Mr. Timothy: A Novel (12 page)

--'Course, Annie's the
real
artist. No one like her for tinting out the faces a bit, bringing out the blue in someone's coat. Ah, and here's a little theatrical trickery on our part: painted scenery, Tim. The young gentlemen love it. We've got backdrops of Mont Blanc, the Parthenon, Colosseum--they can tour the Continent now without ever leaving home. Oh, and you must look at these.

He gestures towards a wine table, laid over with pocket-sized prints on thin paperboard mats. The prints are still slightly damp from their recent immersion. They exhale clouds of nitrate of silver, and smelling them is a bit like mashing one's face into an old woman's hair.

--The newest thing, Tim.
Cartes de visite
. I ask you, likenesses like these, who needs tiresome old calling cards?

--Who indeed?

My fingers flutter across the image of an upright, swarthy man, on the far side of forty but dressed like a smart twenty-fiver, in a full-sleeved frock coat and a crossed tie and high collar. Nothing behind him but the recumbent swag of an organdy drape--as fraudulent as Mont Blanc, for all I know, but the impression is authentic. To think it is with personages like this that my brother, who once threw rocks at constables on Camden High Street, now spends his days. The contrast with my own circle is almost too much; I shall have to invite them all to Mrs. Sharpe's party.

--Not to paw the merchandise too much, Tim.

--Sorry.

--If you like, I'll make a card for you. Free of charge.

--I can't think when I'd ever need it.

I say it simply for something to say, but it casts a strange pall over us. He steps back a pace, fiddles with his watch key. I stroll another loop around the room. Then another.

--See here, Peter, I know it's an odd thing to ask, but I was wondering if you might enlighten me on a particular point.

--Certainly.

--Well, you remember how...in the old days...

--Which old days would those be, Tim?

--When you...when you got around a bit.

His dark eyes twinkling, he lowers himself onto a settee.

--Bless me, Tim, where can this be leading?

--Well, I was thinking how you used to know a certain class of person. Not that you...any more, I
know
that....

--Go on.

--Did you ever hear talk of girls being...you know, for any reason, branded?

--Like cows, you mean?

--Like that, yes.

--
Hoomm
. I can't...no, I can't really...
Tattoos
now and again, that goes without saying, but brands.... It's what they do to slaves, isn't it?

--Yes.

His eyes squeeze down into slits.

--Someone you know, Tim?

--No. No, it's not even anyone alive. A hiccough of laughter escapes me. Most disconcerting. I keep talking simply to cover my embarrassment.

--Well, you'll be glad to hear I saw Uncle N yesterday. Quite filled my ear with all my obligations:
A hard time we have of it in this world
....

--Yes, I've had that one.

--
But we know that coming in
, he said. And that's--that's where I can't follow him. We
don't
know that coming in, how could we? And if we could, would we even bother?

--You're in fine holiday fettle.

--I can't help it. I can't. One sees things, Peter. Young girls dead before they've even bloody lived. You think
they
didn't wonder, with their very last breath, why in God's name they'd been put to all this trouble? I don't have an answer for them, do you? There's no answer. There's no reason to bring any child into such a world.

And then Annie's icicle voice comes scraping through the air:

--Pardon me.

How long she's been in the room, I can't say, but she's making great haste to leave it. Peter is halfway out of his chair, but she's too quick for him, the darkroom door is already slamming after her, and as he slumps back in his seat, he gives his head a slow scratch. His mouth twists into a grimace.

--Well, it's...you mustn't mind her, Tim. We're still...God hasn't seen fit to bless us yet, but we're still hoping, you see.

My head drops into my hands.

--Ohh, Christ.

--You weren't to know.

--I damn well
was
to know. I'm just a great fat idiot, that's all.

--Not so fat.

I love that smile of Peter's: soft and reproving all at once. Judgement and then permanent amnesty.

--I tell her all the time, Tim, if God means it to be, it'll be. But that's not enough, she
feels
it so. Can't get around it. I think it's to the point now she'd take any baby at all.

He snorts at the floor.

