The Streets Read online

  ‘. . . as little as possible,’ I murmured. ‘I had it from Paget – you said that to him once.’

  Marchmont tilted his head sideways in admission. ‘Ah, that is a sundering I do regret. If Paget had stuck with me, well, who knows what we might have achieved . . .’ He paused, abstracted for a moment, before he returned to his theme. ‘Not to harm – and the safest way to do no harm is to do as little as possible. Alas, I broke my own rule. I allowed myself to be persuaded by Mr Sprule, and others, that Bindon Fields would be a model for rehabilitating the urban poor. Oh, it was meant to be first-class, “A1”, this pastoral refuge for the dispossessed. Then I learned that they intended to appoint a superintendent, a Mr Jonas Harrigan – heard of him?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘His previous office was governor at Maidstone Gaol.’

  ‘What?’ I felt my insides begin to run cold.

  ‘Yes. A prison governor. Bindon Fields is to be a labour colony, and the inmates employed as servants of the state. It’s a segregational scheme designed to defend social purity . . . One oughtn’t to be surprised – after all, this is the country that drafted the Poor Law.’ Now I understood what Father Kay had meant. Every form of society requires its protection. Bindon Fields was not a shelter to keep the poor from harm; it was a place to keep society from being harmed by the poor.

  ‘But . . . they couldn’t. No government of any decency would allow it,’ I said, mostly to myself.

  ‘I gather it has a cabal of supporters in Parliament, led by Mr Abernathy. You know their arguments. To them, the poor are essentially a criminal class that must be contained for the sake of public health.’

  ‘Abernathy . . . we met once at dinner –’

  ‘Yes, and I hear you gravely offended him, and his wife’. Again, I detected a kind of amused approval in his tone. ‘Father Kay and his Social Protection League are a determined lot. You have a fight ahead of you.’

  I looked searchingly at him. ‘But you yourself must condemn the idea. I mean, a labour colony – surely it is your fight, too.’

  Marchmont held up his hands and looked about his stripped office. ‘Alas, one that I must decline. You see a man on his beam ends! It’s either exile for me or a prison cell. Out of consideration to my family I choose the former.’ I now recalled Paget telling me of the guvnor’s previous bankruptcy, years ago, when he bolted abroad and left his wife to face the music. So it seemed that he had acquired a sense of duty in the meantime, if no better luck as a gambler. At that moment, the girl I had passed on the step sidled into the room. She glanced about shyly, then said, ‘Papa, the man says the trap is ready to leave . . .’

  Marchmont winked at her. ‘Thank you, my dear. I shall be there presently.’ The girl, shooting her father an uncertain look, withdrew.

  Rennert, consulting his hunter, said with quiet urgency, ‘Sir, you really should – there’s no telling when they’ll show up.’ I presumed ‘they’ were his creditors, or did he mean the police? I had no clue as to the real extent of his debts, and now was not the time to ask. The guvnor sighed absently, and took his coat and hat from the stand in the corner. He looked up suddenly and caught me watching him, a rueful gleam in his eye.

  ‘I could have wished for a more satisfactory leave-taking,’ he said. ‘But the fault is mine, as I say. Exit, pursued by a bailiff.’ He clapped a trilby on his bulbous head, then took the silver-topped cane Rennert held out to him. ‘Mr Wildeblood –’ He extended his hand, and I took it. ‘One more word of caution. Steer clear of Moyles. You have been a stone in his shoe, and he’ll not think twice about dispatching you from it. As for those notebooks you came for, I’m sure Rennert knows their whereabouts. He knows everything else!’

  He took a final resigned look around his office, and then padded out in that lazy rolling gait of his. Rennert followed him into the hall; I remained on the threshold, reluctant to intrude upon their farewell scene but unable to stop myself eavesdropping. I listened to Marchmont’s voice, briskly consoling a lady whose distress emerged in little gasping lamentations – his wife? After a few moments, the lady’s voice receded, and then Marchmont was in converse with Rennert, a spoken duet in which I could hear the notes but not the words, the one’s self-assured boom playing off the other’s low, discreet phrases. It was not long before they ceased, and then Marchmont’s voice sounded from the street, where he was barking instructions to the cabby, or else to the removal men. There came the sharp smack of a whip, and the slow commotion of departing horses and grinding wheels. I stepped back into the office, fuggy with tobacco smoke. Marchmont had carelessly left his cigar burning in the desk ashtray; I picked it up and crushed out its fiery tip against the pewter.

