Sweet Thames

by Matthew Kneale

  The open sewers upon raised embankments – or ‘Artificial Rivers’ – are intended to grace the Thames, and all London, not only with great practical advantages, but also with all the noble elegance befitting our leading city. The colonnades will call to mind the soaring splendour of our cathedrals, the finery of our great country houses. Indeed, these constructions will be the envy of the modern world, raising London, at one stroke, to the status of not only the largest and cleanest, but also stateliest city of this earth…

  Grand intentions, no doubt, but what of the question of expense. Mile upon mile of marble would not be lightly accepted by the ratepayers. In addition, by carrying the effluent downriver – to a giant processing station – a great part of the valuable elements would, to reach the rural hinterland, have to be transported all the way back from whence it had come, adding to costs and reducing profits.

  Surely the Metropolitan Committee for Sewers would see the advantages of my own Effluent Transformational Depositories over these lavish and ill-conceived designs. By placing the depositories all across the vastness of the city, transport to farms surrounding the capital would be reduced to the minimum. The scheme would not be unduly expensive to create and, once established, could be administered locally; each parish would oversee the running of its depositories, and claim, without danger of divisive argument, those profits earned. The inhabitants, indeed, would have the daily pleasure of seeing their own depository, in their very midst, and of witnessing its quiet work; their own parish gold mine.

  While the report did not alarm me, it nevertheless suggested action I realized it would be unwise of me to neglect. These rival notions would now be under discussion, and, consequently, it was proper that I should try to bring attention to my own idea.

  I would write, I decided, a letter to The Times, briefly setting forth my proposal. The time was ripe, after all, as the successful research of the previous few days had done much to answer possible difficulties. It was a long shot, of course. There was no certainty that it would be printed, nor, if it were, that it would chance to catch the notice of men of influence.

  If only I could explain my notions directly to Sleak-Cunningham. It was he, after all, who would be the main judge of the contest.

  The man was so infernally busy.

  I had a thought. I recalled he had, despite his thin form and pallid face, quite a reputation as a gourmand. Perhaps he could be enticed. A dinner. If I were to have printed some grandly formal invitations, they would give an impression of splendid dishes and wines. Certainly it was worth attempting.

  Nor would I invite only Sleak-Cunningham and his wife. The Hoves, too, should be asked. And why not Sweet as well. Both were involved in the matter, after all. Sleak-Cunningham and Sweet; they might even be surprised how much – through the medium of my scheme – they had in common.

  Isobella, I was pleased to discover, seemed taken with the notion, putting down her embroidery to listen. ‘A dinner? But what a good idea. We’ve never held one before.’

  I realized it was true.

  ‘I’d need to clean out the house thoroughly. And we’d probably have to hire a servant to help, at least for the evening.’ As she spoke, thoughts running ahead of her words and causing her moments of bright confusion, I again found my glance lingering on the soft protrusions of her breasts. My attention must have troubled her, as her excited planning soon died away.

  *

  Katie’s skin was as pale as could be, except for those parts exposed to the light during her long hours loitering the streets – her hands, face and neck – which were sun-burned with an exactness as if dipped in dye of a light red-brown.

  ‘Katie does like t’ave a proper gent visiting.’

  She had become almost a habit in the preceding weeks. Although after each encounter I decided – as that afternoon, reaching across for my shirt – that I should never return to her squalid room, a few days usually proved enough for the remembrance of her skinny form to regain, in my imagination, an alluring enchantment.

  She stopped the progress of my arm, opening up the fingers that clutched the shirt so it almost fell from my grasp. ‘You ’as ever sich soft hands, ’Enry. So smooth an’ that. Doctor, is yer?’

  ‘Engineer.’ I freed my fingers, that I might slip the garment over my head.

  ‘Ingineer?’ The discovery seemed to please her. ‘What a lark, eh? All them rileways an’ that.’ She lay back, drawing up her legs and resting her hand casually – temptingly – beside the curls of her lower hair. ‘Sure you wanna take yerself off in sich an ’urry, now?’

