The Streets Page 24

  I paid off the cab at the top of a narrow cobbled lane leading down to the Regent’s Canal. Hungerford Buildings was part of an old brewery whose canalside premises had long fallen into disuse. A few of its windows had been holed, and the ground-floor walls sported an untidy girdle of hoardings with advertisements for quack medicines and knife polish. But the building itself, dominating the horizon, argued an irreproachable solidity, its brick bays and vaulting storeys seeming to announce they would still be here in another hundred years. Gas lamps, blurred by the damp night, offered slender bands of illumination as I patrolled the lonely length of the facade. I knew it to be a place favoured by drunks and derelicts, but I could see nobody through the curtain of dark, and all I could hear was the distant metalled clank of the trains from St Pancras.

  I decided to try round the other side. Here I would have been swallowed utterly into blackness had I not, on setting forth, equipped myself with a tiny lantern, of a kind first shown to me by one of my Labouring Classes informants. (I only discovered later that the man used it professionally, as a housebreaker.) I struck a match to the wick, and a light flared feebly behind the glass. Adjusting my eyes I moved with the stiff-legged caution of one who could feel rather than see the cobbles beneath him. But whilst I could congratulate myself about the lantern, I realised also how foolhardy it was to enter such a place without an escape plan. It was dangerous to be alone around here, and if you were also carrying money . . . I swallowed hard, and at that moment heard a peremptory hiss from the shadows. At first I mistook it for the prowling cat I had seen some moments earlier, but as I held up my lantern I jumped in fright to see a face loom suddenly from out of a doorway.

  ‘Jo!’ I said, all relief.

  ‘Shhh,’ he replied, a monitory finger to his lips. ‘Stash the glim.’

  ‘What?’ I whispered.

  ‘The glim – the light,’ he hissed. I quickly snuffed the flame, and felt Jo tug me by the arm into the doorway’s embrasure. Plunged again into darkness I could discern only the ghostly outline of his face. ‘Gimme a minute with this sket,’ he said, waggling what I assumed to be a skeleton key in his hand before dropping to a crouch at the door handle. I could hear his exploratory twists as he worked the sket inside the lock; after a few abortive scrapings and jigglings, and a muttered curse, he caught the teeth of the inner mechanism with a screwsman’s expertise and pushed the door open; we were through. Inside the building all was musty, unstirred, black – as black as a dead man’s dream. I sensed Jo stepping in front of me, then coming to an abrupt halt.

  ‘Can’t see a bleedin’ thing,’ he said, and a moment later I heard the rasp of a match. A tiny flame showed his face in an eerie play of refulgence and shadow. I bumped his shoulder with the lantern, which he took, and lit. We stood in our pool of light opposite one another, and he gasped out a friendly little laugh, as though he couldn’t quite believe the shifty circumstances in which we found ourselves.

  ‘Is this where Gaffy usually conducts his business?’ I said.

  ‘Dunno. When did you meet him?’ said Jo, holding the lantern above his head.

  ‘I didn’t. I just got the message from the boy you sent.’

  He looked at me queerly. ‘The boy I sent? What d’you mean?’

  ‘The scrawny-looking specimen who called at my lodgings this morning, said you’d arranged to buy back the ring from Gaffy.’

  He shook his head. ‘I never sent no one. First I ’eard about this was the message you left on me stall.’

  We looked at each other, with the dawning awareness that we had been duped, and a further tacit acceptance that we were now quite possibly in danger. The boy had claimed to be Jo’s messenger as a means of luring me here, alone, with money on my person. Seeming to read my thoughts, Jo said, ‘How much blunt you got on you?’

  ‘Not enough,’ I admitted. I had cleared out my bank account that day, reasoning I could negotiate the price with Gaffy. A sudden terrible surge of guilt moved me to blurt, ‘Jo, I’m sorry about this. I ought to have been a bit more . . . leary.’

