Smith

by Leon Garfield

  Smith frowned, still not convinced, but inclined more to a confession than a property deed. In his heart of hearts he thought the document might be something else altogether, but said nothing, having nothing to go on, nor any piece of knowledge to contradict his sisters with.

  “So we must get it read out to us,” continued Miss Fanny, neglecting the breeches, “so we can know where to apply.”

  “And who, miss, would you ask?” queried Miss Bridget irritably.

  “Lord Tom can read,” said Smith, thinking of his highwayman idol and friend.

  “Lord Tom?” repeated Miss Fanny, blushing and smiling. “The very scholar!”

  Miss Bridget sneered. “That high toby is so much in his cups, his mouth’s grown like a spout! Mark my words, miss, I’d as soon trust him with anything worth money as I’d trust the landlord! Not that I think the paper’s worth money at all: for it’s neither more nor less than a deed to property.”

  They went on arguing thus till the tallows burned low: with Miss Bridget inclining more and more to property, and Miss Fanny, who was softer and younger, being scarce nineteen, keeping to the romantic notion of a confession on whose value as blackmail they might all live happily ever after. But on one thing they were all agreed: the difficulty of finding anyone they could trust enough to read it to them.

  At length, when the room was full of tallow smoke and shifting shadows, Miss Bridget and Miss Fanny retired to their curtained-off bedroom, and Smith to his corner in the workroom itself.

  For some minutes one tallow remained alight, and afforded Smith a somber view of the brown velveteen coat and the gray breeches bespoken by the hangman. They were upon a hook in a corner and presented a disagreeable resemblance to their aspect when their last owner had last worn them. Smith wondered if he was likely to come back for them, fearfully white and moaning about the cold. Well—they’d not fit him now!

  He screwed up his face scornfully at the thought of ghosts; but continued to stare into dark corners till he fell asleep, and, when he awoke, did so with a startled air and looked about him with some relief to see the old brick and plaster walls and the dim gray daylight falling down the cellar steps . . . as if his dreams had given him cause to doubt his firm belief in no ghosts.

  The document was still on the table. He folded it up and began to tiptoe towards the stairs.

  “Where are you off to, Smut dear?”

  Miss Fanny, much tousled and creased, had poked her head through the curtain.

  “Newgate,” said Smith, briefly. “Got business.”

  “What are you going to do with our dockiment, Smut?”

  “Don’t know—yet.”

  “Wouldn’t it be safer here?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, dear—if them that wanted it did in an old man for it, they won’t think twice about doing in a boy.”

  “Don’t know I got it! Never saw me! There’s only you and Miss Bridget what knows.”

  “Oh yes . . . that’s true. But you never can tell, Smut. Someone may have seen you. Won’t you leave it behind?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to show it to Lord Tom?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe.”

  “If he’s going to Newgate,” came Miss Bridget’s voice, still croaked with sleep, “tell him to screw some money out of that Mister Jones—for there’ll not be another stitch done till there’s something on account! Hangmen is horrible customers! So degrading!”

  Miss Fanny’s head, which had vanished for the moment, reappeared.

  “Mister Jones, Smut. Brid says, see Mister Jones.” Then she sighed. “For the last time, dear—leave the dockiment behind. ’Twill be safe as houses. Oh, Smut! I’ve an ’orrible feeling you was seen and are in danger! Oh, Smut! I fear you’ll be coming down them steps tonight stone dead!”

  3

  A TREMENDOUS IDEA HAD lodged in Smith’s mind and, like all truly great things, answered its purpose so exactly that one exclaimed, “Why hadn’t it been thought of before?” He would learn to read!

  The morning was dull and windy. The cathedral birds were huddled upon Old Bailey, which stood to the leeward side of the stench from Newgate Jail. Such merchants and clerks and attorneys who walked the whipping streets kept their heads down and their hands to their wigs and hats—as if to hold their aspiring thoughts from flying out to become common property. A general frown and scowl creased their faces: another day was bad enough, without the insolent wind aggravating it!

  Smith had spread the document inside his coat and across his chest, where it kept him from the worst of the weather.

