South of Darkness, Page 2

  Revd Mr Haddock tried to help him but was waved away. The parishioners soon began to recover, and at a gesture from Revd Mr Grimwade moved around the stain on the floor and resumed their places at the altar rail. Revd Mr Haddock stepped forward to continue the administration of the Communion, but with a nod of the head and a lifted eyebrow Revd Mr Grimwade consigned him to a chair on the far side of the sacristy, where the big young man remained for the rest of the service to contemplate his errors, which assignment, judging from his despairing expression, he carried out to an extent that would have satisfied any but the most merciless inquisitor.

  Unfortunately Revd Mr Grimwade was a man to whom mercy was unknown, and in the vestry after the service he subjected his inferior to such an excoriation as I had never heard before, which was followed by Revd Mr Haddock’s being forced to practise moving a jug from the vestry windowsill to the little wooden table and back no fewer than five hundred times, on the pretext that he needed to rehearse the action.

  After Revd Mr Grimwade left, I believe I heard, from my perch on the staircase, the muffled sobs of a man crying. I did not intrude by peeping down to see who it was, but instead inched further up the steps, thereby moving a little closer to the realm of One whom it is hoped is not so harsh a judge as may be some of His representatives on Earth.

  Chapter 3

  The great cold stone exterior walls of the church of St Martin’s had been blackened over the centuries by the cooking fires and chimney smoke; that same smoke which stung my eyes as I groped through the dark and foggy streets. Having traversed the endless eucalyptus forests of New South Wales, it is now my conviction that every boy should be raised in the countryside. Truly, space is the greatest luxury mortal man can experience, and I speculate that the noblest families in their tapestried apartments cannot know the sense of joy that possesses the man who stands in the middle of the forest breathing its pure air and knowing he is free to wander in any direction his fancy determines.

  Such was not the nature of my childhood. It was scarcely possible to take a step without bumping against one of my fellow creatures, or tripping over someone’s feet, or dislodging an item displayed on a street stall. I seemed to spend my early years in a deluge of curses and imprecations, so that I was saturated by them. I do believe they soaked into my very soul. Oftentimes I am sure the words meant little enough to the people who flung them at me; no doubt they were, on most occasions, forgotten by the perpetrators within moments, but the effect on my impressionable self was to believe that every man’s hand was raised against me, and every man’s face distorted by a scowl. Aye, and every woman’s too.

  Thus I spent my formative years like the vestry mouse, learning to find protection in holes and crevices, practising stealth and deception, fearing at all times the sudden pounce of the cat or dog. The man whom I believe saved my life by plucking me from under the wheels of the coach in the crowded street was doing me a kindness no doubt, but when kindness is wrapped in a cloak of harshness it is hidden from a child. Thus, all I remember of him is his anger.

  I was taught to steal by a girl slightly older than I. I don’t know who she was, and perhaps I had been stealing before then, without any moral awareness of the nature of my act, but I remember the girl instructing me and another boy about my age. She taught us how to brush against shop counters in such a way that objects fell into our pockets. She taught us how to look around, to be aware of the gaze of the shopkeepers without seeming to notice them and without attracting their attention. And she taught us how to leave a shop with full pockets but without exciting any interest.

  She also taught us how to look ‘respectable’, as best we could in the tattered bits and pieces we called clothes. We learned to wash our faces and hands in the gutter water, to use our fingers to comb and part each other’s hair, to walk with our heads up as though we were as entitled as gentlefolk to be in a fine shop.

  For all that, though, we were thrown out of half the businesses we attempted to enter. This did not disconcert our young female companion in the slightest. She would merely toss her head, shout some insult at the shopkeeper, and march out, saying to us: ‘Well boys, we’ll know not to spend our money here when we come into our fortunes.’ Then she would lead us into the store next door.

