Breakfast the next morning was a quiet meal. Screamer kept glancing at Andrew and looking as if she might cry, and Mrs. Wiggins was solemn when she said goodbye and told him to take care of himself. Then Andrew and Sam left.
They went out through the passage, over to Edgeware Road and along it toward Hyde Park. Sam, carrying his shoeshine box, was silent, and Andrew said nothing to him until they had almost reached the Marble Arch when he asked, “Where are we meeting him?”
Sam jerked his chin. A man stood on the corner across from the Arch with his back to them. He wore a long, dark cloak, a wide-brimmed, black felt hat and his grey hair hung down almost to his shoulders. He must have been tall when he was younger, but now he was stooped and leaned on a blackthorn stick. As they approached him, he turned … and Andrew shuddered. He had seen blind men before, but never one like this. His eyes were not merely sightless; they were milky white, red-rimmed and ravaged. But, in spite of his blank stare, there was something fierce and proud about him that seemed to reject and defy sympathy.
“Wiggins?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said Sam.
“My name’s Ben, Blind Ben,” said the man, speaking with a decided Irish brogue. “Is the boy with you?”
“Right here.”
“Come closer, boy,” said Ben.
Andrew stepped forward and saw that the blind man had a battered fiddle under his left arm. He transferred his stick to his left hand, reached out and ran the fingers of his right hand over Andrew’s face. They were strong, sensitive fingers, and Andrew did not know what they told him.
Finally the man grunted. “Are you willing to come with me and stay with me for a while?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Andrew.
“I said my name’s Ben! What’s yours?”
“Andrew. Andrew Craigie.”
“And where are you from?”
“Gorlyn in Cornwall.”
Ben grunted again. “All right,” he said. “You’ll do. We’ll go now.” And without another word to Sam, he turned and started along Oxford Street, tapping the pavement ahead of him with his stick.
When they reached Orchard Street, a green “Atlas” bus came toward them from Baker Street. Still tapping, Ben stepped off the curb.
“Wait, sir,” said Andrew and, taking him by the arm, he pulled him back.
“Will you stop calling me ‘sir’?” said Ben angrily. “I told you my name’s Ben. What is it?”
“There was a bus coming.”
“Oh. Yes. I keep forgetting.” He stood there for a moment. “Is this Orchard Street?”
“Yes.”
“Hold these,” he said, handing Andrew his stick and his hat. Then, tucking the fiddle under his chin, he began to play. He played extremely well but, after only a few bars, he stopped and his hand went out and down Andrew’s arm.
“How the divil can anyone put anything in the hat when you hold it that way?” he said. “Hold it out!”
“I’m sorry,” said Andrew. “I didn’t understand.”
“Didn’t you? How do you think I live? Or do you consider it beneath you to take money?”
“No.”
“Then hold it out!”
He began playing again, and Andrew stood beside him, holding the hat out. A well-dressed lady and a girl of about six approached. The woman glanced at them, and Andrew drew back a little, embarrassed. The woman opened her purse, took out a coin and dropped it into the hat.
“Thank you, madam,” said Ben.
He continued playing, and when a gentleman in a white topper dropped sixpence in the hat and Andrew said, “Thank you, sir,” Ben smiled faintly.
After playing for some time, he said, “How much have we got?”
“One and nine.”
Nodding, Ben tucked the fiddle and bow under his arm, took back his hat and stick and started up Orchard Street toward Baker Street. Though he had not been here for some time, this was familiar ground to Andrew. When they had crossed York Street—Ben waiting at the curb now for Andrew to tell him it was safe—Ben said, “Are we near the Bazaar?”
“Yes, sir. I mean, Ben.”
Moving in toward the Bazaar entrance, Ben handed Andrew his hat and stick and again began playing. They did even better here than they had on the corner of Orchard Street—almost half of the passersby dropped something in the hat. They had been there for about twenty minutes when a policeman, walking on the other side of the street, saw them. He hesitated, then began crossing over. At the same time, the door of 221B opened and the heavyset man with the military mustache whom Andrew had seen with Sherlock Holmes came out.
