"What's happened to Charlie?"
"He'll never find us if we move," Dinah said.
"What have we done?" Robert whispered. "I had no hope then. How could I have known?"
"What have you done!" Anna shouted.
Robert buried his face in his hands. Dinah looked at him contemptuously. "You wouldn't hear my voice then, but now it's my voice must tell the news." Dinah faced her mother, and paused a moment, searching for words. They did not come easily to her, not because she could not think of any words, but because they were all so imprecise. "You signed the paper two days ago. Charlie's gone, apprenticed to a chimney sweep.
Anna looked at them in horror. "Charlie! To a chimney sweep!"
Robert looked up, his eyes already inflamed from tears -- not of grief for Charlie, but of shame for having made a wrong decision for the family. "We were only weeks from starvation, Mother. It was a way to save his life."
Charlie, who reads poetry and philosophy, Charlie who has a mind like a god and the disposition of an angel -- climbing up and down chimneys and walking the streets covered with soot. It was impossible. It could not be. Anna came to herself enough to realize that Robert was watching her with terrible apprehension for her verdict on him. She hated what he had done, but he was only a child, and it was her duty to comfort him. "You thought it was for the best, Robert," she said. "As God is my witness I will get him back."
"How?" Robert asked. "You signed a paper."
"I wasn't in my right mind!" Anna said.
"It was written by a solicitor," Robert said, sure that it meant the contract was irrevocable.
"The problem isn't the paper," Dinah said. "The problem is -- where is he?"
"I don't know," Robert said. "I met the man on the street. I saw him with a small boy, and I thought, there's a place for Charlie, and I talked to him and he came to our house on Sunday. I don't know where he lives."
"His name," Anna said.
"Whitesides. But it's not so bad, Mother. He'll send Charlie to school."
Anna shook her head and laughed bitterly. "Did he say so? And since when was there a chimney sweep who could even read? He wouldn't know how to find a school. You knew no better, Robert -- you and Charlie both, so trusting you're easy victims to anyone with a lie that says what you want to hear. So trusting. But I will get him back."
Dinah didn't ask again, but the question still hung in the air: How? Her son, the jewel of her life, was gone; she would do anything; she would swallow pride and beg if she had to. "I will ask Mr. Hulme to help me."
"But, Mother," Dinah said, "you surely lost your place when you --
"I won't ask for my place. I'll ask him how I can find my son."
For a moment they sat in silence. Then Robert leapt to his feet. "How long have we been here? How long has it been?" And with scarcely another word, he and Dinah left the cottage running, for if they were late to the factory they would be docked, and even the smallest loss of pay was one night colder or one dinner with no food, and that might mean the difference between marginal health and plunging over the edge into sickness, exhaustion, unemployment, beggary, starvation, and death.
After they ran off to work, Anna sat in the cottage for a half hour, trying to find in the Bible what was in God's mind when He blessed them with one hand while cursing them a thousandfold with the other. Finally she closed the Bible, unsatisfied, and left to see Hulme to ask his help. She would get her son back whether it was God's will or not. God's will had done them little good so far. Now she would see how well she did with her own.
8
Charlie Kirkham Manchester, 1830
Charlie almost forgot his fear of Whitesides as the housekeeper led them to the fireplace, for the house was magnificent beyond his dreams. He had no way of knowing that it was rather an ordinary middle-class home; his only point of comparison was the places he remembered living, and he couldn't even remember the comfortable rooms above the store, back when his father still owned his own shop. So the varnished wooden floor, the thick rugs, the paintings on the wall, the carefully placed furniture all spoke to him of heaven: this is what comes to good people after they die. Frankly, Charlie gawked.
Raymond. of course, had been in many homes richer than this one and knew it wasn't much. He nudged Charlie and said so -- in a whisper, of course. But when Raymond spoke Charlie realized something that gave him confidence. Raymond's thick, lower-class speech, uneducated and full of cant, would forever bar him from belonging in a house like this, let alone one better. Charlie, however, spoke with his mother's clear, educated speech, which still echoed her father's Cambridge pronunciation; if he were not dressed in old and threadbare clothing, he could easily belong here, and indeed probably had a clearer speech and more elegant language than the owner of the house. Charlie didn't put it to himself so clearly, however. All that passed through his mind was the thought, I ought to be in a place like this. And with the thought came the unrecognized resolution, I will have a house like this. He felt it as a right -- or rather he felt his poverty as a wrong. If God ever set the world to rights, Charlie Kirkham would live like this.
The housekeeper tapped the brick of the fireplace. "This is the one. And please be quick -- we have company tonight, and we must be able to have a roaring fire without smoke. And try not to spray ash everywhere, it's near impossible to clean." She spoke with the conscious snobbery of servants trying to cloak themselves in their masters' elevated status.
Whitesides, smiling, reached up inside the fireplace and felt the brick.
"I thought I said, ma'am, that there be no fire in here last night."
"The master got cold. When he is cold, there's a fire."
"This is hot enough to scorch, ma'am. It must have been put out only a few hours ago at most."
