Is (5 page)

Croopus, where have all the kinchins got to? Is asked herself. It sure is a mystery! Funny no one’s wondered about it sooner. Nobody cares above half, I reckon. Streets look tidier without kids all about. Some folks likes it better that way, I daresay.

‘You seen a boy called Arun Twite, mister – missis?’ she demanded, over and over, but very few people even troubled to reply.

Asking, listening, watching, Is drifted northwards, up Charing Cross Road, up Tottenham Court Road. Near here, in a small public garden by Whitefields Tabernacle, she found a street fair; if two or three meagre stalls and a shabby Punch and Judy could be said to constitute a street fair. Dingy flags and bunting hung between the stalls, and a doleful-looking man played alternately on a set of pan-pipes and a tabor. The stalls offered a few playthings for sale: whistles, tops, hoops, balls, one or two dolls and toy animals. None of them so well-made, Is noticed with a critical eye, as those produced by Penny and herself. But she remembered, now, Penny’s recent grumbles about the fall in the sale of toys. And no wonder, thought Is, if more than half the young ’uns are missing.

The Punch play was drawing to a close; Punch had murdered most of his family and was singing a loud boastful song of self-praise:

Is recognised the tune as one made up by her father: ‘The Day Before the Day Before May Day’. Many of his songs were still to be heard about the streets and countryside, sung or whistled or chanted. Funny how tunes can stop in folks’ heads long after the person who made them up is dead and gone, thought Is; and funny how he could make up such gladsome tunes when he hisself was such a no-good.

At this moment, under cover of the music, she heard a voice whisper sharply in her ear: ‘
How about a trip to Playland? Kids gets a real good time in Playland
!’

Startled, Is glanced back over her shoulder. A crowd of twenty or so people had collected in the little space; which of these could have spoken to her? It had sounded like a man’s voice. Several men stood near her. Was it the merry little character with black curls and whiskers, a velvet waistcoat and kerseymere breeches? Or the tall, lugubrious fellow in a striped jacket who looked like a waiter from a tavern? Or the man in a leather apron who offered to grind people’s knives and scissors at the top of his lungs, as he wove among the crowd? Or the thin white-haired man who stood near Is with a bundle of books under his arm?

‘Where’s Playland, mister?’ Is asked him, but he gave her a severe look and replied sternly,

‘
Playland?
There is no such place. And a child your age ought to be at work, not idling about asking foolish questions in the public street.’

A boy caught her eye and seemed as if he were about to say something, but the Punch show came to its end just then, the crowd quickly scattered, and the boy vanished from view.

Is began to make her way back to Shadwell, taking a circuitous route by Seven Dials and Piccadilly Circus, along the Strand, past St Paul’s cathedral and the Tower of London. Once again, as she stood in a crowd near Piccadilly, watching the antics of a man walking on stilts, she heard a soft murmur in her ear: ‘
How about a trip to Playland, eh?
’ But, as before, when she looked round, nobody near at hand seemed likely to be the person who had spoken.

Still, she felt that she had been given some clue at least. Tired, but not disheartened, she went back to Mr Greenaway’s warehouse.

While she was out, a messenger had brought the token from St James’s Palace.

‘It’s mighty puny,’ observed Is, studying it without excitement.

‘All the easier to carry on your travels,’ pointed out Wally.

The token was a tiny disc, not much bigger than a silver fourpenny piece, made from slivers of black and green stone, cunningly carved and fitted together, so that on one side of the disc appeared a green lion rampant on a black background, and on the reverse side a black lion set against green. Mr Greenaway, feeling and turning it most delicately with his enormous rugged fingers, remarked that it felt to him as if it were carved out of jade and jet, a wondrous clever piece of work, not fashioned in this land, he’d reckon, but in Chiny or Peru, some such place where they’d craftsmen that’d take years over a job like this.

‘If I was you, dearie, I’d sew it, case an’ all into the hem of your jacket, where it’ll be safe and won’t slip out, accidental-like, into somebody’s view. For in the parts you might be off to, jist having a token like that in your keeping might go agin ye.’

‘Might be the end of her,’ said Wally gloomily, frying sausages for supper.

