Charles Palliser (47 page)

My mother and I looked at each other in surprise and shook our heads.

“We heard nothing,” my mother said.

“I am relieved to find it so,” Miss Quilliam said and then she continued somewhat excitedly: “The truth is that upon my first coming to London I lodged at Mrs Malatratt’s house. And when, upon entering the employment of Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson, I departed from there, I left some boxes

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behind me for safe keeping. Last summer I went back there after leaving my position, and Mrs Malatratt refused to restore my property to me.”

“How could she do that?” my mother asked.

“Oh, she said that … she demanded that I should pay her an extortionate rent for the space they had occupied. But when I went back just a week ago and found your note, Johnnie, she at last let me have them. Their contents were of little value and I have sold them to pay debts incurred during my illness.”

She had not needed to say so much and the subject was allowed to drop when Miss Quilliam offered my mother a drink from her jug.

She looked at it wistfully and blushed when she caught my eye. Then she poured herself a tumbler, saying defiantly: “It restores my strength and helps me to sleep.”

The next day I did a little better on the streets, and during the next days and weeks I learned how to manage some of the hazards that threatened. However, I sold very few dolls and earned at most two or three shillings a week clear profit.

At first Miss Quilliam was true to her word and when I came home and we had eaten, she would take out her books and I discovered what a good teacher she was. However, it was difficult for me to summon the strength to devote myself to this after a day on the streets, and she was exhausted, too, after working from first light until late at night.

Although usually after supper (of which she ate very little) she would revive for a while, she would often become too restless to concentrate and would walk up and down the room talking wildly. Then after an hour or two a reaction would set in and she would become listless and dispirited. So after a few weeks my lessons were allowed to lapse.

Though we had much to be grateful for, our situation remained extremely precarious.

Often my mother and I had no money at all to pay our share of the rent at the end of the week when the landlord’s deputy came round on collecting-day, and in effect we lived on Miss Quilliam’s little stock of capital. We also subsisted on “tick” at the dirty little general chandler (generally called the “tally-shop”) at the street corner, paying something weekly towards the total, but never clearing it entirely. This meant that we had to purchase their inferior and over-priced goods, for Miss Quilliam warned us that they would demand repayment of the whole sum if we withdrew our patronage.

During this time I became increasingly annoyed by my mother’s frequent reproaches for having forced her to leave the Isbisters where (she said) we had been so much better off. Moreover, from being wasteful and extravagant, she became increasingly obsessed with obtaining money and unwilling to part with it. Most irritatingly she became convinced that the Peachments — manifestly honest and generous as they were — were cheating her by not paying her adequately for her work, and she even complained to me on occasions that Miss Quilliam worked her too hard. Her mood ranged between deep depression and strange light-heartedness, for I often got back from the streets at night and found her oddly animated and then (though her mood never lasted long) I was cheered. And yet I knew that this way of life was damaging to her health, although it was not until one evening several months later that I understood how very dangerous it was.

As I became increasingly familiar with the neighbourhood I realized how much more desperate was the plight of many of our neighbours, for my mother and I were at least able-bodied and capable of scraping a living. Those ancient SECRET BENEFACTORS

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streets — largely unlit, unpatroled, and unvisited by the dust-collector — harboured nests of the most abject poverty. The stench that hung over the district was augmented by the presence of breweries and above all by the gas-container at the premises of the Gas, Light and Coke Company which were then in Great-Peter-street (and with which my own destiny was much later to be indirectly connected). There were haunts of criminality, too, among the warrens of the poor, and (since the poor find it safer to prey upon each other) the streets were infested by pick-pockets and sturdy beggars who would demand money even in the open street by day. Miss Quilliam warned us of the gangs of armed men who sometimes blocked off a whole street at both ends and attacked the shops “by escalade” like a Crusader army, while others robbed the foot-passengers.

