A Taste for Nightshade

Thomas Dunne Books
St. Martin's Press
New York

To Chris, Lucy and Leo,
Who made our Antipodean adventure a reality.

 

 

Dusk shrouded Manchester's damp streets, disguising familiar landmarks and giving a lurid cast to buildings lit by oil lamp and candle. Michael Croxon dragged his brother past half-built skeletons of factories and mills, the lofty temples to the new religion of commerce. He marvelled at serried rows of golden windows shining against the mauve sky, announcing the new machines' inexhaustible industry. The rhythmic hum and clatter of the looms filled the air like music, a striding overture to a prosperous future. He had learned so much of the modern world on this visit; how damp air kept the cotton from breaking, where the wondrous looms might be purchased, and for what small cost the workers could be housed – and how easily replaced should they not prove satisfactory. At last he had found the grand venture that would prove his worth – and make him prodigiously rich, besides. In his excitement, his boot slipped on the frosty stones and he clutched at Peter to maintain his balance. An oil-black chasm opened up before him; the canal stank of drowned vegetation and blocked privies. He was glad of Peter's arm, but felt a flash of resentment at his gentle, ‘Take it steady.'

They left the clamour of the mills and came to older streets. He recognised the gables of the ancient college at Chetham's, and took a side street, passing floridly tiled public houses that exuded bursts of hubbub and sudden wafts of beer and fried fish. At one corner a huddle of men smoked, one of their number whistling a slow Irish melody that never faltered as the tunesmith followed them with his eyes. The Manchester mills were luring in multitudes of the poor, as a poultice draws in filth: with every visit he saw greater degradation and lawlessness. The coming of night increased his anxiety. The coach to Greaves would wait for no one.

Then there it was at last, the pillared frontage of the Cross Keys inn. Passing through the gate, he found the inn yard crowded with a noisy rabble. Hawkers thrust unwanted items in their faces: a tray of knives, stinking fish. They shoved their way towards a group of fellow travellers, all of them smothered in cloaks and greatcoats, warily keeping watch over their boxes and baggage. A space was instantly made for the two gentlemen; both of them so fair and agreeably modish that a few onlookers, most especially women, cast covert glances towards them.

‘Look. For all your harrying, we still have fifteen whole minutes.' Peter pointed towards the inn clock, his boyish voice reproachful. But if they were on time, it was only because he had spent all day chivvying Peter; cutting short his supper, insisting he broke off his goodbyes to that alderman's daughter, conscious all the time of the hands on his gold pocket watch, marching steadily forward to the moment at which he would announce his plans to his father. Though at twenty-five he was only two years older than Peter, the contrast between his own ambitions and his brother's indolence would be triumphant. Next, he must raise capital, find suitable land, and machines. He felt himself unstoppable, on the road to a glorious future.

The bill of charges for their journey confronted them, pasted on the wall. He turned to Peter. ‘Did you keep back the right change for the journey? Look. Nine shillings and sixpence from Manchester to Greaves.'

Peter half-heartedly rummaged in his pockets. ‘Damn it. My last few bob went to the barber. The coachman must change my pound note.'

‘Will you never learn? I told you the coachman may choose not to change such a large sum. And if the coach is full and another passenger offers the correct fare, then what will you do? What shall I tell Father when I arrive home without you, all because of your negligence?'

Peter attempted a face of contrition, but Michael fancied his lips twitched in amusement. ‘I am sorry. No, truly I am. But it cannot be helped. Shall I see if the landlord has change?' He looked vaguely about; but the press of people at the inn's entrance did not bode well.

‘Well, I cannot lend it you.'

Peter's flippancy brought out the worst side of Michael's character; the bombastic older brother who must always be right.

At that moment a woman standing by them pulled at his sleeve – afterwards, he wondered that he hadn't noticed her at his elbow. She stepped forward into the lamplight.

‘Sir, perhaps I can help you. I've a right lot of coin I can exchange for you.' Her voice was as clear as a bell, though marred by the accent of Manchester's lower orders.

