Alan Moore - Jerusalem

He’d been a small boy of about May’s age who’d lived in West Square off St. George’s Road. She’d seen him, when out with her mam and dad, and recognised him by the pretty eyes. He’d had a brother, older than himself as she recalled, but when she told him this he looked at her as if he’d seen a ghost, out of a past he’d thought behind him now. He looked at her as if he’d been found out. The man’s confusion and pop-eyed surprise made May laugh. He’d not been expecting that. He’d bit off more than he could chew with her. She played him on in this way for a while, then, taking pity, let him off the hook, confessing that she too was Lambeth born. He looked relieved. He’d evidently thought she was a Sybil or an oracle, not just an escaped cockney like himself.

Put in his place like this it was as if he didn’t need to go through such an act, and their street-corner chat grew more relaxed and warm, without the need for any show. They nattered on discussing this and that, her brother John’s ambitions on the stage, the history of Vint’s Palace where they stood, and so on, him and her and little May in cheery conference while the Boroughs sky turned from brocade to sapphire overhead. At last, her daughter squirming in her arms, and mindful there were no more rainbow drops, May knew she’d better get the baby home to have her meat-paste sandwiches for tea. She said her farewells to the handsome clown and wished him good luck with his show that night. He told her to take care of little May. She didn’t think it odd, not at the time.

The climb up Horsemarket didn’t take long although, after some hours of walking round, the child seemed heavier in May’s tired arms. Ascending past the lofty houses there, the doctors’ residences, lit up warm, she wondered which belonged to Dr. Forbes. Past open curtains children home from school sat on plump sofas next to roaring fires, ate muffins, or else read improving books. She felt briefly resentful at her dad. If he’d not sniffed at that director’s job, if just once her old man had spared a thought for someone other than his wilful self, that could be her and little May in there, well-fed and snug, May’s daughter on her knee and being read to from a picture book with embossed covers and bright tipped-in plates. She snorted, and turned up St. Mary’s Street.

The heavens in the west ahead of her showed bruises from the roughhouse of the day, purpling into dark above the roofs of Pike Lane and Quart Pot Lane further on. It startled May, the way the nights fell in when you got close to this end of the year. St. Mary’s Street looked haunted in the gloom. Its alcove doorsteps sucked the shadows in, and splintered work-yard gates clanked on their chains. May strode on with her child held up in front like a blonde candle through the crowding dusk.

She’d have to say she weren’t at all surprised that this was where the great fire had broke out, back two hundred and something years ago. There was a simmering feel about the place, as if it could boil over into harm at any time, quick as you could say ‘knife’. No doubt it went back to the Civil War with all the Roundheads bivouacked near here, Cromwell and Fairfax kipping overnight in Marefair, parallel to Mary’s Street, before they went to Naseby the next day and sealed King Charlie’s and the country’s fate. Wasn’t it Pike Lane where they’d made the pikes? That’s what May’s dad had said, at any rate. She carried on and over Doddridge Street, continuing across the burial ground that ran from Doddridge Church down to Chalk Place. The Reverend Doddridge, who had preached down here, while not a terrible destructive force like old Oliver Cromwell or the fire was as incendiary in his own way, fighting for Nonconformists and the poor, and suited the spot’s troublemaker air. May pressed on through the bone-yard’s overgrowth and hoped her daughter wasn’t getting cold.

In Chalk Lane, by the chapel’s western wall, little May started kicking up a fuss and pointing to that queer door halfway up, as if wanting to know what it was for.

“Don’t ask me, love, I haven’t got a clue. Come on, let’s get you home and lay the fire for when your dear old dad comes back from work.”

Except a burp, young May made no reply as Castle Terrace led to Bristol Street. The lamps were going on at the far end which meant that Mr. Beery was about, walking from post to post with his long pole, angling it up towards the gaslight’s top, flame held beside the jet until it caught. He looked like he was fishing for the dark, using his little glow-worm light as bait. May’s child cooed at the distant, greenish gleams as though they were a Roman candle show.

They went on, heading for the Fort Street turn, when from the unlit terrace at May’s heels there came a washboard clatter drawing near, a rattling sound as someone dragged a plank across the bumping cobbles to their rear. A voice as rich as broth called out “Why, Mrs. May and Missy May! You ladies been off gallivanting all around the town, I bet, you only just now coming home!”

It was Black Charley, him from Scarletwell who had the rag-and-bone cart and the bike with ropes all round their wheels instead of tyres. The sound she’d heard had been the blocks of wood he had strapped on his feet to use as brakes. May laughed to see him, but then told him off for scaring them, although in truth he’d not. He was a local marvel, who she liked. He brought a touch of magic to the place.

“Black Charley! Blummin ’eck, you made me jump!” She told him there should be a law that forced black men to carry sparklers after dark, so you could see them creeping up on you, then thought it was a silly thing to say. For one thing, there weren’t black men round these parts. There was just him, Black Charley, Henry George. Also, she knew her quip made no more sense than if he’d said white people should black up so he could see them coming at midday. He didn’t take offence though. He just laughed and made the usual fuss of baby May, saying she was an angel and all that, a compliment May briskly swept aside. Angels were mostly a sore point with her, part of the madness in the Vernall clan. Her dad and granddad and her barmy aunt had all insisted that such things were real, which, in May’s own opinion, said it all. Nobody took stuff like that seriously, or at least nobody who was all there. They hadn’t since the times of that old monk who’d brought the cross here from Jerusalem. The only angel, little May aside, was that white stone one on the Guildhall roof her dad had cuddled with when he’d been drunk. Besides, May found thoughts like that frightening, great winged chaps watching over people’s lives and knowing what would happen ’fore it did. It was like ghosts or anything like that, it made you think of death, or else that life was a big, foggy, overwhelming place you knew would kill you going in the door. She didn’t dwell upon unearthly things. Anyway, angels would be snobs, May knew, judging her like that pair in Beckett’s Park.

She chatted to Black Charley for a while, and little May, God bless her, tried her best, calling him Char-Char and grabbing the beard that grew in a white frizz around his chin. Eventually, they let him cycle on, shouting goodbye in his deep Yankee voice, down Bristol Street back home to Scarletwell, which was a street May didn’t like to go. It just gave her the willies, that was all, although there was no reason why it should. There was that funny creature of Newt Pratt’s, on Sundays, drunk outside the Friendly Arms, but that weren’t what frit May about the street. Perhaps it was the bloody-sounding name, or else that up round Scarletwell they kept the fever cart, high windows, leaded glass, that let in light but wouldn’t let you see the poor buggers inside that it took off, with scarlet fever or that other one whose name May wasn’t sure how to pronounce, to camps out on the edges of the town. Whatever it was that got on her nerves about the old hill, you could safely say as Scarletwell Street weren’t May’s favourite place. That might change, she supposed, in a few years when she was traipsing up there every day and taking little May to Spring Lane School, but until then she’d give it a wide berth.