Black Wreath (3 page)
Authors: Peter Sirr
T
he dancing master and James passed through a warren of alleys and stinking laneways, constantly keeping an eye upward in case a torrent of filth should fall on their heads. A wild pig came careening down one lane, snorting and squealing as a gang of urchins came chasing after it. The daylight seemed to have been sucked out of this part of the city; it was a dark and frightening domain, and James felt he would never be able to find his way back out of it again.
Eventually they came to an alley as narrow and dirty as the rest. They entered a dilapidated building, but as soon as they stepped across the threshold and into the hall, James doubled over and reached out blindly as he felt himself falling in a dead faint. Kavanagh caught him roughly and pushed him upright again, and James gasped for breath as a horrible stench filled his nostrils. The hall seemed to be moving, as if it were somehow alive. As James’s eyes grew
used to the darkness, he saw that the passage was flooded with a bloody mess crawling with maggots. They would not be able to reach the stairs without wading through it, the thought of which made James retch.
Kavanagh swore. ‘The shambles has leaked again,’ he muttered. The adjoining house was a slaughterhouse, from where the foul animal blood had burst in through the back door. Kavanagh went back into the lane and retrieved a board that was lying upright against the brickwork. With this plank he made a rough bridge and they could cross to the stairs. As they climbed a steady stream of water poured down through the house.
‘Broken roof,’ Kavanagh said, as much to himself as to James.
James was still reeling from the stench of the hall. The stink of the rest of the house seemed to get worse with every step. They passed a room which had no door, and inside the small space James saw a large family sprawled on the floor over a meal of bread and soup.
‘Where is the door?’ he asked Kavanagh as they ascended.
‘Didn’t pay the rent,’ he said. ‘Landlord came and took away the door to make them quit the building. He was in a mad rage. The door was in such a state they could do nothin’ with it but burn it afterwards. Didn’t work, though, did it? He’ll have to drag them out by the hair of their heads.’
The higher they rose in the building, the more James realised that he was unlikely to be greeted by much comfort when they arrived. In this he was right. They climbed until they reached the summit of the house, and Kavanagh led him into
a sparsely furnished garret. There was a single chair and a small table, and in the corner a thin mattress. Against one wall stood a chest. James couldn’t see anything else.
‘Where is my room?’ he asked.
Kavanagh laughed harshly. ‘Why, my lord, this is it and you are in it.’
James put his bag on the floor and made no further comment. It was clear to him now what his father and Miss Deakin had planned, and that they had no intention of retrieving him. Of Miss Deakin he expected no better, but he did not expect it from his father, for all his brutishness and harshness.
That night he found himself sleeping with an empty belly on Master Kavanagh’s hard floor, where Master Kavanagh’s fleas were not slow to introduce themselves, and when the next morning he enquired when his hot water was coming he was rewarded with another harsh laugh.
‘Can you dance, boy?’ Kavanagh asked him.
‘Not much,’ James said. ‘My mother taught me a little. Before she left …’
‘Well, you’re no use to me unless you can move lightly on your feet. I am a professor of dance, a master of the minuet, the quadrille, the jig, the reel, a bringer of joy to the city.’
James wasn’t sure he was convinced by this. There wasn’t much joy in this room.
‘I don’t think I will be able to move at all, unless I eat something.’
‘Don’t think you’re going to eat me out of house and home, boy.’
‘Aren’t you paid for it? By my father?’
The dancing master snarled. ‘Your father!’ he began, but went no further, going instead to the table where he cut a slice from a loaf and tossed it to James. The bread was hard enough to break teeth, but James devoured it. After this modest meal he made James show him what steps he knew, snorting with derision as James moved uneasily across the short space of his floor.
‘An elephant would dance more gracefully.’
Then the master demonstrated his trade, moving effortlessly as he hummed tunes both quick and slow. His feet seemed to belong to a different body than their owner’s upper parts. The upper body was quarrelsome and angry, but the feet had no quarrel with anyone; they moved lightly and happily and didn’t grumble or growl.
His impromptu performance seemed to put Kavanagh in better humour and he announced that he was now ready to encounter the world again. He had once had, he told James, the best dancing school in the city, and he had taught the better half of the city how to dance before he fell on evil times. He didn’t explain to James what brought the evil times, but James could guess as he watched Kavanagh take a swig from a bottle of gin. The dancing master pulled on his tattered wig and his hat, grabbed his cane and, with mock courtesy, took his leave.
