My mother blenched. What did she know of this place?
“Are you all right?” Mrs Sackbutt said. “You look poorly. Will you take something? A little gin?”
Rather to my regret, she accepted.
“We should be going, Mamma,” I said. “Thank you for your help, Mrs Sackbutt. We’ll enquire of the rest of the house.”
“Why don’t your mother wait here while you go?” she asked. “She looks fair done in.”
“Yes, Johnnie, I am very tired,” my mother said.
I agreed and Mrs Sackbutt placed two glasses on a sideboard and pulled open one of its drawers. There was a cry and there — to our amazement — was a small baby lying in an old egg-chest in the drawer that was lined with straw. It was sucking a teat made of a bag of plums.
“Why,” my mother exclaimed. “That can’t be good for the child!”
Mrs Sackbutt smiled cheerfully: “Bless you, that’s only a nuss-child. And it does her no harm.”
While my mother took the baby out and began to nurse her upon her lap and Mrs Sackbutt poured out two tumblers from a stone jug, I left the chamber and climbed the battered staircase to knock at each door. My search was without profit for nobody had heard the name of Digweed, and as I went from one room to the next I realized that this was because the occupiers came and went too quickly for the house to have a common memory. I wondered where they came from and went to, for this, I reflected, must be the very bottom of the pit of degradation, and I could not conceive that there could be anywhere more debased than this.
The signs of poverty increased as I ascended, for above the floor on which the Sackbutts lived I commonly found two families inhabiting a single chamber. (They were large for the houses in the square had long ago been built as fine merchants’ dwellings.) In the first I was assailed by a strong stench which came from the paste the whole family were using for making cigar-boxes. A broken flower-pot propped open the window-frame but smoke from the chimneys outside was billowing in and adding to the foetid atmosphere. In the next room there was nobody but a small boy holding a baby that looked like a limp bundle of rags. There was a bucket full of soaking rags on a rickety deal table, the grate was oozing cinders, and a cracked tea-cup stood on the floor.
Most of the rooms had little furniture — perhaps a single turn-up bedstead with a bag of straw and a dirty and scanty coverlet — and the windows had in many cases lost their glass whose place was supplied by sheets of cloth covered in tallow to let a little light through. Yet in many of them an attempt had been made at decoration and there were flower-pots containing flowers or in some cases mere dried sticks where the plants had long ago died.
When I had tried every door, I decided to try all the other houses in the square in case we had mistaken the number, or in the hope that even if the Digweeds had gone, someone might remember them and know where they were now. The first chamber I tried on the ground-floor of the next house was the dwelling of a sweep and although the front room was fairly clean, I saw over his wife’s shoulder a back chamber containing nothing but a huge pile of soot and beside it an empty bird-cage. I opened another door when there was no response and found an old woman holding a plucked chicken that was visibly putrid, who screamed abuse at me so that I hastily closed it again. The next room was deserted and bare except for a pile of rags, a broken table, and a small girl of about five and a baby — both sitting on the floor.
I need not go on. Many of the occupants of these houses were stunned by hunger or incapacitated by drink or spoke no language that I recognised, but of those who could reply in English, none of them — at least of those who would answer me — could help me, and in despair I almost decided to abandon the search.
Then I knocked at the door of a garret-room at the top of No. 10 and although the woman who opened it (holding it only a little ajar) said: “I nivver heerd tell on ’em, young master,” an old man’s feeble voice from the room behind her called out: “Digweed? Aye, I rec’lleck a fambly of that name.”
“No you don’t,” the woman said without turning round and beginning to close the door.
“Why, I do,” the querulous voice insisted. “They lived four houses along, I b’lieve.”
The woman still held the door, looking at me discouragingly.
“No. 6?” I said. “Yes, that is so.”
With a warning shake of her head, the woman opened the door, allowing me to see that she was holding a baby to her breast, and I entered.
