Quincunx

  “He’s as fond of that boy as if he was his own,” Mrs Isbister commented with a doughy simper, and her hand came snaking somewhat erratically towards the top of my head. I moved slightly sideways and it clawed the back of my chair instead.

  “And he’s so sharp he’s been wery useful to us,” Mr Isbister went on.

  “Yes, he is clever,” my mother agreed, smiling at me nervously. “I wish we could stay, but Johnnie believes we should go.”

  I glared at her.

  “But whyever should you go?” exclaimed Mr Isbister. “And jist for the boy says so!”

  “I need to find work.”

  “What kind?” Mrs Isbister asked.

  “Needle-work.”

  “Are you good with your needle?” Mrs Isbister asked.

  “Yes,” my mother said proudly. “I am.”

  “Why, I could put some plain-work your way. You wouldn’t have to do nothin’ low,” Mrs Isbister went on. “You and me would work here wery snug and cozy. It’ll be to the credit of the connexion to have a real lady.”

  My mother turned to me and her smile faded as she saw my expression. “What harm can it do for just a few weeks?” she asked in an undertone.

  But the Isbisters were so close that I could not tell her all I suspected, so I merely glared.

  “Then here’s what I’ll offer,” Mr Isbister said. “You don’t pay no rent for the room and you work for the old ooman here, and we’ll give you six shillin’ a week for yourself. In course,” he added as an afterthought, “that’s with the boy’s work throwed in.”

  His wife nodded and smiled.

  It seemed to me strange that they were prepared to pay so much more than the going rate when there were many women nearby who would work for much less. Was I wrong to suspect and dislike them?

  “Only six shillings! I had hoped for more,” my mother said.

  Though I was irritated by this, I hoped that her ignorance would prevent the bargain from being struck.

  “More?” Mrs Isbister cried, then broke off suddenly and drained her glass.

  Mr Isbister leaned forward quickly: “I reckon you can see your way to a little more than that, can’t you, Molly?”

  She looked back at him steadily for a moment and then said stiffly to my mother: “For a real lady like you, it’s worth seven shillin’.”

  Though still disappointed, my mother agreed to these terms. The contract had to be celebrated, and several times while he drank, my new master smiled at me and said: “Why, you’ll live like a fighting-cock from now on.”

  When we at last went up to our room my mother was more cheerful than I had seen her since we had fled from our former lodgings. She remarked upon our good luck in having run across such people, and, almost gaily, she said: “I didn’t like Mrs Isbister at first, I must confess, for her appearance is not in her favour. But I believe she is a good creature at heart.”

  “You promised we would leave,” I said reproachfully.

  “Oh don’t start that!” she cried.

  I pursued it no further, but when she extinguished the candle and bade me good-night I made no reply.

  The next morning my mother slept late and when I went downstairs I found that, as usual, Polly and I were the only creatures awake in the house. I tried again to make her answer me but she appeared to be entirely deaf, and even when I stood in her way she stepped round me without looking at me. It was nearly nine o’ clock before the Isbisters emerged from their room and they were both in a very bad mood. My mother came downstairs at the same time as they, and Mrs Isbister, having scolded her for her lateness, put her to work stitching shirt collars despite her protest that she had not breakfasted. And she gave me errands to run that kept me busy all morning.

  Mr Isbister and I went out on the cart in the afternoon and when I got back I found my mother and Mrs Isbister still in the kitchen. My mother was stitching away and looked up at me with an exhausted smile when I entered. Our benefactress, who was sitting with a jug of gin and a tumbler on the table before her, now grudgingly admitted that it was time to end work and handed over a shilling. When we were safely upstairs my mother began to tell me how hard Mrs Isbister had forced her to work. Choking back the words that rose to my lips, I contented myself with extracting a promise that we would leave there as soon as we had saved a few shillings. We were both almost too tired to eat and were soon fast asleep.

