The Whispering Road

by Livi Michael

‘I want help with distributing the paper,’ he says. ‘I can't pay you – but you can sleep in the cellar. And I'll sort something out about food. It'll depend on you being honest, mind. And staying out of trouble.’

  ‘You mean it?’ I say, then, as a thought strikes me, ‘But… the police'll be looking out for me.’

  ‘There's been nothing in the papers,’ he says, surprising me. I'd've thought it'd be everywhere by now – Charity Boy Assaults Benefactor and such. They'd love it.

  ‘I'll keep my eyes open, of course,’ he says. ‘But so long as we get you out of that gear and you stick to your job, you should be fine.’

  I stutter out some thanks and Abel strokes his beard. ‘We'll have to sort something out about food,’ he says. ‘I can't have you nicking stuff. Is that clear?’

  ‘As if!’ I say, grinning broadly. I can hardly believe my luck. ‘You won't regret it, Mr Heywood sir, you never will! I'll work hard for you – day and night. I'll do any job you want. I'll sweep the cellar if you like. I'll… well, what is my job, exactly?’

  18

  Queenie

  This is how it works. All day long, while the front of the shop operates as a penny reading room, Abel writes his paper and prints up articles from famous people like William Cobbett and Richard Cobden. Then all night – for the man never sleeps as far as I can see – he runs the copies off in his cellar, and I help him box them up. We use hat boxes, shoe boxes, cake boxes, in fact, any kind of box that doesn't look as if it might have newspapers in it. One time I carried a dozen that had Caldwell's Pies on the front. As soon as they're boxed up I take them to different places in the city – the Mechanics Institute, and the Co-operative Society, and to the back rooms of about a dozen pubs where people meet who're not supposed to, under the law. Not criminals like Weeks, but workers who want to form themselves into something called a union. The shoemaker's union's one, and the woodworker's another.

  ‘If what you want to do's against the law,’ Abel says, ‘easiest way is to break it. The hard thing is to change it.’

  I follow him about the town for the first few days while he shows me the workshops where plasterers and painters, bricklayers and toolmakers take the paper and read it aloud to one another in their lunch breaks. Plus, there's some private people who take them. There's a grocer in Tib Street, for instance, who parcels several of them up in chests of tea and has them sent with the rest of his stuff to London. There's a baker's shop in Lizard Street that takes a box and – this is a bit embarrassing – the man at the meat-pie stall in Piccadilly, who I tried to nick a pie off. He has several.

  He doesn't recognize me, though, because of my new gear. Abel brought it the first morning. Corduroy trousers and a pale-brown shirt, a printer's apron, just like his only smaller, and a cap that covers my hair, which is growing fast.

  Abel has a long conversation with him about thieves and the police while I stand by, trying to look scarce. ‘It's a terrible thing, thieving,’ says Abel, laying a hand on my shoulder. ‘Does everyone down in the end. What do you think, Joe?’

  I think, What's he playing at? And nod, while bending over to hide my face and pat the dog, which snarls.

  I trot after him because his legs are so much longer than mine, and he talks at me, but he's not boring like Miss C. He makes it all seem like one of the old tales. Like the rich are all giants, and the poor are like Jack.

  ‘The factory owners think themselves the gods of this town,’ says he, as a carriage rolls past, spattering mud our way. ‘But we've a different religion now.’

  ‘Hark at that noise,’ he says outside a factory, where there must be a thousand wheels whirring. ‘You know what's being made, Joe?’

  ‘Aprons?’ I say.

  ‘History,’ says he. ‘Not so long ago only the lords made history, and the kings and queens. But now it's the people of this town.’

  ‘It's a great town this, Joe,’ he says. He's standing in the filthiest court I've ever seen, so that I have to wonder if we're talking about the same place. ‘Perhaps the greatest there's ever been. It's changing the face of the world. And its own face is changing, Joe – it's starting to smile!’

  That's Abel for you, carried along by hopes and dreams. His lean inky fingers work faster than any I've ever seen, and I work fast for him, and hard. And soon I'm taking all the boxes around myself.

