Sparrow Falling

by Gaie Sebold

  Charlotte had been offered the chance to come home, and had refused. It hurt Mama more than she tried to show and it had hurt – it still hurt – Eveline fiercely.

  But Charlotte was irrelevant. She wasn’t coming back. Mr Stug was what mattered right this minute.

  He was a landlord, that much she knew. She couldn’t risk going back to his offices, not now. But though she hadn’t taken anything but the flute... she’d looked at every paper that was in her eyeline the two times she was in the offices, and had an address in Limehouse fixed in her mind. Knowledge, and the means to use it. The school’s motto, taken from one of Ma Pether’s sayings. It never hurt to have as much information about a mark as you could gather.

  Of course, respectable people didn’t think of the people they did business with as marks. Well, you couldn’t change everything at once.

  Limehouse

  SHE DIDN’T BOTHER with a cab, besides, they cost money. She liked to walk, to keep her eye on things. Within an hour the familiar stench and babble of the slums surrounded her. Limehouse, where she’d spent much of her life.

  She felt wrong, out of place. It wasn’t the clothes – she’d moved around these streets respectably enough dressed when she lived with Ma, because Ma kept sets of decent clothes for the very purpose of making her girls look respectable enough to get into places they’d otherwise be kept out of.

  She was still Evvie Duchen, Evvie the Sparrow, underneath – but now she was something else, too.

  These people crowding around her, these pressing, smelly, desperate, exhausted, yelling, drunk, diseased, skinny people – it was these people she’d survived amongst, all that time; these people who’d given her a scrape of their own tiny portion or chased her off their own sleeping-hole behind a draper’s or under a bridge or a broken cart. The children were still everywhere – pallid and grimy, trying to dip a pocket – not much to be gained, not around here – playing hopscotch and begging and yelling and fighting. She’d been one of them, and then she’d been one of Ma Pether’s girls – under the shabby but protective umbrella of Ma’s influence and the fearful respect she was held in.

  Did Ma feel like she did now, out of place? Softened?

  Stop it, Evvie. Keep your mind on the job.

  It isn’t a job. It’s snooping for Respectability, like that feller who came around asking after Fallen Women and accused Ma Pether of being a... what did he call her? A Procuress. I thought it sounded grand until I knew what it meant. Oh, did she ever give him an earful.

  You’ve turned, Evvie Duchen. You’ve gone over to the side of starched linen and lecturing, the ones with money who tell the poor how to live.

  I have not! And anyway, I was respectable to start with, before Papa died and we had to go live with Uncle James – I was respectable until I ran away...

  Her head suddenly seemed so full of yammering voices she wanted to sit down on the filthy pavers and clap her hands over her ears, as though that would help.

  “You crossing, miss?”

  The words came from not much above her knee. Looking down she saw a small, dirty boy; he could have been any age between six and ten for size, given how scrawny and undergrown most of the street children were, but the curves still remaining to his face suggested he was no more than seven. His eyes were brown, his hair a thick mat of unidentifiable colour, and he wore the remains of a pair of trousers and a jacket that would have been comically oversized to anyone who hadn’t had to wear similar clothes as often as Evvie had, just to keep warm. Sleeves cavernous as tunnels had been folded back over their full length to allow small hands to emerge, which grasped a broom almost twice as tall as the boy himself.

  On his feet were boots. Terrible boots, that had not ever been a pair; one was of faded dung-brown, the other, once black, had withered to an indeterminate grey. The brown one was too big, wrapped about the ankle with string to keep it on. Both gaped at the front, showing small bare black-nailed toes.

  “No, I...” She looked again. “All right,” she said. The boy moved ahead of her, manipulating the broom with determined energy and little grunts of effort, sweeping away horse-droppings and leaf-litter and the paper a pie had been wrapped in and the corpse of a rat.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bat, miss.”

  “Bat?”

  “On account of I lives in a belfry, miss.”

  “You never do!” The old Evvie emerged, jaunty and rough. “No-one lives in a belfry. You’d go deaf. ’Sides they’d never let you.”

  He looked up at her, considering, and gave a wide, gappy grin. “Well, that’s what I tells ’em, miss. People like a story.”