  About two weeks passed in much the same way. At times Mrs Isbister was extremely rude and unkind to my mother who then tearfully complained to me, but at other times our mistress would make up for it by being fulsomely friendly. I would go into the kitchen with the baskets and overhear her in her most oily and ingratiating mood as she sat by the gin bottle talking to my mother as she worked:

  “That gal,” she would often begin. “I don’t know what to do with her. (Yes, you help yourself. That’s right.) But sarvints is allus an infernal nuisance, as you know yourself, Mrs Offland.”

  To illustrate her point she would often seize Polly by the hair and pinch her, but the girl neither complained nor resisted. On Mondays a horrible snivelling old woman with red eyes, Mrs Peppiatt, came to help with the wash, and not only was the wretched slavey unmercifully harried on two fronts, but my mother also became the object of their spiteful interest. It was clear to me that Mrs Isbister delighted in having a “lady” to patronize and humiliate, and it infuriated me to see my mother accepting worse and worse abuse from her each day. I do not know whether my mother’s acquiescence towards her mistress or her complaints afterwards to me angered me more, but, annoyed by the latter, I refrained at first from telling her the things I had seen in the district. When at last I began to describe them, she either refused to listen or else accused me of making them up.

  My master’s work involved going to public-houses a great deal while I waited outside with the horse and cart. (When it rained, Gunpowder and I grew soggy, and it was not surprising that the horse did not take fire when the whip was applied.) It seemed reasonable that Mr Isbister should patronize taverns in order to hear of work, but I began to realize that the carting he mainly did was between the bar and his lips, and at this he drove a brisk trade.

  Increasingly I puzzled over the Isbisters’ behaviour for I could make no pattern out of what I witnessed. By this time, I had established that it was Mr Isbister’s wont, regularly every two or three nights, to go out with his cart at about midnight in the company of a number of other men, returning four or five hours later. Then he would sleep most of the next day and begin drinking when he arose. Then another part of the pattern became apparent and began to teaze me.

  Late one Sunday afternoon, about a week after the scene I have just described, Mr and Mrs Isbister came downstairs with an air of self-consciousness. She was wearing a fine silk gown with a velvet cloak, and a magnificent bonnet. Mr Isbister was dressed in a bottle-green top-coat with a pale blue undercoat, canary waistcoat and salt-and-pepper trowsers. Polly was despatched to Bethnal-green-road and when she returned a few minutes later in a hackney-coach, her master and mistress got in and I heard him give the order “Bagnigge-wells tea-gardings, my good man.” They came back very late, sullen and unsteady as they climbed the stairs. The following Sunday they appeared once again resplendently dressed — on this occasion for the country — and this time (as I overheard) hired a coach for the day to take them to Richmond.

  Where, I asked myself, did the money come from that paid for these parties of pleasure? It did not seem to me that Mrs Isbister was “sweating” on a large enough scale to account for their comparative opulence.

  As April wore on, however, this pattern changed. Mr Isbister went out at night on the cart only once in the first week and after that not at all, and there were no more fine clothes on display or trips in coaches. They quarrelled more often and more noisily than before and spent a great deal of time drinking. At least, however, the weather was beautiful now: fine, very dry and still pleasantly cool even in the sun.

&nbsp
; It was at about this time that there occurred an incident which should have encouraged me to believe in the good intentions of our patrons. Since the winter clothes that Mrs Philliber had purchased on our behalf were both heavier and of finer quality than we required, my mother and I decided to sell them for lighter garments and raise some money to enable us (I hoped) to get away.

  It seemed prudent to ask advice of Mrs Isbister and so one evening, just before finishing work, my mother said to her: “Do you know how much this coat of Johnnie’s and his linen shirt and my spencer are worth?”

  “No,” Mr Isbister suddenly objected. “Don’t sell ’em. Leastways not the boy’s good things: that cut-away and the silk neck-kerchief.”

  We all — including his wife — looked at him in surprise: “It’s good for the business,” he said, “to have a smartly-dressed boy on the cart.” And then, to my amazement, he brought out of his greasy coat-pocket a half-sovereign and handed it to my mother with ceremony: “Buy what you need with that,” he said. “I want him to look like a young swell.”

