The Doppelgänger of Dormond Street by Sue Harry

4. Mr Jasper Roundtree

They'll be sorry. They'll all be sorry for overlooking Master Jasper. When my beautiful Clara returns from her Journey, they'll all show me the respect I deserve. Until then I'll paint, I'll hammer, I'll scrape, I'll bow. I'm an Inlander, born a stones throw away from The Three no less, and we inlanders know how to work. 'An honest days pay for an honest days labour', my father always said, Gawd rest his soul.

The poor blighter worked himself into the ground, slaving for them families. He was up before the sun and home long after it set, without a word of complaint and barely any money to show for it. My mother never let him hear the last of it, and being that she made a tidy living using Folk Magic, he was lucky she stayed with him. The fights they'd get into could be heard throughout The Three. I used to wrap my head with my own pillow to drown out the old witch, and when my Dad had had enough, he would drown himself in a jug of sour wine and pass out, if he was lucky.

'Oh Good morning to you, Mr Fomonkov Sir, should be very pleasant today', I smiled at the over dressed fop as he walked away and then spat into the dust at my feet. I'd already been up for three hours, doing maintenance on a train station that barely ever saw a train. Pleasant day indeed. If I had my dear old Mothers skills, I'd pitch Mr Fomonkov flat on his face in the mud. Now that would be the makings of a pleasant day, to my mind.

I've woken up on the wrong side of the bed, I know it. Its been nearly a year since Miss Clara left and she hasn't even bothered to write. I know she is busy with acquiring her stuff and whatnot, but she wasn't too busy to write to her parents. She is on the coast in Bandum, where the people are brown, the sea is blue and the sand is white. She says she is staying with people who are friends with one of the Families in The One. She is happy and rested and doesn't know how much longer she will stay but she promises she will let them know.

I kept the letter for five days, reading and rereading it, just to be close to her, before resealing it and delivering it to them myself. They were so overjoyed to get it that they damn near slammed the door in my face without so much as a thank you. I felt like screaming, 'I'm to be your son soon, you cretins!', but my Clara wouldn't like that behaviour. No, she was a good girl, from a good family, and I was a lucky man that she gave me the time of day.

I was also lucky that the boy her parents wanted to wed her to was as odd looking as his odd looking father. Mrs Tolley, a Matriarch that lived on the West side of town, was married to Mr Bellenbaum. He is a man with a massive belly, a tiny head and massive feet. What had possessed her to marry him and then have nineteen of his children, I couldnt guess, but his twelve sons look just like him but with a little more hair.

Clara had come crying to me when it was suggested she marry their youngest boy, Matthew. Already ample in the waist and losing no small amount of hair on top, Matthew couldn't be described as a looker, and from what Clara said, no amount of cologne and bath oil could hide the fact that the poor boy had a problem with his armpits. Also, he isn't the sharpest knife in the draw. He carries a book under his arm to impress the girls, but they all know he started that book a year ago. Matthew Tolley has a laundry list of problems and she was rightfully horrified to be saddled with them.

Now, I cant be sure, and far be it from me to accuse my beloved of fabricating, but a few weeks after her parents suggested she should marry Matthew, she said she felt The Pull. I don't understand all of that, but I suspect, that instead of a pull towards some old necklace or teacup, my Clara felt a push in the opposite direction of Matthew Tolley. Notwithstanding, her parents were excited that their daughter was becoming a woman and packed her off to go on her first Journey without an argument. Here we are, a year later, and she is still getting the Pull. Or Push. Who knows.

'Good day to you, Mrs Mare. Looks like it's going to be very pleasant'. The old Matriarch was shuffling past the station entrance in her massive noisy dress, with a large bunch of flowers in one hand, and some books that were held together with string in the other. She stopped when she heard my greeting, turned and stared at me. Feeling uncomfortable, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I hated this woman but I continued smiling at her as she stared at me.