The Law of Dreams (31 page)

IN THE
morning he was awakened by the noise of her being
sick on the grass.

He got up and rubbed her back until the convulsions had stopped. “Oh
man, there's black in that.” She was peering at the mess. “I'm
sick, I'm sick. Oh man, I can't follow this life no more.”

He knew the first sign of black fever, typhus fever, was usually headache,
thoughts tangling and blazing. Then violent sickness. Skin flushing dark, so the victim
was black in the face. Chills. Overnight, fever sores blistering. Every joint swollen
and tender. Terrible sleeps, like sleeping in fire.

She was weeping. Wetting his handkerchief on the dew, he began cleaning
her mouth.

“I want to be warm, Fergus. Everything's wrong. I'm
never warm. There's more to life than this.”

“Have you never had the fever?”

“Don't talk to me of fever.” She made herself stand up
straight, and shook out her skirt. “I'm all right. I'm better now
— I'll be all right. We'll have our ship by tonight, won't
we?”

“I don't know. Perhaps.”

“I tell you, man I won't never more sleep on the
ground.”

“What time?”

She cracked open the watch. “It's time. Let's go,
let's catch our flier.”

IN THE
mist, well-dressed railway passengers stood
clutching their parcels and waiting for the Northern Express. At the far end of the
platform, a group of navvies sat on their packs.

No train in sight.

“We've rations left from last night, don't we? I'm
famished, man. Give us a fill, I need something.” She was peering down the line,
impatient.

Her face showed good color, nothing feverish.

He gave her bread and cheese, which she ate greedily, watching the line.
“Here she comes, man.”

He could see the engine, furling white smoke. “Look at that
beauty!” Molly cried, hopping like a bird. People began collecting packages as the
train clanked into the station, smothering the platform in steam, cinders, and the stink
of hot grease and iron. Navvies were getting to their feet.

“Come on, Fergus, let's find a place, she won't stop
long.” Without waiting for him Molly started down the platform, heading for the
open trucks at the end of the train.

If he stayed there, standing on the platform, she'd still board the
train. He'd not see her again. He'd be alone. Safer. Watchful. Using
solitude like a drink.

Another tramp in a world of tramps.

Alone, you lose your sense of yourself. Your thoughts slur. Eventually
you'd vanish, like those ejected; like them dropped into the sea.

“Fergus! She's starting to pull!” She was beside one of
the open trucks. “I can feel it! Come give me a leg-up, man!”

Rejecting solitude, you follow what is warm.

He hurried down the platform. When he reached the truck, he bent and
cupped his hands. Laughing, she stepped up neatly and scrambled over the side. He
climbed over after her. The tramps were packed shoulder-to-shoulder but Molly brusquely
elbowed for space. “Make room, make room, gents — we all shall fit nice as
fleas.” The whistle screamed and couplings slammed down the length of the train,
and the truck gave a jolt and started rolling. It left the station quickly, clattering
over switches. Smoke and red cinders fluttered over their heads. Past stables, wagon
yards, and the backs of houses, they broke out into the open country.

Molly was crouched out of the wind, lighting her pipe. He stood holding on
to the truck's swaying sides watching the fields of England flipping past.

Great speed makes you feel powerful, as though you possess what you see,
but the feeling is a delusion.

DISEMBARKING AT BIRKENHEAD
, they followed a crowd of
navvies past slaughter yards reeking of smoke, blood, and shit, down to the landing
stage, where they paid a penny each and boarded the ferry.

The Mersey teemed like every thought in his head spilling out. Dozens of
steamers and ships trafficked up and down the river or lay waiting to enter the stone
fortress docks on the Liverpool side.

At midstream he caught the sharp aroma of the sea just as a three-master
crossed their bow, her yellow sails flapping. She was headed out under tow from a steam
tug; her deck was full of passengers capering and cheering and waving their hats.

“Look at them going for America,” Molly said enviously.

The sound of cheering was cut and garbled by the wind.

As the ship crossed their bow he stared up at passengers lining the rails
and felt the mystery of life on them, radiant.

