Charles Palliser (39 page)

“Longer back than that, dad,” the woman put in, with a meaningful glance at me.

“You’ve been laid up of that leg of yourn for more than a year.”

“ ‘Why, Sam’el,’ he said to me,” the old man continued, ignoring her words, “ ‘it does a man good jist to lay eyes on you. I declare, your phiz’d ripen cowcumbers.’ That’s what he said,” old Samuel said chuckling. “ ‘Your face’d ripen cowcumbers.’ ”

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“Do you know how I can find any of these men?”

“That I don’t for I nivver heerd tell what become of Barney beyond that he ’tended the floatin’ ’Cademy at Gravesend.”

He began to cackle and I glanced at the daughter who shook her head at me in bewilderment.

“And the others? Where do Isbister and Pulvertaft live?”

“Isbister lives in Parliament-street hard by Bethnal-green. Now is it No. 8 or No. 9?”

“And Pulvertaft?”

“I’ve heerd tell he lives in a nethersken in what they call the Old Manor-house down the Old Mint.”

“Father, you’re going back nigh on ten year now,” his daughter protested.

Seeing there was no more to be got from him, I expressed my gratitude and rose to leave.

“Come again, young feller,” he called out. “Maybe I’ll mind some more.”

As his daughter let me out she held the door between me and her father and said:

“Now he’s stuck up here all day, and nobody don’t bother with him, he don’t care what he says to be took notice of.”

I thanked her and went back to my mother. I found that she had recovered her cheerfulness for there was colour in her cheeks again and when I said I had had some success, she greeted the news with a cry of joy and clapped her hands. I tried to emphasize how indirect was the connexion with Mrs Digweed that I had found, but she hardly listened. She had forgotten her lack of interest in finding her and was all for setting off immediately. Mrs Sackbutt confirmed to me what I had suspected about the relative distances of the two addresses I had learned: Bethnal-green was fairly near, but the Mint was on the other side of the metropolis.

“Bethnal-green!” my mother exclaimed. “Why I remember it. Uncle Martin had a summer-house there. It’s so pretty! Do let’s go there!”

Fate seemed to have determined that it should be so, and therefore we took leave of our kind hostess and set off. There was a light rain falling, but oblivious to this my mother was laughing and smiling as we walked along Wentworth-street and turned up Brick-lane.

“I don’t like to see you like this,” I said.

Her smile faded as if she had been struck : “You only want me to be miserable. “

“Of course I don’t. But you must keep a hold on yourself.”

“Why? What does anything matter any more!” she said.

“That’s silly.”

“We mustn’t quarrel!” she cried and stopped then flung her arms around me. “It’ll be all right, Johnnie. I know it will. We will find the Digweeds and stay with them. And then perhaps find work. Or if we have to, we will go to Sir Perceval and sell the codicil to him.

You’ll see. It will all come right at last.”

“Of course it will,” I said, detaching myself from her embrace.

Though it was late afternoon and the dusk was gathering, carts and waggons were rumbling busily past us and the pavements, cracked and broken in many places, were crowded with ragged foot-passengers.

Once we were in Bethnal-green-road, I tried to use the map (which fortunately I had in my jacket pocket when I left Mrs Philliber’s) but it bore little resemblance to this district, for whole streets of houses stood where according to the design there should have been gardens. The metropolis was growing so

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fast that the map was already out of date, although it had been published only a few months after my birth.

“I remember this road so well,” my mother said, looking around. “We used to come here on Sundays in the summer when I was about your age. It was so peaceful. You’ll see, the countryside begins just here. We would hire a coach and Uncle Marty’s servant would come on ahead and lay out the food in the summer-house so that it would be waiting for us.”

After a few minutes, however, I could see that she was puzzled by the absence of countryside or gardens. And when she saw a church on our right she said: “I’m sure I remember this. And yet it seems so different.”

For some time we had been passing row upon row of little two-roomed or four-roomed dwellings in straggling streets or stifling courts, and now she glanced at me several times in growing perplexity.

“Are we lost?” I asked.

“I don’t understand: we should be there by now. I don’t remember any of this.”

