Is (13 page)

NEW IS BETTER THAN OLD! UNDER IS BETTER THAN OVER!

‘Not far to go, fortunately,’ said Lemman. ‘Mr Gower lives in the main square of Holdernesse. He is the Keeper of the Exchequer – one of your uncle’s most important aides.’

After about five minutes in the tunnel they came out into what, Is could see, must be a huge cavern, with a roof so high that it was hardly visible, for lights hung below it suspended on cables. (They were, Lemman told Is, electric discs fed by currents from electro-magnetic machines.) They flung brilliant light into every corner.

‘Don’t they never let them out?’

‘At night they reduce the power.’

The main square of Holdernesse town seemed to Is about the same size as the new Trafalgar Square in London, and resembled it in having a large central statue on a column, surrounded by four granite lions. The figure here, Is recognised when they passed nearby, was that of her Uncle Roy: squat, stubby and scowling.

Two sides of the square were occupied by grand public buildings with pillars and porticoes; the other two appeared to be handsome private houses. Dr Lemman halted his pony-trap outside one of these. ‘Hold the mare, will you?’ he asked Is. ‘I’ll not be more than a minute or two. Here – ’ and he tore a prescription form from a small block, having first scribbled on it, ‘The girl Is Twite is my official assistant. Chester Lemman.’

Then, with the maid, he vanished inside the house, from which loud jerky hysterical screams could be heard issuing.

It was lucky that Lemman had given Is the paper for, almost at once after he had left her, a dour-looking man in dark-green uniform strode up to her and said, ‘What’s a doul your age doing on the street? Why ain’t you at work?’

She silently handed him her credentials and he read the paper with slow, laborious care, moving his lips as he battled with each word.

  

  

‘Is Twite. B’goom, are ye any kin o’ Gold Kingy, then?’

‘Yes,’ said Is coldly. ‘He’s my uncle.’

‘Ye’re a loocky lass for sure. N’wonder ye bain’t in the foundaries.’ But just the same, the look he gave her was hostile rather than respectful.

Dr Lemman soon reappeared.

‘Hysterical fits are very common here,’ he explained, taking the reins. ‘I fancy it is the result of living entirely in artificial light.’

‘What did you do for her?’

‘Dashed her with cold water, then gave her a soothing draught. She’ll sleep for hours.’

‘Don’t folk
want
to go outside sometimes?’ pondered Is. ‘For a bit of air and sun?’

‘Why would they want to? Out there is nothing but snow and ruins. All the shops and entertainments are in here. You’ll see.’

She did see. They drove out of the huge main square (Twite Square) and into Twite Avenue, a glossy, well-paved street of stores, galleries and amusement arcades. Everything was new, smart, and sizzling with colour. Small electric tramcars ran slowly on rails up and down the middle of the thoroughfare; passengers could climb in and out of them at any point. Here there were quite a few people to be seen, strolling and gazing into opulent shop windows. No children, though.

‘Don’t they have no kids – these rich folk?’ Is asked, studying a woman wrapped in white fur, sparkling with diamonds, who was absorbed in study of some porcelain in a shop window.

‘If they do, they send the children away to be brought up elsewhere. The risks here are too high. Any unattended child over five will be arrested. Many people choose to remain childless. Humberland is a place where – ’ Lemman hunted for words, at last said bluntly, ‘where children are not in favour.’

‘Why?’

‘Well – I believe many adults naturally dislike children. Don’t you agree? Because children have so much energy – imagination – hope – enjoyment. Their life lies all ahead of them. An untapped reservoir. Envy fills some people with hate – don’t you reckon?’

‘Dunno,’ said Is. It had never occurred to her to envy another person.

He said, ‘I fear you are not likely to find the boys you are after among my well-to-do patients. But later, perhaps, among the others . . .’

For a couple of hours he drove to and fro along the streets of new Blastburn, or Holdernesse town, and Is, though disappointed at not seeing a single child whom she might interrogate, was nevertheless much interested by this queer underground city.

But I couldn’t never live in it, she thought. No,
never
.

The barn on Blackheath Edge seemed a haven in comparison with this rich, gaudy, silent, unnatural metropolis. It ain’t a proper town at all, Is thought; proper towns grow up over hundreds of years, and have crumby little old parts with junk-shops and cobblers and tenements and bits of waste ground. Proper towns have street markets and kids riding hobby-horses and sweeping crossings and bowling hoops and dropping cherry-stones. And the goods in the shop windows here are by
far
too fancy – the kind o’ stuff a body would buy only if they had got everything else already, and had no way to pass the time but only to buy more things. Gilt dishes! Marble apples! Pink sofies! Who wants ’em? thought Is scornfully. This is a
nothing
place.

Dr Lemman took considerable trouble, as he drove her on his rounds, to describe the symptoms of the people he treated, and explain what he had done for them. It was real obliging of him to take such pains, thought Is; she did her best to repay him by giving her full attention to all he said, and asking questions when she did not understand. Besides, it was interesting, what he told her; quite a lot of it seemed to connect with what she had memorised in
The Horse Doctor’s Handbook
. I guess folk ain’t so very different from horses, when you get down to it, thought Is.

‘I daresay you will feel that most of these people’s troubles are very trifling – headaches, palpitations, back-ache, bad dreams – and that I am making money from them for very slight services,’ Lemman remarked after a while.

‘None o’ my business,’ said Is, who had thought this.

He glanced at her with respect.

‘I try to strike a balance, you see. Now we have finished with the paying patients, and go to the Infirmary. Nobody pays there. And there you
may
find a few children, though not many. It is not thought worth while – ’ He broke off, and guided the mare carefully over a set of criss-crossing tramlines.

