Midnight is a Place (20 page)

"One of them bit my leg," said Lucas.

"Well, you should'a been nippier! You will next time, I'll lay. Now we'll have to go back a half mile to Sinkhole Reach; that's where I first heard 'em, and we missed all that section; that's one of the best stretches for tosh in the whole neighborhood."

That evening, after Lucas had handed over his findings—no jeweled saddle today, only a dirty and uninteresting collection of broken metal and wooden objects—to Mr. Gudgeon, and washed himself under the pump until his feet and hands felt ready to fall off from cold and his teeth would not stop chattering, he screwed himself up to apologize to Anna-Marie.

"I am sorry I was bad-tempered last night, Anna-Marie. The sewers are so horrible that I can't stop thinking about them, and it makes me edgy." But still he did not tell Anna-Marie about the hogs, or Gudgeon's peculiar nature; let her think that filth and dark were all he had to worry about.

"It is of no consequence," she said haughtily. She handed him a lump of pease porridge. "I simply do not see why, if it is so horrible, you are
imbecile
enough to go on working there."

Lucas did not try to explain that it was a matter of pride; that he had to. He felt sure that Anna-Marie would be completely blank to such an explanation. "You wouldn't understand," he said tiredly.

"Because I am just a stupid girl! Only good for picking up cigar ends. If someone offered
me
a nicer way to make a living, I would take it."

"Your job isn't so bad."

She turned away, her lip quivering, and said, "I do not tell you
all
about it. Some girls say to me I have not the right to pick up cigar ends in Blastburn because I do not come from here."

"Well, tell them to go to blazes! You aren't taking away their living."

Changing the subject, Anna-Marie said, "You can go by yourself to see M. Ookapool this evening. There is no use for two of us to go while, anyway, he cannot speak. I will stay here, me, and make more cigars. There are the eggs and milk for him on the shelf."

"Oh, very well," said Lucas irritably, swilling down the last stodgy mouthful of pease pudding with a drink of water. He ached all over with exhaustion, his leg hurt, and he was still hungry; he would not have minded staying at home and making cigars himself. But somebody had to take Mr. Oakapple his food.

Anna-Marie began washing out the pease-porridge pot, in a tin basin.

"How did you get that bruise on your arm?" he asked.

"I fell. It was slippery."

"Well, take care. I'll see you later," he said, and went out. The snow had changed to a bitterly cold rain which froze as it fell and turned the streets to an icy, slippery swamp. Well, he thought, backing out the pony and turning her, there's at least one advantage of the sewers: no snow down there.

He was getting into the cart when old Gabriel passed him, apparently without recognizing him.

"Good evening, Mr. Towzer," Lucas said.

The old man turned, and Lucas caught a strong reek of Geneva spirit.

Gabriel looked at Lucas vaguely and laid a hand on his arm.

"Hush!" he whispered. "What the eye don't see, the Bible don't gnash its teeth at." He started waveringly toward the house, then paused to say, "I
¿aid
she were a mickle-mouth!"

Up at the infirmary, matters had not greatly changed. Mr. Oakapple was still unable to recognize anybody or to talk sense, but one of the sisters said that he had made a little progress and was taking nourishment. Lucas hoped she was telling the truth, that the eggs and milk they brought with so much trouble were not going elsewhere. How could he be sure? Whom could one trust in this town?

He did not stay long; there was no point.

On the way out, he thought he recognized a familiar back leaving the out-patients' surgery, where minor injuries, generally received in the factories, were treated and bandaged.

In the courtyard, Lucas overtook this person and saw that it was, as he had thought, Mr. Smallside from the Mill, with a bandage covering half his forehead.

"Mr. Smallside!" Lucas exclaimed, eagerly, running forward to catch him by the arm. Here was somebody who could prove his identity to Mr. Throgmorton.

The manager started; his eye fell on Lucas, then swiftly left him; he shook off Lucas's hand, as if he had been accosted by mistake, and walked on.

Lucas again ran to catch up with him. "Mr. Smallside! Don't you remember me? From the Court? Lucas Bell!"

Smallside glanced rapidly all around. Nobody was within earshot.

