Shirley’s story
The sailors on the Red Sea launch nudge each other as Shirley and
Margaret walk past them on deck, Esperanza with her sketchbook and pencils a pace behind. Though the Spanish girl is younger and prettier—one swarthy sailor eyes her openly and lustfully, until a withering thin-lipped stare from Shirley warns him off—the Englishman clearly has eyes for no one but his countrywoman.
The odds current among the sailors are not flattering to Shirley—or, indeed, to Margaret. “She’s a hard ’un, her,” the second mate sums up one evening. “Take more than that limp blade o’ winter grass to soften her up. Twenty to one he’ll not so much as kiss ’er.” No one took him up on it.
Shirley delights in the brilliant, grilling-hot Middle Eastern sun. He spends most of the long days on deck, drowsing quietly, or talking with Margaret whenever they can be out of the way of the sailors. His face, hands, and arms darken visibly by the time they reach Bahrain; he is among the lucky few English whom no amount of sun can burn.
“My parents owned a millinery shop in York,” Shirley tells Margaret one afternoon. “No pretensions whatever of nobility; I come of solid Yorkshire farming stock, I do.” He flexes his thin arm in its rolled-up sleeve comically. “My brother was two-and-a-bit years younger than I. We always looked alike; it was remarked upon. I learned to read and write and cipher—and cook and sew—but my brother seized upon books the moment he learned his letters. He liked to read his boys’ books to me as a child, and would bring me books to read to him that he couldn’t yet manage. Old for his years, he was, truly.
“When I was sixteen and my brother thirteen and some months, both our parents died in a street robbery. Shir—my brother did not take it well. The constabulary found and actually convicted the men responsible. My brother insisted on talking his way into the prison to see them hanged; I earnestly tried to prevent it, but he escaped me. He came back horrified and chastened by what he had seen, and told me he wanted to study law.
“‘And how are we to find money for that?’ I asked him, my anger in no little part stirred by his obvious distress. ‘Set yourself to keeping the shop afloat; we have no leisure for anything else.’
“He tried, bless him. I am a good manager, Margaret, but I have no sense of fashion whatever. My brother did—in addition to discovering a talent as a charmer of women, even at fourteen—and with him choosing out our stock and me managing, we did quite well, all things considered. Even so, he would not give up his hopes, though I showed him over and over that the shop’s receipts would not run to legal tuition and still keep us both.”
Shirley sighs, and lowers his voice. “If I had got married—he never said it to me, never, but I could see him thinking it. Though I seem to be a tolerably presentable man, I was never anything but the most unprepossessing of skinny, homely girls. Small hope of help there.
“My brother would have been a formidable man, I think. He found books I’ve no notion where, and began to study on his own. Rather against my will at first, I helped him, studied with him. We—we never admitted that I was better at it than he, my memory for precedent better and my reasoning sharper. We both knew, but we never, ever said it, and he did not permit it to worry him.
“Then the next winter the influenza broke loose, and we both went down with it. We had to close the shop, as it was all we could do to care for each other. The doctors were overwhelmed, as you can no doubt imagine. Still, we were both on the mend, talking about when to re-open the shop, only I woke up one morning and my brother did not.”
Shirley’s long, sinewy hand clenches into a fist, slowly uncurls. He looks about him carefully before going on. “Have you ever in your life, Margaret, had a moment of perfect clarity? Have you ever seen your entire existence from far away, like Justice peering down at her scales, with knowledge of your complete power to alter everything imaginable one way or another?
“I looked at him, Margaret, just looked at him, for what felt like days on end and can only have been an hour or two. Then I cut my own hair close as best I could, went down to the shop to pick up a wig from one of the display dummies, and started the most grimly humourous series of quick-change tricks and deceptions that one can imagine gracing an operetta stage. The coroner certified the death of Shirley Addam, as he had to—but the stonemason carved Elizabeth Addam’s name on her tombstone, and the over-busy curate said a few words over her grave.
“And then I sold the shop, taking back a note for the sake of the interest. Nobody thought it odd. Poor young Shirley had been sadly affected by his illness and his sister’s death.
“I used the proceeds to study law in earnest. Shirley was a bit young yet, but he was a smart lad, soaked up cases like a sponge, so they let it be.
“I did the usual drudgery clerking, but with some effort I did achieve a stint that gained me access to death records. I filched a fresh copy of a death certificate, filled it in myself, got it signed with a pile of other ones, and made the switch when I was in the archives on a completely different errand. I wonder if the Yard even looked for it. I dare not ask, of course—but I do wonder.
“I took the bar intending to do prosecutorial work—I suppose I was as distraught about my parents as my brother, in my way—but I couldn’t stick it at any price, sending men to hard labour or the gallows. By the time I was ready to throw Blackstone’s at Judge Remington and myself into the Ouse, Lady Hester found me. Some spot of bother with one of her servants that I took care of; she made inquiries into my character and history, and swept me up forthwith.
“But there is more to do than I can manage or she can pay for, so here I am—trying to make enough of a public name for myself to start some kind of subscription, or perhaps earn enough money speaking for a bit to keep myself for a few years.”
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