"Careful," he whispered, leaning near her. "If you can't see clearly, it could happen bad with you."
She nodded. It was friendship here, as much as was possible, and words like that might save a hand. A life. But her tears, they stayed with him more than the boy's death. Her face, ruddy, funny-looking and cheerful, twisted up from crying. Wasn't right, that's all, and yet was necessary, in this place it was needful that tears also fall upon the singing metal.
And when he left at ten o'clock, his body all over in pain, his legs so weary that his feet slapped the pavement like a cripple's feet, then he left his body and dwelt, for a time, only in his mind. He saw Liza crying for the boy, only it was his mother crying for him, only it was St. Mary crying for the slain Lord.
There was singing in the ugly streets beyond Hanging Ditch. The men were drunk, cheerfully singing bawdy songs whose meaning always just eluded Robert; or they mournfully lamented some long-dead hero as a substitute for mentioning the miseries of their present, unromantic life. A slight breeze rattled the rubbish in the streets. It was the mournful songs that most accorded with Robert's temper, and when he reached Ducie Bridge and the turning to his family's cottage, he could not stop himself from weeping. It was not for the boy in the factory whose corpse had been stowed in the corner in a bloody cloth for his family to come for him; the tears were for the pain in his body, for the knowledge he would spend another day at the factory tomorrow and the next day and the next day forever. It was for the squalor he now lived in and the memory of better days in childhood. It was for his father, who would not return, for the two and sixpence that were all he had to lay upon the table to ease his mother's heavy burden. It was for the child Robert, who was dead, replaced by a melancholy old man whose feet spastically slapped against the road as he walked.
He leaned against the corner of the row and wept into his sleeve, wept until he could not weep anymore; then he waited until he judged his eyes would show no sign of his tears before he walked the short way along the riverbank to the cottage.
Anna greeted him with a smile. "Oh, you look weary, Robert. But I bought a fish today, and that should do you good, to have something besides gruel and potatoes and tea, though heaven knows God has blessed us more than we deserve to give us even that much." She kissed him, but he saw behind the smile and knew that she, too, had lost something in her heart today.
"How did it go?"
She affected delight. "I have a position. Upstairs domestic in a fine rich house in Broughton." She laughed and cheerfully described the house, the stern housekeeper, the rough-spoken butler. Dinah and Charlie were awestruck at the number of rooms with no one to sleep in them, at the library full of books to the second-story ceiling, at the kitchen with three ovens and three stoves, at the drive lined with roses. Robert noticed something else: all the other servants were described as humorous characters, not as potential friends. And he asked the other question, which ruined it all.
"How much?"
"Ten a week," Anna said, still smiling.
"With mine that's twelve and six, and we'd be starving even if we had a pound."
"We have our savings."
"Aye, until that money's gone, and buying fish will finish it much sooner than we like."
Anna's smile became wistful. "Robert, Robert, can't we at least be cheerful tonight? I'm so tired."
"So am I." His body shuddered involuntarily. "A boy died at the factory today. Fell asleep and got caught in the machinery.
Anna gave a little cry. Charlie, of course, was immediately full of questions, but Dinah hushed him. And Anna put a close to the dismal conversation by saying, "At least we can thank God it wasn't you.
"Yes, and while we're thanking God, let's thank Him He hasn't burned down the house around our ears, or had us beaten and robbed and left for dead -- "
"Robert!" Anna said.
"Oh, pardon me, Mother, I spoke prematurely. God probably has all that planned for us in the next few weeks, and my thanks would be out of turn."
Her hand swung toward him; something stopped her, though, before she slapped him. It would have made no difference. He did not flinch, and yet felt the pain as surely as if the hand had struck.
"Don't tell me, Mother," he whispered, "that you haven't wondered whether God really loves us."
"And what if He doesn't? Are we so perfect that we deserve favors from Him?"
In that moment Robert discovered that he didn't believe in God. Not the God his mother taught, anyway. What does He ever do? He lets a boy die of weariness, which will also mean the death of his ailing mother, and probably the beginning of his father's career as a beggar. He lets terrible things happen in the world, and never acts to make sure they happen only to the wicked. What sort of weakling God is that, who can't reward His friends? If there is a God He has a shaft somewhere powered by belts that run in opposite directions, making Him forever powerful, and forever impotent. As good as dead. Not worth getting angry at. Not worth arguing about.
"I'm sorry, Mother."
She decided to accept his surrender. "A bad day?"
"I do well now. They never have to strap me. I'm treated kindly." And then, to ease the tension in the room, he said, "I shan't be a doffer long, I think. I've decided to be an engineer. Man said I had an eye for it."
He sounded cheerful enough to convince his mother, who was eager to believe. "I'm glad," she said.
And then: "Are there any girl doffers?"
