Birdcage

By Nia Williams

Millie is flying. She's spreading her wings and soaring, up and away from the filth of the city, away from the putrid yards and bloodstained alleyways, away from the crazy, crooked labyrinth of the rookeries, those last, teetering remnants of a medieval world, tucked in the shadows of the 19th-century city. Millie is six years old and dreams of skies and seas beyond her brief experience. But sooner or later she must come back down to earth. Back to the Manor, where Vincent will return any minute, to set his girls to work on the twilit streets. Back to this loft, where she's just released his songbird and lost him a precious sale. Millie can hear him, now, roaring and crashing up the stairs. Her flight is at an end, and her life is about to change its course forever.

BIRDCAGE traces 25 years of Millie's story, against the backdrop of London's transformation from medieval city to modern metropolis. It's a story of angels and garrotters; of French courtesans and back-street brothels; of ghosts and cats, secrets and mysteries; of the thieves and working girls, fraudsters, tale-tellers and odd-bods who form the strange and compelling family of the Manor—a cut above the rest of the London slums.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gurning Gnome Books
• Release date: Apr 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781393776291

Nia Williams

Nia Williams is a freelance writer and musician based in Oxford, UK. She's the author of seven novels, most recently Touched, published in 2021. Other titles include The Pierglass (Honno Modern Fiction, 2001); Persons Living or Dead (Honno Modern Fiction, 2005); The Colour of Grass (Seren Books, 2011); Birdcage (Gurning Gnome, 2013), Hidden Gems (Gurning Gnome, 2014) and Breakage (Gurning Gnome, 2017). Nia's short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Wales. Her theatre company Three Chairs and a Hat has performed her musicals and drama in theatres around the UK and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and features on award-winning online platform Scenesaver. She also works as an accompanist and musical director, and leads creative music/storytelling workshops. Nia is an Associate Artist with English National Ballet and has worked for Scottish Ballet, National Dance Wales, English Touring Opera and the Royal Academy of Music.

Book preview

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1

Millie is flying. She's riding the rank air above the city, soaring clear of the smoke that hangs over it like a net. Off she goes.

Over the spires and the crooked chimneys, over the babble and squawk of tradesmen and thieves, over the thunder of dray-carts and the rattle of cabs, the bellowing of cows driven to slaughter, the holler of street-singers and organ-grinders. Now she turns, angles her wings against the wind, follows the stink of the Thames and its endless toiling of barges and dredgers and steamers and tugs. She has to come back. Always has to come back—though she tries every time to break free and go with the ships, out to sea.

But the light is failing. From the floor below she can hear the scuffle and thud of people returning to shelter, or leaving in search of a night's work. Millie swoops round, over Fleet Street and the black flap of Chancery Lane, back into the darkness that falls early over these lanes and passages; back into the thick, reeking stew of rookery air and down over the warped and rippling rooves, till she reaches this rotting gallery, barely attached to the upper floor of a broken-backed three-storey building. And she sees this hole, cut into the timber, and sees her own eye looking through it; and she lands lightly on the gallery (Millie hears the scratching of birdfeet above); and cocks her birdskull, and listens to the song of a captive in a cage, swinging gently next to Millie's head.

She's the only one in the house who can tuck herself into this space. Most of the gallery floor has fallen away, leaving one short section of wood protruding from the end. Only Millie is small and light enough to crawl onto it from the ladder, curl up and press her face against the eyehole to dream her dreams. He sends her up here with the cage, when he's caught another bird, to hang it out of reach until he's got a sale. And if he's not there, she comes back up to talk to the creature, and soothe it out of its song.

He'll be back soon, to collect the girls and give them their orders for the night. Millie turns carefully on her width of wood and watches the bird throw itself a few times against the bars before resuming its call. This is what the punters pay for: to hear it crying. Millie is sure that's what the song is—a call for help. The cage hatch is fastened with a wooden plug, attached to a string. In two seconds she could open the hatch and free the bird. Millie imagines it: imagines her bony fingers opening that door and scooping out the bird; imagines herself swivelling round to usher it out through the eyehole and into the dusk.