  ‘I really must go.’

  ‘As you like.’ She watched as I attached the collar. ‘Work round ’ere, you does, I suppose?’

  ‘In Westminster.’ Even from where I sat I could detect the fine scent of her parts.

  She nodded approvingly. ‘Very nice. Seein’ all them prime ministers goin’ past an’ sich.’ She mused for a moment on the notion. ‘Live round there, too, does yer?’

  ‘Further away.’ I pulled on my trousers.

  Rolling herself on to her front, kicking her legs idly in the air, she glanced up at me with a playing look. ‘Where?’

  ‘Pimlico.’

  She uttered a squeal of recognition. ‘I bin down there.

  Which street then?’

  Her questions were growing irritating. It was not the first time I had found myself annoyed by the endless chatter. ‘Does it matter?’

  She shrugged, a touch put out. ‘Only askin’, weren’t I.’ Climbing up from the bed, she stretched, arms high in the air, extraordinarily naked. ‘Sure you don’t want to stay a bit longer?’

  I was not sure.

  It was only later, after I had finally left, that it occurred to me to wonder at her curiosity. Merely my over-tired imagination? Perhaps. Still I was pleased that I had thought, during my visit, to give her a false name.

  THE CHOLERA: A CHLOROFORM CURE

  Dear sir,

  I find myself in a position to recommend to your readers a most valuable means of overcoming the horror of the Asiatic Cholera. A wine glass should be filled to the brim with brandy, to which should be added ten drops of chloroform, this mixture to be administered to the sufferer without delay, and repeated, in identical quantities until the symptoms of the malady have quite disappeared. The type of brandy used is not of great import, although a French variety, of quality, is naturally to be preferred…

  I sat up sharply, pulse racing, skin moistened with perspiration. Slowly the study furniture came into view all around, surprising in its familiarity, reassuring.

  The dreams had become ever more regular in occurrence; indeed, of late I had sometimes been troubled with several in a single night. This last, however, had been different from its predecessors. Though the weapon had been the same, the victim had not been my wife. This time the nightmare – still haunting me with its lingering alarm – had been my murderous assassination of Albert Farre.

  I got to my feet, pondering the change. An improvement? Perhaps, though it hardly seemed a great one.

  Stepping across to the door, I found it fastened shut. Foolish of me to have forgotten. Lately I had been subject to such strong fears that I might sleep-walk – though never had I done so before – and might, in unconsciousness, do some terrible deed, that I had omitted no precaution.

  I lit a candle, retrieved the key from its hiding place beneath a chunk of coal in the fireplace, and made my way downstairs. To be out of the study had a calming effect, and for some time I sat at the kitchen table, munching at carrots left over from dinner. Would a sleep-walker be outwitted, I wondered, by devices he himself had taken when awake? Would I have known where the key was hid? Quite a philosopher’s riddle.

  Whatever the case I could hardly allow this state of affairs to continue. Thus I thought as I crept back past my wife’s door – as silently as I was able, that I would not wake her – to my study. Mere nightmares they might be, but they were interfering with my sleep,
even threatening to dislocate my concentration upon the drainage plan.

  If I could only discover the sender of the malicious letter, surely the whole problem might be overcome.

  This thought remained well alive in me the next morning. Sat at my desk at the office, I scrutinized the faces all about, watching for anyone acting strangely towards me. Several times I caught the eye of Farre, and found myself embarrassed by his beakily friendly nod. How would he look if he knew of my dreams of the previous night?

  At least my work on Sweet’s warehouse was progressing well enough. My plan of the building might not have been the neatest of its kind – a failing I set down to my troubled sleep – but it was approaching completion, while Sweet had been well content with my costings of the project with more windows.

  Glancing up, I saw Gerald Prowse rapidly looking away, as if in pretence at not having been observing me. This was the second time I had caught him doing so. I waited, keeping my head bowed, as if in deep study of the plan before me, while my eye kept watch on his part of the room. Sure enough, after only a few moments he was again peering at me. With a strangeness of expression, too. I looked up and once more his gaze sped away.