  “So they do,” she said. “What’s the real reason, then?”

  “I dunno, miss, it’s just what my brother called me.”

  “And where’s he?”

  “Gone off to sea, miss.” Bat looked wistful. “I wish I could go to sea. I might meet pirates.”

  “Why’d you want to do that?”

  “It’d be an adventure, miss. And there’d be treasure. Maybe one day my brother’ll come and fetch me to go with him. And we can go fight pirates.”

  “Maybe he will,” Evvie said. They’d reached the other side by now. “This crossing much good? I wouldn’a thought anyone around here’s got the blunt to pay a sweeper.”

  “You’d be surprised, miss. We get all sorts through here, church and everything.”

  “Coming round doing the charity?”

  “Oh, yes. And when the duns or the landlords come oftentimes they want a sweeper.”

  “I see. Here.” She paid him – generously. “You know what’s what around here, then?”

  “Maybe, miss,” he said, suddenly wary, clutching his broom across his chest.

  “Don’t fret yer gizzard. I en’t looking to make trouble, I just wanta know who lives in there.” She pointed to the address she’d memorised.

  “’Bout six, seven families, miss – none of ’em uses my crossing,” he said, resigned.

  “I don’t suppose they do,” she said, looking at the building, which seemed to be held together as much with soot and general grime as with actual bricks and mortar. “Here, Bat.”

  “I gotta work my crossing, miss.”

  “Look, there’s another brown in it for you if you’ll tell me anything you can about the people in that house – and I’ll buy you a pie and coffee while you’re telling me. I’m not with the church and I’m not with the Peelers – I just need to find out some things, that’s all.”

  He looked her over, and, finally, nodded. “We’ll have to eat it here, though, miss. We don’t, someone’ll have my crossing.”

  “All right, then. Where’s the best pie shop?”

  “Albey’s Eel and Mash on the corner, miss.”

  She nodded, and started off – he was wary, but skinny enough that she’d have to trust the chance of a pie in the hand, and the need to mind his crossing, would be enough to keep him there until she got back.

  “Miss?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t like coffee, miss. C’n I have milk?”

  “’Course,” she said, swallowing against a sudden stupid lump in her throat and the memory of her sister Charlotte’s baby mouth, silky with milk and blowing a fat, happy bubble of satisfaction.

  The pie shop smelled good enough she decided to get a pie of her own. She’d not eaten since breakfast, and her hunger, though more easily satisfied these days, never deserted her for long. It was as though her body, used to deprivation, could never quite believe the days of plenty would last. She still had the habit, too, of shoving the occasional piece of cheese or apple or chunk of nearly-solid stale crust in her bag, just in case.

  When she came back the boy was standing leaning on his broom, looking world-weary as only a tired, hungry, seven-year-old trying to look older, bigger and tougher can look.

  “Here.”

  “Thanks, miss.”

  “Someone taught you manners, anyroad.”r />
  “My brother’d thump me ’less I said my thankyous, miss,” came the somewhat muffled reply in a shower of crumbs.

  “Didn’t teach you not to talk with your mouth full, though. S’not polite, and you might spill the food, that’d be a waste.”

  He swallowed hastily. “Sorry, miss.”

  “Never mind,” she said, wondering why she was trying to teach this scrap of humanity manners, it wasn’t as though he’d have much chance to use them; most of the people who used his crossing, he’d be lucky to get a bent ha’penny off them, never mind another pie. “So, what about that house, then? Who lives there?”

  “I dunno much, miss,” he said, but between bites he proved willing enough to talk – and he even tried to remember to swallow first. “There’s Juicy Peg, and Blind Will. And Loaf, he’s simple, he goes aaaah but he can’t say words. He lives with his Ma, she takes in sewing. There’s the Farleys on the top, and all their bantlings, I dunno what he does but she makes lace, she comes out sometimes to sit on the step. There’s the Glucks – they talk funny – and the Pritchards, they talk funny too but you can understand ’em, he coughs all the time. The Pritchards are church, they always go out Sundays. The Pritchards got seven, or maybe eight, the Glucks had a boy and a girl, and now they just got a girl, she don’t talk much, and the Farleys, half theirs are off to work ’cept Bert cos Bert’s back went bad on him and he can’t walk no more, he waves at me through the window sometimes. There’s the Stones, they’ve five, no, four, he’s scammered all the time. Gin,” Bat said solemnly. “She don’t half yell when he lays on. And there’s the Huntridges, they en’t been here so long as the others, they got maybe six, I can’t keep ’em all straight. There’s more go in and out, but I dunno the names.”