The chamber was small but clean and tidy and the walls, though they came down from the low ceiling at a sharp angle, were freshly whitewashed. A clean old man with a grizzled white chin sat before the fire looking at us.
“Here, sit down, young ’un,” he said, and with a smile showed me his complete range of teeth: two shiny yellow stumps.
I sat in the ancient chair opposite him that he indicated.
“Digweed, you say?” he began. “For sure, I mind ’em well for the master gived me baccy and the mistress brung me poultices for the rheumatiz and the little lad runned messages for me. They moved away, though. Now when was that? Let me think. They had the fever that time it was so bad here.”
“Yes,” I said with mounting excitement. “That’s them.”
“Why, I rec’lleck now. ’Twas the winter I broke my leg. That was four or five year agone.”
I was disappointed for it had sounded like them and yet if this was so it could not be. But the woman broke in impatiently: “Why, father, that was only a year or two back.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “Mebbe it was. Two on the children died. Is that right?”
“Yes,” I said, remembering the letter we had received and the news that we had been unable to interpret. “But where did they go to when they left here?”
He frowned: “I can’t call it to mind. In fact, I don’t believe I ever knowed it.”
I slumped down, and after all I had endured I found myself fighting back tears. “Do you know of anyone who might know?”
“Hold hard,” he said, “I believe I might. How I knowed ’em at all was on account of Barney. I believe he was the master’s brother, or mayhap the wife’s. Anyways, this Barney (I never heerd no other name), he worked mates with some coves what I done some work with. This is going back more nor ten year now. Jerry Isbister and Pulvertaft, they was.” Here he paused as if remembering something, and then he suddenly looked at me strangely: “Would you know anything about the lay they was on?”
I shook my head.
“Well, howsomever, they worked mates together for many a year. And with others, too, in course. (There was Blueskin for one. Nobody couldn’t forget him.) I helped ’em once or twice but I hadn’t the stomach for it, but that’s how I come to know Barney.”
Though I wanted to ask questions for I was intrigued by these words, I was afraid to interrupt him because he might lose the tenuous thread.
“Well, arter I gived up I heerd they had a turn-up. Barney and Pulvertaft agin Isbister. Then him and Pulvertaft went over the water.”
I glanced at the daughter in surprise and she mouthed: “Down the Borough.”
“But I believe Jerry knows of Barney still,” the old man went on. “I rec’lleck he said summut about him not three month back when I met him one day coming down Field-lane with his hoss and cart.”
“Longer back than that, dad,” the woman put in, with a meaningful glance at me. “You’ve been laid up of that leg of yourn for more than a year.”
“ ‘Why, Sam’el,’ he said to me,” the old man continued, ignoring her words, “ ‘it does a man good jist to lay eyes on you. I declare, your phiz’d ripen cowcumbers.’ That’s what he said,” old Samuel said chuckling. “ ‘Your face’d ripen cowcumbers.’ ”
“Do you know how I can find any of these men?”
“That I don’t for I nivver heerd tell what become of Barney beyond that he ’tended the Floatin’ ’Cademy at Gravesend.”
He began to cackle and I glanced at the daughter who
shook her head at me in bewilderment.
“And the others? Where do Isbister and Pulvertaft live?”
“Isbister lives in Parliament-street hard by Bethnal-green. Now is it No. 8 or No. 9?”
“And Pulvertaft?”
“I’ve heerd tell he lives in a nethersken in what they call the Old Manor-house down the Old Mint.”
“Father, you’re going back nigh on ten year now,” his daughter protested.
Seeing there was no more to be got from him, I expressed my gratitude and rose to leave.
“Come again, young feller,” he called out. “Maybe I’ll mind some more.”
As his daughter let me out she held the door between me and her father and said: “Now he’s stuck up here all day, and nobody don’t bother with him, he don’t care what he says to be took notice of.”
