Chapter 44

-Tap, tap.

The dry sound of beans rattling against the window struck his ears.

Old man Jack, the knocker-up, had passed by.

“Is it four o’clock already?”

Henry Jones, a bricklayer from Notting Dale, opened his eyes in the darkness.

His day always began within the night.

A life of waking before morning and returning only after nightfall.

A life where the time spent in darkness vastly outweighed the time spent seeing the sun.

Perhaps because of that, his eyes were accustomed to the dark. Even in the gloom, he could distinguish the shapes of objects, gauge the depth of sleep by his wife’s breathing, and estimate the severity of the cold by his daughter’s tossing and turning.

The fog visible outside the window was denser and more acrid than usual. Swirling together from factory smoke, sewer steam, and the breath of hundreds of thousands of humans, the mist crawled sluggishly over the streets, accompanied by the twilight of dawn.

“Time to head out to work, Mary.”

He shook his wife, who had fallen asleep on one side of the bed.

Her voice cracked, as if she had barely managed any sleep.

Thanks to having less work yesterday, he had only had to labor for fourteen hours.
He laid bricks, carried bricks, and laid bricks.

When he returned from all that and collapsed onto the bed, every joint in his body shrieked.

“Did old man Jack come by?”

“Yeah, let’s get ready quickly.”

Though alarm clocks that rang on time did exist, those belonged to noble lords living in places like Notting Hill or Camden. To the people of Notting Dale, who lived side-by-side with pigsties, an alarm clock was much like the feather adorning the hat of a noblewoman riding past in a carriage—something whose existence they knew, but could never touch; something visible, yet never their own.

Still, Henry Jones and his wife were among the fortunate ones in this street.

Thanks to Mary working as a maid at Kensington Palace and himself at the brick factory, they had the luxury of hiring old man Jack as a knocker-up. Countless people in this neighborhood didn’t even have that, facing the morning with wide, sleepless eyes.

“If only I could sleep soundly for just a single day.”

Henry Jones forced his heavy eyelids open.

The wish failed to form into sound, withering away inside his chest.

“Breakfast?”

“We have some bread left over from yesterday. But… it’s too hard, so we need to soften it in some water.”

Black rye bread.

Though it was something he faced every single morning, the blackness of the bread seemed unusually deep this morning.

That white-as-snow and soft-as-a-cloud bread from Kensington Palace that Mary sometimes spoke of with sparkling eyes—he had never even touched it, not even in his dreams.

A world where the color of bread dictated one’s social class. The distance between those who ate white bread and those who ate black bread was far greater than the distance from Notting Dale to Notting Hill.

Though reachable on foot in half an hour, measured by the color of bread, it was an unbridgeable chasm.

Still, Henry told himself, it was a blessing just to have this bread.

After all, many people in this street were sucking on their fingers with no work to be had.
In a world where the presence or absence of bread—not its taste—divided happiness from misery, discussing flavor was a luxury.

He took a bite of the bread.

A crunching sound echoed in his mouth, followed by an infinitesimal foreign texture that no flour dough should have, and his tongue fished out a tiny fragment.

Damn it, sawdust again?

It was an open secret that sawdust was mixed in to fake the weight of flour.

A custom so embarrassing it could hardly be called a secret, yet one everyone knew and everyone pretended not to see.

Yet Henry did not feel anger.

For he felt grateful just to be able to buy bread at this price.

A four-pound loaf of bread for the three of them to survive the day cost a whopping twelve pence.

His daily wage was a mere thirty-eight pence.

Arithmetic was as cruel as it was honest.

Setting aside six pence for a day’s rent, he spent three pence on a basket of coal firewood to stave off the cold.

The remaining money was twenty-nine pence.

To fill their hungry bellies, they needed to buy at least two loaves of bread (twenty-four pence), leaving a mere five pence behind.

With those five pence, they had to patch old clothes, mend shoes, and buy medicine when they fell sick.

Without eating even this coarse bread, they would not even have five pence left and would starve to death.

Between starving to death and chewing on foreign matter, a person always chose the latter.

For in the face of death, discomfort was a luxury.

Just then, Mary, who had gotten out of bed and was busily tidying her clothes, noticed him and put a hand on Henry’s shoulder with a apologetic look.

“…If there is any food left over after a royal banquet….”

At those words, Henry inwardly pondered.

