The world had given Alan Ross a rare chance at an unselfish act. And it just so happened to have hooked into it the opportunity for revenge against the men who’d hurt him and used him and threatened his family as if they were nothing.
“Do you read Alanzo’s newspaper, your lordship?” His ma had somehow managed to get Jack talking about Alan’s job. Nobody in the family was illiterate, but Alan’s ma had never read the Morning Post nor met anyone who had.
“Mrs. Rossi, I can say with certainty that I have read every word your son’s ever written. I hate to think of the stories the world would have been deprived of, if I hadn’t been there to save his life.”
Alan coughed on a mouthful of tea and, for the second time in a handful of days, considered flinging the rest of it in Jack’s face.
“In fact,” said Jack, standing up and giving Alan a pointed look, “I’ve been promised that I might see the first draft of the next one. Your study’s upstairs, Ross?”
Just one little cup of tea in the face. Just one. Alan tried to think of an excuse to refuse, but couldn’t. He showed Jack to the narrow set of stairs, and went to follow him, but Bella grabbed his arm just as he began to climb.
“’Scuse us, your lordship,” she said, and dragged Alan two yards away. She lowered her voice to a demanding whisper. “Are you really going to write about the railways?”
Alan’s heart gave a skip of wariness. But Bella’s eyes darted meaningfully towards Jack and she said, barely audible now, “You’re not going off to be—kept?”
Alan stared at her. He would have been less surprised if she’d stood on her head or given birth to an ostrich egg.
“I took a delivery from Berto,” Bella muttered, “and it was all wrapped in paper but the string was loose, so I opened it—”
“Bella!”
“And I only read a few pages, but—oh for fuck’s sake, Al, I’m not a green virgin,” she said, gesturing to her belly. “And Mamma might be happy to believe you’ve never had a steady girl because you’re too busy working, but you’ve never even tried, not when we were little and not now. The girls in this neighbourhood look at you like you’re a fresh apple and they’d stab each other to take a bite. You barely notice.”
And she’d chosen now to have this conversation. Alan glanced frantically up the stairs. Jack was now out of sight. Loose in Alan’s house. Fantastic.
“You can’t tell Mamma,” he said, instead of bothering to fight.
“Madonna santa, of course not.” Bella knew as well as he did the endless moaning and prayers for his soul that would result.
“I’m not going off to be a bloody rent boy,” said Alan. “Can I—”
“Only this lord looks at you exactly like the girls do,” said Bella, not budging, “and I know you think you have to wade through shit so the rest of us can stay clear, but—you don’t, you stupid arse. Not this.”
Her eyes were too bright. Alan cursed himself. Of course Bella, whose life had been dragged into ruin by a rich man’s attentions, would fear this for him.
“You don’t have to worry. I can take care of myself,” said Alan firmly. “And if his lordship lays so much as a finger somewhere it’s not welcome, I’ll punch him in the nose myself. I swear.”
“Good. You might knock it back into shape,” Bella said, and giggled.
By the time Alan reached his attic room, Jack was standing by the narrow desk, running his fingertips thoughtfully over the surface. Jack was too big and grand for this room. He made it look tinier and shabbier.
“You’re out of luck. I haven’t any drafts,” Alan said spitefully. It was a lie. He had three half-started stories, pages curled up in the red-and-yellow cocoa tin that was his filing cabinet, and all of them featured a sardonic lord with dark hair and blue eyes. “You’ve seen the place. I hope it’s as much of a hovel as you expected. Now leave.”
“They’re obviously very proud of you,” said Jack, as if Alan hadn’t said anything.
“I meant it.”
“So did I.”
Silence. Alan gave up and went and sat on the edge of his bed, which would have fit Jack about as well as Violet’s couch fit Robin. The old boards creaked beneath Alan’s meagre weight and the thin mattress sagged. He was acutely aware of the haphazard pile of thin coverings, very different to the single thick, warm blanket that had adorned the guest bed in Jack’s house.
“My ma’s glad I bring in enough to pay the rent. But they don’t understand what I do, and it makes them uncomfortable not to understand.”
“Bullshit.”
“Don’t pretend you know anything about us,” Alan snapped. “You’ve been here half an hour. And Bella already thinks you’re here to change my occupation to prostitute. She understands that well enough.”
Jack looked genuinely startled. Then he laughed and his posture changed. Fuck, Alan shouldn’t have said anything. This was a room of hard angles, and Jack’s low voice shook it like thunder on the horizon.
“And how much am I paying you?”
Alan shook his head. The game didn’t belong here. None of Alan’s fantasies ever played out in this room. The cabins of pirate ships, yes, or the bedrooms and window seats of grand manor houses, or the dungeons of castles. Even if all went perfectly at Cheetham Hall, Alan would still have to live here, write here, exist here.
And if he had to sit at that desk and dwell in the memory of something gloriously real taking place beneath this low, slanted roof, he’d be starving and aching forever.
Alan rubbed a hand over his face. He said, because the exchange with Bella had put it into his head and he needed a topic as far from fucking as he could manage—“Did you ever hear of sin-eating?”
A pause. Jack had packed away his thunder when Alan didn’t respond to it; his voice was normal when he said, “No.”
“Welsh folklore. I read about it in one of Mr. Voight’s books. It seemed familiar at the time, even though there’s nothing Catholic about it. Someone would be paid to take on the sins of the freshly dead and leave them free for heaven. I read that and thought, right. That’s what I’m for.”
Alan had never been the oldest son or the coddled baby. He was the different one—the clever one. He’d barely been surprised when he was the invert one as well.
He used to have nightmares about being forced to eat stones until his feet sank into the earth, then knees and then hips and chest as he kept getting heavier and heavier, the weight shoving him all the way down to where the fires were.
He said, “It was simple enough. After my pa died, I was a forger and a thief and a pornographer, and it meant everyone else could stay respectable. And then one day I stopped believing in God. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “So I told myself, well, that’s something, now stop believing in sin as well. Just drop it on the ground and leave it behind. I thought—I thought it’d be such a relief.”
“But it’s hard to rid yourself of something you’ve been swallowing since you were too young to be revolted by the taste,” Jack said softly.