by Y. S. Lee
She slowed her pace along the bridge, taking a long, deliberate look at the Palace of Westminster. Every child knew that this was the seat of government, where the House of Lords and House of Commons met. Yet she’d never paid close attention to the actual buildings, sprawling and imposing as they were. They’d been under construction since well before she was born. For most Londoners now, the Palace’s twenty-five-year reconstruction was merely an obvious, unfunny joke about government and the ruling classes.
Nothing moved inside Palace Yard. It was too early for the law-makers, and too late for the night-watchmen. The entrance to the building site was separate and there would be no need to enter the Palace itself; no dangerous mingling of peers and working men. Even so, she made a circuit around the Palace proper, entranced now by its colossal mass, its relentless detail. It was a revelation: not beautiful in a restrained, classical way, but fierce and extravagantly Gothic. The intricacy of the design was hypnotic, overwhelmingly so, and the arrogance and tradition it represented made itself felt in the pit of her stomach.
She passed the length of the Palace in a daze, and on looping back up towards St Stephen’s Tower, had to stop to remind herself of who she wasn’t. She touched the back of her neck self-consciously. Although she looked the part of a twelve-year-old boy, she still didn’t quite feel it. Last night’s coaching session with Felicity – a pint and a cold meat pie eaten out of hand in a public house – had been of some use. But it had also intensified her awareness of the very different world of men. Years in an all-girl’s school had changed her. And now, behind the site fencing there would be swarms of men and boys, roaring and swearing and doing whatever it was builders did while preparing to work, and they would all scrutinize her and know immediately if something was amiss. Of course, it was much too late to turn back. Mary took a deep breath, wiped her damp palms on her trousers, and marched through the narrow entrance gate into the building site proper.
She was braced for a wall of noise, an audience of raucous, suspicious masculinity. Yet if anything, the building site was quieter than the street. Small clusters of men chatted as they unpacked tools, or swallowed the last bits of breakfast, or inspected the incomplete work. None looked up as she passed.
There didn’t appear to be much order to the site – not to an outsider, at least. A small shed to her right seemed to function as an office; at least, it contained a desk covered with several inches of papers, but no person. No one appeared to challenge her presence, so she walked about the site slowly, simply looking.
She’d imagined a building site to be like a cross between a factory and an anthill: scores of people milling about, busily doing nothing, until a giant bell rang calling them to work, at which point they would all fall into line. Yet what she saw seemed more leisurely and self-directed. Already a pair of bricklayers had begun to mix up some mortar, and other tradesmen seemed to be finding their places for the day. None took any notice of her, and she suspected that it wasn’t due to the excellence of her masculine costume.
On the south side of the building site, a cluster of perhaps half a dozen men and boys loitered purposefully in the shadow of the Palace. As she drew nearer, Mary realized they were all hovering around one man. He was perhaps in his late forties, with the usual beard and moustache and well-fed paunch. He was also the only man on site wearing a collar and tie, which meant the chances were good that he was the site engineer, Mr Harkness. The fact that he looked tired and harassed rather confirmed this.
“I understand,” he was saying, “that you’re short-handed at the moment. I shall try to find a man to assist you this week, but it is your responsibility to engage a new member for your gang.”
The workman he addressed – a tall, powerfully built man in his middle thirties – glowered with frustration. “Don’t I know it! But it takes time, that. We’re missing an experienced bricklayer, not some useless apprentice.”
A muscle jumped under Harkness’s left eye. “I know,” he said in a placating tone. “As I said, I shall do my best.”
The foreman pushed his way out of the crowd, his face dark with anger. “‘I shall do my best,’” he simpered, imitating Harkness’s tones. “Bloody useless son of a—” His eyes met Mary’s and flared with temper. “What the hell you staring at, boy?”
She quickly averted her eyes and edged deeper into the pack. So that man had been Wick’s workmate. She wondered if they’d been friends.