“Now then,” said the policeman. “You’ll have to move along.”
“But why, officer?” said the heavyset man. “He’s not doing any harm.”
“Well, he’s obstructing traffic here, sir. But if he moved out toward the curb there’d be no objection to his staying.”
“I’ll do that, officer,” said Ben. And putting his hand on Andrew’s shoulder, he started toward the curb.
“Just a second,” said the heavyset man, looking at him sympathetically. He took a shilling from his pocket and dropped it into the hat.
“Thank you, sir,” said Ben. “God bless you.”
He paused when he reached the curb and, for some reason, he was smiling again.
“From now on we won’t do so well here,” he said to Andrew. “Let’s cross.”
Andrew guided him across the street, and they took up a new position near the shop that had interested Andrew so much the day he had arrived: Jonathan Walker’s. Despite the scowls of a ragged beggar who clearly felt they were invading his territory, they remained there until almost noon. A tall, bearded gentleman wearing a shiny top hat came out of the shop about then, glanced at them casually, and then boarded a brown-and-white bus lettered VICTORIA AND ST. JOHN’S WOOD.
They left shortly after that, went back to Oxford Street where they had sandwiches at a coffee stall, and then worked their way east, stopping at various points along the way. Ben said very little during the afternoon, and Andrew marvelled at the fact that he always seemed to know exactly where he was—which made it possible for him to get about London without any help except when he was crossing streets.
They were in Soho Square when it began to get dark. Ben had been playing music hall tunes and light opera here, for he seemed to know, not only where he was, but what sort of music would appeal most to the passersby in each particular place. He finished “I’m Called Little Buttercup,” with a flourish, reached for his hat and stick and said, “We’ll go home now.”
Tap-tapping with his stick, he led the way out to Oxford Street again. On the far side of Tottenham Court Road was a large building with four tall smokestacks. The sign over the entrance to it read: MEUX’S BREWERY. Further to the right was a lovely church with an old gateway in front of it. Andrew was wondering which of London’s many churches it was when Ben said, “St. Giles in the Fields.”
Andrew started.
“How did you know what I was thinking?” he asked.
“You don’t need eyes for that. Most people with eyes don’t really see. I can’t see, but I observe. I could tell what you were looking at by the way you turned, and the rest was obvious. Can we cross now?”
“Not yet,” said Andrew. A red bus with an advertisement for Okeley’s Knife Polish on its modesty board was drawing up in front of them. When it had gone, he said, “Now.” and they started across the street.
“Do you know who Hogarth was?” asked Ben abruptly.
“I think so.”
“Who?”
“An eighteenth-century painter and engraver. He did The Rake’s Progress.”
“Sure now,” said Ben with a faintly mocking note in his voice, “there must be good schools in Cornwall—better than there are in Ireland.”
Andrew did not respond.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Ben went on. “Hogarth did quite a few of his slum drawings where we’r
e going. And bad as it was then, you’ll find it’s not much better now.”
They turned right into a narrow street and then into an alley. Even after Ben’s warning, Andrew was not prepared for what he saw. The neighborhood in which the Wigginses lived had been poor, crowded, and not too clean, but it was nothing like this. The alley was ankle deep in garbage and filth, which smelled so vile it was hard to breathe. The houses on both sides were so old and dilapidated that it did not seem possible that they could still be standing. Most of them had no windows, and the few doors that remained hung crazily from broken hinges.
Andrew stopped, for the alley was pitch dark. But Ben went ahead, tapping the walls on either side of him with his stick, and Andrew followed. The alley curved and twisted and even narrower passages branched off it. Finally they came into a courtyard lit by a single flaring gas jet. The houses that surrounded the court were as old, distempered and soot-streaked as the ones that lined the alley, but most of them had gin shops or low, candlelit drinking dives on their street floors or in their cellars.
