God Is an Englishman (116 page)

He had never been troubled by thoughts such as these in what he could now look back on as his happy-go-lucky past, but now he began to see all manner of gloomy possibilities in his situation, and his first step was to instruct Mr. Gilroy to cease his search of the registers of Thameside parishes for a Rookwood male, GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 625

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born about 1844, give or take a year or two. When Gilroy demurred, saying that informa tion might be gleaned from the books of recently registered baby-farmers, he said, desperately, “Leave it be, Mr. Gilroy. I don’t want to know, for what I don’t know I can’t fret about, can I?”

It might have stopped there had not the Gilroy home been a matri archal establishment. Fortunately for all concerned, Mrs. Gilroy (who had long since elected herself Rookwood’s foster-mother) heard about it that same day and set herself to watch. It was not long before she discerned the hidden reason behind her young lodger’s disinclina tion to meddle with his ancestry, and in passing she noticed some thing else but at that time preferred not to confuse the issue. She put her afterthought on one side as it were, merely thanking God that Hetty had come home from that genteel establishment prescribed by her father with her sense of values relatively unimpaired.

For her part Mrs. Gilroy had never favoured the idea much, having a suspicion that a girl who had been taught music, painting, dancing, housewifery-by-the-book and not by-the-kitchen-stove, might be come petulant and unmanageable when she found herself all dressed up and nowhere to go. Her observation, however, told her that this risk had been exaggerated. Hetty returned to them more polished, certainly, but otherwise unchanged. She was not above giving her mother a hand with the cooking and cleaning, and it was soon demonstrably clear that she was very intrigued by the shy young man with the worried look and the carefully cultivated whiskers, notwith standing the fact that in Mrs.

Gilroy’s estimation the frenzied appli cation of Howarth’s Graded Moustache Oil had aged the boy ten years.

The ageing process, due to the whiskers and the stain of the win ter’s work, led Mrs. Gilroy somewhat astray in the first instance. She set the blame for his drooping spirits and loss of appetite squarely upon Adam Swann’s shoulders, jumping to the conclusion that the dear boy had been overtaxing himself of late. She made up her mind, therefore, to have it out with him, and persuade him to take a holiday, but on the very day selected for the confrontation Rookwood himself brought the issue into the open by hinting that he might soon be leaving the district, and seeking a transfer back to London.

The prospect of losing him appalled her. She had become accus tomed to having him there in place of the son she had been denied, and the thought of having no necessity to prepare his breakfast kip pers was a foretaste of death.

She was very sorry then that she had not made more of a stand when that boss of his came posting down from London, and talked the boy into accepting the GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 626

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post vacated by that dreadful man Abbott and said, with a quaver in her voice,

“
Leaving us?
Leaving me and Mr. Gilroy? After
all this time?
For
London!
Why, Mr.

Rookwood,” (she had avoided using his Chris tian name all these years to help buttress his dignity)…“that’s un thinkable! I won’t hear of it!
You
mustn’t think of it! There must be another way of easing that cruel workload they put upon you!” and at this, Rookwood looked very puzzled so that she added, “That
is
what’s bothering you, isn’t it? That’s why you don’t like my kippers any more and why you toss and turn so much of a night? Oh, I hear you, and so does Mr. Gilroy, and we’re very worried about it. He said it’s those inquiries he’s making about your parents but I told him nonsense, the boy has more sense than to fret over
that.
I said it was all the work they put upon you, and you not much more than a lad, however well you stand up to it, but how will working for the same people in London help? If I was you I’d send in my notice and look about for another position right here. Hickson and Dacre are repu table hauliers…” She could not have said anything more calculated to expose the true source of Rookwood’s disenchantment with her kippers. Hickson and Dacre were his most dangerous rivals, and the prospect of trans ferring his allegiance to a firm that had refused to rent him a single waggon when all his spares had been sent to help Ratcliffe in December was so outrageous that he fell headlong into the kind of trap barristers set for unsuspecting witnesses, exclaiming, “
Me?
Move over to Hickson and Dacre? Leave Swann for those brigands? Good Lord, Mrs. Gilroy, I’d sooner sign on before the mast and go to the South Seas to forget!” He realised his mistake at once and could have clipped an inch from his tongue.