It took a long time for Harkness to give each labourer his directions. When Mary finally presented herself, he stared at her for a long moment with red-rimmed eyes. “Who?”
Had she not spoken clearly enough? “Mark Quinn, sir. I’m to begin today as an errand boy, if you please.”
The twitch came again, and he pressed a weary hand to his disobedient eye. “As a general errand boy?”
Mary tried to look confident. “Yes, sir.” What could have gone wrong? Had someone failed to organize the position? Did she – her stomach plunged at the idea – did she not look the part? A few men nearby had stopped and looked at her curiously as soon as she’d addressed Harkness. Perhaps they could tell, somehow…
Harkness scrubbed his face abruptly with one hand. “And how old are you – what did you say your name was?”
“Quinn, sir. I’m twelve.”
“Quinn. Twelve. And you want work as an errand boy.”
“Yes, sir.” Mary was beginning to think Harkness very slow indeed.
“Hmph.” He eyed her speculatively. “Nicely spoken…”
Damn it all. She’d worked so hard to make her voice gruff and diffident, to get the accent just right, but she’d compromised the role from the start by using the wrong vocabulary. What sort of boy would say “begin” instead of “start”, or “if you please” instead of simply “please”? Five seconds into the job and she’d already made her first blunder.
Harkness fumbled in his inner coat pocket and pulled out a battered sheaf of papers. “Read that.”
Burning with shame, Mary took the bundle and read blankly, automatically, from the top. “‘The recasting of the bell by the Whitechapel Foundry is merely the first—’”
The papers were snatched from her grasp. “Bless me, you can read.”
Of course she could – and Harkness’s realization made her feel sick. Mary Quinn read fluently, but “Mark” Quinn wouldn’t read or write; he’d be fortunate to sign his own name. And she, of all people, ought to have known that. But she’d been so busy kicking herself for the first mistake that she’d compounded it with a second – perhaps even greater – error. Her pulse thudded and her cheeks were flushed. She was furious with herself, yet terrified of making a third and even greater faux pas. What was wrong with her? No wonder the labourers nearby stared at her.
Harkness fixed her with another shrewd look. “I ask you again: why are you here as an errand boy?”
There was nothing to do but to brazen it out. “Sir?”
“You make a bad job of playing the fool, Quinn.”
He was right. But she’d try, nevertheless. Mary thrust her hands into her pockets and stared at the ground. “I can’t do anything else, sir. There’s no money for school fees or to buy an apprenticeship.”
Harkness folded his arms and looked interested for the first time. “For a bright boy like you?”
“No, sir.”
“No Christian charity willing to educate you?”
“No, sir.”
“Hm.”
There was a long pause, during which Mary concentrated hard on the toes of her new-but-old boots. Her responses to this personal line of questioning wouldn’t stand up for long. The last thing she needed was for a kindly employer to research her story. Finally, she looked up. Her face was warm with tension, but Harkness must have seen what he was looking for.
“Never be ashamed to admit want, if it is not your fault,” he said quietly.
Mary nodded slightly. “Yes, sir.” Where was this conversation leading?
�
�I have nothing better for you at the moment, Quinn.”
Mary frowned. “Nothing better…?”
“Than a post as general errand boy. Not right now.”
“That’s all I want, sir,” she stammered, trying to salvage her role. “I just need…”
But Harkness was shaking his head. “I don’t know when something more suited to your abilities will come along. But do your best and prove yourself, and we’ll see. He shall provide.”
“‘He’, Mr Harkness?”
“The Lord, child.”
“Of course, the Lord.” She ought to have guessed.
“You’ll work under the bricklayers, assisting with any tasks they set you. Their foreman’s named Keenan. You’ll also be in charge of making tea in time for elevenses. One of the other boys, Jenkins, will show you the routine. Mine is a teetotal building site, Quinn, so if the men send you for spirits, you’re not to oblige. Hot tea is all that’s required to sustain the soul, not the offerings of the public house.”
