Vices of My Blood (18 page)

“Suit yourself,” said Bettles. “He’s in the bed next to
you
, not me.”

If Traveller hadn’t been blocking the way, Murdoch would have swung a punch at the man and hang the consequences, but neither Bettles nor Kearney were within reach. They slowly eased back to their own beds, allowing the towels to untwist.

“Maybe we’d better leave the candle lit,” said Traveller. “Just so we know there won’t be anybody wandering around where they shouldn’t. And I mean anybody.”

Alf giggled and stuck his head out from under the bed.

“You can come out now,” said Traveller. “Get into your own bed and don’t stir till sun-up even if the whole ward is starving. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mr. Traveller.”

Alf scrambled into bed and Traveller sat back down.

“Thank you,” said Murdoch.

Murdoch looked over at Bettles and Kearney, who were stretched out on their beds, as ready and alert as wolves. Had they guessed he was a police officer and used Alf as an excuse to trounce him?

“Don’t worry about them two,” said Traveller. “I’ve had all the sleep I want. You can get some more kip and I’ll make sure our friends don’t move.”

“No, I’ll do it. I’m wide awake myself. What have we got, another two hours until the call? I’ll stay up.”

It was true what he said. He was hardly going to fall asleep when the man in the next bed possessed a vicious-looking open razor that he clearly would have no hesitation in using and two husky thugs across from him wanted to see blood.

Traveller shrugged. “Suit yourself. Wake me if you need to. Don’t even let those two take a piss.” He lay down and pulled his blanket up around his shoulders. “Don’t let that fool boy bring me his mucky sandwich either.”

Chapter Thirty-One

T
HOMAS
H
ICKS COULD SEE HIS WIFE
, Emily, sitting across from him at the table. He felt terribly ill and knew he’d vomited down his nightshirt. He couldn’t catch his breath no matter how hard he tried and his head was throbbing so violently he was afraid his skin would split apart at the temples. He tried to cry out for help, but Emily didn’t seem to notice. She was drinking her tea in that dainty precise way he remembered so well. He knew that his bladder and bowels had voided and he was ashamed even in front of her. He wanted to move, to stand up and get away from the pain in his chest, but he couldn’t
.

She put down her cup and saucer and folded her hands neatly in her lap
.

“Have you come for me at last, dearest?” he managed to ask her
.

“Yes, Tom, I have, “she said and her smile was so sweet, his eyes filled with tears and he wept
.

“Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.” Murdoch had studied
Macbeth
in the fifth standard. Brother Julian, who was stupefyingly dull, had taught the class and he and his pupils had never progressed beyond the thorny hedge of the unfamiliar language. Brother Julian seemed to find Shakespeare as foreign and uninteresting as they did. However, just once, the play had come alive when quite out of the blue, the Brother said that Shakespeare had understood, even in that long ago time, how disease of the soul can affect sleep. “Macbeth hath murdered sleep,” proclaimed the Brother, his voice unusually resonant. “His guilty conscience prevents him from sleeping.”

Murdoch had suffered from insomnia as long as he could remember, and Brother Julian’s remark had thrown him into a dark period as he tried to discover if his own soul was indeed sick and, if so, how he could heal it. Fortunately for him, there was a priest, Father Malone, who was attached to the school, had listened to the young boy’s painful confessions, reassured him, and absolved him. But the insomnia never went away and many a night Murdoch found himself lying awake, waiting for dawn to come when he could fall asleep.

He thumped at the scrawny pillow as he tried to get more comfortable. Staying awake this time was a choice, which made matters a little easier, but he still felt the familiar twist of utter loneliness in his guts. He was sharing a room with about sixty other men, but he felt alone, the perpetual outsider. What would they do if they knew he was spying on them? Did he have copper written all over him? He hoped not. He thought his own cover story was plausible and they’d seemed to accept it. He could just make out the shape of Bettles and Kearney across the aisle. They were both lying still and their sleep seemed genuine. Traveller was on his back, snoring softly, his breathing deep. Murdoch owed him a debt now for his intervention. From the beginning, he had been most friendly. Was he like that with every newcomer or was he currying favour? Did
he
suspect the truth?