  It'a different town again, now I'm working and moving among working people. Even the streets seem different, now that I'm using them for a different purpose – like there's one world layered over another. I have to be careful not to stumble into Mr M's world, of course, or back into the world of crime. But it's not difficult. I just stick to the routes I know, moving quickly and quietly, troubling no one, and soon it's as if those other worlds never existed.

  Best of all, when I take boxes to these places, they always slip me something – a pie here, some biscuits there, an orange off the old woman with her orange barrow. We'll sort something out about food, Abel told me, and he did. And every night he brings back bread and cheese to see us through the working hours.

  One night he's printing an article by William Cobbett…

  The Daily Diet of Children in the Workhouse

  ½ pt milk gruel

  7 oz rice pudding

  ½ pt of soup

  ‘Is that right?’ he asks me.

  ‘Sounds about right,’ I say. ‘Except for the rice pudding. And the soup. We only had soup on a Sunday.’

  And he changes the article as we speak.

  Soon I start to feel like a different person. Different clothes, different name, different job. I haven't forgotten about Annie, but it seems like I couldn't go back now if I tried.

  Then one day I see Queenie.

  I've just made a delivery in Blackfriars. I'm staring up at the pigeons as they dip and swoop, and wondering what it would be like to be a bird, when she walks right past me, not looking. And it's so long since I've looked for her that I have to look again to make sure. She's wearing different clothes as well. A woman's fancy gown, pink and lacy, though soiled at the hem and frayed. And a bright-green hat with a small feather – not like Bonnet's. She's carrying a little bag and walking with dainty steps. Not like Queenie. Yet it is Queenie and I take a big breath, about to bellow her name, when I realize there's a man following. In his middle years, not as old as Mr M, dressed smartly, with a thick black moustache.

  I know what you're up to, I'm thinking, and I grin to myself. She'll lead him into one of the courts and a whole gang of little blaggers'll leap out and cosh him and rob him blind.

  Well, I'm not about to blow her cover. I follow them round the corner, keeping my distance. They pass through one alley, then a court, and no one jumps him. Then when they get to the alley that leads to St Mary's Church they stop and I stop too, dodging quickly back into the courtyard.

  The man says something and I hear him laugh. Then there's another kind of noise.

  I know what they're doing – I've heard it before, in the workhouse. I didn't like it then and I don't now. I move further away then back again, because I don't want to lose her.

  It only takes a minute then I'm dodging back into a doorway as the man reappears, looking shifty. I have to wait while he crosses the yard. Then I nip into the alleyway and bump right into Queenie, who's straightening her dress, and she gives a little gasp of fear.

  ‘Hello, Queenie,’ I say.

  Her eyes look glazed over somehow, then they focus.

  ‘Dodger!’ she says, and she starts to smile, but I pull her through the alley and out by the church.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I say, pulling her round to face me.

  ‘Dodger,' she says again, still smiling. ‘You've grown!’

  And you've shrunk, I feel like saying, because that's what it looks like. Her face is pale and shrunken, her eyes enormous, with big bluish shadows beneath them. Then I realize I probably have grown, because my eyes are level with hers. All these weeks of good food.

  ‘Nic
e dress,’ I tell her.

  She puts out a hand and touches my face, still smiling, and I try not to flinch.

  What's wrong with her eyes? I'm thinking. The pupils are huge.

  ‘Hello, Dodger,’ she says, and her voice is funny. Kind of blurred.

  I shake her arm. ‘Queenie, what's up?’ I say, and she looks a bit self-conscious then.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says.

  ‘Where are all the others?’ I ask her. ‘Pigeon, and Pickings. Ors'n'cart?’

  She pulls away from me a bit and her eyelids droop. ‘We all work for Bailey now,’ she says slowly.

  I thought as much. I wait for her to ask me what I've been doing all these weeks, where I've been, but she doesn't.

  ‘Queenie,’ I say, ‘what are you doing?’ But she looks away from me, past the church. ‘Got to get back,’ she mumbles and moves away, but I catch her arm again. ‘Queenie,’ I say, and I hardly know how to go on, then the words come tumbling out. ‘You don't have to go back, not if you don't want to – you don't have to do anything you don't want!’

