Quincunx

  “Well,” I said. “Just for one night.”

  When we got downstairs Mr Isbister was standing in the dim passage and smiling.

  “Will you do me and me wife the honour to take a glass o’ best nine-penny with us, ma’am?”

  My mother nodded and made to enter the parlour but Mr Isbister put his arm out and held the door: “Why, the parlour ain’t fit for company jist now.” He turned and led the way into the kitchen where he poured a large tumbler of gin for each of us, and healths were drunk. I left mine untasted.

  “Well, my dears,” Mrs Isbister said with a simper that was more disquieting than her previous hostility, “is the room to your liking?”

  “We wish to take it for one night,” I said.

  “I see who makes the decisions!” cried Mrs Isbister. “Bless him, he’s quite the little master isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said my mother. “He bullies me terribly sometimes.” She looked at me reproachfully.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I love children,” said Mrs Isbister and to my horror reached out a large, doughy fist to stroke the top of my head. “We buried three. Mr Isbister and me,” she said mournfully.

  He sighed heavily and asked: “Another, ma’am?”

  My mother held out her glass and he filled it and they toasted each other again.

  “Would you like the money now?” my mother asked, opening her reticule.

  “There’s plenty of time for that,” Mr Isbister said. “We’ll trust you.”

  “You’ve got to trust someone in this world, haven’t you?” Mrs Isbister said. “That’s what Mr Isbister and me allus says.”

  My mother nodded and smiled at me as if to invite me to share her good opinion of our new landlords.

  “It’s a nice room,” Mr Isbister said. “You’ll sleep sound as a bat in winter.”

  The Isbisters lent us some ragged sheets and blankets and the straw palliasse was made up for me. My mother went to sleep quickly but I stayed awake for an hour or so and my fears were not allayed when I heard the Isbisters very late that night come up to the other chamber quarrelling drunkenly.

  CHAPTER 33

  Rather to my surprise, since I believed that carriers started work very early, I was the first of the household to wake up the next morning. By half past seven there was still no sound from the Isbisters, though I thought I heard a noise below. I got out of bed and dressed, leaving my mother still asleep though tossing and turning restlessly. As I descended the stairs, I could hear snores coming from the Isbisters’ room. From below there was the sound of the fire-grate being riddled and when I went into the kitchen I found a girl of about fourteen kneeling before the hearth and furiously clearing the fire.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m John. Who are you?”

  To my surprise she did not even look at me. This didn’t seem very friendly or even polite, and altogether she looked a most unprepossessing young woman, covered from head to foot in powdered black, and with a pallid, bony face and blistered red hands. I looked round the room. There were a number of large baskets along one wall which, though they were covered by a piece of cloth, appeared to be full of clothes.

  I went to find a baker and a dairy in order to buy a penn’orth of rolls and a little milk for our breakfast, and when I had done this I returned upstairs and consumed my share while I waited. When my mother awoke a little after eight I urged her to make ready as quickly as she could so that we could leave the house immediately.

  “I don’t believe I can,” she said.

  I was disturbed to see that she was feverish and pale.

  “Can’t you make an effort?” I asked.

  “No, and anyway, where should we go?”

  It was clear that she was ill and so I said I would tell our hosts when they got up, and let her sleep again.

  However, I had a long wait. At last, late on towards midday, I heard them rise and descend. A few minutes later I went downstairs, and hearing me on the stair, Mr Isbister bellowed from the kitchen:

  “In here!”

  I went in and found them making their breakfast of bread and cheese and washing it down with porter which the girl was serving.

  “You clumsy creatur’,” Mrs Isbister was saying to the girl as I entered, but when she saw me she forced her features into a smile.

  When I told them of my mother’s state they said they were sorry and insisted that we should stay until she was recovered.

  Mr Isbister scratched his head: “Why, I suppose I could use a sharp lad for a few days to carry messages and hold the horse. In course, I’d jist be doing you a favour. So let’s say you don’t pay us no rent and that’ll keep us square. All right?”

  I nodded.

