THE DREAMS OF MRS. JOE GARGERY
by Atana
1. SILENCE
It had been nearly a year since the attack on Mrs. Joe Gargery, and Biddy Wopsle now found herself sitting in the best parlor across from Cooling's elderly head constable. Her smooth dark blonde hair was pulled back in a bun; her hands twisted a handkerchief endlessly, running the lace through her fingers.
"We have had precious little luck in identifying the culprit," Jeremiah Pankhurst declared, noting the young woman's obvious case of nerves and resolving to speak gently with her. "Before we close things up, I wondered if you would spend a few minutes with me."
Biddy nodded. She could hear Orlick, Joe, and Pip at work in the forge, and it calmed her.
"I asked Mr. Gargery if I might speak to Mrs. Gargery, and he said no," Pankhurst said.
Biddy nodded in agreement. "She is afraid of strangers," she said. "Especially men."
"You've been Mrs. Gargery's caretaker for a while now," Pankhurst said. "What I want to know is if she's said anything – anything at all – that would give us any indication if she remembers the attack." He glanced at the seated woman through the parlor door and noticed Pip's old slate on the table next to her. "Has she written anything down?"
Biddy sighed. "She doesn't speak at all, sir," she said. "and as far as writing, she only went to school for a couple of months so she writes precious little. Mr. Gargery told me that her father – Pip's and her father, you know – didn't believe in sending girls to school. He considered it a royal waste of time."
The old constable nodded. "I remember Philip Pirrip indeed," he murmured. "Not the best of fathers to be sure."
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Years ago Pankhurst had been a young man new to the force who had been in this very kitchen before, but on another case. It seemed that the blacksmith had soundly beaten his wife for taking in a young girl who had tried to drown herself in the marsh water. Her son Joe had seen the girl running down the lane, sobbing as if her heart would break, and had followed her. He had lost her for a while but then spotted her sinking into the muck, and had raced over and pulled her by the hair from the gray-green water and pounded what water he could out of her lungs before carrying her home.
After Pankhurst had examined Mrs. Gargery's black eye and his son's fresh bruises, he had gone out to the forge and determined that Enoch Gargery had not only been drunk as a goat but also in the simmer-down phase of a fit of rage. After that, he had spoken to young Joe about the girl.
"Workin her to death is what they are doing, sir," the boy had said. "And beatin her when they wasn't workin her. Said her name was Georgie and that her father dug graves an suchlike at the church. Ma got her bout settled but once my pa come in here, she took one look at him and took off out the front door. Then he lit into my Ma." He rubbed his blue eyes with a grimy soot-spotted fist. "That's all I know, except I don't want that girl drowning herself again if I can help it." He wrapped his arms around his weeping mother.
After Gargery had been taken to gaol to sleep it off, Pankhurst had gone to the Pirrip home to make inquiries there. The young girl stood by the fire stirring a pot of stew; her pregnant mother sat nearby fanning herself. He noticed that the girl's hair was still wet from the marsh water, and it was hanging in such a way as to obscure her face, which was fortunate for her father since he had beaten her soundly upon her return from her little marsh adventure.
"Warn't my daughter," Pirrip had said. "She been here all day long. Now if you will excuse us, my wife is in a fix and I don't want her eating supper late."
The young man had shook his head at the time, consigning the scene to memory.
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Over the following years he had kept an eye on that household and concluded that the Pirrip parents kept the girl as their slavey, which bothered them not a whit because they had wanted sons, not daughters. Predictably, the girl grew up sad and mean and hardly left the house for parties, or dances, or carol-singing or anything else that young people enjoyed. Since her mother was always either in a "delicate state" or mourning the death of yet another baby, all of the work of the house had fallen onto her shoulders and this had been the way it had been in the Pirrip home since time out of mind.
Diptheria had attacked the Pirrip household and had sickened the parents and daughter. Georgie Pirrip had been the only one to survive it, a fact she regretted once she figured out there was no one to raise her parents' new baby but her.
The father's gambling debts had finally caught up with him posthumously and a judgment of execution had been served on the front door of the little house. Horrified but being too poor to stop it, Georgiana Pirrip and her brother had moved to the back stable after the home's new residents had taken up establishment. What she would do when the cold weather arrived, she was sure she didn't know.
It had been just more bad luck for the Pirrip girl. And now she sat in the next room, as well nigh dead as a person could be, and Pankhurst felt bad that there had been nothing he could have done for her back then.
But what could he have done, at any rate? Under English law it was no crime for a man to beat his wife and children, particularly if they were as ill-tempered and contrary as young Georgie Pirrip.
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The constable coughed in his fist, and Biddy jumped. "You are aware that at the time of the assault we closely examined Mr. Gargery and determined that he was not a suspect at that time. Have you seen or heard anything that might indicate that I am wrong in that respect?"
The young girl's jaw dropped, and tears welled in her eyes. "Oh, sir! Mr. Gargery could never hurt her. Did you notice a few minutes ago, how he come wandering in here and looked at the old Dutch clock above the fire? He doesn't know what to do with himself without her tellin him. You know," Biddy continued, placing her hands on her knees and leaning forward, "I don't think Mr. Gargery can tell time by the clock. I think she always did that for him – Mrs. Joe, I mean. Once I figured it out, I've started to tell him myself; such as, Mr. Gargery, it's time for tea, or it's time for a drink of water and a rest, or it's time to close up shop and come in for supper." She wiped tears from her face and sighed deeply. "He's like a ship without a port. He goes in there for hours and talks to her, even though she can't understand him or talk back even if she could. It's like he is imagining things are the way they used to be." She shook her head again. "No, sir. No. Mr. Gargery wouldn't harm her. Not ever. I know that as well as I know my own name."
Pankhurst did not respond immediately, and Biddy mistook his silence as reticence.
"You need to understand this, sir, and understand it well. Mr. Gargery don't know what to do without her," she replied simply. "Why would he kill the person who kept him going, after all?"