Free The Report by Jessica Francis Kane Page B

things, grief hot in your blood, you stand on a cold curb in front of the town hall, chanting with the others who are there every day, “The light, the light,” because to the crowd, the light is at the heart of the matter, the accident, the disaster, the catastrophe, whatever today’s papers are calling it, the event that ended the lives they had and gave them new ones they never wanted and never will. All their misery, all their unmitigated despair at what their lives have become, reduced to two words.
    As the inquiry began, winter rallied. Temperatures sank, and the radiators in the room were not up to the task. That first morning, a crowd gathered and watched Laurie arrive by cab the way, he imagined, defeated villagers awaited their conquerors. They looked wary, but when Laurie stepped out and waved an arm in greeting, he needed the help of several constables to move through the sudden surge. They were not angry or violent, just insistent. Men called his name but were mute when he turned to listen. Women begged him not to forget the shelter orphans. They pulled back rough sleeves to show him their bruises, their children’s bruises.
    Laurie strove to be warm and cordial yet noncommittal.
    The second-floor room he’d reserved for the inquiry was charmless, high ceilings and a wall of windows opposite the door its only attributes. Borough residents called it the marriage room because it was often used for civil ceremonies. Now, under a rolling chalkboard, a pile of gas masks huddled like a small clan of burrowing animals. Stacked in a corner, several crates overflowed with donations for the shelter library, the pride of Bethnal Green. The room had burgundy carpeting and white walls splotched gray with damp. Cracks ran through the plaster ceiling, here and there a seam widening into a hole the way a stream feeds a lake. The place was freezing and dusty and in general smelled like a church.
    “Quakers and conscientious objectors,” explained Ian Ross, the Bethnal Green constable appointed Laurie’s messenger for the duration of the inquiry. “They’ve held a few meetings here. With candles.”
    A small stage, just a foot and a half high, also carpeted in burgundy, anchored the far end of the room. Between Laurie and this stage stood a small sea of chairs. Most were wood, but a few upholstered ones, like royalty among the masses, had been dragged in as well. The uneven rows gave the room that first morning, Thursday, March 11, the air of an amateur theatrical or a children’s story hour rather than that of the site of an official inquiry. The lights were dim, the curtains heavy, though someone had tied them back to let in what light there was from the street. The walls all around displayed hand-lettered signs about where families should go to collect the clothes and pocket items of the victims.
    “Where was Gowers’s inquiry?” Laurie asked.
    “Police station, sir.”
    Laurie walked to the windows and looked down. From here, the distance reduced the crowd, so animate and visceral when he’d arrived, to a nearly continuous layer of trembling black umbrella. Where there were gaps in the fabric, he saw a stoic, dripping face; pale, damp skin. He thought they had every right to be angrier than they seemed, and years later Laurie would say that the accident at Bethnal Green cried out for a more eloquent report than he thought he could write.
    “These chairs,” Laurie said, turning.
    “A protest, sir,” Ross said.
    “Protest.”
    “It is the hope of the clerk who brought them in that the borough residents might storm the doors.”
    “And then be pleased to find a place to sit?” he said, smiling at Ross.
    “Yes, sir. I believe there’s one chair for every victim.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Bertram Lodge.”
    “Ah.” Laurie turned from the windows. “Well, they don’t seem to mind standing out there.” A few people had made signs.
    “Also, sir, I’m to give you this.” Ross held up a sealed