Midnight is a Place Page 15

  "I am thinking, Luc-asse," Anna-Marie said thoughtfully, as they drove home from the infirmary after leaving the food for Mr. Oakapple, who was still feverish, "I am thinking it is better if you do not continue to go down into that dark dirty place, but come and help me. If one of us is picking up the stubs, and the other selling, we shall do better. I am sorry now I arrange you to meet M. 'Obday—if I had known how nasty the work was, I would not have done so."

  But Lucas, greatly to her surprise, refused to come and join her in the cigar trade. And when she asked why, why he preferred to go poking about in a dark, horrible, dangerous, dirty underground place, where he did not even have the right to keep what he found, but had to pass it over to Mr. Hobday, he became quite angry.

  "Oh, stop bothering on about it, Anna-Marie. It is better if one of us earns a regular wage, so we have something coming in that we can rely on. Suppose you pick up all the cigar ends in the town and there are none left, what then?"

  "I do not think that will happen," she said practically.

  "Or you may find that once other people notice you are making money at it, they will start doing it, too, and then stubs will be scarcer. Or the constables might stop you. It may be against the law, to make new cigars out of old."

  "Oh la la," she said, shrugging. "I don't care abou that, me! I do wish you will come and help me, Luc; besides, you smell so bad. Mrs. Tetley may grumble."

  "For the seventh time, no!" he snapped. They had arrived in Haddock Street; he put the pony in the shed, with a frugal feed of hay and just a few oats. Anna-Marie stood shivering silently while he did so, with her hands in her pockets. She looked so small and thin and pale that it made him crosser still.

  "Come on, it's late, and tomorrow I have to go out at half past five, let's eat quickly and go to bed."

  Anna-Marie had bought a few candles, but they were expensive. After she had lit the way up to their freezing attic and they had huddled into bed with their clothes on, Lucas told her that she had better blow out the candle.

  "We have got to learn to be as economical as possible." And then he lay in the dark, thinking with longing of the shabby schoolroom at Midnight Court, provided with unlimited pens, ink, writing paper, and candle ends, where he had had boundless time in which to write down his thoughts. Why had he not valued these things when he had them? Now he felt so sore, tired, scared, and depressed, that he believed his only possible comfort would be to sit peacefully alone in a room writing down a record of all that had occurred in the last few days. Much chance there was of that! He had not even his notebook.

  "Are you cross because I say you smell bad?" Anna-Marie asked timidly. "I am sorry, but it is true."

  "No, of course it's not that. Oh, do be quiet, Anna-Marie, and let me go to sleep."

  But of course it was that, or at least partly. And it was also partly the fact that she, a girl, and so much smaller, was successfully making money and so far had supplied most of their needs and had even found him a job, while he had brought in nothing. After all, it was easy enough for her, he thought resentfully; anyone could pick cigar ends up in the street and roll new ones. It was quite a pleasant job really; whereas look what he had to do.

  If only he need never go back into that horrible sewer again! He could still hear the tinkle and plop of drips from the vaulted roof, and the unnerving scurry and rustle as some underground creature made off up a side passage. If there were hogs and rats, what else might there be? He kept tightening his calf muscles, his feet felt as if the ground were slipping away from under them into a bottomless bog; he could still hear Bugle's voice, saying, "Gudgeon uses up tosh boys uncommon fast. You're the third he's had this year."

  If Gudgeon pushed him into the Muckle Sump, what would happen to Anna-Marie, all alone in the streets of Blastburn? Who would look after her?

  He heard a small sob from Anna-Marie, and the slight noise, like a soft chirp, that meant she was sucking her thumb. Impatiently he turned over on the thin pallet, pulling the blanket up over his ears.

  "Go to sleep, Anna-Marie."

  "I cannot," she said forlornly. "I wish I had something at all nice to think about." He was silent. After another long pause she said, "Luc? Are you still awake? I wish you will tell me a story. About your friend Greg, peut-être? Could you, do you think?"

  "Are you crazy? Go to sleep."

  After that, there was total silence. And it was in silence next morning that they got up, hastily ate a few bites of breakfast, and went off to their respective occupations.

