said the small child who stood at Vikram’s elbow. “Sir, is you Mr. Pandey? Please, sir, come in, thank you. Get out the way, you sour-faced cow! In here please, sir. Pa!”

  After a few moments of scuffling and shouting in whispers, during which a number of wide-eyed children scurried past, Vikram found himself in a room that was clearly the Gupta family’s home. It was small and dark but no worse than many, with a few sticks of furniture offering a little comfort, and as clean as was possible given the damp and the encroaching black mould on the walls. There were two chairs, one of which was offered to him; the other was occupied by a man either in his fifties or prematurely aged. One of his legs ended at the knee, and Vikram guessed he was or had been a lascar from his weatherbeaten look; he seemed decidedly alarmed. The girl who had escorted him in was, at his ill-informed guess, perhaps eight years old, brown haired, and much lighter skinned than her father.