King Dido Read online

  “Dirty beast,” his mother said. “That’s all he is. A dirty beast. Have nothing to do with him. Nothing to do with any of ’em.”

  “He done it on the floor. In front of you.” He opened the door to the corridor.

  “Dido —” He paused as his mother spoke again. She said, “You’re wearing your chapel suit.”

  He looked at her mildly. “It’s the King’s Coronation.”

  Her eyes were vague and puzzled behind the glasses, and her voice was vague, as if the talk had scattered her wits. “You got no collar and tie on.”

  “That’s right. Give them two their cocoa.”

  He went out and in a moment they heard the heavy slam of the street door.

  Poverty has many strata and Rabbit Marsh was far from being at the lowest. It was a paradise compared with the sinister back alleys of Spitalfields where lived a strange population of down-and-outs, men and women with meth-bloated faces and the eyes of dead fish who might have come straight out of Hogarth prints. It was respectable compared with the back streets of Hoxton where gangs reigned and roaring drunkenness prevailed. In Rabbit Marsh, people worked when they could, not only those who subsisted as scavengers, but those who followed regular, almost aristocratic, occupations — the porters, draymen, cleaners, stable hands and others who worked in the immense railway goods yards that covered acres of the district; the dockers and costers; the sprinkling of foreign immigrants, mostly Jews, who kept to themselves and worked long hours at bench or last; and the keepers of small shops.

  Mrs Peach’s shop always had its shutters up. She ran a rag business and the shop was her depot. It was crammed almost to the ceiling with bundles of rags of every colour and material. She bought from people who earned their wretched livelihoods going round the streets buying old rags or rummaging for them in dustbins. The pick of her purchases she sold to second-hand-clothes shops; others, carefully sorted by material, she sold to slum tailors for use as paddings or linings; the rubbish went for doll stuffing, or for pulping into paper. She had scraped a living in this way since her husband died ten years ago.

  Shonny, who had left school only recently, stayed at home and ran all over the East End with a hand-barrow, delivering. Mrs Peach toiled like a slave, sorting the foul rags and boiling them in the yard. Only a few of her purchasers wanted clean rags, but she could not abide filth in the spotless home that she kept. Although the woodwork of the houses teemed with bugs and rats infested the yards, she always had clean windows and curtains, and she was not the only one in the street. She had put up bright, flowered wallpapers at her own expense in the kitchen, the hall, and the two rooms on the first floor, in one of which she slept and the other of which was occupied by her three sons. The top floor was tenanted by two families. She could afford the luxury of wallpaper, for although her own earnings were small, Dido was in regular work as a sorter on the Poplar scrap-iron wharf and Chas worked in a timber yard along the Regent’s Canal.

  Rabbit Marsh was respectable; and it would have been left to itself, if it had not been for its Sunday market. The traders of Rabbit Marsh scratched such meagre livings from the surrounding poverty that they were only enabled to survive by what they took on Sunday mornings, when thousands of people from all over the north-east of London surged through the Bethnal Green streets on the lookout for bargains.

  The market brought money. And because of the money they lived under the rule of Ginger Murchison.

  A stone’s throw from Rabbit Marsh was Bethnal Green Road, wide as a boulevard through the maze of slums. On the other side of Bethnal Green Road, towards Shoreditch, lay the area once known as the Old Nicol, a thieves’ kitchen so notorious, dangerous and insanitary that it had been demolished by the authorities. But its clans of roughs, who for generations had lived by terror and easy pickings, only scattered into the surrounding streets. The Murchison family, with its hangers-on, had come to settle in a courtyard named Jaggs Place, in the block that backed on to Rabbit Marsh on the opposite side to the railway. Lying in the right angle formed by Rabbit Marsh and Brick Lane, both of which streets had Sunday markets, it was an ideal base for the Murchisons. For several years they had thieved off the stalls, put their hands whenever they fancied into the tills of the shops and blackmailed the artisans with the threat of destroying their workshops.