  Jo gave a dismissive snort. ‘Frettin’ won’t help,’ he said, as though to a child. ‘I know what’s o’clock. Just keep yer tread soft.’ And at that he jerked his head to one side, meaning for me to follow him. As I did so I had a sense of the warehouse rearing darkly, vertiginously around us, and an ominous phrase recalled from my mother’s scripture teaching caused me to shudder – Yea, though I walk through the valley . . . Enough, I rebuked myself; it was quite likely we were walking through an empty building, for we had arrived more than an hour late for Gaffy’s rendezvous. The floor beneath was gritty to the tread, and the lantern light, butterflying ahead of us, showed a forlorn carpet of weeds, broken glass and mouse droppings. There really wasn’t anything here.

  After a few minutes of silent tramping Jo stopped, and I could sense his body straighten up, not in alarm so much as curiosity. ‘Can you smell somethin’?’ he said, no longer whispering. I sniffed the air doggishly.

  ‘Like smoke . . .?’

  Jo nodded, and swung the lantern in a wide semicircle. It seemed we had been moving in parallel to another gallery, dimly disclosed through an aperture in the wall to our left. The smoke was emanating from this direction. We turned at a right angle towards it, and as we drew nearer the sliver of illumination was revealed to be a narrow passageway. Jo handed the lantern back to me, and in a quicksilver flourish had his knife in his hand. He leaned towards my ear and said beneath his breath, ‘Stay close.’ We moved at a slight crouch down the passage, its brickwork clammy to the touch. The smoke carried on it something else, not only burning dust but the stale reek of tallow; ahead of me I heard Jo’s sidelong dry retch of disgust. A little more creeping along and we had reached the gallery, where about thirty yards away, marooned in the empty expanse, a brazier glowed eerily orange through the updraught of smoke. A hunched figure stood near to it, turning a long stick over the flame. As we approached a look of animal wariness sprang from his dark eyes.

  ‘Evenin’,’ called Jo affably.

  The man lifted his shaggy head, and in the firelight we saw his filthy matted beard; for a moment I wondered if what we could smell was him. He seemed to be wearing a great quantity of old clothing – a ragged apron, jacket, perhaps two coats. I could not guess his age – it might have been anything between fifty and eighty – but he had a strange saturnine aura about him, a sense that he had occupied this place for many years, and would remain for many after. In the dim illumination his gaunt, bearded aspect unaccountably recalled a photograph I had once seen of the Poet Laureate. Jo had stepped round the brazier and was warming his hands in a companionable way. The man continued to rotate his stick, which I now realised was a toasting fork. I glanced over the lip of the brazier and saw – could it be? – a small shoe on the prongs. I had heard of people in the throes of starvation boiling shoes to eat the hide. But cooking them? Jo, bemused, I think, offered another overture.

  ‘Dinner, is it?’ he said, nodding at the thing on the fork.

  The man looked up abruptly, as if he feared we might be inviting ourselves to his meagre repast. He grunted something that sounded like ‘All I’ve ’ad today’, though I couldn’t be sure.

  Jo tucked in his chin, his way of saying we had no intention of muscling in on a private meal, before adding, with a show of cheerfulness, ‘My pal and I, we’s supposed to meet, well, an h’acquaintance of ours – only we’s awful late. You seen anyone . . . ’ereabouts?’

  He looked to one side, thoughtful, then muttered, ‘Three fellers. Stopped by ’ere. Gone now.’

  ‘Three, was it? They say anythin’?’

  He looked into the fire, and the ghost of a smile twitched his mouth. ‘Same thing you said.’

  Jo cocked his head to one side. ‘Yeah, well . . . When’s this – an hour ago?’

  The man shrugged, blankly, as though it might have been a year ago for all he cared. He then withdrew his roasted whatever it was from the fire and i
nspected it. It seemed that our brief converse was at an end. Jo bit his lip uncertainly, and steered his gaze about the dark gallery for a few moments. Then with a lift of his brow he indicated that we should go.

  ‘Much obliged to ya,’ he called back to the man, who didn’t reply. I followed Jo across the gallery to another door, which he seemed about to open and then paused, his hand on the doorknob. He took the lantern again. ‘They went this way,’ he said, pointing out footprints in the dust. ‘So . . .’ he dropped his voice to a mutter, ‘we go back the way we come in – then round the outside of ’em.’

  I nodded, and followed him back through the passageway and thence into the first room we had crossed. Curiosity at last got the better of me.

  ‘D’you have any idea what he was, um, cooking back there?’

