Sweet Thames

by Matthew Kneale

  I regarded his resting place. recalling the purpose of my visit; I had hoped to conjure up advice, wisdom he might have offered. Staring at the stone, I tried to form in my mind a detailed picture of the man – not so easy as one might suppose – and achieved an impression of quick eyes, half-moon spectacles, gnomishly domed head, and two tangles of hair above his ears, rising quivering into space.

  As soon as the picture became properly recognizable, however, I realized he would have been the last person from whom I might have gained advice. Had I not tried once, just a few weeks after the wedding – indeed, only a few short weeks before he passed away – when I was still impatiently eager to find an answer. I had visited my father at his shop in Clerkenwell, just as he was closing, and he had given me tea.

  ‘Isobella’s well, yes,’ I told him. It was such a thorny, awkward business. ‘The first weeks of a marriage, I dare say, are not the easiest of times. So much that is new. Especially for the wife.’

  My father nodded, but as if he had hardly heard my words. ‘Such a wonderful creature, Isobella.’

  I tried again. ‘There have been worries between us.’

  For some moments he left the phrase hanging thus, then, with a faint shrug, plucked up a piece of watch to study. ‘Mere nothings, I dare say.’

  ‘Well… A difficulty has arisen…’ I wondered how I could possibly broach the subject. Such matters can be so much more difficult to explain to persons close to one – especially family – than strangers, ‘arose in fact on our wedding night.’

  He frowned. ‘What are you trying to say?’ He shook the watch piece in the air, almost angrily. ‘You’ll be quite fine, d’you hear. I won’t hear such fussing.’ He peered closely at the desk top, plucking up a minute spring. ‘When I saw you both walking into the church, I knew you were right together. Everyone knew.’

  It was the first time I fully grasped the strength of his determination to see my life as somehow complete, firmly on the path to happy conclusion. As if any life can be so. I had not the heart to pursue the matter further.

  A relief it was, too, that I had not. How could I have lived with myself if, during what were to be my father’s last weeks in this world, I had selfishly clouded his thoughts with my own troubles.

  Through the mist I could see the greyed outline of a man – the sexton – at the poorer end of the graveyard, hammering at the ground with a spade, causing a sound harder than that of earth; a ‘chock, chock, chock’, faintly numbed by the fog.

  I strode out of the churchyard, observing that the trails of smoky vapour seemed to be lifting slightly, filling the street with strange light; a luminous dusk. With a clattering of hooves an omnibus hove into view and I clambered aboard, taking my place on the open upper deck – damp in the mist – squeezed beside two keen young types, legal clerks by the look of them. Sitting back, with no paper to occupy me, I found myself overhearing their chatter.

  ‘The Whitechapel Poorhouse, it was,’ said one, relishing his own account. ‘Seven gone already, and ten more sick. One came down with it after supper, so I heard, and was topped by breakfast-time.’

  ‘And there’s no mistaking what it is?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ The first was indignant at this slight on the drama of his news. He lowered his voice a shade. ‘Vomiting fit to burst, they were. Turned near blue, too. And when they opened up the veins, the blood was thick as molasses. Almost black it was.’

  The other stared down at the floorboards of the vehicle, evidently affected by what he had heard. ‘Seven gone, you say.’

  The first sat back, basking a little in the power of his news. ‘And that’s just the start of it. Mark my words.’

  So it had begun at last. Strange to say, I felt almost relieved by the discovery, after the long weeks of waiting. If it were to come, let it come now.

  Chapter Five

  THE CHOLERA: A CHINESE CURE

  From Father Joseph Rizzolati, Vicar Apostolic,

  Hou Kouang, South China.

  Dear sir,

  I have had Cholera morbus and should have been a dead man in four-and-twenty hours had not the malady been taken in time to a good physician. The ordinary and most convenient treatment is this: the tongue of the patient is punctured in innumerable places with the point of a table knife or crystal blade, so as to provide an abundant effusion of blood. Then, whilst some of the attendants stretch the principal nerves by main force, others give the patient severe blows to the chest, the back, the thighs and the hips, until torrents of blood gush forth. When the crisis is over the patient recovers, at the cost of numerous scars and bruises and skin as black as a negro’s. Thus...

