by Edward Carey
‘I’d like to see you try.’
‘Got such a lip on her this one,’ some other torch said.
‘Yes, I have, if you want to know,’ I replied. ‘And by God I swear I’ll split the first lip that comes close to me; you don’t frighten me. Touch one of us here and we’ll so burn you back and blast everything you’ve ever owned. We’ll set your mother’s hair alight while she’s sleeping, we’re that determined!’
‘Whatever’s got her goat?’
‘Were only asking.’
‘Just checking you had no light of your own.’
‘This is our patch, you see.’
‘And we protect it, and see that it stays ours.’
‘Who are you anyway?’ one of them asked.
‘Your nightmares come to life,’ I said, ‘that’s who.’
‘Whoever you are you may not light a light on this street, not without our say-so.’
‘And why not?’ I asked.
‘Well we’re link boys. Obviously.’
‘Link boys?’
The torches moved back now and we were better able to see who it was that was holding them. They were boys, just boys. London boys with torches, scruffy little urchins, just kids, kids like us. Going about their business. Whatever that was.
‘My name’s Lucy Pennant,’ I said, growing bolder, ‘these are my friends. My family, you could say. Like as blood to me.’
A small silence then.
‘Oh, well, in that case,’ said the most talkative of the boys, their leader I surmised, ‘I’m Tommy Cronin, local of these parts. And these here about me are the Mill Bank Link Boys. That’s Jim Lowe, and Samuel Boxall and Peter Freyer and Horace Points and Willy Rochester and over there’s Georgie Clark.’
At each introduction the boy waved his torch slightly and said ‘How do.’ The last child, a poor ill-faced one, stood somewhat apart from the others, a rather melancholy figure.
Each of us said hello back and gave our names.
And then, like we were at some strange social gathering, like the rare dances they used to have in Filching, when boys were shoved one end and girls the other and we looked at each other across a great distance and waited for them boys to come to us and they took their times, and once I was so furious at waiting (cos they said the girls must wait on the boys, because that was how it was done) I stomped over the ground and picked one and said to him, ‘You’ll do then, dance with me now!’ But this wasn’t a dance, this was something else all together, couldn’t be further from dancing, unless it was dancing between life and death.
‘What are link boys anyway, when they’re at home?’ I asked.
‘Well, we’re lights, aren’t we?’ said Tommy. ‘Don’t you know anything? The sun’s on strike and don’t show on London any more, and not everywhere is street lit with gas lamps, and them that are don’t shine so very bright, and in all this blackness a fellow loses his way and don’t rightly know where he’s heading to, or even which way is home, and some of these lost guv’nors are a little oiled by drink and find themselves walking unsteadily into the drink, into the Thames itself and then, well then, they don’t bob up after a time, which is, all in all, rather an inconvenience to them. And we, you see, we light them. We’re link boys, we’re here to show the way. We’re what you might call walking lampposts, living breathing lampposts, lampposts with life, and this is our strike: Mill Bank, see? So there we are, we shed light in the darkness. For a fee.’
‘Come to think of it, that’s very clever,’ I said, because I thought it was. ‘What a business!’
‘Yes it is,’ said Jack, ‘isn’t it? And we’re doing handsomely out of it, quite moving up in the world. And so: wherever it is you’re going to, can we light you, me and some of my lucifers here present?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘perhaps you may. Thing is, we’re new to London.’
‘You’re new, are you? Well there is a thing.
‘Welcome to London, great city, greatest of all cities!’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we’ve heard much about it.’
‘Course you have, we’re that famous.’
‘So,’ I said, ‘we thought we’d come and see for ourselves.’
‘Hardly dressed for it though, are you? Stink to heaven on high.’
‘Let me describe London for you in three words, just so you know,’ said ill-faced Georgie Clark in his sharp little voice: ‘Huge. Heavy. Black.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ I said.
‘Welcome, strangers, to the best place in all the world,’ moved in Tommy Cronin, shutting up Georgie. ‘Where you from then, Russia, is it, or Blackpool? Afrique or Orinooque or Acton? Don’t matter much to us, we’ll oblige, for a fee. Making conversation, not to be repetitive: where’s home then?’
‘We don’t have a home.’
‘Well then, are you wanderers from Wandsworth, or crooks from Cricklewood?’
It seemed that Tommy could not think of many places beyond London and so mentioned different regions of the vast capital, as foreign to him, I supposed, as any place.
‘No, no we’re neither,’ I replied.
‘They’re not especial tall, so they can’t be from Highbury.’
‘No.’
‘Nor excessive short.’
‘So Low Leyton is out the question.’
‘Let’s have an estimate on their size?’
‘Bell size? From Belsize Park, is it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Can you help us? Would you help us?’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Yes!’
‘Yes!’
‘Yes!’
‘Then you’re not from Fulham.’
‘Or Stockwell.’
‘I’m starving,’ said Esther Nelson, involuntarily.
‘Then you must’ve come from Holloway?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘no, no.’
‘Well you’re filthy, that’s certain.’
‘Then if they’re not from Wormwood Scrubs they should hurry thence with all dispatch.’
‘I am going to punch one of you any moment!’ I said, and meant it.
