The Revolutions (7 page)

“What an odd fellow,” Arthur said. “Josephine—are you all right?”

“Of course.” But it was a great comfort to take his offered arm.

“
Josephine
,” Mrs Sedgley said, contriving to suggest that the whole awkward scene had somehow been Arthur’s fault, and that she did not entirely approve. Then she set off in pursuit of Atwood, just in time to have him close the door in her face.

Arthur toyed with the card Atwood had given him. It was blank, except for the address Atwood had written on it. Somewhere in Deptford.

“Well. Something always turns up, doesn’t it?”

“I think,” Josephine said, “that you should throw that away.”

“Do you think so?” He looked disappointed. She did think so, though she couldn’t say exactly why.

“I’m afraid the poor man may be a neurotic,” she said. “It’s regrettably common in these circles. No sense in indulging him; it would probably be an utter waste of your time.”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “One never knows. Don’t you always say that? One never knows, these days.”

*   *   *

On the way home they talked about money, and the closing of the
Mammoth
, and the future. It wasn’t until she got back to Rugby Street, and had said good night to Arthur, who was still turning the card over in his hand—in fact, it wasn’t until she was half-way up the dark stairs to bed that something odd moved in her memory. She stopped on the stairs with her hand on the bannister, and she thought back to the conversation with Atwood—the odd moment when his mood had changed. In her memory, she saw Mrs Sedgley’s ugly gilt-edged mirror again. Was it a trick of her imagination, or had there been, now that she thought about it, a fifth person reflected in the mirror—out in the street, peering in through the open door, his face gaslit and half-obscured by rain? A pale stranger with dark eyes. Then Gautama had distracted her, and in the next instant, he was gone.

The product of an overactive imagination, no doubt. That was what came of too much reading.

Chapter Five

In the morning Arthur set off for Deptford. The tram deposited him outside the central station of the London Electric Supply Corporation—which at the time (so Arthur had written for the
Mammoth
) was the world’s largest power station, an unsurpassed triumph of engineering, one of the jewels in London’s crown. It had flooded on the night of the storm, and the engines were out; it sat silent, like a great fog-shrouded Egyptian tomb. Beyond there were cattle-markets, stinking slaughterhouses, and yards full of milling herds of livestock, each poor beast branded with the icons of its owner and the inspectors of Her Majesty’s Government, each one marked for its ultimate destination; and beyond that were fish-markets and tea-markets, small bank branches, and the offices of maritime clerks. He bought ham sandwiches and coffee from a stall and read the newspapers in a shop window. The latest outrages in Kabul, good news regarding Her Majesty’s health, a murder in Mayfair, the progress (negligible) of Dr Conan Doyle’s investigation into the Duke’s death …

Beyond all that lay Bullen Street.

Bullen Street was a narrow space between some warehouses and the river. A single building occupied most of the street, long and low and flat; a face of dull red brick, an unmarked door, boarded windows. The little buildings on either side of it looked abandoned, vandalised. Behind it, crowded and dilapidated terraces stretched away into the distance.

Somehow the building gave an impression of intense activity, intense
heaviness
, as if it would be a terrible time-wasting rudeness to interrupt it for anything but the most urgent business. It took a considerable effort of will even to cross the street.

Arthur rang the bell. An electric buzzer sounded distantly somewhere inside.

The sensation that he was wasting the building’s time had faded; now it returned, redoubled. Before Arthur knew what he was doing he’d turned as if to leave—but then he stopped, shivered, told himself not to be such a great bloody fool, and rang the bell again.

The street reeked of the river, and of rats. Out in the distance there was the noise of gulls and the horns of passing boats.

The door opened. Arthur stood to attention.

A short and ugly man stood in the doorway. Behind him was a desk, and a heap of boots and hats and umbrellas. Beyond that was a long hallway with a multitude of doors leading off from it.

The man rapped his stick on the steps at Arthur’s feet. “Eh?”

“Is this Mr Gracewell’s establishment? I’m inquiring after work.”

“Are you now? How’s that, then? Who told you? Who sent you? Saw an advertisement in the paper, did you?”

“An advertisement? No. A Mr Atwood sent me.”

“Who?”

