Dan Vyleta - Smoke

I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.

But she too tries to say good-bye. Tries to pay me, in fact, taking a silver cross off her neck and holding it out on her open palm.

“For your trouble,” she says.

I suppose she’s trying to be gracious. In the dark, I might have taken it and worn it against my breast. But in the beam of the lamp I can see the stiffness of her bearing, those meek, I’m-a-saint-because-I-know-I’m-a-sinner eyes. Like she’s standing portrait for a bust of Jesus.

“Please accept it as a token of our gratitude.”

I hiss my answer.

“Can’t,” I say. “People will see and assume I’m a thief. The justice of the peace will have me flogged.”

Miss Naylor looks aggrieved at that. And also a little cross. But she fights it down, takes off the collier’s jacket she’s sporting, tears off the whole of the sleeve of the dirty blouse she wears underneath, and hands it over to me.

“It’s French lace. You can resew it. Turn it into a handkerchief, or a baptismal wrap. When you have children, I mean.”

The coal-streaked rag hangs limp from my hand. I suppose she can see what I am thinking, because she grows embarrassed, tugs it out of my grasp.

“Forgive me. I’m sorry.”

And just for a moment she sounds real. Almost a little desperate. Trying in earnest to reach across the chasm between us. God knows who’s dug it.

It makes me feel sorry for her.

“I’ll keep it,” I say. “It’s very nice.”

We share a smile. Then she quickly slips back into her jacket, so the boys cannot see her, in her state of undress. And just like that she is her old self again. Distant. Cold as the dew.

“Mr. Argyle owes you his life,” she closes our transaction. “We are all in your debt.”

I nod, wave the rag in front of her face.

“That you are. But look here, you’ve already paid.”

Dawn breaks and Charlie thinks his heart will break for joy.

They have been walking for several hours already, tottering along in the dark, taking breaks every few minutes when Thomas grows dizzy and can no longer keep pace. Then a ribbon of predawn light appears on the horizon, hazy and pale. But what miracles are revealed by this pallid smear! They are walking on a muddy path: rectangles of fields stretch on both sides, parcelled up by enclosure walls and dotted with barren trees. Above them sits a leaden sky, so overcast that the clouds have no contours. It is a world of browns and greys. But what greys! How many shades of brown!

Charlie cannot believe his eyes; stops in his tracks, blinking tears from his eyes. Then, rising from the knolls of lowly hills, a smear of orange paints itself across the east. Theirs is not a picture-book sunup, a fire-red balloon slowly mounting the world’s edge; sitting on it; then lightly bouncing up, to scale the sky. And yet it is the most beautiful thing Charlie has ever seen. By increments the world gains in contour. And when the cloud cover breaks, momentarily, he feels the light on his face like a physical touch, searching his features. He stares down, at himself, his hands, his legs, and laughs from pure joy, marvelling at how even the sound is different under an open sky.

Only then does he turn to his friends.

It has been, for Charlie, a lonely week, stuck in a hole in the earth. He spent many hours sitting with Thomas, unable for much of the time to reach him through his fever, listening to his dark ravings, cut off even from his Smoke that appeared to have no smell in the dark, nor any power to infect, and danced aimlessly before the timid light on the few occasions when they dared to light a lamp. He talked to Lizzy, of course, but the girl was taciturn with him, jealous of sharing her time with Thomas. And Charlie talked to Livia: touched her, kissed her, took her breath in his. But even this was an adulterated joy in a world without sight; a love affair conducted by shades. In the dark, Charlie felt, they could not be fully present to one another. It was a world without smiles. Without beauty. He would wake from sleep and be beset by the fear of not having woken; would reach around himself and find no one; or a stranger; or a friend — a lover? — whose emotion he could not read.

The dark did something for Livia, though. Something important, a kind of tempering, something smiths do to their steel. Charlie looks at her now, his first look since their kiss, and finds her changed. Thinner. Dirtier, of course. Holding herself differently. It makes him shy and awkward with her, and shier yet, more awkward, when she looks back at him and does not mirror his smile.

If Livia is thin, Thomas is emaciated. Cleaner than the rest of them (Lizzy saw to that, with the constant application of bucket and sponge) and pale underneath the speckling of coal dust. Out of the lip of his bandage crawl the tendrils of a dark blue tattoo, touch his eyebrow and the corner of his eye, where coal has grown into fresh scar tissue. His face is a mask of concentration: on the muddy path, on each step, keeping himself going by a sheer act of will.

By the time dawn has given way to midmorning they see it before them: not so much a village as a train supply station. Freight trains stop here to take on goods. Apparently, one can hop on a freight car for pennies, and ride with pigs or chickens or black mounds of coal. Mr. Mosley advised them to come here; it would attract less notice, he said, than going to town. It is a place tramps come, in the hope of transport. Tramps. Well, thinks Charlie, we certainly look the part. His trousers and jacket are stiff with filth. A drizzle has started and is leaving patterns on his dirty skin. As though on command, they stop in the shelter of a hill. It is time to make decisions.

ф

And yet the words won’t come right away. Overwhelmed by a world without a roof, they have spoken little all morning and an odd timidity clings to them yet, as though words will put in motion something irrevocable; will put a close to one part of their lives and commit them to a new one.

It’s Charlie who accepts it first.

“Do you want to go home?” he asks Livia. “To your mother?”

The girl shakes her head. She has come this far, assuming her mother’s complicity in the attack. Now she will see it out. Charlie knows better than to argue with her.

“To London, then.”

As Charlie says it, he hears the question in his own voice. It is directed at Thomas. He is their leader. They did not vote on it, nobody picked him and yet it is true, even now — especially now — that he is wounded and weak.

“I mean, if we can’t go back to Lady Naylor’s and want to do more than just sit around, it’s the only real option. ‘The Tobacco Dock, midnight, the twelfth of January.’ That’s what the ledger said in the laboratory. ‘Collect in person’: Lady Naylor will be there. She is working on something, something important, and she paid a fortune just for this one item.”

Thomas has clearly been thinking the same thing. Nevertheless there is a hesitation to his response.

“What day is it today? We were attacked on the second, and went down the mine on the third. Six days down the mine. The morning of the ninth?”

Both Charlie and Livia confirm his calculation.

“Then we have four whole days. Time enough.” He shudders slightly, squats down on his heels, steadying himself with one hand. It comes to Charlie that Thomas is very close to fainting. That he does not have the strength even to stand.

But his voice is firm.

“What we need is to talk to someone who can shed light on everything. The laboratory, the experiments, Lady Naylor’s theory of Smoke. Fresh information; some other perspective. Without it, we will continue tapping in the dark.” He juts his chin out, his mind made up. “You two go to London. I will go and see Renfrew.”