by Parry, Owen
“I should say so,” Inspector Wilkie told me. “We’ll ’ave no revolutions around ’ere, thank you. ’Er Majesty wouldn’t allow it.”
I left it at that, for all of a sudden we had turned into a maze of lanes so littered with filth and waste they seemed almost barricaded. I am ashamed to say I saw a naked child at play, of an age that wanted schooling and bodily concealment. Surrounded by boys and girls in rags, he did not seem to feel a thing amiss.
“Seven Dials,” Inspector Wilkie said. “Where the Devil ’imself comes for dinner.”
THE RAMSHACKLE BUILDINGS, all tilted and tipping, snuggled as close as poor folk in the winter. Their ancient gables sought to meet above us, the way the weary lean in search of a shoulder. Fair blocking the light of day they were, and sheltering fetid odors of every description. Boards defended the street-level windows and makeshift rooms grew out of the upper stories, precarious as a drunkard’s reformation. Beneath our wheels, the cobbles gave way to mud and planks and carcasses. The driver grew unsure of the wisdom of taking the rig any farther, so the inspector decided we might proceed on foot. There is trouble to understand this world, see. Twas the richest city on earth, encompassing souls in the millions, an achievement to dazzle Mr. Gibbon’s Romans. Yet, here we were in Penury Lane, not far from Starvation Alley.
Sad it was to see a ragged mother sitting dull-faced on her tenement stoop, where the bit of sun that sneaked down was just enough to let her pick the nits from her child’s hair. And the infant lacked the vigor to squirm and squawk. Hard the gathered women’s voices were, and no tone under a shout come from their throats. Cursing a neighbor or calling a wayward child, they could not part their lips without profanity. Irish the half of them sounded, although I heard the lilt of Wales gone sour and plentiful English cackles in high complaint.
“And doosunt she get herself all tarted up, the minute her Tommy’s gone cartin’? When that Tommy Boylan hears tell of her tricks, he’ll beat her like Cromwell’s drum. And she’ll have it coming, the slut.”
“Oi says to the old man, Oi says to ’is face, that Oim laving ’im out in ta gutter ta next toim ’e rolls back ’ere stinking.”
“She stole it, I saw ’er, I did.”
“Empty your shit-pot on my steps, will you . . .”
“Go on with you, Mabel. For I will not be told a single thing by the likes of you. I smelt the men all over her no sooner than she come in. And her always puttin’ on airs with her fancy collars . . .”
“‘Two and six, or I’ll ’ave you turned out,’ says ’e. Well, ’e mought as well ’ave begged a thousand pounds, the dirty Jew. And then don’t the filthy thing put ’is fingers—”
“‘Turn out the light,’ ’e tells ’er, for ’e don’t want ’er to see ’is shame. But she’s been done dab times enough, and she lights up a match the moment ’e’s bouncing and ready. And don’t ’e just ’ave a great sore on ’is lum, and painting ’imself as the innocent . . .”
Such were the gentlest tones we heard, and the stench of the place was as vile as its spirit. Airless and lightless, the Dials teemed with the wreckage of Adam and Eve. There is poor, I will tell you, when you do not find a single public house on a street—although I do not approve of them, in any case—but in their place front-room affairs, with trestle tables and gin swilled out of jars.
“Go lively,” a woman hissed to her sisters in poverty. “It’s the tallyman come.”
And there he was, indeed, alert as a scout on the cruel Northwest Frontier. Paging through his black book he was, hungry for overdue shillings and tardy pennies. The tallyman is fond when selling his wares, but fierce when wanting his payments.
The women disappeared, as if the fellow had plague and smallpox both.
Then we come onto a beggar, gathered against a wall in sightless squalor. Like boiled eggs his eyes appeared, where the ball of the yoke hints through the hardened white. His nose was ripe with sores and his lips were scabbed. We might have been in the worst lane of Lahore.
“You there,” Inspector Wilkie said in an unhappy voice, “move along now. Begging ain’t allowed, not even ’ere.”
The beggar smiled up a blackness and made no move to rise.
“Begging? When did anybody see Old Joey begging? Following my perfession, I am, and werry skilled at it, too.”
