The Street Philosopher (24 page)

Charles Norton walked up the grand staircase of the Union Club, his shoes sinking into the thick carpet. The large circular window on the landing offered its usual barren view of the flank of the next building along; but that morning the expanse of neat brickwork was bisected by a diagonal shaft of summer sunshine, divided equally into the brightest light and the blackest shade. The effect was quite dazzling, and as Norton rounded the corner and completed his ascent to the coffee room, a greenish, semi-circular after-image floated across his sight.

The coffee room of the Union was spacious, and decorated with a combination of stately oak panelling and ornate rococo plasterwork. There was even a modest fresco in an oval between the room’s two chandeliers, depicting an allegory of Wisdom crowning Industry with laurels, enacted by blowsy ladies in flowing Grecian robes. Below this scene, high-backed leather chairs stood around low tables scattered with newspapers and periodicals. Infusing the room, as ever, were the rich, reassuring smells of fine tobacco and fresh coffee.

A cart clattered by outside, the sound uncommonly loud. Charles saw that the tops of the Union’s tall front windows had been drawn down to admit what little breeze there was. He caught a whiff of roasting meat, and realised that they must be starting lunch. It was almost noon, and other members were beginning to arrive from their offices and warehouses. The room was filling with conversation about the state of play at the Exchange, the price of this or that,
the new contracts that had been put up for tender–talk in which the proprietor of the Norton Foundry would usually have taken a keen interest. That day, however, was different.

Charles was slightly disappointed to find the Brigadier-General in civilian clothes. He had expected to see the searing scarlet of the infantry coatee before anything else; but this, he supposed, would have attracted unwanted attention. They had not met since the winter of 1855, but he recognised his associate straight away on account of that enormous moustache of his, so carefully pruned, the sharp tips now snowy white. The face behind, Norton noticed, was becoming jowled, and the features a little sunken. Nathaniel Boyce had aged.

The Brigadier-General had chosen a small corner alcove, tucked away from the main area of the coffee room. He greeted the labour-lord without enthusiasm, clearly regretting that circumstances had obliged them to see one another, and gestured towards the empty chair at the table with an immobile, gloved hand. As he lowered this hand, his right, it connected with the arm of his own chair with a dull crack–the sound of wood striking wood.

The third chair in the alcove, the one closest to its window, was occupied by a large young man of about twenty-two or -three, who was staring down into the street with open-mouthed, oafish fascination.

Norton regarded him uncertainly. ‘I wasn’t aware that anyone else would be present here this morning, Brigadier.’

Boyce clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Do not worry yourself, Norton. This is Captain Nunn, my ADC. You have nothing to fear from him.’

Nunn did not look around. Scarcely reassured, Norton squeezed into his seat. Both the soldiers were big men; there was only just enough room for the three of them, and Charles was obliged to sit sideways to keep his knees from brushing against Captain Nunn’s.

‘So who did it, Norton?’ asked Boyce, sitting back. ‘Who stabbed Archie Wray?’

Again, Norton glanced at Nunn. He still hadn’t turned from the window. ‘There is a rumour going about of an insane
cripple–a man with terrible deformations and an implacable loathing of all soldiers. We are certain, however, that Richard Cracknell is involved somehow. He is in Manchester, making an annoyance of himself in his usual manner.’

Boyce narrowed his eyes; and then, to Charles’ surprise, he smiled languidly. ‘Do you know, I was wondering if my submission to your little Exhibition would flush him out. After I cut him down to size in the Crimea, the pathetic fool seems to have devoted his entire existence to wreaking some kind of vengeance. Quite tragic. Stabbing, though–that’s a new one. Perhaps he has finally found his backbone.’

A china coffee-pot stood at the centre of the table, with an empty cup set before each of the officers. Thinking that he would very much like some coffee, Norton turned in his seat, looking for a waiter who might bring them another cup. ‘He has an accomplice, also, this time. A fellow named Thomas Kitson.’

Boyce raised his eyebrows without much interest. ‘Kitson… yes, I believe he was the
Courier’
s junior correspondent during the war. Very much second fiddle to our Mr Cracknell.’

There was a squeaking sound; Captain Nunn had pressed a fingertip against the window pane and was moving it across the glass as if following something down in the street.

