The Great Stink

by Clare Clark

  As the uproar subsided around him Tom looked down at his hands. They had gripped the wall of the pit so hard that its sharp edge had scored two long grooves along the balls of his thumbs. His palms glittered with sweat.

  'Look who's here. Enjoy the fight?'

  Brassey stood at Tom's elbow, his hands caressing his stomach and his feet neatly arranged in a V Behind him the boy flung the corpses by their tails into a corner.

  'Your rats didn't exactly put up a resistance, though, did they?' Brassey sneered. 'May as well've lain down and cut their own throats for all the trouble they gave that 'un. If you think I'm paying a penny apiece for —'

  Brassey broke off, his attention distracted by a commotion in the doorway. Immediately his little eyes grew round and bright and the scowl on his face melted into a treacly smile. Pushing Tom aside, he scurried to greet the newcomers.

  'Captain,' he declared, skittish as a girl. 'I am glad to see you, my dear friend. And you, sir,' he added to a second, unfamiliar, gentleman. 'We've some right pretty performers for you tonight. Are you set to wager?'

  The Captain nodded impatiently, craning over Brassey's shoulder towards the pit. He was a thickset man of middling age, with dark whiskers crowding in on his slit of a mouth. He had the sneering look of a man accustomed to issuing unreasonable commands but otherwise he gave no indication of military association, wearing not a captain's uniform but a black coat over a high and stiffly starched collar that seemed from the irritable jut of his chin and the scarlet flush of his complexion to be causing him considerable discomfort. His friend's collar was higher and stiffer still but his neck was so thin and his face so narrow that it seemed he could have slid it on without untying the knot of his stock.

  Brassey led them over to their box, his head bowed so low Tom wouldn't have been surprised if his forehead'd borne the imprint of his buttons. The Captain made no remark upon the box provided for his comfort. Instead he flung himself into one of the carvers, his feet slung over the pit's wall, and abruptly demanded that the dogs be brought to him for his inspection. He examined them closely, his eyes half-closed against the smoke from his cigar. One man wished to sell him a bulldog and he looked at this one particularly closely, holding out the lighted end of his cigar to the animal; the dog sniffed and recoiled with a yelp of pain. The Captain smiled.

  'Chuck him in,' he commanded.

  'He'll pay all of a fortune for a champion, that one,' muttered a voice next to Tom. It was the mole man from the parlour. 'Mad for the sport, 'e is. Never seen 'im when he don't drop more in a wager 'an us reg'lar coves sees inside a year.'

  The Captain clearly did not consider the bulldog a champion. The dog was given only minutes before the Captain waved a hand to dismiss it from the ring. Brassey scuttled off to fetch the next competitor. There was strong support amongst the Fancy for this dog, a fierce little terrier barely larger than the rats he set about, and a roar set up about the room the moment its whining was heard on the stairs. Tom had thought to put a shilling or two on this one himself but he was suddenly weary. His head ached. By the time the dog was set in the ring the clamour was louder than Tom could stand. In his box the Captain leaned forward and placed his elbows on the wall of the pit, sucking greedily at his cigar. Tom slipped out.

  Outside in the darkened alley there was a thin wind blowing. It was cold. Tom shivered and thrust his hands into his pockets. He had gone near as far as Compton-street before he fancied he was being followed. He turned around. The pink-eyed dog dropped into a sitting position behind him, its chewed tail making patterns in the dust. It made no sound but it stared hopefully up at Tom in the darkness. A frayed loop of rope trailed from its neck. Tom looked at the dog. From Compton-street he could hear the shrill and splintered owl-shrieks of a woman hurling curses. Slowly he pulled one hand from his pocket and let it hang loosely at his side, the fingers uncurled. The dog watched him, its pink eyes travelling down his arm to his hand, and then back up again. Its erect ear quivered in the breeze. And then, quite silently, it got to its feet, took three careful steps towards Tom and placed its muzzle in the palm of Tom's hand. It was a good fit. They stood like that for some time, the dog's whiskers stitched between Tom's fingers. Then Tom bent and picked up the rope and together they made their way homeward.