Robert was too tired to catch her drift before he answered. "Aye, a few. Women do everything men do, except overseering, and the engineers are all men."
"Any girls as young as Dinah?"
"No." Now he understood. "They never hire them so young."
"Are you sure? I think they do. Perhaps if Dinah worked too, them being so kind and all -- "
"No," Robert said vehemently. "They won't take her."
Anna looked at him in surprise. "Robert, it's good for a girl to stay home and all, but you know we need the money. It might make all the difference."
"I won't have it."
"You won't? Why not?"
Robert did not answer.
Anna was not a fool. "You lied, of course. They aren't kind at all there. They still beat you, even when you do well."
"It's good enough for me, because I can bear it."
From the dimly lit edge of the room Dinah spoke. "They also punished the girls in school, and I bore that."
"In school the girls were punished lighter than the boys. They make no difference between them at the factory."
Anna was standing now, had walked behind Robert, was touching his shirt. "What are these stains, Robert? Are they blood?"
"Yes," Dinah answered, before Robert could deny it.
"The strap?"
"I tell you I can bear it, but Dinah can't."
"What did you do, that they'd punish you so hard as to draw blood? I'll have words with that overseer, I will!"
"It was only once he drew blood, and I deserved it." How could he tell her that if she complained it would be the ruin of him, whether they sacked him or not? "I swore at him."
"You what?" Already the lie was working, for her anger had become surprise.
"Never mind. But I'd rather he forgot that time he beat me, the sooner the better."
"You swore?"
"I told him to go to hell."
Anna was shocked, outraged. It made Robert want to laugh or scream at her, he could not decide which. In a world like this, his mother could actually be irate at the thought that her son spoke some of the world's language. Yet she was angry, and he had deliberately provoked her, and so he bore it. "You're a Kirkham, your father's son and mine, and in all our tribulations have you ever heard either him or me speak one ugly word?"
"Never."
"I don't know where you learned to say such a thing. Not from me. Surely not from me."
"No, not from you."
"If he hadn't already punished you, you can be assured I would," Anna
said. "I won't have my children acting like common boys and girls. You are not common. You must never be common." Her voice trembled with emotion. All the day's humiliations were in her voice now. "We may have to live and work among the lowest scum of mankind, but we don't have to think or talk or act as they do. We can't ever forget who we are!"
Yet after all had quieted down, as they were quietly undressing for sleep, Dinah said, in a voice that denied any thought of compromise, "I'll go to work as a doffer tomorrow."
Robert turned on her. "You shall not."
"You needn't worry about me," Dinah said. "I shan't tell the overseer to go to hell, and so I'll be all right."
He would have argued more, but for the look in Dinah's eyes. She stared him down; he looked at her and remembered that only a few nights ago she had kicked a man and sent him tumbling down the stairs. I will do what I will, she said to Robert with her silent gaze, and he hadn't the power to argue with her anymore. "Do as you like," he said.
You might have thought that what Robert went through would have taught him compassion. And he learned it, I suppose, after his fashion. But it was a fastidious sort of charity, a selective pity. He could grieve for strangers, but never quite forgave his family for their inconvenient insistence on not behaving as he thought they should. Nothing was ever as it ought to be. It would be his life's work, he realized, just beginning to set the world to rights. But he would not fight it through tonight. Let Dinah do as she likes and be damned. Soon enough -- how well Robert could foresee it -- she'd run into trouble there, and want his help or his comfort. And he knew with satisfaction that then he would have his revenge for her disregard of him -- he would comfort and help her, you see, and then they would know that he was right, they should have listened to him.
In his dreams again and again the overseer raised his whip, but the strap did not fall on Robert's back. It fell on Dinah, and the blows seemed heavy enough to cut her in two.
6
Charlie Banks Kirkham Manchester, 1830
It was the birth of the baby that took the last of the savings. The midwife had to be paid in advance. They had to buy a blanket to line the crate they would use as a cradle. And when the midwife, after a seven-hour labor, insisted that they call a doctor, the doctor took all the money that was left, and muttered even so that no man knew poverty but the man who made his living from the poor.
Charlie was sure, as he watched the events through his childish eyes, that they were being persecuted by fate. Actually, however, they were lucky. The doctor was so disgusted by the squalor of the neighborhood and his low fee that he didn't actually touch Anna, which doubtless saved her life -- if he had examined her he would have given her an infection that her body had no strength to resist.
In fact, Providence, after so long a quarrel with the family, was downright kind to them now, for the baby died. That meant no one to nurse. No one to weary them with nightlong wakings. Mother could go back to work as soon as she healed. Charlie admitted no doubt that she would heal. We will let her rest, Charlie assured himself, and she will get better.
