Charles Palliser (129 page)

When he had drunk it he fell into a deep sleep.

In the course of the evening the patient grew fevered and delirious and Joey and I —

now sleeping in the lower chamber — were kept awake by his cries for much of the night. He was quieter in the morning and slept most of the day with a grey, drawn expression that struck a chill into my heart.

He was a little better the following day, but worse the day after that. And so he continued, varying between one day and the next, sometimes fevered and at other times weak but collected in his wits. The wound did not become poisoned, but neither did it heal.

Everything had gone wrong and it was my fault — though I was the least affected by it.

Mrs Digweed offered no reproaches, but I saw Joey gazing at me more balefully (it seemed to me) than ever before.

Our anxiety over Mr Digweed’s condition could not prevent us from facing the fact that we had to earn money, for our failed burglary attempt had exhausted what little we had, and the situation was the more critical now that Mrs Digweed was often unable to go out on her laundress-work for having to watch her husband. And so, two days later, Joey and I ventured into the shores alone.

Now it was that I realized the full extent of Mr Digweed’s skill and knowledge, for the amount that Joey and I were able to glean dropped dramatically without his father’s guidance, and this was because we covered less distance and made poorer judgements of which tunnels to explore under the prevailing conditions.

More worryingly, our inexperience led us to make serious errors of judgement. On one occasion, the tunnel we were in, which was built over another and more ancient one, began to collapse as we walked along it and we were lucky to escape. And several times we came perilously close to being trapped by gas. We kept these incidents from Mr and Mrs Digweed, but it was quickly becoming apparent to me at least that we had to find a means of earning our living that was at once safer and more profitable.

After a little over a month Mr Digweed’s condition seemed to settle at a steady level.

He would have feverish periods which lasted several days and were then followed by a slight recovery. He remained too weak to leave his bed, but at least while Joey and I were at home Mrs Digweed was able to go out and look for work. And we badly needed the money, for Joey and I were only able to make about twelve shillings a week between us.

So things continued for the following three months. As the autumn drew near it became clear to me — and, I am sure to the others, though we did not speak 594 THE

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of it — that Mr Digweed’s strength was slowly ebbing. He now slept most of the time and could speak only with considerable difficulty.

Then one day towards the end of October, when Joey and I were in a shore near the river with which we were unfamiliar, we had our most serious misadventure. It began when Joey was venturing cautiously into an area of deep mud, probing ahead with a rake, while I held the lanthorn. Suddenly he found himself sinking rapidly where a mass of compacted material had deceptively borne his weight for a few seconds and so lured him further before giving way so that he sank to his waist. Placing the lanthorn on the ground, I waded into the mud up to my knees and held out my hand to Joey who was now immersed in thick mud up to his shoulders. After a struggle, I pulled him free but as he returned to safe ground he kicked over the lanthorn and the light was extinguished.

The darkness was absolute. Luckily the tinder, which had been in my pocket, was dry but in that damp atmosphere it would be difficult to get a match. We worked in growing desperation, well aware that without light our chances of finding our way out were slender. At last, we succeeded in nursing a spark into flame and hurriedly set off for the surface.

When we reached the larger shore into which ours debouched we found that it was several feet deep in water.

“The tide!” Joey cried.

We had lost more time than we had realized.

“But it shouldn’t be so high,” I exclaimed. “There must have been a shower.”

This was the combination that was most feared by under-goers. And our plight was now grim for the way we had come was already blocked and all other ways led down towards the river.

“I know a way out, if I can remember it,” Joey said. “My old feller took me once. We have to find the fleet and follow it.”

“But that’s towards the tide! It’ll be higher the further we go!”

“I know, but it’s the only way out from here when the tide is so high for there’s ladders from the tops of the vaults.”

I didn’t understand what he meant but there was no alternative but to follow him.

And so we waded down the shore until we reached the fleet — the oldest and most ill-reputed of London’s hidden rivers — now a subterranean ditch that runs beside the ancient prison in which my mother and Mr Pentecost had been immured.

