Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“A gentleman!” Poppy replies enthusiastically, not catching my tone. “Imagine it! Clean sheets, nobody cussing you out or even raising their voices. No pushing and shoving. A soft world.”

I snort. “Always thinking before you speak. Inspecting your bedding in the morning. Keeping your farts in, lest they trigger something. A life lived with your arsehole clamped. Never letting rip.”

But the boy is adamant, forgets for a moment that I am his senior and prophet, his shipside god.

“What’s so great about coarseness and dirt?” he asks.

And when I don’t answer (for he’s hit upon a point, I suppose) he adds, angry now, wet in his eye: “They’ll go to heaven, sir. And you and I shan’t.”

ф

The first set of customs officials boards us two full leagues off the coast. His Majesty’s servants! And how thorough they are, how prim, fine gentlemen in worsted suits. Always in twos, watching each other’s virtue like hawks. They must submit reports, it is said, about each other’s behaviour. And all the same I would bet my pecker they are just as bent as that one-eyed thief that runs the port at La Rochelle. This is Britain, though. Here crookery has had a haircut, and its shirt cuffs are freshly ironed.

There are four checks in total. Each time the cargo is examined and reexamined. Seals are applied, paperwork lodged, fees paid. Each time our captain fawns and twitters; attempts small talk; offers drinks and is rebuffed. All captains are like this when it comes to customs.

But our captain is dripping with sweat.

“What are we smuggling then?” I ask when yet another pair has left the ship and we are steaming down the mouth of the Thames.

Captain van Huysmans starts.

“A joke, Captain, a joke. What’s our cargo? Spices? Flowers? Opium?”

He shakes his head, dries his forehead on a handkerchief.

“Machine parts.”

I whistle. “Special permits?”

“Of course.” Then he blanches, as though in aftershock to my comments, cocks his head like he’s heard the rumble of an approaching storm.

“If you will excuse me.”

And I swear he starts singing, shrilly and out of tune, hurrying to his cabin and trailing his handkerchief like a little white flag.

ф

In good weather, you can see London all the way from the mouth of the Thames. Not a plume, exactly, more like a dark mist. Some of it is the factory chimneys, though the mist is darkest near the ground. Poppy stands next to me at the railing, staring at the mist ahead. I can see him make the sign of the cross.

He blushes when I laugh.

“Is it like they say it is?” he asks me shyly. “Gomorrah? A den of thieves?”

“It’s a city. The biggest in Europe.”

“But the Smoke.”

“It’s where the sinners live. The workers, the paupers. Good people live in the country. Bad people there.

“It’s like everywhere else,” I add a little later. “Only more so.”

ф

We head for the Tobacco Dock. There are cheers when the captain announces that the men are to take the night off. Even the cabin boy looks happy at the news. He is afraid of this Gomorrah, this den of thieves. But he wants to explore it too. I look forward to showing him around, talking some of his fear out of him, showing him that people are people, even here, when the captain takes me aside.

“Stay. I have special orders for you,” he announces quietly.

We haggle over it for the better part of an hour. Then the sum he names gets so large I begin to worry he will withdraw the offer. I am pleased, of course, but also afraid.

What grave felony must the man be up to if he is willing to pay a dozen gulden just for my standing around?

Do you think it’s midnight yet?”

“How would I know? I haven’t seen a single working clock in the entire city.” Thomas adds, thoughtfully: “They’ll have the time on the ship though, and nobody’s stirred.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“This is a steamer, built for the open sea. They need a clock to take readings. Otherwise it’d be impossible to navigate. And there is no way on and off other than that plank.”

“You know about boats.”

“Ships. I grew up near the sea. Hush now, the watchman is coming back.”

They fall silent and watch the man approach. His movements are easy to follow, even at a distance. He has lit a pipe and with every puff the tobacco glows red in the darkness of the dock and reveals a fragment of his face, deep-lined, whiskered, a clean-shaven chin. He passes half a dozen steps from them, then turns and leaves behind the sweet smell of burnt vanilla. At his turn his heels squeak on the cobbles.

Rubber soles , thinks Thomas. He is from the ship.

At the far side of his round, the man stops, his pipe momentarily obscured by the back of his head. A moment later a sound can be heard, water hitting water. The dock lies so still that the noise travels through the dark. Then, his bladder empty, the man starts humming past the stem of his pipe. The melody that reaches them is unknown to Thomas; is lovelorn and sweet. After the second chorus, the man breaks off and resumes his round. The pool next to him lies flat, black, glassy: an absence of space, too Soot-soaked to reflect the occasional fragment of moonlight peeking through the clouds.

There are three such pools, rectangular in shape and connected to the Thames by deep, iron-gated locks. All three are gigantic. The largest might fit a score of cricket fields. The Tobacco Dock holds the smallest of the three basins, though it is still large enough to berth an East India steamer. All around the basin’s rim rises a city of warehouses, of workshops, cranes, ship parts, barrels, and bollards. It is a landscape built for machines, towering husks of metal, sweating rust. A propeller stands by the side of the dock, each blade bigger than a man and twisting around itself like a broken-necked shovel. If machines had religion, this should be their cross. It is not hard to imagine a creature nailed onto its blades.

On all sides the quay is secured by a high brick wall. There is only one gate. Approaching it — passing through the crowded piers of the Western Dock just as work was winding down, then hiding behind a row of barrels until all the stevedores were gone — Thomas and Livia had found its doors unlocked, the guard booths empty, their entry witnessed only by the hinges’ squeak. Thomas suspects that this is more than an oversight. The Western Dock does not admit foreign ships and security is light. But at the Tobacco Dock foreign custom is expected. Signs warn of trespass, and dense loops of a peculiarly spiky wire crown all the walls. Nonetheless the whole site stands abandoned, as though waiting for thieves. Someone has been paid off, the guards sent home, the dog kennels emptied for the night. All that remains is this one lone watchman. A careless fellow: thanks to the pipe, they spotted him as soon as they had passed through the gate. They have been playing hide-and-seek ever since.

It had been easy to identify the Haarlem . While the two other vessels tied up at the short end of the dock are little more than river barges, the ship by whose side they are cowering must be a hundred and fifty feet stern to prow. It reeks of the open sea. There are no waves in the basin but there must be a current of some sort, down deep. Periodically the ship will either tug at the ropes that secure it to the pier or lean on the padded barrels that ride between its flank and the wall: two types of groan, one taut and creaking, the other a patient grinding. They give texture to the night.

Close up to its side, it is hard to make out the ship’s details: a confusion of masts and chimneys; the angular contours of an iron hull, sitting low in the water. They made their way there running from cover to cover, the dock a plane of overlapping shadows, deep as wells; then hid by a cluster of crates stacked man-high on the quay. The edge of the basin is five feet from their hiding place, the hull another three feet beyond. Above their heads droops a flag it is too dark to identify. Beneath, the water is viscous with the oily weight of undissolved Soot.