by Alex Pheby
There was a steady stream of men in and out of the door – they were all of a type that Nathan barely recognised – certainly they were not like the working men he had seen. They were not like his father. They were not even like the gentleman callers. They were very similar to each other, though – hats and jackets, neat hair and an air of distant professionalism. They went in, there was a brief discussion with the woman at the desk, drinks were bought, and then girls introduced.
At an upstairs window, the curtains ruffled, and there was Prissy. She was shouting, though he couldn’t hear her words, only see the anger in her expression. Someone pulled her away, and there was another girl, very like Prissy in her looks, but larger, angrier, and now here was Gam, hands up, palms first, with a very reasonable face, and Prissy was behind him trying to fight her way past, to get, seemingly, her fists in the other girl’s face. Gam took Prissy by the waist, lifted her, and the curtains closed.
Nathan ran over, feeling the Itch in him, but his progress was blocked by two men coming out, smiling and laughing, and another man going in, furtive. Before Nathan could get past them, he spotted Gam and Prissy coming out of a side door. She was furious and Gam was apologetic, that much he could see, and her cheeks were streaked with black tears.
Nathan stood where he was. Partly he didn’t go over to them because they were talking now, earnestly, partly he didn’t go because he had seen those tears on his mother’s cheeks. Gam took Prissy’s hands and held them together, but she wasn’t having it, whatever placation he intended by the gesture.
Gam muttered something to her; she turned, looking to where Nathan had been standing. Gam looked too, and when they didn’t see him there, they both looked around. He waved, and then Prissy wiped her face and composed herself, almost, tried to smile, but it didn’t work. She turned away, and Gam came over to him.
‘Alright, Nat?’
‘Never mind me,’ Nathan said, ‘what’s the matter with Prissy?’
Gam shrugged. ‘No idea. You know what girls are like. Don’t worry about her; if everything goes well tonight, she’ll never have to see this place again.’
XXVI
Gam waded through the sludge in his leather trousers, with his knees coming up high as if it was nothing at all, but he hadn’t brought any for Prissy and she couldn’t bring herself to do it without. She looked off at Gam’s back and hissed to herself.
Nathan watched her, the line of her cheek. When she turned instinctively, her attention caught by that indefinable senseless thrill on the skin a person feels when they’re being stared at, she was steel-eyed and angry. Gam turned and they exchanged a glance, and then she smiled, her eyes softening. ‘Nathan, would you?’ She put her arms up, hands limp like a begging dog, and tilted her head.
At first Nathan didn’t know what she meant, but then she lifted her leg and let her bottom lip stick out a little. She wanted to ride him, like a horse.
His mouth was suddenly dry.
‘Terrible, aren’t I? It’s just my stockings, you see? Can’t ruin them, can I?’
‘Of course not.’
Of course she couldn’t. Nathan came and stood in front of her, so she was behind him. A moment passed in which it seemed to Nathan that she was reluctant to touch him, but then she put her arms around his neck and wrapped one leg around his waist. Her white stocking was so bright in the darkness, against the leather of her boot, that Nathan had to swallow.
‘Well, go on then,’ she said. She meant that he should take her knee over his elbow and lift her so she could swing her other leg around too. He took her legs and clasped his hands together underneath them. Nathan gasped – the pain from the rat bite was up to his elbow now, and her weight on it made it worse.
‘What’s up?’ Prissy asked.
Nathan shook his head, set his jaw and eased slowly out into the water.
At first, she kept upright behind him, but then she rested her head on his shoulder so that her warm breath sent shivers down his back. ‘Giddy up then, eh?’
Nathan nodded and carried her out into the dark, writhing mass.
Gam was out of sight, but Nathan could hear him disturbing the water up ahead. He shouted back, ‘Watch yourselves! Floater coming down.’
Nathan didn’t have to wait long to find out what he meant. Prissy shifted on his back and pulled her arms tighter around his neck, but Nathan barely noticed, not even the close press of her, or the slipping of her skin against his.