  They had never had any trouble with the people. It was as if a ruling dynasty had been driven from its hereditary lands and settled, knights in fearsome mail with lances and long swords, upon some neighbouring province, where the peasantry, weary with toil, weakened by privation and bitterly taught by past punishments, accepted a new authority as they might accept the coming of plague, hail or drought. And in fact this was the attitude of Rabbit Marsh. Wherever they came from, descendants of dispossessed country folk, refugees from foreign persecution or Irish famine, seekers after work on many brutal waterfronts or in many pitiless streets, often-evicted tenants, they accepted that there must be victims and victimisers, that someone must assume authority over them and take tribute from them; someone much nearer and more plainly visible than the monarch whose coronation was being celebrated tonight. Perhaps they celebrated that monarch’s coronation because he was so remote, and therefore beneficent. Perhaps they celebrated because one of the few pleasures of the downtrodden is to tread upon others, and in their poverty they felt themselves lords of the British Empire. Certainly they had no objection to drinking the King’s health. They would drink anyone’s health. The King did them no harm. His policemen were almost as remote as he was, walking majestically down the street, occasionally collaring a drunk if he became a nuisance but otherwise only the wardens of a distant and noninterfering power. The King was not the visible ruler of Rabbit Marsh. The King took no taxes from Rabbit Marsh. It was too poor. Rabbit Marsh paid its taxes to the Murchisons. The Murchisons ruled.

  No one knew why the Murchisons had always left the Peaches alone. Probably the little shop, its tall shutters always up, had simply escaped their notice. It was just a gloomy cavern crammed with bundles. There was no counter, no cash-drawer or till. The Peaches did not put a stall out on Sunday mornings.

  But nothing in a realm is too insignificant for the eye of the ruler, or the eyes of his stewards. A week ago one of the tribe, a boy known in the street only as Cockeye, a grandson of Ginger Murchison, had come into the shop. He was a wizened, sickly creature, but a demon of impudence and cruelty, compensating for his squint, his scrawniness and his ugliness by the unbridled use of his family’s power. He came into the shop and said to Mrs Peach, “’Alf a dollar.”

  She had never been asked before. Silently she put her hand into her apron, brought out her purse and found half-a-crown.

  “’Ow much yer got there?”

  She looked at him in a vague and fearful way. What reeled through her mind then was not fear of him but fear of her sons, who were brave. She did not want them to be brave. She knew what life was. She was submissive. She wanted her sons to be submissive, to remain unnoticed, to survive.

  “You ’eard me. Show us.”

  And then, to her horror, she heard the iron-rimmed wheels of the barrow clatter to a stop outside. Shonny came in. She said, “Take the barrow round the yard, Shonny.”

  There was a stable yard down the street where they left the barrow for sixpence a week. But Shonny stood there looking at Cockeye and Cockeye spoke again. “Show us that purse.”

  “’Ere,” Shonny said, “that’s my ma.”

  “Fuck your ma!”

  Shonny grabbed Cockeye’s collar with one hand and the back of his jacket with the other, and swung him out of the shop. Cockeye flew across the pavement, fell over the end of the barrow and landed on his back in a pile of horse-dung. He started to scramble up. Shonny, back at the handles of the barrow, ran the barrow at him. Cockeye lurched up and away. Shonny ran at him again. Cockeye retreated again. “I’ll kill you,” he shouted. People were in the doorways, watching. “I’ll cripple you.”

  Shonny, wi
th the barrow, took a step forward. Cockeye loped off. From the comer, before he vanished, he shouted again, “I’ll fucking kill you.”

  Shonny put the barrow back in the kerb. His mother was standing on the doorstep of the shop. He watched the wisps of thought wandering across her eyes. His own expression was patient. This was a situation to which he and his brothers had been accustomed since childhood. In time she would grasp at one idea, not because it was the best but because she was desperate. She said, “You won’t tell your brothers?”

  “No, mum.”

  “I suppose you will tell them.”

  He did not answer. She said, “No trouble, you see?”

  “No, mum.”

  “I don’t want no trouble.”

  “No, mum.”

  “Not with you boys.”

  “Cup o’ tea, mum?”

  Her eyes were on him, puzzled, groping within her own mind. “I knew you’d forget.”

  “Forget what?”

  “I told you.”

  “What did you tell me?”

  Her voice weak with humility, “I can’t remember.” She sought. “I told you last night. Something.”

  He uttered a high, boy’s laugh. “I never forgot. You told me git seed for the canary.”

  “I knew I told you something. Last night.”