  The words sound daft even to my ears, but I'm thinking, I'll take her to Abel – he'll know what to do. She can deliver papers with me.

  She pulls her arm away. ‘No time,’ she's saying.

  ‘Queenie,’ I urge her. ‘Don't go back. Come with me. It'll be all right.’

  She looks at me properly then, her eyes look up and down over my new clothes. ‘I can't,’ she says flatly, and I feel her emptiness and despair.

  ‘Why not? You don't have to live like this.’

  She shrugs. ‘It's my life now,’ she says, and I see her glance up at the church.

  ‘It doesn't have to be,’ I tell her. ‘Come with me now!’

  She shakes her head, still looking at the church. Then she looks at me again. ‘You're doing well, Dodger,’ she says. Only her lips are smiling.

  ‘I've got another kind of life now,’ I say. ‘You come with me and bring the others. It can be your life too. We can start again.’

  ‘Too late,’ she murmurs.

  ‘It's not too late!’ I say, feeling desperate. ‘Look, just come with me. Don't go back there – to him!’ I shake her shoulder, as if trying to shake some sense into her. She looks at me, smiling properly now, then she touches my face again.

  ‘It never was your world, Dodger,’ she says. ‘Not really. You didn't belong. But it is mine. I can't change. I can't just move into your world – not now. Not after everything I've done.’

  ‘You can!’ I say, shaking her again, and her eyes fill with tears.

  ‘Look at me, Dodger,’ she says. ‘I'm not anyone. I walk the streets. Don't tell me I can just walk out of my world into yours, because I can't. The things I've done won't ever go away. And I'm sick, Dodger – you know,’ she nods at me. ‘I'm sick. I'll not get well again –’

  ‘Don't say that!’

  ‘I can't live with ordinary people. Wherever I go, they'll know what I am.’

  She glances at the church again and I know what she's thinking. Suddenly I can see it all the way she sees it, the way the church would see it. And Miss C and Mr M and all the rest of that crew.

  Queenie looks at me levelly enough, like she knows what I'm thinking, but I feel like I'm breaking up inside. And because I can see it all clearly I can't speak. But you're Queenie, I'm thinking. That's who you are. Yet I don't say it.

  ‘I'll have to go,’ she says finally, moving away, but I catch her hand as she moves and press it to my lips, and she looks at me startled and turns her face away as I kiss her again, so that I just catch the corner of her mouth. Never done that before, or since.

  For a moment she clutches me and I can feel her crying without a sound, then she breaks away, almost running, turning into the next alleyway without looking back. And I know she doesn't want me to follow her, so I don't. I just stand where I am, arms falling uselessly at my sides, feeling like someone just carved a great hole in me. Then after a while of standing stupid-like, I set off, back towards Piccadilly.

  All the birds are calling and crying, setting up their usual evening din, but I hardly hear them. I push my way through the crowds and the shiny streets. My chest hurts and I feel worse and worse inside.

  I'm not looking where I'm going and on the corner of Oldham Street I walk smack into someone who's coming the other way. ‘Sorry,’ I mumble, without looking up. But the other person steps back.

  ‘Joe?’ she says. Then, catching sight of my face, ‘What is it? What's the matter?’

  It's Nell, wrapped in her shawl. I can tell from her eyes how bad I look, but I just say, ‘Nothing,’ and start to press on towards the shop.

  ‘Are you looking for Abel?’ she says. ‘He'll be late tonight – but he's given me the key. Come on. We'll wait together.’

  Didn't want company. But I follow her round the back of the shop and into the back room, waiting while she lights the lamp.

  ‘There, that's better,’ she says.

  I say, ‘I'll be fine now. You go if you like.’

  But she stays looking at me as if she's really sorry, and I can't take it. I turn my face away.

  ‘Joe,’ she says, very gentle. ‘What is it, Joe? Has something happened?’

  ‘It's nothing,’ I say again. ‘Just… someone I used to know.’

  Then before I know it, I'm telling her everything, about Queenie and the gang, how I had to leave them to live with Mr M while they had to go to Bailey, and about Queenie now, how she looked, and what she said. And Nell doesn't say anything the whole time, but when I've finished she steps forward and takes me in her arms and presses my head into her shoulder. I feel myself going all stiff as she rocks me, and my breath comes in great gusts and bursts. But I'm not crying, because I never do.

