London - Edward Rutherfurd [507]
Eugene found that his office was just over half an hour from home. But the feature which pleased his wife best was the fact that, not a hundred yards from their own pleasant garden, began the great fields on the slope down to Battersea where they grew lavender. Whenever people asked where she now lived she would tell them: “Oh, out at Clapham, just beside Lavender Hill.”
1829
The boat nosed slowly through the brown water out into midstream. The little craft was dipping so low that from a distance, in the April evening’s dulled light, it looked almost waterlogged. Once it had reached the middle, halfway between Blackfriars and Bankside, it paused and then, as though held by an unseen line, remained still.
“Hold her steady,” Silas’s voice, deep from the stern. The oars obediently stroked the water. “Steady. Good.”
Although it was a year since Lucy, now ten, had started to work for Silas, she had still not grown used to it. So great now was the quantity of effluent, of sewage, of coal dust that washed down from the metropolis into the Thames that not even the sea-tides could carry it away. At high tide the water was murky; at low tide, a sickly smell hung over it. For the first time in history the fish in the river were dying: their mottled and blistered carcasses would be found amongst the rubbish on the mud flats. When a pea-souper descended, it seemed that the fog and the river were one and the same, the gaseous and liquid forms of a dark, putrid element. As Lucy plied the oars, she would often feel a piece of sewage gently nudging the blades.
Suddenly Silas reached over the side and plunged his hands into the water. A moment later there was a bump as something heavy struck the boat. Reaching back with one hand, he took a length of rope from between his feet, tied it round the object in the water and secured the other end to a ring on the stern. After this he occupied himself feeling about in the water again. Giving a grunt of satisfaction he sat up and, opening his big webbed hands, showed Lucy half a dozen gold sovereigns and a fob watch. Depositing these at his feet, he leaned over once more, staring intently at the face of the corpse that floated just below the surface. “That’s him all right. Ten pounds for him,” he observed.
This reward had been offered for the recovery of the body of a certain Mr Tobias Jones who had disappeared a week before, but such corpses often carried valuables upon them, increasing their yield. A corpse was a fine thing indeed for Silas and Lucy to find.
For Silas was a river scavenger – a dredger as they were called. Dredgers took in anything. Crates or barrels that had fallen off a boat, wooden spars, baskets, bottles – and, of course, corpses. There was something about these waterborne vultures that made most men shun them. Yet the best, like Silas, could make a good living; for the dirty old river yielded up something every day.
Even now, Lucy was not sure why he had chosen her as his helper. “You’re my kith and kin,” he would say. Certainly the money he gave her had kept the little family out of the workhouse. Yet if Silas was so devoted to the family, there was one thing that puzzled her.
Though she called him uncle, she knew that in fact Silas was her cousin. “Your father and his father were brothers,” her mother had told her. “There were sisters, and Silas had a brother too.” When she had asked Silas about these other Doggets, he had only shrugged. “Don’t you worry about them,” he had said. “They’ve gone.” Though whether this meant they were dead, or had left London, she could never discover. It occurred to her that perhaps the other Doggets did not care for Silas; but whatever the reason for their absence, Silas would often remind her: “I’m all you’ve got, young Lucy.” She depended upon him entirely.
It had taken nearly a year, but her mother’s asthma had taken its toll and she had been unable to work. Eventually, when the family was down to five shillings and Lucy had pleaded, she had weakly agreed: “Go to Silas, then.”
If Lucy was out at work, it was little Horatio