Rack & Ruin

by Carol Hedges

  Then he slides out from between the grey patched sheets and splashes his face with last night’s cold water. The tools of his trade lie scattered about. He stares at them without much recognition. His life seems to consist of things that he borrowed a long time ago but which it’s now too late to return.

  He raises the blind and looks out. He has got so used to seeing the city as a series of brick piles and rubble that from here it always seems like a foreign place, never before viewed. Sun sparkles on red roof tiles. Birds swoop and dart. Smoke rises straight up into a cloudless blue sky.

  He could be someone else, he thinks. He is intelligent. He has had a good education. He speaks two languages. He read Hegel’s Philosophie des Rechts in the original German while waiting for permission to access the site again.

  If he had the will to change, a belief in his ability to accomplish what he set out to do, he could step out of this room and enter a new life, be a different person, more rational. He is only twenty-five, still a young man.

  But every time he tries to change direction, it feels as if some giant hand has got him by the scruff of the neck and is propelling him through a network of pipes under a landscape he does not know until he surfaces back where he started.

  The engineer shaves carefully and dresses in his work suit and a clean soft collar - he is after all a skilled artisan. (He can still see his father’s face when he told him. Can hear the words being spat back at him like a curse).

  Having done all he can sartorially to face the day, he heads downstairs and enters the dining room, where his landlady’s drab of a maid is serving crisp bacon and watery eggs to the rest of the lodgers. He slips silently into his place and unfolds the limp, grubby napkin.

  He still has not heard from Mr Joseph Bazalgette.

  After gulping down his breakfast, he sets off for the site. The morning rush hour is underway. It is still early, but the population of Camden Town are afoot, also using the marrowbone stage to reach their place of employment.

  An endless stream of spruce young city clerks in their pea-green gloves, scarlet braces and with roses in their buttonholes jostle the older counting house clerks who plod steadily along, head down, speaking to nobody.

  Young seamstresses and milliners, their pretty faces pinched from want, their dresses shabby but neatly darned, slip in and out of the crowd like needles pulling thread. They all carry wicker baskets containing last night’s candlelit home work.

  Stopping only to purchase a stale tart from one of the bakeshops he passes, the engineer reaches his destination, where once more he runs the gauntlet of the crowd, who today seem slightly diminished in both noise and number, and slips through the gate.

  He opens his satchel and takes out the sheaf of drawings he has made of the site, noting that the contractor has already started the navvies on their day’s tasks. He seems to be fielding a full team. Maybe the ‘curse’ has lifted at last.

  His train of thought is interrupted by the appearance of the onsite chemist, a laconic middle-aged man called Albert Noble. He wears ageing corduroy trousers and has yellow stained fingers and a hat that looks as if it has exploded a couple of times.

  The chemist spends his time in a small wooden hut by the site perimeter, where his sole function is to make up the delicate and notoriously unstable concoction of nitric acid, sulphuric acid and glycerol that is used to blast the way through the urban jungle.

  Now he hurries up to the engineer, a worried frown upon his face.

  “Morning Mr Noble,” Grizewood says, carefully tuning his facial expression to neutral.

  “It may be for some.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  The chemist holds up his hand, palm out, index finger raised.

  “One can of nitro-glycerine and two blasting caps are missing from my shed. I always check the shelves every morning upon arrival and again before I leave. You cannot be too careful with an unpredictable chemical like nitro-glycerine. Dear me no. I had four cans last night. This morning, when I checked the shelves again, I found that one of them had gone missing.”

  “You are quite sure?”

  The chemist gives him a look that says that if he (the engineer) thinks that he (the chemist) can’t count to four, then he (the engineer) is the one with the problem.

  “This is a very serious matter, Mr Grizewood,” the chemist says. “Very. Serious. Indeed. Nitro-glycerine, even a small amount mixed with alcohol and sealed in a can is still a dangerous and unstable substance. Especially in the hands of somebody who does not know how to deal with it.”

