Sweet Thames Read online

  I took the knife from her hand, the touch of it troubling, as something not quite dead. ‘I’ll get rid of that.’

  Isobella rose to her feet. ‘But it’s mine. I’m fond of it.’

  ‘It’s of no use now.’ I held it briefly before her eyes. ‘Quite broken, I’m afraid. I’ll bring you another when I return from work. Something altogether better.’

  Some moments away, through the din and dust of the half-grown buildings of Pimlico, I gladly hurled the thing into a water-filled ditch among the foundations of some grand house of the future.

  The office of the company of Augustus Moynihan – my father-in-law – was a fine place to behold; a sunlit, dusty, giant of a room, filled up with draughting desks, cupboards stacked with surveying devices, and a noisy crowd of engineers, keenly at work. Adjoining was a smaller chamber that Moynihan himself inhabited, possessing – as did its larger neighbour – a noble view across George Street. To the leftward side could be seen the Palace of Westminster; a jumble of masonry as it rose, phoenix-like, from the ashes of the building destroyed in the fire of the previous decade.

  Seated that morning amid such splendour, I found myself engaged – as now was so often the case – in a battle to curb my own impatience. Speed yes, haste no. Thus, deliberately slowing the very movements of my hands as if engaged in some form of French mime acting, I marked out the limits of the building with a pricker – the incision of a needle being more exact than a mere pencil dot – then linked together these points with lines of ink, to begin the ground plan. Already, however, within just a few moments of forming such fine intentions, I found my hands grasping hungrily for bisectors, and causing a small tear to appear in the corner of the paper.

  There was so much to do; here was the difficulty (or, as I viewed it in my better moments, the fierce challenge). To both earn my livelihood at my father-in-law’s company – where I had been set to labour on the design of a dock warehouse – and in those spare hours I could muster, to devise a drainage plan of my own, required me to summon all the determination I might.

  I stretched my arms into the air, as if to catch energy in my opened hands. I had slept poorly the night before – rarely was it otherwise – and was aware of a lurking tiredness, as if close behind me, waiting for some slackening, some weakening of spirit.

  I would outpace it.

  ‘Mr Jeavons, is it, sir?’ A useless-looking lad had appeared and stood loitering in front of my desk, restlessly twisting about, as if eager to divest himself of his own arms. ‘A message from Mr Sweet.’

  From the envelope he presented I took a note written in Sweet’s clear, strident handwriting, requesting I pay him a visit that day. More time eaten away. Still, there was nothing to be done. Harold Sweet – the fellow whose warehouse I was designing – was not a man with whom to trifle.

  ‘Tell him I’ll visit this afternoon.’

  The boy had just slunk off when Moynihan emerged from his office, causing a muffling of the room’s chatter as he strode among the desks, inspecting work. Augustus Moynihan, Isobella’s father, consultant engineer – a status few enough managed to attain – on nodding terms with important Members of Parliament, with giants of wealth in the City of London.

  ‘The work is progressing well, I hope?’ He stooped over my desk, regarding my draughtsmanship; an unusual occurrence, as of late we had had something of an unspoken agreement that each should steer clear of the other; I rarely heard from him except by way of his personal secretary.

  ‘There seem to be no great difficulties.’ I wondered if this was some attempt at making peace. It seemed hardly likely.

  ‘I’m glad to hear so.’ He scrutinized the lines. ‘Take care to keep your drawing clean and neat. You have left, I presume, generous space between the structure and the landing sheds? No precautions should be omitted against the danger of fire.’

  ‘It’s a concern I’m most alive to.’

  ‘Good.’ With a nod of his head he moved on, a tall man, all the more so for his military bearing – he had learned his trade in Wellington’s Engineering Corps in the late wars with France – and handsome, even aristocratic in his features, though his expression was often marred by a look of dissatisfaction.

  He was not greatly liked. There was to him a kind of charged silence, so that even when charming – and he could be most charming when he chose – he possessed an aura of things unsaid, of unspoken criticism, which afterwards left many uneasy, wondering if they had not blundered into uttering too much, into some clumsy self-betrayal.

  This character could hardly have been more untypical of engineers of the day. Most were lively, wide-open fellows who worked like demons, swore to match, and would have a try at anything proposed to them, whether it was a railway to China or a bridge to the moon. Moynihan could be energetic enough in his work, and was undeniably capable, earning full respect from others in the profession, but his reserved manner left him out of tune. The office chatter about him – in which, naturally, I no longer joined, the man now being my own relative by marriage – was rarely kind.

  His refusal to support my drain plan had hurt deeply, all the more so as it was but the latest in a series of displays of little confidence in my abilities. There had been the man’s reluctance to give me any real role in the workings of the firm; even now the task of designing Sweet’s warehouse was a dull one, hardly worthy of an engineer. Most of all, there had been the matter of his dealings with myself and Isobella.

  I had thought of seeking work with some other company, and even made some quiet enquiries. What with the difficulties within the profession at that time, however, these had met with no success. Still I was far from resigned to continuing to work for my father-in-law.

