Golden Hill by Francis Spufford Page B

in the cellars of Limehouse. Left and right he stamped as hard and fast as he could on the toes of those holdinghim; and as they commenced to jump about swearing, and loosed their hold, he threw himself forward onto the blood-perfumed bulk of the butcher before the fist could pick up speed. It was an awkward, huddled embrace that checked the momentum of the blow at cost of leaving Smith merely draped on his adversary, but all he needed from the posture was leverage; a hand’s grip on each bulging shoulder of the butcher’s coat, quick, quick, while he still grunted with surprise, and then his own jack-knifing body all the weapon he required to pivot back from the waist and slam his forehead as hard as ever he could into the butcher’s nose. The cartilage cracked. A hot wetness splattered Smith’s brow. The butcher howled. The butcher fell. Smith’s head seemed split with pain itself, and flashes of white internal lightning obscured his sight, but he retained enough of himself to roll from atop the fallen pork monolith, and to try his best to crawl into the confused dark. Legs, shouts, the pain in his head − hands and knees over the tussocks – when he shut his eyes the lightning continued – he had seen the Limehouse Kiss performed but had had no idea it was so grievous for the doer – still he was moving, foot by foot, yard by yard – the stir and the groans falling behind – the inglorious escape of an injured beetle, but even so an escape— And then a hand seized his ankle, a firm and solid and unappealable hand, and he was caught.
    It took a couple of panting minutes for him to be hoisted again to face the butcher, for the butcher himself rose only in slow staggering stages, the centre of his face a bubbling black mess, and all holiday humour gone.
    ‘You liddle bastard ,’ he said thickly, spitting out dark gobbets as big as garden slugs. This time the fist was inevitable and, swung into Smith’s belly, drove the breath out of him as effectually andthoroughly as if he had got in the path of a hammer. Smith coughed and retched. The butcher’s shadow-smeared visage loomed close. He spat on Smith. He hit him again. But it did not seem to satisfy him.
    ‘We wuz only goig ter tiggle yer up a bid,’ he said fretfully. ‘No fugging longer.’ Rummaging in the dark; the rousting-out from the butcher’s pocket of something that gleamed as narrowly along its edge as the new moon. A clasp-knife, maybe; extended with professional delicacy in the butcher’s quivering, aggrieved hand. ‘I ab goig,’ he said, his voice a caress of treacle, ‘to fugging fillet you.’
    Hesitancy in the group; a palpable in-drawing of breath all the way around the little circle, at a thought so cold and sharp it momentarily cut itself free from the soft fuzz of drunkenness, though it might in a moment more succumb to it, and dissolve back again.
    ‘Master—’ began the hiccupper anxiously.
    ‘Shud it,’ said the butcher. ‘Tide’s goig out. He’ll be floading past the Narrows by dawd. No-one’ll fide him. No-one’ll care. Now take his coad off.’ The butcher spat black slime; the butcher advanced. Oh well, thought Smith, surprised still to find his grieving all done.
    ‘Gentlemen!’ said a new voice: a bright voice, an amused voice, a drawing-room voice, a voice of tea-cups and couplets. ‘Are we all having fun?’ Smith dragged his gaze from the butcher, which seemed as hard as shifting a planet from its course. The gravity of his death had had him in its pull; he was tumbling down, all struggle done. He almost resented the interruption. There stood Septimus Oakeshott at the edge of the group, a sabre hanging negligently in one hand.
    ‘Who’s that?’ one of the prentices asked.
    ‘The Governor’s bumboy,’ said another.
    ‘This is privade business,’ said the butcher, ignoring them. He seemed to be finding it as difficult as Smith to change direction.
    ‘Is it?’ said Septimus. ‘I do sympathise, for I