Along the black river, through the shadows, came a mass – a raft of sticks? No, denser than that, and darker – solid. It looked for a second like driftwood and branches torn from an oak tree, but the illusion quickly passed.
It was a woman this time: she was quite naked, her arms stiff out to the sides and her grey hair haloed out in wisps that drifted around her face. She was mottled blue and her white, lidless eyes stared up, her mouth slack and open as if she was amazed at what she saw on the roof above her, as if she was petrified by it. Her expression was so peculiar and eerie that it was a little while before Nathan could look away, and then he wished he hadn’t.
In the bowl formed by her jutting hip bones, there was a rat’s nest. Five or six black grubs nestled in the dip, eyes shut and bulging, and beside these blind, wriggling things a fat mother rat lay as they suckled, her thick fur as luxuriant as any rich woman’s stole and her tail ribbed and pink, curled around them all, keeping her children safe from the encroaching dead-life that threatened to suffocate them.
The mother turned her head to Prissy and Nathan, looking up at them like she was about to introduce herself, twitching her whiskers. She said nothing though, did not break into a speech like a rat from a tale, but instead she buried her head in the corpse below her, coming back after a struggle with a half-gnawed tube of flesh, quarried from the dead woman’s bowel.
Nathan retched. If he had eaten more of the chop, he would have emptied his guts, but it was already digested. Prissy clutched him tighter, as if he was about to throw her off.
‘What’s going on back there?’ Gam called.
Nathan couldn’t answer.
‘He’s going to drop me in it!’
‘Why?’
The rat swallowed her meal in one, her huge front teeth no good for chewing, only for ripping, and she went back down for more.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Prissy hissed. ‘You better not let me fall.’
‘Ask him what the matter is.’
‘I have asked him.’
This time when the rat came up, its meal remained stubbornly attached and the rat thrashed about, getting to its feet so that the grubs hung down like udders on a goat. The woman bobbed a little in the water, as a boat does when its occupants shift about. Nathan doubled over so that now Prissy’s ribbons dipped into the grime and she slipped forward.
‘He’s going to chuck me off!’
Gam came splashing back through the water. ‘What’s the fuss about?’
‘Don’t know. We were going on fine, then this dead bird floats past and he starts up.’
Gam nodded. ‘What’s going on with you, Nat? Squeamish are we all of a sudden? Delicate of stomach? Refined of sensibilities? Don’t like to see it, I suppose, death? That right? Offends the eye, does it? First panicked by a ghost and now this? After the day Prissy’s had?’ Gam reached round and held Nathan’s face, pulling him up until the two were eye to eye. ‘Or is it vermin you don’t like. Pests? Well, that’s easily solved.’
Gam let Nathan’s face go and went over to the corpse. He grabbed it by an elbow and a knee and span it round so that it went face down into the water. The dead-life, that part of it which could eat, raced for an easy meal, and the rat mother had to fight as she swam.
‘There you go. Out of sight, out of mind. Now pull yourself together! You act like you’ve never seen a corpse before. Never seen a rat. Are you going to turn out to be a dud, Nathan? Am I going to have to revoke your membership? Come on. We’ve got work to do.’
X
XVII
The ladder swayed at the top like a snake charmer’s flute, bumping and scraping until it met wall flat enough to rest on.
‘Hurry up, Gam, I’m slipping!’
Nathan moved forward so that Prissy could rest her feet on the first rung that was out of the water. She lunged at it before he was in position, grabbing into the darkness above him, stamping her heel into the space between his shoulder and collar. And then she was off, up and away, as if he was nothing more than a convenient foothold.
‘You go next.’
‘How?’ Nathan stared down at the waders, slick and glistening. In lieu of an explanation Gam got hold of Nathan’s braces and pulled them away to either side. ‘Grab these.’
Nathan did and then, like a father does for a child, Gam heaved him up into the air. The waders stood on their own for a second before listing off to the side. When the flow found a way into them, the whole lot slipped under the water and Gam dumped Nathan onto the ladder. ‘Up!’