  I glanced about the dusty expanse of the room, at the figures stooped, like myself, over giant sheets of paper, labouring on the design of some railway bridge or station building – elements of the new railway line that the company was constructing in the far North of England, the Elfield to Gizbee – chattering as they drew, and filling the place with noise. A cluster of sunburned fellows, fresh back from field work examining the course of the new rail route, engaged in lively discussion of the merits of different contractors. Other subjects, too, were in the air that morning. I heard the word ‘Cholera’ repeated a good few times.

  Lucky men, they could count themselves. They had work; a harder time for engineers had not been known for two decades or more. Lines were in the process of construction up and down the country but, strange though it may seem, this did nothing to reduce the number of young engineers seeking employment.

  The moment when the whole land seemed to be crying out for one of our number – for any creatures who could hold a sextant, whether expert or charlatan – was not during the actual building of railways but before, during Railway Mania: a mad season of too much money, when the public jingled with sovereigns, was drunk with hope of profit, and would invest in any railway scheme, however ludicrous. Engineering companies did their best to keep up with the demand for projects into which money might be hurled, and plans for new routes were conjured up as fast as you could count – enough to link every lost and sleeping village in the land with every other – speedily attracting brigades of shareholders.

  For each project that might actually be completed, half a dozen sank, their engineering companies often with them, and those not lucky enough to be attached to a line actually attaining construction found themselves left high and dry. By now matters had reached such a point that one often heard of good, experienced men taking their chances with a sailing ticket, and the hope of finding livelihood on the great railways being built in Europe, Russia or America.

  My eye passed across the many faces. Did there lie concealed within the breast of one of these noisy, work-drunk people, the malice to send a poisonous letter, seeking to set me against my own wife? A smouldering envy, perhaps, of my having married the daughter of the chief of the company? What of Coast, for instance, Moynihan’s secretary – a
grey-faced, lopsided man, who was always finding fault with my work. In observing him I found I had caught his eye. He met my own squarely, with no sign of shiftiness.

  My pencil having broke, I made my way across to Albert Farre’s desk.

  Farre glanced up at my request. ‘How’s the Prince of the Sewers?’ His head was long and narrow, giving him the look of an attentive hawk. He and I had been apprentices together, having both joined Moynihan’s company at almost the same time. Lately he had been all but unable to resist making foolish jokes concerning my drainage work, seeming to find almost limitless amusement in the matter, until, fond as I was of the fellow, I was beginning to grow weary of his chatter.

  ‘Well enough. But in need of a pencil.’

  ‘So I gathered.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘What’ve you done with your own? Dropped it down some gully hole?’

  Another time I would have enjoyed wasting a few moments joking. Another time. ‘Does it matter? I’m sorry, but I’ve a lot to do today.’

  He looked at me for a moment, frowning. ‘So I see.’ He took a pencil from his pocket. ‘There. I’ll delay you no more.’

  ‘Much obliged.’ I turned to retrace my steps back to my own desk. What my foot struck I do not know – some stool leg or such thing – but it was sufficiently anchored to trip me thoroughly. I could hardly have been better propelled had I been cannon shot; arms spread forwards before me, pencil flying, until I came to a noisy halt on the ground. The buzz of office chatter vanished away into rich silence. Several gathered about to help me up, Albert Farre first among them. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course.’ I clambered to my feet, suffering less from bruises than the absurdity of having fallen.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Again Farre was looking at me strangely, as if he was not certain what he saw.

  ‘Why ever should I not be?’

  ‘You don’t look well, you know.’ He hesitated, seemingly unsure whether he should go on. ‘You haven’t for some time.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’ His remark annoyed me. ‘I feel full of health. Better than ever.’

  The day I first met my wife was…

  Backwards by more than one year I jump in the space of a couple of lines. But you must know these things if you are to understand my story.

  It was, of all things, the Railway Mania that introduced us. It sounds strange, perhaps, but I am well certain I could have met her by no other means. In these last months, beneath the richly blue Piedmontese summer sky, I have found myself wondering not a few times what different fate might have been mine had the mania not thrown us together. And hers.

  That January our company was as busy as ever it had been, the office a scene of phrenetic activity as we laboured to devise a route from Elfield to Gizbee. Elfield to Gizbee: the names occupied our thoughts more thoroughly and constantly than a priest’s musings on the deity. Good fellows, however young and lacking in experience, were hurled into icy rural nowheres in the hope they would discover where a railway might be made to go. In the office in London their reports were stitched together as best could be, blank miles painted in with conjecture.

  The moment was fast approaching when we would be required to submit proposals to Parliament – further progress was impossible without approval from some yawning House of Commons committee – and the office was alive with the drawing of overdue maps, descriptions of stations, enumerations of lately conceived cost figures. I was working with Moynihan that day, helping him write an account of the route of the line. It had been going well enough, too, until he began impatiently shuffling through the pile of documents on the desk before us.

  ‘Where’s Hall’s field book? We can’t go on without his notes on the Kingsfell section.’ He scoured the papers twice more. ‘Damn the thing. I took it back with me last night to look at and must have left it there.’

  Hayle and the other servants were all out on last minute errands. Moynihan himself could hardly leave the office at such a time, and would trust nobody else to continue drafting the route description.

