The Streets Page 4

  But I must not run ahead of myself. The establishment to which my parents consigned me was an ‘academy’ in Berkshire – I shall not lower myself to name it – where young gentlemen, according to its brochure, were ‘liberally boarded, fairly treated and carefully instructed in every department of useful education’. Ye Gods! It was, as I have implied, no refuge for a tender soul, especially one who talked in a bumpkin accent, had played little sport and knew almost nothing of tact, or of cunning. Institutional discipline was absolutely foreign to me, and harsh treatment came oftener from the masters than it did from the school roughs, most of whom I dwarfed. (I inherited tallness from my father, and bless him for it.) I will not exaggerate: this was not Dotheboys Hall. For most of my time there I passed beneath the notice of anyone who might really have harmed me. But to live in such an atmosphere, where gratuitous humiliation might be visited upon you at any moment, where kindness was mocked and sentiment was outlawed – it must leave its mark. I have never known a place to have been designed around such a contemptible purpose: to wit, the destruction of love. But such was the lesson the inmates had to learn.

  Do you begin to see the violent contrasts that have dictated my life’s course? The first ten years of my boyhood a strange idyll of loneliness, sequestered from company and raised like a greenhouse flower. The following eight, confinement to an institution whose brutish habits I was singularly ill-prepared to combat, let alone embrace. The ‘useful education’, I should add, barely deserved the name. The grammar and scripture I had learned by rote at my mother’s side bequeathed me an advantage in those classes, but in all else, save the study of art, I was a poor student. When I ought to have been studying the collapse of the Hanseatic League or grappling with the mysteries of Euclid I was instead dreamily engaged in sketching a cumulo-nimbus, or a gnarled oak, or a plough horse. (I had graduated from the carnage of battlefields by then.) How soon my father came to acknowledge that his son would never emulate his academic distinction I cannot say. Oxford was wildly out of the question. But in the light of what followed, that may have been one of his more easily borne disappointments.

  Having furnished that introduction to Somers Town and the working people of the Brill, Marchmont did not accompany me there again, though he indicated through Rennert that he would continue to take particular interest in my reports. I could not be sure if this directive was due to the guvnor’s old affection for the neighbourhood or his indecision regarding my employment there; after all, I had no training in journalism, and had been hired only on the recommendation of my godfather.

  So I pounded the Somers Town streets on my own, as doggedly as any vendor or hawker. Straight away I marked a difference in people’s reception of me, and twigged the advantage that Marchmont’s company had bestowed. His natural ease with the class we were studying was plain: they opened their doors to him, and were willingly drawn into conversation. I had no such talent, and the faces that met me were stiff with suspicion. I was a stranger, an interloper, and they knew it. Some believed I was a slop (the police), some a clergyman (my mother should see me now). Others accused me of being an agent of the work’us, which I later discovered to mean the St Pancras Workhouse. I had seen this dismal edifice up on King’s Road, and was careful not to mention the place in conversation, if I could help it. However desperate people might be, there still flickered a thin flame of comfort if a meal, or a few pence, or a bed for the night was secured. But the workhouse represented the absolute terminus of hope, the staging post on a journey whose end was death. To those who mistook me thus I might have been an emissary from hell.

  Even at those houses where I was admitted, danger often lay in wait. One man, a builder, unemployed and reeking of drink, had no sooner invited me in than he asked for money. I had begun to explain that payment was not part of the transaction when he stood up and called for his ‘friend’. This turned out to be a brawny, ill-kempt, mean-eyed woman, who listened to the man’s grievance before reaffirming his demand to be paid, ‘or else we’ll break your fuckin’ neck’. I vacated the room speedily, their oaths ringing in my ears as I hurried down the staircase. I thought I had reached safety on the street when, of a sudden, a crash sounded behind me: a chamber pot had just missed my head and cracked on the pavement. (I later recounted this to Marchmont, who said, ‘Ah, the bitter cry of penurious London,’ and roared with laughter.)

  I felt less inclined to be mirthful. The day’s rounds were long, and they yielded scant reward. Incomprehension continued an obstacle on both sides: while I struggled with their language, they as often looked blank on hearing my country accent. How many times would I have to repeat a sentence before its meaning registered on a face? It disheartened me to be making so little headway, and I might have abandoned the work in despair had not a certain incident changed my fortunes entirely.