  “Be still, old fellow,” he muttered from time to time as the stiff paper pricked and tickled. “You and me’s got business. You and me’s going up in the world . . . just as soon as I gets you to talk!”

  He was crossing Ludgate Hill when suddenly he fancied he saw the murdered old gentleman, stumping along ahead of him. He stopped, much frightened. Then he looked again and saw that the old gentleman was someone else altogether. But thereafter the murdered man stayed pretty firmly in his thoughts—as if keeping a watch on his document and where Smith was taking it.

  Which, in the first place, was to the blackened and gloomy felonry of Newgate Jail. Smith turned in at the lodge, greeted the jailer there, and lit up his battered pipe against the dreadful smells to come.

  First, he found out Mr. Jones, the hangman: a short, stout, horny-handed gent who shone with pomatum. He got three shillings out of him on account—together with a surly prophecy that if he, Smith, didn’t mind his P’s and Q’s he’d become Mr. Jones’s customer in a transaction with a yardage of hemp.

  “P’s and Q’s?” said Smith, earnestly. “Them’s letters, ain’t they?”

  Mr. Jones agreed.

  “Then show us a P, Mister Jones, and then show us a Q, and I’ll try to mind ’em!”

  For the thought had occurred to Smith that two letters would be a fair start to the day’s work of learning to read. Unluckily, Mr. Jones took him for a humorist and aimed a thump that would not have been pleasurable if it had struck.

  Bleeding scholars! thought Smith, as he scuttled out of the hangman’s office. Want to keep everything to themselves!

  From Mr. Jones’s, it was but a brief, though dark and sullen, way down a ragged stairway, along a passage, a turn to the right, then up two steps, to the Stone Hall, where Smith’s present hopes were most likely to be passing the time of what was neither night nor day. The Stone Hall was a long, low, arched room with its own stone sky and its own six lanterns for a sun. When these were lit, it was day, when they were out, it was night—no matter what the outside heavens were declaring.

  Smith’s present hopes shuffled somewhere among the lost multitude of the Town’s rubbish and dregs. Grumbling ragbags and tattered felons, debtors who always looked surprised and, here and there, like a fallen moon, a pale white face of unbroken pride—most likely of a man due to be hanged.

  Here was Smith’s place of daily business; for he ran errands for the debtors—twopence a mile dry, and fourpence when it rained.

  Very educated gentlemen, the debtors. A man needs to be educated to get into debt. Scholars all. The first Smith tried was a tall, fine-looking gentleman who, though still in leg-irons, walked like he owned the jail—as well he might, for his debts could have bought it entire.

  He smiled; he was never at a loss for a smile . . . which was, perhaps, why he was there; when a man can’t pay what he owes, a smile is a deal worse than nothing!

  “Learn us to read, mister!” said Smith, humbly.

  The fine debtor stopped, looked—and sighed.

  “Not in ten thousand years, my boy!” and, before Smith could ask him why, he told him.

  “Be happy that you can’t! For what will you get by it? You’ll read and fret over disasters that might never touch you. You’ll read hurtful letters that might have passed you by. You’ll read warrants and summonses where you might have pleaded ignorance. You’ll read
of bills overdue and creditors’ anger—where you might have ignored it all for another month! Don’t learn to read, Smith! Oh! I implore you!”

  Then the gentleman drifted, smiling, away, with his back straight, his head held high—and his ankles jingling.

  Next, Smith applied to a learned felon, a ferret-faced man with small, starry eyes.

  “What d’yer want to read for, Smith? No need. And if it weren’t for me skill as a reader, I’d not be here today. I was on the run—and saw a new goldsmith’s sign. Stopped to read it—and ’ere I am! No, stay ignorant, me boy—and keep out of ’arm’s way.”

  Smith pleaded—but the felon was determined, so Smith left him and would have gone from the Stone Hall had he not seen Mr. Palmer.

  This Mr. Palmer was a debtor of a different sort: a gentle, sad man who could not bring himself to believe that the world had been so spiteful as to jail him. (Even though it had been these past five years.) For Mr. Palmer—did the world but know it—nourished a very high opinion of himself, which he was careful to hide for fear of its being damaged.

