Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

Addressing Jo, Godfrey said, ‘Have you heard about Pyke’s plan to travel to Jamaica? Now of all times.’

Briefly Jo met his gaze and then looked away. ‘No, I wasn’t aware of that.’

‘I’ll only be gone for a couple of months.’ It might and probably would take him longer, but he didn’t like to admit this. If he travelled by steamer, he’d been told the crossing could take as little as three weeks.

‘Don’t you see how much your son needs you? What he did today was stupid but it was a cry for help. And now you’re going to abandon him again.’ Godfrey’s face had turned the colour of beetroot.

‘I’m sorry, Godfrey. I just can’t let this thing go. I have to see it through to the end.’ It was an inadequate answer, but it was the truth, too.

‘Look, don’t misunderstand me, dear boy. I’m sorry this mulatto woman was murdered but isn’t that the point? She’s dead. Your son isn’t and he needs you here.’

‘Don’t you see — I’m doing this for him. In part, at least. So I can look him in the eye and say this is what I did. So he can see what I do and be proud of me. I can’t just walk away from it now.’

‘Let the police sort the matter out,’ Godfrey said, sighing.

‘I was there when they buried her.’ He hesitated. ‘It was just me at her graveside; me and the two gravediggers.’ Pyke stole a glance at Jo, wanting her to see that he was capable of such feeling. ‘I close my eyes at night and I can see her face, how it was mutilated.’

Godfrey regarded him with a mixture of pity and frustration. ‘Your wife is dead, Pyke, and nothing you do now is going to bring her back.’

‘And that’s what you think this is?’

‘Isn’t it?’

They stared at one another awkwardly. Out of the corner of his eye, Pyke could see Jo squirming. But Godfrey hadn’t quite finished. ‘What if you’re laid out with yellow fever or your ship is attacked or goes down in a storm. What will I do with Felix? I’m an old man.’

‘Two months; I’ll be back in two months.’

‘I can’t get through to him,’ Godfrey said to Jo. ‘He just refuses to listen. See if you can talk some sense to him.’

‘Felix is almost ten,’ Pyke said, trying to rein in his frustration. ‘I lost my father when I was barely eight; he needs to learn to stand on his own two feet.’

‘I shan’t give you a penny. You won’t get a single penny from me to fund this absurd venture.’ Godfrey left the room muttering. ‘Pig-headed man.’

Pyke waited until he was gone before saying to Jo, ‘Do you think I’m as reckless and pig-headed as Godfrey seems to?’

For what seemed like minutes she stood there, her arms folded, refusing to answer the question.

The hackney carriage dropped them by the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane just as it was getting dark. Just him and Felix. The boy hadn’t wanted to go with him at first but Pyke had forced the matter. The light was fading and the lamp-lighters were strung out along the street. The odour of rotting food and faeces was pungent in the breeze. Pyke took Felix’s hand and told the lad to hold on to him ‘at all costs’. Felix hadn’t uttered a word to him during the short ride from Camden. They entered a narrow alley just past the Theatre Royal not wide enough for carriages to pass along. Two roughly dressed men stumbled out of a brothel. Through the door, Felix caught a glimpse of the interior, lit up by the red, smoky flame of a grease lamp. He seemed transfixed by it. They passed a swag and slop-shop, tailoring hovels and a gin shop; a man was lying face down in the gutter outside. They stepped over him and continued into the heart of the rookery.

At the next corner, they came across a man dressed in a monkey jacket and oilskin cap who was whipping a donkey. Felix wanted to stop but Pyke tugged on his hand and pulled him onwards. On either side of the alleyway, disembodied faces stared at them through shattered window panes; in doorways, barefoot children watched them pass. Some uttered obscenities, their harsh, guttural accents echoing down the intricate web of alleyways and courts; but most were silent. Pyke felt Felix’s grip tighten around his hand. At the next corner, they stopped for a moment outside the door to an underground slaughterhouse; Felix stared down at a mound of quivering entrails. Next door, a stream of liquid refuse from a tripe scraper and scum-boiler leaked into an open cess trench. The rookery was where Pyke had grown up, had been his home until his uncle had rescued him, and he wanted Felix to see it in all its unvarnished nastiness. They passed a toothless man who stood half naked in the street. He giggled as they stepped around him and then followed them, his trousers around his ankles, hands outstretched for coins.

At the heart of the rookery was a dilapidated building that stood on the foundations of an old leper hospital. It was called the Rat’s Castle and its walls were buckled, its windows patched with rags and paper. At one of the entrances, paupers fresh from oakum picking and bone grinding tugged on Pyke’s coat sleeve, begging for money; Pyke pushed them to one side and led Felix into the darkened interior. A long passageway took them into the bowels of the building, past rooms where men and women scolded, fought, swore and copulated with one another. At the top of a corkscrew staircase, a man wearing a torn shooting jacket and a billycock hat jumped out of the shadows. Felix recoiled but Pyke pushed the man backwards; pushed him so hard he toppled on to his backside.

They continued along another passageway; eventually it opened up into a much larger room where children as young as six or seven, orphans and runaways mostly, lay head to toe on the rotten floorboards, with not even a rag to sleep under. One boy was sobbing; another was being sick. A man and a woman were openly copulating in front of them. No one paid the newcomers much attention at first, but then an older boy, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, sidled up to them and asked Pyke how much he wanted ‘for the boy’. He inspected Felix as if he were a slab of meat. Grabbing his son’s hand, Pyke led Felix back along the passageway, ignoring the older boy’s protestations. At the stairs, a couple of men were waiting for them; Pyke could see from their eyes they meant business. With his free hand, he withdrew his Long Sea Service pistol from his belt and brandished it in their faces. They fell back and let them pass. Outside the building, they retraced their path out of the rookery. Felix didn’t say a single word to Pyke until they were safely ensconced inside a hackney carriage bound for Camden Town.

‘That was all I knew until Godfrey offered to take me into his home.’ Pyke waited. ‘I don’t want that life for you.’

From the bench on the other side of carriage, Felix just nodded.

‘What you did today was foolish but, worse than that, it was unnecessary. Those people we saw just now; they steal because they have to. If they don’t steal, they starve. We should never forget how lucky we are.’

Felix stared down at his boots. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘Reading stories can give you some insight into other people’s lives but they never give you the whole picture.’ Pyke paused to gather his thoughts. ‘People tend to do things because they have to; when they don’t have a choice. Often it isn’t about right or wrong. It’s about surviving.’

Felix seemed to consider this. ‘Is that why you did some of the things you did?’ he said, in a quiet, deliberate voice.

‘In Godfrey’s book, the character is presented in a certain way to shock and appal the readers, or at least that’s what I’m guessing because I haven’t actually read it.’

Felix stared at him, open mouthed. ‘ You haven’t read it?’