‘What a temper.’
‘She must be from Barking, to make such a shout.’
‘Nah, Isle of Dogs.’
‘Come a step closer, why don’t you,’ I said, ‘and flame or no flame I shall clobber you.’
‘All right, deary, no need to get all Charing Cross about it.’
‘Please!’ I cried. ‘Will you help us?’
‘Tell us where you’re from,’ said Tommy, serious now, playing the adult. ‘Don’t normally see groups of children covered in turds. What’s your business? Where are you from?’
I hesitated. We all did.
‘She doesn’t know!’
‘She’s not very bright.’
‘Very well then,’ said Georgie, ‘she must be from Dulwich.’
But then I pointed over behind us, where the sky was lightest from the burning. And turning back around, I saw all those flaming torches retreat from us, and a shock run through them all.
‘Oh.’
‘Oh.’
‘Oh.’
‘Over there?’
‘Yes.’
‘I might have known by the smell of you.’
‘Not Staines, but …’
‘Foulsham.’
‘Foulsham.’
‘Foulsham.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we are from Foulsham.’
‘Are you ill?’ one of the boys asked.
‘Not from Camberwell then, are you,’ another boy whispered, but his heart wasn’t in it any more.
‘From Foulsham?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Can you help us? The police are looking for us, and they shall kill us if they find us.’
‘From Foulsham.’
‘Yes, from Foulsham. Please help us, I haven’t any money. But I’ll get some, I’m a good thief, I always was.’
‘From Foulsham. A thief from Foulsham.’
‘Yes, I already sa
id so, didn’t I.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I don’t know if you noticed but there’s a whopping great fire over there.’
‘It’s been burning these past few nights, and don’t seem eager to go out neither,’ said Georgie.
‘Shouldn’t have come here,’ said Tommy Cronin.
‘Is that so?’ I asked. ‘Should we rather have stayed there and burnt to death? Oh, I’m so sorry,’ I added, all sarcastic, ‘no one told us. Shall we head back now, would that make you happy? Come on, help us. Please.’
‘It was wrong of you to come here.’
‘We would have died,’ I said.
‘It’s not your home is it?’
‘We have no home, it’s been burnt to the ground.’
‘You’re trespassing, that’s what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be here.’
‘Will you help us or not? We’ll find ways to pay you.’
‘You’re filth. My father always said, see any person from Forlichingham, you know what to do: slit their throats double quick.’
‘You won’t help us.’
‘You’re dirt, ain’t you? Through and through.’
‘Please,’ I said, ‘just tonight, just tonight get us a place to sleep, some food. Tomorrow we’ll be away and you’ll never hear of us again.’
‘Couldn’t do it. Sleep alongside Foulsham? Couldn’t be done.’
‘You’ll know somewhere, somewhere where we shall be safe.’
‘No, there is nowhere, nowhere at all for the likes of you.’
‘Then we’ll go on, without you. Let us pass.’
‘Stand back, one and all,’ called Tommy. ‘Don’t let them touch you.’
‘Yes, stand back, or I swear I’ll strike you hard.’
‘Go on then – go, scum, into the night.’
‘Come on,’ I said to my people, ‘we’ll find somewhere without them soon enough, gutless children that they are. Stand back, stand further back, why don’t you. You wouldn’t want us to touch you. I’ll spit if you come close, one gob of my spit and you’ll be dying, I reckon.’
‘Get back one and all!’
‘Come along, quickly now. Before the constables find us.’
‘Wait one moment!’ called Tommy.
‘Now what?’
‘You’re on the run you say?’
‘Yes!’
‘Don’t like the peelers?’
‘What?’
‘The police. They move you on?’
‘They bloody shoot at us!’ I cried.
‘Well, that isn’t really welcoming is it.’
‘We’re already down five, one of us dead most like.’
‘That’s not good.’
‘Not sociable I call it.’
‘They move us on too,’ admitted one of them.
‘They kicked Jim’s mother,’ another volunteered. ‘Shoved her down into the ground for answering back, and his little sister crying, and nothing we could do about it. They’ve pulled our homes down in the past, collapsed them when we’d made them up of this and that. Move us on when our gaffers can’t pay the rent.’
‘And they’ve locked us up, some of us have gone missing and never seen again.’
‘They sound like Iremongers to me,’ I said.
‘No, we don’t love them, them coppers. But what’s a fellow to do?’
‘Leave them alone, keep clear of them.’
‘Run from them.’
‘Then please,’ I said, ‘help us.’
‘Well …’ paused Tommy, ‘well, we might help them, a bit.’ He whispered to the lights around him.
‘Thank you!’ I cried. ‘Thank you!’
‘And you’ll pay us for it. Pay us steep!’
‘Yes, we will, we’ll find a way.’
‘All right then, all right. Now listen, men.’ He called his boys and they gathered round in a scrum, making plans. A moment later Tommy was back again.
‘All right then, we’ll link as usual and watch the coppers for you, and where we can, we’ll steer them the wrong ways. But if we get fined, by heavens you’ll be in for the cost of it.’
‘Doubled!’
