Wattle Circus: Chapter Fourteen
Abigail wondered who this man was, and why he was telling her all of this, speaking to her as though she was an adult. She still had no idea where she was being taken and when she looked up at him, he must have sensed the confusion.
“Oh, did nobody tell you? You’re off to court today, Abigail, they have decided to send you to trial. You will be represented, of course, there will be a lawyer arguing your case. Obviously you haven’t met him yet, but it little matters, it’s all just for show anyway.
“Unless, of course, you can produce names. You will still be in a lot of trouble, I cannot say what example they will make out of you, but if they have names then they can spread that example around, show that they’re getting on top of all this petty theft the good people of London fear has spiralled out of control.”
He paused, picking a small piece of lint off his trousers and holding it up for a closer look, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. Abigail saw that he looked quite snug despite the chill, almost lost inside a heavy coat with two sets of tarnished buttons running its whole length, a wide belt hitching it to his waist and a broad collar that went right up to his jowls. He held his tall stiff hat in his lap, running a finger around the top of it absent-mindedly. Dark eyebrows dipped towards each other over a sharp nose, making him look as though he was perennially questioning the world around him.
“Now this is no different to anywhere else, Abigail, not some particularly idiosyncratic London way of doing things. This is the way of the world, people like you, people like me, we’re just faceless cogs in a far larger machine, a colourful backdrop to the fabulous lives of the great. We’re not part of history, no book will ever tell of our lives, or laughs, our loves. The closest we will come is if we drift too closely to the lives of those who matter, our waxen wings melting in their glow.”
Abigail watched his hands flutter like detached wings then crumple into his lap.
“As I see it, there are three things that can happen here. Do you believe in fate, Abigail?”
Abigail had actually been thinking about this exact question over the last few days. She felt it had been fate that her aunt had found her, fate that brought her mother’s book into her life. But how could she explain this latest disaster? How could these events unfolding out of her control be her fate? She had done no wrong by anybody, so surely fate should not do wrong by her?
“I, I guess I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Sometimes I do, but other times I really don’t know why things are happening. Until this week not much happened to me at all, now it seems everything is happening.”
Abigail was surprised to have been so open, but there was something about this young policeman’s honesty that seemed to have drawn her out.
“Well I do,” he said, “and that’s why I’m giving you these three possibilities. I honestly believe that whichever you take, the outcome will end up being what it is bound to be. We may think we can trick it, escape it, put it off or avoid it all together, but my feeling is that simply sends you all the more quickly to where you were inevitably and always going to find yourself.
“People speak of choice, but we are here right now, having this conversation, because we were always going to be. If we weren’t, then we wouldn’t, would we? But because we were, we are. That’s not choice, that’s just that. Dodge one way, dodge the other, fate will always tell.”
Abigail thought about what he said, but really did not know. If this was true, then all this was really out of her hands, as she had always felt.
“So here is how it is. You may or may not have noticed, but when we got into the carriage I didn’t latch the door. When we stop at the next corner, you open the carriage door, jump out, run and run and don’t turn back. That’s your first option, and I won’t raise a hue and cry until you’ve cleared off.
“Alternatively, I can give you some names of people we know are caught up in just this kind of racket. They’re bad people, Abigail, they take advantage of young people just like you. You wouldn’t be telling us anything we didn’t already know about them, and their time is up either way.
“Your third option, otherwise, is to stick to your story, refuse to admit you were involved, and have the system do what it intends to do with you. They won’t believe you, they can’t believe you. But you will know you stayed true to yourself.”
Abigail felt the carriage rolling to a stop. She looked out the window and saw they had by now travelled some way across town. They had just passed St Pauls Cathedral and were approaching St Martin within Ludgate, just around the corner from the Old Bailey. If this was indeed the court that had been chosen for her trial, she knew it was serious.
As the carriage waited at the corner for a chance to turn north, Abigail saw that it would, indeed, be quite simple to launch herself out into the busy streets, weaving between passersby and shooting into a side alley. But where could she go? What could she do? She wouldn’t know how to find her aunt and uncle, so she would have to return to Horlicks, and surely the authorities would send someone there.
She considered the second option, using the name of someone who was known to be a criminal already. But the obvious drawback with this was admitting she had done wrong, something she still could not bring herself to do. Abigail looked up at Carringford, who seemed to be observing her lazily, as though just another passenger on an ordinary ride across town. That this was the most momentous decision of her life to date could not be told by anything other than her own awareness of the matter, so casually did Carringford sit and wait to hear her speak.
“I will have my trial,” Abigail said, pleased to hear her voice did not waver for a moment. “I will tell them things exactly as they are.”