The streets hereabouts were darker and narrower. At one point the pony-trap traversed another large square with an equestrian statue in the middle. One side of this space was dark – simply a wall of cliff, divided in the centre by a massive pair of iron gates reaching halfway up to the cave roof. Sentry-boxes guarded the gates, and half a dozen men in uniform marched back and forth in front of them. Great beams of white light played down upon them from the roof.

‘What’s those gates?’ asked Is.

‘The main entrance to the mine. We are very close to the shore-line here. The mines extend under the sea, you know that? For more than five miles. Your aunt is grieved that she is not allowed in with her comforts for the children – but it would be much too far for her to walk, in any case. The gates are kept locked, as you see; only mine officials may go through them. And, of course, the wagons full of workers when they first arrive off the train.’

‘Ain’t there no other way in?’

‘Well – ’ Dr Lemman began, then checked himself. He said, ‘Certainly none that your aunt could use. Though she does not let her lameness deter her from visiting the foundries and the potteries. And she has a – ’ He broke off again and said, ‘Now, this is the Strand Gate,’ as they passed under an arch into daylight, of a sort.

Holdernesse town, it seemed, was scooped out of a bulging hillside, rather as the pith is scooped out of a Hallowe’en pumpkin; it had several different exits to the outside world. The one through which they had just come led to the docks, and not far from it stood the Infirmary, which took care of injured sailors, besides accident cases from the nearby iron foundries.

‘It’s the best place for the foundries, for coal comes straight from the mine and the iron ore is fetched by boat,’ Lemman explained, ‘either by sea or by canal.’

The Infirmary was a gaunt old building, left over from the days before Blastburn’s transformation. The wards were cavernous and dark, each one holding about fifty beds. The nurses were weathered, elderly women who took no nonsense from anybody, neither patients nor doctors, though they seemed kindly enough disposed to Dr Lemman, who addressed them all as dearie. Is, whom he introduced as ‘my new helper’, they regarded with scorn.

‘Is Twite? Mind she don’t faint on you, that’s all. Not exactly what
she
’s used to, I’ll be bound.’

Afterwards, Is rather wondered at herself, that she had not fainted. Some of the sights there were so awful that she had to drive her fingernails into the palms of her hands before she could bear to stand looking at them and pay attention to what Dr Lemman was saying.

But if
they
can put up with what’s happened to ’em, then
I’d
better be able to, she told herself fiercely, over and over.

Strangely enough, as she stood at one terrible bedside, dizzy and nauseated, listening to Dr Lemman’s quiet explanation, she felt again what she now described to herself as ‘the Touch’: the powerful, alien jolt, coming from who knew where, grazing the exact centre of her mind – and this time it came as a welcome relief.

‘Yes! I can hear you!’ she found herself able to call back. ‘I hear you! I need help just as badly as you! Can you help me? Can you hear me?’

‘Yes. Yes!’ came the strong answer.

‘Who are you?’

There followed a pause of a second or two, for consideration, it seemed. Then the reply came like a waterfall: ‘TomJimNanMarySuePhilPatEllenDickCharlie – ’

On, on and on.

‘But who are you? What does that mean?’

Another pause. Then: ‘We are the Bottom Layer. That’s who we are!’

Suddenly the connection failed. It broke. Is found herself alone – terribly alone, sick and hollow – by the bedside of a man who had had both his legs cut off. Although the ward was full of noise – clangs and rattles, groans and shouts – she felt, for a moment, as if she were deaf.

Dr Lemman gave her an encouraging nod, and they moved on to the next bed . . .

The patients in this place were all adults, she noticed. There was not a single child in the Infirmary.

But still I gotta learn, she thought. It’s the least I can do. Clenching her fists, she set herself to pay attention to what Lemman was telling her. Sometimes, when treating an accident or burn victim, the first part of his method was all talk. Is found this very puzzling.

‘Listen to me; look at this,’ he would say, holding up a candle or his little silver pencil. ‘Imagine that you are not here in the hospital; think that you are walking down a grassy path to a cool, fast-flowing river. Now you are
in
the river – in the cool water. You feel very cool and light, your pain has all drifted away . . .’

A few of the patients looked at him blankly, without comprehension, and seemed unable to imagine themselves anywhere else, but they were not the worst sufferers. Many of these appeared to obtain great relief, right away, from being told that they were in a cool, swift-running river. Often they would fall asleep, which made it easier for Lemman to do what was needed for them. And when they woke later, Lemman told Is, they were often a good deal better than might have been expected.

After he had finished his rounds in the Infirmary – which took a long time, several hours – and they were outside again in the fresh air, Lemman said to Is:

‘You did well, dearie. To tell the truth, I was surprised at how well you did.’

Is said, ‘Axcuse me, Doc – I gotta go off a minute and lob me groats – ’

She fled away from him, round to the far side of a huge heap of coal dust. When she returned she was pale, damp and shivering, but composed.

They climbed into the pony-trap and started for home.

After the doctor had driven a short way, Is asked him:

‘Doc, how the blazes do you do it? That game of telling folk they are in a river – what in the name of wonder put such a fix-up into your head?’

‘Why, dearie,’ he said, ‘the notion wasn’t mine. A doctor called Braid, in Manchester, he first had the idea, not long ago; I worked with him for a short time and studied his methods. It’s called
Braidism
or hypnotic suggestion. You’ve seen how it works. If you persuade someone that they aren’t so bad as they think – well, as you see, it often has a good effect. They fall asleep, and when they wake, the symptoms are relieved.’

‘Suppose you suggested summat bad – that they might get worse, or die?’

‘No doctor would do such a thing!’ he told her severely. ‘A doctor swears an oath, at the start of his training, that he will work only to relieve suffering.’