Henery Foble shifted in his seat, the thin padding the railway company deemed suitable for passengers, not ample enough for comfort for his thin frame. His coat pulled tightly at his arms and it he shuffled around, realising he had sat on his coattails.
‘Henery,’ Mary chided, ‘Please. You haven’t stopped twitching since we boarded.’ She smiled at him with wifely fondness and smoothed her gloves.
Henery laughed self-consciously, ‘You are right, my dear. I think I am excited to see it. Not everyone makes the trip to Pit Town after all.’ He glanced out of the carriage as it clattered past streets that seemed to shrink in size and grandeur the further out of Hope Town they travelled.
‘I know.’ She looked nervously around at their fellow passengers. ‘Do you think we shall be alright?’
‘Now, now, Mary. You know I have written to Mrs Lickspittle, and she has sent me a welcoming …response.’ He couldn’t elevate the grubby parchment and badly spelled scrawl that had said ‘Deer Mr Fondle yes pleez Com and see the sites of pit TOwn’ to the status of Letter. He also didn’t want Mary to see Mrs Lickspittle’s idea of parsing a sentence.
‘Yes, dear,’ Mary said in doubtful tones. ‘It is just that I was talking to Mrs Pearson, and she told me the most dreadful tales. She says one of her friends was there and…’ Henery sighed. Mrs Pearson was one of his wife’s closest confidantes, and Mary was always pricklier after seeing her. He suspected Mrs Pearson of stirring trouble.
‘Damn Mrs Pearson!’
‘Henery!’ she said in a shocked voice and smiled apologetically at an outraged glance from a matronly woman on the next seat.
He leant over and held one of her hands. ‘Apologies Mary, but seriously, Mrs Pearson is one of those people that knows more and has done more than anyone else. I daresay if I were to tell her I was to go down the mines, she would tell you her friend’s brother’s friend’s uncle was the lead pit man and had dug through to the other side!’
Mary stifled a laugh, not being able to deny it and Henery relaxed at this sign of humour. Secretly he was worried they might need it, and wondered if perhaps he should have come alone. Less said about it, the better, now they were on their way. He cleared his throat and tried to look tranquil, as if he wasn’t concerned about their trip to the – how had it been described? – the ‘necessary evil that was Pit Town’ and ‘Hope Town’s cesspit’.
His friend, Thompson, upon hearing of the impending trip, at their club, had been colourful in his depiction. ‘Pit Town?’ he had exclaimed, ‘My dear fellow why would you want to go there? Please tell me you are not still studying those low unscrupulous individuals to determine that their head shape has rendered them criminal. Really, it’s enough to turn one’s stomach -hanging’s the thing.’
Henery had laughed, ‘I shall remember your cynicism, Thompson, and you’ll owe me a drink once I publish my article. It will redress some of the balance between the Pit and Hope Towners. Once cannot survive without the other! But I am particularly interested in the workers, you know, they are reported to be specialised to a remarkable degree …’
Thompson had snorted and called for a waiter saying, ‘Henery my good fellow, think of it thus: Our glorious Hope Town is held in the palm of the Benevolent god’s hand, and Pit Town is at end of the little finger, rammed under the nail, which is dirty from picking it owner’s nose.’
They left the familiarity of Hope Town behind them, its golden-hued light fading as the plexi-glass became dirtier, and the light grew dimmer accordingly. The warmth of the Sun-surrogate was already weakening, and Henery thought how far the broad, white-paved avenues, of central Hope Town seemed already.
He pulled out the small guide to Pit Town and read a well-worn passage aloud, ‘Listen to this, Mary. ‘If one takes the Dung Line from Hope Town, one finds at the last extremity, Pit Town, which whilst deemed poor, dirty, and filled with the raff and scaff of the world, is yet an essential bedrock of our civilisation, as necessary to the most modest house as to the grander mansion. At the risk of venturing into those subjects most distasteful to persons of refinement, the writers of this guide must presume upon the natural curiosity of the reader…blah blah..’ Oh here It is…’represents a most convenient hole into which all the dross and dirt is siphoned from the rest of the colonies. Termed ‘brown gold’, the (do please excuse me, Mary) ‘the excreta of the towns is a precious resource, its rich nutrients carefully recycled, to make bounteous the fruits and vegetables upon which we dine! Do you see Mary? Imagine! Next time you are in the plaza, sipping at your freshly squeezed juice, imagine what they are grown in!’ He stopped, gazing anxiously at Mary ‘Are you alright, my dear? You’ve gone slightly green?’