We paused. Although we did not come too close to the fellow. Oh, I am a sorry Christian. Our savior took men such as that to his breast. I call myself a Christian, but hesitate to touch him with my boot. And we content ourselves with feeling shame at our weakness, although our shame has never helped another.
“And what, pray tell, is this profession of yours?” Inspector Wilkie asked, not without a weary edge of doubt. The policeman’s lot is one of repetition, enlivened now and then by sordid matters. I fear it is a life that cripples faith.
The fellow raised his boiled eyes toward us. “I’m a heel-reader,” he said. “And the finest perfessional heel-reader in England, Scotland or Wales, if I do say so myself, your honor.”
Now, this was a new thing to me. Although I have heard pattering in plenty, and am not unfamiliar with the conny-man, I had no inkling of the art of “heel-reading.”
Twas clear Inspector Wilkie knew as little as I did. “’Ere, ’ere,” he said, “get along with your nonsense. I never ’eard of such a trade, I ’aven’t.”
The rotting face took on a dignified, even sniffy look. “Well, it’s a rare craft, I give you that, your honor. A high craft and rare perfession. If a gentleman ain’t born with the gift, it won’t be taught in a lifetime. But Old Joey was born blessed. Try me, your honor. Just try me.”
“Try you at what?” Wilkie asked.
“A penny to me, if I reads you right, a ha’penny’s yours, if I tells you wrong.”
Now, that seemed an unfair mathematics. “Look you,” I intervened. “Whatever it is you do, my good man, it makes no sense that you should gain a penny entire by your success, but only lose the half if you should fail.”
I have been a clerk in a counting house, see. And we Welsh know how many pence make a pound before we are out of the cradle.
“It’s the premium,” the fellow said. “For my perfessional services.”
“I’ll ’ear no more of your nonsense,” the inspector told him. “Take up your cane and move along now.”
“See?” the fellow said. “Knew two streets away you was a peeler. A man’s walk allus gives him away. Allus. But it don’t hardly make a proper demand upon my skills, a policeman’s walk.” He turned his crusted head in my direction, seeking to find my face with those dead eyes. “Your friend there, he’s a werry different story. A challenge for even the finest heel-reader, that one. What with his cane annoying my perfessional sensibilities and distracting me of my concentration.”
“You mean to say,” I asked him, “that you can tell a man’s profession by his walk?”
“What else do you think a heel-reader does, then? I can tell his perfession, and his character, too. I can tell you if he’s happy or sad, young or old, a bachelor or a prisoner in his home. And plenty more, besides.”
I fear I was taken in by his patter.
“All right, then,” I told him. “If you can tell me the half of that, you shall have yourself a penny.”
“Tuppence,” he replied. “For you’re a difficult case, your honor. Not like the peeler bloke you’re dragging after you. Watch him, I would, if I was you. For he goes about unsavory.”
“A penny,” I said, “and not a copper more.”
He shook his head. “See? I knew you wouldn’t have your pockets raised, your honor. And not only because you’re a Welshman. No, a man’s heels tells it all, and yours say that you’re careful of your purse. Werry careful, indeed.”
As all men should be. Waste is sin.
He lifted a claw to his scruffy chin, as if in deepest thought. He even lowered his eyelids, as a man will who can see.
“Many’s the year you spent soldiering,” the
fellow began again. “And sweating like a treadmill dog in a regiment of foot. But that’s the easy part, guv. Crippled in a battle or worse you were. Within the last year, or mayhaps in a year and six. Still not comfortable with that third leg, are you now, your honor? All wishing you could run, and raging as you can’t. And neither young nor old, but stump in the middle of your fourth tenner. Happy when home, for there’s a married settlement to your gait. Your heels would turn homeward this instant, if only they could go. But there’s something else, Lord, something else entire. Married the man may be, but he wasn’t allus. No, not allus, not by a mile out on the high road. Not in the eyes of the law, with his pretty Nellie or Jane. Oh, you were a werry fiend for all your passions, your honor, though allus tender of a lady’s feelings.” He grinned like a cavern at midnight. “And as for your humor and temper, well, it’s clear as you’re God’s own fool. Sometimes more the fool. But God’s own, when it matters.”
