Last night I took the riverside walk for the first time in longer than I care to remember. Nothing much had changed.
 
Homeless men and women were still spending the night on municipal benches. Some were asleep, they breathed noisily, or moaned. They looked like bundles of rags, although one or two of them had contrived to wrap flattened cardboard boxes around themselves. Others were awake, and clutched their most valuable possession close to them, a bottle of cheap wine or methylated spirits, in which they perhaps found escape or comfort or oblivion. They were all sickly, sicklier than they even knew. That’s what came of inhaling the cold, damp air and autumn mist that visited them from the sluggish water. One by one they would die here, or somewhere else, it didn’t really matter. That’s the way it had always been.
 
As I passed these lost and abandoned people, I moved slowly, for I had no reason to hurry—on this or any other night. I would not be in this place for long, there were other places I would visit later, places that really suited me so much better.
 
I watched as a man just ahead of me struggled to his feet. He almost fell as he stood. Then he slumped down, in a sitting position, onto his bench again.
 
“Shadow,” he said, his voice not quite a whisper, as I drew abreast of him. That’s what they always called me. I don’t know where the name came from, or what these unfortunates saw to make them believe I was a shadow.
 
I paused and looked at the man. No light reflected from his eyes, everything about him spoke of darkness. He said nothing more. He’d forgotten me, and was removing the screw-on cap from his bottle.
 
When I walked away, I heard that single word again, ‘Shadow’, as indistinct as a distant voice carried by a breeze. I turned and looked back to the man on the bench, he was now swigging from his bottle. Seeing how absorbed he was, in the only thing that gave his life meaning, I realised that he may not have spoken at all.
 
Five metres above my head, the street-lights on the parapet wall were wrapped in glaucomatous halos caused by the thin river mist. My silhouette was no longer visible by their light as it slid silently across the stone slabs beneath my feet. Only the creaking sounds of pleasure cruisers moored until the tourist season came again, and the gentle lapping of the river, found their way to my ears. At this time of the morning, near silence was always the most common sound in this part of the city. Farther away, fish and vegetable markets would be alive with activity as they prepared for the wholesale transactions that fed the street markets in every quarter. Here though, the city still slept, that’s why I liked it, this was my time.
 
I had left my atelier an hour earlier, and had allowed my feet to bring me here, as they threaded their way through the maze of forgotten alleys and snickets that are hidden by the modern stores and offices and apartment buildings that everyone knows. Along the way I’d passed the memories of people I knew well. There was the old lamplighter who knew nothing of electricity—the wonder of his time was gas—his shadow was still where he’d left it, visible only to those who knew where to look. Georgina, for such she called herself, although her real name, I’d heard, was Mavis Bloodworthy, still offered to perform any kind of sex act, with anybody, for a few pennies, enough to keep her in gin for an hour. “Quick fuck, love?” I heard her say. My hand was feeling for coins in my pocket before I remembered she too was gone. Then I came upon little Robert, his was a story so sad it pained me as I recalled it, but still he smiled, and still he politely lifted his cap as I quickly passed him.
 
 
Then there was Gilbert Barnfeather. I had never encountered him but, like everyone of his time, I knew of him. He was reviled as a killer of dogs before he turned to killing people, and of those he had slaughtered fourteen, men, women and children—he had no preference, it was said that he simply enjoyed watching the life drain out of one of his fellows—before he was caught by officers of the law. I didn’t attend his public hanging, believing it to be too bloodthirsty an event for my delicate disposition. Afterwards it was said that he hadn’t died quickly, and that he was left hanging for days, his struggle for life slowly ending. Several months later, when I decided I could once again pass through the tiny square at the confluence of streets and alleyways where the gibbet had been erected, all that remained was the shadow of a man jerking and twisting on a wall. People were going about their business as usual, children were playing, dogs were barking. I accosted a person I knew vaguely, he was a trader in tobacco and I had, on occasion, purchased from him, I asked him about the shadow.
 
“Does it not make you shiver every time you pass it by?”
 
“No sir, it does not,” he replied. “That foul person received the punishment he deserved, and his shadow will forever be there as a warning to other miscreants.”
 
As he went on his way, I thought how abrupt his manner had been.
 
Barnfeather’s shadow still dances on that wall when the sun shines brightly, and seeing it still chills me to the marrow. 
 
That’s one of the reasons I seldom walk by day, even though those alleys are often gloomy places. Most shadows that remain, especially when they are the shadows of those who lived without harming others, are visible by the light of street lamps as well as sunshine, but Barnfeather’s shadow, thankfully, needs the strongest of sunlight to give it life.
 
 
By and by I came upon the hall of clocks. This was not exactly a place of business, nor was it exactly a service for the benefit of the public. I think I can best describe it as an obsession that in some measure provides the gentleman—for indeed he is a gentleman—who is always in attendance, with an income of sorts.
 
He is a man small of stature and thin of limb. His fingers are like the legs of a spider, and appear to be capable of acts of dexterity of which the fingers of a person such as myself are incapable. Residents of this ancient quarter bring him their clocks whenever they need his attention.
 
