London (145 page)

“Mr Forsyth,” he said boldly, “I have been made a partner in Meredith’s. I have come to ask for Mary’s hand.’

“A partner?” the Scot enquired. “That is definite?” Eugene nodded. “Well, then, I suppose ye’re right. It is time.” He paused thoughtfully, and took a pinch of snuff.

“Have you a ring?”

“I mean to buy one today.”

“Aye, well. A ring’s a necessity. But if you will take my advice, do not get anything too expensive. I can take you to a man who will let you have something perfectly” – sniff – “reasonable.”

The Pennys’ first child was a healthy boy; and a second was already on the way when Mary said she would like to live outside the metropolis. So she was delighted when Eugene told her he had found a house in Clapham.

His choice of a village on the Thames’s southern bank was sensible. Even Hamish Forsyth agreed about that. “The southern bank’s the place to be,” he nodded. Three new bridges – Waterloo, Southwark and Vauxhall – had made it far more accessible and the open fields by Lambeth were being laid out in handsome streets so that the carriage drive out to the villas of the well-to-do in Battersea and Clapham seemed likely to pass through quite a fashionable suburb. At Clapham itself, around the ancient common, there were a number of handsome houses. The church in the centre was a gracious classical edifice. And though Forsyth felt that the six-bedroom house Penny found was larger than strictly necessary, he seemed mollified when Eugene pointed out that their family would be growing.

“It’ll save you the cost of moving later,” Forsyth conceded. And to celebrate the event he even bought the couple a fine set of Wedgwood china. “Wedgwood keeps the same patterns,” he pointed out. “If you should break a piece, it can be replaced without losing the value of the set.”

Eugene found that his office was just over half an hour from home. But the feature which pleased his wife best was the fact that, not a hundred yards from their own pleasant garden, began the great fields on the slope down to Battersea where they grew lavender. Whenever people asked where she now lived she would tell them: “Oh, out at Clapham, just beside Lavender Hill.”

1829

The boat nosed slowly through the brown water out into midstream. The little craft was dipping so low that from a distance, in the April evening’s dulled light, it looked almost waterlogged. Once it had reached the middle, halfway between Blackfriars and Bankside, it paused and then, as though held by an unseen line, remained still.

“Hold her steady,” Silas’s voice, deep from the stern. The oars obediently stroked the water. “Steady. Good.”

Although it was a year since Lucy, now ten, had started to work for Silas, she had still not grown used to it. So great now was the quantity of effluent, of sewage, of coal dust that washed down from the metropolis into the Thames that not even the sea-tides could carry it away. At high tide the water was murky; at low tide, a sickly smell hung over it. For the first time in history the fish in the river were dying: their mottled and blistered carcasses would be found amongst the rubbish on the mud flats. When a pea-souper descended, it seemed that the fog and the river were one and the same, the gaseous and liquid forms of a dark, putrid element. As Lucy plied the oars, she would often feel a piece of sewage gently nudging the blades.

Suddenly Silas reached over the side and plunged his hands into the water. A moment later there was a bump as something heavy struck the boat. Reaching back with one hand, he took a length of rope from between his feet, tied it round the object in the water and secured the other end to a ring on the stern. After this he occupied himself feeling about in the water again. Giving a grunt of satisfaction he sat up and, opening his big webbed hands, showed Lucy half a dozen gold sovereigns and a fob watch. Depositing these at his feet, he leaned over once more, staring intently at the face of the corpse that floated just below the surface. “That’s him all right. Ten pounds for him,” he observed.

This reward had been offered for the recovery of the body of a certain Mr Tobias Jones who had disappeared a week before, but such corpses often carried valuables upon them, increasing their yield. A corpse was a fine thing indeed for Silas and Lucy to find.

For Silas was a river scavenger – a dredger as they were called. Dredgers took in anything. Crates or barrels that had fallen off a boat, wooden spars, baskets, bottles – and, of course, corpses. There was something about these waterborne vultures that made most men shun them. Yet the best, like Silas, could make a good living; for the dirty old river yielded up something every day.

Even now, Lucy was not sure why he had chosen her as his helper. “You’re my kith and kin,” he would say. Certainly the money he gave her had kept the little family out of the workhouse. Yet if Silas was so devoted to the family, there was one thing that puzzled her.