She knows it can't be done. It would be a crime against everything she has learned in her six years on earth. To throw away a sale; to lose the chance of fourpence, which he might even spend, this time, on food. To disobey him. It can't be done.

Sometimes, when Millie is becoming a bird, the fantasy is so strong that it seems she could make it real, just by thinking hard enough. She could shrink herself into a feathered ball, hop onto the edge of the eyehole, imagine her wings lifting, beating—and it would be true.

Once she's decided, Millie acts quickly. She pulls the plug from its place, curls a finger round the narrow bar of the hatch and pulls it open. The bird does nothing at first, twitching on its perch, jerking its tiny head from side to side. Then suddenly, before Millie can cup her hands in readiness, an explosion of movement sends the cage swinging wildly, and it's out, flying hopelessly round the eaves and swags of cobweb under the roof.

'Here!' urges Millie, almost tipping herself off her shelf. 'Over here!' But the bird is confused, fluttering among the beams, singing for all it's worth. Millie hears a slamming and a shout from below. Her bladder loosens; she curls herself up, tight as a beetle.

He's back.

2

Two floors down, a door crashes open. Vincent fills the frame.

'Shift yer fannies, my little sluts! Rain's stopped and there's gents stepping out to spend their lucre!'

The room's landscape of heaps and hummocks sways and stirs. Here and there a figure unfolds from its grimy cocoon and staggers to its feet.

'Quick sharp!' bellows Vincent. 'Them worms'll be after other holes if you don't get out and get ahead!'

More thin forms emerge in the murky light. Five girls, six, seven, eight ... they fumble for shawls, shake out their skirts, cough and mumble and fasten their bonnets. One of them rasps a comment and another gives a laugh like nails in a bag. Satisfied that his workforce is on the move, Vincent heads for the stairs, with one parting jab of his thick forefinger:

'And mind you follow the quality, now! No ha'penny quickies up by the wall'.

As the first of them is opening the front door, flinching at the cold, he adds:

'Any of 'em look more likely than most, I'll be receiving at the Dutchman's. Bring him along for introductions'.

Vincent is a cut above. He's no alley pimp. He's a businessman. An entrepreneur. Vincent is a man destined for a better life than this. He paces round his territory like a lion in its lair. He calls himself a soldier, and always wears the remains of an infantry jacket, still bearing traces of proud scarlet in the right light. He says he served in India. Claims he was wounded at the Siege of Bharatpur. Not many believe it hereabouts. Some say the jacket belonged to an old feller, one of those who came back maimed and broken from some distant war, and sank into the gutter to beg. They say Vincent found him, frozen half to death, and took his cap's-worth of coins and the jacket for luck, hurrying the poor bastard to his maker as a particular favour. Others whisper a gorier tale: that Vincent cut a soldier's throat in a fight and took the jacket as a trophy. But nobody says anything at all in Vincent's hearing. The only soul who ever asked him about his rank and regiment got a bloody nose for his reply.

Vincent takes the stairs two at a time, kicking aside the bundled few who've settled early for their pennyworth of rest. The first floor landing bucks and wheezes under his stride. He flings open a door at the end and shakes his greasy mane.

'Where's the monkey?'

The only person living who takes him as a soldier smiles and shifts, trying to ease the weight of her belly.

'Will you bring me something later, Vince' she wheedles, 'to warm me through?'

She winces and twists on her chair. It was a red velvet chair, in another time and another home. Now it's black and fetid, and is set by an empty hearth. The chair, a low bed, a bruised piece of mirror on the wall and a three-legged table with a jug: these are the furnishings of Vincent's room. A shelf above the fireplace holds odd tins, boxes and a pot of withering fern leaves. In a bucket in the corner are more bits and pieces: cutlery, a broken comb, cloths and a few candles. There's a pile of damp wood by the hearth and a small stack of pots and bowls, though there's no apparent means of cooking apart from the fire itself. But Vincent's room is a cut above the rest. The child-heavy woman and another woman, motionless and watchful in the shadows, are currently its only occupants, though he casts about searching for someone else.

