Elephant Man (27 page)

“Then we’d better hurry, sir.”

Their route took them past Treves’ office, outside which Carr-Gomm stood and fumed impatiently while Treves darted in to get something.

“Was that really necessary, Treves?” he demanded, looking disparagingly at the wrapped parcel that Treves had tucked under his arm.

“Yes, sir. Absolutely necessary.”

At the door to Merrick’s room they found Mothershead, standing guard.

“I’ve made sure no one went in till you came, sir.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Mothershead. Perhaps you would like to come in with us,” said Carr-Gomm.

Treves led the way inside and went straight up to Merrick, who rose apprehensively.

“Good afternoon, John. Mr. Carr-Gomm has something he would like to say to you.”

He deferred to Carr-Gomm, who took center stage with a beaming face.

“Mr. Merrick,” he said formally, “it is my greatest pleasure to welcome you, officially, to the London Hospital. The Governing Committee have voted, unanimously, to provide you with these rooms on a permanent basis. This is your home now. I’m so very, very pleased for you.”

He finished by bending his head forward in anticipation of Merrick’s reply. But the Elephant Man was speechless, whether from joy or disbelief no one could tell. He only looked around them, from Treves, to Carr-Gomm, to Mothershead, who was smiling at him.

“So you see, John,” Treves encouraged him, “there’s no need for a lighthouse. All your friends are here.”

“Welcome home, John,” said Mothershead.

At last Merrick spoke. “My—home—?”

“Yes, John,” said Treves.

“You—” He looked at them all in turn. “—did all this for me?”

“Yes,” said Treves again.

Merrick pulled himself together. “Please—please thank the committee for me. I will do my utmost to merit their kindness.”

He turned away from them slightly and looked at the room as if seeing it for the first time. Treves could sense that only now was it beginning to dawn on him that at last he had a real home, a place of his own.

“My home.” Merrick lingered over the words.

“There is one more thing, John,” said Treves. “Here.” He laid the wrapped parcel on the table, and stood back, indicating for Merrick to open it. He thought he had never known such pleasure and satisfaction as he felt watching Merrick pull off the paper and open the dressing bag. It was plain that the Elephant Man was overjoyed by his gift. He lovingly handled the articles, the brush, the comb, the toothbrush, taking them in and out of their compartments, opening and closing the bag with a dazed air, as if he could not believe what was happening to him.

“Mr. Treves—” he said huskily. “Thank you, my—friends.”

Treves raised his eyebrows to Carr-Gomm in a silent question. The Chairman understood at once and signaled to Mrs. Mothershead to leave. He followed her, stopping briefly at the door to say, “Once again Mr. Merrick—welcome to the London Hospital as our permanent guest.”

Then he was gone, leaving Treves alone with Merrick.

“It’s getting late,” said Treves in a deceptively casual voice, to cover the fact that he knew Merrick was weeping quietly. “I keep forgetting that winter is so far advanced until the light starts to fade so early in the day. Look at it, dark already.”

He kept up this small talk until Merrick had recovered his composure. Then he smiled at him.

“I hope you like your present, John. Anne chose it.”

“Please thank Mrs. Treves for me. I hope she didn’t go to any trouble.”

“She did, because she wanted to—because it was for you.”

He was momentarily afraid this might set Merrick off again. The Elephant Man had had as much as he could bear.

“Mr. Treves—thank you for what you’ve done for me. I know it was you who made them keep me here …”

“It wasn’t me at all, John. It was—a very kind lady who I’ll tell you all about tomorrow. Not tonight. You’ve had enough excitement for one day. Goodnight.”

There was a good crowd in the Peacock that night. Jim Renshaw’s “parties” were getting known in the district and the demand was growing. So far the porter had confined his sightseeing trips to Bedstead Square to five or six persons. It was easier for him to keep control that way. But confidence and greed had combined to make him think a larger expedition practicable, and this evening he was planning on twelve.