  V

  The war against Russia was expected to last no more than a month or two. As troops from across the country massed in Southampton, their brilliant uniforms and glittering ornaments the incarnation of the majesty of war, the newspapers thrilled with accounts of heroic battles at the seat of war on the Danube, and the triumphs of the Napoleonic Wars were trumpeted gloriously down the decades. Crowds paraded the streets delirious with excitement, intoxicated with national pride.

  In the doctor's house in Clapham Polly went placidly about her duties, her freckled cheeks dimpling as easily as ever to accommodate her wide smile. She had little idea of where William had been dispatched and certainly none of the reasons for the war he was fighting, but she knew that it had been his duty to go and that, when it was over, he would return to her. Polly had always had a knack for contentment. She had no capacity to dwell upon unpleasant things; it was not in her nature. Her life had not been without its hardships — her farmer father had died when she was a child, leaving the family penniless and requiring her to abandon her schooling and go into service before her eleventh birthday — but it had never taught her the habits of anxiety or introspection and she refused to learn them. There was no purpose in wishing night was day. William would return home in good time. Meanwhile she had a comfortable position in a kind household, she was fond of the children and she sang as she tidied the nursery, laughing with unfeigned pleasure at the perfect fury on the painted face of a toy soldier, the lopsided solemnity of a stuffed rabbit's button eyes. The unfathomable gravity of seriousness never failed to touch and amuse her.

  She had always laughed at William's seriousnesses too, smoothing away the lines from his forehead with her hand and standing on tiptoes to kiss his lip where it caught between his teeth until he laughed too and took her in his arms. With her, he told her, one finger tracing the curve of her cheek, he could never be unhappy for long. If she had not silenced him with a kiss he would have told her more. He would have told that with her he stepped out of himself, leaving behind, like a chrysalis, the grocer's son with two left feet who took things too much to heart. That with her he forgot that life was unpredictable and cruel, that fathers died and fortunes changed so that everything that had once seemed certain was all of a sudden beyond your reach. He forgot that he'd promised himself to be careful, to always stand apart and alone where the ground was solid and familiar and moulded like old shoes into the shapes of his feet. With Polly he forgot he had feet at all. He spun and somersaulted through the days with her, so dizzy with astonished joy that upside-down felt much the same as right-way-up. He felt as though he had flung open a window in the middle of winter to find summer sprawled upon the lawn. Her warmth seeped into him like sunshine. For Polly's part, William's thoughtful gravity made her feel safe. Although she could never have turned the feelings into thoughts or words, she understood somehow that the weight of him tethered her like the ropes that secured the hot-air balloon above the pleasure gardens at Cremorne. He would never let her drift away.

  Every morning in the month after William's departure Polly sang as she tidied the sunny nursery and readied the children for the day. And every morning a cold sweat gathered on her forehead and beneath her arms and sickness tumbled giddily in her belly until she vomited into the basin set ready on the washstand. When George remarked with some distaste upon this ritual to his father, the doctor had summoned Polly to his study. Her conduct was inexcusable, he told her sternly, but while he sincerely hoped that she felt ashamed before him and before God, there were things that might be done. The doctor had long specialized in those particulars of medicine peculiar to the female sex and he had established something of a reputation, amongst those who knew,
for assisting ladies who found themselves in positions of difficulty. He was willing to offer Polly such assistance.

  But Polly had politely refused. She was certain things would come out well. It would be months before the baby showed. When the war was over, and everyone said it must soon be over, William would come home. They would marry and the baby would be born. They would be happy. Beyond this she did not allow herself to think. At night she sat beside the fire in the nursery, her mending untouched in her lap, and smiled into the stuffed rabbit's anxious face. She knew that she was taking a terrible risk, that having the child could be ruinous, but she knew it vaguely, as she knew from the globe in the children's nursery that the earth was not flat but round, without having the least instinct for it.

