The Street Philosopher (30 page)

Cregg had been waiting with Stewart on London Road for the better part of the afternoon. They passed a pint of gin between them, trying to keep their eyes on the modest doorway of the Model Lodging House.

This, Cregg knew, was his last chance. He’d seen enough coves go under to know well enough what was happening to him; he just didn’t seem to be able to muster the energy to bring a halt to it. His acts against the army, against that bleeder Wray, hadn’t brought him any real satisfaction or relief. Some days it even seemed like they had made things worse. His hand, his leg and his face all ached to high buggery, sometimes getting so bad that his insides twisted up and his eyes grew unreliable. There was one answer to all this and one answer only: the bottle.

His recollections of his time in Manchester were accordingly sparse–half-memories of dingy pot-houses and gin palaces, of dark alleys and rank, undrained courts, of squalid two-room houses and crumbling basements, all nestled in the shadows of pounding mills. There had been vomiting, a good deal of vomiting; some joyless fornication with a toothless whore not a day under fifty; and numerous clumsy attempts to position himself on floorboards already covered with coughing bodies.

At some point he had acquired Stewart, a pallid, sly looking Irishman. Cregg was dogged by the sense that Stewart was after something beyond simple companionship. He was a
steady drinker, though, and didn’t yet seem to be tiring of his new friend’s lengthy Crimean stories, tearful eulogies to the Crimean dead, and Crimean songs, sung over and over with sodden earnestness. He said he was an ironmonger by trade, with a specialisation in making spanners–yet he had plainly practised little but self-obliteration for some time.

One morning, quite recently–three or four days ago, he thought–Cregg had woken at dawn in a turd-filled gutter with his mouth full of straw. This in itself was hardly unusual, but as he had sat up and tried to get his bearings, he found that he was also smarting with lost purpose. Before him was a public house called the Hare and Hounds. He could dimly recall entering it for an important meeting with his employer. Whether this had transpired or not he couldn’t rightly say. Drink had close-shaved all remembrance of the day from his mind, leaving it utterly bald. He knew, though, in that brief moment of semi-sobriety, that he had duties in the Cottonopolis. He had come there for a reason. There was a proper scheme in place, a scheme for revenge. The nature of this scheme, however, and his role in it, were lost to him completely.

Shaking the worst of the filth from his greatcoat, Cregg had decided that he must see Mr Cracknell, offer his sincerest apologies, and make his best effort to get himself back on track. A few shreds of information clung to his bruised brain, like the scraps of an over-pasted bill left sticking to a wall after an attempt to tear it down. Cregg still knew where Mr Cracknell had based himself; and he swore that once he had drunk his shaking limbs back under his control, and soothed the beast that raged inside his skull, he would go there straight away.

And so there he was–a little late maybe, and not exactly clean, but chock-full of the best will in the world. The unexpected length of their wait was taking its toll, though. A soft impact on Cregg’s upper arm told him that Stewart had gone to sleep, and was leaning against his sleeve. The crippled veteran lifted up their gin bottle. Only a quarter-inch of the dirty spirit remained. Bringing the bottle close to his disfigured face, he sloshed this liquid from side to side,
momentarily transfixed by the tiny bubbles popping at its edges. Then, through the warped glass, he spotted the man he sought, swinging a cane as he walked briskly towards the Model. Dropping the bottle in the gutter, and leaving Stewart to topple on to the pavement, Cregg rushed over to intercept him. Cap in his hand, he made a boozy but heartfelt plea for forgiveness.

Mr Cracknell stopped with some reluctance. ‘I cannot use you, Cregg,’ was his impatient response. ‘You were drunk in the Hare and Hounds, drunk as a bloody lord.’ He leant in closer, sniffing, his nose wrinkling slightly. ‘And by Jove, you’re pretty bloody drunk now. How exactly I am supposed to lay complex plans, and make careful arrangements, with a man who can’t stay dry for long enough to bloody well hear ’em? Answer me that!’ The correspondent set off again. Six strides took him almost to the door of the lodging house.

