The Streets

by Anthony Quinn

  Then he strolled back towards the workhouse, and I hurried in his wake. The line was on the move, and it now comprised only men. The few women had been directed to another entrance. Someone ahead of us had spotted the superintendent who kept the door. ‘I know ’im. He’s a right bastard.’

  We were admitted in groups of three, and our clothing searched just as my companion had warned. The fellow in front of me was nearly turned upside down and shaken. The superintendent, Mr Scotton, had a face as wide as a shovel and the bulked physique of a recruiting sergeant. He pushed the men around with no more ceremony than a keeper at the dog pound. Sometimes he would raise his hand as though to strike, and as the wretch cowered in fright, Scotton would merely fix him with a glare of contempt and walk on. When it came to my turn, he bent his head and scrutinised me as if I might have emerged from a jungle.

  ‘Like a fight, do ya?’ he said, patting me down the while.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No what?’

  ‘No . . . sir?’

  He came up close to my face, close enough to smell his foul tobacco breath. ‘Any fightin’ in ’ere and you are out on your arse. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Then he shoved me out into a sort of holding pen, where we waited. I heard him speak even more unpleasantly to others, the older men, too, who you might have thought had earned themselves a little courtesy by dint of their advanced years. But he yelled in their faces just like the rest. We then trooped off, as docile as cattle, to the wash house. The animal stink of all those bodies disrobing was indescribable. Clothes untouched by soap or water for weeks on end were dropped on the tiled floor, their vile miasma almost a palpable entity. Men, one pair at a time, were dunking themselves in the wooden tubs. The warders told us to hurry it along, and kept the line moving as though we might have been sheep through a dip. I needed no chivvying; the lukewarm bathwater, cloudy with the others’ muck, was the last place I wished to linger.

  A towel, worn to a thin napless rag, was thrust into my hand, and I dried myself off as best I could. Other pale bodies, pale as a fish’s underbelly, shivered in the gloom, and I caught terrible glimpses of raw flesh, vermin-scourged or rash-tormented, and skin stretched taut over knobby shanks and ribs. I felt suddenly embarrassed for looking properly fed. Then we were given workhouse shirts to put on, and packed off to a dismal-looking hall traversed by two long tables, lined with benches on either side. Here we sat, and from tin plates ate an atrocious concoction we had been served out of enormous vats – this, I gathered, was skilly, and nothing like it had I tasted before, not even in prison. Some were chawing it down with bread. My first mouthful was lumpy and bitter, and almost impossible to swallow. Sitting opposite, Duckenfield looked pityingly on me and handed across a jug of water. I drank from it, sluicing the coarse dry stodge down my gullet. I mashed up another mouthful, forced it down and then pushed my plate aside. The man next to me, a startled look in his eyes, said, ‘You done with that?’

  I nodded, and, without bothering to transfer it to his own plate, he wolfed it clean in less than a minute, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He still looked ravenous. Duckenfield, apparently undisturbed in his attire, top hat included, was lecturing a few casuals about something or other; they stared back as if he were Moses himself. They all addressed him as ‘Dux’, which, he archly explained, was Latin for ‘chief’. Not since Marchmont had I heard anyone so relish the command of his own voice.

  Dinner time over, about thirty of us were herded out of the hall and thence to a dormitory whose meagre light came from tiny, barred windows high up in the wall. Low beds were ranged along either side. I flopped down on a cot. The superintendent returned and, glowering up and down the room, bellowed out a woe-betide to the men. To one unfortunate who had caught his eye he hissed, ‘One peep outta you and I’ll scrag your scrawny neck.’ Then, satisfied by the cowed silence, he stalked out. Plunged into blackness, the shadows of the men did not stir – were they listening for his footsteps? – and a long minute passed before I heard the rasp of a match and a candle, two candles, bloomed in the dark. The whole room seemed to unbend with relief, and a low mutter of conversation began. On the next cot Duckenfield was hauling off his boots and rolling down his sock, wherein he had stashed his baccy. Others were doing the same.

  ‘They never look in your socks,’ he said in a wondering tone, lifting his thin legs onto the bed. He filled up his pipe again and lit it. ‘So – your first night here. Ever seen anything like it?’