  “That man’s so kind,” his wife said to me. “Why, I’ve knowed him give up a day’s work to help his brother when it weren’t nothing to his own good. Do you know, I believe I could find something for you to do as well. You could fetch and carry the out-work for me, for this idle gal’s too slow.” She turned quickly and cried, “Why, Polly, haven’t you set that fire on yet?” aiming a slap at the girl who moved smartly out of the way.

  When I had told my mother what had been agreed, I came down again in order to be ready to go out on the cart. The girl was black-leading the fireplace while her employers rounded off their breakfast with a few glasses of gin, and I stood at the door waiting for my orders.

  “What would you like me to do, Mr Isbister?” I enquired at last.

  “Nothin’ for now,” he said, leaning back and loosening his belt a few notches. “I’ll want you by and by, though, for I have to take a half-anker of Hollands from Lime’us to Hackney. But arst her.”

  He pointed a finger over his shoulder at his wife who nodded towards one of the baskets and said: “Take that to Mrs O’Herlihy in Smart’s-gardings. Tell her to bring home what she’ve done.”

  Carrying the heavy and awkward basket with difficulty even though it was empty, I set off. At last I was working! Just beyond the little square was a nightman’s-yard where a number of old women, each carrying a leather bag, appeared to be raking through the ash-heaps with sticks, and from one of them I enquired out my way to Smart’s-gardens. I had to cross places where pools of black liquid lay blocking the narrower streets and often flooding right across the courts so that it was impossible not to wade through them. Great mounds of waste lay in the courts and I hated to think what this place must be like in the hot weather.

  Around here most of the streets were new, but they had been thrown up carelessly in the former pleasure-gardens and straggled haphazardly across wild wastes of mud and stones. There were no street-lamps or pavements, and in many places the carriageway was not made up at all but was merely an expanse of mud. The yards and the little gardens that seemed to grow nothing but broken railings and old china were often not distinguished from the public thoroughfares, or were marked off only by rotting palings; and all about there were piles of rubble, old herring-casks lying on their sides, broken glass, weeds, and always and everywhere there were dirty children rolling among the dirt or tossing ha’pennies.

  I found the dirty little street — really no more than a few short rows of houses built in higgledy-piggledy fashion — and asked for the O’Herlihys. The house they inhabited was the same size as the Isbisters’ but a different family had each of the rooms. The people I sought possessed the kitchen, and when I entered I found almost the whole family — two women, three girls and even two little boys — hard at work stitching. The room was hot and close for it was illuminated by stinking tallow-dips, and there was paper stuffed in the broken panes of several of the windows which rose and fell as I opened and closed the door. With a shudder I saw that the walls were alive with wood-lice and moved a step away.

  Mrs O’Herlihy, who rose and came forward, had a lined, anxious face and yet — I realized with surprise — was only a few years older than my mother.

  She seemed frightened at the sight of me and the basket: “I hope
she won’t make no bates for poor work.” She sighed and said: “She ain’t the worst of the sweaters, but she’s bad enough.”

  Mrs O’Herlihy loaded the basket with finished garments and I helped her to carry it back, and hard work it was to chart a course that would keep it clear of the filth.

  “What took you so long?” Mrs Isbister demanded when we staggered into the over-heated kitchen. Her face was flushed and there was a stone jug and a tumbler on the table before her. Her husband sat frowning judicially at the other end of the table with his large hand clasping another tumbler.

  She began to lift the garments out — I now saw that they were all waistcoats — and examined the linings, the buttons and the button-holes of each one carefully. Triumphantly she held one up and cried: “Look at this! I ain’t a-goin’ to pay you for work like this! You’ve sp’iled that lining. It’ll come out of what I owe you and you won’t git no more work of me.”

  “Oh please, mim,” Mrs O’Herlihy pleaded, “it’s only a little sp’iled. One of the chillun must’ve done it. Let me take it back and do it again.”

  “Wery well. But I’m still bating you for it on account of you’ve sp’iled the material.”

  “Oh please, mim, my good man’s been out of collar for four months.”

