“And how do you plan to achieve it?”
“By teaching the people to have a due sense of their rights and their duties. That is the only way. But you could see for yourself what manner of men we are. Why don’t you come along to one of our meetings?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know much about such things.”
“You know enough to recognise wrongs that need righting, and that is all it is.”
Dan had the chance to appear to think this over while the waiter brought the main course. “When is the next meeting?”
“Tonight at eight.”
“There’s no harm in finding out about it, I suppose. Where?”
“At the Boatswain and Call in Maze Pond, the back of Guy’s Hospital. I’ll call for you and introduce you…what is your address?”
“I’ve got rooms in Thomas Street.”
“Where all the houses are falling down and infested with bugs! No, no, Mr Bright, we can do better than that. I have a friend in Tooley Street who has a room that has just become vacant. Why don’t we go and look at it after dinner?”
“Thank you, I’d like that.”
For the rest of the meal they swapped remarks about the excellence of the food. After the apple pie they drank a coffee and Broomhall settled the bill. Another party pounced on their table as soon as they stood up to leave.
“Is your friend an LCS man too?” Dan asked as they strolled along Tooley Street.
“No, Chambers is much too careful these days. But I think you’ll find him interesting.”
They stopped at a shop window full of badly-drawn cartoons printed on cheap paper. Dan could see that it was not quality that mattered in this market, but the quantity of bums and bubbies the customer got for his money. Central place in the display was a book on a wooden stand open at one of the illustrations. Dan, twisting his neck the better to see what was going on in the scene, wondered if it was possible for a man and woman to get into the position shown or, for that matter, out of it. He looked at his companion in surprise. Broomhall laughed, took his arm and drew him up the steps.
They had been seen from inside the shop and the door opened as they reached it. They were greeted by a fine-looking woman in her middle years with a clear, wholesome complexion, bright hazel eyes from which flashed a hint of green, and auburn hair beneath a white cap. Her dress was neat to the point of modesty and there was a pleasing Welsh tinge to her voice which, for all that Dan was unfamiliar with the nuances of the accent, struck him as that of a woman born to better things.
“Mr Broomhall,” she said. “I see you were showing your friend The Adventures of a Comely Country Wench.” She turned to Dan and added with an air of pride, “It’s one of our most popular publications.”
“And with good reason, I don’t doubt,” Broomhall said. “How do you do, Mrs Chambers? We’ve come about the room.”
“You’d better come in then.”
In the shop a thin, puny-shouldered man with grey hair straggling about his pale face was unpacking a box of books. He peered at Dan over a pair of green-tinted glasses. Dan took him at first for Mrs Chambers’s father.
“Mr Chambers, this gentleman is going to look at the room,” she said.
“Yes, yes, my dear,” he murmured absently. “Oh, is that Mr Broomhall? What a pleasure to see you!”
Broomhall held out his hand. “How do you do, my dear fellow?”
Dan and Mrs Chambers left the two chatting. She led him through the door at the back of the shop into a parlour crammed with books, some in boxes, others stacked in tottering piles. Three girls sat at the long plain table which took up the remaining space. The elder two, who were about sixteen and fourteen, had brushes and paints in front of them and would have looked like any young misses at their watercolours had they not been diligently colouring in lewd prints. Their little sister, with bent head and protruding tongue, copied addresses from an order book on to slim parcels of discretely wrapped books. She did not look up from her work, but the other two regarded Dan with demure curiosity.
Mrs Chambers paused at the table to gather the scattered papers she had been working on before she went out to the shop. Dan caught sight of the title page: Amora, or the Countess of Love. That explained her pride in the book in the window: she was an authoress. He had walked into the middle of a busy family manufactory.
The room was upstairs at the back. It looked out over a yard in which stood a large shed with a padlocked door.
“We used to have a printing press in there,” Mrs Chambers said. “But now we send the work out. It is cheaper than keeping a pair of apprentices. This was the room they slept in.”
It was certainly superior to the Thomas Street establishment. The sheets and blankets were clean and fresh, and there was a gaily-coloured rug on the floor. There was a wash stand with a clean bowl and unchipped jug, and a table, chair and chest, all smelling of beeswax.
They agreed terms. Mrs Chambers would provide breakfast, coals, towels and bedding, water and candles, and suppers by arrangement.
“The shop closes at ten, but here is a key if you are later.”
She took Dan downstairs, left him in the shop with the other two men, and returned to her writing.
“Mr Broomhall has just been telling me about the service you did him this morning,” Chambers said. “Let me shake you by the hand, sir, for your quickness – but more than that, for your kindness. The parish ignores these children when they starve, but is hasty enough to punish them when they steal.”
“I was just telling Chambers that you are coming to your first London Corresponding Society meeting tonight,” Broomhall said. “And asking him if he could provide you with some reading material that might be useful.”
“I have just the thing. Come with me.”
He led Dan and Broomhall back to the parlour.
“My love,” he said, “would you keep an eye on the shop while I talk to Broomhall and – and –”
“Bright,” Dan said.
