“I will make the tea,” I said. “Tell me where everything is.”
She consented and so, under her direction, I boiled a kettle in a corner of the vast fireplace where a few coals were gathered, and while the tea was mashing, toasted some slices of bread. This was all there was to eat or drink except for a small jug of milk and another stone jug.
Later, while we ate, my mother and I, at Miss Quilliam’s prompting, began a condensed version of our history, omitting nothing of importance — except that neither of us seemed to think it necessary to mention that we had a document which others were anxious to obtain. I felt a little guilty at not confiding fully in our friend but it seemed prudent to mention the codicil to nobody.
I noticed that Miss Quilliam consumed very little, but while my mother and I were still eating, she said to me: “Will you be kind enough to bring me that jug by the chimney-piece and the glass beside it?”
I did so and she poured herself a measure saying: “I find it restores my strength a little.”
She offered some to my mother who glanced at me timidly and declined.
When we had finished, Miss Quilliam asked some questions which were pertinent without being in the least prying.
Then she said: “You say you are penniless, but I know that you have at least something of value.” My mother looked at me in alarm which vanished when Miss Quilliam went on: “I refer to the clothes you are wearing, which would bring several pounds.”
“If it comes to that we have something much more valuable …” my mother began.
Fearing that she was after all about to mention the codicil I quickly said: “Yes, indeed we have. Mother, show Miss Quilliam the locket.”
“Not that, please, Johnnie,” my mother said.
Her face showed that she was struggling, while Miss Quilliam looked from one to the other of us in surprise.
At last, however, my mother reached for the locket round her neck and showed it to our hostess: “If necessary,” she said, “I could raise money by this.”
“Yes,” said Miss Quilliam examining it with interest. “That would assuredly fetch several pounds.”
My mother restored the locket to its place with a reproachful glance towards me.
“Now as to the future,” Miss Quilliam said, “I will help you as best I may. But as I wrote in my letter, I fear that I am almost destitute myself. Of course you may stay here as long as you wish, for anyway this room is far too large for me.”
“That is very kind of you,” my mother said.
Miss Quilliam looked up at her: “Not at all. I have been seeking to underlet it, so I am happy to have you as tenants. There is a bed” (and she indicated a straw mattress in one corner) “and Johnnie may sleep in the little closet.”
“How much should we pay you as our share of your rent?” I asked.
“Oh, Johnnie,” my mother said. “Miss Quilliam did not mean that.”
“Of course she did,” I insisted.
“I only wish,” Miss Quilliam said, “that I could let you have it for nothing. But let us say, two shillings?”
“That is very little,” I said. “But it may still be too much for us for I don’t know how we will earn any money.”
“You said you did plain-work for that woman,” Miss Quilliam said to my mother. “There are some good souls in the room across the landing who give me such work, and it may be that they can find some for you as well. Mr Peachment is a slop-tailor and he and his wife have been very good to me. For some months I have been keeping myself with my needle by helping them to do out-work for a slop-shop. I owe them a great deal, for they saved my life. You see, shortly after arriving here, I was taken ill and Mrs Peachment nursed me. I will take you to meet them tomorrow in the hope that they will be able to offer you some work — at least while the Season lasts.”
“You are very kind. But have you given up hope of finding employment again as a governess?” my mother asked in surprise.
Miss Quilliam appeared not to hear and my mother did not repeat the question, for there were many others to be asked and answered on both sides.
After a short time, however, since my mother and I were tired, it was settled that we should retire to bed. The unpacking and disposition of our two bundles of possessions took but little time and the vast room looked hardly any the less bare for the new additions.
I made myself comfortable in the closet, which was, in effect, a small chamber off the larger one as is often found in houses of that period. Miss Quilliam gave me a mattress of quilted straw on which I spread a sheet and then crawled under one of our two blankets.
I heard the voices of the two women murmuring together until I fell asleep. Once when I awoke — or half-awoke — I thought I heard someone sobbing and the sound of a gentle voice rising and falling. I slept badly for there were noises from the street and on the stairs and in the other parts of the building all through the night: loud arguments and drunken singing and once someone hammered at the barred door and tried to get in.
BOOK III
Secret Benefactors
CHAPTER 36
The next morning Miss Quilliam took us to meet the Peachments. As we entered their chamber I had the impression of crowdedness in contrast to the emptiness of Miss Quilliam’s and realized that this was because, although it was no larger, it had to serve as kitchen, bed-chamber, living-room and workshop for the parents and no less than seven children ranging in age from near full-grown to an infant in arms — all of whom were now present. Yet it was clean and neat for all that. Moreover, it was made even smaller by an arrangement of faded and threadbare Turkey-carpets hung from ropes hooked to the walls (putting me in mind of a dingy tent from the Arabian Tales) which served to separate one corner.
Although it was not yet seven everyone was busily at work: a number of little girls and boys were cutting out pieces of felt and sewing them into the shapes of dolls, while their elders were stitching pieces of cloth and button-holes under the direction of their parents.
Mr and Mrs Peachment were friendly and their soft West-country speech fell gently on my ear after the insistent rise and fall of London speech.
