London (147 page)

“Mine,” Bocton claimed, with a wry smile.

Not that the thing was done yet. Within days, a wrecking amendment had got through and the Reform Bill lay in ruins. This last stand by the die-hards did not distress Carpenter much. “The Whigs will go to the country now,” he judged. “And they will win.” Sure enough, the Whig prime minister, Lord Grey promptly called an election. The Whigs were returned with a large majority. Reform was now inevitable.

One small event did puzzle both men. Carpenter had just gone for a meeting with Bocton at the start of the new election. Finding him in a large, crowded lobby beside Westminster Hall, the craftsman remarked with total innocence: “I see your son George is standing now, as well. For a pocket borough.”

Bocton gazed at him in astonishment. “Is he?”

A moment later, walking stiffly by in the company of several other elderly peers, they caught sight of the old Earl of St James, whom Bocton now approached.

“Did you know, father, that George was standing for a rotten borough?”

“That’s right, Bocton. I bought it for him.”

“You did not tell me.”

“Didn’t I? Must have slipped my mind.”

“I shall look forward to walking through the Aye lobby with him. Father and son,” Bocton remarked drily.

The fact that a man was standing for a rotten borough, of course, was no indication that he supported the system. There were plenty of Whigs who had got into Parliament via rotten boroughs who were committed, as a matter of principle, to voting their own seats out of existence.

“Really?” The old earl shrugged. “I’ve no idea which way he’ll vote.”

For a moment Carpenter thought he had misheard. “He’ll vote for reform like you and me, my lord,” he coaxed the cross old man. “That’s why you put him there.”

“Oh.” Did the old earl look a little vague, now? Had he lost the thread of what they were saying, or was this just another little game to annoy his son? He stared at Carpenter. “What sort of odds can one get on this election?” he suddenly demanded. “Who’s making a book? Any idea?”

“No, my lord.”

“I suppose I’d better go and find out.” The earl paused. “I don’t think,” he remarked with a frown, “that I’ve been to the races for some time.”

September fog, thick and brown, smothered the river. Had the boat been going round in circles? Were they opposite Blackfriars, or down by the Tower, or out in the reaches by Wapping? Used as she was by now to the river, she had no idea; and when, after an hour, she asked Silas, he only grunted.

How he expected to find anything in this brown miasma, she could not imagine; yet still, from time to time, he would give her an instruction: “Pull to port. Hold her steady.” So that she could only wonder what he knew in the opaque, undivided firmament of water and fog, that other men did not.

As the boat drifted, Lucy’s thoughts drifted also. For a time, after he had found the gold, Horatio had seemed to be better. At Christmas, he and Lucy had prepared a splendid feast for their mother, and he had even sung his family a carol he had learned. But in January he began to cough up phlegm, and in the first week of February he was so racked by a raging fever that at times Lucy wondered if his frail body could stand it. The infection that had taken over his lungs was as thick and evil as the London fog. For two months he had sat at home, his chest wrapped up in shawls. Sometimes his mother would try hot compresses to draw the infection, and he would thank her with tears of pain in his eyes. But only in May had the evil presence seemed to withdraw, for the time being at least, leaving him weak all through the warm months of summer; and now, with the chill and fog of September beginning again, she trembled to think of the sickness’s awful return.

“Keep away from him, or you’ll catch it,” Silas would say.

“He must get away from this place,” she repeated, though Silas gave her no encouragement.

She could see Silas well enough as he sat a few feet from her, and as he rested his chest thoughtfully on the oars it seemed to her that even he might be thinking of calling it a day. They seldom exchanged more than a few words but, sitting alone in the fog, Silas for some reason decided to be more companionable.

“You’ve got pluck. I’ll give you that. Out here in this fog and you never complain.”

“It’s nothing,” she said. And then, encouraged by this unusual turn of conversation she ventured: “How can you tell how to find things, Silas? Even in this?”

“I don’t know, really,” he confessed. “Always could.”

“Were you on the river as a child?”

He nodded.

“And your father?”

“Waterman. Whole family on the river. Except my sister,” he added thoughtfully. “She hated it.”

