Kicking and Screaming
The day began in a dreary fashion. It was rainy and warm, and the air like a soggy blanket, but by afternoon, gusts of wind pushed back the clouds. Sunlight evaporated the larger puddles around Sussex Square. Carriages rattled on the cobblestone and splattered people's skirts and trousers as they left their homes and ran errands at the shops.
Elspeth Fry rode in a brougham carriage, her nose hovering near the window as the wheels took them up Stanhope Street, near the boutique where she purchased fragrance from Berdette Daugney. The gift had been begrudgingly received by her sister-in-law, but was wildly popular amongst her friends, a few of whom had complimented Ms. Fry on her tastes and asked after the shopkeeper who kept it in stock. She hoped to drop off a hand-written note of thanks to the proprietress.
As the carriage rolled past her destination, she let out an exasperated grunt. "Good lord, has he fallen asleep?" Leaning forward, she rapped to get the driver's attention. "I beg your pardon, but we seem to have gone past it! Sir!" She half-lifted off her seat and struck the carriage wall with the flat of her hand. The driver brought the horses to a rough stop and Elspeth caught herself on the backward-facing bench. Through the little viewing hole, she gave his back her most severe glare. She waited for him to dismount and open her door.
Out on the street, she thanked him and sorted through her purse, looking for the square of stationary paper. "Please return for me in an hour," she said. The driver closed the door, climbed onto his bench, and set the horses moving. Unfortunately, Elspeth's skirt was trapped in the door, a fact she did not realize until she felt a backwards tug.
Her eyes widened. "Wait!" She scurried alongside the carriage, trying to get a foot on the step.
Izzy had come to the conclusion that even if he had all the time in the world, he would not have recognized everyone who liked to consider themselves a regular at The Aviary, or thought of themselves as 'A close confidante of Mrs. Daugney.' There seemed to be a lot of these people, more than he usually saw in the shop and more than he generally imagined it would be possible to be close to. Puzzlingly, more and more of them seemed to know him, though he couldn't remember introducing himself to many of them.
So, it was pure luck that found him by the window, wherein he saw a woman who seemed to be headed towards the shop suddenly get jerked in the same direction as a carriage apparently driven by a blind man. Though she didn't look nearly as fashionable as some of the people he saw on a daily basis, he had a nagging suspicion that she'd been here before. Besides, she looked like she was having an awful time of it (though secretly he found it quite funny), and he wasn't as awful as to just let her get dragged along, potentially hurt. That was the kind of thing Londoners did and were doing right now.
He didn't have time to put on his jacket as he ran outside. He didn't tell anyone where he was going, he didn't expect to be gone for more than a few minutes. It didn't take him very long to catch up with the carriage, up to where the driver was sitting. It really seemed that he was genuinely unaware of what was happening just a few feet behind him.
"'Scuse me! Sir! Sir you might..." At first he thought the driver might have been deaf, and he thought that maybe if he just held on to the carriage he'd probably have been able to slow it down at least, but in the spirit of not making a big show out of it, he continued to yell until the driver took notice. Of course, he didn't deign to turn around, so no matter what Izzy looked like, to the driver he was just some kid, probably a troublemaker of some sort.
Indeed, there was nothing the man could have done except go faster and try to lose him.
"Stop! You stop this thing at once!" she cried. Elspeth was aware of the young boy's efforts, and also that he failed to catch the daft coachman's attention. Her little feet in their sensible boots hurried to keep up. Indeed, she was a wing and a prayer from meeting real disaster, if her shoe should catch in the cobblestone, or if her dress ripped and she wound up mangled under the wheel with her backside exposed for all of London.
Elspeth took a leap -- both of faith and the literal kind -- and got a toehold on the step. There she clung to the side of the runaway carriage, pounding on it with a mighty gloved hand. It did not occur to her to try and open the door. As they rounded a corner, her hat blew off. "Stop the... stop the bloody carriage!" Even in the midst of disaster, she knew it was a travesty of language and felt her face redden from more than exertion.
This was...a bit mad, he could tell even as he kept running, matching the speed of the carriage and continuing to try to catch the driver's attention in some way that would involve the man stopping and recognizing that there were two people chasing him. Yet it seemed that the man was one of those irritatingly stubborn people who perhaps had someplace to be and therefore the rest of the world didn't matter, least of all the two people who were following him.
After a few minutes of this, Izzy got quite fed up with the whole thing and decided that, scene or not, there was very little else he could do to get the driver to stop. In fact, he said as much, "If you ain't -" he grabbed onto the side of the carriage, "I'll damn well do it...for you!" He stopped very suddenly and dug his heels into the cobblestones, putting all his strength into stopping the carriage.
A small but fundamental problem arose, and Izzy realized it about a split-second later. The carriage, which had up to this point been very happy to continue moving forward, would have been moved backward if most of the regular forces had their way. Unfortunately, the horses were still moving forward until they began to freak out. Izzy, standing in one place, was more or less preventing both of these things from happening. The result of all this was that the carriage was now about to tip over. If Izzy could have gone clear, he probably would have in that instant. Fortunately, he managed to gather his wits enough to push it so that it managed to stay upright.
