The Streets Read online

  Sprule bowed slightly at Paget, then turned to me. ‘Mr Wildeblood is already known to me, sir. He and I had an exchange of views on the future of the London poor.’

  Marchmont eyed me narrowly, and said, with deliberation, ‘Is that so? And what conclusion did you reach?’

  Sprule was urbane in his reply. ‘None at all, I’m afraid – on the matter of housing them, Mr Wildeblood expressed himself very much against our resettlement scheme.’

  ‘Quite right, too,’ said Paget. ‘The idea of uprooting whole neighbourhoods and relocating them to the countryside is preposterous.’ He gestured at the crowds still pouring into the square. ‘How willingly d’you suppose they would comply with such an arrangement?’

  Sprule’s level expression didn’t change. ‘There are ways and means, Mr Paget. One cannot expect the great revolutions of social engineering to pass off without a tremor. Naturally there will be disputation along the way. But five years from now, perhaps sooner, I predict that resettlement will have been embraced as a necessary measure to save society.’

  ‘To save society? – from what?’

  ‘Why, from the contagion of degeneracy,’ said Sprule, as though the answer were obvious. ‘We cannot allow the slums simply to fester on. Resettlement is the only policy that will halt the deterioration of our social and economic health. In that way we shall regulate the very existence –’

  ‘Your missionary zeal is admirable, Sprule,’ said Marchmont, cutting in sharply, ‘but I fancy Paget here is on the clock. May I advise you gentlemen to have a care this afternoon? It seems –’ he looked out over the sea of bodies – ‘the local constabulary is out in force.’

  He was not wrong. As we had been talking, long lines of policemen had appeared seemingly out of nowhere to picket the edges of the square and were now jostling the crowds contained within. The guvnor, having tipped his hat to us, walked on with Sprule, who had the slightly thwarted air of one who would like to have lectured us a good while longer. I suspected he was a man not used to being interrupted. But Marchmont would have interrupted the Queen if it suited him. Paget and I, in an effort to circumvent the crush, were heading for the junction at Northumberland Avenue, where we might plot a more convenient path towards the centre.

  Paget glanced round as we edged through the press of bodies. ‘There’s our man,’ he said, nodding towards the chief speaker as he mounted the steps of the National Gallery. It was Kenton, the leader of the Rental Reform League and the star of today’s protest. I recognised him from the day Paget introduced us on Fleet Street; I particularly recalled the bruise across his nose which he had sustained during the St Pancras Vestry affray. In the weeks since, his name had scarcely been out of the newspapers, his printing works in King’s Cross had been raided by the police, and in Parliament a Tory MP had accused him of ‘fomenting a working-class rebellion’, a charge which Kenton was only too pleased to accept. Now here he was, megaphone in hand, ready to address the assembled thousands.

  ‘Workers,’ he began, ‘we have come together this afternoon for a simple reason – to put a stop to murder. Yes, murder! What else should we call that poisoning of our bodies and spirits, the result of inhabiting foul dens that are no more than living tombs? Yet not only do we endure them – we pay for them, too, over and over again, because robber landlords demand their rents. Listen to me. These slum owners are growing rich on your misery, your degradation, your slow death. We have asked the government for help, but they have failed us. So the responsibility is ours to set things right, to stand up to the rack-renters and say No more! You shall not have another penny from us!’

  The last words of this oration were almost drowned out by the tumultuous approval that burst like a dragon’s roar from the crowd. This was the stuff they had come to hear. It set the tone for the next speaker, and another after him, each of them kindling the mood of indignation that crackled in the air. As we stood there, a distant worry snagged on my consciousness, and it prompted me to consult Paget.

  ‘That man Sprule – what do you know of him?’

  ‘Only that he’s off his nut. I gather he’s embroiled in some charitable enquiry into the working classes – that’s why he’s been knocking about with Henry.’

  ‘He hasn’t much in common with the guvnor’s view of intervention – “as little as possible”, you told me.’

