‘Because that’s a lot of wasted energy when all we have to do is walk somewhere. I know exactly where he’s going to be and trust me, everything is going to be just fine. This isn’t my first time here and let’s just say I’m not entirely without friends. It’s all been taken care of already.’
‘How can you know?’
‘Takes a bit of tuning to the wavelength of the world,’ he said, pinching his ear, ‘and then some careful listening.’ He took one look at my face, sighed, and added, ‘With infinite possibilities and permutations, it’s quite easy to see how things have played out. Even if it hasn’t happened yet. Because somewhere - and indeed, with infinite worlds, most everywhere - it already has.’
‘So you’re saying I already have my briefcase,’ I said, slowly. ‘I just don’t have it yet.’
‘Yeah. Probably.’
‘I feel a bit like Schrödinger’s cat,’ I said, thinking I was getting the hang of it. ‘Do I have my briefcase, do I not have my briefcase…’
‘No, you don’t,’ said Pierre, confused enough to stop walking. ‘I can see you - you’re right there. And you don’t have it. So it’s not like that at all.’
He tossed his apple core in a bin and that was the last time I attempted to bring up science to understand my situation.
I bit into my own apple as I caught up with Pierre. It was delicious - much better than anything I could ever get at my local supermarket back home. Back home. Huh. Home probably hadn’t even been built at that point.
‘So who do you think this guy is? The thief, I mean.’
Pierre shrugged. ‘Haven’t a clue. I can honestly say that we’ve never had a briefcase thief before. What about you?’
‘Well, given the scarf around his face I first thought it was good old Mr. Boyle,’ I said, trying to keep from cracking up, ‘but then I saw him run. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it isn’t him.’
We both laughed at that, and for the first time since losing my briefcase I felt a moment of relief. Everything would come together if only I’d give it time. I wonder if the laughter would have sprung so easily had I known how much harder my journey would become.
‘Yes, I think you’re safe on that one. As much as I would love the idea of Mr. Boyle being a world-hopping briefcase thief, I just can’t see it. We’ve had a few criminal types pass through our doors, mind.’
‘Yeah? Like who?’
‘Mad Frankie, The Krays. Lucky Luciano, too. Whatever happened to him…? Oh well. I doubt any of them would have cared much for a briefcase anyway. Unless you had a hundred grand stuffed in there. You didn’t, did you?’
‘Ha, no. I would be so lucky.’
A couple of kids ran past us down a street lined with old terraced housing. A cat fled from them, mewling and frail. In the distance I could hear a steam train sounding its horn. London fog crept over the buildings like a sinister pervert, craning to see into people’s bedrooms. Above us clothes had been hung out to dry. It didn’t look all too different to modern day Clapham or Hammersmith, at a glance, just minus the cars.
The further south we ventured, the worse the kerbs of the roads smelled. On the corner of one street lay a pile of horse manure almost as tall as Sam would have been, all those years ago. Or to come, as it was at that moment.
‘I’ve just realised something,’ I said, feeling a horror dig its talons into my brain. ‘I haven’t any free will at all, have I?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well I can’t, surely? I mean, if there are an endless number of worlds where everything plays out one way or the other, then I’ve always been destined to follow a single, predetermined path. My job, my family, my…’ I looked at Pierre’s worried face and instead decided upon, ‘my mortgage. I guess I never had any choice in the matter.’
Pierre shook his head.
‘Quite the opposite. Tell me something about your life, say… your first girlfriend. What was her name?’
‘Lisa Roberts. Dated her when I was fifteen, I think. Blonde hair and glasses, that’s about all I can remember. Jesus, that feels like a long time ago.’
‘That’s because it was. But there was never any predestined path you were following when you asked her out, no hand of God or fate to guide you. You made your own choice.’
‘Then why the need for other worlds? Why not just have the one straightforward reality?’
‘Because when you made your choice to date Lisa Roberts, you also made the choice not to. And the same goes for every choice you’ve ever made. The other choice played itself out, just somewhere else. Imagine a tree with a billion branches growing off it, and each of those branches splits and splits and splits as it grows higher. You’re at the top of one of those branches - the decisions you didn’t make are the others.’
