The Great Stink

by Clare Clark

  The boy scowled. Dropping the dog without warning on to the floor, he delivered a fierce kick to its ribs. It slunk beneath the settle. Tom fancied he felt Lady flinch.

  'If I ever gets my fists on that devil what sold 'im me,' he growled. 'Told me it was a ratter born and bred, 'e did, like to bring 'em down a score a minute. That useless beast?' He spat scornfully on to the sawdust floor and wiped his hands on his tight breeches. 'Couldn'tVe deaded a singleton, not if the ugly little bastard'd lain there and offered it its throat for Sunday dinner.'

  Tom shook his head.

  'I's only glad there wasn't no one much mattered up there to see it,' the coster-boy went on, more cheerfully. "E'd've given me all sorts, that Cap'n gent, what with Brassey gettin' me to talk the bleedin' runt up something proper last time I seed 'im.'

  Tom stroked Lady's head thoughtfully.

  'Captain's not in, then?'

  'Nah. Big to-do up Kentish-town way tonight. Prime chaff, they says. Reckon 'e fancied 'is chances over there.' The lad grinned broadly, revealing a wide gap in the space ordinarily given over to a pair of front teeth. 'Brassey's got a face on 'im sourer 'n week-old milk.'

  He wasn't coming. Tom's hand moved up and over Lady's head, the veins twisted around the bumps of his knuckles like they was lengths of twine securing his fingers to his palm, and even as he watched it move it felt like it belonged to someone else.

  The Captain's not coming.

  He couldn't make sense of it. For nearly a month he had strained towards this moment and against it, counting off the days on his fingers and in the pit of his stomach, knowing all the while that on this day everything would turn. The last few weeks he'd all but forgotten his fear that the Captain would betray him. Too much water under the bridge, Tom'd reckoned. Too much he knew. When he'd handed over the pocketbook and told the Captain there'd been no papers on the dead man, Tom'd known the Captain didn't much believe him. There wasn't nothing the Captain could do, of course, Tom being so insistent, but from that moment Tom'd figured himself safe. And then, all of a sudden, without so much as a sniff of warning, the fight was off. Tonight was to be a night like any other. No worse than most, better than some, a night you'd be pushed to remember a week from now. Despite the wager, despite all that had passed between them, the Captain had not come. There would be no fight. There would be no one hundred guineas.

  The chill ran like a streak of sweat down his spine. No one hundred guineas. For all he'd not yet won it that money'd squatted for weeks on the edge of things, spilling from its sack like golden corn. And now the Captain wasn't coming. Tom shivered, he couldn't help himself. The Captain had done him over and, like a cotton-headed dollymop, Tom was left with his drawers around his ankles and his ears ringing with a hundred empty promises. The rage and disappointment curdled the spit in Tom's mouth and stiffened his fingers so that Lady shook her head to loosen his grasp. The Captain had needed a man of Tom's kind, someone to entertain his friends, to dispose of his friend's awkward doings. And Long Arm Tom with his terrier's nose for a dodge, who had reckoned himself so wide awake he'd thought there wasn't a trickster in all of the metropolis sharp enough to catch him out, Long Arm Tom had been hooked and landed like a fish, and all the time he was being reeled in he'd not thought to put up the slightest twist of a fight. He'd been a fool, a blind greedy old fool, and when he lay himself down in his crib tonight he'd have what he deserved. Nothing. Nothing but Lady.

  'Fine collar your dog's got itself,' the lad observed admiringly, fingering his own brightly-patterned neckerchief. 'Champion, is she? Worth a flatch?'

  Tom said nothing. Instead he pushed Lady to the floor and stood up. His legs were old and very tired and they shook a little as he straightened. The coster-boy aimed another less enthusiastic kick in the direction of his own dog and crossed the parlour towards the bar.

  'She'd've been a champion,' Tom muttered but the coster-lad did not turn around. 'A true champion. Given half a chance.'

  When Lady wriggled her nose into the palm of his hand Tom snatched his hand away, making a show of wiping it off on his coat. The dog stared at him with her pink eyes and then slunk away, her belly almost grazing the floor. Tom wanted to kick her and he wanted to take her in his arms, and he wanted both powerfully and at the same time. His chest hurt.

