A Tale of Two Cities Read online

A Tale of Two Cities

  By Charles Dickens

  Paraphrased into “Easy English”

  By

  David Mckay

  Copyright 2014

  The First Book: Called Back to Life

  1. The Year 1775

  It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness. It was the spring of great hope; it was the winter of no hope at all. We had everything; we had nothing. We were all going straight to heaven; we were all going straight to hell. In short, the time was much like the present, in that everything rested on who you listened to.

  There was a king with a big jaw and a queen with a humble face in England, and there was a king with a big jaw and a queen with a beautiful face in France. In both countries it was perfectly clear to these, the ruling class, that all was well.

  It was the year 1775. People then, like people now, looked for revelations. There were magic chickens in some places or spirits knocking on tables in others, that would tell you London or the government were going to be destroyed. But there were revelations also coming to the crown from people who lived across the Atlantic, revelations which had no magic. People would soon see that these revelations were far more important than anything the chickens could tell them.

  [The next year, 1776, America broke away from England to become a free country on her own.]

  France, which was not as religious as England, was moving smoothly down a hill, spending money as fast as she could print it. Her spiritual leaders entertained her by doing such wonderful things as cutting a boy’s hands off, pulling his tongue out with pliers, and then burning his body while he was still alive, because he did not drop to his knees in the rain when a group of religious leaders walked by him from some distance away. I should think that at the time this was happening there were trees growing in France or in a neighbouring country that were already marked to be used to make a machine with a sharp knife in it and a bag to catch the head of the person killed by it. And I should think that on the farms close to Paris there were at that time rough wagons covered with mud, that would be used to carry people to their death at the mercy of those machines. But the ones planning all of this worked quietly at that time, for fear others would think their plans made them enemies of God or guilty of treason.

  There was little in England at that time to be proud of either. People were robbed in their homes and in the streets every night in London. Families were told not to leave the city without moving their furniture to some safe place. Robbers by night became city workers by day. One such robber, who was pointed out by another worker, just shot the man in the head and ran. A mail coach was stopped by seven robbers. The guard killed three of them before running out of bullets, and then he was killed himself, after which the other four robbers finished their job in peace. The Mayor of London was robbed in an open park, in front of all his helpers. Prisoners often started fights with the prison guards, and the police would open fire on them. Robbers cut diamond crosses from around the necks of the rich. And men with guns returned fire on a crowd of smugglers after the smugglers started shooting at them. All of this would happen without anyone thinking that there was anything strange about it.

  In the middle of all this, the man whose job it was to hang people, and who was never of any real use to anyone, was always busy: first hanging a long line of mixed criminals, then hanging a man on Saturday for breaking into a house on Tuesday; one day burning marks into the hands of people at the prison, and the next day burning leaflets outside the house of government; today taking the life of an awful killer, and tomorrow taking the life of a man who robbed a small coin from a farm boy.

  All these things and a thousand more like them happened around the year 1775. There were the farmer and the woodcutter making their plans for a takeover in France, and there were those two men with faces so much the same and their wives with faces so different, each confidently doing what they believed was God’s will. The year 1775 moved the Great ones — and other less great ones that you will meet in this story — along the road that was to change them all.

  2. The Dover Mail

  The first person of interest in this story was on his way to Dover on a Friday night in late November. He was walking slowly, along with two other passengers, up the muddy road on Shooter's Hill. Beside them was the Dover Mail coach. They were not walking because they wanted exercise, but because the mud and the hill had forced the horses to stop three times already. Once the horses had even pulled the coach to the side, planning to turn it back down the hill if they could. But that had been when the driver and the guard, with ropes and a whip, had proved that animals do not have a mind of their own. The team of horses had obeyed and returned to their climb.

  With their heads hanging and their tails shaking, the animals pushed through the thick mud, moving this way and that as if their legs were about to fall off. Each time the driver would let them stop for a rest, one of the lead horses would shake its head and its whole body as if to say, "It’s not possible; we’ll never make it.” As the horse shook, so did the nerves of the passengers.

  Below them was heavy fog. It had moved up to them now, like an evil spirit looking for a place to rest. It was wet and cold, moving like waves on a dangerous ocean. It was so thick that, even in the light of the coach lanterns, one could see but a few yards ahead. The clouds coming from the noses of the tired horses joined with the fog, to make it look like it had all come from them.