Mary had said that among the servants working in the palace, some covertly pilfered wax candles, linen, or a little bit of food to sell at the market.

Because they were supplies delivered to the royal household, their high quality meant they fetched quite a handsome price at the market—let alone food. Even if it were the same bread, it wouldn’t be the sawdust-mixed bread they ate, but holy white bread made from pure flour and butter.

However….

Henry shook his head.

Ever since a daycare had opened inside Kensington Palace by Her Majesty the Queen’s grace, the complexion of his five-year-old daughter Alice had improved remarkably.

A rosy tint had begun to bloom on her cheeks, and her laughter had grown frequent.
Having received that grace, his conscience would not permit him to steal items from the palace.

“No, Mary. Rather than eating fine food with a guilty heart, I’d rather eat this bread in peace.”

“But Henry….”

“If we work harder than now, the day will come when we can proudly buy and eat white bread ourselves. I’ll work harder.”

Right.

Eating sawdust-mixed bread in peace was surely better than getting severely punished for secretly eating white bread smuggled from the royal court, wasn’t it?

“Daddy… where is my candy?”

At that moment, having just woken up, Alice rustled the edge of her pillow and searched for her candy.

A single three-ounce bag of candy he had bought by scraping together every last penny left over from Easter last.

It seemed unbelievable that a small bag of candy could cost more than a large loaf of bread, yet in front of Alice’s star-shining eyes and apple-red cheeks, Henry could not bring himself to say a word.

He couldn’t. To calculate prices in front of a child’s joy was the saddest thing a father could do.

Instead, they had promised that if she ate candy often, she would only have it once a month, and today happened to be that day.

“You mean that green candy?”

“Yes, Daddy!”

Henry momentarily cleared away the trencher (a wooden plate) that had held the black bread, opened the old tea chest they used as a dining table, and rummaged through it for a long time. The candy bag emerged from inside the tea box. A green glow shone faintly through the paper bag.

“Here it is, Alice. You must make it last, alright?”

“Yes, Daddy. Twice a day! When I’m not eating it, I’ll keep it in my tin cup!”

“Such a good girl.”

With that, slipping the brilliantly green candy into her cheek lest someone snatch it away, Alice wore a happy expression.

“I’m off to work. Alice, you must listen to Mama and behave politely at the daycare, okay?”

“Yees!”

Work at the brick factory would not be easy.

The fatigue from fourteen hours ago still lingered in his bones.

Yet Henry Jones made up his mind to endure.

For Alice’s happiness.

To feed his entire family white bread instead of black bread.

There was not a single second to spare for resting.

Before opening the door and stepping out, he looked back.

Alice was waving her hand with the green candy tucked in her cheek.

That tiny hand. That greenish smile.

Henry Jones closed the door carrying a smile within his heart. The fog swallowed him whole.

That evening, Henry Jones’s footsteps on his way home from work were lighter than usual, for it was the day the magazine Bentley’s Miscellany—his sole solace—was released. Once a month, on the day this magazine came out, a day steeped in brick dust felt just a little less heavy. Oliver Twist. Just the thought that the story of that poor orphan boy was waiting for him seemed to lift half the pain in his shoulders.

“Hey, Henry! Over here!”

As he stepped into his regular pub, The Prince of Wales, located in Prince’s Palace, his coworker Samuel waved at him.

The pub was already packed to standing room only with brick factory laborers and pig raisers.

Though the air was a mingling of acrid tobacco smoke, cheap gin stench, and body odor, it was the sole escape route blowing away a hard day’s toil and the cathedral of the poor. Here, people momentarily laid down their weariness, entrusted themselves to someone else’s story, and melted away the bitter taste of the day with beer.

“Samuel, today’s the day Oliver Twist comes out, right?”

“Yeah! Last month, that damn scoundrel Bill Sikes hanged himself and kicked the bucket, didn’t he? Today we finally get to see if that old villain gets strung up on the gallows!”

At those words, the eyes of the gathered men sparkled.

The story of the poor orphan boy Oliver was not just someone else’s tale; it was the story of the London poor living right here in Notting Dale.

When Oliver cried from hunger, they wept together. When Oliver took beatings, their own backs ached in sympathy. Oliver was merely ink upon paper, yet their blood was mixed within that ink.

“No matter how I think about it, this Charles Dickens fellow is the real deal among the real.”