"Quiet, boy!" he said urgently in an undertone. "Have you no sense? The very name of Randolph Grimsby, or of Midnight Court, is so unpopular in the town that the words are enough to get you stoned; even strung up from a lamppost. How do you think I came by this black eye? For having been Sir Randolph's manager—appointed by him. I've had to quit Murgatroyd's—I'm getting the night coach to Manchester. If you are wise you'll do likewise. Don't tell anybody you saw me!"

And he disappeared into a shadowed passageway.

As he drove home, Lucas tried to decide whether he should pass on this warning to Anna-Marie. It was not easy to give advice to her, he thought; unless she happened to agree with it, she was just as likely to do the opposite. And she was very proud of her name; she would not wish to conceal that.

She was sitting cross-legged in her bunk, rolling cigars, when Lucas went up. Poor little thing, he thought; what a life for her.

"I am working, so it is proper for me to use the candle," she said defensively.

"You had better have gone to sleep; you look tired."

"I am all right," she said stiffly.

"Would—would you like to play a game of scissors-paper-stone?" Lucas offered. He was aware that it would have been a better peace offering if he had suggested telling a story, but he was too tired; he simply could not set his mind to the task of invention.

"No, thank you," Anna-Marie said politely. "You need not be bothered playing child's games with me. If you wish to sleep, I will put out the candle."

"Very well."

Again they went to sleep in silence.

It seemed strange that days should pass swiftly in the sewers, yet, on the whole, they did. Perhaps it was because of the dark, and the monotony. The black, wet hours went by; sometimes the toshers were chased by hogs and had to run for it; once or twice Lucas felt his heart come into his mouth when great rats, big as terriers, darted or snapped at him and had to be beaten off with his pole. On Saturday he received his wages of five pounds from Mr. Hobday plus a bonus of seven shillings, which was his percentage on the various things he had found. He had an uneasy feeling that this was probably much less than he should have received—what about that saddle, after all?—but really there seemed no means of checking.

"What did Mr. Hobday do with the saddle?" he asked Gudgeon.

"That bain't none of your concern, boy. You tend to the toshing, let Mester Hobday tend to the dealing," Gudgeon replied, leaving Lucas still full of doubts.

However it was satisfactory to have more than five pounds; it seemed like a huge sum. Lucas was able to pay Mrs. Tetley, and the next weeks infirmary fee for Mr. Oakapple, and the bribe money to Joe Bludward the Friendly Club boy, who never failed to turn up, taking his collection, as the patients' relatives left the wards. That didn't leave much change from the week's money. But at least it meant that what Anna-Marie earned could be kept for food and their daily needs.

Two paydays later, before taking the plunge down the manhole, Lucas went to a secondhand-clothes stall in the market and bought a red coat with a hood, which he had been considering for several days. It was worn but still thick, and he liked the color.

He went across to Mr. Hobday's stall, where Anna-Marie was setting out her cigars in a tray of plaited straw that she had made.

"Here," he said. "Put this on. It ought to fit you quite well. And it's warmer than that worn-out old black thing. It's a nicer color, too."

She looked very surprised; her mouth fell open. Before she could say anything, Lucas hurriedly ended, "I must be off, I'm late. See you this evening," and ran after Gudgeon, who was impatiently gesturing to him. But all day, in the blackness of the sewer, he was a little cheered by the thought of Anna-Marie wearing the red coat; it seemed to sit in one corner of his mind like a small red beacon.

She needed something to cheer her, he thought; she had been very silent and withdrawn for the last few evenings.

Mr. Oakapple had spoken a few words on the previous night; that evening Anna-Marie volunteered to come up to the infirmary with Lucas.

"Perhaps he will like some soup now, or a cake—not just egg and milk," she said, and made up a packet of food.

The rain had given way to snow again and there was fog too; icicles hung from the roof of the shed; it was a bitter-cold night. But Anna-Marie, when she came out to the cart, had only her old black coat on, with a handkerchief tied round her head.

"Why don't you put on your red coat?" Lucas said. "Hurry! I'll wait for you."

"I do not have it."

"Why not?" His voice sounded sharp, merely because he was puzzled.

"I sold it," said Anna-Marie.