And so the summer wore on. We awoke shortly after five o’ clock and while my mother and Miss Quilliam began their work, I drew water from the pump in the yard at the back, washed in a leaden trough beneath the cistern, then carried up the water, lighted the fire, and boiled a kettle. We made our breakfast as quickly as possible and then by seven o’clock I was on my way to my pitch in one or other of the streets leading from the suburbs into the City. My best customers at the beginning and end of the day were clerks and people of that kind, but in the morning and early afternoon my “walk”

was amongst the fashionable shopping streets of the West-end.

One morning, finding that the City was almost deserted, I abandoned trade for the day and set off for home. Approaching Westminster, I encountered crowds of people in holiday dress making in the same direction, and asked someone what was going on.

“Why, it’s the risin’ of Parlyment,” he answered with a sneer as if only a simpleton could fail to know it.

So that was the explanation for the emptiness of the City! Along the route from St.

James to Westminster there were crowds gathered to watch the royal procession return, and mounted soldiers to protect His Majesty from the popular displays of feeling to which he had occasionally been exposed. Quite near our street I came across a gaily-painted wooden box with streamers of coloured ribbons, before which was gathered a crowd of children with their nurses and governesses — and further back some urchins of the street.

Mr and Mrs Punch had reached that stage in their domestic relations when they were furiously throwing the baby backwards and forwards in anticipation of its final ejection through the window by its male parent.

“You improvident creature,” Mr Punch cried in a nasal squeak, “you didn’t never ought to have had it. What was you a-thinkin’ of ?” With these words he flung his off-spring at his wife who neatly caught it round the neck.

“Why, you monster, don’t you love your own little child?” asked his wife in a much deeper voice than her spouse.

“How should I love it if it conflicts with my interests?” her husband demanded. “I can’t afford another mouth to feed!”

“What’s the cost matter to you?” his spouse retorted. “We shall get our reg’lars of the paritch.”

“Why, woman, that’s just what will beggar the country and bring us all to our ruin!”

Punch riposted in deeper and much better modulated accents.

“Humbug!” Joan cried. “There’s wealth enough and it’s only equitable that 218 THE

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the rich should help the poor. Why, I know Lady Decies has ten thousand a year and she

… ”

The young audience was becoming increasingly restless at the turn the performance was taking, and some were beginning to drift away.

“Don’t speak to me of Equity!” interrupted Mi Punch in an even deeper voice than before. “You’re a Jacobin! An incendiarist!”

This exordium was interrupted by a man’s voice from behind the little stage that sounded oddly like Joan’s: “Hit me, you ideot!”

Mr Punch instantly obliged by raising his truncheon and bringing it down hard upon his wife’s head, and the children who remained roared with delight. To their even greater joy, Mrs Punch turned her infant into a weapon and banged it a number of times over her husband’s head. While Punch and Joan continued to trade blows they did not speak but the sound of a fierce argument could be heard coming from behind the box.

The voices were too muffled to be heard distinctly, though occasional phrases were comprehensible : “property rights … irresponsibility … population”.

Suddenly Mr Punch turned away from cudgelling his wife and demanded of the remaining members of the audience in a squeaking voice: “Children, have you ever considered the relation of the means of production to the growth of population?”

I saw some of the governesses and nurses exchange looks of outrage, and in a moment there were only a few jeering street-urchins left. Though his wife continued to smash their child down upon his head Mr Punch took no notice of her.

“Only grasp that principle and its terrible implications and you will perceive that while we flatter ourselves as a polity that we are in control of our destiny, the truth is that we are powerless,” he declared passionately, his voice now unequivocally that of an ordinary man.

While he was speaking, Joan ducked down with the baby leaving her husband on the stage alone.

“How then may we become free? Only by harmonising ourselves with the randomness of life through the untrammelled operation of the market.”

While Punch was making this speech his wife reappeared carrying a saucepan which she had substituted for the baby, and crept up behind him.