Norton tried his best to ignore him. ‘I’d assumed that their connection would be something of that nature. My own feeling is that they must be planning something together, for them both to be in the city at the time you have chosen to visit. This devil Kitson has already tried to strike at me through my daughter.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Do–do you wish us to do anything? I have men who will—’

‘Colonel, I see him! I see him, Colonel!’

The words burst out of Nunn in a heavy spray of saliva. Norton started; the Captain was all but shouting. Boyce told him firmly to keep his voice down. The man gaped at his commander, his head lolling. The muscles in his long face were relaxed, like someone deep in sleep; his eyes were pale and soapy, entirely devoid of any reasoning intelligence.

‘So-sorry, Colonel, but I
see
him
–Captain Wray, sir, walk-walking in the street. Major Maynard, sir, is there, too, and Davy, sir, and Major Fairlie, and, and…’

‘Really, Mr Nunn! Captain Wray, imagine that!’ Boyce’s tone was flat. ‘Is Lord Raglan down there with them as well, perchance, or Major-General Codrington?’

The young officer turned back to window so quickly he almost put his head through it.

Boyce picked up his coffee cup with his left hand. ‘The lad understands little and remembers less–and sometimes thinks he can see people who are not actually there. Our old comrades from the 99th Foot, in particular, make regular appearances in his daily life, Wray included.’ He took a sip. ‘One of several burdens placed upon me by my service in the Crimea.’

Norton nodded uneasily and then looked around again. Where were all the blessed waiters?

‘And another, of course, is Richard Cracknell, the blunted Tomahawk. I fail to see how he could damage us, frankly. He’ll probably just end up humiliating himself further.’

This seemed a little blasé to Norton. With gathering agitation, he told Boyce about the Polygon ball and the unpleasant events in the Art Treasures Exhibition two days before. Both incidents, he said emphatically, were intended to show how vulnerable they were; to demonstrate Cracknell and Kitson’s ability to interfere, should they choose to do so.

Unmoved, Boyce set down his cup. ‘Keep up your watch, then, by all means. Perhaps have a limb or two broken.’ He lifted his inert hand into his lap, smiling again as he made some adjustment to it. ‘How amusing, though, to think of him in the Exhibition, standing before my
Pilate
. How dreadfully that must rile him.’

This notion, and the malicious relish with which it was expressed, caused Norton’s disquiet to grow yet further, and he was relieved indeed when Boyce changed the subject to business. The Brigadier-General revealed that he had found a replacement for Wray–probably on a permanent basis as it was deemed unlikely that the Major would make anything approaching a full recovery. Captain Rupert Morris, a distant cousin of Boyce’s, was transferring to the 25th Manchesters
before the end of June, and would thereafter be the Brigadier-General’s man in the Cottonopolis, with whom Norton should conduct all his usual transactions.

Charles said that he understood, and then quickly ran through some of the Foundry’s recent figures. Sales were healthy, he reported, due to a contract from Weller and Sons, the largest boot-maker in the North East. Boyce inquired about profits, and how much he could expect to see; and was well satisfied by what he was told.

Their business concluded, the Brigadier-General volunteered no further conversation. He looked absently around the room, drumming his fingers on his knee. Captain Nunn hadn’t seen anyone else of note from his window, and was now talking to himself in a low monotone.

‘How is it here?’ Norton asked eventually. ‘I’m told the Union has the finest rooms of any club in the city.’

Boyce frowned. ‘Good God, I am not staying
here
, man.’ The Union Club, Norton realised, with its industrialists and financiers, was well beneath a gentleman such as the Brigadier-General. ‘No, I am going to the country for a few days. After that, I shall be lodging at the Albion Hotel on Piccadilly.’

‘Are you sure you will not stay at Norton Hall? We would be more than happy to accommodate you.’

Norton felt acutely self-conscious as he asked this. A part of him had long cherished the hope that an acquaintance might be built between himself and his well-born associate–that he might yet manage to win the respect of this proud, difficult man. They had significant things in common, after all. Both had a keen interest in the fine arts, as his involvement in the Exhibition testified. And both knew the cold loneliness of the widower.

‘No thank you, Norton,’ Boyce replied with barely veiled distaste. ‘The Albion Hotel will suffice. I will send word to you from there.’

A waiter, finally noticing Norton’s presence, came over to his side. ‘Can I bring you a cup, sir? The luncheon card?’

