Not Less Than Gods (11 page)

As the train idled through Greenwich, Ludbridge leaned back in his seat and considered Bell-Fairfax.

“So you served in China, did you?”

Bell-Fairfax looked up from the third portrait. “I did, sir, yes.”

“You can’t have been much more than a boy then. Midshipman?”

“Yes, sir.” Bell-Fairfax seemed unwilling to enlarge on his reply. Ludbridge
took out his cigar case, offered a cigar to Bell-Fairfax, and lit his own cigar when Bell-Fairfax declined. He puffed smoke.

“So you can’t have got up to much, I suppose.”

“No, sir, not much.”

“I served in China too,” said Ludbridge casually. “Royal Marines. What’d you think of the whole business?”

Bell-Fairfax raised his eyes, looking wary. “I didn’t care for it, sir.”

“I didn’t either.” Ludbridge blew a smoke ring. “And I served under Stransham, you know. When we were at Zhenjiang . . . there were three merchants there and, you know, they were supposed to have obliged us in a certain matter and—to make a long story short—they hadn’t. So I was sent out with my men to round up the merchants’ wives and concubines and children and servants. Which we did, of course. We herded them into the courtyard in front of the house we’d commandeered, and our C.O.—won’t tell you his name, but he was knighted a few years ago—he brought the merchants to the window looking out over the courtyard, and he bid them look well. Then he told me to give the order to prepare to fire.

“And I did. We raised our muskets and aimed into that crowd of weeping women and squalling babies. I assumed, of course, that all we’d have to do was threaten—the Chinese are very particular about their offspring, the sons at least—and the merchants would fall to their knees, begging for a second chance to do as they’d been told.

“And that was exactly what they did. But, do you know, the C.O. gave the order to fire anyway?”

Bell-Fairfax looked steadily at Ludbridge. “And did you?”

“No.” Ludbridge blew another smoke ring. “I refused a direct order. Made no difference, of course. The C.O. was set on making an example of the merchants, you see. He had me relieved of command and my men fired into the crowd, and about half the women and children died at once. Then the C.O. ordered my men to reload and shoot the rest of them.

“I was told a great deal during my dressing-down about how yellow
heathens only understood that sort of cruelty, how they often did worse to their own people, how they were scarcely human anyhow. You know the sort of things we were told out there, I expect.”

“I remember,” said Bell-Fairfax, in a whisper.

“Well, and then my C.O. went on to make an example of me. Soldiers, themselves, only understand that sort of cruelty. I was cashiered and sent home, and spent a year in prison. When I got out, Greene came round to see me, on the Society’s behalf. I was recruited and became a Residential.”

Bell-Fairfax said nothing. Ludbridge took a last pull on his cigar.

“The reason is all, you see,” he said meditatively. “I’d killed before; I’ve killed since. But that wanton slaughter, all to make a point in what was after all an unjust war . . . no, by God. I’ve never regretted refusing that order.”

“I set fire to houses,” said Bell-Fairfax, in a faraway voice. “I was serving aboard the
Repulsion
. We went ashore in the gig with Mr. Hastleigh, our lieutenant. Jermyn and Shawe and I, all midshipmen. We had kegs of oil and matches and tow and oakum, to start the fires . . . we were to creep in amongst the houses of this little village, and set them alight. They were only fishermen’s huts. We were laughing, because we didn’t know anything. We thought it would be some sort of grand Guy Fawkes prank.

“We followed our orders. The little huts went up in flames. People ran out of them. I saw a woman carrying a baby, with her clothing afire. I tried to help her; Mr. Hastleigh stopped me and boxed my ears. He ordered me back to the boat. We all ran . . . he told me I might have gotten us all killed, and all I could think of was that poor woman beating at her rags, and the baby screaming.

“We rowed like madmen. As we came alongside the
Repulsion
, her guns began firing on the village. We cowered in the boat, with the guns roaring out over our heads. I had to hold my hands over my ears.

“When we’d given them three or four good broadsides, we pulled up anchor and sailed out of the harbor, and sat just offshore. I heard the screaming a long while after. I could see the fires burning for hours.

“In the morning, the smoke lay heavy as fog, in big rifts. We couldn’t see where the village had been, or what had happened to the people there. The captain called us before him and commended us on a job well done.”

