God Is an Englishman (55 page)

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He was much earlier than he had anticipated, remembering how in sistent she had been about him returning in time. At the Croydon livery stables, where he kept his gig, he decided to ride the rest of the distance, hiring a chestnut mare that caught his eye. She exceeded expectations and he was turning into the drive in just over an hour of leaving the train.

He looked out for little Stella as he topped the rise but she was not to be seen. Instead, at the entrance of the yard, stood a dogcart with a dejected pony between the shafts, and as he passed it he noted the words, “J. Millward, Sweep,” painted on the backboard.

He paid no particular attention to it, but as he was unsaddling the horse he became aware of a stir at the rear of the house and scurrying to and from the kitchen where the pump was clanking. He thought it odd that no one ran out to greet him, and that Ellen’s husband, now the groom, was not to be found. He went in through the stableyard door where one of the maids, wheyfaced, and seemingly half out of her wits, was jerking away at the pump handle, and letting the water swill over the edge of the trough. She went on pumping even when he shouted at her. Then he heard his wife’s voice raised in violent pro test, and ran through the hall and into the double-room, where he saw Henrietta disputing possession of what appeared to be a bag of soot with a squat, bowlegged man evidently J. Millward. Beside them were the Michelmores, both looking as if they had seen a spectre.

For a few seconds he stood gaping, unable to comprehend what could have happened, but then he saw that what he had mistaken for a bag of soot was a boy with a rope tied to his ankles, and blood clotting on raw areas of flesh on knees and elbows that were ringed with soot. He understood then, at least in part, what must have occurred, and it had the power to enrage him in a way that nothing had since he helped to empty the well at Cawnpore, for he had read Lord Shaftesbury’s recent appeal to the Lords concerning the usage of chimney sweeps, and the evidence cited had sickened him. Now, he realised, fresh evidence was being accumulated, and that on his own hearthrug, and shame galvanised him into action. He seized the sweep by the shoulder and swung him round, and at that moment Henrietta pitched forward on her knees and bowed her head, just as if she had been shot in the back.

Her fall made no immediate impression on him and he had for gotten she was there when Ellen intervened, wailing some gibberish about the boy being stuck GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 290

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in the chimney. That made him look more closely at the body on the floor, and he saw at once the boy must have been dead for some time, for his limbs were rigid and his mouth, half full with soot, was wide open, as though he had died in the act of screaming.

The man said, in a voice that quavered, “Best lad I ever ’ad. If on’y…” but he was unable to finish whatever he had been going to say for Adam dropped crop and gloves, swung his fist, and sent him spinning across the width of the room with a tremendous buffet on the point of the jaw.

Millward would have fallen had he not cannoned against the shrouded garden door and clutched at the dust sheets suspended there so that for a moment he seemed to hang, like a bloated spider framed in the aperture. Then, slowly, he half-subsided and his hand shot up to his face as he said, feebly, “You got no call to do that, you got no right to hit…” but before he could complete his protest Adam struck him again twice more, and this time he did go down, the first blow striking him in the belly, the second stretching him senseless on the floor.

The primitive violence of the assault did something to sober Adam, and the haze that floated in front of his eyes shredded away, so that he was belatedly aware there were others in the room besides him self, the sweep, and the dead boy in the hearth. Henrietta was still crouching near the door, with Ellen fussing about her trying to make her sip from an enamel mug, and beyond the bundle of rags in the hearth was another boy, with rolled-up trews revealing thin, spindly shins, who was obviously in a state of shock for he was scrabbling at the granite slabs of the fireplace as though, if he pushed hard enough, they would part and enable him to escape into the open. The sight of the terrified child restored some kind of sanity to Adam, so that he spun round on Ellen, shouting “Get her out of here!

Give me that mug,” and Ellen said, reproachfully, “It’s brandy for Mrs. Swann, sir, she’s fainted…” but he roared, “I don’t give a damn, give it to me! Get her out of here, and come straight back, do you hear?” and she passed him the mug and took Henrietta by her shoulders, drag ging her from the room.