--Even branded on all sides. And shod by the local smith. Suddenly, over his left shoulder, a strange and ephemeral vision: a woman, tall and straight and ancient, under a nest of strawberry curls. Drawn by some magnetic field all her own, too insensible, perhaps, to notice the slow, inexorable slide of her bonnet towards her left ear.

--All right, Miss Ashbee?

--Oh, yes. You know, while I was being mesmerised, I had the most charming dream.

--Is that so?

--I'm afraid I can't recall a moment of it now.

--Well, that accounts for its charm, perhaps. Shall we send on your portraits when they're done?

--That would be lovely. And do say good-bye to the other gentleman, if you would.

--Other gentleman, Miss Ashbee?

--Yes, he was standing very still and quiet in the center of the room. Three legs and one large glass eye.

Chapter 8

SWINGING HIS HEAD ROUND, Colin the Melodious fixes me with a basilisk stare.

--Christ, is that the fastest you can go?

Until now, he has been the most admirable of guides. With his low-slung gravity and busy feet, he can navigate any puddle, skirt the most treacherous morass, and he has a keen inner eye for the sheets of black ice that crop up every ten yards or so. A good thing, too, for it's the dreariest, drizzliest of mornings--sleet and ice and rain sloughing down in a great numbing soup--and Drury Lane's courts have never been mazier. Only fifteen minutes ago, we were in Covent Garden, surrounded by oxen and sheep, handbarrows and donkey carts, costers bawling for all they were worth: the holy din of the market. Now we might as well be in another hemisphere. The streets have vanished under drifts of mud. The houses charge at us like bellicose dart throwers, or else lean drunkenly on one another's shoulders, and from their chimneys, parabolas of soot rain down on us in hard black flakes.

--Lord bless me, Mr. Timothy! You must have a week's worth of shit up your bum!

It's half past eight, but the morning hasn't quite taken hold here. The street lamps still smoulder through curtains of sleet. Candles flicker from barely discernible windows. The sky holds far off, and the only sound is Colin's occasional whistling--as lovely, in its way, as his singing--and even this dies away as the streets taper into tunnels and the houses close down on our heads. We step over shattered, frothing cisterns and wrenched-off water spouts, still clogged with black ice, and it seems to me we no longer have any location to speak of. We are off the human map.
A few more minutes, and we have passed into a small court, even darker and colder than the one we just left. We sidestep a recumbent, bloodstained man...thirty? sixty?...He opens one eye to us, then slowly, regretfully closes it again. From off in the distance come the sounds of a German band warming up for nobody.

--Ssst.

Colin puts a finger to his lips, motions me to stop.

--Over there, sir. That's the churchyard.

I will have to take his word for it. Through the haze and sleet, all I can see is a large blotchy archway, with a listing iron gate and, above it, a single lamp, still burning. The rest is intuition: a row of crumbling, unevenly laid bricks; an inscription; wrought-iron tracery.

--I don't see her, Colin.

--What'd you expect? She'd be waitin' there with a pie for you?

We ford the muddy street and come to a halt by the gate. From the blackness on the other side, a dank sulphurous gas billows forth, but this is less terrible than the sheer unmitigated dampness of the place. I wouldn't have imagined we could be any wetter than we already are, but standing here, I think we must have stepped into a great panting, oozing mouth.

Through the bars, I can just make out isolated heaps of stones and markers, and as the haze slowly lifts, I begin to see the true method therein: grave piled upon grave in promiscuous confusion. As unhallowed a ground as one could wish for. Even Colin sounds awed by it.

--Fearful spot to be dead in.

The gate, deprived of its hinges, has managed to cling to the outer wall through some stubborn oxidation, and so the only way to enter the enclosure is to squeeze through the crevice between the gate and the archway. Colin takes less time about it than I do. By the time I'm through, he is already leapfrogging over the gravestones, dropping into handstands--and then stopping suddenly, his body poised and quivering like a pointer's. And when I come up alongside him, he is indeed pointing--to a small grey figure twenty yards off, kneeling before one of the stones.

--It's her, sir.

--Are you sure?

--'Course I'm sure.