Murdoch could hear Alf, in the next bed, snuffling and whimpering periodically in his sleep like the puppy Traveller had called him. Murdoch let his thoughts drift. He wondered if anybody was awake at home. Katie might be tending to the twins. Perhaps Amy had got up again and was helping her. She was so good with the babies. Murdoch grinned to himself. She wasn’t like any teacher he’d known. The nuns at his school were strict, but in the early years he was a studious and obedient boy and he’d liked school and done well. It was later, when his Aunt Weldon had sent him to study with the Christian Brothers, that school descended into unremitting misery. Murdoch chafed at the strict and unjust rules, the capricious dishing out of punishments, but above all, he loathed what he perceived as the superstitious ignorance of the Brothers. Most of his teachers seemed poorly educated, hardly one step ahead of their pupils. He began to challenge them, to speak back, and almost every day he was caned for some infraction, supposed rudeness, or simply because that day the Brother felt like beating his pupils. The worst, the man who became his hated enemy was Brother Edmund, a big-boned, hard-faced man who before he’d found his calling had worked for a horse breeder somewhere in Alberta. This Brother boasted that there wasn’t a horse or a boy he couldn’t break. Murdoch had desperately wanted to prove him wrong, but the contest was impossibly unequal. By the end of his second year, Murdoch knew he had only three choices. He could leave the school without an education of any kind, endure a brutality usually reserved for hardened criminals, or stop questioning everything, learn whatever he could and go silent. He chose the last option and Brother Edmund crowed.

Murdoch’s jaw had clenched at the memory. Unlike Traveller, his body no longer carried the scars of the floggings the Christian brother had administered with such undisguised delight, but his soul did. He’d heard a few years ago that Brother Edmund had died from diphtheria and Murdoch’s first reaction was one of regret that he’d never gone back to the school, found the man and given him the thrashing he deserved.

Amy Slade’s pupils would never carry that kind of memory, quite the opposite.

He hadn’t told her what he was up to, but Charlie would have explained why he wasn’t at home. She’d be eager to hear his tales when he returned, he knew that. He was lucky to have her and Seymour, and he’d come to rely on their company the way he had on the Kitchens. As long as he’d been living with the Kitchens, he’d had some feeling of family and he dearly hoped Arthur would recover. Murdoch would like to have his own family, he knew that. He and Liza had talked about having children, had even picked out names.

Murdoch sighed. The possibility of finding a wife seemed remote now that Enid had left him. Maybe he should go back to professor Otranto’s dance studio. There were some very attractive young women there, but he didn’t feel comfortable dancing with them, treading on toes, his hands sweating on the silk of their dresses. He was out of practice and he’d be sure to make a bollocks of the waltzes.

If he were at home in his own room, he would have got out of bed at this point, pushed back the rug, and done a few reverse turns. If he did that now, they’d probably send for the doctor and he’d get committed.

Thank goodness Dr. Ogden had been drawn away by Parker. Clever Ed. All that trickery paying off.

Somebody at the far end of the ward got up to use the commode. He seemed to be ill and groaned and broke wind alternately until he voided. Murdoch hoped he wouldn’t forget to empty that bucket.

The nightshirt was itchy. He scratched his chest remembering the bedbug bites on the men going into the bath. Somewhere in the city, people were sleeping in soft feather beds with linen sheets that were washed regularly. They were warm and fed. Of all the men in this room, how many deserved this wretched fate? Less than one-third in his estimation. The others, through the misfortune of injury or ill health, were sentenced like convicts to a wandering life with no home or family and little prospect of getting out of the mire. The more time a man spent in the casual wards, the less chance he stood of getting back to a respectable job. Employers were suspicious of the wayfarers and as he’d already seen, they were the first to be suspected of a crime if one occurred in their vicinity.

Was it one of these men who had attacked Charles Howard so viciously? In his mind, both Bettles and Kearney were capable of it. Bettles had shrugged off his bruised face and the minister didn’t seem to have marks on his knuckles, but he could have struck out with his elbow, an object in his hand, anything really. Which of them had been wearing Howard’s boots before Parker took them?

Murdoch sighed and pulled the threadbare cover up to his chin. He’d better start acting more like a detective and less like a tramp if he was going to find out.

Josie groaned and tried to sit up, but the room swam nauseatingly in front of her eyes and she dropped back to the pillow. She reached over to touch her mother, who was lying beside her
.

“Ma, can you get me some water, I’m desperate thirsty.” She thought she’d said this, but she wasn’t sure. Her head ached and she felt as if the air was so heavy it sat on her chest making it hard to breathe
.

“Ma,” she said again and she turned her head. A cold, clammy fog from the lake had crept into the room and she was finding it hard to see anything clearly. She so wanted to go back to sleep, but she knew she shouldn’t. Through the deepening mist, she tried to see her mother’s face
.

“Ma, get up. It must be late.”

