Lewin's Mead

by E.V. Thompson

Genres: Action & Adventure; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

When artist Fergus Vincent forsakes the slums of Lewin's Mead in Bristol he leaves behind him Becky, the street urchin whom he loved and married. As he sets sail on a warship bound for mutiny-torn India, Becky is left with the secret knowledge that she is carrying their child . . . But Becky has learned how to survive and she does not face the birth of her daughter, Lucy, alone. When a deadly cholera epidemic sweeps through Lewin's Mead and Becky is struck down she is cared for by Simon McAllister, a blind musician, and Lucy is taken to safety in Clifton by Fanny Tennant, the Ragged School teacher.

Despite the dangers and squalor of her surroundings, once Becky has recovered she is determined to bring up her daughter in the slums, the only home she has ever known, never giving up the hope that one day Fergus will come back to find them.

Release date: July 5, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 544

Sample

When the bell sounded in the entrance hall of the crumbling chapel, the pupils of the makeshift school rose in a body and fought to be first out to the street.

In Fanny Tennant’s class, more than thirty boys and girls aged between eight and fifteen stampeded for the door, ignoring her half-hearted call for them to leave in an orderly fashion.

At the doorway the youngsters pushed, pulled and jostled each other. One boy, obstructed by a girl a couple of years his senior, seized her by the hair and hauled her head back painfully. Ignoring the obscenities she shrieked at him, he retained his grip. Then, with a final heave that sent her tumbling to the ground, he scrambled past her.

Seated behind a high desk at the front of the class, Fanny watched the scene with despondent resignation. She should have brought the children to order. Made them leave the classroom with at least some semblance of decorum. Exerted her authority over them.

On any other day she would have done so, but not today.

This had been one of those days that was best forgotten. She had woken with a shocking headache that would not be shaken off. Then much of the morning had been spent unsuccessfully tramping through the reeking alleyways of the Lewin’s Mead slum in search of a young child who had not been seen at the ‘ragged school’ for more than a week.

Eliza Gardener was one of her favourites and a promising pupil. Fanny wanted to learn the reason for her absence.

Few men or women who did not actually reside in the back streets of Lewin’s Mead would have dared venture here. Policemen were known to have entered the warrenlike slum twice only.

On the first of those occasions they were in sufficient numbers to wage a small war if the need had arisen. They had entered the maze of streets in order to arrest an escapee from a prison hulk who had murdered more than one victim.

When, a few weeks later, two policemen had entered the dark alleyways in close pursuit of a robber, both constables had been set upon and killed.

Despite this, there was not a single resident, drunk or sober, who would have laid a finger on Fanny Tennant. Although not yet able to open the door to the outside world for the children of the appalling Bristol slum, she had at least shaped a key for them.

At her ragged school Fanny had given a sense of pride to children who would otherwise never have known the meaning of the word. She felt it was vitally important for the pupils of the Lewin’s Mead ragged school to have something in their day-to-day existence they could rely upon.

Her headache had persisted throughout the day. It would have been wiser had she not come to work this evening, but there was no one else available to take the class.

When the children had finally fought their way through the door, she counted the pencils deposited in haste upon her table by the class monitor. There were four missing. Four pencils, new only that day.

Fanny shook her head in despair. It was her own fault. She should have counted them before allowing the children to leave.

Sometimes she did not know why she bothered trying to educate such children. It seemed an impossible task. Every one of them was too dirty, unruly, or just too plain dishonest to be accepted in any other school.

Here, in a near-derelict chapel that had been disused for many years, she worked hard to give such children a glimmer of hope. An opportunity to achieve something outside their miserable existence. To show them that life had more to offer than poverty and dishonesty.

Fanny threw the pencils in the drawer in an angry gesture. She wondered whether the effort and long hours she put in at the school served any purpose at all. Whatever she, or any of the other helpers, did was ultimately to no avail. Every one of the ragged school pupils would eventually be convicted of robbery, thieving, prostitution, or worse, and was destined to spend most of his, or her, life locked inside a prison cell.

She had no doubt they would show far more interest in whatever they might learn there than in anything she could teach them.

Fanny pulled herself up short. This was the very defeatist argument put forward by the many opponents of the ragged school system. An attitude shared by some of the children themselves. It was an argument she was constantly fighting against.

