by Priya Sharma
He’s still chewing on my unpalatable comment about riots.
“All I meant was that it’s unseasonably hot and a while since the last high day or holiday. Steam builds up in these conditions.”
I hear craziness in the ale houses all the time that I’m not going to share with him. Talk of seizing boats and sailing out of Liverpool Bay, north to Blundell Sands and Crosby to breathe rarefied air and storm the families’ palaces. Toppling the merchant princes. A revolution of beheading, raping and redistribution of riches.
Tough talk. Despairing men with beer dreams of taking on armed guards.
“They can riot all they like. Justice will fall hard. Liverpool’s peaceful. There’ll be no unions here. We’ll reward anyone who helps keep it that way.”
I want to say, The Peels aren’t the law, but then I remember that they are.
*
I cross Upper Parliament Street into Toxteth. My cart’s loaded with a bag of threadbare coloured sheets which I’ll sell for second-grade paper. I’ve a pile of bones that’ll go for glue.
“Ra bon! Ra bon!” I shout.
Calls bring the kids who run alongside me. One reaches out to pat Gabriel, my hound, who curls his lip and growls.
“Not a pet, son. Steer clear.”
When I stop, the children squat on the curb to watch. They’re still too little for factory work.
“Tommy, can I have a sweet?”
“No, not unless you’ve something to trade and it’s Tom, you cheeky blighter. Shouldn’t you be in school?”
There are elementary classes in the big cathedral. I convinced Dad to let me attend until he decided it was too dangerous and taught me himself instead. Hundreds of us learnt our letters and numbers by rote, young voices raised in unison like fevered prayers that reached the cavernous vaults. The sad-eyed ministers promised God and Jerusalem right here in Liverpool and even then I could see they were as hungry as we were, for bread and something better.
“Are you the scrap man?” It’s a darling girl with a face ravaged by pox. “My ma asked for you to come in.”
“Don’t touch my barrow,” I tell the others. “After the dog’s had you, I’ll clobber you myself.”
I wave my spike-tipped stick at them. It’s not a serious threat. They respond with grins of broken teeth and scurvy sores. They’re not so bad at this age. It’s the older ones you have to watch for.
I follow the child inside. The terraces seethe and swelter in the summer. Five storeys from basement to attic, a family in every room. All bodies fodder to the belching factories and docks; bargemen, spinners, dockers, weavers and foundry workers. Dad reckoned Liverpool got shipping and industry when the boundaries were marked out and other places got chemicals, medicines, food production and suchlike. He said the walls and watchtowers around each county were the means by which the martial government quelled civil unrest over recession, then biting depression. It was just an excuse to divide the nation into biddable portions and keep those that had in control of those that didn’t.
Dad also said his grandfather had a farm and it was a hard but cleaner living. No cotton fibres in the lungs, fewer machines to mangle limbs. Less disease and no production lines along which contagion can spread.
The girl darts into a room at the back. I stand at the door. The two women within are a pair of gems. One says, “Lolly,” and the child runs to her. She looks like an angel, clutching the child to her that way.
“We’ve stuff to sell,” says the other one with the diamond-hard stare. “I’m Sally and this is Kate.”
Sally’s dazzling. I take off my cap and pat down my hair.
They share the same profile, long hair fastened up. Sisters. Sally’s still talking while Angel Kate puts a basket on the table. I catch her glance. This pitiful collection’s worth won’t meet their needs.
“Let’s see.” I clear my throat. “These gloves might fetch something. The forks too.” The tines are so twisted that they’re only worth scrap value. There’s a jar of buttons and some horseshoe nails that look foraged from between cobbles. “I’ll give you extra for the basket.”
Kate looks at the money in my outstretched hand with hungry eyes but Sally’s got the money in her pocket before I can change my mind.
“Are you both out of work?”
“Laid off.” Sally makes a sour face.
“I’m sorry. Laid off from where?”
“Vicar’s Buttons.”
A good, safe place for nimble-fingered women.
