Sweet Thames

by Matthew Kneale

  With time I adapted my room to offer the little comfort I required. The bed had collapsed without delay – perhaps suffering from the additional weight of the drainage plan within the mattress – and I left it so, finding it more stable than when raised up upon its legs. It mattered little anyhow, as I used it seldom enough; I had not regained the gift of easy sleeping, and spent many of the sultry night-time hours not even attempting rest, but seated at a kind of desk I had rigged up by the window, fashioned from all manner of broken bricks and pieces of scrap wood, precariously supporting the table top.

  There I would work, copying my drainage plan by candlelight, sometimes pausing to peer through the telescope. I had arranged this on a tripod, so it was never far from my eye, pointed at the street corner below. Even in the darkness I would sometimes stare through the instrument, in the unlikely hope of seeing her face – lit perhaps by some lamp she might be carrying – pass before the glass, brought into clarity.

  It was with little enthusiasm that I found myself embarked, after an especially long absence, upon the way to Lark Road, one sultry afternoon. Conscience had driven me thither, that I might be certain no letter lay waiting there for me; an unlikely prospect, in view of her last communication, promising to be gone from my life for ever. I expected to find nothing except the empty blankness that was so familiar.

  I was to be surprised. Not by some envelope lain upon the hallway floor, my name upon its cover, but by a discovery of quite another order.

  Somebody had been living there.

  The kitchen was the room the intruder had chosen as dwelling place. A number of anonymous rags had been formed into something like a bed while the oven fire was made up and ready to light. Inspecting this last I saw the grate had been filled with all manner of pieces of wood – more was stacked in piles, each formed with remarkable neatness – much of which I recognized. There were the legs of an old stool – one so rotten it was far beyond selling – as well as the cracked headboard of Miss Symes’s old bed, and lengths of picture rails and skirting-boards, these last torn from the very fabric of the house, Irish fashion. Glancing about I saw the wounds left by such vandalism, and the tool with which it had likely been achieved; the iron handle of an old pot – one long been severed from its vessel – that had a flattened end where it had once been affixed, sharp enough to gouge wood from plaster.

  The landlords from whom I had rented the house would hardly be pleased. Though it was of little enough concern to me now. My thoughts were drawn, rather, to the mystery of what soul had been there, and whether they would return.

  The poverty of life pointed towards some tramp who had found the house empty. He would have gained access with ease, as, the house containing nothing, I had long ceased to lock the back door. A strange kind of tramp, however. The leavings were so tidy; not only were the piles of wood arranged with care, the rags that made up the bed were drawn up into a perfect rectangle, with the old hallway rug – a ghastly old thing – rolled up to form a kind of pillow.

  It was not long before I found evidence of a more instructive kind. Beside the sink were four written lists. A literate tramp, then. Examining them, I found myself wondering, with a beating heart, if the writing was not Isobella’s. Certainly it bore more than a slight resemblance. But though the style was familiar, it seemed more hurried than hers; the letters wilder, and less carefully formed.

  Besides, I reflected, how could it be? She was not sleeping on beds of rags. She was away gallivanting with some son of the nobility. Indeed, with half the wealthy lechers of London. Surely.

  Each list was dated at the top and, between them, they covered some ten days, the most recent being of less than one week passed. All described only foods, and these always of the cheapest of kinds and in the smallest of quantities. With them were also calculations, whose purpose was not exactly clear to me, although they seemed always to be juggling with the same meagre sums. The pencil with which they had been written still lay near by; little more than a blunt stub.

  The paper was in the form of mere scraps, formed, it appeared, from some larger piece I had myself discarded and left; probably because some blemish left it unworthy of imprinting upon it my drainage plan. The letters and figures were so small that it was only on a second inspection that I discovered the messages hidden among them; messages doubtless intended only for the writer’s own eyes. Tight wedged between a long division sum of days, shillings and pennies, and amounts of potatoes and swedes, was spelled WHY CAN HE NOT LEAVE ME ALONE? Nor was this the only one. Lodged in a corner, beneath four ounces of potatoes and three carrots, I discerned, in letters uncertain and tiny: KILLING THING.

