To the south the fields and copses spread away as far as the horizon, but to the north, just beyond the railway, lowering sky banners told him the Dwarfs were in complete control of the landscape and there in such numbers that they could never be driven out.
It was evening then, a still, airless sunset, with every leaf drooping, the sun a flaming ball over the Wirral, and the smoke-stack of a tired, Liverpool-bound goods train shooting cotton volleys straight into the sky as it dragged itself east to west. He reined in where a dust road joined the metal road and studied his smaller ordnance map, thinking longingly of a draught of cool beer and perhaps the luxury of a hip bath in an inn. There was a town on the skyline, one of a line of towns that starred the father and mother of all railways, like a row of guard towers along Hadrian's Wall, and he had already seen sufficient of these towns to know that they promised little in the way of comfort. They were usually no more than vastly enlarged villages, where someone had converted a barn into a mill and then other mills had come and perhaps a small foundry. After that the jerrybuilders had swarmed in to run up their rows of back-to-back shanties along streets that often bore pastoral names but were, for all that, no more salubrious than the foetid alleys that ran inland from the wharves of Wapping and Rotherhithe. The mare was tired, however, both of them were hungry, and there was nowhere to bivouac, so Adam moved off down the macadamised road and straight into chaos.
4
The first indication that something unusual was happening in Seddon Moss was the number of men abroad, all surging in one direction towards an open space that did duty for a town Square. Their expressions were enough to alert him. He had seen looks of that kind in the days leading up to the first murders at Meerut, and there was a kind of loose discipline in the movement that made him think of the parade ground degradation of the 3rd Native Cavalry that had touched off the Mutiny, dragging from the massed ranks of sepoys the long, rumbling growl of “Dohai! Dohai! Dohai!”
Curiosity made him forget his fatigue, and when a man at the door of a hovel glanced in his direction he reined in and asked what was happening. The man hesitated and then spat, viciously but not very accurately.
“If you’re a stranger then give t'square a bloody wide berth. Lads mean to make an end of it but they’ve nowt agin anyone but Sam Rawlinson and ye c’n spread that as far as Manchester.”
Adam swung himself out of the saddle. “I was looking for an inn, somewhere I can put up the horse and get a bite to eat. Is it a strike?”
The man looked him over carefully before answering. “Nay, a lockout,” he said. “Sam Rawlinson's overstepped t’mark this time. There's men there as’ll burn his bloody mill if they have their way, but that's daft. Burn t’mill and they’ll fetch in troops an’ yeomanry be railroad, same as they did last time, and them as they caught in the open are still blacklisted; if they haven’t starved, or died in gaol long since.”
Adam asked him how long the lockout had persisted and the man said, “Third month we’re entering, and all over a penny an hour and a bloody breakfast break! Sam's daft and they’re daft. There's nowt we coulden agree upon over a pint of ale.”
A woman's querulous voice called from the dark interior of the house. “Who's there, Harry? Who's at t’door?”
“Nobbut a toff ridin’ through,” the man answered casually but the woman shouted, “Bolt t’door and come in out of it, like I warned!” and the man grinned toothily, indicating that orders of that kind carried more weight than the high-pitched voice of an orator Adam could already hear from the direction of the Square. He added, however, “Do like I say, man. Give bloody town a wide berth. There's a good enough inn no more than a ten-minute trot south, beyond the crossroads on the Warrington turnpike.” Then he spat again and closed the door, and Adam heard the bolt grate and the rumble of voices beyond.
He remembered the inn, a rundown establishment a hundred yards or so up the dust road, but he had passed it because it looked unsavoury. Now, he supposed, there was no help for it, for the mare's head was drooping and hunger gnawed at his belly. And yet he was reluctant to leave without hearing something of the men's grievances, and deciding whether the hagridden man at the door had mistaken a noisy demonstration touched off by boredom and the staleness of the day, for the certainty of a riot. Then he remembered the expression on the faces of the men and went on down the narrow street to the fringe of the crowd that now filled the small Square and was spilling into the approaches.
Here there was no mistaking the mood of the demonstrators, women as well as men and even groups of half-grown children, all chattering like magpies. The entire town was afoot, drawn to a loading bay on the far side of the space that was being used as a platform for the speakers. It was not long before Adam began to regret having failed to take the man's advice, if not for himself then for the sake of his mare whose manners were being sorely tried by the press. It was then about half past eight and not yet dusk, although the closeness of the atmosphere filled the Square with an unnatural yellow light as though the heavy sky, bent on coming to the meeting, was bearing down on the multitude and working upon the restlessness of every man, woman, and child assembled there. A distant growl of thunder heightened this impression, and a ripple of nervous anticipation ran through the crowd, producing a kind of sigh that was caught up by the strident voice of a wildly gesticulating orator.