  The outside door burst open. Into the parlour tumbled several gentlemen, wrapped in thick greatcoats and heavy scarves and bringing with them a burst of frozen air and the bosky bog stink of whisky.

  'Brandy!' ordered one of them, thrashing at the air with a silver-topped cane. 'Let there be brandy!'

  'But surely there's a mistake,' another one protested, his words misshapen by drink. 'Nothing doing here. Look you, there's no one here but an old man.'

  'Why, Tom,' drawled a familiar voice and the Captain doffed his hat with a flourish, tipping it to Lady. 'Good evening to you.'

  The Captain's face was flushed, the spots of red in his cheeks as bright as a trollop's. His lips were red too and glossy and the tip of his tongue flickered out to lick at them, over and over. The pores stood out black on his skin and the dark centres of his eyes were so unnaturally large there was room for only a thin band of colour around them. Tom sniffed but to his surprise he couldn't find it, the animal musk of fucking. Just whisky and the harsh reek of fog and snow, metallic as blood. Tom's eyes narrowed.

  'Deal still on?' he demanded.

  The Captain inclined his head.

  'One hundred guineas?' Tom pressed.

  'Was that our agreement?' The Captain's eyes glittered as he smiled, baring his sharp yellow teeth. 'Well then, naturally. One hundred guineas.'

  Perhaps Brassey had been spying through the keyhole or perhaps he had the toad's instinct for a fly. Whatever it was he was in the downstairs parlour and flexing his slippered feet before his boy had time to set a bottle on the table. A number of dogs had already been in, he told the gentlemen, his head swivelling frantically on his shoulders, but there were a number still to be done with upstairs if the gentlemen fancied something by way of a warm-up. Otherwise he would have the pit cleared forthwith to accommodate the big fight. Whatever the gentlemen chose. His fingers rubbed at the slope of his belly, counting his likely takings.

  As his companions fell upon the brandy the Captain gestured at Tom to place Lady upon the table so he might give her the once-over. In contrast to his companions who fumbled with their glasses, their eyes and mouths dazed with drink, the Captain's features were precise. His dark eyes glowed. His breath came fast. A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

  'So you're a killer, are you, girl?' he murmured to Lady, his shiny lips scarlet against the black of his whiskers, and he squeezed her jaw so hard that she winced. 'Got the taste for it, have you? The taste for blood?'

  Tom said nothing. He stared at the floor, his hands clenched in his pockets. When Brassey escorted the gentlemen upstairs, he did not follow them. There were to be three or four rounds before Lady's. The dog lay at his feet. He did not touch her. He hardly moved. He kept his hands in his lap and his mind empty. If he started thinking he wouldn't stop. So he stared at the smoky shadows on the wall, his hands in his lap, and he waited.

  When at last they were summoned Lady was almost asleep. She blinked groggily at Tom as he roused her. Why hadn't he thought to keep her awake? Tom rebuked himself angrily. He should've sharpened her mind on something, so as to keep her alert. She'd be slower now, on account of dozing off like that. Tom felt flustered and unnerved. Upstairs he set the dog on the platform and stood back as the Fancy rushed at her, peering into her mouth and squeezing her paws. When they was done prodding and poking they sidled up to Brassey, muttering into his ear, and the proprietor nodded and scribbled their wagers on to a folded wad of paper. Though he tried for a solemn expression, as befitted the importance of the occasion, the glee was slapped across his face like whitewash. There were muttered exchanges, meaningful glances. The pit was smeared with blood. In one corner Brassey's boy wiped hi
s nose on the back of his hand and threw rat corpses by their tails into a rotted basket.

  In their box the Captain and his associates banged their hands impatiently on the rim of the pit. The sill of the box was a mess of bottles and smeared glasses. One gentleman's head hung oddly from his collar, like it was no longer quite fixed on his shoulders, and his cheeks glowed green as watercress. The Captain nudged him gently and, making a proper effort to hold his head steady and not look down, the green gentleman plucked a bill from his pocketbook and, as though it were the note itself was the cause of his afflictions, waved at the Captain to do him the honour of taking it away. The Captain smiled his wolf smile and, folding the note carefully, slapped the green gentleman upon the shoulder. The slap nearly lost the man his footing altogether. He stumbled against the wall, sliding as much by luck as calculation into the chair beside him, and closed his eyes.