  It was a beautiful summer. In the long pale-blue evenings before she put them to bed, Polly sat with the children, one in the curve of each arm, and told them of the life that she and William would share together when he returned. Her caramel eyes softened with conviction as she described the home they would live in together once he was free from the army, the flowered china they would eat from, the names they would give to their children. The doctor's children listened, their faces rapt. Their previous nursemaid had favoured stories of an instructive bent, such as the tale of the girl who, unable to reach a shelf, had trodden on the big family Bible, fallen and died of her injuries. There were no lessons in Polly's tales. The children would demand again and again to be told the story of how Polly and William met in Kew Gardens, even though they themselves had been present. They could not get enough of the shy young man with the botany books who had stopped to help George free his hoop from a bush, flushing awkwardly when Polly had thanked him for his kindness. They laughed gleefully at the suggestion that, smitten with love for the pretty nursemaid, he had secretly followed them into the Great Conservatory and at last summoned the courage to approach them and to stammer out his name. Indeed they were so fond of that part of the story that they had chosen to quite forget that it was Alice who had first spotted him sketching in the tropical glasshouse and pounced upon him, dragging a reluctant William over to join their party and insisting that he show them the precise and beautiful illustrations in his journal.

  'And then George said, "By the way —"'

  'Polly!' protested Alice. 'You said you wouldn't skip.'

  Polly grinned.

  'All right, madam, keep your hair on. So I says to him, "The children's always telling me I'm a right ignoramus when it comes to flowers," and he says, "I only know about them because I had a good teacher." And I says back, "Perhaps you could teach me?" and he says, "Oh yes!" all in a rush and then, "If you liked," all gentlemanly only a bit too late and then he blushes scarlet, right to the roots of his golden hair.'

  Alice clapped her hands together.

  'That's right. And then George said, "By the way her name's Polly" and he said —'

  She looked at George, the laughter already beginning, and together they chorused, '"Polygalaceae."'

  When the children had giggled William had been covered in confusion. He had never meant to say it out loud. It was just that the name Polly had set him thinking, first of Polygonaceae, the dock family, and then Polygalaceae, the milkworts. Both short and tough, herbs that flourished on heaths and waste ground, but the milkwort flower was surprisingly dainty, the delicate white corolla peeping from the bell-shaped flower like lace-edged petticoats. Polly had broad strong shoulders and wide-set eyes, caramel brown and dusted with golden flecks like pollen, but her waist and her wrists were fine and neat. She had smelled of rumpled bedclothes and grass and salt and, very faintly, of carbolic soap.

  It was Polly who suggested that William call for her at the doctor's house on her afternoon off. After that they spent every Sunday afternoon together, although Polly resisted with blithe determination William's early attempts to teach her a little of botany. She refused to see a flower as an arrangement of calyx, corolla, stamens and the rest, to be classified and noted along with the particularities of their habitat and distribution, its likely flowering time and frequency. She said such dry examination spoiled a simple pleasure. For Polly a flower was a thing of passing beauty to be pounced upon and plucked and placed behind one ear in the here and now of a hot summer afternoon until its petals wilted against a creamy cheek and its fragrance mixed with the scent of hair and the salty bedroom smell of skin. Then William's heart pressed so hard against his ribs he was certain it would snap them like matchsticks. Against such an argument his books made only the faintest of impressions. They remained unopened. Instead he walked with Polly along the banks of the river, their hands clasped, and, while she held her face up to the sky like a sunflower, he prayed silently that the Sunday sun might never set.

  On one of those enchanted Sunday afternoons William asked Polly to be his wife. Within two years, he calculated, they would be able to marry. His work on the Ordnance, though tedious and repetitive, had equipped him with the kind of skills that were increasingly being sought amongst civil engineering practices. As they walked they planned their life together, arranging rooms, stoking fires, naming children. To William's delight Polly favoured flower names for a girl: Violet, Daisy, Rose. Fleabane, William teased. Goosefoot. Cudweed. Or milkwort after her mother. Polygala amarella, dwarf milkwort, baby milkwort. Polly laughed and tweaked his nose. My little milkwort, he called her then. He ached for her, the desire rising and rising within him until he could barely breathe, and, to his astonished delight, she responded to his tentative approaches with an ardour that inflamed him yet further. They hid themselves in dark corners on the common, out of sight, her fingers fumbling with his buttons, his breathless mouth upon her neck. He could not smuggle her into his lodgings — the boot-faced landlady kept watch over her staircase with the impassive rigour of a Royal guardsman — but on the occasional Sundays when the doctor's family went out to pay calls they crept up through the darkened house and into her narrow bed. Her breasts gleamed in the dusky light. My darling, he whispered, as she arched her back against him, her hair tumbling from its pins, and she bit her lip to stop herself from crying out. My own precious milkwort flower.