Charlie watched her all day, for of course Robert and Dinah couldn't afford to stay away from work. He watched as she tossed back and forth on the bed, usually unconscious, sometimes delirious. He could hardly tell when she was in her right mind and when she was not. She might call him over and talk to him clearly about what she would do as soon as she was well, and then end the conversation by calling him John and saying strange things that Charlie didn't understand. She would talk sometimes about the baby, how beautiful she was, her pretty black curls, her turned-up nose, though the infant had died within hours of birth, and Anna had never seen her.
It made him afraid. For the first day he tried to read and memorize passages to please her, as if performing that daily ritual in exactly the right way would restore her. Surely if he memorized and recited she would remember her proper role and catechize him on what he had just read. But no passage from Wealth of Nations would rouse her, and when he quoted the Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet, she wept and wept and would not be comforted, calling out again and again for her little girl. Charlie did not know that one of the children born and died before his own life began had been called Mab. He only knew that he had recited and caused his mother to grieve; he blamed himself, and it made him try all the harder to bring her to herself. He went back and forth to the well to bring cool water and bathe her fevered face and arms. He kept silent for hours once, and another time kept up a constant stream of talk. When he was silent she grew afraid and began to cry out; when he talked she seemed to become confused, and tossed and turned until he thought she would throw herself from the bed in her writhing.
By the time Robert brought Mr. Whitesides, Charlie was so filled with guilt for his mother's suffering that he was ready to do anything that might help. He did not notice that Robert approached the subject cautiously; it did not occur to him that Robert was afraid he would say no. For, inadvertently, Robert began the conversation in such a way that Charlie could not refuse.
"Charlie, since Mother's been so sick she's had no wages, and with her wages stopped we'll soon be out on the streets to starve unless we can do something to take up the slack."
Charlie, obsessed as he was with his mother's condition, immediately imagined her, delirious and raving and burning up with fever, forced to sit in the road and beg.
"There's a man, Charlie, who's willing to take you for an apprentice. He'll feed and shelter you, and train you for a trade."
"Will I have wages, then?" Charlie asked.
Robert shook his head. "You're too young for wages, Charlie, only eight years old; you wouldn't earn enough to pay for what you eat. But if you go with Mr. Whitesides, you'll at least stop eating up part of our little money here. That'll be a help."
And, miserably, Charlie agreed. The best thing he could do would be to leave, to stop harming his mother, to stop costing them money. Robert only confirmed what he had already feared: that he caused more harm than good in the family. "I'll go," Charlie said.
Then Robert went downstairs and brought Whitesides up with him. The man was tall and thin and wore a coal-black suit that didn't fit him and a top hat that looked to be the perfect home for lice. His hair was also black, and his skin was dark and stained.
Whitesides was all business. He smiled and shook Charlie's hand briskly, then said to Robert, "All right, I need the mother's permission, the boy can't do it."
"She's asleep," Charlie said.
Whitesides smiled broadly. "And I'd never think of interrupting her slumber, lad, except that it's a Sunday, and it costs me money to be standing about on a Sunday."
Robert nodded and went to the bed where Anna lay. He touched her gently, then shook her until her eyes opened. Charlie knew immediately that she did not know what she was about -- she had one of the looks of madness on her. But only he would know that. Dinah and Robert hadn't been around her enough since the birth to know.
"Mother?"
"Hmmm?"
"This is Mr. Whitesides, Mother."
She giggled. "Such a bright name for so dark a man."
"Mother, Mr. Whitesides is in the chimney-cleaning business.
"A sweep?"
Whitesides raised his hands in genial protest. "Oh, no, ma'am, a director of sweeps, a superintendent of sweeps, but never a sweep myself. I'm much too big for the chimneys anymore." So it was that Charlie first learned what trade Robert had chosen for him for the rest of his life.
Anna smiled bashfully and touched her hair. "Robert, how can you bring me company to see me in bed? I must look like a monster from the deep."
"Not at all, ma'am," said Whitesides. "Charming to the core. Boy here says you have a sweep to give me."
Robert interrupted. "Charlie, Mother. He's still small. Mr. Whitesides is willing to take him on as an apprentice."
"My Charlie, a sweep?"
"It's not a bad life," Whitesides said, and as he talked his hands came alive
and inscribed spiderwebs in the air. "The boys earns an honest living during the working days, and in the schoolish time of year I sends 'em to the finest of teachers that moderate money can afford so they grows up to be what any mother could be proud of. And it's a jolly time for the boys, they gets to see Manchester like no other boys ever does." Whitesides reached over and pulled on Charlie's cheek. "You like a jolly time with the boys, don't you?" The hand was a claw, and Charlie's cheek hurt.
Anna tried to make sense of what was going on. "My Charlie's a reader."
"I love a good book myself," said Whitesides.
"And the best of it is," Robert said, "Mr. Whitesides doesn't ask an apprentice fee."
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