“Time has stopped,” I heard an old woman say to him, on one very rainy evening, as she deposited a medium sized clock, that appeared, to me, to be of Germanic origin, in front of him.
 
“Oh no,” the man said, “you see, madam, time never stops. Time, as measured by your beautiful clock, is simply taking a rest. It needs to be reawakened.”
 
He then proceeded to open the hinged door on the back of the clock, and allowed his spindly fingers to crawl inside. I heard a pinging sound, followed by a metallic twang.
 
“There,” he said, with an air of mild satisfaction as he closed the door. Turning the clock to face him he opened the glass front, and then fumbled with a large bunch of keys that were hanging from his belt. Finding the one he sought, he used it to carefully wind the clock’s mechanism, one turn, two turns, three turns, and then set the hands to the correct time. By now the clock was healthily ticking
 
“With careful use your clock will last forever,” he said to the woman. She smiled at him, dropped two or three pennies into his hand, picked up her clock and left.
 
“What did you do to that clock, sir? How did you awaken the time within it?” I asked as my curiosity caused me to be imprudently curious.
 
“My fingers know,” he said, “I permit them to enter a clock and they know what they must do. Can I be of assistance to you?”
 
“I have but come to admire your wonderful clocks.” I spread my arms expansively to include the hundreds of clocks arrayed around us. “Such workmanship they display. But tell me sir, why are they all silent.”
 
“Their times are resting,” he replied, “all but for this one.” He rested his hand on an elegant carriage-clock. “This one shows the time for today. Tomorrow another will show the correct time. That’s how it must be.”
 
I smiled at him.
 
“I have all of time here. Last year and next year and all the years that flow to and from them.”
 
I felt some uncertainty as to what he meant, but I offered him no more questions. Instead, I pulled a few small value coins from my pocket and, as the old woman had done, I dropped them into the palm of his hand.
 
“Thank you,” he said as I turned to leave, “please return whenever you feel the need.”
 
Many times I have returned to visit him. He appears never to change. For myself, I find it most reassuring to know that time is in such good and capable hands.
 
 
I must beg your forgiveness or, at the very least, your indulgence. For during my rambling discourse, which I had intended should take place only within my mind, I have become aware that others may be listening. If you are from that part of the city which we call the World of Haste, it is possible, indeed it is likely, that you are unaware not only of some of those things I have touched upon, such as the shadows that remain, but also of the very existence of our ancient places at the heart of what you consider to be your city. If this should be the case, if you continue to listen, you will, I hope, gain some understanding of the fact that our two societies have coexisted for many, many years. We frequently pass between our places and yours; you may have noticed us from time to time, you may have dismissed us as odd, but you seldom find your way to those places where we might congregate, such as the inns, or the chapagogue—indeed, perhaps I should speak of the chapagogue, since it will be quite unfamiliar to you if you are of the World of Haste.
 
 
There was a time when our city was one, by your way of measuring time that was several centuries ago, to us it was as yesterday. For reasons we choose not to remember, many people came to despise our Jewish citizens, and those times being less tolerant than today a pogrom came about. Those of our Jewish brethren who were not killed, fled to other places. Only the Rabbi remained, but so frightened was he of being killed that he forsook his faith and was baptised a Christian. He converted his synagogue into a church, and thereafter referred to it as the Church of the Cleansing. I knew this man, not as a close associate, but sufficiently well to be polite to him whenever we encountered each other. From the day of his conversion it was rumoured that his new faith was not founded in Biblical principles. In fact, he had become a convenient combination of Christian and Jew. Years later, when Jewish traders began to return to our city, he began to refer to his building as his ‘chapagogue’, for it served the needs of both faiths, who soon found that they could worship together in harmony. That situation abides to this day.
 
 
With the hall of clocks and the chapagogue well behind me, I emerged from our city and entered the World of Haste on a wide boulevard that followed the course of the river. Even at this hour of the morning, when the pavements were empty of people and the road without its daytime throng of horseless carriages, bright street lights were still shining. I must say here that I so much prefer the more human glow of our gas lamps and tallow candles, because they do not create a sense of daylight when the world should be in darkness.
 
I made my way across the road, and thus it was I came to the steps that took me down to the riverside walk, where I passed slowly by the many resting indigents and inebriates and heard someone, I really know not whom, how could I possibly know, call me Shadow, in a whispered voice as I passed him by. I did not look at the man, of that I had no need, for I knew that like all those here, those who lived with the clinking of bottles, those who slept, when they slept, to the lapping of the river’s waters against worn stone, that he was a discarded soul well beyond any help I might offer. When I was a step or two beyond him, I heard a deep sigh that rattled with the sound of life trying to escape a dying body. I had often heard it whispered among these sad people, that the touch of my shadow, my very passing, pulled life away from those willing to give it leave to depart from them. How could that be, especially here, where on a night such as this shadows, including my own shadow, were no more than gestures to the darkness?
 
Shadow was not my name of course, but it is what many of the unfortunates here have called me these several centuries past. Perhaps it is that any brethren from our city who choose to visit here are also called Shadow. In my city, our city, I have a name, but never will it be known to the World of Haste, as such passing of knowledge is forbidden to us.
 