Embarrassed by his partner’s rebuff, Norton rose to his feet. ‘Nothing,’ he muttered. ‘I am leaving.’

Cracknell lay on his bed in the Model Lodging House, listening to the assortment of mechanics and junior clerks who also resided there maligning him through the thin partition walls. They complained about his airs; they moaned about how long he spent in the Model’s bathtub; they wondered what exactly he did all day, since he didn’t seem to have any manner of gainful employment. The Tomahawk sighed. Such a cruel descent mine has been, he thought. If only these blockheads knew who they maligned so freely! If only I could afford to be where I deserve!

Ten minutes later, with his usual sense of relief, he was heading across the Model’s fly-blown hallway towards the front door, brushing at his old hat as if the touch of his hand might magically restore the faded fabric. Nodding to the ghoul behind the desk, he stepped out on to the London Road. Technically speaking, he was running late, his afternoon nap having raged a little out of control; but given the person he was meeting, he hardly thought it mattered.

God, how Cracknell hated Manchester. He’d hated it from his very first glimpse, through the window of his third-class carriage, blasted into its valley like a blackened, smoking crater. It is an abomination, he’d thought; an abomination to nature and to God. He hated the filth, of course, the clogging dirt, the indescribable stinks and the constant, pumping coal-smoke; the huge crowds of wretched, uniform humanity, surging through the lanes at their appointed hours, moving
between mill, pub and slum-house; the low Irish, who were bloody everywhere, with their bare feet and starved, gormless faces, making him feel as if Cork had crawled over the sea to England to claim him back.

Most of all, though, Cracknell hated the immeasurable complacency of Manchester’s elite, people like those at the Polygon–people like Charles bloody Norton–who sat atop this dismal ruin brazenly sucking out all the wealth. Their mendacious assertion was that their Exhibition, that paltry shed out at Old Trafford, had made their seething shit-sack of a city the new Athens, a glorious outpost of refinement and culture. To Cracknell, however, its purpose was self interest, plain and simple. These rich factory owners had mounted their art show because they were genuinely convinced that standing cotton-spinners and buckle-casters in front of a Hogarth, or a Raphael, or a Rubens, would make them more obedient–and therefore more productive on the factory floor. Before such greatness, their theory went, the working man would suddenly feel the natural order of things, abjure the bottle, and accept his place at the very bottom without complaint. It really was quite laughable, and made Cracknell think yet again that only a full-scale, palace-burning, head-chopping revolution would truly right this rotten country.

Standing for a moment before the plain frontage of the Model, Cracknell took a cigarette from his pocket. As he cocked his head to light it, he spotted the tail, loitering beneath the crude steel arches of the railway bridge. It was one of Mr Twelves’ gang. Cracknell recognised him, in fact, from the fracas in the Exhibition: a stocky fellow, his face round and flattened like that of a pug dog. The Tomahawk tutted, blowing out smoke. This was rank provincial amateurism, to send a man to follow someone who knew him by sight. He was almost offended.

Cracknell walked along the London Road until it turned into Piccadilly, leading him past the Infirmary to the wide mouth of Market Street. This mighty thoroughfare glittered with gaudy shop-fronts, their lamps already burning against the soft summer evening. He started down it. As the working
day drew to a close, Market Street was caught in a final throe of commercial activity. Carriages, tradesmen’s drays and omnibuses all jostled together, ignoring the signs directing them to keep to their proper sides of the road. Cries of disputation rose above the creak of spokes and springs, the crack of whips and the tramping of iron horse-shoes. The pavements were similarly packed. Placid crowds drifted like livestock between shop windows, grazing on the displays; clerks and porters hurried for home or the public house.

The Tomahawk looked around. Not only was the pug-faced man still with him, but he had been joined by a friend. Two men could only mean that a beating was planned. Cracknell waited until he was in sight of the new Exchange building, looming up like the side of an enormous drum, and then crossed the road, pausing halfway over to scratch a carthorse’s silky nose. Throwing away his cigarette, he weaved up swiftly through the dense, ramshackle lanes of Shude Hill until he came to Smithfield Market, rushing under its iron-and-glass roof. This was surely the perfect place to shake a tail.

