by Anne Moore
She picked up a little bell and tinkled it to call for the maid.
'Well, this has been a most productive morning, Mr Scrooge. I will speak to my husband, and ask him to show you a number of good causes which are close to his heart, and which are in dire need of assistance. You are under no obligation, of course, but at least it will demonstrate to you the range of possibilities.'
Scrooge prepared to leave, but as he stood up Mrs Bannister put her hand on his arm.
'Pay close attention to my maid, Mr Scrooge. Her name is Sasha, and I have a number of plans for her future.’ She gave him one of her puzzling smiles. ‘Some of them involve you.'
CHAPTER 11
The following Monday, after breakfast, Scrooge informed Billy that he was going to look round a school. Would Billy like to come along too?
'What sort of a school is it?'
'It's a school for poor boys.'
'Is that where you're going to send me?'
'Not unless you want to go there....'
Scrooge paused, for he could see that his announcement had made Billy cautious and suspicious.
'Look here, Billy, I give you my word that you will go nowhere unless you are comfortable with it. But I'd like you see to see this place—I'd like to hear your opinion of it.'
Billy frowned darkly. ‘Hm, well, all right then.'
The snow had disappeared over the weekend, though some filthy dark slush remained. Scrooge and Billy had to pick their way carefully as they walked round to the Reverend Mr Bannister's home. There the three of them hailed a cab and climbed in, and immediately Billy cheered up.
'I ain't never been in a cab before,’ he told them, and was clearly impressed by the quality of the fittings and the padded seat.
Scrooge was pleased that the boy could derive pleasure from something so simple, but he made a mental note to give Billy some instruction about avoiding double negatives.
The Vicar, meanwhile, began to brief Scrooge about their destination.
'This school, Mr Scrooge, scarcely merits the title in the sense that you and I would understand it. It consists of three rooms in a rotting old house which is in urgent need of repair. In one room girls are taught, and in the other two, boys.'
'Ages?'
'From five until as long as they will stay, which isn't much past ten. At that age there is paid work which they or their parents can find, and the temptation of taking it in preference to school becomes too strong. Neither would I wish to give you the impression that attendance at the school is regular. The pupils come and they go, much like migrant birds.'
'And the teaching is done by whom?’ asked Scrooge.
'It is done by volunteers. The headmaster, or the person in charge would perhaps be a better title, is an Oxford friend of mine. His name is John Kemble. He is ordained but does not wear clerical dress or hold office. Happily he has both private means and a strong social conscience. And in running his school he is aided by a number of parish ladies, several of them taking turn and turn about.'
After about fifteen minutes, heading north, the cab moved from the main thoroughfare on which it had been traveling into a dark and dingy side-street. There the way was narrow, the air full of smoke and strange smells, and the inhabitants, such as could be seen from the cab, were shabbily dressed. It was a place of marked poverty, and although such a scene was far from unfamiliar to Scrooge, he did not enjoy being reacquainted with it.
The cab stopped outside a tall building with broken and missing railings which had originally been designed to prevent passers-by from falling into the basement; but the temptation to sell the metal had evidently been too strong for someone.
As he stepped down from the cab, Scrooge could hear the sound of children's voices chanting the multiplication tables in unison.
'Two twos are four, three twos are six, four twos are eight....'
By the sound of it, perhaps twenty or thirty children were involved.
A group of local residents surrounded the visitors as soon as they closed the cab door behind them. The arrival of a couple of toffs who might well be persuaded to part with the loose change in their pockets was a welcome development. But, despite several entreaties, both Scrooge and the Vicar went into the building without appearing to hear the requests for alms.
Billy followed the two men, to the jeers of a few boys of his own age.
The Vicar led the way to the back of the building, where he pushed open a door into one of the ‘schoolrooms'. In reality this was no more than a modest-sized space, once the back parlor of a family home perhaps, when both the street in general and this house in particular had enjoyed better days.