'Where' he repeats 'is the monkey?'

The pregnant woman casts a pleading look at her companion and whines:

'Bridey, where did Millicent go?'

Bridey directs her reply to Vincent:

'Gone to put your catch out of harm's way'.

'Good' barks Vincent. 'Got a sale lined up for that'.

He turns away, and his woman asks again—

'Vince, will you bring me—' before the door shuts her sentence in half.

3

All her short life, Millie has known this fear: the fear that comes with the sound of his approach. The fear that makes her contract into a skinny fist, willing herself to disappear. Rolled into the farthest corner of her ledge, Millie listens to the frantic bird, and she waits.

Bang. The door bounces off a wall and back against Vincent's shoulder as he storms in. He doesn't seem to register the impact at all. For a second he stands there, chest out, straining his army-jacket buttons to their limit. Apart from the sound of the bird in the rafters, the attic might be empty. He glances up at the cage, still creaking on its high hook. Not a flicker of a look at the girl. His eyes swivel towards the blackness between the beams, following that treacherous shiver of song.

Suddenly Vincent lunges forward and seizes a baton of wood from the floor. Wielding it like a sword, in one fluid movement, he slams it against the wall. The wood shatters into a cloud of dust and splinters. The birdsong becomes a shriek, and the bird plunges from its hiding place, back into the light in a flash of feathers. Vincent drops the remains of the baton and hurls himself at it, snapping his hand like a trap. He's as quick as a lizard. But he's not quick enough. The bird veers from danger, heading straight for the last of the daylight. The air quivers over Millie's bare feet as it aims for the eyehole, perches briefly, then vanishes into the city air.

Her heart putters like wings. Somewhere under this terror, she feels a thrill of triumph, as if Millie herself had squeezed through the eyehole, leaving Vincent gawping after her. But the thrill is doused at once by his torrent of rage. Violent words batter her ears. She picks out a few with the clarity of dread: I'll snap your scrawny monkey-neck, you evil little bitch. You lost a fourpenny sale. Now Millie's silence breaks into a low moan that seems to come from elsewhere, and builds into a high, unearthly monotone. She'll suffer badly for this. And she deserves to. Millie has taken the food from her family's mouths.

The narrow shelf shudders as Vincent throws himself against the ladder that's rotting against the attic wall. Rung by rung, he hauls himself upwards. With every step, the whole room shakes. He draws level with Millie's ledge, and his great arm reaches towards it. Millie folds herself deeper into the corner. He can't get to her. One more step. The walls quake. Vincent flings himself across the void between ladder and ledge. His shovel hand closes around Millie's ankle and he flings her out and away, like a scrap of cloth. The ledge dissolves beneath her. Vincent lets go, and braces his weight against the ledge. For a fraction of a second, Millie is flying. Then her face hits a high beam and she drops like a stone onto the attic floor.

4

When he sees her face, Vincent runs. Past the gathering crowd at the door, down three flights of stairs into the kitchen, battling through the gathered thieves and beggars, clambering over the laps of women by the kettle and fire. Out through the back door into the yard. Over a low wall into the next yard. At the opposite building he keeps going, through the open door, flinging aside a tattering of clothes on a line, plummeting down the steps into the cellar and swerving past the covered cesspool. There's a hole in the far wall and Vincent aims for it, flattens his body and slithers like a snake through the gap into the adjoining cellar. This room is ranked end-to-end with low platforms—16 in all—each with a straw mattress and a blanket. Not one is occupied: the girls who sleep here have gone their way, like Vincent's girls, to earn the thruppence a night's rent. Finally, Vincent relaxes, takes his time negotiating past the beds to the steps and emerges from the house in another street with a different air, patting his jacket for his clay pipe and beginning a weak whistle as he heads towards the Dutchman's gin house. He cheers himself with thoughts of the ginnery's convivial company, and the quarterns he'll cadge from whoever's likely. He'll stay away a good few hours, maybe check on the progress of his girls, and by the time he saunters back to Manor Court, Vincent assures himself, Bridey will have sorted everything out. All fixed and forgotten. Vincent fishes for his tobacco and falls into a swagger, seeing off a vision of that mangled face with a shake of his lion whiskers.

