The Great Stink

by Clare Clark

  A little after ten o'clock there was a rap at the trapdoor. As it swung open the pit's proprietor, Spanks, a man beyond his middle years but with the beady eye and cockerel swagger of one with a good few more decades in him, raised his hand in salute and pursed his lips in a piercing whistle.

  'How goes it, good Doctor?' Spanks declaimed, extracting the cork from a bottle of brandy with a triumphant pop. 'And may I prescribe for you a little tonic?'

  It was the Captain, sure enough. He wore a plainer frock-coat than the one Tom was accustomed to seeing and he'd brought with him a leather bag of the type favoured by those in the medical profession but otherwise he had not concerned himself with anything in the way of a disguise. And of course he had Lady with him. Lady. Tom had to hold on to the table to steady himself, so strong were the feelings that flooded him at the sight of her. She looked well, Tom thought. He hadn't expected her to look so well, somehow, and relief and disappointment mixed queasily in his belly. She stood at the Captain's heels, her goose neck extended and her nose jammed up in the air. Tom's eyes devoured her, at the same time willing her to know him and beseeching her not to give him away. He needn't have worried. Already the Fancy in this part of town had got wind of something, and they crowded around the dog, jostling for a better look. The Captain set her upon a table and stood with one hand set possessively upon her shoulder, for all the world like her official owner. Tom had to clench his fists against his thighs and bite down hard upon his lip to stop himself from knocking the cheating swindler directly into the middle of next week.

  As Tom had expected, the Captain had not come alone. He brought with him two associates, one of whom Tom recognized as the narrow-faced gent from the Badger, the other a brick-faced stranger with pendulous dewlaps that slapped against his stiff collar every time he took a drink, which was often. The Captain himself seemed in unusually expansive spirits, his face soft with wine. Slinging his feet upon a chair he poured himself a large brandy and took a draught. Careful to remain out of sight Tom crept closer to their table. From here he could see her better, or at least the back half of her, her pink-edged rump and the chewed stump of her tail. It took all the strength he had not to reach out and touch her.

  The betting was soon under way and the Fancy clamoured about Spanks, laying their wagers. In the pit a wiry terrier danced around a score of rats like a nervous suitor. Only its second took any heed of it.

  'So a beast like that'd cost you a pretty penny, I'll bet,' the brick-faced man muttered, nodding at Lady, his dewlaps all a-quiver.

  'You do me a disservice,' the Captain replied, baring his teeth. 'Naturally I acquired her for less than half of what she was worth.'

  The brick-faced man raised a purple eyebrow.

  'Let us just say her previous owner was something of a simpleton,' the Captain drawled. 'A sewer-grubber of the lowest order.' The brick-faced man screwed up his mouth in disgust. 'Well, that has its advantages. For me, that is. It would appear that the atmosphere in those drains is so fetid it makes dung even of a man's wits.'

  The brick-faced man laughed loudly and the Captain smirked. He was leaning back to say more when a bell sounded with a single urgent clap. The next moment the Fancy was draining from the pit faster than water down a pipe and Spanks's boy was in the pit, shovelling live rats back into their crate fast as his hands could manage. Spanks hurried over to the Captain.

  'It's the peelers, gentlemen,' he muttered, jerking his head towards the ceiling. 'My apologies. Someone must've tipped 'em off. If you'd follow me —'

  The Captain snatched up the brandy bottle in one hand and Lady's rope in the other.

  'But what about the fight?' he snarled as Spanks steered him and the remaining ratters towards a second trapdoor set into the damp wall behind an iron grille. Tom kept his head down and his collar up. Lady, only a few feet ahead of him, raised her nose and sniffed at the air, her pink face puzzled and alert. 'Never mind that the wagers are nowhere close to what you promised. If you dare for one moment —'

  'Next week, my fine doctor friend,' Spanks said smoothly, hurrying the last of the men out of the cellar. The Captain didn't see Tom as he slipped silently past him but Lady's nose was set to twitching in an instant. She strained at her rope as Spanks turned the key and slipped it beneath the tails of his coat. 'Next week. All bets stand.'

