Seven Dials

The man was walking towards her, moving easily as if he were accustomed to it. He looked perfectly ordinary, in his early forties, slim under his ragged coat. His head was uncovered and his brown hair was badly in need of cutting.

Charlotte stopped to allow him to pass. He had a purpose in his stride and she did not want to bar his way.

To her surprise he stopped also. “I hear you are looking for me.” His voice was soft and well educated. “My name is Morgan Sandeman. I work here with anyone who wants me, but especially soldiers.”

“Mr. Sandeman?” Her voice lifted more than she had meant, as if she were really some desperate wife in search of a lost husband he might know.

“Yes. How can I help you?” He stood beside her amid the piles of shoes.

There was no point in pretense, and perhaps no time to waste. “I am looking for someone who has gone missing,” she replied. “And I believe he may have spoken with you shortly before the last time he was seen. May I have a little of your time… please?”

“Of course.” He held out his hand. “If you would like to come with me, we can go to my office. I’m afraid I don’t have a church, more like an old hall, but it serves.”

“Yes, I’d like to,” she agreed without hesitation.

He led the way with no further speech, and she followed him back up the cobbles between the silent people, around the corner and along an alley towards a tiny square. The buildings were four or five stories high, narrow and leaning together, creaking in the damp, eaves crooked, the sour-sweet smell of rotting wood clinging to everything, choking the throat. There was no distinct sound, and yet there was not silence. Rat feet scuttled over stone, water dripped, rubbish moved and fluttered in the slight wind, wood sagged and settled a little lower.

“Over there.” Sandeman pointed to a doorway and walked ahead of her. It was stained with damp and swung open at his touch. Inside was a narrow vestibule and beyond a larger hall with a fire burning low in the huge open fireplace. Half a dozen people sat on the floor in front of it, leaning close to each other, but not apparently talking. It was a moment before Charlotte realized they were either insensible or asleep.

Sandeman held up his finger to request silence, and walked almost soundlessly across the stone floor towards a table in the corner to the right, at which there were two chairs.

She followed after him and sat as he invited.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I have nothing to offer you, and nowhere better than this.” He said it with a smile, not as if he were ashamed for it. It was more an accommodation to her than to himself. His face was gaunt and the marks of hunger were plain in his thin cheeks. “Who is it you are looking for?” he asked. “If I can’t tell you where he is, I can at least tell him that you asked, and perhaps he will find you. You understand that what is told me in confidence has to remain so? Sometimes when a man…” He hesitated, watching her intently, perhaps trying to judge something of the man she was seeking from her emotions.

She felt like a fraud, imagining the desperate women, wives, mothers or sisters who had come to him to find a man they had loved, lost to experiences he could not share with them, or whose burden he could not carry without the oblivion of drink, or opium.

She had to be honest with him. “It is not a relative of mine, it is the brother of a young woman I know. He has disappeared, and she is too distressed to look for him herself, nor has she the time. She could lose her position and not easily find another.”

His expression of concern did not alter. “Who is he?”

Before she could reply the outer door swung wide open, crashing against the wall and bouncing back to catch the person coming in. It hit him so hard he lost his precarious balance and crumpled to the floor, where he remained in a heap, like a bundle of rags.

Sandeman glanced at Charlotte too briefly to speak, then stood up and went over to the door. He bent down and put his hands under the man, and with considerable effort, lifted him to his feet. The man was very obviously drunk. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, but his face sagged, his eyes were unfocused and he had several days’ stubble on his cheeks. His hair was matted and the dirt on him could be smelled even from where Charlotte sat.

Sandeman looked at him with exasperation. “Come on in, Herbert. Come and sit down. You’re sodden wet, man!”

“I fell,” Herbert mumbled, dragging his feet as he shambled half beside, half behind Sandeman.

“In the gutter, by the look of you,” Sandeman said wryly.

And the smell, Charlotte thought. She longed to move farther away, but the dignity with which Sandeman spoke to the man made her feel ashamed to.

Herbert made no reply, but allowed himself to be guided over to the bench by the low fire, and sank down onto it as if he were exhausted. None of those already there took the slightest notice of him.

Sandeman went to a cupboard against the far wall. He took a key from the ring on his belt and opened the door. He searched for a few minutes, then took out a large gray blanket, coarse and rough, but no doubt warm.

Charlotte watched him with curiosity. It was hardly enough for a bed, nor was the man sick, in the sense that rest would help him.

Sandeman closed and locked the cupboard, and went back to Herbert, carrying the blanket.

“Take off your wet clothes,” he instructed. “Wrap this around you and get warm.”

Herbert looked across at Charlotte.

“She’ll turn her back,” Sandeman promised. He said it loudly enough for her to hear and obey, swiveling the chair around so she was facing the opposite way. After that she did not see him stand up, but she heard the rustling of fabric and the slight thud as the wet cloth struck the floor.

“I’ll get you some hot soup and bread,” Sandeman went on. “It’ll settle your stomach.” He did not bother to tell the man to stop drinking the alcohol that was poisoning him. Presumably that had already all been said, and to no purpose. “I’ll wash your clothes. You’ll have to wait here until they’re dry.” Charlotte heard his feet coming towards her until he stood at her elbow.

“You can turn around now,” he said quietly. “I’m afraid I have things to do, but I can talk to you as I work.”

“Perhaps I can fetch him the bread and the soup?” she offered. The stench of the clothes was turning her stomach, but she tried not to allow it to show in her face.

“Thank you,” he accepted. “We have a scullery through there.” He pointed to a door to the left of the fireplace. “We can talk while I wash these. It will be private.” He picked up the clothes again and led her into a small stone room where a huge stove kept water simmering in two kettles, a cauldron of soup near the boil, and several old pans of hot water, presumably ready to wash clothes as necessary. A tin bath on a low table served as a sink, and there were buckets of cold water from the nearest pump, perhaps one or two streets away.

She found the bread and a knife and carefully sliced off two fairly thick pieces. It was not difficult because the bread was stale. She looked around for anything to spread on it, but there was no butter. Perhaps with soup it would not matter. Anything would be good that would absorb some of the alcohol. She lifted the lid from the cauldron on the stove and saw pea soup almost as thick as porridge, bubbles breaking every now and then on the surface, like hot mud. There were bowls on a bench, and she reached for one, took the ladle and filled it.

She carried the bread on a plate in one hand, the bowl and a spoon in the other, protected by a cloth, and went back into the hall and over to Herbert. She stopped in front of him and he looked up at her. She could see in his face the instinct to rise to his feet, old discipline dying hard. He had once been a soldier, before whatever kind of pain or despair it was had destroyed him. But he was also acutely conscious of the fact that he was wearing only a blanket, and he was not sure enough of his grasp on it to maintain his decency. The nakedness of his situation was bad enough, without exposing his body as well.