The Street Philosopher (40 page)

Cracknell skirted the long tables and took up a place in the middle of the bar, leaning against it like a regular. His faded gentleman’s garb, and especially his garish waistcoat, were conspicuous indeed amongst the drab caps, fustian jackets and plain cotton frocks of the rest of the Trafford’s clientele. He was behaving, also, with a notable swagger. The first thing he did was buy drinks for all those around him, filling the barmaid’s cupped hands with coppers. This magnanimous gesture was met with a decidedly ambiguous murmur and a couple of grudging nods of acknowledgement. Cracknell, entirely unconcerned by this response, handed Kitson a glass of spirit, knocking back one himself in a single swallow. This liquid, gin he supposed, had the appearance of old dishwater and smelled like burned rubber. Kitson drank it anyway.

Beer was next, a jar of dark porter. After making a healthy start on his, Cracknell lit a cigarette and scanned the Trafford’s balcony. He saluted a bald-headed man in a red neckerchief who sat gravely at the balcony’s edge with a company of roughs gathered around him. This fellow, Cracknell explained, was the Trafford’s landlord, a Mr Bairstowe–who, he’d discovered, had once clashed unpleasantly with Mr Twelves and his underlings, and would not now permit them inside his establishment. The Trafford was a haven; a place where they could catch their breath and consider their next move.

Putting a hand on the coarse, unpolished bar, Kitson took in the tavern, working out the best escape route and thinking about how long he would need to get back to Princess Street. Something was going on, he was sure of it; this all felt rehearsed. Cracknell had another reason for bringing him here. I will wait for half an hour, he thought, let him have his civil conversation, and then I will leave.

The Tomahawk looked at Kitson and grinned. His former junior was practically a visual definition of unease–ideal for his purposes. They stood out like goats in a sheep pen,
and were drawing a good deal of attention. He puffed on his cigarette and took a cool swig of porter. It was time to get back to the business of the evening.

‘No,’ he announced after a few seconds’ silence, ‘there was rot in the Norton family, and it needed to be gouged out. The railway, Thomas, the bloody
railway
! So many times I rode it, marvelling at its effectiveness, little suspecting that the very nails holding it together were the product of greed and wickedness! I had no notion of this whatsoever until I returned to England in the winter of fifty-five. Such a boon to the troops–and yet being exploited by Boyce for his own gain!’

‘So you have brought down his accomplice,’ Kitson said, reaching stiffly for his jar. ‘Boyce will have been damaged also. He must have an interest in Norton’s business.’

‘Undoubtedly, although I could find no trace of a formal connection between them. The Brigadier has protected himself with exceptional effectiveness, I must say. I haven’t even been able to discover where the brute has been living since he was invalided home from the war. But now I will finally get my vengeance. And by Christ, there’s a lot to avenge.’ Cracknell paused. ‘He took her from me, Thomas–
stole
her from me.’

‘You are referring to the late Mrs Boyce, I assume.’

‘Such a beautiful, spirited creature, cruelly cut down by that
demon
.’ The Tomahawk drew himself up. ‘I cannot accuse him directly, of course. The murder was covered up very nicely, blamed on a rogue Russian–Boyce produced a couple of witnesses from his regiment, as well as the body of the supposed killer. Neither can I get at him, in the Metropolis or elsewhere. The obstacles are simply too great.’ He fixed Kitson with a direct, resolute stare. ‘Up here, though–up here there is a real chance. And I must take it. I must do whatever I can to obtain justice for my poor Madeleine.’

Kitson banged his glass down impatiently on the bar. ‘Oh, come now, Cracknell!’ he exclaimed irritably. ‘You seem to forget that I was
there
. You would have me believe that you have come here as a vengeful lover–but I spoke to Annabel
Wade on the day Madeleine Boyce died. You had deserted her, taken flight to escape the wrath of her husband and pen your vitriolic reports in safety. You had not seen her for
months
. Your affair was over.’

Cracknell dropped his cigarette butt on the ground, crushing it beneath his boot, somewhat wrong-footed by Kitson’s hard certainty. ‘She was killed, Kitson, because of her connection with me,’ he said quietly, ‘because of her love for me. You cannot deny this.’

