Perry Scrimshaw's Rite of Passage (6 page)

The man’s face dropped. ‘Not
poor Norma. She were here visiting but a few days past,’ he shook
his head and wandered off.

‘
Wait! She was
here? Come back! Talk to me.’

‘
Oh now
you
want something for
free? Piss off!’ the man spat back, barely turning round. Another
pair of prisoners pushed in front of him, wagging their notes in
the air. Joel was grabbing notes off some others, checking for
addresses, assuring the men of safe delivery. He turned to
Perry.

‘
Glad you’re
here to help me deliver all these, looks like a bumper
week!’

Perry took the notes off the
prisoners and their coin. He couldn’t credit it, Mrs D venturing
this far from home and to prison. It could only mean one thing. She
was visiting his father.

By the time the claxon sounded,
they counted twenty-one notes between them. The guards bellowed for
the prisoners to fall in line.

‘
Look,’ Joel
pointed, ‘one more?’

The man shuffled towards them,
his shackles clanking as he went. Perry knew instantly. He knew by
the shaggy hair hanging over his face, by his big gardener hands.
Hands that had tucked him in at night and mussed up his hair in
Bishopstoke. The hands that had abandoned him.

‘
We’ve got
enough. Let’s go,’ Perry stuffed the notes in his
pocket.

‘
Oh come on!
It’s only one more. Not frightened of him are you?’

‘
Not
him
Joel,’ he said
sharply and left as fast as he could without breaking into a
run.

Perry felt sick with guilt. He
just wasn’t ready. Maybe Samuel Scrimshaw was just hoping to send a
note like the rest of them, maybe he’d recognised his son. But he
didn’t want to know.

‘
Let me out,’
he said to the guard.

‘
Wait for your
mate,’ the guard replied and to his relief Joel was bounding
towards him.

‘
Thanks Jack,’
Joel dropped a few coins into the guard’s palm.

‘
Anytime,’ Jack
opened the gate and Perry rushed through the gap. He gulped the air
like he’d been stuck underwater.

A hand patted him on the back.
‘You alright Perry? You don’t look so good.’

‘
Fine. Just had
to get out of there.’

‘
Don’t worry.
I’m scared of them sometimes too. The ones in shackles are the
murderers apparently.’

A chill went
down his spine. His father had killed someone, he knew that much,
he remembered the towering policemen and being frightened out of
his wits, but who his father had killed or why – he had never
wanted to know.
Murder
. The word was sinister black, an unshakeable leech that had
attached itself to his father forevermore.

They returned up the path,
Perry stirred his hand around his change-filled pocket, feeling
marginally better with each step he took away from the prison.

‘
We done really
well today, I- ’ Joel stopped counting the coins in his hand and
looked up. Perry heard it too; the rumbling wheels of a carriage.
When it got to them, Perry and Joel stepped off the road onto the
scrubland to let it pass. Perry craned his neck and caught a
glimpse through the window of a man with white hair and a
moustache.

‘
I think that
was Dr Fairbanks.’

‘
Who?’

‘
He came to see
us when Mrs D caught The Sick. He was after me, wanted to take me
away to a sanatorium,’ panic flushed over him, ‘what if he saw me?
Come on Joel, we better scarper.’

Joel chewed his lip. ‘Another
one of the prisoners must have gone down with it. Contagious don’t
just mean it’s serious does it?’

Something clicked in Perry’s
mind; the dead prisoners, Mrs D visiting the gaol.

‘
Contagious
means you can catch it.’

‘
Like the
plague,’ Joel whispered.

What if his Pa
caught it - and that was the last time he ever saw him? Then, what
if
he himself
caught it. He ran his hand over his Adams apple.

‘
Bloody hell!
We might have got it off one of them,’ he grabbed the fistful of
notes in his pocket and threw them onto the ground.

‘
Don’t be
stupid, none of them looked ill.’

‘
I’m not
touching them,’ Perry wiped his hands on his shirt.

‘
I can’t do all
of them on me own!’

‘
Don’t then.
Throw them away! We got the money didn’t we?’