  What an assemblage of grand persons to behold, gathered in all their fineries beneath the roof of none other than Joshua Jeavons; waited upon by his servants, seated at his dining-table – indeed tightly wedged about it, as the room was barely large enough to hold them all – and eating the food he had provided. I was all but dazzled by the honour, and the opportunity.

  I was also concerned whether my display of hospitality was sufficient to impress these guests – having never seen their homes I had little idea of the splendours to which they might be accustomed – or whether they secretly despised what they saw.

  The table at least was no cause for worry. At the last moment Albert Farre had kindly suggested I borrow the dinner service of his aunt – an offer that explained the closeness with which his eyes followed the other guests’ hands as they plucked and replaced the delicately thin-stemmed wine glasses – this last proving to be a splendid collection, with plates depicting rural scenes in subtle blues, as well as glittering silver cutlery and candlesticks, and a giant tureen so polished that it seemed to illuminate the room.

  The smallness of the building, however, was troubling to me; in particular the dining-room was so cramped we might have been taking dinner in a Royal Navy frigate’s Ward Room rather than in a modern London household. I had not failed to observe the way Edwin Sleak-Cunningham, when he arrived, had glanced about him dubiously, casting looks towards his wife, and then – greetings barely done with – lamenting how he feared he would be unable to stay for the whole evening.

  ‘What with the Cholera started up, we’ve quite a crisis brewing at the Committee, and I promised I’d be in at some lunatic hour tomorrow, almost before the birds are singing.’

  An annoyance indeed, when the whole event had been planned to entice the fellow.

  Harold Sweet, too, seemed disappointed, regarding me with brusqueness, as if I had in some way let him down, while his wife – a noisome and discontented woman with an accent straining to impersonate the sound of elegant wealth – expressed fierce interest at the discovery that we had been living there for as long as ten months. ‘So clever of you to find the space enough to put everything.’

  I wondered if they had assumed Moynihan had housed us in some urban mansion; if they had been looking forward to an evening of fashionable entertainment. Perhaps they had even hoped my father-in-law would be present, and they might talk with that great man of engineering. As if it would have been fitting to invite the very one who had turned down my scheme.

  Only Hove and Albert Farre seemed to regard the proceedings without criticism. Hove was too preoccupied hanging on to Sleak-Cunningham’s coat tails, that he might not miss one single of his superior’s words, his wife – a dumpy, crushed creature – hurrying after him. As for Farre, being a close acquaintance of mine he had something of the status of an honorary member of the household.

  The mood improved when the introductions in the parlour were done with, and all wedged themselves into their places around the fine gaudiness of the dining-table. The first course, though only soup – a concoction of red cabbage and apple of my wife’s – seemed to be a success, and my thoughts ran ahead to the other dishes prepared, trying to assess likely responses to each.

  More pressingly urgent to consider was the question of the timing of my lecture. With Sleak-Cunningham threatening to le
ave early I could not, I realized, delay until the ladies departed to the parlour for their gossip. A pity. It meant I had no means of removing them from my lecture on drains and effluent; hardly proper subjects for female ears. But the alternative was to make no speech – hurling away the whole purpose of the evening – and that was something I was not willing to consider.

  I would detail my scheme after the main course, I decided, when all were still firmly seated about the table; if necessary well delaying the dessert. The grandeur of vision of my plan would surely prove captivating enough for Sleak-Cunningham to forget his thoughts of an early departure. He would want to hear more.