  “I got it this mornin’. It’s be’ind the ornaments. Cleaned the cage out, I did, too.”

  He followed her into the kitchen. The room was furnished with a deal table covered by a sheet of oilcloth with a blue check pattern, three bentwood chairs, and a black sofa, its leatherette much cracked by use, against one wall. There was a blackleaded kitchen range and grate and over it a mantelpiece and a big mirror in an elaborate walnut frame with many shelves. These shelves, like the mantelshelf, were laden with framed family photographs and with china souvenirs of trips to the seaside. Against the wall separating the room from the shop was a gas stove. The shallow alcove between the chimney-breast and the window had a cupboard in its lower half and shelves of crockery above. On the wall Mrs Peach had hung a framed print, in colours, The Light of the World, showing the Saviour in a nimbus of rays. In the frame of the mirror she had stuck a coloured plate of the new King and Queen. The canary watched, beady-eyed and silent, from its cage hanging from a bracket between the sofa and the hall door.

  Shonny went out to the yard to fill the kettle. An outside tap and an outside water-closet served the whole house. From other yards came the clucking of poultry. In most of the yards people, many of whose families a few generations back were from Kent or Essex, kept hens, dogs and rabbits, and most had singing birds indoors.

  He told his brothers, of course. Chas looked quickly at Dido for a lead. Dido, busy polishing his boots, which he always kept shining, grunted, “Comes round here again, let me know.”

  Nothing happened for a week. The brothers, vigilant at first, let the incident sink out of mind. Cockeye and other Murchison brats made all sorts of trouble around the district. Their elders took little interest in their fortunes or misfortunes; but from time to time, moved by no more than a whim, or a surge of pent-up savagery, they would march forth in defence of their young, a phalanx of outraged family virtue; to raid another street, or to terrorise a schoolmaster who had used the cane upon one of theirs. And now, because of some whining complaint from Cockeye, Ginger himself, the Old Man of the tribe, noticed the existence of the little rag-shop in Rabbit Marsh. There must have moved in his mind the idea (or rather one of those spurts of primitive heat that took the place of ideas) that his authority had been belittled. The lord must uphold the least of his minions.

  This morning Mrs Peach had heard the shop doorbell jangle on its loop of wire. She had come out from the kitchen to see a man in the doorway so big that he seemed to fill it. She did not recognise him against the light but when he advanced into the shop she knew that Ginger Murchison had come to deal with her.

  Without a word she went into the kitchen, took a little one-piece cruet set from the mantelshelf (a souvenir from Southend, the words in gilt upon it among wreaths of roses), removed the lid from the mustard pot and took out a small gold coin. She returned to the shop and without a word held the coin out to Ginger Murchison. The fluttering of her heart could be heard in her murmur, “Half a sovereign.”

  She was a small woman. To her Ginger, as he looked thoughtfully around the shop, seeming to make a valuation, was a giant. He reached out, took the half- sovereign gently, unbuttoned his jacket and put it into a waistcoat pocket. Deliberately he buttoned up again. He straightened his bowler hat upon his head as if about to leave. Then, with the same deliberate movements, he undid his flies, exposed himself before her and urinated at the foot of a pile of rags. He buttoned up, stood over her for another moment, relaxed and quite benevolent, then with a leisurely tread left the shop.

  Mrs Peach stood with her head bowed for a little while, shaking, her fingers laced together in front of her. Then she went to the yard for a bucket of water, washed the shop floor, took the sodden bundle of rags out to the yard and dumped it in a zinc bath to be boiled. She washed at the tap, went back into the kitchen and sat on the sofa, shrivelled with fear. She meant to say nothing and hope for the best. But there had been witnesses from the street. There almost always were in Rabbit Marsh. Dido, trudging home from work at seven o’clock that evening, had been stopped a dozen times. “Ginger Murchison was in your shop. ’E pissed on the floor. In front o’ your ma.”

  He had followed his usual routine; eaten his supper in silence, stripped to the waist and gone out to the yard to scrub himself, and then gone to the bedroom to dress. Meanwhile he had sent Shonny to the Jew cobbler’s shop for six pennorth of iron plates. He had dressed in his good serge suit and hammered the plates on to his boots. He had laced on the boots and put something inside his cap and now he was walking down the street to “The Railway”, the folded cap in his right hand, the iron on his boots making a cold, hard noise on the cobbles.