She realised she must be feeling low. She would need to pull herself together and decided the answer might be to have an early night.

Fanny had slept badly the night before. In fact, she had not slept really well for some weeks. A feeling was beginning to creep up on her that life was passing her by. It left her with a discontent she had never known before.

She paused in the hallway and looked at herself in the full length mirror in which the pupils were encouraged to study themselves and improve their appearance. She saw a small, slim woman in her late-twenties, with long, reddish hair, pulled back and secured in what she herself would describe as a ‘severe’ style. She was not unattractive, Fanny told herself, but she looked tired. Extremely tired.

Perhaps this was the problem. She was too exhausted by her work at the ragged school to enjoy a social life.

Outside the old chapel building, Fanny waited for two of her fellow teachers who were following her out. Husband and wife, they passed by in frosty silence, with no ‘Good nights’.

Both were under notice of dismissal – for failing to maintain discipline in their classrooms. Mary Carpenter, the almost legendary Bristol-based reformer who had been the founder of the school, had signed their dismissal notices. It had been as a result of a report submitted by Fanny.

She had denounced them for countenancing the standard of behaviour she herself had experienced in her own classroom that very evening.

Turning the key in the lock, Fanny remembered what she had been subjected to during the lesson. Marbles flicked at her from the back of the class. A steady erosion of her authority which had culminated at one point in a fight between a girl who was defying her and another who took Fanny’s part.

Still thinking about it, she tucked the key inside her purse and set off for the cab rank around the corner, in Stokes Croft.

‘Good evening, Miss Fanny. May I have a word with you, please?’

A tall figure in dark clothing stepped from the shadows of a nearby doorway, touching his fingers to a shiny, black hat that made him loom even taller than he was.

‘Hello, Ivor. You startled me for a moment. I’m not used to seeing policemen in doorways around here. I hope you’ve had a better day than I.’

Fanny had known Constable Ivor Primrose for some years. He was one of the few policemen sympathetic to the aims of a ragged school and had done much to help Fanny and Mary Carpenter on numerous occasions.

‘I’ve had better days, Miss Fanny. I’m afraid the reason I’m here isn’t going to improve yours very much, either.’

Fanny’s heart sank. ‘Oh! Is it something that will keep until tomorrow?’

‘Quite frankly, no, Miss Fanny. I wish I could go home tonight and forget about it altogether. But I can’t, so I want to see someone caught for it, and the sooner the better.’

Fanny frowned in annoyance. ‘You are talking in riddles, Ivor. What has happened, and how do you think I might be able to help you?’

‘A street urchin – a young girl – has been found dead, Miss Fanny. Assaulted and strangled, according to the pathologist. A lady came to the police station early this morning. Said she’d been stopped in the street late last night by a “creature”. A woman with painted face and bold ways.’

‘You mean a prostitute, Ivor?’

‘That’s right, Miss Fanny. She told the lady she was to come to the police station and tell us to make a search of the derelict houses down by the river. The ones where the Irish were staying a year or two back. She said that when we found what was there we should look for the girl’s stepfather, because “he did it”. Those were her very words, apparently. Well, we went there and found this young girl’s body, like I said.’

Fanny was puzzled. ‘It’s very sad, Ivor, but surely it’s quite straightforward. You have the girl’s body. Now you need only go and arrest her stepfather. I can’t see how I can be of any help to you.’

‘Ah! Well, the trouble is that we can’t put a name to the girl. Until we do we can’t arrest anyone. The superintendent said I should come and find you. To see if you can identify her.’

Fanny looked at the grim-faced policeman in open dismay. ‘You mean … you wish me to go to the mortuary and identify this poor girl?’

‘I wish there was another way, Miss Fanny, but you know most of the children who live in Lewin’s Mead. I waited until you finished school until I spoke to you. I knew it wouldn’t go down too well with some of your pupils if you were seen talking to me.’

This was true enough. Almost every one of the children in her class had an undetected crime or two upon his or her conscience. If it was known she had been talking to a constable there would be many empty seats in her classroom tomorrow.

‘When do you want me to go?’

‘Right away, Miss Fanny. The superintendent, the coroner’s officer and the mortuary attendant are waiting in the Quakers’ Friar mortuary right now.’