‘Yes, doubled, that’s right, Willy! And if we get punched, then by heavens we’ll punch you for it out of compensation.’
‘All right then,’ I said, ‘agreed.’
‘All right then, agreed,’ said Tommy. ‘Now we’ll go on our way and see what’s doing and Georgie’ll guide you.’
‘I hate to do it,’ said Georgie.
‘I know you do, Georgie, but you’re the fastest. Go on with you.
Turning to us he said, ‘Listen to Georgie. If you get trapped that’s your own lookout.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you!’
‘Thank you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Oh, belt up. Come on then. We’ll catch up with you later. Good luck.’
And all the torches ran off. Only one solitary light remaining, that of Georgie.
‘I don’t like you much,’ he said.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘cheers.’
‘But I like the police even less. They were the ones that made my face so melancholy. I don’t smell no more on account of them, so you might stink, you look as if you stink, but I don’t smell you, cos I don’t smell nothink.’
‘Well I’m right glad to know that,’ (that’s how Clod would have said it), ‘but we’re in a bit of hurry right now.’
‘I haven’t made up my mind to hate you yet.’
‘That’s a comfort right there.’
‘Thing is, you’ll want to be hiding.’
‘You’re a fast one, aren’t you?’
‘Somewhere other people shan’t find you.’
‘You’ve got the plot.’
‘Yes, well, that’s what you want I reckon.’
‘Yes, and we do thank you.’
‘Oh will you all belt up. I said I don’t like you and I’m liking you less and less every moment. Now do you think you have it in you to be silent?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes.’
‘Silent I said! Can you shut your traps?’
We nodded.
‘Now there’s quick schooling, right there! All right, now I’ve got your lugs, here’s the dish. Just follow me, it’s all I ask, if one of you falls off and gets lost, well then that’s your problem, ain’t it? I can’t be helping that. When I move, I move fast and I’ll be turning my light out so we don’t have a bright arrow pointing us out wherever we travel. So come along then, I know this landscape, I’ve lived in it all my twelve year, but you don’t so you don’t know nothink, you’re thick as night. So then I’m your blasted teacher. Come along wiv me, and be swift. No turning back for any left behind, if you lose some I don’t care, I’m going on and without me you’re blind as death. So then buck up.’
We gathered around him.
‘Don’t come so close, you’ll quite throttle me. God, look at you. Know what? I hate you, I feel it now, yes I do, I hate you, but not as much as others. Can’t even think why I’m helping such as you, maybe because I’m soft, must be soft as turds. So shut it and keep up. Got it?’
We nodded.
‘What a lumpage! Right then, lights out!’
He blew out his lamp and the darkness pounced.
‘Follow! Follow! Only follow!’
And he was off, and we running behind him, all in a terror.
They were such dark and deep and slippery streets, that all of us fell over at some time but were very quickly pulled up by the rest. We moved on and tried to keep him with us, ill-faced Georgie who ran like a bloody whippet. All along the river’s edge we went following the Thames, rushing in through thin streets sometimes, but then we kept coming back to it, like he needed to be by the river, that that was the only way to know where we were otherwise be lost in the maze of London. Over streets thick with mud, always in back ways, dark, loveless, neglected places. I know F
oulsham was supposed to be a place of no great loveliness, but these shadow houses and streets, these crooked silhouettes, these rotted dwellings seemed to me more miserable yet. How can a person live like this and still be a person? When do you stop being a person, I wondered, and be stamped as something else?
How long did it all take? The sliding, the crying, the calling out, the begging for Georgie to slow down and let us catch our breath? But he never did, on we must go and on and on or lose him and find ourselves who ever knows where and in darkness eternal. There were people on the way, all wrapped up, showing barely any face or hands, but all clothed in shining, soaking, greasy material, subterranean people I thought. People that live in the bottom of a water tank. What dripping lives, where to find warmth, where to find any light? Sometimes there’d be a person, or a moving shape that may have been a person, sometimes there was a shouting out at us, or someone in one of the black buildings crying out in the night, on and on we went, through the strangeness. How, I wondered, could we ever thrive here, in such a place that must discourage life so? How could anything live here? On and on we went, forward and backwards and down again, the great slopping of the filthy river.
Oh please stop.
Oh please, enough, enough.
Not another step, yes another and another yet, on we must go, and at such a rate. I hate you too, Georgie broken nose, I hate you and your feet, webbed no doubt.
And then all of a sudden.
‘All right! Hush!’ said Georgie. ‘Nearly there, we may walk the rest and act as if we’re happy to be here. Come along.’
A great dark shadow loomed up.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Only the Bank of England,’ said Georgie. ‘We’re upon Threadneedle Street, come along, come along, just a few steps more.’
We went along a wider street then, and I wondered if it was safe for us to be in such a great thoroughfare, carriages going up and down with their lamps lit before them.
‘Bishopsgate,’ instructed Georgie. ‘Here we are then.’
There was a narrow passageway and we took it.
‘We may calm ourselves now,’ he said in utter blackness.
I called the names, they called them back, all present, all that were left of us.
We had arrived.
‘Here’s home,’ said ill-faced Georgie.
17
AMONGST NEW COMPANIONS