  ‘Only once,’ I replied. ‘Who’s the ogre, by the way?’

  ‘Ah, Mr Scotton, the tartar, the terror, the tyrant of the two-nighter! A legend in this parish, I should say.’

  I leaned in, lowering my voice. ‘The men seem – petrified by him.’

  He gave me a quizzical look. ‘And you are surprised? They are absolutely at his mercy. One back answer and he’d haul you out by the hair and throw you into the gutter. For them he stands between a bed for the night and carrying the banner.’

  ‘Carrying –?’

  ‘Walking the streets. The Scottons of this world are employed to keep the poor man in a state of morbid fear – a fear that even the little he has may be taken from him. The government operates on the same principle.’

  ‘You don’t seem very frightened of him,’ I said.

  He exhaled a languid curl of pipe smoke. ‘He has a crude sort of respect for gentlemen, or what he perceives as gentlemen – thinks only “the swine” are fit for bullying. Of course he could toss me out like all the rest, but I’ve never given him cause.’

  At that moment a man sidled up to my cot – he was the one who’d eaten my skilly – and handed me a squat brown bottle. I hefted it in my palm. Though it was being offered in the spirit of ‘one good turn deserves another’, I secretly dreaded touching my lips to a bottle other men had passed around. But it would be an insult to refuse, and I tipped my head back to swallow. Something burned down my throat, a liquid bolus of fire, and I lurched upright, trying to cough it back out of me. It was a dose of acid scouring my insides. Still gasping for breath, eyes watering, I returned the bottle to the man, who nodded as though to say, That’s the stuff. Duckenfield took his own draught without a tremor.

  ‘What was that?’ I asked him.

  ‘Local moonshine. It’s mostly French polish, stolen from upstairs.’

  ‘My God,’ I groaned.

  ‘What did you expect – brandy and soda?’

  He lay back, chuckling, and for a while neither of us said anything. Along the row someone had begun, very quietly, a crooning lament. I thought then of Roma, and of the first time I saw her sing to a whole room, upstairs at the Rainbow, the whole place falling mute just to listen to her, and that great uproar of applause at the end. Roma: even the sound of her name made her seem far away. There was no eruption when this man’s song concluded; on the contrary, the mood folded sadly within itself.

  ‘Mr Duckenfield,’ I whispered eventually, ‘where do the women go?’

  He was carefully removing his coat – he had already split a seam on the arm – but stopped to peer through the expiring light. ‘The women? Other side of the courtyard. What, not pining for company already?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. How would it be –’

  ‘They catch you in there you’ll get fourteen days, so think about something else.’ There was another long hiatus before he said, with a shake of his head, ‘I’ve been turning it over for a while, and still I can’t fathom it. Please to tell me what on earth you’re doing in here?’

  So I laid out the story for him, beginning with my time in Marchmont’s employ, the rents scandal in Somers Town, my discovery of the falsified leases and then the tracking down of Edith Arkell. Duckenfield’s face was obscured in shadow as he listened, and the only sign of his consciousness I could depend on was the glowing eye of his pipe bowl and the occasional cloud of smoke, like a resting dragon. The dormitory had fallen quiet by now; our fellow casuals had reached an
exhausted truce with sleep, broken only by the querulous muttering of a man in his dreams.

  ‘And what do you hope to achieve by this?’ he said, once I had finished.

  ‘To right a wrong – a grievous wrong. Surely you see the need?’

  He shifted his weight to one side, and the candle flame showed his gaunt, watchful features. ‘Oh, I see need all the time, etched in the faces of these poor devils. Need is the engine that keeps the entire system spinning. You cannot frequent the spike without coming up against the plain fact that one part of our society connives at the deprivation of another part. Without the poor, there could be no rich. It has never been more apparent than in this city, where they are thoroughly degraded and sweated for labour. And once they have served their miserable purpose and are too old to work? Why, they are consigned to such a place as this, that decent people may not be offended by their sight! So if you believe that your plucking this one pauper from oblivion might bring down the giant edifice of inequity, then please, by all means, pursue her to the end.’

  The satiric twang of those last words vibrated harshly on my ears, for I realised now I had been in error. I had taken him for a dandy of indifference, and found instead a mordant critic of the abyss.