“’Ere, ’ere,” the inspector told him, “I won’t ’ave the good major insulted.”
The heel-reader turned his face toward the voice. “Insulted? I was giving him the goodness of his fortune. He’s Johnny Luck out of a million. Not like you, Bobby Peeler. For you’ll do dab twicet over before you’re done. You’ll fall down wicked, you mind me.”
I feared an unfortunate exchange between the two and hastened to drop a penny into the fellow’s palm. And then I dropped in another. Although I cannot say why.
“Now you’ve ’ad your way, ’aven’t you?” Wilkie asked the fellow. “Just don’t let me catch you begging, or you’ll find yourself in the workhouse. Reading ’eels, indeed.”
The fellow had closed his business with us and was slobbering over the pennies. I fear his symptoms were those of a dark disease of the sort men discover through vice. Such leads to madness. And madness will explain what science won’t. I had a taste of that in cold New York.
But as we began to step along, I stopped and turned back to the unfortunate fellow. “Excuse me, sir. Would you happen to know where a certain Mrs. Hepburn conducts her trade?”
The heel-reader grinned. “In trouble, is she?”
“A simple inquiry.”
His grin widened. “You’re practically on her doorstep, gents. Step left on Quality Lane, just along there. Back of the first close and up the stairs. But don’t believe a word she says, for she’s got liar’s heels if ever I heard a pair.”
As we stepped along, the inspector gave me a gentle reprimand. “I intended to arsk a constable, the first one we might come across, for ’er address. Can’t ’ave the likes of that one knowing our business, Major Jones.”
Well, he was right, and I was wrong. Twas only that I was anxious. Besides, I know enough of poverty to understand that our business would be known by all in the neighborhood before the inspector and I were back in our rig.
AS WE STEPPED FROM QUALITY LANE into the appointed close, we surprised a brown-haired girl squatting down in the archway. Or, better put, the young lass surprised us. For she was no more concerned with our presence than with a pair of sparrows. She finished her doings, rubbed herself dry with her skirts, and moved along. We placed our feet carefully, for others had used the passage for similar purposes. The summer’s heat awakened every scent, and flies feasted.
At the base of the first tilt of stairs, to the tune of a wailing child, we found a sign that read:
Mrs. Lucy Hepburn, Gentlewoman
Friend to the Temporarily Inconvenienced
Appraisals, Advances, Purchases
Confidentiality Guaranteed
And up we went, just as a golden-haired spark of a missy blazed out of a door and come down. Fair she was, in a flash sort of way, and gaily got up above the want around us. Her dress of lilac, inset with buttermilk satin, trailed on the steps despite her attempts to lift it—I glimpsed a pretty ankle, to my embarrassment, and raised my eyes as quickly as I could. She wore a summer hat of the palest green, with sufficient brim to mind her soft complexion. Trailing a gossamer shawl she was, as angels precede their wings, and its mint-green hue went handsome with the rest of her.
I stepped to the side, and Wilkie did the like.
Fury there was on the young lady’s mouth, and her cheeks shone red with rage. Such a tempest was upon her that I do not think she marked us at first, although we stood there plain enough to see. Eyes to scorch a saint she had. When they burned our way at last, she paused to drop a veil over her features. As she brushed by, I smelled perfume and womanness. Her skirts rustled against us with the sound of a leafy tree on a blowing day. All to the tune of that howling child below.
And she was gone. Lovely she was, though I prefer a dark-haired woman, for such have deeper souls, I am convinced. Lovely, and yet she failed to seem a lady.
Dark of hair, spirit fair; pale on top, to Hell they drop. It is a cruel rhyme, I know. And one I had not heard for many a year. Not since my youthful departure from Wales. Yet, now it leapt toward my tongue unbidden.
Just below, in a shut-up room, the child howled on as if in fear and torment.
The inspector looked up to where I stood, with his whiskers quilled in wonderment. “That one ain’t from the Dials,” he said. “Though end up ’ere she might.”
And we climbed on, with my cane digging splinters from the boards.
