The Street Philosopher (41 page)

‘Tell me,’ Cracknell asked loudly as he lit a cigarette, ‘did you consider my plight at all when you fled so promptly from that ruined house? When you
abandoned me
, Thomas? I was trapped in there for hours, y’know. I had to claw my way out through several tons of masonry, and then creep back to the British line under the cover of darkness–all the while thinking that I was about to get shot in the back by a Ruski sniper.’

Kitson drank from his second jar. Cracknell was goading him, and he would not rise to it. His only thought back in that collapsed parlour had been to leave, to hide himself away. Before heading for the cemetery, though, he’d noticed that the table the correspondent had been sheltering under was still intact, despite being largely buried under a fall of bricks. He had not gone to help. Cracknell, he’d felt, deserved to be left.

‘I knew that you would manage to save yourself somehow.’

‘It was your final dereliction of the
Courier
, I suppose–leaving your erstwhile mentor for dead.’ Cracknell paused thoughtfully, smoke spilling from his lips. ‘Do you know, I often reflected whilst in the Crimea that your desertion was in fact a singular piece of good fortune. It allowed me to find my true level. You did not understand our mission, and you were certainly never committed to it. As soon as things got a little difficult, you simply melted away.’

Grinding his teeth, Kitson took hold of the iron bar-rail with both hands. He would not relent and give Cracknell what he so plainly wanted.

‘You’re more of an
observer
, Thomas, aren’t you? You will not act to bring about change–you will not take a bloody stand. I mean, look at you now. A bloody street philosopher, a purveyor of gossip, of empty-headed prattle! After all I tried to teach you about the duty of the correspondent to truth, to matters of import!’ He stopped to drink, wiping his mouth reproachfully on his sleeve. ‘I admired you, at first. There was wit in your pen, and vigour, and serious intelligence too–but you lacked the strength of will to hold them together. You possessed every gift except the one needful–the pearls without the string.’

The voluble bombast in Cracknell’s voice was enough to cause something of a disruption. A number of those dancing eyed him with open dislike.

Kitson hunched his shoulders and lowered his head; it was no use. He could not leave this unanswered. ‘You mean I lacked your capacity for selfish indifference,’ he snapped.

Cracknell curled his lip. He had won. ‘You are referring to Madeleine Boyce again, I take it.’

‘And Robert Styles.’

Cracknell laughed–he actually
laughed
at this mention of their illustrator’s name. ‘How could I forget? A fellow with a similar weakness to your own, Thomas, if you don’t mind me saying, but with the very opposite inclination–a mind prone to an excess of brutality and morbidity rather than sentimentality.’

‘
Sentimentality
?’ Kitson turned towards him. ‘I helped many on the docks. In the British Hotel.’

‘A drop in the bloody ocean,’ Cracknell replied coldly. ‘A single line of one of my articles did more for the cause of the common soldier than an entire year of mopping up gore for Mother Seacole. But then, how can I expect you to understand this? Both you and Styles were utterly unable to grasp the simple, potent role of the war correspondent.’

‘Keep it down, can’t ye?’ growled a voice nearby. Up on the stage, the singer slid neatly from the hornpipe into a comic ballad, greeted with a universal bellow of approval. ‘
A friar came to a maid when she went to bed
,’ he began, warbling earnestly up at the balcony, ‘
Desiring to have her maidenhead
…’ The crowd erupted into salacious whistling.

‘Like you do, you mean,’ Kitson cried, ‘with your pointless, protracted feuds,’ He snatched the
Times
clipping from the bar and held it in Cracknell’s face. ‘How, pray, was your crusade against Boyce part of any effort to relay matters of import–to bring about this change you boast of?’

Cracknell said something about how Boyce, apart from his various terrible crimes, was a symbol of the turpitude of that war; a symbol of both undeserving privilege and callous incompetence.

Kitson ignored him. ‘For you to talk so freely about the neglect of duty would be amusing in its hypocrisy if the consequences had not been so tragic. You were our
senior
. Robert Styles was broken by your taunts, by trying to keep pace with you, with what you insisted we all do. I told you he had to be sent home, many times, yet you did not do it. And it cost Styles his life.’

The song went on behind them, the singer raising his voice in an attempt to drown out the heated disputation at the bar. ‘
But she denied his desire, and told him she feared hell
fire
…’ The audience joined in; more faces turned towards the two newspapermen.