  There was no sign that the visitor might return: in fact quite the opposite was true. Perched high upon a cupboard I found a sad collection of vegetables and such that exactly corresponded to those of the final list. They must have been left there in the warm air for some days, as already most of them were discoloured and spoiled; a great loss considering the care with which their purchase seemed to have been planned and recorded. Nor was this the only indication that the intruder had left in a hurry. The back door stood open, swinging in the hot breeze.

  Some miserable vagrant, almost certainly. Still I resolved not to again leave such a long interval before my next visit. And I took with me the strange lists.

  Joshua Jeavons, striding triumphant into the London Docks. Joshua Jeavons, chosen from the yelling crowd of ne’er-do-wells for a full day’s work emptying ships’ cargoes. Joshua Jeavons, feeling fortune has at last shown him some favour, if of a most modest kind. Just in time, too; the coins in his pocket total only ha’penny farthing, while his belly – unfilled since breakfast time the day before – bubbles with a gnawing hunger.

  Behind, the calling foreman’s droning of names came to halt. ‘That’s all there is.’ Others had not been so lucky and were already trailing gloomily away, perhaps to wait longer, in the thin hope that some ship might drift in late.

  The glory of the London docks, depot of all the planet, destination of goods from all countries, whether frozen or tropical, whether populated by Mahommedans or Hindoos or worshippers of bears. Though it was hardly the best of mornings for me – an experienced engineer reduced to working as a casual dock labourer – still I could not but be impressed by the drama of the place.

  Thus the sheer variety of goods collected all about; here a giant stack of cork, there a yellow bin of sulphur, or a small mountain of lead-coloured copper ore. As I strode along the stone quay my feet trod one moment upon the stickiness of West Indian sugar, next on the slipperiness of Spanish oil. The air itself told of far off foreign lands; now sickening with the stench of hides from the wildlands of America, next warm with fumes of Caribbean rum, then sharp with the tang of vast stores of Mexican tobacco, or scented with the light fragrances of a shipload of coffee and spices from the Orient.

  I was directed to the rearmost part of the dock, below a large clock tower, where the foreman – an angry, skull-faced soul – barked and pointed down a stairway descending beneath the quay itself. ‘Them as is marked with a letter “O” on them is the ones. For those of yous as can’t read, that’s like a fish’s mouth, wide open. I want the lot brought up within the hour, d’you hear. Remember, like a fish’s mouth.’

  Below was a kind of misty subterranean palace of vaults, air dank with grapey spirit and dry rot. Stretching away into the distance were acres of wine hogsheads, some of which it was our task to move to the surface; I joined forces with a bearded fellow and set to work, wrestling one of the things – as awkward of shape as a lead midget – up the stairs. We had just brought it into the daylight – both perspiring in the river-damp heat – and were rolling it to join others already brought, when I heard the foreman’s voice call out.

  ‘That man, shoving the hogshead.’

  I saw he was pointing at myself.

  ‘What’s that on your back?’

  He meant, I realized, my leather sack. It had become such a regul
ar habit to carry it with me that I had picked it up without thought as I left my room that morning. Only now did I wonder if I might have been wise to bring it to a place of work. ‘It contains some documents.’

  ‘Documents my arse. You’re a thieving rascal.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’ I peeled the sack from my shoulders and pulled open the straps to extract a thick sheaf of papers, each marked with fine ink lines; the fifth copy of my drainage plan for London. What safer course, I had reasoned, than to carry one set constantly with me, wherever I might go. ‘It’s an engineering scheme. My own. I’m an experienced engineer.’

  Some of the other casuals had stopped to watch the entertainment, pleased that the day should have so promptly provided excuse for a few moments’ idling. One called out ‘Fight’, suggestively.

  The foreman plucked the plan from my hands, glowering hard. The fact that I claimed to have written it seemed, for some reason, to aggravate him rather than otherwise. ‘I don’t care if it’s the Bible in bleedin’ Hindoostani, nor if you’re King of Japan. Bags ain’t allowed, thieves neither.’