He went very red and gestured with his hands, try ing to think of something that would repair the gap torn in his defences. It was a vain attempt. A strong, white light lit up the twi light areas of Martha Gilroy’s logical brain and suddenly, as though he had proclaimed it in unequivocal terms, she perceived the real reason for his rejected kippers and rumpled sheets. She saw some thing else too and it made her bubble with excitement. Suddenly a tremendous prospect opened up before her—a daughter off her hands, the dear boy officially enlisted in the family, and the near-certainty of grandchildren to spoil in her old age.

“Hetty!”
she gasped. “Dear life, what a fool I am! It’s Hetty, isn’t it?”, and he nodded, morosely, but this did nothing to prevent her from grasping him in a fierce maternal embrace, something she had so often longed to do but never had, for fear of embarrassing him. Then a sobering thought occurred to her and she clapped both hands over her ears as though to ward off bad news, and said,

“You’ve not…not spoken to her? She hasn’t said no, has she?” and Rookwood, GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 627

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now so far out of his depth that he despaired of touching bottom again, mumbled,

“Spoken to her? Good heavens, you can’t know me if you think…what I mean is I wouldn’t pre sume…Speak to her about it behind Mr. Gilroy’s back? Good Lord, ma’am, as if I would…” and he tailed off, muttering some thing about being shown the door, or invoking Mr. Gilroy’s un speakable indignation but precisely what it was Martha Gilroy never did learn, for suddenly his modesty struck her as something that deserved more than a push; it needed a well-judged kick, and if no one else was there to administer one then she was, praise God.

“Stop it!” she shouted, “Stop talking like that! I won’t listen to a word of it and neither will Mr. Gilroy when he gets home. Whatever is wrong with you courting our Hetty? That’s what I’d like to know, for if she doesn’t jump at you she hasn’t the sense I credit her with. As for me, I can’t think of anyone I’d as lief see wedded to my flesh and blood, for I’ll have you know, since you don’t seem to know it already, that I don’t give a thimble who you are or where you come from! It’s plain to me you’re a good, steady lad, and very biddable with it, to say nothing of keeping clear of taverns and bad lasses all the years
I’ve
known you!

There, now I’ve made you blush, but I’m not sorry for it. It’s time someone told you and if you want to begin courting Hetty you can start at any time you’ve a mind to, with my blessing!” She paused just long enough to draw a single, whistling breath. “Do I make myself clear?”

He was standing in front of her with his mouth open, his hands limp, and his knees slightly bent, so that he seemed to her to be cower ing and it was this pitiable aspect of him that caused her to lead him to a chair and give him a chance to make some kind of attempt to pull himself together. He said, at last, “You’ve not…not mentioned it to her?”

“Indeed I haven’t,” she replied, tartly, “for in my day lads didn’t need sponsor-ing. Mr. Gilroy took his time, now I think on it, but that was on account of him being a lawyer. All the other young sparks I knew wanted holding off not setting on!”

“But, don’t you see, Mrs. Gilroy? Hetty’s educated, besides being…well…

beautiful. She could have anyone, anyone at all, and I don’t even know who I am.

I thought…” but Mrs. Gilroy was not in the least disposed to listen to a recital of his disqualifications. Modesty in a man was becoming but only up to a certain point. Be yond that point it became nauseating, so she said, quite sharply, “I told you to stop talking that way and I meant it, Albert Rookwood! Now you listen to me, and stop sitting there looking up at me like a stranded codfish! I’ve told you what Mr. Gilroy and me think of you, and as to Hetty, I’ve got my suspicions GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 628