Ben led the way across the court, past a rusty water pump and a fish and chips shop to a house on the far side. He went in, up a flight of rickety stairs with no bannister, unlocked a door and pushed it open. Inside he fumbled in his pocket, took out a box of vestas, struck one and lit a candle that was thrust into the neck of a bottle.
Andrew stood in the doorway, looking around. The room was bare except for two mattresses that lay on the floor and a cracked pitcher.
“Well, here we are,” said Ben. If he was aware of Andrew’s dismay, he gave no sign of it. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
“Here.” He took out some of the money they had collected and held it out. “Get us some fish and chips.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, Ben.”
He went down the stairs again slowly, feeling lonely, miserable, and anxious. He had lost his fear of London—of the unknown and frightening world it represented—during the time he had been staying with the Wigginses. But now, in this strange place, surrounded by squalor and depravity, and cut off from all contact with anyone he really knew, it all came flooding back again, and he bitterly regretted saying he would go with the blind Irishman.
Voices—shouts, curses and snatches of song—came from the dives and grog shops that surrounded the court. Dark shapes huddled in the doorways or lurked in the passages that led into the yard, and he was conscious of eyes—many and unfriendly eyes—watching him. He tried to ignore them as he walked toward the fish and chips shop. He was just a few steps from the door when a figure came out of the shadows and stopped in front of him; a boy who was probably fifteen. His cropped hair stood up in bristles, his face was streaked with dirt, and he looked at Andrew with open dislike.
“Oo’s yer?” he said with so thick a Cockney accent that Andrew could hardly understand him.
“Andrew.”
“Wotcha doing here?”
“I’m with Ben, the blind man.”
The boy continued looking at him, his small, blue eyes as hard as pebbles. His lips moved. Andrew knew what was coming and, as the boy spat at him, he stepped aside and hurried into the shop.
This was all familiar. He had been through it before in Gorlyn. Grownups, who should know better, were always making you do something you did not want to do and then leaving you to face the consequences alone: the hostility of those your own age who resented you because you were different.
He asked for two orders of fish and chips, was handed them in cones of newspapers, paid for them and looked out. There was no sign of the boy. But, as he left the shop, there he was again, waiting in the shadows to the side of the door.
“Gimme those,” he said, reaching for the fish and chips.
“What?”
“Give ’em to me or I’ll smash your gob!”
Rage kindled in Andrew’s stomach, flared upward. Yes, he’d been through it all before, and there was only one answer to it.
Two men and a woman had come out of a nearby gin shop and were standing there a little unsteadily, watching. The woman, in a bedraggled feathered hat, must have been pretty when she was young. She was no longer young now—her face was powdered and painted—but her eyes were not unfriendly.
Andrew brushed past the boy.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, “but would you hold these for me?”
One of the men guffawed. “Ma’am!” he said. “Listen to him!”
“Shut up!” said the woman fiercely. “Just because he treats me like a lady … Are you gonna fight him?” she asked Andrew.
“Yes.”
“It’s young Danny,” she said. “He’s a bad ’un, but … Yes, I’ll hold them.” She took the two papers of fish and chips. “And good luck to you.”
“Thanks.”
He turned back to face the boy, who stared at him for a moment, then, grinning, came at him with swinging fists.
Rage still gripped Andrew. From the beginning—when the trouble had first started in Cornwall—his sense of outrage had made him willing to take any amount of punishment in a fight if he could return it. But one of the things Trefethen had taught him, along with everything else, was to control his anger.
The boy, Danny, was no boxer. His blows were wide and wild, and Andrew had little difficulty ducking or blocking them. But he knew that if one of them landed, he was finished. He kept jabbing to keep Danny off balance, side-stepping when he rushed him, and was hoping to tire him out. Then, suddenly, one of Andrew’s feet slipped in the mud of the courtyard, and he went down.