Lucy’s heart missed a beat. He had a sister. He did not seem to have noticed her surprise. He was gazing into the fog, his mind apparently elsewhere.

“She didn’t stay then?” Lucy asked softly.

“Sarah? No. Married a coachman in Clapham,” he mused. “They set up a shop there.” And then, suddenly realizing that he had given away a piece of information he had never before divulged, he hastily added: “Dead now of course. Long since. Both of them. No children neither.”

And she knew, she positively knew, that he was lying. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.” But her mind was beginning to race.

By October 1831 Zachary Carpenter could truly feel for the first time in his life that all was right with the world. The September fogs had lifted; the weather was fine. Two weeks ago, as expected, the Whig Reform Bill had passed easily through the House of Commons. Lord Bocton and his son George had passed through the lobby together. So the measure has even brought unity to that family, he thought. Today the bill was going through the House of Lords. After that the king would sign it and the thing would be law.

Yet, for all the huge importance of the Reform Bill, another much smaller measure recently passed through Parliament had given him even greater delight. For in 1831, Parliament had calmly made the closed vestry of the parish of St Pancras illegal.

It therefore came as a great shock to Carpenter, late that evening, to receive a message from Bocton, which caused him to pull on his coat, permit himself two or three full-blooded oaths, and storm off towards the house by Regent’s Park where the old Earl of St James now lived.

Never in all his life had Zachary Carpenter been more angry than he was now, as he faced the earl. St James was wearing, over his shirt and stockings, a gorgeous silken dressing gown which, Carpenter calculated irritably, could not possibly have cost less than fifty pounds. It was as if for the first time he had seen behind the sporting, reformist mask to the rich, capricious, selfish old soul who, all the time, had been lurking there behind it. He did not trouble to mince his words.

“What the devil were you doing, you old humbug?” he cried.

The House of Lords, by a narrow majority, had just thrown out the Reform Bill. And the Earl of St James had been one of the peers who voted against it.

Carpenter did not know what response he expected to this outburst, and he did not care. Knowing St James, he imagined it would be something sharp. He was surprised, therefore, when the old man seemed to hesitate. He frowned, looking a little confused. Then fumbling with the cuff of his silk dressing gown, as if he thought he had discovered a fly there, he mumbled. “They were going to take away George’s seat.”

“Of course they were! It’s a rotten borough,” Carpenter cried impatiently; but St James only frowned again, as if he had forgotten something.

“I couldn’t let them take away George’s seat,” he said. Carpenter was so blinded by the earl’s behaviour that he failed to observe what should have been plain enough. The Earl of St James was not in full possession of his faculties. He was eighty-eight years old; and he was confused.

“You old fool!” shouted Carpenter. “You evil old aristocrat! You’re the same as all the rest of them. Ordinary men are just a game to you. They’re just something to bet on. Nothing ever touches you, does it? Tell me this, my so-called noble lord, who do you think you are? Who –” he was bellowing right into the old man’s face now “– do you really think you are?” He turned on his heel and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. So that he never saw the Earl of St James staring after him in genuine puzzlement.

“Who am I?” he asked the empty room.

It was just after dawn at Southwark. Lucy knew she had no time to lose. The day after the fog, Horatio had started coughing. By the end of September the fever had returned and he seemed to be burning up before her eyes. She had fetched a doctor, using one of Horatio’s sovereigns; but after a careful look at him the doctor had only shaken his head sadly and advised them to wrap damp towels round him to try at least to bring his fever down.

Would he be better off out of the city, in a more dry and airy place, Lucy had asked? Perhaps, the doctor had told her with a shrug. Then he had given her the sovereign back.

On 6 October, Horatio had coughed up blood. She could see the little boy was getting weaker. He’ll never get through the winter like this, she thought.