"
Sold
it?" Automatically Lucas flicked the reins, and the pony started. But his attention was all concentrated on Anna-Marie, who sat staring straight ahead, with her small pale face so tightly controlled that it looked like the face on a shilling.

Lucas had to control himself too. He was seized by a violent inclination to storm at her, shake her, push her off the cart and tell her to walk home. What a childish, silly, spiteful thing to have done! Well, it would be a long time before he gave her another present, she needn't think he was going to fling away any more of his hard-earned money on buying things for her to sell again.

For the first time in many days a letter to Greg formed in his mind.

"Dear Greg, I am driving through the main street of Blastburn, up Milestone Hill. Snow is falling out of the fog, like white leaves coming down from the ghosts of trees. (He was not satisfied with that, though; he would have to change it later.) Anna-Marie is with me, but she is in one of her peculiar, awkward, contrary moods. Today she sold the red coat I had given her—just to be rude and saucy, just to show me that she doesn't need the things I can buy with my wages. If I weren't older and bigger and a boy, I'd smack her ungrateful little head...." Forming the words in his mind cooled down his bad temper, and he looked about him more calmly as they drove up the hill, thinking that the vague foggy shapes of two pottery kilns looked like a picture of a Russian town that Mr. Oakapple had once shown him in a geography book.

Then he heard a stifled sound beside him and saw out of the corner of his eye that Anna-Marie was wiping her cheek, trying to do it inconspicuously.

"What's the matter now?" Lucas demanded. "Are you crying?"

She took a great breath. "I—I am sorry, Luc-asse. It is nothing."

"Of course it's something," he said angrily. "First you sell the coat I bought for you, then you cry.
Nothing
you do has any sense in it, if you ask me."

At this Anna-Marie broke down entirely. "Oh," she wept, "I hoped that perhaps you would not ask about the coat—or that you would understand. I was so sorry to sell it. But the color showed up too much. It made me too noticeable."

"Noticeable? How do you mean?" A new anxiety took hold of Lucas. "How can I understand if you don't explain what all this is about? Are the constables after you? Is it what I thought? That making cigars out of stubs is against the law?"

"No," she sobbed, "not that. At least I don't think so. But it is some boys. The girls tell them about my cigar collecting and now they come and say that I must not do it, because only they have the right. I am sure it is not true, but they say it. And sometimes they upset my stall and spoil my cigars, treading on them. And if they see me in the street they chase me and throw stones, so I can go only in the small streets where there are no pieces of cigar. That is why for the last few days I have made very little money, and I am very much afraid it will be the same tomorrow—"

"So that was why you didn't want to wear the red coat?"

"And I sell it because I make so little money today I do not have enough to buy things for Monsieur Ookapool—"

Lucas felt quite numb with rage. This is too much, he thought; just
too much.
Whatever providence is doing this to us ought to see that we have had as much as we can stand.

"Was it they who bruised your arm?"

"It was a stone. Usually I am quick to duck, but that time not so quick."

"Just wait till I catch some of them—"

"
No,
Luc! It is not only that they are big, but they are many. What could one person, two people, do against a whole crowd?"

"We'll talk about it after we see Mr. Oakapple," he said.

They had arrived at the infirmary. Lucas strode in, absent-minded with rage, and Anna-Marie, loaded with the basket, had difficulty keeping up with him. Suddenly he remembered and took it from her, then walked on, his forehead creased with furious concentration. They ought to go, they ought to leave the town, this was no place for Anna-Marie to be. But where could they go? And what about Mr. Oakapple? There seemed no limit to the number of problems that faced them.

Mr. Oakapple, however, was visibly on the mend this evening. He lay propped up on pillows, instead of flat, and the bandages had been removed from his face, which was still red and painful-looking but not scarred or mutilated.

When he saw Lucas and Anna-Marie, he gave a small difficult smile; evidently it still hurt him to move his cheek muscles. "Well! I had wondered who were the kind brownies who kept bringing me eggs and milk. I had thought it could hardly be Sir Randolph or Mrs. Gourd. So it was you two! I am very much obliged to you."

"It was no trouble," said Lucas gruffly, and Anna-Marie, a pink flush suffusing her pallor, cried, "Oh, we are so please to see you better, Monsieur Ookapool!"