“I’ll let you know if anyone’s hiring.”
“Lolly, play outside.” Lolly jumps to Kate’s order, dispelling any doubt about which woman is Lolly’s mother.
“We need more money.” Mother Kate is fierce. “I’ve heard that you’re looking to collect things for one of the families…”
“Which one?” Sally butts in.
“The Peels,” I answer.
“The Peels have taken enough from us already.”
I want to ask Sally what she means but I don’t get a chance.
“We need more money, Sally. Peels, Vicars, Hardmans. What’s the difference?”
“There is.”
“No, there isn’t, Sal.” Kate sounds flat. “Lolly needs food and a roof. She comes above pride or principles.”
Nothing could make me admire Kate more. I’m gawping at her.
“We’ll get work.”
“Not soon enough.” Kate turns to me. “Tell me more.”
“It’s just in case one of the Peels get ill.” I feel foolish trotting out this patter. “Should they need a little blood or skin, or bit of bone.”
“Are they too proud to ask one another?” Sally’s sharp. “I’ve heard that they take the bits they want and toss the rest of you to their lapdogs. And what if they want an eye or kidney?”
“They wouldn’t want anything vital and the compensation would be in keeping, of course.”
“Compensation?” Sally presses me. She’s the sparring sort.
“That’s up for discussion. Someone got granted leave to live outside Liverpool for their help.”
Outside. Myth and mystery. That shuts her up.
“Yes, but what will you give me now?” Kate has more pressing concerns.
Both women are bright-eyed. They don’t look like they buy backdoor poteen or have the sluggish, undernourished look of opium fiends. They’ve worked in a button factory, not a mill, so they’ve young unblemished lungs, engine hearts and flawless flesh, except for their worn hands. Just the sort I’ve been told to look for. I feel like a rat, gnawing on a dying man’s toes.
Do whatever you need to survive, Dad would say. Do whatever you need to be free.
I put a silver coin on the table.
“I’ll do it,” Kate says.
“Don’t.” Sally’s like a terrier. I don’t know whether to kiss or kick her.
“We’ve queued for weeks with no luck.”
The indignity of hiring pens and agency lines. At the respectable ones they just check hands and teeth. At others, they take women and boys around back for closer inspection.
“What if they want something from you? What then?” Sally sounds panicked.
“All they ask is a chance to speak to you. No one’s forcing anyone.” It’s what I’ve been told to say, but the rich always have their way.
“Do it.” Kate’s firm.
I take off the bag strung across my chest and sit down at the table.
“What’s your name?”
“Kate Harper.”
Kate’s hands are callused from factory work but her forearms are soft.
“It’ll hurt.” I remove the sampler’s cap.
I put it over her arm and press down. I feel the tip bite flesh and hear the click as it chips off bone. It leaves a deep, oozing hole. Kate gasps but doesn’t move. It’s only ever men that shout and thrash about.
“I’ll give you some ointment to help it heal. What about Lolly’s father?” I try and make it sound like easy
banter as I write her details in the log book and on the tube.
“He was a sailor on The Triumph.”
“You’re Richard Harper’s wife?” A name said with hushed reverence.
“Yes, and before you blather on about heroism, he didn’t give us a second thought. Everything we’d saved went on his sailor’s bond.”
The Triumph was a Peel ship that landed in the Indies. You can’t send men across the ocean on a boat and not expect them to want to get off on the other side and walk around. It’s a foul practice to stop sailors absconding, resulting in cabin fever, brawling and sodomy. The crew of The Triumph mutinied.
The leader, Richard Harper, was a martyr for his part. The authorities tied him to the anchor before they dropped it. His sailor’s bond, held with the port master, was forfeit.
“You were widowed young.”
Kate’s nod is a stiff movement from the neck. She tries to soften it with, “It’s just us now.”
“I understand. It used to be me and my dad until he died. He was a rag and bone man too.” I’m overcome with the need to tell her everything, but I can’t. “He wanted a horse instead of pulling the barrow himself. One day I’ll get one, if I can save enough.”