Darkness. Silence.

The terrible flowering of pain.

It seems to Millie, in the years to come, that this is the moment when her new self is born. That other little girl, with a pretty name and an even face, is part of a dream, a fantasy long gone. This is how real life, real memories begin: with the howl of her smashed skull.

In later life Millie will remember very little of the aftermath. Just the looseness in her cheek, and her own scream blotting out the light. The rest is a story others have told her: Bridey's pounding feet as she races up from Ma's room; the scuttling and slamming of doors as residents run for cover; the braver souls venturing in to stoop over Millie and avoid Vincent's eye. And Vincent himself, before he runs, livid with shame, repeating over and over again: She fell. She fell from the gallery. She fell.

Old Mother Duggan, the white witch from down the landing, will tell Millie many a time that she was blessed that day.

'Why else would you still be standing here, bold as brass and twice as flash?' she'll say. 'Cos your guardian angel broke your fall, that's why. Else you'd have been busted to a million smithereens'.

Bridey doesn't hold with all that blither. She tells Millie her life was saved by the blankets and rags and bundles used by the lodgers at night.

'Mind', she says, 'he reckoned he'd hang for it. Took off like a whippet. Thought you were dead and done for'.

Well, he was right. Millie is dead and done for. A new, disfigured girl is laid on the mattress in the bare room, where days and nights pass in a pounding of pain. Someone—Bridey, probably, and some of the other lodgers—must be feeding this child, carrying her down to the midden and back up the stairs again, dosing her with gin and laudanum. None of that ingrains itself in the new girl's memories. In her mind, there's barely a blink between the impact and the first bawl of horror when her mother's waters break. But there must be months, in fact. By the time her mother goes into labour, the pain no longer threatens to drown Millie in the merciless small hours. It's become a part of her. She's become a person who lives with pain, and knows how to ignore it.

Just as well. There's no space for any other suffering once her mother goes into the birth-throes. Her exertions fill every cavity and corner of this maundering house for 16 hours. The room smells of straw, which Bridey's managed to cadge from a stableman to cover the floor. She and three of the downstairs girls have to hold Millie's mother down by her arms and legs to stop her thrashing, while Old Mother Duggan rubs her belly with a thick and revolting brown brew. Vincent has barely been seen since Millie's fall. He comes back at dawn to collect the girls' takings and his cut of the rents, and then vanishes again.

'He'll be scarce,' Bridey reassures Millie 'till the trouble's all done'.

The trouble takes its own sweet time about it. As the hours expand, whispers travel around the edges of the room that Millie's mother won't survive such a birth. Millie tucks her knees under her chin and her self into the corner, and wraps her arms around her head to block out the words. But she knows what childbirth is: it's blood, and fear, and disease; and all too often it's death. Life without her mother. No-one between her and Vincent. It's a fathomless pit, ready to swallow her up as soon as her muscles relax ...

Millie wakes from a stupour, aware of a billowing stench, and a change of noise. Her mother's lusty baying has flattened into a groan of despair. Millie dares to peep above her knees, keeping one eye shut for safety. The women are bowing over her mother, heads together, rummaging, wrestling. She hears Mother Duggan say:

'Hold it by the ankles and give it a good shake'.

The whole city pauses. The whole world stalls. Then a shout, a smack and a crackling yell of defiance.

'Swaddle 'er up' calls Mother Duggan over the din 'while I gathers up this lot...'

And presently Millie hears her mother retching, and Old Mother Duggan exhorting her:

'Eat it up, dear heart, that's it—you must try and keep it down, my love—it'll give the both of you life and good health'.