  When Rennert returned to the office he looked somewhat enervated, as though the guvnor’s departure had drained him of vital juices. It may have been a trick of the light (the room itself seemed to have shrunk) but his face looked gaunter, and his figure even spindlier: he reminded me of a wounded egret I had once found on a riverbank near home. He lifted a stack of books from the worn chaise longue, then set them down again, seeming to have forgotten what he was meant to do. He turned, and started slightly on seeing me, as if he had expected to find himself alone. I suddenly felt very sorry for him.

  ‘Would you – care for some help? Tidying . . .’

  ‘Your notebooks,’ he said, ignoring my offer. ‘I took them because I hoped the governor might one day put them to use. He is a man whose sense of purpose depends on his work. Take that away from him and –’ He stopped, unwilling to articulate his gloomy prognosis.

  ‘Where will he go?’ I asked.

  ‘Belgium, to begin with. He has close ties in Bruges. Then – I don’t know – he speaks good French, and German . . . a man of his calibre will always find a welcome.’ He looked thoughtful for a moment, then, blinking away his reverie, he stepped over to one of the open crates. After some rummaging he plucked out three bound notebooks whose navy boards I recognised, and handed them to me.

  ‘I shall return them to you once I am finished.’

  ‘Keep them,’ he replied. ‘A memento of Somers Town.’

  ‘But you said the guvnor might require them one day –’

  ‘The governor will not be coming back. Not in a long time. Perhaps not ever.’

  I looked at him, wondering if he would elaborate upon this speculation, but his face was unreadable. It occurred to me that Rennert would have made a good poker player, with his cool impassive front, but I also knew that, unlike Marchmont, he never gambled. It was possibly that which had made their partnership work, the one’s steady diligence matched to the other’s combustible audacity. But it was not something that could last.

  I was about to offer my hand in farewell, but he had withdrawn to the other side of the desk and was taking down the great coloured map, on which had been pinned such high ambitions. ‘Goodbye, sir,’ I said. Still with his back to me he stopped what he was doing, and turned his head slightly. I could not swear to it, but in the fleeting moment the light fell on his eye I thought I saw a glint of moisture. His voice, when it came, was as dead as ashes.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Wildeblood,’ he said, in such a way that suggested we would not meet again.

  One evening, later that week, I lay on my bed and opened the third and final notebook from my period as inspector at Somers Town. I silently thanked Rennert for instructing me back then to write in pencil, for my atrocious penmanship was often illegible even to me. I turned up the gas lamp on the bedside table, and retraced my time on the streets.

  . . . the second-floor room occupied by a family of Irish costers. Man of 60, quiet, steady type & afflicted with asthma; the wife drinks; children out at work. Could not see a single chair to sit upon. Broken parts of windows are stuffed with rags . . . A couple, Mr & Mrs Standish, married for 20 years, earned a living by making toys in the form of mice, which are set to run around a wooden plate by the manipulation of a wire beneath. He said they made about 2 shillings a we
ek. Polite but wary, seemed anxious that I might steal his trade secrets. Their room clean but small, & one damaged table at which they worked and ate . . .

  No. 15. A ‘disorderly house’, viz. home to prostitutes & their bullies, but also frequented by thieves & vagrants; most of the occupants, about 20 in number, were drunk, & filthily clothed; at least three people asked me for money . . . On the first-floor front live the Mountjoy family. The man was formerly a soldier & now worked at St Pancras as a porter; the wife in a dreadful state, nearly insensible with drink; their 20-year-old son in advanced stages of consumption; the daughter, also grown up, sold flowers in the street. All four live & sleep in this room . . .

  No. 32. Another common lodging house for women, of which there are many in this neighbourhood; a horrible, crowded place that could only be home to those in unimaginably low condition, victims of drink or folly or misfortune . . . this a long, narrow street offering a vista of dismal penury, which I had not visited before & would not choose to again. A crowd had gathered round a drunken man lying white-faced in the gutter – he was bleeding from a stab wound in his stomach – & a rowdy argument going on as to who should have the care of the wretch. Eventually, some friends carried him off to a nearby house, amidst bellowed imprecations. A little later, when I passed this way again, the crowd had dispersed & only a few children remained, & a pool of blood glistening almost black on the cobbles . . .

