Sixpenny Stalls

by Beryl Kingston

  At last, after an interminable time, an attack was launched on their barricade that was so ferocious that the remaining defenders took to their heels and fled through the cellars, taking their walking wounded and Will and Tom and Edward with them.

  ‘Is it over?’ Edward gasped as he followed Will through the darkness.

  ‘I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Where are they going?’

  ‘To other barricades, to the country.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘To my apartment, if I can.’

  They emerged into total darkness in a narrow alley between two rows of tall, unlit, decaying tenements. There was no time or energy for leave-taking. People were scrambling off in both directions. If they were to get away, this darkness was their only hope.

  ‘South,’ Will said, ‘and don’t run. Running looks bad. If we are stopped, leave the talking to me.’

  Every other street was guarded by troops. They were stopped three times, but their interrogators seemed satisfied with Will’s explanation that he was a reporter looking for a story.

  ‘Write that the revolution is over for good and all,’ one officer said, peering at them in the light of his lantern. ‘Tell your readers that. We have had a blood-letting here in France and revolution is dead.’

  It was an enormous relief to be back in the apartment, almost as if they’d all escaped home to England. The servants had gone, of course, and there was no food in the house but there were beds to sleep in and no sound of gunfire.

  ‘Sleep tonight,’ Will said. ‘Food tomorrow.’ And he dropped across his bed and fell asleep at once, still fully dressed.

  Edward and Tom took off his boots and removed as many of his filthy clothes as they could without lifting him and then they took themselves off to bed. It was past midnight and they were tired to the bone.

  Tomorrow, Edward promised himself as he drifted off, I will have a bath and a meal and then I will catch the next train out of this city no matter where it’s going. Enough is enough.

  But Fate had other plans for him.

  In the early hours of the morning he was woken by an unfamiliar sound, a rhythmic, insistent rattling, like something being shaken. He got up at once and lit a candle and went to see what it was, opening the shutters first to peer out anxiously into the empty street. Then he realized that the noise was coming from his cousin’s room.

  Will was lying on his back with his mouth fallen open and the whole of his body visibly shaking. The noise that had woken Edward was the sound of bedsprings creaking and teeth chattering. Good God! What now?

  ‘Wake up!’ he said, shaking Will’s juddering shoulder. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  But his cousin only opened his eyes for a weary second and gave a long terrible groan. ‘Feel so bad,’ he said. His forehead was burning and his skin clammy with fever.

  Oh God! Edward thought. What am I supposed to do? And he remembered Mirabelle who was always so calm and efficient when anyone was ill and for a few panicking seconds ached to have her beside him. But he was on his own now. There was no one else to take responsibility.

  ‘I’ll get a doctor,’ he decided. Tom was in the doorway rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. ‘Get a doctor, Tom, as quick as you can.’

  It took a very long time to find one, most of them having been commandeered to serve as surgeons to the army. The sun rose and Will groaned from the bed to use the chamber, falling back upon the covers afterwards totally exhausted. From then on Edward spent his time emptying one chamber pot after another, with growing nausea and alarm. By noon his cousin was passing blood and was in such extreme pain that he couldn’t talk. His cheeks were flushed with fever, but the rest of his face was like sweating putty and his tongue had a yellow coating.

  But at long stinking last Tom returned with a doctor, an elderly man who spent more than a quarter of an hour negotiating his fee before he would walk into the bedroom to examine his patient.

  ‘He has dysentery,’ he said. ‘The bloody flux. There are cases all over Paris.’

  ‘What is to be done?’ Edward said. Dysentery was serious. People died of it. ‘You can cure him, can you not?’

  But the doctor wouldn’t commit himself as to the possibility of a cure. ‘I will give him castor oil to purge the bowel and tincture of opium to relieve the griping,’ he said. ‘Keep him in bed, keep him warm. Give him plain boiled water to drink. Not pump water. Pump water is lethal. The fever should subside in a day or two. If he becomes delirious send for me again.’