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “I shall have to report it to the Board,” Noble says crisply. “Unless it ‘turns up’, you will have to report it also.”

  He leans forward, lowering his voice and treating the engineer to a waft of foul morning breath.

  “Just a hint to the wise - many of the navvies are Irish. Roman Catholics or Fenians I have no doubt. A place to start asking? Need I say more?”

  “Yes. No. Perhaps,” the engineer says unhappily. “You are absolutely sure that a can is missing? It couldn’t have been used and ...”

  His voice tails off in the face of the chemist’s withering stare.

  “I shall speak to the foreman,” he says meekly.

  “Do that. And if you get no satisfaction, I suggest you speak to the police inspector that was here a while ago. The Scotch one. He looked like he had his wits about him. Unlike some. Meanwhile I shall go and telegraph Mr Wandle. Good day to you.”

  His back bristling with indignation, the chemist heads for the gate. The engineer watches him leave, feeling his heart sink. Suddenly the light at the end of his mental tunnel is showing only more tunnel. Cursing under his breath, he goes to locate the foreman. It is going to be another long, difficult day.

  ****

  Meanwhile just a few streets away, a small backstreet grocer’s shop is opening up for trade. It is the sort of local shop that displays a variety of goods calculated to meet the needs of servants and the poorer classes generally.

  The dingy shop windows are covered with advertisements for meat paste, boot polish and gentleman’s relish. The sign over the door reads: Pastorelli & Rifkin, Provisions.

  A small boy carrying a long wooden pole has just emerged from the shop interior and taken down the wooden shutters. Now he drags a trestle table out front, and begins to arrange boxes of broken biscuits, stale currant buns, and tea mixed with sawdust for the delectation of future customers.

  The small boy wears a long grubby apron, once white, and a worried expression. He has heard his father (the Pastorelli of the sign) and his cousin (the Rifkin ditto) discussing the fall off in trade since the arrival of the railway.

  He has learned that since the houses on wheels made their first appearance, followed by the wagons loaded with timber and the gravel-coloured men with picks and shovels, people have stopped patronising Pastorelli & Rifkin, which is now physically as well as ideologically on the wrong side of the tracks.

  Even the troops of navvies who were the next to arrive do not shop here. And with the continued dissolution of Hind Street and the neighbouring streets to it, trade has dwindled to a few regulars.

  The talk now is of relocation somewhere else. Possibly south of the river, a place that strikes fear into the boy’s soul as he knows it to be a place inhabited by ferocious monster children who live in caves and will eat him alive.

  The boy is just finishing garnishing the trestle table with torn up newspaper, when he is approached by two men. They are clean, well shaven and decently dressed, which immediately singles them out as strangers and sends a warning signal. The boy folds his arms and assumes a hostile expression.

  The slightly older man steps forward.

  “Morning, my laddy,” he says. “Owner in?”

  He has a slight (and therefore suspicious) Scottish accent.

  The boy looks vague.

  “Dunno.”

  “Mebbe we could step inside an
d take a look for ourselves?”

  Something about the tone of the man’s voice gives the impression that this is a statement of intent rather than a question.

  The boy shrugs and stands aside.

  The men enter the shop. The boy loiters in the doorway because he has finished his outside work and while the men are in the shop, he can’t start his inside work sweeping it out.

  The men approach the counter, where his father is arranging the sales book and filling the wooden cash drawers under it with coppers and threepenny bits. He stops, looks the two men up and down, and adopts a similar stance to his son.

  “Gen’lemen?”

  Once again it is the older man who speaks.

  “Good day to you. Are you the proprietor of this establishment?”

  The boy’s father runs this past some mental translator for a minute, then agrees that he is.

  “Then I’m hoping you’ll be able to help me out. I’ve been asked to find the couple who used to live at number 9 Hind Street - mebbe you’ve served them - the man has a beard and walks with a stick. The woman is a tidy body, always wears a black knitted shawl round her head. Do you know them?”

