The First Bloom of Winter, page 2
“Father, please,” Holden tried again, only to be met with the same lack of success.
Franklin Peters was not a large man, but he had always seemed so in his son’s eyes. When he rounded on Holden suddenly, Holden couldn’t help but cringe back from the evident fury that darkened his father’s countenance.
“I’m glad she’s dead and didn’t live to see her son become a degenerate.”
Franklin glared with hazel eyes that were the image of Holden’s. Beneath the fire, they held a reddish sheen that suggested they had recently been beset with tears. Holden’s stomach clenched at the thought of having brought his father so low.
“Leave this house, and never again darken my doorstep. You would be most unwelcome.” With that, the elder Mr. Peters turned away to stare once again out the window, visibly dismissing his son from his notice.
The disappointment and anguish on his father’s face twisted Holden’s heart. Holden resigned himself that he could do nothing further to delay the inevitable. But the looming doubt concerning his impending future prompted him to ask one last question. “If you please, sir, what type of business does this Mr. Leslie run?”
No answer was forthcoming. Holden sighed and left his father to his resentment. He was almost to the front door when a winded shout sounded from behind him, bidding him to look around for the source. Mrs. Parsons heaved her considerable bulk toward him as she rushed from the back of the house where she’d clearly been working in the kitchen. Her apron was covered with flour, and her hands still bore the traces of a hasty wiping. The white powder on her face was streaked with still-falling tears.
“Oh, Mr. Holden,” she sobbed. “Is you really leaving us?”
“It appears so, Mrs. Parsons.” Holden forced what he hoped was an encouraging smile to his lips. “Don’t cry. I rather think it’s an adventure to make one’s own way in the world.”
The dear lady was plainly having none of his weak reassurances. “It ain’t right a lad like you being put out onto the street.” She shot a glare toward the sitting room, her disgust with her employer evident though she carefully pitched her voice low enough so as not to be overheard. When she lifted her gaze once more to Holden, her anger instantly melted into distress. “If only you would apologize for whatever it is you done.”
Holden winced, recalling his recent attempt to do precisely that. “I fear the time for apologies has passed.” He smiled again, this time with more sincerity. “I’ll be fine, Mrs. Parsons, though I dare say I will regret never tasting the likes of your plum pudding again in this life.”
The praise prompted a fresh round of tears, but before Holden could think how to comfort her, she thrust a wrapped packet at his chest. Even without looking, he knew it was a package of Fry’s Chocolate Cream. The cook had been enamored of them since their debut two years before. Now, as then, he didn’t have the heart to tell her he preferred the plainer chocolate bar offered by the Cadbury brothers. Instead he took them with all the gratitude owing her intent. He bent to press a kiss to her plump cheek as he’d so often done over the years.
“Thank you, Mrs. Parsons. I shall strive not to eat the entirety in one go.”
The joke earned him a sob punctuated with a giggle. “See that you don’t, young sir. And, Mr. Holden,” she added, grabbing the hand not holding his satchel in hers, “do take care of yourself.”
Holden made the requested promise, hoping he’d be able to keep it.
THE CLARENCE pulled away from the curb with a jerk, forcing Holden to brace his hand against the roof of the enclosed carriage. He glanced at the satchel resting in the empty seat at his side, glad he didn’t have to rely on the uncertain security of the boot to stow any additional luggage. Mrs. Parsons’s gift crinkled in the pocket of his waistcoat where he’d stashed it. As the cab reached the southernmost end of Chenies Mews, Holden wrapped his hand tightly around the bars of candy. Tears stung his eyes when the carriage turned, causing the façade of the townhouse to disappear from view. He had traveled down this street on countless occasions, but always before with the knowledge that he would eventually return home. The realization that his journey this time was to be one way made him cling longingly to the small bit of familiarity.
