Charles Palliser (117 page)

I slept late the next morning and awoke to find that Mr Digweed and Joey had not yet returned. Already they had been out for much longer than usual and Mrs Digweed was growing anxious. I shared her anxiety — though without having any precise idea of what I should be worried about — and by ten o’clock we were both in a state of considerable alarm.

Suddenly the street-door opened and Mr Digweed’s hook appeared around its edge, and when after a moment he himself entered sideways we realized to our horror that this strange mode of entry was because he was supporting his son who now staggered in behind him hardly able to stand. He was pale and trembling and blood was running down the leg of his boots. As I took this in my senses were assailed by the appalling stench that came from them now that they were inside the little chamber.

With some help from me, Joey was eased into a chair. His mother carefully removed his boots and stockings and cut back his trowsers so that we could see that there was a deep gash several inches long just above the knee on his right leg.

Mr Digweed threw off his oil-skins in the back-yard and hurried off to the Dispensary while I assisted his wife in removing Joey’s filthy outer garments, washing the wound, and carrying him upstairs.

A medical student came, applied a pledget to the wound and bound it up, bled his patient, approved of the treatment he was receiving, came downstairs again and, as he pocketed his fee, announced:

“He’ll be all right so long as it doesn’t become infected. If it does, send again for me.

Keep him in bed for a few days and then at home for a couple of weeks.”

When he had gone Mrs Digweed busied herself in making a sleeping draught for her son who was now in considerable pain, while Mr Digweed went into the back-yard and occupied himself in cleaning the oil-skins.

I went out and helped him. He was less talkative even than usual and we worked in silence for a few minutes.

“Mr Digweed,” I said, “for the next couple of weeks you’ll need help, won’t you?

Please let me take Joey’s place.”

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He shook his head vehemently: “No, that wouldn’t be right.”

“But why not?” I persisted.

“Well, the work don’t suit everyone.”

“But,” I added at a venture, “you can’t work easily without assistance, can you?”

He stared at me and exclaimed: “Easily? Why, you can’t work at all on your own!”

“Then how will you manage?”

He shook his head gravely.

There was a long silence while we rinsed the boots under the pump and then he said:

“Well, we’ll see what the old lady says. But let it lie till tomorrer.”

Joey slept well that night, and the next morning there was no sign of the wound turning bad. Mr and Mrs Digweed’s spirits having lifted, I raised the subject as we breakfasted :

“Mrs Digweed, I want to work the shores until Joey is recovered.”

“Why,” said Mrs Digweed, “then you knowed all along what they was doing!”

I explained that I had recalled her words back in Melthorpe.

“Then you know how dirty it is, and dangerous. No, it wouldn’t be right for a genel’man’s son, Master Johnnie.”

They were concerned about the danger, I imagined, because they were being paid to keep me safe. I persevered and Mrs Digweed resisted hard and long until at last, seeing that I was determined, she gave her grudging consent.

Mr Digweed nodded and said: “Very well. And you’re small enough to suit.” (It was true that I was of a size with Joey, but I was puzzled by this remark.) “There’s a low tide at midnight, so we’ll go tonight.”

I was restless all day until at last the time came for us to make ready for our departure.

Mr Digweed helped me to put on Joey’s boots and oil-skins and showed me how to trim the bull’s-eye lanthorns and work the shutters.

By the time we left the house it was almost dark. To my surprise we headed away from the river and walked towards Bishopsgate. In this district there were many little workshops, most of them connected with the slops trade, so that when I peered through windows as we passed I often saw tailors sitting cross-legged on the floor sewing in the light of a candle. No wonder so many of them became blind, I thought, and remembered my childish fancy many years before of the blind mole stitching a coat for Mr Pimlott.

We turned into Dorset-street, walked some way along it and then stopped. I looked around in bewilderment and, in the near-darkness that surrounded us in this unlit district, saw merely a quiet back-street with nothing remarkable about it, except perhaps an old brick culvert beside us of the kind so much more common at that date when many open sewers and drainage ditches could still be seen even in the fashionable parts of the metropolis.