‘What should I do?’ James asked as Kavanagh was leaving.
‘My lord should do as he pleases,’ the dancing master laughed, in a tone that made it clear that he really didn’t care
whether James lived or died.
Left to himself, James took stock of his new surroundings and his new position. Was this to be his new life, hidden away in a rancid garret? The walls and the poor furniture looked back at him blankly. James felt a tide of panic wash through his body. He must get some air. He went down the stairs at a run, pausing on the landing where there was the room without a door. A man sat at a table tapping at the side of a shoe. Patches of leather were spread beside him on the table, and several ragged young children sat around listlessly. The shoemaker looked up sharply as James stood outside.
‘Who might you be?’
James had to think for a moment, as if this new life had robbed him of himself. ‘James Lovett.’
‘Well, James Lovett, what brings you to Coles Alley? You don’t look as if you’re related to the dancing master.’
‘I’m not.’
The shoemaker invited him in and waved to an empty seat at the table. ‘I’ll warrant he doesn’t have much more than gin in that room. You’re hungry?’
James was starving. The shoemaker’s wife brought him a bowl of broth. As James ate, the shoemaker cast a critical eye at his feet. James shifted uncomfortably under the gaze.
‘Those are not the shoes of a street boy, are they, James Lovett?’
‘They are now,’ James replied. ‘Since that is what I’ve become.’
A
s often as he could, James made his way out of the Liberties and back into the old city to seek out Harry down by the Custom House dock. If Harry was busy, James contented himself with watching his friend at work, smiling at the easy way Harry had with his customers, chatting away with them, sharing the news of the city.
Harry sat on his three-legged stool and the men would appear as if out of nowhere and place a foot on his lap. Harry would take his old knife – his spudd, he called it – and scrape off the dirt. Then he would fish out a mouldy old wig and wipe the boot with it. Finally it would be time for the polish, a mixture of lampblack and eggs, which Harry would ladle on with a paintbrush. The mix would dry quickly, leaving the boot looking as if it just been bought, but if you smelled the boot before it was completely dry, you’d nearly faint with the stink of rotten eggs.
‘You know, Jim,’ Harry said to him later as they leaned against the arch that gave onto the dock, ‘I don’t think you should lie down so easily under your burden.’
‘What do you mean?’ James asked.
‘Just look at you. You’re getting shabbier every day. Next time you come here someone might hold up his boot to you and expect you to polish it.’
‘What am I supposed to do?
‘Everyone knows where you belong. Everyone knows whose son you are. Have you ever gone back to the house?’
Since the day that Miss Deakin delivered him to his new life, James had never thought about returning. He had put the house out of his thoughts, which had been easier than he had expected. So much else was happening, his old life had shrunk back into a small corner at the back of his mind. If he kept it there, maybe the pain would shrink too, and he could learn to face whatever came his way. Yet he sometimes thought of his father, and then he would drift back to the time when they had lived in the house in Wexford, when his mother was still there, before the fighting started, before his mother was driven out and they came to the house in Dublin. He even imagined that his father still looked out for him in some strange and secretive way, asking about him, perhaps following him in disguise or looking out from a tavern or coffee house doorway as James passed in and out of the old city. He felt sure he had seen his father once or twice, in the distance and not very clearly but still unmistakably him. Maybe he wasn’t completely abandoned; maybe there was a path back to the affections of his father.
Harry interrupted this thoughts. ‘Have you really never gone back?’
‘No,’ James said.
‘Well then, go, find out what’s happening. Maybe your father has changed his mind.’
James hesitated. The word ‘father’ produced a strange sensation in him, a kind of sickening, in which fear and sorrow were the main ingredients. Was it really possible that there might be a way back to his old life? It had not been a happy life, but at least he knew where the next meal was coming from and where he would lay his head at night.
‘Only if you come with me,’ he said finally.