  It was all like this, page after page of it, though it would be impossible to convey the day-by-day experience of what Marchmont called ‘outcast London’ – the sudden shrieks, the casual viciousness, the roaming drunks and derelicts, the appalling stench of blocked drains. It was lowering to retrace the chaos, set down in my own hand, and rather surprising, too: it unnerved me to realise that I had forgotten many of the encounters I had recorded here. That toymaker and his wife, yes, I recalled them quite vividly . . . but most other faces from those teeming houses of the poor were already lost to me.

  I read past midnight, eyes itching with fatigue. My trawl through the first two notebooks had turned up nothing. A grey mood of hopelessness dragged on me. I looked at those four names on the torn sheet of Johnson Street leaseholders, almost certainly undiscoverable, even if they were still alive. So what was the sense in trying? I must have dozed off then, for I dreamed of standing in a room that resembled a gambling den but turned out to be part of someone’s house. A man in a top hat who recalled Marchmont in manner but not in appearance was explaining the rules of some abstruse game, which, even as he talked, I found myself playing – and doing rather well. ‘Beginner’s luck!’ he cried pleasantly. It seemed that we were great friends, this not-Marchmont character and I, for once my pockets were bulging with coins I began to press my winnings on him. Which I noticed he was only too pleased to take.

  The next time I woke, with a start, the lamp was gleaming weakly. A quarter to four in the morning. The notebook lay open next to me, though not (I thought) at the page I had last perused. And, quite spontaneously, my eye fell upon the name ‘Arkell’. It stood off the page so suddenly that at first I imagined myself to be dreaming still, and stared in bemusement. Edith Arkell. Not a dream at all. It had arrived like an arrow out of nowhere, right at my eye.

  No. 12 Goldington Street. Front parlour occupied by family of three, the man a railway worker, his wife takes in washing. One son, ill-looking, in irregular employment. In the upper room, an old widow, poor but respectable, introduced herself as Mrs Arkell (E.). Has lived there for five years, she said.

  I had met her, I noted, on 14 May. In June, according to the Records Office, this poor widow had bought the lease to several houses on Johnson Street, transferred to her name by Condor Holdings. It was quite obvious to me that Mrs Arkell had no idea of her recent elevation to property owner. But I was going to make sure that she found out.

  15

  Lights out

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, light-headed from my nocturnal astonishment, I was in the middle of writing to Paget about my fortuitous discovery of ‘Mrs Arkell’ when I heard raised voices on the doorstep. Mrs Home, my landlady, was addressing someone in a peevish tone, and from the sound of it receiving a fair amount of impudence in return. I ambled down to the hall in time to hear her snap ‘Be off with you! This is a respectable ’ouse –’

  ‘May I be of assistance, Mrs Home?’ I asked in a calming, responsible voice.

  ‘This cheeky Arab knocks ’ere and starts talkin’ t’me like I’m his char,’ she replied, hot-faced with indignation. I had to look around her wide girth blocking the hallway to see the ‘Arab’ in question, a skinny boy of about fourteen whose sharp, feral features and cocky posture spoke of a rogue-in-training. Ignoring her complaint, he smirkingly addressed me.

  ‘You the man o’ the ’ouse?’

  ‘Er, no. What business have you here?’

  ‘Don’t you start,’ he snorted. ‘Yor name Wildeblood?’

  I replied that it was.

  ‘Message for ya,’ he said, and flicked his gaze at my aggrieved landlady, indicating he was not prepared to continue with her in attendance.

  ‘Mrs Home, so sorry for your trouble. I’ll deal with this . . . person.’

  She pursed her lips in proud disdain and, shooting another sour look at our caller, withdrew. I had witnessed other such altercations between Mrs Home and ‘street people’ – window cleaners, dustmen, chimney sweepers – to whom she condescended appallingly. She was the more snobbish for being so close in status to the class she despised. It sometimes occurred to me that I had only been accepted as her lodger because I didn’t speak with a cockney accent. The boy, who stood with hand pertly against his hip, threw down an answering look of condescension at odds with his worn togs and scrawny frame.