  “Here’s the blunt,” Mrs Isbister responded, flinging the coins down on the table so that one of them rolled onto the floor. “Take it or leave it. There’s plenty to do the work if you don’t want it.”

  Mrs O’Herlihy picked up the money and with a little bob towards Mrs Isbister and a nervous glance at her husband, hurried from the room clutching the waistcoat.

  “What are you a-starin’ at?” Mrs Isbister cried to me. “Look alive now! Git on to the Parracks in Coopers-gardings and tell them to bring their work home if they want any more.”

  As I turned to leave she grabbed me by the shoulder and thrust the big basket at me: “Where are you goin’? You’re to take this with you, in course. And mind and don’t be so long this time.”

  It was a relief to get out of the house and as I hurried away I noticed that there was a bladder-drier’s a few doors along, and wondered if the smell might come from there for it gave off a terrible stench.

  Now I had to plunge into one of the former gardens which was a wilderness of broken-down palings, criss-crossed by treacherous ditches and dotted with summer-houses — either abandoned and overgrown with vegetation or still inhabited. Wide lakes of putrid water and huge mounds of debris and filth lay everywhere, but in amongst the mud and the undergrowth, makeshift cabins had been thrown together with rooves of tarred canvas. My goal turned out to be a rickety wooden structure, built perhaps sixty years earlier as a summer garden-house, in whose single tiny room a whole family yet again was at work.

  When I explained my errand Mrs Parrack, almost in tears, said: “I haven’t got none ready. We’ve all been sick of the low fever. I’ll do it by Monday, on my solemn word.”

  So I left and now, as I hurried back, I realized what I was reminded of by the rotten thatch, the leaning chimneys, the holes in the rough-cast walls that had been stopped with hurdles and straw, and by the livestock — the numerous chickens scratching around in the dirt, the pigs snorting in little outhouses, even ducks waddling through the black ponds that drained from the heaped middens, and donkeys grazing dolefully in tiny back-yards. The district was like one of the tumbledown hamlets around Melthorpe — except that it went on and on and on, and the smells were not those of the farm-yard for the leaking ash-heaps were foul, the dark and noisome stalls that sprouted like blighted mushrooms amongst the undergrowth of the waste-lands sheltered human beings, and, as I was to realize later, the cries and moans and sudden outbreaks of bark-like yelpings that occurred throughout the night, were made by men and not beasts.

  When I got back and told Mrs Isbister the outcome of my errand, she shouted: “You little flatt. You should have took what she’d done. Most like, she’s pawned it. And then you should have gone on to the M’Quhaes.”

  “But please, you didn’t tell me,” I protested.

  “Don’t answer me agin,” she shouted. “Go to the M’Quhaes in Crabtree-row. And if they don’t have nothing, go to the Lamprills up Whiskers-gardings.”

  In this manner I hurried backwards and forwards a number of times, all the while worrying about my mother and hoping that we would soon be able to leave. Then in the late afternoon when I was slumped exhausted and unregarded in a corner of the kitchen while Mrs Isbister was haranguing Polly, Mr Isbister rose a trifle unsteadily to his feet, wiped his sleeve across his mouth, and told me to make ready to come with him. I just had time to hurry upstairs where I found my mother sleeping restlessly, her face flushed, before my new master and I strolled to the livery-stables nearby. Here we fetched his horse which we led back and put to the cart.

  The horse seemed as lazy as its master — though much thinner — and was stubborn to move off at the command. “Why, drat you, Gunpowder!” Mr Isbister cried, shaking the reins: “Burn my body if I don’t sell you for glew!”

  We were in motion at last, however, and this was a welcome respite for me. We drove to Limehouse to fetch a great barrel of Hollands which we delivered to a public-house in Hackney, and all I had to do was to hold Gunpowder’s head while Mr Isbister directed the warehousemen and then the pot-boys. After that we came home and when he had shewn me how to unharness the horse, I took the beast back to the stable. Although my master did nothing for the rest of the day, his wife kept me busy until night-fall.