A bar of cream-filled chocolate. Was it all that was to be left to him of his old life? For an instant, Holden was blinded by hatred toward the absent Tommy Innisbrooke. How dare he presume to lead the son of a man as honest and good as Franklin Peters down the path of debauchery? Holden had ever striven to be perfect, to proudly bear his family’s name so it might carry on into the future as a model of middle-class respectability.
“Your betters will always regard you as being beneath them, my lad. Let them see you as the firm stone meant to ease their journey and not as the grimy dirt under their feet.”
His father had instilled the lesson in him for as long as his memory served, and yet he had failed utterly in that duty. Instead he was being shipped off to parts unknown like so much noisome trash.
Guilt rode hard on the heels of his anger. How could he blame Tommy for his current plight when he’d followed him into that blissful darkness so willingly? The worry he’d felt daily concerning Tommy knotted his stomach. His father’s rage at finding them together in that alley had been terrible to behold. Though he didn’t want to imagine it, perhaps the elder Peters had, in fact, been incensed enough to have Tommy incarcerated. That his friend might be in jail, however, was the least of his fears. Though Holden was loathe even contemplating the distressing thought, it was entirely possible Tommy had come to some even more permanent harm than being forced to repent for his blasphemous deeds.
The sway of the clarence provided a much-needed respite from Holden’s increasingly gloomy ruminations, though the moment of relief was fleeting. The cab had turned right instead of left onto Chenies, the driver plainly attempting to avoid the bustling thoroughfare of Gower Street. While his choice might be prudent, Holden resented that he would be denied what might be his last opportunity to experience the British Museum’s comfortable, looming presence. He had spent countless hours roaming the vast halls filled to bursting with wonders from lands near and far. It had sometimes been his only friend, the constant, loyal companion of his solitary childhood.
Before resigning himself to learning the family business, Holden had often dreamed he would become a famous adventurer and see the places from which his favorite exhibits had originated with his own eyes. Or perhaps he’d be a great scholar, and the multitudes would gather from all over the country to listen to his lectures on a recent discovery or some brilliant new scientific deduction. But what good was all his learning now? Holden had no inkling of what his new life might entail. Would he even be required to put his practiced skills of reading, writing, and figuring to use? Such was his hope, but it was not beyond the realm of probability he would be brought so low as to become a servant in some unworthy house. His father intended to castigate him for his misdeeds, and he didn’t doubt the penalty would be severe.
The cab swung left onto Tottenham Court Road and trundled slowly in the direction of Bedford Square, putting the institution forever beyond his reach. Holden was both grateful and cross that the driver seemed in no great hurry to reach their destination. He honestly could not say which was greater, his anticipation to finally discover what awaited him or his reluctance to greet it. Doubtlessly he deserved whatever he would find at the end of his journey. Surely he had somehow offended God to have been cursed with such an affliction as had led him to this pass.
It had all seemed so innocent back when he would eagerly accompany his father down to the Victoria Dock to witness the arrival of the trading vessels bringing the company’s shipments of tea into port. His father had expounded knowledgeably about the superiority of the steamer ships and how the planned Millwall Dock would significantly increase the capacity with which cargoes from all over the empire could discharge their goods to the betterment of all. As a small lad of seven, Holden had thrilled along with the million other souls watching the failed attempt to launch Brunel’s Leviathan steamer into the Thames. But by the time he’d turned thirteen, it wasn’t the hulks belching their foul columns of black smoke that had held him enraptured. His adolescent imagination had instead flown on the canvas wings of the three-mast sailing vessels, and his gaze had lingered secretly over the strapping forms of the hardened sailors that made the ships soar.
Holden’s body had reached maturity frolicking in a hazy nocturnal fantasy of firm buttocks in tight, white seaman’s garb. His school friends had whispered about their dreams of loose girls in flowing skirts and skintight bodices, but he’d wisely remained silent concerning his own reveries. By that time, he’d been well aware most would consider his thoughts immoral. The pastor’s impassioned shouts denouncing the unspeakable evils that led to the downfall of Gomorrah and its vicious neighbor rang almost daily in his ears like the tolling of Hell’s death knells.
