Murdoch sensed rather than heard somebody beside the bed. He opened his eyes, saw a silhouette of a man bending toward him. He had something in his raised hand. With one swift movement, Murdoch rolled onto the floor, dropping into a crouch, and straining to see in the dark. The figure backed away and he heard a familiar giggle.
“Alf, what the hell are you doing?”
Murdoch tried to keep his voice low but the youth had startled him. Anger followed.
“You said you was hungry,” whispered Alf. “So I was going to surprise you and put a piece of bread under your pillow.” He showed a crust to Murdoch. “I smuggled it in my boot, but I wrapped it up good in some newspaper.”
Murdoch got to his feet. “That was kind of you, but I’ll wait until morning. Why don’t you go back to bed.”
“Yes, why don’t we?” growled a voice from the bed across from them. Murdoch heard the scratch of a match and a light flared, illuminating Bettles’s face. There was a sconce directly behind his bed and he reached up and lit the candle.
“What the hell’s going on?” Kearney stirred in the adjacent bed and also sat up.
“Little Alf was having a tryst with his sweetheart.”
“He was giving me a piece of bread,” said Murdoch.
“My, touchy, aren’t we?” Bettles turned to Kearney. “What do you think, Sean? Have we uncovered a couple of nancy boys?”
Kearney swung his legs over the side of his bed. Bettles did the same. The simpleton knew exactly what was in store for him. He dropped to the floor and scuttled underneath his bed, whimpering like a frightened dog.
Somehow, Bettles had managed to smuggle one of the bathhouse towels into the dormitory. He’d covered his pillow with it and now he pulled the towel away and began to twist it into a rope.
“Perhaps these two need a bit of a lesson, Sean.”
Kearney had a towel as well and he picked it up and started to twist it. “I’d say that’s a good and necessary thing to do.”
Both men stepped across the aisle, blocking any chance Murdoch might have to get away from the wall. He was trapped between Traveller’s bed and his own, both of which had heavy metal frames bolted to the floor. He had nothing to defend himself with except the thin pillow and he grabbed this and held it in front of himself.
Bettles grinned. “Fat lot of good that’s going to do you, Mr. Nancy Boy. This is the casual ward, or did you forget? I’ll split that thing in two with one swing.”
The moment hung in the balance, Murdoch on his feet, ready for the attack, the two men opposite him, just as ready to move in on him. Nobody had raised his voice and the rest of the ward appeared to be fast asleep.
As far as Murdoch knew, that included Traveller, but suddenly, with as quick and easy a movement as Kearney had made, he sat up and pushed away the blanket.
“Put it down, Bettles, that’d be despoiling of public property and we can’t have that, can we?” His bare feet dangled over the edge of his bed. He was no longer a young man, but at that moment, nobody would have doubted his ability to make good his command. In his hand, a blade gleamed dully in the light of the candle. It was a razor.
Bettles grimaced. “I ain’t got no truck with you, Traveller. This fellow’s a Miss Molly.”
“No he ain’t.”
“Alfie here was a going to climb in bed with him.”
“No he weren’t. The lad’s as simple as a puppy dog. Now, I suggest we all calm down and get some kip. Before you know it, we’ll be called.”
Traveller got off the bed with such speed that both Bettles and Kearney jumped back.
“Suit yourself,” said Bettles. “He’s in the bed next to you, not me.”
If Traveller hadn’t been blocking the way, Murdoch would have swung a punch at the man and hang the consequences, but neither Bettles nor Kearney were within reach. They slowly eased back to their own beds, allowing the towels to untwist.
“Maybe we’d better leave the candle lit,” said Traveller. “Just so we know there won’t be anybody wandering around where they shouldn’t. And I mean anybody.”
Alf giggled and stuck his head out from under the bed.
“You can come out now,” said Traveller. “Get into your own bed and don’t stir till sun-up even if the whole ward is starving. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mr. Traveller.”
Alf scrambled into bed and Traveller sat back down.
“Thank you,” said Murdoch.