There was a path on our side and we followed it downwards, though even now the tide was backing up over its banking so that water was swirling about our ancles. As we descended, its level rose higher and higher. Suddenly we came to a flight of steps and as we stood at the top and peered down, saw water several feet below us. I raised the lanthorn and we made out that the river and its banks widened out and the roof soared above us twenty or thirty feet in a series of high vaults whose limits were lost in the gloom. Now we had reached the fleet-market where the river was actually a canal built by Sir Christopher Wren more than a hundred years before; and in front of us, beneath the water, were broken wharves lining a row of vaulted warehouses. They had never been used because they flooded at high water since the water-gates — the first of which we had arrived at — had from the very beginning failed to hold back the tide. In token of this, all the stonework we could see was blackly encrusted A FRIEND ON THE INSIDE

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with nitre and as I gazed, I thought of the fortunes quite literally sunk here by speculators all those years ago.

“Too late!” Joey cried out. “There’s a ladder in the top of each vault that goes up to a trap. But we can’t reach it now, the water’s too high.”

The tops of the vaults were still just visible, but their entrances were now below the water-line.

“Yes we can,” I said, remembering those summer afternoons when Job had persevered (and Harry had succeeded) in teaching me to overcome my fear of the water and to swim beneath the water-gate of the mill-pond at Twycott. “We might be able to dive and swim through the top of the arch.”

“I can’t swim!” he cried.

We stared at each other in horror.

“We can try it,” I said. “We must. I’ll try it now myself.”

I removed my boots and great-coat while Joey watched me. It would be hard in the dark to know where to come to the surface and then to find the ladder. And perhaps the trap-door would be locked? However, there was no alternative. And the lanthorn would give me light enough at least to know where to dive. I plunged in and was shocked by the cold. Even to stay in it for more than a few minutes would be dangerous. This water was not a living creature like the river at Twycott, but a dead thing that was yet claiming an intimate familiarity with me. I swam towards the first arch. Then I dived, felt my way down the wall until it gave way, swam through the space and then came up. I had hoped that there would be cracks of light coming from around the sides of the trap-door which should be far above me, but I found myself still in utter darkness. I groped about above my head and to my relief hit my hands against the cold iron of a ladder. Thinking that I had better verify that the trap-door was open — for otherwise I would need to try another vault — I climbed it until I banged my head (fortunately, not too hard) against something. I pushed, and the heavy wooden object lifted a few inches. It suddenly occurred to me that I could escape now rather than risk trying to save Joey at the peril of my own life, but the reflection came to me as an intellectual fact and not something that had any emotional appeal. I could not imagine facing Mrs Digweed or living with myself if I did not at least attempt to rescue him. Though whether he could be saved depended on how far he would trust me.

I descended the ladder, dived again and rejoined Joey without difficulty. I could see how pleased — and surprised? — he was to see me. I must have seemed a long time away. Now he began to remove his boots and coat.

Pulling myself onto the slimy steps, I told him what I had found and he managed a grim smile. Then while I slapped my limbs to restore warmth, I gave him directions (just as Job Greenslade had done to me) on how to let himself be drawn under the surface :

“Whatever you do,” I stressed, “don’t panic and try to cling onto me or you’ll drown us both. Just let yourself go and I’ll hold you.”

Whitefaced, he nodded and lowered himself into the cold water. Then I held him from behind by the shoulders and kicked with my legs, slowly moving us towards the arch. Now came the hardest part.

“Keep your eyes shut and trust me completely,” I urged.

Joey turned his head and nodded.