With a shout, Danny leaped forward, swung a heavy boot and kicked him in the side and in the thigh. When he drew his foot back to kick him again in the head, Andrew rolled over and away, got to his feet. He was so furious that he felt no pain. Even in a free-for-all, you didn’t kick someone when he was down. He set himself and, when Danny came charging in to finish him, he drove a hard left to his stomach and a right to his face.
Danny staggered back, blood dripping from his nose and a look of surprise on his face. Then, as he came on again, Andrew half turned and, catching him by one arm, tossed him with a hip throw. Danny landed heavily and lay on the ground half stunned.
A roar went up from the crowd that had gathered to watch.
“You’ve got him now!” someone shouted. “Bash him!”
Andrew went over to Danny, waited till he had struggled to one knee.
“Had enough?” he asked.
Danny looked at him dully.
“I said, have you had enough?”
Slowly Danny nodded.
“All right, then.”
He glanced around. The woman who was holding the fish and chips came toward him.
“That was ream!” she said, her eyes shining. “You’re a young wonder, you are.”
“Fights like a tiger,” said one of the men with her.
“Thanks,” said Andrew. “And thanks for holding those for me.”
“No need to thank me,” she said. “But watch out for that Danny. He’ll try and nobble you again sometime.
“I expect he will,” said Andrew. “Thanks again.” And taking the fish and chips, he went across the yard and into the house. By the time he had climbed the stairs, his side ached and his leg hurt so much that he had trouble walking.
“Andrew?” said Ben when he opened the door.
“Yes.”
“What was that noise out there? A fight?”
“Yes.”
“There are a dozen a night. Wait a minute.” He listened as Andrew came toward him. “You’re limping. Were you in it?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
He stood there quietly as Andrew told him, then chuckled.
“You finished him with a hip throw?”
“Yes.”
“Where’d you learn to fight like that?”
“From a blacksmith in Cornwall. He’d been county champion.”
“Not Marquis of Queensberry, I tak
e it.”
“No. Old style—bare fists.”
Ben nodded. “That’s where the throw came in—very useful in a free-for-all. How badly are you hurt?”
“Not too badly. Just my leg and side where he kicked me.”
“I shouldn’t have sent you down there alone. I won’t do it again.” He smiled grimly. “You’ve had quite an education—Hogarth and catch-as-catch-can fighting. Shall we eat?”
Andrew handed him one of the paper cones, and they ate in silence.
“There’s something we’d better talk about,” said Ben when they were finished. “How long have you been in London?”
“About ten days.”
“No, you haven’t. You just got here yesterday, and you don’t know anyone. Not Wiggins, not anyone. We met in Penzance about two weeks ago, and you’ve been with me ever since. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He lifted a loose floor board, took out two blankets, and gave one to Andrew. “It’s been a long day, and you must be tired,” he said. “We’ll go to sleep now.”
“All right.”
“I hope your leg and side won’t bother you too much.”
“Thank you.”
Andrew stretched out on the mattress and covered himself with the blanket. He was tired. The mattress was lumpy and his leg and side ached, but neither of these things bothered him as much as the cold, for there was no glass in the windows and a chilly breeze blew through the room. In spite of that, he fell asleep. He woke once, sometime during the night, feeling warmer, more comfortable. He reached down and discovered the reason for it. Ben had thrown his cloak over him so that he was covered with that as well as the blanket.
9
Broken Nose Reappears
When Andrew first woke the next morning, his side hurt and his leg was stiff. But getting up and moving about seemed to help, and by the time he had gone down to the pump in the courtyard, filled the pitcher and brought it back to the room, he felt much better.
He and Ben washed rather sketchily, hid the blankets under the floor boards, then locked up and went down the stairs together. There was no one in the courtyard when they left the rookery. They had tea and buns at a stall in Soho, then began a round that was similar to the one they had followed the day before. This time, however, Ben was even more silent than he had been and, when he was not playing the fiddle, Andrew had the feeling that he was listening intently to everything that was said around them.
The Case of the Baker Street Irregular (Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt Book 1) Page 8
