Charles Palliser (116 page)

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to collapse. (As I learned only later, they sent for a surgeon from the London Dispensary nearby, who prescribed medicines which I was sure they could not afford, and my conviction that they were receiving money from someone was strengthened.) For the first few days I remained in the lower room because it was the warmer, but when on the third day the fever broke and the crisis was past, Mr Digweed carried me upstairs and laid me on a straw mattress in the other chamber; and from now on this was where I slept while Joey made his bed on another mattress on the floor nearby. During the weeks that followed I stayed in bed and slept most of the day while my strength returned.

When I was better I was carried downstairs during the day and sat in a chair by the kitchen fire. Now that I was able to take notice of what was going on around me, I was struck by the amount of noise coming from the houses nearby: dogs barking and drunken shouts and fierce arguments all day and all night. It seemed to me that the neighbourhood was worse even than Orchard-street — and later I came to know that, indeed, it was perhaps the worst part of London and jocularly called Jack Ketch’s Kitchen. flower-and-Dean-street was its most notorious thoroughfare, consisting of big old houses, now decaying, which had been “made-down” and were dens of thieves —

and worse than thieves. Because the Digweeds’ cottage was up a “slumber” at Deal’scourt, which had been thrown up in the back-gardens of the big houses, it was somewhat secluded from the goings-on in the street. And I soon noticed that the Digweeds seemed deliberately to keep themselves apart from their neighbourhood, although of course Mrs Digweed’s gossips came in to borrow cups of sugar and pass the time of day, and boys came looking for Joey. (My hosts’ visiters stared at me curiously but were given no explanation of my identity.) Also, Mr Digweed went to the pub every day and Mrs Digweed often accompanied him, and I’m afraid I could not help noticing that they frequently came home the worse for drink.

Most of all, I remarked that Mr Digweed and Joey were out for much of the time but at hours that varied strangely. Sometimes they set off during the morning, sometimes in the afternoon or evening, and occasionally Joey woke me when he rose in the middle of the night and went downstairs. Once or twice I watched from the little window that over-looked the yard in front and saw him and his father leave the house, each wearing worsted stockings up to the waist, greased knee-boots, a loose blue shirt, long oil-skins which were not like the loose-hanging garments that sailors wear but fitted closely around them, and a fan-tailed leather hat. Between them they bore a bag worn on a strap over the shoulder, a large sieve, and a long-handled implement like a kind of hoe or rake.

And each had a short knife, a stick, and a trowel worn at the belt, and carried a closed lanthorn even when they went out and returned during day-light hours.

I could make little of this or their hours: they were never away longer than about six hours, the only times they never ventured out were when it was wet (for they went out on Saturdays and Sundays), and they always came home exhausted and filthy. Now I recalled that when Mrs Digweed had come to our house in Melthorpe she had mentioned that her husband was “working the shores”, and my mother and I had guessed that this meant scavenging along the river. This would explain the hours since they could only do so during a low tide, though it did not account entirely for their dress and the equipment they carried.

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Since the little house was kept scrupulously clean by virtue of a great deal of hard work by Mrs Digweed — with a little assistance from her husband and son — it was some time before I realized how extremely malodorous the male Digweeds’ work was.

Once I was well enough to spend most of my time downstairs I perceived that at whatever hour Mr Digweed and Joey returned they always entered the house by the back way, and eventually I grasped that the point of this was that they removed their oil-skins and boots in the little back-yard and washed their hands and faces under the common cistern-pump. Their things were then cleaned — usually by Mrs Digweed —

before being brought into the house, and it was for this reason that I took so long to realize how foul their original state was and to wonder how this could have come about.

After performing their ablutions and in a state of absolute exhaustion, Mr Digweed and Joey made a light breakfast and then lay down and slept soundly for several hours.

When they volunteered no explanation and my hesitant questions were turned aside in evident embarrassment, I began to become suspicious, and the more so when I noticed that they quite often came back with injuries — particularly Joey. These were usually nothing more than slight cuts or bruises, but once every couple of weeks or so one of them — usually Joey — had a wound that incapacitated him for a day or two.

