David Liss - A Spectacle Of Corruption

He shrugged. “As for that, I cannot say. I don’t have the vote, and this party or that candidate don’t mean much to my nugget. I’ll go to the processions in the hopes of getting some bread or drink, and maybe a pretty girl will kiss me if she thinks I’ve got the franchise, but Tory or Whig, it don’t signify. Both of them think they know best how to put the poor in their place. Neither know their own arses, if you ask me. We got other things to worry about.”

“Such as.”

“Such as it’s February, and there ain’t much loading to do. Nothing but coal barges this time of year, and no hope of anything more until spring. We are used to get paid better than most porters, and that’s supposed to help us get through the lean months, but with the gangs at each other’s throats, fighting for what little work there is, we’re hardly making more than if we was lugging apples around for the grocers. And our work is more dangerous, too. Just last week a fellow I know got flattened to his death when a barrel of coal fell on him. Crushed his legs entire, it did. He died two days later and hardly stopped screaming the whole time.”

“And how does Ufford hope to make things better?”

“That I don’t rightly know. I heard his sermons, I but I don’t understand them all proper, like. He says there was a time when the rich looked after the poor, and the poor worked hard but they made their living and were happy. He says these Whigs don’t care nothing for the way things used to be, only for their money at the end of the day, and that they’ll work the poor to death rather than give a good wage.”

“So he wishes you to believe that Tories shall be kindly taskmasters because they are better used to lording it, while Whigs are poor taskmasters because they are new to their power?”

“That sounds about it.”

“Is it true?”

Littleton shrugged. “Dennis Dogmill’s a Whig, they say, and most of the work we do is for him. I can tell you that if every one of his men died after unloading he wouldn’t give a fig if there were others to take their place next time. Does he have a black heart because he’s a Whig or does he have a black heart because that’s what he’s got? I’m inclined to think his politics don’t make much difference.”

Littleton pulled down his hat even lower, a clear sign he wanted less talk and more gin. I therefore amused myself by looking about the tavern for the better part of an hour when a disturbance began near the back. Someone struck up a few candles while a figure stood upon a barrel. He was of middle height and wide of body, perhaps forty years of age, with a narrow face and wide-set eyes that gave him an appearance of surprise or perhaps confusion. He stomped his foot only a few times, and the din of the room began to wane.

Littleton roused himself from his gin stupor. “There he is. That’s Billy.”

The man on the barrel held up a tankard. “A drink,” he called, “to Dingy Danny Roberts, dead last week from a barrel of coal that expostulated down upon his personhood. He was one of Yate’s boys”- murmurs of disdain arose from the crowd, so Greenbill raised his voice-“he might have been one of Yate’s boys, but he was a porter all the same, and we have somewhat in common with those boys, whatever imperative sort of fiend they might follow. A drink, then. May he be the last to go that way.”

It does not take much encouragement for a roomful of porters to tip their glasses. After a moment of rumblings, I know not whether of agreement or discord, Greenbill began again.

“I called this here meeting of our gang because there’s something you should know, boys. Shall I tell you what it is? There’s a shipment of coal coming next week, and it’s Yate and his boys that want to take it away from you.”

Much grumbling and shouting here, so Greenbill had to take a moment to pause.

“See, there’s this scoundrel called Dennis Dogmill, a tobacco man you might have heard named”- he waited for the laughter and hissing to die down-“and he had this idea to make the porters fight against one another. It worked so good that all the shipmen now do the same thing. ‘Which one of you has the lowest price?’ they all want to know. So I went to Yate and I said to him it would be best to work together. Let’s not be different gangs. Let’s be one gang to navigate and together raise up the wages of the porters. And Yate said- and I quote him now, boys- Yate said, ‘I’d burn in hell before usurping with the likes of your rubbish. The men in your gang are nothing but cutpurses and mollies and buggerantos.’ That’s what he said, boys, and it was all I could do to keep from murdering him where he stood for speaking ill of the likes of you.”

“That is a filthy lie, Billy, and you know it.”

Halfway between where we sat and Billy stood, a man rose and stood on his table. He was in his early thirties but still youthful in his smooth face. He wore his natural hair, which was dark and cut with a short tail, and he was small of stature though clearly strong.

“Look at this, boys!” Greenbill exclaimed. “It’s Walter Yate. He’s gone mad to acuminate here. Either that or he’s grown so fond of lies, he’ll speak them where he can, regardless of who listens.”

Littleton ’s mouth dropped open and he righted his posture. He reached up with one hand and pulled his hat back. “What’s he up to?” he whispered, more to himself than to me. “He’s like to get himself killed.”

“Sit down!” a man shouted at Yate. “You’ve no business here.”

“And Greenbill Billy’s got no business telling these falsehoods to you,” Yate said. “I’m not your enemy. It’s Dennis Dogmill and the likes of him, who want to set us one against the other. We all have to eat, so we work for near nothing since that’s better than nothing itself. Save your curses for Dogmill and his Whig friends, who want to work you to your deaths and then forget you ever lived. Instead of agitating against one another, we ought to do what we can to see Mr. Melbury gets his seat in Parliament. He’ll do what he can to help us. He’ll protect our traditional rights.”

I felt my muscles tighten. Here was Melbury again, and I wanted him nowhere near me.

“What, did Melbury pay you to canvass here?” Greenbill asked. “None of us have the franchise, which you might know if you were one of our number, instead of thinking to lord it over us. Griffin Melbury. Unless he’s got a ship to unload, I don’t care nothing for him or his whore mother’s arse.”

“You ought to care for him,” Yate said. “He would help put Dogmill down and put food in your children’s mouths.”

“I’ll put bum fodder in your mouth if you don’t shut it,” someone shouted at Yate.

“Your words smell prettier than a fen’s cunny,” another voice barked. “I’d reckon the pope himself sent you to tell us these lies.”

And then someone threw a pint of gin at him. Yate stepped gracefully to one side, and the glass struck Greenbill in the chest.

Oh, the outrage! How dare he avoid a missile and allow it to muddy their beloved leader? There was an instant of silence, of stillness. And then someone grabbed Yate and pulled him off the table and he disappeared beneath a heaving sea of punches. I heard, over the shouting, the dull thud of fist on flesh. Some gathered around and kicked at their brethren who were closer to the victim. Some merely punched at the air in a troubling pantomime of the hidden violence. But these pleasures were limited, and while a few porters stayed to try to take their shot at Yate, others seemed to forget in an instant there was any cause to rally around but mayhem itself. These fanned out through the tavern, looking for aught to break or steal, or they dashed for the door that they might pursue a wider field of destruction.