by Clare Clark
Tom could smell the voice now. Above the reek of the stream it carried the faint prickle of soap and laundry starch. The strange union of stinks set the hairs on Tom's neck prickling sharp as pins. He placed a comforting hand on Lady's back.
'You did for them, though. There were a hundred of them, a thousand, but you had them. I was there. I did my duty. I had them, like that, like that. Didn't I? William would never run. Not my William, my brave, sweet William, my baby boy. Why is it so dark? Lord, have mercy! You have turned Your face away from me and cut out my soul! Is that what you call mercy? Answer me, damn you! Oh, sweet Jesus, there is so much blood. A river of blood. I am drowning, do you hear me? I'm drowning in blood. I can't breathe! You think you can frighten me? Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open. You want to take a look in mine? Too dark, you say? Damn you, do you hear me, damn you to hell! Will it never be dawn? Hush now, sweet William, hush. It was a dream. It is still night. It will always be night. In Hell there is no sunrise. The blood runs so fast I can barely walk. We had them, didn't we? We showed them. Like that. Like that. Why, why is it so terribly dark?'
There was a sharp splash and a thud. Tom heard a long low moan like a rabbit giving itself up to the trap. It faded and died, lost in the roar of the stream. The tunnel settled itself around the new silence. Tom crept to the mouth of the cavern. The stranger must have dropped his lantern when he fell. The tunnel was perfectly dark. Tom cursed quietly to himself. He'd heard tales of government gents who'd got themselves lost in the tunnels and fair lost their marbles. Or it might be a crusher, coming down on a tip-off. That was all Tom needed. If he was one of them, his cronies'd be down to fetch him out in the shake of a tail, sure as eggs. A battalion of them, most likely, with lamps and rattles and the devil only knew what else, stirring up trouble.
'My little milkwort. It's so dark.'
It was more a breath than words. The gentleman's head was clear of the water then. But he went on lying there and made no move to get himself back on his feet. The tide was rising faster now. If no one came after him it'd be over the gent's head within the hour. How many of them would there be down here then, on the lookout for the one who got himself drownded? Tom hesitated for a moment, Lady's nose against his back. Then he opened the shutter on his lantern.
It wasn't a trap. Tom breathed a little easier then. But whoever he was he was in a right sorry state, no two ways about it. He'd lost his hat, and his hair and whiskers might have been any colour, so caked were they with mud and shit. His face was ghostly white and streaked with slime. But the curious thing was how he was dressed. The gents coming down from the Parliament wore oiled leather head to foot for fear the faintest smear of shit might dirty their delicate hands. Not this one. Every stitch he wore was sodden and plastered with all the compliments of the tunnels but there wasn't no mistaking they were regular street clothes, from the woollen overcoat to the neckcloth, and nothing patched up about them neither. There was studs in the front of his shirt, proper studs, and a pin in his neckerchief. Gold by the appearance of it, Tom thought, sizing it up with his tosher's eye. Who the blazes was he?
And then, right out of the blue, the man opened his eyes and stared right at Tom, his gaze so pasted on to the tosher's face it was like he meant to fix every part of it perfect in his memory. Three months in Mill-bank Limping Gil had done. Tom felt the breath punched clean out of his throat.
'Mr Rawlinson?'
The words rang out clear as a bell. Tom hesitated. The voice was tidy as you like, a gent's voice, but there wasn't nothing else about this man that put you in mind of a gentleman. Not to put too fine a point on it, by Tom's reckoning the man was stark raving mad. Watching him as he smiled, all twisted up with his eyes rolling about, and the hungry way he plucked at the air with his hands, it wasn't a stretch to picture this creature chained up with the other lunatics in the dirty straw of the Bedlam.
'Is that you, Mr Rawlinson?'
The man caught at his sleeve. Tom grimaced. Surely there'd not be a soul alive who'd set any store by the ravings of a man like this, even assuming his addled head was clear enough to remember any of it after. The main thing was to get him out the tunnels, and quick. Tom paused for only a moment before nodding.
'That's right,' he agreed, bringing the lantern right up close to the man's face so as to dazzle him with it. You couldn't be too careful. 'Rawlinson. That's me.'
