Midnight is a Place (19 page)

Then Gudgeon said he would take charge of all the findings.

"You lodging at Tetley's? 'Tain't a bad house, but there's sailor-men and all sorts there; you can't trust 'em. The tosh'll be safer at my place."

Gudgeon, apparently, lived in a derelict boat farther down the riverbank; its chief attractions seemed to be that he was undisturbed by females, need never wash, could suit himself, and had all his things about him.

'"Tis better for a tosher to live separate. I'll take care o' the things."

There was such a sharp, mistrustful gleam in Gudgeon's eye that Lucas thought it best not to argue, though he would have liked to show the saddle to Anna-Marie, having struggled with it so far.

As they toiled up the slippery mudbank toward Haddock Street's little row of houses, now shrouded in blue dusk, a shadowy figure hailed them from farther along the bank. "Hey-o, Gudgeon, me old mate! Any good pickings?"

"So-so; very so-so, Mr. Bugle," Gudgeon replied, shaking his head. "Pickings ain't what they used to be." It was evident that he was not anxious to discuss the day's haul with the new arrived, a thin man with a pronounced squint. He kept the saddle, wrapped in a muddy bit of sailcloth, under his arm, and said, "This-yer's my new boy. Luke, he calls hisself."

Bugle walked beside them a short way, discussing current trends in sewer harvest; Lucas gathered that the sort of things which could be found varied considerably according to season; in the winter there tended to be more jewelry and dead bodies; in the summer, more household goods. Gudgeon remained silent and made it plain that he did not welcome Bugle's company.

"Well, I'll be ganning," Bugle said at length, and turned off up a narrow alley.

Gudgeon waited until he was a good distance off and then said to Lucas, "Never tell 'em what you've got, even if they should ask."

"Why not?"

"Tain't owt o' their business, the prying skivers. They'd like to know what I got, but I don't ever let 'em know. Understand?"

"All right."

"See you in the morning, then." Gudgeon gave Lucas a last long narrow-eyed scrutiny, and finally made his way off in the direction of Wharf Lane, which was where he kept his boat.

As Lucas walked along Haddock Street he was surprised to see the figure of Bugle reappear.

"Hey, boy!" Bugle called softly. "Hang on a moment!"

"What is it?" Lucas wondered if he was going to be interrogated about their day's catch.

But Bugle had a different intention.

"Here, you, what's-your-name. You're new to the town, ain't you ? I wanted to give you a word o' warning. Just you watch out!"

"How do you mean?" Lucas was rather startled.

"Watch out for old Gudgeon, I mean! He uses up tosh boys uncommon fast. You're the third he's had this year. All kinds o' mishaps comes to Gudgeon's boys."

"Oh?" said Lucas.

"It's my belief he ain't pleased above half if a boy finds summat val'ble; he's a bit queer that way, Gudgeon is. Like, today, for instance, if you was to have found a gold crown or summat, 'stead o' going half shares, he might a' preferred to shove you into the Tidey and keep the whole takings. See? So, like I say, keep a watch out. I'm jist a-warning you out o' friendly motives, an' for the honor o' the profession."

"Thank you sir," said Lucas. "I'm much obliged."

Bugle nodded, and vanished up an alley called Sea Coal Lane.

Lucas walked home very thoughtfully.

Although the wind was icy and flurries of snow were once more beginning to blow down the street, Lucas went round to the pump in Mrs. Tetley's back yard, drew bucket after bucket of cold water, and scrubbed himself and his clothes until he felt very much like a burning icicle. Only when he could not bear the cold another second did he stop, wring himself dry as best he could, and go into the back kitchen.

There he found Anna-Marie, stirring away industriously at a potful of something that looked and smelled deliciously like mutton and lentil stew.

Lucas thought he had done a tolerably good job of cleaning himself up, but even before Anna-Marie had turned around and seen him, her nostrils curled up like those of a suspicious cat. As he shut the door behind him, she spun round, exclaiming, "Luc-asse!
Dieu-de-dieu-de-dieu-de-dieu!
Where
ever
have you
been?
"

Luckily Anna-Marie had again done well on the second day of her reconditioned-cigar business; during the morning she had picked up another three bags of stubs; during the afternoon she rolled and sold them in the market at sixpence apiece. She had earned twenty-eight shillings, deducting the price of papers and the rent paid to Mr. Hobday.