  'You'd better be damned sure it's worth the wait,' the Captain spat through the grille and again the blacksmith clang of metal on metal echoed up the stairs. 'I want double the wagers, you hear me? Double!'

  Quick as a flash, Tom turned around and winked at Lady, laying a finger upon his lips. With a strangled whimper she hurled herself towards him, her stump of a tail pumping fit to bust.

  'Move it, man!' the brick-faced man called nervously from the alley. Tom slipped into a doorway as Lady plunged up the stairs, dragging the Captain behind her. In the alley she paused, tasting the air, her tail suddenly still.

  'Come on, you stupid bitch!'

  The Captain wrenched at her leash. Lady tried to resist him but her claws could get no purchase on the frozen ground. As he dragged her down the alley and the darkness blurred her white shape she kept her nose thrust into the air but her shoulders drooped. Tom could hardly bear to let her go. It was a long walk home. When at last Tom opened the door to his lodgings his head was clear. He had to get her back. There wasn't no money and even if there was he'd never get it. But he'd make bloody sure he got the dog back. And he'd get that swindling bastard of a Captain into the bargain, he'd get him if it was the last thing he ever did. Tom might not be an educated man but he knew how to play a hand, how to trust to more than luck to get a pack to fall out favourable. The Captain was about to find out he wasn't the only one who knew how to force a card.

  XX

  Spratt was thorough. On paper stamped with the Board's letterhead he took signed affidavits from both the ganger and the flusher. The surveyor had conducted himself inappropriately, both affirmed, and he had caused some material damage to the underground structure. And, yes, they also conceded, conduct of that kind could be mortally dangerous in the tunnels. Pressed further by the clerk, both men were forced to agree that the surveyor had appeared to be, as you might say, not in his right mind. Neither had particular objection to the term 'nervous hysteria'. To complete the picture, Spratt added a florid description of his own attesting to the surveyor's wild and filthy appearance upon his emergence from the tunnels.

  The meticulous clerk did not stop there. Once the statements were complete he suggested to the grateful ganger that May be entrusted to his own custody. Then, to permit the testimony of any number of reliable and loose-tongued witnesses, he carefully steered the surveyor so that he entered the Greek-street offices through the clerks' room, the stinking blanket pinning his arms to his side in the manner of a straitjacket and the dung still plastered in his hair. Satisfied with the general air of disgusted commotion caused by the surveyor's appearance, Spratt let him go. His business was still not quite complete. Arranging his weasel face into an expression of grave concern he presented himself to May's superiors and made quiet enquiries as to the purpose of the surveyor's commission underground. Within a short time Spratt was able to ascertain that May had obtained access to the system by deception and that there appeared to be no legitimate explanation for his presence there. Thus armed, Hawke demanded an interview with Lovick.

  It proved unnecessary. Frozen and exhausted, matted with shit and unable to master the frantic trembling in his limbs, William could fight no longer. He was defeated. The madness had wrenched and twisted at his brain until it had ripped the soft mass from its moorings. He had no desire at all to cut. Cutting would make him feel again. The thought of that was unbearable. He craved laudanum instead, chloral, anything that might bring sleep, that might dull the fear. With enough of it he might stop feeling altogether. He wanted that more than anything.

  Gathering up what little strength he had left, William went to Lovick. The clerk in the outer o
ffice recoiled as he passed and, pressing a handkerchief to his mouth, commanded him in a muffled voice to wait. William did not hear him. He stumbled through the door without knocking. Lovick was deep in conversation with Grant, the two engineers engrossed in a plan spread out across the desk. Both looked up as William half-fell into the room.

  'May, what the devil —?'

  William turned towards the sound of Lovick's voice. Although his eyes were open they had the unfocused numbness of a blind man. Lovick called sharply into the outer office for assistance as William collapsed to the floor, rocking and clutching his knees. Grant stared, his brow creased with disgust and astonishment.

  'Help me.' William's voice was so low and cracked it was little more than a breath. 'Help me, I beg you.'