He went over to the whimpering boy, thrusting the mug towards him.

“Drink it,” he said, “drink it and go through to the kitchen. Ask the girls to send all the men in here,” and the boy Jake, responding automatically to the voice of authority, took the mug and gulped down several mouthfuls of spirit, his hands shaking so violently that the mug rattled against his teeth.

Over by the window the master sweep stirred and the movement deflected Adam’s attention from the boy who suddenly darted past him and out, fleet as a scared cat. Adam crossed the room and prodded the sweep, with his boot. “Get GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 291

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up,” he growled, “get up, man, before I kick you to death!”, and the man rose unsteadily to his feet, glaring at Adam with bleared, resentful eyes, and passing the back of his hand to and fro across his bleeding mouth.

“I didden kill ’im,” he mumbled. “It was that flue o’ yours. Missus says to scrape it, but how could I know he’d git stuck wivaht even ’ollerin’ back, like ’ee’s trained to?”

Suddenly the mere sight of the man began to act on his self-con trol like a wrench so that he knew, if he looked at him a moment longer, he would strangle him. He flung open the garden door, grabbed Millward by his collar, and dragged him on to the terrace, and as the sweep writhed in his grasp he remembered the water butt in the yard. They arrived there together at a run and with a single heave he swung Millward clear of the ground and dropped him bodily into the vat.

“Wash the blood off your hands then get out of here before I break every bone in your body!” he said. “Don’t show yourself here again or, by God, I’ll see you get ten years for this!”

“There’s my other boy an’ gear…” Millward spluttered, not dar ing to make any attempt to climb out of the vat, but Adam said, “The boy stays here and I’ll bury your gear with the one you’ve just killed. I’ll give you ten seconds to get in that trap of yours and out of my sight…” but the man made no further attempt to remonstrate, projecting himself out of the tub, crossing the yard and leaping into the trap, where he grabbed the reins and laid his whip across the pony’s back. In something under the time limit he was out of sight behind the first of the copper beeches.

Michelmore came out, the one person in the house, it seemed, in command of himself. He said, bitterly, “I would have stopped it if I’d known, sir. Leastways, I would have warned Mrs. Swann. She couldn’t have realised…Ellen should ha’

told her,” and then, see ing Adam’s expression, he fell silent.

Adam said, “See to that other boy. Get him washed, fed, and bedded down in one of the lofts. Then go for the doctor, he’s a magistrate and will have to be told anyway, If he’s out on his rounds find him, wherever he is, but before you leave find the gardener and send him to me,” and he went along the terrace thinking how quiet everything had gone, so quiet that he could hear rooks cawing in the elms, and the swish of the gardener’s billhook in the spinney.

The big room was empty save for the corpse under the chimney canopy. Soot was everywhere, lying in a pyramid in the grate, smeared on the dust sheets, and even marking the imprint of Millward’s hands where he had clutched the door GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 292

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coverings. Its acrid smell filled the room and made his eyes smart. He knelt by the boy and satisfied himself that he was dead before lifting him clear of the fireplace and laying him on the sheet covering the chaise longue. Then he went across the hall and into Henrietta’s little sewing room behind the dining-room, finding her sitting with her hands in her lap, and on her face the crumpled, bewildered expression of one who has just witnessed something incomprehensible.

“You knew that man was sending his boys up that chimney? You were there when they went up?”

She said, tonelessly, “They were up there when I arrived. One of them came out while I was there, but the sweep made him climb back to help the other.”

“You let him do that? You
knew
there was a boy stuck up there and let them drag him out with a rope? ”

“I…I went away…I felt sick.”

“No doubt,” he said, grimly, and then, in an impersonal voice that was foreign to her, “I’m fetching soap, water, and a nightshirt. We’re going to wash him and lay him out before the doctor comes. Just the two of us, Henrietta. Find an apron or something,” and turned on his heel.