I thanked her and went back to my mother. I found that she had recovered her cheerfulness for there was colour in her cheeks again and when I said I had had some success, she greeted the news with a cry of joy and clapped her hands. I tried to emphasize how indirect was the connexion with Mrs Digweed that I had found, but she hardly listened. She had forgotten her lack of interest in finding her and was all for setting off immediately. Mrs Sackbutt confirmed to me what I had suspected about the relative distances of the two addresses I had learned: Bethnal-green was fairly near, but the Mint was on the other side of the metropolis.
“Bethnal-green!” my mother exclaimed. “Why I remember it. Uncle Martin had a summer-house there. It’s so pretty! Do let’s go there!”
Fate seemed to have determined that it should be so, and therefore we took leave of our kind hostess and set off. There was a light rain falling, but oblivious to this my mother was laughing and smiling as we walked along Wentworth-street and turned up Brick-lane.
“I don’t like to see you like this,” I said.
Her smile faded as if she had been struck: “You only want me to be miserable.”
“Of course I don’t. But you must keep a hold on yourself.”
“Why? What does anything matter any more!” she said.
“That’s silly.”
“We mustn’t quarrel!” she cried and stopped then flung her arms around me. “It’ll be all right, Johnnie. I know it will. We will find the Digweeds and stay with them. And then perhaps find work. Or if we have to, we will go to Sir Perceval and sell the codicil to him. You’ll see. It will all come right at last.”
“Of course it will,” I said, detaching myself from her embrace.
Though it was late afternoon and the dusk was gathering, carts and waggons were rumbling busily past us and the pavements, cracked and broken in many places, were crowded with ragged foot-passengers.
Once we were in Bethnal-green-road, I tried to use the map (which fortunately I had in my jacket pocket when I left Mrs Philliber’s) but it bore little resemblance to this district, for whole streets of houses stood where according to the design there should have been gardens. The metropolis was growing so fast that the map was already out of date, although it had been published only a few months after my birth.
“I remember this road so well,” my mother said, looking around. “We used to come here on Sundays in the summer when I was about your age. It was so peaceful. You’ll see, the countryside begins just here. We would hire a coach and Uncle Marty’s servant would come on ahead and lay out the food in the summer-house so that it would be waiting for us.”
After a few minutes, however, I could see that she was puzzled by the absence of countryside or gardens. And when she saw a church on our right she said: “I’m sure I remember this. And yet it seems so different.”
For some time we had been passing row upon row of little two-roomed or four-roomed dwellings in straggling streets or stifling courts, and now she glanced at me several times in growing perplexity.
“Are we lost?” I asked.
“I don’t understand: we should be there by now. I don’t remember any of this.”
“I believe this might be the place, Mamma. Look, that court is called Mulberry-gardens. These houses look new although they’re so broken down.”
She spoke in a faint and distant voice: “I believe you may be right.”
“And look,” I cried, “there are summer-houses.”
In an overgrown piece of waste-ground just off the high-road were a number of single-storied wooden buildings with verandahs and projecting supports for canvas awnings that must have once fluttered in the summer breeze. Now, however, they were rotting, green slime covered the walls, and they were near collapse, for they were forty or fifty years old. Yet to our surprise there were dim lights in them and we saw people entering and leaving.
As we advanced my mother became more and more upset and when she clutched my arm I could feel that she was trembling.
“Where was Uncle Marty’s summer-house?” I asked. “Can you remember? Perhaps it is still there?”
“I don’t want to see it!” she cried. “Oh Johnnie, everything’s so horrible now, I can’t bear it!”
We quickened our pace and hurried through the darkening streets until we reached the Green. There we enquired out the way, and had great difficulty in finding Parliament-street which turned out to be a dark little conspiracy of tiny houses crouched around a gloomy and diminutive square. Like most of those that had been thrown up in the last few years, it had a built-up parapet with a roof rising above it like a high hat, and windows that were too large for the front and looked like bulging eyes. We had no difficulty finding the house we sought, for a cart stood outside No. 8 bearing on its side the painted legend “Jeremy Isbister: General Carrier”.