  My mother was no better in the evening and when I had fetched and consumed a ha’penny pease-pudding from the pastry-cook — my mother could eat nothing — I fell exhausted into bed. She was in the same state the next morning and the day passed in much the same way, for Mr Isbister lay even later in bed, then rose and immediately began drinking, while I spent the morning running errands for his wife. I was sent to fetch and harness the horse in the afternoon and we made one journey to Aldgate to pick up some boxes to deliver to Poplar. But then I was instructed to take the horse back and for the rest of the afternoon Mr Isbister sat in the kitchen drinking.

  In the evening my mother was a little better and she and I were eating some cold pies from the pastry-cook when we heard a number of men arriving one after the other. The sound of drinking and laughter was heard all evening and had not abated by the time we went to bed. Towards midnight I was woken by sudden noises and as I listened it became clear not only that the men were leaving the house, but also that they were trying to do so quietly. Then, to my surprise, I heard the cart setting off and reflected that Gunpowder must have been fetched from the livery-stable so late by special arrangement. I wished our room gave onto the street so that I could look out, for I wondered what Mr Isbister and his companions could be doing at this late hour. I fell asleep before I heard the cart return, and the next morning my master did not rise until noon, and did not go out at all that day.

  When we had been there three days my mother was better and that evening, the 26th. of March, I asked her if she felt well enough to leave the next day.

  “I believe I do,” she said. “But, Johnnie, we’ve been getting on so well here, why don’t we stay a little longer?”

  “No,” I insisted. “They’re not nice people.”

  Yet what did I have against them — apart from the way they treated Polly and the out-workers, and even the poor old horse?

  “Don’t be silly. They’ve been very kind in letting us stay for nothing. And where else can we go? We’re not going to be able to find Mrs Digweed and that was a foolish idea anyway. And your Miss Quilliam won’t help us either. And we need somewhere to live while I look for work and try to find you a school.”

  “School!” I exclaimed. “How can we afford that? Don’t you understand how little we have now?”

  “Don’t speak to me like that, Johnnie,” she said indignantly.

  I persisted, however, in my attempts to persuade her to leave.
r />   “Oh very well,” she cried at last. “If you’re so set on it, we’ll go and starve on the streets.”

  We went downstairs and, finding the Isbisters as usual drinking in the kitchen, told them of our decision. They looked taken aback and Mrs Isbister said:

  “We’re wery sorry to larn it. Will you stay for a moment and say farewell with a nice glass of best Cream o’ the Valley, my dear?”

  Avoiding my warning gaze, my mother accepted and seated herself.

  “In course a place like this ain’t good enough for you,” Mrs Isbister began. “For you’re a real lady and I respecks that. Oh, I know you think I’m low, and so I am, powerful low,” and she glared round fiercely as if defying anyone to deny it. “But I know I’m low and that makes me not as low as them as don’t.”

  “Draw it mild, old gal,” Mr Isbister murmured.

  “But I will say on me own behalf as how I knows a real lady. And for how? On account of I lived sarvint to one for nigh on ten year. Oh wery ladylike she was with her fine chaney and her fambly silver and all that. Everythin’ had to be jist so. I left her at the last for I could not abide her prims and prissums.”

  “Oh that does sound awful,” my mother said. “I know I always try to be good to my servants.”

  Mrs Isbister scowled briefly at this: “So does I. For that’s the best way to git work of ’em. Though that gal!” She shook her head. “It’s a kindness to keep her up to the mark for she’ll slip if I don’t. But as for my mistress what I was a-tellin’ you on, oh, she was a Tartar and no mistake. That fust day I come, she says, ‘Do this, Meg,’ and I says, ‘With respeck, that ain’t my name, ma’am,’ and she says, ‘Why, Meg, we allus calls our maid that on account of it’s easier to bring to mind.’ ” Mrs Isbister glared round as she reached this conclusion and angrily drained her glass.

  “She don’t want to hear all that,” Mr Isbister interrupted. He turned back to us: “Mrs Isbister and me is wery sorry you’re going, you and the younker.”