Hooligan Nights | Page 3

by the barrowful; paper covers with pictures that hit you between the eyes and made you blink. And music! 'Words and music. Four a penny, and all different.'
You may buy anything and everything in the Walk--caps, canaries, centre-bits, oranges, toffee, saucepans, to say nothing of fried fish, butchers' meat, and green stuff; everything, in fact, that you could require to make you happy. And a pervading cheerfulness is the note of the Walk.
On that Saturday evening there were probably more people in Lambeth Walk who made their living on the crooked than in any other street of the same length in London. Yet the way of transgressors seemed a cheerful one. Everybody was good-humoured, and nobody was more than reasonably drunk.
Lower down we came to the meat stalls, over which the butchers were shouting the praises of prime joints. As we passed, a red-faced man with sandy whiskers suddenly dropped his voice to the level of ordinary conversation.
'You ain't selling no meat to-night, ain't you?' He said, cocking a knowing eye at my companion.
Young Alf glanced quickly at the butcher, and then round at me.
'I'll tell you about that presently,' he said, in answer to my look of inquiry.
''Ere we are,' said young Alf, a few moments later, as we turned suddenly from the glaring, shouting, seething Walk, redolent of gas, naphtha, second-hand shoe-leather, and fried fish, into a dark entrance. Dimly I could see that the en trance broadened a few yards down into a court of about a dozen feet in width. No light shone from any of the windows, no gas-lamp relieved the gloom. The court ran from the glare of the street into darkness and mystery.
Young Alf hesitated a moment or two in the shadow. Then he said:
'Look 'ere, you walk froo'--straight on; it ain't far, and I'll be at the uvver end to meet you.'
'Why don't you come with me?' I asked. I could see that he was looking me up and down critically.
'Not down there,' he said; they'd think I was narkin'. You look a dam sight too much like a split to-night.' Then I remembered that he had been keeping a little ahead of me ever since we had met at the Elephant and Castle. I had unthinkingly neglected to adapt my dress in any way to the occasion, and in consequence was subjecting my friend to uneasiness and possible annoyance.
I expressed my regret, and, buttoning my coat, started down the court as young Alf melted into the crowd in Lambeth Walk. It was not a pretty court. The houses were low, with narrow doorways and windows that showed no glimmer of light. Heaps of garbage assailed the feet and the nose. Not a living soul was to be seen until I had nearly reached the other end, and could just discern the form of young Alf leaning against one of the posts at the exit of the court. Then suddenly two women in white aprons sprang into view from nowhere, gave a cry, and stood watching me from a doorway.
'They took you for a split,' said young Alf, as we met at the end of the court. 'I know'd they would. 'Ello, Alice!'
A girl stood in the deep shadow of the corner house. Her head was covered by a shawl, and I could not see her face, but her figure showed youth and a certain grace.
"Ello!' she said, without moving.
'When you goin' to get merried?' asked young Alf.
'When it comes,' replied the girl softly.
The voice that falls like velvet on your ear and lingers in your memory is rare. Wendell Holmes says somewhere that he had heard but two perfect speaking voices, and one of them belonged to a German chambermaid. The softest and most thrilling voice I ever heard I encountered at the corner of one of the lowest slums in London.
Young Alf was apparently unaffected by it, for, having thus accorded the courtesy due to an acquaintance, whipped round swiftly to me and said;
'Where them women's standing is where Pat Hooligan lived, 'fore he was pinched.'
It stood no higher than the houses that elbowed it, and had nothing to distinguish it from its less notable neighbours. But if a Hooligan boy prayed at all, he would pray with his face toward that house half-way down Irish Court.
'And next door--this side,' continued young Alf, 'that's where me and my muvver kipped when I was a nipper.'
The tone of pride was unmistakable, for the dwelling-place of Patrick Hooligan enshrines the ideal towards which the Ishmaelites of Lambeth are working; and, as I afterwards learned, young All's supremacy over his comrades was sealed by his association with the memory of the Prophet.
'This way,' said young Alf.
The girl stood, still motionless, in the shadow, with one hand clasping the shawl that enveloped her head.