Murdoch looked over at Bettles and Kearney, who were stretched out on their beds, as ready and alert as wolves. Had they guessed he was a police officer and used Alf as an excuse to trounce him?
“Don’t worry about them two,” said Traveller. “I’ve had all the sleep I want. You can get some more kip and I’ll make sure our friends don’t move.”
“No, I’ll do it. I’m wide awake myself. What have we got, another two hours until the call? I’ll stay up.”
It was true what he said. He was hardly going to fall asleep when the man in the next bed possessed a vicious-looking open razor that he clearly would have no hesitation in using and two husky thugs across from him wanted to see blood.
Traveller shrugged. “Suit yourself. Wake me if you need to. Don’t even let those two take a piss.” He lay down and pulled his blanket up around his shoulders. “Don’t let that fool boy bring me his mucky sandwich either.”
Chapter Thirty-One
THOMAS HICKS COULD SEE HIS WIFE, Emily, sitting across from him at the table. He felt terribly ill and knew he’d vomited down his nightshirt. He couldn’t catch his breath no matter how hard he tried and his head was throbbing so violently he was afraid his skin would split apart at the temples. He tried to cry out for help, but Emily didn’t seem to notice. She was drinking her tea in that dainty precise way he remembered so well. He knew that his bladder and bowels had voided and he was ashamed even in front of her. He wanted to move, to stand up and get away from the pain in his chest, but he couldn’t.
She put down her cup and saucer and folded her hands neatly in her lap.
“Have you come for me at last, dearest?” he managed to ask her.
“Yes, Tom, I have, “she said and her smile was so sweet, his eyes filled with tears and he wept.
“Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.” Murdoch had studied Macbeth in the fifth standard. Brother Julian, who was stupefyingly dull, had taught the class and he and his pupils had never progressed beyond the thorny hedge of the unfamiliar language. Brother Julian seemed to find Shakespeare as foreign and uninteresting as they did. However, just once, the play had come alive when quite out of the blue, the Brother said that Shakespeare had understood, even in that long ago time, how disease of the soul can affect sleep. “Macbeth hath murdered sleep,” proclaimed the Brother, his voice unusually resonant. “His guilty conscience prevents him from sleeping.”
Murdoch had suffered from insomnia as long as he could remember, and Brother Julian’s remark had thrown him into a dark period as he tried to discover if his own soul was indeed sick and, if so, how he could heal it. Fortunately for him, there was a priest, Father Malone, who was attached to the school, had listened to the young boy’s painful confessions, reassured him, and absolved him. But the insomnia never went away and many a night Murdoch found himself lying awake, waiting for dawn to come when he could fall asleep.
He thumped at the scrawny pillow as he tried to get more comfortable. Staying awake this time was a choice, which made matters a little easier, but he still felt the familiar twist of utter loneliness in his guts. He was sharing a room with about sixty other men, but he felt alone, the perpetual outsider. What would they do if they knew he was spying on them? Did he have copper written all over him? He hoped not. He thought his own cover story was plausible and they’d seemed to accept it. He could just make out the shape of Bettles and Kearney across the aisle. They were both lying still and their sleep seemed genuine. Traveller was on his back, snoring softly, his breathing deep. Mu
rdoch owed him a debt now for his intervention. From the beginning, he had been most friendly. Was he like that with every newcomer or was he currying favour? Did he suspect the truth?