  It was a market day in the Brill, about three weeks after my venture with Marchmont, and I was mooching about the stalls. It was a morning of weak sunlight and scudding clouds, and the narrow streets were humming with trade. A young fellow brushed past me roughly, and as I turned in expectation of an apology I felt the merest flutter of a hand at my back, and another man in a corduroy coat and billycock hat was passing briskly in front. It took but a few seconds to realise my purse had been prigged, and the fellow striding away was the culprit. ‘Oi!’ I cried, and without even bothering to look round Billycock broke into a run. I started in pursuit, dodging this way and that between traders and market folk, keeping in sight my light-fingered quarry. Light-fingered but not, I should say, light-footed; I was gaining on him, and his swift glance backwards told me he knew it.

  Having got to know the layout of the Brill, I was confident there was no street he could hide down which I hadn’t visited myself. On that score I was wrong. My pickpocket had taken a sharp left off Aldenham Street and then disappeared; retracing my steps I saw that I had run straight past an alley, so narrow I had to turn sideways and move crabwise along. Blackened walls reared massively overhead. I reached the end, and found a court with turnings to the left and right. Both vistas looked absolutely identical, canyons of three-storey housing whose dilapidation was severe even for Somers Town. I cocked an ear, and thought I heard footsteps echoing down the right-hand passage. I hurried along, less sure of myself now. The noise of the Brill was gone here; the crowds, not more than a minute behind me, had vanished. I came to another crossways, and stopped. I had entered a labyrinth, it seemed, and saw how easy it might be to lose oneself. Just as this thought struck me I turned into a blind court, and there was the thief, leaning against a wall with his billycock hat, a smile and – behold! – three of his mates. They all wore billycocks and cord trousers, like a uniform. I looked behind, and a fourth mate had somehow appeared to block my retreat. I remembered at this moment Marchmont’s warning against ‘going off the main drag’, and imagined the regretful shake of his head on hearing this latest folly of mine.

  These fellows had been standing around, as if in wait for me, and on my appearance the tallest of them took a step forward. ‘You’re a ways from home, ain’t yer?’

  I stood there, tensed, sorting the odds. I said nothing.

  ‘Lost yer pipe?’ he said in the cawing cockney of his tribe. He tipped his hat off his brow to take a closer look at me. ‘I’m bound to tell yer, there’s a charge for them who’s crossin’ this bit o’ property. A tax, y’know?’

  ‘How much?’

  He paused, frowning at my literal-minded question, then looked round at his fellows. One of them sniggered. ‘Let’s see ’ow much you’ve got in them pockets,’ he continued in an equable tone.

  ‘My purse is gone,’ I shrugged. ‘Your friend there stole it.’

  My interlocutor turned to the pickpocket and said, in a sarcastically quizzical voice, ‘You ’ear that, Tig? This young shaver reckons you lifted his purse.’ He mimicked this last word in my own accent – not badly.

  Tig, though his shoulders still heaved from his recent sprint, braz
enly shook his head. ‘Dunno nothin’ about it.’

  I made a tsk sound in deprecation of this lie. The tax collector, pulling a face as if to suggest he didn’t believe Tig either, spoke again. ‘Well . . . someone’s got to pay the piper, and if you ain’t got the blunt, we’d best be ’avin’ yer coat.’

  Not again, I thought. I’d become rather fond of my pilot coat, and didn’t relish explaining its loss to Marchmont, or to Rennert, for that matter.

  ‘You can do as my shirt does,’ I replied. The phrase had leapt off my tongue without troubling to consult my brain. To clear up any doubt, I fastened the top button which had come unloose. He stared at me, disbelieving; then he nodded at the man beyond my shoulder. I heard his step, and sensed that an arm would be locked around my neck at any moment – but I was prepared. As his shadow lurched in the periphery of my vision I had time for a quick backward glance that allowed me to thrust my elbow smartly into his face: I heard a snap as it connected with his nose, and then a yelp of pain as he staggered back. Hurling him aside I bolted back down the passage whence I had come, with the others at my heels. If I had the advantage in pace, they had the bulge on direction: I wanted to be getting out of there, but my pursuit of the thief had enfolded me in a warren of alleys and lanes I had no clue as to navigating. On, on I flew, hare-like, with the hounds grunting behind me. Every time I thought to reach the main drag I seemed to turn down another nameless way, and might have continued indefinitely had not my frantic zigzagging been suddenly checked. A coster’s barrow, emerging from a side passage, caught me shin-high and I went for a purler across the cobbles.

