The Whispering Road

by Livi Michael

  Mr M and Miss C come back in the room together.

  ‘This – ingrate!’ she says. ‘Tell Mr Mosley what you said!’

  Mr M's in the doorway, looking from one to the other of us in alarm. ‘Nathaniel,’ he says, ‘what is going on?’

  ‘Tell him!’ thunders Miss C.

  ‘All I said was that she talks more than I do,’ I tell him. ‘Which is true enough. And then she went mad.’

  Miss C's face turns from red to purple.

  ‘You see?’ she cries. ‘How like vipers are the tongues of men!’

  ‘Miss Chitters, please!’ says Mr M. ‘Nathaniel, tell me properly what happened.’

  ‘I'm sick of lessons!’ I tell him.

  Miss C cries, ‘After all my time and effort. This ingratitude! You must beat him, Mr Mosley and beat him well. Kindness has had no impact. Spare the rod and spoil the child.’

  ‘Try it!’ I say. I'm losing my fear and beginning to enjoy myself.

  ‘Now, calm down, please,’ Mr M says, trying to be severe, but squeaking a bit. ‘There'll be no beating in this house. Nathaniel, you can stay in your room without food until you apologize. Miss Chitters, come with me, please.’

  Miss C looks as if she's about to ignore him and lunge at me, but Mr M takes her arm and steers her out. A minute later there's the sound of the door being locked.

  ‘Kindly reflect on your behaviour,’ Mr M calls through the lock. ‘I shall be back to speak to you later.’

  Left on my own again I fling myself down on the bed. This isn't a punishment. Not like the ones you got in the workhouse, where they'd take the skin off your back. And if I'd spoken to mistress on the farm like that, I'd've been killed and fed to the pigs. I stare at the ceiling thinking, Mr M can't have done all them bad things.

  Hours later, though, it definitely feels like punishment. I'm bored, almost to tears, when he opens the door again. And hungry too.

  ‘Well, Nathaniel,’ he says, his lips looking pinched. ‘What have you to say for yourself?’

  My heartbeat quickens but I take my time, looking up at the ceiling then round the room. ‘Nowt,’ I tell him finally.

  His pale face goes a little paler, but all he says is, ‘Very well. I'll have Mrs Quivel bring you some broth. And then I want you to take a little walk with me.’

  He closes the door again. I'm thrown by this. I thought the least he'd do would be to starve me but, no, here comes the broth and some bread, and I down it in one because I've not eaten since breakfast.

  When I've finished, Mr M's at the door. ‘When you're ready,’ he says, without smiling.

  I'm thinking I'll get to the door with him and run off, but I still want to hear what he has to say, so I follow him down the stairs and through the front door.

  ‘We set off walking, and the evening's fine. Birds rise and settle on the eaves of the houses. He places one hand on my shoulder and the other holds his stick.

  ‘All these fine old houses are being sold as warehouses now,’ he says as we pass a boarded-up terrace. ‘Everywhere you look people are moving out of town. Why do you suppose that is, Nat?’

  I don't answer and he sighs gently. ‘The old days are coming to an end,’ he says. ‘We live in a different world. When you look around this town, Nathaniel, what do you see?’

  ‘Too many people,’ I say, and he pounces on that.

  ‘Exactly. But what can be done?’ And when I don't answer again, he says, ‘Shall I tell you what I see? I see a town at a turning point. Part manorial village, part sprawling industrial city. All the filth, all the misery and poverty, has come with the industry. It never used to be like this. My family would look after the poor people in times of famine. My grandfather would share out his grain at the doors of the Collegiate Church, and take everyone into his halls in time of threat. That was the way things were done around here for hundreds of years. But the new lords of Manchester are the factory owners, and they do not care for the people. They have created a perpetual famine. And a new class of people come pouring into Manchester every day from all over England. A new class, more depraved than the old, swarming into the courts and alleys, and bringing with them crime and disease.’

  ‘Is that what you mean by the problem of the poor?’ I ask him, and there's a sharp edge to my voice.