He stood in the center of the barroom, jingling the night’s takings in his pocket, and trying to see through the smoke that hung, foglike, over the customers. A sheaf of raised arms stabbed the air to catch his attention and Renshaw surveyed them with lazy pleasure, enjoying the feeling of power their supplications gave him. A good number of the drinkers were ladies of the town who did the rounds of the pubs last thing to drum up trade. Renshaw knew most of them by now. His “parties of pleasure” always included at least one whore who paid her entrance fee in kind. Renshaw found these occasions more rewarding even than he had hoped. He had discovered that the horror and revulsion that a sight of the Elephant Man always induced did something to a woman, shook her with a physical frenzy that she had to work off with a man afterward.

Secretly this rather shocked Renshaw. Buried deep down amid his brutality and sentimentality he kept a half-recognized strain of puritanism where female behavior was concerned. It wasn’t “nice” that a woman
who’d had a nasty shock should be sexually excited by it. But he profited by the fact just the same.

He passed over tonight’s collection of whores, searching for a new face. At last he found what he was looking for—two new faces, sitting at a table with a raffish-looking young man who seemed to be coping well with both of them—for the moment. The boy had an air of tawdry prosperity.

“Here now,” he called to Renshaw, “these lovely ladies ain’t never seen it.” Renshaw gave the two girls the briefest glance—enough to assure him that either (or both) of them would do. The fair-haired one was a choice piece.

“You’re on, mate,” he said. Turning back to the other customers he raised his voice. “All right, all right. That’s enough for this performance.” Amid a chorus of disappointed moans he yelled, “Hang on, hang on. There’s always tomorrow night. Not to worry.”

He began to round up his little flock, shooing away a couple of hangers-on who tried to slip in at the back.

“Not tonight, ladies,” he told them genially. “Sally, you oughta be ashamed of yourself. You’ve seen it twice already. What’s got into you?”

The blowsy redhead he’d addressed gave him a knowing look. “I really couldn’t say, Jim Renshaw. But I know what gets into me afterward—and so do you.”

He gave her a chuck under the chin. “Not tonight, Sal. I’ve got me ’ands full. Hop it now. Go and earn an honest penny.”

Turning away from her Renshaw found himself confronting a man in a twisted stove-pipe hat, and a five-day growth of greying beard. Renshaw regarded him curiously, conscious that this stranger had been studying him silently from a seat by the bar all evening. Several times he had looked over to the bar, and always the man had been sitting there, drinking gin and never moving his pale eyes. He never spoke, and amid the racket of the other customers the silence that surrounded
him had been almost tangible. Renshaw would have died rather than admit he’d been unnerved by it, but he did not, as he would otherwise have done, tell the stranger briskly to get out of his way. There was something about Bytes that killed such words on his lips.

“Room for one more?” Bytes inquired in a soft voice, which mysteriously reached Renshaw easily despite the row going on around him.

Only a moment earlier Renshaw had declared “full house,” yet now he found himself saying, as though hypnotized, “At the right price …”

Bytes held out a hand that contained several coins, but his gaze never left Renshaw’s face. With difficulty Renshaw dragged his eyes away and looked at the money. He stiffened with shock when he saw the amount. Whoever this cove was he wanted to see the Elephant Man badly—badly.

“There’s room,” he said.

“Well, let’s be off then,” said Bytes.

The little giggling procession moved on its way. They might have been a party of cheerful holiday makers, enjoying a well-earned day out. Renshaw had already slipped an arm round the waist of the blonde whore, whose name turned out to be Jess. Her male companion seemed disposed to resent this, until a closer look at Renshaw made him think better of it, and turn his attention to Beattie, the other whore. But he still nursed a sense of grievance. He’d paid for all three of them.

Bytes wandered out alone at the back, and followed the gaudy crowd quietly at a distance. As he walked he was considering his position.

The money he had handed over was almost the last of a dwindling stock. Much of the rest had gone on the hire of the horse and cart that Tony was now minding in a back street near the hospital. He had offered Renshaw a purposely generous contribution to ensure that he would be included in the party this
very night. Otherwise the hire of the cart would be wasted, and Bytes’ money was fast running out.

His fortunes over the last few weeks had fluctuated wildly. Destitution had threatened, following the loss of his prize possession, and Bytes had been forced to ease his financial circumstances by a little quiet burglary.