The baby is wrapped tight. Millie's mother is still gagging over the afterbirth, so Millie is summoned to hold her sister, while the others clear away the muck and faeces. Millie stares at her squawking sister, and the mouth that opens impossibly wide, in such a tiny head. Presently there's a pause in the crying and the face folds up. Experimentally, Millie puts the tip of her nose against the baby's, then sniffs at the blood-smeared cheeks and forehead. They're covered in a sticky layer of fuzz.

'She's furry!' exclaims Millie, working her damaged jaw with difficulty. 'Like a moth!'

Nobody answers. They're trying to manage a disaster. That's what every newborn baby is, in this place.

Millie's mother cries endlessly and calls for Vincent. She won't hold the child or give her a name.

'May as well borrow yours, then' Bridey tells her, abruptly. 'Winifred. It'll do', she adds, 'to remember her by'.

Bridey has no faith in Mother Duggan's methods.

Millie's mother refuses to give Little Winifred the breast.

'It's beastly' she wails. 'I had a wetnurse. There should be a wetnurse...'

'Never mind yer wetnurse' snaps Bridey, and stands behind her to hoist out the breast. Bridey is a strong, square-set woman. It's said she used to work with the navvies, and could drink them to their knees.

'It's shameful' weeps Winifred the elder. 'I'm not a washerwoman, I'm not strong enough for this ...'

But with Bridey standing guard, she does feed her child, and somehow Little Winifred survives, and puts on weight, and her mother gains a little strength as well, and does not die.

'Where is Vincent?' she asks, every time Bridey presents the baby. 'He should come to see his daughter...'

Bridey says,

'Never you mind him. I'll make sure he gives over enough chink to keep us alive'.

'But he should be here...' whines Millie's mother. She's long since decided to believe Millie's fall was an accident. How could she believe anything else?

Millie watches her sister suck and chomp, and decides she will never call her Little Winifred. Secretly, she already knows her as Moth.

By now, Millie has a new name of her own. It's bestowed by Isaac, the oldest man in the house, who makes his bed in a filthy cubby under the stairs. Millie's up and about now, though she hasn't ventured beyond the yard since her fall. She wanders into the kitchen in the late afternoon to sit with the cadgers and sharpers as they prepare the evening's con tricks. She likes to watch them check their fake sovereigns and false pockets and stutter the marked cards rapidly against their thumbs. One of them lifts her onto a stool beside him and offers her a slurp of tea from his bowl. She's still struggling with the geography of her altered face. She misjudges the distance to her crooked mouth, and has to wipe away the dribbles with her sleeve.

Isaac is sitting nearest the fire—a privilege of long survival. He watches her with his sagging, unlit eyes.

'Nipper's gorn lopsided', he growls, and gobs into the fire.

The card-sharper covers Millie's two hands with one of his, and helps her direct the tea more surely.

'Ere you are, Loppy', he says. 'Everything comes easier if only you keep at it'.

From that day on, Millie is known in the house as Loppy. A new name, for her new self. Only her mother and one other person will ever call her Millicent again.

5

Early morning, on a dry March day. Bridey is knocking rapidly on the door to the girls' room.

'Look sharp', she calls, 'he's coming!' and there's an urgent scuffling from inside. Bridey carries on up the stairs and opens the door to Vincent's room.

'He's here' she announces. Winifred leaps up, dropping her shawl and a shower of hairpins, and flaps her hands at Loppy, who's sitting cross-legged on the floor with her sister in her lap.

'Quickly, quickly, give me the child!'

As soon as Winifred takes her namesake, the child senses her agitation and begins to cry.

'Stop it! Stop it!' squeals Winifred, and 'Bridey, you take it. Don't let it yowl, he won't stand for it! A little laudanum if you must, but leave me enough to get by ...'

She tries to tidy herself at the dark mirror, then spots the crouching figure at the wall.

'Millicent, be off; you know how it upsets him when you're under his feet'.

Bridey holds the door open with her spare hand and gestures with her head.

'Off you go, girl. He's fair quiet today, but wear yer bonnet, keep yer face hid and don't push yer luck'.

