William Gibson - The Difference Engine

Mallory moved to the bar. She was not chaffing with the barman but arguing with him, in a half-painful, nagging, womanly way. She was thirsty and had no cash and said that her friends were paying. The barman didn't believe her, but would not say so straight out.

Mallory tapped a shilling on the bar. "Barman, give the lady what she wants."

She looked at him with annoyed surprise. Then she recovered herself, and smiled, and looked at him through half-shut lashes. "You know what I like best, Nicholas," she told the barman.

He brought her a flute of champagne and relieved Mallory of his money. "I love champagne," she told Mallory. "You can dance like a feather when you drink champagne. Do you dance?"

"Abominably," Mallory said. "May I go home with you?"

She looked him up and down, and the corner of her mouth moved, with a wry but voluptuous smirk. "I'll tell you in a moment." And she went to rejoin her friends.

Mallory did not wait, for he thought it likely a gull. He walked slowly about the monster promenade and looked at other women, but then he saw the tall plain-faced girl beckoning. He went to her.

"I think I can go with you, but you may not like it," she said.

"Why shouldn't I?" he said. "I like you."

She laughed. "I don't mean in that way. I don't live here in Brompton; I live in Whitechapel."

"That's a long way."

"The trains aren't running. And we can't get a cab at all. I was afraid I would sleep in the park!"

"What about your friends?" Mallory asked.

The girl tossed her head, as if to say she didn't care for them. Her fine neck showed a bit of machine-made lace at the hollow of her throat. "I want to go back to Whitechapel. Will you take me? I haven't any money, not a tuppence."

"All right," Mallory said. He offered her his arm. "It's a five-mile walk—but your legs are a marvel."

She took his elbow and smiled at him. "We can catch a river-steamer at Cremorne Pier."

"Oh," Mallory said. "Down the Thames, eh?"

"It's not very dear." They walked down the steps of the monster platform into the twinkling gas-lit darkness. "You're not from London, are you? A traveling-gent."

Mallory shook his head.

"Will you give me a sovereign if I sleep with you?"

Mallory, surprised at her bluntness, said nothing.

"You can stay all night," she said. "I've a very nice room."

"Yes, that's what I want."

He stumbled a bit on the gravel walk. She steadied him, then boldly met his eyes. "You're a bit lushed, are you? But you look good-natured. What do they call you?"

"Edward. Ned, mostly."

"That's my name, too!" she said. "Harriet Edwardes, with an 'e' on the end. My stage-name. But my friends call me Hetty."

"You have the figure of a goddess, Hetty. I'm not surprised you're on the stage."

She gave him that bold, grey-eyed look. "You like wicked girls, Ned? I hope you do, for I'm in a mood to do wicked things tonight."

"I like them fine," Mallory said. He grabbed her by her tapered waist, thrust one hand against her swelling bosom, and kissed her mouth. She gave a little surprised shriek, and then threw her arms around his neck. They kissed a long while beneath the dark bulk of an elm. He felt her tongue against his teeth.

She pulled back a bit. "We have to get home, Ned. All right?"

"All right," he said, breathing hard. "But show me your legs now. Please?"

She looked up and down the path, then lifted her petticoats to the knee and dropped them again.

"They're perfection," he said. "You could sit to painters."

"I have sat to painters," she said, "and it don't pay."

A steamer sounded at Cremorne Pier. They ran to it and got aboard with moments to spare. The effort sent whiskey racing through Mallory's head. He gave the girl a shilling to pay the four-pence toll, and found a canvas steamer-chair up near the bow. The little ferry got up steam, its side-wheels slapping black water. "Let's go in the saloon," she said. "There's drink."

"I like to see London."

"I don't think you'll like what you see on this trip."

"I will if you stay with me," he said.

"How you talk, Ned," she said, and laughed. "Funny, I thought you were a copper at first, you looked so stern and solemn. But coppers don't talk like that, drunk or sober."

"You don't like compliments?"

"No, they're sweet. But I like champagne, too."

"In a moment," Mallory said. He was drunker than he liked to be. He stood and walked to the bow railing and gripped it hard, squeezing sensation back into his fingertips. "Damned dark in the city," he said.

"Why, it is," she said, standing near him. She smelled of salt sweat and tea-rose and cunt. He wondered if she had much hair there and what its color was. He was dying to see it. "Why is that, Ned?"

"What?"

"Why is it so dark? Is it the fog?"

"Gas-lights," he said. "Government have a scheme to turn off the gas-lights because they smoke so."

"How clever of them."

"Now people are running about in the blackened streets, smashing everything in sight."

"How do you know that?"

He shrugged.

"You're not a copper?"

"No, Hetty."

"I don't like coppers. They're always talking as if they know things you don't know. And they won't tell you how they know it."

"I could tell you," Mallory said. "I should like to tell you. But you wouldn't understand."

"Of course I'd understand, Ned," Hetty said in a voice as bright as peeling paint. "I love to hear clever men talk."

"London is a complex system out of equilibrium. It's like—it's like a drunken man, blind drunk, in a room with whiskey bottles. The whiskey is hidden—so he's always walking about looking for it. When he finds a bottle, he takes a long drink, but puts it down and forgets it at once. Then he wanders and looks again, over and over."

"Then he runs out of liquor and has to buy more," Hetty said.

"No. He never runs out. There's a demon that tops up the bottles constantly. That's why it is an open dynamical system. He walks round and round in the room, forever, never knowing what his next step may be. All blind and unknowing, he traces circles, figure-eights, every figure that a skater might make, but he never leaves the boundaries. And then one day the lights go out, and he instantly runs headlong out of the room and into outer darkness. And anything may happen then, anything at all, for the outer darkness is Chaos. It is Chaos, Hetty."

"And you like that, eh?"

"What?"

"I don't know what that means that you just said; but I can tell you like it. You like to think about it." With a gentle, quite natural movement, she put her hand against the front of his trousers. "Isn't it stiff!" She snatched her hand back and grinned triumphantly.

Mallory looked hastily about the deck. There were other people out, a dozen or so. It seemed none of them were watching, but it was hard to tell in the foggy darkness. "You tease," he said.

"Pull it out, and you'll see how I tease."

"I'd rather wait for the proper time and place."

"Fancy a man saying that," she said, and laughed.

The steady slapping paddle-wheels suddenly changed their tenor. The black Thames gave up a vile rush of stench and the crisping sound of bubbles.

"Oh, it's horrid," cried Hetty, clapping a hand to her mouth. "Let's go in the saloon, Ned, please!"

A strange curiosity pinned Mallory in place. "Does it get worse than this? Down-river?"

"Much worse," Hetty said through her fingers. "I've seen folk swoon away."

"Why do the ferries still run, then?"

"They always run," Hetty said, half-turning away. "They're mail-boats."

"Oh," Mallory said. "Could I buy a stamp here?"

"Inside," said Hetty, "and you can buy me something, too."

Hetty lit an oil-lamp in the cramped little hallway of her upstairs lodging in Flower-and-Dean Street. Mallory, powerfully glad to be free of the fog-choked eeriness of back-street Whitechapel, edged past her into the parlor. A square, plank-topped table held a messy stack of illustrated tabloids, somehow still delivered despite the Stink. In the dimness he could make out fat Engine-printed headlines bemoaning the poor state of the Prime Minister's health. Old Byron was always feigning sickness, some gammy foot or rheumy lung or raddled liver.