Fogging Over (5 page)

“That child is tiny! What can he possibly do?”

“He’ll fit very snugly inside a chimney,” said Brice. “Especially if that nice gentleman gives him a good kicking to help him on his way. Everyone has coal fires these days. Haven’t you noticed the smell not to mention the soot everywhere? And if you don’t sweep yer chimbleys regularly, darlin’,” he said, putting on a cockney accent, “they catches on fire, don’t they?”

Lola stared at me. “Please tell me he’s joking.”

Unfortunately I had to tell her the truth. “He’s not. They really do put little boys up chimneys. It’s in Oliver Twist.”

“And this is like
, legal
?” My mate’s eyes were dark with distress.

“You bet,” said Brice. “Since the Industrial Revolution, kids have been a vital part of the economy. They work as fluff pickers and mud larks and—”

He’s doing this on purpose, I thought scowling. He’s brainwashing Lola, making her think coming here was a mistake.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Brice was supposed to look bad, not me.

By this time crowds of office clerks were hurrying through the streets. They were on their way to work, but in their gloomy suits and high stiff collars, they looked more as if they were going to a funeral.

Brice was still reeling off depressing Victorian info.

“Most of these sad characters work in the counting houses in the city,” he said. “What a way to spend your life, copying figures into ledgers all day.”

I didn’t need an ex-PODS agent to tell me how hard these people’s lives were. I could see it in their bleak expressions and their unhealthy, greenish complexions, as if they rarely saw daylight.

It’s like they’re trapped in some nightmare machine and don’t know how to get off, I thought. I was feeling fairly trapped myself.

Lola gave me a searching look. “Did you do that protection thingy?” she murmured. “Because you look a bit -”

Oh, no
wonder
! I thought. What with my little hand-holding humiliation earlier, and the watches malfunctioning, I’d forgotten to run though my usual landing procedure. Basically since I got here, I’d been soaking up negative vibes like a sponge.

I mentally instructed my angelic system to protect itself from any cosmic toxins in the locality. Ahh, that’s better I thought.

“Shouldn’t we be running into our human at some point?” I said aloud.

“You’d think,” said Lola.

A horse-drawn cab pulled up to the curb. A middle-aged lady got out carrying two carpet bags.

The street was super busy by this time, so she started off towards the crossing. I don’t know if it was her crinoline or the corset underneath that made her take such little steps, but it made her look like she was on tiny wheels! When she reached the crossing, I saw the lady crinkle her nose. There were piles of horse manure everywhere.

Suddenly a little boy appeared, flourishing a bald-looking broom. He made a bow to the lady and grandly swept all the poo out of her path.

The lady fumbled in her purse and gave him a very small coin.

“I’ll carry them bags for yer, if you like, lady!” he said eagerly. “I’ll carry them to Timbuctoo if you just says the word.”

She clutched her bags. “Certainly not! Such impudence! Run along, you little guttersnipe. Shoo!”

“Stop thief!” An older boy came dashing through the traffic complaining at the top of his voice. “Turned me back for a second and the little tea-leaf swiped me broom!” he panted.

“Call that a broom?” jeered the little urchin. “Where I come from, we calls that a stick.” He flung down the broom and legged it down the nearest alleyway.

For no obvious reason we all went chasing after him. The people in the tenements had strung their washing across the alley. Victorian pantaloons, nightgowns and petticoats hung limply overhead in the stagnant London air.

In mid-sprint, Lola and I exchanged glances.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” I panted. “He’s our kid?”

I saw Brice grinning to himself.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” he smirked.

“Can you believe that!” said Lola breathlessly. “We went all the way to Australia and we still hooked up with our human!”

“Agency timing is quite cool like that,” Brice admitted.

“What about PODS timing?” The remark slipped out before I thought.

“Also excellent,” he said coldly.

Lola gave me a look. Like, how could you be so mean? So I gave her a look right back. Like, was
I
being mean?