You don't know where it is, the other side, you can't
imagine.

“
I WILL
get clean,” Fergus announced.

“Let's find your friends first.”

“No.” They were watching people with damp hair and shining
faces coming out of the public baths on Georges Dock, a few steps up from the landing
stage. “We'll bathe first, and new clothes. Look out —”

A runner was coming through, pushing a barrow piled with baggage. Yelling
traffic out of his way, trailed by a pack of emigrants who looked stunned by what was
happening to them.

Liverpool no longer stunned him, but it was a hard place and used people
hard, if they were unprotected. Ruined them.

“Come on, Moll.”

He led her to an old-clothes cart, one of a dozen on the quay. He longed
to change his skin, to clean up, to impress Shea. They began sorting through hats,
boots, and clothes piled on tables and pegged out on lines, flapping on the breeze. The
better dressed, the stronger he would feel. Shea must see him as the hard fellow he had
become. If she tried to take Molly, he would fight.

“Do you like this, Moll?” He held up a shirt, Manchester
cloth, red-and-white checked, with small, hard, white buttons, but she was absorbed
trying on boots. He found a pair of duck trousers, sky blue in color, stiff from
washing, with two rows of black buttons down the front. Linen and cotton underclothes.
Woolen stockings that smelled of lamp oil. Studying a table of hats, he saw a beaver
sleeker and even taller than his own, but his own was still good enough, still stiff
enough and more or less straight, without the crazy dents and angles of Irish hats. He
picked out another cotton shirt, checked black-and-white, missing a collar button.

“I feel like a duck,” Molly said staring down at the boots on
her feet.

“Boots make you strong in the world, Moll. Nothing like
it.”

She held up a pink gown with blue ribbon at the neck and a split seam.
“I ought to burn my old thing; I smell of turnips.” She turned to the
old-clothes man. “Tell me what it is for this gear.”

“A pound the lot.”

“That's no good.”

“It's fine gear.”

“Spun of gold, I suppose?” she sneered. “Come along,
man, I'm not off the boat. Six shillings I'll pay.”

You're too small for a whore
, he thought, watching her
bargain with the dealer.
Too bony. You don't want strangers inside, they will
tear you open, will bust your thoughts.

They settled for a price of nine shillings, with a canvas grip included,
and raced for the baths. Tickets were a penny each, paid at the wicket. She paid for
them both — she had their money, rolled up in Muck's
handkerchief. As he watched her heading into the women's baths, another fear
nipped him. Would she be waiting when he came out? He was about to call after her and
ask for the money, for his share at least, but stopped himself.

He didn't know what she would do, but he wished to know.

In the men's dressing room white bodies of men and children appeared
and disappeared through a gauze of steam. He stuffed his old clothes in the grip, which
he left with an old attendant, receiving in exchange a brass disc on a cord that hung
around his neck.

Walking the tunnel to the baths, the noise of water splashing reminded him
of that first night at the Dragon, how clean that bath had scraped him; and of Shea,
oiling him, then coaxing him.

He had been ill for weeks, and they had taken good care of him. Never
before had he received such bounty and affection.

The tiled bathroom was crowded with steam and men's bodies. Hot
water slashed from nozzles in the ceiling. Stepping under a torrent he felt a shock of
heat, and stood for a couple of minutes hanging his head, like a bull dozing, absorbing
the drench, before he began scrubbing.

If she went off with the money she would swim like a fish in the streets
of Liverpool and he would never find her.

After rinsing off the soap, he stayed under the torrent while a stream of
bathers flowed in and out of the room.

Betrayal was what it was — the timing didn't matter. He was in
no hurry to find out.

Most bathers seemed to fear the ferocity of the pounding, drenching
deluge. They ducked under for only a few seconds, gasping and howling, slapping their
chests and thighs, then rushing away.

He could go for the Dragon, even without money, and Shea and Arthur and
Mary and Betsy would welcome him; would take him in if he had money or not.

