Towards the end of the first week he realized the other emotion that was consuming him, knotting his stomach and making his head ache.
He had accepted Isaac’s offer to help him find work with Saul, the silk-weaver. Of course, it was completely unskilled labor, a matter of bending his back to lift crates and bales, to sweep the floor, fetch or carry everything as needed, run errands. It was the most manual task in the establishment, and the pay corresponded, but it was better than nothing at all, and probably physically easier than labor in the sugar factory. It also offered him far more opportunity to be in the streets, to listen and observe without calling any attention to himself. Although he could see little purpose in it; the capture of anarchists Nicoll and Mowbray was evidence that the Special Branch’s detectives were well schooled in their craft and needed no help from a stranger in the area like Pitt.
As he was walking back to Heneagle Street -he could not think of it as home-he heard shouting ahead of him. The anger in it was unmistakable. Voices were high and rough, and a moment later there was a crash as if a bottle had been hurled to the pavement and splintered to pieces. There was a yell of pain, and then a torrent of abuse. A woman screamed.
Pitt broke into a run.
There was more shouting and the sound of a load of barrels cascading onto the ground, several bursting open as they landed on each other. A cry of rage rose above the general hubbub.
Pitt turned the corner and saw about twenty people in the street ahead of him, half of them partly obscured by a wagon whose tailboard was open. Barrels rolled into the street, blocking the traffic in both directions. Men were already beginning to fight, hard and viciously.
Other people came out of shops and workplaces, at least half of them joining in. Women stood on the sidelines shouting encouragement. One stooped and picked up a loose stone and hurled it, her arm swinging wide, her torn brown skirts swirling.
“Go home, yer papist pig!” she screamed. “Go back ter Ireland w’ere yer belong!”
“I in’t no more Irish than you are, yer soddin’ ’eathen!” the other woman shouted back at her, and whirled a broom handle around so hard that when it caught the first woman across her back it broke in half and sent her flying into the gutter, where she lay winded for a few moments before sitting up slowly and beginning to curse viciously and repetitively.
“Papist!” someone else shrieked. “Whore!”
Half a dozen more people, men and women, joined in the melee, everyone hurling abuse with all the power of their lungs. Several scruffy children were hopping up and down, squealing encouragement, backing whoever they fancied in the scrum.
A police whistle blew, thin and shrill. There was a moment’s lull through which came the pounding of feet.
Pitt swung around. It was not his job to stop this, even if he could have. He saw a constable running towards them, and he stepped back near the arch of the gate into a stonemason’s yard.
Narraway would expect him to observe. Although what he could tell him that would be of the slightest use, he had no idea. It was only one of countless numbers of ugly street scenes that must occur regularly and surprised no one.
More police came and started trying to pull the fighting men apart, and were rewarded for their trouble by becoming the victims themselves. Hatred for the police seemed about the only thing that the crowd had in common.
“Useless bloody rozzers!” one man yelled, flailing his fists in the air, willing to hit anyone and everyone within reach. “Couldn’t catch a cold, yer stupid bastards! Pigs!”
A policeman lashed out at him with a truncheon, and missed.
Pitt remained in the shadows. He looked around at the shabby, crumbling buildings grimed with the smoke of thousands of chimneys, the patched windows, the broken cobbles of the streets, the overrunning gutters. The smells of rot and effluent were everywhere. The fighting in the street was vicious. It was not a quick flare of temper but the slow, sullen rage of years of anger and hate shown naked for a few moments, before the police frightened or beat it into silence again… until next time.
Pitt turned and walked away before he was noticed-and remembered. He kept his head down, hat jammed forward, hands in his pockets. He went around the first corner he came to, even though it was away from Heneagle Street. He had been aware of a simmering resentment since he came here, an edge to people’s voices, a quickness to take offense. Now he had seen how close the rage simmered under the surface. It only needed an insult perceived, one ugly remark, and it broke through.
