What little light fought for survival against the dank dark was provided by small brown wax candles that produced a smaller brown flickering light. Slivers of sunlight penetrated the cracks in the rotting wood door, but soon became lost in the gloom. They brought a damp stench and clung to the air and wet the lungs and offended the nostrils. There were no beds—only two dirty grey uncomfortable mattresses made from stitched sacks and straw, placed on the cobbled stone floor. One for his mother and sometimes his father—if truth is told, the father was rarely seen and spent most of his time pissing at the gin shops. The other mattress belonged to the boy. They slept in ragged sheets that wouldn’t keep a small rat in bedding. The boy barely noticed his father and was not even truly aware of him until his mother was in the cold grip of The Consumption. In his memories, the mother’s smile lit up the dark; she was soft and warm despite the harsh cold world. Her hair was red curls, wild, that tickled his nose whenever she cleaned his face with kisses. She would sing to him at night, sweet angel songs as she sat in front of a cracked mirror putting on her coal soot make-up.
“Mummy has to go out, my lovely boy.” She looked so beautiful, smiling before him and her voice a comforting whisper. “But when the morning comes, I will have enough money to take you to breakfast.” The boy’s mouth practically drooled at the thought. She kissed him and that night he dreamt of sausages and oranges and treats to come.
The next day the boy woke with his mother sitting over him.
“Get up, sleepy head; I owe you breakfast.” She beamed.
The boy was out his makeshift bed and holding her faster than a dying eye can flicker. They laughed and the boy dressed into his one and only set of clothes. An itchy and thick woollen suit and heavy leather shoes Mum had bought from a boy who no longer needed them. His mother wore the same outfit from the night before and although she looked a little dishevelled and smelt of smoke and gin, she was still beautiful. Soon out in the sun they walked to the market. Mother held her son’s hand tightly as people barged by, hurrying and not watching where they were going. The noise was incredible to the boy, as stall vendors called their wares to the world. The boy felt dizzy with happiness as his senses where overwhelmed. The air smelt warm and exotic, the noise intoxicating, the sights inviting as they passed brightly coloured stands selling all manner of fancy goods. She bought two hot sausages and the boy nearly swallowed his whole, burning his lips. But the pain was nothing to the satisfaction of having something warm in his belly. His mother laughed at him and gave him another sausage, which disappeared as fast as the first. They walked to the hill that overlooked the city. The buildings steamed and shimmered with chimney smoke in the hot sun. As they strolled past green trees and upon the carpet of grass, something they had done many times, Mother stopped suddenly, gasping for breath. The boy panicked by her side as she fell to the ground, landing on her back in the green grass. She looked pale even beneath her make-up. The boy shook her as best he could with his small arms; there was no one around to help.
“Mum, Mum, wake up please,” he pleaded.
She must have heard his cries, for moments after falling she opened her eyes to her son.
“I was resting, boy.” She smiled. “Can’t I rest?”
The boy held on to her, burying his head in her chest, not seeing the trickle of crimson from her mouth’s corner. The mother, however, knew it was there as certain as she knew what was happening deep inside her vulnerable flesh.
The death of his beloved mother began slowly, and with all the efficiency of a leech attached to an exposed vein. The boy’s world was not taken from him in a swift act of violence but rather a fading from the inside and outwards. The illness took her strength until, when she was at her most vulnerable, it took her soul. Without fresh water or any type of medicine she soon became bedridden. Weak, she could barely speak without the trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth or wet, red chokes denying her breath Her pale skin the colour of curdled milk and just as soaking wet as she perspired her life away. The change was subtle at first: the odd cough there, the unsure strength of weak knees.
“What is wrong, mummy?” the boy would ask.
“Nothing.” The mother would smile, hiding the red spots on the handkerchief from his view. But when the boy crept closer, the mother held him more and more at arm’s length. Until one day she was too weak to even muster the effort for that. For hours he lay upon her, huddled, thirsty and starving in the dark but unwilling to leave her side. Her breathing was gasping and her body felt as brittle as twigs, but still the boy would not leave her. Finally after untold hours, the mother stirred and opened her eyes for the first time in a long, long time.
“Where is Father? Where is he? We need to get you help,” the boy said; his voice was a dry whisper so as not to hurt his mother with heavy words.
“We do not need him, son, and never have,” she replied so distantly, lost in a memory of what was, and when she spoke of him sadness overshadowed her otherwise defiant words. “Come,” she added between deep gasps. “Let us be out of here; you have to be strong and help me.”
The sun was warm on the boy’s face as he held his mother in the outside world.For one fleeting moment as the smells and sounds of the city washed over him, everything was good and familiar. The shouting of the boat workers on the bank of the river as huge steam ships came down from faraway places. The smells of the river, a cocktail of heat and rain with a measure of rotten fish from the market. There was the laughter and fighting from the gin houses that lined this part of the city as sailors came and went and ladies with thick make-up greeted them with drunken smiles… The mother held on to her son tightly, and each step was an achievement for both the mother whose life was slipping and for the young boy holding her upright. They half walked half stumbled across the cobbled street. A horse and carriage trotted by dropping steaming manure behind it. A few of the homeless children followed collecting the stinking piles into sacks. The boy knew a life of poverty; he shared a bed with lice and at many times had taken dark water from a burst pipe. However, his mother had always kept him sheltered and safe. Even from his own father, who once came stumbling into the hovel angry that his mother had no coin for him to liberate.
Like a shadow of a beast, he pointed, looming over the boy, slurring words through a foul breath.
“What about him? Get him to the sweep. What about it, boy? You’ll climb a chimney for us, won’t you boy?” He swayed over his child, but before his giant hands could grab him, his mother stood between them.
“He’s five and if you go anywhere near him, I’ll see you floating in that black river out there, feeding the rats.”
He grabbed his son by the arm with such force that socket and bone were very nearly separated. The pain and shock was such that the boy could only yelp at being dragged along. The mother went after the monster in an attempt to save her child but her breath betrayed her as she violently spiralled into a coughing fit, collapsing on the floor, gasping as if she had woken to find herself buried alive. The boy cried for his mother but too late; he was dragged into the street, finding himself slapped across his head by his father’s huge palm. As the pain shook him senseless and his vision fired purple sparks, his father threw him over his shoulders where the boy flopped like a fresh corpse. He bounced along the cobbled streets. The sun seemed violently radiant and the boy’s ears rang a hum. The boy was brought to a street of houses in the darker side of town, but still with a higher standard of living than the boy and his mother had to endure.
“I want to go home,” the boy spluttered against nausea as his father set him down on the street. He wobbled and sat in the dirt.
“Shut up, boy; time you earned your keep, be a man,” his father snarled back.
The street was full of houses crushing together, with red brick and grey slate roofs overhead.