“I can spare ye some work from the slop-master,” Mr Peachment said to my mother when the situation had been put to him; “like I’ve been doin’ for the other young lady, for this is the busiest time o’ the year.” My mother thanked him and he added: “But ’tis unpossible to say how long ’twill endure. When Parlyment rises and the Season ends then there shan’t be a mite o’ work no more.”
“We’ll not deceive ye,” said his wife with a kindly smile. “If there’s but little work it must go first to our own.”
“It’s hard to scratch a living here,” her husband said reflectively. “Lunnon folks is so mortal ’cute.”
As he spoke he laid one finger along the side of his nose, and he repeated this phrase a number of times in his conversation and always with the same gesture as if it indicated that, sharp though they might be, he had the measure of them.
The question of what I should do was also resolved for it emerged that the Peachments’ eldest boy, Dick, who was a year or two my senior, and who earned a few shillings a week by selling in the streets the dolls made by the younger children, had been offered an opening in the “costermongering line” as his father proudly expressed it. And so it was suggested that my mother and I should buy the tray and the current stock and that I should assume his function.
The negotiations were protracted and made difficult by the commercial attitudes of the two parties:
“Why,” Mr Peachment kept saying, “we don’t want to take more than a fair price of you.”
“What would that be, do you reckon, Mr Peachment?” speculated his wife.
Here Dick, scowling at us, said something to his father in an undertone who shook his head, upon which the boy walked away angrily to the other end of the room.
However, with the mediation of Miss Quilliam it was at last settled that I would pay five-
pence a week for the use of the tray, purchasing the dolls at four-pence and letting them go to the public for a shilling. And, moreover, it was agreed that Dick would take me out that very morning in order to initiate me into his mysterious art.
When Miss Quilliam had paid over the money on our behalf, I strapped on the heavy tray and Dick and I left the house.
“Me mam and dad is green,” he said sullenly, breaking his silence only as we reached the end of the street. “They could have got more of you than they done.”
I noticed that his speech was already more London than Dorsetshire.
“Fair price!” he snorted. “I told ’em a fair price was what you’d pay. I told ’em, but they wouldn’t take no heed.” He kicked a loose paving-stone.
Encouraged by his volubility, I asked him several questions about my new profession, but he said nothing. And so we walked on in silence — I having to struggle to keep pace with him since he was unencumbered — until we reached the corner of Fleet-street and Chancery-lane, where even though it was long after eight, crowds of people were still hastening to work.
“This here’s your walk,” he said. “But you have to be here earlier than this or you’ll lose it.”
“And what do I do?” I asked.
To my astonishment he suddenly seized one of the articles of sale and, brandishing it ferociously above his head, shouted: “Dolls! Buy my dolls!”
Then he banged it back in the tray: “That’s what you do. And be ready when the traps’ deputies pull you up for their blunt.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Lor’! Ain’t he green!” he exclaimed to an imaginary auditor. “I ain’t got all day. You’re up to the game or you ain’t.”
With these words he walked away without looking back.
Now that I had to make my entry onto the stage of commerce, I found it extremely difficult to raise my voice and shout, convinced that I would be ridiculed if I tried. At last I managed it and to my surprise the foot-passengers — far from pausing to jeer at my feeble screech — continued to hurry past without looking at me. I shouted louder and directed my attentions towards particular individuals, but during the course of the morning I succeeded in selling only one doll.
There was a puzzling incident when, after about an hour, two men came up to me, one lean and sharp-featured, the other with a bland, shiny face.
“Cut away, young ’un,” the thin one said. “This here’s our pitch.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“We keeps the streets hereabouts,” the one with the fleshy features said confidentially; “and anyone what wants to work ’em has to square us.”
“But that’s not right!” I cried. “These streets are free to anyone.”
He lowered his face to within a couple of inches of mine and said: “Hook it or it’ll go the worse for you.”
They walked away and, indignant at this threat to the native liberties of an Englishman, I continued to sell. I soon forgot about the incident for I had discovered a serious problem in the form of street-boys who ran up, grabbed my wares, and hurried off until I learned to watch out for them and turn my tray to the wall until they had gone.
Early in the afternoon, a policeman came up to me and said: “Move along, young shaver.”
When I protested that I had acquired the right to this walk from its previous occupant, he smiled perfectly affably and said: “Why, you surely don’t believe he didn’t pay for the privilege, do you?”
“Then I will, too,” I said.
He nodded judicially and walked away.
A little later his deputies re-appeared and, when I assured them that I had sold only one doll, agreed to accept a mere tuppence on the grounds that I was only a beginner.
I sold no more that day and returned home exhausted and dispirited to find my mother and Miss Quilliam stitching furiously.
“Isn’t it time to stop now?” my mother asked Miss Quilliam when she had greeted me.
“Heavens, my dear, not yet.”
“Mrs Isbister let me stop at seven or eight,” she protested.
They worked on while I fetched and prepared a meagre supper of herring and cold potatoes, and then at last Miss Quilliam declared that it was time.