Later that evening, after Harry had finished his work for the day, the two boys crossed the river and made their way towards James’s father’s house. The streets were dark and lifeless, with just the occasional carriage trundling past. James grew more agitated the closer he came to his old home. He had no clear idea of what he would do when he got there, and was beginning to regret the impulse to go back. It did not feel as if he was coming home, but more like he was entering a dark cave full of hidden danger. He felt like Hansel following the bright stones back to the house where no welcome was waiting. He had to force himself onward. At last they arrived in the street. There was a sudden flurry of noise and activity as the coach from Newry pulled in and the passengers descended as the coachman set down their luggage. Harry and James hid in the shadows until the last passenger had gone, then James walked on the other side of the street, glancing across at the terrace
where his father’s house was. As he approached his old home James suddenly started. A black wreath hung on the front door. James’s heart thumped uncontrollably. He walked past the house, then turned on his heel and went back again. It was the right house, and the wreath was still there.
‘Looks like somebody has died,’ Harry said.
James stood rooted to the pavement. In the upstairs windows he could see the glow of candles, but he couldn’t make out any figures. He couldn’t bring himself to knock on the front door.
‘We’ll go round the back,’ he whispered to Harry, and led him to the laneway at the back at the houses until they came in by the stable and crept up to the kitchen window.
Mrs Rudge and Smeadie were sitting down to their supper at the table and James rapped on the windowpane to attract their attention. Both looked up at once, and James watched the colour drain from Mrs Rudge’s face as she looked at him. After some hesitation, Smeadie opened the door a crack and hissed, ‘What do you want?’ He looked in distaste at Harry.
‘Smeadie, it’s me,’ James said. ‘And Harry is with me. Let us in, can’t you?’
‘It’s more than my job’s worth to let you in, sir.’ Smeadie looked embarrassed by his confession, but he didn’t open the door any further.
Then they heard Mrs Rudge’s firm voice behind him. ‘Let them in.’
Reluctantly, Smeadie admitted the two boys. Mrs Rudge took one look at them and sat them down at the table, without
a word, then produced two bowls of steaming food and commanded them to eat. After they had swallowed a few mouthfuls, James asked about the black wreath he had seen on the door.
Smeadie and Mrs Rudge looked at each other awkwardly. Finally Mrs Rudge spoke. ‘It’s given out that you died, master. The wreath is for you.’
James almost choked on his stew. ‘Dead? How can I be dead? Look at me!’
Smeadie gazed at him, as if not quite convinced that he was real and not a ghost returned to cause trouble for his master. ‘His lordship was greatly distressed,’ he said. ‘It was said that you had drowned in the river in a most unfortunate accident.’ He said this in such a way that James felt he had inconvenienced the household by not having the grace to perish quietly.
‘I never believed it meself,’ Mrs Rudge said. ‘I always thought your going away was her doing, and since no body was ever produced I never believed you had gone to your reward.’
‘Was there a … funeral?’ James asked, hardly daring to utter the word.
‘Aye, there was,’ said Smeadie, enlivened by the memory. He described it in some detail and with unmistakable relish: the solemn procession, the onlookers, the grave voice of the archbishop in the cathedral, the tears of Miss Deakin and his father.
‘Oh be quiet man, can’t you!’ Mrs Rudge interrupted, irritated. ‘Young James doesn’t need to hear all that.’
‘How shall a dead man live?’ asked Harry, who had been
sitting quietly, eating and listening. His question was met with silence. But James wasn’t defeated yet.
‘It’s a trick. They know I am alive. They know where I am.’ He stopped suddenly, as if he had just realised something.
‘The last thing they’ll want is you turning up now,’ Smeadie said.
‘He’s right,’ Harry said. ‘You’re in great danger now you’re … dead. It would suit them very well to have the reality match the lie.’
‘You must never come back here,’ Mrs Rudge said.
‘Can we trust you not to say anything?’ Harry suddenly asked Smeadie.
‘How dare you, you little get!’ Smeadie spat back.
‘He won’t say anything, don’t fret,’ Mrs Rudge said. ‘But you must take great care, Master James. Don’t go down any dark alleys at night. Keep your wits about you and be careful who you talk to, and don’t let anyone know who you are.’
Everyone knows who I am already, James thought to himself. I can’t remove myself from their knowledge without destroying half the city.
He could see that Smeadie and Mrs Rudge were growing more uncomfortable the longer the visit lasted, so he got up from the table, thanked them and took his leave, and he and Harry slipped back down the lane and down by quiet streets towards the river.