Sweet Thames

by Matthew Kneale

  Barrett interposed before I could reply. ‘Mr Jeavons is required back.’

  The fellow seemed keen indeed to have me gone. His coolness served only to strengthen my desire to stay. ‘A moment or two will make little difference, I’m sure.’

  By the time I had located Hall’s field book all had been made ready. Joshua Jeavons taking tea with Isobella Moynihan, secret beauty, subject of years of ignorant speculation. A maidservant, plump and silent, carefully juggled the fine crockery and a cup was in my hands, heavy to hold and threatening to clatter, making me feel clumsy in front of Isobella, balancing hers quite still in the air above her knees.

  I had never seen such a fine room. It was so well furnished with windows that even the smoky winter light seemed heartening. Every object was full of splendour; the mounted fireplace with a brass lion and lioness prowling above; the rich red curtains; a giant tripod candlestand formed into a subtle likeness of goat heads, its lower portions supported by three delicate feet, with talons. Feet, indeed, seemed to be everywhere, supporting the table, the chairs we sat on, the fire-guard. It was a most modern sight.

  ‘I imagine you must have visited your father’s office in George Street?’ I asked. The conversation had come round to the present work on the Gizbee line.

  ‘No, I never have. Really I ought to, I know.’ Isobella was adept at evading questions she chose not fully to answer – especially for someone so young – and had given away almost nothing about herself except that, like myself, her mother had died when she was very young. I, on the other hand, felt quite interrogated, and was sure I had caused disappointment as I admitted my junior position. Calmer now, her expression had grown brightly unreadable and there was no telling what was in her thoughts. Perhaps she was already regretting having invited me to stay.

  The conversation reached a pause, and I drank the last of my tea. ‘Miss Moynihan, if you’ll excuse me, I fear I should not be too late back.’ I got to my feet. ‘I thank you for your kindness.’

  ‘So soon? You’ll not stay a little longer?’

  ‘I only wish I could.’

  She also stood. ‘Well, now that you’ve visited us, you’ll do so again I hope, and before long.’

  ‘I’d be delighted.’ If the conversation had ended then, I would have left much affected by her aura, but doubtful that I had witnessed anything more than the game-playing of a rather strange and fascinating young woman, perhaps fretfully bored on a dull winter’s afternoon. I would have been most uncertain of taking seriously her suggestion I return.

  The conversation was not ended, however. As I was turning to leave, she touched my sleeve with her finger, so lightly that it was a thing hardly felt.

  ‘Do you promise?’ The look in her eyes surprised me no less than the question. For a moment I hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘Yes, I promise.’

  Her voice sank almost to a whisper, too quiet for the ears of the maidservant. ‘There’s no need for you to tell my father of your intention to call again.’

  It was an extraordinary remark, enticing and troubling. ‘Would he disapprove?’

  ‘No, no.’ She glanced at me again. ‘It would just be better.’

  In no more than a moment the temperature between us had risen so high. ‘Then I’ll not mention it, of course.’

  I left the house in a strange state; exhilaration mixed with misgiving. To deceive Moynihan, even by omission, would be to risk losing my employment. Indeed, to be in any way placed between daughter and father was certain to be dangerous. I disliked the position she had so swiftly put me in, requiring from me a kind of dishonesty; I felt no great love for Moynihan but he was my master – I owed him for that alone – and had done me no ill.

  The brief taste was strong, however. I do not believe I seriously considered, even for a moment, going back on my promise.

  Moynihan was in his place at the far end of the office by the time I returned, and I glanced towards him uneasily. Farre and two others swiftly gathered about, greeting me with hushed curiosity.

  ‘Were you let inside?’

  ‘Any signs of the daughter?’

  ‘Hunchback, was she?’

  The faces – laughing, expectant – heightened my sense of a gulf freshly opened, of the new loyalty I felt.

  ‘Do you mean to say, then, that you had no awareness of the state this drain was in?’

  The slum landlord under questioning was hot and red of face. ‘I had no awareness that anything was greatly amiss.’ He glanced unhappily towards the public area, where a couple of shabby types – journalists – were taking notes.