  “Learn us to read, Mister Palmer!”

  Mr. Palmer stopped in mid-shuffle.

  “Learn us to read, Mister Palmer!”

  Mr. Palmer turned on Smith a look of amazement that hid a powerful contempt and dislike—even loathing—for this debtor loathed, hated and despised every mortal thing that was better off than himself by being free.

  “A pleasure to ‘learn’ you, Smith,” he said. “Here, boy.” He bent down and beckoned. Smith approached. “This is how we begin!”

  He seized Smith’s nose as hard as he could and pulled and twisted and wrenched it till Smith’s squeals filled the Stone Hall and his eyes fairly gushed with tears. Then his own voice was raised even louder, in a fearful bellow of pain. He’d forgotten Smith wore no leg-irons and could use his feet to advantage.

  In an instant Smith was fled, leaving Mr. Palmer with an empty finger and thumb, and a pair of shins that were splintered with booting. He lay on the ground and continued to roar, only breaking off to pray that the ungrateful brat who’d crippled him might come to a bad end on Mr. Jones’s rope; while Smith, full of anger and humiliation and a burning pain in his nose, left Newgate Jail swearing a solemn oath that, not till he was took, would he ever set foot in that foul place again!

  With his hands pressed to his chest and his eyes still streaming with forced tears, he ran towards the nestling of lanes about the great cathedral. Softhearted ladies stared as he passed, moved by the sight of the weeping urchin. Then his eyes dried up, his nose recovered—and his grand determination flared anew. He would learn to read! For he and the document were going up in the world—though the Devil himself stood against them!

  Surely the Town had more scholars than those in Newgate Jail? The streets must be full of them! He’d only to ask. No harm in asking . . . He crossed the windy street to meet with a round-faced old gentleman with an absentminded air.

  “Mister—mister! Learn me to read!”

  The gentleman paused—momentarily taking his hand from his hat. In an instant the wind whipped it off, together with his wig, leaving him as bald as the dome of St. Paul’s. Smith, meaning no offense, began to grin. The gentleman raised his stick—and Smith fled for his life!

  He asked a lawyer, a clerk, a country schoolmaster—but they’d have none of him. He poked his head through the window of a carriage waiting outside an apothecary’s to ask of the elderly lady who sat within. But she shrieked and shouted for her footman to frighten him off. At last, he found himself in Holborn Hill, passing by gray, high-shouldered St. Andrew’s Church. The Church: Mother of the Town—and all creatures in it!

  With renewed hope he shuffled up to the porch and peered into the richly stained gloom of the church’s insides. Blood of glass martyrs fell across the aisle and drenched the altar . . . and there was a smell of damp stone in the quiet air. A very peaceful, genteel sort of place.

  At first, it seemed empty—and Smith had some brief thoughts concerning the candlesticks.

  “What d’you want, my child?”

  A priest was in the pulpit, still as a carven saint.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful!” said Smith, ingratiatingly. “Just like me sisters’ stories of heaven!”

  The priest nodded and smiled kindly.

  “What are you looking for, my child?”

  “Guidance, Your Reverence,” said Smith, who’d decided, this time, to ask roundabout.

  “Are you lost?”

  “Oh no, Your Worship! This is ’olborn ’ill!”

  The priest compressed his lips and eyed Smith shrewdly. Hurriedly, Smith went on, “Learn me to read, Your ’oliness. That’s what I come for. Learn me to read so’s I can read the ’oly Scripture.”

  The priest stared in amazement at the filthy, strong-smelling little creature who stood in the aisle with his black hands pressed to his grubby heart.

  “If you come and stand by the door during Service, then you’ll hear me reading from the Holy Scripture, child. Won’t that be a comfort and help?”

  “Oh yes, Your Grace. And I’m humbly obliged. But what of when I’m ’ome—all in dirt and disorder? Who’ll read to me then? And me two poor sisters—a-panting, a-groaning, a-supplicating for salvation? Who’ll read to them? Oh no, Your Reverence—I got to learn to read so’s I can comfort meself in the dark o’ the night . . . and light a little lamp in me sisters’ souls with perusings aloud from the Good Book!”