  ‘The edifice you mentioned is strong indeed,’ I said at length. ‘There is a temptation to do nothing. But if you saw that one brick might be loosened from its walls – just one – would you not do your utmost to drag it out?’

  He stared dead ahead, eyes absorbed in thought, seeming to turn my hypothesis over. After some moments he let out a long sigh, as though wearied by the utter foolishness of thinking about it at all. ‘They will run you in if you’re caught. Fourteen days in quod, like I said. Does it mean that much to you?’

  ‘I’m afraid it does.’

  He blew out his cheeks. ‘Well, carry me out and bury me decent . . . A Daniel come to judgement –’

  ‘It’s David,’ I said meekly.

  ‘It’s Shakespeare, as a matter of fact. And it didn’t end well for the feller who said it. Get some kip,’ he said, drawing his blanket around him. ‘We must ready ourselves for tomorrow’s adventure.’

  ‘We?’

  His voice was crafty. ‘Of course. You didn’t think I’d send you out alone?’

  The reveille next morning came in two stages, first the workhouse bell splitting the air outside, then the stentorian blast of the superintendent’s voice rousting us out of our cots. ‘Show a leg, ya lazy curs,’ he boomed (he actually addressed us as ‘curs’). As I searched for my boots, I glanced around at Duckenfield, who was already dressed, right down to his collar and tie.

  ‘Your boots are under my bed,’ he said, and indeed they were, each anchored by a leg of his cot.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ I asked, lifting up the cot to get at them.

  ‘I put them there last night – after you fell asleep. If you don’t pin ’em down they’ll be gone by morning.’

  I thanked him, and as I dressed I fell to wondering how many nights of the year Duckenfield stopped on the spike. He appeared to have such a deep familiarity with every sleight and dodge of the workhouse that you might have thought he’d been raised in one. Yet from his accent and manners, from his fancy but threadbare finery, it was clear he had been born to better things. He somehow stood aloof from the others, though he treated them with equal affability; I could see why the men were drawn to him.

  We assembled once again in the dining hall, which in the wan light of dawn presented an even drearier aspect than it had the previous night. The deal tables rang dully to the clank of our tin plates. The limewashed walls offered no respite to the eye, only a yellowing notice that listed the ward regulations and the punishments that would be visited on any miscreant. The warders patrolled the room like prison guards – as if our lot had any fight in them. The breakfast skilly was served with tea, thin, dun-coloured stuff, hardly deserving of the name, but at least it was hot. In this place you quickly became grateful for any sort of warmth. Around me, the men talked of exactly the same things as they had the night before: the food and the kip, and how it compared with the food and the kip at the previous spike. Once this narrow field of interest had been tramped, over and over, this way and that, they fell to brooding, or mere vacancy. The conversation was exhausted, and they had no other.

  Duckenfield had not sat with me at breakfast, but as we queued to leave I saw him in converse with one of the warders. At the head of the hall, the brute Scotton was assigning parties to this or that task – some to work in the garden, some in the infirmary, some (this was met with grumbling and silenced with a glare) to scrub down the stable. One old cove, his frame bent like a question mark, was moving at a sad shuffle towards his appointed task when Scotton ghosted up behind him and delivered a crack to his head. The man executed a painful about-face (‘Oi!’) but on seeing his assailant instantly swallowed his outrage and continued on his wizened way. At this, something boiled within me – something black and hateful and murderous – but I bit it back.

  The warder I had seen with Duckenfield had come across to consult with Scotton, the result of which was a brusque summons from the man. He informed me that I was on kitchen duty, and that I should consider myself ‘damned lucky’ too – it was a plum job in the workhouse. I was bidden to follow him, and on turning into the corridor found Duckenfield lounging against the wall. The warder escorted us both down the stairs and into the bowels of the kitchen; as he left us, I saw him exchange a look with my companion: some bargain had been struck. The kitchen was a hive of huge reeking vats, hissing geysers of steam, and a deafening clangour of pots and pans that sounded like some giant being clapped in irons. Porters scurried through the roaring fug, oblivious to us, their footsteps echoing along the stone flags. Eventually, one of the cooks spotted us skulking there, and thrust a mop and pail at us. Duckenfield assumed an air of lordly indifference – as though he barely recognised such domestic paraphernalia – so I took hold of them myself, and we went off in search of something to clean.