Cracknell took a sip of beer. ‘You talk, Kitson,’ he said levelly, ‘as if I were the one who shot the boy.’

This remark, delivered so calmly, robbed Kitson of his breath, winding him as suddenly as if he had been slammed hard against the floor. A momentary vision flashed across his mind: of Styles’ wasted limbs, twitching for the last time on the bloody tiles of the parlour, a fraction of a second before they were buried forever beneath a heavy fall of Russian masonry.

Kitson faltered, his gaze dipping down. ‘That is something I must live with. I–I cannot forgive myself for my part in his death.’ He looked back at Cracknell. ‘And I cannot forgive you either. We failed him. He was our charge, our comrade, and we failed him appallingly.’

Cracknell rolled his eyes and finished off his porter. ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, listen to yourself! So damnably sensitive, so full of bloody drama! Drink up, man, before you collapse in a swoon.’ He summoned the barmaid and requested more gin, sliding an extra sixpence in her apron as he did so with an air of lascivious benevolence. ‘The sad truth of it,’ he continued bluntly, ‘is that Robert Styles wished to die. There was nothing either of us could have done to prevent it, short of binding the poor fellow in chains. Don’t you remember all those ghastly drawings of his?’

Kitson flinched. He had in fact brought a small number of Styles’ works back from the Crimea with him, taking them from the
Courier
tent on that last afternoon and tucking them inside his filthy jacket. His intention had been to try to honour the illustrator’s dying wish; but, as he had expected, it had been impossible to engage the interest of any respectable publisher. The bundle of gruesome studies had lain untouched at the bottom of a wardrobe in his cousin’s attic for nearly eighteen months.

‘Death was his fascination,’ Cracknell pronounced. ‘A lunatic obsession. Styles wanted nothing more than to join the fallen soldiers he studied so assiduously. He wanted to die. If it had not been by your hand, Thomas, it would’ve soon been another’s. Perhaps even his own.’

‘
Tush, quoth the friar, thou
needst
not doubt
,’ went on the ballad, accompanied by the scraping of the fiddle, ‘
If thou
wert in hell I could sing thee out!
’ The tavern exploded into uproarious mirth.

‘You cannot honestly believe that.’

Cracknell merely raised an eyebrow as he polished off his second measure of gin.

Kitson glared at him. ‘So you feel nothing–no shame, no remorse, not even the smallest sense of responsibility? Two young people died as a direct result of your neglectful behaviour. The Norton Foundry will surely close, bringing want and worry to its many hundreds of employees. William Norton has been forced to flee the country, and Jemima James has been reduced to almost certain penury. And yet you feel
nothing
–nothing but your righteous wrath about the evils of Nathaniel Boyce?’

Cracknell picked up Kitson’s beer-jar and took a long draught; then he set it down, his moustache heavy with foam and his cheeks red as radishes. He paused for a few seconds, as if considering what his former junior had said. Then he grinned. ‘Astute as ever, Thomas!’

Kitson strode away from the bar with livid energy. He had heard enough. It was time for him to leave.

‘Wait, my friend, wait,’ Cracknell begged with a boozy chortle, jogging after him and fastening a hand around his arm. ‘What about Mr Twelves?’

‘That is my concern, is it not? If they are even out there.’

‘I cannot let you go outside. They will surely murder you.’

Kitson looked into Cracknell’s rosy face, trying to find an explanation for this concern for his wellbeing, and saw at once that it was somehow part of the scheme–part of the reason he had waylaid Kitson on King Street, brought him to this place, plied him with drink, and tried so hard to provoke an altercation between them. He attempted to free himself, and they began to grapple; a table went over with a crash. People began to shout.

Men, the landlord’s roughs, were soon prising them apart. Mr Bairstowe himself looked down from the balcony, and asked what the trouble was. He addressed Cracknell by name; they were plainly acquainted. This was the world in which his former colleague had hidden himself so effectively for all these weeks.

‘Oh, nothing, Bairstowe old chap,’ Cracknell replied breezily, ‘just a difference of opinion. I will replace any drinks that were lost.’

Bairstowe snorted. ‘As if ye could. Who’s this with ye?’

‘An old friend from my days on the
London Courier
. He’s at the
Evening Star
now.’

Kitson shook off the man who was holding him. ‘I am no friend of his,’ he said fiercely; and then he walked out of the tavern into the rain.