Cregg, contrite and servile, scurried along at his side. ‘I’ll make amends, sir, promise I will. You know me will is strong, sir. What’s the scheme, sir? What would you ’ave me do?’

Mr Cracknell turned around, quickly moving in close again, his voice sharp with spite. ‘Your will may be strong, Cregg, but your mind is weak indeed. There is no place in my scheme for the weak-minded.’

A familiar feeling crept into Cregg. The situation was sliding beyond his control. Nothing he could say or do now would stop Mr Cracknell from dropping him. It was like all the other positions he’d lost, all the magistrates he’d stood before, all the demotions, humiliations and punishments he’d received in his wretched life. Bitter rage welled up inside him. ‘So ’ow am I to get me vengeance, then?’
You fat paddy
bastard
, he almost added. ‘’Ow am I to get Boyce, if you won’t ’ave me?’

‘Well, the Brigadier appears to be out of town at the minute,’ Mr Cracknell replied, stepping up to the door of the Model, ‘but my sources tell me that he is due at the Albion Hotel in a couple of days. You left your bayonet in Captain Wray, I understand, but I’ll warrant that a fellow like you will have no trouble securing himself another weapon. Why don’t you simply go over there and kill him?
Stick him one in the gut, perhaps? There, is that a scheme you can take in? You would certainly have your vengeance then, Cregg! Now, begone!’

Mr Cracknell opened the door and walked through grandly, as if the Model Lodging House was the swankiest address in all Manchester. It slammed behind him.

‘Hello,’ said Bill Norton, spying the soot-scarred back of a city cab through a tangle of wisteria. ‘What’s a growler doing here at this hour?’

His father glanced up from his half-eaten kipper. Promptly dropping his fork on to his plate, he cast aside his napkin and rose from the breakfast table. ‘A business associate,’ he explained curtly, walking around the back of Bill’s chair. ‘I will return shortly.’

Bill and Jemima looked at each other. The morning sun shone brightly through the breakfast room’s large window, casting slanting shapes across the table between them. It was early still, but these blocks of light already shimmered with rising heat.

‘Strange time of day for a Foundry call,’ Bill mused. ‘And since when did the governor’s associates ride around in growlers? Every man-jack of them has at least one private carriage.’

Jemima lowered her eyes. ‘You are right. It is strange.’ She moved her coffee cup around in its saucer. ‘Almost as strange as the readiness with which he agreed to let me go to the Belle Vue this evening.’

It had been a risky proposition–even Bill had seen this. The upsets of the company visit were less than two weeks old. Their father had forbidden Jemima from seeing Mr Kitson again, in the severest terms. And now all of a sudden she was requesting permission to accompany her brother and
his friend Alfred Keane to the Belle Vue, Manchester’s largest pleasure garden–a place she had not visited, and shown no desire to visit, since before her marriage. It would hardly have been a great piece of deduction for their father to realise that Mr Kitson had been contacted and would be meeting her there.

But Jemima had been determined to try. She said that she had to see Mr Kitson as a matter of urgency. This was not merely lover’s hyperbole. Since the company visit she had been stuck fast in a quiet, bitter anger, which was far more significant than the impatient ire that formed a daily part of her character. It was an anger of rumination, and of ominous conclusions; Bill had thought about asking its precise cause, but swiftly decided that he didn’t really want to know. Best to leave it to Mr Kitson.

‘I take it that you are suspicious of his leniency.’

Jemima stared at him in disbelief. ‘William, are you
not
?’

‘Come now, Jem, what sinister motive could there possibly be? The governor has no inkling of our, ah,’ here Bill paused, blushing a little, ‘of our true pursuits once we are clear of these walls. Perhaps he simply wants peace.’

‘I would put nothing past Father, and neither should you.’ She got up. ‘We must remain very much on our guard.’