  When Gudgeon lifted up the big manhole cover and said, "Down you go, then, lad," Lucas had such a struggle to make himself step into the black hole that he felt almost as if it were somebody else, another shuddering reluctant person, to whom he was giving the order.

  Perhaps I'm dreaming the whole thing, he thought; perhaps I'm really sitting in the schoolroom at Midnight Court; perhaps I'm not here at all.

  And this mood of dreamy detachment stayed with him for quite a long spell; they walked, and sloshed, and dipped, and scooped, until, after possibly a couple of hours had passed, Gudgeon suddenly exclaimed, "Quiet! Listen!"

  "What?"

  "Hush!"

  Then Lucas, above the swish of the sewer, began to hear a faint, shrill, distant, ear-piercing sound, like the squeal of pipes.

  His fear made him quick.

  "Is it hogs?"

  "Ah! Reckon so. And the mischief of it is that the Causeway manhole's nearest from here, and some blaggard has made off with the ladder from that one; we'll have to foot it on to the James Street one. Step lively, boy, eh? There ain't any time to waste pronging up the tosh just now."

  Lucas had no intention of doing so. He followed Gudgeons example, and hurried along as fast as the slippery, uncertain footway would allow.

  "How do you know the hogs aren't on ahead?" he panted.

  "They are," Gudgeon said grimly. "Can't you hear? Leastways they're to the side of us, a-coming down Pastry Lane Passage. We got to get past afore they come out." And he splashed on through a stretch of overflow, while Lucas struggled to keep up in his noisome wake. For Lucas it was impossible to tell where the squealing—much louder now—was coming from; the echoes seemed to be all around; but Gudgeon was quite positive.

  "Hogs often do come out o' Pastry Lane," he explained. "There's extry pickings for 'em up that way, see; all the rats that gets killed in the bakers' backyards gets chucked down there. Ah! See! What did I tell ee?"

  For a brief moment, as they passed the narrow branch entrance that was called Pastry Lane Passage, he shone his bull's-eye up it, and Lucas, with a horrible closing of his throat, caught the flash of two dozen little points of red light.

  "They don't like a light in their eyes; that'll slow 'em for a moment," said Gudgeon. "Come on, it's still a tidy way to James Street."

  On, on, they pounded and slithered, panting and gulping. Lucas had lost his mood of detachment some time ago, yet even through his terror he felt a strange kind of unreality: this can't actually be happening to me?

  From time to time Gudgeon turned momentarily and shone his bull's-eye backward; the points of red light would halt each time he did so, but they came on again each time and were getting much closer. Lucas could hear the thud and patter of sharp little galloping feet now, and a scraping sound, as some members of the herd were pushed by others against the brick walls.

  A horrible thought came to him: suppose somebody else, some other inconsiderate tosh man, had removed the ladder from the James Street manhole? Suppose they had to run on for another mile? Or suppose, in their haste, they had already passed the James Street refuge?

  But at last he heard Gudgeon, ahead of him, give a grunt of satisfaction, and the shadows from his bull's-eye flowed suddenly downward instead of swinging from side to side.

  '"Ere we are, then, boy; look slippy," he called back, now suspended somewhere overhead.

  Lucas wanted no urging; the hogs were only a few yards behind him, thrusting each ot
her forward; he could see their small black hairy shapes as he turned to climb and smell a rank, warm piggy odor, even above the reek of the drain.

  He slipped, fumbling for the ladder, which began at waist height—pushed himself up with his pole—felt a sudden sharp pain in his left leg—kicked out in a frenzy of fright—and then he was up, and safe. The little red eyes flashed for a moment below, and then were gone; the impetus of the herd, with the hogs at the back pushing on the ones in front, was too rapid for them to stop. In a couple of minutes, furiously squealing and champing, they had disappeared again into the blackness of the tunnel.

  "That's all right then," said Gudgeon, calmly, descending several rungs of the ladder. "—Well, stir your stumps, boy, down you go; don't dangle there like an apple on a codlin tree."

  "But aren't we going out?"

  "Out?"

  "Through the manhole?"