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as regards her, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, and that can’t be soon enough to my way of thinking. No mother wants to see her only child make a fool of herself, and what with her music and painting and all the what-not her father would have her learn there’s no knowing what kind of loafer she might introduce into the house as her intended. Now me, I like to see what I’m getting in advance, and you’ve been as good as a son to me and Cedric, so there’s no question of us buying a pig in a poke, is there? I’m sorry to speak that plain, but circum stances demand it. If you fancy Hetty that much then all I can say is she’s a very lucky girl, so, for pity’s sake, stop fretting about who you
were
and try and remember who you
are,
a lad holding down a job that would tax the wits of a college man, and the patience of Job into the bargain. What’s more you’ve been taking more money to the bank every week than most lads your age save in a month, so if you’ll take a final word of advice, say your piece to Hetty right now, without giving yourself time to think on it. If I’m any judge of my own flesh and blood you’ll have occasion to thank me for it, and so will she when she gets used to the idea. Then you can go back to eating a proper breakfast again, and go to bed with the prospect of a good night’s rest. Are you man enough to try, or do you prefer to stay hanging about while she has her bit of fun keeping you waiting?”

In the last few years Albert Rookwood had been called upon to make any number of quick decisions but never one like this. Perhaps, however, the uncertainties and the manifold hazards of his profes sion, had tested him in a way he had not acknowledged up to that moment for now, faced with a straight choice, he did not hesitate long. He said, lifting his hand to his long, drooping whiskers,

“I’ll do it now, Mrs. Gilroy. I’ll get it over with, for I couldn’t stay on not knowing, any more than I could if Hetty didn’t see it your way. Give me ten minutes and I’ll come down and perhaps…well…perhaps you could pretend to be doing something out in the kitchen.”

“Aye, I could that,” she said, smiling, “for there’s always one woman’s work waiting out there, notwithstanding the way you’ve been picking at your food ever since our Hetty ogled you!”

She went out then and down the stairs, calling sharply to her daughter who was playing with the fat marmalade cat in the back yard. He resisted a temptation to listen at the head of the stairs and resolutely closed the door, peeling off his jacket, rolling up his sleeves, and studying himself in the mirror clipped over the splashboard of his washstand. He stood there for more than a minute and then he made another decision. Breathing hard, and holding his face so close to the mirror GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 629

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that it began to mist, he groped for a pair of scissors he kept in his oddment drawer, alongside his razor, his Moustache Oil, and a pipe he had laid aside after a few whiffs had made him as sick as a cat. With the solemnity of a mayor snipping the tape of a new bridge he made two cuts, reducing the carefully cultivated mou stache to a ragged fringe extending about two inches beyond each nostril.

The alteration was not a success. It gave him the look of a young Irish navigator who shaved by candlelight so he dipped his fingers in his water can, finding the water lukewarm. “Better start fresh,” he said aloud and began to lather. It was his final misjudge ment that season. The first thing Hetty did was to insist that he grow it again.

5

It was Rookwood he remembered as he stumped across the sunlit yard that July morning, a month or so after his return to bondage, for somehow Rookwood symbolised the entire experiment; something permanent, promising, and substantial, emerging from a hotpotch of unlikely components, a coming-together in this place of any number of men and boys with no common background, widely separated by the nature of dreams that some called ambition but were more fundamental to his way of thinking. For a man’s dreaming pro claimed his essential personality.

He remembered Rookwood because the vanboys were much in evidence at that hour, a few of Keate’s originals but a greater number of recruits, for Keate was still dredging along the banks of the Thames. He watched them idly, swinging like monkeys from the tail board ropes, exchanging the kind of chaff with which the Cockney armours himself against those who trespass on his individuality. Cockneys, he recalled, made excellent private soldiers and good N.C.O.’s but were too gregarious to hold rank above sergeant. Rookwood was the exception. Somewhere along his genetic line there was good blood, possibly the blood of kings. Who knew? Who knew the truth about anyone? Hadn’t he been completely ignorant of the potentialities of a woman who had shared his bed and board for years?

Something alerted him, something in the way they looked at him, as though trying to compose their urchin features into expressions of respect, but only succeeding in looking very artful, and it was the same when he called in at the stables and counting house, finding both Keate and Tybalt missing, and this was strange at nine o’clock on a summer’s morning.