Nathan looked to see where he was going and there was the white of Prissy’s stocking. Inside her left thigh a rip snaked up into the darkness. As if she heard him looking, Prissy hissed and stamped down on his head. ‘Don’t you start too.’
‘Watch it up there! I’m not going to be holding it much longer.’
Nathan turned his attention to the rung in front of him, pushing out of focus the frills and ribbons and scuffs and rips of Prissy’s underthings. It wasn’t long before what looked like moons and stars above shone enough light so that rocks and mortar appeared around him. Then the top of his head met the sole of Prissy’s boot.
‘What do I do now?’ she said, under her breath.
‘Is there anyone up there?’ Nathan whispered.
‘How should I know?’
‘Poke your head out of the hole.’
Prissy bit her lip and put her face up through the nearest moon.
‘No-one.’
‘Then push.’
She did, and suddenly there was a dizzying blaze of light and what had seemed in the dark to be the open bowl of the heavens came sharply into much closer focus: the walls and ceiling of a mizzen appeared where the sky had once been. Prissy didn’t pause and, suddenly understanding that there might be people who could harm her above, neither did Nathan. He scrambled up, Gam pushing at his heels.
Soon the three of them lay sprawled on the floor, rough sawdust and shavings in clumps, tracks of dragged feet leading here and there. Gam returned the lid of the bench to its proper place.
From outside came shouts and the clattering of pans and urgent orders.
‘Dust yourself down,’ Gam said. ‘We go from here, through the basement kitchens, up into the downstairs. Everyone will be busy with the ball prep, and no-one will be paying attention to wandering urchins. If anyone asks, we’re casuals hired for the event. We get up to the private areas by the dumb waiter, find his lordship’s study. In there are his valuables and the thing our client wants.’
‘Which is what?’ Prissy asked.
‘None of your business, that’s what it is. You keep your mind on your buyout – you can both take what you like. Alright?’
They nodded.
‘Right then. In and out, home by bedtime. Easy.’
But it wasn’t easy.
The moment they went through the door each of them was dragged off: Gam by a chef, Prissy by a sommelier, and Nathan by a commis. In any kitchen brigade there are slum urk skivvies that are more or less nothing in the eyes of the more important staff – drudges who, stooped and lowly, foul-smelling and repulsive as they may be, can be made to do whatever dirty work requires doing at a moment’s notice. The children were assumed to be of this order, and if they stank like the mizzen then this was not so entirely unusual, and the place was, anyway, filled with a thousand strange and unfamiliar odours proper to the recipes and the ingredients necessary to make them, which are often offal, or distasteful for some other reason.
The commis pulled Nathan by the collar, so that his top button wedged in the indent between his collar bones, and dragged him through the low, arched, brickwork corridor of a cellar into a similarly cramped and dingy chamber.
‘Gut these!’
On the floor in front of him, in a tin bathtub, there was a pile of chicken carcasses, thick with blood, beside which was a small knife.
‘What are you waiting for? You want paying? Get gutting.’
Nathan took the knife. It was stubby, no longer than his thumb, sharpened down until there was a talon of iron sticking out from the smooth wooden handle. He passed it to his right hand, the one without the rat bite, and gripped. It was made in such a way that, despite its smoothness, it was perfectly rigid in his hand.
He turned, eyes down, but when he stepped forward and looked up the chef had gone and there was Prissy, a bottle gripped by its neck in each hand.
‘I can hear Gam,’ she said.
‘Let’s go.’ Nathan dropped the knife and went back into the corridor. ‘Where is he?’
‘I heard him shouting from in there.’
She nodded towards a doorway flickering red and shimmering with heat. From inside there was clattering and banging, metal against metal, the rushing roar of a fire stoked very high.
Nathan edged towards the door, wishing suddenly that he had kept the knife. Prissy pushed at his back, urging him forward, so that he was all at once at the doorway, and there was Gam, hands wrapped in bundles of linen, half bent, reaching into a great oven. He was overseen by a wiry man, black hair sprouting from beneath a high white hat. ‘Deeper! There’s some at the back.’
