Day 6 1981 words

Spitalfields Market, so Mr Triskit said, was not was it used to be. He blamed the railways, since now goods were offloaded and sent on direct from the platform, and the early morning passengers picked their way through trolleys of meat, fish and vegetables that had all been grown and packed, so he maintained, ‘bleedin miles away’. But to Ernest the market was enormous, a vital world of its own, where the usual order of respect was reversed, and the costermongers were the lords of their domain. Nobody else in London, thought Ernest, knew what went on here. Not the cooks, the housewives or even the chefs in the fancy hotels and grand houses. They only saw their ingredients in small heaps and piles and baskets; they could pick out the bunch of cherries that appealed to them best, select the ripest apples and the best looking carrots. Their butchers would dress the meat, chop it up nice and small, surround it with parsley and offer it up for sale. But here, the evidence of the slaughter needed to keep London fed was all around. There were whole cows, lambs split in two, and pigs chopped up into four enormous chunks. Blood dripped on the floor, pooling and thickening over the grates, and causing accidents to anyone unwary and new to the market. Discarded leaves, vegetable tops and rotten fruit were swept to the sides, where small children and desperate women scratched through the fetid heaps like scrawny chickens, looking for anything they could bear to eat.
Ernest walked through the market on Monday morning with a new, intense feeling of purpose. He felt that before he had been childishly accepting each day and whatever it brought, but now he had an obligation to pay attention, to make something of himself and to get his Mother back to her former station in life. The differences that his Mother cultivated, deliberately setting him apart from, and sometimes against, their neighbours in the Rookery, must have been for a purpose. For something more than helping Mr Triskit add up his profits and turnover. He took his place on the top of the high stool, the canvas-bound book on his lap, and wrote down the quantities and prices that were called out to him.
During a short break for a mug of sweet tea and a piece of bread and dripping, Ernest looked around at the other boys and youths who thronged the market, and wondered what they thought about doing when they grew into men. He supposed that most of them would follow their fathers, brothers or uncles into the family trade. He wished he had inherited his Mother’s talent with pictures, but even she had to admit that he was never going to make a living that way. He wondered how much money the performers in the Cabinet of Talents made. He could see that it might be a difficult life, but on the other hand they had a lot of food between them, and clothes made of fine materials, and the women had jewellery.  Perhaps he and his Mother could join them – Mother had a beautiful way of reciting poems, and if she were dressed properly… actresses had a bad reputation, he knew that, although he did not know exactly what their reputation was for, but he was coming to realise that he was the only person in the city who saw his Mother as unstained.
The best perk of working at any of the food markets in London was that they packed up when many folk were only sitting down to have lunch, leaving Ernest with the afternoon free. Often he went straight home and slept, but today he walked down to the Mile End Road, and looked into the windows of the clothes shops. He started off with the shops with large plate-glass windows, gas-lit at night and offering a glimpse of their wares in glass cabinets. Ernest knew that he would be chased out if he dared to set foot in these places, especially when he had the taint of his work around him, so he moved further down the road, to the start of the second-hand shops, the pawnbrokers and the barrows of clothes and rags.  He stopped to look at a rail of jackets in front of a barrow, and the seller was between him and the goods in an instant.
‘Don’t finger the dunnage unless you’re a paying customer.’
‘I might be, if I can see what I want.’ Said Ernest, putting as much authority as he could into his voice.
‘Oh ho. A lost little gennerman? You don’t want these goods, you want something flash – bugger off up the other end of the street.’
‘I need a new jacket – some good work clothes. Not boy’s clothes.  What can you give me in exchange for this suit?’ Ernest turned all the way round so the seller could inspect him.
‘Mate – that’s coopered. What you been doing in it, fisticuffs?’
‘It was new.’
‘Yeah. When your Dad was in ringlets.’
‘I want this jacket’ said Ernest, and these trousers. And I need a shirt, and a…’
‘A bend, to set off that lot like a swell.’
‘A waistcoat. Yes, please.’
The seller looked at him suspiciously. ‘Ain’t got none in your size.’
Ernest wondered why it had to be so difficult to buy anything. The poorer you were, the harder it became. If you were rich, you could have anything delivered the same day, and did not even have to pay for it but could run up an account. Ernest had enough money to buy the clothes that were on sale at precisely this part of the street, but if he actually revealed the cash he would get ripped off or even enticed down a side street to look at other items, and robbed as soon as he was out of sight.
Ernest pulled the jacket from the rail and found, as he had expected, that it was tied with string to the trousers and waistcoat that made up the suit. He clamped the heavy suit under his arm.
‘Oi!’ said the seller ‘Thief!’
Ernest stood firm ‘Right, with money  off in exchange for what I’m wearing – this is what I’ll give you for this suit.’ He extracted some coins and held them in his free hand.
‘And the bloody rest.’
Ernest extracted one more sixpence.
‘Oh all right. Rob me blind why not. I’m only a poor old man trying to earn enough for a headstone for my grave.’
Ernest scuttled behind the rail and hopped out of his old clothes and into the new suit. It was only a little bit big. He extracted his old belt and pulled the trousers right in. With the waistcoat pulled down, it was a good fit. He wished he could have done something about his boots, but he had no more cash and he would not get even a ha’penny for the ones he was wearing.
Leaving behind the muttering clothes seller, still complaining that he had been ripped off, Ernest made for home through the broad streets of the city, quiet in the afternoon. Only a few children played hoop or hopscotch along the pavements, but otherwise even the drunks in the doorways were snoozing and still.