  Paget shrugged. ‘If I know Henry he’ll have worked the association to his advantage. Sprule is probably paying him in some unofficial capacity.’

  I brooded for some moments. ‘Sprule seems very confident about this scheme of relocating the poor. It’s as though he knows something we don’t.’

  ‘It has no chance of succeeding,’ said Paget flatly. ‘As I said, it would be impossible to persuade people to move en masse to the countryside, however temptingly it is presented. Neighbourhoods cannot be so easily dispersed.’

  ‘Yes, but you heard what he said about “ways and means”. Perhaps the state might have recourse to less congenial methods of persuasion.’

  ‘That would not –’

  Paget’s reply got only so far into this expression of demur, for the words about to form on his lips were suddenly and rudely dashed. The stirrings of agitation we had felt earlier in the boisterous throng had gathered strength on the way to where we stood; it arrived first in a hefty shove to our backs, which threw us in turn against our close-packed neighbours directly in front. This barging impact set up a hugely violent ripple that carried us forwards, causing others nearby to stumble and fall to the pavement. The air rang with oaths and cries of pain. The reason for this commotion, at first unknown, was now discernible: a mounted policeman had strayed into the centre of the square, and the horse, either confused or maddened by the noise, was rearing up in terror. Next thing it bolted, charging a line of demonstrators in its path and knocking them down like skittles. Some brave soul grabbed the horse’s reins, and, wrong-footed, the beast and its rider collapsed in a neighing heap.

  As we later discovered, this incident was fatefully misconstrued; from the ambiguous perspective of those on the margins of the square an act of self-defence perhaps looked like an attack. In any event it acted as a provocation to the blues. Now a whole line of mounted police made a charge on the eastern flank of the demonstration, scattering some, putting others to flight; yet with barely any room to run multiple collisions ensued. Paget and I, still borne headlong by the momentum behind us, were now trying to scramble our way out of the ruck. The front ranks of the demonstrators, who had probably heard these ructions at a distance but not known their cause, were soon caught in the surge of bodies bearing down upon them, pushing them back against the temporary fencing erected in front of the gallery steps. It was lucky for all concerned that it was temporary, because a solid wall would have fatally crushed the oncoming wave. Instead it broke and toppled under the weight of the panicked crowd, of which we were still a helpless part. The steps were now thirty yards in front of us, and there, I calculated, safety would lie. Paget had slipped, like many others, in the melee, and without ceremony I dragged him bodily to his feet. ‘Quick, man, to the steps,’ I cried. But this channel of escape was abruptly closed, from the north, by another massed charge of police horses, whose aggressive intent could no longer be doubted. Some of the mounted slops were laying batons on demonstrators, whose only offence had been to break free of the chaos that had so suddenly engulfed them.

  Seen from the vantage of Kenton and his fellow speakers on the steps, the spectacle must have looked baffling – and then horrifying. Bad enough that people were being trampled down by the onrushing throng; worse still that the police were picking off stragglers by coshing them about the head. One poor woman I saw found her shawl entangled with the stirrup of a mounted slop, whose momentum dragged her along in its wake before she was hurled bodily to the ground. The piteous calamity happening in front of them had moved the organisers to remonstrate with the police. When that proved futile, a group of them came down to intervene, K
enton foremost amongst them. But this was only more paraffin poured on the bonfire. Wading into one violent scuffle, he was immediately set upon by three slops, and disappeared under a blur of truncheons. With the steps blocked from access we turned back on ourselves. At this stage angry demonstrators were openly engaging the slops in running battles, and for a moment I stopped, transfixed by the chaos around us. I didn’t notice the shadow at my back until I felt a cracking blow at my ear; my legs gave way, and the ground rose to meet me. I couldn’t tell how long I was unconscious, but when I came round Paget had somehow got us clear and was half lifting, half walking me down a narrow alley off St Martin’s Lane.

  I begged for a moment’s rest, and sank down with my back against the wall. As Paget squatted down and wiped the blood from my scalp, he said, almost to himself, ‘Perhaps he was right after all . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sprule. He’s been warning of “a people’s revolution” for years, putting the wind up the government. Now with the murders in Ireland yesterday there’ll be a right panic.’