  The servant we had taken on for the evening – a slight girl by the name of Jenny, who charged little but had troublingly uneven teeth – arrived to collect the soup bowls. We should have hired several such persons, as befitted such an occasion, but what with the great expense of the food and wine it was more than I could afford. Her ungainly leanings over guests brought distraction from the proceedings, and, perceiving this was a useful chance to slip away from the dining-table, I rose to my feet. Edging my way behind the guests, my eye caught for a moment my wife’s glance, causing her to look away.

  Matters had been more than awkward with the two of us no longer on speaking terms. Of course it could have been worse still; Isobella might have refused to assist with the event, might not have attended, or acted coldly and without welcome to the guests (in the event she had been distracted, but not without a withdrawn hospitality). Still I found it hard not to feel a resentment towards her. What of her dogged failure to apologize, her sulky behaviour, as if it had been I who was to blame? Also there was the humiliation of having to direct every remark through the malicious medium of Miss Symes – now posted in the kitchen – who showed a disagreeable delight at her position of new importance, even commenting on the messages I gave her, with surly nods, or disapproving grunts, that always implied clear partiality in favour of my wife.

  The soup bowls had been cleared by the time I returned, endeavouring, as I negotiated the passage back to my seat, to hold the scrolls and maps of my drainage scheme high in the air, that they would not scrape against the heads of guests I passed behind.

  ‘What d’you have there, Joshua?’ called out Farre. ‘Some revolutionary petition to Parliament?’

  ‘You’ll see soon enough,’ I answered mildly, though his remark annoyed me for its poor taste. There was little room to place the bulky documents – on the floor they would be vulnerable to the faint grime of soot drifted from the fireplace – and I chose in the end to balance them, somewhat precariously, on the mantelpiece, beside a large china dog with tears in its eyes, that had been a wedding present.

  ‘But you want to interfere with the whole balance of the economy.’ Though Sweet uttered the words quietly enough, his clever eyes sparkled ominously.

  ‘You entirely miss the point.’ Sleak-Cunningham was warm of voice, quite unlike his usual self. I had placed them at opposite ends of the table, but they appeared to have manufactured themselves a noisy disagreement even at such a distance. ‘Look no further than the flushing of the sewers we’re now undertaking. Even aside from the vital benefits against the Cholera, the savings are remarkable. Effluent removed at sixpence per cubic yard. A mere fraction of the price required to be rid of it by cart.’

  Sweet regarded him darkly, as if his words had been somehow slanderous against himself. ‘Savings, you say? To whose profit? You just discharge the substances away, robbing the nightsoil men of their honest livelihood. It’s against all the logic of economics. Nobody benefits, except perhaps some parasitical committee.’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ I interposed, concerned at the way the dispute was speeding towards personal rancour. The sooner I brought amongst them the unifying device of my drain plan, the better. I glanced impatiently towards the door, wondering what might be delaying the arrival of Jenny. She should have brought us several dishes by now, including the game pie, the potatoes with parsley, and the pork with orange. The huge roast fish was to come later. ‘Don’t grow so serious that you’ll spoil your appetites.’

  The two combatants were too well embarked on their quarrel to be so easily distracted; indeed they showed little sign of having heard me at all. Sleak-Cunningham waved a bony finger at his opponent, directing towards him the same cold stare I had seen him hurl at the slum landlord at the session of the Committee for Sewers. ‘You, I suppose, would have no committees. You’d have them done away with, and the fate of our cities left solely in the care of…’ He jabbed his finger towards the other’s eyes. ‘... Of blind entrepreneurs, who, if they see no glint of profit before them, would happily leave our metropolis to turn to a mere swamp of defecation.’

  Such words caused me to glance towards the ladies. Mrs Sweet and Mrs Sleak-Cunningham, however, were hardly listening. Spurred on by loyalty to their spouses, they had embarked upon a separate fracas of their own, hardly less fierce, concerning the merits of a leading hat and bonnet merchant. Only Hove and his wife, Isobella and Farre were unembroiled in the spreading war.

  What could Jenny be doing with her time? Her arrival with the meat dish – now well overdue – would likely mute the dispute, or at least smother it of vilificatory remarks, unsayable in front of a servant.