Mrs Chambers, used to the constant interruption necessary on attending a business, rose from her seat. The three men went out through the kitchen and crossed the yard, and Chambers opened the padlock on the shed door with a key from his pocket. The building was empty save for an old desk piled with books and magazines, with a tray of letter presses nearby. Chambers rummaged through the literature.
“Something for someone attending his first LCS meeting, you say?”
“That’s right.” Broomhall erupted into a coughing fit. “Must be the dust in here. I’ll leave you to it and go and get a glass of water.”
Chambers, busy with his books, did not notice him go. “I have just the thing,” he said, thrusting a pamphlet at Dan. “Here is the Address to the French National Convention. And the Address to the Nation at Large…William Frend’s Peace and Union…some copies of the London Corresponding Society’s Moral and Political Magazine.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t let Mrs Chambers see them. She doesn’t like them in the house, you know…I’ll just lock up. You go through.”
Dan thrust the offending publications under his jacket and went back across the yard. The back door stood open and neither Broomhall nor Mrs Chambers, who were standing in the kitchen, heard him approach. They were too busy kissing. Kissing and arguing.
The woman tilted back her head. “But why did you have to bring him here?”
“Because I want to be sure he is who he says he is. You can keep an eye on him for me. Tell me if he has any visitors, receives any letters. You will do that little thing for me, won’t you?”
Before she could refuse, he kissed her again.
Dan heard the shed door close and Mr Chambers fumbling with the padlock. He tiptoed back into the yard and then returned to the house, treading heavily and scraping his shoes on the doorstep. The couple leapt apart.
“That’s better,” Broo
mhall said, patting his chest as if recovering from a coughing fit. “Thank you for the water, Mrs Chambers.”
Her husband came in and invited Dan and Broomhall to take a glass of wine. Broomhall said he had his own shop to look after, and Dan said he would go and fetch his things from Thomas Street. The eldest girl had been sent to wait in the shop. On his way out, Broomhall winked at her. She scowled at him and turned away.
“That’s a strange family business,” Dan said when they were outside. “It doesn’t seem to fit Chambers and his family somehow.”
“He didn’t always sell salacious literature. His was once one of the best radical bookshops this side of the river. He had a spell in prison for selling copies of Tom Paine’s book, The Rights of Man. He was never charged with anything and they let him out after a few months. But it ruined his business. He had to sell his printing press and, as you’ve seen, diversify his trade. I doubt he would have taken that way if he had not been driven to it by dire necessity and a wife who has a sounder head for business than he does. I hear from those who are knowledgeable about such things that Mrs Chambers has discovered a talent for a certain type of literature.”
Dan, thinking of the Comely Country Wench and the Countess of Love, nodded. “And yet their daughters behave as if they are misses in a mansion.”
“Yes, those girls are like white roses growing in a midden heap.”
Broomhall gestured at their surroundings to illustrate his point. Around the quays foul-mouthed lumpers shifted bales and crates. A filthy beggar sat in the road with his back against a wall, his bare ulcerated legs stretched in front of him. A drunken woman peeped out of an alley and slurred, “Buy us a drink, me darlings!”
Chapter Eleven
The pool that had given Maze Pond its name was long gone, aptly replaced by a bewildering network of narrow streets and courts behind Guy’s Hospital. Broomhall explained that, like most divisions of the London Corresponding Society, Division Fourteen had often had to change its meeting place as landlords threatened with prosecution turned them away.
“But the landlord at the Boatswain and Call is on our side,” he said. “And the constables don’t come into the Maze Pond if they can help it.”
Dan could see why. The occupiers of the crowded, rotten tenements spilled out into the streets. Hard-faced women, savage children and brutish men sat on doorsteps or hung about on corners. They all seemed to be in a perpetual state of readiness to offer violence to anyone who so much as looked at them. Broomhall was unaffected by their hostility. He strode amongst them as if they were his friends, and for the most part there was a lifting of the mood as he passed. But no amount of friendly smiles could change the stale atmosphere, heavy with the stench of cess pits, open drains, rotting food, gin, and unwashed bodies.
Broomhall led Dan past the inn’s front door and turned into a narrow alley where no light penetrated and the flagstones were damp and slippery. A few steps brought them to a side entrance, where Broomhall rapped a distinctive rhythm on the door. It was opened by a man in dust-covered smock and trousers.
“Citizen, this is Citizen Bright,” Broomhall said. “He is my guest for the evening.”
The door-keeper nodded an acknowledgement and stood aside to admit them. They climbed a steep flight of wooden stairs towards the buzz of voices coming from the room above. Clouds of smoke billowed across the narrow landing from the open door. A man with a cash box and a bundle of tickets sat behind a table at the entrance. While Broomhall gave him the two pennies for Dan’s entrance fee, Dan moved into the room. Instantly the chatter ceased and he was confronted by a crowd of wary faces.
“Citizen Bright is with me,” Broomhall announced.