  “Any visitors?”

  “Juicy Peg gets lots,” he said. “And Loaf’s Ma gets a few, men, mainly. She turns Loaf out when they come, unless it’s the draper man come to pick up the shirts. Sometimes Loaf comes to the crossing. He tried to take my broom, I had to yell and his Ma come for him.”

  “You do all right holding on to it like you do, how’d you manage?”

  “Oh most of the time s’all right, cos they know me round here, but sometimes a bigger boy’s tried to have it off me and I kicks ’em. I kick good, and I bite.” He wrapped his hands protectively around the broom. “But Loaf’s real strong, his Ma says what didn’t go into his head God put in his body. He’s all right, mostly, he’s sort of like a dog. Anyways... That’s mostly it.”

  “What about toffs? Landlords and that?”

  “Oh, them.” There was a wealth of scorn and distrust in the word. “There’s Bowler, and the Viper. The Viper don’t come often himself, mostly he sends Bowler. I don’t like ’em. Time they came together they used my crossing, Bowler looked at me like I was a pie, only he wasn’t sure what was in it, and he said to the Viper did he think I’d do, and the Viper told him he was a flat. Bowler only guv me a fadge and it was clipped.”

  “So the Viper, he’s the landlord?”

  “’S’right.” Bat was looking at the remains of Evvie’s pie with a ravenous eye.

  “Here,” she said. “I’m full.” She wasn’t, but she reckoned he was earning it. “Why’d you call him the Viper?”

  “S’what everyone calls him, Viper Stug. I asked Juicy Peg once and she said it was cos he’s the devil himself in disguise, not that this was the Garden of Eden she said, I din’t understand that bit, only anyway she called him a... she said I wasn’t to say it. I dunno what it means anyways.”

  “Why’d she say he was the devil?”

  “She says he’s bad luck and carries evil with him.”

  “Why’s that then?”

  Bat shrugged, picking the last crumbs of pie off his filthy trousers with a wetted finger. “I dunno, miss.”

  “But often he doesn’t come himself, you said, he sends Bowler? Who’s Bowler?”

  “He’s the Viper’s nobbler, miss. You don’t pay up, he gives you a basting. We calls him Bowler on account of his hat – never seen him without it, miss. I don’t like him. He’s...” The boy seemed to choose, and reject, several words, possibly ones Juicy Peg had told him not to use, before settling on, “bad, miss. Proper bad. I reckon he’s the devil, not Viper. There was horns under that hat of his I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

  “Well, well. You’re a noticing one, you are. You all done? I gotta take these mugs back to the shop.”

  He handed her his mug.

  “You been a proper help to me,” she told him. “You keep this hidden and don’t go flashing it about, you hear?”

  Bat gave a wide stare at the handful of coins she slid into his small palm and nodded vigorously. “Right you are, miss.”

  “Good boy. Here, you know when the Viper was here last?”

  “Not for ages, miss. But Bowler was here two days back.”

  “Everyone paid up?”

  “S’far as I know, miss. He was right nettled.”

  “Why’d he be nettled?”

  “He likes it when they can’t pay up, miss. Makes him happy, that does. Like I said, he’s a bad ’un.”

  “You’re a good boy, Bat.”

  “Thank you, miss.”

  “You stay away from them fellas.”

  “Oh, I will, miss. Less they wants the crossing, cos that’s me job, that is.”

  “Yeah, I know. All right, Bat.” She felt an odd impulse to say, “Be good,” but being good had never done her any favours, not when she was out on the streets. There was one other thing she could do for him, though. “Here, Bat. One of them boys comes after your broom again, I can show you something to put ’em off, you want to see?”