  The Metropolitan Committee for Sewers was nothing less than a Parliament in miniature. A large house had been converted for the purpose, the chamber fully equipped, with places for Committee members, a secretary to keep notes of the proceedings and seats for visitors and journalists. No elements of legislative procedure were absent, and quite a sight it was to watch, as justice was meted out against those who were, by their negligence, polluting the skies with effluential poisons.

  The Committee met in Crete Street, on the way to Mr Sweet’s yard, and I had decided to pay a swift visit en route. I had alerted a minion of the place to call Mr George Hove – my connection among the members – and, standing by the door to the debating chamber, I could see the servant point me out. Hove nodded importantly, without getting to his feet.

  ‘You have not observed, then, that the drain was blocked and quite filled with deposits of a most offensive and dangerous type?’ The interrogator of the slum landlord was none other than Edwin Sleak-Cunningham himself; leading civil servant, in close contact with high government figures, and one who had contributed greatly to the sanitary movement. Sleak-Cunningham was a fellow who seemed to attract enemies – not that this had obstructed his efforts – a fact which I was inclined to ascribe at least in part to his appearance. A thin figure, almost ghostly with pallor, he exuded intense determination, belief, at times resembling a kind of frozen priest. His critics claimed him to be secretive, a dictator of committees.

  I felt respect for him, and was pleased that a soul of such abilities had been drawn to the sanitary cause, smiting the sinners of defective drainage. Indeed, when Moynihan spurned my drainage plan I had had hopes of eliciting Sleak-Cunningham’s help. On the one occasion I had managed to talk to him, he had even showed some interest in my notion. In the event, however, I found him to be so busy – possessing other duties in addition to his sewerage work – that it proved all but impossible to meet again. After many failed arrangements, he had written – apologizing – and suggested I instead speak to Mr George Hove, a colleague of his on the Committee who was less pressed for time.

  ‘You were, then, unaware,’ Sleak-Cunningham continued, ‘of the putrid stench that so blighted the neighbourhood that many were unable to sleep at night.’

  I glanced at the fellow. Probably he had two dozen appointments lined up for that very afternoon.

  ‘I don’t remember.’ The landlord glanced again towards the journalists.

  ‘Is there a history of amnesia within your family, perhaps?’ Sleak-Cunningham’s remark brought laughter from the other members of the Committee. Hardly had it died away when the questioner’s expression regained its seriousness, eyes fixed sharply on those of his prey. ‘I suggest you search your memory well, Mr Feines. You realize, I hope, that you can be prosecuted over these matters.’

  George Hove emerged from the chamber. ‘You wanted to speak to me, I believe.’

  ‘I hoped I might call upon your help in a few matters connected with my researches.’

  ‘I see.’ He uttered a faint sigh. ‘Is it urgent?’ Though he was of much the same age and build as Sleak-Cunningham, Hove could hardly have been more different; quite absent was Sleak-Cunningham’s intensity of eye, his strong presence in a room. Hove had the closed nature of a minor mandarin; regarding the world with prim suspicion, his demeanour as stiffly upright as an old piece of charcoal, seemingly in danger of breaki
ng into parts were he asked a disrespectful question or required to give a direct reply.

  ‘It is urgent,’ I told him. ‘I’ll be unable to continue long without some assistance, that’s certain. Nor would the help I require take much of your time. There are a couple of sewer outlets which are not easily reached, and also I believe you have some figures on flow of…’

  He cut me short with a wave of his hand. ‘Mr Jeavons, I’m much occupied presently. Perhaps you could be so kind as to send a list of what you need? I’ll do my best to attend to the matter as soon as I can.’

  An obvious tactic of delay and inaction; two of Hove’s favourite weapons. The truth of it was he loathed doing favours. He was the sort who is happiest dealing with his fellow men through the medium of lengthy forms – I sometimes imagined him communicating with his wife by such means – and it had only been by persistence that I had managed to extract any usefulness from the fellow; embarrassing him by constant harping.

