by Irene Carr
He was the only family Tom had ever known. His first memory was of his grandfather coming to the house where Tom’s parents waited for burial. The tall old man, burly and strong then, had scooped him up into the fold of one arm and told him, ‘I’ll not let them put you in the orphanage.’ Tom had been with him ever since.
But that was all over now, though Tom did not realise this for some time. He was uneasy and fearful when his grandfather, after a long silence, let out a deep sigh and then ceased his laboured breathing. The worried small boy could not wake the old man. Tom suspected the worst when the two policemen came slow-striding and one said, ‘I don’t like the look o’ this one.’ Tom did not like the look of them, either, had always been taught to steer clear of the ‘pollis’. So he sidled away – but he heard: ‘Th’ould feller’s deid.’
He had been taught to seek shelter in crowds so he slunk into the station. He had begged there out of habit and there his loss came home to him and he shed tears for the rough, hard-bitten old man who had cared for him after his fashion. Now he realised that there was no one to tell him where to go, what to do. No one to find him a bed – of some sort – for the night. He was alone.
When the police came into the station he guessed they were looking for him. His grandfather had told him how he had been saved from the orphanage and Tom was determined not to go there now. The train was filling up again to return to Sunderland. He sneaked aboard it by hiding among a little group of passengers, workmen smelling of drink and shouldering through the gate. He found a seat beside them and as the train rattled along from station to station he learned that they were all getting off at a place called Monkwearmouth.
He got out of that station as he had entered the train at Newcastle. The ticket collector at the gate spotted him worming through among the workmen, all of them singing now, but Tom ducked under his clutching hand and ran away into the night. He walked around some of the streets of Monkwearmouth, row upon row of soot-stained houses with windows lit yellow. A fine, cold drizzle came in from the sea. He begged as he went but got nothing from the few people hurrying home.
When the streets emptied, and the lights in the windows went out one by one, he found a tenement where the front door had not been bolted. In the passage was a dark corner where he could not see his dirty hand before his dirty face. He had a few halfpennies in his pocket with a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese. He ate the food and slept on some old sacking with the mice skittering around him. All this was done as if his grandfather was still with him; he was clutching at normality. This was the only life he had known and he had been happy enough.
But now he was miserable – and lonely.
2
Liverpool, January 1888
Josie had no sense of foreboding when she and her family boarded the emigrant ship, lying in the Albert Dock, in the late afternoon. The wind whipping in off the Mersey was cold but excitement kept her warm. The side of the SS Blackhill stood above the landing stage, black-painted and massive to Josie’s eyes. Smoke trailed from the ship’s two funnels as her sweating stokers laboured below, hurling shovelfuls of coal into the furnaces to raise steam for her to sail. Josie held her mother’s hand, following her father as he carried their portmanteau on his shoulder. They climbed the gangway to the deck of the ship along with other passengers sailing to a new life in America. Some had portmanteaux but most made do with a cheap suitcase or an old kitbag. A few carried all their belongings tied up in an old shawl or blanket.
David Langley set the portmanteau down and straightened his back, worked his shoulders after ridding himself of the weight. He set an arm about his wife’s shoulders and smiled at her. ‘We’ll be sailing in a few hours.’
Josie asked, ‘Will we get to America tomorrow?’
Her father laughed. ‘Not as soon as that! But not too long. It will give you time to enjoy the cruise.’ That was said to reassure his wife as much as his daughter. Privately he doubted if a winter passage of the North Atlantic would be pleasant. But he told himself they would all survive a little bad weather and seasickness and be none the worse.
He lifted the portmanteau again. ‘Time to go below.’ He led the way to the poop and a door opening on to steep stairs leading down into the steerage where the emigrants would live during the crossing.
Josie stood at the head of the ladder, looking down into the dark bowels of the ship. It reminded her of the stairs down into the cellar in her grandfather’s house. And it was then she felt the first queasiness, the first shiver shaking her, She wailed, ‘I don’t want to go down there!’