A loud rumble caught Holden’s attention, providing a welcome distraction from the lingering phantom cries of damnation he often feared had been aimed squarely at him. He gazed out the cab’s window in time to see the unwieldy shape of an omnibus parting the foot traffic as it traversed New Oxford Street. It provided a convenient path for the clarence, which turned to follow in its wake. The conveyance resembled some lumbering beast with wheels in place of legs and spikes down its back made of the poor sods forced to save their pennies by riding up top. The omnibuses were slowly being made obsolete by the underground trains that roared below the city, swallowing passengers at one place and spewing them forth at another seemingly none the worse for wear. The contemplation of the old giving way to the new provided Holden some measure of comfort. Maybe the old-fashioned notions of his father would similarly yield to the light of progress, and he might someday be forgiven for his transgressions. A sigh trapped within a laugh hitched in his throat. And one day pigs might fly.
Even with the unwitting assistance of the omnibus, the horrid, late-day congestion kept the clarence to a snail’s pace. He was barely a half mile from home, and it already seemed he’d been traveling forever. How much farther might he have to go before reaching his mysterious new domicile? A breeze tested the seals of the carriage windows and the thickness of his wool jacket. He shivered, his fretful temperament altering the typical December chill into an ominous portent.
Leaning to peer out the front window of the carriage, Holden could just make out the street past the driver’s slouched figure and over the horses’ straining haunches. Before him stretched the wide thoroughfare connecting Hyde Park to the bounds of the old city proper. Farther down the well-traveled road near the western boundary of the old London Wall sat the heart and soul of the Anglican faith, St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Though Dante had consigned the forward-looking to the eighth circle, Holden was desperate enough for something to occupy his unsettled thoughts that he engaged in some harmless fortune-telling to presage his impending fate. He imagined for a moment that his father had somehow arranged for him to take orders and receive the training necessary to serve as a curate, merging the useful employment of a clergymen with the attendant scouring of his soul. Yes, that would certainly appeal to his father’s love of efficiency. In truth, Holden did not despise the prospect. The immersion in the written word, even if it was merely God’s, would not be an objectionable manner of whiling away his existence. It would mean denying those baser aspects of his nature since the only form of marriage open to him held no allure whatsoever, but that seemed fitting, considering it was indulging those facets of his character that had brought him to ruin.
“Go forward,” he begged quietly, speaking to whatever Heavenly creature might deign to hear him. Go forward. If only the cab would continue on until New Oxford Street exchanged its moniker for High Holborn, he would be saved in every sense of the word. But almost immediately after reaching New Oxford, the cab turned right again, abandoning it for High Street. Holden imagined he could hear the crash of his dreams as the heedless driver dashed them against the ground. Straight on meant a future, but he had not calculated what this veered path might portend. He slumped back in the seat, the slowly passing scenery continuing by unremarked as he contemplated the implications of this new direction.
Holden was a young man of learning, and he knew the environs of his home as well as any native-born Londoner. Farther down was St. Giles’s Church, but Holden had already abandoned his mad dream. He’d envisioned St. Paul’s as his salvation, but a small parish church would never do. He knew enough of his father’s pride to realize he would never establish his only son at such a lowly house of God in lieu of one far grander, no matter the quarrel between them. Or perhaps, Holden considered, it was he who was thinking far too highly of himself. The carriage slowed as it approached St. Giles, and Holden thought briefly that he might be delivered after all, albeit in lower circumstances than he might prefer. But even that hope was denied him. The cab continued onward, ignorant of his wishes, waiting only until a milk woman, burdened under the yoke harnessing the empty jugs she was collecting for the evening, had finished crossing in front of the carriage.