Mary nodded weakly and daubed at her mouth with a white, lace handkerchief. The matronly woman cast a disapproving glance at Henery, and stood huffing and puffing, and muttering ‘Disgraceful’ as the train slowed for the next station. This was the last main station of the outskirts of HopeTown. From the map, the stations became further apart from now on, the stops mere villages for HopeTown workers. The passengers left were now of a rougher sort, their clothes plainer and their faces grubbier and more tired. But there were a pair of young well-dressed men, which Henery thought must be slummers: those tourists who made a trip merely to experience the poverty and report at their next dinner party how perfectly ghastly it was how some people lived. Made one grateful etc etc. Henerey congratulated himself that he didn’t fall into that category of gawpers. His was serious business. He had long thought that the Hope Towners distaste of Pit Town and its people was deeply unfair. As a student of the Sciences, he was often at a loss to understand the squeamishness Hope Towners felt with the natural lifecycle of their world. Theirs was a closed system, everything must be given to the Cycle, good and bad.
At length, the train slowed and Henery who had for the last hour been eagerly observing every new thing he could from the window, leant over and shook Mary from her doze. ‘Mary,’ his voice was excited, ‘We are here!’
They stepped off the platform, Henery’s blue coat and Mary’s green dress two bright points in a sea of grey-brown sludge coloured people, jostled and pushed as they made their way into the dim light. Mary gave a cough and even Henery noted the smell of drains that seemed everywhere.
‘Come, Mary. Let us take a taxi.’ He held his arm up and a sullen man flicked a horse to life and a pulled his tattered cab up beside them. ‘Stankford Street, my good man.’ Henery ordered, and the man smiled revealing a yellowed tooth in an amused sneer.
‘Henery, these seats are damp,’ Mary patted the seats and showed him her wet gloves. She sniffed the stain and recoiled. ‘I don’t think this cab is very clean, Henery.’
‘All will be well once we reach Mrs Lickspittle’s, Mary.’ He said it firmly, to avoid the quivering he felt being heard.
Stankford Street was soon reached and both Henery and Mary hastily left the cab. As soon as the man had driven off they gazed around at the piles of litter and rags in the road, the windows, made opaque by greyed curtains or smears, and a scuffed door, which Henery, after checking his paper, stepped up to and knocked.
The door opened, and Mrs Lickspittle stood braced on the threshold, in a dirty gray shift dress, meaty arms on hips, and a large bosom which melted into her waist and calves that reminded Henery of Watkins, the prop on his local rugby team. ‘Mrs Lickspittle,’ he raised his hat, but before he could continue, she interrupted him, ‘Yea Mr Foible and ‘ she nodded at Mary ‘missus Foible. I’m Lickspittle.’ She cocked her head ‘Come in, come in then.’ She turned and they watched her wide berth sway down hallway.
‘Its er, Foble,’ Henery said in a faint voice, following her and Mary into the house. As they stepped further in both he and Mary recoiled at the smell. If it had been bad at the station, he realised now that had been an elixir of roses compared to the unholy stench that hit them. His gag reflex made his Adam’s apple wobble and Mary stood a moment holding the wall whilst she wrestled for control.
Eventually, Henery lifted a handkerchief to his nose and smiled uncertainly at Mrs Lickspittle. Mary watching the pained expression on Henery’s face, managed a reassuring smile. He wondered if he would ever smell anything other than the foetid stink of Pit Town again; it had seemed to hang over the streets in a miasmic haze, ever since they had clattered into the station on the train, and he was sure it would have soaked into his clothing.
‘Well come closer, then, you won’t see from there’ Lickspittle shouted, moving various buckets and pans, around in the wide hallway to make space. ‘You’ve arrived jest in time. I’m jest about to feed ‘em.’ She dragged a couple of buckets, full to the brim with…Henery wasn’t sure exactly what was in the buckets, from where he stood it seemed to be a sort of thick grey soup, in which various unidentifiable pieces surfaced briefly before being lost again. His stomach heaved. ‘And these are the Workers you are about to feed?’ She nodded, with a terse ‘Aye.’
‘And er… how often do you feed the…er…workers, er, people, Mrs Lickspittle?’ he asked. He pulled a small book from his pocket and prepared to take notes.