Peter glanced at him triumphantly. ‘You see. Providence provides.' He looked at the girl, a fine strong-looking piece, with a wooden tray hanging from her neck on which a jug and wooden cups were laid out. She looked handsome in a shabby, housemaid's sort of way. Wide feline eyes smiled at him from a pleasing heart-shaped face.

‘It is a whole pound he needs change for,' he said gruffly.

‘It's just as well I've had a good day, sirs.' She tested the fat leather bag in her hand. ‘Now if you was to take this heavy coin it would be doing me a favour. Save me hauling it all the way to my mother's at Strangeways.'

She smiled modestly, clearly aware that he was the senior of the two brothers. ‘Go on, help yourself to a cup, won't you? No, not a penny. I'll have less to carry.' She offered each of them the remains of her fare, a sweet and pungent tea. As she passed him the cup, her fingertips brushed his own for a pulsating moment. Drinking the tea, he wondered why he had never discovered this delight before; it was refreshing in the manner of spirits, setting off little thrills in his veins. After replacing the tea things with the money bag on her tray, she said gravely, ‘This is a whole twenty shilling in coin. I should rather one of you counted it with me.'

Peter rushed forwards, of course, forever springing to help a lady. Though this was no lady, in spite of her lace cap trimmed with green ribbon. He hoped his brother could distinguish that much, for he was already murmuring, ‘A pleasure. And most kind of you, dear girl.'

She glanced up at Peter's fawning expression with that sweet smile. ‘Why, thank 'ee, sir.' Then she lowered her eyes as if she were quite unused to the civility of gentlemen. Michael pictured her in the very different exchanges of the lower orders: scenes of cursing, scolding, degradation. She had a remarkably well formed body, and her face was as fair as that of a duchess. As for her eyes, they were bright and probing when they met his, seeming to seek entry to some hidden chamber within himself. Then there it was in her bold stare; a stinging jolt; an invisible connection. Discomfited, he rapidly turned away.

The next time he looked, a cascade of copper and silver tumbled across the tray. Quickly, Peter and the girl began counting as he looked on, watching the girl especially. Soon they had made neat piles of shillings: six, seven, eight. Peter passed her the pound note and she folded it reverentially, tucking it into the pocket in her skirts.

‘Seventeen shilling, eighteen shilling,' she counted, her clean and graceful hands gathering and heaping. ‘Look. A black dog.' She held it up for them to see the black-leaded forgery of a sixpence. ‘I'll not count that, you gentlemen needn't fret.' She replaced the coin with a shiny one of her own.

He glanced at the clock: it was almost half-past. ‘Hurry, can't you?'

‘Nearly there, sir. Nineteen, and that is surely twenty.' She stiffened, and raised her hand to cover her mouth. There was an awkward silence. ‘On my mother's heart, there's some mistake,' she whimpered. ‘Why, it's all wrong, there must be a half-crown more of coin here, at least.' She grew flustered, checking each tottering pile so clumsily that she toppled a few, undoing all their careful work.

Just at this juncture a crash at the gates announced the arrival of the Manchester Flyer, scattering bystanders and spraying mud like a racing plough. The horses strained in their harnesses as the coachman drew hard on the reins.

Peter tried to retrieve the situation. ‘If we quickly recount these twenty?' he suggested. But the girl was too agitated to reason with. ‘I can't account for it,' she wailed. ‘I must have counted wrong. If I give you too much, I'll be for it all right.'

She stared a moment at the untidy heaps. Suddenly she gathered them all together in a tumble of coins. ‘Oh, I am sorry, sirs; I wish I had never started. It's more than my skin's worth to lose a penny.'

Now the Flyer's coachman had dismounted, and their fellow passengers eagerly pressed towards the carriage doors. The man at the head of the queue proffered the right fare and received a friendly salute from the coachman.

‘Peter, for goodness' sake come on!' He picked up his own bags and looked back impatiently over his shoulder.

‘Never mind, dear,' Peter said. ‘Thank you for trying.'

‘Here, sir. Your pound note.' She rummaged in the pocket of her skirts and pushed it back into his hand.