  “What?” He was wary again, clutching his broom close to his chest.

  She put her hands over his. They looked very clean by comparison, and she felt that sense of dislocation again. “You hold it like this, so they can’t grab it so easy. Then, one of ’em comes at you, you jab it like this – see? That’ll wind ’em proper, and you can get away. Or give ’em a bit more to remember you by, if you’ve a mind – but getting away’s usually better.”

  “That’s smart, that is. Show me again?”

  She showed him twice more. She remembered that much from her Bartitsu lessons, and a broom was as good a weapon as any. “You could see if you can find someone to shave a coupla feet off the end, and you’ll get by easier, and you can still jab with it – better, even.”

  “I dunno about that, miss. It makes the ladies go a bit soft, seeing me with this broom.”

  He gave her that gappy grin again and she grinned back, feeling a little better and glad to give him something more than a few coins – the move would last him longer than they would, especially if he had a chance to grow a bit.

  She made her way to the miserable collapsing heap of a house.

  JUICY PEG PROVED to be at home, if you could call her room ‘home.’ She flung open the door of a tiny little cupboard of a place, which Juicy Peg filled like a bunch of big, blowsy flowers jammed into a small, ugly vase. She was a full-figured woman, wearing a pink sateen wrap thrown over scarlet corsets. With her bright ginger hair, the combination was startling, but cheerful.

  Peg looked Evvie up and down. “You ain’t my usual sort of customer,” she said, “but I’m accomodatin’. Come in.”

  “I ain’t here for wapping, love,” Evvie said. She felt perfectly at home, instantly; the room was crammed with cheap colourful junk – brightly painted fairground china, luridly dyed shawls and artificial flowers. A scrapbook and a pot of glue lay on the small rickety table. Red-cheeked cherubs frolicked over its pages among finely-dressed children. More cherubs were paused in flight across the table top, ready to be pasted in. A boy doll in a sailor suit perched on a chair, the crisp whiteness of his jacket startling against the grimy cushions. Crammed among the gimcrackery were dozens of brightly-tinted picture postcards of elaborately dressed children. There were damp stockings and undergarments hanging o
ff the furniture. It smelled of sausages and Dr Mackenzie’s Arsenical Soap and cheap Mille Fleurs perfume and sex, and, of course, of sewage. Everywhere around here smelled of sewage.

  “What you want then?” said Juicy Peg. “I’m about to have me breakfast.”

  “Don’t mind me.”

  “If Viper sent you...”

  “He didn’t. I wanta ask you about him.”

  The sausages were steaming in a greasy wrapper. Peg unfolded it and picked a sausage out, delicately, with the tips of her fingers. “What about him?”

  “He’s the landlord, right?”

  “So?”

  “So... I heard maybe he isn’t on the up and up.”

  Peg opened her mouth, closed it on a big bite of sausage, and chewed, eyeing Evvie thoughtfully. Eventually she swallowed. “This room,” she said, gesturing with the remaining sausage, “it en’t much, but it’s what I got, and it’s no worse than some. Better’n others, ’cos I got it to meself, and my customers likes a bit of privacy. I can charge more. So I can’t afford to be on outs with the V... Mr Stug, right?”

  There was a porcelain dog with an expression of sneering idiocy and a dusty ruff around its neck staring down at Evvie from the grimy mantel. She looked at it while she considered. “All right,” she said. “I know. I ain’t planning to make trouble and I ain’t naming no names. Anything I hear, I didn’t hear off of you.”

  “S’all very well,” said Peg, “but how do I know?”

  Evvie let out a small sigh. It was partly genuine, too – after talking to Bat and seeing the room, it was almost too easy to guess where Peg’s lever was.

  “I think,” she said, “he’s up to no good – and it’s something to do with children.”

  Peg wrapped her arms around herself, as though she was cold. “Here,” she said, “you fancy a drop of porter? I always has a drop of porter with me breakfast.”

  “All right.” Evvie hated porter.

  Peg poured the dark stuff into two mugs, both chipped. She leaned forward confidentially, enveloping Evvie in the smells of sweat and cheap perfume.