The city was a foul place. Smoke rose in curling spirals from the chimneys and mixed with the low-hanging clouds in the air. The streets were a mixture of cracked cobblestones, mud, and debris--fruit peels, human and animal excrement, old scraps of fabric. The city smelled like urine and
(more) stale alcohol, like mud and heavy perfumes, like loneliness.
Mother washed clothes for a living, though it wasn't much of one. She scrubbed the peacock-blue and emerald-green gowns of the upper class while I fetched hot water from the pot on the fire for her. Over and over. Smoke and steam intermingled, turning the washroom gray and cloudy. Mother always was sweating. My feet had worn a smooth path in the stones from the fire to the washbasin.
I was one of the young boys, eleven years old, who had nothing better to do than pickpocket the upper-class, hitch rides on the backs of carriages, and run through the streets in grubby gangs. My friends and I threw stones at windows, chased horses, threw rotten tomatoes at constables. We weren't bad kids. In fact, we were very good kids. But we had nothing much better to do.
Sometimes in the evening, when you could just see the pale sun setting and the grinding noise of industrial London slowed and silenced...Sometimes, I took off my shoes and dirty jacket and stolen cap and climbed barefoot up the side of the buildings, my toes finding footholds in the bricks, my fingertips scraping and bleeding. Pigeons rose around me as I climbed to the chimney. I would lean against the warm brick and look out.
Beyond my view, beyond the smog and the Thames and the dirty harbor and the swearing sailors, beyond London, there was a place where I could see the sun.(less)