Her cry reached him as he was halfway across the threshold. “Adam, I
couldn’t
!” and he turned back, staring at her as though she had been an insolent servant.

“You will, though, or I’ll serve you as I served Millward.”

“But why, Adam? Why? It wasn’t me who…”

“You could have stopped it. You’re mistress here, or supposed to be, and you’ll do it if I have to drag you there by your hair. Find an apron and gloves,” and he went into the hall leaving the door open.

She had the impulse to run, to dart across the paddock to the woods, or up the rhododendron path behind the house and on to the moor, anywhere that offered a refuge from his cold rage, and the prospect of stripping and washing that obscene little corpse in the room across the hall. But she knew that wherever she ran he would pursue her and catch her, and that in the end it would be done in the way he wanted it done, and that he would accept no excuse and no substitute, not even if she died at the task. She dragged herself up, crossed to the chest of drawers and found an apron and a pair of gardening gloves. By the time she had them on he was back with a bucket in one hand and a steaming kettle in the other. Under his arm he had a bundle and she recognised one of her nightdresses by its embroidered collar and lace-edge wristbands.

In the big room the soot had settled but the atmosphere still reeked and she watched him fling open the garden doors. Then, averting her eyes, she joined GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 293

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him beside the couch where he set down his pail and filled it from the kettle.

Methodically he began to strip away the filthy rags that covered the child’s ema-ciated body, expos ing wide areas of flesh that were only a shade paler than the face, feet, and hands. She noticed too that each elbow and kneecap was crowned with an inflamed sore, and that not only the mouth but the eyes and nostrils were choked with soot.

Mechanically, at a nod from him, she dipped one of the cloths in the bucket and tried to remove some of the filth from the loins, while he performed the same task on the chest and shoulders. Slowly the horror of what she was doing began to recede and in its place came pity, but mostly pity for herself at being involved in such a task. Once, when revulsion reached a certain point, she flung down the cloth and turned away, retching, but he said, in the same toneless voice,

“Finish it, or you walk out of this house today and never come back.” It astounded her that he could threaten her like that, that he could behave to her as Millward had treated the boy Jake when he had crept from the chimney, whining that he had lost contact with his fellow-apprentice. And then, in a freakish way, she accepted his tyranny, for it went some way towards extricating her from a crushing load of guilt, and as she became aware of this she began to work more attentively, removing layer after layer of grime from other chimneys than her own, and pausing every now and again to wring water from the cloths.

When the water in the bucket was quite black he threw it out, replenishing it from the kettle.

After about ten minutes Ellen crept in, her mouth forming a hard line as she realised what they were about. She said, in a whisper, “Dawson and the boy were in the spinney. They’m coming now,” and when he made no answer: “Mrs.

Swann should go and lay down, sir. It’s been a rare shock for her.” Henrietta thought then that he was going to strike Ellen across the face and braced herself against the blow that would send the house keeper reeling, but then he locked one hand over the other, saying, “Take a cloth and help. There’s something here you should see, the pair of you.” He made room for her and Henrietta stood aside too, following the direction of his pointing finger towards the boy’s groin. She saw then that all was not as it should be, for a cluster of seamed scars showed in the crutch. Adam said, in something like a recog nisable voice, “He’s not only bowlegged and a hunchback, he’s also a eunuch. He’s probably been at the trade since he was five or six. That’s a scrotal affliction caused by soot and known as chimney sweep’s cancer. The only treatment for it is the knife.

Slip this gown over him while I lift him. Take the other side, Henrietta.” GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 294

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She was past all thought of rebellion. There was implacability in every word he uttered, as though to question it would be to invite the prospect of being throttled and laid beside the child on the couch. Both she and Ellen accepted this and responded to it, so that between them, with him raising the body, they managed to shroud it in her nightgown. She noticed that, small as it was, the robe was too big for him. A foot or more of it had to be tucked under the feet. Then mercifully, he took another sheet from one of the chairs and covered the body, including the face.