  ‘I’ll fetch it,’ I volunteered.

  Moynihan’s unforthcoming nature was nowhere more evident than in the way he rigidly separated his work and private life. While most of the leading engineers of that time were known for their generous sociability – dining and drinking and talking into the night on any subject that took their fancy, whenever their work gave them time – Moynihan had never been known to invite anyone, whether employee or colleague, to his home. Likewise it was rare indeed for one of his household servants to be seen at the office.

  He scrutinized me, reluctant. ‘Very well.’ He scribbled a note. ‘You know Trowbridge Street? It’s not far. Give this to the butler and he’ll fetch the thing for you. Then get yourself back here without delay.’

  All across the world nothing excites curiosity and speculation more keenly than secrecy, and it was no different in our office. Moynihan was a widower, and there had long been rumours amongst his workforce that he possessed a daughter. Nobody being able to glean any firm facts on the matter, however, the able minds of so many young engineers and clerks had resorted to imaginative slander, and with time the boss’s daughter had grown into nothing less than a scurrilous tradition of the place; as a progeny in some way strange or deformed, and quite beyond presentation to the public world.

  ‘Talks to trees, she does, like old King George.’

  ‘An hunchback fit to scare horses.’

  ‘... black as India ink.’

  ‘... grabs at every pair of legs she sees in trousers.’

  ‘... drinks a gin palace dry and spat in Queen Vick’s tea at a Buckingham Palace party.’

  Understandably I felt more than a little curiosity as I strode through the streets – there was no cab to be had – towards the famously unvisited house. It was a thorough-going winter’s day and the street slop-dirt was part frozen, treacherous to traverse. House roofs were covered with soot-darkened snow, sheets of which – softened by the warmth of the buildings – were liable at any time to slide down in avalanche upon the unwary pedestrian below, instantly begriming him.

  It was only a short distance from the office to Trowbridge Street, adding to the strangeness of its seeming removal from the alive world. I glanced up, watching for faces at the windows, but seeing none. Certainly it was no home to be ashamed of; the building was a grand one, fronted by a splendid white-painted façade, and lying within only a few dozen yards of the greenery, now dulled in hue by the winter season, of St James’s Park. Most men would have been proud to invite their fellows to such a place.

  I waited a while at the door, stamping my feet against the cold, until a sour-faced butler appeared, examined Moynihan’s note and ushered me inside. A glimpse of fine stairway lined with portraits, and then I was deposited in a small waiting-room. A disappointment. During my swift departure from the office I had managed to tell Farre and the others of my errand, and it was little less than a matter of honour that I should have some tale to relate on my return.

  ‘Mr Jeavons.’ The butler had reappeared. ‘The book Mr Moynihan requires is not immediately to sight. Probably the maid’s tidied it away.’ His manner was pompous, no doubt to distract from his failure to find the thing. ‘May I suggest sir, that you yourself look, as you’ll be more familiar with its appearance.’

  ‘Very well.’

  He led the way again past the grand stairway. The library was not a large one, and contained little except works on engineering and related subjects. I was still scouring the shelves for Hall’s field book, when into the room floated the sound of bustling skirts. Turning, I found myself looking at a young woman.

  She was fair and very pale of complexion. Beautiful, yes. Her age was that of earliest womanhood, and in her movements, her speech, there remained hints of childishness, of skills employed with such careful concentration that one had a sense of their being practised almost for the first time. What struck me most forcefully, however, was the aura of tension abo
ut her; something like nervousness, half concealed beneath her fine manners, almost as if I were the confident host and she the unknown visitor.

  She glanced at me only for an instant. ‘Barrett, why was I not told we had a visitor?’

  The butler looked far from happy, stepping forwards to meet her before she could advance into the room. ‘Mr Jeavons has come on an errand.’

  ‘He’s still a visitor, is he not?’ Her words were calm enough but her voice sounded a touch shrill for a daughter of the house addressing a servant. ‘I should’ve been informed at once.’

  Barrett stood his ground. ‘Mr Jeavons has been sent by your father’s office. He came to…’

  I interrupted, unwilling to have my situation described on my behalf. ‘I came to collect a book.’

  My speaking thus seemed to add to her sureness, and she stepped round the butler into the room.

  Already I was intrigued. The expression on her face seemed almost to pull in two separate directions; the tautness of her smile – as if she were wary of something just out of view – at odds with the proud look in her eyes. Indeed, my own feelings towards her were no less contradictory. At the same instant I was struck with both awe at her fine young lady’s manners – my own Clerkenwell upbringing had left me with more than a little nervousness of any event requiring social niceties – and also an urge to embrace and comfort her.

  ‘Mr Jeavons, I fear you’ll have a poor view of our hospitality.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  She introduced herself – firing a quick look at Barrett, who had failed to do so – and the word Isobella rang in my head for the first time. ‘Perhaps we may tempt you to stay a while, Mr Jeavons, and take some tea. Then you won’t deem us a household utterly neglectful of its guests.’

  Her invitation excited but also puzzled me. Was it prompted by mere politeness as she had implied, or was there some other reason? Had Moynihan spoken of me – it seemed most unlikely – or had she perhaps confused me with somebody else.