“Right. He’s the only educated pen who knows what a cesspool life is like around here!”

“Quiet! Keep it down for a second!”

At that moment, Mrs. Scranton, the landlady of the pub and one of the few people in this street who knew how to read, climbed up onto a table. A freshly minted magazine was clutched in her hand.

“Come on, keep your ears open, everyone. Master Charles Dickens didn’t write a story this time; he sent a special letter.”

“A letter? What about Oliver?”

“Just listen for a second. The title is… ‘In Memoriam: The Death of Oliver Twist.’”

An instant silence fell over the pub, as if a bucket of cold water had been dashed upon it.
The hand lifting a pint glass froze, and the fingers of a man about to put a cigarette to his lips flinched.

Death. Oliver’s death. Oliver in the story was still alive.

Yet death? A memorial?

“If Oliver had… rushed to the bakery… that bread would have been as white as snow… but that is not the color of flour….”

Mrs. Scranton read the text aloud in a trembling voice.

“It is the color of bone dust… forged by the greed of merchants and heavy tariffs.”

Bone dust.

Suddenly, Henry Jones recalled the texture of the bread he had eaten that morning.
That unpleasant, gritty foreign substance grinding in his mouth.

That wasn’t sawdust… it was bone? They ground up animal bones and put them in bread?

Someone in the corner could be heard retching, but Mrs. Scranton did not stop reading.

“What touches Oliver’s tongue is not cow’s milk… it was a fraud mixed with a calf’s smashed brains and plain water.”

Brain matter???

The true identity of that white, thick milk was brain matter???

Henry Jones felt sick to his stomach.

His stomach churned.

He forcefully swallowed back the lump of bread he had swallowed this morning, which threatened to rise right up to his throat.

Yet the real shock came next.

“Lastly, Oliver… sparkling like a jewel, a green candy… even that was a lump of arsenic.”

Thud.

In that instant, Henry Jones felt his heart drop to the floor. No, it felt as though it plunged straight through the floor, deeper into the earth, far down beneath the ground. His hands began to shake violently. He had been gripping his pint glass, but it slipped from his hands.

Green… candy?

That very morning, the candy Alice had popped into her mouth. That brilliantly green candy that sparkled like a bead. The one she had put in her cheek and smiled happily over, the one they had promised she could eat only once a month because it cost more than a loaf of bread.

“By the way… what is arsenic?”

He felt uneasy.

He knew for certain it was something bad, but not knowing exactly what it was, he looked around in confusion. Mrs. Scranton clicked her tongue, as if bewildered that anyone wouldn’t know, and enlightened him.

“Man, are you blind?! It’s rat poison, rat poison!”

“…W-What?”

“That rat poison they make by mixing it with pig fat!”

In a flash, Henry Jones’s mind went blank.

The very thing they only use to make rat poison… was inside her candy?

Sound vanished. The pub’s buzzing, the clinking of pint glasses, Mrs. Scranton’s voice—every sound grew distant, as though submerged underwater.

Only a single scene remained in Henry Jones’s mind.

This morning, Alice’s cheek. The smile she wore as that green candy melted inside her cheek. The happiest smile in the world, the most defenseless smile in the world.

The true identity of the candy melting away inside that smile was rat poison?

His heart crumbled away. Amidst the ruined debris, a memory from the past surged up.

The day Mary had put Godfrey’s Cordial into Alice to make her sleep. Her face as she fell to pieces with remorse after realizing that giving her a syrup laced with opium to keep her quiet was no different from giving her poison.

She had vowed never to repeat that again. She had promised never to feed the child anything harmful.

And yet.

He had been feeding rat poison to his child.

Under the name of candy. Wrapped in the package of a green jewel.

Once a month, on the day the child was at her happiest.

“You bastards…!”

Heat surged up from deep within. It was anger, but not just anger alone.

Within it lay shame, self-reproach, and a father’s despair at having failed to protect his child.

His hands, unaccustomed to trembling from exhaustion, quivered violently with rage.

He tried to say something, but his throat choked up, and no sound came out.

Before remorse and utter emptiness could take the form of words, they shattered inside his chest.

Henry was not the only one feeling such emotions.

The faces of parents within the pub turned dark and ruddy.

Some hung their jaws open in disbelief, unable to close them, while others drained the beer in their pint glasses in a single gulp, as if trying to wash away their fury.