  I was probably about five years old at this time. The other boy’s name was Quentin, and we met when I took shelter from a rainstorm under a footbridge and found him huddled there, curled up like a little mole. I was afraid of him at first, because he had a huge red birthmark covering half of his face, and I had been told this meant he was possessed by the Devil. But I was afraid of getting cold and wet too, so when he moved over and made a space for me I crawled into it gratefully. There was not much room, because so many other of London’s poor had chosen the same refuge. Just a foot away was a huge man lying on his back asleep, snoring as loudly as the thunder, his hand resting on an empty brown bottle. I had seen him around the streets often enough; he was known to everyone as Uncle Bert. I was not afraid of him when he was asleep, but when he was awake I kept my distance, for he had a violent temper.

  As we waited for the storm to ease, Quentin told me a little of his origins. ‘I was left on the doorstep of a convent when I was born,’ he said, almost proudly. ‘Because of this, I suppose,’ he added, touching his birthmark.

  ‘Have you always had it then?’ I asked, for I knew nothing of birthmarks, or of anything for that matter.

  He nodded solemnly. ‘That’s why my father and mother didn’t want to keep me,’ he explained. ‘Leastways, it’s what the nuns told me.’

  When the rain stopped we left our shelter. No sooner had we got out from under the bridge than Quentin showed me a large bread roll. His expression was one of triumph.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ I asked, amazed, for I was sure he had not had it a few moments before.

  ‘It was sticking out of Uncle Bert’s pocket,’ he giggled.

  ‘Will you share it with me?’

  He shared it willingly, and so our friendship was cemented.

  Just a few hours later, however, he sauntered past a fruit stall and I was startled to see him pluck an apple from the top of a pile and attempt to dart away down an alley. This was before the lessons with the older girl; she would have scorned such an amateurish approach. Quentin ran a dozen steps, but in looking around at the stall to see if he was being pursued he failed to notice a massive obstruction: to wit, the back of a large and prosperously dressed man, of a type we seldom saw in Hell. He was standing in the middle of the alley, gazing searchingly around him as if wondering how he came to be in such a place. Quentin ploughed straight into the man and staggered back, holding his nose. The man whipped around. He had a cane and he raised it high above my companion. ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘Vagabond! Be off!’

  The collision gave the stall owner the time he needed. He had seen the theft, and now he seized Quentin and dragged him away behind his horse and cart. Fearing for my friend’s safety I hastened around there, in time to see the man belabouring Quentin with a stout stick. The blows landed on Quentin’s back and shoulders as the boy fought to break free. But the man was too strong and had too good a grip. There was nothing I, a puny child, could do. He only stopped when a gaunt old woman loading a cart behind him screeched: ‘Leave him alone, you great oaf! What’s he done to you?’

  ‘He’s a thief,’ the man retorted. But he ceased his flogging of the boy.

  ‘Yah! As if you don’t steal from every customer you short-change. Anyway, what have you got that’s worth stealing? Your mouldy old apples? I wouldn’t feed them to my horse.’

  ‘You’d better feed the nag something or he’ll end up as skinny as you, you old bag of bones.’ But he laughed as he said it. With a quick twist Quentin was out of his arms and gone. ‘Leave my fruit alone or you’ll get worse next time,’ the man shouted after him.

  There in the mud and horse e
xcrement I saw the stolen apple, dropped and forgotten in the clamour. I picked it up and went in search of Quentin.

  Back then such incidents were common enough for we children who lived by our wits in the crowded streets of London’s poorer areas. I don’t know if much has changed since. Watchmen or constables, let alone the Bow-Street Runners, whom we called the Robin Redbreasts, were rarely seen in Hell, unless it was to raid a molly house or a place of prostitution, or to close the shops of those working on the Sabbath, or some other activity that had little effect on our lives. Punishments were rough and ready. I believe in the countryside the ducking stool was still in use. A judge could sentence a felon to be hung, drawn and quartered, though in practice the sentence was always commuted to hanging and decapitation. The streets were dark and dreadful at night, especially in winter, for the wonderful innovation of gas lighting was not yet used to illuminate a single thoroughfare.