But before we can take another step, a titanic howl sets us back on our heels. A large blackwhiskered dog has darted from cover and crouches now before us, snarling and bellowing to beat Cerberus, slashing the ground with its forepaw and spitting drool. I take a step back, but Colin, with truly alarming aplomb, picks up a fragment of crumbled stone from the nearest grave and shies it at the dog's head.
In that instant, the dog ducks its snout, lowers its ears, and dashes past us in a most unCerberal fashion, squeaking where it once howled, scrambling through the gap of the gate and making off down the street with nary a backwards look.

Its flight serves at least one function: it rouses the hooded figure in the distance. Rising to her feet, she wraps herself round with a cloak--a new addition, that--and glares through the mist. Locked in her sights, I grow as still as if
I
were the quarry, and it seems she is under the same impression, for she shakes off her own stillness and comes hard on.
Running
, she is. Charging with such ferocity I find myself virtually helpless before it. She dodges grave markers without even seeing them, so merciless is her intent, and the closer she gets, the greater her velocity, until at last she is almost airborne, flinging herself not at the sky, as I half imagined, but at the boy standing frozen next to me. I hear Colin's startled cry:

--
Goomf
!

And down he goes. Kneeling on his stomach, the girl rears up in a towering rage and rains down punishment, blow after blow to Colin's face and shoulders and chest, as he squirms and grunts beneath her. I grab her round the waist and pull as hard as I'm able, but she won't budge, just keeps raking and pounding. I pull harder, harder still, and at last she gives way, but only of her own volition, I know that much, and when I have dragged her a few paces away, I understand the reason for her acquiescence: the blue woollen scarf has been wrenched from Colin's neck and hangs now from her still-clenched fists--a conqueror's tribute.

--Christ almighty! says Colin.

He wipes a smear of blood from his lip, climbs to his feet with a long, dissipating groan, and stares at me with glassy eyes. I hand him his cap, grab him by the shoulders, and turn him round until he is facing the girl.

--Young lady, you must excuse my friend Colin. He would like you to know how very sorry he is for stealing your scarf.

It takes a poke to the ribs to jar the necessary words from Colin.

--Very. Awf 'lly.

Still glaring, the girl slowly winds the scarf round her neck, taking special care, I notice, with that last dangling fringe, draping it just so between the folds of her cloak, so that the two articles of clothing form a single continuum.

--We only wanted to be sure you were all right, I tell her.--You mustn't be crawling about in sewers, you know, it isn't safe.

She takes a step back. Another step.

--We won't come any closer.

Another step.

--You needn't be afraid. She's not afraid. That much is clear. The simple act of plying her fists has stiffened her spine, pushed her chin into a promontory.

--If you...if you wish to leave now, we won't follow. I can't run very fast. As you know.

I make a quick little running motion with my arms, then frown and shake my head:
No runny runny
. And strange to say, this desperate pantomime manages to reach her--elicits the barest ghost of a smile. Or am I imagining it? Colin, at any rate, is ready with a translation:

--He means he's a bloody cripple!

And whether it is his mode of expression or the reaction it produces on my face, her smile does draw a little wider.

Here is Drury Lane's gift. Standing in this tenement of the dead, this girl and I at last approach some degree of ease together. If ease it can be called, both of us coated in rime and soot and fixed in place, several yards separating us and not even the glimmer of a conversation on our horizon.

It will have to do for now. It is enough, at any rate, to embolden me towards something that only a minute ago I would not have attempted. I point to the place where she was lately kneeling, and I ask her:

--Is that someone you know?

A shade comes rolling down over her eyes; she turns away. Not the retreating motion I remember from our first encounter, but a slow, graceful circling, almost flirtatious in its delicacy. And in that moment, the very arc and style of her movement become a form of permission, and so, taking Colin by the elbow, I make for the graveside she has just vacated.

The stone is new, but it might as well be a century old, for all the care that has been taken with its carving and placement. It leans back at a crazy angle, almost kissing the turf, while a small bouquet fans across its base. A paltry collection, given the season: flowerless dandelions, a couple of pansies, the snipped-off heads of chrysanthemums. Snatched from curbs and refuse bins, no doubt, and so ragged I'm not sure even a flower girl would try palming them off, but a gentle hand has slapped them back into life, interwoven them in such a way that their old identities have reemerged.