Burning Bright

‘What’s that house in the field past the wall?’ Jem indicated a large, two-storey brick house capped with three truncated towers, set alone in the middle of the field behind the gardens of the Hercules Buildings houses. A long stable ran perpendicular to the house, with a dusty yard in front.

Maggie looked surprised. ‘That’s Hercules Hall. Didn’t you know? Mr Astley lives there, him an’ his wife an’ some nieces to look after ’em. His wife’s an invalid now, though she used to ride with him. Don’t see much of her. Mr Astley keeps some of the circus horses there too – the best ones, like his white horse and John Astley’s chestnut. That’s his son. You saw him riding in Dorsetshire, didn’t you?’

‘I reckon so. It were a chestnut mare the man rode.’

‘He lives just two doors down from you, the other side o’ the Blakes. See? There’s his garden – the one with the lawn and nothin’ else.’

Hurdy-gurdy music was now drifting over from Hercules Hall, and Jem spotted a man leaning against the stables, cranking and playing a popular song. Maggie began to sing along softly:

One night as I came from the play

I met a fair maid by the way

She had rosy cheeks and a dimpled chin

And a hole to put poor Robin in!

The man played a wrong note and stopped. Maggie chuckled. ‘He’ll never get a job – Mr Astley’s got higher standards’n that.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘People’s always coming to perform for him over there, hopin’ he might take ’em on. He hardly ever does, though he’ll give ’em sixpence for tryin’.’

The hurdy-gurdy man began the song again, and Maggie hummed along, her eyes scanning the neighbouring gardens. ‘Much better view here than at the back,’ she declared.

Afterwards Jem couldn’t remember if it was the sound or the movement that first caught his attention. The sound was a soft ‘Ohh’ that still managed to carry up to the Kellaways’ window. The movement was the flash of a naked shoulder somewhere in the Blakes’ garden.

Closest to the Blakes’ house was a carefully laid out, well-dug kitchen garden partially planted, a garden fork now stuck upright in the rich soil at the end of one row. Anne Kellaway had been following its progress over the last week, watching with envy the solid, bonneted woman next door double-digging the rows and sowing seeds, as Anne Kellaway would be doing herself if she were in Dorsetshire or had any space to plant a garden here. It had never occurred to her when they decided to move to London that she might not have even a small patch of earth. However, she knew better than to ask Miss Pelham, whose garden was clearly decorative rather than functional; but she felt awkward and idle without her own garden to dig in springtime.

The back of the Blakes’ garden was untended, and filled with brambles and nettles. Midway along the garden, between the orderly and the chaotic, sat a small wooden summerhouse, set up for sitting in when the weather was mild. Its French doors were open, and it was in there that Jem saw the naked shoulder and, following that, naked backs, legs, bottoms. Horrified, he fought the temptation to step back from the window, fearing it would signal to Maggie that there was something he didn’t want her to see. Instead he pulled his eyes away and tried to direct her attention elsewhere. ‘Where’s your house, then?’

‘Bastille Row? It’s across the field – there, you can’t quite see it from here, what with Miss Pelham’s. What is that tree anyway?’

‘Laburnum. You’ll be able to tell easier in May when it flowers.’

Jem’s attempt to distract her failed, however, with the second ‘Oh’ confirming that the sound came from the same place as the movement. This time Maggie heard it and immediately located the source. Jem tried but couldn’t stop his eyes from being drawn back to the summerhouse. Maggie began to titter. ‘Lord a mercy, what a view!’

Then Jem did step back, his face on fire. ‘I’ve to help Pa,’ he muttered, turning away from the window and going over to his father, who was still working on the chair leg and hadn’t heard them.

Maggie laughed at his discomfort. She stood at the window for a few moments more, then turned away. ‘Show’s over.’ She wandered over to watch Jem’s father at the lathe, a heavy wooden frame with a half-carved leg clamped to it at chest height. A leather cord was looped around the leg, the ends attached to a treadle at his feet and a pole bent over his head. When Thomas Kellaway pumped the treadle, the cord spun the leg around and he shaved off parts of the wood.

‘Can you do that?’ Maggie asked Jem, trying now to smooth over his embarrassment, tempted though she was to tease him more.

‘Not so well as Pa,’ he replied, his face still red. ‘I practise making ’em, an’ if they be good enough he’ll use ’em.’

‘You be doing well, son,’ Thomas Kellaway murmured without looking up.

