Alexander Graham Bell: Master of Sound #7 (9 page)

“What if we don’t see the Thames and we fall in and drown?” Felix asked as they stood on the street trying to decide where to go.

Felix pronounced it
Tames
, which was how
Thames Street
in Newport was pronounced.

“It’s
Thames
,” Hadley said, emphasizing the
th
sound.

“I don’t care what you call it,” Felix groaned. “I don’t want to drown in it.”

Maisie peered around the corner. The main streets were lit by gas lamps. In fact, when they’d arrived at Grandfather Bell’s house, a man was going around lighting the lamps with a big pole that had a fixture on one end. She’d watched as he inserted it into each lamppost and a sudden burst of flame ignited inside.

“You look like you’ve never seen a lamplighter,” Grandfather Bell had teased her.

Now she wished there had been more lamplighters around. The side streets had no lights at all. They yawned out into sheer darkness as a swirl of fog floated eerily around everything.

“I don’t think we should leave the main street,” Maisie decided.

“We can’t just stand here all night,” Rayne said.

They agreed on that, but none of them had any idea what to do. Felix’s bringing up the man who drowned in the Thames because he couldn’t see it had frightened them. Now they didn’t want to wander too far off. The dark, foggy streets added to their growing fear.

From the distance, the sound of heavy footsteps moved toward them.

“Oh dear,” Rayne whispered as they inched closer together.

Out of the darkness stepped a man. He wore a long, dark coat with big brass buttons and a thick belt around his waist. They all noticed his shiny top hat. But only Maisie noticed his gun.

“Where do you belong?” the man barked at them.

Maisie’s eyes drifted from that gun hanging from his belt up to the badge pinned to his coat. She could just make out the words
CITY POLICE
with a crown etched above them.

Just as she felt relieved that this wasn’t a bad guy,
the policeman grabbed Felix roughly by the ear and yanked him closer.

“Come on, then,” he said in disgust. “The lot of you.”

For a brief moment Maisie considered running away. But how would she ever find her brother again if she left him now? At least the police would bring them somewhere warm for the night, maybe even give them some food.

“Thank you, Officer,” Maisie said as she fell into step beside him.

The policeman laughed.

“You’re thanking me for bringing you to the workhouse?” he scoffed. “That’s a good one.”

“Workhouse?” Maisie repeated.

But the policeman didn’t answer her. He didn’t let go of Felix either.

Maisie turned to see what Hadley and Rayne thought of this situation. But when she did, they were gone. All she saw was an empty street and the fog swirling around the lampposts.

To Felix, the workhouse looked like a prison.

Once the policeman deposited them there, a fat woman with red cheeks and watery eyes handed the twins scratchy, tattered uniforms and ordered them to put it on. Then she half-dragged, half-led Maisie to a set of big double doors and told her to find an empty cot and get some sleep. She grabbed Felix by the ear the policeman had left alone and brought him to another set of double doors, instructing him to do the same.

“You’ll need your sleep,” she said in an accent like some of the women in Grandfather Bell’s class had. “Sweepin’s hard work.”

“Sweeping?” Felix repeated.

But the woman just folded her arms and glared at him.

Reluctantly, Felix walked through those doors into a big room. As far as he could see, cots stood in rows. On each cot, there was a small lump of a boy.

Felix walked slowly up and down each row, looking for an empty one.

“
Pssst
,” he heard. “Over ’ere.”

Felix followed the voice several rows over.

“Take Jimbo’s,” the boy said. “’e won’t be needin’ it anymore.”

Felix crawled under the thin blanket.

“Where did…um…Jimbo go?” he asked the boy.

“Dead,” the boy said matter-of-factly.

Felix shivered under the dead boy’s blanket.

“What happened to him?” he managed to ask.

The boy snorted. “’e died!”

“I…I know. But how?”

“’ow would I know? ’e got sick and ’e died. Maybe quinsy. ’e complained about his throat.”

“But—” Felix began.

“They take the dead ones and put them in meat pies,”
the boy whispered. “And that’s the truth.”

“I don’t think—”

“You’re in the parish now,” the boy said sleepily. “You’ll get used to it.”

The boy settled back onto his own cot.

All around him, Felix heard the soft breathing and light snores of sleeping children.

Orphans!
Grandfather Bell had said.

And now Felix was one of them.

Felix was awakened from a fitful sleep by someone hitting the bottoms of his feet with a stick.

“Get up, you little buggers,” a man growled.

Through his half-opened eyes, Felix watched the man move systematically up and down the rows of cots, slapping all the boys awake the same way.

No one hesitated. As soon as the stick left a boy’s feet, the boy jumped up, cowlicks pointing to the ceiling, eyes filled with sleep. Felix did the same, the bottoms of his feet still smarting and both of his ears hot and sore from the night before.

The boy in the cot next to him grinned down at Felix. He was tall and stout, with black soot in his sandy hair and around his ears and neck.

“You can be my climbing boy, Jimbo the Second,” he said.

The sound of the dead boy’s name sent a shudder down Felix’s spine.

“Felix,” he said quickly. “My name is Felix.”

“Stop the yammering!” the man yelled. “Get to breakfast so you can get to work!”

The boys formed a ragtag line and slowly made their way out.

“Breakfast,” the boy muttered. “Gruel is all we get. Call it what you like.”

They moved down the corridor to another vast room, this one with rows and rows of long tables and chairs. Already half the room was filled with girls, and Felix searched for any sign of Maisie among them.