Her father joked with her, ‘Well, you can’t sleep on deck. What if it rains?’
Josie’s mother picked her up, held her close and soothed her: ‘It’s warm and dry down below. It will be just like going downstairs in our old house.’
Josie clung tightly to her and so they went below.
Later that evening, Peggy Langley looked up into her husband’s face and said anxiously, ‘She’s burning up! Oh, David, I’m frightened!’ She held Josie in her arms – the little girl was flushed, her hair damp with perspiration.
David laid his hand on her brow, felt the heat of it and bit his lip. He looked around him. The steerage accommodation for the emigrants was down below the waterline and crowded, bunks stacked one above the other like huge chests of drawers. David had been to sea more than once. He knew what it would be like to be battened down in this dark hold for hours or days in bad weather, and he had learned from one of the ship’s officers that the barometer showed they would get it. And in the North Atlantic? How would this child of his fare during such a crossing, three thousand-odd miles and lasting two weeks or more? And what lay at the end of it?
He ran his hand through his dark hair worriedly and looked down again at Josie’s flushed face, saw the way she twisted restlessly in her mother’s arms. And she cried out in fear, ‘The giant!’
Peggy whispered, ‘She keeps on about some giant, a bad dream she’s having. She’s not in her right mind, David.’
He nodded. ‘She’s delirious.’ He made his decision. ‘Come on, we’re going ashore.’ He hurried the partially relieved Peggy up the succession of ladders to the deck. She would not be fully relieved so long as Josie was ill, but she was glad to be able to deal with that illness on dry land where there were doctors.
They were only just in time; the gangway was about to be swung up and inboard by a team of seamen working a derrick. David and Peggy trotted precariously down the gangway’s tilted length, and they had scarcely set foot on shore when it was lifted into the air by the derrick and a clattering winch. When they reached the gateway to the dock, David looked back and saw the Blackhill already clear of the landing stage and easing out into the stream, pushed by a fussing tug. The Blackhill’s siren blared farewell and emigrants lined her rails, waving handkerchiefs and hats. David bade his own farewell to her in silence and turned away. He told himself his dream of a new life was postponed, that was all. And he had no regrets. His daughter came first, and he smiled down at her. He told Peggy, ‘We’ll have to find a room for the night and then I’ll fetch a doctor to her.’
They found the room in a boarding house run by a Mrs Entwistle. David brought a doctor to see to Josie and he diagnosed a fever and administered some medicine. He smelt of whisky and oozed confidence: ‘She’ll be right as rain in a day or two.’ But he was right. When Josie awoke the next morning the fever was gone and she was full of life and questions: ‘Aren’t we going to America? When are we going? Will we go on a big ship like the other one?’ And: ‘Can I go out to play?’ Because she could see through the window the children playing hopscotch in the street.
Her delighted parents answered all her questions laughingly but refused the request in that last. Peggy said, ‘I think she ought to stay in today. If she is still all right tomorrow we can take her for a walk.’
David agreed and picked up his cap. ‘I’ll take a walk myself. I want to see about booking another passage.
’ He would also try to regain the money paid for the passage on the Blackhill but doubted if he would get it. And the longer they stayed in the boarding house the more the rent of their room would eat into his small savings, so he wanted a passage sooner rather than later. As he left the house he met Herbert Entwistle, husband of the proprietress, a skinny, obsequious man. He occasionally worked as a clerk but usually lived off his wife whom he beat regularly. Now he smirked and stood aside deferentially. David, who had disliked him on sight, nodded stiffly and went on his way. Entwistle sneered at his back.
Reuben Garbutt might easily have seen the Langleys when they entered the Albert Dock or left it because he plied his trade hanging around the dock gates, but he had missed them. Reuben was the only son of Elisha Garbutt, who had been sacked by William Langley for theft. When David and Peggy carried Josie off the Blackhill, Reuben and his gang were following a sailor.