The man blinked in the bright light.
'Is — is it dawn?'
Tom smirked, he couldn't help it. The bloke was off his rocker, clear as day, more like to reckon Tom was the hippopotamus in the Zoo as hand him over to the traps. Hoisting the gentleman up by his armpits Tom slung his arm around his neck. He wouldn't give Tom too much trouble at any rate, despite the weight of his wet clothes. There wasn't much more to him than skin and bone.
'Stay here, Lady,' Tom muttered, face close to hers. 'Good girl. I'll be back in a shake.'
Fast as he could he hustled the man along the tunnel. The man let his head fall against Tom's shoulder. They were up almost at the cellar when he spoke.
'We shall have to bury them,' the man said clearly. 'The bodies.'
Slow as a sleepwalker the gent reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. Its blade was rusty with dried blood. Tom felt a kick of startled anger in his belly. Wrenching the knife roughly from the man's loose grip, Tom thrust the crazy bugger up through the gap, throwing him into the cellar. The madman collapsed on to the mud floor but Tom seized him by the ankles and dragged him up the shallow cellar steps and into the alley. His head bounced against the steps like a football. Tom hoped it hurt. He had to get the bastard far enough away from the cellar so as he'd never recall the place. Two corners and then the alley opened into a narrow yard. That'd do. The studs in the man's shirt caught the first glimmers of morning light. Quick as a flash Tom had them out and into his own pocket. As an afterthought he took the man's handkerchief too, although he tucked the bloodstained knife back into the pocket of his sodden trousers. If the bastard got himself picked up before he froze to death it'd like as not give him a spot of bother. There was satisfaction in that.
The moment Tom let go of him the madman curled himself up on the ground, knees to his chest, tight as a prawn. Tom spat disgustedly at the patch of ground near his head and hurried back into the tunnels to fetch Lady.
XIII
It was a pair of coal-heavers, cutting through the alleys on their way down towards the river, who came across William in the early hours of dawn. Even in the winter they were expected to be at work by five o'clock, humping the loads of coal on their backs from the ships to the wagons by the red light of hanging cauldrons. This morning was no exception. When they first saw William's huddled body, white with a light dusting of fresh snow, they took it for nothing more than a heap of rubbish. One of the men scuffed it with a boot as they passed. Roused, his pleas barely audible, William cried out for help. Usually the men would have paid no heed to such an appeal. It was not in the nature of either man to do something for nothing and William, filthy and half-frozen as he was, did not immediately present a prospect that suggested profit.
But William was fortunate. As they walked the two men had been engaged in a fierce debate as to which of the two was the stronger. It was the taller of the two, a giant of a man in a well-tarred short smock-frock and patched velveteen knee breeches, who suggested he prove his superior strength by carrying the injured man upon a single shoulder as far as the bridge. As was habitual for coal-heavers, the men had been paid their daily wage the previous evening not by the wharfinger but by his brother, the publican, who liked to keep the men waiting for their money while offering them something by way of refreshment on credit. The slighter man had little of his pay left in his pocket and a great deal of the publican's beer in his belly. There were, however, sufficient funds to cover a satisfactory wager and the bet was settled. Whistling cheerily to attest to the undemanding nature of the contest, the giant swung William on to his back with
as little ceremony as if he had been a sack of coal. William's feverish forehead bumped clumsily against the man's back as he strode south, the slighter man quickening his step to keep pace. The snow fell steadily, lining the fan-tail of the giant's hat. If he felt any strain he made no show of it. At Thames-street, his blackened palm already extended to collect on his debt, the giant swung William down and looked for somewhere to deposit him.
'Git on wi' yer,' urged the slighter man, put out by his loss. 'We'se late, they'll be on us like fleas.'
The giant tipped back his hat slightly to scratch his head. While he'd walked he'd considered the burden on his back no more than a weight to be hefted, a deal lighter than the coal but otherwise no different. Now that he could see his face, that burden was once again a man, a man who, however unwittingly, had helped him to a fair taking. He was moaning steadily in the high and hopeless manner of a sickly infant.
'Can't just leave 'im 'ere, can I?' the giant said.