Bill sighed, pushing away the remains of his plate of buttered toast. ‘Very well, Jemima. As you say.’

He followed his sister out in to the velvet gloom of the hall. There was a faint smell of dried lavender and wood polish. The door to their father’s study was firmly closed. Jemima went towards the wide staircase, heading up to her rooms. After a second’s reflection, the heir to the Norton Foundry turned on his heel and strode down towards the hall’s opposite end with sudden purpose. The sonorous ticktocking of a dark grandfather clock seemed to echo his steps as he walked past.

Bill swept into a reception room, his silk dressing gown billowing around him, intending to throw open its patio doors, go out on to the lawn and feel the morning sun on his face. He shed his shoes and stockings before leaving the house. The grass was still damp with the last droplets of dew,
but had a wonderful warmth and softness, sinking under his bare white toes like a quilt. For a moment, as the sun’s rays hit him, his entire world dissolved in fiery brightness. Shading his eyes with his hand, he looked down to the willow lake at the lawn’s end. His favourite gardener was at work among the bulrushes, already in his shirt-sleeves, his bronzed arms rippling as he dragged some driftwood to the shore.

He was filled with anticipation, excitement almost, about the evening ahead. Things had not been going so well of late for Freddie Keane and himself. Bill reckoned that their fathers had been plotting together; concerted moves were certainly being made to press both young men into their respective family firms. This was an anathema to Bill, but he was far better equipped to fight against it than his friend. Keane simply did not have the strength of spirit to weather such assaults and was allowing them to preoccupy him utterly. He was unable to think or talk of anything but his father’s business plans. Although his knowledge of the details was scant, he remembered enough of what had been said to be able to predict the end of his life, properly speaking, and the commencement of an unbearable waking death.

But Bill was not inclined to worry about this. A good deal more than Keane’s pouts were required to spoil the prospect of the Belle Vue on a summer’s evening. They had not been there in some months. It was an easy place to move in, and an easy place indeed to meet like-minded acquaintances. After nightfall, away from the pavilion and the dancing boards, there were a great many secluded corners where sport could be had without fear of interruption.

Bill found that he looked forward to the more conventional pleasures of the place as well; to the rare sights, the drinks, and the dancing. Keane would be distracted, for a few hours at least, and Jemima would forget her anger and her misgivings completely once she was reunited with her street philosopher. Bill was quite certain of this. This little trip was exactly what was needed for all three of them.

He looked back at Norton Hall. Its western side was a slab of blue shadow, the dark windows seeming to contain a vast
quantity of filthy water, as if the house was nothing but an enormous brick rain tank. Bill imagined smashing one on the ground floor, releasing a bursting cascade out on to the lawn, and watching the level drop in all the windows around it. This notion was in his mind so strongly he actually had to stop himself from stooping down and plucking a stone from a path that bordered the grass.

As he was gazing at this window, a sallow face floated to its surface–a square face, with a narrow mouth and round, black eyes. It was one of his father’s hired men, the leader in fact; Bill recognised him from the company outing to the Exhibition. For a long moment, they contemplated one another. Then the hired man turned away.

‘He beat you, Mr Twelves. Evaded you; gave you the slip. That’s the rub, is it not?’

Twelves adjusted his hold on his stew-pan hat. His expressionless manner did not leave him, but Norton could tell that he was profoundly annoyed. The man’s natural arrogance had been undermined by unequivocal failure. Charles found that he was rather enjoying himself, but was glad that the solid mass of his desk was between him and the black-suited investigator.

‘God knows, it was a simple enough task. One would think that a man with your reputation would be able to do such a thing with ease.’

Twelves fixed him with a dispassionate stare. ‘My employees let me down, Mr Norton. Ye know what that’s like. I saw yours in the Exhibition, streaming out of those halls like the Jews after Moses, with nary a thought for the coin it’d cost you.’