Doubling back through the stalls, he pushed his way past pails filled with dried herring, piles of white cheeses and grubby, miscellaneous heaps of earthenware. He came to a large second-hand clothes stall on a corner plot, its wares hanging like shorn, dusty skins from an ornate series of wooden rails. The owner was busy with a customer. Seizing his chance, Cracknell slipped in amongst the multitude of suits, dresses, shawls and coats, concealing himself in the folds of old material. The clothes smelled strongly of stale sweat, the salty, human odour of a thousand different people. This was oddly comforting; Cracknell sighed, thinking he could happily remain there all evening, peeking out between the sleeves at the unknowing passers-by.

Then the pug-faced man in the black suit stalked into view, coming to a halt on the very corner on which Cracknell’s clothes stall was situated. The Tomahawk noticed that he now had a small cudgel held up against the inside of his arm. These men, for all their bumbling ineptitude, certainly meant business.

It was a pretty straightforward manoeuvre–Cracknell
reached out, got an arm around the pug-faced man’s neck and a hand on the cudgel, and pulled the rascal back into the clothes whilst keeping him off balance. The black-suit fought it, though, fought it hard.

‘D’you know who you’re serving?’ Cracknell hissed when things were fully under his control. ‘D’you have any idea what the bastard’s involved in?’

The pug-faced man went still, saying nothing.

Cracknell tightened his grip. ‘What, pray, are your instructions?’

This time he got a reply. ‘Break yer legs.’

‘That’s
all
? Mr Norton’s a bloody soft touch.’

‘Aye, we feel the same.’ The black-suit started to thrash his free arm around, trying to get hold of some part of his assailant, but couldn’t make a purchase amidst the clothes.

Cracknell took the cudgel and twisted to one side, making the black-suit lose his footing. He grabbed at the clothes as he went down; there was tearing, something snapped loudly, and a great swathe of fabric dropped away, engulfing him completely. Skipping neatly out of the remains of the stall, Cracknell looked around for the other black-suit. He was nowhere to be seen. The stall-holder started shouting furiously at the pug-faced man, who floundered as if drowning in the heavy fall of clothes. Entirely unobserved, the Tomahawk left the market at the same point he had entered it and headed off to his meeting, tossing the cudgel in an alley on the way.

The Hare and Hounds on Albert Street was but a stone’s throw from the Irwell, and the reek of the black river compelled Cracknell to hold his nose as he hurried through the mud and litter towards the tavern’s soot-caked windows. He was most relieved to push against the peeling paint of the door and then step on to the straw inside, which at that point in the evening had only attained a moderate state of foulness.

The air in the wide, low-ceilinged room was miasmic with the sour smoke from clay pipes, farthing cheroots and hand-rolled cigarettes. Even so committed a tobacco-worshipper as Cracknell felt his eyes sting in protest at the polluted
atmosphere. The clientele, newly released from their machines, were a lacklustre lot, staring at their beer-pots in a stunned, sullen silence. Their drinking was determined, he saw, done grimly to service a necessity rather than to provide a pleasure.

Even in the dull dinginess of the Hare and Hounds, though, locating his man was not difficult. Amidst the hushed exhaustion of the pub, his slurred singing gave him a certain prominence.

‘’
Ere upon Guard am I
,’ rose up the familiar voice from somewhere at the back of the room, wobbling drunkenly around its East London vowels, ‘
Who–who dares to say that
British pluck
,’ here the singer stopped to emit a ragged belch, ‘…
is somewhat on the wane
?’

Cracknell dropped into the booth, the cheap carpentry protesting beneath the weight of his ample behind. He almost removed his hat, but then thought better of it. His man was a long way gone. It had plainly been an ale-for-breakfast day. Several empty pots sat on the table before him, surely only a small fraction of what he had imbibed. He was having some trouble remaining upright on his bench, and kept clutching at the table’s edge with his good hand. By his side sat a young whore, about sixteen, bare-headed and streaked with dirt. Her skin was an unhealthy yellow colour, her hair a greasy black. Holy Christ, Cracknell thought, does the stupid fellow actually
want
a dose of the clap?

‘Good day, Mr Cregg,’ he said sardonically, ‘I trust you are well?’

Cregg looked back at him with watery, unfocused eyes. Cracknell flinched at the sight of the ghastly, raking scars that covered one side of the man’s face, the stump of the missing ear, and the pock-marked jaw and neck; the disfigurement was worse than he remembered.