It was possible to pay off the Friendly Club boy entirely and buy more eggs and milk for Mr. Oakapple, and a few necessities, for Lucas and Anna-Marie had escaped from the fire with nothing but the clothes they wore.

"I am thinking, Luc-asse," Anna-Marie said thoughtfully, as they drove home from the infirmary after leaving the food for Mr. Oakapple, who was still feverish, "I am thinking it is better if you do not continue to go down into that dark dirty place, but come and help me. If one of us is picking up the stubs, and the other selling, we shall do better. I am sorry now I arrange you to meet M. 'Obday—if I had known how nasty the work was, I would not have done so."

But Lucas, greatly to her surprise, refused to come and join her in the cigar trade. And when she asked why, why he preferred to go poking about in a dark, horrible, dangerous, dirty underground place, where he did not even have the right to keep what he found, but had to pass it over to Mr. Hobday, he became quite angry.

"Oh, stop bothering on about it, Anna-Marie. It is better if one of us earns a regular wage, so we have something coming in that we can rely on. Suppose you pick up all the cigar ends in the town and there are none left, what then?"

"I do not think that will happen," she said practically.

"Or you may find that once other people notice you are making money at it, they will start doing it, too, and then stubs will be scarcer. Or the constables might stop you. It may be against the law, to make new cigars out of old."

"Oh la la," she said, shrugging. "I don't care abou that, me! I do wish you will come and help me, Luc; besides, you smell so bad. Mrs. Tetley may grumble."

"For the seventh time, no!" he snapped. They had arrived in Haddock Street; he put the pony in the shed, with a frugal feed of hay and just a few oats. Anna-Marie stood shivering silently while he did so, with her hands in her pockets. She looked so small and thin and pale that it made him crosser still.

"Come on, it's late, and tomorrow I have to go out at half past five, let's eat quickly and go to bed."

Anna-Marie had bought a few candles, but they were expensive. After she had lit the way up to their freezing attic and they had huddled into bed with their clothes on, Lucas told her that she had better blow out the candle.

"We have got to learn to be as economical as possible." And then he lay in the dark, thinking with longing of the shabby schoolroom at Midnight Court, provided with unlimited pens, ink, writing paper, and candle ends, where he had had boundless time in which to write down his thoughts. Why had he not valued these things when he had them? Now he felt so sore, tired, scared, and depressed, that he believed his only possible comfort would be to sit peacefully alone in a room writing down a record of all that had occurred in the last few days. Much chance there was of that! He had not even his notebook.

"Are you cross because I say you smell bad?" Anna-Marie asked timidly. "I am sorry, but it is true."

"No, of course it's not that. Oh, do be quiet, Anna-Marie, and let me go to sleep."

But of course it was that, or at least partly. And it was also partly the fact that she, a girl, and so much smaller, was successfully making money and so far had supplied most of their needs and had even found him a job, while he had brought in nothing. After all, it was easy enough for
her,
he thought resentfully; anyone could pick cigar ends up in the street and roll new ones. It was quite a pleasant job really; whereas look what he had to do.

If only he need never go back into that horrible sewer again! He could still hear the tinkle and plop of drips from the vaulted roof, and the unnerving scurry and rustle as some underground creature made off up a side passage. If there were hogs and rats, what else might there be? He kept tightening his calf muscles, his feet felt as if the ground were slipping away from under them into a bottomless bog; he could still hear Bugle's voice, saying, "Gudgeon uses up tosh boys uncommon fast. You're the third he's had this year."

If Gudgeon pushed him into the Muckle Sump, what would happen to Anna-Marie, all alone in the streets of Blastburn? Who would look after her?

He heard a small sob from Anna-Marie, and the slight noise, like a soft chirp, that meant she was sucking her thumb. Impatiently he turned over on the thin pallet, pulling the blanket up over his ears.

"Go to sleep, Anna-Marie."

"I cannot," she said forlornly. "I wish I had something at all nice to think about." He was silent. After another long pause she said, "Luc? Are you still awake? I
wish
you will tell me a story. About your friend Greg,
peut-être?
Could you, do you think?"

"Are you crazy? Go to sleep."

After that, there was total silence. And it was in silence next morning that they got up, hastily ate a few bites of breakfast, and went off to their respective occupations.