Though she called him uncle, she knew that in fact Silas was her cousin. “Your father and his father were brothers,” her mother had told her. “There were sisters, and Silas had a brother too.” When she had asked Silas about these other Doggets, he had only shrugged. “Don’t you worry about them,” he had said. “They’ve gone.” Though whether this meant they were dead, or had left London, she could never discover. It occurred to her that perhaps the other Doggets did not care for Silas; but whatever the reason for their absence, Silas would often remind her: “I’m all you’ve got, young Lucy.” She depended upon him entirely.

It had taken nearly a year, but her mother’s asthma had taken its toll and she had been unable to work. Eventually, when the family was down to five shillings and Lucy had pleaded, she had weakly agreed: “Go to Silas, then.”

If Lucy was out at work, it was little Horatio who helped keep the household going. At seven years old, he was still a pale, spindly little boy. His legs were thin as sticks, but in his quiet way he would not give up. Each day when she returned, she would find him waiting for her with the kettle filled and a meal laid out; and when she asked: “How is mother?” he would answer cheerfully: “Mother can breathe today.” Or, more quietly: “Mother is tired,” which meant that she could not.

Sometimes, when the weather was warm, and if their mother was well, Horatio would go with Lucy to the river. She would not allow him to come in the boat in case she and Silas encountered a body, but he would sit in the sun by one of the riverside boathouses, or, if the water was low, wander on the mud flats, where there were always other children mudlarking. Though he could never keep up with them when they rushed to inspect a new find, he would often meet Lucy with a happy smile and show her some small treasure he had discovered in the grey old mud.

Every night, as she held him in her arms, he would promise: “One day I’ll be strong. Then you shall rest at home and I’ll go out to work for us all.”

She would rock him gently and sing to him, always ending with his favourite, the song that the lavender-seller had taught her, singing it over and over, very softly, until he was asleep.

It was a pity that Silas did not like him. His heavy, angry eye would rest upon the boy and he would say: “He’s sickly, like your mother.”

“He grows stronger!” she would protest. Silas would shrug. “He’ll never pull an oar.”

Now, Lucy changed places with Silas, and he took the big oars, rowing with slow, heavy strokes towards the Tower of London while she sat in the stern, aware only of the corpse being drawn along below the surface just behind her.

“Your brother will die,” Silas remarked suddenly. “You know that, don’t you?”

“He will live!” she cried defiantly. “And pull a better oar than you.”

For a time, Silas said nothing, but as they drew level with the little steeple of All Hallows church above the grim old Tower he gruffly declared: “Don’t love him too much. He will die.”

When Zachary Carpenter rose to speak nobody in the hushed hall in St Pancras would ever have guessed that he was convinced he was wasting his time. After all, he had spent half a lifetime agitating for reform and got nowhere. Nonetheless he addressed the crowd with his usual eloquence. His theme was a good one; he had perfected it in the last few years.

“Do you not
acknowledge
,” he cried, “that this nation is being fed upon by bloodsuckers? What are the king, his Parliament and their many friends? They are eaters of taxes. They feed upon your flesh. I can give you proof positive of the rottenness of this kingdom. Do you want proof?”

The crowd in the hall said that they did.

“Go down to the Mall, then!” Carpenter cried. “Go to the Mall, look down to the end of it, and tell me what you see. I will tell you what you see: not just brick and mortar, not just stone, and tower, turret and pinnacle. You see a scandal, my friends, rising up to mock you. There is your proof.” He was speaking, of course, of the building of Buckingham Palace.

Of all the many embarrassments which the Prince Regent, now king, had inflicted upon England, none – not his debts, not his roaming wife, not even his strange coronation – could begin to rival the ongoing scandal of Buckingham Palace. Originally an aristocrat’s house bought by the royal family, George IV had decided to convert it to a new palace. His friend Nash, the architect, had been called in and Parliament, very unwillingly, had voted two hundred thousand pounds which had soon been spent. The radicals protested, Parliament protested, even the loyal Duke of Wellington exploded with rage. The king went blithely on. By now the expense was a staggering seven hundred thousand pounds.