He patted me on the back.
‘Don’t go having an existential crisis on me,’ he said. ‘All the other worlds were born from your choices. You occupy the world you shaped.’
That made me feel a little better, even if I didn’t quite know why.
‘Of course, it’s not just you,’ he continued. ‘It’s you, me, that kid playing with a hoop and stick over there. It’s Lisa Roberts - perhaps in one of her worlds the two of you ended up married. Imagine that! It’s every possible variation starting from the Big Bang, or maybe even before then. It’s best not to think too hard about it, so let’s leave it at that.’
We must have walked for an hour or more before I started complaining, which I thought was pretty good going under the circumstances. If I hadn’t been so fascinated by the history playing out around me I imagine I wouldn’t have been half as patient.
‘How much further must we walk? These cobbles are playing havoc with my heels.’
‘Not much,’ said Pierre. His pace was quickening. ‘In fact, we’re almost at the factories now.’
True enough, the endless rows of identical houses had slowly given way to an industrial district, to dividing walls of brick, and chimney stacks that rose like great prophetic monoliths amongst the swirling white mists. Stocky men in braces leant against the walls and fences, smoking and tossing their fags onto the pavement. Their jaws looked like anvils.
‘Don’t pay anyone any attention, not with your eyes or your mouth,’ Pierre warned me. I kept my head down and my words to myself. I guessed the two of us were ripe for commenting on. Easy targets.
We turned into an alley littered with rubbish and puddles of unidentifiable liquids. The air was full of yeast and sweat and the sounds of machines belching. Rainwater dripped from a broken roof gutter and part of a wall had caved in, though from time or a sledgehammer I couldn’t be sure.
‘Tell me you can get us out through a door if things turn unpleasant,’ I whispered.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Pierre said, dismissing me with a flutter of his hand. ‘I’ve never had any trouble here before and I don’t see us finding any now. Besides, look ahead.’
An enormous building of dusty red bricks rose into the sky before us, nothing peering through its second-storey windows save for a decade’s worth of grime. Some of them were broken. A couple of men like barrels held together by belts were standing out on a precarious wooden balcony of sorts, guiding a box of machinery as it climbed up a rope towards them. Its pulley sweated from the weight. I could hear the angry hum of industry coming from inside the building, punctuated by bells and horns.
Painted on the factory walls in huge capital print was HABBORLAIN COTTON & YARN.
‘A cotton mill?’ I asked. ‘How does this help?’
‘I’ve got a friend who works here. I’m hoping she can be of a certain assistance… providing I can get on her better side.’
‘Will she know where my briefcase is?’
‘Better. I’m hoping she already has it.’
We passed through a rusty iron gate and crossed over the yard. Gravel and mud crunched and squelched underfoot. A man with the demeanour of a hungry weasel watched us from behind a
wheelbarrow, and a scratchy rake of a woman sidled up to us from the factory’s corner. Her mulberry bush of black hair matched the shade of corset that ballooned down around her, layer after layer.
‘Fancy a spot of afternoon charm?’ she asked. One eye strained from somewhere beneath an inch of white powder and rouge. ‘Got some girls, ready and willin’.’
‘Not today, Madam Jay,’ replied Pierre, though he hadn’t so much as glanced towards her. ‘I’ve got business with the Boss, and you know she doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Not even when she isn’t expecting anyone.’
‘Two for a penny, then?’ she insisted, trailing behind us with her hands clasped to her chest. When we didn’t reply she slunk back to her usual spot, away from all but the more curious eyes.
A few workers looked up from unloading crates in the yard, but even they carried on with their work without too much interest. Two big metal doors looked out from the factory wall. I half expected Pierre to pull his keys from his pocket and try his luck opening them, but instead he rapped the one to the right with his knuckles.
Half a second later a small window on that very same door slid open with a metallic clang. A pair of bloodshot eyes peered out at us.
