to see and gawk at.
For a start there was the rain. Caleb had never seen such grey and louring weather; it was never like that back at home. There were rolling, low clouds that morning, as well as a light artificial fog, and a cold, fine, drizzling rain. Everything was blurred and softened. The outlines of the buildings and the people were hazy. There were pungent smells of burning coal and hot steam smuts, acrid soot and hot oil and working steam engines and, above and over all of that, horse manure, and urine, which caught Caleb unawares, and seemed to linger in the back of his throat.
And no matter how many photographic images of old London and its people he had seen, nothing had prepared him for the experience of actually being there.
He was suddenly immersed in the vivid world of the past.
The images he had seen had been mainly monochrome, either old Victorian or Edwardian photographs. Images that looked as if they had been pickled in malt vinegar or tobacco smoke. Faded-looking pictures in soft yellows and sepia browns. No modern cameras were ever allowed into Pastworld, so there was nothing to prepare for the shock of the colours and the bustling movement. The women’s clothes seemed to be very bright, floral patterned, or plain velvets and silks and all in strong purples, yellows and reds. This contrasted sharply with the dull tones of the men’s clothes. They wore mostly formal black, but there were some local swells wearing checked tweeds and gold-threaded waistcoats. Everyone wore hats. Some of the women wore large creations topped with elaborate swirls of feathers. The men wore shiny top hats, or sombre trilbys and homburgs. There were Buckland Corporation cadets in their red uniforms, and the London policemen, or bobbies, in dark blue, with high, crested helmets.
That morning, during his first immersion, Caleb’s eyes darted this way and that. He was confused by so many things at once. The haste and hurry, the constant noise from the heavy traffic. The clattering and clopping hooves of the horses, the metal jingle of harness. There were steaming piles of grimly unhygenic manure in the roadways and it seemed there was a constant wash of horse piss in the gutters. Caleb could almost feel the germs rising in the steam, crawling over everything, the twisted writhing colonies of bacteria spilling from cobbles to shoes, from shoes to clothes, from clothes to flesh, and he shuddered.
Caleb watched the overwhelming crowds of poor people as they moved among the smarter Gawkers and residents. He was surprised by their noise and robust roughness, by their numbers, by the variety of their skin colours, and by their bewildering speed of movement and confidence as they dodged around each other on the pavements. With all the shoving and pushing, Pastworld already looked a dangerous place. For some perhaps even a terrifying one. To a skinny seventeen-year-old boy from a dull, wealthy garden city there was an immediate sense of lawlessness and adventure in the air. It seemed to Caleb that almost anything might and could, and perhaps indeed should, happen.
.
Chapter 10
The hansom cab pulled up outside a tall Georgian house in Cloudesley Square, Islington, which was just north of the centre of the old city.
Caleb noticed his father’s anxiety. It became visible just for a moment as they arrived at their lodging house. Another ragged man stepped forward out of the mist and helped the driver down with the steamer trunk. The man then dragged the heavy trunk up the short steps to the front door. After that he stood wringing his hands, waiting to be tipped along with the cab driver. His father looked the beggar up and down, took in his shabby coat, his leaky boots. He gave the beggar a coin; the beggar looked down at the coin and then back at Lucius Brown then, stepping forward close to him, he looked Lucius in the eye.
‘That was a heavy case, very heavy,’ he said quietly, almost mournfully. Then the beggar pocketed
For a start there was the rain. Caleb had never seen such grey and louring weather; it was never like that back at home. There were rolling, low clouds that morning, as well as a light artificial fog, and a cold, fine, drizzling rain. Everything was blurred and softened. The outlines of the buildings and the people were hazy. There were pungent smells of burning coal and hot steam smuts, acrid soot and hot oil and working steam engines and, above and over all of that, horse manure, and urine, which caught Caleb unawares, and seemed to linger in the back of his throat.
And no matter how many photographic images of old London and its people he had seen, nothing had prepared him for the experience of actually being there.
He was suddenly immersed in the vivid world of the past.
The images he had seen had been mainly monochrome, either old Victorian or Edwardian photographs. Images that looked as if they had been pickled in malt vinegar or tobacco smoke. Faded-looking pictures in soft yellows and sepia browns. No modern cameras were ever allowed into Pastworld, so there was nothing to prepare for the shock of the colours and the bustling movement. The women’s clothes seemed to be very bright, floral patterned, or plain velvets and silks and all in strong purples, yellows and reds. This contrasted sharply with the dull tones of the men’s clothes. They wore mostly formal black, but there were some local swells wearing checked tweeds and gold-threaded waistcoats. Everyone wore hats. Some of the women wore large creations topped with elaborate swirls of feathers. The men wore shiny top hats, or sombre trilbys and homburgs. There were Buckland Corporation cadets in their red uniforms, and the London policemen, or bobbies, in dark blue, with high, crested helmets.
That morning, during his first immersion, Caleb’s eyes darted this way and that. He was confused by so many things at once. The haste and hurry, the constant noise from the heavy traffic. The clattering and clopping hooves of the horses, the metal jingle of harness. There were steaming piles of grimly unhygenic manure in the roadways and it seemed there was a constant wash of horse piss in the gutters. Caleb could almost feel the germs rising in the steam, crawling over everything, the twisted writhing colonies of bacteria spilling from cobbles to shoes, from shoes to clothes, from clothes to flesh, and he shuddered.
Caleb watched the overwhelming crowds of poor people as they moved among the smarter Gawkers and residents. He was surprised by their noise and robust roughness, by their numbers, by the variety of their skin colours, and by their bewildering speed of movement and confidence as they dodged around each other on the pavements. With all the shoving and pushing, Pastworld already looked a dangerous place. For some perhaps even a terrifying one. To a skinny seventeen-year-old boy from a dull, wealthy garden city there was an immediate sense of lawlessness and adventure in the air. It seemed to Caleb that almost anything might and could, and perhaps indeed should, happen.
.
Chapter 10
The hansom cab pulled up outside a tall Georgian house in Cloudesley Square, Islington, which was just north of the centre of the old city.
Caleb noticed his father’s anxiety. It became visible just for a moment as they arrived at their lodging house. Another ragged man stepped forward out of the mist and helped the driver down with the steamer trunk. The man then dragged the heavy trunk up the short steps to the front door. After that he stood wringing his hands, waiting to be tipped along with the cab driver. His father looked the beggar up and down, took in his shabby coat, his leaky boots. He gave the beggar a coin; the beggar looked down at the coin and then back at Lucius Brown then, stepping forward close to him, he looked Lucius in the eye.
‘That was a heavy case, very heavy,’ he said quietly, almost mournfully. Then the beggar pocketed
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