“I believe this might be the place, Mamma. Look, that court is called Mulberry-gardens. These houses look new although they’re so broken down.”

She spoke in a faint and distant voice: “I believe you may be right.”

“And look,” I cried, “there are summer-houses.”

In an overgrown piece of waste-ground just off the high-road were a number of single-storied wooden buildings with verandahs and projecting supports for canvas awnings that must have once fluttered in the summer breeze. Now, however, they were rotting, green slime covered the walls, and they were near collapse, for they were forty or fifty years old. Yet to our surprise there were dim lights in them and we saw people entering and leaving.

As we advanced my mother became more and more upset and when she clutched my arm I could feel that she was trembling.

“Where was Uncle Marty’s summer-house?” I asked. “Can you remember? Perhaps it is still there?”

“I don’t want to see it!” she cried. “Oh Johnnie, everything’s so horrible now, I can’t bear it!”

We quickened our pace and hurried through the darkening streets until we reached the Green. There we enquired out the way, and had great difficulty in finding Parliament-street which turned out to be a dark little conspiracy of tiny houses crouched around a gloomy and diminutive square. Like most of those that had been thrown up in the last few years, it had a built-up parapet with a roof rising above it like a high hat, and windows that were too large for the front and looked like bulging eyes. We had no difficulty finding the house we sought, for a cart stood outside No. 8 bearing on its side the painted legend “Jeremy Isbister: General Carrier”.

A burly unshaven man of about forty opened the door to our knock. He had small bloodshot eyes on either side of a prominent but broken nose, and wore a neckcloth which was none too clean. He stared at us with hostility from orbs that were like the

“eyes” of a potato that remain when it has been peeled, deep and black in the white flesh. His close-shaven scull, too, was like a fuzzy potato with its knobs and dents all visible. His big head was held low as if, like a cautious turtle’s, it was ready to disappear back between the shoulder-blades.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

“We are friends of the Digweeds,” I said.

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“Digweed!” he exclaimed in dismay. “Did he send you here?”

“No,” I answered. “And it is Mrs Digweed that we know.”

He scrutinised us: “I nivver heerd o’ no Mrs Digweed. What’s your business with her? Who sent you here?”

“If you are Mr Isbister, we were told you know a man called Barney, who is some kind of kin to Mrs Digweed.”

The small eyes appeared to me to widen, but he began to close the door saying “I don’t know no Barney. Is that good enough for you?”

At this my mother gave a cry and staggered against me so that I had to hold her up.

The man looked at her curiously: “She looks about done up. Don’t you have nowhere to go?”

I shook my head.

“Nor much blunt, I s’pose?”

I shook my head again: “We hoped to find shelter with Mrs Digweed.”

He looked at me with an appraising expression: “You’re a bright lad,” he said. “I’ll wager you can read?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Anything at all, print or writing?”

“Yes.”

“And write a fine genel’manlike hand, too?”

“That too,” I agreed.

He stared at me intently with his mouth slightly open but he said no more and I turned away, supporting my mother as best I could. When we had taken only a few steps he called out: “Wait! Do you want a shake-down for tonight?”

I turned back but hesitated.

“I have a chamber free,” he went on, “what I lets in the usual run o’ things. I had to turn the last fambly out a couple of nights back. You can have it tonight for ten-pence.”

“I think we should go on, Mamma,” I whispered.

“Oh let us take it for tonight, Johnnie,” my mother said. “I am so tired.”

Mr Isbister was listening to our conversation anxiously.

“May we see it?” I asked.

He turned and advanced into the passage, and as he did so bellowed: “Molly!”

He looked back and impatiently beckoned us with his head to come inside. As we stepped across the threshold into the dark passage, a strange smell that I could not identify struck me: it wasn’t just the cabbagey, potatoey, smell of the poor that I had become familiar with, but something darker and earthier. As we jostled each other in the narrow passage a big slatternly woman appeared from the back room.