On the floor were five benches with five or six children seated on each. And a curious assortment of children they were too. Ages, Scrooge guessed, from five to eight. Clothing, various rags and hand-me-downs. Expressions, wide-eyed and seemingly eager to please.
No source of heating met Scrooge's eye, and because of the cold outside the two windows were both closed. The smell of the unwashed poor was strong in the air, but the atmosphere was chilly despite the tightly packed presence of so many bodies.
Neither could Scrooge see evidence of any form of lighting, and the room was both gloomy and drab. Damp stains were visible in each corner of the ceiling, and in places the plaster was falling down. If there were no rats visible, it was only because there was scarcely room for them among the feet under the benches.
The master in charge, who was no doubt Mr Bannister's Oxford friend, smiled a greeting at them as they entered but went on leading the chant.
'We will go as far as the five times table,’ he announced over the last of the four times table, ‘and then pause. ‘Now, one five is five....'
His obedient flock took up the cry. ‘One five is five, two fives are ten, three fives are fifteen ...'
When it was over, the teacher set the children some work on their slates. Scrooge noticed that the school could not provide a slate for each child. Not even one between two. But the children formed little clusters around such facilities as were available and got on with the task as best they could.
The teacher was then introduced to Scrooge and Billy.
John Kemble was about thirty-five, Scrooge guessed, taller than average, and burly with it. This was a circumstance which no doubt stood him in good stead when it came to dealing with trouble-makers, and Scrooge had no doubt that there would be a fair number in this district. He had fierce eyes, a dark beard, and a full head of dark, thick hair. His clothes were respectable, but he was obviously unconcerned about his personal appearance.
Mr Kemble gave his visitors a quick tour of the whole house, which involved calling on the two other schoolrooms on the floor above. He could not, he explained, be away from his own class for too long. They had a pronounced tendency to drift away if left unattended.
At midday, said Mr Kemble, there would be a break, with soup and bread provided for the children. This, he well knew, was often the chief motive for their presence in the first place. That plus the fact that a child in school was a child who did not need the care of a parent.
Mr Kemble was a patently good-hearted man, doing his best to improve the lot of the poor, and Scrooge took to him. More than that, Scrooge admired the fellow for sticking at a task which he himself could not have stomached for one morning.
In answer to Scrooge's question, Mr Kemble declared that he had been running the school for three years. But he seemed oddly shy with a stranger, and did not volunteer much more.
Scrooge asked how an injection of money might be used. Better equipment was the immediate answer. And uniforms for the children. This latter suggestion struck Scrooge as a hideous idea. He could just picture the ranks of identical little bodies lined up on the benches. True fodder for the factories of the industrial revolution. But he made no comment. Presumably Mr Kemble had made his suggestion about uniforms for a good reason.
The smell of food—no doubt the soup referred to earlier—was no
w percolating into the schoolroom and causing a certain amount of noisy speculation among the class. Although he had not been there long, Scrooge realized that his presence was a distraction, and so without further ado he took out bank-book, borrowed the teacher's pen and ink, and wrote a check for 100.
The Reverend Mr Bannister smiled warmly as he looked over Scrooge's shoulder, but Mr Kemble was visibly shaken when he saw the size of Scrooge's gift.
'Why, my dear sir,’ he said, in a voice made gruff with emotion. ‘How very generous.’ He shook Scrooge's hand with almost painful violence. ‘I cannot tell you how useful this will be.'
Scrooge waved a hand. ‘I can see for myself that you will put it to good use. And now, Mr Kemble, we must remove ourselves from your presence and allow your work to continue.'
Scrooge, Mr Bannister, and Billy made their way back to the main thoroughfare at the end of the street. Their passage was not without difficulty, because word of a toff with money seemed to have spread. Only a handout of coins from Scrooge plus a few stern words from the Vicar enabled them to complete the short journey without having the clothes almost torn from their backs.