  ‘I’ve stolen nothing.’ I guessed it was already well too late; the way the man stared at the pages, eyes angrily unseeing, made me all but sure that – despite his proud descriptions of the letter ‘O’ as resembling a fish’s mouth – he could not read. A piece of bad luck for me.

  ‘It’s got no business bein’ on this ’ere quay. And neither ’as you, mister.’ Sure enough, try as I might, there was no arguing with him. The matter was decided.

  I was not allowed to leave through the main gate, but was flung out, without ceremony, through a small side exit that led directly on to the river bank, my sack – laboriously searched lest I had already smuggled into it some exotic tropical goods – hurled after me on to the mud.

  Thames slime. My shoes squelched nastily upon it, seemingly in reflection of my thoughts. To be thrown out thus, after all my struggling in the morning crowd. A lowering moment indeed. Ejected from a day’s employment I had not even wanted, but had resorted to only from hungry desperation.

  The river bank was littered with beached boats, and it was hard to discern the best way out of the quagmire. Light-headed with hunger, I clambered on to the rotted skeleton of an old skiff, that I might peer down from a point of higher vantage. Beneath the hulls to my right – rising up so steeply they resembled sleeping whales – I discerned the ground was of gravel rather than mud, and, accordingly, stepped down in that direction.

  Hunger. Should I abandon the two sovereigns sewed into the hem of my frock-coat, I wondered. A grim prospect. Or sell the telescope in my room, carefully aimed at the life of the street below. To discard either amounted, in effect, to the same change; the beginning of a surrender of hope of discovering Isobella.

  Picking my way among the boats I caught brief glimpses of the river beyond, barges floating slowly past with the tide, silent except for the cries of the crews wrestling with their long oars. It was some time since I had been so near the Thames. The stench of effluent expelled into it by the efforts of the Committee for Sewers was indeed overpowering; clear evidence of that body’s energetic labours of the previous weeks.

  Or should I write again to Moynihan? I had been unwilling before, on the grounds that to do so would amount to little more than transparent begging. Now, however, I was less troubled by such niceties. But how long would it take? I doubted I could well endure more than a couple of days more of hunger, and, what with the delay before a letter could reach him – I did not even know how often he returned from his secret work – and before his reply could come back to me…

  I had progressed some way along the river bank, still without having discerned a way on to firm land, when, stepping out from the shade of a barnacled hull – thoughts lost in dismal questions and eyes blinking in the sharp sunlight – I walked clean into a fellow marching about the far side of the boat.

  The collision all but knocked the breath from me. Regaining balance, I focused on whom I had struck; a grubby, burly sort with unusually large ears. Also winded, he clutched a stick of some kind, whose point he had stabbed into the mud to help steady himself. He glared at me with suspicious recognition.

  ‘The drain copper.’

  Behind him were two others; a towering fellow with a patch over one eye, and a flimsy-framed lad with an irked, pugnacious look upon his face. It was only seeing the three together – all wearing long greasy coats with lanterns hanging from the breast, and carrying identical poles with hoes at their ends – that I recalled their identity. They were my foes at the battle by the sewer outlet.

  ‘You’re still alive.’

  Giant Ears uttered a kind of growl. ‘Had other plans for us, did’ja?’

  The other two, close behind him, regarded me with hard stares, the lad planting the end of his pole into the mud with measured violence. Aware of the cool breeze of threat blowing, I hastened to make clear the meaning of my words, spoken so incautiously. ‘I was only worried you might’ve been struck by the Cholera.’

  One Eye watched me warily. ‘That so?’

  Remarkable. I regarded the three, as if to be sure they were indeed stood before me, and not some hallucination of hunger. How could they have survived the long season of epidemic? Did they possess, I wondered, some resistance to the poisonous effects of the miasma cloud? If so… The chance meeting could be the beginning of important discoveries.

  ‘You’ve been working the sewers all these last months?’ I asked.

  ‘What’cher want to know fer?’ demanded the lad accusingly. ‘Want to go snitchin’ on us, does yer?’