While Mr Digweed lighted our lanthorns I leaned over the low and crumbling parapet of the shaft and saw that there was a trickle of water running along the brick-work of the culvert’s bottom. A little further along there was an arch-way leading into a tunnel, protected by an iron grille.

Mr Digweed now warned me to be ready to follow him and always to do exactly what he told me. He glanced cautiously around and seeing that the dark street was empty, he suddenly sprang over the parapet and seized with his hook the topmost of the series of iron rings driven into the brick-work, then lowered 540

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himself down the wall by their means and dropped into the shallow water below us. In surprise I followed him and we splashed our way towards the arch-way.

Now I discovered by the light of our lanthorns that the iron grille which had looked impenetrable from above, was so rusted and broken that it presented no obstacle. My companion pulled it towards him and squeezed round its side and I followed him without difficulty. As we advanced into the tunnel the smell assailed me and I gasped for air through my mouth as well as my nostrils.

For a few terrifying seconds I was overcome by dizziness and heard a loud rushing in my ears and thought my legs would give way and that I would lose consciousness, but then I recovered, the fear and nausea left me, and I found I was able to keep moving. By the glow from his lanthorn I could see Mr Digweed a few yards ahead of me, picking his way quickly along the bed of the foul stream, glancing back occasionally to make sure I was following him.

Once he let me catch up and then raised an eyebrow interrogatively. I nodded back with a forced smile and he placed his mouth next to my ear and shouted : “This is a very pretty shore. But you has to keep moving or you starts to notice the smell.”

I nodded and we moved on. Suddenly he turned up a side-tunnel. Since it was lower and narrower we had to stoop so that progress became more difficult, and the level of the water rose which meant that as it was rushing more quickly it made more noise and speech was now impossible.

After a few yards this tunnel branched and Mr Digweed chose one fork as unhesitatingly as if he were sauntering through the streets of his own neighbourhood.

Now we were going discernibly downhill and the surface was so slimy that it was difficult to avoid slipping. In addition to this the stench was almost over-powering.

We walked for some time — I cannot say how long for I found distance difficult to judge and time impossible when every moment was crowded with new fears and sensations. Indeed, here where it was absolutely black and there was only the rushing of waters in my ears that might have been the rush of blood, I could not tell what was I and what was not I. When I stretched out my hands to touch the rough sides I could not tell whether I felt my own frozen fingers or the cold stone. Involuntarily, I thought of the great weight of earth and buildings and paved streets that was above us, and felt such a blind terror that I had to force myself to think of something else.

Although I now understood much, I was still puzzled by the purpose of this activity until suddenly Mr Digweed stopped and waited for me to catch him up. Then he bent down — I should say, bent even further down for we were both hunched over — and lowered the lanthorn, indicating that I should look at what he was studying.

I did so and noticed that there was something standing upright in the space left by the erosion of the mortar from between two of the stones. The object gleamed in the light and I saw that it was a coin. My companion lifted it out and held it in the beam so that I could perceive that it was a shilling, then slipped it into the leathern pouch that hung from his shoulder.

There was money lying down here for anyone to find who took the trouble to look for it! I could not understand why — apart from the noxious smell — more people did not venture down here.

We now passed along tunnels of many different sizes and characters which THE RELEASE

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must have owed their variety to their having been constructed at widely-separated periods. Some were medieval, though most had been built during the re-construction of the City after the fire and its extension into the suburbs that made up the modern metropolis, and were therefore between a hundred and a hundred and fifty years old.

Since, therefore, they had been constructed by means of quite different methods, through varying soil conditions, and at different angles and gradients, conditions in them were quite distinctive.

I walked behind my companion and both of us — though we were of small stature and I was not fully-grown at that date — had to stoop, which I found extremely painful to the neck and shoulders. All the time Mr Digweed was scrutinizing the surface, and once or twice he reached down to lift a coin.