She had been baking and was wiping her floury hands on her pin-before, but it seemed to me that there was something indefinably unclean about her. In the midst of her mealy-white fat face that was floury and doughy (like the ill-baked bread and cakes that I was to learn she was constantly making), lurked two deep black eyes. It was a habit of hers constantly to wipe her hands on her dirty apron as if — it seemed to me —

preparing to use her fists.

“What do you want?” she said irritably.

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The man jerked his head at us: “They want the chamber for tonight.”

She looked at us contemptuously: “Can you pay?”

“We’d like to see it first,” I said.

“First pair back,” she said.

“You can take it for the week for two shillings and six-pence,” the man said suddenly.

“Oh can they!” exclaimed the woman angrily.

As her husband took her arm and said something in an undertone, my mother and I went upstairs. The room was small and dark with one soot-begrimed little window which looked into a dirty back-yard. There was an ancient truckle-bed which was stripped bare and a thin straw palliasse on the floor. We looked at each other in dismay.

“It’s very dear for one night,” I objected, wrinkling up my nose at the smell of damp and that something else that seemed to pervade the house. “I don’t like those people. I don’t think we should stay.”

“But it’s getting late and I can’t go any further. I can’t, Johnnie. I don’t want to go onto those streets again. And where would we go?”

“Well,” I said. “Just for one night.”

When we got downstairs Mr Isbister was standing in the dim passage and smiling.

“Will you do me and me wife the honour to take a glass o’ best nine-penny with us, ma’am?”

My mother nodded and made to enter the parlour but Mr Isbister put his arm out and held the door: “Why, the parlour ain’t fit for company jist now.” He turned and led the way into the kitchen where he poured a large tumbler of gin for each of us, and healths were drunk. I left mine untasted.

“Well, my dears,” Mrs Isbister said with a simper that was more disquieting than her previous hostility, “is the room to your liking?”

“We wish to take it for one night,” I said.

“I see who makes the decisions!” cried Mrs Isbister. “Bless him, he’s quite the little master isn’t he?”

“Yes,” said my mother. “He bullies me terribly sometimes.” She looked at me reproachfully.

“No, I don’t.”

“I love children,” said Mrs Isbister and to my horror reached out a large, doughy fist to stroke the top of my head. “We buried three. Mr Isbister and me,” she said mournfully.

He sighed heavily and asked: “Another, ma’am?”

My mother held out her glass and he filled it and they toasted each other again.

“Would you like the money now?” my mother asked, opening her reticule.

“There’s plenty of time for that,” Mr Isbister said. “We’ll trust you.”

“You’ve got to trust someone in this world, haven’t you?” Mrs Isbister said. “That’s what Mr Isbister and me allus says.”

My mother nodded and smiled at me as if to invite me to share her good opinion of our new landlords.

“It’s a nice room,” Mr Isbister said. “You’ll sleep sound as a bat in winter.”

The Isbisters lent us some ragged sheets and blankets and the straw palliasse was made up for me. My mother went to sleep quickly but I stayed awake for an hour or so and my fears were not allaved when I heard

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the Isbisters very late that night come up to the other chamber quarrelling drunkenly.

Rather to my surprise, since I believed that carriers started work very early, I was the first of the household to wake up the next morning. By half past seven there was still no sound from the Isbisters, though I thought I heard a noise below. I got out of bed and dressed, leaving my mother still asleep though tossing and turning restlessly. As I descended the stairs, I could hear snores coming from the Isbisters’ room. From below there was the sound of the fire-grate being riddled and when I went into the kitchen I found a girl of about fourteen kneeling before the hearth and furiously clearing the fire.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m John. Who are you?”

To my surprise she did not even look at me. This didn’t seem very friendly or even polite, and altogether she looked a most unprepossessing young woman, covered from head to foot in powdered black, and with a pallid, bony face and blistered red hands. I looked round the room. There were a number of large baskets along one wall which, though they were covered by a piece of cloth, appeared to be full of clothes.

I went to find a baker and a dairy in order to buy a penn’orth of rolls and a little milk for our breakfast, and when I had done this I returned upstairs and consumed my share while I waited. When my mother awoke a little after eight I urged her to make ready as quickly as she could so that we could leave the house immediately.