The young Garbutt was sixteen years old while most of his gang were a year or two older, but he led by strength of personality, example – and fear. They wore ragged jackets and trousers, greasy caps or battered bowler hats. Some smoked stubby clay pipes. The sailor was dressed in an old blue reefer jacket and canvas trousers. He had been paid and he was drunk.
Reuben was tall for his age, broad and muscular with dark, piercing eyes. In the past year the precocious boy had grown into a young adult. He had learned that he was attractive to some women and was learning how to use that charm. But not today. He strolled close behind the sailor as he staggered through the streets, the six members of the gang spaced out over a score of yards following their leader. He waited with the confidence of experience for his opportunity and seized it when it came. The sailor turned into a street narrower than the rest – and empty. Reuben took two long strides to bring him up on the heels of his prey and with a flick of one booted foot he tapped the sailor’s ankles so that he tripped and fell. Reuben was on the man’s back before he sprawled his length, shoving his face down into the dirt of the street. The rest of the gang came running up as the sailor tried to fight and yell. Reuben cut off the cry with a hand around the man’s throat and the others helped to pin him down. They went through his pockets, found his money and a watch, and one of them tied his ankles with a length of rope. Then they were up and running as a woman appeared at her door and shouted, ‘’Ere! What are you lot doin’?’
‘A’right! This’ll do!’ Reuben snarled the command and halted his band after running for a minute and rounding half a dozen corners. They stood in a dark alley and Reuben took off his cap, held it out and demanded, ‘Cough up!’ They all tossed into the cap what they had stolen from the hapless sailor. Reuben counted the coins in the cap and remained with his head bent, staring down into it for some seconds. Then he looked up and said softly, ‘I saw him change a sovereign in the pub. I could tell you to a penny what he had in his pocket. Somebody’s holding back.’ His gaze, dark eyes staring, travelled around the circle of faces, looking into the eyes of each of them in turn. He stopped at one, a skinny youth with a spotted face. Reuben said, ‘You’re a cheating rat, Sepp.’ He did not raise his voice but its tone and his glare were sufficient. Sepp hurriedly dug into his pocket, pulled out more coins and threw them into the cap.
Reuben dismissed him with a jerk of the head towards the mouth of the alley. Sepp whined, ‘What about my cut?’
‘You’ll get your cut if you try that again – right across your throat!’ Reuben held him with the terrible glare and Sepp backed off, turned and ran. Reuben showed his teeth in a grin. That was another skill he had learned in the past year: how to terrify.
He shared out the money in the cap, though his share was bigger than the others and he pocketed the watch. No one objected. His partners in crime then headed for a favourite pub, but Reuben set out for what passed for his home.
This was a single crowded room in a tenement. He climbed several flights of stairs in darkness to reach it, his boots clumping hollowly on the wooden treads. He found his mother and his four sisters, all younger than he, sitting on stools around the small fire that burned in the grate. There was a table, bare save for a crust of bread and a knife. On the floor lay two mattresses. Reuben slept on one of them, the four girls on the other. His father lay in a corner on the only bed. He alternately mumbled, coughed, raved and gasped for breath.
Reuben shoved through the half-circle formed by his mother and the girls to stand in front of the fire. He asked, ‘How is he?’
His mother, sallow and dark-haired, shrugged. ‘Still hanging on.’ Her dress, like those of the girls, was old and greasy. She and her daughters stared listlessly into the fire. But then she looked up and asked, ‘D’ye get any money?’
Reuben reached into his pocket, pulled out some coins and dropped them in his mother’s lap. She fingered them eagerly, counting. Reuben knew how much there was and how much remained in his pocket. He warned, ‘Don’t spend it all on gin.’ Then he shoved out of the ring around the fire and went to stand by his father’s bedside.