When Gudgeon lifted up the big manhole cover and said, "Down you go, then, lad," Lucas had such a struggle to make himself step into the black hole that he felt almost as if it were somebody else, another shuddering reluctant person, to whom he was giving the order.

Perhaps I'm dreaming the whole thing, he thought; perhaps I'm really sitting in the schoolroom at Midnight Court; perhaps I'm not here at all.

And this mood of dreamy detachment stayed with him for quite a long spell; they walked, and sloshed, and dipped, and scooped, until, after possibly a couple of hours had passed, Gudgeon suddenly exclaimed, "Quiet! Listen!"

"What?"

"Hush!"

Then Lucas, above the swish of the sewer, began to hear a faint, shrill, distant, ear-piercing sound, like the squeal of pipes.

His fear made him quick.

"Is it hogs?"

"Ah! Reckon so. And the mischief of it is that the Causeway manhole's nearest from here, and some blaggard has made off with the ladder from that one; we'll have to foot it on to the James Street one. Step lively, boy, eh? There ain't any time to waste pronging up the tosh just now."

Lucas had no intention of doing so. He followed Gudgeons example, and hurried along as fast as the slippery, uncertain footway would allow.

"How do you know the hogs aren't on ahead?" he panted.

"They are," Gudgeon said grimly. "Can't you hear? Leastways they're to the side of us, a-coming down Pastry Lane Passage. We got to get past afore they come out." And he splashed on through a stretch of overflow, while Lucas struggled to keep up in his noisome wake. For Lucas it was impossible to tell where the squealing—much louder now—was coming from; the echoes seemed to be all around; but Gudgeon was quite positive.

"Hogs often
do
come out o' Pastry Lane," he explained. "There's extry pickings for 'em up that way, see; all the rats that gets killed in the bakers' backyards gets chucked down there. Ah! See! What did I tell ee?"

For a brief moment, as they passed the narrow branch entrance that was called Pastry Lane Passage, he shone his bull's-eye up it, and Lucas, with a horrible closing of his throat, caught the flash of two dozen little points of red light.

"They don't
like a
light in their eyes; that'll slow 'em for a moment," said Gudgeon. "Come on, it's still a tidy way to James Street."

On, on, they pounded and slithered, panting and gulping. Lucas had lost his mood of detachment some time ago, yet even through his terror he felt a strange kind of unreality: this can't actually be happening to
me?

From time to time Gudgeon turned momentarily and shone his bull's-eye backward; the points of red light would halt each time he did so, but they came on again each time and were getting much closer. Lucas could hear the thud and patter of sharp little galloping feet now, and a scraping sound, as some members of the herd were pushed by others against the brick walls.

A horrible thought came to him: suppose somebody else, some other inconsiderate tosh man, had removed the ladder from the James Street manhole? Suppose they had to run on for another mile? Or suppose, in their haste, they had already passed the James Street refuge?

But at last he heard Gudgeon, ahead of him, give a grunt of satisfaction, and the shadows from his bull's-eye flowed suddenly downward instead of swinging from side to side.

'"Ere we are, then, boy; look slippy," he called back, now suspended somewhere overhead.

Lucas wanted no urging; the hogs were only a few yards behind him, thrusting each other forward; he could see their small black hairy shapes as he turned to climb and smell a rank, warm piggy odor, even above the reek of the drain.

He slipped, fumbling for the ladder, which began at waist height—pushed himself up with his pole—felt a sudden sharp pain in his left leg—kicked out in a frenzy of fright—and then he was up, and safe. The little red eyes flashed for a moment below, and then were gone; the impetus of the herd, with the hogs at the back pushing on the ones in front, was too rapid for them to stop. In a couple of minutes, furiously squealing and champing, they had disappeared again into the blackness of the tunnel.

"That's all right then," said Gudgeon, calmly, descending several rungs of the ladder. "—Well, stir your stumps, boy, down you go; don't dangle there like an apple on a codlin tree."

"But aren't we going out?"

"Out?"

"Through the manhole?"

"Lord love you, no! And waste a whole morning? Not on your peggy! Why, if we was to leave the sewer every time we met a handful o' hogs, we'd not collect a farden's worth o' tosh in a fortnight. Any road, that lot won't come back—they never do, jist run on and on. No, the only danger is once they get you down and tromple on you;
then
they stop all right.
Then
you're done for. Long's you whip up a ladder, smartish, when they catch up with you, you 'ont take no hurt from 'em. Like now."