‘
They’ll find
out! I’m not pissing off a bunch of thieves and murderers! Anyway,
why would I? It’s a right money-spinner.’

‘
Not my
problem,’ Perry walked past the notes, twitching in the wind,
threatening to take flight.

‘
I’ll tell Ma,’
Joel called.

‘
So what?’
Perry sneered, ‘I’m not coming back. I’m going home to Mrs
Donnegan’s! She might not be there anymore but my bed bloody well
is.’

‘
Perry!’

But there was no point arguing
anymore. He marched to the top of the road and paused to see if
Joel was following, but no, he was chasing the skittering notes
across the scrubland. Stupid fool.

5

The Southampton rooftops
glistened with rain in the early dark. People scurried in heavy
coats, brollies gleaming dully under the streetlamps, shuffling
along like beetles. All had handkerchiefs and rags fastened around
their noses and mouths.

At the wealthier townhouses
near Charlotte Street, an exodus was in motion. Carriages lined up
outside half of the residences. The street teemed with drivers
carrying luggage from house to cab, assisting wives and children
into vehicles.

Perry cowered under a tree for
shelter, watching them leave. He was jealous; not just of the
wealth in itself, but the safety it afforded. They could flee town
at a moment’s notice while he had been exposed to Mrs D and to the
inmates at the prison. On the walk back he’d checked himself every
quarter of an hour or so, but he was tired and wind-battered. It
would be easy to believe every little muscle twinge or sneeze was
the start of something more and he had to fight to keep calm, to
remind himself that he wasn’t at death’s door. After all, only
adults had been taken by The Sick thus far.

The drizzle left him itchy damp
and the idea of sleeping in his own bed again was a warming
prospect. Perhaps he’d even see the boys. He continued on to Simnel
Street, hazy with fog and the air smelling faintly of bacon. Perry
crept along, keeping an eye out for the doctor or the apothecary.
As he neared, the smell grew stronger. This was no fog. It was
smoke.

He pressed on; the murk
enveloping him was now so thick he could barely see. He used his
shirt to cover his mouth and wafted his hands in front of him, but
saw no flicker of flame, no heat, only the pattering rain on his
face and the sting of smoke in his nostrils. Up ahead there came a
strange sound, a squeak, repeating over and over like the rusted
wheel on the lackey’s barrow at the dry docks. Then, a snort. Not a
human sound. He stopped, frozen with fear and squinted through the
fug. It looked like…he took a step closer, yes, it was the black
stamp of a horse in the milky gloom. The beast’s nose was warm and
damp and it lowered its head submissively as he stroked it.

‘
What happened
here boy?’ he said to the horse.

‘
Fire,’ came
the unexpected reply.

‘
Huh?’

The squeaking stopped.

‘
Over
here.’

Perry traced the voice to
beyond the horse and saw as he stepped closer, that it was
harnessed to a fire truck. A silhouette of a man came into view,
chest heaving and leaning on a pump.

‘
Bad fire?’
Perry asked him.

‘
It’s mostly
out thank Christ. The rain saved us a hell of a job
here.’

‘
Bit more
water!’ came a yell from the gloom,

‘
Coming!’ he
returned to the squeaky pump. Perry followed the hose, water
belched out in thick gobbets, like a picture he’d seen once of a
rat in a snake’s belly. The smoke had disorientated him and he
couldn’t be sure of exactly where he was, so he traced the hose to
the nearest house. It was Mrs Donnegan’s.

‘
No!’ he
gasped.

It was a smouldering ruin,
charred and black. On the front door a skull and crossbones had
been painted in red, the streaks baked hard by the fire. Smoke
caught the back of his throat. His eyes stung, oozing out tears.
What had he done to deserve this? He wiped his nose on his sodden
sleeve.

A fireman appeared in the
doorway, hose in hand. ‘Oi, you shouldn’t be here.’

‘
Sorry,’ Perry
stammered, ‘what happened, what’s the skull mean?’

‘
Madness is
what it is. Fourth one today. There’s folk going round torching the
houses of the infected to stop it spreading.’