‘What do your pa make?’ Jem asked. The men back in Piddletrenthide were makers, by and large – of bread, of beer, of barley, of shoes or candles or flour.

Maggie snorted. ‘Money, if he can. This an’ that. I should find him now. That smell’s making my head ache, anyway. What’s it from?’

‘Varnish and paint for the chairs. You get used to it.’

‘I don’t plan to. Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out. Bye for now, then.’

‘Z’long.’

‘Come again!’ Maisie called out from the other room as Maggie clattered down the stairs.

Anne Kellaway tutted. ‘What will Miss Pelham think of that noise? Jem, go and see she be quiet on the way out.’

SIX

As Miss Pelham came up to her front gate, having spent a happy day visiting friends in Chelsea, she caught sight of some of the wood shavings Maisie had scattered in front of the house and frowned. At first Maisie had been dumping the shavings into Miss Pelham’s carefully pruned, O-shaped hedge in the front garden. Miss Pelham had had to set her straight on that offence. And of course it was better the shavings were in the street than on the stairs. But it would be best of all if there were no shavings at all, because no Kellaways were there to produce them. Miss Pelham had often regretted over the past week that she’d been so hard on the family who’d rented the rooms from her before the Kellaways. They’d been noisy of a night and the baby had cried constantly towards the end, but at least they didn’t track shavings everywhere. She knew too that there was a great deal of wood upstairs, as she’d watched it being carried through her hallway. There were smells as well, and thumping sometimes that Miss Pelham did not appreciate at all.

And now: who was this dark-haired rascal running out of the house with shavings shedding from the soles of her shoes? She had just the sort of sly look that made Miss Pelham clutch her bag more tightly to her chest. Then she recognised Maggie. ‘Here, girl!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing, coming out of my house? What have you been stealing?’

Before Maggie could reply, two people appeared: Jem popped out behind her, and the door to no. 13 Hercules Buildings opened and Mr Blake stepped out. Miss Pelham shrank back. Mr Blake had never been anything but civil to her – indeed, he nodded at her now – yet he made her nervous. His glassy grey eyes always made her think of a bird staring at her, waiting to peck.

‘Far as I know, this is Mr Astley’s house, not yours,’ Maggie said cheekily.

Miss Pelham turned to Jem. ‘Jem, what is this girl doing here? She’s not a friend of yours, I trust?’

‘She – she’s made a delivery.’ Even in the Piddle Valley, Jem had not been a good liar.

‘What did she deliver? Four-day-old fish? Laundry that’s not seen a lick of lye?’

‘Nails,’ Maggie cut in. ‘I’ll be bringing ’em by reg’lar, won’t I, Jem? You’ll be seein’ lots more o’ me.’ She stepped sideways off Miss Pelham’s front path and into her front garden, where she followed the tiny hedge around in its pointless circle, running a hand along the top of it.

‘Get out of my garden, girl!’ Miss Pelham cried. ‘Jem, get her out of there!’

Maggie laughed, and began to run around the hedge, faster and faster, then leaped over it into the middle, where she danced around the pruned bush, sparring at it with her fists while Miss Pelham cried, ‘Oh! Oh!’ as if each blow were striking her.

Jem watched Maggie box the leafy ball, tiny leaves showering to the ground, and found himself smiling. He too had been tempted to kick at the absurd hedge, so different from the hedgerows he was used to. Hedges in Dorsetshire were made for a reason, to keep animals in fields or off paths, and grown of prickly hawthorn and holly, elder and hazel and whitebeam, woven through with brambles and ivy and traveller’s joy.

A tap on the window upstairs brought Jem back from Dorsetshire. His mother was glaring down at him and making shooing motions at Maggie. ‘Er, Maggie – weren’t you going to show me something?’ Jem said. ‘Your – your father, eh? My pa wanted me to – to agree on the price.’

‘That’s it. C’mon, then.’ Maggie ignored Miss Pelham, who was still shouting and swatting ineffectively at her, and pushed through the ring of hedge without bothering to jump it this time, leaving behind a gap of broken branches.

‘Oh!’ cried Miss Pelham for the tenth time.