In the event, they had to wait to board the coach. A couple of youths clambered up on the roof, and were slow in hauling their bags up beside them. The old fellow in front of them fussed abominably over being parted from his portmanteau. Finally, Michael paid the coachman his nine and sixpence. He lingered to watch Peter pay, torn between wanting to see his younger brother humiliated and a desire to board at once.

‘What's this for a lark?' asked the coachman, holding Peter's pound note aloft as if it were a filthy rag. ‘You think I don't have no notion what a banknote looks like?' Michael frowned, looking closely, and then saw it clear before his eyes. Instead of the copperplate inscription,
Skipton Bank I promise to pay the bearer on demand One Pound
, and the cashier's freshly inked signature, the note bore all the signs of a forgery; the ink a crude blur, the motif ‘
One pound
' a childish blot.

‘The girl!' he shouted. Then, to Peter, ‘You damned idiot.'

Michael looked to where she had stood with her tray – of course she had gone. A bearded man selling clay pipes now stood in her place. Craning his neck, he saw she was no longer in the yard.

‘Stay here with the bags until I return,' he shouted at Peter. Consumed with fury, he shouldered his way to the gates, and from there, by great luck, he saw her running in the distance, a flurry of movement beneath a street lamp. He set off after her, his feet pounding the hard frost, feeling the same savage exhilaration as when he was a boy, hunting with his dog, careering after rats in the stables.

His father's money. It must be repaid. He could never admit to his father that Peter had been duped by a Manchester swindler – and a trollop of a woman at that. It was a matter of preserving his reputation. Careless of his boots slithering on the mud, he ran until a stitch jabbed his side, his gaze never leaving his quarry. She was moving fast, darting through pools of darkness but always emerging into murky lamplight. There were few other people abroad; only gaunt creatures shuffling close to the walls.

Then two gentlemen emerged from a side alley, nearly colliding with him. He cried, ‘I have been robbed!' and, enjoying the drama of his situation, pointed at the woman's distant figure. When he set off again he could hear their footsteps behind him. He felt like the leader of a pack, his breath white vapour in the darkness.

Rapid hoofbeats and a post-horn trumpeting the rapid trills of Clear the Road signalled the approach of the Manchester Flyer. Michael was forced to take refuge in a doorway and protect his eyes from the hail of dirt from the wheels. As it receded, he squinted up at its bulk, but of course Peter had not boarded without him. He looked once more for the woman, peering this way and that. Devil take her, she had vanished.

He had marked the spot of her last appearance with his eye, but when he reached it he stopped, perplexed. Before him stood an old shop: a ramshackle place with a wooden sign swinging over the door. His fellow pursuers arrived at his back, bending double and puffing hard.

‘She's gone,' he said. ‘Disappeared into the air.'

The elder of the two gentlemen, who introduced himself as a magistrate, fetched a lantern and began to inspect the vicinity. The ancient shop sign bore a primitive design of a quill pen and an ape-faced angel with a sword. Squinting, he saw that it read ‘The Pen & Angel'. The tiny pool of light moved over a window displaying only curling, ancient paper behind its dirty pane. Then, he spotted a narrow opening that he had earlier thought to be a drainpipe. Approaching the ginnel, he saw it was barely a few feet wide. Alerting his companions, he slid his body between its walls, and was instantly so cold that he might have fallen underground. Coal black darkness enveloped him; he was forced to reach out with fingers, simultaneously recoiling from the oozing slime. He groped his way forward, fearing each step might betray him into a pit or sewer. With great relief, he emerged into a gloomy yard, from which the only exit was an unobtrusive door in a blank brick wall. When he tried the door, it opened.

He had expected some sort of wretched warren. Instead, he found himself inside the loveliest of mansions, in a salon lit with coloured lights reflected by gilded mirrors. At the centre of the chequerboard floor rose a fountain. Picking up one from a row of glasses on the stand, he drank thirstily, and was astonished to find that the fountain ran with wine. As if in a marvellous dream, he wandered into a parlour where a half-dozen women lounged beneath crystal girandoles, dressed in flimsy silks. He could see at once, from their hot glances and painted pouts, that they were as wanton as the Devil. He could smell them, too: a fecund dampness beneath their ratafia scent.