Arthur had the sense that he was being made fun of. “Look—can I come in or not? It’s bloody cold out here.”

“Shoes.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Shoes. Coat. Hat. Hup! Hup! Go on. Big slow fellow that you are. Over there. Then come along quick. Time’s wasting. You’ve had good luck—Mr Gracewell’s
in attendance
today. They call me Dimmick.”

“Arthur Shaw. Why do you need my shoes?”

“Slow now, slow! Gimme your hand, it might get bit—that’s just a joke, Mr Shaw. Shoes, coat, hat, hup, hup, hup.”

*   *   *

Dimmick led the way down the hall, moving with a slight bounce that made Arthur think of an acrobat, or an ape. His shirt was frayed and stained.

“I don’t understand—”

“The shoes?” Dimmick shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t ask neither. One o’ Mr Gracewell’s rules. He has his little ways. Feet cold?”

“No.” There were holes in his socks, and he felt a fool. “It reminds me of India. The temples there, they take off their shoes before they enter, as a mark of respect, I suppose.”

Dimmick looked briefly interested. “India? Soldiered, did you?”

“No. I’ve never seen India. I read about it.”

Dimmick lost interest.

The hallway was windowless. To Arthur’s astonishment it was lit by electrical light-bulbs. He was impressed. Certainly one wouldn’t have expected the luxury of electrical light somewhere like this odd and shabby-looking place. He thought that it was very modern, and admirably industrious.

On the other hand, the light-bulbs were mostly dim or failing. Arthur supposed it was a wonder they were lit at all, after the damage the storm had done to London. In the dim, erratic light it was hard to see how far ahead the hallway extended. It might already be quite hard to find the way back if he had to do it alone.

The doors were numbered. Most of them were painted green, but the paint was peeling. Behind them there were sounds of coughing, muttering, and turning pages.

Between the doors, at irregular intervals, were what looked like dumbwaiter hatches. They were marked with letters: A, B, C,
et cetera
.

In the hallway ahead, a door marked 14 opened and half a dozen young men emerged in a row. All of them were barefoot, bareheaded. Arthur thought they might have been Italian, perhaps, or Spanish. They whispered to one another as they approached, nodding at Arthur and glancing nervously at Dimmick, who rapped his stick on the wall so loudly that they jumped. At almost the same moment one of the nearby light-bulbs hissed and went dark. The six clerks trooped past and went into the door marked 11, a little way back down the hall.

Arthur turned to Dimmick. “What does Mr Gracewell do here?”

“He’s the Master.”

“I mean, what sort of work does Gracewell & Co. do? There’s a lot of men working here—far more than I imagined. There must be about as many men here as work for the Bank of England.”

“Maybe! Never been in a bank.”

“Well, what are they doing?”

“Numbers,” Dimmick said.

“A scientific enterprise of some kind?”

“Numbers.”

“Insurance? Accounts? Out here by the docks, I rather thought it might be something, well, maritime.”

“Numbers,” Dimmick repeated.

Arthur began to wonder if Dimmick was quite right in the head. “All right, Mr Dimmick. Numbers, numbers it is.”

A quaint figure, this Mr Dimmick. Short, and square; muscular almost to the point of absurdity. He had bad teeth, uneven ears, and a much-broken nose. A Wedgwood-blue hint of tattoos under his thin linen shirt. Arthur wondered if he might be a naval man. Easy enough to imagine him clambering the rigging. He had what Arthur thought might be the accent of a sailor or a soldier; that is, he was quite clearly of rustic origin, but he was a well-travelled rustic, with something of the East End in his voice. Something of the sea. Scars on his broad knuckles, from which Arthur imagined a detective might read a history of violence; or possibly just factory-work, or haulage, or bad luck, or who knows what.

Dimmick poked open the door marked 14 with his stick. On the other side of the door was something like a schoolroom, reeking of sweat and chalk and feet, of dust and headaches and old india-rubber. There were five rows of desks, in ten close-packed columns, with a narrow channel down the middle. Fifty desks in all; perhaps a third of them occupied. The occupants of the desks were mostly around Arthur’s age. There were some men Arthur thought might be Greek, and several Indians. Each man was engaged in identical efforts; each bareheaded, barefooted, with rolled-up sleeves and ink-stained forearms. Each had a ledger in front of him, in which he was industriously making notations. A crackling light-bulb overhead cast chessboard shadows. At the front of the room there were three red bell-ropes, a blackboard with chalked instructions, and a little shelf that held a black telephone, with a hand crank and ringer box.