  ‘The old ways have gone forever,’ he says, as if he hadn't heard. ‘And we shall go too. There is no place for us in our own land.’

  He takes off his spectacles and wipes them, and for a moment I feel almost sorry for him. But then I remember what Abel and Nell said.

  ‘Is that why you're so keen to get rid of them?’ I say. ‘Before they get rid of you?’

  He stops polishing his glasses. ‘Get rid of whom?’ he asks.

  ‘All the poor people,’ I say. ‘Isn't that what you mean by a workable solution?’

  He looks taken aback by this, but not thrown. ‘Who have you been speaking to?’ he says.

  So it's true, I'm thinking.

  He waits for a while and then says, ‘Well, what do you think, Nathaniel? What would you do? What's the best way to relieve the suffering of the poor? Should we leave them in their misery, or try to find them useful, productive work? Where they can live indoors rather than on the streets? What do the poor need most? Laws about sanitation, perhaps – or the gin shops? What would you do?’

  ‘I wouldn't take them from their families.’

  He's shaken by this, but he laughs. ‘But how would it be possible to place the whole family in employment? And what is the alternative? To move the whole tribe into the workhouse? Or maybe transport them to Australia? The real problem is that the poor breed so many of their own kind.’

  ‘No,’ I say sharpish. ‘The real problem is that the rich live in houses like yours, and the poor live like pigs in pens.’

  We're turning a corner now, into a street where the houses are boarded up and new signs nailed to the fronts of them.

  Mr M stops. ‘Ah,’ he says, and his spectacles gleam down at me. ‘But perhaps the question is, whether it is in the nature of the poor to live in the way they do. Bred in the bone as it were.’

  I'm speechless, and he carries on walking. Then I find my tongue. ‘You think the poor are like animals, don't you?’ I say, feeling my face burn with wrath. ‘And that makes it all right to herd them into pens!’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ he says. ‘You are talking in ignorance. Of course the poor are inbred, as are the rich – they have been for centuries. It is an essential way of preserving the finer traits – intelligence, aesthetics, judgment, restraint, in the ruling classes. In the poorer classes, of course, rather less fortunate attributes are reproduced.’

  He thinks I won't be able to argue with all them big words, but I've heard them all before, from Miss C.

  ‘Such as?’ I say, hopping mad now and showing it.

  He smiles. ‘I hardly think you need telling.’

  ‘No – go on.’

  ‘Well, the opposite traits of course. A certain dullness and brutishness. A lack of control. Intelligence replaced by a low animal cunning that makes crime the natural outlet.’

  He shoots me a look as he says this, but I'm past caring. ‘That must make you feel a lot better then,’ I hiss at him.

  ‘Not at all,’ he says, raising the eyebrow. ‘Indeed, when I took you on I had hoped for great things. And you showed some initial promise – you learned your lessons quickly, for instance, and demonstrated the ability to be trained. Above all you showed a capacity to appreciate, which is one of the highest faculties we possess. But now it seems that the improvement has run its course. You are becoming boorish and inattentive again. Miss Chitters has commented on a regrettable lack of respect, and an inability to take in new information. We have concluded that your ability has reached its natural limit and it would be a mistake to press you further. Cruel, in fact.’

  I can hardly believe my ears. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I'm saying, my dear boy, that the
experiment has proved to be rather disappointing. That, fed and clothed and educated as one of the most privileged, you are still reverting to your natural condition – a rather low condition that finds its natural outlet in deceit and material dishonesty.’

  He bends towards me. ‘Don't think I haven't heard you creeping around my house at night,’ he says. ‘What were you looking for? Money? Or things you could sell on the street?’

  So many thoughts are charging through my head that I can only gape at him, looking, I daresay, as low and oafish as he thinks me.

  Then he says, ‘You can take the boy out of the workhouse, but can you take the workhouse out of the boy… That was well said, I think.’

  I find my voice. ‘Well, if you think you're sending me back there, you've got another think coming. That's what you'd like, innit? To play God with me – and with the lives of all the other poor children you pretend to be interested in; taking them off their parents and getting rid of them… “Oh, we must take care of the children,”’ I say in a high voice, ‘“because the parents aren't fit.” But what happens to them then, eh, Mr Mosley? And what happens to the poor parents?’