  The three passengers were covered up to their eyes, and over their ears, and they all were wearing heavy boots. Not one could say what the others looked like, and they did not talk either, as they each tried to hide what they were thinking. In those days, anyone could be a robber or be working for a robber. Every stop on the way had people who were being paid to tell secrets. The guard on the Dover Mail was thinking about that on that Friday night in November, 1775, as he stood on his shelf at the back of the coach, stamping his feet and keeping an eye and a hand on the weapon box. In it were six or eight guns with bullets already in them; and there was a covering of knives at the bottom of the box. The guard did not trust the passengers; the passengers did not trust each other or the guard; and the driver trusted only the horses, and then he only trusted that they were not good enough for the job.

  "Whoa!” said the driver. "So then, one more pull and we’ll be at the top, no thanks to you animals, for all the trouble you’ve been.” And then, "Hey, Joe!”

  "Hello?” the guard answered.

  "What time do you make it?”

  "At least ten minutes after eleven.”

  "Good God! And still not at the top. Go! Get on with you!”

  The horse that had been shaking itself stopped when the whip hit it, and it started climbing again. The others followed. The coach was moving, and the passengers walked close beside it in the deep mud. If any of them had tried to run ahead into the fog, they would have been in danger of being shot by a highway robber.

  That last push carried the Dover Mail to the top of the hill. The horses stopped there to breathe deeply. The guard jumped down to set the brake for the trip down the other side, and to open the door for the passengers to climb in.

  "Hey, Joe!” the driver called down in a warning voice, from his seat on the top.

  "What is it, Tom?” They both stopped to listen.

  "Sounds like a horse walking this way, Joe.”

  "Running's more like it, Tom,” the guard answered, leaving the door and jumping to his place at the back. "People! In the King’s name, all of you!” he said as he picked up his gun and looked down the hill behind them.

  The passenger we are most interested in was standin
g on the step, and the others were still on the ground. He stayed there, half in and half out. They all looked from the driver to the guard and back to the driver... and they listened. The driver and guard looked behind them, and even the lead horse turned its head and lifted its ears.

  Now that the noise of climbing the hill had stopped, it was very quiet. The heavy breathing of the horses shook the coach quietly, in a way that made the coach, too, look worried. Hearts were pumping, and the breathing was that of tired people... if one could say that anyone was breathing at all.

  They could hear a fast horse racing up the hill.

  "You there! Stop, or I’ll shoot!” the guard cried out.

  The horse stopped and from the fog a man’s voice asked, "Is that the Dover Mail?”

  "Not your business what it is!” the guard shouted back. "What are you?”

  "Is that the Dover Mail?”

  "Why do you want to know?”

  "I want one of your passengers if it is.”

  "What passenger?”

  "Mr. Jarvis Lorry.”

  The man on the steps showed that it was his name. The others looked at him like he was dangerous.

  "Stay where you are,” the guard said to the voice in the fog. "If I have an accident with this gun, you won’t live to know of it. Now, Lorry, you answer him.”

  "What’s wrong?” the man on the step shouted back. "Who is it? Is that you, Jerry?”

  "I don’t like Jerry’s voice,” the guard said to himself. "Too deep and rough for me.”

  "Yes, it is, Mr. Lorry.”

  "What’s the problem?”

  "A letter from T. and Company.”

  "I know this man,” he said to the guard as he stepped down. The other passengers were happy to have him out of the way. They quickly climbed in, shut the door, and pulled up the window.

  "Let him come up. There’s no danger," Lorry said.

  "I hope not; but I can’t be sure of it either,” the guard said to himself. “Hello there!”

  "Hi to you too,” Jerry said in his deep voice.

  "Just come at a walk. You hear me? And if you have a gun on your saddle, don’t let your hand go near it. My nerves make me jump a lot, and when I do bullets fly. So let’s look at you.”

  The shape of a horse and a rider came slowly out of the cloud, and over to the side of the coach. The rider leaned over to give a small, folded piece of paper to the passenger, looking up at the guard as he did it. His horse was tired, and the horse and its rider were covered in mud, from the horse’s feet to the rider’s hat.

  "Guard?” said the passenger with the confidence of a businessman.