  "Lord love you, no! And waste a whole morning? Not on your peggy! Why, if we was to leave the sewer every time we met a handful o' hogs, we'd not collect a farden's worth o' tosh in a fortnight. Any road, that lot won't come back—they never do, jist run on and on. No, the only danger is once they get you down and tromple on you; then they stop all right. Then you're done for. Long's you whip up a ladder, smartish, when they catch up with you, you 'ont take no hurt from 'em. Like now."

  "One of them bit my leg," said Lucas.

  "Well, you should'a been nippier! You will next time, I'll lay. Now we'll have to go back a half mile to Sinkhole Reach; that's where I first heard 'em, and we missed all that section; that's one of the best stretches for tosh in the whole neighborhood."

  That evening, after Lucas had handed over his findings—no jeweled saddle today, only a dirty and uninteresting collection of broken metal and wooden objects—to Mr. Gudgeon, and washed himself under the pump until his feet and hands felt ready to fall off from cold and his teeth would not stop chattering, he screwed himself up to apologize to Anna-Marie.

  "I am sorry I was bad-tempered last night, Anna-Marie. The sewers are so horrible that I can't stop thinking about them, and it makes me edgy." But still he did not tell Anna-Marie about the hogs, or Gudgeon's peculiar nature; let her think that filth and dark were all he had to worry about.

  "It is of no consequence," she said haughtily. She handed him a lump of pease porridge. "I simply do not see why, if it is so horrible, you are imbecile enough to go on working there."

  Lucas did not try to explain that it was a matter of pride; that he had to. He felt sure that Anna-Marie would be completely blank to such an explanation. "You wouldn't understand," he said tiredly.

  "Because I am just a stupid girl! Only good for picking up cigar ends. If someone offered me a nicer way to make a living, I would take it."

  "Your job isn't so bad."

  She turned away, her lip quivering, and said, "I do not tell you all about it. Some girls say to me I have not the right to pick up cigar ends in Blastburn because I do not come from here."

  "Well, tell them to go to blazes! You aren't taking away their living."

  Changing the subject, Anna-Marie said, "You can go by yourself to see M. Ookapool this evening. There is no use for two of us to go while, anyway, he cannot speak. I will stay here, me, and make more cigars. There are the eggs and milk for him on the shelf."

  "Oh, very well," said Lucas irritably, swilling down the last stodgy mouthful of pease pudding with a drink of water. He ached all over with exhaustion, his leg hurt, and he was still hungry; he would not have minded staying at home and making cigars himself. But somebody had to take Mr. Oakapple his food.

  Anna-Marie began washing out the pease-porridge pot, in a tin basin.

  "How did you get that bruise on your arm?" he asked.

  "I fell. It was slippery."

  "Well, take care. I'll see you later," he said, and went out. The snow had changed to a bitterly cold rain which froze as it fell and turned the streets to an icy, slippery swamp. Well, he thought, backing out the pony and turning her, there's at least one advantage of the sewers: no snow down there.

  He was getting into the cart when old Gabriel passed him, apparently without recognizing him.

  "Good evening, Mr. Towzer," Lucas said.

  The old man turned, and Lucas caught a strong reek of Geneva spirit.

  Gabriel looked at Lucas vaguely and laid a hand on his arm.

  "Hush!" he whispered. "What the eye don't see, the Bible don't gnash its teeth at." He started waveringly toward the house, then paused to say, "I ¿aid she were a mickle-mouth!"

  Up at the infirmary, matters had not greatly changed. Mr. Oakapple was still unable to recognize anybody or to talk sense, but one of the sisters said that he had made a little progress and was taking nourishment. Lucas hoped she was telling the truth, that the eggs and milk they brought with so much trouble were not going elsewhere. How could he be sure? Whom could one trust in this town?

  He did not stay long; there was no point.

  On the way out, he thought he recognized a familiar back leaving the out-patients' surgery, where minor injuries, generally received in the factories, were treated and bandaged.

  In the courtyard, Lucas overtook this person and saw that it was, as he had thought, Mr. Smallside from the Mill, with a bandage covering half his forehead.

  "Mr. Smallside!" Lucas exclaimed, eagerly, running forward to catch him by the arm. Here was somebody who could prove his identity to Mr. Throgmorton.

  The manager started; his eye fell on Lucas, then swiftly left him; he shook off Lucas's hand, as if he had been accosted by mistake, and walked on.