Mary nodded. She wasn’t sure about souls, but she now had a good idea about Harkness’s popularity among the men.
“And – er – since you are better educated than the average errand boy, Quinn, you may find that the others – well, they may not take to you as quickly as they might to someone of their own class. In those instances, remember, child, to turn the other cheek, and also that from those to whom much is given…” Harkness paused expectantly.
“Much is expected,” mumbled Mary. The look of gratification on Harkness’s face was familiar. “May I go, sir?”
Twitch. “Yes, yes, run along.”
She was only too relieved to flee. Three minutes and two colossal mistakes. At this rate, she’d not last the hour. After all that work – cutting her hair, Felicity’s coaching – she had failed the very first challenge. Even more humiliating, the role of a poor working child was not unfamiliar to her: after her mother’s death, she had indeed been poor, uneducated and desperate. She’d been homeless, at times. She’d gone hungry. She’d passed as a boy to avoid rape. But today’s abysmal performance showed how deeply she’d lost touch with that part of her childhood. It came as a profound and unwelcome shock.
Five
Mary circled the building site, looking for a stack of bricks and men with trowels. It was a good opportunity to walk the site and explore its corners. It was a cramped, untidy place to work, with a great number of labourers moving awkwardly about the large tower at its centre. St Stephen’s Tower was the last element of the Palace to be built. With the Houses of Parliament in daily use and densely built-up streets all around, there was little space to store building materials and equipment except in the construction zone. Wherever the workers stood, the Palace loomed over them, making a pinched space feel even smaller.
All the same, Mary wondered if there might be a more efficient way of doing things. She felt her ignorance here. If she knew more about building practices, she’d be better able to assess Harkness’s efficiency as an engineer in charge. Not for the first time since accepting this assignment, she thought of James Easton. She would have given much for his assessment of the site, and the job. But this was an entirely theoretical temptation: James was in India, and she’d never see him again.
Eventually, she noticed a fair-haired man, whistling as he slapped some mortar onto a mortar board. “’Scuse me – you Mr Keenan?” Mary kept her diction indistinct, a little reluctant. She could try to blur her accent a bit more, but the fact remained that she’d already set herself apart. It was too late to change things.
The man looked up. His good humour seemed at odds with his face, which bore the souvenirs of a fist-fight: one eye puffy and discoloured, lip split. “What’s that?”
“Mr Harkness sent me to help out.”
“Ah. You want Keenan – dark chap over there.” He pointed to a tall, thickset man a little way off. He was scowling, but even without the surly expression Mary would have recognized him as the man who’d snarled at her not half an hour before.
She sighed inwardly. Of course the bad-tempered bricklayer would be the foreman. Still, perhaps that was relevant to Wick’s death, too. She approached him reluctantly, as he was clearly preoccupied.
“You’re awful small,” he said in response to her explanation.
“I’m stronger than I look.”
“Aye? I hope so.” Something happened when he spoke which made words sound like threats, even when they were simple instructions. He wasn’t generous with them, either: he simply nodded at a pole lying on the ground. “You’re Reid’s hod-carrier today.” Then he strode away.
Mary struggled to make sense of the contraption, a long stick topped by three wooden planks that together formed three sides of a box. Unfortunately, she had no idea what to do with it, or whom to ask for assistance. The cheerful young man, perhaps? But when she looked around, he’d disappeared with his trowel and mortar board.
When Keenan came back to her a few minutes later, his face was flushed with temper. “Still mucking about? I told you to get moving.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to use this.”
His face darkened some more. “Useless brat. Never seen a hod before?”
“N-no, sir.”
“Then what you doing working on a building site?”
“I want to learn, sir.”
Keenan cursed. “Not with me for a bloody nursemaid, you won’t. I got bleedin’ work to do.” He looked about for a moment, then bellowed, “Stubbs!”