  He was delirious all night, and raving, about some woman in Ireland, ‘starving to death and the warehouses full of corn’, about his mother, ‘she won’t die, will she, Papa? Say she won’t die’, about Caroline, ‘she wrote to me, you know. She was worried … about something. I can’t remember. Should have gone back to help her, my poor Carrie.’

  It was a gruelling night. Edward sat beside him and listened to his ravings and sponged the sweat from his forehead and supported him when he had to stagger from the bed to use the chamber yet again. At daybreak they both fell into a troubled sleep and neither of them woke till mid-day, when Will groaned to the chamber again.

  ‘Are you better?’ Edward asked when he’d helped him back into bed again.

  ‘A little, I think,’ Will said. ‘The pain ain’t quite so strong.’

  ‘Could you fancy anything to eat?’

  ‘God no!’

  ‘You won’t mind if I get Tom to cook me some breakfast?’

  ‘No, no. You go. I mustn’t keep you.’

  ‘I’ll be back directly,’ Edward promised. ‘Call if you need me.’

  As he ate Tom’s rough bread and cheese breakfast, he remembered his plans, and grimaced to think how thoroughly they’d been wrecked. Not that it mattered. After the horrors of the barricades and the terror of death and now this new ordeal of an illness that could so easily kill, the need for flight was a thing of the past, and the great sin he’d fled reduced to nothing more terrible than a trivial mistake. Only one thing was important to him now, and that was to nurse cousin Will back to health. This was a family matter. The trial was simply a distant irrelevance.

  In London on the other hand it was an approaching ordeal.

  Chapter 31

  In the dark streets around the Seven Dials in Soho, Caleb Rawson was hard at work, even though the task he had set himself was growing more difficult and uncomfortable by the day. For a start he was ill at ease in his merchant’s clothes because he knew they didn’t suit his ugliness at all. But worse than that, oh a deal worse, was the abhorrence he felt for the man he’d set himself to find. Pornography was an obscenity to him, a denigration of all the precious qualities in women that he’d learned to value and admire during his seven years as a convict and his long trek home to England. Nevertheless he was determined to hunt his quarry down no matter how much time and energy it took. He owed it to Harriet Easter, and he owed it to her daughter.

  Ever since he’d first met Harriet’s daughter he’d felt peculiarly responsible for her, admiring her passion for life and pitying her present misery, almost as though she were a child of his own. Which for all he knew she might very well be. His affair with her mother had been almost exactly nine months before she’d been born, and although they’d only made love once, he knew such things were possible. Sometimes he caught himself looking at her and seeing reflections of his own face, dark, low of brow, grey eyed, and far too similiar for mere coincidence. And then he would yearn to be able to acknowledge her and claim her for his own and be loved by her. But on other occasions he would scold himself for such ridiculous fancies, and remind himself that he was an ex-convict wandering the world, and that she was an Easter and granddaughter to the great Nan, and very unlikely to prove to be anything else. But Easter or no she needed his help, poor young woman, if she was to come through this trial without serious harm.

  There was very little time left now, for the case was a mere six weeks away and he was no nearer t
o tracing this man they wanted than he’d been on the day he started. He’d established that he was no longer operating from Holywell Street, for although none of the publishers there would admit to any knowledge of him, the third man he’d visited had been talkative enough to let drop that several of his colleagues had left the street quite recently.

  ‘Rumours of a police raid, you see, sir,’ he said. ‘As if the police ain’t got better things to do.’ And to Caleb’s hidden satisfaction he actually admitted that he knew where ‘one or two’ of them had gone. It took a lot of persuasion and several sovereigns before he would part with addresses or ‘whereabouts’, but Caleb’s persistence was finally rewarded. Since then he’d been checking these new addresses, methodically, one after the other, but without success.

  Tonight’s destination was the fifth on the list and the nearer he got to it the less promising it looked. The Seven Dials was the dark centre to seven narrow alleys renowned for their poverty and violence. Rubbish lay piled beside every doorway, beggars huddled against every wall, the smell of filth and decay clogged the very air he tried to breathe. It was a noxious place and hardly the sort of neighbourhood for a gentleman, even one seeking the most secret of pleasures.