  'What the devil —!' Grant echoed, at a loss. But Lovick had recovered himself. Immediately he instructed the clerk to remove Mr May to an adjoining room where he might safely be detained. Then he sent for Dr Feather.

  The doctor arrived within the hour. He brought two burly attendants with him but in the event, and to their apparent disappointment, no coercion was necessary. William seemed to shrink a little and his hands jerked uncontrollably as he signed his name but he slipped his arms into the sleeves of the strait-waistcoat as though he were being fitted for it by a fine tailor. By the time Hawke thundered at Lovick's door, declaring the urgency of his business and insisting upon an immediate audience, William was already safely in a coach and on his way to Hounslow, a small town several miles to the west of the capital. There was a private asylum there which, because it did not require patients to be formally certified as insane, had long been favoured by decent families who wished to be saved awkwardness and embarrassment. It could therefore be relied upon, Feather assured Lovick, to show the utmost discretion in its dealings. There would be fees of course, and in the absence of family approval the Board would be required to underwrite a commitment to their settlement, but in the circumstances —

  Lovick understood the circumstances only too well. Hastily, he agreed to Feather's proposals. He had been a fool not to heed Hawke's earlier warnings, of course. He had let his antipathy towards the man cloud his judgement and his mistake might cost the Commission dearly. Since its very outset the Board's work had been closely followed in the press and in Parliament. So far the response had been predominantly favourable, and Bazalgette and his fellows had been almost universally praised for both the rigid economy and stern prudence with which they were carrying out the work. But it remained early days. Any hint of scandal might tip the balance of public opinion in the other direction. Feather had assured him that securing an admission to one of the overcrowded pauper asylums might take weeks, longer if there were fewer than the usual number of deaths amongst current inmates. Who knew what trouble a lunatic might contrive to cause for the Board, given weeks? Hawke had been quite right to mistrust the man. He had been a juddering, stinking wreck. The sooner he was taken into custody the better for them all. Summoning a clerk Lovick requested that a message be taken to May's wife to notify her of her husband's situation and that interviews be arranged with suitable candidates to fill the newly vacant position. With work progressing at its current pace there was no time to be lost.

  Feather took his own carriage to the asylum. The two attendants took up a position opposite William in a second, less elegant conveyance. Heavy iron rings were set into the walls of the coach at shoulder height and screens fashioned from cheap black cotton obscured the windows. The upholstery smelled of mildew and urine. In the gloomy half-light the men's faces were shadowy, cut into dark slabs, and their eyes glinted. They seemed hardly to sit upon the bench. Instead their feet pressed down hard into the dirty straw that strewed the floor and the muscles in their meaty legs flexed as though at any moment they might be ready to leap up and wrestle their charge back into place. From somewhere came the muffled rattle of chains. But William moved only when a particularly violent jolt dislodged him from his seat. Feather had given him a dose of something to render him quiet and in his hunger for it William had almost bitten the bowl from the spoon. Now the emptiness inside his head stretched as chill and blank as the winter sky. It did not occur to him to speculate upon what would become of him. He thought nothing of what it might be that Polly would be told or by whom. Thoughts of Di did drift vaguely across the emptiness but they were grimy tatters of thoughts, distant and insubstantial, a thin blend of longing and bewilderment, and an uneasy fear that even to think of him might besmirch the boy's purity with his dirt and disgrace. Then those thoughts were gone too. The draught that Feather had given him left his mouth gritty and dry His tongue was clumsy in his mouth and his lips were pasted shut. He closed his eyes. The breath barely stirred within him as he shrank away from the edges of himself, shrivelling until he was nothing more than the cramped protests of his restrained arms and the grind of the headache in the soft hollows of his temples and the scope of all that was possible and all that would ever be was contained in the stink of mould and piss and the jolting sway of the darkened coach. Opposite him the attendants stretched their legs a little. One slid a flask from his coat and drank deeply from it before offering it to his fellow. The two men did not speak but occasionally, catching each other's eye, they laughed.

