Read Online When the Devil Drives by Caro Peacock - Free Book Online Page B

is when they’re feeding or watering their horses. Like that.’
    Two cabs were standing by the horse trough, their drivers beside them, smoking clay pipes.
    â€˜Don’t talk this time,’ I said. ‘Just listen.’ I wished them good morning and asked if they remembered picking up a fair-haired young lady in a blue cloak and hood around midday the Thursday before last, adding that she might have had a gentleman with her. They were polite enough but had seen no such young lady. When they’d gone, I waited and repeated the process with two more cab drivers, with the same result.
    â€˜Do you think you could do that?’ I asked Tabby, as we waited by the horse trough.
    â€˜Should think so.’
    At least it was serving a purpose in showing her the monotony of our trade. When the next cab came to the trough I stayed within earshot and let her do the questioning. She managed very well. In her grey dress and bonnet she could have been any ordinary servant. I was amused by some turns of phrase that caught my way of speaking exactly. Tabby had a quick ear. When the cab had gone I congratulated her.
    â€˜Wasn’t any use though, was it?’
    â€˜It would be a miracle if it had been.’
    â€˜Why are we doing it, then?’
    â€˜Because we’ve got to do something, and at present I can’t think of much else. Can you manage on your own here for a while? It’s three o’clock now. Give it another two hours, then come back to Abel Yard.’
    I gave her money for something to eat and the omnibus fare.
    â€˜Where are you going, then?’
    â€˜Fleet Street. I’ll see you later.’
    I walked back past St Paul’s to Ludgate Hill into Fleet Street. I loved every grimy, crowded, purposeful yard of Fleet Street, from the evil smelling Fleet Ditch at one end to Temple Bar at the other. Far more than Whitehall or Westminster, it always seemed to me the centre of what was happening in the country, or even the world. Slow carts drawn by shire horses bringing supplies of paper to feed the printing presses tangled in narrow side streets with discreet carriages that brought cabinet ministers for confidential talks with editors. Every fourth or fifth building seemed to be a public house, with more laughter (always male) coming out of it than in any other part of London. In between, print shops displayed caricatures of those same cabinet ministers, and the journalists laughing in the public houses probably knew more about the confidential talks with editors than the prime minister did.
    Jimmy Cuffs was usually to be found in the Cheshire Cheese, just off the street itself in Wine Office Court. The rule that respectable women do not enter public houses applied several times over at the Cheshire Cheese. Even unrespectable women weren’t welcome. If I wanted to talk to Jimmy, I had to wait until a waiter or pot boy came out with an armful of empty bottles and ask him to take a message inside. Luckily, at the rate men drank in the Cheshire Cheese, empty bottles accumulated pretty quickly. The boy who took my message came back shaking his head.
    â€˜He’s off at an inquest. There’s three copy boys waiting already, so he should be back any time.’
    I strolled up and down the street, wandering in and out of print shops. Several of them were selling pamphlets by the Chartists or other radical groups, urging people to unite against a government that kept the price of bread high in the interests of landowners, denied most labouring men a right to vote and locked them up in workhouses when there were no jobs for them. Most of the pamphlets kept just on the right side of the law on sedition, but a few went beyond it. I thought of the printing press hidden under my stairs and wondered which side of that dangerous line my father’s friend Tom Huckerby walked. I thought I could guess.
    When I went back to the Cheshire Cheese, the lamps were lit and Jimmy Cuffs had