  My first thought, before the pain of landing had registered, was: done for. The coster must have been in league with Tig & co., for he had timed his intervention perfectly. Dazed and prostrate, I felt his hand at my shoulder, but the voice that accompanied it was almost clucking with concern. I was lifted tenderly to my feet, and the hand was now brushing the dust and grit from my coat. He was a tallish fellow of about my own age.

  ‘. . . comin’ through faster ’n a squirrel with a nut,’ he was saying to himself, in a musing undertone. Then I realised he was talking to the donkey that pulled his cart. I had just glimpsed his face – sallow, with very dark eyebrows and a patchy stubble on his jaw – when clattering footsteps announced the arrival of my pursuers. I looked around at the coster, who seemed to take in at once what had prompted my violent haste.

  The man who had demanded my coat now addressed this coster as ‘Jo’.

  ‘Gaffy,’ replied Jo in greeting. ‘You’re in a hurry.’

  Gaffy (if such was his name) nodded at me. ‘Been after this feller. A regular trosseno – owes us blunt.’

  ‘A trosseno?’

  ‘Yeah. Owes owt-gen, exis-yenep. And cool what he done to Jags.’ He jerked his thumb at the one whose nose I’d bloodied; above the hand he held to it his eyes were bright with malevolence.

  Jo shot me an appraising look. ‘Sez you’re a bad’un as owes ’em two-and-sixpence. Know anything about that?’

  I shook my head. ‘I never met them before. That one –’ I pointed to Tig – ‘lifted my purse on Phoenix Street. So they owe me.’

  Jo’s gaze held mine for a moment – a decision had to be made – then he heaved a sigh. ‘I reckons you’s mistaken, Gaffy. Cool him, ’e’s no cross-chap, just a gent as got hisself lost. So let’s be on our way.’

  ‘Now, Jo,’ said Gaffy, his voice still reasonable, ‘I tumble to you, but do the ’andsome . . . you’ll not put yer bones up for this one.’

  ‘Oh, won’t I?’ said Jo, a challenge in his voice. At this, one of the gang took a step forward, and the air felt abruptly charged with intent. Jo didn’t appear to move a muscle, but by some quicksilver feat of dexterity he now had something in his hand, and it glinted with warning. Gaffy stared hard at him.

  ‘Sorry to see you do that, Jo. Pullin’ a chive on us. Very sorry, indeed.’

  ‘Yeah, well. You takes another step, I mean it, you’ll know what sorry is.’

  Gaffy took a long moment to consider, then jerked his head at the others, who slunk back the way they had come. The last to withdraw, he scratched with his index finger just below his eye, a gesture directed at Jo. Then the court was empty but for us two, and the donkey. I examined my palms, smarting where I’d skinned them on falling.

  ‘Scraped the enamel?’ said Jo, peering at them. I nodded.

  ‘I’m really most obliged to you for – . . . I’m David. David Wildeblood.’

  Folding his knife with a magician’s little flick, he pocketed it and took the hand I had proffered. He looked amused by this formality. ‘Gianpaolo. People calls me Jo.’ He squinted at me, and looked thoughtful. ‘I seen you before, ain’t I?’

  ‘Have you?’ I couldn’t imagine where.

  ‘Yeah . . . I seen you with that well-togged spark – the fat feller. You was eatin’ hot ’taters one market day, few weeks back. That was you, wunnit?’

  I agreed that it was. But his memory must be uncommonly good, I remarked, for I had only spent a morning and afternoon with Marchmont in the Brill.