He cast around. In the swirling snow-globe light of a gas-lamp he made out a rickety flight of steps leading down to the riverbank and, beneath a notice warning passers-by to be decent, a narrow wooden bench. Sweeping the worst of the snow away with a huge hand he settled William into one corner of it. William's head slumped upon his chest and his legs sprawled outwards but he remained approximately upright. A smear of coal dust charred one white cheek.
'Git on wi' yer, then,' the giant said, suddenly as anxious as his friend to be gone, and together the two men disappeared into the night.
William was left on Thames-street, his body convulsed with cold and fever, but, although from time to time his eyes opened, their blank gaze recognized nothing of his surroundings. In his restless delirium William was back in Balaclava, pleading for the love of God for a drop of water as the mule he was slung over slithered through the frozen mud towards the harbour and the ship that would take him to Scutari. It was pitch dark and snowing and every jolting footstep echoed through his body in a thousand breathless whimpers of pain. The air was crowded with the desperate entreaties of the other wounded men. They settled on William as thickly as the snow, filling his ears and drifting down the back of his ragged coat. But the Turkish bearers seemed not to hear them. They smoked and jested with one another noisily in their unfathomable tongue, their swarthy faces swimming in and out of focus, their sticky laughter warm with the soldiers' leaking blood. When, at last, his mule fell and William was thrown to the ground, one amongst their number shoved him upright in the snow like a doll. The Turk was vast, the size of two men. He loomed over William, as if considering his prize, his black hands raised. His slack mouth hung open but beneath the crown of his hat his eyes were red with greed. William shrank backwards. Faintly he thought to cry for help but the world had somehow receded, the clamour and chaos of the harbour compressed into a fist that lodged at the back of William's skull, while throughout the rest of his deserted head the silence was broken only by the moan of a frozen wind, scattering shards of snow into the void. Here, there was nothing. Here, he would freeze to death and when they came afterwards to this spot there would be nothing. His very bones would be compressed by the nothingness until it too took on the characteristics of nothingness. Here at the edge of everything there was no God. There was no Devil. There was only oblivion. You could turn away if you had the strength. You could battle towards the noise and the throb of the light, slash and hammer at suffering with your bayonet and your bare fists until it opened up to take you in. Or you could lie down in the blackness and give yourself up to the wind. Its frozen breath would take away the pain and the fever and the intolerable thirst. All you had to do was to let go.
'Who are you?' the darkness demanded not unkindly, cradling his face in its frozen fingers. 'Do you have a wife? Will she not be wondering where you are?'
William thought of Polly, of the smooth coils of her chestnut hair and the mole on the back of her neck like a splatter of chocolate, and the pain twisted between his ribs. He turned his head so that the moaning of the wind might fill his ears. No more of anything. There was no longer a man by the name of William May. Was there ever? Perhaps, for a brief snatched moment, there was a patch of feverish heat in the cold darkness. Now, at last, he who was nothing would be returned to nothing. It was over. The darkness closed over his head like water.
When William finally opened his eyes again the glare of light dazzled him. Flinching, he squeezed his eyes closed and turned his head away. The movement exploded a shell of pain at the back of his skull. He shivered uncontrollably, although his face was intolerably hot. He was on his back and something held him down, pinning his arms to his sides so that his hands juddered like landed fish against his thighs. The light pressed against his closed eyelids, flooding them with a vicious red. His legs and his neck and the roots of his teeth ached and when he tried to press saliva into his parched throat his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth.
'Water,' he muttered to the Turk. 'Water, I beg you.'
Abruptly something soft and pleasantly cool passed over his forehead and encircled his head, lifting it. A cup was held to his lips. William drank. As he swallowed, the water seemed to flow not only into his throat but upwards into his brain, soothing its scorched folds. The bloody undersides of his eyelids darkened to a pigeon grey.
'Tesekkur ederim,' he murmured. 'Thank you.'