  ‘When the need is there,’ Sweet retorted, ‘a market will spring up. D’you really think the great banks of the City would sit back and let their premises be engulfed in effluent? Of course not. They’d pay well to prevent such a thing happening and, under a system of open competition, good men will vie with one another to do it cheapest. Better, by far, have the fate of the nation in the care of free men of enterprise…’ he regarded the other accusingly, ‘than in the hands of mere committee men, holding back others to their own stagnant pace of life.’

  ‘I would have you know…’

  I did not take in Sleak-Cunningham’s reply, as my attention was captured by the door opening, and Jenny at last stepping into sight. Her arrival, though amply welcome, was also puzzling. Her arms hung by her sides. Why, I wondered, was she not carrying the meat?

  She did not cast so much as a look towards the heated disputants as she squeezed behind their chairs, but hurried towards my own place. ‘Mr Jeavons, somu’t’s up.’

  ‘Whatever is it?’

  ‘Best you come see yourself.’

  The arguers seemed hardly to notice my progress from the table. Something up? In my mind’s eye I saw Katie knocking at the door, requesting to speak to me on a matter of urgency; her look charged with silent purpose, brimming with invented tales of injury. I saw her being led to the parlour, where she sat, waiting her moment.

  It was not, however, to the parlour that Jenny led the way, but to the kitchen. Nor was there any Katie to be seen. Instead, sprawled upon the floor, surrounded by vilesomely reeking ejections – as I walked in she vomited up a little more, then groaned – was the hulking form of Miss Symes.

  So there it was. So sudden, so unexpected. Thus I regarded, with black wonderment, this premature arrival of the great foe, come to my very kitchen. Joshua Jeavons, head spinning with drains, with lectures to give, with important figures to persuade, staring at the stricken figure of a servant woman who never inspired in him anything but dislike, but for whom, now, he cannot but feel reluctant pity. Joshua Jeavons juggling urgencies, furious at the timing of the affliction, swearing to himself in a low murmur.

  I stooped down to feel her pulse, which was still strong. ‘How d’you feel?’

  She glared up at me, face glowing with perspiration. ‘What d’you think?’ She surprised me by the powered malevolence of her words. Then, with a loud grunt, she heaved again, this time expelling only a belch.

  ‘How long has she been like this?’ I asked Jenny.

  ‘Not so long, I dare say.’ The girl stood awkwardly, nervous of the crisis about her, leaning forward on her toes. ‘I would’ve told you sooner, Mr Jeavons, but I didn’t rightly know if to call you o
ut of your dinner and that.’

  I glanced at the sufferer. ‘We’d best get her up from there.’ As I pondered how I might put these words into action – by no means a simple prospect considering the woman’s weight – my attention was, however, distracted by the sound of footsteps, then the appearance in the kitchen doorway of the bird-like form of Albert Farre. Miss Symes’s groaning must have been heard from the dining-room, the din of the governmentalist dispute had died away. He glanced about the room.

  ‘My God.’

  ‘All’s well in hand,’ I told him, a little impatiently; I had had some vague notion – perhaps foolish – of keeping knowledge of the crisis from the other diners, at least for the moment. ‘The matter’s being well attended to.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ accused the patient with energy. ‘He’s done nothing but ask if I felt well. Imagine.’

  Before I had a chance to reply, more footsteps were audible drawing near, and I watched unhappily as Sleak-Cunningham’s pale face peered into the room. ‘I heard a shout and thought…’ He looked on in grim fascination. ‘It can’t be, surely…?’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Sweet, close behind him, though more business-like, was not unaffected by what he saw. ‘The first case in the parish.’

  ‘That we know of,’ corrected Sleak-Cunningham, unforgetful of their recent rivalry.

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ I told them, struck by an unsettling sensation of events sliding even further from my control. I gestured to Farre. ‘Can you give me a hand getting her up to her room?’