Bell-Fairfax fell silent. Ludbridge shook his head.

“Wretched business,” he said. “All of it. We really must make a better world, don’t you think?”

Bell-Fairfax nodded. He looked down at the third portrait once more.

Stepping down from their railway carriage, they beheld Rosherville Gardens. It was a genteel place, green and well kept, and solidly genteel folk strolled amid the trees. They admired the Greek temples and statuary, or practiced at the archery range, or lost themselves in the shrubbery maze, or took refreshments at the various pavilions provided for that purpose. All the lower middle classes were dressed in their very best and on their best behavior.

“I expect you’re thinking we ought to have changed our costumes before coming,” remarked Ludbridge. “Rather conspicuous, aren’t we?”

“No help for it now,” said Bell-Fairfax shortly. He took a last glance at the portrait. “Perhaps they’ll think we’re gardeners.
He
looks as though he must be a waiter. We ought to go somewhere and order tea.”

“If you like,” said Ludbridge. He put his hands in his pockets and strolled along beside Bell-Fairfax, who glowered rather as they made their way through the crowds of children bowling hoops and shopgirls on the arms of tailors. “You might at least attempt to look as though you’re enjoying your outing. I know what it is; you’re making a comparison between all these happy Britons and the memory of those poor wretched Chinese. Do you find yourself despising us all? I did, at first.”

“Rubbish,” Bell-Fairfax muttered.

“Ah! I see you’re particularly affected. But you mustn’t allow it to distract you from the job at hand, you know.”

Bell-Fairfax looked at him sidelong. Ludbridge only smiled.

“One can’t despise whole nations,” said Bell-Fairfax, with some heat. “There are innocents everywhere.”

“Really? Point to one of these smug, comfortable people and tell me which has a pure heart.”

“You don’t know them. Any one of them might be a saint. Shall I feel contempt for them because you use words like
smug
and
comfortable
? That’s just the same as telling me the villagers didn’t matter, because they were
yellow heathens
. The clever use of words to reduce living people, for whom we ought to feel compassion, to mere ciphers who can be erased to suit someone’s purpose.” Edward kicked savagely at a stone in the path.

Ludbridge raised his eyebrows. “Bravo,” he said. An infant, who had been staggering ahead of its parents along a grassy slope, tottered and fell. Its long skirts hindered its rise, and it went rolling over and over down the slope in a whirl of white lace. Edward jumped forward and caught it, swinging it up.

“Here you are,” he said, smiling into the child’s eyes. The baby, too astonished to cry, stared back. “Here’s a pure heart, Ludbridge. Unless you’re a desperate criminal in disguise, baby? No, I didn’t think so.”

He returned the infant to its father, who came running down the slope after it, and looked after them a trifle wistfully as they returned to the infant’s mother, who stood above them wringing her hands.

“You never know,” said Ludbridge
sotto voce
. “Might grow up to be a burglar.”

“Bollocks,” said Bell-Fairfax.

They spotted their man carrying a tray of sandwiches and lemonade to a group of chaperoned misses. He wore a striped apron and was of average build, was in fact average in nearly every unmemorable feature of his person. A careful observer might note that his gaze darted to and fro as he performed his office, and his expression was perhaps a little uneasy; but these were the only things that marked him out in any way.

“I think we’ll just go take a seat.” Bell-Fairfax strode toward the dining terrace. Ludbridge followed. They sat at a little table and waited. Minutes passed, and neither their quarry nor any other waiter came to wait on them. The waiters swooped perilously near, like swallows, and off again, pouncing on empty cups and saucers and whisking them in on trays, clearing away uneaten crusts, hovering attentively at the elbows of the respectably dressed; but they did not wait on Bell-Fairfax and Ludbridge.

“Then again, it must be admitted that the attire of the common laborer does confer a kind of invisibility,” said Ludbridge.

“So much the better, then,” said Bell-Fairfax, and rising to his feet he marched toward his quarry, who was scrubbing melted ice cream from a tabletop. As Bell-Fairfax passed, he set the gummed label on the man’s back and kept going. Ludbridge rose and walked past on the waiter’s other side, deliberately pausing to catch his eye. The waiter looked up, recognized Ludbridge, and started. Ludbridge grinned at him.

“We
are
everywhere,” said Ludbridge.