  ‘Drain copper,’ repeated Giant Ears in a murmur.

  I held up my arms that they might see the frayed cuffs of my frock-coat. ‘Do I look like police?’

  They seemed none too sure.

  ‘I’m only an engineer, a scientist if you will, eager to find ways of combating the Cholera. You could help greatly.’

  ‘A signtist?’ Giant Ears regarded me, far from convinced. ‘Why d’ja jump us that time, then?’

  I regretted having done so. ‘We let you go quick enough, did we not?’ I decided to change tack. ‘You don’t realize. Your survival this summer is remarkable. The world has much to learn from you.’

  ‘What’s so remarkiber?’ Giant Ears, though he uttered the words fiercely, betrayed in his eyes a certain interest at the thought of being essential to science. ‘Shoremen ain’t never bin took by the Cholera. Not this time, nor the last, twenty year ago.’

  Another surprise. The whole profession unaffected. I was more sure than ever that the key could lie with these people. ‘But that in itself is important. If it’s possible to discover why you’ve not been struck by sewer gases, we could gain new understanding of the malady, even find a cure.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ The lad jutted his chin into the air. ‘And what’d we git out’a all that?’

  I struggled to think of a reply. ‘You could become famous. Your names could be quoted in a hundred medical books, in twenty languages, all across the world.’

  ‘Our names?’ One Eye shook his head knowingly. ‘Then they’d ’ave it writ down we’d bin in the shores – sewers as you calls ’em – which ain’t allowed. We’d all be hauled off ta gaol.’

  A ridiculous notion, but somehow the discussion seemed to have reached a point of hingeing on nothing else. The three of them glanced at me, expectant, and I searched my thoughts for some solution. ‘You could give other names,’ I suggested. ‘And only tell the truth to those you trust.’

  ‘Jest tell them we likes?’ The notion seemed to appeal to the three, and they exchanged glances, if not thoroughly won over, at least satisfied for the moment. ‘Well then,’ pronounced One Eye, who seemed to be senior amongst them. ‘So what d’ya want?’

  The answers to questions; legions of them. Where did they work and for how long, their ways of traversing the tunnels, the garments they wore, whether they used some special means of breathing, and more. To g
ive them credit, the three replied freely enough, and I soon gained a most detailed picture of their habits. Nothing I learned, however, brought me any closer to feeling I had solved the mystery.

  A disappointment indeed. Especially after all my sudden hopes.

  ‘When we gonna be faimis, then?’ demanded the lad, with the air of one who has already been kept waiting too long. ‘How come we’s not all dead then?’

  I shrugged unhappily. ‘I’m sorry. I just don’t know.’

  The lad scowled, while Giant Ears yawned in the manner of one who had guessed the matter would be of no purpose.

  One Eye plucked up his pole. ‘Come on lads. We’ve spent enough time playin’ at this. Let’s be on our way.’

  A thought occurred to me. ‘Are you going on an expedition into the sewers now?’

  One Eye frowned. ‘What if we is?’

  Despite my hunger, it was an opportunity not to be missed. ‘Can I join you? I’ll surely discover something if I can watch you at work.’

  The three were doubtful, and it was all I could do to assure them they could suffer no harm from my presence. ‘Even if I was a spy – which I’m clearly not – I could hardly arrest the three of you by myself.’

  ‘All right,’ One Eye agreed, cautiously. ‘But if yer cross us, don’t think yer won’t be looked for, and found, and smashed right proper.’

  Thus I found myself an apprentice scavenger of the sewers, walking with my new – and strange – teachers in the warm summer morning air. The river was low with drought, the sun had baked much of the sliminess from the mud, and the going along the bank was not hard; before long we reached the outlet chosen.

  ‘You’d best take your boots off,’ One Eye suggested as we stood before the entrance. ‘Easier, it is.’

  They were each of them barefoot, so his advice was doubtless sound, but still it was not without squeamishness that I removed my boots and socks – hiding them beneath a beached log – and placed my bare feet in the ooze.