The Devil’s Acre

Edward rolled his eyes. The question did not surprise him. In contradiction to his rather cerebral appearance, Graff had always been a keen and active admirer of the fairer sex. Back when both men had been junior clerks at Carver & Weight’s, before Saul left for his current career as a parliamentary aide, Edward would regularly be recruited for pursuits over great stretches of London, after a group of dressmakers or governesses or even gay women who’d caught his friend’s undiscriminating, ever-vigilant eye.

He looked impatiently at his pocket watch. ‘The factory girls, you mean?’

‘Several dozen, are there not? Under your very roof?’

‘I believe the number is close to that. Most are rather ugly and unkempt, as you’d expect.’

‘But not all, eh?’ Saul was grinning. ‘You blasted rogue, Lowry.’

With a small grimace, Edward relented, telling of how he had walked Miss Knox home a couple of nights previously. He kept his description fairly brief. It did not seem necessary to mention that he’d found himself thinking of her several times since; that he’d taken to imagining her hand slipping around his side, pulling him closer, and her head tilting back to receive his kiss. He was a little embarrassed by this, in all honesty – by the fact that despite all his professional poise he could be so easily affected by a pretty face and an engaging manner.

‘And have you sought her out since?’

Edward shook his head. The meeting he was due to attend at the factory that night – with the American staff, after the operatives had been discharged – would be the secretary’s first stop in Pimlico in nearly a week. Lajos Kossuth’s crowded calendar of engagements had obliged the Colt Company to agree to conduct his tour of the works the very next Tuesday, only four days after the conversation with Street at the Hotel de Provence. Edward’s every waking hour since had been spent bound to the Colonel, under the somewhat haphazard stewardship of Alfred Richards, travelling between the offices of various publications, buying drinks and meals for Richards’s extensive circle of acquaintances and generally doing anything the press agent or gun-maker could think of to secure some last-minute coverage of the Hungarian’s visit in the newspapers. Edward had thus been denied all opportunity to arrange a second encounter with Miss Knox. This was both a frustration and a relief. He wanted to see her again, very much; but he was acutely aware that a dalliance with a drill operator might well hinder his ascent to the Colt Company’s upper reaches. On balance, it was best left alone.

Saul was visibly disappointed by this lack of progress. ‘Edward, did you learn nothing while we were together at Carver’s? It never pays to linger. You must be bold, my friend. This is a factory girl, for God’s sake, not some curate’s daughter who requires a ring on her finger before she’ll even take your hand. You must act.’

Edward rose from the table, tempted to point out that Saul’s pursuits had almost invariably ended in some form of humiliation for them – and that his friend had met the woman to whom he was currently engaged through the exertions of his mother. Instead, he simply ducked out under the blackened arch, directing a sardonic, sidelong look at Graff as he went.

‘I must catch a steamer to the factory,’ he said. ‘The Hungarian is due at ten tomorrow, and there’s a good deal still to arrange. But I thank you sincerely, Saul, for your interest.’ He nodded towards their plates. ‘I’ll let you stand for this one.’

Colonel Colt, clad in a powder-blue Yankee coat, stormed before the bandstand that had been erected over the factory’s water trough and threw his arms in the air, urging the dozen musicians perched upon it to play louder. They tried their best to obey the gun-maker’s impatient command, blowing hard on flutes and coronets and banging away at drums, but this still wasn’t enough to drown out the party of protesters that had gathered outside the Ponsonby Street gate. These people were singing a hymn – the Lord’s Prayer set to a rather turgid tune – and held aloft placards on which they had painted biblical passages. The largest read: The Righteous One takes note of the house of the wicked, and brings the wicked to ruin. At their head was a pale, majestic lady in a costly emerald-green dress and a black shawl and bonnet. Watching from across the yard, Edward realised that this must be Lady Wardell, the committed enemy of Colt that Lawrence Street had spoken of. Those around her had the upright deportment and sober clothing of city Evangelicals, the kind that one might see taking aristocratic Sabbath breakers to task on Rotten Row or performing missionary work within London’s foulest rookeries. Their hymn ended, and one among them, a man of the cloth from the look of him, started to rail against the evils of the weapons trade in a deep, imposing voice. He appealed to the Colt operatives to leave the American’s clutches and seek decent Christian labour instead.

