‘It matters to me.’
They waited on the cold platform, then sat silently side by side like a long-established couple who’d been having an argument. At Baker Street, they changed to the Metropolitan Line and went on, silent, swaying, until he said abruptly, ‘We’ll get out at King’s Cross and walk.’
‘I don’t want you to walk me home.’
‘We’re going to my typewriter’s on Lloyd Baker Street. I think I know how to find the Satterlees.’
‘But it’s impossible, Mr Denton!’ Mrs Johnson was less scandalized than usual because Denton had a woman with him; she had even let them both inside the front door. ‘It’s after seven o’clock, Mr Denton — they’ve worked all day and they’re not going to work all night!’
‘I’ll pay double! Triple! They won’t have to work all night — it’s one name, one name!’
‘Mr Denton, they’ve been three days, looking for Ruths and Rebeccas; now you want them to look for Alices and Ednas. I’m sure they’ll be happy to try again on Monday.’
Janet Striker said in her most severe voice, ‘The Metropolitan Schools Board building is open until nine o’clock. I know, because I’ve had to go to meetings there. We have two hours — more, Denton, if you’re not averse to bribing people.’
Mrs Johnson sucked in her breath, as harsh a rebuke as she ever allowed herself.
‘It will also cost something to prise the records out at this hour. Mrs Johnson, do you know what records they were looking at and in what office?’
Mrs Johnson wilted under Janet Striker’s tone. She didn’t know, she murmured; she hadn’t been doing the work, only organizing it; Frederica Tilley had been the one actually there and running things.
‘Where is she now?’ Janet Striker demanded.
‘Home, I suppose, slaving all day as she’s been doing. Several streets away. No, of course I don’t have a telephone — nor she — it’s ten minutes’ walk-’
They made it in six, to find Frederica Tilley relaxing with sherry and sausages in a room above an upholsterer’s. Once she’d got over the surprise of the visit, she told them quite lucidly where the records were in the Schools Board building, and precisely which volumes would hold the most recent reports. ‘But it’s way down Blackfriars Road and a frightful walk from the tube station! You’ll never-’
Then they were in a motorized cab speeding through freezing streets to the south bank. The city was dark but peopled, everybody hugging himself, shoulders hunched, hands at throats to hold collars closed against a wind that seemed to be blowing from the Arctic. Overhead, clouds scudded in the reflected light of London, low and fast and spitting a snowflake now and then. Paying the cab fare, Denton counted his money and wondered if it would last.
Janet Striker, he found to his surprise, knew all about bribing people. When she saw his hesitation, she held her hand out for money and said crisply, ‘I’ll do it.’ She got them into the building — a shilling for the night porter — and into the records room — half a crown for the clerk, half a crown for the watchman — and down at a table near the records themselves. It cost them another crown when the building closed at nine, and then they sat in a big, cold room, the brass Aladdin lamp on the table the only light, bound books of handwritten school reports piled around them.
‘Have you any more money?’ Mrs Striker said at ten-thirty.
He blushed. ‘Coins.’
‘We never had supper.’ She disappeared and came back after ten minutes. ‘The night porter’s gone for food. And drink. I’m afraid we’re entertaining two watchmen, the porter and somebody he calls “Old Geoff ”.’ She smiled into the island of light. ‘If any of “the upper staff ” find we’re here, it’ll cost a good deal more.’ She sat down. ‘Your money ran out. We’re on my shilling now.’
‘I can’t let you.’
‘You can’t stop me.’ She opened a book with a bang. ‘What bad fists people have! My eyes are crossing from the handwriting.’
At half past midnight, she suddenly slapped her worn hand down on the ledger. ‘I have them!’ She raised her voice. ‘Satterlee, Edna, aged 12, East Ham Progressive Central School.’ She looked up at him, her face weary, ironic, smiling. ‘Don’t,’ she said, ‘don’t do it, Denton,’ because apparently she knew he wanted to kiss her.
Chapter Nineteen
A hard frost had laid a sheen of palest grey over grasses and had left a gloss of black ice on the streets. East Ham beyond the train station was a bleak expanse of seemingly identical streets of identical houses, all joined into two-storeyed rows under shallow-peaked roofs. At intervals, ancient wetland persevered as dun-coloured grass, now almost white, matted into clumps and hummocks and marked here and there by pools of open water whose edges had frozen overnight. Always, beyond any view that opened — inevitably over the marshes — there was a jagged skyline of factories and the rising plumes of smoke and, this bitter morning, steam.
Denton and Mrs Striker, their cab jogging slowly between the rows of houses, were silent. It was only a little after seven; working-men were moving on the street, dinner buckets hanging from one hand; an odour of pipe smoke, coal and food hung on the chilly air. Denton shivered in his overcoat; the revolver, snug in its pocket, was icy to the touch.
East Ham had been a village for centuries, an inhabited place before the Romans, probably; it had seen farms and orchards in the middle ages and later. Now, London had engorged it as a place for the working people needed to stoke the great British engine.
‘There are far worse places,’ Mrs Striker said as if they had been discussing it. He grunted. She said, ‘People don’t leave places like East Ham to go back to the farms, Denton.’
‘That’s because there’s no work on the farms.’ He sighed. ‘They’d pave the whole country, if they could.’
‘And if people needed houses to live in, I’d say it was a good thing.’
He glanced aside at her, thought how unsentimental she was — not always an attractive trait. This morning, she looked ugly to him, pinched, her face closed as if by the cold. He wished he’d come on this part of the journey alone. They jogged on for another several minutes, and he said nothing, and she, probably understanding him, didn’t try to talk.
‘Almost there,’ the driver called down to them.
Denton put his head out to look. Off to their left, a different kind of prospect was opening — no low houses and streets, for a change, but a levelled field of the kind he’d come to recognize. It was big, perhaps ten acres, stretching away as flatly as a bed; on three sides, the streets lined it like walls; on the fourth, he could see open space, a line of trees and, distantly, a steeple: this, for now, was the end of the gobbling-up of East Ham.
‘You sure you want the pub?’ the driver said. He was pointing with his whip. The building was far over towards the outer edge of the field; between them and it was a frosted expanse with sewer pipes and water connections sticking up where macadamized streets would run.
‘Is there another?’ Denton said.
‘This’s the only one where they’re still building. I can’t get you closer than the edge here — can’t do it! Wouldn’t risk the horse on them fillings.’ After another hundred yards, he pulled the horse up. ‘Can’t get no closer.’
They got down. Their breath steamed in the windless air. The driver was pointing again, showing them how they could pick their way among piles of building stone and lumber. Denton had already seen the route, noted how it had been pioneered by other feet.
‘Good enough for the workmen, I guess it’s good enough for us,’ he said to her. ‘You needn’t come, if the walking’s too hard.’
She gave him a look. ‘You can’t get rid of me now, Denton; it’s too late.’
They walked into the field. It was made of fill; nobody had been too choosy about what the fill was or where it came from. Denton saw broken crockery, a rusted gear poking up like a jawbone. There was a thin smell of