Lavender Hill. In the chilly days of early October, the vision of that glorious blue haze haunted her. If she could only get him up there. And now she knew she had a cousin there, at Clapham. A cousin with a shop, up on the high ground to the south-west. Only the very worst of the pea-soupers made it out there. Within days she had formed a picture of her cousin: a warm, kindly, motherly sort. A person who would welcome the little boy in, and care for him and, perhaps, save his life. There could not, she supposed, be that many shops in the village of Clapham. A few enquiries and her cousin would surely be found. She had hoped to go out and search for the shop herself, but there had been no time and suddenly now, seeing the little boy coughing blood, she was overcome by a blind desire to get him out at once.

She had told no one. She knew Silas would not help her. She was not sure about her mother, but dared not take the chance. The day before, she had found a carter who agreed for a shilling to take them down to London Bridge at dawn. Leaving Horatio, wrapped up in a coat and scarf, by some river steps she went across to Southwark to get the boat.

“What will we do when we get to Lavender Hill?” he asked weakly. “I do not think I can walk about while you look for our cousin.”

“But we can go to the house of the kind lady who took us in the pony trap,” she reassured him. “We know where she lives.”

“I should like that,” he agreed.

The light was just lifting along the river when Lucy brought the boat to the steps and carried Horatio down into it. His teeth were chattering, but he did not complain. Minutes later, the boat was moving slowly upstream.

Another figure was also moving through the early light that morning. He was wearing a greatcoat and he had crammed an old three-cornered hat on his head so that, at first glance, it seemed as if he were some old watchman or lamplighter left over from the previous century. But under the greatcoat there was a brightly coloured silk dressing gown, and on his feet, instead of rough boots, a pair of highly polished court shoes. He was followed, nervously and at a distance, by a footman.

About the same time as Lucy and Horatio were passing under Westminster Bridge, the Earl of St James reached Seven Dials.

There were people about. Nearby, in Covent Garden market, business was already starting. From somewhere there came the smell of baking bread. Overhead, the sky was overcast with high, grey cloud, but the day felt as if it might get tolerably warm. When he got to the little monument of Seven Dials the earl paused for a moment, as though looking for someone. Then he made a little tour of the place, coming back to the railings round the monument. And there, still watched by the footman, he remained for a while until, by chance, he noticed a costermonger approaching with a barrow. The costermonger, who was a friendly fellow, and who soon figured that the old gentleman might not be quite right in the head, talked to him gently enough. Only one thing puzzled him. The old gentleman was talking in broad cockney.

“’Ave you seen me dad?”

“Who might that be, sir?”

“Harry Dogget, the costermonger. I’m lookin’ for me dad.”

“I should think, old fella, that your dad’s been gone this many a year.”

The Earl of St James frowned. “You never heard of Harry Dogget?”

The costermonger considered. The name, now he thought of it, was vaguely familiar. He thought he had heard of the Dogget family once, when he was a boy. But that was forty years ago.

A woman with a basket of oysters joined them now, sensing that there was some amusement to be had. “Who’s he?” she asked.

“Looking for ’is dad,” the costermonger said.

“Oh.” She laughed. “What about your mum then, dear?”

“Nah.” St James shook his head. “She won’t do me no good.”

“Why’s that?”

“Needle and pin, that’s why,” he said sadly. Then, “I gotta find Sep,” he went on.

“Sep? Who’s that now? And why’s that?”

“Should’ve been ’im up the chimney, not me,” his lordship said.

“He’s really gone in the ’ead, he has,” the woman said.

“Where’s Sep?” St James cried out with sudden urgency. “I gotta find Sep!”

Just then a carriage drew up a few yards away, out of which stepped Lord Bocton, accompanied by Mr Cornelius Silversleeves.

The journey had been very slow. The boat was heavy and Lucy was rowing against the current. By the time they passed under Vauxhall Bridge Horatio, having shivered continuously, had fallen strangely still. As they approached Chelsea, his head sank forward on to his chest and she could see beads of sweat on his pale brow. He had begun to make a rasping sound as he breathed.

The place for which she was heading lay just past the long reach beside Chelsea. At the end, a curious, rather ramshackle old wooden bridge crossed the river which, immediately afterwards, curved sharply left. A little way along this next, southward stretch, a stream came down to the river by the ancient village of Battersea, and from here it was only a short walk up to the slopes of Lavender Hill and the pleasant plateau of Clapham Common.