(Was this the way Mr Digweed had received his injuries?) There were other things: they purchased newspapers and Joey — since Mr Digweed could not read — pored over them. I could not help remembering how Sally and Jack had done the same.

Whatever it was, they appeared to be making very little money for the signs of poverty were everywhere. Their clothes were patched and threadbare, they mashed tea two or three times from the used leaves which were boiled with milk, and they ate little but herring, the rough bread of the poor, and occasional faggots or blood-puddings. Yet the rent was paid every week when the deputy came round for it, and they were able to keep themselves in coals, clothes and candles. I was certain that they were being paid by whoever it was who was taking an interest in me, and that this was why they were providing my keep without any prospect of recompense from myself.

Mrs Digweed, moreover, was working as a laundress, which necessitated rising and going out very early in the morning to help some establishment — often an hour’s walk away — with their weekly wash. Despite this, I could see that their situation was precarious for they had no savings to rely on and, which was much more to be looked for, no valuables to pawn in the case of illness or accident.

One night at the beginning of April when I had been there the best part of two months, I awoke in the early hours and, hearing voices, I crept down the ladder. Mr Digweed and Joey were sitting at the little table before the fire at the other end of the room while their wife and mother slept on the settle. They were counting coins into piles and I believed I saw the glint of silver and perhaps even of gold. I watched for perhaps a minute and then, fearful of being seen, crept back to my bed. What were they up to? Was that the money that they were being paid by someone to take care of me? I determined that I would ask some direct questions the next day.

So the following evening as we were gathered at the table for our meal, I said: “You’ve been very kind to me, but now that I’m recovered I must leave you.”

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Though I thought Joey looked pleased, his parents were as alarmed as I had expected if they were receiving payment for keeping me.

“Why you ain’t well enough yet!” Mrs Digweed exclaimed. “And wherever would you go?”

“I can’t stay here costing you money,” I objected.

They looked embarrassed at these words, as I had anticipated.

“Wait until you’re stronger,” she said.

“Well, just a little longer since you’re so kind,” I said sarcastically, and I thought she blushed.

“We’re on’y paying you back,” she said. “You and your mam for your kindness that Christmas-time.”

“Yes,” I began. “I meant to ask you, how was it that you and Joey happened to be in Melthorpe then?”

I wanted to draw them out for I was sure I would find gaps and inconsistencies in their story.

They all three looked at each other in some perplexity.

Then Mr Digweed began: “It all goes back to when I couldn’t find no work in my own trade so I had to take a job with the Gas, Light and Coke Company in their new works in the Horseferry-road.”

“I remember you mentioning it that Christmas-time, Mrs Digweed!” I cried. I turned to her husband: “And you were injured in an explosion there.”

They looked at each other in surprise.

“No, it wasn’t that,” Mr Digweed said.

He seemed unwilling to say more, but, recalling my suspicions, I prompted him to go on.

“In them days the other companies was trying to lay their pipes in our district. They would break up ours and we’d do the same to theirs if we got the chance — especially when we found they’d laid their pipes overnight.” He chuckled but then looked grave and said. “But there was worse. Some of our foremen would let on they was trying to win their men over with gin, and then when they was disguised in liquor, they’d go at

’em with pikes and bludgeons. There was men killed in the gas wars. But I never took no part in that. Not until one day when I got ’tacked by the lads from the Eq’itable, and they throwed me into one of our braziers for heating the tarmacadam, and put out my eye and smashed my arm bad.”

“They took George to the cutting-ward of St. George’s and had his arm off,” Mrs Digweed put in with a shudder. “And they couldn’t save the eye.”

“So when I come out I had to be nussed by the old lady. In course, I didn’t have no work to go back to like this.” He indicated the hook.

“Did you not get any compensation? I mean, set-off?” I asked, feeling rather ashamed of my suspicions.