  Gerald Prowse? It seemed hardly likely that he would be the perpetrator of such vicious behaviour. He was no more than a lad; still in the midst of his apprenticeship, and – being a little lacking in sharpness – frequently the butt of jokes and deceptions by his elders.

  But could one be sure? I would keep a close watch on the boy.

  Always to press forward, countering each obstacle in one’s path, never to look back or falter; this was the only way to conduct oneself. At least so I believed that summer, with the fervour of a fanatical Mohammedan.

  A wind-blown day in late spring, the breeze chasing clouds across the sky, one moment throwing houses, pavement, passing carriages all into shadow, the next lighting them up with a brief taste of warming sunshine. Thus I recall the afternoon when, with much trepidation, I approached Trowbridge Street, that I might ask Moynihan for his daughter’s hand.

  It seemed as if the whole world were somehow apprised of my intention, my feelings. Was there not a knowingness in Barrett the butler’s glance as he ushered me inside? And was it chance that, as I fidgeted in the waiting-room, the footman happened to be striding past carrying a pot and peered in, and the silent maidservant happened to be creeping by clutching a tea set and also peered in?

  And Moynihan himself?

  On my second visit to the house there had been no sign of him, though I thought I heard his step, echoing from some recess of the house. When I asked Isobella if it were indeed her father, she had been vague. ‘Possibly. I’m not sure if he’s at home this afternoon.’

  The encounter had proved a disappointing one. After all my hopes and trepidations of previous days, I had found Isobella distant, even formal, speaking – often with that glimmering agitation I had observed before – only on subjects of general interest, and always in a voice loud enough for the maid to hear every syllable. I wondered if she had come to regret her earlier enthusiasm, and it was with some uncertainty that, rising to my feet, I asked if I might visit again.

  She reduced her voice to hardly more than a whisper. ‘The weather’s growing so much brighter now. Perhaps it would be nice to walk in the park.’ It was with her eyes that she suggested I should not tell her father.

  Thus I found myself leading a strangely divided life. On Sunday afternoons I would meet Isobella at the end of the lake in St James’s and we would take a stroll. These occasions could not have been more proper – she would not even allow me to grasp her hand – but possessed a finely charged quality nevertheless. Likewise, though we spoke little except of light matters, the very secrecy of our rendezvous implied an intimacy between us, a sense of decisions silently agreed.

  During the week I continued to work phrenetically on the plans of the Elfield to Gizbee, often in the company of Moynihan. Neither he nor I made any mention of his daughter, but I was all but certain he knew something; the servants would surely have commented on my second appearance for tea. Also I was sure I sensed subtle changes in his behaviour towards me. His manner, though still distant, seemed more intense, the heaviness of his silence more weighty.

  Twelve Sunday walks. That was all that it took. With each my pleasure at her arrival – always a few minutes late – grew deeper. With each I found enhanced my wonderment that such a graceful – and head-turning – creature should choose to spend time with me. Ever more urgent was my desire – resisted – to embrace her, and dispel that nervous tautness about her lips. Greater, too, was my fear that, next Sunday, she would not come.

  Our twelfth Sunday. She was late, far more so then before, and it was the alarm this caused in me that prompted my proposal; tipping the balance between fear of asking, and fear of not. She too seemed agitated; perhaps she guessed my dilemma. For a time we walked in silence. Then I led her away from the promenading crowds beside the lake, and we stood beneath a horse chestnut tree, raining freshgrown leaves and white explosions of blossom. I took her hand, hardly able to look her in the eye.

  ‘Isobella, will you marry me?’

  Her reply took me aback. She almost laughed. ‘But of course.’

  It was she who suggested I write formally to her father requesting a private interview. She would hardly listen to my nervousness of Moynihan’s response.

