Gaslight by Mark Dawson

1
    THE CLOCK ACROSS THE STREET struck half past four. It was a bleak Friday in late November and London was still slowly waking up from the nightmare of the Great War. The sun had already faded beneath the rooftops, the darkness bleeding into Soho’s dingy grid of streets and the smog creeping up from the river like a thief in the night. Harry Costello braked his bicycle and came to a stop. He disembarked, manoeuvring the ten foot wooden ladder that was balanced on his shoulder. He stood the ladder against the side of the lamp post, the tapered end braced against the cross bar at the top, twelve feet above the ground, and clambered up. He opened the fragile glass cage that protected the four delicate mantles positioned in a circle around the enamel refractor. He eased his hand into the chamber, found the tap, turned on the flow and lit it with a large industrial match. The pop and slow illumination of the gas told him all was well and the warm yellow light spilled down to flow in a circle around the base of the lamp post. He took the rag that he had stuffed into his belt and cleaned the glass panels, quickly dabbing it across the refractor before it grew too warm. Then, satisfied, he descended to the cobbles below.
    He leaned against the lamp post and drew breath. He had to attend to two hundred lamps and he was only three-quarters of the way through. The rest of the round would take another hour, maybe two if he was unlucky and some were faulty and needed fixing, and he was already tired and sore and ready to quit. He took the fourpenny packet of Player’s Weights from his pocket and idly opened and shut the lid with his forefinger. He looked around at the dismal streets. It was biting cold, people hurrying about their business, anxious to get inside. Housewives ferried rush baskets filled with provisions, a cart delivered sacks of coal to a local restaurant, prostitutes reclined against the walls of buildings and eyed approaching men with entrepreneurial zeal. Another clock sounded the half-hour—this one from St. Anne’s, on Wardour Street, several roads away—the chimes rippling through the freezing air. Harry shoved the packet of cigarettes in his pocket again. He was dying for a smoke but there was only one cigarette left. He had no money coming to him until Monday at the earliest. He was going to have to go without until then.
    He was miserable. He looked up, across the street to the French House, and the billposts opposite advertising goods he couldn’t possibly afford. Their enforced cheeriness depressed him, the optimistic promise that he knew to be false. Oxo, Burberry, Osram Lamps, Bird’s Custard (‘You Do Like Bird’s Custard’), Lux Washing Powder, HMV. Of them all, the Burberry one bothered Harry the most. A man with three women, arranged in an Alpine scene, skis stacked across a log as they took an afternoon drink. Three women! The expressions on their faces were perfectly oppressive, a life of leisure that was represented, if you believed the copy, by the clothes that you could buy at the Burberry shop in the Haymarket. What rot! Harry knew that they wouldn’t even let him in through the front doors.
    He looked over at the opposite side of the street. There was a ham and beef shop and a down-at-heel undertaker’s. The hearse was waiting outside, the horse assuming a curious patched brownish black colour as the dye wore off. A café was next door, welcoming light from windows and the sign in the doorway that advertised ‘Good Cup of Tea, 2d. No Urns Used.’ He would have liked to have stopped for a drink but that was out of the question, too. He had to press on. The next lamp was a hundred yards away. He balanced the ladder on his left shoulder, took the handlebars of his bicycle in his right hand, and made his way down the street. He repeated the routine, clambering up to the glass chamber and reaching in to turn on the gas. He pushed the lit match between the mantles but the glow, when it