‘Perhaps so, but it was a love you did not return. You knew the manner of man Boyce was. Did you not think, even
once
, of the danger you were placing her in with all that Tomahawk nonsense?’ Kitson made a disgusted sound. ‘This grand act of yours does not work on me, Cracknell. Stop pretending that you are in Manchester to avenge Mrs Boyce. You are here for yourself.’

A comic singer, wearing a drooping ruff and a pair of outsized pantaloons, ambled on to the stage of the Trafford Arms. His appearance was greeted by applause and raucous cheers from the audience, with a good number of those seated rising to their feet. Several even climbed up on top of benches and tables.

Drawing in an exaggerated breath, his arms open wide, the singer launched into an account of young Billy Taylor, pressed to sea. It was clearly a regular tune at the Trafford, as within the space of a bar or two the entire crowd, except the two newspapermen, were belting out its lines into the smoky air with considerable gusto. ‘
Soon ’is true love followed
after,’ they sang, ‘Under name o’ Richard Carr; and ’er lily-white
’ands she rubbed all over, wi’ nasty pitch and tar
!’

Cracknell finished his porter. A disconcertingly genuine anger had started to itch away inside him. He raised his hand, beckoning over a plain-featured, wide-hipped barmaid in a dirty apron. After ordering more beer, he turned back to Kitson.

‘I’ll admit that I have other reasons for hating him,’ he retorted sharply, raising his voice to be heard over the singing. ‘You must know what he did to me.’ It hurt Cracknell even to think of this matter; but, simultaneously, he found that
he wanted desperately to drag it out into the open once more, to bask again in the toxic injustice of it all.

‘I have heard that letters were written to the Times,’ Kitson said carefully.

Immediately, Cracknell reached into his jacket and pulled out the clipping. It was heavily worn, and falling apart where it had been folded; he could have recited it by heart if requested. He laid it on the bar in front of Kitson.

The presence of certain civilian war correspondents, it read, has
been a nagging irritation to all fighting on this campaign. One man
in particular, an employee of the
London Courier
magazine, has
made an active annoyance of himself from the day the expeditionary
force set sail from England. He has cast his abuse about widely,
selecting targets from the most senior generals through to the stalwart
men of the line, doing considerable damage to morale. Recently,
he named all British soldiery in the Crimea ‘fruit of a rotten tree’;
here I use his own despicable expression.

During the first assault on the Redan, his interferences became
rather more direct, and have prompted me to write this letter in
the hope that it might lead to some form of punitive action being
taken against him. I witnessed him running amidst the men of the
Light Division at the height of the attack, shouting seditious slogans,
undermining the confidence of the soldiers and interrupting their
advance. In my opinion as an officer, this absurd behaviour
contributed directly to the failure of the assault and the deaths and
injuries of a number of soldiers; indeed, my own wound, which
has caused me to be sent home, was inflicted as I attempted to
correct his disturbances.

I implore those with direct authority on this person to consider
this incident and summon him away from the Crimea as soon as
possible; and I entreat the ministers of our government to impose
some manner of formal restriction upon civilians who seek to enter
a theatre of war, so that the disastrous, inappropriate bravado of
the Courier’s man cannot be repeated.

It was signed
A commander of Infantry, July 1855
.

Kitson finished reading it. He made no visible reaction. ‘And this led to your being recalled by O’Farrell?’

Cracknell nodded. Whilst the trials of ‘Richard Carr’ were loudly detailed all around them–including her less than
successful attempts to splice the main-brace, and then sneak to her Billy’s hammock once the moon was high above the waves–the Tomahawk told of his fall. He had actually managed to persevere until the final three-day bombardment of Sebastopol in early September, and the miserable failure of the second British assault on the Great Redan: their final humiliation, in which Sir William Codrington, the
Courier’
s old pal, had played a prominent, inglorious role. When the Russians had withdrawn from their fortifications the following morning, after the successful French occupation of the Malakhoff Tower, Cracknell had been among the first to venture past the enemy defences and into the burning town. This had brought him no satisfaction or triumph, however. The Redan, that impregnable bastion, had been but a miserable mess of scorched earth, splintered timber, dead Russians and camp litter; and Sebastopol itself a ruin only, knocked to pieces by shot and then set on fire. It had seemed a paltry thing, an empty accomplishment that was neither victory nor defeat, completely unworthy of the many thousands of lives it had cost.