  The guard, with his right hand ready to shoot, his left on the gun's barrel, and his eye on the rider, answered, "Sir?"

  "There's nothing to fear. I'm from Tellson's Bank. You must know Tellson's Bank, in London. I'm going to Paris on business. I'll buy you a drink. May I read this?

  "If you do it quickly."

  He opened it in the light of the lantern on that side of the coach, and read it, first to himself, and then out loud. "Wait for the woman at Dover.”

  “You see, it's not long at all. Jerry, say that my answer is Called back to life."

  Jerry moved in his saddle. "That's a strange answer."

  "You tell them that; and they'll know that it's from me. Be careful as you go; and good night to you."

  With that, the passenger climbed inside the coach. The other passengers did nothing to help him in. They had each secretly tried to hide their watches and money in their boots, and were now trying to make him think that they were asleep. There was no good reason for doing it, but it protected them from having to make a choice about what else to do.

  The coach moved off, with the fog becoming thicker as they rolled down the hill. The guard returned his gun to the weapon box.

  "Tom!" he called softly over the top of the coach. "Yes, Joe," answered the driver.

  "Did you hear what he said?"

  "Yes, I did, Joe."

  "What do you make of it?"

  "Nothing at all, Joe."

  "Strange that," the guard said almost to himself. "Because that's just what I made of it too."

  Left alone at the top of the hill, Jerry gave his horse a rest, and and cleaned some of the mud off his face.

  "Called back to life. That's a strange thing to say," he whispered to himself. "Very strange, I'm sure."

  3. Night Shadows

  Think about this: Each person is in some way a secret from all others. We are made that way. When I come into a city at night, I know that each house holds a secret. Each room in each house holds a secret. And each person on earth hides in their heart at least one secret from everyone else, even to the one who is closest to them. People are not like books or bodies of water. You may read a page or two of a person, but they will close up long before you know all that is in them. The water that is a person will freeze over before you can see all that hides under it. It is like part of every person is dead to all others, and will never be known. My friend is dead; my neighbour is dead; the love of my life is dead, and in this I too am dead to them. Is there any body buried in this city that is harder for me to know now than are the people who are still alive in it?

  In this, the rider on the horse was no different to the King, the head of government, or the richest businessman in London. And the same was true of the three passengers crowded together in the one old mail coach. They each knew as little about the others as they would know if they had been travelling in three different coaches, with many cities between each of them.

  The rider on the horse did not hurry back to London. He stopped for drinks on the way; but he kept to himself, and he kept his hat pulled down over his eyes. His eyes were black, but shallow in colour and too close together, like they were each afraid to be alone. His eyes made a triangle with the hat above, and they looked down on a very long scarf that covered the man's throat and chin before dropping down almost to his knees. He would pull the scarf away from his mouth with his left hand, far enough to pour in his drink, and then move it back into place.

  "No, Jerry, it would never do," the man said to himself as he was riding slowly toward London. "You cannot change the words when your job is to tell what you were told. He did say, 'Called back to...' But break my head if he wasn't drunk when he said it!"

  Jerry was thinking so much about the words that he had been asked to carry, that he took off his hat from time to time to scratch his head.

  The horse moved slowly along the road to Temple Bar, where Jerry would tell those words to the night watchman, waiting at the door to Tellson's Bank. Above and around him, the shadows of the night took shapes to him that grew out of what he was thinking. And the horse must have been seeing shapes that grew out of its thinking too, for it would jump to the side in fear from time to time.

  At the same time the mail coach rolled roughly along the road in the opposite direction, with its three strangers sleeping inside. The shadows of the night took different shapes for each of them. Their dreams were built on the thoughts that had been going through their heads when they fell asleep.

  Tellson's Bank was doing big business in the Dover Mail that night. The bank passenger had one arm through a leather loop on the wall of the coach, which did what it could to stop him from falling over onto the passenger next to him. His eyes were only half shut. Light from the coach lantern, coming through the window, and movements from the passenger opposite him became the lights and movements of a busy bank. The sound of the ropes on the horses were the sound of money. He did more business in five minutes than the whole bank had ever done in three times as long. Then the passenger would go into the strong rooms that were under the bank, carrying in one hand the big keys to the boxes there, and a candle in the other. He would find them safe and strong as they always were.