Page 43 of A Ruse of Shadows
Charlotte did, however, manage to locate Johnny at his construction site. The day was overcast and relatively cool, not bad for working outside. And Johnny had already made substantial progress on the wall he was building. He was climbing down the scaffolding as she arrived.
“May I have the pleasure of buying you your luncheon, Mr. Esposito?”
“I brought my lunch, and I’d best eat it. But if you’re in a generous mood, Mr. Herrinmore,” answered Johnny, rinsing the mortar from his hands, “I wouldn’t mind having something to take back to the family.”
Charlotte promptly crossed the busy intersection and bought a trio of grilled sausages and a ham pie from a street vendor. When she came back, Johnny had laid out his lunch on a plank set upon two stacks of bricks. His meal consisted of a single sandwich, whichlooked substantial at first glance, but on closer examination turned out to be only two slabs of bread with an almost invisible layer of butter in between.
Johnny stared at the glistening, faintly blistered sausages she set down before him. “Thank you. My family will enjoy these.”
“These aren’t for your family—I’ll buy some for them later. These are for you, for lunch. A man who works all day ought to have more than bread for lunch.”
Johnny, for whom pride must be an unattainable luxury, offered no protests. He thanked “Mr. Herrinmore” and tucked into the bounty. And only after he’d polished off everything Charlotte had bought did he pause to say, “Today it isn’t only bread. There’s butter and a bit of sheep’s trotter inside, too. Plenty enough to get me through the rest of the day.”
He asked for so little, this young man.
Or maybe it was more accurate to say that he was accustomed to almost nothing and expected even that to be taken away.
“I was looking for your friends, Mumble and Jessie. I might have bought them luncheon if I’d found them, but I didn’t.”
“Guess it’s my lucky day then.” Johnny pinched a bite from his sandwich. “They weren’t at work?”
“No. Do you know where they live?”
He shook his head.
“I thought you all were good friends.”
He chewed without speaking. All around them, workers carted squeaky wheelbarrows back and forth. Sandwich board men trundled by, advertising custard powders and shoe polish. A bobby blew his whistle on the next street, shouting for a pair of unruly drivers to behave themselves.
Just as Charlotte thought Johnny wasn’t going to answer her, he said, “We are—weareall friends.”
His tone, both hesitant and emphatic, as if he’d just come to that conclusion himself…
“Last year Jessie baked a beautiful cake for my mamma’s birthday.It was decorated like a garden, with roses and tulips made from marzipan—all because Mamma told her that she wished she had a garden.
“Mumble…” He touched the inside of his bare forearm, still splattered with bits of mortar, as if at a sudden recollection. “After Mr. Underwood became my sponsor, I put my brothers back into school. But it was hard—they were behind all the other pupils. When Mumble came along, I asked if he could help them. He reads a book a day, Mumble—the bookbinder has rooms full of books at home and loans them to him by the boxful. And he’s good with numbers, too, from looking after the shop’s accounts. So Mumble came on Saturday evenings for a full year to catch them up.
“And every time he came, Jessie sent along baked goods from the tea shop. They said those were stale buns and biscuits that Mrs. Hatfield let Jessie have for next to nothing, but they tasted perfectly fresh to me, and I don’t think Mrs. Hatfield is all that generous.”
He took another bite from his brick of a sandwich. After three sausages and a ham pie, and a sizable supper the previous evening, Charlotte doubted that his stomach wanted more food. But he ate with the same doggedness with which he’d endured—and overcome—the boxing match.
“Yes, we are friends,” he repeated, “even if I don’t know where they live.”
His voice fell. “Even if they won’t let me do anything for them in return.”
A street musician began playing nearby, a violin rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major.
Johnny listened for some time and said, rather savagely, “Mumble plays much better.”
Mumble, Charlotte was beginning to think, could do no wrong in this young man’s eyes.
“Do they live together, Mumble and Jessie?”
“I think so, but don’t get the wrong idea. They’re foster siblings—they grew up together.”
The thought that someone might get the wrong idea about Mumble and Jessie seemed to bother him—and Charlotte didn’t think his anxiety was on Jessie’s behalf. “How long have you known them?”
“Two and a half years—since the beginning of ’85.”
