'The worst of it is,' I said, 'I think he was done in too – just like Mike.' 'The one who was crowned this week?' I nodded.
'This is Waterloo,' said my landlady, 'and it is a very bad place. Men are the slaves of the factories and the railways, and the women are the slaves of the men – whether in the homes or the night-houses. There is drunkenness, opium, cramped quarters and all that goes along with it.' 'But you live here.'
'I have no choice, and have my church and my god, Mr Stringer,' she said.
As, by that most unexpected remark, my prospects of making her my girl disappeared, she seemed to become still more beautiful.
"The book was left under the bed,' my landlady went on, and she handed it to me. 'What did you know about Henry Taylor?' 'He was handsome enough.' I did not like to hear that. 'When did he die?' I said, quite harshly. 'It is not known that he did.' 'When did he go from here, then?' She was back at the boiler now, poking at the clothes very lazily. 'August.' 'When in August?'
'He was last in this house on the twentieth of August – a Wednesday. I happened to be here the night before, and I heard him leave for work.' 'At what time?' 'Six. Two hours later they sent a man around – a very young man.' "The call boy.' She said nothing. 'Do you mean the call boy?' 'I suppose so. He was a boy, and he called.' 'Do you know which way Taylor went to work?' 'Along the river, I think.'
She had gradually turned away from me as she spoke, and I saw she was no longer stirring but simply holding the stick in the boiling water. Then she sniffed mightily, or so I thought, but at the same time she dragged one of my undershirts out of the water and held it in the air with a waterfall coming off it. She could have been crying but it might have been the steam on her face; her eyes, at any rate, were prettier and more full of light and darkness than ever. She let the undershirt fall back and, turning around to face me, said, 'You are like a detective.'
For the first time I felt that I had the upper hand with her. 'You've talked to detectives?' I said.
"Three times,' she said, and then, being sure she was about to cry but hating the thought of it, I felt that this was enough.
I slapped the table with my cap, and said, 'The pharmacy over the road has been telling me, by a dozen adverts all across its front, to "Buy Vianola Soap".'
'And you have finally given in,' she said, smiling somewhat again. I nodded. 'Now I am going to have a wash.'
'Good,' she said, and with her mystery smile returning we were back on equal terms.
She pushed one of the towels towards me with the book now on top instead of underneath. She reached up to a shelf, took down a bowl and filled it with hot water. I walked upstairs and unwrapped my soap, which was rather on the small side but took away the stink of Nine Elms Loco Shed in an instant. I lay down on the bed and slept for half an hour. When I woke up the sky was a smokier red, and the banging and the crashing were still going on but further out in the distance. I looked at my room – at all the things that Henry Taylor had looked at from the same truckle bed. It was a lonely spot in a crowded place, but when I thought of my landlady downstairs I felt that, whatever lay in store for me, I wouldn't mind for having been here with her for a while.
Chapter Fourteen
Saturday 5 December continued
I walked down Lower Marsh, and had no trouble: there were too many girls about for that, even though they were lasses of that particular sort – that watchful sort.
The Citadel was a round pub with mighty lanterns dangling over each door (except that one had been smashed off, leaving just the gas pipe, which came down and around like the trunk of an elephant). These you passed underneath to get to a circular bar with mirrors around the top, the bull's eye of the boozer. On the ceiling were paintings of dancing ladies, and there were signs everywhere saying 'Piano Most Nights'. I couldn't see a piano anywhere but I soon learnt that you didn't need one in the Citadel because after a while it just erupted into song, like tinder catching fire.
I took a pint of Red Lion and carried it across to a seat marked 'The Comfortable Corner', although there were no corners anywhere, the place being circular, so this was perhaps a joke. The joxies on the next seat were certainly laughing as I sat down. I had never seen such pretty drunks.
I had bought my pint, thinking my first would also have to be my last, but when I got to the end of it the Citadel seemed quite the place to be, and, sitting there, I began to think once again that progress was being made in my thoughts. But that did not last long, for they all went wrong in the end, like the broken gas pipe: Rose and Hunt were true engine men put to work on a sleepy branch, for which they would have hated the bosses like old boots – and Rowland Smith had been one of the bosses. But then he had also put himself on this balmy branch, and that after having risen to the top of the South Western in what must have been very short order, for he was still a young man.
As to Vincent, I was out with him, but like as not that was only because he knew I was up to the mark for an engine man and might beat him to the regulator. But why could he not relax even for a minute?
Then again, as to the murders… were they really anything of the sort? Perhaps Henry Taylor was only lying low, and maybe Mike had fallen on the footplate and hit his head on the handbrake or had some other accident of the sort not unusual around any engine shed.
I started thinking again of Vincent, and when I looked up I had hocussed him out of the air, for he was standing before me with a pewter in his hand. (He's putting on swank, trying to look like an engine man, I thought.) There was a circular sort of fellow next to him, also carrying a pint, and wearing a crushed and twisted black suit. He was shouting, 'Trousers! I say, trousers!' to someone in another part of the pub. I had seen him somewhere before. 'All right there?' said Vincent, over the noise of the other. So he was talking to me again, and very matey with it.
'This is Mack,' he said, pointing to his pal. 'Saturday Night Mack, I call him.'
Saturday Night Mack was still yelling to someone in the middle of the pub, and it struck me that he was the fellow who'd been holding the brush and being scolded at the Necropolis station. 'Mack!' shouted Vincent, 'pay attention, man!'
He introduced us with words that let me know I was in for more sensation. 'Mack works for the Necropolis. You went into their station on the Red Bastard, didn't you?' Vincent added. 'Thirty-One,' I said, 'yes.'
Vincent sat down in front of me and put his pewter on the table, while Saturday Night Mack carried on shouting across to a gingery bloke. 'Well, you've been a bit bloody silent on the subject, for Christ's sake,' said Vincent.
'So have you. You've been a bit silent on all subjects, if you ask me.' 'Well, I'm all ears now. Who was Barney's mate for the trip?' 'Mike.'
'Oh crumbs. It knocked me for six when I heard. I was on leave, you know.' 'But who would do that to Mike?' I said. 'Search me,' said Vincent. 'He was a good fellow,' I said. 'Top hole,' said Vincent.
We both took a drink. Talking to this kid?, I thought, was like walking on hot coals.
'Bit of an over-steamer, though,' I said. 'I noticed when I went on that trip with him.'
Vincent left a long pause, giving me plenty of time to regret speaking ill of the dead – it was wanting to sound like a true engine man that had done it, that and the beer – before saying, 'You're bang on, there.'
Just then, Saturday Night Mack stopped shouting about trousers and sat down at our table with three fresh pints of Red Lion on a tray. 'Chatting about that bad business on Monday, are we?' he said, and took a long drink.