  “Why, you’re too generous,” Mrs Isbister cried. She turned to my mother: “I’ll take that from your wages, Mary.”

  I saw my mother flinch at this use of her name.

  “No you won’t,” Mr Isbister said. “That’s from me.”

  My mother and I hastened upstairs as they began to quarrel.

  “Mother,” I said, “we must leave this place.”

  She looked at me in alarm: “Whyever do you say that?”

  “Because of them.”

  “How can you say that? Of course, she makes me work very hard but at least she pays me something. And without that, where would we go and what would we do?”

  “We must try to find something else,” I insisted. “We can’t stay here for ever, and now is the best time to look for other work. The summer is approaching and the start of the Season.”

  “No,” she said. “I dare not leave here.”

  “But you promised we would go when we had money.”

  “But a half-sovereign isn’t enough, Johnnie. And there are so many things that we need. I must have some decent clothes and I can’t bear not to have proper bed-linen. I can’t.”

  We quarrelled about this and she was reduced to tears. Now feeling guilty for what I had said, I tried to comfort her.

  “Then if you really want to please me,” she said, “let us go out now and buy what we need!”

  I agreed reluctantly, for the half-sovereign represented our best chance of escape. As we left the house we heard Mrs Isbister’s voice raised: “When are you ever a-going to get some more pickled pork?”

  “Don’t start on that agin!” the man of the house shouted just before we closed the street-door.

  We hurried through the muddy streets of the neighbourhood towards the high-road, for it was Saturday-night and the street-market was drawing towards its climax. In the flaring gas-lights the faces — the features often squashed together or misshapen — loomed at us from the shadows like a theatrical show: the drawn faces of the very poor, the laughing faces of those in funds or already drunk, but always, in one form or another, misery and fear and shame and desperation, whether clothed in rags or in tawdry finery, and everywhere a profligacy of children — children of all ages, children in tatters, dirty, with unkempt hair, their chests pinched inwards and their legs bowed, and with running sores on their faces or on their limbs that were visible through their rags; children running, fighting, stealing, swarming in the kennels.

  This was the first time we had ventured into the market so late, and we drew together in dismay.

  We bought (second-hand, of course) some more clothes for my mother and some bed-linen and a pair of boots for each of us, and the half-sovereign soon disappeared. However, once she was wearing her new bonnet and cloak, my mother’s spirits rose.

  When we got back we heard the Isbisters in the middle of a fierce quarrel.

  “I’m having to work myself half to death,” the lady of the house was shouting as we opened the door.

  “It’s the blessed weather,” her husband responded. “Is it my fault that it’s so bad?”

  We were stealing up the stairs at this moment and I don’t think my mother heard this remark which puzzled me, because the weather had remained fine and dry for a couple of weeks.

  “You know there ain’t no things to be had when it’s like this,” Mr Isbister shouted.

  We had not been quiet enough, for just as we reached the door of our room, Mrs Isbister came into the hall. She looked up at my mother and said thickly: “Why, Mary, you do look nice.”

  My mother drew back to take my arm: “Thank you, Mrs Isbister.”

  That lady glowered and, reaching for support from the door-handle behind her, said: “From now on you call me ‘ma’am’. Is that understood?”

  “Yes,” my mother said softly.

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  When we had shut the door behind us, she said: “Oh Johnnie, I think she’s horrible. If only we could go! I wish we hadn’t spent that money.”

  “Then let’s go now anyway!” I urged.

  A look of terror appeared on her face: “No, I dare not.”

  She seemed so frightened at the thought that I pursued it no further.

  The weather continued sunny and dry. It was a few days after this, on the 13th. of April, that Mr Isbister told me late one morning to put on my new clothes and get Gunpowder from the livery stable and harness him to the cart. I noticed when I got back with the beast that a piece of tarred sacking was hanging over the driver’s side of the cart in such a way as to obscure the name painted on it.