  Brassey's lad rang a bell to signify the closing of the betting. Brassey made a few last jabs at his paper. Then he nodded at Tom. The Fancy clotted the rim of the pit, shoving at each other to secure a good position. There were indignant curses as elbows were jostled and glasses slopped. Then Brassey clapped his hands and the room fell silent.

  'And now, gentlemen, for the moment we've all been waiting for, the very pinnacle of this evening of delights, in which we challenge the champion dog of the Borough, known to us Fancy men simply as Lady, to the killing of eighteen big 'uns within the space of a single minute.'

  He nodded at his boy who lifted the wire crate of rats into the pit. They weren't Tom's rats. According to Brassey the Captain had insisted on it, so as to keep things on the level. Jittered as he was, it occurred to Tom to wonder who Brassey'd got the beasts from and for what price. The boy opened the flap set into the crate's lid and shoved in his hand, stirring the heaving mass like a pudding. The green-faced gentleman watched the boy, his face creased with horror, and then, very quietly, deposited the contents of his stomach into the corner of the box. None of his companions paid him the faintest scrap of notice. Instead they beat each other around the shoulders, their elegant clothes in disarray and their eyes wild for blood. Only the Captain held himself quite still, his eyes fixed upon the rats as they streaked away from the crate and piled themselves into a writhing wad of brown against the far wall.

  'Twenty,' the boy declared, closing the crate.

  With a great show of ceremony Brassey clambered up on a chair placed close to the gentlemen's box and drew a pocket watch from his vest, raising his other arm to call for silence. The Fancy drew in its breath all in a great wheeze together as, Lady in his arms, Tom slung his leg over the wall of the pit. The dog made no sound but at the sight of the rats the hair across her shoulders stiffened and her legs quivered like fiddle strings.

  'Time — now!'

  Brassey brought down his arm. Tom let Lady go. Like a streak of lightning she crossed the pit, thrusting her face into the mound and bringing out the first of her trophies. The rats were big ones, sure enough, their heads near the size of oranges, but they were no match for Lady's cunning and dash. The rats didn't know what'd hit them. She bit into the beasts and tossed the bodies behind her with all the steadfast swagger of a coster-boy going at a roasted fowl. Contained by the second's circle Tom had only to stand and watch. And still she didn't slow. Clamp and toss, clamp and toss. As the blood and the bodies darkened the floor, the shouts began to rise and the stamps grew harder and louder until the room shook with them. Tom didn't turn to look into the box, so set were his eyes upon Lady that he might have been looking out of her head himself, but if he'd thought to turn he'd have seen that, although the Captain stood perfectly still, his wolf eyes flashed and the sweat on his forehead sparkled like ice on a windowpane. At his sides his fists were clenched, each knuckle white with triumph.

  'And time!' Brassey shouted.

  The roar was deafening. Tom clicked his fingers and straight off Lady dropped the rat in her mouth with all the delicacy of a lady's handkerchief and sat back on her haunches, her paws set neatly together. All around her lay dark clumps of fur. There would be an official count, it was the way things were done, but Tom knew straight off that Lady'd done it. Twenty beasts they'd had in there. A minute later there was only one rat in the pit that still moved. It eyed Lady peevishly before sitting up in the far corner of the pit, setting about its whiskers with its pink paws. Quietly, just like they were alone together down the tunnels, Tom knelt and held his arms out to Lady. She wriggled into them and grinned at him, her tail making patterns on the blood-spattered floor. Tom closed his eyes. His heart was banging fit to bust clean out of his chest. They stayed that way as Brassey's lad worked around them, counting the bodies into his basket. They did not look over towards the box where the Captain was smiling and nodding and shaking hands with those of his friends still possessed of the necessary dexterity. They'd done it. Lady was a champion. She'd go home with the Captain and Tom'd go his own way, a rich man. The spit rushed into Tom's mouth and his eyes blurred.

  'Nineteen!' announced the lad, tossing the final corpse into his pottle.

