Kidney Pie – Part 8
-"From Hell"-
All the windows were open in Jack's little rented room, letting the cold, foggy air pour in from outside. He missed the coat he'd had to leave at Mrs. Lovett's, but the chill helped his head, so he wrapped himself in his tattered blanket and waited for the pain to go away.
No weather, though, could drive off the memory of his dizzy flight from the bakehouse, his terror as Eleanor threw him, gore-spattered, into Fleet Street , the crack of her rolling pin against his knuckles as he tried to force her door open and escape the crowd that would lynch him or worse if they guessed who he was. His fists tightened around the blanket's frayed edges, drawing it closer over his hunched shoulders as he sat on the edge of his bed. He had run before, but as the leader of the chase, never a creature in a blind panic. He felt an unusual heat in his pale cheeks. Damn it!
Standing, he staggered to his cluttered desk, fuming. That shouldn't have happened. He shouldn't have been seen, shouldn't have been beaten by that bloody barber, shouldn't have been so damned afraid.
The blanket slid from his shoulders as he sat. His head started spinning again, making him steady himself against the desk with his right hand as he clawed for paper and ink. As soon, as the page no longer seemed to lurch in from of him, he began to pour his hatred into the crimson scrawl that leapt across the page:
Beadle Bamford – Sir….
-"I will have you!"-
Sweeney almost trembled with a nervous excitement as he watched the dawn spread silver across the London skyline. In the kitchen below, he heard Mrs. Lovett begin to make his breakfast and prepare for a busy day. She was starting behind. He wondered guiltily how many pies he and Jack had destroyed or failed to make the day before. Still, at least she still had time to see to him. He smiled as he heard the sizzling of what must have been his breakfast. Mrs. Lovett was looking after him.
He drew in a long breath of cold, groggy morning air, opening his razor's felt-lined case and exposing them gently to the dawn. They smiled. He didn't need to wake them; like him, they never slept. They were always ready, always determined, even to try something new.
Anthony's advice ran through his mind as he held up first one, then another, inspecting each edge in turn. He was ready to try. He had to be. With the Ripper gone, he had the time, the space to win Nellie back.
Below, he heard the faint jingle as the bells above Mrs. Lovett's door. She was coming up. His eyes darted along the bottom edge of window, straining for a glimpse of her reddish curls, a flash of skirt, an elbow cocked out as she held the tray high. He couldn't see her, but he heard the hollow tread of her boots on the steps outside and her muttering grow a little less distant.
What do I do? Letting the baker find him staring at the window would not be enough. He glanced around blankly, nervously, thinking, all his plans flashing and vanishing around Mrs. Lovett's.
What would I do if it was Lucy? To his surprise, the ghost of Benjamin Barker and his bright memories weren't hard to summon, although they left him staring around the dark shop, suddenly seeming crowded, until he heard Nellie reach the landing outside his door. The door…
Springing to the doorway, Sweeney threw back the bolt and flung it open just as the baker reached for it, one side of the tray balanced on her slender forearm to free her hand. She stared at him, her eyes white and wide in their shadows. She looked half mad. She looked beautiful. She smiled.
"Good morning, Mr. Todd."
"Good morning, Mrs. Lovett."
XXXXXXX
Toby hesitated as he set a mug of ale down beside a customer, his eyes leaping up to the barbershop even as the man slipped a penny into his hand. On most days, he could see Mrs. Lovett's fearsome tenant pacing back and forth beside the window, his dark eyes, lost in the heavy shadows around them, flashing as he glanced angrily into the crowd. Today, he was strangely still. Pale and blurred behind the glass, he looked like a ghost. But it was an anxious anger he inspired, not fear.
Because the longer he watched, the more Toby was sure that it was Mrs. Lovett the barber was looking at.