Is thought Mr Greenaway’s advice was worth following, and unpicked an inch of jacket-lining. While she was sewing the disc, in its tiny chamois-leather pouch, safely out of sight, she asked,

‘Mr Greenaway, did you ever hear tell of Playland?’

Mr Greenaway shook his head, but Wally said at once, ‘Don’t you remember, Is, there used to be a song of your da’s that went, ‘If I could find my way to Playland, you’d never see me no more; Playland, the happy and gay land, where nobody is poor, and no apple ever has a core – ’?’

‘I’d forgotten,’ said Is slowly, ‘but now I remember. Is there really sich a place?’

‘Not as I ever heard tell on.’

Wally served the sausages, for simplicity’s sake, on a slice of bread.

‘Best eat hearty while you can, young ’un,’ he said.

Mr Greenaway munched his in silence with a troubled expression on his face. It was plain that, while from various points of view he felt it proper for Is to undertake this errand, he was not very happy about the plan.

‘I sent a message to his majesty,’ he said, ‘by the chap as brought the token, to say as how, if you don’t come back – suppose some mischief was to come to ye – your sister Penny should be took care of. Benefit, like.’

‘Care of Penny?’ said Is, surprised. ‘Why, she’s allus taken pretty sharp care of herself. There’s not many – and that goes for wolves too – as comes out on top of Penny. Why should she be took care of?’

‘Well, dearie, as you’re, in a manner o’ speaking, doing a job of work for his Grace, ’tis only right that you, or anyway your kin, should be the better for it.’

‘I haven’t
found
his Grace’s boy yet,’ Is pointed out. ‘And may never do. Still,’ thinking it over, ‘that ain’t a bad notion. Poor old Penny-lope hain’t had much luck up to now. The Dutchman went off and left her . . . Mind you – ’ bursting out laughing, ‘ – I’d be sorry for the chap as took Penny the Benefit. He’s like to get his ears trimmed.’

But still, it gave Is a feeling of comfort, as she climbed into her hammock, to think that Penny, who had argued so fiercely against her going and been so surly on leave-taking, might possibly derive some good from the business. You never knew, after all.

Is fell asleep, and instantly began to dream about a black, black forest, with water trickling among the roots of the trees. And there were voices calling for help . . .

On the third day of her wanderings about the streets of London, Is heard Playland mentioned again. She was at Covent Garden market, very early, before daybreak, watching great trays of fruit and flowers being unloaded from the carters’ wagons, sniffing with relish at the fresh, earthy scent of leaves and roots, which, for an hour or so, prevailed over that of the acrid, coaly, pea-soup fog thickening the air and making it hard to see across the street.

A few children were to be seen hereabouts, running across the slippery cobbles with baskets and trays balanced on their heads, weaving among the sharp-faced buyers from fruit-stalls and taverns and hotels.

Is had edged among the group surrounding a hot-pie booth. She was listening to the shouts of the pie-man: ‘Hot eels! All hot! Penny pies! Penny Jennies! Trotters here a farden!’ when she heard a voice in her ear:

‘Hey – missy!’
whispered the voice. ‘
How about a ride on the Playland Express?
’

And, at the same moment, she felt something gently slipped into her pocket.

She looked round swiftly, but nobody near at hand seemed to be displaying the least interest in her.

Drifting round a corner into a narrow alleyway, Is carefully investigated the contents of her pocket. Her first expectation was that she had been used as a car’s-paw for some stolen article which a pickpocket needed to get rid of in a hurry.

But, to her great surprise, what she found was a species of wafer or pancake, very popular just at that season, and to be bought off pastry-cooks’ barrows all over London. They were sold in stacks called Quires of Paper, or singly, at a cost of about a ha’penny apiece.

Written across this particular pancake in pink sugaricing letters, was the message:
PLAYLAND EXPRESS EUSTON GREEN MIDNITE TONITE
.

‘Croopus!’ said Is, much impressed.

Although strongly tempted to eat the pancake (they were delicious, she had heard, flavoured with orange and nutmeg), she slid it back into her pocket, glanced about her warily to make certain that she was not the target for anyone’s special attention, and then set off, at a casual-seeming yet rapid saunter, for Shadwell.

There, in the High Street, she found Wally at his usual post, selling tea, coffee and hot rolls. Even here, in Shadwell, the children who had once been in charge of the other market-stalls, offering apples, whelks, household articles and cheap clothing, had all been replaced by adults.