The few children who were still watching cried: “Look out behind you, Mr Punch!

Look sharp, you silly puppet!”

“Puppets, that’s all any of us are,” Punch remarked, catching only this word.

“Hold your noise, you fool,” shrieked Joan, thumping him on the head. Then in a lower and gruffer voice she added: “They don’t want to hear that.”

It occurred to me now that when the puppeteers emerged at the end to pass the hat round they would find nobody but myself and a few ragged laughing boys, and, embarrassed at the thought, I walked quickly away.

In the next street the crowd was gathering along the pavement and, finding a good site on a street-corner, I could not resist the temptation to take up my pitch.

During the next hour or two I sold more dolls than I had ever done in a whole day, though the press of the crowd made it difficult to keep a hold on my tray and several times boys snatched objects or even money from me. Then the procession at last returned and there passed the most magnificent carriages I had ever seen or imagined —

each with a squadron of mounted and plumed

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out-riders on matching bays. At that moment a crowd of boys and youths approached and one of them — a tall, ungainly youth with a jutting jaw and deep-set eyes —

appeared to notice me and to draw the attention of some of the others. They ran up and, while the eyes of the rest of the crowd were on the procession, knocked over my tray.

They seemed to be impelled by mere high spirits, but the one who had incited them stayed behind when they passed on and pushed me to the ground so hard that for a moment I was stunned. He stood over me, reached into my pockets, and extracted all the money I had taken. Then he was, I think, about to kick me for he had got so far as raising one foot when he was suddenly pulled backwards so unexpectedly that he lost his balance and fell.

The gentleman — or was it a gentleman? — who had done this looked down at him and remarked benignly: “My most excellent young man, you will learn in due course, I hope, the virtue of moderation. A kick would have been a wholly unnecessary expenditure of energy.”

The youth, as he stood up and dusted his trowsers, replied venomously: “Oh won’t Squeezem Jack jist be pleased with you! I should say so. You’d better look for another pitch, that’s all.” Then he slunk off and was lost in the crowd.

As my saviour helped me to my feet I had the chance to look at him. He was tall and stooping with rounded shoulders and a rotund figure and was about fifty years of age.

His face, which wore an expression that I can only describe as one of indignant good humour, was red-cheeked and adorned by little half-lens eye-glasses above which bristled a pair of very bushy eyebrows that gave his physiognomy an expression of permanent surprise. His appearance did not efface but recorded the history of his dressing: a neckerchief carelessly tied, stockings ill-matched, and the act of shaving ill-completed. His stained and patched coat was covered in a fine powder and when I knew him better I understood that this was because of his habit, on becoming passionately eloquent on a subject as he often did, of throwing rapid pinches of snuff in the direction of his nose so that it flew about him like a golden mist. He wore an ancient wig which somehow always contrived to get turned round so that the queue hung over one ear, impairing the tenuous dignity of his appearance still further.

“Silverlight, restrain yourself !” this gentleman suddenly cried, and following his gaze I saw another individual standing anxiously some distance away with a number of what looked like wooden boards, a bundle of material, and a large box sitting beside him on the pavement.

He was much shorter and slighter than his companion, and about ten years younger.

Though so small he had a large head and jaw and possessed quite the most distinguished nose I had ever seen on a human face — indeed, so distinguished was it that the rest of his features were cast into shadow both literally and figuratively by this magnificent organ. Unlike his companion this gentleman was dressed very carefully and I owe it to him to say that in times to come, however severely straitened his circumstances, I never but once saw him when his linen was not impeccable and his clothes equally neat.

“Beast ! Animal ! “ this gentleman was crying as he shook his fist at the retreating youth. “I shall go after him!” he shouted, making as if to take up the pursuit.

“Noble fellow, be calm,” the larger gentleman shouted and leaving me he rushed to hold onto the coat-tails of his friend who appeared to be making violent attempts to break loose, though fortunately the cloth held.