Sweet Thames

Matthew Kneale

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786496409
• eBook ISBN: 9781786496416
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

In the summer of 1849, cholera threatens the city and the people of London. The authorities send millions of gallons of sewage cascading into the Thames - for many Londoners the only source of drinking water. Joshua Jeavons, a young and idealistic engineer, embarks on an obsessive quest to find the cause of the epidemic. As he labours in a fog of incomprehension, his domestic life is troubled by the baffling coldness of his beautiful bride, Isobella. But when she suddenly disappears, his desperate search for her takes him to a netherworld of slum-dwellers, pickpockets and scavengers of subterranean London.

Chapter One

The glory of a London unobstructed by effluent. This was the vision of the future that flashed into my imagination as I stood above the sewerage outlet on the north Thames bank. Our metropolis free from noxious odours affronting the nostrils, from unsightly deposits, from the miasma cloud of gases hanging above the rooftops. I grew lightheaded at this dazzling prospect. Until I realized, surprised, that juices were stirring in my loins.

‘Thirteen inches deep here,’ Hayle, my assistant for the morning, called up from before the sewer where he stood ankle deep in the current effluent.

I noted the quantity in my field book.

‘That enough measurements yet for you, sir?’ In his voice there was a detectable note of complaint. ‘We don’t want to overdo it, do we.’

I knew the cause of his grumbling well enough; we had been at work since half past five in the morning, on this, Easter Monday, when most of London was in holiday mood, perhaps out for a spree at the Greenwich Fair. Not that this was an unusual state of affairs for me; the urgency of my task had required that every spare moment be put to good use, including – to my own shame – more than a few sabbaths.

Half past five. My lack of sleep gave the morning a dreamlike quality. Still I felt no sympathy for my servant. After all, nothing had forced him to work so early except his own eagerness to earn my shillings.

‘Mr Hayle,’ I told him, ‘if you don’t mind, I’ll be the arbiter of when we’re finished here.’ As I peered down at my notebook I was sure I detected, from the corner of my eye, quick movement of his fingers, as if he were making some obscene gesture. Looking up, however, I saw nothing except a faint smile on his lips.

‘Whatever you say, sir.’

I had never liked the fellow. More than a few times I had discerned in his manner a sarcasm, as if to work for me were beneath him. Even for a servant – a class I especially detested – there was in Hayle much ‘I know better though I will not say it clear’. He was quite a crone, having served in some lowly rank of soldiering in the war against Bonaparte, and probably it was there that he had learned to treat his masters as a snide nanny might her charge. Frequently I had discerned in him sneering. Sneering at my mere five-and-twenty years of age. Sneering that my drainage scheme for London had found no supporters in the world of engineering. Sneering at my humble background – my father had been a repairer of watches – and my having grown up into the world without Hayles of my own to direct.

But it was he who was stood in the shit.

‘Try over there,’ I suggested, watching not without satisfaction as he wobbled against the current into a deeper part, and the liquid nearly overran the top of one of his boots.

‘Mister, mister…’ The street urchin tugged at my sleeve. He had been following us for an hour or more as we toured the sewerage outlets into the river, regularly demanding a shilling. A sadly vile creature, he resembled a torn sack poorly repaired with string; string, indeed, seemed the greater part of him, holding together what remained of his rags – shiny with grime – with bulbous knots bulging about his wrists, ankles and waist. But at least, in the furtherance of his own cause of begging, he displayed a lively perseverance quite absent in Hayle.

‘I’d keep an eye on him, sir,’ the servant called up. ‘He’ll have your watch.’

‘That’s not so, mister, never so.’ The urchin’s face was wizened into resemblance more of an old man than a boy. Framing his forehead with a kind of sad exoticism was a red ‘Wide Awake’ hat, brim long since lost, so that it resembled a filthy fez. ‘I just wanted to ask a question, didn’t I. Just a question.’

I was curious. ‘And what was your question?’

‘Why’s ’e jabbing that stick into all that filth?’

It was a not unintelligent enquiry considering the source. ‘He’s measuring the depth,’ I explained.

His face screwed itself into a fist of incomprehension. ‘Wha’s he want to do that fer?’

‘So a fine new system of drainage for our city may be planned.’ I studied the lad’s face, wondering if the quickness in his eyes represented interest in my words or mere alertness for opportunities of theft. ‘We must know how much liquid pours through the sewers, you see.’

Hayle glanced up from his work. ‘Training him as your assistant, are you? You’d be better off leaving him to turn into the nat’ral grown murderer he’s intended for.’

‘You should show a little Christian faith, Hayle, rather than condemning the boy.’ I returned to the urchin. ‘What’s your name, lad?’

‘Jem.’

‘Well Jem, is our work interesting to you?’

‘Oh yes, certinly ’tis.’ The creature bolstered his reply with a kind of smile, half-toothed and hungry, the effect by no means reassuring.

‘Then you shall learn more of it.’ I glanced at Hayle, yawning extravagantly in the stream of effluent. ‘My servant here shall act as demonstrator of the methods we are using.’

The yawn abruptly died.

It had not been the best of mornings. Throughout I had been uneasy, agitated by a dream. Absurd, I reasoned, to be so alarmed by a mere imagining. One, moreover, whose subject I could not so much as remember, as all recollection had slipped from my grasp on the instant of gaining consciousness – at that quiet, early hour – eluding all effort at recapture. But still the nightmare clung to me, troubling my thoughts with its aftertaste; something of a smouldering panic, almost as if I had committed a crime.

I was dimly convinced it had involved my wife.

‘Over there, nearer towards that boat,’ Jem ordered. Hayle obeyed his new master with visible sulkiness, petulantly splashing through the flow towards the skeleton of a rotted skiff. He planted the measuring stick sharply, as if hoping to impale unsuspecting submarine vermin.