  Before I met Quentin I lived largely on the scraps left on the ground when the markets closed and on hand-outs from the occasional kind soul. Then there were the little suppers left behind by Revd Mr Haddock, and payment of food for jobs I performed from time to time. Of course in my youngest days I could do few jobs that were of use to anyone, yet to some extent I was compensated for this inadequacy by the fact that people were more inclined to show pity to the youngest children. As I grew older I was tossed fewer and fewer scraps, but I was employed more and more to run errands, guard stalls or clean windows.

  I still consider it something of a miracle that I survived, for of course most children did not, and during my infant years I came upon more than one little body in the streets.

  Under Quentin’s tutelage, and later that of the nameless girl of whom I have written, I became a more skilled thief and not a day passed that I did not steal something. The girl made us give her a lot of what we took, but we were able to conceal a great deal from her. One day, however, she disappeared. We were supposed to meet her at a statue of a man on a horse, and when she did not turn up we soon drifted away. People were always coming and going in our lives. Yet she did not turn up the next day, or the day after that, and in fact we never saw her again. Perhaps she had been arrested. We soon forgot her, but we continued to practise the lessons she taught us.

  Strangely, I always had a feeling of sickness as I did so. I do not know whether this was from the fear of punishment, or the stirrings of the conscience that God has given all but the most benighted. Perhaps it was a little of each. Certainly I had good reason to fear punishment, for numerous times I was chased and not infrequently caught, my little legs not being strong enough to outrun a determined pursuer.

  I resolved from an early age not to cry when I was beaten and I gradually became more stoic on these occasions, taking pride in my inner strength, which sometimes elicited ejaculations of wonder from onlookers. Yet it was not always possible to maintain this appearance of stoicism. My worst thrashing came at the hands of a footman from a rich house, when Quentin and I ventured further from Hell than was our usual practice. We were in a back lane when a commotion broke out in one of the buildings. A bewigged old man threw open a window on the second floor, poked out his head, and cried, in a surprisingly powerful voice: ‘Fire! Fire!’ A stream of white smoke issued from the adjoining window as he spoke. A moment later, the back door burst open and a woman in cook’s uniform ran out into the laneway, looked up, saw her master and the smoke, uttered a scream and ran back up the steps into the house.

  Quentin and I, excited by the prospect of this spectacle, and, I can say with certainty in my case at least, with no thoughts of larceny, followed her up the steps. We found ourselves in a large and grand kitchen, the warmest room I had ever known, hung with pots and pans. A dresser stretched almost the full length of the wall. The vast table in the middle of the kitchen was laden with food the like of which I had never seen outside a shop. And the smells! I felt dizzy with the aromas of baking bread and roasted meat and frying bacon and cooked onions. It was as though I were in a delightful dream. I had been wafted away from the putrid smells of rotting meat in the markets, the corpse of a horse abandoned in a street at the edge of Hell, and the channels and puddles of human sewage that festooned the alleys and laneways of our usual surroundings. And the best of it was that the room was completely deserted. We could hear squawks and screeches from upstairs as the denizens of the house confronted the fire. Evidently it had engaged the attention of all. Quentin and I immediately forewent all interest in the fire. He looked at me with sparkling eyes, and without a word exchanged, we set to gathering all we could carry. In my case, an entire chicken in one hand, two potatoes in the other, a loaf of bread under my arm, and best of all a large biscuit crammed into my mouth. For Quentin a large brown bowl of rice pudding, two or three pastries and a long bread stick.

  Out the door we ran, straight into the arms of a man in servant’s uniform, blue and silver, who was entering all in a rush. ‘Oh ho ho,’ he laughed. ‘What have we here? Take advantage of our situation, would you? Well, we’ll see about that.’