Murdoch could hear Alf, in the next bed, snuffling and whimpering periodically in his sleep like the puppy Traveller had called him. Murdoch let his thoughts drift. He wondered if anybody was awake at home. Katie might be tending to the twins. Perhaps Amy had got up again and was helping her. She was so good with the babies. Murdoch grinned to himself. She wasn’t like any teacher he’d known. The nuns at his school were strict, but in the early years he was a studious and obedient boy and he’d liked school and done well. It was later, when his Aunt Weldon had sent him to study with the Christian Brothers, that school descended into unremitting misery. Murdoch chafed at the strict and unjust rules, the capricious dishing out of punishments, but above all, he loathed what he perceived as the superstitious ignorance of the Brothers. Most of his teachers seemed poorly educated, hardly one step ahead of their pupils. He began to challenge them, to speak back, and almost every day he was caned for some infraction, supposed rudeness, or simply because that day the Brother felt like beating his pupils. The worst, the man who became his hated enemy was Brother Edmund, a big-boned, hard-faced man who before he’d found his calling had worked for a horse breeder somewhere in Alberta. This Brother boasted that there wasn’t a horse or a boy he couldn’t break. Murdoch had desperately wanted to prove him wrong, but the contest was impossibly unequal. By the end of his second year, Murdoch knew he had only three choices. He could leave the school without an education of any kind, endure a brutality usually reserved for hardened criminals, or stop questioning everything, learn whatever he could and go silent. He chose the last option and Brother Edmund crowed.
Murdoch’s jaw had clenched at the memory. Unlike Traveller, his body no longer carried the scars of the floggings the Christian brother had administered with such undisguised delight, but his soul did. He’d heard a few years ago that Brother Edmund had died from diphtheria and Murdoch’s first reaction was one of regret that he’d never gone back to the school, found the man and given him the thrashing he deserved.
Amy Slade’s pupils would never carry that kind of memory, quite the opposite.
He hadn’t told her what he was up to, but Charlie would have explained why he wasn’t at home. She’d be eager to hear his tales when he returned, he knew that. He was lucky to have her and Seymour, and he’d come to rely on their company the way he had on the Kitchens. As long as he’d been living with the Kitchens, he’d had some feeling of family and he dearly hoped Arthur would recover. Murdoch would like to have his own family, he knew that. He and Liza had talked about having children, had even picked out names.
Murdoch sighed. The possibility of finding a wife seemed remote now that Enid had left him. Maybe he should go back to professor Otranto’s dance studio. There were some very attractive young women there, but he didn’t feel comfortable dancing with them, treading on toes, his hands sweating on the silk of their dresses. He was out of practice and he’d be sure to make a bollocks of the waltzes.
If he were at home in his own room, he would have got out of bed at this point, pushed back the rug, and done a few reverse turns. If he did that now, they’d probably send for the doctor and he’d get committed.
Thank goodness Dr. Ogden had been drawn away by Parker. Clever Ed. All that trickery paying off.
Somebody at the far end of the ward got up to use the commode. He seemed to be ill and groaned and broke wind alternately until he voided. Murdoch hoped he wouldn’t forget to empty that bucket.
The nightshirt was itchy. He scratched his chest remembering the bedbug bites on the men going into the bath. Somewhere in the city, people were sleeping in soft feather beds with linen sheets that were washed regularly. They were warm and fed. Of all the men in this room, how many deserved this wretched fate? Less than one-third in his estimation. The others, through the misfortune of injury or ill health, were sentenced like convicts to a wandering life with no home or family and little prospect of getting out of the mire. The more time a man spent in the casual wards, the less chance he stood of getting back to a respectable job. Employers were suspicious of the wayfarers and as he’d already seen, they were the first to be suspected of a crime if one occurred in their vicinity.
Was it one of these men who had attacked Charles Howard so viciously? In his mind, both Bettles and Kearney were capable of it. Bettles had shrugged off his bruised face and the minister didn’t seem to have marks on his knuckles, but he could have struck out with his elbow, an object in his hand, anything really. Which of them had been wearing Howard’s boots before Parker took them?
Murdoch sighed and pulled the threadbare cover up to his chin. He’d better start acting more like a detective and less like a tramp if he was going to find out.
Josie groaned and tried to sit up, but the room swam nauseatingly in front of her eyes and she dropped back to the pillow. She reached over to touch her mother, who was lying beside her.
“Ma, can you get me some water, I’m desperate thirsty.” She thought she’d said this, but she wasn’t sure. Her head ached and she felt as if the air was so heavy it sat on her chest making it hard to breathe.