“Oh, bugger,” said the waiter, in a peevish voice. “Was it you?”

“Not at all,” said Ludbridge. “A promising apprentice. Tootle-oo.”

“Spa Road Station,” said Bell-Fairfax. “This is our stop, I believe.”

“It would appear that way,” said Ludbridge. He rose and followed Bell-Fairfax as they stepped down from their carriage onto the platform at Bermondsey. There was an overpowering reek of raw sewage in the heavy air.

“I assume that the Society has some confidence we won’t catch cholera?”

“It would appear that way.”

Bell-Fairfax grimaced. They made their way to Neckinger Road and, passing under the railway arches, walked on toward Jacob’s Island. The red sun was fading already, obscured by shrouds of fog that drifted up-river; there was no breath of wind to stir the reeking vapor between the high leaning houses or the canals that ran behind them. “Good God,”
murmured Bell-Fairfax, holding his nose. “Why was there ever a spa here?”

“It wasn’t like this, once,” said Ludbridge imperturbably. “Tanneries and docks here now; and all the poor who work in them, living in these teetering warrens. The human filth of their privies goes straight into the canals. When they require water in which to bathe or launder their clothes, or indeed to boil their dinners or drink, they simply draw up a bucketful from the canals. They’ll let it sit awhile to let the worst of the stuff precipitate down, if they’re not
very
thirsty, and pour what they mean to drink off the top. Filth seeps up and oozes through the floors, and in some cases the walls. This is the shop you want for cholera and typhus, my boy.”

They came to the corner of Georges Row and started down it. Bell-Fairfax halted after a few steps, shaking his head like an alarmed horse. He groped frantically for his pocket-handkerchief. “There are corpses—I can smell them—” He started to tie the handkerchief over his mouth and nose.

“That will make you rather conspicuous, won’t it?” said Ludbridge. “And of course there are corpses! Dead animals floating in the water; dead men and women shuttered up in their houses. What d’you expect happens, when people live like this? March on; you’ve work to do.”

They proceeded on their way. Whitechapel and Spitalfields had been bustling by comparison, for Bermondsey was eerily silent. Not a soul moved anywhere, no drunken quarrels could be heard; only, here and there, a ghost-white child sat motionless on a doorstep, or on an upper stairway, with its sticklike legs dangling through the railings. Rifts and veils of poisonous gases hung in the air, heaviest at ground level.

“Now, you might suppose,” said Ludbridge, “that the inhabitants of Whitechapel deserved their poverty. Drunkenness, idleness and all such vices. You couldn’t say the same of this place! The folk are thrifty, industrious souls, every one of them. They die like flies here, simply because they can’t afford to live elsewhere. You may blush at the memory of what we did to the Chinese, but see what our own people endure in our own nation!”

“But something must be done for them,” said Bell-Fairfax, in a kind of strangled gasp.

“Of course. Educate them, in order that they’ll know better than to drink from the canals? But what will they drink, then? Raze the whole district to the ground? But where will they live? Move them all, men, women and children, to the countryside? And how shall they live? They work the docks because they haven’t the education to do anything else. There are no easy answers, my son. And, should you discover one, you will find a host of men standing ready to call you a liar, because their continued wealth depends on everything remaining exactly as it is. Now, look sharp! You’ve almost missed your street.”

They turned down a lane so narrow it was bridged across by the shop signs on either side. Above them the upper stories shot up black against the sky, smeared now with the red of sunset, and a deeper gloom was seeping down between the houses. Here and there a candle had been lit, burning low and blue for want of air.

“There it is,” said Ludbridge, pointing at a sign:
THE SHIP AGROUND
. Bell-Fairfax, who was doing his best not to breathe, nodded curtly. The inn was a long gabled building, looming up out of the mud. It breathed out a fragrance of gin positively wholesome in that mephitic atmosphere. They hurried within and found their way to a dark corner.

“Aren’t you going to go ask the barman if he’s seen your mate Jack?” Ludbridge inquired, returning from the bar with a glass of gin in either hand. Bell-Fairfax scowled.

“I shan’t make that mistake again. He lodges here; sooner or later he must come in, or go out, and I’ll spot him.”

“Assuming there isn’t an exit round the back,” said Ludbridge, taking a sip of gin.