  ‘What murders?’

  ‘Chief Secretary for Ireland and his undersecretary were stabbed to death in Phoenix Park. Fenians, they suspect. But what happens over there could just as easily happen here – there is a dangerous mood abroad. The government will be hot to root out seditionaries.’ He paused, and turned to me. ‘And that will include anybody attending a protest like today’s.’

  Monkey on a stick

  I WAS MORE shaken by my fall in Trafalgar Square than I had at first perceived. My head the next morning throbbed – my unseen assailant must have delivered a fearsome thwack – and my knees and arms were tender with abrasions. (I wondered if Paget had actually dragged me along the ground to safety.) I did not feel well enough to go to work, and instead shuffled to a low eating house round the corner from my lodgings for a bowl of soup. As the spoon trembled in my hand I felt sadly valetudinarian. The Times reported that the riot had been orchestrated by seditious elements in the crowd, though admitted that the police had been, in certain instances, ‘heavy-handed’. Casualties, many of them head wounds, had been taken to the nearby Charing Cross Hospital. Over twenty demonstrators had been arrested in the disorder, including Kenton. The leader page opined that yesterday’s events carried an ominous message for the government: ‘Unless measures are quickly taken, a brutalised labouring class will be ready to rise up and seize control.’ Dread was in the air, just as Paget had suggested.

  I was back at my rooms in Hanover Street when the landlady, who rejoiced under the queer but appropriate name of Mrs Home, stopped by with a letter. The opulent texture of the envelope seemed familiar. I opened it and read:

  Kensington Palace Gardens, W.

  8 May, ’82

  Dear David,

  I did so enjoy our conversations at dinner here last month, since when I have been engaged in a charitable venture in which I think – I hope – you might be interested. Perhaps you will allow me to tell you about it in person. I wonder if you are at liberty on the afternoon of Saturday week? – we could meet at the house and then stroll in the park, if it pleases you.

  Your affectionate god-sister,

  Kitty

  I supposed she must have got my address from the letter I had written to Sir Martin thanking him for dinner. But why did she want to tell me about this charity of hers in person? Surely she was not so deluded as to mistake me for a potential patron? No, she knew of my lowly employment under Marchmont – she probably even knew how much I earned. It was, I decided, simply an overture of friendliness, and one that I was glad to accept. We had got along pretty well on the night, certainly more than I had with the other guests. It would also give me the opportunity to discover what she knew of the mysterious Sprule, whose book I had borrowed from Mudie’s. Thus far I had read only the preface of The Inferior Race, wherein Sprule thanked both Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. Two pages in two weeks; I could justly claim for myself the title The Inferior Reader.

  In the meantime my enquiries concerning Condor Holdings had achieved precisely nothing. I had written to them some weeks ago about their taking possession of various leases, and still awaited a reply. Paget, who knew quite a lot about everything, had never heard of them. At one stage I was minded to ask Rennert – ‘the oracle’, as he was known at Salisbury Square – but an instinct warned me not to, and, in the light of what followed, I was glad to have obeyed it. It had come to my notice that the copy I dictated most afternoons was being used in the paper less and less often. When I mentioned this to certain more experienced inspectors I learned that a gradual whittling-down was not unusual: Marchmont was always on the lookout for unexplored neighbourhoods to incorporate into his survey, and Somers Town had perhaps yielded up most of its vital ore for now. It had also become apparent that the Poverty Map was now his chief preoccupation; Rennert was to all intents and purposes the presiding spirit behind The Labouring Classes of London, and it was to him I reported.

  But for now I had a somewhat lighter workload, which gave me time to pursue my investigation of the Somers Town leaseholders. With no likelihood of receiving any communication from Condor Holdings, and no other information about this company forthcoming, I took it upon myself to pay them a visit in person. Bishopsgate House was a City office building occupied by shops on its ground floor, rising to a sooty terracotta facade from which huge banks of windows stared down. Such was its aspect from the far side of Bishopsgate Street, which was this morning so thunderous with carts and cabs and ’buses that merely crossing from one side of the road to the other held the air of an achievement. Inside, the board on the wall listed at least twenty businesses in occupancy, Condor Holdings amongst them. A few dark-coated City gentlemen stood about jawing in the atrium.