  But this was too much.

  “You’re a little liar!” exclaimed the priest, abruptly. Smith gazed thoughtfully up at him, proud in his white surplice and bands.

  “And you’re a fat bag of rotting flour!” he snarled suddenly. “I ’ope the weevils gets you!”

  Was there no one in all the Town who’d teach Smith to read?

  He passed the top of Godliman Street. A man came out from somewhere, stopped . . . and stared at him palely. But Smith, still disheartened by the church’s rejection, did not see him and went wearily on.

  Smith came to the booksellers in St. Paul’s Churchyard. A last hope for the day. And where better to learn to read than in a bookshop?

  Several times he idled up and down, judging his chances in each shop. Here, a proprietor scowled at him; there, a clerk shook his fist . . . and there an entrance was blocked by a fat man who seemed to have died in the act of reading, but came to life to turn a page and acknowledge the helpless bookseller with a corpse-like nod.

  But there was one shop that attracted Smith by the mad profusion and tottery architecture of its wares. Books stood in walls and towers and battlements, as if the owner had been in a state of siege for a hundred years—which was partly borne out by his appearance. He was an amazingly thin, wary little man with a nervous affliction which made his head dart from side to side as if wondering from where the attack might come. Nor was he put at ease when he saw Smith. For he’d seen Smith before—even knew him . . .

  He sat in a curious kind of cave of books where he could jerk and twitch in privacy and quiet.

  “Learn us to read, mister!”

  “Be off with you!” he said curtly, jerking his head to the right.

  “Ain’t you got no feelings for yore trade?” asked Smith earnestly. “Don’t you want it to prosper with more readers—”

  “—You’re a wicked little thief!” said the bookseller, now jerking to the left.

  “—Only because I’m ignorant!”

  “Get out of here!”

  “Why won’t you learn me?”

  “Keep your thieving hands to yourself!”

  “Why won’t anybody learn me?”

  “Because they’ve too much sense—”

  “—All this goodness and wisdom and learning—” Smith was grandly pointing to the dusty cliffs that reared on either side.

  “Touch a book and I’ll finish you!”

  The bookseller was now jerking and twitching pretty vigorously and, as his head flew from side to
side, Smith considerately tried to keep pace with it—which made him appear as if he was performing a wild dance.

  “Keep still!” shouted the bookseller of a sudden—and jerked worse than ever.

  Too late. Smith, capering wider and wider, struck first against one and then against the other of the two tottering shelves.

  The calamity that followed, though of brief duration, was terrific in its scope. It was as if the long siege was at last over and the enemy had breached all the walls at once!

  The two walls of shelves had collapsed and with them, brought down in a mighty and thunderous torrent, every last item in the whole of the ramshackle shop!

  Books in their fluttering and dusty thousands poured and thumped down as if the very skies had been loaded with them. Histories, Memoirs, Diaries, Lexicons, Grammars, Atlases, Journals, Biographies, Poems, Plays . . . books about heaven, books about hell, huge books about pygmies, tiny books about giants—even books about books—all, all slid and tumbled into a desperate ruin overhung by a bitter cloud of dust. And somewhere underneath it all, still jerking and twitching, though feebly now, lay the unlucky bookseller himself!

  Gawd! thought Smith, halfway round the Cathedral and going like the wind, ’e must be squashed flatter than an old sixpence!

  But the bookseller was alive, and, while Smith was still running and wondering hopelessly whom next he could ask to teach him to read, his last victim was being exhumed by neighbors and passersby. Strangely enough he seemed almost the better for the disaster, as though, all his life, he’d expected and dreaded it and now that it had happened a load was fallen from his soul. He jerked and twitched hardly at all as he told how it had come about and who’d been chiefly to blame.

  “They call him Smith,” he said.

  “And where does he come from?”

  “Somewhere near the Ditch. I fancy it’s the Red Lion Tavern . . .”