The old man was skeletal, the skin drawn tight over his skull, his wispy beard tangled. His eyes were glazed and shifted wildly. When Elisha Garbutt was dismissed by William Langley he had already spent the money he had stolen and had saved nothing. The sale of the furniture in the house he rented in Sunderland had paid for him and his family to travel to Liverpool where he hoped to find work. Those hopes were soon dashed; without a reference he could get only badly paid menial work and little of that. Now he was at the end of a long year of starvation, illness and despair.
Reuben listened to the old man’s mumblings but for most of the time they were incomprehensible. Only now and again did a few words come through clearly enough to be understood: ‘… Langley … damned Langleys … beggared me … Langley … damn them to hell!’ Finally Reuben could stand no more, turned and almost ran from the room. He strode the streets, not mourning but raging. He was sure who was to blame for the downfall of his father and hence his family.
When Elisha Garbutt had managed the Langley shipyard he and his family had lived comfortably, members of a middle-class élite, and looked down on the people who served them. None more so than Reuben, who had strutted at his father’s side, disdainful of the common workmen. He had furtively mauled the young girls who worked in the Garbutt house and counted them lucky to have the experience. He had looked forward confidently to a lifetime of full pockets come easily. At the same time he envied the Langleys as owners of the yard and believed his father really did all the work. Then William Langley had sacked Elisha and Reuben found himself a penniless outcast, humiliated, jeered at by the girls he had lorded it over. During the past year his hatred of William Langley had built upon itself and now it had crystallised into a determination to be avenged.
He returned to the tenement as the dawn was breaking and he heard the wailing as he climbed the stairs. He knew what it meant and did not need his mother to tell him as he pushed in through the door, ‘He’s dead!’ The dirty blanket was pulled up over Elisha Garbutt’s face. Reuben stood over the body, silent, his head bowed, but not in prayer. Inside he was cursing the Langleys, man, woman and child, and swearing to make an end of all of them – one day. He flung himself out of the room again, shoving his mother and sisters out of the way.
Garbutt’s gang was not the only one following his villainous trade. Another pack of four, dirty and shifty eyed, saw David Langley on his way to the shipping agents. His route took him through a maze of streets where all the houses seemed to be tenements. They teemed with grubby children and harassed women. He wound his way through them and the four skulked after him. But then, thinking he saw a short cut, he turned into an alley that led to a court that was dark even in the light of day. Here there was not a soul to be seen and here the gang struck. They spread out and one overtook David and swung round in front of him. He demanded hoarsely, black and stained teeth showing through his straggly beard, ‘Cough up!’ He held out one hand open, palm up, while the other pulled a short
iron bar from his pocket.
David checked for a second, startled, but then his reaction was automatic and he lashed out. His fist struck the other full in the face and he staggered back, but then his partners closed in from each side and behind. One locked his hands round David’s neck and the other two seized his arms. He struggled desperately and the panting, cursing group staggered about in the gloom of the court. The bearded one wielding the iron bar stepped in again but took David’s boot on his shin and yelped with pain and rage. ‘You bastard!’ And he struck out with his weapon.
David’s jaw dropped as the club came down on his head. He slumped among his captors. For a second they held him up, then they let him go and he crumpled and fell in the dirt.
One of them cursed, ‘You mad bugger! You’ve killed him!’
No one argued; the result of that fearful blow was obvious. Another muttered, ‘You could swing for this.’
But the bearded killer whined, ‘We’re all in it together!’ Then he shoved the iron bar in his pocket and ran, the others racing after him.
When Reuben passed that way an hour later there was a policeman beside the blanket-covered corpse. An ambulance with its team of two sweating horses stood nearby. A crowd surrounded them, all talking about the young man who had been killed. Reuben stood back and listened.
‘Bloody murder! … Smashed his head open! … He was dead when they found him so they could ha’ walked them poor horses ’stead o’ whipping ’em along here at a gallop … could ha’ been you or me …’