No one molested him, but no sooner had he edged into the Square than he began looking for a way out, deciding that he was unjustified in exposing those about him to the risk of being trampled if the mare began to rear. Holding her on a close rein he edged his way along the southern face of the Square until he found a ramp that ran up towards the goods yard of the station. The crowd was thinner here and he could observe it individually. He had never seen so many misshapen people assembled in one place. At least half of the men and women about him seemed to be twisted or crippled, as though he had strayed into a world of the brothers Grimm, populated by the humpbacked, the lame, and the knock-kneed. On every face was the same sullen expression that he had noticed among the men on the outskirts of the town, but here he could smell their sweat and hear the whistle of their breath as they stumbled by in groups in an effort to come within earshot of their leaders’ harangues. He saw two uniformed constables, whose faces were set and strained, and whose efforts to control the crowd seemed to be confined to packing as many people into the Square as it would hold, for they prodded the laggards into the main stream against which Adam now battled in his efforts to reach higher ground and cross the embankment to open country.
At the top of the ramp he saw that this was not possible. He was now in a cul-de-sac, sealed by a wire fence bordering the permanent way. A constable crossed over and asked if he was a member of the Yeomanry, and when Adam said he was not, and that he had entered the town in search of an inn, the man said, “Any shakedown i’ Seddon Moss will have its shutters up tonight, sir. There's nobbut a dozen of us, and what can we do now they’ve torn up the track? They knew we were expecting reinforcements down the line, but somebody blabbed and Sam Rawlinson’ll pay the piper if they don’t get here in time.” Then, with a bitterness that half-enlisted him with the demonstrators, he made a similar comment to the man whose wife's tongue had kept him off the streets. “To think it's come to this! Forty-two over again, and all on account of a penny an hour and a breakfast snap!”
“Are you expecting the Yeomanry?” Adam asked. “They’re breaking no law holding a public meeting, are they?”
The man looked up at him sardonically. “Tha’ don’t know Sam Rawlinson's hands if you’re banking on ’em listening to hot air and then goin’ quietly to bed. They’ll sack his mill if they have their way,” and he looked balefully at the yellowish sky. “On’y one thing can save it now and that's a storm and a drenching all round.”
They were interrupted by a full-throated roar that was echoed by a second roll of thunder and a flicker of lightning, followed by a third, much heavier peal. As the constable
broke into a run, Adam saw the section of the crowd closest to him surge forward leaving the foot of the ramp almost clear. At the same moment a yellow streak of flame rose from the loading bays and ran the length of the piers. A stunted man came scrambling through the fence and ran past Adam shouting, in a gleeful, sing-song voice, “They’ve fired t’bales! They’ve fired bloody bales…!” before disappearing round the corner at top speed. The mare began to tremble so Adam slid from the saddle and looped the reins to the fence post, running down the ramp to see if the nearest face of the Square was clear enough to make his way back by the route he had come. Mercifully it was, for now the crowd had split, one section surging across to the fire on the loading bays, the other and larger section moving diagonally across the width of the Square towards a large oblong building opposite. Above the tumult he could hear the crash of glass, and from the elevation of the ramp he saw smoke curling from several of the first-storey windows of the mill. Over on the left side of the Square a fire-bell clanged, and through the smoke Adam could make out the tossing heads of stationary horses, apparently harnessed to an engine that was being prevented from moving towards either fire. He could even see the silhouette of the driver, arms upraised as in supplication, before he was dragged from the box and swallowed up in the crowd.
The frenzy of the spectacle kept him there for perhaps a minute, absorbing small, unrelated facets of the scene: a fat woman dragging a screaming child by the hand; a tall, scarecrow of a man scrambling on to a wall surrounding the building, a brand held above his head so that he looked like a figure in an allegorical painting; the wide, glittering arc cut by a metal object, probably a fireman's helmet, as it soared out of the group struggling round the engine. Then, like a frame for these pictures, came the steady lick of flames under the angled roof of the mill. He thought, grimly, “My God, this is like Delhi all over again,” and ran the length of the ramp, untying the reins and dragging the horse round with the object of fighting his way out before the Yeomanry and police reinforcements waded into the mob. It was something he had seen once before, when the military had been called out to quell a bread riot at Hounslow during his first year of service. The memory of Englishmen trampling Englishmen still had the power to disgust after the passage of years marked by the Crimea and Cawnpore. The mare wheeled again, dragging at the rein and backing away from the intense glare and the uproar rising from the Square. With a curse he fumbled with the straps that enclosed his rolled boatcloak, dragging it free and blinding the horse with its folds. She quietened at once so that he was able to drag her down the ramp and along the unembattled face of the Square to the street by which he had entered the town. Here it was relatively deserted. He removed the cloak, tied it about his own shoulders, and lifted a foot to the stirrup. At that moment several things happened simultaneously.