  For a second his eyes bulge, then he laughs in a high-pitched horrible way.

  ‘The poor parents?’ he says. ‘Why, they're a danger to their own kind. You know what they spend their time doing at the Wood Street Mission? Trying to save the babies their parents have dropped into the river! If we weren't getting rid of the children as you so delicately put it, their parents would be doing the job in another, far more brutal way. But you know all this, Nathaniel. I took you in, hoping to prove that the way forward lay in kindness and education and care. I was wrong, of course.’

  ‘You think you're so clever, don't you?’ I yell at him, spit flying from my mouth. ‘You don't know nowt! But I'll tell you this much. You may think you're some kind of organ grinder, Mr Mosley – but I ain't no monkey!’

  I take a step towards him, hardly knowing what I'm doing, my head full of the wrongs of Nell and my mother. Mr M raises his cane, stepping backwards, but before he can bring it crashing down I've seized it and wrenched it off him. Then I strike out at him with it and catch him across the jaw. He staggers back and I just keep hitting out.

  ‘I'll – tell – you – what – the – poor – need – shall – I?’ I yell at him, striking out with each word so that he collapses under the blows. ‘Some – RIGHTS – that's all!’

  I finish and throw his cane a long way behind me. Then I see what I've done.

  He's struggling to get up, his face all bloody. ‘You – fool!’ he gasps, sinking down again.

  Horror washes over me like cold water. I take a step or two back, then suddenly I'm running, fast as my legs'll carry me, in any direction that's away from him. Don't know where I'm going but I've no choice but to run – faster and faster, like all the hounds of hell are following.

  17

  Refuge

  I spend that night in one of the boarded-up houses that's being converted to a warehouse. One of the boards over the window is loose, and the others rotting. I pull them away with shaking hands and climb through.

  Don't get much sleep, though. Can't stop thinking about everything that's happened. It's all true, I'm thinking. Everything that Nell and Abel said.

  All over the country poor kids are taken from their parents and never see them again – all for the sake of getting them out of the parish. And even though my mother gave us up, seemingly of her own accord, I can't help but wonder what happened to her after, and whether or not she ended up in the kind of place she couldn't get back from.

  Soon I've got other things to think of. I've left Mr M's, like I intended, but I've left with nothing – nothing I could have nicked to sell on the streets; nothing but the clothes I'm wearing, that mark me out as a target for anyone who's looking. And the police'll be looking, sure as eggs are eggs. Folk like me can't set about folk like him.

  Looks like all my plans have gone wrong. Just for a change.

  Hold up, Dodger, I tell myself. It's not long since you were in the workhouse, but you got out of there and you stayed out. No one'd've given much for your chances when you left that farm, but here you still are.

  I tell myself this and try to keep my chin up, but inside I'm shaking. And thinking, From the workhouse to the gaol, that's where you're going.

  In the morning, because I can't think of anything else to do, I make my way to Abel's shop. I stick to the back streets, passing pigs, hens and littl'uns all foraging in the muck. This time the front door of the shop's open, propped by a brick. There's a young man with a mass of fizzy black hair standing behind a wooden counter and behind him the walls are lined with books. The front of the shop's so different from the back that I wonder if I've got the right place.

  Still, I go up to the counter. ‘Can I speak to Abel Heywood, please?’

  A change flickers over the young man's face, then it straightens again. ‘There's no one of that name here.’

  I stare at him. ‘Well, he were here the other night.’

  ‘Can I interest you in a romance, madam?’ he says clearly, to a woman who's just entered the shop behind me.

  But he's not getting rid of me that fast. ‘If he's not here,’ I say. ‘How come his name's over the front door?’

  ‘Mabel the Mildewed,’ he says to the woman, just like he hasn't heard, and he opens a cabinet for her. ‘A rural romance – love and madness, knights and castles, dungeons, suicide and a wedding.’