My mother and I drank porter with our meal, but Miss Quilliam poured herself a tumbler from the stone jug, and then added a few drops of dark liquid from a small bottle.
They resumed work while I explored her library (three battered volumes) and read a few pages of one of Sir Walter Scott’s historical romances.
Seeing this Miss Quilliam, whose spirits had lifted, cried: “I shall teach you, Johnnie. It will be quite like the old days with Henrietta. I love to teach.”
We thanked her and my mother exclaimed: “How can you bear to live like this when you could be a governess again?”
Miss Quilliam looked up and coloured. After a moment she said: “I think you said yesterday that you learned of my former lodging at Mrs Malatratt’s house from the registry-office in Wigmore-street?” We nodded and she glanced from one to the other of us uncertainly. “I don’t know what lies about me you may have been told …” she began, and then broke off.
My mother and I looked at each other in surprise and shook our heads.
“We heard nothing,” my mother said.
“I am relieved to find it so,” Miss Quilliam said and then she continued somewhat excitedly: “The truth is that upon my first coming to London I lodged at Mrs Malatratt’s house. And when, upon entering the employment of Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson, I departed from there, I left some boxes behind me for safe keeping. Last summer I went back there after leaving my position, and Mrs Malatratt refused to restore my property to me.”
“How could she do that?” my mother asked.
“Oh, she said that … she demanded that I should pay her an extortionate rent for the space they had occupied. But when I went back just a week ago and found your note, Johnnie, she at last let me have them. Their contents were of little value and I have sold them to pay debts incurred during my illness.”
She had not needed to say so much and the subject was allowed to drop when Miss Quilliam offered my mother a drink from her jug.
She looked at it wistfully and blushed when she caught my eye. Then she poured herself a tumbler, saying defiantly: “It restores my strength and helps me to sleep.”
The next day I did a little better on the streets, and during the next days and weeks I learned how to manage some of the hazards that threatened. However, I sold very few dolls and earned at most two or three shillings a week clear profit.
At first Miss Quilliam was true to her word and when I came home and we had eaten, she would take out her books and I discovered what a good teacher she was. However, it was difficult for me to summon the strength to devote myself to this after a day on the streets, and she was exhausted, too, after working from first light until late at night. Although usually after supper (of which she ate very little) she would revive for a while, she would often become too restless to concentrate and would walk up and down the room talking wildly. Then after an hour or two a reaction would set in and she would become listless and dispirited. So after a few weeks my lessons were allowed to lapse.
Though we had much to be grateful for, our situation remained extremely precarious. Often my mother and I had no money at all to pay our share of the rent at the end of the week when the landlord’s deputy came round on collecting-day, and in effect we lived on Miss Quilliam’s little stock of capital. We also subsisted on “tick” at the dirty little general chandler (generally called the “tally-shop”) at the street corner, paying something weekly towards the total, but never clearing it entirely. This meant that we had to purchase their inferior and over-priced goods, for Miss Quilliam warned us that they would demand repayment of the whole sum if we withdrew our patronage.
During this time I became increasingly annoyed by my mother’s frequent reproaches for having forced her to lea
ve the Isbisters where (she said) we had been so much better off. Moreover, from being wasteful and extravagant, she became increasingly obsessed with obtaining money and unwilling to part with it. Most irritatingly she became convinced that the Peachments — manifestly honest and generous as they were — were cheating her by not paying her adequately for her work, and she even complained to me on occasions that Miss Quilliam worked her too hard. Her mood ranged between deep depression and strange light-heartedness, for I often got back from the streets at night and found her oddly animated and then (though her mood never lasted long) I was cheered. And yet I knew that this way of life was damaging to her health, although it was not until one evening several months later that I understood how very dangerous it was.
As I became increasingly familiar with the neighbourhood I realized how much more desperate was the plight of many of our neighbours, for my mother and I were at least able-bodied and capable of scraping a living. Those ancient streets — largely unlit, unpatroled, and unvisited by the dust-collector — harboured nests of the most abject poverty. The stench that hung over the district was augmented by the presence of breweries and above all by the gas-container at the premises of the Gas, Light and Coke Company which were then in Great-Peter-street (and with which my own destiny was much later to be indirectly connected). There were haunts of criminality, too, among the warrens of the poor, and (since the poor find it safer to prey upon each other) the streets were infested by pick-pockets and sturdy beggars who would demand money even in the open street by day. Miss Quilliam warned us of the gangs of armed men who sometimes blocked off a whole street at both ends and attacked the shops “by escalade” like a Crusader army, while others robbed the foot-passengers.
And so the summer wore on. We awoke shortly after five o’ clock and while my mother and Miss Quilliam began their work, I drew water from the pump in the yard at the back, washed in a leaden trough beneath the cistern, then carried up the water, lighted the fire, and boiled a kettle. We made our breakfast as quickly as possible and then by seven o’clock I was on my way to my pitch in one or other of the streets leading from the suburbs into the City. My best customers at the beginning and end of the day were clerks and people of that kind, but in the morning and early afternoon my “walk” was amongst the fashionable shopping streets of the West-end.