Holden watched her ponderous gait and wondered if he would be equal to the woman’s task. He thought he might soon find out, for beyond the vanishing church was the foreboding edifice of Covent Garden. Even from this distance, as the clarence rounded the bend onto Broad Street, he could see it. The preeminent home for purveyors of fresh fruit and vegetables and all good things… and for a life of drudgery, toil, and the type of honest labor that made his genteel skin crawl with foreboding. So this, then, was to be his lot. Salvation through industry. A very proper solution for one of the merchant class, Holden was sure. There was nothing his father enjoyed more than knowing his prosperity was owing to a hard day’s work, even if the work was done by far rougher, less deserving hands than his own. Although trepidation coiled deep within his gut, Holden stiffened his spine with the very pride his father had always instilled in him. He refused to be beaten, especially not by the mere prospect of having to earn a living by dirtying his hands. If there was one thing Holden did not doubt, it was the power of his own mind. Though he might begin as a laborer, he was certain his superior intellect would see him rise to a position of management and respect afore long.
Lost in thoughts of prodigal reunions with his father once he’d conquered the Market and made it his own, it was a moment before Holden noticed the driver had deviated in his course yet again. The rightward veer was wholly unexpected, and Holden read the street name on the side of a building through a murky fog of mounting dread. Great St. Andrew? His perfect recall of John Dower’s overly detailed map of London, revised the Year of Our Lord 1866, informed him the carriage was entering the Seven Dials, but he couldn’t accept it as truth. Never in his most haunted nightmares had he ever imagined his father would consign him to this stinking, festering underworld of poverty and pestilence. What use could a gently reared lad of his temperament and education ever be in such a horrible place?
“Driver!” Holden banged his fist on the roof of the cab. “Driver, there must be some mistake. You’ve taken a wrong turn.”
His pleading went unheeded, muffled by the vehicle’s sturdy frame and the unceasing clop of the horses’ hooves against the cobblestone street. It seemed he was the one who’d been mistaken. He’d obviously underestimated the depths of his father’s hatred toward him, which apparently went beyond mere hurt or disgust. In that instant, Holden knew he’d been completely and irrevocably disowned. There would be no forgiveness, no reunion, no restoration to his former life. Holden thought he’d understood his father’s heart, the unyielding propriety that governed every aspect of Franklin Peters’s world. But he’d never imagined his father could be capable of such outright cruelty.
The carriage moved deeper into the warren of the Dials, and Holden felt the very light dim about him, as though even Helios himself shunned this place. A shadow of movement drew his frightened glance, and he narrowed his eyes to peer reluctantly into the gloom. A slight figure stood at the edge of the street, a drab silhouette of dull browns and sooty grays. Her patched skirts and ragged bonnet betrayed her gender, and the degree to which her hiked skirt bared her ankles declared her profession.
Holden experienced a moment of scornful pity as the carriage left the prostitute behind. No matter what tortures his father had devised for him, at least he hadn’t lost all dignity like that wretched soul.
“NEAL’S YARD?” Holden asked as the driver opened the cab door to let him out. He looked at the sign a second time, his brows knitted with confusion. The clarence had stopped at the mouth of an alleyway. The path curved off to the right so Holden could not discern the distance to the far end. He didn’t like the looks of this at all. “I’ve never heard of this place.”
The driver shrugged, sublimely unconcerned with his passenger’s bewilderment. “The man said this is where I was to bring ya.”
Holden stepped down out of the carriage hesitantly. “What man?”
“He would be referring to me, young sir.” An elderly chap dressed in a severely correct butler’s uniform stepped out of the shadows filling the narrow passageway. He glanced briefly at the watch he pulled from the pocket of his coat, the timepiece secured by a length of silver-plated chain. “I congratulate you on your punctuality. I am Sebastian,” he intoned, the accompanying bow shaded with the precise degree of ambivalence between respect and disdain proper for any English butler. “Your belongings have already arrived, and you are expected. If you would please follow me.” He replaced the watch and straightened the chain to hang exactly so before turning away sharply, obviously confident Holden would follow his instruction to the letter.