I walked slowly along the riverside, catching the aroma of stagnant water as it rose up and dropped away again, sensing the life and death with which it was redolent. In the World of Haste, the river was cleaner than it had been through all the years I had known it, but it was not really clean, and I could well imagine the cargo of misery that travelled amongst its ripples, until it dropped to the river’s bed and became the silt of life.
 
By and by as I walked, the river entered a large garden whose trees and shrubs came almost to the water’s edge. How do I know this? Because long ago, perhaps as much as a century before this time, I often visited this city when the sun was upon the sky. I walked here by the light of day, I saw the seasons in this garden, from the glorious colours of summertime, to the dull greys and browns of winter. That was before the time of horseless carriages and shining birds that soared noisily across the sky, it was, in fact, before this World of Haste had come to pass. In that time, as I walked here, people would look at me with some curiosity, they would shake their heads, as if they were unsure as to whether they had seen me or not, then they would look right through me and go on their way, sometimes glancing back at me, sometimes not. I often wondered what thoughts had passed through their minds, whether they wanted to reach out and touch me to discover whether or not I was real.
 
Nowadays, the World of Haste, during the hours of daylight, is no place for anyone from our city.
 
 
When I became aware that light was touching the Eastern rim of the sky, that the first moments of dawn were glinting from polished glass windows, I knew I had to leave the World of Haste. I had walked right through the garden, and had emerged close to the arches of a bridge across the river. I could remember the time before that bridge had been built, when this crossing had provided a living for a ferryman and his family. Now, the bridge arched slightly towards the tall buildings across the river, and though quiet now, it would soon teem with the people of this city and their omnibuses and horseless carriages.
 
Six hours, I estimated, I had been in this city, as I crossed the boulevard towards where I must go, that was time enough, and I would not feel the need to return here for many a long night.
 
As I approached the side street that would lead me back, by twists and turns, to the timeless streets and alleyways of our city, a young man approached me.
 
“You been to a fancy dress?” He asked.
 
“A fancy dress?” I asked him, unsure of what he meant, but I knew he would not hear me.
 
He reached out a hand to touch me. I felt it enter me, disrupt me. Then the man stumbled and fell to the ground, thrown off his balance by my incorporeality.
 
“What the…” I heard him call out, but by then I was around the corner of the street and approaching the snicket that only people from our city knew was there.
 
By the time I was threading my way through the maze of streets that led to my home, I could already hear the sounds of the World of Haste rising above the near silence in which I was.
 
 
As I neared my street, I passed the apothecary’s shop, I passed the boot maker’s, I passed the butcher’s from where my nose detected the metallic tang of fresh blood. I came to the printery, where unfolded sheets of  the City Journal were pegged on lines of thin string while their ink dried.
 
“A morning paper?” The printer asked from the doorway.
 
“Alas, I have no coinage with me,” I replied.
 
“That’s quite alright sir, you may make good your small debt to me on the next occasion that you pass this way.” With those kind words, he removed a copy of his publication from a small pile of dried and folded copies and handed it to me.
 
“Thank you most kindly, Mr LaFarge,” I said, then I smiled and went on my way.
 
Freshly baked bread has, for me, always had a most enticing aroma, so a little nearer my atelier I paused outside Mrs Mellow’s bakery shop, and looked longingly at the stack of freshly baked loaves in its window. Seeing me, Mrs Mellow, who made the most delicious bread, and who looked dumpling-like, just as a baker should, bustled out to greet me.
 
“All fresh this very morning,” she said, “I’ve been working since three o’clock so you can enjoy your breakfast.”
 
“Alas, I have no coinage with me,” I said to her.
 
“That’s quite alright, you may make good your debt to me on the next occasion that you pass this way to buy my bread.” With those kind words, she took a loaf, wrapped it in muslin and handed it to me.
 
“Thank you most kindly, Mrs Mellow,” I said, then I smiled and went on my way.
 
By the time I reached the door to my atelier, I had already broken several morsels from Mrs Mellow’s warm loaf to satisfy a hunger that I didn’t know was there.
 
As I removed my key from a pocket, I heard a familiar voice.
 
“Milk sir? Fresh milk?” Mr Bray asked.
 
“Yes indeed, Mr Bray,” I replied. “I shall fetch a ewer that you may fill it for me.”
 
I returned a moment tater, and watched as Mr Bray measured out my milk.
 
“I would like a good pat of butter too, if you please, to go with Mrs Mellow’s fresh bread.”
 
“And very fine bread it is, very fine bread. That will be one groat, sir.”
 
Having collected coins in my atelier, I made good my debt to Mr Bray.
 
“What a beautiful day it’s going be, do you not think Mr Bray?”
 
He shrugged his shoulders. We both look up at the sky, heard the distant noise of a metallic bird passing overhead.
 
“I do believe you may be right, good days in our city are always good days.”
 
“Thank you Mr Bray, thank you,” I said as I smiled, shook his hand, and went inside to breakfast.
 
 
© James Goddard 2024.