Rosalina was asleep when Ernest came home. She had made a thin soup out of the last scraps of the rabbit, and had aired the bedding, but apart from that she had stood by the window for hours, watching the shadows shift and lengthen.  She could not bear to inhabit this room of theirs. She lived in it as if she was merely staying there for a night, taking shelter from a storm before continuing her journey to her true destination.  The laudanum helped to make this frame of mind her reality, but when she was unable or unwilling to rely on it, to look around at the bare boards and worn out items brought her into a deep depression. In this state she was even less able to contemplate earning some money through needlework or laundry, as she knew she should. To rely on her son, who was not even eleven years old, was shameful. To commit to this life was to admit defeat. To leave life altogether… in order not to think of that, she stared at the rooftops and the pigeons, and the gathering rain clouds over the city. She wondered where Ernest had gone on Sunday. He still had not told her. He was punishing her, of course, by keeping secrets of his own. She hoped that a girl was not any part of the reason for his absence, on Sunday and this afternoon. Then she hoped that a girl was precisely the reason.

When Ernest bounded into the room, keen to show off his new suit, Rosalina did not know what to say. She found herself between tears and pride at her grown-up boy in his man’s clothes. He was talking of asking Mr Triskit for a pay rise, of learning how to take charge of deliveries, and of renting a better room. He had made his choice, it seemed, between the reality out there in the street and the world of his Mother and her memories of fame and favour. She could not blame him, she knew she could not keep him tied to her for much longer, but still his choice hurt; it was a betrayal, a desertion, and she felt it keenly.

For the rest of the week Ernest set about convincing Mr Triskit of his value by working hard, completing tasks as fast as he could and overseeing the deliveries as much as he could, even stopping Mr Triskit getting short changed in a deal.  Mr Triskit gave him no thanks, but accused him of being ‘up to something.’ Ernest grinned, since this meant that his efforts had been noticed. But his work left him so tired that on Friday night he went to sleep as soon as he got home in the afternoon, his Mother sitting on the windowsill so that he could lie flat out on the divan bed. When Ernest woke up it was early evening, and he was alone.  Hearing raised voices below, he looked out of the small window and saw a knot of people in the courtyard, his Mother among them, standing with the rest of the women. One young woman was crying inconsolably. Ernest dressed and went down, but he moved through the group without speaking. As if he was sleepwalking, he turned down the next alley, brushing his hand against the walls as he went, feeling his way more than seeing it. He found what he had expected to find, and threw himself against a half-sized door which was set into a wall.  The neighbours by now had caught up with him.
‘You’ve lost a little girl’ said Ernest ‘a little girl with red hair, wearing a green dress.’
They agreed, asking him how he knew, what he was doing. The girl’s mother began to cry again, as Ernest held up his hand for silence. ‘She’s in there – she’s alive. She was shut in by the boys it was a joke, but they couldn’t get her out again and they got scared.’
The men heaved the door open, and a girl of three, covered in soot, was pulled out, alive and sobbing, from the tiny hole behind it.
‘Ernest – how did you know?’ asked his Mother. ‘You must have heard the boys talking?’
‘No. I knew nothing until – Mother – I know it sounds  - wrong. But I dreamed it. I saw it all. And when I woke up I knew where she was.’
Rosalina hugged her son tightly. ‘Oh, Ernest. No. Not dreams. Not you as well.  What more must we endure?’