None So Blind

by Alis Hawkins

  I stood and addressed her covered face. ‘I shall make sure Mr Williams knows this child is not mine,’ I said. ‘What he decides to do then is his business.’

  In telling Williams that the child was not mine, had I removed from Margaret the one last protection that might have saved her?

  Part 4: Ipswich

  John

  Harry and I got off the coach in Carmarthen and made our way straight to the docks. If there was a chance of catching a steamer that day we didn’t want to miss it – Harry wanted to be in London and then Ipswich as quickly as he could. The quickest way – the mail – had had no spaces so here we were. It was steamer to Bristol for us, then train to London.

  Steamer! Train! I’d hardly even been in a coach before.

  I’d never been near Carmarthen docks, either, but their reputation was shocking. Well, it was in Newcastle Emlyn anyway. As far as people like my landlady were concerned, the docks were a hive of murderous gangs and shameless prostitutes. But perhaps that was just after dark, because all I could see was a businesslike quayside, with things coming off and going on to ships under the eye of men with bills of lading in their hands. It all looked about as scandalous as Owens the grocer’s warehouse.

  Mind you, busyness was almost as much of a problem for Harry as dodging criminals would’ve been. It wasn’t easy for him to watch his step while he was making his way between piles of merchandise, wooden landing piers and lines of barrows and carts. More than once he had to grab at my coat to stop himself being pushed over.

  ‘Along here?’ I skirted past barrels coming down a gangway onto the quayside.

  ‘Yes. But I’m not sure which building. You’ll have to ask.’

  Ten minutes later, the ticket clerk was telling us that we were just in time – a steamer would be leaving in half an hour.

  How did people travel to America and live to tell the tale? The Bristol Channel almost did for me. According to Harry, the sea was calm for the time of year but my stomach didn’t think so. Not at all. And it wasn’t just the sea. When we came down the gangway on to Bristol docks, my legs turned to string. I’d been yearning for firm ground underfoot but, when I got it, I found myself stumbling to my knees on the solidity of it. How did sailors manage after weeks at sea? Why weren’t Bristol docks full of staggering men?

  Harry almost fell over me. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No,’ I muttered. ‘Just slipped on the wet stones, that’s all.’

  ‘Just stand still for a minute,’ he said. ‘Your body still thinks it’s on the steamer. Let it settle to being on land again.’

  It was all right for him, he wasn’t reeling around like a drunkard. ‘You need something to eat,’ he said, after I’d managed to stand up straight for four seconds in a row. ‘Let’s find out what there is before we see about a train for the morning.’

  It was amusing to see Harry standing in the street eating a pie of eels and oysters out of his hand as if he’d done it every day of his life.

  ‘D’you like it?’ I asked.

  ‘Bit salty. But when you’re hungry anything will do, won’t it?’

  I doubted whether Harry’d ever known real hunger in his life. Not that belly-shrinking hunger you get when you’ve had no food for two or three days. But I didn’t say that.

  And I kept my mouth shut when we had to stay the night in the same cheap room, too. If Harry could lie down in his shirt and breeches, so could I.

  But both of us were scratching in the morning.

  The Bristol railway station was huge. Bigger than I’d ever imagined a building could be. It was hundreds of yards long and the span of the roof was immense – that’s the only word for it – with gigantic, curving iron ribs supporting the glass of it.

  Harry obviously saw me looking up. ‘Magnificent, isn’t it? It’s so big even I can see it. Detail’s irrelevant.’

  What he wouldn’t be able to see was that the roof’s acreage of glass was grey with smoke from the locomotives’ long chimneys. And it wasn’t just smoke the roof kept in, either. The noise of trains and people was held down, too, close to the iron rails and the platform, battering at your ears. The whole place echoed and rang so much my head throbbed.

  It was a relief to hear the guard shouting the off. I spotted him, sitting high up on the coach at the back of the train. Just like being outside on a normal coach. ‘Close all the doors, gentlemen! All those not travelling, kindly step aside. We are embarking. We are embarking!’