A passing doubt brushed their minds—what on earth might be floating inside that very beer? But now was not the time to split hairs over that.

“These madmen… just what the hell are they selling people?”

“Bread, milk, candy… no matter if we live in the slums, this is crossing the line. This is too far!!!”

At that moment, Mrs. Scranton drew in a sharp breath and cried out.

“…Unless the problems facing our Olivers are resolved, the final story of Oliver Twist shall be postponed indefinitely… what?”

“What?”

“Postponed indefinitely? No, what on earth does that mean!”

Bewilderment turned into anger, anger into a shout, and the shout became a fist slamming down upon a table.

The glasses on the table rattled. They looked ready to dash outside this very second and grab the nearest baker by the throat.

“Lads! Just how long are we going to live like this miserably?”

Right at that moment, amidst a clattering commotion, a robust young man climbed up onto a table in the middle of the pub and shouted.

“William, you damn rascal! Get down from there this instant!!!”

“Oh, Granny! We’re having an important conversation right now!”

Despite Mrs. Scranton’s shriek-like protest, her grandson William showed no intention of stepping down from the table.

William Jones.

Though a former watchmaker, he seized every opportunity to argue that working-class folk like them deserved the right to vote. The pub regulars half-respected him and half-ignored him for it.

“Hey! Instead of chasing pie-in-the-sky dreams like political struggle, if you’d just worked a bit harder, wouldn’t you have bought white bread!”

Someone’s remark sparked laughter, but William, unbothered, shouted with veins bulging in his neck.

“Don’t talk such stupid nonsense! Do you really think working harder gets you white bread? Fat chance! We’ll be lucky if those merchant scum don’t just keep raising prices!”

When the man who had pointed him out fell silent, William began to unpack the thoughts pent up inside him.

“As Mr. Dickens said, the laws of this country are the problem, you fools.”

“The laws are the problem?”

“Look here.”

William said, gesturing in a wide circle with his finger to encompass everyone in the pub.

“Do you think those noble lords up top eat bone-dust bread? Do you think they drink milk laced with calf brains? They live off clean flour and fresh milk! So how could they possibly have any idea what people like us are scraping by on and eating!”

Everyone fell silent, but that silence was tantamount to agreement.

“Mr. Dickens says this is all because of the Corn Laws! Because the lords won’t lower tariffs so they can sell the wheat grown on their own estates at high prices, bread prices go up, and the merchant bastards mix in all sorts of trash just to make ends meet!”

William’s voice bounced off the low ceiling of the pub and echoed back. Once again, he unpacked Dickens’s writing, this time in his own words. If starving to death from poverty or dying unknowingly from poison meant the end was the same either way, shouldn’t they change the law before they died?

Facing the people who had hesitated until then, William looked around at them all and shouted.

“We grew up eating wretched trash, but are you going to tell your children to live eating that too?”

Henry Jones’s mind flashed to Alice’s face.

The face she made smiling with the green candy tucked in her cheek. That smile. That defenseless smile.

Every father inside that pub, every mother, was picturing the exact same face.

Different names, different ages, yet identically defenseless faces of children.

Children knew nothing. They didn’t know that bones were mixed into the bread they ate, nor that rat poison was melting inside the candy they sucked on.

Yet the children were happy. They were happy because white bread was white, and happy because green candy was sweet.

Protecting that pure happiness was supposed to be an adult’s job. Instead of protecting it, adults were buying that poison with their own hands and popping it straight into their children’s mouths.

Not a single person could answer William’s question. Naturally, no parent wanted to feed their children such things, but the wall of reality was…

“So, all we have to do is change the law!”

“…And how on earth are we supposed to do that?”

When Henry Jones finally raised his arm and asked, William didn’t answer right away; instead, leaning forward from the tabletop, he reached out a hand. Then, smiling briefly, he said.

“We just need to win the right to vote, too.”

The right to vote.

The voice with which William spoke those words was small.

Yet, like dry beans tapping against a windowpane, in the darkness before the sun had yet risen, ringing out like the sound announcing the start of a day, it echoed loudly in everyone’s ears.

“The right to vote, huh….”

Everyone present here was someone who had endured by chewing black bread.

People who had started their days swallowing sawdust and bone dust.

They had endured more than enough already.

Now, all that remained was to stop enduring and start changing things.