It was the last thing Fanny wanted to do tonight, but she knew there was no way of avoiding the gruesome task. Nodding to the tall policeman, she said, ‘All right, Ivor. Let’s go there now.’

The mortuary was in an ill-lit courtyard not very far from the ragged school. It was a cold, forbidding building. Not a place she would have visited had she not been in the company of Ivor Primrose.

Three men were waiting for her inside the hallway of the building. Two were policemen and were looking decidedly uncomfortable. Only the mortuary attendant was cheerful.

‘Ah! You’re the lady who’s come to identify our little street urchin, are you? I’ll tell you one thing, she’s a sight cleaner than she was when she was brought in here, that’s for certain. The pathologist did a good job on her. Thorough, it was. Afterwards he stitched her up as neatly as though he was making a silk purse for a lady.’

While the mortuary attendant was talking, the small party walked through to another room. There was a smell in here that caused Fanny to wrinkle her nose in distaste. To one side of the room was a large marble slab, on which lay a tiny, sheet-covered form.

Before Fanny even realised what was happening, the mortuary attendant had drawn back the sheet revealing the head of a small child.

The pallor of death served to accentuate the bruises and abrasions on one side of her small face.

Fanny drew in her breath in an involuntary expression of horror.

‘You know her, Miss Tennant?’ The prompting came from the police superintendent who had been watching her expression closely.

Fanny’s eyes clouded over with tears, but she nodded her head. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, I know her.’

Fanny had found the girl she had been seeking in Lewin’s Mead that morning. The girl on the mortuary slab was Eliza Gardener.



‘Are you all right, Miss Fanny?’

Outside the Quakers’ Friars mortuary once more, Ivor asked the question anxiously.

Fanny had made the official identification of Eliza Gardener. She had also been able to tell the police superintendent the name of the man suspected of killing her, and the place where he worked.

She was unable to shut out the memory of that poor, bruised and bloodless face. But she nodded. ‘I’ll be all right tomorrow, Ivor. Just for tonight I’ll grieve a little for Eliza. There’s no one else who cares enough to shed a tear for her.’

It was a sad truth. Eliza Gardener had never known her real father. It was doubtful whether her mother could have identified him with any degree of certainty.

Then, when Eliza was eight years old, her mother had married Charlie Stock, a coal-heaver employed on the jetty at Welsh Back. Less than two years later, Eliza’s mother died. Since that time Charlie Stock had brought a variety of women to the basement rooms that constituted Eliza’s home.

Most of the women left after no more than a week or two, refusing to put up with the violence to which they were subjected at Charlie’s hands. Because of this, Eliza’s fortunes fluctuated wildly, dependent upon the whim of her stepfather’s woman of the moment. It was a recipe for disaster, but no more so than the conditions faced by a hundred or more children who existed in similar, or worse, situations in Lewin’s Mead.

At the end of the road, Fanny turned left instead of taking the road which would have led to the cab rank in Stokes Croft.

When Ivor Primrose expressed his surprise, she said, ‘I’ve decided to walk home, Ivor. I feel I need a little time before I have to face anyone else.’

‘Then I’ll walk along with you, Miss Fanny. If you don’t feel much like talking I’ll follow some way behind you, but the city at this time of night isn’t the place for a young lady to be walking alone.’

Fanny’s inclination was to argue with the constable, but she knew he was right. She gave a wry smile. It was ironic that she was safer in Lewin’s Mead than in the more ‘respectable’ parts of Bristol.

‘Walk with me, Ivor. I’m pleased to have your company. It’s just that I need to think of a white lie to tell my father about being late home. If I tell him the truth, he’ll try to persuade me, yet again, that I should give up my work at the ragged school.’

‘At times like this I’m inclined to agree with him, Miss Fanny, but I doubt if the school would be able to carry on without you and Miss Carpenter.’

The two walked on in silence for a while before Ivor asked, ‘Have you seen anything of our young artist friend recently, Miss Fanny?’

‘Fergus? No, I was thinking only yesterday that I haven’t seen him for some weeks. Have you?’

‘I haven’t seen him since he was on his way home from London and the prostitute was murdered in the house where he and young Becky live.’

Fanny remembered the incident which had shocked the whole city. A prisoner had murdered a guard in an escape from a prison hulk and made his way home to Lewin’s Mead. He had then killed the prostitute after holding her and the unfortunate woman’s landlady hostage. The man was patently insane. This had been the occasion when the police entered Lewin’s Mead in strength.