  ‘How did you swing this?’ I asked him, once we’d gained a back parlour in which we might safely dawdle.

  ‘Oh . . . that warder owed me. I recovered a watch one of the men had prigged from him. Useful to have some favours to call in.’ He stepped up to the window to check something, and, satisfied, sank back against the wall.

  ‘So what do we now?’ I said, perching on the window ledge.

  ‘We wait. On the other side of that courtyard are the women’s dormitories. Your old Mrs whatsit may be resting her feet there even now. Though of course she may not . . .’

  ‘You mean –’

  ‘She may be resting in peace. You must understand, it is by and large the old who apply to the workhouse. They are frail and often ill when they arrive here – most of them know this will be their last home.’

  I looked down. ‘That’s a bleak notion.’

  He shrugged. ‘My dear sir, what can I say? The poor are an army of strangers we have no intention of joining. But the old . . . in their ranks we shall all find ourselves, sooner or later, and unless fate has provided us with money, or a kindly relative on whom to depend, this is the ignominy that awaits. Society has no use for the old, because they are no longer of use to society.’

  I watched him as he spoke, and the question which had been circling my brain from the first hour we had met now forced its way to my lips. ‘Forgive me, I must ask – you are plainly an educated fellow, of good stock – how – how did you end up here?’

  He paused, and looked amused by the question: he had not expected it. He opened his mouth to speak, and then checked himself. ‘I was about to recount my life story, but an altruistic instinct seized me at the last moment, and I spared you. Ha. Suffice to say I have made and lost fortunes, and felt no remorse. My only ambition was to live by my wits – and thus far I have contrived to do so. There is no cause to look glum!’

  That was intended for me. ‘But . . . how can you bear it? Y
ou have no need to stop here,’ I said, wanting it to be true.

  He looked briefly pained by this line of questioning, then recovered his droll demeanour. ‘Where else should I go? I have never owned a home, and at my age I am not likely to. For a man of modest requirements, the food and the kip aren’t so bad – and as you see I am well regarded –’

  ‘Yet you have just denounced the place – said how ignoble the system–’

  ‘So it is. I stop here because I choose to. The poor come because they have nowhere else but the streets. That is the pity of it.’

  I searched his face for some twitch of regret, and found none. Perhaps he really was the jolly rover he claimed to be. But I wondered about him, still, for I could not fathom how a man of his natural sympathy and intelligence could endure such a place. What had his life once been, that he could relinquish it with such indifference? He had taken out a watch – he appeared to have smuggled in anything he pleased – and, a few moments later, the workhouse bell began to toll the hour. He rose to his feet.

  ‘The bell invites us. Scotton takes out his crew of drudges to work in the cemetery at this hour. Thus we may navigate the courtyard without fear of encountering the Scylla of St Pancras – or do I mean the Charybdis? Come!’

  I followed at his heels as he took the stairs by which we had earlier descended, and then we were heading towards an oak-framed, iron-studded door. Without pausing, Duckenfield drew back the bolt, which gave a foundry-shriek such as might have roused a workhouse in the next parish.

  ‘A good thing I never took to housebreaking,’ he said with a rueful smirk, and heaved the door open. We entered an irregular-shaped courtyard, surrounded on all sides by vaulting walls of charcoal-coloured brick. Overhead the sky was the colour of pewter, threatening rain. Sunshine in this place would have been a poor joke. It was as we were passing alongside a row of barred windows that Duckenfield suddenly hauled me down by the collar and hissed a command to stay there. We were crouched behind a line of dustbins, and I could hear my companion’s breathing at my ear. When I turned to speak he had his finger pressed to his lips. I sensed activity at the window in front of us, and angling my head at a gap in our cover I saw Scotton’s profile; he was talking to someone, though had he glanced out on the courtyard a moment earlier he would have seen us ambling past. Had he heard the iron thunderclap of that bolt drawn back? My heart beat like a clenched fist against a door. I felt a tug at my sleeve. Duckenfield was scuttling away on his haunches, and signalled me to follow.