‘Toss you for a mug of hot!’ Is said pertly to Wally.

‘No charge, matey, it’s on the house!’ And he handed her a mug of brown, steaming liquid; hot, certainly, and tasting of the brown powder used for scouring cooks’ knives.

‘I got news!’ murmured Is, leaning close and blowing the steam from her mug.

‘I’ll be home at noon,’ murmured Wally in return.

Back, therefore, in the privacy of the warehouse, Is showed her edible message to Wally and his father.

‘Now ain’t that cunning!’ mused Mr Greenaway, carefully investigating the cake with his big clever hands. ‘No wonder the constables and Bow Street chaps never picks up any clues. Here’s a billy-doo that ninety-nine boys and gals out of a hundred will gobble down as soon’s they done reading it – and then, where’s your evidence? That’s a real mob’s trick, and makes me even more positive this game is run by some big mogul who’s up to all the dodges. A devilish clever one. You got to watch yourself, dearie, every step of the way.’

‘Euston Green, at midnight,’ said Wally thoughtfully. ‘Seems to me I did hear tell of some goings-on up that way; there was a big clog factory on the edge o’ town, got burned out and, on account of some law-business, it can’t be rebuilded till they get it argued out. So there it stands to this day, empty and ruined and locked up. Just north o’ the Green, ’tis – and beyond it there’s a big old graveyard, all filled up with graves and supposed to be haunted. So no one goes nigh it.’

‘Well, I reckon I’ll doddle up there at midnight,’ said Is, ‘and see what’s to be seen.’

Wally at once offered to come too, but she would not allow him.

‘Whatever it is might not happen if there was two of us. ‘Sides, you’re too big, Wally. You’d show up. You ain’t a kid no more. Anyhows, you got your da to look out for. But keep the pancake. And if I don’t come back, show it to King Dick.’

At eleven o’clock, therefore, she hugged them both goodbye, said, rather gruffly, ‘You might send my love to Pen if I ain’t home by Christmas,’ and set off to walk to Euston Green.

The streets were mostly empty at that time of night, and her way, through Cheapside and Holborn and Farringdon Street, took her less time than she had reckoned; she reached the neighbourhood of Euston Green at about twenty minutes before midnight.

It was a rough wild area, still more or less on the edge of town, with unbuilt-on land stretching away to the north, which could not properly be called country, for it was covered with vegetable gardens, and sheds, and brickworks, tanneries, livery stables, and great mounds of rubbish.

Making a slow and cautious approach to the north end of Euston Green (a patch of unkempt weeds grazed by geese and costermongers’ donkeys), Is located the big warehouse of which Wally had spoken. It was a massive, partly ruined building, at least three storeys high. Against a sky now blazing with wintry stars it showed up as an irregular, gaunt shape, sombre and spiky. In front of it lay a patch of inky shadow and, edging warily closer, Is found that this piece of shade was entirely packed with silent children. There must have been several hundred of them, all totally quiet. So far as could be made out in the dark, they were of every possible kind. Large, small, some decently clad, some ragged and dirty. All they had in common was their complete silence.

On the stroke of midnight – clanged out by not-too-far-distant St Pancras Church – the very faintest of creaks could be heard, and the crowd shifted a little, softly and expectantly. Then, unit by unit, Is realised that it was beginning to diminish. She was on the southernmost edge of the group, and felt that everybody was moving north, inchmeal, drifting by scarcely noticeable stages towards the black wall of the factory building. A narrow hatch, she presently saw, had slightly opened and, one after another, children from the crowd were slipping inside, without making the least sound. Is, lingering on the outskirts, came last of all, and stepped through the wicket from darkness into deeper darkness.

‘You the finish?’ demanded a voice in a whisper.

‘Yus, I reckon.’

There was a pause, while she felt somebody brush past her and look out, presumably to check her statement. Next she was searched, not roughly but thoroughly, the contents of her pockets removed, inspected, put back. Lucky I tucked that token into my lining, she thought. After that, she was given a gentle push into what seemed to be a passage with canvas walls, the darkness giving place to dim light as she passed along. Then she stumbled down a flight of stone steps, holding on to a wooden rail, passed through a door – and suddenly emerged into a place of dazzling light and colour.