  I can’t say the train’s seats were as comfortable as the ones on the Carmarthen coach but they were no more uncomfortable than the stools in Mr Schofield’s office so I had nothing to complain of on the journey to London. Nothing except hunger anyway. And we could move about. There was some empty bench space on the other side of the carriage so, if the view from one side got boring, I could move to the other. Harry asked what I was looking at but I didn’t know how to answer him. I’d never been further than Carmarthen in my life so I was looking at everything. Because everything was different. The houses, the fields, the villages, the towns, the rivers. Everything. It all looked prosperous and fat and well-tended. Every house seemed to be built of brick or stone and, everywhere, houses were two-storeyed, like in Carmarthen, only this was the countryside. Where were the labourers’ cottages, I wondered. But I didn’t ask. I didn’t want Harry to think I was ignorant.

  Mind you, I wasn’t the only one staring. Every time Harry and I opened our mouths and spoke Welsh the other passengers gawped at us. I felt like a freak in a show. Roll up, roll up, see the men who talk nonsense and yet understand each other perfectly!

  ‘We’ve got a good chance of getting to London in daylight and finding something near Shoreditch,’ Harry said. ‘That’s where the trains for the east coast go from.’

  Shoreditch. I mouthed the word. ‘What shore is it on?’

  Harry made a face. ‘I’ve never thought about it. It’s not on a shore, actually. Not even on the bank of the Thames. Maybe it was once – on a shore, I mean – London’s got some very marshy areas. And had more before it was drained, I dare say.’

  ‘Odd,’ I said, ‘the name not being anything to do with the land around.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve never thought of it but it’s not like at home, is it?’

  I thought of the places associated with Margaret Jones’s death. Glanteifi: the banks of the Teifi, where Harry’s home was. Alltddu: the dark wood, where her bones had been found. And Williams’s Waungilfach: the meadow with the little hiding place. It had been hiding Margaret Jones. Was it still hiding secrets?

  The place where the train stopped in London was called Paddington. The station there was nothing like the huge glass-house at Bristol. It was all soot-blacked red brick and brown-painted wood. Outside, a thick fog lay low to the ground.

  I coughed. ‘Why does this fog taste of coal dust?’

  ‘The smoke from all the fires gets caught up in it. They call it a London Particular.’

  I was glad we didn’t have to spend more than a night in London. Breathing that air, day in, day out, would have killed me in a month. Harry stood, chewing the inside of his lip. I knew he was fretting about the light. It was almost dark and we weren’t going to be able to find our way to this Shoreditch very easily.

  Finally, he made up his mind. ‘John, can you see a Hansom cab anywhere?’

  I wasn’t going to admit I didn’t know what a Hansom cab was. ‘What do they look like?’

  ‘Small. Two wheels, one horse.’

  ‘Sounds like a gig.’

  ‘Hansoms are closed.’

  I looked about, squinting into the Particular. There were gaslights at the side of the road but they seemed to make it more difficult to see, not easier. The fog around them glowed so you couldn’t see beyond it.

  Then I heard a faint sound. A metallic scrape and jingle. I moved forward until I could see.

  I turned to Harry. ‘There’s one of your Hansom cabs just up the street.’

  ‘Lead o
n then.’

  The driver – cabbie Harry called him – turned his face to us as we approached.

  ‘Evening, gents.’

  Harry gave him his greeting back and I thought how different he sounded in English. Just like what he was – the squire’s son, a gentleman.

  After I’d passed our bags up to the cabbie, I heard a thump and the doors at the front of the cab opened for us to get in.

  ‘He’s got a lever up there,’ Harry told me in Welsh, ‘and he won’t open the doors to let us out until we’ve paid him.’

  ‘Not very trusting.’

  ‘That’s London for you.’

  When we were in and the doors had closed in front of us, a little hatch opened in the roof of the cab. ‘Where to, gents?’