“Aye,” Mrs Digweed said. “I must do ’em the justice to say they gived George a hundred pound hurt-money.”

“That was a great deal!” I cried.

“Aye,” she said quickly; “but we lost it all soon arterwards.”

“Lost it? How?” I demanded, suspicious once again.

They looked embarrassed and then Mr Digweed began:

“Well, it was somebody … somebody as I knowed. He’d got hisself mixed up in this building spec over by the Neat-houses and he arst me to j’in him in it. Well, I thought it was a good thing and so I went in with him on one

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o’ the houses. And so did others that he knowed. And we sub-contracted to do the plaistering and j’inery work on a few on ’em. Well, I worked for nearly a year while we lived on our hurt-money and Maggie here went out washing.”

I was sure he was referring to Barney. Why did he not admit it? It could only be because he was trying to conceal this criminal connexion from me.

“How did this friend of yours become involved?” I asked.

Would they tell me what was surely the truth? That Barney had become involved in it through Sancious?

“I don’t rightly know,” Mr Digweed replied. “But I believe it was through someone he used to do things for. A genel’man. Howsomever, me and him nivver got nothing for the work we done.”

“The work
you
done,” his wife interrupted indignantly. “Precious little he done!”

“Aye,” Mr Digweed acknowledged ruefully. “The spec failed and so me and the old lady was worse off than a-fore, with the hurt money gone and everything hocked, and debts we’d run up besides.”

“Aye,” she put in. “That was a bad time. Yes, pretty bad, I should say, taken all round.”

“And that was when you went north?” I prompted.

“That’s right,” Mrs Digweed answered, “for that same … friend of George’s told us about work near your village. So we went down — me and George and Joey. We left …

we left …”

She broke off and her husband said: “We left the other children here.”

The other children! Now, would they mention Sally whom I recalled Mrs Digweed referring to when she was at my mother’s house, and who I was sure was the young woman I had encountered in Barney’s gang.

“But when we got there,” Mrs Digweed went on, “we found there wasn’t no work for me and Joey, so we went on to Stoniton. Then I got word that the children was ill and started back. That was the time me and Joey come to your mother’s house.”

“By chance?” I prompted.

She looked at me in such innocent surprise that I shuddered inwardly at the thought that she might be dissimulating: “Yes. I knowed nothing of you before that. And when I got back here …”

Her voice trembled and she stopped speaking.

Her husband gently took her hand and said: “When she got back here she found them desperate bad. And they died a week arter.”

They were implying that Joey was their only surviving child. So they were suppressing all mention of Sally! I was sure of it. Again, this must be because they did not want me to know that she was in Barney’s company. What else were they concealing? I would give them the chance to admit the connexion with Barney.

I watched them carefully and then remarked conversationally: “When you and Joey came to my mother’s house, do you know, you weren’t the only visiters from London we had? For the house was broken into and burgled not many years before that?”

The effect of this was dramatic: they all stopped eating and lowered their eyes.

“Yes,” I went on; “and I saw the burglar.”

Nobody looked at me or spoke.

“Don’t you want me to tell you what he looked like?”

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There was a silence.

Then Mrs Digweed asked: “Why, what did he look like, Master Johnnie?”

So I described Barney in as much detail as I could. They said nothing and none of them met my gaze. I was certain that they knew that the burglar was Barney. Why did they not tell me? Presumably because they did not realize that I had recognised him and discovered their relation with him.

Mr Digweed and Joey did not go to bed that night but prepared themselves for one of their mysterious nocturnal departures, and left the house a couple of hours after midnight. I heard them leave, for I had retired to rest for the night with much to reflect upon many hours before that and had been lying awake wondering what I should do. If they were in the pay of the Mompessons, then I was surely safe, though I was made uneasy by their connexion with Barney — and even more so by their failure to admit it. I would stay with them and wait for the hidden hand that had been guiding my destiny to reveal itself.