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But it was Claudine she met just outside the kitchen door. She began to explain that she was going to be away for a few hours. The books would have to wait. She was happy enough to stretch out the task as long as she could.
“I heard,” Claudine said gravely, her face puckered into lines of concern. She was unaware of it, but her anger was so fierce that her sense of social class had temporarily ceased to register. “It’s monstrous. If people are being injured by hasty work, we must do what we can to fight it.” Unconsciously she had included herself in the battle. “We can manage perfectly well here. There’s nothing to do but the laundry and the cleaning, and if we can’t manage that, then we need to learn. Just be careful!” This last warning was given with a frown of admonition, as if Claudine were somehow responsible for Hester’s safety.
Hester smiled. “I will,” she promised, aware for the first time that Claudine had become fonder of her than perhaps she herself knew. “Sutton will look after me.”
Claudine grunted. She was not going to admit to trusting Sutton; that would be a step too far.
In spite of there being little wind, it was fiercely cold outside. The narrow streets seemed to hold the ice of the night. Footsteps sounded loud on the stones, and the brittle crack of puddles was sharp in the close air. This was the time of year when people who slept huddled in doorways could be found frozen to death at first light.
She walked beside Sutton, Snoot trotting at their heels, until they came to Farringdon Road and the first omnibus stop. The horses were rough-coated for winter and steamed gently as they stood while passengers climbed off and on. Hester and Sutton went up the winding steps to the upper level, since they were going to the end of the line. Snoot sat on Sutton’s knee, and she envied him the warmth of the little dog’s body.
They talked most of the way because she asked him about the rivers under London. He was enthusiastic to tell her, his face lighting up as he described the hidden streams such as the Walbrook, Tyburn, Counter’s Creek, Stamford Brook, Effra, and most of all the Fleet, whose waters once ran red from the tanneries. He talked of springs such as St. Chad’s, St. Agnes’, St. Bride’s, St. Pancras’ Wells, and Holywell. All had been reputed as sacred at one time or another, and some became spas, like Hampstead Wells and Sadler’s Wells. He knew the underground courses and bridges, some of which were believed to date back to Roman times.
“Walbrook’s as far up as yer could get a boat when the Romans was ’ere,” he said with triumph.
He animatedly recounted earlier travels, including the danger of highwaymen, until they reached their stop.
They alighted into a busy street, workmen crowding around a peddler selling sandwiches and hot pies. They were obliged to slip out over the gutter onto the cobbles to pass them, and were nearly run down by a cartload of vegetables pulled by a horse whose breath was steam in the air.
At the corner half a dozen men huddled around a brazier, talking and laughing, tin mugs of tea in their hands.
“Not sure as I like so much change,” Sutton said dubiously. “Still, can’t be ’elped.”
Hester did not argue. They had only a few yards further to go before she saw the vast crater of the new tunnel. It would carry not only the sewer but beside it the gas pipes for the houses that had such luxuries. Skeletons of woodwork for cranes and derricks poked above it like fingers at the sky. There was a faint noise from far within of grinding and crushing, scraping, slithering, and the occasional shouts and the rattle of wheels.
Hester stood on the freezing earth and felt the freshening wind from the tide on the river, with its smell of salt and sewage. She turned to her left and saw the roofs of houses in the near distance, and closer, the broken walls where they had been flattened to make way for the new works. To the right it was the same, streets cut in half as if they had been chopped by a giant axe. She looked at Sutton and saw the pity in his face, as well as the fury he was trying to suppress. To build the new they had broken so much of the old.
“Keep close and don’t meet no one’s eyes,” he said quietly. “We’ll just walk through like we got business. There’s ’em as knows me.” And he led the way, making a path through the rubble and keeping wide of the groups of men. Every now and again he put out his hand to steady her, and she was grateful for it because the rubble was crumbling and icy. Snoot trotted along at their heels.
There was a thick fence around the actual pit in which the men worked, possibly to keep out the idle and to prevent the careless from falling in.
“Got ter go round the end there.” Sutton pointed and then led her through a shifting, slithering wasteland of debris. The line of pipes was easy enough to trace with the eye by the wreckage that lay in its path. Twice they were stopped and questioned as to who they were and if they had any business there, but Sutton answered for them both.
She kept silent and followed him patiently. At last—her feet sore and her boots and skirt splattered—she reached the point below which the men were actually working by flares at the face of the tunnel. The earth was excavated deeper than she had expected. She was close to the edge of the drop, and a feeling of vertigo overcame her for a moment as she stared down almost a hundred feet to the brickworks at the bottom of the abyss. She could quite clearly see the floor of what would be the new sewer, and the arching brick sides already laid and cemented. There was scaffolding over it holding the walls apart all the way up. Here and there other pipes crossed it. Fifty yards away, well on the other side, a steam engine hissed and thumped, driving the chains that held heavy buckets and scoops to draw up and empty the rubble and broken brick.
She turned and met Sutton’s eyes. He pointed down to where she could see men below, foreshortened to funny
little movements of hands and shoulders. They walked, pushing barrows. Others swung pikes or heaved on shovels of soil and rock.
“Look.” Sutton directed her eyes towards the walls on the far side. The earth itself was held firm by planks of heavy wood, supported by crossbeams every few yards. Then she followed Sutton’s gaze and saw the water seeping through—just a dribble here and there, or a bulge in the wood where the boards had been strained and were coming away.
On the bank opposite, stokers were keeping the great steam engine going. She could hear the wheeze and thump of its pistons and smell the steam, the oil.
She was aware of Sutton watching her. She tried to imagine what it would be like to work down in that cleft in the earth, seeing nothing but a slit of sky above you and knowing you couldn’t get out.
“Where’s the way up?” she asked almost involuntarily.
“ ’Alf a mile away,” he answered quietly. “All right ter walk ter, if yer in no ’urry. Nasty if yer need ter move quickish—like if ’em sides spring a leak.”
“A leak? You mean a stream…or something? You don’t mean just rain?” The picture of that bulging wall giving way filled her mind—a jet of water gushing out, not just dribbling as it was now. Would it fill the bottom? Enough to drown them? Of course it would! Who could swim in a crevasse like that, with freezing water coming down on top of you?
“That’s a sewer,” he said quietly, standing close to her. “The sewers o’ London takes everythin’, all the waste from all the ’ouses an’ middens in the ’ole city, an’ from the sinks an’ gutters an’ overflows everywhere. If yer a tosher or a ganger, yer know the tides an’ all the rivers an’ springs, an’ keep an eye ter the rain, ’cos if yer don’t, yer’ll not last long. An’ o’ course there’s the rats. Never go underground alone. Slip and fall, an’ the rats’ll ’ave yer. Strip a man ter the bone if yer unlucky an’ fetch up where they can reach yer. ’Undreds o’ thousands o’ ’em down there, there are.”
Snoot had pricked up his ears at the word rats.
Hester said nothing.
“An’ there’s the gas,” Sutton added.