Another youngish man, with curly ginger hair and an astounding number of freckles, appeared. “Mr Keenan?”
“Show this brat what’s what.”
Once Keenan was at a safe distance, Stubbs looked at Mary. “What’s he want you to do?”
“Be Reid’s hod-carrier.” Mary spoke the strange words tentatively. “This is the hod?” She hefted the pole and box.
Stubbs laughed, a single brief snort. “Aye. You hold it like this.” In a single deft motion, he swung the stick over one shoulder so that the three planks were behind him. “You fill it with bricks – at your size, not many, maybe three or four – and carry it to your brickie. You said Reid, did you? He’s over that way, round the corner.”
“That’s all?” It seemed absurdly straightforward.
“You fetch whatever he tells you to. You can carry mortar and trowels in it, or anything else he needs.”
He gave her the hod and she hefted it experimentally. Not bad, but… “Why not use a wheelbarrow?”
“Sometimes you climb with the hod – up scaffolding, like.” He grinned at her expression. “Not today, though – I’m doing the tricky bits while we’re short-handed.”
“Oh. You missing a hod-carrier?” Mary followed him towards a large pile of bricks.
Stubbs frowned down at her. “You new?”
She nodded. “Started this morning.”
“Oh. Suppose you ain’t heard, then.” He paused and his round face turned sombre. “One of ours, a brickie, died last week. Until Keenan finds a new one, the other hod-carrier, Smith, is filling in. Not that he’s a proper brickie, or nothing. But he can lay a simple wall while Keenan and Reid do the rest.”
Mary frowned. The explanation was almost as confusing as the situation. So bricklayers and hod-carriers worked in teams, and it sounded as though this was a disrupted team of five: three bricklayers, Wick, Keenan and Reid, supported by the hod-carriers Stubbs and Smith. With Wick’s death, it was up to Keenan to find a new bricklayer to join his permanent team, rather than for Harkness to hire another solo bricklayer. Like the hod itself, it seemed strange but made sense once you thought about it. The men were accustomed to working with one another and would have their own efficient habits and systems. Hire a gang of brickies and, she supposed, they would work together smoothly from the start.
“Here.” Stubbs stopped by the brick pile. “Hold steady, now.” Mary braced her shoulders as Stubbs loaded three bricks onto the hod. “All right, there?”
“I can take another one.”
He looked at her critically. “Best not. Save your strength, lad; you’ll be doing this for hours.”
It was good advice. The hod itself was not light, and with three bricks on it the combined weight was as much as Mary could manage while dodging through the yard. Stubbs’s directions were approximate but she soon spotted the blond man, Reid, squatting on his haunches, whistling again as he sized up his day’s work. Despite his propensity for fist-fights, he seemed as good-tempered as Keenan was hostile, and this made her all the more grateful not to be working directly under Keenan.
“Three bricks?!” he exclaimed, as she set down the hod.
Mary flushed. “Sorry, sir. I’ll try to bring more next time.”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” he said, amiably enough. “But Lord love me if you ain’t the tiniest hod-carrier I ever seen.”
“Still growing, sir,” she mumbled.
“If you don’t grow no bigger, be something else,” he advised. “A glazier, maybe.”
Mary nodded and fled back to the brick pile. As the morning wore on, she became more skilled at loading bricks onto the hod and carrying them efficiently. Some time later – she couldn’t have said how long, but hours rather than minutes – she became aware of another boy watching her. He stood about twenty yards off, hands in pockets, staring at her openly.
Mary straightened from her task – sweeping up mortar dust and brick rubble – and stared back. After several moments, she nodded a brusque acknowledgement. But instead of responding, the boy merely continued to stare aggressively. Mary kept at her work.
After a few minutes, he finally spoke. “Suppose you’s Quinn.”
Mary looked up again. He was closer, but no less truculent. She nodded once and went on with her sweeping.
“You don’t look so posh.”