Paid and Loving Eyes

smoky. The light was only clear at the top of the street now. Here was gloom, foreboding, trouble. I almost started to whistle, like walking past the churchyard coming back from the White Hart.

Some sort of torch would have done me, but I’d not the sense. How had Gobbie managed it? Go up, he’s said, then you can look down. The steps were of the old-fashioned sort you see in North London, iron railings both sides. Some gone, jagged pegs waiting to stab you as you fell.

The door was blowing faintly, sacking, outwards. No lights except some feeble glow—oil lantern?—from within. I shoved. To my surprise it scraped ajar. I stepped in. Somebody calling, others yelling, childish voices answering. A bloke threatening.

Glass, pieces of broken glass, on bare linoleum. Flaking everything, by the light of the oil lamp hung beside the stairs. Oil lamps meant no traceable electricity bill. Up or down? I went where the light glowed most, which was directly ahead beside the staircase. The place stank.

One unbelievable creaking woodwork step down, then a sheen from below. Round a corner, me shuffling inchwise and the hum growing and the shouts louder. If only I could have understood what they were saying. Lots of little voices, the gruff deeper voice yelling abuse. Near silence, then the hum resuming.

And I saw them, suddenly there, children down in the cellars. The floor of what had been the living room had been knocked out, almost ripped, the floorboards scagged at their insertions into the walls near my feet. They had been unceremoniously hacked away. I was near the margin. Another foot or two, I’d have tumbled over and been down among them.

Them? Three or four dozen children, bare-arse naked, working on furniture, planed mahogany, even some walnut. Lovely aroma of fresh heartwood. But it was looking down into hell. Straight out of the seventeenth century, the children were smoothing with their hands, feet. Some were standing on the wooden surfaces, holding on to rods stretched from cellar wall to cellar wall. Oil lanterns shone light.

The children’s bodies glistened with sweat. Their hands bled. One little mite was weeping, trying to lick his palms. Another had actually fallen asleep. Even as I looked he got whipped awake with a riding crop.

They were polishing. One boy nudged his pal, keep going, keep going. Some chanted, working in time. One tiny mite went along the rows, casting up handfuls of dust on the worked surfaces.

The man walking down the aisles of furniture—five rows, three or four pieces a row—switched the air. I swear that he lashed a little lass from sheer habit. A couple of men were seated at a deal table beneath two lamps across from where I stood looking down, playing cards. Playing cards. Smoking cigarettes. The whipmaster looked at his watch, was downcast at the time and lashed here and there in annoyance.

Two smaller children burst in from the rear cellar door, trying to haul a plastic bowl. I recognized the technique. Brick-dust, doubtless.

The average age? It looked about six, at a guess. The oldest child was about nine, the youngest threeish. They were bloodied, blistered, hands and soles dropping sweat and blister water. They were all scarred, too experienced in life to be scared very much. One’s shoulder was a carbuncled, pus-pouring red mass. It took me a while to move away.

Odd, but I walked from there without a single creak of the floorboards. I swear I glided. Odd because when you’re desperately trying to avoid making a noise, everything you touch peals like thunder. When you don’t give a damn, you don’t make a sound. I actually wanted that whip-toting flogger to catch me. I’d have… I’d have run like a gazelle. I know I would.

“Gobbie?” I called at the corner. “Where the hell?”

They were watching me come. Lysette said nothing. Gobbie said, “Awright, son?”

“Stop asking that, stupid old bugger.”

Twice they had to call to me, correct my direction when I’d marched ahead, as if I knew the way and they didn’t instead of the other way round. The motor’d had nothing thieved.

“I expected no wheels,” I joked. “This sort of district.”

“Don’t, Lovejoy,” from Lysette as we boarded.

I swung round in the seat, finger raised. “Not another word from you, love,” I said. My voice was a hoarse whisper, astonishing, because I’d said nowt much. “Not one.”

“It’s not your fault, Lovejoy,” she was saying, when I lashed my hand across her face and she fell back with a cry.

“Now then, son,” Gobbie gave me.

“You too,” that funny whisper said. “Get us to Zurich.”

“Via where?” Gobbie asked. “Lausanne—”

I looked at him. It was enough. He fired the engine, and we flew from Paris like angels.

CHAPTER THIRTY

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Thanks,” I told them just before they dropped me off. “You’ve been pals. See you at home, eh?”

“What’re you going to do, Lovejoy?”

“Join the scam.” I gave Lysette a really sound smile. “Get my chop, live in idle richness.” They didn’t roll in the aisles. My jokes always fall flat. I can’t even remember ones I’m told.

“You go careful, son.”