The driver noticed that. Indeed, once he'd managed to calm the horses down, his first course of action was to stalk right up to Izzy and shout, "What the devil are you about, boy?"
Izzy's most coherent response to this was a nervous, "I...she...you didn't..." and then turning to look at the woman, eyes pleading for some kind of interpretation of the very good response he would have been giving if he hadn't been so shocked.
Aghast at the coachman's accusation, Elspeth unleashed her vocals with the fury of a harpy. "Can't you see my dress is caught, you... nincompoop!?" At last able to step safely down, she did so and opened the door to release the fabric herself. Quite aware of their audience, Elspeth smoothed it into the best shape she could and advanced on the man. It was an effort to keep her volume down. "If--!" She breathed and tried again. "If it weren't for him, I've no doubt you would've dragged me back to the stables, Mr. Helmsley!"
Doing her best to ignore the laughter of onlookers, Elspeth directed herself to the boy. Because her back was to him during the rescue, she didn't see that his strength was what stopped the carriage's flight. "I thank you for your troubles. Are you alright?"
For his part, Izzy stood dumbly and thanked every single one of his lucky stars by name that nothing terrible had happened. Like, for instance, the carriage could have fallen over. He'd have likely survived but God only knew the woman probably wouldn't have, even if, from where he currently stood, she looked like she might have just punched through it. There were people staring now, people laughing. It was all rather ridiculous, when he thought about it, and even though he glared at a few of the onlookers, he wanted to laugh too.
"Oh, no, I'm perfectly fine madam," he said, before a repressed laugh forced itself up his throat and out of his mouth. Once it stopped, he tried to look a little bit more respectable when he said, "It's no trouble at all, really. Just something any decent person would have done." He felt rather silly saying that and immediately wished he could have taken it back.
"Then I am fortunate there's one decent person in London," she said, casting a pernicious look at the throng of afternoon shoppers. Someone cleared his throat. A woman tittered. They disbanded, though talk continued of the incident. For her part, the brunette found no humor in the incident. Had she the ability to laugh away small catastrophes, Elspeth might have found herself the brunt of jokes less often.
Her fingers combed at her hair. The pins kept it coiffed, but her hat was missing. Doubtful she'd want to reclaim it, as it landed on the thoroughfare where horses dropped manure. "May I pay you for your kindness?" she asked, pulling her gloves tightly onto her fingers. Her purse swing from its strap around her wrist. "Please pardon me if that's a rude suggestion. I'm afraid there isn't much social protocol for how to behave in a situation like ours."
Izzy gave a wry smile. "Well, I'm not from around here, so I suppose I might not know how things work." From her demeanor, he guessed that the woman really didn't find this whole situation as humorous as he did, or indeed humorous at all. Despite her slightly disheveled appearance, she looked like one of those perfectly respectable and proper people, probably upper middle-class. As much as he hated to admit it, Izzy's former occupation had given him a good eye for that sort of thing. She did look younger than he'd first thought, but she held herself like someone much older.
His knee-jerk reaction was to take whatever he could get, but his reason kicked his knee-jerk reaction in the shins and told it to at least be more tactful about it. "I suppose there might be," he said somewhat airily, "There's something for every situation, I've noticed," then his voice grew more polite and sincere, "But I couldn't take anything, really." It was the kind of statement that gave the not-so-subtle subtext that the proper response was 'No, I insist.'
Or...
"Don't be ridiculous." Elspeth waved her hand and opened her purse. She withdrew enough currency to cover his meals for a few days, if he had a regular appetite, and pressed it into his palm. "I would offer more, but I'm afraid I don't carry much on my person. Should anyone get the urge to club me over the head, they shall be a disappointed thief, indeed." Having settled that, she felt better about the incident. "There now." She cleared her throat.
At age twenty-six, Elspeth had a stretch of youth left in her, but the coarseness of her manners did suggest a woman of advanced years. She guessed the young man to be eighteen or so, though a sickly fellow, if his pallor was anything to judge by. Motherly instincts might have encouraged her to check his forehead for fever, if she possessed any of them. "I was just on my way to a shop," she said, swinging her arm in the direction from which they'd come.
Pocketing the money, Izzy smiled a little to himself, and then a bit more politely to the woman as he said, "If you insist. You're far too generous, ma'am, but thank you." She'd given him quite a bit, so perhaps he should have felt a little guilty, but damn if he didn't need all the help he could get. Besides, she'd given it to him willingly, and it might make up for whatever Mrs. Daugney decided to dock out of his pay for abandoning his position for...oh Jesus, he hadn't expected it to take this long.
He grew a nervous as he realized this, and began to think of ways of getting out of this situation as quickly as he could so that he wouldn't be admonished too badly. Every minute counted, in his opinion. Wait. The woman had been going towards The Aviary, how could he have possibly forgotten? Maybe she wasn't going there, but if she wasn't maybe he could convince her to. After all, if he was going to leave he might as well come back with customers. "Oh! In Sussex Square?" he suddenly seemed a lot perkier, "I work there - at The Aviary. I could walk you to wherever you're going."