‘State your business,’ came a voice like a crocodile wearing a tie too tight around its neck. ‘Or you best be ready to scram.’
‘It’s Pierre. This is my friend George. We have an appointment with Viola, though I’m not sure if she knows it yet.’
Chapter Eight
As anyone who’s been lucky enough to visit a fully operational Victorian cotton mill and walked away with enough fingers to pick up a pen will testify, the only thing healthy in such a factory are its profits. Safety codes are “just a socialist’s way of doing less work”.
Pierre hadn’t even taken us to a mill where the employees were trying to be safe. At one point I swear one of them swung a wrench at another, and a moment later they were laughing it off as if he hadn’t almost been decapitated. They leant against machinery that could have stapled their spines to rags and crushed them flat. And that’s another thing - where were the women? I’m not being sexist - the society of their time took care of that for me - but surely a cotton mill would need its fair share of the fairer sex. There were plenty of children though, climbing up into the mechanisms to pry things loose with their tiny, nimble fingers. I imagined Sam getting lost amongst the cogs and gears, being crushed into a paste of claret and bone, and wanted to raise a fuss; the two goons with arms like their factory’s pistons, flanking us to either side, made it evident I should not.
We were escorted across the factory floor. It was impossible to hear anything over the intense rattling and stamping. The air was hot and humid and only seconds after entering I could feel sweat running down my sides from my armpits. That same air tasted thick and slow as it ran down my throat.
Seven or eight rows of identical machinery lined the factory work-floor. White rolls were threaded along their length. Above each row were wheels with thin spokes, turning and turning, running leather drive belts that spun and weaved. Everything kept moving around and around, the thousands of people and pieces fitting together like the cogs in a giant clock.
Between the aisles we were shepherded in silence. A rotund man in braces and a bowler hat watched us pass with a wary eye, then swatted a child of ten around the back of his head for doing the same.
We reached a door at the back of the hall and went through in single file. It led to a dark and narrow stairwell, leading down into an equally dark and dank basement. The boards squeaked as we descended, the roar of the machinery having been dampened by the closing of the door behind us. A dim gas lantern hung from a chain above, casting all in an eerie glow.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ I whispered to Pierre, who seemed not all too worried. I’m pretty sure he was even humming something under his breath. ‘Being brought down into a dingy basement by thugs with fists like ham joints doesn’t usually bode all that well.’
‘Nonsense. How many times have you been brought into a dingy basement?’
‘Come to think of it, I don’t believe I have.’
‘Exactly. Whereas I have, and this particular basement too, so just keep calm and let me do the talking. Unless you’re spoken to. In which case talk the right amount - no more, no less. Just follow my lead and we’ll be fine, trust me.’
We were shown into a marginally less dark room - this one had two lanterns, one hanging from the ceiling and another that sat atop a pile of unmarked crates - and asked to sit on the two chairs that had been placed in the centre of an unswept and unfurnished floor. They felt as precarious as they looked and the dust floating around them tasted old.
‘Is that a blood stain on the floor?’ I asked once we’d been left to wait alone. ‘Because it looks like a blood stain is on the floor. I’m pretty sure it’s a blood stain.’
‘Mr. Webber, calm yourself.’
‘Who even is this Viola? And how on earth does a hotel concierge form a social circle with the sorts of people who hire goons and keep torture-rooms?’
Pierre smiled. ‘She’s not that bad. Not to her friends at least. Viola’s the boss of this here cotton mill… and the boss of The Black Dogs. She’s quite pleasant unless she thinks you’re a member of The Diamond Rats.’
‘What the hell is a Diamond Rat?’
‘They’re the other gang in the area. They also happen to own the rival cotton mill down on Cobbett Street, so you can imagine things get pretty heated. No love lost there, oh no. That’s actually how I met her, incidentally. I was on my annual leave, soaking in some history, when I got mistaken for one of the rival cotton workers and brought in for questioning. And look,’ he said, wiggling all of his fingers, ‘nothing lost. She took quite some convincing though. Had to go grab her a copy of the next week’s newspaper before she’d believe me. I think she just wanted the results of the horse races, if I’m honest.’