  ‘My father was a watch-maker. That may not matter to you, but…’

  ‘Just do it, Joshua. Have trust in me.’

  The next day I wrote to Moynihan. My apprehension abated somewhat when, the following morning, I received a reply inviting me to visit him at home the following Saturday. Then he must know, I reasoned. Doubtless he had known all along. Much pleased that the air could be cleared at last, I sought him out at the office that I might accept his invitation and offer my thanks. He silenced my effusion with a raised hand.

  ‘We’ll speak on Saturday. Now I’d be grateful if you’d address yourself to the matter of the gradient of the line at Silmoor.’

  Most of all I wanted to speak to Isobella. Our weekly meetings allowed for no such spontaneity of arrangement, however. Thus my life at work continued for some days within the same tight atmosphere of things unsaid and uncertain that it had before. Until, on that wind-blown afternoon, I found myself being deposited in the waiting-room by Barrett the butler, his face so knowing.

  ‘Mr Moynihan will see you in the library.’

  Strange of him to choose the same room where I had searched for Hall’s field book, which was neither grand nor comfortable. I found him standing behind the single table, so that I had to step through the narrow gap between it and the wall to shake his hand, causing a chair to scrape upon the wooden floor.

  ‘You wished to speak to me, Mr Jeavons?’

  For the previous few days I had thought of little except phrases I might use at this moment. Now it was come upon me, I found myself robbed of any suitable means of broaching the subject. How could one, when, except in my own near-certain suppositions, the man did not even know I had met his daughter. Should I begin by admitting I had been regularly seeing her, deceiving him by omission? All etiquette seemed to run short of the situation.

  ‘You did wish to speak to me?’

  ‘I did.’ The words came at last. ‘The truth of it is, the matter concerns your daughter and…’ A vain final search for some proper phrase. ‘I’d like to marry her.’

  ‘You would?’ He showed no surprise, more an exasperation. ‘Mr Jeavons…’ He recovered. ‘I thank you for your offer, Mr Jeavons, but I’m afraid I am unable to accept.’

  The reply caught me quite off balance. ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘I do not see it as a suitable match.’

  ‘But sir…’ I stared at the man, trying to comprehend his thinking. His words had given away so little. ‘I know this is a momentous step in the life of your daughter. I realize the concern you feel for her welfare, all the stronger, no doubt
, for her being your only child, but…’

  He interrupted, shaking his head. ‘Mr Jeavons, I’ve given you my answer.’

  I could not stop. ‘Have you talked with her? D’you know her views? I’ll be as good a husband as could be desired, you must believe me. The affection I feel…’

  He turned towards the door. ‘Please don’t go on.’

  ‘You disapprove of my background? Is that not it? You worry I’ll not be worthy of her? But I’ll make myself worthy of her. I’ll work hard, I’ll…’

  A fierce glimmer of restrained anger showed through the man. ‘I have no doubt you will, Mr Jeavons, but that’s not the issue. I have spoken. This interview is over.’

  The hallway was empty – the footman and maidservant had doubtless made themselves well scarce when they heard raised voices – as I strode towards the front door. Barrett darted out from some recess with my hat and coat and abruptly I found myself in the bright spring afternoon once more, still half numbed to what had occurred. I began walking, my pace slowing as the consequences of the interview began to make themselves properly felt.

  All lost in a single moment. All those months of hope, of mad excitement. Already it seemed worse than foolish to have imagined any other outcome were possible; to have led myself down a path towards such pain.

  I was some hundred yards down the street before I heard footsteps clattering behind me. It was Isobella. ‘Joshua?’

  ‘You know…?’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked, more than anything, scared. ‘Wait here for me. Don’t leave, whatever you do.’

  I can only say I have never known such waiting. Joshua Jeavons, bubbling as a pot with the lid too tight, trying not to let himself hope, trying vainly to force his thoughts into some kind of blank doze. Joshua Jeavons, unable to help himself constantly staring at the house, from tapping the railings beside him with the frequency of an operator of the electric telegraph.