A burly unshaven man of about forty opened the door to our knock. He had small bloodshot eyes on either side of a prominent but broken nose, and wore a neckcloth which was none too clean. He stared at us with hostility from orbs that were like the “eyes” of a potato that remain when it has been peeled, deep and black in the white flesh. His close-shaven scull, too, was like a fuzzy potato with its knobs and dents all visible. His big head was held low as if, like a cautious turtle’s, it was ready to disappear back between the shoulder-blades.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“We are friends of the Digweeds,” I said.
“Digweed!” he exclaimed in dismay. “Did he send you here?”
“No,” I answered. “And it is Mrs Digweed that we know.”
He scrutinised us: “I nivver heerd o’ no Mrs Digweed. What’s your business with her? Who sent you here?”
“If you are Mr Isbister, we were told you know a man called Barney, who is some kind of kin to Mrs Digweed.”
The small eyes appeared to me to widen, but he began to close the door saying “I don’t know no Barney. Is that good enough for you?”
At this my mother gave a cry and staggered against me so that I had to hold her up.
The man looked at her curiously: “She looks about done up. Don’t you have nowhere to go?”
I shook my head.
“Nor much blunt, I s’pose?”
I shook my head again: “We hoped to find shelter with Mrs Digweed.”
He looked at me with an appraising expression: “You’re a bright lad,” he said. “I’ll wager you can read?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Anything at all, print or writing?”
“Yes.”
“And write a fine genel’manlike hand, too?”
“That too,” I agreed.
He stared at me intently with his mouth slightly open but he said no more and I turned away, supporting my mother as best I could. When we had taken only a few steps he called out: “Wait! Do you want a shake-down for tonight?”
I turned back but hesitated.
“I have a chamber free,” he went on, “what I lets in the usual run o’ things. I had to turn the last fambly out a couple of nights back. You can have it tonight for ten-pence.”
“I think we should go on, Mamma,” I whispered.
/> “Oh let us take it for tonight, Johnnie,” my mother said. “I am so tired.”
Mr Isbister was listening to our conversation anxiously.
“May we see it?” I asked.
He turned and advanced into the passage, and as he did so bellowed: “Molly!”
He looked back and impatiently beckoned us with his head to come inside. As we stepped across the threshold into the dark passage, a strange smell that I could not identify struck me: it wasn’t just the cabbagey, potatoey, smell of the poor that I had become familiar with, but something darker and earthier. As we jostled each other in the narrow passage a big slatternly woman appeared from the back room.
She had been baking and was wiping her floury hands on her pin-before, but it seemed to me that there was something indefinably unclean about her. In the midst of her mealy-white fat face that was floury and doughy (like the ill-baked bread and cakes that I was to learn she was constantly making), lurked two deep black eyes. It was a habit of hers constantly to wipe her hands on her dirty apron as if — it seemed to me — preparing to use her fists.
“What do you want?” she said irritably.
The man jerked his head at us: “They want the chamber for tonight.”
She looked at us contemptuously: “Can you pay?”
“We’d like to see it first,” I said.
“First pair back,” she said.
“You can take it for the week for two shillings and six-pence,” the man said suddenly.
“Oh can they!” exclaimed the woman angrily.
As her husband took her arm and said something in an undertone, my mother and I went upstairs. The room was small and dark with one soot-begrimed little window which looked into a dirty back-yard. There was an ancient truckle-bed which was stripped bare and a thin straw palliasse on the floor. We looked at each other in dismay.
“It’s very dear for one night,” I objected, wrinkling up my nose at the smell of damp and that something else that seemed to pervade the house. “I don’t like those people. I don’t think we should stay.”
“But it’s getting late and I can’t go any further. I can’t, Johnnie. I don’t want to go onto those streets again. And where would we go?”