Most of the tunnels were shaped like an egg, curving around us above and below; others — and these were the biggest which dated from the medieval period — were much wider and flatter and had a deep ditch, with a narrow and crumbling path-way along the side. Here the sound of the rushing water was almost deafening, though in other tunnels it glided or trickled silently, and in yet others there was no water at all but only a layer of wet or dried mud.

“Is it so easy?” I asked my patron when next we were passing through a dry tunnel and could hear each other’s voices.

“Bless you no,” he exclaimed. “Why, I’ve on’y found that shillin’ and a few coppers so far.”

“But we haven’t been looking for long.”

“Why, how long do you reckon?”

“I don’t know. Do you not have your watch?”

He laughed: “A watch wouldn’t last long down here.”

“About a half-hour?” I suggested.

He shook his head. “Nearer two. You see, we won’t find much up here. We’ve got to get down to where the mud builds up for that’s where everything gets washed down to.

But we can on’y stay down there for about an hour at the most.”

I was about to ask him to explain this when I noticed a dark shape scurrying quickly out of the light of the lanthorn. Then there was another. And another. I realized with horror what they must be, though they seemed too large.

Seeing me shudder my companion said: “Aye, rats.”

“But so big!” I gasped.

“Brown rats. They ain’t the same as the house-rats.”

“Aren’t they dangerous?” I exclaimed.

He laughed: “You don’t want to get bit by ’em. They’re p’isonous. But they don’t as a rule go for a man unless he’s bleeding a’ready. Seems the smell of blood drives ’em to it.”

I swallowed hard to fight down the panic I felt rising within me at the thought of those knife-like, envenomed teeth. But if Joey had been able to endure these horrors, then I was determined to show myself no less courageous.

We went on and now I could tell that we were making our way consistently downhill. I discovered that the deepest tunnels were generally the most ancient and the most foul smelling and treacherous, for the brick-work of the narrow ledges along the sides was often crumbling so that it would suddenly give way beneath your weight, and the surface was pitted with deep ruts on which one could easily trip. And to miss your footing here, where the water was deep and the current swift, was to face a certain and very horrible death.

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Gradually I began to sense another odour distinguishable from the acrid, sulphurous stench that I had already grown somewhat inured to, and eventually I realized that it was that of the river: a deep, ancient smell like the stagnant ponds that I had found so fascinating as a small boy. Now the different sewers broadened out into wide, flatter basons rather as a river widens at its mouth, so that the water ran down the middle leaving banks of deep mud exposed at the sides. Instead of being cast back at us from the dank wall, the lume of the lanthorn was lost in the gloom that opened around us.

“You can only stay down here when the tide is at low-water,” Mr Digweed explained.

“And that’s not long.”

So that explained the hours he worked!

“As the tide rises the low-lying tunnels back up,” he explained. “Very sudden sometimes. There’s many as has been caught that way, by not keeping a reckoning of the time. And the spring and neap tides can be devilish tricky, too.”

Now we set to work and I understood why two of us were needed, for the shore-hunters’ technique was quite different, in these vast stinking sumps where Thames and sewer came together, from that used higher up. Instead of coins being trapped in the crevices where the angle of descent was steep enough so that the mud and filth were washed away by the running fluid, here the effluvium was left behind by the retreating tide whose action, as it went out, formed a kind of vast sieve, leaving the mud and its contents to sink to the floor. And it was upon this expanse of crumbling brickwork covered in layers of thick mud or worse — on which it was easy to lose one’s footing —

that we had to work in the absolute darkness and as quickly as possible.

Now Mr Digweed showed me my duties which involved holding the lanthorn for him while he raked through the mud and filth that accumulated in smooth heaps like the sand left along the foreshore of a beach. He now brought the trowel and sieve into play, sifting through the mud and occasionally finding a coin. Or he would start prodding with the rake at a particular shoal of foetor while I had to direct the lanthorn as he indicated. Sometimes he would detect something — a lump of rusted metal, an iron baccy box, a spoon — and hook it back with the rake. I was amazed by the way in which he saw coins and other objects that were invisible to me in the mud, and I realized that although it looked easy enough, he had a knack of spotting them when I would not have noticed them — even though I had the advantage of two eyes.