  Persistence. A slow and tedious game, but what other choice was left to me? ‘I’ll send a list to reach you by tomorrow,’ I told him. ‘I’d be grateful if you could act promptly as the matter is, I assure you, of urgency.’

  Outside, the rain had grown heavy, and I glanced about for a cab. The frustration of it all. As if the value of my notion – the benefits it could bring – were not obvious to see. At times I felt as if I were a beacon of sanity on a dark night.

  Harold Sweet’s yard was in a poor district, not far from the Seven Dials, where I had encountered Katie only the day before. I stared out from the cab window at London flying by, a London of ragged figures: some reckless in the downpour, others glumly loitering, glowering at the wet. They should be pleased with such weather. Did they know what favours would drop upon them when the season turned hot? Probably not. Most were children or little older, with few grey hairs to be seen among the throng; a city of fast-ageing young, of persons barely half-grown in height, resembling midget adults with their quick looks, the swiftfound hardness of their eyes.

  Every day more tramped in to join them, from villages and small towns all across the country. For the last years they had come, most of all, from Ireland; a stream of displaced humanity fed, seemingly without limit, by the bubbling catastrophe of the potato failures. All drawn to the great metropolis, a city already heaving with the weight of its people, struggling still to digest arrivals of ten, twenty years ago. All come to test their ingenuity, their stamina, and their luck.

  Behind lurched a disjointed skyline, buildings seeming to lean on one another, as if ready to fall at any instant. Thus had the capital grown: wildly, like some hungry forest, quite without plan. Only when the pressure of clattering vehicles so blocked the arteries as to threaten to halt its very life might the building of a road be considered, as, recently, New Oxford Street, tumbling to dust grand houses and nests of vice alike.

  Some claimed to see a grandeur in the way the city had spread, without any visible logic. How admirably different, they claimed, to the despotical capitals of Europe, where kings redrew all as they pleased, subjugating at once both architecture and citizen. I was as patriotic as any other man, but saw no cause for pride in a system that supposed matters only deserved to be righted when they had lurched into catastrophe.

  *

  Harold Sweet had the unusual distinction of having invented his own name. ‘What’s it matter to me what people call me, as long as it’s not “You lazy so-and-so”,’ he had explained at our first meeting, talking with lively energy that had left me impressed. ‘In my book it’s what you do with your life that counts, not what you were born with. I came into the world Harold Oaster, and what usefulness is there in that? Better to have a name that people will easily remember, that it may help trade. Yes, put your own name to work, why not? I sell molasses, so what more suitable than Harold Sweet.’

  It had to be said that Oaster fitted him a good deal better. Sweet, with its longer tapering vowel, struck me as being a thin man’s name, and there was little that was thin about this fellow; he resembled nothing so much as a grinning bear with clear eyes.

  Consuming of time though the warehouse project was to me, I always found pleasure in visiting his yard. It was a place of such splendid activity; carts being loaded and unloaded, barrels of molasses stacked into piles or opened up that their contents might be inspected, the substance itself filling the air with its sickly scent, and causing the ground to be sticky underfoot. The spot seemed to breathe enterprise and the creation of wealth. It was a true reflection of its master.

  Sweet spotted me as I walked in through the gates, waving cheerily for me to join him in his office; a wooden box of a thing, with deep windows that he might always keep a good watch on his men. ‘How prompt, Mr Jeavons. I hope it’s not been trouble for you to come at such short notice, but I had to talk to you without delay.’ His broad smile, though encompassing eyebrows, cheeks, lips, dimples, and even his beard, always seemed to miss the eyes themselves, which regarded me studiously. ‘All last night I was thinking of the warehouse, and whether we’re planning it right.’

  ‘I see.’ His words struck me as ominous. If the warehouse required redesigning I would be further deprived of time to research my drainage scheme. ‘What were you concerned with?’

  He tugged thoughtfully at his beard. ‘For a start these firedousing machines. Surely two would do rather than four.’

  At least that would not be a great change. ‘Is that wise? Molasses can go up in a mighty blaze.’