Furthermore, the publication of Boyce’s letter in the
Times
had made it almost impossible for him to operate. No soldier or sailor of any rank would tolerate his presence, even for a second. He was cursed and spat at wherever he went. Every one of his friends seemed either to be dead or to have been invalided home. And perhaps most crucially, the
Courier’s
circulation had begun to drop. Before long, O’Farrell had grown nervous and he was summoned back to England. Not a word of his had appeared in the
London
Courier
since.

‘All of which leads me to this place, Thomas, to a grubby tavern in Ancoats, standing before you with my clothes torn and stained and my last few pennies jangling forlornly in my pockets.’ Cracknell felt like laughing aloud at this ludicrous state of affairs, if only to mask the black despair that was gathering inside him. ‘I sell to anyone who will consider me. The
Dublin University Magazine
ran a piece last winter. But I’m the Tomahawk of the bloody
Courier
, aren’t I–the disgraced relic of an ignoble war that everyone wants to
forget. I am friendless, Kitson, entirely friendless, thanks to Nathaniel bloody Boyce.’

Cracknell took a deep, soothing drink from the fresh jar of porter that had been set before him. It was good, he told himself, that his blood was up; it would make the attainment of his object that evening all the easier. He could not help but think, however, that their conversation was starting to veer off course. Kitson, bless him, had somehow managed to get the Tomahawk struggling like a kitten in a rain-barrel to justify himself–when he was in fact the wronged party, the innocent victim. He knew that he must change the tide of their discourse, and dislodge this sanctimonious street philosopher from the seat of judgement on which he was becoming so damnably comfortable. It was time, in short, to launch an attack of his own.

He looked Kitson over. The fellow’s clothes were clean enough and in decent repair, but they looked to be second hand; there was no watch-chain either, and his boots were old. ‘I must say, though, Thomas, that you yourself are hardly the picture of journalistic success. How on earth did
you
end up here?’

Kitson realised that he was now leaning against the bar. For the first time in days, his chest had stopped hurting. His cheeks were flaming; no longer did the wet jacket feel so cold against his back. In fact, was it even still wet? He had already been in the tavern longer than he’d intended. Cracknell’s story had held him, if only because of his sheer amazement at the man’s capacity for self-delusion; but he would take his leave soon.

After draining his beer-jar, Kitson gave a terse account of how he had fled the Crimea the very afternoon of that first attack on the Redan. Totally deaf, half-mad with guilt, and still caked with a thick mixture of blood and dust, he had simply walked aboard the first steamer bound for Constantinople, without sending word to anyone. Back in England, after a period recuperating at a cousin’s house in Highgate, he had tried for a time to find work in the hospitals and infirmaries of London. The sight of death, however,
and the feel of warm blood on his hands and clothes, quickly proved to be more than he could bear. Eventually, on the advice of a friend from his days in art correspondence, he had come to Manchester and introduced himself to Edward Thorne of the
Manchester Evening Star
.

‘Street philosophy was the only employment Thorne could offer,’ Kitson explained wearily. ‘This didn’t concern me in the least. I didn’t care what I did. I only wanted to be away from everything, from everyone, thinking that I could repair myself if I was only left alone. I—’ The porter was going to his head. He was talking more than he meant to, saying things certainly not suited to his former senior’s ears.

Cracknell’s expression was unsympathetic. ‘But then this bloody great art exhibition came along and upset all your plans, eh? Enough to attract old colleagues you probably thought you’d shaken off for good, and old enemies you’d quite forgotten, all brought together in your sooty refuge! Well, my commiserations, Kitson, truly.’

Another song began, this time a Lancashire clog hornpipe. Some space was cleared, and led by the comic dancer up on the stage, the revellers clomped about in their wooden shoes with whooping enthusiasm. Arms were linked, skirts gathered up, and caps thrown in the air.