"Toby!" The baker's voice pulled him away, catching his little head and spinning it toward her. In the middle of the crowded tables, she stood, a few stray beams of sunlight drifting through the foggy clouds to show the red tint of her hair and make the fabric of her new dress glitter. She pointed to a man in a gray jacket. "One for the gentleman, dear."
"Right, mum." He forced an unconvincing smile, but it faded as he turned back to the shop. He tried to lose his worries among the horde of customers, to pretend he was still with Pirelli and had no reason to care about a thing beyond following orders. It wasn't fair, after all, that as soon as he should find a real lady, a real mother, to look after him it should be in the middle of this hell of rear and rotting meat. Pushing open the old door, Toby ran in through the bell's jingling and found a clean mug to fill with ale. He watched grimly as the cup filled.
As he stepped outside, his heart almost stopped. Sweeney Todd was outside on his landing, staring down at Mrs. Lovett. And she, transfixed, stared back.
She was not Pirelli. He loved her, and she was in love, and she needed him.
"What we do for pretty women"
Benjamin Barker leaned over the polished railing to watch Lucy, who smiled up at him as she shifted a bundle of flowers in her arms to reach for the end of the rail at the foot of the stairs. The sunlight stroked her hair and made her blue eyes sparkle against the matching hues if the flowers and her simple dress. He couldn't help beaming down at her as she climbed the clean steps.
Sweeney didn't have to work to bring up the memories. But as he tried to act them out again, every muscle went rigid, corpselike, as if unwilling to return to anything like life. At the window, though, it was easy. With the cold glass at his palms, he stood, as stiff as his stubborn limbs, and watch her move through the cannibal crowd.
She was easy to watch, damn her, especially with the effect his higher perspective had on her fondness for low-cut dresses. But he needed more, needed to a little further, to get her back.
She saw him. He saw her glance up, look away, then turn her pale face up to him again. But she went back to her work, turning back to hands clamoring for pies. She must have thought it was the filth at her tables that attracted his attention. She needed more.
Sweeney felt his knees suddenly go looser than usual. Step by step, he crossed the stained floorboards at a cripple's pace, remembering how Barker's feet seemed to fly over the same stretch, then dry and sun-warmed. The door creaked and jingled open. The rail groaned as he finally reached it.
Below him, he could hear Mrs. Lovett chattering, her bloody musical Cockney carrying over the murmuring crowd and the chirping of her caged birds. "Nice weather, for London," she was saying. "We could do with a few more days like this." Sweeney forced himself to lean out over the rail. His eyes fell slowly, falling on the dirty red knots of her hair, her bone-white face, and, through the clouds, a rare beam of sunlight wandered down onto the baker.
Even as the light shifted to nothing again, Sweeney felt his weight shift further against the rail, his feet almost losing the landing like Barker's. The wood creaked, and she turned, her white china doll's face, her ghost's face, tilted up to him.
He could see her dark eyes search his face. He could see her lips part slightly, uncertain. He could almost see her breath catch and hold as those eyes met his own.
"Mum!" He saw her head turn before he caught the light cry. "Mrs. Lovett, mum!" His feet sank down to the ancient boards as he saw Toby struggling through the crowd towards them. "I think I can smell the pies burning!" Nellie glanced back up at him as the boy rushed to take her hand. Even as he pulled her away she stayed half looking up at him.
The rest of the world, the noise of the crowd and the smell of burning bone and gut, rushed suddenly back at him as he stood back, feeling strange. He turned back to his shop, scowling as the memories crowded behind his door: the sun on Lucy's hair, her bright voice as she held up the bouquet she had bought at the market – among a spray of white baby's breath, bunches of forget-me-nots…
XXXXXXX
"Are you alright, mum?"
"Hm?" Nellie stared vacantly across the now-empty courtyard, a damp rag pressed uselessly beneath her fingers. She was supposed to be wiping down the long tables, scattered with crumbs and drying gobs of gravy. Instead, she looked into the thickening shadows and saw only Mr. Todd, still looking down at her from her memory.