  ‘It says, “Abel Heywood, Printers” on the front,’ I point out and he looks at me like I'm an annoying fly.

  ‘It was a printers, indeed, at one time,’ he says. ‘Now, as you can see, it's a penny reading room.’

  Suddenly it dawns on me that the press has to be kept secret. So at the front of the shop is a reading room and at the back is the printers.

  ‘Well, maybe I'll just stay here and read then,’ I say, thumbing through a magazine.

  ‘Do you have a penny?’ he says.

  I'm getting nowhere this way. And now he's off talking to an old man.

  ‘Look,’ I say to him in lowered tones when he comes back. ‘I was here the other night, right? Talking to Abel. I know all about The Poor Man's Guardian. And Abel's expecting to see me. So just tell me when he's coming back, and I'll go away and leave you alone.’

  He doesn't look best pleased by any of this.

  ‘No, the shop closes at eight in the evening,’ he says clearly as another woman comes up behind me. ‘There'll be no one here after that. You can try again later, if you like,’ he says, and she gives him a funny look. Because he's looking at her but talking to me. And he adds as the woman moves away, ‘So clear off, before I say something to the officer outside.’

  I whip round and indeed there is a police officer, just passing the shop. I think of saying something sharp like, ‘He's just as likely to arrest you as me,’ but the last thing I want to do right now is call his bluff. So I wait till the officer's well past and nip out.

  I spend a weary day on the streets. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. No sight of anyone I know, which is probably a good thing. Plus I'm starving. This is the first day in weeks I've been without food. And I'm losing my touch. I try nicking a pie and get chased by a little man with a big dog. Finally I see a little lad carrying a bag of black pudding. I stick my foot out as he walks past and he obliges me by falling over it. I pick up his bag and leg it, leaving him howling.

  Course, he's eaten half of it. Still, it's better than nothing. But that's all I have to eat all day – that and a handful of cherries I nick from a stall. I spend the day avoiding people as best I can, which isn't easy, since there's masses of them, and none of them seem to be alone, like me.

  You can get lost in a crowd, but it's no place to be alone. Around about mid-afternoon I begin to feel like I don't exist. Course, I don't want to be seen but still, it's a funny feeling. If you're going to live on the streets, you need a gang.

  Arou
nd about seven I make my way back to the shop. I know it's early, but my feet hurt. I go straight round the back this time. Gate's closed but it's not too hard climbing over the top. And the back door's shut so I sit on the step, pull my hat down over my face and sleep.

  I'm woken when the back door scrapes open. It's Abel, coming in with his back to me, and refastening the gate.

  ‘You took your time,’ I say to him, and he jumps violently.

  ‘How did you get in?’ he asks.

  I laugh. ‘Security's not your strong point,’ I tell him, ‘considering this is supposed to be a secret press.’

  I stand aside to let him open the door. ‘You'd best come in,’ he says over his shoulder.

  Once again we sit in the little back room with all the boxes. ‘So,’ he says, ‘you've come back.’

  ‘I have,’ I agree.

  ‘Been thinking about things, have you?’

  ‘That's right,’ I say.

  ‘Come to any conclusions?’

  I take my hat off, put it on the table and rub my grubby fingers across my forehead. ‘Look,’ I say. ‘I'm in trouble.’

  And I tell him everything – even about battering Mr M with his own cane. I don't lie because he has to see how much trouble I'm in. When I've finished he gives a long, low whistle, then stares at his inky fingers on the table.

  The longer the silence goes on, the further my heart sinks. He's going to tell me to stay away from him because he's in enough trouble already.

  Then, just when I think I can't take the silence any longer, he says, ‘How well do you know the city?’

  I stare at him. ‘Like the back of my hand. Why?’

  ‘First thing is – we'd better get you some new clothes.’ And as I go on staring, he adds, ‘You stand out a mile in that gear. I daresay that was the point.’

  ‘You mean… you're not turning me in?’ I say, hardly believing it.

  ‘Turn you in?’ he says frowning. ‘You'd not be able to work for me if I did that.’

  ‘Work? For you?’ I say.