Cregg, needless to say, didn’t notice his reaction. ‘
That
British valour never will be seen or known again
?’ he staggered on, without acknowledging Cracknell’s arrival. ‘
The Crimean
page will yet be read, and ’onest cheek will glow
…’ He stopped, confused and a little annoyed: he’d forgotten the words. ‘’
Onest cheek will glow
…’

Cracknell sighed, and turned his attention to the whore. ‘What has he paid for? The whole fuck?’

‘’E give me sixpence.’ She shrugged and looked away. ‘Didnay tell what ’e wanted forrit.’

‘So you thought you’d stop here, see if any more coins appeared, and then slope off when this poor sod collapsed in the gutter?’ Cracknell sneered. ‘That’s your game, is it, lassie?’

Cregg’s scored, sagging features lit up with simple triumph. ‘
When learning ’ow we nobly fought, and thrashed the stubborn
foe!
’ He drank deeply from his pot, brown rivulets of beer running down around the sides of the crude tin cup and over his unshaven chin.

‘Begone,’ Cracknell said bluntly to the whore. ‘Now.’ She opened her mouth to protest. ‘Be thankful that I’m letting you keep the sixpence without extracting anything in return.’

The girl slunk away like a kicked cat, paused by another table on her way to the door, and was soon sitting herself down again.

Almost a minute passed before Cregg realised what had transpired. ‘Oi, that was mine, you bastard! I ’ad plans there, so I did! Took me an age to find it!’

‘It took you an age to find a rancid whore in Manchester? That I doubt, Mr Cregg. Now, gather yourself, if you can. We have much to discuss.’ Cracknell scowled. ‘Captain Wray, for example. And now this business at the barracks. D’ye not remember my instructions, man? You were to lie low until I sent you word.
Lie low
, Mr Cregg! D’ye want to end your stay in this miserable city with a Tyburn jig?’

None of this registered. ‘Are you not ’aving a drink, Mister Crackers? Are you not? No? Well, I understand, chum, I really do. It’s piss, the beer up ’ere. Bleedin’ piss.’

Disregarding his supposed assistant’s inebriation as best he could, Cracknell gave a brief, cautionary account of the incident in Smithfield Market, then began to talk of train times, hotel reservations and the subtle, ingenious coordinations he had devised for them to follow. Cregg was a less than receptive audience. After a few seconds of half-hearted pretence that he was paying attention, his head dipped down
blearily towards the grain of the ale-splashed table, and he started to hum the tune of his song once again. Cracknell paused pointedly. Cregg misunderstood this as an invitation to repeat the song’s newly remembered final line, even more volubly and boisterously than in his first rendition. Clenching his fists, the Tomahawk prepared a sharp comment to strike some sense into the hopeless buffoon before him; but sight of the fat tears that now crawled across Cregg’s shredded cheek stopped this rebuke on his lips.

‘Did we though, Mister Crackers? Did we?’ There was an insistent longing in the man’s voice. ‘Did we
nobly fight
? What does that bleedin’ well mean, anyways? What nobility is there in stabbin’ or shootin’ some poor bastard Russian, with as much of a clue as to why you’re all there as you’ve got yourself? And what flamin’ nobility is there in being damn well
dead
, Mister Crackers? Tell me that!’

Cracknell murmured something unconvincing about the unimpeachable integrity of the fighting soldier. It was not heard.

‘And
thrashed the foe
! Thrashed ’im!’ Cregg spat. ‘Ha! And we wasn’t thrashed right back? When I think of ’em, of all of ’em, and the things I seen and done, it makes me feel like
screamin
’, bleedin’ well
screamin
’ till me lungs come up right out of me chest.’ He was starting to take deep, shuddering breaths, his battered face turning a terrible purple. ‘When I think of the Major, who was ’onest as the sun and who
saved my bleedin’ life
, lyin’ there,’ is legs all buggered, and–and then what happened afterwards …’

Cregg collapsed forward on to the table, unable to continue. Cracknell leant over hesitantly and patted his shoulder, aware that they were starting to attract some proper attention. He softly reminded the weeping Cregg that the two of them were working towards balancing the scales right there and then and would avenge the wrongs that had been done to them. Cregg was quite inconsolable, though, his mutilated face buried in his arms, his body heaving as he sobbed. So this is where my money has gone, thought Cracknell with resignation, sitting back on his creaking bench. Down the throat of a man determined to drink himself into
the madhouse. It is fortunate indeed that I have devised an alternative strategy.