‘It’s too hot!’
The man laughed, dry and bitter. ‘Not as hot as it’s going to get if you don’t get those tarts out before they singe.’
Nathan clapped his hands together, and the man turned.
‘What?’
‘Chef wants you.’
‘What?’
‘Boss wants you. Some problem upstairs.’
The man spared Gam one glance and marched off, his hat in his hands.
Gam was in the corridor before Nathan was. ‘No more mucking around. Follow me, and quick!’ Gam went off as if he knew where he was going: left, right, never pausing for a second. If someone tried to make them stop or listen, Gam nodded and bowed and made by a motion of his hands for them to understand that they were on an errand and would be right back any moment. Off one wall of a large room, plates were laid empty on trestle tables and children polished knives and forks with cloths. There was a hatch in the wall into which Gam urged Nathan and Prissy.
‘Get in and sit still. I’ll winch you up; when you stop, send it back and do the same for me.’
Prissy got in, cramming herself into the corner as if she were a puppet packed away in a trunk, her joints unnaturally twisted here and there. Nathan didn’t move to join her.
‘Get a move on, Nat, we haven’t got all day.’
He didn’t move.
‘Look, Natty, there’s no time for all this. You’ve no cause to be skittish. This is work. Cram yourself next to her or I’ll cram you in. Understand?’
Nathan did as he was told. He went in backwards, the soles of his boots grazing Prissy’s shins, making her spit, but soon Gam was shoving them in together, as if he was filling a suitcase, and then the shutter shut and everything was dark and quiet. For a moment all Nathan could feel was Prissy’s breath on his cheek, and the sweet, astringent camphor of her dress. In the dark it was as if they were alone in the world, and when the dumb waiter began to move, it was as if they were drifting in nothing, only her scent and the press of her on his back meaning anything.
‘When’s the last time you washed?’ she whispered. ‘You stink!’
‘It’s the sewer stuff.’
‘Dirty so and so! You better not be filthing up my good dress.’
Nathan could have said that he was only filthy because he’d done his best to keep her clean, but he didn’t, and then they stopped with a bump.
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‘Well, open the bleeding hatch then! You want us to suffocate?’
Outside there was a room of such beauty that Nathan forgot Prissy for a moment. The walls were painted with men and women, all stark naked in the woods, golds and greens, sunlight pouring over the lot of them like honey.
The furniture was almost as lovely, as if it was carved from the driest of woods, from trees that baked in the sun. Between the limbs of chairs had been woven cloth of perfectly white cotton, threaded with gold and silver picked into patterns so intricate that he couldn’t see how it had been done. Even the floor was beautiful, no planking to be seen, but rather a vase of flowers so lifelike that Nathan could scarcely understand that it was flat, and when he stepped down, he paced around the edges, poking it with his toe.
Prissy grabbed his arm. ‘Well, send it back down then, and be quick.’ She shoved him full in the back and he lurched over to where the sash rope looped around a gear and lowered the dumb waiter. Before there was any slack in the rope, it was wrenched out of his hand and then, in a hoarse bark, Gam shouted, ‘Pull it!’
Gam’s weight was too much. Nathan tried to pull but it only came up an inch. His rat-bitten arm was weak with pain and the other one couldn’t compensate.
Prissy came up behind and grabbed. ‘Put your back into it, Nat. It’s like you want us to get caught. What’s the matter with you? If this job doesn’t get done, I’m at the Temple tomorrow. You understand?’
Nathan understood. He spit on his hands and together they pulled it up.
Gam, when he appeared at the hatch, looked off behind them. In the doorway was a woman who was less substantial than the dress she was wearing: the fabric was ribbed and ruched and frilled, whereas she was like tissue paper, with eyes so pale a grey that they barely outshone her pallid skin. Her arms were thin as kindling. She had her hands at her mouth.