‘If you could leave via a door, why didn’t you just stay away? I mean, nothing was forcing you to come back.’
‘Sure, sure. But it’s always good to have some favours owed, and we’ve done each other a good number. She probably owes me one. Or do I owe her?’
Much to my gratitude, Pierre left most of the more grisly details about Viola, full name Viola Mary Kadwell, until after our introduction, in a conversation a little while from then. But for your benefit I shall share her story with you ahead of time, rather than make you wait in the manner Pierre made me.
Viola had been born to parents who struggled through life, turning to the drink all too regularly, even when there wasn’t enough coin to keep the roof over their heads. Mary Kadwell and Chris Kadwell, never slow to blame the child for the burdens on their back, nor any slower with the belt. They lived in a one room flat above a butcher’s shop, sleeping on two mildew-ridden mattresses under a pipe which dripped something not quite clean enough to be called water.
Nobody had shed much of a tear when Chris Kadwell had been run down by a runaway stagecoach on Christmas Eve, its horses startled by a gun going off in the alley behind old Mr. Mackenzie’s bakery round the corner. Chris had been too drunk to gauge the speed of the horses or to jump out the way fast enough. It hadn’t been a quick or clean death. Viola had been six at the time. The year that followed was twice as harsh as any that had come before, and by its end Mary Kadwell had been taken by consumption.
And Viola had been taken to the Mount Pleasant Institute for Orphaned Children, a dark and foreboding manor estate out towards Dagenham. It had spires and towers and everything one wouldn’t associate with a friendly, inviting or… well, pleasant environment for parentless infants.
There she had stayed for another year, working for the strict Ms. Abercrombie, stitching and sewing and working the mills to keep the orphanage afloat and Ms. Abercrombie’s purse above water. Though the work was hard and tiring, and though she once lost a fingernail to the machines, having an actual bed made it appear a pal
ace compared to the mattress she’d had back at home. Even if she had to share it with little Alice Chambers, who smelled of old socks and earwax.
So it had been with a confusing blend of sorrow and excitement that she had left the orphanage, having been paid for and therefore adopted into not family but service by the enigmatic Mr. Clifton Habborlain, a cotton mill factory owner in need of small hands and a good work ethic. She’d worked and lived with the other children in much the same way as she had in the orphanage, and that had been fine, even if it meant knowing that every half-penny she earned the mill went straight into the lined pockets of The Black Dog gang.
But it only took a couple more years for Mr. Habborlain to notice that Viola was a girl. And there were ways a girl could make much more money than through tying broken threads or cleaning machines.
She was sent to work with Madam Jay. The washed-up hag who had approached us from the corner of the cotton mill had once been a burlesque starlet, all hips and tits, with lips that could make your mouth water. But when the years took her youth they took her client list with it, until she was forced to work the streets not as a whore herself but as the pedlar for her Black Dog sisters. If a cotton mill girl could flash a pretty smile they put her to work flashing a lot more instead.
At age ten and a half, Viola formed part of their younger selection.
She serviced her clients as best she could, crying herself to sleep each night with her knees hugged close to her chest. It would have been hard to describe the years she’d seen before as a childhood, but whatever faint glimmer of innocence she’d held onto had been well and truly snuffed out. Madam Jay took as much care of her as she could, wiping away the morning tears and dressing the occasional wound. ‘It gets better,’ she would say in her high but calming voice. It didn’t.
Still, she picked up a lot over those years. First, who the gang members were and what part they played in the Black Dog machine. She imagined each muscle-bound goon as a piston, and any man who resembled a string of gristle as a drive belt, keeping the cotton spinning. And second, she pieced together what their plans were - what deals were going down, when the next hit was, even what juice they’d managed to squeeze from a Diamond Rat beaten to a jawless pulp (sometimes this happened in the very same basement in which Pierre and I had been made to wait). She became near-enough an honorary Black Dog, even if nobody saw her as anything more than a pair of spread legs.
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