Free The Singing Fire by Lilian Nattel Page A

of light and dark came in through the cracks with the whistling wind as she listened to the sounds of the lodging house. Mice in the walls. Feet on the stairs. The squeaking of beds on old floors. Shouting. A thump. A song. Coughing. That was Sally, sitting on the floor, resting her head and arms on the bed. Nehama was naked. Even her thin nightgown had been taken away so she wouldn’t leave the room. She thought it was Sally who’d covered her with the blanket. In the stupor of her waking and sleeping, it felt like a soft blanket. Soft and thick. The beating hadn’t got rid of the baby. Anything was believable.
    “Are you awake?” Sally asked. “There’s something for you to eat.”
    Nehama shook her head. She only wanted to talk about the seaside. The promenades. The donkey rides. The colored sand and shells and pebbles to arrange in a box with seaweed. The theater at the end of the pier. “When my horse places, we’ll go to Brighton,” she said.
    “Then I’ll want a chair for the beach,” Sally said. Her short hair stood around her head in thin puffs.
    “We’ll hire two. And have a bag of cherries.” Nehama touched a wisp of her dark hair. The baby’s would be fair. There would be a cap trimmed with lace to protect it from the sun.
    “A drop of white satin for me.” Sally didn’t care how thin a gown she wore. It could be as transparent as glass. But as long as there was the feel of cloth against her skin, she believed that her body wasn’t visible, and she was sure that the priest would give her absolution before her death because no man had seen her naked.
    “Not me. I’ll drink chocolate made with cream and whipped egg.”
    “We’ll swim in a bathing machine.”
    “For hours,” Nehama said. But the blanket was starting to scratchher. It was made of rough, cheap wool, and her eyes watered, the tears mixed with mud.
    The air was mild, the sun shining palely, and Nehama could hear bells—maybe a school bell or a church bell. She sat hunched in the doorway of the Horn and Plenty, watching the sign swing on one bolt as if about to fall but never falling. No one paid her any mind. A dead wife could lie on a table for a week for want of money to bury her, and there were plenty of men and women smoking a fag or nursing a wound, crouched in the doorways of doss-houses.
    The baby was coming out of Nehama like a foggy drizzle. What luck, the other girls would say. The rags she’d stuffed into her underthings were soaked. It must be four o’clock. The muffin man was ringing his bell, a tray of muffins on his head. The sad-looking costermonger with his barrow of old vegetables bought a muffin for tea. So did the knife grinder, and also the little tailor that mended whores’ dresses, stepping high as if he might avoid the muck of sewage and blown-about rubbish.
    Sally opened the door. “The Squire’s placing his bets. I’m to stay with you till he’s done.” She took a drink from her bottle of laudanum. Soon her eyes would glaze. “You’re looking awful white.”
    “So what?” Nehama was losing the baby and with it every desire. Eating was too much effort. Sleeping impossible. Her friends would have to watch out for themselves. Sally held out the bottle of laudanum, but Nehama shook her head. She needed nothing.
    Sally pulled her bonnet forward. “The sun’s in my eyes. And I’m getting awfully sleepy.” She sat down on the step. “Someone might beg a copper off a cove and go to the infirmary and I wouldn’t know nothing.” Her voice was very soft and tired.
    “Someone might.” Nehama didn’t move. The Horn and Plenty stood at the corner of Dorset Street and Bell Lane. Within a block there were Jewish shops. It was as close as that, her old life. But she was someone else now, a bit of cabbage leaf left on the ground at midnight when the Saturday night market packed up and the lamps went dark.
    “There’s not much left in this bottle. I’ll have another drop, I think.” Sally leaned