They were assisted too by the fact that the Vicar carried a silver-handled stick. Scrooge had thought of it as the man's sole concession to fashion and vanity, but he realized now that from time to time it might have a more practical use.
At last they found themselves seated in a cab, taking them back to the relative safety of St Michael's Alley and St Andrew's church.
Scrooge leaned back as the cab jolted along. He closed his eyes. He was no longer at all sure that it was a good idea to have accepted the Vicar's invitation to show him some worthy causes. But his wasn't the only opinion to be considered, of course.
'Well, Billy,’ he said. ‘What did you think of the school?'
Billy literally shuddered. ‘Horrible,’ he muttered. ‘Horrible! The children was all younger than me, too. I can't go there.'
'No, you can't,’ Scrooge agreed. He also agreed with Billy's description of the place as horrible, but he didn't want to upset the Vicar by voicing it.
He turned to his guide.
'I may well be able to help in providing some financial support for places like that,’ he said. ‘But I can't say that I liked the atmosphere. It seemed very regimented.'
Mr Bannister nodded. ‘I take your point. But I would ask you to accept that my friend John Kemble may well have started out with very different ideas. Indeed I know that he did. But he is a man who for three years has had to wrestle with the practicalities of the situation. And what you have seen today is a demonstration of what he has found, by trial and error, to be both possible and useful. John is a wonderful man, but he is no good at raising cash because he is too impatient to be tactful and never prepared to flatter. And if you are going to practice philanthropy, Mr Scrooge, you are going to have to learn to distinguish between the charlatan, the fake, and the man who genuinely deserves support. John Kemble is one of the latter.'
'I don't doubt it,’ said Scrooge. ‘And I admire him for it. If he is ever desperate for funds in the future you may approach me again, and your word alone will be enough. But I believe that tomorrow you have something different to show me?'
Mr Bannister nodded. ‘Different, and yet, in a way, the same.'
CHAPTER 12
The following morning found the same three companions—Scrooge, Billy, and the Reverend Mr Bannister—seated side by side in another cab. This time they were heading east.
They traveled as far as the cab-driver was able to take them, which is to say to the point at which a narrow side-street became blocked by rubbish and rubble. As they stepped down from the cab they realized that there had been a fire in this neighborhood, probably within the last few days. A strong smell of smoke was still in the air.
On the left of the narrow roadway—which was more like an alley—the bare bones of a brick-built house reached upwards into a lowering, dirty-gray sky. Blackened, useless wood clung to the doorway and the window-frames of this house. Any timber worth stealing had long since gone, but no one had bothered to clear up the aftermath of the fire. There were piles of smelly, scorched material which had once, perhaps, been clothes, curtains and carpets; and a mixture of broken tiles and smashed glass littered the pavement.
With a brief glance at the devastation caused by the fire, the two men and Billy set off to complete their journey on foot.
They were now in territory through which Billy moved with more confidence than either of the two men. He led the way, picking the safest path through the debris, his eyes ever alert to danger.
At one point, someone lurking behind a half-closed door hurled a lump of brick at them. But Billy spotted it coming and pushed Scrooge aside. The missile hit a wall and scattered into fragments at their feet.
They hurried along as best they could, conscious of the inquiring eyes of those who leaned idly against walls or peered out from dirty windows. The watchers evidently wondered, and some of them inquired out loud, what business it was that well-dressed fellows like these had in a place like this.
The answer was, they were in search of a hostel: a house of refuge, which was run by another friend of Mr Bannister's. The hostel was a place where those who were too poor to rent a room in even the dingiest hovel might find shelter from the winter night.
As they walked along, for they still had a way to go, Mr Bannister enlarged on the explanation which he had given to Scrooge before they set out.
'As you can see, Mr Scrooge, this is as deprived an area as we are likely to find, even in the east end of London. There is nothing here but ignorance, starvation and crime.'
'So I see,’ said Scrooge grimly.