Loppy pauses to grab her bonnet, then escapes, swift as a cat, under Bridey's arm and down the stairs, swerving back towards the kitchen just as Vincent makes his grand entrance through the front door.

'What's the monkey doing indoors when she should be earning her keep?' he demands behind her, but Bridey was right: there's no real threat in his voice today. As she races out through the back of the house Loppy hears him thundering from the stairwell:

'Get busy! And stay away from them shirksters out the back!'

Manor Court stands at the outer edge of a muddle of alleys, passages and yards, all feeding into one another, around and through and below the ground and buildings. Once upon a time Manor Court was a rather grand town house, the fashionable home of a 16th-century textile merchant. In those days there were mews, a cattleyard and service buildings behind it. Now the whole area is a misery of crumbling tenements, encrusted with wooden galleries that teeter crazily towards each other and shut out even more of the daylight. A stream of effluence, choked with rubbish, oozes through the middle of this snarl. Here and there, it's crossed by wooden boards, all sodden and slippery. A sorry bunting of garments and cloths is strung between the upper windows—most of which are broken and stuffed with rags. Tarred ropes have been slung across the gap. Messages, or illicit takings, are sent in baskets from attic to attic across these ropes. Sometimes the smaller children swing across them as a dare, or an escape: hand over hand they go, over the dark and stinking alleyway, bare legs kicking wildly. Sometimes they fall.

Manor Court turns its back on this labyrinth, where several families crowd into each room to sleep and eat and die. Manor Court's once haughty façade overlooks The Dogleg, a narrow street that twists its way to the main thoroughfare. It pretends to have nothing to do with the slums behind it. From the moment she could walk, Loppy has heard and ignored their commands to 'keep to the front', and stay away from the destitutes out the back.

'Load o' shirksters' Vincent growls. 'Couldn't turn a fadge into a mag. Haven't the wits for begging.'

'I suppose it can't be helped', her mother sighs: 'It's London. One's forced to live alongside all manner of sorts.'

'Every neighbourhood's got its rats' agrees Vincent. 'Never mind that. Eyes front. The Manor's a good cut above'.

And Loppy's mother must believe him. It's what keeps her alive.

Loppy hurtles out of the house using Vincent's escape route through the back door and into the yard. She stands for an instant to revel in the promise of early morning while she ties on her 'bonnet'—an oddity made of a man's soft-brimmed hat with a length of ribbon attached. Now she's meant to turn right and slip up Chaste Lane, a covered brick passage hardly wider than a man's frame, which runs alongside the Manor into The Dogleg. After dark, Chaste Lane becomes one more shadow. Only those in the know can find its entrance, and a man with a cosh can make himself invisible in there, as he waits for a girl to lead in her unsuspecting client. Loppy has never liked to use it, even during the day. If needs be she runs the length of it as hard as her oversized boots will move, with her fists up in front of her like a boxer, ready to wallop any lingering spirits. Today she rejects it altogether and turns left, cantering through the yard, past the midden and through a child-sized hole in the wall, emerging in the forbidden territory of the rookeries. She zigzags through the warren, thudding over the ditch-boards, and flits into a cramped area, enclosed by tenements on three sides. A large wooden lid takes up most of this courtyard, failing to cover the poison that seeps up through its knots and seams. Piled around the edges of the area are scraps of rusting metal, wood, bird-bones and other, indeterminate refuse. A stray dog balances on one heap, snuffling. Loppy stands at the edge of the court, takes a deep breath and hollers:

'STICK!'

The dog lifts its head and barks once, before returning to its task. A juicy snorting erupts from inside one of the buildings, where a family keeps two pigs. Loppy tries again.

'STICK! You coming?'

On the upper floor, a hand lifts the edge of cloth covering a cavity in the wall. A hoarse voice answers:

''E's gorn to the river!'

Loppy spins on the spot and runs back the way she came. As she reaches the Manor's yard she sees a figure leaning on its wall, chewing tobacco and tying his dirty cravat with all the precision of a 12-year-old Beau Brummell.

'Gideon!' she calls. 'Come down the river to see Stick!'