Charles shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He did not like to think of the Foundry visit, and it pained him to recollect that this unsavoury fellow had witnessed it all.

‘Most of ’em what go ’ave been reacting the same way, if it’s any consolation. Pearls before swine, Mr Norton.’ Twelves’ mouth twitched into the very slightest of sneers. ‘Down my way, they complain that working people can’t afford to attend the Exhibition. But they can afford the
American Circus at Ordsall, for the same money. I don’t see any going thirsty either, if ye follow my meaning.’

Norton sat forward. Twelves was managing to turn their discourse away from his own shortcomings. ‘You have not been able to find him since, have you?’

The investigator remained outwardly unperturbed. ‘Ishmaels like Richard Cracknell are usually pretty good at hiding themselves away. He’ll appear again soon enough.’

‘That may be so, but a chance has appeared for you to redeem yourself before then.’ Norton cleared his throat. ‘My daughter came to me this morning requesting that she be allowed to go to the Belle Vue Gardens tonight. In the company of my son and his friend Alfred Keane.’

‘So the son is involved as well as the daughter.’

The brute was striking back at him now, striking back with an expert touch. ‘It would seem so.’

Without altering his tone or his features in the slightest, Twelves managed to radiate malicious satisfaction. ‘That is awful, Mr Norton. Both your offspring, your own flesh, as perfidious as Caesar Borgia. My sympathies.’

Norton tried to ignore him. ‘My daughter obviously intends to meet with Kitson in the gardens somewhere. I think we can safely assume that Cracknell will be present as well. They will be attempting to draw her into their despicable schemes once more.’

Twelves’ eyes were wandering coldly over the bookshelves behind Charles’s desk. ‘And what d’ye want us to do?’

The labour-lord put a hand to his brow. ‘Watch them congregate. Ascertain the extent of my son’s involvement. Wait until they are all together.’ He spoke slowly and deliberately, choosing his words with care. ‘Then you are to act. I want you to do to Cracknell what you were supposed to last time.’

Twelves had taken out his notebook. ‘Only that? Surely more is warranted now, Mr Norton?’ He plainly wanted revenge on the man who had embarrassed him.

Charles looked out at the dense, layered canopy of a cedar of Lebanon, and the gravel driveway that snaked beneath it. ‘Do what I ask, Mr Twelves, and nothing more. Incapacitate him. That is all that is necessary.’

The investigator was not pleased. He wrote something down. ‘And what of the other one–the street philosopher? The same?’

Briefly, Norton thought of that day in the Exhibition–of the protests of Kitson and his daughter, and the obvious regard she held him in. All of it had seemed genuine. He was certain, however, that it was merely another manipulation, part of the grand scheme that these two demons were orchestrating against him. He nodded. ‘Afterwards, I want you to bring both my children back here. I will talk to them immediately.’

Norton smoothed his whiskers, setting his mouth in a hard line. This had to be done. The depths of their treachery had to be exposed once and for all. And it would cause such shame, such utter disgrace to be brought upon the pair of them that he would henceforth be entirely justified in exerting the full force of his will. His son would make a bonfire of his dandy clothes, and enter the Foundry before the month was out; and his daughter, swathed in ignominy yet again, would be sent away from Manchester for good. No other option remained. Jemima had an aged spinster aunt in Newcastle, her late mother’s elder sister, who was famous for both the dull confines of her life and the bilious spirits which she inflicted on all who entered them. If the girl is so determined to be objectionable, he thought, let her kneel at the feet of an authority. She will soon learn something of the true boundaries that can be thrown around difficult women.

‘You must succeed, Mr Twelves. My partner returns to town tomorrow, and I do not want him troubled by these degenerates.’

The investigator tucked away his book. ‘I will take charge personally, Mr Norton. All will go smoothly.’

‘Very well.’ Norton stood, straightening his jacket. ‘It is high time we ended this foolishness once and for all.’