Ross Gilfillan - The Edge of the Crowd

‘A half dozen rats in five minutes, Daniel – that ain’t asking much, I think, of a dutiful son.’

‘I only done two last time,’ the boy complains.

Saggers’ stick prods the boy towards the largest piling of rats. ‘Every one on ’em, Dan’l, or you’ll bed in the gutter tonight. I’ve had my fill of you.’

Tears of anger and frustration flash in the boy’s eyes as he crosses the pit and swings a ferocious kick at the writhing mound. As the rats disperse, he stamps hard and crushes the head of one and immediately receives a crack across his own skull from his father’s stick. ‘None of that, none of that! You bite ’em, same as the dogs!’

Around the ring, bets are being made by the sanguinary men who cheer noisily as the stick flails and Daniel ducks to avoid another knock on the head. The boy resigns himself to his circumstances and falls to his knees before the rats. Screwing tight his eyes, he darts his head among them in the manner of the dogs before him. The topmost creatures escape his incursion by scrabbling over the boy’s head, matting his hair and scratching his scalp before they run off down his back. Others dart out from between his legs and around his sides. The boy shuffles about, his head bobs up and down and then he straightens his back and turns about. Blood streams from lacerations to his cheeks, nose and forehead. He has a rat between his teeth, which he quickly traps against the wall while he bites its neck. The rat scratches, fights and squeals as the boy traps it against the wood while he finds a place to make a fatal nip.

‘That’s the style, boy, that’s the style!’ Saggers calls.

The boy drops the rat and spits out a piece of its fur. ‘Let me go, I’ll get you money if you’ll let me go,’ he implores, but Saggers will hear none of this and shouts, ‘Another varmint, lad, go to it!’

Reluctantly, the boy again addresses the quivering rats. This time his small mouth can find no purchase and each time he delves among the animals he receives additional wounding. Not all who cheered before are cheering now. A pop-eyed, florid-faced man urges on the sobbing boy, waving his stick and shouting, ‘Kill ’en, Dan’l! Kill ’en, boy!’ but Daniel withdraws himself from his quarry and sits back upon his heels with glazed countenance.

Saggers, for all that he seems intent upon the boy, has Hilditch in his gaze. His thin smile is enquiring. ‘How do you like our sport now, sir?’

Blood wells in the boy’s eyes, drops heavily from a split lip and dapples his shirt front. Wherever bare skin shows, it is crazed with the scratches of sharp claws.

‘This is the most damnable thing I ever saw,’ Hilditch says.

Saggers prods the boy with his stick. ‘Don’t stop now! Another rat, damn you!’ He begins to push Daniel towards the seething, blood-speckled heap of animation.

Hilditch, who is so close to Saggers that he seems complicit in his every action, clears his throat.

‘What’s that?’ Saggers says.

‘That’s enough!’ says Hilditch.

Saggers affects surprise and cups his ear as he speaks to the assembly at large. ‘You ain’t about to interfere? Ho, no, I couldn’t have heard that!’ He leans forward and pokes his stick in the back of the boy’s neck. ‘Get along, boy, you ain’t finished yet!’

Hilditch lays his hand upon the arm that is raising the stick. ‘You must stop this. You must have his wounds seen to now!’

‘Must I, indeed? This is your opinion?’

‘It’s the opinion of anyone with an ounce of sanity,’ says Hilditch.

‘You keep out of this. Can’t you do like you said? He’ll be taken care of, jest as soon as he’s finished.’

‘He’s finished now, man. Look at him!’

Saggers spits at Hilditch, ‘If he leaves that pit now, he leaves this house for ever and ever, Amen. A boy what can’t make money is no good to me. Well? Will he leave with you, sir? Will you take him?’

Hilditch hesitates. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘I thought as much,’ he says, and turns away. ‘Finish them rats, Dan’l. It’s like you said. The gent’s only here to watch.’

Daniel shuffles towards the rats once more. Saggers throws a halfpenny into the pit and someone else throws a second. Daniel is encouraged by the men about the pit, whose calls are now sympathetic, some even kindly. ‘Go on, son,’ someone says. ‘You’re doing stunning.’ Over his shoulder, Saggers says, ‘You’ll recall the way out, sir.’

The crowd makes way before him, and before he knows it, Henry Hilditch is once more outside in the cool night air of the London streets.

At the wrong end of a small tributary off Oxford Street, in an area where strugglers of some ambition might claim a West End address, but others might feel keenly their proximity to the rookeries of St Giles; where spider and web fought dustpan and brush, and the occasional tottering pile of crumbling masonry and broken windows was like an ebony piano key on an otherwise ivory board; and where the owners of flower boxes and neat little shops hoped to raise their neighbours by example alone, a smart black equipage was pulled by four beautifully turned-out horses the full length of the street before it was brought to a halt outside a place of business situated on a corner.

The upper two storeys of this house were much like its neighbours – soot-stained bricks punctured by a double row of three sash windows, all nearly opaque with grime. Below these upper windows appeared the still-white lettering, Touchfarthing. Photographer. The ground-floor sashes had been removed and replaced with a large plate-glass window, behind which were displayed line upon line of assorted photographs framed in tin and silver and representing generations of people of all stations, although those of more obvious standing were allowed their right of precedence and stood to the front of the window, while anonymous fishwives and porters, costermongers and men with dogs lurked in obscurity at the rear.

Dwarfing these were larger portraits framed in wood and gilt depicting whiskery men of business in shiny hats; young, newly-commissioned officers; robust matrons restraining fidgeting infants and there were also the records of young ladies and gentlemen at various stages of their development. Two removable glazed panels of sample pictures and frames stood propped in opposite corners. Beneath the window, for anyone sufficiently interested to stoop, was the information:

Cornelius Touchfarthing, Photographer. Exact Likenesses taken for as little as 6d, frame included. Miniature and Large sized Photographs taken at Three-quarters or Full length. Reduced Prices for Whole Families and Groups. Personal Visits undertaken to the Homes of Ladies and Gentlemen. Enquire within about our Morocco cases, brooches and lockets.

The window display was rarely without its cluster of admirers and was treated by much pavement traffic as a free gallery and by the proprietor with mixed feelings. If one half of those who gathered about his window would enter the shop and have their likenesses taken he might be well-pleased, and he was buoyed only by the hope that some who peered into his window told others and these might some day be his customers. In the meantime, he admitted with some reluctance, he would have to resort to more go-ahead methods if he were to keep his head above water.

On this morning a smartly-dressed family stood before his window admiring another family, whose perfect likeness made the attractive centre-piece of the window display. A great gilt frame, such as might have been employed almost without shame at the Royal Academy, encompassed a scene of domestic perfection. The tall, mustachioed patriarch of the group stood sternly to one side with a hand resting heavily on the shoulder of his seated wife, a model of simple chastity. Sitting on a chaise-longue beside her were three children, groomed, scrubbed and stiffly resplendent in their Sunday best. The bases of posing stands, showing between the polished shoes of the boy and the laced-up boots of the elder girl, suggested that this perfect poise had not been achieved without a little ingenuity.