‘Twelve inches.’

The urchin peered down at him with seriousness, not at all playing a game. ‘Now do the bit with the wood.’

With a glare at the lad, Hayle held the measuring stick just above the level of the liquid, plucked a red-painted wood chip from a sack on his back, and dropped this into the flow, regarding its speed of progress past the stick’s markings while also observing the watch in the palm of his hand. ‘Two seconds and a quarter.’

‘Thank you.’ I noted the figure in my field book.

‘Wha’s’at strapped to you?’

The child had observed the case attached about my waist, and I opened it up to extract the handy portable sextant it contained. The instrument – which I had had little enough need of that day – was new and shone pleasantly.

Jem’s eyes widened. ‘Gold, is it?’

‘Listen to him,’ called out Hayle. ‘No mystery what studyin’ ’e’s bin up to.’

‘The boy’s showing no more than a healthy interest in the science of the device,’ I retorted. I held the object before the creature, without actually releasing it into his hands. ‘It’s brass.’

He touched it with his finger, leaving a small greasy smudge.

‘Will you remember what you’ve learned today?’ I asked him.

‘Oh yes, mister.’

‘Then you shall have a reward.’ I replaced the sextant in its case and took from my pocket a shilling. The lad stared, clutched towards it, then, when I released the coin, darted back some yards – doubtless lest I change my mind – and despatched it into some recess of his rags with the swiftness of one well alive to the danger of letting silver see the light of day an instant too long. Without a word he scampered away along the river.

‘Waste of good money.’ Hayle looked put out. He would have liked the shilling for himself.

‘Don’t be so mean-spirited,’ I told him. ‘Probably you are wearied and agitated by your exertions – you’re no longer so young, after all – and this has made you so.’ I glanced at the columns of figures in my field book; ample now. There was no sense in detaining the servant longer. ‘Pack up the things and that’ll be enough for today.’

He trudged from the sewer to a street handpump close behind, where he began cleansing his boots and the measuring stick, subjecting them to angry belches of water.

The charitable exercise had, of course, been partly to taunt Hayle for his sneerings, but not for that purpose alone. I had also been fired by a genuine hope that the lad would somehow be won over to the importance of sanitary change. It was a notion very much in the spirit of my passions of that time; I was caught by an urgent wish that all – however lacking in usefulness they might appear – might be won to the brave cause of drainage reform.

It was still only quarter past eleven. I had promised my wife I would be home by one o’clock, as she had planned a small luncheon party; though I had little fondness for the guests invited, it was so unusual for her to suggest such an event nowadays that I felt I should give every encouragement. Who knew, perhaps it might help set her upon a brighter course.

An hour and three quarters. It was quite an amount of time. I stared out across the river, pondering what useful task I might set myself; one that would not take me far from my route back to Pimlico, yet would also be attainable without the help of a servant.

It was low tide and beyond the marker-less mire of Thames mud the river seemed little more than a ditch in the ooze. A black Thames barge crept warily along its surface, heavy brown sail flapping in the light breeze. To the west four figures were advancing along the water’s edge, silhouetted dark against the grey sheen and, idly watching, I studied their progress nearer, until they were close enough to observe in detail.

A strange party they were. Each carried a pole that was taller than himself, with a hoe attached to the end, and had a sack strapped to his back. All were shoeless, and wore similar coats: long and greasy, with objects dangling from the breasts that seemed to be lanterns. Lanterns? My interest grew as I realized they were not passing by, but seemed to be making their way towards the very sewer entrance we had just investigated. For what possible reason? They had reached the place where Hayle had stood only a short while earlier, when the tallest chanced to glance up. Seeing me, he let out a cry.

‘Spy.’

In an instant they were off, bare feet producing a faint squelching in the mud as they dashed away eastwards, towards Wapping.

I turned to ask Hayle what manner of men they could possibly be. But he had already gone.

Foreign sunlight shines in between the slats of the shutters, bright and hot even in the late afternoon. Through the distance of miles and two full years I see that London summer in a remembrance strangely focused. It is as if it were not me but a different man who lived through those months of fearsome discoveries. I can almost see him thus, as a soul separate from myself.

There. Still puzzled by the sight of the four men with poles, he steps forward to cross the Strand, watching for horse dung, picking his way between the omnibuses and coal wagons that creak and crunch and raise up clouds of street dust. Joshua Jeavons dodging a brewer’s dray, eyes alert, keen, seeing no impediments to his progress that he cannot swiftly overcome. Joshua Jeavons, his young man’s beard short and pointing sharply ahead from his chin, pulling forward, as if in representation of some greater propellant within. Joshua Jeavons, now striding past a newcomer from the country who is halted by the never-still hooves and wheels before him. Joshua Jeavons, pressing on past the fellow. Joshua Jeavons possessed by strange eagerness, as one set on outpacing an electric storm.

The task I had chosen myself had been to inspect the possible site of one of the Effluent Transformational Depositories. According to my scheme these would be established all across the metropolis at locations of low height, so the fluids would flow into them by gravitational process. The valuable elements would then be removed from the rest by sedimentary separation, and drawn out by steam engine, to be transported away in specially designed carts to rural areas, where they would be sold – at a wonderful profit – to farmers.

The spot was in an area of small roads to the east of Covent Garden. It had seemed simple enough to locate when I sat in my study inspecting my map of the metropolis; so much so that I had not troubled to bring the bulky plan with me. Once in the district, however, the streets proved quite a maze, and for some time I wandered, unhappily aware of the roar of Strand traffic – echoing mischievously from the high brick façades so it was hard to say from exactly whence it came – growing fainter behind me, telling that I was venturing even further from my quarry.

I paus...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Author’s Note
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Epilogue: The Real End
• Mr Henry Mayhew
• Acknowledgements