The dancing master and James passed through a warren of alleys and stinking laneways, constantly keeping an eye upward in case a torrent of filth should fall on their heads. A wild pig came careening down one lane, snorting and squealing as a gang of urchins came chasing after it. The daylight seemed to have been sucked out of this part of the city; it was a dark and frightening domain, and James felt he would never be able to find his way back out of it again.
Eventually they came to an alley as narrow and dirty as the rest. They entered a dilapidated building, but as soon as they stepped across the threshold and into the hall, James doubled over and reached out blindly as he felt himself falling in a dead faint. Kavanagh caught him roughly and pushed him upright again, and James gasped for breath as a horrible stench filled his nostrils. The hall seemed to be moving, as if it were somehow alive. As James’s eyes grew used to the darkness, he saw that the passage was flooded with a bloody mess crawling with maggots. They would not be able to reach the stairs without wading through it, the thought of which made James retch.
Kavanagh swore. ‘The shambles has leaked again,’ he muttered. The adjoining house was a slaughterhouse, from where the foul animal blood had burst in through the back door. Kavanagh went back into the lane and retrieved a board that was lying upright against the brickwork. With this plank he made a rough bridge and they could cross to the stairs. As they climbed a steady stream of water poured down through the house.
‘Broken roof,’ Kavanagh said, as much to himself as to James.
James was still reeling from the stench of the hall. The stink of the rest of the house seemed to get worse with every step. They passed a room which had no door, and inside the small space James saw a large family sprawled on the floor over a meal of bread and soup.
‘Where is the door?’ he asked Kavanagh as they ascended.
‘Didn’t pay the rent,’ he said. ‘Landlord came and took away the door to make them quit the building. He was in a mad rage. The door was in such a state they could do nothin’ with it but burn it afterwards. Didn’t work, though, did it? He’ll have to drag them out by the hair of their heads.’
The higher they rose in the building, the more James realised that he was unlikely to be greeted by much comfort when they arrived. In this he was right. They climbed until they reached the summit of the house, and Kavanagh led him into a sparsely furnished garret. There was a single chair and a small table, and in the corner a thin mattress. Against one wall stood a chest. James couldn’t see anything else.
‘Where is my room?’ he asked.
Kavanagh laughed harshly. ‘Why, my lord, this is it and you are in it.’
James put his bag on the floor and made no further comment. It was clear to him now what his father and Miss Deakin had planned, and that they had no intention of retrieving him. Of Miss Deakin he expected no better, but he did not expect it from his father, for all his brutishness and harshness.
That night he found himself sleeping with an empty belly on Master Kavanagh’s hard floor, where Master Kavanagh’s fleas were not slow to introduce themselves, and when the next morning he enquired when his hot water was coming he was rewarded with another harsh laugh.
‘Can you dance, boy?’ Kavanagh asked him.
‘Not much,’ James said. ‘My mother taught me a little. Before she left …’
‘Well, you’re no use to me unless you can move lightly on your feet. I am a professor of dance, a master of the minuet, the quadrille, the jig, the reel, a bringer of joy to the city.’
James wasn’t sure he was convinced by this. There wasn’t much joy in this room.
‘I don’t think I will be able to move at all, unless I eat something.’
‘Don’t think you’re going to eat me out of house and home, boy.’
‘Aren’t you paid for it? By my father?’
The dancing master snarled. ‘Your father!’ he began, but went no further, going instead to the table where he cut a slice from a loaf and tossed it to James. The bread was hard enough to break teeth, but James devoured it. After this modest meal he made James show him what steps he knew, snorting with derision as James moved uneasily across the short space of his floor.
‘An elephant would dance more gracefully.’
Then the master demonstrated his trade, moving effortlessly as he hummed tunes both quick and slow. His feet seemed to belong to a different body than their owner’s upper parts. The upper body was quarrelsome and angry, but the feet had no quarrel with anyone; they moved lightly and happily and didn’t grumble or growl.
His impromptu performance seemed to put Kavanagh in better humour and he announced that he was now ready to encounter the world again. He had once had, he told James, the best dancing school in the city, and he had taught the better half of the city how to dance before he fell on evil times. He didn’t explain to James what brought the evil times, but James could guess as he watched Kavanagh take a swig from a bottle of gin. The dancing master pulled on his tattered wig and his hat, grabbed his cane and, with mock courtesy, took his leave.
‘What should I do?’ James asked as Kavanagh was leaving.
‘My lord should do as he pleases,’ the dancing master laughed, in a tone that made it clear that he really didn’t care whether James lived or died.
Left to himself, James took stock of his new surroundings and his new position. Was this to be his new life, hidden away in a rancid garret? The walls and the poor furniture looked back at him blankly. James felt a tide of panic wash through his body. He must get some air. He went down the stairs at a run, pausing on the landing where there was the room without a door. A man sat at a table tapping at the side of a shoe. Patches of leather were spread beside him on the table, and several ragged young children sat around listlessly. The shoemaker looked up sharply as James stood outside.
‘Who might you be?’
James had to think for a moment, as if this new life had robbed him of himself. ‘James Lovett.’
‘Well, James Lovett, what brings you to Coles Alley? You don’t look as if you’re related to the dancing master.’
‘I’m not.’
The shoemaker invited him in and waved to an empty seat at the table. ‘I’ll warrant he doesn’t have much more than gin in that room. You’re hungry?’
James was starving. The shoemaker’s wife brought him a bowl of broth. As James ate, the shoemaker cast a critical eye at his feet. James shifted uncomfortably under the gaze.
‘Those are not the shoes of a street boy, are they, James Lovett?’
‘They are now,’ James replied. ‘Since that is what I’ve become.’