As Jem moved to follow Maggie into the street he glanced at Mr Blake, who had remained still and quiet, his arms crossed over his chest, while Maggie had her fun with the hedge. He did not seem bothered by the noise and drama. Indeed, they had all forgotten he was there, or Miss Pelham would not have cried ‘Oh!’ ten times and Maggie would not have beaten the bush. He was looking at them with his clear gaze. It was not a look like that of Jem’s father, who tended to focus on the middle distance. Rather Mr Blake was looking at them, and at the passers-by in the street, and at Lambeth Palace rising up in the distance, and at the clouds behind it. He was taking in everything, without judgement.

‘A’rernoon, sir,’ Jem said.

‘Hallo, my boy,’ Mr Blake replied.

‘Hallo, Mr Blake!’ Maggie called from the street, not to be outdone by Jem. ‘How’s your missus, then?’

Her cry revived Miss Pelham, who had sunk into herself in Mr Blake’s presence. ‘Get out of my sight, girl!’ she cried. ‘I’ll have you whipped! Jem, don’t you let her back in here. And see her to the end of the street – I don’t trust her for a second. She’ll steal the gate if we don’t watch her!’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Jem raised his eyebrows apologetically at Mr Blake, but his neighbour had already opened his gate and stepped into the street. When Jem joined Maggie, they watched as Mr Blake walked down Hercules Buildings towards the river.

‘Look at his cocky step,’ Maggie said. ‘And did you see the colour in his cheeks? And his hair all mussed? We know what he’s been up to!’

Jem would not have described Mr Blake’s pace as cocky. Rather he was flat-footed, though not plodding. He walked steadily and deliberately, as if he had a destination in mind rather than merely setting out for a stroll.

‘Let’s follow him,’ Maggie suggested.

‘No. Let him be.’ Jem was surprised at his own decisiveness. He would have liked to follow Mr Blake to his destination – not the way Maggie would do it, though, as a game and a tease, but respectfully, from a distance.

Miss Pelham and Anne Kellaway were still glaring at the children from their positions. ‘Let’s be going,’ Jem said, and began to walk along Hercules Buildings in the opposite direction from Mr Blake.

Maggie trotted after him. ‘You’re really comin’ with me?’

‘Miss Pelham told me to see you to the end of the street.’

‘And you’re goin’ to do what that old stick in a dress wants?’

Jem shrugged. ‘She’s the householder. We’ve to keep her happy.’

‘Well, I’m goin’ to find Pa. You want to come with me?’

Jem thought of his anxious mother, of his hopeful sister, of his absorbed father, and of Miss Pelham waiting by the stairs to pounce on him. Then he thought of the streets he did not yet know in Lambeth, and in London, and of having a guide to take him. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, letting Maggie catch up and match his stride so that they were walking side by side.

SEVEN

Dick Butterfield could have been in one of several pubs. While most people favoured one local, he liked to move around, and joined several drinking clubs or societies, where the like-minded met at a particular pub to discuss topics of mutual interest. These nights were not much different from other nights except that the beer was cheaper and the songs even bawdier. Dick Butterfield was constantly joining new clubs and dropping old ones as his interests changed. At the moment he belonged to a cutter club (one of his many occupations had been as a boatman on the Thames, though he had long ago lost the boat) a chair club, where each member took turns haranguing the others about political topics from the head chair at a table; a lottery club, where they pooled together on small bets that rarely won enough to cover the drinks, and where Dick Butterfield was always encouraging members to increase the stakes; and, by far his favourite, a punch club, where each week they tried out different rum concoctions.

Dick Butterfield’s club and pub life was so complicated that his family rarely knew where he was of an evening. He normally drank within a half-mile radius from his home, but there were still dozens of pubs to choose from. Maggie and Jem had already called in at the Horse and Groom, the Crown and Cushion, the Canterbury Arms and the Red Lion, before they found him ensconced in the corner of the loudest pub of the lot, the Artichoke on the Lower Marsh.

After following Maggie into the first two, Jem waited for her outside the rest. He had only been inside one pub since they arrived in Lambeth: a few days after they moved in, Mr Astley called to see how they were getting on, and had taken Thomas Kellaway and Jem to the Pineapple. It had been a sedate place, Jem realised now that he could compare it with other Lambeth pubs, but at the time he’d been overwhelmed by the liveliness of the drinkers – many of them circus people – and Philip Astley’s roaring conversation.

Lambeth Marsh was a market street busy with shops and stalls, and carts and people going between Lambeth and Blackfriars Bridge towards the city. The doors to the Artichoke were open, and the sound poured across the road, making Jem hesitate as Maggie pushed past the men leaning in the doorway, and wonder why he was following her.