There was a rustle of relief and the talking and smoking started up again. Broomhall took Dan over to a burly, broad-shouldered man who stood with his back to the door, talking with another man. His neat, dark clothes were not those of a labourer. They were almost clerkly, though he did not look like someone who spent his days bound to a desk.
“Citizen Bright,” said Broomhall, “may I introduce Citizen Metcalf. He has been a member of this division since it started. He will be able to explain the proceedings to you and answer any questions you have.” He nodded at the long table at the top of the room. “My place is over there.”
Metcalf regarded Dan stonily from beneath thick black eyebrows. His jaw was shaded by the day’s growth, his dark hair cut short. His face was as blank as that of a pugilist in the middle of a bout, his expression carefully arranged so as not to give any hint of where he meant to strike next. Dan was equally careful not to betray the tautening of his own nerves as he shook Metcalf’s hard hand. He sensed that this was a dangerous man.
Metcalf had not been chosen to steer the newcomer because of his charm, for it was a quality he lacked. Unsmilingly, he introduced his crony, Simmons, who was tall and bony with a long, lantern-jawed face and knobbly knuckles which he cracked throughout the meeting.
Metcalf gestured at the front row of seats. “Won’t you sit here beside me, Citizen Bright?” His voice, deep and emotionless, grated on the ears.
Dan sat down with Metcalf on his right. Simmons slithered into the seat on his left. Dan did not like the arrangement, but had to resign himself to the fact that, with these two at his elbows, this was no occasion to start asking even the most subtle questions about Kean.
Broomhall took his place at the top table. Beside him sat the Division Secretary: a thin, nervous-looking man who had a squint which became more pronounced when he was called upon to speak. The third person at the table was the speaker for the evening. He was one of the Division’s tything men, Metcalf explained. They were individuals who each had ten members assigned to them with whom they kept in regular contact. It was a quick, efficient system for passing on news from the committee, such as last-minute venue changes, and also, Dan guessed, warnings of impending raids and arrests.
By the time Broomhall called the meeting to order there were close to sixty men in the room. That made the meeting illegal, the lawful limit being fifty, but as Broomhall said, Maze Pond was largely ignored by the constables. Many of the men were smoking pipes and some had brought glasses of ale up with them from the bar. All removed their hats and placed them under their seats.
“Welcome, citizens,” Broomhall began. “First in the order of business: are there any new members to be admitted tonight?”
Dan turned with everyone else to watch two men stand up. For one of them the manoeuvre was something of a struggle. He gripped the back of the chair in front of him and stood awkwardly, one hip higher than the other. Dan glanced down and saw that one of his boots was built up to accommodate a club foot. His clothes were patched and ragged, his eyes large and intense in his skeletal, pockmarked face.
“Citizen Upton, who is it you wish to introduce to the Society tonight?” Broomhall asked the lame man.
“Citizen Broomhall, I present Citizen Warren, a tea merchant of Tooley Street and known to many of us herein assembled.”
Warren bowed and one or two members nodded in recognition.
“And you vouch for Citizen Warren? He is well known to you?”
“I hereby swear that I am able to vouch for the here-assembled party Citizen Warren who has a domicile in Tooley Street in this Borough of Southwark and who seeks –”
“Yes, yes,” Broomhall interrupted. “There’s no need to swear an oath. Does anyone second the application?”
Someone mumbled something from the back row which was taken as a second and Broomhall continued, “Citizen Warren, has Citizen Upton explained our requirements to you?”
“He has,” the tea merchant replied.
Dan wondered if Warren valued the commodity he traded in too much to drink it. He was a fat, red-faced man with a bulbous, crimson nose which suggested he spent more time at his wine glass than his teacup.
“Then I shall pu
t the qualifying questions. Question one: are you convinced that the parliamentary representation of this country is at present inadequate?”
“Inadequate and imperfect,” corrected Upton.
“Thank you, Citizen Upton,” Broomhall said drily.
“I am,” answered Warren.
“Question two: are you persuaded –” Broomhall saw Upton open his mouth and hastily said, “Thoroughly persuaded that the welfare of these kingdoms requires that every person of adult years in possession of his reason and not incapacitated by crimes should have a vote for a member of parliament?”
“I am.”
“Question three: will you endeavour by all justifiable means to promote such reformation in parliament?”
“I will.”
“Then your application for membership is accepted. The secretary will collect your quarter’s dues and give you a copy of the rules and the addresses of the Society after the meeting.”
Warren and Upton sat down looking pleased with themselves. Broomhall and the Division Secretary conferred briefly over their papers. Most of the penny candles in the room were concentrated on and around the front table for the benefit of the delegates, leaving the corners and rear of the apartment in shadow. Looking around during the short pause, Dan noticed a man huddled against the wall at the end of the row behind him, scribbling in a notebook held close to his eyes.
Metcalf, following Dan’s gaze, said, “That’s Spy Wheeler. Every division has its own Jerry Sneak, some more than one.”
So much, Dan thought, for Sir Richard Ford’s spy and his vital work for the nation. “You know he’s a spy but you admit him?”
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