The musicians started up again, and another song began. Bairstowe walked slowly down the balcony stairs, stopping by the door. Cracknell found himself being escorted over to him. The Trafford’s proprietor crossed his arms. He had the flattened, broken nose of a retired pugilist, and was regarding the swaying Tomahawk with weary amusement

‘Time for ye to leave as well, I think, Mr Cracknell,’ he said. ‘Afore my other customers tear out that bushy beard of yours.’

Cracknell gave a throaty chuckle. ‘My apologies, Bairstowe. You know how these things can go. What is the hour, if you please?’

‘Aff past eight, near enough,’ someone mumbled.

‘Heavens, early still.’ He chuckled again, and made a great show of stumbling into the man beside him. ‘Yet I feel already that I should be heading to my bed.’ The barmaid appeared and sullenly returned his cane, which had been left leaning against the bar. He bowed to her in gratitude.

‘Aye,’ agreed Bairstowe, nodding at a man to open the door, ‘and not a moment too soon. Good night to thee, Mr Cracknell.’

Outside, Cracknell looked around for Twelves. There was no one at all in the rainy street. Perhaps Kitson had been right. He straightened his jacket, shrugging off his show of inebriation like a cloak and directing himself not towards London Road and the Model Lodging House, but somewhere else altogether.

Then he caught sight of them down a side alley, silhouetted
against a distant gas-light: four black-suits standing around their victim, who lay coughing at their feet. Immediately, he started back to the Trafford. Reaching the door, he wrenched it open.

‘Mr Bairstowe!’ he bellowed. ‘There’s something out here I believe you might be interested in!’

Kitson landed on his side and curled up on the wet cobblestones. The stick had struck him in the stomach, close enough to his old wound to set off a great sparking bonfire behind his eyes, and lay him out, entirely helpless. He hadn’t seen his assailant; he could tell, though, that more than one man stood around him.

‘So this is the end,’ said a nasal, inexpressive voice somewhere above him. It belonged to the man from the Belle Vue–Mr Twelves, the leader of the black-suits. ‘This is it for ye, Mr Kitson, and no mistake. No gang of bugger-boys to rescue ye this time. Brigadier Boyce has ordered you dead.’ He tapped a knotted cudgel against his leg. ‘And it will ’appen.’

Before Twelves could act, however, someone barked his name with gruff aggression, the word ringing flatly off the close walls of the alley. It was the Trafford Arms landlord, Mr Bairstowe. Kitson could hear the sound of boots walking purposefully across the cobbles towards them.

‘Twelves!’ Bairstowe repeated. ‘What did I bleedin’ well say about your lot comin’ round ’ere, eh? Weren’t it clear enough for ye?’

There were thuds and grunts; feet scuffed and scrabbled against the stones. A black-suit fell close to where Kitson lay and had several savage kicks planted in his midriff. Kitson struggled up on to his elbows. Twelves tried to stop him, to beat him back down with his cudgel, but was dragged away by another man before he could lift it. The two of them exchanged a few jabbing blows and then toppled together into a deep, filth-choked gutter.

Kitson managed to rise to his knees. He peered down the alley. It was filled with brawling men, wrestling, punching and kicking at each other with vicious vigour. Both sides were obviously experienced at such backstreet combat, and it was brutal indeed. Kitson saw a man–he could not tell which group was
which in the darkness–pitched head first against a cluster of lead drainage pipes that snaked down the alley’s wall. There was an empty clang, and he slumped senseless to the ground. And there, on the opposite side of this desperate fight, was Cracknell, looking on excitedly, holding his cane like a sword as if ready to swipe at anyone who came near him.

Their eyes met through the ducking heads and flailing limbs. ‘Run, Thomas!’ Cracknell cried. ‘Run, my friend!’

Kitson needed no further encouragement. Arriving on the wide Oldham Road at a brisk trot, clutching his side, he started down towards the centre of the city. He could not now return to his attic. Princess Street was a good half-mile away, and there could easily be more black-suits along the route. All that was there, in truth, were some old clothes and a negligible sum of money. Time was beginning to run rather short, also; the train was due to leave Bank Top in under an hour. He turned right at the bottom of Oldham Road on to Swan Street, splashing heedlessly through dirty puddles, wincing at the continued complaints of his chest.