  Lucas again ran to catch up with him. "Mr. Smallside! Don't you remember me? From the Court? Lucas Bell!"

  Smallside glanced rapidly all around. Nobody was within earshot.

  "Quiet, boy!" he said urgently in an undertone. "Have you no sense? The very name of Randolph Grimsby, or of Midnight Court, is so unpopular in the town that the words are enough to get you stoned; even strung up from a lamppost. How do you think I came by this black eye? For having been Sir Randolph's manager—appointed by him. I've had to quit Murgatroyd's—I'm getting the night coach to Manchester. If you are wise you'll do likewise. Don't tell anybody you saw me!"

  And he disappeared into a shadowed passageway.

  As he drove home, Lucas tried to decide whether he should pass on this warning to Anna-Marie. It was not easy to give advice to her, he thought; unless she happened to agree with it, she was just as likely to do the opposite. And she was very proud of her name; she would not wish to conceal that.

  She was sitting cross-legged in her bunk, rolling cigars, when Lucas went up. Poor little thing, he thought; what a life for her.

  "I am working, so it is proper for me to use the candle," she said defensively.

  "You had better have gone to sleep; you look tired."

  "I am all right," she said stiffly.

  "Would—would you like to play a game of scissors-paper-stone?" Lucas offered. He was aware that it would have been a better peace offering if he had suggested telling a story, but he was too tired; he simply could not set his mind to the task of invention.

  "No, thank you," Anna-Marie said politely. "You need not be bothered playing child's games with me. If you wish to sleep, I will put out the candle."

  "Very well."

  Again they went to sleep in silence.

  It seemed strange that days should pass swiftly in the sewers, yet, on the whole, they did. Perhaps it was because of the dark, and the monotony. The black, wet hours went by; sometimes the toshers were chased by hogs and had to run for it; once or twice Lucas felt his heart come into his mouth when great rats, big as terriers, darted or snapped at him and had to be beaten off with his pole. On Saturday he received his wages of five pounds from Mr. Hobday plus a bonus of seven shillings, which was his percentage on the various things he had found. He had an uneasy feeling that this was probably much less than he should have received—what about that saddle, after all?—
but really there seemed no means of checking.

  "What did Mr. Hobday do with the saddle?" he asked Gudgeon.

  "That bain't none of your concern, boy. You tend to the toshing, let Mester Hobday tend to the dealing," Gudgeon replied, leaving Lucas still full of doubts.

  However it was satisfactory to have more than five pounds; it seemed like a huge sum. Lucas was able to pay Mrs. Tetley, and the next weeks infirmary fee for Mr. Oakapple, and the bribe money to Joe Bludward the Friendly Club boy, who never failed to turn up, taking his collection, as the patients' relatives left the wards. That didn't leave much change from the week's money. But at least it meant that what Anna-Marie earned could be kept for food and their daily needs.

  Two paydays later, before taking the plunge down the manhole, Lucas went to a secondhand-clothes stall in the market and bought a red coat with a hood, which he had been considering for several days. It was worn but still thick, and he liked the color.

  He went across to Mr. Hobday's stall, where Anna-Marie was setting out her cigars in a tray of plaited straw that she had made.

  "Here," he said. "Put this on. It ought to fit you quite well. And it's warmer than that worn-out old black thing. It's a nicer color, too."

  She looked very surprised; her mouth fell open. Before she could say anything, Lucas hurriedly ended, "I must be off, I'm late. See you this evening," and ran after Gudgeon, who was impatiently gesturing to him. But all day, in the blackness of the sewer, he was a little cheered by the thought of Anna-Marie wearing the red coat; it seemed to sit in one corner of his mind like a small red beacon.

  She needed something to cheer her, he thought; she had been very silent and withdrawn for the last few evenings.

  Mr. Oakapple had spoken a few words on the previous night; that evening Anna-Marie volunteered to come up to the infirmary with Lucas.

  "Perhaps he will like some soup now, or a cake—not just egg and milk," she said, and made up a packet of food.

  The rain had given way to snow again and there was fog too; icicles hung from the roof of the shed; it was a bitter-cold night. But Anna-Marie, when she came out to the cart, had only her old black coat on, with a handkerchief tied round her head.