  He dragged us back into the kitchen. He had my head under his left arm, lodged in his smelly armpit. I dropped the chicken and potatoes, and spat out the biscuit, and fought to get free. When I had no success in prising his arm loose, I bit him as hard as I could, through his jacket. I don’t think I had much effect, but he grunted, ‘Oh, that’s your game is it?’ and hit me across the head. In doing so, I believe he lost his grip on Quentin, because he suddenly lurched across to his right, as though grabbing at someone. For a moment I had a chance to break free but I could not quite manage it, and an instant later he was holding me more tightly than ever. ‘You can have the punishment for two then,’ he snarled. ‘That’ll learn you.’

  With that he pitched me forward, into I knew not what. A door slammed behind me, the room became instantly dark, and I heard a key turn in a lock. I was imprisoned in a tiny windowless space that seemed empty. All I could think of was the fire upstairs, and the fear that the house would burn down with me in it took me over, chasing away my stoicism, so that I screamed in fear and begged through the door for help. There was no response. The sound echoed back at me in a dead way that made me think my thin voice was incapable of penetrating the heavy wood. Yet I continued to shout until my voice gave out, and then I sobbed in frustration and despair.

  I do not know how much time passed before the door was opened. My tormenter stood before me, and as my eyes adjusted to the light I saw a mocking smile on his face that did not bode well for me. Behind him stood another man, in powdered wig, wearing a red waistcoat trimmed with gold lace. He glanced at me disdainfully.

  ‘The fire . . .’ I sobbed but they ignored me.

  ‘Here he is, sir, the little wretch,’ the servant said. ‘Shall I take him to the magistrate or would you have me deal with him myself?’

  ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with the magistrate,’ the man said. ‘Not today of all days, with the shambles upstairs. You can inflict justice, I’m sure, Thomas.’ He turned away as he finished his sentence: a man who obviously had too much on his mind to be concerned with an urchin from the gutters.

  ‘Oh I can, sir, depend on it,’ the servant gloated.

  He slammed the door shut and locked it again, but this term of imprisonment lasted only a few minutes before I heard the key turn and he flung the door open once more. I trembled to see a whip in his hands. It was a kind I had seen rich men use on their horses: black leather, with a rigid handle and a short hard piece for striking. I cowered into the corner of the little room but he grabbed me by the back of the neck and hauled me out, despite my kicking and wriggling. Then he picked me up and tucked me under his arm as before, and marched down into the cellar.

  I will always remember the smell of that dark and damp room. Around me, stretching into the distance, were barrels and chests, and hanging from the walls were any number of dead beasts, awaiting, I suppose, the day the lord of
the house ordered them for his table. The natural stagnant smell that one finds underground blended with the fresh smell of death from the recently hung animals and birds, and in turn was supplemented by the sour smell of wine from the barrels and bottles.

  The smell mingled with the fear in my stomach, and I felt the rush of saliva into the mouth that generally presages an extrusion of vomit. I tried to hold the bile back as the footman placed me across a low bench, holding me with one hand pressed into the small of my back and pulling my britches down with the other. Then he set about flogging me with his whip. No matter how I tried to protect myself I was unsuccessful: when I got a hand behind my back to cover my buttocks the blows fell on my arm, and when I jerked my hand away in pain the blows resumed their assault on my rear portions. I have always been lean, having had little choice in the matter, and of course I was a bony underfed thing back then, with no fat to protect me from the brute’s blows.

  He did not hold back; I do not know how many times he lashed me, but I passed at last into that place beyond pain, a place most convicts know all too well. The pain encompasses the whole body until nothing but pain is known, and yet at the same time one transcends the pain and floats away from it. It is a kind of death, I believe, where one lets go of part of oneself that is mortal; it is also a surrender. Not necessarily a surrender signifying submission to the one who is administering the punishment, but a surrender to a greater power.

  At some point I vomited, and I think some of it splashed onto his elegant black shoes, for he swore, thrashed me another half-a-dozen times very quickly, then stamped away up the stairs.