  The Fancy erupted. It was a while before Brassey could silence the crowd. Proceeds would be distributed in the downstairs parlour, he announced. There was a clatter of boots behind him on the stairs while, around the pit, the remainder of the Fancy gathered in noisy groups, each alive with talk of the silent dog and the supposed fortune the tosher was to make from the Captain's wager and whether it was true that the dog was the self-same beast that had fared so poor for old Jeremiah who was now dead, and what might be the dog's bloodline and whether there were other animals out there that might be pressed into fighting to such remarkable effect. Amongst all this flurry there was only one man who was quite still and quite silent, his head bowed over so as you could see the knobbles of his spine poking out above the collar of his coat. In the curve of the old man's squatting body the dog was almost invisible.

  An impressive performance.'

  The Captain stood over Tom, his feet set wide apart and his hand out. Reluctantly Tom shook it but he didn't look the Captain in the eye.

  'One hundred guineas,' Tom said. The words came out cracked in the middle. He cleared his throat and tried again. 'One hundred guineas.'

  The Captain smiled his wolf smile and patted his coat pocket.

  'It is a great deal of money/ he said smoothly. 'Best to settle things away from the crowds, do you not agree?'

  Taking Lady in his arms, Tom followed the Captain down the stairs and into the parlour where Brassey had set himself up at a small table and was busy licking the stub of his pencil. When he saw the Captain enter the room he chivvied away the coster-men who clustered around him and made something of a ceremony of pulling out a chair and dusting off its seat with his handkerchief.

  'Good, good,' the Captain murmured. 'Now, Brassey, as to this wager.'

  'Yes, yes, the wager,' Brassey oozed. 'We must settle the wager.'

  'One hundred guineas, Tom, is a considerable sum. A sum, as I said upstairs to Mr Brassey, too considerable to risk carrying upon my person in a tavern such as this one.' The Captain peeled his lips back from his teeth. 'I was at pains to point out, was I not, Mr Brassey, that the deplorable locality of your premises and the felonious instincts of your customers provide very little in the way of a guarantee of safe passage for any items of value?'

  'Quite so, quite so,' Brassey agreed, bridling as if the Captain had bestowed upon him a compliment of the highest order.

  'Besides, who ever heard of a wager of this magnitude paid out in a single transaction?' The Captain shrugged. 'I therefore propose that we resolve the issue as it would be resolved in more distinguished establishments than this one. I have here forty guineas. Forty guineas,' the Captain said again, as though to impress upon Tom and Brassey the significance of the sum, and he patted his coat. 'As a deposit it represents a fair sum, I'm sure you will agree. Tom will have this now and I will take the dog. The balance of the wager I will pay out in two
remaining instalments of thirty guineas, the first due next week and the second the week after that. I trust that you will find an arrangement of that kind satisfactory?'

  He tipped his head at Tom who frowned suspiciously.

  'No,' he said firmly. 'No money, no dog. Them's always been my terms all my life and I ain't about to change them now. When I gets my hundred guineas, you gets the dog. Not a day before.'

  'Tom, Tom, listen to yourself,' Brassey cajoled. 'The Captain's not one of your ruffian associates. He's a gentleman, with a gentleman's honour. Ain't that right, sir?'

  'But of course.'

  Tom set his shoulders and his face darkened.

  'Once I got my money, you get the dog.'

  'Tom,' the Captain said smoothly. 'Mr Brassey is right. A gentleman would never break his word. However, I believe, Tom, that you and I understand each other. This is not the first time we have done business, after all. My friend was much obliged to you for disposing of his — detritus, shall we call it? As a result, my friend would be most displeased with me if I were to give you the slightest cause for unhappiness. You are intimately acquainted with personal matters of his that he has every wish to remain private. Any betrayal of you, Tom, would therefore be a much greater betrayal of a man I have known all my life.'

  The Captain studied Tom's face.

  'You are suspicious,' he continued. 'I understand that. It would be unreasonable of me to expect a man of your kind to do business like a gentleman.' He patted the pockets of his coat and drew out a folded sheet of paper. 'To that end I have already made sure to have a schedule of payments, all drawn up and endorsed by a lawyer, to place our dealings on an official footing. It is quite simple. I sign it here and you, Tom,' he pointed, 'here. Mr Brassey will witness our signatures.'

  Brassey nodded vigorously, his head spinning like a greased ball in its socket.

  'It comprises nothing less than a written guarantee for payment of the full amount,' the Captain assured him. 'One hundred guineas, as detailed here. And naturally if you do not receive the money you may reclaim the dog. The contract stipulates that most clearly. Here, do you see?'