  ‘Oh, Joe, Joe,’ she mourns. ‘There are so many evils in this world.’

  I just stand and let her rock me. It's never happened before, not so long as I remember. Maybe my mother used to do it, long ago.

  When she lets go we sit down on opposite sides of the table. ‘Eh, Joe,’ she sighs. ‘If only I could be sure the same thing hasn't happened to my own little girl.’

  I wipe my nose on my sleeve. ‘What did you say her name was?’

  ‘Sarah,’ she says, like a sigh. ‘And my boy was Ned – Edward, after my father.’

  ‘How old were they?’ I ask, happy to talk about something else.

  ‘Sarah would be eleven now, and Edward coming up to thirteen. I haven't seen them for four years.’ Her mouth quivers, but she doesn't cry.

  ‘Did they look like you?’ I ask, for something to say, and she nods her head.

  ‘A little. Sarah did. Edward took after his father, but fair, very fair.’

  ‘Which workhouse was it, where you left them?’

  ‘Rochdale.’ She looks at me. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I shrug. ‘I just thought I might have seen them if they'd been where I was, that's all.’

  ‘Saddleworth?’ she says, and I nod, but she shakes her head.

  Then the next thing she says makes the hair on the back of my head stand on end.

  ‘You'd remember my Ned if you'd seen him. He had a birthmark on his face. A little bluish pattern all over his left cheek and eye – like bilberries on the moor.’

  I just stare at her, and she looks back at me, wondering. But I'm saved from having to speak by Abel, who comes crashing in at the door.

  ‘I've just been tipped off,’ he says. ‘There's going to be a raid!’

  19

  Raid

  Now we're both staring at him.

  ‘What will you do?’ says Nell. Abel runs his fingers through his hair till it all sticks up. ‘There's a bloke I know,’ he says, ‘owns a warehouse at the back of the Bridgewater Arms. He says we can move all the stock there. But we'll have to be quick.’

  We work all night, loading the boxes on to barrows and wheeling them through the back streets to the warehouse. It starts to rain and the barrows are heav
y, and soon we're slipping and sliding through the muck. I don't mind too much, since it gives me something else to think about. But the words Annie spoke to me in the forest keep coming back to me all the time.

  Light hair, she said. Like straw, the boy has… And a pattern like bilberries – here.

  I don't want to think about it, because I never believed her. But now my insides are stiff with dread and guilt. Annie, I'm thinking. Where are you now?

  Soon, though, there's no time for thinking. I never knew there were so many boxes in the back room and the cellar. Abel works with Matt, the lad who runs the front of the shop in the daytime, to get the printer loaded on to a cart and covered up. Nell helps at first but then he sends her home.

  ‘Things could get nasty,’ he says. ‘I don't want you running foul of the law again.’

  She protests a bit but she's already had a long day's work and looks worn out. So I help her load some of the boxes on to another barrow and she wheels them off a bit unsteadily to her cellar room.

  Then, just as we're loading the final lot on to my barrow, there's a thundering crash at the front door. Matt goes to answer it while Abel helps me tug the barrow into the yard.

  ‘Don't go by Oldham Street,’ he hisses at me, and I nod to show I've understood.

  I wheel that barrow fast as I can through the back alleys. It overturns twice on the uneven cobbles, and I have to pile all the boxes back on again. God knows what state the papers'll be in. I go up Back Piccadilly and on to Lever Street, my feet slipping in the mud and all my muscles straining. From Lever Street I turn on to Hilton Street, which crosses Oldham Street, and I pause at the corner to watch what's going on.

  A crowd's gathered and I can just make out Abel, because he's half a head taller than the rest. There's lots of heckling and jeering.

  ‘Have you got nowt better to do?’

  ‘Call yourselves constables!’

  Then Abel says something to one of the officers and gets himself struck across the face with the baton, and a cry goes up, ‘Traitor! Traitor!’

  They're yelling at the police, not Abel. I hear the sound of glass smashing and pick up my barrow fast, wheeling it towards Market Street and the Bridgewater Arms.