Perry stared at the ruin and
his sense of dread sunk to his very core. The boys. ‘Were there any
bodies?’

Grimy and grim. ‘Not yet.’

Thank God, let
it stay that way.
Perry wiped away the
tears and cleared his throat. Before he knew it, he was climbing
back over the rubbish heap and sploshing through the swollen Blue
Anchor Lane puddles. He knocked at Ma’s, hating that he was here
again and in no mood to make amends with Joel.

The door swung open violently
and before he could speak, his chin was in Ma’s vice-like grip.

‘
Ow! Get off!
What are you doing?’

He struggled and squirmed, not
believing how strong she was.

‘
Stop
wriggling!’

Lantern light flooded his eyes,
too bright and too close. He batted it away and finally tore
himself free from her grasp. Ma stood there grimacing, her bosom
heaving. Then he realised. Joel must have told her about the
notes.

‘
Look, I know
what-’

‘
-Don’t you
start with me you little scamp! You were one of Donnegan’s boys
weren’t you? The whole Ward’s talking about The Sick starting
there!’

Wrong-footed, Perry opened his
mouth but no sound came.

‘
You might have
brought it into my house!’

‘
I ain’t got
The Sick,’ he said limply, then gathered up his resolve, ‘It ain’t
possible Ma. I spoke to Dr Fairbanks see, you heard of
him?’

‘
The doctor
looking for a cure?’

‘
Yeah
him,
he
said I
can’t get it because I’m not an adult. Otherwise they would have
taken me for disinfecting wouldn’t they?’

She grunted, his logic
stumbling into place somewhere in her head. Perry reached into his
pocket.

‘
I owe you for
last night, and here’s payment for tonight too, go on take
it.’

Ma examined the coins.

‘
I’m fine.
Promise,’ he attempted a smile, ‘and there’s more where that coin
came from if you let me stay for a bit.’

Ma stared him
down for a moment, weighing his words. Then, she stepped back from
the doorway. Money talks. Water dripped off his nose, earlobes and
fingers and pattered on the floor. Ma didn’t seem to care; the
floorboards were rotten anyway. He couldn’t believe he had to beg
to stay here. In the bedroom there was no sign of Joel.
My first bit of luck all day,
he thought wryly. He hung his sopping clothes over the door to
dry and wrapped himself in a bundle of old blankets on the floor.
The day couldn’t end soon enough.

In the morning, he woke with
his hair still stinking of smoke. Joel was asleep on the other side
of the room. Perry hadn’t heard him come in but it must have been
late; there were an awful lot of notes to deliver. Guilt prickled
at him. Things were far adrift from even his most modest hopes and
it was up to him now to make the best of it. He got up quietly and
went to the kitchen. There was no sign of Ma, probably asleep
upstairs. Joel’s clothes were gathered in a soggy bundle in front
of the unlit hearth.

Perry brushed the ash and spent
coal from the fireplace. From the coal bucket, he tossed a
scattering of black lumps until there was a decent pile and stuffed
paper and kindling in the gaps. He struck a match off the wall and
lit the paper. The fire smoked, but wouldn’t draw properly, so he
covered the fireplace mouth with a sheet of old newspaper, holding
it in place until he could see the lick of flame shadow through the
paper. Once it was going he dusted his hands off and set the
kettle. While he waited for the water to heat, he wrung Joel’s
clothes out into a bucket and hung them on the line above the
mantel. He supposed it was the least he could do.

Two slices of bread rested on
the table. Ma playing at innkeeper was she? Laying on a breakfast
spread for her two young guests? Perry claimed his stale slice and
gnawed on it until it was soggy enough to bite off and chew. At
least there was something to eat. The kettle whistled and Perry
grabbed a towel, took the kettle off the heat and poured the
scalding water into a dented metal teapot. He heard movement in the
bedroom.

‘
Morning,’ he
called, swilling the water round the teapot.

Joel shuffled in, red-eyed and
in his nightclothes, his head down. He reached the washing line and
felt his shirt and trousers.