Mrs. Hepburn’s establishment was the queerest thing. Now, my nose has not been stuffed with violets from the cradle up, and I have seen pawn-brokers from Pottsville to Delhi. At least through their front windows. And a fellow comes to expect a certain clutter. The interior of such a business is marked by a greater mess than a swag-shop, and piled with objects of even lower value. It is a place of dented tin, of discolored brass and iron rusted through. But Mrs. Hepburn’s might have been a counting house, except for the absence of clerks. No single trinket lay on display, but all her goods were locked in chests and cabinets, with seaman’s trunks stacked one atop the other. Twas one long room with a window smudged to gray at the distant end, a corridor of fastened drawers that led to the light and the woman.
And the woman herself was a very sight to see.
Mrs. Hepburn was spectacular in her rotundity. Sitting behind a desk at her embroidery, she must have had a specially constructed chair beneath her—although I could not see a trace of its wood. Her girth dwarfed that of the bountiful Hilda Schutzengel, my Washington landlady. Indeed, Frau Schutzengel seemed a child of famine by compare. Broader than the window spread behind her Mrs. Hepburn was. She loomed nigh as big as the elephants we used to cart our sick and sore upon campaign when the bullock carts gave out, in punishing India.
A most remarkable span of a woman she was. And bald as a lie in church. With a tiny white cap of frills that did not cover one-half the crown of her head.
Even in that dirty-window light, her scalp gleamed like the brass on a grenadier.
I do not mean this unkindly.
When she saw us coming down that corridor of chests, Mrs. Hepburn dropped her needlework, squared her great shoulders and said, “I’m a law-abiding woman, and I’ll not be interfered with.”
Perhaps she thought my uniform a policeman’s garb—I needed to follow Mr. Adams’s advice as soon as practicable and get me something plainer—or it might be that she read Inspector Wilkie’s profession from his demeanor.
“Now, now, mum,” the inspector said as we closed toward her, “it’s only a matter of answering some questions.”
She seemed to swell and darken, a leviathan set to attack, with only a flimsy desk to keep her from us. She stank, too. Although her dress was gray and most demure.
“I’m a law-abiding woman, and I only do business with law-abiding people. I know the law, don’t think I don’t. You have no right to come breaking in upon a decent woman.”
We had not broken in.
Inspector Wilkie rose to the challenge. For he was a proper veteran of such matters.
“Act decent, now,” he told her, with a steel edge to his voice, “or I
’ll ’ave you up on suspicions of running a bawdy ’ouse.”
She looked at him in astonishment. Twas clear she had expected no such charge.
“I seen that young bit go down the stairs,” he said. “The one all in purple and green. That’s evidence enough.”
“Ha!” the pawn-mother said, regaining her old confidence. “I never seen that baggage before in my life.”
“The magistrate might take an interest in such claims, mum. I don’t. And while we was allaying all suspicions of immoral activities . . .” He gestured at the ranks of chests and cabinets. “ . . . we’d ’ave to inventory all what’s in these drawers ’ere.”
Oh, that struck home. I saw it.
“And,” the inspector continued, “I ain’t certain all of your law-abiding customers would be tripping over themselves to do business with you, mum, after they ’eard the police was taking an interest.”
Fit to bursting hot she was, for the inspector knew where to poke and prod and push. I do not mean that literally, of course.
I stepped up, for it seemed to me a time for mediation.
“Mrs. Hepburn,” I said double-quick, “no one intends to bother you, see. It is only that I have come on behalf of a friend. To redeem a pledge that he no longer can. I am no policeman. And the inspector has only been my good companion. And there is true.”
“What do you want, Tiny?” she said, in a voice that would not have disgraced a barracks bully.
“A certain Billy Bounds—known to you as William Bounds, perhaps—”
“I don’t know any names,” she said. “I don’t ask names and my clients won’t be bothered. I give them their tickets and off they go.”
“Well, then . . . a certain gentleman, let us say, visited you yesterday, with a watch. Twas a simple brass affair, viewed outwardly. But, inside the cover, an enamel depicts foreign parts.” I took a little breath and added, “It is a scene from India, perhaps.”
“Ha,” she said again.