  I took the stairs to the fifth floor, and eventually found their office at the end of a gloomy corridor. I knocked once, twice, on the mahogany panelled door, and on receiving no reply tried the doorknob. Locked. I settled on a courtesy bench seat hard by, and waited. A half-hour or more had passed when, from the next office along, a man emerged and, on seeing me, asked if I was his next appointment.

  ‘No, my appointment is with your neighbour,’ I lied, gesturing at the Condor Holdings office.

  The man pulled a dubious face. ‘You’ll wait a long time,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen barely a soul come or go from that place. Whoever they are, they don’t seem to hold with office hours.’

  ‘D’you happen to know what hours they do keep?’

  ‘Not a clue. That door’s always closed – queer way to run a business, I must say.’

  We exchanged a shrugging look, and he was about to withdraw when I called him back. ‘You did say “barely” a soul, am I right?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, you implied that you have seen someone here before.’

  He frowned, recalling his own words. ‘Yes. Once, I believe. A fellow called in at the office for twenty minutes, then left, just before the close of business. I noticed it only because it was so unusual.’

  I asked him if he remembered when this occurred, and he blew out his cheeks in such a way as to suggest he could sooner recall the date of the last lunar eclipse. The time snailed by. At half past one I strolled down to the street and bought a ham sandwich from a stall; I returned to my lonely post on the fifth floor and ate it there. I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew the office worker I had spoken to woke me with a tap on my boot. It was now gone four. From the sceptical look he gave my half-eaten sandwich I suppose he must have thought I was just on the mooch.

  ‘I fancy my appointment has been forgotten,’ I said, rising to my feet and trying to sound businesslike whilst I brushed crumbs off my trousers. I gestured in resignation at the door of Condor Holdings, and echoed his earlier opinion that it was indeed ‘a queer way to run a business’.

  ‘Better luck next time,’ he called, just as I reached the turning for the stairs.

  In daylight the E
lder mansion at Kensington Palace Gardens looked almost objectionably grand. The carved eagles on the gate-piers looked down their beaks at me, and the immaculate white stucco of the facade glowed against the obsidian gaze of the windows. To clink the brass knocker upon the door seemed in itself an act of trespass, but the footman admitted me once again without a twitch. I was halfway across the marbled expanse of the hall when I heard my name called – nearly sung – from above, and there, head and shoulders canted over the spiral of the balustrade, was Kitty.

  ‘Come up!’

  I followed the curve of the staircase to the second floor, where she greeted me with a handshake. Her sky-blue pinafore dress made her seem younger than I remembered, though I had a notion she was of an age with me. A sly, dimpled half-smile suggested some privately anticipated delight. She turned on her heel and bade me follow her.

  ‘I want to introduce you to a new friend,’ she said over her shoulder. I felt a small jolt of disappointment as I tramped after her along the corridor. Wasn’t I her new friend? She opened a door off to the left, and I entered a vast drawing room (there was no other size in this house), its centrepiece a circular buttoned sofa upholstered in damson-coloured velvet; its tiered, segmented plumpness gave it the look of an enormous furred jelly mould. Kitty peered about the room, then said in a fondly indulgent tone, ‘Now, where is the little fellow?’ I was about to enquire after the identity of this diminutive when from behind the sofa rose a ghastly inhuman screech. I turned to Kitty in horror, but she responded with a merry tinkling laugh and hurried towards its source. ‘Here he is!’ she cooed, and came from around the sofa carrying – to my astonishment – a small, black, spindly-tailed monkey. I say black, though the fur on the neck and head were yellowish-white, and its wrinkled little face a cloudy pink. Its expression, I should say, was one of ineffable stupidity.