Our human slowed down to a leisurely amble, but he didn’t totally relax. He was like an animal in the wild, noticing the smallest sound or movement, alert for trouble.

They’ve picked us a real character this time, I thought.

He wore a battered stove-pipe hat and a swallow-tail coat at least two sizes too big for him. The coat was full of holes which he’d tried to mend with various jazzy remnants, including a flowery bit of curtain. Despite his comical clothes, the kid had an air of genuine dignity, as if his tattered hand-me-downs were just a costume he was wearing for the time being.

We trailed our little urchin through a maze of sleazy courts and alleyways, finally emerging in a street market.

It was total mayhem. Stall holders competing for who could yell the loudest. Two women having a cat fight, literally pulling out clumps of hair! Plus a driver was backing a brewery wagon into a very narrow entry, while bystanders yelled contradictory advice.

But the little boy in the patchwork coat just sauntered through the chaos, dodging all the slippery cabbage leaves and fruit peel underfoot cheerfully scuffing up dirty hay with his boots as if it were autumn leaves. He was having his breakfast on the move, I noticed, helping himself to a bread roll when a baker’s boy wasn’t looking, sneaking a quick dipper of milk from under a milkman’s nose.

He strolled up to a stall selling the lurid Victorian horror comics known as Penny Dreadfuls and started reading furtively, while he munched away on a stolen apple.

I should be taking notes, I remembered, and fumbled in my bag until I found my notebook.

Our human is probably about ten years old
, I scribbled.
But v undernourished, so looks younger. He can read though he doesn’t seem to go to school
.

The Penny Dreadful stall was next to a stand serving freshly-made coffee and cooked breakfasts. An elegantly dressed gentleman stood apart from the regular customers, self-consciously turning his coffee cup in gloved hands, looking as if he’d been up all night.

“Slumming,” Brice commented. “You get a lot of that here. Toffs coming down to get their thrills.”

“Toffs!” I mimicked. “Who are you? The Artful Dodger?”

I’d become vaguely aware of a news vendor bawling on the other side of the market. I couldn’t actually hear what he was saying at first. It was just another raised voice, competing with the voices of barrow boys and costermongers yelling about fresh fish and shallots. Even when I finally managed to make them out, the words still didn’t really register.

“Another murder in Whitechapel. Read all about it!”

I saw people gasp and turn to each other to make sure they’d heard correctly.

I suddenly felt sick. “Omigosh. The Whitechapel Murderer. That’s what they called Jack the Ripper.”

Lola’s face went white. “The Ripper was in these times? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Brice sounded stunned. “I assumed you knew. That’s why I—”

And suddenly I felt as if I was falling through space.

I had actually
chosen
to come here. I’d even imagined it would be fun, like when my mates and I used to watch dross like Jeepers Creepers to scare ourselves into hysterics. But it wasn’t thrilling to be on Jack the Ripper’s turf for real. It felt unbelievably sordid and scary.

And suddenly I knew what was wrong. It wasn’t the fog and the soot that made the streets of Victorian London so dark and brooding. It wasn’t even the poverty. Plenty of times are poor and dirty, but only a small handful of them are a breeding ground for cosmic evil. And for shallow and pathetic reasons which I was totally ashamed to remember, I had brought my lovely soul-mate to one of them.

Chapter Four

I
‘m not going to try to justify what I did next.

OK, so possibly my angelic system was affected by its brief exposure to those negative Victorian vibes. That could have clouded my professional judgement. Even so, that’s no excuse.

I should have called the trip off then and there. I was going to, I was, honestly. I opened my mouth, drew a big breath - and did absolutely nothing. I pictured Brice smirking to himself as I mumbled my way through my apology, then I pictured Lola and him exchanging glances over my head, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give him the satisfaction. There was this crucial split second when I could have, should have, done the right thing and I fluffed it. What can I say? I promised to tell you the whole truth and here it is; uncut, unvarnished and as you see, deeply unflattering to yours truly.