  We set off and after some time were driving along Old-street and then up the City-road, a district which was quite strange to me. Then, just after we passed a large building on the side of which I saw the sign “St. Luke’s”, we turned the corner and Mr Isbister reined in Gunpowder.

  He glanced behind him up the street and then said to me in a low voice: “Now listen, young ’un. I’ve been good to you and yer mother, haven’t I?” I nodded. “Now it’s your chance to show your gratitude. All right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to go to the infirmary ward and arst for Mr Pulsifer who is the superintendent. When you find him, tell him you’ve come for Mr Leatherbarrow. He’s the uncle of a friend of mine, Bob Stringfellow. Bob hasn’t time to fetch the old feller himself, so he’s arst me to do it.”

  “But Mr Leatherbarrow doesn’t know me. Will he come with me?”

  “Don’t consarn yourself about that,” Mr Isbister answered, with a smile.

  “Very well,” I agreed.

  “That’s prime,” he said. “I knowed you was up to the game.”

  “Where will he go?” I asked, for there was room for only two people on the seat.

  “On that straw back there,” Mr Isbister said, jerking his head.

  I supposed he would be more comfortable if he could lie down since he had been ill.

  “That puts me in mind o’ something,” Mr Isbister went on. He reached into his pocket and brought out a coin. “Now you see this here shilling? You’re to show it to Mr Pulsifer and say it’s for helping you to get the old feller onto the cart out here. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “If he arsts, say there’s a friend o’ yourn with the cart what can’t help on account of I’ve got a gammy arm. See?” I nodded, reflecting that this did not seem to have prevented him from heaving bales of cloth a few days before. I reached out for the coin and he handed it to me saying earnestly: “There’ll be one for yourself if this goes off all right.”

  I got off the cart.

  “Go to the gate round the front,” he said, pointing back the way we had come. “And remember, he’s in the infirmary ward.’

  I went through the gate and up to the porter’s lodge where I was given directions. When I passed into the building the sounds from the street were suddenly
muffled, and as I began to walk along a long dark stone-flagged passage I heard nothing but the echoes of my own footsteps and the distant sounds of raised voices.

  I passed a yard with a high wall through the gate of which I saw men, women and children — all wearing their distinctive garb and the parish badge — picking at thick knots of tarred ropes. And in another yard there was a loud and mysterious rumbling, though I was unable to see what was making it.

  When I had made my way to the infirmary I was directed by one of the attendants to Mr Pulsifer, a tall and sallow-faced individual with a thin, fastidious mouth.

  When I gave him my message he looked at me curiously: “Do you have a coach?”

  “No, but a person is waiting outside with a cart. I have a shilling for your attendants to help me get Mr Leatherbarrow onto it.”

  “Follow me,” he said, looking at me sceptically.

  As we left the room he picked up a candle and lit it from a gas-jet while he called to two other men: “Hey Jack! Jem! This way!”

  Two burly individuals who had been lounging against the wall smoking a pipe and chatting together, now followed us out of the long room and along a gloomy passage.

  “Nobody visited him when he was ill,” Mr Pulsifer said, turning to look at me intently. “It’s strange his nephew should want him now.”

  As we descended some steps and entered a cold dark room in the cellars, I wondered at the inappropriateness of such a chamber for a convalescent old man. Mr Pulsifer led us over to a corner of the room where there was a wide wooden ledge like a sideboard on which I now saw, by the light of his candle, a large shape covered by a piece of cloth. While Mr Pulsifer raised the candle Jack pulled back the cloth.

  “There he is,” Mr Pulsifer said.

  I went closer, my eyes straining in the dim light. Then I felt a surge of horror and all my perplexities were instantly resolved: an old man was lying there who, by his marble-like flesh and staring eyes, was no longer in a state to be injured by a ride in a jolting cart. Because of the near-darkness, the men did not notice my expression. The two assistants picked the awful object up, and, one holding the feet and the other the shoulders while Mr Pulsifer led the way with the candle, carried it back the way we had come. The superintendent took leave of me — with a final suspicious look — as we passed through the infirmary, and the other two followed me with their burden out into the street.