Perhaps there was a room somewhere within the Dragon — somewhere in
the warren of passageways, staircases, kitchens, card rooms, and bedrooms — where
he could hide, and no one could ever find him. An unvisited room, dusty and forgotten. A
space concealed by the living house, surrounded, and perfectly safe.

Of course such a room couldn't be.
That was your grave you were
thinking of.

“
WHAT A
Liverpool jockey you are,” she said,
teasing.

She had been waiting for him outside the baths, wearing her new gown,
combing out her damp hair with her fingers.

Looking down, he noticed with satisfaction how neatly his new trousers
broke over his boots.

“You're the navigator, lead away,” she said, taking his
arm. “All I know of Liverpool is shit and death. Find us some friends.”

Threads attaching you to another person, to a woman, are biting and
intense. You try to gather them in your hand and they are almost invisible but how they
sting and cut.

THE ALLEYS
up from the dockland were lined with
victualers' shops and crowded with sailors, ship riggers, and the smoke of
roasting meat. Every wall was plastered with bills and pictures of sailing ships.

“If I had my letters like old McCarty, I could read them bills for
what they say and find us on a ship tonight. If we stay long in Liverpool, Fergus,
we're bleeding money — I can't wear these boots any longer, man, they
are biting my feet.” Taking them off, she tied the laces and strung the boots over
her shoulder. “Don't know how you stand it.”

Following spaciousness of light they came out of the alleys and into
Custom House Square, where streams of traffic slashed past, drivers cracking whips,
everything excited. Crossing the square, swept along in a sea of umbrellas and silk
hats, they started up Hanover Street where girls and old men hawked pilchards, roast
apples, and grilled nuts from carts and barrows.

“We have the coin, we can get a bite to eat, man. Who knows how far
it is.”

“Waste of money. They will feed us at the Dragon.”

“Are they clever? Can they help us bark the watch?”

“I suppose they can. There are gents with money at the Dragon.
Merchants and all.”

“Sounds like a big, fat fuck house.” She sounded amused.
“Were you a fuck boy, Fergus?”

He shook his head and walked faster.

“Why'd they keep you then?”

He ignored the question.

“Oh, don't look so queer! Come along, tell me, what did they
want you for, if it weren't the old fizz? Did you stoke fires? Clean boots? I
reckon they wanted something.”

“They were my friends.”

“Oh ho, they were going to put you to work, a fresh boy like you! Of
course they were. You can't blame them.” Molly tightened her grip on his arm
as a glossy tide of people carried them along. “Hang on to me, man, or I'll
drown in this road.”

Tousled and hungry, a sparrow she seemed, furious for something. He said
nothing of his fears. They were carried along, buoyed on the crowd. If he told her he
was afraid of losing her, it might come true.

“
WHAT IS
it, Fergus?”

They were standing in Bold Street, staring at the gap in the terrace where
he was sure the Dragon had once existed. Now there was nothing between two adjacent
houses but a flight of white marble steps leading nowhere, and heaps of bricks and
charred beams, and a gap of sky.

“Perhaps you have it wrong. These streets look all the
same.”

Molly looked over her shoulder and called out to the butcher's boy
walking down the other side of the street. “Boy, do you know the
Dragon?”

“What happened to them inside?” Fergus called. The boy wore a
white apron and carried a paper package stained with blood.

“Burned out, they was.”

“Come, man, let's get away,” Molly said, tugging
Fergus's arm.

“Burned out and sent to Hell, every single one. Hey you, Mike, are
you one of them?”

“Come on, Fergus, it's no use, let's get out of
here.”

Drawing a steel knife from his belt, the butcher's boy stepped out
into the road.

“Where are they?” Fergus asked.

“Nest of murderers and traitors it was — they got what they
deserve.”

“Are they dead? Shea? Mary? The baby? All of them?”

The boy shrugged. “Big pawky funeral they give 'em, very
grand.”

“Come on, come on.” Molly began pulling Fergus away. He looked
back and saw the boy capering in the road, slashing the air. “I'll fix your
Irish bollocks!” He was still shouting as they turned the corner into Hanover
Street where the rush of traffic, hundreds of carriages, thousands of people, drowned
everything.