Dimmick moved so quickly across the room and out the door on the other side that Arthur had no time to read what was on the board. He saw one man raise an arm to wipe his face—was his nose bleeding? Then he hurried after Dimmick and out into a narrow corridor. Beyond that there was another door, another room, much the same as the last, except that this time a short round man stood in front of the board. He was chalking some kind of instructions on it.

He wore a shabby, patched black coat. Bare feet, unkempt yellow nails. He was ugly. His eyes were round and watery, his eyebrows prominent and black and spiky, like little voles or marsh-rats come to drink at a puddle. His hair was plastered across a balding scalp.

He stopped writing, and rubbed his face as if exhausted, getting chalk in his beard.

“Mr Gracewell, I presume? I’m Arthur Sh—”

“Well, Dimmick—where’d you dredge up this one?”

“Didn’t, sir. Came to us—lost sheep. Rang the bloody bell! Bold as you please.”

“Did he? Well.”

“A Mr Atwood sent me.”

“Atwood! Interfering in my business. Telling me who I can and can’t use. Do I interfere with his experiments? I have a good mind to have Dimmick throw you out. But no—God knows we need men. All right—come along.”

*   *   *

Gracewell’s office was on the second floor. A window revealed a stretch of grey river and smoky sky. The office itself contained a desk, three chairs, two oak filing cabinets, a telephone on a shelf, a typewriter, a heap of ledgers, a smell of tobacco, a number of odd photographs behind glass. Mr Gracewell sat at his desk, behind a row of pipes and a small pile of correspondence.

“Right.” Gracewell reached for one of the pipes. “What’s Atwood told you?”

“Nothing. I met him at a—a sort of party. He said that you had work.”

“Can you count? Can you read?”

“Yes, Mr Gracewell.”

“Seven times seven. Nine times six.”

“Forty-nine and, ah, fifty-four.”

“Well, many can’t. You’d be astonished at some of what Dimmick drags in. We’re looking for a very particular sort of fellow, and that means we have to take ’em where we can find ’em. Some of them are animals. Enough to make you give up all hope for England’s future. Then again, last month Dimmick found us an Oxford man! And he didn’t last a week. More precisely, five days. Do you believe in telepathy, young man?”

“Telepathy? I don’t know.”

“Clairvoyance?”

“Yes and no.”

“Fortune-telling?”

“I can believe in any number of things if it would help.”

Gracewell didn’t smile. “What’s your name?”

“Arthur Shaw.”

“Educated man, from the sound of you. University?”

“A little.”

“A little. Hmm. More precisely?”

“Ah—I began my studies at the University of Edinburgh. Medicine.”

Gracewell looked annoyed. “Began?”

“Yes, Mr Gracewell.”

Shaking his head, Gracewell began to rummage in the drawers of his desk, possibly for tobacco.

Arthur glanced again at the photographs on the wall. Reflections on the glass obscured their contents, but he thought that they might be an astronomer’s sketches of the moon; all blotchy grey seas and mysterious black lines.

“I see you have an interest in astronomy, Mr Gracewell.”

“Began.” Gracewell closed the drawer. “But not finished.”

“Well, no.”

“Your father?”

“Excuse me?”

“
Was
, you said. Departed?”

“Yes.”

“Madness in the family?”

“Madness?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“No there isn’t or no you won’t answer?”

“The former, Mr Gracewell. At least, not to my knowledge.”

“A history of unlucky accidents?”

“I don’t see the pertinence of any of this.”

“I dare say you don’t! Answer, please, or stop wasting my time. How did your father die?”

“In an accident; boating on a lake in Switzerland. I was eight. My mother too, if you must know.”

“Hmm.” Gracewell showed no sign of sympathy.

“I still don’t see the pertinence of it.”

“Unusual coincidences?”

“No more than usual.”

“Shaw. Arthur Shaw. Do I know that name?”

“I don’t know, Mr Gracewell. Did you read the
Mammoth?
”