  A man who relished a dispute, Sweet grinned, seemingly enlarged behind his desk; fuelled by the prospect of argument. ‘It’ll light, certainly, but it’s no tar or hemp. Thorough precautions would surely be adequate. Or do you disagree?’

  I shrugged; it was his warehouse, his molasses, after all. ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘I am, Mr Jeavons.’

  To be in the presence of the man was to be struck by the compelling nature of his character. The fellow was well known as a self-created success. He had begun with his father’s grocery business, a modest enterprise no larger than my own father’s watch repair in Clerkenwell – like my own, his speech still possessed a remnant of shopman’s twang – but had managed steadily to increase sales, until able to open a further shop. By then he had begun specializing in molasses above other goods, and, on opening a third shop, found himself in a position to make his own arrangements with importers; leasing the yard and himself distributing to other traders. Now he intended to go further still; to take up an interest in a small dock in Rotherhithe, build a warehouse, and import molasses in his own right, direct from the West Indies.

  Nor did he apply his talents only to molasses. He had become quite a figure in the government of Westminster, having taken on the duties of a Poor Law Guardian for the parish; overseeing local medical arrangements, and the workhouse for the paupers. Admirable achievements, without doubt. Indeed, he had the reputation of being no less zealous in his management of the poor than he was in pursuing his own business concerns.

  ‘Another question, Mr Jeavons.’ He had placed before us a sketch I had done of the likely frontage of the building. ‘Have we enough windows here?’

  It was hardly an enquiry I had been expecting. It also threatened a considerable amount of extra work as I had all but completed my fair copy of the design. ‘You feel it will not be sufficiently imposing?’

  ‘Imposing?’ He smiled at my foolishness. ‘Mr Jeavons, you should know me better than to say such things. No, my concern is that it will be too dark inside.’

  ‘Too dark for the labourers to see?’

  This guess amused the fellow hardly less than my previous one. ‘Not at all. Too dark for them to be seen.’ He rested his hands upon the table. ‘It’s not a little important in this business. Have the building full of dark corners and they’ll be up to all manner of tricks. Slipping molasses into their pockets to steal, or just swallowing it down their throats on the spot. No, the structure must be properly light.’
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  I glanced at the sketch, trying to think of objections that would deter the man. ‘It would add to the cost.’

  ‘How much? No more, surely, than I would save on the two fire-dousing machines.’

  I shook my head. ‘That I couldn’t say. I’d have to study the whole matter in detail.’

  He was not so easily put off. ‘When can you let me know? Tomorrow?’

  Tomorrow I had more than a full day’s work already planned, as well as a determination to visit the Committee for Sewers that I might again apply pressure to Hove. ‘I’d say it’d take at least a few days.’

  ‘A few days?’ He frowned. ‘Mr Jeavons, I can’t afford to have this project delayed.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry but I can’t see a way of having it done sooner. I’m very busy at the moment.’

  ‘Busy?’ Again he seemed to swell at the prospect of battle. ‘Are we not all busy men, Mr Jeavons. I administer this company – not such a small one, you may observe – I have a family, and lately I’ve also taken on the task of Poor Law Guardian for the Parish – I’ll be busier still if the Cholera comes – but, as far as I’m aware, none of my duties has been neglected.’ He studied me for a moment, as a general anticipating an easy campaign. ‘Now let us examine how busy you are. You’re not, I believe, engaged on any other project for Mr Moynihan.’

  I met his look. ‘Not for Mr Moynihan. But I’m working on a scheme of my own. A new system for the drainage of all London, to present to the competition of the Metropolitan Committee for Sewers.’

  ‘Drains?’ He frowned, surprised. Perhaps he had imagined that, as Moynihan’s son-in-law, I was of a lazy disposition and had won my place through nepotism. ‘And Mr Moynihan’s not involved?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Having suffered this setback in his original campaign, he changed to a new line of attack. ‘A scheme for the Committee for Sewers, eh? I imagine they’ll be all for increasing the burden on honest ratepayers to pay for the business.’ He regarded me knowingly. ‘But then perhaps you see no harm in working for such people?’