“Ma,” she said again and she turned her head. A cold, clammy fog from the lake had crept into the room and she was finding it hard to see anything clearly. She so wanted to go back to sleep, but she knew she shouldn’t. Through the deepening mist, she tried to see her mother’s face.
“Ma, get up. It must be late.”
Esther stirred and Josie saw her struggle to get out of the bed. She knew she was trying to get to Wilf.
She always puts him first, she thought irritably. Can’t she see I’m dying?
Chapter Thirty-Two
THE DOOR OPENED and the old nabber, Hastings, came in carrying a handbell, which he began to shake vigorously.
“Wake up, men. Wake up. It’s six o’clock. Wake up.”
The men stirred in a movement that rolled down the ward like a feather bed being shaken by an energetic servant. Some of the men sat up quickly, others groaned and rolled over, but nobody stayed asleep. Traveller sat up and got out of bed at once.
“Nothing else happened, I presume?” he asked Murdoch.
“We were quiet as the grave. I’d better pinch myself to know I’m alive.”
Traveller chuckled. “Well my stomach and my bladder are telling me I’m still quick. Do you have to use the bucket?”
“I do indeed.”
“Use it now then. The last one has to empty it.”
Murdoch took his advice.
He hardly finished when he felt a tug on his sleeve. Alf was standing behind him.
“Can I come in with you?” he asked and nodded nervously in the direction of Bettles and Kearney.
“Of course.”
“Line up in front of the door,” the nabber called.
“Come on,” said Traveller. “It’s best to be at the front of the line for the dining room.”
Murdoch and Alf followed him, shoving through the other men, and got into the first group already waiting at the door.
“You five men at the back, you bring down the buckets,” called the nabber before leading the way down to the long hall where they’d left their clothes. Murdoch thought they must have looked a proper sight, sixty men of all ages and sizes, shuffling along in their nightshirts and boots. It was cold in the corridor and he was glad of the warmth of the bodies pressing around him. Alf hung on to Murdoch’s shirt as if he were a child with his father. They halted at the door past the bathhouse.
The nabber hopped on a small stool by the door and rang his bell.
“Find your clothes and get dressed quickly. Put your nightshirts in the bin provided. Don’t forget to hand over your tabs. When you’re ready, wait in front of the doors at the far end.”
“Are we in the army?” Murdoch asked Traveller.
“More like jail
,” he replied.
As they stepped over the threshold, an overpowering rotten egg smell hit Murdoch’s nose.
“Phew, what’s that?”
“It’s the burning sulphur they use to fumigate our clothes. Stinks, doesn’t it?”
Hunger and cold made all of them move speedily and within ten minutes they had lined up facing the opposite doors. Murdoch hadn’t enjoyed getting into his dirty clothes but at least he was warmer. All the men were dressed for the outdoors, clothes piled on top of clothes when they had them. Murdoch was struck by the hats the men were wearing: battered fedoras, plaid caps, fur forage hats, anything to keep their heads warm.
The nabber shoved his way through the crowd and jumped onto yet another stool.
“For those of you who haven’t been here before, I will tell you that you will be served two slices of bread and one bowl of skilly. One mug of tea. Don’t moan and complain because you won’t get any more than that. It’s not our fault. That’s all the council allows us.”
“I could eat that four times over,” Murdoch whispered to Traveller.
“Not here you won’t unless somebody’s sick and can’t eat, and who gets his food is a matter of luck.”
Hastings opened the door, leading the way back upstairs.
Because of Traveller, their little trio was among the first to spill into the room. The dining room was long and narrow with several wooden tables and benches in rows down the centre. Traveller took them directly to a long serving table where four men, old and withered, were standing ready to serve them. Two of them dished out the oatmeal, the third man had a bin of slices of unbuttered bread, and the fourth was filling mugs from an urn with a liquid so pale it was hard to believe it was tea.
Murdoch collected his bowl of skilly, his two slices of bread, and a mug of tea. Following Traveller, he went to one of the tables and slid into the bench, Alf close beside him.
His stomach was growling painfully and he spooned up some of the oatmeal as fast as he could. It was watery, lukewarm, and tasteless.
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