  ‘What, Old Nick?’ In the dark I could hear Jo’s smile rather than see it.

  ‘It looked like, I dunno, a shoe.’

  Jo snorted, and said, quite matter-of-factly, ‘Nah. ’E was cookin’ a rat.’ I felt an inward shudder as I thought again of that roasting lump on the fork.

  ‘Well,’ I said after a moment, ‘I’m glad he didn’t ask us to dine with him.’

  For some reason this tickled Jo, and he was still chuckling away as we reached the door he had unlocked with the sket. ‘You’re a caution to snakes,’ he said, the laugh still in his voice, and I suppose I remember the line because it was the last he said to me before it happened, before the memory of the night broke into pieces. We had just re-entered the enveloping black outside when shadows seemed to leap and fall on us. Jo was first under the cosh, I heard him swear as he was wrestled to the ground, but in the instant I stepped towards him I was suddenly and violently taken about the neck by a loop of rope. Garrotted! This is it, I thought, and clawed against the constricting pressure at my throat, struggling for air. Time seemed to slow up and stretch out whilst my hands scrabbled blindly against the choking cord – and just when the talons were closing about my neck the infernal noose went slack. Like a swimmer under water too long I burst to the surface, coughing, lungs sobbing for air. A scream of pain had torn past my ear, and the brute who’d been strangling me wheeled away – only later did I realise that Jo had slashed him along his flank. At that moment two other figures were circling Jo, watching the knife in his hand. ‘Davie, the stick!’ he cried, and in my breathless fuddle I saw a cosh, its promising heft, on the ground at my feet. I snatched it up and launched myself at the nearer one – from his height I knew him to be Gaffy – and by luck rather than skill I felled him with a glancing blow to his head. The keening cries of the man Jo had cut were evidently distracting the third assailant, who must have been calculating the odds of sustaining an injury of like severity. As Jo moved towards him with the blade glinting in his hand, the man backed up a few steps and, with a hissed imprecation, took to his heels. His wounded companion limped after him.

  Still dizzy from my recent throttling, I sank to my knees, gagging and coughing. I felt Jo come up behind me – brave Jo – and put his hand on my shoulder. He patted me softly, rather as he had the first time I ever met him with his ‘old moke’ in the Brill, murmuring, ‘Easy does it – deep breaths now.’ I was still kneeling there, gasping out my relief, when I heard swift footsteps coming up behind us, then a collision and a quick effortful grunt, before Gaffy careened away into the night. ‘Ow,’ said Jo, as though he’d just been bitten by an insect, and he sucked in his breath sharply. I didn’t know what had happened until I rose and looked around. A few yards away Jo was examining something on his coat, it seemed, with an expression of irritated interest. I picked up the fallen lantern and went to him; he raised his head, and the light showed his face blurred with confusion. ‘Davie, cool this, will ya . . .?’ He was breathing hard as I bent my head to the dark stain blooming on his coat, which was viscous to the touch. ‘Must’ve speared me on the way through,’ he added, and lifting up his shirt tail I saw a raw wet puncture in his flank. It was leaking an astonishing amount of black blood, and when I put a covering hand to staunch the flow it seeped through my fingers. Yes, Gaffy had got him for sure, a coward’s thrust at his back as he fled past us.

  Some sound of dismay must have escaped my lips, for Jo narrowed his eyes on me. ‘Doogheno or dabheno?’ he asked in a low voice, unable to diagnose it for himself.

  ‘Doogheno,’ I reassured him, my hand slippery with his blood. I felt him stagger against me, and knew then that I must get him to a hospital straight away. Folding up my kerchief I pressed it against the fountaining hole, and ducked round his other side. ‘Put that arm around me, here,’ I said, and with unwonted obedience he did so. I told him that we’d make for the main road and hail a cab, and my voice, surprising me with its steadiness, seemed to console him. I shouldered him along as best I could, but he kept slumping down, and mumbling about his need for a rest.