  “Might do. Why? Who’s asking?”

  “It’s to do with the railway company workings and the destruction of the house they were living in. I can’t say any more, because it’s private business, you understand.”

  “You mean they’re entitled to compensation?”

  “All I can say at this stage is that there is something waiting for them.”

  The boy’s father looks thoughtful.

  “I may know the people you mean. They might have shopped here. Possibly. Haven’t seen them for a few days. I could ask around.”

  His eyes stare greedily at the older man.

  “I’m sure that would be appreciated. By all concerned,” the man pauses, looks at him meaningfully. “Mebbe my colleague will drop by in a day or so.”

  “Yes ...?”

  It is clear the man is already mentally pocketing his share of the compensation.

  “So, we’ll bid you good day and we’ll be on our way.”

  The man touches his hat and they both leave the shop.

  The boy inches in, his eyes wide. His father places a finger to his lips, then goes to the doorway and looks up and down the road.

  “They’ve gone,” he says.

  “I know that couple,” the boy chirps eagerly. “They were called Herbert and Amelia Hall. They used to come in on a Friday evening. They always bought a bottle of Daffy’s cordial and a quartern loaf and some potatoes.”

  “Might be the same ones, yes,” his father replies. “You could see if anybody knows where they’ve shifted to.”

  “Will there be a lot of money?”

  The man shrugs.

  The boy looks at him, eyes full of hope.

  “P’raps there will be enough so we don’t have to move?”

  “P’raps there will. I don’t know. First, we have to find them - and we mustn’t tell anybody why we’re looking for them. D’you get it? Stumm’s the word from now on. Coz if there’s any money in this, then it’s our money. After all, we’re the ones the railway gen’tl’men came to first.”

  ****

  Letitia Simpkins is also facing a dilemma. Mama has had another of ‘her’ nights and has another of ‘her’ heads, meaning Papa has one of ‘his’ moods. As a consequence, Letitia has had to supervise breakfast for Papa and the boys. Not a pleasant chore.

  Papa consumes his bacon and eggs in angry glaring silence broken by angry glaring shouting when the boys make enough noise and spillage to awaken the dead. Then half-way through breakfast, the familiar sounds of a barrel organ filtering discordantly from the street reduces him to paroxysms of rage.

  Letitia is forced to leave her breakfast and hurry to the street door, on the other side of which the scruffy man with the sad monkey on a chain is waiting to be paid to go away.

  Placing tuppence in the animal’s little tin cup, she reflects that now she does not have enough money to take the omnibus to Miss Jacques’ lodgings, and will have to walk.

  To add to her difficulties, it is also the day of the twins’ entrance exams, so she has to accompany them to the venue, and accompany them back afterwards, treating them to a fruit tart on the return journey, (money provided by Mama) as a reward for all their hard work.

  She toys with telling them she has no money for treats, and using the money for her bus fare instead. But she knows that the boys will expect something and will complain to Mama and her thievery will be exposed in all its meanness.

  Oh, how she wishes she had money of her own - earned by the work of her hands, instead of having to go bonnet in hand to her parents. It is so humiliating. She has to ask, sometimes beg for the wherewithal to purchase anything for herself.

  After the unpleasant meal is over, and Papa has slammed the door, she makes the boys recite their times tables, fractions and decimals, their science, sundry capital cities and the dates of the Kings of England. Then she brushes their coats and hats and they all sally forth into the blue-skied morning.

  A short walk later, having wished them both good luck and promised to be waiting for them when they have finished, Letitia waves good-bye to her brothers and hurries off in the direction of Miss Sophie Jacques’ lodgings, which are off Tottenham Court Road.

  She knocks at the door and is admitted by her friend Sarah, who shows her into a neat sitting room fragrant with the smell of coffee. The walls are covered with a light paper panelled out with a design of birds and roses, and there are cosy chairs and a couple of small tables.