Time passed. The light came and went. Vaguely, like half-forgotten dreams, dislocated noises tugged at his memory before evaporating into silence. In turn and together he shivered and burned, the relentless sweats crusting him with a skin of salt. And all the while impossible images swam in and out of his head. His mother's hand stroking his face, her fingertips seeking out the golden bead of a sunbeam on his cheek, as his son stared at him, his unblinking eyes given adult shadows by the smoky light of a rush-lamp. Polly's pink ribbon mouth curving itself around the soft Irish syllables of Meath, the one-legged soldier. Hawke, his whiskers flecked with spittle, sitting in his father's favourite chair, a green ledger of shop accounts open upon his knee. Alfred England, smiling solicitously and offering him a dish of cakes, each one a disc of burned London clay.
And always, in the far corner, smudged by a ceaseless dusk, Mr Bazalgette, his fingers steepled against his Hps. I beg you to recollect yourself, May, the great engineer murmured. From the turmoil of his natural instincts an engineer brings order. Order, May, if you please. William could not make out his face but the hooded eyes fixed upon his as though they were only inches away, grave and dark with disappointment. An engineer brings order. My hands shake so, he tried to protest to Bazalgette, but his Hps would not obey him. Instead, over and over, they repeated the great man's words: an engineer brings order, an engineer brings order. In the fevered confusion of his half-sleep the words repeated themselves with the steady rhythm of a steam engine but they brought him no peace. Struggle as he might William could not remember what it was he sought to make sense of.
XIV
Then the fever fell away and he woke. The square of the window was marbled with a cold grey light, splintered by black and leafless branches. Above the sill the paint flaked from the window frame. William looked towards the corner where he had become accustomed to see the figure of Mr Bazalgette, his head bowed thoughtfully over his fingers, but instead he saw only the curved washstand with its familiar basin painted with forget-me-nots and the sampler with its bunchily stitched promise of HOME SWEET HOME. A small fire burned in the grate. He turned his head. There was a faint smear of pain across the underside of his forehead as he moved but it held steady upon his neck, the skin almost cool. On the other side a bentwood chair had been pulled up to the bedside, a tartan shawl thrown over its back. A basket of mending sat upon the bare floor, a spool of thread abandoned untidily across it, and next to it the forget-me-not jug with its chipped spout, a white rag laid over it. From beyond the window he could hear the rattle of wheels over cobbles and the dispirited lamentation of 'Milk! Ha'penny half-pint!' from the street. A h
orse whinnied. Softened by distance, the drawn-out goose honks of the penny steamers scuffled with the higher-pitched remonstrations of a departing train.
He was home.
For a perfect moment the ordinariness of the bare room flooded him with peace. And then, into the still warm pool of his belly, began to leak the thin sour effluvia of elusive dreams and half-forgotten terrors. His stomach crawled uneasily and along his arms the hairs bristled.
'Polly?' he called out in a low voice, his tongue clumsy with disuse.
A moment later he heard the pad of shoeless footfalls on the bare boards of the landing. William swallowed and, with an effort, raised himself up on to one elbow. In the doorway Di stood hesitantly, his hair sticking up in a startled crown around his sleepy face. His eyes were round above the woollen blanket he clutched in his arms. The way he stared at his father set William's skin alive with agitation. He squeezed his eyes shut.
'Polly!' he shouted again, this time more roughly.
He did not open his eyes. He heard her as she murmured something to the boy and the rustle of her skirts as she crossed the room towards the bed. Her step was heavy and he could hear the laboured pull of her breathing. The touch of her hand upon his forehead made him flinch.
'William? Are — are you awake?'
William opened his mouth but the dread spun him in such circles he was too dizzy to speak. Instead he nodded dumbly, his eyes still tight shut.
'Water. You must take a little water.'
Her hand tilted his head until his lips touched the rim of a cup. He drank a little but the liquid caught in his throat and he coughed. Polly clasped his limp hand, pressing her lips to his palm.
'Oh, my love! How I've — but the fever is almost gone. All is well. All will be quite well.' Polly spoke cheerfully but there was a shrill note to her voice that grated against William's ribs. 'And you must eat, get back your strength. Some soup maybe? A little cheese?' William shook his head, clenching his eyes shut. Carefully Polly replaced his hand on the coverlet. 'Maybe later then. Oh, Di, my little lambkin, all will be well! But get along with you now. Your papa is quite worn out. We must let him sleep.'