‘The Apostle Matthew teaches us to love our enemies, not destroy them with revolving pistols!’ he cried. ‘To bless those who curse us, to do good to those who hate us, and to pray for those who persecute us, that we might be the sons of our Father in Heaven! My brothers and sisters, you must turn yourselves away from this infernal factory and the instruments of death it will produce!’

Edward stood with Alfred Richards in front of the factory block’s sliding door, beneath a hastily painted banner that proclaimed ‘Col. Colt Welcomes Kossuth’, and pictured the Old Glory, the Union Jack and the gaudy flag of the short-lived Hungarian Republic intertwined in everlasting friendship. Beside them was the American staff, plainly uncomfortable in coats and neckties, swapping obscene remarks about Lady Wardell and her protesters. Half a dozen newspapermen, all loose stitching, scuffed elbows and four-day beards, were positioned a little further towards the gate, their notebooks at the ready. The main body of the London workforce, numbering around one hundred and fifty, had spread itself across the yard before the warehouse, bunching around the bandstand, chattering loudly. Instructed by Gage Stickney to clean themselves off in the factory washroom before coming outside, they presented a slightly less grubby aspect than usual, but this wasn’t saying too much.

It looked, in all, like the setting for some kind of popular ceremony. The visit of Lajos Kossuth was being made to serve as the public unveiling of the factory – the event that would announce Colt’s arrival in London to the world. Despite the unruly workers, the Colonel’s evident peevishness and the disruptive efforts of those at the gate, Edward was growing excited. This, he thought, is the proper start of it.

Richards wore a frock-coat the colour of old Madeira with a ruffled shirt, and appeared surprisingly well. There was still something tarnished and moth-eaten about him, though, as if he was a rather neglected stuffed peacock instead of the actual living bird. Glancing over at the demonstration he let out a theatrical groan. ‘It would seem that we are this week’s cause,’ he declared, his nasal voice dripping with contempt. ‘How confoundedly tiresome.’

As the street sermon continued, intruding upon the jaunty music of Colt’s band, the tolerance of the assembled workers was soon used up. They started to heckle, telling the sermoniser to get himself back to church or shut his trap. When this did not deter him they started up a steady barrage of mud, dung and stones. A direct hit to the forehead with a jagged pebble effectively ended the lesson; the preacher stepped back unsteadily among his companions, accepting a handkerchief from Lady Wardell herself with which to staunch the blood that trickled across his face.

Even before this unexpected protest had commenced the morning had not been going smoothly. From the moment it had opened the factory had been alive with talk of a second beating, this time of three English operatives from the shaping machines. It had occurred on Lupus Street, significantly closer to the Colt premises, and limbs had been broken; one of the victims was said to be so badly hurt that he would not be able to return to the works. The general reaction to this news had been fearful, but some among the Americans were angry. Walter Noone, in particular, had been positively incensed, taking the attack as a personal insult. He’d insisted on a private conversation with the Colonel in the factory office, during which he’d no doubt laid out the case for immediate vengeful action. It was fair to assume that this hadn’t gone as he’d hoped, however, as he’d emerged from the office even more enraged than he’d gone in. Right then, in the minutes before Kossuth’s arrival, the watchman was marching intently along the perimeter of the factory, drawing nervous glances from protesters and Colt workers alike. His weathered, inexpressive features were visibly straining, like a door about to break open before some great force pushing against it from within.

‘So, Mr Lowry,’ said Richards, chuckling at the smart cessation of the sermon, ‘I understand that you were present when this little visit was conceived.’

‘I was, Mr Richards.’

The press agent grunted cynically. ‘He does very well indeed, this Mr Kossuth, for such a wretched failure. Forced to abdicate, driven into penniless exile, sent trailing around the globe like a bloody mendicant – yet still hailed as a living saint by the plebeian million wherever he damn well pokes his head up.’ He crossed his arms, leaning back against the sliding door. ‘Really rather depressing, is it not?’

Edward was attempting to refute this assessment when he was interrupted by a loud clatter of hooves over on Ponsonby Street, and the sudden flash of yellow panelling. The Colt barouche, sent to collect Kossuth from his Clerkenwell boarding house some hours earlier, cut swiftly past Lady Wardell’s party and drove across to the bandstand to hearty cheers; on cue, the musicians struck up a brisk version of ‘Hail Columbia’. Colonel Colt strode over to take his place before his men. He turned to Edward and muttered that Mr Kossuth was to be presented with a pair of their finest Hartford Navys if he took to the stand and addressed the factory.