  Harry gave an address, the cabbie called to his horse and we were off.

  ‘Is that a guest house?’ I asked as the horse began to trot.

  Harry grinned. ‘Not exactly. It’s the home of my friend, Augustus Gelyot.’

  The smartest house in Cardiganshire would’ve looked shabby next to the Gelyots’ tall, modern house. Everything in it looked as if it’d been invented last week. It was all fresh and new and shiny, from the door knocker to the patterned tiles of the entrance hall and the wallpaper on the way up the stairs.

  ‘I see Mrs Gelyot has embraced the new fashion for turquoise?’ Harry said as Gus Gelyot led us up the grand curve of the staircase. He’d come bounding down when we were announced, like a boy let out of school.

  ‘My mother embrace a fashion? My dear Harry, she started it.’

  I studied the wallpaper which was bright in the hissing gaslights. Turquoise. An odd word for an odd colour. Not green or blue but a mixture of both. It made the curling white vine pattern that ran up it seem to stand out, as if it was sculpted instead of painted on.

  ‘Have you dined?’ Gus wanted to know.

  ‘No. Nothing since a pie in Bristol,’ Harry said, with feeling.

  ‘Then I’ll have something brought up and you can tell me what on earth you’re doing here.’

  We sat in the Gelyots’ blue and gold dining room eating curried beef – the first time I’d heard of curry, never mind eaten it – while Harry told Mr Gelyot about our investigations.

  In a day of new experiences, sitting in the Gelyots’ house felt like the strangest. All the rest were what the newspapers would call marvels of engineering – steamers, stations, locomotives. This was somebody’s house. But it was a different way of living entirely from what I was used to. Bright-as-day gaslights, food from the other side of the world that made your mouth burn, colours I’d never seen before.

  Harry, who was used to it all, I suppose, ignored our surroundings after his comment about the wallpaper. He was too busy telling Gus how things stood at home. ‘My father,’ he said eventually, ‘is keen to point out my insolvency but less keen to ameliorate it.’

  Gus Gelyot’s eyes moved from Harry to me. They’d been doing that since we arrived. He wanted to know what I was doing there.

  ‘Harry, might this be an appropriate moment to have Mr Davies shown to his quarters?’

  ‘What, so he can lay out my clothes for the morning?’ Harry’s voice was suddenly sharp, as if Gus Gelyot had insulted me. ‘He isn’t my valet, Gus, he’s my assistant in this investigation. And, I may say, my friend.’

  Gus’s eyes were on me again. ‘Be that as it may,’ he said, ‘I’m sure he would be more comfortable if certain things were left unsaid in his presence.’ He wanted me to do the right thing and save Harry from himself.

  But Harry wasn’t having it. ‘If you think John is going to be shocked at the idea that I have no money and am going to ask you to lend me some, then you’re wrong.’

  Gus Gelyot was still looking at me. Nervous now, I shrugged slightly. You know what Harry’s like, he won’t be told. He turned away. I’d disappointed him.

  ‘P-L, do you not see what an invidious position you put Mr Davies in by having these discussions in his presence?’

  ‘Invidious? Hardly. It’s I that am at a disadvantage, here, not John.’

  ‘Oh, for the love of God!’ Gus Gelyot rolled his eyes. ‘What disadvantage? This boy has no power over you at all.’

  ‘Except the power to tell the world that I had to beg for money.’

  ‘Oh, and that would result in the good burghers of Cardiganshire being better informed than they find themselves, now, would it? Don’t be ludicrous, P-L, they already know that you’ve fallen out with your father and are living in a rented room – it would hardly startle anybody that he’s not funding your eccentricity!’

  Harry turned his face to me and drew a steady breath. ‘Do you feel that I’m acting unfairly towards you, John?’ I could tell he was trying to meet my eye but he missed by about a foot.

  ‘Don’t ask him!’Gus Gelyot was almost shouting, now. ‘He’s the last person who can give you an honest answer!’

