Hooligan Nights | Page 3

you Londoners.
You ain't to be took in. You know-'
But young Alf was making his way through the crowd, and I hurried
after him.
Literature, too, 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