The housekeeper narrowed her eyes. "Oh, a regular scientist, he is. Next you'll be telling me how many pounds of coal we burned. Will you do the job or not? You're not the only sweeps in town, I hear."
"But we're the only ones in this house, ma'am. You're welcome to go find another, if you think you can get one quick enough. But there you are. We'll do it, but the charge is more, in case of damage to my boys."
The housekeeper chuckled. "If there be damage, sweep, then we'll talk about paying extra. These don't look like they're worth much anyway." And with that she swept out of the room, her bouncing stride belying the airs she affected.
"What a proud day," Whitesides said when she was gone. "Your first day up a chimney, Charlie. Does it please you?"
Charlie, whose cheeks already hurt from smiling, smiled more broadly and said, "It does, Master."
"Then up you go.
Charlie hesitated. He was not an athletic child, and had never climbed a chimney in his life -- had never, in fact, climbed a tree. He had no notion how to begin.
"Charlie looks reluctant, wouldn't you say, Raymond?"
Raymond laughed. "More stupid than slow, I'd say, right Charlie?"
Whitesides came close to Charlie and squatted down so his eyes were on a level with the boy's. "You take off your shoes and socks, Charlie."
Once his feet were bare, Charlie started to take off his coat. Raymond stopped him. "Unless you want to scrape your elbows raw, boy, and have ash in your arse and armpits, you leave the coat on."
Now Whitesides took a long, sharp pin out of his lapel and, with a flourish, handed it to Raymond. "You help the boy up the chimney, Raymond," he said. "You give him a bit of a desire to climb high and fast." "What's that for?" Charlie asked.
"You look worried, Charlie."
Charlie smiled more broadly.
"Much better, Charlie. And now faces, Charlie, there mustn't be faces in the chimney, mustn't there?" Whitesides reached into the voluminous pocket of his coat and pulled out a blackened wad of knit. Charlie took it gingerly, opened it. It was a mask, with holes for eyes and nothing else. It had once been red, or partly red. "It's been up ten thousand chimneys twice ten thousand times, Charlie, and up one m
ore with you today."
Charlie started to put it on, filthy as it was, but Raymond stopped him. "Dip it." Charlie didn't understand. Raymond pointed to a bucket of water the housekeeper had set out for them. "Dip it. Wet it so you can breathe."
Charlie dipped it in the water and picked it out. The water had not penetrated much.
"Soak it. Wet clear through."
Charlie dipped it again, squished it several times in the water, then pulled it out, heavy and dripping. Was he to put it on like that? He looked at Raymond, then smiled at Whitesides. They were watching him intently. No advice from them, and he dared not ask, so he slipped the filthy mask over his head. Cold water dribbled down his neck into his shirt. He shuddered. Whitesides giggled.
"Most boys wrings it out," said Whitesides. He giggled again.
Raymond sauntered to the hearth and Charlie followed. The bricks were rough under the white paint; inside, unpainted, there would be nothing to mitigate the sharp points and harsh edges against his feet and hands, nothing but the soot itself. Inwardly Charlie recoiled from the touch of the brick. It would hurt him. And now that hurting was a fresh memory, it terrified him more than it had when he had never known real pain.
He leaned his head back and looked up. Far above was a dim light. It looked miles away. And there was no ladder, no step cut into the brick, nothing at all to help him up the shaft. Yet he had to climb it, for Raymond held a needle whose use would not be tailorwork, Charlie was certain.
"How?" Charlie whispered to the boy beside him.
"It's elbows and knees does it, Charlie, and your back. You push against the walls and it holds you up.
Now Charlie felt the heat of the bricks seeping into his feet. He began to lift one foot, then the other. He heard Whitesides giggle and say something about a clever dance.
"Will you give me a boost?" Charlie asked.
"Of course," said Raymond. "But you need the chipper and the brush, you know. Get right to the top and chip your way down -- keeps the ash out of your eyes."
Suddenly Whitesides' head was in the hearth, inches from them. "Aye, Raymond, you ought to write a book, my boy. You're taking time, my lads, and time is money, and money is bread, and bread is dear, and if you want full stomachs tonight you'll hasten hasten hasten."
Raymond cupped his hands to give Charlie a lift. As Charlie placed his foot in the stirrup and braced one hand on Raymond's shoulder, he said softly, "Please don't stick me, Raymond."
Loudly Raymond answered, "Stick you? It's worth my life if I don't stick you, jack!"
"Aye, that's the answer," said Whitesides. Raymond gave Charlie a rueful grin that at least hinted that he'd regret doing it.
The air was close in the chimney as Charlie climbed into it. The bricks were warm, and the ash stung his lungs despite the wet mask. Charlie scrabbled for a handhold, but there was nothing; the bricks scraped his hands and hurt him when he banged his elbows on them. Soot slipped from the sides of the chimney, avalanched into Charlie's shirt and down his back. He slid downward, his foot slamming into Raymond's upturned face, the brick scraping his knees.