“Our human’s on the move again,” hissed Lola.

He was making for a stall, where a woman in a filthy bonnet had various hot suet puddings for sale. “Well, it’s my little Georgie,” she said. ‘“Ow’s tricks?”

I was still inwardly freaking at what I’d done, but I couldn’t bear to think about it, so I whipped out my notebook and scribbled frantically:
Our human’s name is George
.

Georgie produced a coin from an inside pocket. “I’ll have a ha’porth of the plum,” he shivered. “I want it pipin’ hot, mind.”

“I don’t blame you, dear! Perishin’ today, ain’t it?” The pudding lady gave him a toothless grin. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You run and fetch me a drop of what does your ‘eart good!” She gave him a conspiratorial wink. “And I’ll give you a bit of plum duff for nuffin’.”

“Is that some kind of code?” whispered Lola.

Brice grinned. “She’s sending him to buy gin. Gin is the poor man’s tipple,” he explained. “Life doesn’t seem quite so bad if you can see it through a boozy blur.”

The gin shop was in the most desolate street I have ever seen. The houses all looked to be on the verge of falling down. People had stuffed old rags and newspapers into the cracks in an attempt to keep out the cold. I couldn’t believe anyone really lived here, but if you listened you could hear families inside, clattering cooking pots and soothing crying babies just as if it was a real home and not something out of a nightmare.

In these surroundings, the gin shop, with its fancy sign and plate-glass windows, stood out like a glittering palace. Inside everything was bright and gleaming: the polished mahogany of the bar, the brass rails, the giant gin casks painted glossy green and gold. The barrels were labelled with enticing names, like Real Knock-me-down, and Celebrated Butter Gin.

It seemed a bit early to be knocking back the hard stuff, but some of the customers already smelled of drink. One half-starved woman was shushing a toddler.

“Never mind, dearie,” cackled an old lady. “A few drops of gin in ‘is bottle and ‘e’ll sleep good as gold.”

Georgie bought something that was called Regular Flare-up. As soon as he was outside the shop, he took a furtive swig. He shuddered, wiped his mouth then raced back to claim his free plum duff.

I was starting to feel as if I was trapped in the opening chapters of Oliver Twist as Georgie ran about the streets running errands, taking messages, carrying parcels for toffs, doing anything he could to earn a couple of pence.

Wherever we went, people were talking about the Whitechapel murders. It got to I could tell when people were going to bring it up. They all had this same expression on their faces, a kind of sick fascination. They were like Jack the Ripper addicts, swapping the latest lurid rumour, endlessly rehashing horrific details. You could see they were scaring themselves, yet they couldn’t seem to stop talking about it.

Georgie had to stand around in the barber’s for ages, waiting to deliver one of his messages. He kept clearing his throat, waiting for someone to notice him, but everyone was too busy speculating about the Ripper’s true identity.

Someone’s cousin had seen a suspicious figure with a doctor’s bag, fleeing the murder scene. Someone else had heard of a foreigner with a gold-topped cane in which he concealed his deadly weapon. One customer swore it was the killer’s perfume that marked him out. “Sweet, like lily of the valley. It’s to cover the smell of the blood,” he explained with relish. “It’s that scent what’ll give him away, mark my words.”

“Nuffin’ won’t give ‘im away,” the barber chipped in. “Our Jack’s too clever for ‘em.”

“I heard that Scotland Yard know who it is,” said his customer through a froth of shaving foam. “But they’ve been asked to hush it up.”

The barber stopped with the cut-throat razor in his hand. “Why would they do a thing like that?”

“It’s obvious, ain’t it? It’s got to be a member of the Royal Family.”

In the street outside, some guy was buttonholing anyone who’d listen. “It’s a Hebrew conspiracy!” he shouted, spraying spit. “Send them murdering Jews back where they come from. Coming here, taking food out of our children’s mouths!”