“Looking for someone?” the boy asked him.

“My sister,” Felix said.

“So you just got put out then?” the boy asked.

Felix took a seat next to him but kept his eyes searching the rows of girls.

“You still remember your mum? And eating bangers and mash?” the boy continued.

Hot tears sprung to Felix’s eyes. He didn’t know what bangers and mash was, but surely it was better
than gruel. And the thought of his mother made his chest ache with homesickness.

“I’ardly remember mine,” the boy said softly. “She smelled nice, I think. She sang to me at night.”

Felix looked at the boy, but the boy looked away.

“No use complainin’, is there?” he said.

A woman even fatter than the one last night moved through the rows with a big pot. She reached Felix’s table and ladled what looked like thin oatmeal into his bowl. One ladle full barely covered the bottom. But that was all each boy got before she moved on to the next one.

“Get used to it,” the boy said, spooning some into his mouth. “It’s breakfast. It’s lunch. And it’s dinner.”

Another boy was so thin and sallow-complexioned that Felix wondered if he had quinsy, too, whatever that was. His large brown eyes were sunk deep into his head and when he smiled he showed a mouth of rotten teeth.

“Don’t lie to the new boy, Johnny,” the sallow boy said. “Sometimes we get meat or potatoes thrown in.”

“Practically never,” Johnny said.

“Sweeps!” someone bellowed, and boys rushed to their feet.

Johnny tugged on Felix’s collar.

“That’s us,” he said, pulling him from his seat.

Felix followed Johnny to the door where boys were lining up. He craned his neck, still searching the girls’ side of the cafeteria for Maisie. Just when he thought he glimpsed her tangle of blond hair, the boys began to move out. He stood on tiptoe and waved his hand in her direction.

But as soon as he did, a stick came out of nowhere.
Smack!
Right down on his shoulder.

“Move it, sweep,” one of the guards bellowed at him.

And in an instant, Felix was out in the rainy, foggy, stinking London air again.

S
weeps
.

Felix mulled over the word as he and a few dozen other boys left the workhouse—the
parish
—and stood in the still-dark early-morning light. The smell of manure and sewage and smoke filled the air.

Sweeps
.

He finally supposed that he would be handed a broom and taken to some dirty house or building and made to sweep up.
Like a janitor
, Felix decided.
That isn’t too bad
, he told himself. He’d swept up at home before. Why, he had experience as a sweep!

Felix didn’t notice the skinny, bent man in the dirty coat arrive.

But Johnny did. He nudged Felix in the ribs and whispered, “’ere we go now, mate.”

The man spit an address at Johnny, but Felix didn’t understand him.

Johnny let out a low whistle.

“May Fair,” Johnny said, picking up a broom from a wheelbarrow the man had parked on the street corner. “Posh.”

The man asked Johnny a question. Again Felix didn’t understand him.

“My new climbing boy,” Johnny told him, slapping Felix on the back.

As they walked off, Felix imagined that as the climbing boy he’d have to clean the second floor of these…what had Johnny called them?
Posh
. Posh apartments. That was all right. He held tight to the broom he’d taken from the wheelbarrow.

“You’re not afraid of small places?” Johnny asked at one point.

Felix thought of the dumbwaiter back in Elm Medona.

“Well, I don’t like them much,” he said. “Especially if it’s dark inside.”

“
Hmmm
,” Johnny said.

They kept walking, Johnny whistling softly as they did.

“Where is this May Fair?” Felix asked after some time. His eyes had started to tear from the smoke and soot in the air.

“Almost there,” Johnny said.

But they weren’t. They just kept walking through streets much like the one near the train station the day before.

Had that only been the day before? Felix thought sadly. A warm fire. Tea and sandwiches. His stomach grumbled. The gruel this morning had been thin and meager. He wished he had some of that gray meat with green jelly now. The relentless noise of the city pounded in Felix’s head.
It would actually be nice to get into someone’s posh house and sweep up their dusty floors
, he thought.

Finally Johnny came to an abrupt halt.

“It’s this row,” he said, pointing to a block of identical row houses.

“All of them?” Felix said. The houses were tall and skinny. He counted eight on the block.

“’fraid so,” Johnny said cheerfully.

Each house had a wrought iron gate in front of
steep steps leading to the front doors, double-glass affairs with lace curtains hanging on them. There were lace curtains in all the windows, too, and behind some of them a warm, soft light glowed. That light made Felix even sadder. Inside were families, families waking up and eating toast and laughing together. Families unaware of how precious mornings were in their quiet, cozy houses.

He moved to open the gate of the first house, just to get started, to push away his sadness.

But Johnny clasped his big hand over Felix’s.

“We go up through the cellar, mate,” he said. “They don’t want the likes of us traipsing through their drawing rooms and parlors, do they?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he tugged Felix away from the gate and down an alley stinking of trash and rotting things. Felix saw a long, skinny tail disappear in the garbage and forced himself to look up, straight ahead.

Behind the house was a small, neat yard with a little garden. Johnny and Felix walked through it to the cellar bulkhead. There Johnny paused.

“It’s a little scary the first time,” he said. “I started as a climbing boy, before I had me growth spurt and
got so big. And Mr. Pippin? The bloke who gave us our assignment this morning? ’e was me boss.” He lowered his voice. “’e lit
fires
beneath me to get me moving, ’e did. I still got scars on the soles of me feet from the blisters. And me only six years old at the time. Me mum just dead. Me ’eart broken.”