  ‘On the contrary – he’s the only person!’

  ‘Harry, you’re a fool. The world won’t alter to suit you, however much you want it to.’

  The silence that followed Mr Gelyot’s words was filled with nothing but the gas lamps’ hiss. You forgot they made a noise until there was a silence, then they seemed overly loud and you wondered how people stood it. Not to mention the smell of them.

  ‘Am I not allowed to order my own life in the way I wish, Gus?’

  ‘No. Because the ordering of your life impinges on the way others are obliged to order theirs.’

  I could see they weren’t going to agree. If Harry needed to borrow money to finish our investigation, it would be best if they didn’t argue any more. I stood up.

  ‘The ordering of disparate lives notwithstanding,’ I said, using the best English I knew, ‘it’s been a very tiring day or two. We’ve been conveyed hundreds of miles by diverse means and, though I know none of that is new to Harry’ – I might be falling in with Gus Gelyot’s wishes to keep the peace but, by God, I was going to call him Harry! – ‘it’s all new and strange to me and I’m falling asleep where I sit. If you could ask somebody to show me where I’m to sleep, Mr Gelyot, I’d be grateful.’

  If Harry thought I was taking the coward’s way out then he could tell me to my face tomorrow. We could have an argument about it, then, if he liked. As equals, seeing as that seemed to be what he thought we were.

  Mr Gelyot turned to the footman standing in the corner of the dining room. But before he could speak, Harry was on his feet.

  ‘Don’t even think about putting him in the servants’ quarters, Gus. Please.’

  Gus didn’t look around at his friend. He glanced at me without changing his expression then said, ‘Fred, please see Mr Davies to the room you put Mr Probert-Lloyd’s bags in. And ask a maid to make up the room next to it for Mr Probert-Lloyd. You can fetch Mr Davies’s bags down while you’re at it.’

  Harry

  I was glad to put the city behind us. Everything about it – the sounds of Paddington Station, the familiar tang of the Particular in my throat, the Cockney tones of the cabbie, even my argument with Gus – had been a painful reminder of my former life. Gus’s house, so familiar despite his mother’s constant changing of furnishings and decoration, had almost undone me. Once, I had imagined that the life of a barrister would allow me to own such a house, to live in it with a family of my own. No more.

  Did Gus understand the jumble of emotions that had led to my outburst? I doubted it; he had been too taken up with what he saw as my eccentric attitude towards John. But what choice did I have, now, but to embrace what he saw as eccentricity? I had to fashion a new life for myself and, though it might be lived out beneath my father’s roof, I was damned if it was going to be lived after my father’s example.

  From Bishopsgate station we travelled on the Eastern Counties railway to Colchester and, from there, on an Eastern Union train to our final destination. The fares were steep – had I not persuaded Gus to lend me some money John and
I would have found ourselves without the means to get home and I tried not to think about how I would live if our investigation went on much longer.

  Once we were out of the railway station – which was, like all railway stations, grimy, sooty and laden with coal dust – Ipswich had a different smell from London or even Bristol or Carmarthen. Perhaps it had to do with the stiff easterly breeze that was blowing from the North Sea, but there was an unfamiliar flavour to the air.

  John asked the way to the Unitarian chapel and was given directions over a bridge into the middle of the town.

  ‘How far is it?’ he asked.

  ‘’Bout ten minutes.’

  Ten minutes if you knew the way, perhaps. Half an hour later, after stopping twice more to ask which street we should follow, we found ourselves in front of a large building which stood, from what I could make out, on the far side of its own graveyard.

  ‘This is his chapel,’ John said. ‘What now?’

  ‘Let’s see if he’s here.’

  A brief reconnaissance revealed neither minister nor any other person.

  ‘His house can’t be far away, I’ll ask.’

  I stood aside while John knocked at a door close to the chapel and asked whoever had appeared if they might be able to tell him where the Reverend Nathaniel Howell lived.

  ‘Who?’ a female voice asked.