"Mum, are you alright?"
"What?" She snapped her attention snapped to Toby, standing at the foot of the table with his arms full of abandoned plates. "Course, love, I'm fine. Just a little distracted, that's all." She rubbed the cloth quickly over the tabletop.
"Sorry about earlier." She heard his light little steps drift farther away among the clacking of her new plates as he went back about his work.
Her motions slowed as her thoughts leapt again to the barber leaning out above her. "That's alright, dear." Her heart gave an extra thump as she stole a glance at the now empty window. Bloody pies. "I'm sure it really did smell like they were burning. Hard to tell in all that stink."
She stopped cleaning, toying idly with the edge of the rag as it lay on the wooden table. "Toby, love?" The clanking dishes paused. "I was just thinking I'd pop in to make us some supper. What would you like tonight?"
"Can't I just have a pie?"
"Yeah, alright, dear, but I'll go cook something for me and Mr. T." She felt a little guilty as she took a step toward the shop, craning to catch a glimpse of the barber above. "Can you manage out here?"
"Yes, mum." Behind her, the plates clicked faster as the boy doubled his speed. Nellie felt another glimmer of guilt before her thoughts were drowned in the blackness behind Sweeney's window. I'll buy him a toffee or something.
Inside, she hastily lit the little coal-burning stove beneath her counter, almost flinging apie into its sooty gut before reaching for the salt pork she kept in her cabinet. She ran her knife through it quickly and tossed it in a pot, reaching for the sack of potatoes under the counter.
As she continued to cook, she couldn't help looking up at the stairs to the Tonsorial Parlor. She half hoped to see his boots step down or his face peering over the railing. She wanted him to keep watching her, keep feeding the little spark of hope that he might just care about her.
Hadn't that been longing in his eyes, when he had leaned out above her? Couldn't he be upstairs right now, working up the nerve to tell her-
"Ow! Oh, bugger." Nellie jumped as the knife - unwatched while she monitored the steps outside – nicked the side of her finger. She smiled wryly as she put the wounded finger in her mouth and tasted her own blood.
That's what you get for being foolish. She held back a bitter chuckle. If he's up there thinking, it's about that bloody judge.
But he had been looking at her.
She pushed the diced potato and onion into the pot, tears forming as she watched the stairs through a cloud of steam.
XXXXXXX
Jack could hear the chimes in Big Ben chiming out three o' clock as he left Mrs. Greeley's in Dean Street. He meant to go straight to the public mailbox at the corner of Flower and Commercial, but found himself wandering past it towards Brick Lane and the Ten Bells Pub.
Leaving it later than he intended, the cold, at least, bothered him less. His hands were full though, with the letter in one and a bottle of gin in the other, and he wished for the pockets in the coat still waiting beside Mrs. Lovett's chair.
Eventually the bottle was gone, left empty and broken in a back street in London proper. He found another gin shop before he managed to post his red-printed note.
It was already dark when he found himself standing unsteadily on a road in Whitefriars, another bottle in one hand and a tart on his arm. In his fist was the letter, now damp and crumpled, addressed to Beadle Bamford.
Before him was a dented mailbox, its blue paint peeling.
Faintly, behind the smoke and towers of the city, St. Dunstan's bells rang. The whore smiled.
"If one bell rings in the Tower of Bray,
Ding-Dong! Your true love will stay…"
A high-pitched twitter escaped her painted lips as Jack joined in uncertainly. "Ding-Dong! One bell today…" He studied her, trying to remember when she had joined him. She used far too much blush. "Give me one second to post this, sweetheart, and we'll go somewhere nice and private, right?"
XXXXXXX
Man, all that time since the last update, and you'd think I could come up with a funny chapter! Guess not. Sorry to keep you waiting so long. The next chapter should be up in fairly short order. "The Tower of Bray," by the way, was in the original production of Sweeney Todd. The Beadle sings it.