  Chapter Two

  There was a door at each end of the green-tiled front of the public house, one to the only bar that it possessed, the other to the small jug-and-bottle department, from which the bar was separated by a plain wooden partition.

  Dido went into the bar. It was crowded and full of noise. There was no singing, only a cacophony of London slum voices, quacking, raucous, ugly; and, since everyone was trying to talk above the din, deafeningly loud. He pushed his way to the bar, not looking about him, and only saying “Evening” a couple of times. He had no friends in the street. He knew everyone, as everyone knew him, but Dido Peach was marked out as a silent man, a man who kept to himself, who was enough of a hermit to have no dealings either with the bookies or the women of the neighbourhood. He often came in for a pint but he never stood or was offered one.

  He said “Evening” to the publican, ordered his pint, and drank it in occasional sips, taking no notice of his surroundings. The slightest of glances as he came in had already told him what he wanted to know. Apart from the wooden bench that ran along the wall beneath the window the only seat in the pub was a highbacked chair in the far corner by the counter. This was occupied by a man who was well over six feet tall and was fat in proportion. He wore a good serge suit; apart from Dido and the publican’s, the only respectable suit in the pub; with a waistcoat, a gold watch on a heavy chain, and a silk choker. His narrow bowler hat, with a brim that dipped fore and aft, was tilted back, so that some of his hair could be seen; not — although this man was Ginger Murchison — ginger, but an indeterminate greying colour shot with strawy streaks. For Ginger, so named from his earliest childhood, was now sixty-five years old.

  He sipped his drink peaceably, a big, solid man, respectable to look at, a landlord, one might have said, having a drink among the tenants of his houses. He was alone. His reputation was enough to protect him; not only as the leader of a gang, but as a man strong and cunning enough to have survived the fights of fifty years without a mark on his face. In
any case, the Rabbit Marsh people wanted only an easy life, and had never challenged his power. A few toadied round him, trying to entertain him like court jesters, perhaps in the hope of some future favour or emolument. His red, jowled face hardly seemed to hear them, moving only in the faintest of smiles at the mouth. Some others, when they bought their own rounds, ordered a pint for him and set it down by him, saying nothing and neither expecting nor receiving any acknowledgement. Others affected to ignore him, though none really did.

  A few people were glancing at Dido, and small groups could be seen conferring within the din. Somebody spoke to Meek, the publican. Meek came and spoke to Dido.

  “Busy night, Dido.”

  Dido nodded, half-turned away from the bar.

  “Wouldn’t mind a Coronation every year.”

  Dido made an ‘uh-huh,’ of acknowledgement in his throat, not opening his mouth.

  “You keepin’ all right?”

  “So-so.”

  “Dido—” The publican leaned forward. “Don’t want no trouble.”

  All he had from Dido was a side-glance that said nothing.

  “Not tonight,” the publican said. “Don’t want no trouble tonight.”

  Dido sipped his ale. The publican said, “Here, have another one.”

  “No thanks.”

  “On the house.”

  Dido shook his head. Meek laid a hand on his sleeve across the counter. “Dido, we don’t want no trouble. Not with him. Never been any trouble with him. Not down this street.”

  Dido left the counter but he did not go to the door. He walked to Ginger Murchison and stopped in front of him. He said, “You.”

  Ginger looked up. He said, “I got a name. It starts with Mister.”

  Dido said, “Come outside.”

  Ginger did not stir.

  Dido said, “Mister.”

  “That’s better.” Ginger heaved down on the arms of his chair and with the resigned grunt of a fat man stood up and followed Dido to the door. The conversation did not die away. It changed tone. It became the sound of people pretending to carry on their many conversations. When the door closed behind them the din soared and the sound in it was a compound of eagerness and panic. They were excited by any free entertainment, including fights; but this fight might bring them trouble, and it had come too suddenly for them to do anything to avoid it. They surged out into the street, and their only hope was that Ginger would lay Dido out quickly. The business settled, they would buy the victor drinks, flatter and appease him, so that when he lumbered on his way to visit his subjects in another pub in another street, he would be without anger against Rabbit Marsh.