I’m trying to impress them. Sally sighs as if I’m tiresome but Kate pats my hand like an absentminded mother. Her unguarded kindness makes me want to cry. I want to put my head on Kate’s knee and for her to stroke my hair.
Sally watches us.
“I won’t do it. I don’t trust them.”
I realise that I want to touch Sally too, but in a different way. I have a fierce urge to press my mouth to the flesh on the inside of her wrist where the veins show through.
Sally stares me down and I want to say, I’m not the enemy. I’m not a flesh-eating Peel up in an ivory tower, but then I realise that I might as well be.
*
I sit in my room at The Baltic Fleet. Mother Kate’s essence shouldn’t be contained in a vial. I don’t want anyone else to possess her. Not some sailor, bound and drowned, and definitely not a Peel. She should be free.
Times are hard. I’ve filled in a whole page of Makin’s log book.
I go walking to clear my head, Gabriel at heel. Mrs Tsang, the publican, is stocking the bar with brown bottles of pale ale. She’s good to me, just like she was good to Dad. She lets me the room and I keep my barrow in the yard under a tarp.
“Okay, poppet?” she asks as I pass.
On impulse I lean down and kiss her cheek. She swats me away, hiding her smile. Mrs Tsang’s tiny but I’ve seen her bottle a man in the face for threatening her. The jagged glass tore his lips and nose.
The factories are out and everyone’s heading home. Workers pile into the terraces. Some sun themselves on doorsteps. A tethered parrot squawks at me from its perch outside a door, talking of flights in warmer climes. Kids play football on the street.
I head to Otterspool Prom where I stand and consider, looking out at the river. Herring gulls scream at me for my foolishness. Gabriel lies down and covers his face with his paws.
I drop Kate’s vial and stand on it. Then I kick every single fragment into the water and don’t leave until the Mersey’s taken it all away.
I pause outside Makin’s office.
“I’d advise caution with his sort, sir.” A stranger’s voice.
“What’s his sort then?” That’s Makin.
“Loners, in my experience, are freaks or agitators.”
“Tom’s neither.”
Behind me, someone clears his throat. I turn to find myself on the sharp end of a pointed look from Makin’s secretary. No doubt he’ll tell later.
“I told you to knock and go in.” He opens the door.
“Ah, Tom, this is Mr Jessop.”
Jessop’s the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, with good teeth and all his hair. He’s no gentleman. He has the swagger of the law, not a regular policeman but a special.
“Tom, we were just talking about you.” He sounds like a Scouser now, a rough edge to his voice that was missing before. He must talk it up or down, depending on the company. “Can I see the log book that Mr Makin gave you?”
I look at Makin who nods. Mr Jessop flicks through it, checking against the ledger where a clerk copies the details.
“Is this address correct?”
It’s Kate’s.
“Yes.” I shrug. “I filled it in at the time.”
“Anyone else live there?”
“Her sister and daughter.”
“And you broke one of the samplers that day?”
“Yes. An empty one. I’m a clumsy oaf.” I try and sound like I’m still berating myself. “I dropped it and stepped on it. I reported it straight away, didn’t I, Mr Makin? I offered to pay for it.”
“No one’s accusing you of anything, Tom.”
“Do you know where Kate Harper is now?” Jessop doesn’t let up.
“Isn’t she there?”
I know she isn’t. I knocked at her door and an old man answered. Bugger off. I’ve no idea where they went.
“No, but you know that already because you went back.” Jessop smiles, the triumphant conniver. “You do know that she’s Richard Harper’s widow, don’t you?”
“Yes, but what’s that got to do with me?”
Jessop’s hands are spotless. He must scrub them nightly to get out suspects’ blood. Specials with manicured hands don’t come in search of factory girls without reason.
Makin sits back, waiting. Of course. They’re terrified of Harper. That his wife will be a rallying cry.