  Every square inch of space is occupied, such is the popularity of Miss Jacques and the regard in which she is held. There are young women sitting on chairs, the carpet and even two young women perched precariously on the window ledge.

  At the centre of the room Sophie Jacques, in a becoming green silk dress, her hair down and a morning wrapper around her shoulders, sits on a grey upholstered chaise-longue, dispensing coffee from a large silver pot.

  She glances up at Letitia and smiles.

  “Ah - Letitia, our newest and youngest member! Sarah has been telling me all about you. Welcome little one. Come, I have saved you a place.”

  Pink with embarrassment, Letitia picks her way round, over and across the seated bodies and sits down on the narrow end of the chaise-longue.

  “This young lady represents all that we are fighting for,” Sophie Jacques tells the assembled company. “She is barely seventeen and has just left school. And what does our great country deem that she is good for? Embroidering fire screens, planning meals and bearing children - pah!”

  Letitia ventures timidly, “I enjoy helping my brothers with their lessons.”

  Sophia passes her a cup of coffee.

  “I’m sure you do, little one, but that is not the point, is it? Ladies, this is precisely what I rail against - so many bright young women leave school barely knowing anything useful, and are then reduced to accepting a hand-me-down education from their brothers.”

  “I never went to school, though I had a series of governesses. I do not recall learning anything useful either,” one of the window-sitters states, adding, “Other than what to do in a thunderstorm at night.”

  “Draw your bed into the centre of the room, commend your soul to Almighty God and go to sleep,” her companion says, to much laughter.

  Letitia sips her bitter black coffee. The conversation ebbs and flows around her. These young women seem so confident in their opinions, so assured. They speak in such well-bred voices. She wonders how many of them have ever had to darn socks and pinch pennies from the housekeeping to buy cambric to make themselves new drawers.

  Time slips by on enchanted feet, until eventually Sophia Jacques announces that a light luncheon is to be served in the adjoining room. Suddenly Letitia realises that while she has been sitting here listening entranced, the boys will have finished their exams and be waiting for he
r to walk them home.

  Horrified, she jumps to her feet, makes her excuses and stumbles out of the room. Guilt gives her feet wings but even so, when she reaches her destination, she finds no twins waiting for her.

  Letitia goes into the exam hall. It is empty but for a caretaker sweeping up. Her only hope now is that the boys have somehow made their own way home without her. Breathless and lunchless, she tears through the city streets with the speed of an arsonist though a cornfield, elbowing people out of her path as she goes.

  Reaching her home, Letitia pounds up the front steps, fumbling in her bag for the key. She flings open the door and tumbles into the hallway, one hand at her side, gasping for breath, hoping and praying that she will hear the customary sounds of two eleven-year-old boys squabbling over some toy.

  But the house is loudly and terrifyingly silent.

  ****

  To Inspector Greig, the floor of his office is the equivalent of a big flat filing cabinet. He has just augmented it with a report on the morning visit to Pastorelli & Rifkin, when one of the day constables knocks politely.

  “Person at the front desk requesting to see you, sir.”

  Greig rises and follows him along the corridor. Leaning against the desk is the young engineer, fiddling awkwardly with his pocket watch. For one joyous moment, Greig hopes he has come to divulge the whereabouts of the couple who lived at number 9 Hind Street. Then he catches sight of the young man’s woebegone expression and shelves the thought.

  The engineer seems close to collapse. Greig signals for a chair to be brought and sits him down. He requests a glass of water. Finally, when the engineer’s colour has somewhat returned, he inquires,

  “Can I help you?”

  The engineer swallows a couple of times, his hands tightening spasmodically round the glass.

  “We seem to have mislaid a can of nitro-glycerine.”

  “We?”

  “That is to say, the site chemist thinks it is missing. I have questioned the contractor and all the workmen and nobody knows anything about it.”