‘Its Lickspittle I keep telling you, there ain’t no Mister, never was and never will be, I’m not being bossed about in me own ‘ome. I feed ‘em when the buckets are full. Could be twice a week, could be more. Depends. Depends on whether Pit Town gets enough to eat. If we do, then they do. Simple as that and you can tell that lot back in Hope Town that too. As if their shit don’t stink.’ She broke into a laughing cackle that ended in a phlegmy cough, which she spat into the bucket, where it sank.
Mary closed her eyes and swayed, and Henery pulled her close to support her, whilst keeping his eyes on the wall and thinking of the roses in the avenues of Hope Town, the sweet, sweet roses, until his nausea passed.
He opened his eyes and saw Lickspittle eyeing him with satisfaction. ‘Soft,’ she muttered, ‘all the Hope towners, soft. Are you ready?’
Henery looked at Mary, with a questioning glance. Her gentle eyes looked up at him ‘Its ok, Henery, I’m ok.’
Henery nodded, and Lickspittle went to the double doors, at the end of the hallway; large, steel contraptions, which she dragged open, onto a space Henery thought was part yard part field and part dwellings amongst muddy mounds, ponds and puddles of water. She pulled her ample bosom up by the dirty straps of her bra, let them resettle under her dress and hollered ‘Come for yer food, you uglies, quick as you like, or it’ll be going to the pogs’.
Henery and Mary watched with horrified fascination, as they came spilling out from the banks of the murky pond, out from muddy holes or small shacks, where they lived, half formed, misshapen skeletal figures, each worthy of their own formaldehyde jar on the physicians shelf; a catalogue of mistakes: heads too large, or missing an eye or two, or fingers, feet, or legs and arms, some with three ears, or too many teeth or with bare smacking gums, they came, some on wheels, others on sticks, some pulling themselves by their arms, if they had them. They slewed to a halt in front of the steps up to the large doors, squirming in anticipation of sustenance, a keening whine issuing from those with vocal cords. Lickspittle heaved up one of the buckets and launched the grey slop, down the steps, revealing the hidden largesse of solid contents, which Henerey wrote down as: peelings, shavings, heels of cheese, gristle, cabbage leaves, a bone or two, some fruit. All was revealed, all the refuse of Pit Town meals, was thrown from the buckets, by Lickspittle, and lay scattered on the steps and in the mud in front of the doors. At the same time, the grunting, pushing, and fighting started.
Lickspittle smiled showing brown teeth, ‘I like this part, you watch now. Beasts they look and like beasts they behave’ she said. ‘There! Look at this one, I call him Two Arms, he’s lucky he gets more food. Look – see, he pushes that one away with one arm, and uses the other to cram a handful into its mouth! Look, all mud and food mixed, they don’t care. Oh, and this one! Biter, she’s called. Small, but watch…’ A bent-backed creature had secured a large bone, and Henery could see rags of meat hanging from it, certainly a prize, but before Bent-Back could eat, Biter sank her teeth into its leg and Bent-Back howled in pain, whilst Biter seized the bone and scampered to the back of the crowd chewing the bone as she went.
‘Its…it’s… horrible’ Henery said, his voice almost failing at the desperate sight of so many desolate creatures scrabbling in the mud. Tears ran down Mary’s face.
Lickspittle nodded ‘I know, smell something terrible, don’t they? And the noise!’
Henery looked at Lickspittle in mingled shock and horror, as Lickspittle shook the bucket to empty the last bits ‘That’s your lot, no, no, back, BACK, I said’ she shouted, aiming a kick at the head of one of the misshapen as it crept too close to the doorstep. It jumped back with a yelp of pain, and Lickspittle slammed the doors shut.
‘She’s a monster,’ he whispered to Mary. Mary sniffed ‘Yes, but she feeds them. I don’t think anyone else would’.
Lickspittle slapped her hands together ‘Well, that’s that. All done until next time. GANNET!!’ She yelled and a small boy came running in from another room. ‘Clean ‘em up, boy’ she pointed to the buckets with a foot and walked into the front room. ‘Come on then’ she said to Henery and Mary.
She was holding out her hand as they walked in. ‘We’ve paid you!’ Henery said indignant.
‘Come on, that was worth a tip or two. You don’t think I can do this for free do you? Got to pay someone to collect all them vittles’
Mary nudged Henery and he put a few coins into her palm.
‘So, where do they…come from?’
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