Esther stirred and Josie saw her struggle to get out of the bed. She knew she was trying to get to Wilf
.

She always puts him first, she thought irritably. Can’t she see I’m dying?

Chapter Thirty-Two

T
HE DOOR OPENED
and the old nabber, Hastings, came in carrying a handbell, which he began to shake vigorously.

“Wake up, men. Wake up. It’s six o’clock. Wake up.”

The men stirred in a movement that rolled down the ward like a feather bed being shaken by an energetic servant. Some of the men sat up quickly, others groaned and rolled over, but nobody stayed asleep. Traveller sat up and got out of bed at once.

“Nothing else happened, I presume?” he asked Murdoch.

“We were quiet as the grave. I’d better pinch myself to know I’m alive.”

Traveller chuckled. “Well my stomach and my bladder are telling me I’m still quick. Do you have to use the bucket?”

“I do indeed.”

“Use it now then. The last one has to empty it.”

Murdoch took his advice.

He hardly finished when he felt a tug on his sleeve. Alf was standing behind him.

“Can I come in with you?” he asked and nodded nervously in the direction of Bettles and Kearney.

“Of course.”

“Line up in front of the door,” the nabber called.

“Come on,” said Traveller. “It’s best to be at the front of the line for the dining room.”

Murdoch and Alf followed him, shoving through the other men, and got into the first group already waiting at the door.

“You five men at the back, you bring down the buckets,” called the nabber before leading the way down to the long hall where they’d left their clothes. Murdoch thought they must have looked a proper sight, sixty men of all ages and sizes, shuffling along in their nightshirts and boots. It was cold in the corridor and he was glad of the warmth of the bodies pressing around him. Alf hung on to Murdoch’s shirt as if he were a child with his father. They halted at the door past the bathhouse.

The nabber hopped on a small stool by the door and rang his bell.

“Find your clothes and get dressed quickly. Put your nightshirts in the bin provided. Don’t forget to hand over your tabs. When you’re ready, wait in front of the doors at the far end.”

“Are we in the army?” Murdoch asked Traveller.

“More like jail,” he replied.

As they stepped over the threshold, an overpowering rotten egg smell hit Murdoch’s nose.

“Phew, what’s that?”

“It’s the burning sulphur they use to fumigate our clothes. Stinks, doesn’t it?”

Hunger and cold made all of them move speedily and within ten minutes they had lined up facing the opposite doors. Murdoch hadn’t enjoyed getting into his dirty clothes but at least he was warmer. All the men were dressed for the outdoors, clothes piled on top of clothes when they had them. Murdoch was struck by the hats the men were wearing: battered fedoras, plaid caps, fur forage hats, anything to keep their heads warm.

The nabber shoved his way through the crowd and jumped onto yet another stool.

“For those of you who haven’t been here before, I will tell you that you will be served two slices of bread and one bowl of skilly. One mug of tea. Don’t moan and complain because you won’t get any more than that. It’s not our fault. That’s all the council allows us.”

“I could eat that four times over,” Murdoch whispered to Traveller.

“Not here you won’t unless somebody’s sick and can’t eat, and who gets his food is a matter of luck.”

Hastings opened the door, leading the way back upstairs.

Because of Traveller, their little trio was among the first to spill into the room. The dining room was long and narrow with several wooden tables and benches in rows down the centre. Traveller took them directly to a long serving table where four men, old and withered, were standing ready to serve them. Two of them dished out the oatmeal, the third man had a bin of slices of unbuttered bread, and the fourth was filling mugs from an urn with a liquid so pale it was hard to believe it was tea.

Murdoch collected his bowl of skilly, his two slices of bread, and a mug of tea. Following Traveller, he went to one of the tables and slid into the bench, Alf close beside him.

His stomach was growling painfully and he spooned up some of the oatmeal as fast as he could. It was watery, lukewarm, and tasteless.

“Put some salt in it, it’ll taste better,” said Traveller. There were metal shakers spotted along the table and Traveller smothered his oatmeal. Nobody spoke while they consumed the unappetizing meal. Murdoch was ravenous, but even so, it was hard to enjoy dry bread that was on the verge of being stale. He followed Traveller’s advice with the bread too and dipped it in his mug of tea. Both Alf and Traveller finished before he did and he saw them scouting the table to see if anybody was dawdling over the oatmeal and who might be persuaded to give it up. There wasn’t anybody, even though Murdoch could see several of the out-of-work labourers were pulling faces and muttering to each other.

Bettles and Kearney had taken seats at the end of their table and Murdoch glanced over at them casually and without pausing in his gulping down the porridge, Bettles managed to flick him the thumb.