Gideon pats the pockets of his jacket in direct imitation of Vincent, then hooks his thumbs into the fob pockets of a threadbare waistcoat, cut, patched and stained, but still bearing traces of a pattern stencilled some 70 years ago.

'Busy' mumbles Gideon. He gives his whipcrack cough—a sound that punctuates his speech so persistently that it seems a part of it. He stands aside to let her crawl through the hole in the wall. Then he shrugs, vaults over the wall with one hand on his cap, and shakes himself down, adding: 'Might stroll along an' (crack!) wish 'im good-day'.

She doesn't mind Chaste Lane if Gideon's striding ahead of her. He struts like a king, does Gideon, making the most of his three feet and eight inches, modelling himself on his champion and mentor. Loppy knows he only deigns to speak to her because of her connection with Vincent, but never mind. She feels safe, trotting along at Gideon's heels, and she knows he would never raise a hand to her.

Out into the Dogleg they go, rushing along its twists and turns, past a blankness of back walls: the fish-and-potato-shop, the soup rooms, the mission. They swing left, then right, and finally pop out through an opening between a solicitor's office and a bank, like gnomes emerging from their secret world. The city hits like a tidal wave. Loppy and Gideon flatten themselves, for a moment, against the cold bricks of the office building. From the opposite edge of the pavement, they can't be seen at all. A race of giants parades past. Crinolines, fortressed with pleats and double-flounces, wash against them; coat pockets pass within snatching distance; a child stiff-armed in his velvet coat is the only one in this crush to register their presence. He drags his feet to stare at the two urchins till he's given a sharp tug by his nanny. Above the heads of the crowd a wooden ball rises and drops, as a penny-toy-man yells his chant. Chant and chatter and rap of hurrying shoes are all overwhelmed by the racket from beyond the pavement. The boom and grind of dray-wheels, dustcart wheels, cab wheels, hearse wheels; the click of hooves, the cursing of drivers, a calamity of geese, all swirl into the city air, already dense with smoke and horse-shit and sizzling trotters and human bodies and tavern fumes, but bright and free and irresistible.

Without a word, Gideon sets off, with Loppy at his tails. At first they slither along the inner edge of the pavement, then, at the first splay of civic steps, they dive into the crowd, ducking elbows and bags and dodging between legs and skirts, and eventually finding their way onto the road itself. The traffic is at a virtual standstill—carts, carriages and livestock trying to head in all directions, with no order, scheme or priority in force. Loppy stays as close as she can to Gideon, clutching the rough hem of his jacket, and he leads her behind and under and round the massive cartwheels, narrowly missing a horse's startled kick, gesticulating at a carriage-driver's angry shout. Finally they reach the relative safety of the opposite pavement and slip down a short cut towards Seven Dials.

It's easier to walk, here, though it's busy enough. Three lads slightly older than Gideon are lounging against the wall of a beer shop. He pauses to shake their hands, each one twisting his thumb and forefinger in a quick and secret contortion. Their four heads dip together and some solemn message is exchanged. Loppy hears their coded plans, notes the percussion of their alien words, before Gideon steps back, jerking his head towards Loppy, and saying in a louder voice,

'Tush-ti, gents. Tyke's ears are waggling!'

'No they're not!' Loppy protests, but Gideon's off again with a brisk salute to his companions, and picks up his pace as Loppy jogs along behind. Past the King George Dining Rooms, where three old men are slumped on a bench under the black windows, eyes swimming in the smoke of their pipes, boots bursting at the ankles and toes. Past a group of onlookers gathering to urge on an argument between two women, who screech over a length of fabric, tugging until—just as Gideon and Loppy go by—it tears with a terrific fart, prompting a storm of laughter and insults. Past the cross-eyed birdseller, propped awkwardly on his distorted legs, bearing the weight of his struggling cage on a chain around his neck. Loppy has to stop, even though Gideon has gone ahead. She goes up on her toes to see the wretched creatures thrash against the bars, and raises a finger, in some poor attempt to give them comfort. The birdseller squints over her head, mumbling to himself.