  ‘Jo, please walk,’ I kept repeating, and, touchingly, he would try to keep upright. A fearful urgency drove me on, for I realised our hobbling progress could not favour his chances. So I bent down and heaved him up beneath the arms. I staggered for a moment, then broke into an awkward trotting run, with Jo slung over my shoulder like a sack of coal. He was a weight, but it didn’t matter: dread lent a lightness to my steps. I imagined the amusing story this would make one day, and the embarrassment Jo would feel on hearing it – like his sister, he was proudly self-sufficient, with a natural aversion to accepting favours. We had reached King’s Road, almost deserted at this hour. A cab, for God’s sake, I pleaded silently, though I knew this to be no place for casual traffic. We pressed on, drawing curious glances from passers-by. On my shoulder Jo let out a low moan, and I stopped for a moment, propping him against a low brick wall spiked with railings. Under the refulgent yellow of the street lamp his face was beaded with sweat, and his eyes did not seem able to focus when I spoke to him. The kerchief I had held to his cut was soaked through.

  He had become feverish, muttering something about a hand, or a handshake, but in my rising panic I couldn’t attend to anything he said. And then – a mercy – at the turn in the road a horse and trap cantered into sight, and I leapt to my feet and sprinted towards it, waving my hands. I fancied the driver might suspect this was a brazen dodge to rob him, for he refused to adjust his pace as I made my wild approach. ‘Stop, I beg you!’ I cried, and perhaps the shrill desperation in my voice persuaded him to pull up. In haste I gabbled out Jo’s plight, with assurances that I could pay him for his trouble.

  ‘I don’t ask for your money,’ said he, an old man as I now saw, and told me to help my friend aboard. Quickly, I hauled Jo onto the back of the cart, where he lay, and with a click of his reins the fellow set off again. ‘There’s the Temperance Hospital a few streets away,’ he called over his shoulder. At the junction we turned into Crowndale Road, and then cut through the tall terraces of Oakley Square. With every jolt of the cart more blood spurted from Jo’s side. He mumbled something about being cold; I looked around for a blanket but there wasn’t one, so I tore off my coat and wrapped it about his shivering frame. No, he mustn’t, not like this – I banished the thought before it could seize hold of my brain. Of a sudden he looked up and plucked at my arm, indicating he had a vital message to impart. I bent my head down, straining to hear him above the rattling commotion.

  ‘Davie . . . always cool the hands,’ he panted, teeth chattering. ‘That’s why they used – they used to shake hands – did ya know? – to show you wasn’t holdin’ a chive –’

  ‘I understand, Jo. We’re taking you to the hospital, see?’

  But Jo only shook his head, as though it were more important for me to heed the lesson that he had just imparted. ‘Cool the hands,’ he repeated in a mumble. I looked again at the sodden cloth I held to his side, its white turned black under the wan moonlight. We were coming down Hampstead Road, and there ahead of us was the looming silhouette of the hospital. ‘Whoa,’ I heard the man call to his nag, and we clattered to a halt on the co
bbled forecourt. He got down from his seat and helped me lift Jo, pale as bone, off the cart. He clucked in a sympathetic way as he stared at my stricken friend.

  ‘These young ’uns got a lot o’ blood in them,’ he said, and I flinched at his callous observation; but then I thought it was perhaps meant to reassure me. I gasped out my thanks, and would have shaken his hand if I had not been so distracted with the effort of carrying Jo. By chance two attendants had just emerged at the entrance, and one of them hurried forward to relieve me as the other went for help. As we carried Jo between us into that place the attendant kept telling me to calm myself, and though my voice was raised in pleading I cannot recall any of the things I said. We got him into the receiving room, and onto the table. A flurry of footsteps around us heightened the sense of purposeful alarm. Under the gas jets’ glare Jo, lying there, looked thin and sad and terribly alone. A doctor arrived, his black tailcoat flapping behind him like bat wings; I felt someone trying to pull me away, and I shrugged them off. My throat had gone hoarse, but I called out ‘Jo’ and gripped his bloody hand in mine. Cool the hands, he had told me in the cart, and I couldn’t bear them to be the last words ever spoken between us. I choked out his name again, and then my eyes were blinded in an uprushing salt flood.

  I lay my head by Jo’s, and stared. I touched his hair, and inhaled a smell of burnt dust and smoke. I thought I should cut a lock of it to keep. I don’t know how long I was there before someone patted me with infinite gentleness on the shoulder, as Jo had once done, but never would again.

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