“I didn’t know who she was until she gave the sample.”
“And why would she do that?”
“She needed money.”
“So she’s not being looked after by her Trotsky pals?” Jessop won’t let it go.
“I don’t think so.” I try and catch Makin’s eye.
“Why did you go back?”
Makin’s holding his breath, waiting.
“The thing is”—I shift about, embarrassed by the truth—”they were pretty and I wanted to see them again.”
“There’s no shame in that.” Makin seems relieved. Thank God that good men like him can rise in this world that favours politicians who use smiles, wiles and outright lies.
I feel bad about lying to him.
“We need to speak to her,” Jessop says.
“But I don’t know where she is.”
“But you’ll tell us if you do find her?” His smile makes me want to bolt for the door. “You’ve never had a job, have you?”
“I work.”
My dad would say, We’re free. Never subject to the tyranny of the clock. The dull terrors of the production line. No one will use us as they please.
“Bone grubbing. Piss-poor way to make a living.”
“Enough.” Makin tuts.
“So sorry.” Jessop’s oily and insincere. “If you do find her, be a good lad and run up here and tell Mr Makin.”
I want to say, Shove your apology, but keep my gob shut.
*
The bastards follow me about all day. Jessop and his pals, got up like dockers. I pretend I’ve not seen them but they stand out. They’re too clean to look real.
I look for Kate and Sally in the hiring lines, strolling past with my barrow as if on my way elsewhere. I wouldn’t give her away. I just want to see her face. I ask the washerwomen at the water pumps and the old men standing around the fires at night.
Kate, Sally, Lolly. There’s not a whiff of them.
I go up to the destitute courts of the Dingle, each court comprised of six houses set up around a central yard. The noxious stench from the shared privy is of liquid filth. I look through open doors: blooming damp patches on the plaster, crumbled in places to bare brick. I see faces made hard by deprivation. Infants squalling from drawers because they’re hungry. It was a miracle that Makin clawed his way out of here.
“You.”
A priest accosts me. He’s o
n his rounds, demanding pennies from the poor to give to the even poorer.
“Come here.”
Closer and he’s unshaven and smells. He’s ale addled. I feel for him, driven to despair and drink by the gargantuan task of saving so many lost souls. He follows me out of the court, onto the street.
“I’ve heard about you, Thomas Coster.”
I tie Gabriel to the cart in case he goes for the man and wait for the rage of the righteous. I don’t feel so well-disposed towards him now.
“You’re in league with evil.” He shoves his face into mine. Gabriel goes crazy. We’re drawing quite an audience. “The Peels keep people in tanks like fish, cutting off the bits they want.”
I’m panting from pushing the cart uphill and trying to outpace him. Jessop’s up ahead, leaning against a wall.
“A man should be buried whole in consecrated ground.”
The priest’s enraged when the crowd laughs. Burial’s expensive. The poor are cremated on pyres.
“You’ll be damned. You’ll suffer all hell’s torments. You’ll be flayed. The devil will sup on your gizzards and crack the marrow from your bones.”
Jessop laughs under his breath as I pass.
*
It’s a rare day that a Peel comes to town.
The Peel factories have closed an hour early to mark the day. Men loiter on Hope Street, outside the Philharmonic pub. Rowdy clerks from the insurance offices and banks are out, seeking white-collar mayhem. One turns quickly and shoulder barges me as I pass. He’s keen to prove he can push more than a pen. His friends laugh.
His mates all line up across the pavement to block my path. I step into the gutter. One of them steps down to join me. He’s wearing ridiculous checked trousers and his hands are in his pockets. I wonder what’s in there.
“You walked into my friend. You should apologise.”
I open my mouth but someone’s standing at my shoulder. It’s Jessop.
“I think you’re mistaken,” Jessop says as he opens his jacket. Whatever’s glinting within is enough to put this bunch off.
I glance around. Jessop’s travelling in numbers, all of them in black suits.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Oh, to wield so much power that you don’t have to exert it.