  At last, the soot-stained London buildings gave way to flat grey fields and the leafless spikes of winter hedgerows. Their black fretwork patterned the shadowed windows. The road was rougher here and several times, unable to balance himself with his arms, William was thrown uncomfortably across the seat. Each time the assistants wrenched him upright by the straps of the strait-waistcoat with such force that his head jerked and the metal clasps bit painfully into his wrists. Some time later, when the interior of the coach was almost completely dark, the jolting finally slowed. The chains in their hiding place shifted and clanked. The coachman called sharply to the horses and while the coach was still swaying a knock came upon the window. One of the assistants lowered the sash and handed a sheaf of papers to a gatekeeper in a dark-coloured uniform who peered with undisguised contempt at William and sternly tapped the huge iron ring of keys that hung at his waist. Then, with a final jolt, the carriage juddered forward and came to a stop. William was hauled to his feet and thrust out into the night.

  There was all sorts of commotion then, shouting and scurrying and the bright flare of gas that blinded William and made him flinch. He was taken into a bare room with stone flags like a scullery, he remembered that, and there he was given a bath and something was rubbed vigorously into his hair that set his scalp on fire. The attendants from the coach were gone but there were other men there, men with the same slabs of faces and the same readied muscles. He was given another draught of chloral, which he swallowed, and a basin of brown soup, which he did not. Dr Feather was there or perhaps someone else who looked like the doctor, and another physician with dark skin and heavy eyebrows who did not. Things were said, others were written down. Cold metal was pressed against his skin. A white light was shone into his eyes. He was dressed in an unfamiliar outfit of clothes, loose cotton garments of the kind worn by Hindu street-sellers that tied at the front with short strips of cloth. And then he was in a narrow crib, an ordinary bed almost except that the blankets were sewn to the mattress and his wrists were caught in canvas straps by his sides. There were other beds in the room, other noises, shuffles and bangs and the sound of soft weeping, cut into by sharp shouts from beyond the locked door. William's arms jerked and the restraints tightened against his wrists. Their unyielding rigidity calmed him. As they confined him so they confined the madness within him, pinning it down. He was safe in their embrace; he no longer had to be vigilant. And so for the first time in days he slept, drifting in and out of the noises and the shouts, across the dark unfamiliar room and through the tunnels and along the frozen trenches and past the shadowed faces that leered and wept and smirked until the noises became louder and more specific and the grey dawn forced itself tiredly through the barred window to
present William with his new home.

  The Hounslow asylum considered itself a progressive one. It was certainly small by the standards of county institutions. There were fewer than one hundred inmates, arranged in dormitories of eight, and although the rooms were deficient in warmth and general comfort, plastered walls being considered an unnecessary luxury for the insane, they were kept tolerably clean. Iron restraints were forbidden and, once a patient had demonstrated a satisfactory level of docility, even the canvas straps were seldom used and then only as a punishment for inappropriate behaviour. Difficult patients might be forced to wear strong-dresses, garments fashioned from canvas as heavy as slate that restricted their movement. The use of ice-cold shower baths was frequently effective in cooling the fevered heat of madness. But while some patients persisted with a course of passionate and often violent resistance, they were not in the majority. The asylum fostered an atmosphere of dazed tranquillity through a diet that was rich in sedatives and scanty in nutrition. Routine and regularity were all. Patients were given no access to pen and paper in case their usage should lead to overexcitement, and books and newspapers were strictly limited. It was expressly forbidden for patients to speak about themselves on the certain assurance that listening to a hysteric's utterances could only exacerbate his morbid sense of self-importance. And while there were strict rules governing the conduct of the attendants who were responsible for the daily care of the patients, men prepared to do the job were hard to come by and the asylum considered it reasonable, given the ratio of attendants to patients and the potentially volatile nature of their charges, to allow the attendants considerable latitude in their interpretation of these rules. There were, after all, only two physicians resident at the asylum and, while they made sure they were on hand to speak directly and with appropriate gravity to those responsible for meeting their patients' fees, their affairs frequently transpired to take them away from the hospital. They saw each patient perhaps for a few minutes each week. And so it was that the attendants were the true masters of the place and each ward became a miniature fiefdom in which the particular preferences of the attendants might be practised.