  ‘Old Jo’s got all his buttons on!’ he crowed delightedly. ‘Old’ Jo, as I later discovered, was nineteen, angular in face and frame, and dressed not unlike my recent adversaries, in cords and loose jacket, but with a merchant sailor’s navy cap instead of a billycock. His eyes were as dark as raisins, which sorted with his Italian name. He had turned round his cart, and was coaxing his donkey likewise, when he looked back at me. ‘Comin’ along?’

  I followed him, not sure of ever finding my own way out of there. As we walked, Jo smoked from a clay pipe with a long stem, and seemed happy to answer whatever questions I put to him. He had been a coster lad since the age of fourteen. No, he wasn’t an Italian, but his mother and grandparents were, they’d come from over there, like, oh, years ago. He’d lived in Somers Town all his life, knew every last stone of the place, and he had never been out of London. He wrinkled his nose when I suggested he might one day visit the land of his forefathers (‘Bit far, Italy, I’ve ’eard’ was his considered view). He knew a few words of Italian, from his mother, but she had died when he was at the Ragged School. His father had been a coster and would have taught him the trade, but he had also died when Jo was only a ‘nipper’. So who had raised him? His sister, he said, who once worked as a slummy – a servant girl – but now earned pin money from sewing and such.

  I asked him about the brigands we had lately encountered.

  ‘Gaffy and Tig I know a bit. The others weren’t from around here – a Shoreditch mob, p’raps. You wants to be stayin’ clear of ’em.’

  ‘I’d be glad to,’ I said. ‘You always carry that on you?’

  He nodded. ‘Cool the curve on the ’andle.’ The blade was again in his hand without my having seen him produce it. He stared at it proudly. ‘Bought it with the first blunt I ever made – from a hawker in Bow. It’s me little pal!’ It occurred to me that he and his little pal had quite a reputation: those brutes had thought better of tangling with him.

  By now we were back in the Brill, and Jo was calling to this or that coster as they passed by one another. ‘Aw’right, Jo!’ a flower girl would say, and Jo would return her greeting with a cheery halloo. Everybody appeared to know him, and like him – and it was this last perception that sparked an idea in my head. We had reached Chalton Street, his regular pitch, and he was setting out his trays of onions, cabbages, turnips, watercress and whatnot. As he did so, he began calling the prices of his wares in a sing-song voice (‘Fresh woorter-cressis, penny a bunch’) which I now noticed was rather hoarse for one so young.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Jo, shrugging, ‘I’m shoutin’ all the day long, so it gets a bit throaty. And some days you lose it altogether . . . ca-a-a-m on, fine ripe plums, penny a pint.’

  ‘You make a good living, then?’

  ‘Not so dusty.’

  ‘Are you ever at leisure?’

  ‘Course. I always
’ave time for cards and skittles – ask anyone!’

  ‘Because I was wondering . . .’ and I proceeded to explain my work for Marchmont’s paper, and how difficult I had found it, first in securing the people’s trust, and second, in comprehending the peculiar tongue they conversed in. With a local favourite at my side, however, I was sure they would greet my enquiries more amenably, and perhaps open up about their occupations, earnings, lodgings and so on. ‘It would be such a very great help to me,’ I said, and having conceived of this arrangement it felt suddenly vital to me that Jo agreed to it. He didn’t say anything, but the way he gazed off into vacancy indicated his doubts about the enterprise.

  ‘Of course, I’d be willing to pay you . . . for your time . . . if that’s what –’

  He asked me how much; I really had no idea what to say, and plucked a number out of the air. Jo tipped his head sideways, considering. ‘Well . . . every little ’elps, as the old lady said when she pissed in the sea.’

  I looked at him uncertainly. ‘Does that mean you will?’

  He laughed, and made a satirical little bow. ‘At yer service. But it won’t be every day I can spare – I ’aves to keep the old moke in work.’ I understood him to be referring to his donkey. At that moment two old women were hovering about his stall, waiting to buy, and Jo gestured to me as though to say, Back to business. I thrust out my hand again, eager to have his pledge. He took it.

  ‘Tomorrow, then?’

  Jo gave me a little wink. ‘Yeah . . . I’ll be ’ere, don’t you worry, Mr, er –’ He had forgotten my name already.

  ‘David. It’s David,’ I said. But he had already turned away, too busy pitching his wares to the crones for any further conversation.