The siege of the house had ended when the man fell from the window of the room occupied by artist Fergus and his wife, Becky.

‘I was speaking to Charlie Waller, landlord of the Hatchet Inn, recently. He said Fergus could be making good money there if only he’d put in an appearance. It’s not only seamen who want portraits of themselves. Many Bristol men have been there asking for him. His fame has spread far and wide.’

‘I heard from London that his visit there was hugely successful,’ said Fanny. ‘But I have seen neither him nor Becky since his return.’ She had intended calling on them long before this. Time seemed to pass all too quickly. She was also somewhat hurt that Fergus had not contacted her since his return.

Fergus Vincent was a very talented artist who had come to Bristol’s Lewin’s Mead when he was invalided out of the Royal Navy with an injured leg. He painted the misery and the poverty of the people of the slums with a vivid realism that had seized the imagination of thousands who viewed his work.

Recognising the very real talent he possessed, Fanny had introduced him to people able to help his career as an artist. It had not taken long for his talent to capture the attention of those who were influential in the art world.

Before long Fergus was being fêted by all and sundry and had made a couple of journeys to London to fulfil commissions and arrange exhibitions.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way Fanny had fallen in love with Fergus, although it was something she had admitted to no one. She had been devastated when he suddenly married Becky, a young waif he had befriended in the Lewin’s Mead slum.

Nevertheless, Fanny had continued to do all she could to further Fergus’s career. It was she who had arranged his most recent trip to London.

‘I’ll try to get news of him over the next day or two,’ promised Ivor.

‘Don’t put yourself out too much, Ivor. He’s an artist, remember. When he’s working, neither time nor friends mean very much to him – and he has Becky.’

‘No doubt you’re right,’ agreed the big policeman. ‘All the same, I’d like to know that all is well with him and Becky. I like them both …’

At that moment there was a sudden eruption of noise from a public house farther along the street in which they were walking. Amidst the hubbub there were many raised voices. There was also the unmistakable sound of smashing glass.

Ivor sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Fanny, but I had better find out what’s going on in there.’

More glass was broken inside the building and suddenly people began spilling out on to the street.

Ivor stepped into the road to stop a passing hansom cab. As the vehicle came to a halt, the policeman said to Fanny, ‘I think you’d better be catching this, Miss Fanny. The city is a bit lively tonight.’

‘I’m not for hire,’ protested the hansom driver. ‘I’ve been out since five o’clock this morning and I’m on my way home.’

‘So you may be,’ said the policeman. ‘But you’ll go via the home of Alderman Tennant. In case you’re inclined to argue I’ll remind you that he’s chairman of the Watch Committee. He’s the one who’ll be considering renewing your licence next month.’

The driver of the hansom cab grumbled, but his protest was more subdued now. A moment later he climbed down from his seat to help Fanny inside the vehicle.

‘You’ll be home in no time,’ said Ivor, kindly. ‘Try to forget about what you’ve seen tonight. It’s not going to bring the poor child back. If her stepfather is the guilty party you can be quite sure he’ll pay the penalty for what he did.’

‘Thank you, Ivor.’ Amidst renewed uproar outside the public house, she added, ‘Shouldn’t you be there, putting a stop to the disturbance?’

He glanced in the direction of the public house where two men were locked together in combat, wrestling on the ground watched by fellow customers.

‘It won’t hurt to give them a minute or two. I recognise both the men who are fighting. There’ll be more noise than blows coming from them. I’ll let those about them enjoy it for a few minutes more. By then both the men who are doing battle will be pleased to have me stop them. If they haven’t had too much to drink, a word or two from me will be enough to bring them to their senses. If they’ve been drinking heavily I’ll take them to the police station and tomorrow they’ll appear before a magistrate charged with being drunk and riotous. Seven days in prison should be long enough for them to sober up and reflect on their foolishness.’

Saluting Fanny, Ivor Primrose signalled for the hansom cab driver to whip up his horse and be on his way.



Fanny was having breakfast with her father the morning after her unhappy visit to the mortuary when a servant came in to the room. After apologising for disturbing them, she told Fanny there was a police constable outside who wished to speak to her.