He knew why, though: Maggie was the first person in Lambeth to take any interest in him, and he could do with a friend. Most boys Jem’s age were already apprenticed or working; he had seen younger children about, but had not yet managed to talk to any of them. It was hard to understand them, for one thing: he found London accents, as well as the many regional ones that converged on the city, sometimes incomprehensible.

Lambeth children were different in other ways too – more aware and more suspicious. They reminded him of cats who creep in to sit by the fire, knowing they are barely tolerated, happy to be inside but with ears swivelling and eyes in slits, ready to detect the foot that will kick them back out. The children were often rude to adults, as Maggie had been to Miss Pelham, and got away with it when he wouldn’t have in his old village. They mocked and threw stones at people they didn’t like, stole food from barrows and baskets, sang rude songs; they shouted, teased, taunted. Only occasionally did he see Lambeth children doing things he could imagine joining in with: rowing a boat on the river; singing while streaming out of the charity school on Lambeth Green; chasing a dog that had made off with someone’s cap.

So when Maggie beckoned to him from the door of the Artichoke, he followed her inside, braving the wall of noise and the thick smoke from the lamps. He wanted to be a part of this new Lambeth life, rather than watching it from a window or a front gate or over a garden wall.

Although it was only late afternoon, the pub was heaving with people. The din was tremendous, though after a time his ears began to pick up the pattern of a song, unfamiliar but clearly a tune. Maggie plunged through the wall of bodies to the corner where her father sat.

Dick Butterfield was a small, brown man – his eyes, his wiry hair, the undertone of his skin, his clothes. A web of wrinkles extended from the outer corners of his eyes and across his forehead, forming deep furrows on his brow. Despite the wrinkles, he had a young, energetic air about him. Today he was simply drinking rather than attending a club. He pulled his daughter onto his lap, and was singing along with the rest of the pub when Jem finally reached them:

And for which I’m sure she’ll go to Hell

For she makes me fuck her in church time!

At the last line, a deafening shout went up that made Jem cover his ears. Maggie had joined in, and she grinned at Jem, who blushed and stared at his feet. Many songs had been sung at the Five Bells in Piddletrenthide, but nothing like that.

After the great shout, the pub was quieter, the way a thunderclap directly overhead clears the worst of a storm. ‘What you been up to, then, Mags?’ Dick Butterfield asked his daughter in the relative calm.

‘This an’ that. I was at his house—’ she pointed at Jem ‘—this is Jem, Pa – lookin’ at his pa making chairs. They just come from Dorsetshire, an’ are living at Miss Pelham’s in Hercules Buildings, next to Mr Blake.’

‘Miss Pelham’s, eh?’ Dick Butterfield chuckled. ‘Glad to meet you, Jem. Sit yourself down and rest your pegs.’ He waved at the other side of the table. There was no stool or bench there. Jem looked around: all of the stools in sight were taken. Dick and Maggie Butterfield were gazing at him with identical expressions, watching to see what he would do. Jem considered kneeling at the table, but he knew that was not likely to gain the Butterfields’ approval. He would have to search the pub for an empty stool. It was expected of him, a little test of his merit – the first real test of his new London life.

Locating an empty stool in a crowded pub can be tricky, and Jem could not find one. He tried asking for one, but those he asked paid no attention to him. He tried to take one that a man was using as a footrest and got swatted. He asked a barmaid, who jeered at him. As he struggled through the scrum of bodies, Jem wondered how it was that so many people could be drinking now rather than working. In the Piddle Valley few went to the Five Bells or the Crown or the New Inn until evening.

At last he went back to the table empty-handed. A vacant stool now sat where Dick Butterfield had indicated, and he and Maggie were grinning at Jem.

‘Country boy,’ muttered a youth sitting next to them who had watched the whole ordeal, including the barmaid’s jeering.

‘Shut your bonebox, Charlie,’ Maggie retorted. Jem guessed at once that he was her brother.

Charlie Butterfield was like his father but without the wrinkles or the charm; better-looking in a rough way, with dirty blond hair and a dimple in his chin, but with a scar through his eyebrow too that gave him a harsh look. He was as cruel to his sister as he could get away with, twisting burns on Maggie’s arms until the day she was old enough to kick him where it was guaranteed to hurt. He still looked for ways to get at her – knocking the legs out from the stool she sat on, upending the salt on her food, stealing her blankets at night. Jem knew none of this, but he sensed something about Charlie that made him avoid the other’s eyes, as you do a growling dog.