  Summer passed. News began to leak back from the front, slowly at first and then in furious torrents. For the first time ever several newspapers, most notably The Times, had their own correspondent filing reports directly from the front line. They bore witness to a miserable and ramshackle campaign presided over by aged incompetents, crippled by chronic lack of supplies and decimated by disease. Before the armies reached Balaclava ten thousand lives had been lost to cholera. The bloody battles at Alma and then at Inkerman claimed thousands more and yet they brought the Allies not one step nearer to taking Sebastopol. The conflict that had begun with such jubilance stretched interminably ahead into the harsh winter, lodged in snow and suffering.

  In London, as in the Crimea, the year shrivelled into bitter winter, the harshest in England since records had begun. The ice on the Serpentine grew six inches thick and fishermen were forced to beg dynamite from local laundrywomen to blow it open. At the stage in her confinement when he feared her condition might no longer be easily disguised, the doctor summoned Polly to his study once again. He had long prided himself on his radical principles and had determined upon regarding the situation as one of folly rather than depravity. Polly was ignorant but she was sweet-tempered and the children were fond of her. If, as he suspected, her sweetheart was already dead then she might be passed off as a widow. Although his wife would require considerable persuasion he was confident she would allow Polly to remain with them after the child was born, so long as no mention of it was ever made to the children. There was a woman he knew in Battersea who ran something of a foundling home with whom the infant might be lodged for a small fee. Few in her position would have dared to hope for such kindness but Polly accepted the doctor's terms without surprise. After all, did luck not favour those who trusted in it? At the end of her seventh month she took the coach to her brother's
modest cottage in Kent where she completed her lying-in. The snow drifted thickly against the casement window so that even at noon the room was muffled with frozen shadow. When the baby was born her sister-in-law, who was barren, offered with grudging sanctimony to take the child as her own. Polly only laughed.

  As soon as she was fit to travel Polly returned to the doctor's house and resumed her duties. She refused to listen to news from the front. In London the snow was finally melting, leaving the unpaved alleys of Battersea soupy with treacherous sludge. But every Sunday afternoon she picked her way through the mud to the old woman's crumbling cottage behind the railway line. She rarely took him out. Instead she cradled the infant William in her arms, inhaling his sweet milky smell, gorging herself on the sight of him. He stared up at her with her own round caramel eyes, their centres dusted with gold. Sweet William. He was a robust baby, with little of the flower about him, but when he screamed his face grew as purple as a foxglove. Polly soothed him, holding his soft cheek against hers and whispering of the perfect happiness that would be theirs when his father came home from the war. Then they would be together once more. He would gather them up, his precious flowers, in the circle of his arms and hold them close to him. He would keep them safe.

  Polly barely recognized the gaunt and haunted man who returned to her as the year 1855 drew to a close. Their son was almost a year old. William accepted the child without question, as Polly had known he would, sometimes staring at him for hours as he slept, his thin fingers pleating the edge of the infant's knitted blanket. But when Polly stood on her tiptoes to kiss his lips he blinked at her in bewilderment. He barely spoke. He no longer called her his flower, his precious milkwort girl. He no longer talked of flowers at all, although he carried his thumbed botany books, as he always had, tucked into the pocket of his coat. The leather binding of one bore a ragged dark stain. Sometimes, when Polly placed his son in his lap and he looked down into the child's muffin face, his arms would stiffen and he would thrust the infant back to her, his face averted and his eyes wild with panic. His cheekbones stood out upon his face like elbows.