  Number 27 St Martin’s Lane was a grimy terrace shared by six people plying for trade of one sort or another, with a reluctant lantern above the front door to illuminate the little cards on which their names were printed, each one set beside its own individual doorbell, Mrs Dalrymple, milliner and gentlemen’s assistante, Mr Grange, furniture restorer and cleaner, Mademoiselle Fifi, who didn’t specify her line of business at all. And there amongst them was Mr Leonard Snipe, publisher.

  Found at last! Caleb thought as he pressed the appropriate bell. And although he had long since decided that he didn’t believe in anything so unlikely as a God, he found himself offering up a prayer as he waited for Mr Leonard Snipe to open the door. Let some good come of all this at last, he urged. Let this evil man be punished instead of my innocent girl.

  The door opened and a very ordinary man stood before him, an ordinary middle-aged man, of middling height, and middling appearance, dressed plainly in a servant’s brown suit, three colourless waistcoats, and unobtrusive buff linen. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, standing inside the shadow cast by the half-opened door.

  ‘Mr Snipe?’

  ‘Well now,’ Mr Snipe said, ‘I’m sure I couldn’t say, sir. That would depend.’

  To be given such a devious reply after such an aggravating search was irritating, but Caleb kept his temper and spoke smoothly. ‘Now that’s a pity, for I’ve business to do with Mr Snipe, and business worth a mint of money what’s more.’

  The mention of money encouraged Mr Snipe. ‘If I could just say who is calling, sir?’

  ‘Why, you know better than that, man,’ Caleb said, giving vent to a little of his honest scorn. ‘In matters like this we must all use discretion, ain’t that so? It don’t do to go shouting names.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Mr Snipe agreed. His face was still expressionless, but there was an alertness about the way he held his head that showed he was listening attentively.

  ‘I act on behalf of two very powerful families,’ Caleb said with perfect truth. ‘Uncommon powerful families, if you take my meaning, sir. T’ sort of people who couldn’t possibly trade direct, not in t’ present climate of opinion, I tell ’ee straight.’

  Mr Snipe seemed to understand that too. ‘A matter of business, was it?’ he asked.

  ‘Books,’ Caleb said shortly. ‘Books for connoisseurs, if you take my meaning.’ That was the word that had unlocked doors in Holywell Street.

  ‘Ah!’ Mr Snipe said thoughtfully, but he didn’t invite Caleb into the premises and he didn’t say anything else.

  ‘You were particularly recommended by a friend of mine.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘He assured me you could provide me with some of the books upon this list.’ He pulled the paper out of his pocket and handed it across into the shadow.

  Mr Snipe examined the list closely, holding it towards the candle.

  ‘Excellent publications,’ he said, ‘but costly.’

  ‘Money is no object,’ Caleb said, and pulling his wallet out of his trouser pocket, he opened it briefly so that the man could see the bank notes packed inside. That was another trick that had brought results in Holywell Street.

  It brought results here too. At last Mr Snipe stood aside and asked his visitor if he would care to enter.

  It was a long entrance, up four flights of stairs following the eerie shadows of the candle, and into a small cramped room overlooking the street. There was a truckle bed in one corner and a table under the window, but apart from that the room was furnished with packing cases, which seemed to be doing duty as chairs, book shelves, washstand, clothes-horse and even candle holders.

  ‘I’m in a bit of a pickle, as you see, sir,’ Mr Snipe said, ‘on account of a rather precipitous move occasioned by the police, which won’t surprise you given the present climate of opinion. Did you wish to purchase any of these books?’

  ‘My brief is to buy the most expensive one and examine all the others,’ Caleb said as casually as he could. ‘Do you have copies of all of them?’

  Mr Snipe consulted the list again.

  ‘Two of these are out of print,’ Mr Snipe said, ‘but I could show you some of the others.’