Dick Butterfield tossed a coin onto the table. ‘Fetch Jem a drink, Charlie,’ he commanded.

‘I an’t—’ Charlie sputtered at the same time as Jem said, ‘I don’t—’ Both stopped at the stern look on Dick Butterfield’s face. And so Charlie got Jem a mug of beer he didn’t want – cheap, watery stuff men back at the Five Bells would spill onto the floor rather than drink.

Dick Butterfield sat back. ‘Well, now, what have you got to tell me, Mags? What’s the scandal today in old Lambeth?’

‘We saw summat in Mr Blake’s garden, didn’t we, Jem? In their summerhouse, with all the doors open.’ Maggie gave Jem a sly look. He turned red again and shrugged.

‘That’s my girl,’ Dick Butterfield said. ‘Always sneakin’ about, finding out what’s what.’

Charlie leaned forward. ‘What’d you see, then?’

Maggie leaned forward as well. ‘We saw him an’ his wife at it!’

Charlie chuckled, but Dick Butterfield seemed unimpressed. ‘What, rutting is all? That’s nothing you don’t see every day you look down an alley. Go outside and you’ll see it round the corner now. Eh, Jem? I expect you’ve seen your share of it, back in Dorsetshire, eh, boy?’

Jem gazed into his beer. A fly was struggling on the surface, trying not to drown. ‘Seen enough,’ he mumbled. Of course he had seen it before. It was not just the animals he lived among that he’d seen at it – dogs, cats, sheep, horses, cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, pheasants – but people tucked away in corners of woods or against hedgerows or even in the middle of meadows when they thought no one would pass through. He had seen his neighbours doing it in a barn, and Sam with his girl up in the hazel wood at Nettlecombe Tout. He had seen it enough that he was no longer surprised, though it still embarrassed him. It was not that there was so much to see – mostly just clothes and a persistent movement, sometimes a man’s pale buttocks pistoning up and down or a woman’s breasts jiggling. It was seeing it when he was not expecting to, breaking into the assumed privacy, that made Jem turn away with a red face. He had much the same feeling on the rare occasion when he heard his parents argue – as when his mother demanded that his father cut down the pear tree at the bottom of their garden that Tommy had fallen from, and Thomas Kellaway had refused. Anne Kellaway had taken an axe later and done it herself.

Jem dipped his finger into the beer and let the fly climb onto it and crawl away. Charlie watched with astonished disgust; Dick Butterfield simply smiled and looked around at the other customers, as if searching for someone else to talk to.

‘It wasn’t just that they were doin’ it,’ Maggie persisted. ‘They were – they had – they’d taken off all their clothes, hadn’t they, Jem? We could see everything, like they were Adam an’ Eve.’

Dick Butterfield watched his daughter with the same appraising look he’d given Jem when he tried to find a stool. As easy-going as he appeared – lolling in his seat, buying drinks for people, smiling and nodding – he demanded a great deal from those he was with.

‘And d’you know what they were doing while they did it?’

‘What, Mags?’

Maggie thought quickly of the most outlandish thing two people could do while they were meant to be rutting. ‘They were reading to each other!’

Charlie chuckled. ‘What, the newspaper?’

‘That’s not what I—’ Jem began.

‘From a book,’ Maggie interrupted, her voice rising over the noise of the pub. ‘Poetry, I think it was.’ Specific details always made stories more believable.

‘Poetry, eh?’ Dick Butterfield repeated, sucking at his beer. ‘I expect that’ll be Paradise Lost, if they were playing at Adam an’ Eve in their garden.’ Dick Butterfield had once had a copy of the poem, in among a barrowful of books he’d got hold of and was trying to sell, and had read bits of it. No one expected Dick Butterfield to be able to read so well, but his father had taught him, reasoning that it was best to be as knowledgeable as those you were swindling.

‘Yes, that was it. Pear Tree’s Loss,’ Maggie agreed. ‘I know I heard them words.’

Jem started, unable to believe what he’d heard. ‘Did you say “pear tree”?’

Dick shot her a look. ‘Paradise Lost, Mags. Get your words right. Now, hang on a minute.’ He closed his eyes, thought for a moment, then recited:

The world was all before them, where to choose