Burglary had once been his trade in an on-and-off sort of way. He had never really taken to it, preferring less-energetic forms of roguery when they presented themselves. He was forced back to it only by the most pressing need.

Alas, his professional judgment had failed him. He had fallen foul, not of the law but of the competition. The shop he had chosen to rob lay in the heart of a well-defined “patch” that was considered the exclusive preserve of the local criminal fraternity. Bytes got away with enough cash to tide him over comfortably for a few weeks, but found himself a hunted man. His only protection was that his pursuers did not know for certain that he was their quarry. Just the same, Bytes deemed it wise to retire from London for a while—for his health.

He had vanished from the metropolis, never knowing that Tony was searching for him with news of the Elephant Man. When he returned a month later, hoping the dust might have settled as his pockets were again nearly empty, he found Tony still waiting impatiently to deliver the message.

Bytes, a superstitious man, considered that Providence had smiled on him. As he walked on through the darkness toward the hospital, he reflected that it must surely be Providence that had brought him back at this moment, with just enough cash left on him to arrange for the recovery of his property.

It was not until he was safely alone that Merrick felt able to relish the full joy of his dressing case. He knew his little audience were on his side—Treves, Carr-Gomm, even Mothershead now. But any spectators,
no matter how sympathetic, were a restraint on the free flow of his imagination. The case was a vehicle for dreams, and dreams could only be savored in happy solitude.

Alone at last he could be himself, the true self that nature had meant him to be, the self that would use such a dressing case as a matter of course. He studied its contents, removing each one and laying it gently on the table. They lay there in a neat row, but after a moment the order displeased him, and he began to rearrange them.

He held up the toothbrush and considered it. He had never used such a thing, but the debonair young gadabout that lurked hidden inside his body would have used one every day to maintain the dazzling smile he turned on the ladies. It was the same with the comb and the ivory-handled razors, accessories a gentleman could not afford to be without.

He wondered how he might have obtained the case. He would have preferred it to be a gift from a pretty woman, but was it likely? Merrick’s knowledge of etiquette was almost nil, but some instinct told him that no well-bred young woman would give such a personal gift to a man not her husband.

A wife then? And into his mind rose the charming face of Anne Treves. She epitomized the little he had ever seen of domestic bliss but—was it not a little soon to be thinking of domestic bliss? Marriage cramped a man’s style. Even a betrothal got in the way of those delightful little saunters in perfume-scented gardens, whispering languorous delights into small feminine ears. Reluctantly he decided he had bought the case for himself.

His situation settled, he began to consider how best he might spend the evening. A night out on the town would suit him. Dressed in the height of elegant fashion he’d saunter along to—here Merrick’s knowledge failed him—to wherever dashing young blades saunter on these occasions. A theater party perhaps, to see
Twelfth Night
at the Apollo? The idea pleased
him. He’d send Mrs. Kendal a bouquet of red roses with compliments on her performance. A note would be delivered to his box, inviting him to a select supper at the Kendals’ house afterward. There would be champagne—ladies …

He began to prepare himself for the night’s revelry, taking up one of the silver-backed brushes and stroking forward his thin hair till it lay neatly across his monstrous skull. To check the effect he lifted the picture of Mrs. Kendal and used the glass to give him a reflection. The ugliness of his own face staring back did not disturb him. He did not see it.

With difficulty he used his finlike right hand to slip the ring onto his left. Then he opened the cigarette case and shoved a cigarette into his right hand. All that was needed now was the walking stick, and his accessories were complete. He twitched the stick up into his left hand and began to circle the room in a casual saunter. He could feel the admiring eyes cast upon him, drawn by his matchless elegance.

Before Mrs. Kendal’s picture he stopped and inclined his head toward her.

“Hello, my name is John Merrick,” he said courteously. “I am very,
very
pleased to meet you.”

He gave her a small bow, then he turned and repeated the movement in the direction of the other ladies on his mantelpiece. He felt his heart might break with happiness.

The thunderous opening of the door behind him shattered his fragile world like crystal. On the threshold stood Renshaw grinning tipsily.