Alderman Aloysius Tennant frowned in annoyance. ‘Tell him to come back later in the morning. Miss Fanny was out until nigh on midnight attending to ragged school business.’

Turning to his daughter, he added, ‘I’ve told you before, Fanny. It’s high time you gave up your work at that school. You’ve spent enough years there. I don’t want you to end up like Mary Carpenter. She’s an admirable woman, but her good works have come between any chance she might have had of finding a husband and raising a family. That’s not what I want for you. It’s not what your dear mother would have wished, either.’

His last sentence was intended to circumvent any argument Fanny might make. Her mother had died many years before, leaving Fanny to revere the dim memory that was all she possessed.

The Alderman’s ploy was only partly successful. Fanny did not argue with him. Instead, she spoke to the maid.

‘Has the constable told you why he is here?’

‘No, miss – but he told me to tell you it was Constable Primrose.’

Fanny deposited her napkin on the table in front of her and rose to her feet immediately. Ignoring her father’s disapproval, she said to the servant, ‘I’ll come and see him right away.’

Ivor Primrose had taken off his tall, shiny top hat, but he was still large enough to dominate the hall of the Clifton house.

‘Come in, Ivor, we’ll talk in the library. It must be something serious for you to call on me so early in the morning. You can hardly have had any sleep.’

‘There was little sleep for any of us last night, Miss Fanny. It was as busy as any I can remember.’

‘Have you arrested Eliza’s stepfather?’

‘Yes, thanks to you. He’s in the cells right now. When I left him he was sobbing his heart out and swearing that he’d never meant her any harm.’

Accepting a seat in a leather armchair, Ivor looked up at her. ‘But I’m not here about Eliza. When I returned to the station last night a woman named Iris was there. She’d been arrested for prostitution – and not for the first time. She lives in the house where Fergus has a room.’

Ivor had Fanny’s full attention as he continued, ‘I asked her about Fergus and Becky. The question seemed to surprise her. She said she thought everyone knew that Fergus hadn’t been seen in Lewin’s Mead since the night there was all the trouble in the house.’

Fanny was startled. ‘But … that was two months ago! Where is he?’

‘No one knows, although there was some fuss about us going in to try to arrest Alfie Skewes. Perhaps his landlady, Ida Stokes, blamed him for what had happened, him coming back when everything was going on.’

Fanny was not sorry to learn that Fergus had apparently left Lewin’s Mead. The Bristol slum was a totally unsuitable environment for such a promising artist. However, she could not understand why he had failed to inform her of his new address. She was the link between Fergus and the art world of London.

‘Does anyone know where he and Becky have gone? Why hasn’t he told me? There are a number of exhibitions in the offing …’

‘Fergus didn’t take Becky with him. Apparently he’s gone off alone, without saying anything to anyone.’

‘Becky is still in Lewin’s Mead? Fergus has left her?’

Fanny found the news hard to believe. When Fergus had first risen to fame in the art world, he had been prepared to risk all he had and all he hoped for, because of Becky. She had always meant more to him than even his work.

‘Where is the woman who told you about this?’

‘Probably on her way to prison. She’s been convicted and sent away for fourteen days.’

This seemed to rule out the possibility of Fanny’s speaking to Iris and having her confirm what Ivor had just said. But she still found the news difficult to accept.

‘I just can’t believe that Fergus would go off and leave Becky. Why?’

Ivor shook his head. ‘I’ve told you all I know. If I hear any more I’ll tell you, but it’s taken two months for this information to reach me. Unless Fergus gets in touch with someone here …’ He shrugged.

‘Yes … yes, of course. Thank you for coming to tell me, Ivor.’

‘What will you do now?’

Fanny had already reached a decision. ‘Go and see Becky. I’ll do it this morning.’

Fergus and Becky had a room in Back Lane. It was one of the worst of all the alleyways that extended like the tunnels of a warren in this, Bristol’s most notorious slum.

As she walked along the narrow, garbage-strewn street, Fanny wondered, as she had on many occasions, why Fergus had chosen to continue to live here. It was, perhaps, understandable while he was gaining the trust of the inhabitants. He had wanted to paint them at home, at work, in birth and in death. Happy or distraught. But there had been no reason why he should continue to live here once his talent was recognised.