Behind him part of the mill roof collapsed with a soft explosion, and a million sparks soared, making the narrow street as light as day. Ahead of him, but as yet heard rather than seen, a group of horsemen thundered over the setts, the first coming into view while he stood with his hands on the pommel and one foot on the ground so that he paused before swinging himself into the saddle. Then, on the blind side of the horse, a shambling little figure in clothes several sizes too large for him darted from the shadows and ran diagonally across the street towards the doorway of a shop. He was standing close against the wall immediately opposite the shop, and another flicker of lightning lit up the scene in the greatest detail. He had time to take note of the first galloping horseman, a thickset man in a low-crowned beaver hat, who sat his horse awkwardly, as though unused to the saddle. The darting figure in the baggy clothes saw the horseman at the same time, and he seemed to hover in the shop doorway. Then, with panic in every movement, he turned and ran back across the street, right into the path of the leading policeman, if policeman he was. A collision was not inevitable, but the horseman made it so, swinging his horse hard left so that its shoulder struck the running figure a heavy glancing blow. Adam saw the man's hand shoot up and down, a short cudgel he was holding crashing down on the reeling figure with tremendous force, so that the crack of the wood on bone punctuated the uproar in the Square.
The force of the blow swept the victim inwards under the belly of the horse, and then another flicker of lightning showed a feebly threshing ball, spurned by the rear hooves the width of the street and finally coming to rest against the wall of the shop.
By then the following horsemen were on the scene, about a dozen of them, some in uniform and some not, and behind them a recklessly driven carriage containing two passengers, one elderly and sitting hunched on the box, the other young and standing upright, lashing the horse with a long switch. The cavalcade swept by in a confused mass, debouching at the Square where its arrival created renewed uproar. In a moment the little street was empty except for Adam and the huddled figure under the window of the shop.
He went over and knelt on the greasy setts, turning the figure over and looking down at the face. It was a dead face, the face of a child about thirteen, wearing clothes that were obviously cutdowns, for sleeves and trouser legs were shortened to half their original length. The eyes, wide open, held an expression of terror, and thin trickles of blood ran from the nostrils and the corners of the mouth. Adam Swann had seen innumerable dead men before, slain in hot blood on a dozen contested fields, and had witnessed any number of executions at Delhi and elsewhere, but this was different and he could only think of it as murder. This had occurred in an English street, and the butcher had not been a maddened sepoy, in the grip of terror, bigotry, and prejudice but a middle-aged Englishman, at the head of men representing the forces of order. He knelt there looking into the accusing eyes of the child and his gorge rose. The action was at one with everything ugly he had noted passing through the territory of the Black Dwarfs. It was pitiless, pitiable, obscene. It had the power to stir him as no scene of carnage apart from the well at Cawnpore had stirred him, for there was nothing inevitable about it, as of one blind force colliding with another. It was a single, decisive gesture, proclaiming the terrible arrogance of the propertied against the weak and dispossessed, and in a way it fused with the terrible indignation he and Roberts and every other mercenary had experienced in their fighting advance along the Ganges.
He took a handkerchief and wiped the face clean. Then he straightened the grotesquely clothed limbs and looked over his shoulder in the direction of the wild outcry behind him. It was futile to seek justice there or, for that matter, anywhere else in the area. Judging by the fury of the crowd, and the storming approach of the horsemen, there might be many such deaths before dawn, and with the arrival of police reinforcements and the Yeomanry the fire-raisers would be hunted from street to street as he had once hunted sepoys. The prospect, together with the dead boy at his feet, made escape from this foul place imperative. He hoisted himself into the saddle and turned the mare's head towards open country, and as he went he swore an oath. If, in the time left to him, he involved himself in commerce of any kind, then he would throw away the book of rules that clearly governed its practitioners in places like Seddon Moss. He would write new rules, embracing an entirely different set of values, of the kind that he had always supposed were acceptable in Western communities that were making some kind of attempt to emerge from the Middle Ages. There would be no reciprocal hatreds of this kind, no cut and thrust regulated by profits on one side and mob rule on the other. In his ledgers, if he ever came to keep any, the life of the child wearing his father's cutdown corduroys would count for more than a penny an hour and a breakfast break.
He crossed the railway line and headed back to the fork in the road where the dust track joined the turnpike, and as he coaxed the tired horse into a trot the thunder crashed overhead and the first heavy raindrops fell like pellets. He thought of them striking the upturned face of the child under the wall of the shuttered shop and no longer felt hunger in his belly.
Three
1
; THEY SAW ONE ANOTHER AT THE SAME MOMENT, ADAM TOPPING THE LAST FOLD of the moor with the rising sun at his back, Henrietta standing in a shallow pool, her head turned sideways as she struggled to free her copper hair of the husks sown in it during the night. Perhaps he had the minimal advantage. When the level of his eyes rose above the heather rim south of the shepherd's hut they fastened on the one incongruity present in the view, the momentary glimpse of a pair of neat buttocks, enclosed in white pantalettes as she straightened herself after completing a perfunctory wash.
He never afterwards forgot this unconventional introduction for on that particular morning he felt himself to be in need of laughter, and the prospect of a girl washing herself in a puddle on a deserted moor was not only unexpected but droll.
He called, cheerily, “Hullo there!” but the little figure in the pantalettes whirled and fled back into the hut at such speed that he wondered, for a moment, if he had imagined her. Then he went on down the gentle slope to the hut, reining in outside the entrance and calling, in the tone of voice one might use to coax a child, “Hi! You in there! Don’t be scared. Can you tell me if this road spans the railway?”
God is an Englishman Page 9