To Carpenter Buckingham Palace was a safe bet. He only had to point out to his audience that such outrages would continue until there was reform, and his case was made. Yet was there any point? Nothing ever changed. Last year that staunchest of Tories the Duke of Wellington had become prime minister. True, the Iron Duke had somewhat modified the Corn Laws to help the poor, but not enough to do any damage to the landowners. True, also, the duke had repealed the Test Act so that Wesleyans and Dissenters like Carpenter were no longer debarred from public office. But Carpenter was not deceived by that. “Wellington’s a general,” he judged. “It’s a tactical move to strengthen his position with the middle classes.”

The present ministry showed every sign of wanting to impose the firm stamp of authority. The Home Secretary, Robert Peel, not satisfied with the old Bow Street Runners of the previous century, was even proposing to enforce law and order on the country with a uniformed police force under central authority – a frightening idea indeed. While the City of London had already declared it would have no police force that was not subject to the Lord Mayor, decent people elsewhere were muttering: “The duke and Peel want to return us to the stern old days of Cromwell and the generals.” As far as Carpenter could see, the cause of reform was further off than ever.

So as the crowd was leaving the hall Carpenter was greatly astonished to see, of all people, the bottle-green figure of Lord Bocton approaching him, not with a frown but a smile. Holding out his hand, that die-hard Tory remarked: “Mr Carpenter, I agree with every word you say!”

Carpenter looked at him with suspicion. Penny-pinching Lord Bocton might well agree about the absurd cost of Buckingham Palace, but surely not about anything else.

Seeing his surprise, Bocton coolly continued: “You and I, Mr Carpenter, may be closer than you think. Indeed” – and now he moved closer – “I have come here to ask for your help.”

“My help?” What the devil was he up to?

“Yes. You see, Mr Carpenter, I am standing for Parliament.” He smiled again. “I am standing for Reform.”

As Lord Bocton watched Zachary Carpenter, he was pleased to see that he had judged human nature correctly. The proposals he put to the radical had been very carefully calculated. Bocton meant to get what he wanted.

The system of representation about which Carpenter complained was certainly hard to defend. Great commercial cities had no member of Parliament; many rural seats were under the effective patronage of great landowners; and last and most scandalous of all were the pocket boroughs – the rotten boroughs as they were often called – where a handful of electors had the right to return a member. Most of these were not independent men, but placemen who could be bought.

Some radicals even favoured a secret ballot.

“To me,” Bocton confessed, “that seems a cowardly underhand sort of method which no honest man should support. But perhaps, Mr Carpenter, you can convince me otherwise.”

But the real test came over the question of who was to vote. “Is it really your belief, Mr Carpenter,” he asked, “that every man – the journeyman you have to dismiss for drunkenness, the apprentice, the beggar in the workhouse even – should have the same right to elect the country’s governors as you?”

And just as he suspected, Carpenter hesitated. It was a question that had been haunting the reform movement for years. The purists believed that all men, no matter what their condition, should vote. Ten years ago, Carpenter would have agreed; but as he grew older, he had started having doubts. Were the twenty people he employed really ready for so much responsibility?

“Men who pay taxes should vote.” Solid citizens. Men like him.

“Precisely,” said Lord Bocton

That women also might vote had never occurred to either of them.

“My title,” Bocton reminded Carpenter, “as the heir to the Earl of St James, is only a courtesy title. My father sits in the House of Lords but I may sit in the Commons.” It was a route that politically minded aristocrats often liked to follow. “At the next election I intend to stand for the St Pancras seat,” he continued. “Though I am of course a Tory, I give you my word that I will vote for reform. I want you to support me.”

“But why?” the bemused radical demanded. “Why should you want reform?”

The reason why Bocton, and a number of Tories like him, had suddenly swung round in favour of reform had nothing whatever to do with the merits of the case. It had to do with the Catholics in Ireland.

The previous year, in an unexpected by-election, a prominent Irish Catholic had been elected to the British Parliament. Under the existing rules, he could not take his seat. “But if we force the issue the Irish may revolt,” Wellington regretfully concluded. “The king’s government must be carried on.” To his pragmatic soldier’s mind it was a question of duty. And after considerable arm-twisting the Tory ministry had actually combined with the Whigs to pass a law giving Catholics the same rights as Dissenters. But it was a politically dangerous course.