  This is our man, Caleb thought, his heart constricting. But he kept calm.

  ‘All of ’em, if you please,’ he said. ‘I’m not empowered to buy unless I see them all.’

  Mr Snipe sighed and considered, gazing at his list. Then he agreed. ‘If you would be so kind as to sit down here, sir, I will get them for you.’

  Here was on the only chair in the room and a mighty uncomfortable one, but Caleb sat on it with what patience he could muster while Mr Snipe unpacked boxes and removed books and muttered to himself.

  And finally there they all were, all the books on the list except two. If this man didn’t publish them, he certainly sold them. It was evidence enough.

  ‘I have a summons here for you, Mr Snipe,’ Caleb said, producing his second and more powerful document. ‘You will see t’ matter to which it pertains, when you read it.’

  Mr Snipe’s face changed colour and shape in an instant, like a placid dog baring his teeth to snarl. ‘Devil take ‘ee, sir!’ he said. ‘What a trick to play! Dammit all, ain’t a man to earn an honest living? I took you for a man of discernment.’

  ‘And found a man of honour.’

  ‘Honour!’ the pornographer growled. ‘Don’t talk to me of honour. There ain’t no such thing in the world. This is a calumny. I shall fight it, dammit. I don’t take this sort of thing. I’ll have you know I have powerful friends.’

  But Caleb was already out of the door. Rail all you like, he thought, it’ll make no odds now.

  On the way back to his lodgings in the Strand, he called in at Bow Street police station to warn the sergeant on duty that there was a pornographer on his patch who had been served a summons and ought to be watched in case he made a bolt for it. Then he asked for pen and ink, and leaning against the sergeant’s counter, he wrote two short letters, one to Nan and the other to Mr Brougham and folded them, with great satisfaction, into the envelopes he’d been carrying about with him all this time for just that purpose. Then he took a cab to Bedford Square to deliver them, even though he knew the house would be dark and asleep. Which it was. Then and at last he went home to his well-earned rest. From now on, things would improve for Miss Caroline Easter. They had reached the turning point.

  Over in Paris a turning point of another kind had very definitely been reached. After weeks of illness Will was on the mend at last. The doctor pronounced himself well pleased, although he warned that the flux could return and that the patient should be treated with great tenderness for several months yet.

  ‘Could I travel?’ Will wanted to know.

  ‘By easy stages,’ the doctor sai
d. ‘And if you are careful not to overtire yourself. Yes, it might be possible.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Will said to Tom and Edward when the doctor was gone. ‘We will travel tomorrow. I can’t wait to be back with Nan and Carrie and … If I can get home I shall be completely well again, straight away. You’ll see.’

  ‘Which means I got ter pack I suppose?’ Tom teased.

  And I’ve got to face the music, Edward thought, for he could hardly leave old Tom Thistlethwaite to escort Will back to London on his own. It took two of them to support him when his legs gave way, as they often did, even now. No, no, poor old Will was in far too weak a state to travel alone. But oddly, after so many difficulties it was possible to consider this return and to accept it too, if not with equanimity, then at least with resignation. He knew now that he should never have run away in the first place, and that he would have to go back sooner or later. Will’s illness had simply made it sooner, that was all.

  And perhaps in a way, the sooner the better.

  It was a nightmare journey, for on top of everything else Will was sea-sick and by the time they got to Dover, he was too weak to stand and had to be carried ashore in a chair.

  It quite frightened Edward to see how ill he looked, propped in the corner seat of their first class carriage with his eyes shut and his cheeks greeny grey. ‘Soon be home, old thing,’ he said, trying to be encouraging.

  ‘Be better presently,’ Will muttered. ‘It’ll pass.’

  ‘I’ll get you a newspaper,’ Edward offered. ‘Catch up on the news, eh?’ That might take his mind off things. And he shot off to the Easter stall.

  It was ominously empty, with very few newspapers on display and no books at all.

  ‘You are sold out of books I see,’ he said conversationally to the young man behind the counter.