When Fanny reached the house she was seeking, her arrival was witnessed by Ida Stokes. The owner of the house, she occupied a ground-floor front room. There was very little that went on in Back Lane that was not witnessed by the blowsy, overweight woman.

Coming from her room as Fanny entered the house, Ida said, ‘Hello, dearie. Is there something I can do for you?’

‘I’ve come to see Becky. Is she in?’

‘I expect she’s still in bed at this hour of the day. Not that I’m one to interest meself in the comings and goings of me tenants. As long as they pay their rent on time they can do as they please, as far as I’m concerned.’

Eyeing Fanny, she said, ‘You’re the one who runs that school in St James’s chapel, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right.’ Fanny made her way along the gloomy passageway, heading towards the stairs.

Behind her, Ida Stokes sniffed her disapproval. ‘If you was to ask me I’d say that giving schooling to them as lives in Lewin’s Mead ain’t doing ’em no favours, dearie. All it does is give ’em ideas above their station in life. When they find that such learning don’t put shoes on their feet, nor meat in their bellies, they feel let down. Turn to doing what they’d have done anyway. They take what they want from them who have more than they need. The only difference is, they’ve learned fancy names for what they’re doing. If that’s all that learning does for anyone it’s got to be a waste of time, ain’t it now?’

Climbing the uncarpeted, rickety stairs, Fanny thought ruefully that she had heard the same argument put forward, if rather more eloquently, in the houses of her father’s friends, in Clifton and beyond.

She wondered how members of both vastly differing communities would view being allied in this way. In fact neither side had ever put forward an argument to cause her a moment’s doubt about what she and others like her were trying to achieve.

Fanny firmly believed that only by educating both sides would they ever eliminate slums such as this.

She arrived on the first floor to find a number of half-naked and incredibly dirty children staring at her through the uneven gaps between the banisters. Some of the children were small enough to fall through if they were not very careful, but Fanny knew better than to try to point this out to their mother, Mary O’Ryan – even were she in the house.

Fanny smiled at the children but received only blank, faintly hostile stares in return.

There was a door open on the next floor with a bundle of belongings standing inside. Fanny guessed this was the room belonging to Iris, the prostitute who had been arrested the night before.

Finally, a narrow, flimsy staircase brought her to the door of the attic room that had been Fergus’s studio before his marriage to Becky, and to where he had taken his young bride.

Fanny knocked twice before she had a reply in a voice thick with sleep.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Fanny Tennant. Can I come in?’

As she spoke, Fanny tried the latch but it seemed the door was bolted on the inside. It was something that was unheard of in this neighbourhood where nobody stole from each other.

‘No … it’s not convenient.’

Fanny couldn’t be certain, but she thought she could hear low voices in the room. It puzzled her. Was it possible that Fergus was in the house after all? Perhaps he was hiding from the world for reasons of his own? There was only one way to find out.

‘Please yourself, Becky. I’ll sit out here on the stairs until it is convenient.’

There was more whispering inside the room and now Fanny was convinced that one voice was definitely a man’s.

‘Wait for me at the ragged school. I’ll come and see you there,’ Becky’s voice came to her through the door.

Fanny was not willing to accept this suggestion. If Fergus was hiding from something, or someone, she wanted to know what it was.

‘I’ve had experience of some of your promises, Becky. If it’s all the same to you I’ll wait here until you come out. You might as well come sooner than later. I can stay here all day if need be.’

There was more whispering inside the room, then silence and Fanny settled down to wait. She hoped she would not have to remain on the stairs for too long. In spite of what she had told Becky she would not wait for more than an hour. Even that would seem longer. The smells rising from the remainder of the house were particularly unwholesome.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a bolt being drawn inside the room. The door opened and a man came rushing out. He turned his face away as he squeezed past Fanny on the dark stairs and she did not have a clear view of his features. However, one thing was quite certain. It was not Fergus. The artist still had a severe limp as a result of his naval injury. He would not have dared to take the stairs at such a speed.

Fanny rose to her feet and entered the sloping-ceilinged attic room.

Becky was shrugging herself into a dress. Not yet twenty, her body was still that of an immature girl. Lifting her long, black hair free of the dress, she looked at Fanny defiantly. ‘Well, now you’ve seen what I’m doing you can go back and tell Fergus that I’ve had a man in our room. You can tell him that he’s only himself to bla