"Damn you!" Raymond cried. "Keep your foot out of my face, you little bastard!"
"Watch your language, my young friend," said Whitesides cheerfully. "We can't let the good folk here get theirselves offended."
Raymond pushed Charlie upward again, and this time he rose high enough to find a small ridge in the brick where he could hook his fingers, giving him enough purchase so that he didn't slide downward. He pressed his back firmly against one side, his toes against the other, and tried not to tremble in fear, for he dared not loosen his hold to climb higher, and yet he knew that if he stayed --
"Doesn't he like to climb?" he heard Whitesides say.
"You're turned wrong!" Raymond called up to him. "It's the other way, pressing outward with your knees and elbows!"
"Doesn't he like chimneys?"
"I love the chimneys," Charlie called down, trying to turn himself in the chimney so that he faced one of the narrow walls instead of one of the wide ones. His muscles were not toned for pressing outward; it took all his strength just to stay up, facing that way. But now his back was not pressed against a wall, and he could climb a little. It was slow, and he was terrified.
There was no warning. Just a sudden, agonizing pain in his foot. He cried out; his leg by reflex shot upward, and he lost his hold. He started to slide downward, which drove the needle deeper. Then he felt the shaft slide out of the wound, and he hung in the chimney, gasping, until the needle came into the sole of the other foot. He shouted and desperately elbowed his way upward into the chimney, banging and bruising his knees and elbows, scraping and burning his hands and feet, but climbing. And now that he was getting higher, he had no choice but to climb, for the soot was so thick and slick that if he stopped moving for an instant he began to fall, and a fall from this height would surely break a leg, if it didn't kill him.
The higher he rose, however, the cooler the bricks became. He began to slow down. He hadn't realized Raymond was climbing after him, until the needle came again. This time was the deepest, the most painful of all, and the hurt took his breath away for a moment; then he climbed again, faster than before, and now Raymond didn't follow him. The chimney was so caked with soot and ash that it narrowed, making the climbing easier, though breathing was harder all the time. Dust rose in the chimney, stinging his eyes, and despite the wet mask it burned in his throat.
He looked down. Raymond's face was so far below him that he looked like a bug, and Charlie felt a terrible vertigo, a feeling, not that he would fall, but that he already was falling.
"Keep climbing!" Raymond shouted. His voice rang in the chimney.
"I'll never get down again!"
As if the voice came from hell he heard Whitesides call out gleefully, "Down's easy, boy! Nothing's so easy as down!"
"All the way to the top!" Raymond called.
His elbows and knees throbbed with pain, his hands were raw, his arms and legs were exhausted, but he climbed upward because he had no choice. And at last, not daring to look down again, he reached the top, flung his arms out over the lip of the chimney, and hung there, up to his armpits in ash, but his face at last free to breath.
He had never realized Manchester was so large. From this house on Manor Street in Ardwick he could see a battery of chimneys, like cannons firing into the sky. The pall that always hung low over the city on a still day seemed to be pouring down a thousand spouts, or shooting up from them -- the illusion kept changing as he watched.
Sound also rose to the rooftops, but oddly there was none of the bustle of a city. Instead he heard the birds by the River Medlock not far distant, and the genteel carriages passing brusquely in the streets. The cry of beggars was not heard here, nor the whine and stomp of machinery. They could be different worlds, the one his ears heard and the one his eyes saw.
The shouting from below, inside the chimney, reminded him of what he had come for. Turning, he braced his back against the chimney and began chipping away the soot. It was easy enough work -- the soot was not hard to chip away -- but it was miserable. For every pound of soot that dropped past his legs, down to the bottom, it seemed sixteen ounces turned to dust and drifted upward into his eyes and hair and mouth. He shut his eyes often as he worked. Yet, struggling with the soot, he was able to keep his mind off misery, except the stinging of his feet, the aching of his legs, his elbows; it became almost a game to him, getting the soot off and brushing the dust away until brick showed through a bit.
It took him nearly an hour to work his way down, and, as Raymond had promised, it was easy. Staring at the brick ahead of him, he forgot how far away the ground was and began to take some pride in accomplishing the cleaning as well as he did.
But his legs, under constant tension, grew weaker and weaker. He began coughing, and the phlegm tasted of ash; tears streamed out of his eyes, and he could not wipe them because of the mask. Gradually even the pinpricks in
his feet were numb compared to the vast ache of his entire body.
And at last when he let himself slide downward a few inches there was suddenly nothing for his toes to brace against. He had reached the bottom of the chimney. He fell.
Not far, of course, but there was a deep pile of loose ash in the hearth, and when he landed in it the dust flew in a great cloud through the room, settling on the walls, the ceiling, the bare floor. What had once been plastered white was now a dingy gray. And Whitesides was smiling.
"Careless boy," he said. "Careless, careless." And he dragged Charlie from the hearth and began beating him, raising a cloud of dust on the first blow and bringing no cry of pain from Charlie at all. Charlie was too tired to care. His brain had shut off the pain, and since the pain was all he felt of the world, he might as well have been asleep.
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