  ‘Right, message for ya,’ he said again, jutting his chin. ‘About a fawney yous been lookin’ to buy. Meetin’ with yor mate Jo tonight at Hungerford Buildings, by the canal. Know it?’

  I nodded. It was a disused warehouse off King’s Road. ‘What hour?’

  ‘Eight. An’ Gaffy sez –’ his eyes narrowed slyly – ‘bring the blunt.’

  Jo must have arranged with Gaffy to buy back Kitty’s ring. I asked the boy how much money it would require. He hesitated for a moment, as if trying to decide. ‘A hundred.’

  The price was low for a diamond ring, and I wondered then if the boy had any idea of what was at stake. ‘I’m not sure about this –’

  ‘It’s a hundred,’ he shrugged, ‘or you don’t see the fawney. So, eight o’clock. Got that?’ The insolence of his manner was a little provoking – I began to see why Mrs Home had been so affronted.

  ‘Got it,’ I replied. He stood there, delaying, and I almost laughed at the half-expectant gleam dancing in his eye. He was waiting for a tip! With a little gasp of incredulity I said ‘Good day’, and closed the door on him.

  A few minutes after the boy had gone I realised that I would not be able to meet Jo’s rendezvous precisely at eight, having forgotten I would be working a late shift at the Evening News. I decided to go via Chalton Street that afternoon so as to adjust our meeting time. As it happened, Jo was away from his stall when I stopped by. I asked Jed, one of his coster mates, what time he was due back, but he didn’t know. Being in a hurry I decided to leave him a note, not quite trusting Jed to do the job.

  Jo – Can’t get away till half past eight. Will meet you at Hungerford Buildings at nine. Gaffy wants l.100 for the ring. DW.

  I folded the message up and wedged it in an angle between two trays on his barrow. This improvisation seemed very far from satisfactory, but I hurried on, eager to follow through on the matter of Edith Arkell. Goldington Street was a long terrace whose grimy stucco and clouded windows presented a familiar aspect in these parts. At number 12 my knock was met by a thickset man whom I half recognised from the last time I visited the street. Of course he knew Mrs Arkell. She had lived in the room above, for years, he said.

  ‘But no longer?’

 
He shook his head. ‘Oh, she was a right age,’ he said, in a tone that suggested age to be an affliction – which I suppose it was.

  ‘So she’s – dead?’

  ‘Nah. Just her ’elf gave out. Had to go to the work’us.’

  I felt at once moved to pity and quietly ecstatic – not dead! ‘Are you sure about that?’ I said, and the man looked vaguely offended.

  ‘You can go and arsk her yerself,’ he said, pointing down the street to where the battlements of St Pancras Workhouse loomed over the rooftops. I thanked him, and walked on to King’s Road, which offered a full view of the building. It was a rebarbative place, constructed on a scale that baffled the eye and shrivelled the soul. The meanness of the windows and the grimy brickwork reminded me of Reading – I mean the prison. Awful to think that Thomas Bowland-Darke had breathed his last here. One of many: Marchmont had once told me that fourteen Londoners in every thousand were in workhouses. About such matters he was seldom wrong.

  Behind those walls lived Edith Arkell. If my theory was right, Condor Holdings had concealed their ownership of Somers Town housing by a fraudulent transfer of leases to persons either at death’s door or else forgotten in the workhouse. And those persons had been selected because they had no next of kin, no dependants who might enquire after them. Once they were dead the ownership of the lease would be untraceable. Perfect in its cynicism, and almost foolproof in its application. Almost. If I could get inside the place and talk to Mrs Arkell, the subterfuge might be found out.

  I was out of the Evening News office and sprinting up Fleet Street by a quarter to nine. The late-September evening was steeped in long inky shadows, and the glimmer of gaslight was reflected on the puddled pavements. It must have been raining since I had begun my shift. At the top of Chancery Lane I flagged down a cab, and was thence carried joltingly through St Giles and Bloomsbury. The clock atop St Pancras Station chimed nine as we crossed the Euston Road, and my anxiety redoubled on remembering the paltry note I had left for Jo that afternoon. It was perfectly possible that he hadn’t even read it, in which case he would have been waiting for more than an hour.