Excerpt of The Great Stink by Clare Clark
(Page 2 of 2)
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'How unutterably tedious he'd like us!' one of the pupils had
hissed at William as they were dismissed. William paid no attention.
In the months that followed he had held on to Bazalgette's words,
repeating them to himself until their shape acquired the metre of a
magic charm. William no longer trusted in prayer.
Where the floor of the tunnel levelled out once more William
paused, holding his lantern up to the wall. The water tugged
impatiently at his boots. Where the light caught it, the masonry
bulged with overlapping wads of fungi. They sprouted fatly from
between the spongy bricks, their fleshy undersides bloated and blind,
quilting the holes that pocked the walls. They were the closest that
the tunnels came to plant life but William could find no affection for
them. He ducked further, pulling in his shoulders to avoid brushing
against their pallid flesh. Their cold yeasty smell rose above the
privy stench of the filthy water. William's throat closed. For a
moment he felt the tilt of the ship and his hair crawled, alive with
vermin. Men moaned all around him, crying out for help that never
came. He had a sudden urge to dash the glass of the lantern against
the wall. A shard of the broken glass would be as sharp as a knife. It
would slice through the stinking fungi until their flesh fell away
from the wall. Would it bleed or would it simply yield the yellowed
ooze of a corpse too long in the sun? The craving quickened within him
and his breath came in shallow dips. He imagined his fingers closing
round a dagger of glass, tight and then tighter until his blood ran in
narrow black streams between his knuckles. The hunger pressed into his
throat, and crowded his chest. He stared into the lantern, watching
the worm of flame curl as he swung it slowly backwards and forwards.
Just one hard blow. That was all it would take. He pulled back his arm
. . .
No! The lantern swung dizzily as he snatched in his hand and a
pale fragment of mushroom swirled away in the stream. A fine crack ran upwards
through the glass of the lantern but the light did not go out. Unhurriedly the
flame stretched, shivered and then steadied. Sweat trickled from beneath the
brim of William's hat. He gripped the handle of the lantern tightly, angry at
his imprudence. Without the lantern he would never find his way back to the
shaft. Forcing his mouth full of saliva he licked his lips. Regular in his
habits, steady, disciplined, methodical in his problem-solving. Equable and
law-abiding. He repeated the words to himself as he moved further into the
tunnel. His knees were unsteady.
Once again the tunnel narrowed. Here there was barely room to accommodate the
spread of William's shoulders and the water rushed over his knees. At high tide
the flow would fill the channel almost to the roof. Where the stream scoured the
walls there were no more mushrooms. Instead the walls were slick with a fatty
dew of nitre that gleamed silver in the lantern's light. In the darkness beyond,
a row of stalactites hung like yellowing teeth from a narrow lip of brick in the
curve of the roof. This was the place, the place where young Jephson had finally
gone to pieces.
It had not come quite without warning. Jephson, a gangly surveyor with the
raw oversized knuckles of the not-quite man, had been discomfited for at least a
half-mile, the perspiration standing out on his forehead as he complained of
stomach aches, headaches, of difficulty breathing. He had insisted that the
ganger pause every few yards and hold out his lantern on its pole in the
darkness, checking and rechecking for the presence of choke-damp. While the
measurements were being taken his hands had trembled so violently that William
had taken the spirit level from him, anxious it might be lost in the underground
sludge. But it was not until they reached this point that the boy finally lost
his head. His fear had travelled backwards through the tunnel like gas,
poisoning the other men, but not William. William had watched with a detached
disinterest as Jephson flailed, screaming, in the filthy water. He had noted the
lettuce-green tinge of his pinched face as his hat was carried off by the
current. He had observed the spots of red flaring on each of his sharpened
cheekbones, the bony white fingers clutching at the crumbling walls. He had felt
nothing but a faint impatience as Jephson thrashed and shrieked in the
restraining grip of the ganger and his assistant. The flushers were stout as
butchers and their great fists encircled Jephson's arms as easily as if they
were axe-handles but for a time the young man's movements were so violent that
it had been as much as they could manage to hold him at all. At last Jephson's
wild legs had kicked out with such force that he had dislodged a welter of
bricks. 'Get 'im out of 'ere!' There had been no mistaking the edge of
warning in the ganger's habitually lugubrious tone. When finally they bundled
him up into the street, the rest of the surveying party following in subdued
silence, Jephson's hair was clumped with filth and his nails had been quite torn
away.
Copyright © Clare Clark, 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