The Vicar, he noticed, held his stick halfway along its length, so as to be able to use it as a club in short order, if the need arose.
'And it is precisely for those reasons,’ Mr Bannister continued, ‘that my friend has selected it as the location for his hostel for homeless men.'
'This friend of yours,’ said Scrooge, ‘is he another Oxford man?'
Mr Bannister smiled. ‘No. A former companion from my schooldays.'
At length they turned a corner and came upon a courtyard with what had once been an impressive doorway at the end of it. Now, however, the entrance to the formerly handsome mansion was much dilapidated. The steps were cracked and crumbling, the lintel was tipped sideways at a crazy angle, and the paint was peeling off the door. Still fixed to the door was a heavy lion's-head knocker. It had been protected from theft, Scrooge suspected, only by the fact that it was black with age and looked worthless.
In the court below this doorway stood two men: one a uniformed police constable, and the other a slightly-built, pale-faced fellow in a dark suit. The latter was clearly a gentleman of sorts, his general bearing quite different from that of the average citizen of this quarter.
As Mr Bannister's party approached, the suited man turned to look at them, and then gave a cry of recognition.
'Henry!’ he declared. ‘What a pleasure it is to see you!'
He advanced to shake Mr Bannister's hand, but then, almost at once, he had to excuse himself to complete his business with the constable. That done, the policeman departed and introductions were made.
The name of Mr Bannister's friend was Peter Carrow, and he immediately asked forgiveness for not having been able to give them his attention sooner.
'But there was, I regret to say, an incident overnight which has of necessity involved the police.'
'May I ask what kind of incident?’ Scrooge inquired.
Mr Carrow sighed, but answered openly. ‘That is a very proper and natural question, sir. But the fact is, this house contains some thirty to forty men of a night, and there are often squabbles between them. On this occasion—’ He sighed again. ‘On this occasion I regret to say that a knife was drawn. One man was killed, and his attacker fled into the night.'
Scrooge was astonished. ‘A murder,’ he said. ‘
If I may state the obvious.'
'Yes indeed,’ said Mr Carrow sadly. ‘A murder. Not an everyday event, even here, but far from uncommon. News of it will not appear in The Times, or in any other paper for that matter, for it lacks the sensational aspects required to fascinate the masses. But it has deprived all of us of much sleep and has greatly disturbed my men.'
With that, Mr Carrow made a determined attempt to lighten the mood. He banged his hands together, as if to signify the end of that discussion.
'Well,’ he said brightly, ‘you have not come here to be shocked with tales of the desperate doings of some villain. You have come, have you not, to have a look round our modest premises and to hear of the work which we try to do.'
'We have indeed,’ said Scrooge.
Mr Carrow led the way on a tour of the house. He was a man in his early thirties, and he was suffering, Scrooge noticed, from a heavy cold, which appeared to make him somewhat deaf. He made frequent use of a handkerchief.
The building turned out to be more spacious on the inside than it appeared from the outside. It had been built, Scrooge estimated, about a hundred and fifty years earlier, possibly for a rich merchant, for it lay near to some docks.
Mr Carrow explained that, under his direction, the present purpose of the house was to provide free overnight accommodation for men (and only men) who would other-wise be obliged to sleep rough, in the street. At seven a.m. in the mornings, bread and tea were made available, at no charge; thereafter the men were obliged to leave the building and try to find work. The whole enterprise was financed by charity, and no man was allowed to stay for more than seven nights in succession.
Downstairs, a front room had been set aside as a reception and waiting area. Another room, much smaller, provided an office for Mr Carrow. At the rear of the premises was a communal eating-room, with a substantial kitchen adjoining.
Upstairs, the principal rooms had been converted to dormitories, with some ten to twelve beds in each, tightly crammed together. In one room, a bed was occupied by a man too sick even to raise his head. Mr Carrow had a quiet word with him and promised to send someone with some soup before long.