"Well, that is a coincidence," she said, tilting her face. "That is the same shop." Elspeth studied him more closely, her fingers kneading her purse. If he worked there, perhaps he did the lifting for Mrs. Daugney, helped with shipping orders and such. She considered passing him the note for the shopkeeper and going about her business, but thought better of it. If the young man had risked life and limb to rescue Elspeth from her own carriage, she could accompany him. She might be of assistance if he was scolded for his absence.
"Very well." Elspeth stepped around him to walk a bit closer to the buildings. "I'm Elspeth Fry."
Had he seen her before? He wasn't entirely certain, but his first reaction was something along the lines of 'No, absolutely not,' and it was probably right. After all, as bad as he was with names, faces weren't much of a problem for him. He wondered if this was her first time going to the shop. "Really?" he continued in the same cheerful tone, "Were you looking for anything in particular? I'm not exactly an expert on perfumes, but I know most of what we have in stock and I might be able to help you."
As he looked around, Izzy discovered they weren't far from the shop. That was a relief. "Izzy Alderdice," he replied with a bit more confidence than he should have. "Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Fry."
"It's lovely to make your acquaintance, Mr. Alderdice. I made a purchase at the shop earlier this month," she said. For each step that the young man made, Elspeth took two, but she had a no-nonsense gait and kept up admirably. "I wanted to leave a note for the proprietress, Mrs. Daugney. It really was an excellent selection and I owe her my gratitude." At a large puddle, she did her best to maneuver around it, but her boot sunk into muck regardless. Her face, which was very pretty when she smiled, soured instead. "It is unpleasant to shop for difficult people. The sister of my late husband is the queen of difficult people."
She shielded her eyes from the sun. "What do you do for Mrs. Daugney, if I may ask?"
"Oh, I see." So she probably wouldn't be buying anything today, or at least didn't expect to. If nothing else, perhaps Miss Lascelles could convince her otherwise, since he wasn't entirely sure if Mrs. Daugney was in the shop right at this moment. If she was, Mrs. Fry would definitely be walking out of there with a few things she hadn't intended on buying but looked ever so nice. "My condolences," he said when she mentioned her late husband, and moved a bit more into the street so that she wouldn't step in any more puddles, though that seemed like a futile exercise as there were so many of them.
"I take care of the birds for her," he replied.
"Ah." Elspeth nodded, though she was surprised by the answer. "Do they... do they require vigorous upkeep?" Having never owned anything more exotic than a horse, she had no understanding of what birds might need, besides seed and clean cages. Perhaps he was a charmer of sorts, and could lure them to sit on his shoulder while he fed them treats. She decided he did look disheveled, as if one had stirred up his hair before he left the shop.
How many birds had there been? When last in The Aviary, Elspeth was so determined to avoid eye contact with the customers that she didn't notice Mrs. Daugney's collection.
"No, not really," replied Izzy, "It all depends on the day, I suppose, and some of 'em require different kinds of food, but they're the sweetest creatures you ever met." Even if, according to some reading he'd been doing, they really weren't supposed to be. And he supposed 'sweet' wouldn't have been the right word for them, though it was certainly the kindest.
"I must confess, I do not consider them sweet when they're soiling my hats," Elspeth said wryly. The prettier the hat, the more attractive a target it made. "Once, when I was a girl, a pigeon swooped down and stole a bread crust out of my hand! I had always thought of birds as skittish creatures, but that altered my opinion. Mrs. Daugney doesn't cater to pigeons, though, does she." It wasn't really a question, just a way of making conversation as they covered the short distance. Elspeth thought back on that bird's nest under the bridge with its enormous, wobbling eggs. She pressed a hand to her mouth.
"Well, I don't think any of the species she keeps would be soiling your hat, at least in London. I don't think you could find any of them here, unless they were in someone's collection." In fact, he had found that at least one species Mrs. Daugney kept was supposed to have gone extinct at least five years ago, maybe more. He assumed she or whoever caught the birds for her had just gotten to it before that point.
They rounded a corner and the shop was now in sight. "Well, here we are."
Elspeth nodded. When they came to the door, she waited for Izzy to open it and ducked into the fragrant shop. "Thank you for the escort," she said, taking the little note from her purse. She craned her neck but did not see Berdette; there was another woman tending to customers. She waited a moment to make sure Izzy wasn't cajoled a second time. "If I may leave this for her?" Elspeth's eyebrows lifted in question and she extended the note to him.
Opening the door and giving Mrs. Fry a small, dismissive wave, Izzy replied, "It was nothing, really. No trouble at all." Of course, from the glare Miss Lascelles shot him, he expected there would be some kind of trouble, but then when she saw Mrs. Fry her expression softened a bit. Taking the note, Izzy replied, "Certainly. I'll make sure it gets to her."
Elspeth fiddled with the handle of her purse. She looked at the birds in their decorative cages, whose songs complemented one another in an aviary choir. Odd, really, now that she thought on it, that none of them squawked. They must have been selected for their songs. Elspeth returned her focus to the pale Mr. Alderdice. "Good afternoon, then." Having no reason to dawdle, she breathed in the perfumed air and stepped out of the shop.