This time the police had come quickly and some form of order was restored, but nothing was solved. Pitt had been startled by how anti-Catholic feeling had erupted within seconds. It must have been only just controlled all the time. Now, as he walked past a row of small shops, narrow-fronted windows piled with boxes and goods, he remembered other remarks he had heard, slang words for
And the feeling had been given back with good measure added.
He remembered also snatches of conversation about business that would not be done on religious grounds, hospitality denied, even the reasonable help to one in trouble withheld, not out of greed but because the one in need was of the other faith.
The anti-Semitic taunts were less surprising to him simply because he had heard them before: the dehumanizing, the resentment, the blame.
He went into the first public house he came to, and sat down at a table near the bar nursing a tankard of cider.
Ten minutes later a thin-shouldered young man came in with a finger tied up in a bloodstained rag.
“Eh, Charlie!” the barman said curiously. “Wotcher done ter yerself, then?”
“Bitten by a bloody rat, that’s wot,” Charlie replied angrily. “Gimme a pint. If I were paid ’alf o’ wot I work fer, I’d ’ave a shot o’ whiskey! But wot poor sod in Spitalfields ever got paid wot ’e was worth?”
“Yer got a job, yer better’n some,” a pale-faced man said bitterly, looking up from his half pint of ale. “Don’ know w’en yer well orff, that’s your trouble.”
Charlie turned on him angrily, his cheeks flushing. “My trouble is that greedy men work me night an’ day and take wot I make and sell it and grow fat themselves, an’ keep all us poor sods on a pittance.” He drew in his breath with a rasping sound. “An’ bloody gutless cowards like you don’t stand up beside me to fight fer justice… that’s my trouble! That’s everyone’s trouble ’round ’ere! Just roll over an’ play dead every time anyone looks sideways at yer!”
“Yer’ll get us all out in the gutter, yer stupid sod!” the other man snapped, clinging onto his mug as if it were some kind of protection to him. His eyes were hot with anger struggling to overmaster the fear that haunted him day and night: fear of hunger, fear of cold, fear of being hurt, fear of being despised and excluded.
A fair-haired man looked from one to the other of them, apparently not noticing Pitt at all. “What d’yer want ter do then, Charlie? If we all stand beside yer, wot then, eh?” he demanded defensively.
Charlie glared at him, considering his answer carefully, his face still creased in anger.
“Then, Wally, we’d see a few changes ’round ’ere,” he retorted. “We’d see a day w’en a man gets paid wot ’e’s worth, not what some fat swine chooses ter give ’im, because ’e’s no use if ’e starves!”
Wally coughed into his beer. “Dream on!” he said witheringly.
His tone conveyed his boredom with such empty words he had heard too many times.
Charlie slammed his empty mug on the bar so hard the pewter made a scar on the wood. “Yeah?” he said belligerently. “Well if we ’ad more men wi’ the guts ter be men, instead of a lot o’ sniveling papists an’ Jews creepin’ around the place, we’d get up an’ fight fer wot’s ours! Like the bloody Frogs did in Paris! Cut a few throats an’ we’ll soon see ’ow quick some o’ them fancy bastards can change their minds about ’oo ’as wot!”
A dark-haired man shivered a little, biting his lips. “Yer shouldn’t say fings like that!” he warned. “Yer dunno ’oo’s listenin’. You’ll only make it worse.”
“Worse!” Charlie exploded. “Worse? Wot’s worse ’n this, eh? Yer expectin’ bleedin’ crushers ter come in ’ere an’ cart us all orff ter the Tower o’ London, are yer? All of us, like?” His voice rose, frustration raw and throbbing in his words. “There’s ’undreds an’ thousan’s of us trodden down by a few idle, greedy bastards poncin’ around up west, eatin’ ’emselves sick an’ so fat they can’t scarcely ’old their trousers up. An’ the rozzers are in their bleedin’ pockets, an’ all,” he added, swinging around, daring anyone to challenge him. “That’s w’y they never caught the Whitechapel murderer wot killed them poor cows in ‘88. You mark my words, ’e’s one o’ them… an’ that’s the