It was now plain that an act had been staged in the Trafford Arms, in classic Cracknell fashion; an act that Kitson had fallen for completely. Cracknell had wanted to cause a disruption, and had manipulated him towards that end with every success. The reason for this he could not fathom. No details of his scheme against Boyce had actually been revealed. Neither had he tried to recruit his one-time colleague to his cause.

Cracknell had clearly believed everything that he had said, though. Kitson’s attempts to challenge his wilful, self-serving distortions concerning Styles had not had any effect whatsoever. Rather than simply reawaken his anger, however, this realisation made Kitson recognise the inflections that he himself had given to their tale. After years of black confusion, he could now regard those events with a new clarity. He had contributed to the illustrator’s death; but the blame was not his alone, far from it. And he, unlike Cracknell, felt deep remorse for what he had done. In this simple fact he could sense the possibility of redemption.

Up amongst the clustered roofs before him, a dirty locomotive chugged along a raised railway into the immense hulk
of Victoria Station, a line of carriages trailing behind it. Kitson stopped briefly, catching his breath, following the engine with his eyes; then he hurried over to the station’s long front, where a row of hackney cabs stood before its thick Doric columns. He selected one and climbed inside, directing the driver towards Cheetham Hill. The interior smelled of cheap perfume, cigars and wet leather. They started with a jolt, wheeling off towards the outskirts of the city. Sitting back on the cab’s flattened cushions, he looked out at the storm and the soaked decorations that swung helplessly in its clutches. Few people were about, and traffic was at an absolute minimum. The empty, waterlogged streets shone like canals beneath the City Corporation’s gas lamps.

Jemima stepped on to the landing of Norton Hall, her valise in her hand. She wore her plainest bonnet and a long, sturdy cloak, a costume calculated not to attract notice. Her fine clothes, all bought with Foundry money, remained in her wardrobe, and of every book and journal she had collected in her rooms, only one volume had a place in her valise: the London and North-Western Railway Almanac.

Many of the servants had departed Norton Hall, keen to escape any contaminating association with the scandal that had broken there. As Jemima crossed the stair, however, a footman strode along the hallway below to her father’s study. She moved close to the wall, concealing herself in the gloom; no candles or lamps had yet been lit in the understaffed house.

The man opened the study door. Jemima could see her father sitting in the red glow of a guttering fire, an open watch in one hand and a full glass of liquor in the other. He looked immensely tired and careworn, clearly lost in embittered contemplation of the events that had reduced him with such devastating speed. Jemima knew that he had nurtured dreams of a great dynasty, stretching off into the mists of futurity, long after he himself was dead; dreams that would now surely come to nothing. She felt a stirring of pity, and an unexpected impulse to go to his side. Then he spoke, and she checked herself.

‘Where the blazes have ye been?’ he bawled at the servant, his voice rough with drink. ‘I rang five minutes ago!
Five minutes
ago
! What do I pay you for, to sit warming your idle feet by the scullery fire? You worthless dog!’

Her reasons for leaving, for never wanting to set eyes on Charles Norton again, returned to her forcefully. The grandfather clock chimed nine. She had to leave. The tirade in the study went on, out of all proportion with the perceived offence. Her father’s enraged voice echoing around her, Jemima took her valise in her arms in order to avoid accidentally bumping it against anything in the dark, and crept along the hall. She extracted an umbrella from the stand. The front door opened a crack, just enough to allow the passage of a slim woman and all her worldly possessions; and Jemima James slipped away from Norton Hall entirely unobserved.

The rain was so heavy that it almost forced the umbrella from her grasp. She walked rapidly down the drive; the lamps of a hackney cab shone up ahead, waiting at the gate as they had agreed. As she neared it, she saw that its windows were misted up with Mr Kitson’s breath. She climbed inside, dropping her umbrella to the floor and sitting with an exclamation of relief. Raindrops drummed upon the roof of the cab as it turned back towards the centre of Manchester. Mr Kitson sat across from her, deep in shadow; she could see, however, that he was smiling. Jemima was light-headed with exhilaration. It was underway. They would soon be free. She looked over at him, her partner in this bold action, and returned his smile.

‘Thomas,’ she said.

And then they were reaching out across the cab, embracing each other, kissing with a determined passion. His hands slid quickly beneath her cloak and across the sheen of her gown. Hers gripped on to his jacket, the damp material gathering under her fingers.