'I'm going to let them go' announces Loppy, knowing what the effect will be. Sure enough, the mumble ignites into a roar:

'LEAVEITALONEWHYCAN'TYOULEAVEITALONEWHYCAN'TYOULETMEBELETMEBELETMEBE!'

Loppy watches him with interest as he raves on at noone in particular. Then a click of Gideon's fingers makes her take to her heels again. Gideon's cough intensifies as he berates her.

'What's the idea (crack!), what you setting off the (crack!) shouter for?' he demands.

Loppy shrugs. 'Just to 'ear 'im'. Then, 'Wait a mo', as Gideon makes to walk on again. He stands impatiently, jiggling his legs, itching to go, as Loppy bends and gasps, pressing her hands to her stomach. After a few seconds she straightens again.

'Right'.

'Touch of the cramps?' enquires Gideon, falling back into his stride.

'Just a touch', reports Loppy.

'We'll pick up a morsel' says Gideon 'and take a bite to Stick'.

Past the cat's meat shop, the Gunner's Arms, the Turk's Head, the Rat's Tail, the Royal Emporium junk shop, the pawnbroker's, the second-hand boot store, the soap-boilers, trunk-makers and bookbinders. A dark-skinned man, shabbily but impeccably dressed in a Moroccan cap and jacket, sits at a small table outside a boarding house, smoking a hubble-bubble pipe. A small, barefoot child—even smaller than Loppy—marches into a butcher's, holding up a dead bird by its wing. A youth with a scar from hairline to jaw and a broken nose is biding his time on a corner, hands in checkered-trouser pockets.

'Oi!' he yells as Gideon goes by. 'Tell Vincent it's all ready!'

'What's ready?' gasps Loppy, as Gideon raises his hand in acknowledgement.

'His new silk coat from the tailor's' says Gideon dryly.

'Gid' pleads Loppy, seizing on the words, 'can we look in the actors' shop?'

Gideon tuts. It's a digression from their route. But he takes a sneaking pleasure in the place too, so they take the next street left and make their way to a bulge of window, piled high with cloaks, wigs, turbans, tailcoats, a false bushy beard, an exotic beaded headdress. A sign sticking out above the window reads: 'PARADISE COSTUMIERS', and painted on the wall above that is: 'Theatrical Attire and Fancy Trimmings'. But the words mean nothing to Gideon and Loppy, who gaze instead at the mountain of disguises, with their faces pressed against the glass. Suddenly a bell chortles, the door opens, and a red-faced figure in a battered top hat steps out, clutching a brown paper parcel to his chest. He looks one way, then the other; catches sight of two gawping children and smiles broadly, revealing half a dozen brown stumps of tooth. Then he lopes away in the direction of the Adelphi.

'Not now' says Gideon, grabbing Loppy's sleeve as she starts off after him. 'We'll miss low tide'. He makes a show of looking at his broken fob-watch, and says, 'Yesterday it were just about now. Should be later, today. Just time to saunter through the market and pick up a morsel, and we'll be right'.

When they reach the Piazza Gideon guides Loppy away from the glistening heaps of cabbages, onions and leeks.

'We'll get better'n that' he promises. 'An' besides, them porters is like blasted 'awks'.

At the word, a basket-crowned porter, puce from his teetering load, sweeps them out of his way with a curse. The two dodge among the barrows and stalls and shoppers, and find their way to a flower-seller, squatting at her basket.

'This is more likely' mutters Gideon in Loppy's ear. 'They don't 'spect us to be lifting blooms. See that sweet old dame? She's likely. Go an' give 'er the blab a minute'.

Obediently, Loppy distracts the stallholder by begging for a coin, while Gideon slips a small bunch of violets up his sleeve.

'This'll do for Miss Flora' he says, as they scutter along the colonnade. 'She likes 'er flowers, and she'll have an errand going, mark my words'.

'That lady give me a penny' reports Loppy, and opens her sticky palm to show the coin.

'Bloody hellfire (crack)!' exclaims Gideon, and regards