I could see his eyes glittering in the lume of the distant lanthorn. Then he closed them. I dived, pushing him down so that our heads went under together 596 THE

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and, though I knew that all his instincts were urging him to rise again, he stayed beneath the surface. So down we went, I holding his hand and with my other feeling down the wall until I found the top of the arch. I pulled him under it, swam a few strokes, and then we rose to the surface. Joey was spluttering and sobbing with fright and relief. I pushed him onto the ladder and climbed after him. When we reached the top we had more difficulty than I had anticipated in raising the door, but at last we found ourselves sprawled in the dark on the floor of a cellar amidst the reassuring smell of musty straw and rotting wood.

I waited for him to say something.

After a silence he spoke: “I nivver thought you’d come back for me.”

That was as close as he came to expressing his gratitude. And this episode led to no improvement in my relations with him. In fact, it sometimes seemed to me that it had given him a further cause for resentment.

We lay for some minutes, too exhausted to move — although in our soaking garments we were both shivering violently.

“We should get out of here. Some of these cellars get flooded, too,” Joey warned, though this one seemed dry enough.

Groping in the blackness it took us some time even to find the door, leave alone to open it. But at last we were out in a passage that led to a small door which was merely bolted on the inside, so that in a moment we found ourselves out in the street. And there before us were the wooden market-stalls, the bustling crowds, and the shouting barkers of fleet-market!

Fortunately, when we got home we found that Mrs Digweed had set off for her work without waiting for us, so that no explanations of our bedraggled appearance were required. We changed our dress and then sat watching over Mr Digweed who was sleeping restlessly.

For a long time neither of us spoke. Then at last:

“Well, that’s the toshing finished,” Joey said.

Apart from any other consideration, we had lost everything: rakes, lanthorns, boots, and great-coats.

“Yes,” I agreed. “But what can we do instead?”

“There’s lots of other things,” he said.

I looked at him suspiciously.

However, before I had a chance to ask what he meant, Mrs Digweed came in and I could she that she was excited about something. As she removed her bonnet she went across to her husband, took his hand, and studied his sleeping face for a few moments.

Then she turned back to us: “You’ll never guess where I’ve been!”

“Tell us quick, Ma,” Joey said shortly.

“Why, what would you say to Brook-street?”

Joey stared at her. By an unspoken agreement we had never mentioned the events of that ill-fated night.

“I reckoned it was safe by now, so a week or two back when I started doing some work up that end of Town, I went to the tavern nearest the house a few times, hoping to meet that gal I got to know before, Nellie. Well, she come in today so that’s why I’m late now.”

“Did you ask her about the crack?” Joey asked.

“In course not. I ain’t sich a downey. Jist like a-fore, I was careful never to ask no questions but on’y to listen and hold my peace.”

I managed to stifle a smile at the thought of Mrs Digweed holding her peace.

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“And sure enough, arter a bit, why, naterally, she told me everything I wanted to know.

She said when they gived the alarm the men-sarvints couldn’t wake the watchman for he was boosed so deep. Nor they couldn’t find where he had hid the key of the street-door.

So they had to get out through the back of the house and go round by the mews.”

“That’s what saved us,” I exclaimed.

“She said it was the tutor, Mr Vamplew, what fired the gun.”

I recalled the sallow, sinister face I had seen.

“He got a good look at the man and the boy with him, so she said. And she told me the cracksmen didn’t manage to take nothing.”

“Well, so what have we lamed that we didn’t know already?” Joey jeered. “You didn’t ought to have done it, Ma.”

“I disagree,” I said. “We might have learned something important.”

“Oh, but I did,” Mrs Digweed said mysteriously. “I wanted to pick up something useful and I did.”

“Useful?” I asked in bewilderment.

“For getting the will back, in course!” she exclaimed.

I was stunned by this and seeing my surprise she said: “You didn’t think I’d gived up, did you?” she asked. “Why, I’m more bent upon it than ever.”

Though I had not consciously thought about it, I now realized that I had never abandoned the idea. But that
she
should have gone on thinking about it!

“Then what did you learn?” I asked.

“A deal of things. That girl is a fee-rocious rattle. She told me about one of the footmen, Bob. (For it seems he’s sweet on her.) Well, he has a boy to work to him —