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Chapter 2 1847, Bolton Street, Liverpool
The steam whistle screamed and he knew it was time to get up. It must be five o?clock already.
Every morning was the same. That was the trouble of living ?round the corner from the station---the constant chuff, chuff, chuff of the steam engines and the slamming of carriage doors. The piercing whistles. The smoke?thick, black and choking, it descended on all the buildings and people like big, sooty snowflakes. The station had had only opened eleven years ago but already the fine cast iron struts and beams were blackened and grimy.
Joe Chapman yawned, scratched his straggly, black beard and dragged himself out of his bed. Twenty three years old, he was a strong muscular man with bushy eyebrows and a broad stomach?the result of many a pint of beer. A dark brown wart stood out on the end of his broad nose giving the impression that a fly had arrived there to take an extended rest. Standing in the early morning darkness he muttered ?**** it?s cold?, farted, buttoned on yesterday?s shirt and pulled up his thick canvas trousers over the long woolen underpants that he slept in. Fumbling for the stub end of a candle, he struck a match and lit it. The candle fluttered in a cold morning breeze. Outside it was pitch dark on this miserable November morning.
?Are you goin? now??
?Aye lass, see you tonight. The foreman told me that a ship?s goin? to dock today so likely I?ll be late. Might stop in for a couple of pints after work.?
Tom became uneasy and started with those whiny noises that he always made before launching in a full-blown spate of crying.
?There, there now little one, your mam?s here.? Elizabeth snuggled up to him, pulled out her breast and gave him her swollen dark nipple??.silence, except for a contented slobbering sucking. ?There, there, there. That?s what you wanted wasn?t it??
Joe tied up his hob nailed boots, belted up his trousers and pulled on his thick second-hand coat. Leaning over the baby, he ran his fingers through Elizabeth?s long, chestnut brown hair, kissed her on the cheek, started out the door and down the few stone steps onto the slick pavement.
?Your cap, Joe! Don?t forget your cap.? He came back, took the cloth cap off the back of the chair.
?T?rar Lizzie. See ya?
?T?rar m?love.?
When young Edward heard his pa go he jumped up from bed, ran to the door, called out ?Bye pa!? and scurried back to the warmth of ?his? bed where Elizabeth and baby Tom were enjoying each other?s closeness and intimacy.
The two brothers were fast asleep on the straw-filled mattress in the same room. Ned and James were inseparable. Identical twin brothers, they spent most of their time together and were confused by nearly everybody except of course, ma, pa and young William, his six year old brother.
Swirling fog mixed with sooty smoke tasted sharp and foul in his mouth. Damp fog almost blocked out the gas lights outside the curved cast iron roof beams of Lime Street station. He walked a few yards, waited until a horse carriage had clip clopped past and up to the station forecourt where a heavily over coated and bewhiskered gentleman got out, then Joe sneaked behind the old, broken brick wall which partly enclosed a derelict plot of waste land. The long wet grass dampened the bottoms of his thick trousers. The dim gas lamps of the station made a gloomy shadow behind the wall; he undid his belt, dropped his trousers, pulled down his pants and squatted. He shivered involuntarily as his backside brushed against the cold wet grass.
The train pulled out of the station with one last lonesome whistle and made the long grinding haul up the incline to Edge Hill; Joe strained and ****ted. ?Bloody hell, it?s freezing,? he muttered to himself. His tenement building was old and he preferred to use the waste land instead of smelling up the one room where he and his family slept, lived and cooked. And after all, Lizzie would have to take the night waste down anyway and empty it in the privy; she didn?t like to do that chore in front of her neighbours: much better like this. He wiped his backside with a scrap of newspaper which he had kept in his coat pocket for just this job, threw it down, pulled up his underpants and adjusted his clothes again.
The damp fog loomed everywhere and hansom cabs appeared out of the darkness. Wet, gloom and choking smoke closed in around Joe. It was dirty weather. Steam engines clanged, whistled and roared into and out of the station.
Making sure that the coast was clear, Joe emerged onto the pavement, walked up the rest of Bolton Street and up the sloping forecourt to the coffee stall outside the station, wiping his hands on his great coat.
That was his routine every day. Dress, kiss, ****, coffee and bun, walk to the docks.
The coffee was weak again. ?Mary, where in hell do you get this coffee? It?s as weak as maid?s water!?
?You don?t like it, go elsewhere,? she rejoined, ?It?s all the same though. Worker down at the coffee warehouse told me the **** coffee dealers add ground up, mouldy ships? biscuits. Makes it go further.? Joe and Mary knew each other well and there was a mutual give and take of curt remarks that neither of them took to heart.
Joe spat in reply. His spittle was green grey with black sooty flecks.
He knew Mary was right.
It was common to adulterate food and drink. Bakers added powdered chalk to whiten the bread. Potato flour was added to wheat flour because it was cheaper. And that wasn?t the half of it. Strychnine was added to rum and beer, sulphate of copper to pickles and wine, lead chromate to mustard, lead to cider. But sugar and chocolate were the worst with healthy doses of copper carbonate, lead sulphate, bisulphate of mercury and Venetian lead added. Joe never had enough money to buy chocolate but he liked bread and dripping, and beer. Yes, he liked beer. In fact he spent three or four evenings a week at one of the hundreds of ale houses that seemed to be on every street corner of Lime Street. Joe never drank milk though.
The fog closed in around him as he joined the groups of other silent dockworkers making their way down Lime Street, along Ranelagh Street and Hanover Street to the wharves and quays. He coughed and spat up the filthy phlegm onto the pavement.
That's the beginning of chapter 2.
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