Traveller, who didn’t seem to miss anything, jerked his head in a warning.

“Don’t let him get to you.”

“He’s riding me.”

“’Course he is but you’re the winner if you keep your temper. Besides, t’ain’t nothing to do with you, son. That son of a bitch was just hoping to best me, is the truth. You’re the bait.”

“Why do you say that?”

Traveller didn’t answer immediately, wiping the inside of the mug with his last piece of bread.

“Traveller’s the king,” giggled Alf. “They’s always going for the king.”

Trevelyan grinned. “You ain’t been going around the circuit like we have, Mr. Williams. Us regular tramps become like a court, you might say. We knows each other and we knows our place. I ain’t the oldest, Jesse over there is the oldest, but I’m the strongest and I know the ropes. Sooner or later one of the bucks wants to challenge my position. It’s happened to me since I was a nipper. I was born big and stayed big. And there’s always some cull wants to best me so he can be king.” His keen eyes met Murdoch’s. “They’re too stupid to realize that they’re going to be king of a court filled with courtiers who wear rags and are society’s castouts.”

“Let them have it, then.”

“If it were a matter of stepping aside so they could have first go for the pig’s food they serve us, I’d do it willingly, but it ain’t that simple. Some of these fellows like Bettles won’t be satisfied till they see blood. It’s what you might call primitive. Us men are the same as the wild creatures. We’ve got to prove who’s got the biggest cock, excuse my language. So as long as I’ve got the strength, I’ve got to fight them.”

“And when you don’t have the strength?”

“Then there’ll be a new king, won’t there?”

Murdoch couldn’t tell how old Traveller was. Certainly close to middle age. He was big and looked strong, but more than that he had a formidable presence.

Jesse, the old tramp who was sitting next to Traveller, apparently lost in his own world, suddenly said, “Here, Jack. I can’t stand this tea. Do you want the last of it yourself?”

He shoved his mug toward Traveller.

“Thank you kindly. Even this cat’s piss is better than none at all, though I’d give my right fingers for a good hot, strong cup of char with heaps of sugar.”

He gulped down the tea, wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

Murdoch would liked to have gone on talking to him, but Hastings appeared again with his bell.

“Listen up, all of you. This meal is being served to you courtesy of the taxpayers of this city. In return you are expected to work. You will follow me to the lumberyard, where you cut and split wood. Those who are physically capable of this work must do it or you will forfeit your dinner. If you are incapable you will be excused and if you can prove that you have prospects of getting work if you leave this morning, you must say so. I will remind you, however, that we are experienced here in the ways of tramps so don’t think you can pull the wool over our eyes. Who here is going for a position this morning?”

Of all sixty men, a half dozen raised their hands.

“You can leave then, but report to the manager in the lumberyard first. Don’t try any gammon, we’ll know.”

Murdoch nudged Traveller. “Why aren’t more of the men trying to find proper work?”

“’Cos there ain’t any to be found. It’s easier to stay here and chop wood than trudge around the city and get turned down every time you try for something. At least you’re guaranteed a bowl of soup for dinner.”

The nabber saw them talking and he scowled. “Quiet, you two. I haven’t finished. Is there anybody here who ain’t going to pay for their keep?”

Four men raised their hands.

“You’ve got to move on then.”

“That’s what I was planning to do,” growled one grizzled tramp. He must have gone through the bathhouse, but his clothes were so wretched and dirty, his skin so weatherbeaten, he seemed filthy. The other three men were similar and Murdoch gathered they were at the end of their permitted three days and preferred to take their chances on getting dinner and leave the workhouse. He hoped none of them was the one he was looking for and he tried to memorize what they looked like.

“Are you going to work?” he asked Traveller.

“I am, I’ve got one more day here.”

“What about your hernia? Will it give you trouble?”

Jack winked. “I never know when that damn thing is going to act up. Sometimes I can’t do anything, sometimes I can. Today, I’m all right.”

The nabber rang his bell again. He must enjoy doing that, thought Murdoch.

“The rest of you follow me. Orderly and quiet now.”

The men at the table began to move out from the benches.

“Hang back,” Traveller muttered. “It’s better to be with the last group in the lumberyard. They might not have enough piles for everybody.”

They followed the nabber out of the dining room and back down the stairs. He pushed open a heavy door.

“Don’t think you can get away with shirking because you can’t. Remember, you can still be turned out.”

As he walked out to the lumberyard, Murdoch entertained himself with the fantasy of stuffing the old codger’s head into his own bell.