Birdcage Walk by Kate Riordan Page B

pavement.
    He got up, feeling faint from lack of food, and crossed the road to squint at the clock’s hands. It was gone ten. More than two hours could not now be recaptured but it was still not late. He thought that if he made his way a little further along the Holloway Road there might be a bakery where he could get a bun for one of the coins that had found its way between the stitching of his jacket pocket to drop into the lining. He could feel their outlines between his finger and thumb along the hem. It was just as he was attempting to extract the largest, surely a penny, his fingers casting about and making the pocket’s hole even bigger, when a pair of neat velvet slippers the colour of brandy stopped just in front of him.
    “It’s Mr. Woolfe, isn’t it? George Woolfe?” asked the light, musical voice that he had cursed himself for forgetting so quickly after their meeting. She was wearing an outfit festooned with all manner of complicated ribbons and clasps. Above them, her eyes were bright and merry.
    “Mama, this is the birdcage-maker’s son who delivered Uncle Charles’s present,” she said, turning to the older woman next to her. “Do you remember I told you about him and how he must come and look at father’s books? You must remember.”
    Mrs. Drew was a slightly collapsed version of her daughter, and though she stood only a shade shorter, she was many inches stouter around the middle. Her hair, which looked to George like nothing so much as a clump of wire wool, was frizzed out in a puff quite different to the shiny rope that reached down Miss Clemmie’s back. It was the eyes that made for an uncanny likeness; only the slightly creped skin around the older pair distinguished them.
    “Hello Miss, and Mrs. Drew,” he stammered, hoping he had remembered the name correctly.
    “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Woolfe,” said the lady, inclining her head slightly. “My daughter loves her birdcage and has a pair of canaries to go inside it now. You must tell your father how impressed we were by his skill, I don’t think I’ve seen a finer cage. Do you live close by?”
    Before George could answer, Clemmie spoke up. “No, mama, he lives in Hoxton, don’t you, George? Uncle Charles told me. He made notes on George’s street for his study.”
    “Ah, Hoxton. I know of it,” said Mrs. Drew vaguely. “So, what brings you to the Holloway Road this morning, young man?”
    George was suddenly at a loss for an answer he would admit to and, feeling his cheeks colouring, simply stared at his feet while he tried to extract his hand through the pocket hole as unobtrusively as possible. After a long moment, when it seemed to George that the bustle and tumult of the surrounding street had also quietened in anticipation of his excuse for being there, the girl spoke up for him again.
    “I expect you have been running errands for your father again, haven’t you?” she said. “That must be it.”
    He looked up and saw that she was not teasing him and this emboldened him to nod and even smile thinly in the direction of Mrs. Drew. “Yes, that’s right,” he said slowly, the new notion taking shape in his mind. “I’ve already delivered the cage I brought with me, as you can see, and so I’ll be going now, back home.”
    “Well, you can walk with us part of the way, can’t you?” asked Clemmie, glancing at her mother.
    Mrs. Drew nodded her permission thoughtfully. “George, if you’re not in a dreadful hurry to return home, there’s something you could do for me, just a small job,” she said. “You see, my husband Captain Drew is away on his ship, and we are all women in the house. I wanted something fetched down from the attic but it’s far too heavy for our maid to lift and I am too old for such things.”
    She held out two small, pudgy hands that were studded with half a dozen gold rings. “Would you mind bringing it down for me? It would only take a healthy boy like you a few minutes.”
    George was