Mr. Timothy: A Novel (21 page)

Chapter 13

MRS. SHARPE'S GIRLS STILL TALK about the night the King of the Belgians came (though none of them was around to see it). They say he arrived in a coach-and-six, wearing a Pierrot mask and smelling of hollyhocks and bacon. His servant introduced him as a Mr. Gluwid from Wales, but no Welshman ever sounded like Mr. Gluwid, nor sported such a large signet ring. He stayed but fifteen minutes, long enough to be bound in a bell rope and half asphyxiated with Mrs. Sharpe's unwashed chemise. Before he was released, the recumbent gentleman was heard to moan:

--May Heaven take me now, for this earth has nothing left to yield. Well, that was ten years ago, and it is fair to say that Mrs. Sharpe's clientele has fallen off a bit in the interim. At tonight's function, there will be no Belgian kings amidst the bowls of trifle and the ropes of privet and the Tom Smith Christmas crackers. No princes or dukes, no ministers of the Crown, not even a rank-and-file Tory. According to Mary Catherine, the only guests of real note are a Viennese surgeon, a clergyman from Exeter Hall, an editor of the
North London Press
, and a retired colonel from the 13th Light Dragoons rumoured to have been somewhere in the vicinity of Sebastopol either shortly before or shortly after the famous battle.

For all the paucity of titles, though, there is a superabundance of facial shrubbery: great topiaries of whisker, woollen and baroque, running in an uninterrupted line from one jaw to the next. And Mrs. Sharpe's strictures remain in force. No medical students will be found on the guest list (too poor by half). No soldiers or sailors below the rank of captain. No one under the age of eighteen, and most of all, no lawyers, it being Mrs. Sharpe's contention that the Inns of Court have ruined more girls than all the brothels of London combined.

This is not to say that the interests of the Law go unrepresented here. Three members of the Metropolitan Police, still in uniform, have arrayed themselves round a giant bowl of negus. By the looks of things, they have been at their station for some time, for they are all of them three sheets to the wind, and have taken to using their hats as ladles. Whenever Mary Catherine passes by with a platter of food, they make elabourate shows of snatching an oyster or a leg of mutton and then pointing accusing fingers at one another.

--Officer. Someone has gone and pinched a meat pie.

--It were you, Officer.

--No, I swear. It were the other officer.

And to think, last night, with Bowler on our heels, we were searching for someone just like them. We failed to appreciate how easily a public trust can be breached. A bowl of negus, a toothsome ham bone--that's all it takes to look the other way. And if I'm not mistaken, the rewards are just beginning for this lot: later tonight, they will have their pick of Mrs. Sharpe's girls.

Cherry ripe, cherry ripe Ripe I cry
Full and fair ones
Come and buy....

Bizarre, isn't it, to hear that pure treble welling up from these climes? It must be said that Mrs. Sharpe's parlour, with its strange cross-hatching of respectability and sex, is not the best venue for Colin's talents. His timbre is swamped by the flood of conversation, and the wreaths of cigarette smoke tend to catch in his throat. Still, he carries on as though he had the room's undivided attention--stands on a piano bench, one foot slightly in advance of the other, and glows with justifiable pride in his knickerbocker suit. The short jacket, with its fashionably roomy sleeves, has been fastened at the neck with a single button and hangs open to reveal a grey cloth waistcoat, to which Colin has attached a miniature watch chain, sans watch. His face has been scrubbed, his sward of curls slicked and parted--all in all, he looks quite the little man. Mrs. Sharpe's girls swooped down on him when he first arrived, and Colin took these attentions so personally that he has spent the entire recital scanning the room for his nymphs and giving each one the most salacious of winks. Whether the girls wink back is unclear, but Colin seems to derive fresh assurances from each new contact, and his voice swells with confidence.

Where my Julia's lips do smile
,
There's the land of Cherry Isle
....

--He's lovely, Mr. Timothy. I can't thank you enough.

Mrs. Sharpe's fingers graze my wrist. It's a gesture I normally equate with proximity, but when I turn, I find her at a great remove, her torso bent and her right arm extended to its full length. This is the closest she can come to anyone tonight, for her dress makes anything nearer impossible. Other women her age might have made do with a bonnet and a modestly flounced skirt. Mrs. Sharpe, in defiance of propriety, has encased herself in the roomiest of crinolines, and whirls about the room like a miniature planet, blowing others out of her orbit. More than once, she has knocked ceramic bowls off tables, and in one particularly alarming manoeuvre, she swept a spadeful of flaming cinders onto the hearth rug. (Mary Catherine had to throw the piano shawl over them.) How many horses must have forfeited their hair, how many whales their bones, so that Mrs. Sharpe could occupy this sovereign space.

The dress is somehow in keeping with her personality, for all night long, she has been exerting a kind of reverse magnetism on her guests. Not twenty minutes ago, I watched her repel with great success an audience of monarchists.

--Oh, the Queen! Poor dreary titmouse. Forever mourning the loss of her chin. Well, at least she can comfort herself with the father of her children. Oh, no, I'm talking about the royal physician. Please don't look shocked, you
must
know,
everyone
does! That Hun she's married to couldn't impregnate a dairy maid. Oh, my, no, the only people in danger from him are the footmen. Why, if equerries could have children, we'd have a whole new royal lineage to contend with!

Perhaps it is the influence of the hock, but with me, she exchanges her provocations for a more benign style of impishness. Smiling now, she points her elbow towards the corner, where the lovely Minnie and her swain, the second son of the Bishop of Exeter, sit on a dos-ados, spooning frumenty into each other's mouth.

--Aren't they positively oozing, Mr. Timothy?

--The very word I was looking for, Mrs. Sharpe.

--I'm afraid we shall lose her before long. At least for a few months.

--Well, perhaps he will make an honest woman of her after all.

--Oh, yes, look at my friend Skittles, very happily married to the Marquess of Hartington. But you know, Mr. Timothy, I think pigs fly only once or twice a century. In any event, this does not bear on the real question, which is why have you been standing off to yourself all evening, tiresome wretch?
--I am only listening to the music, Mrs. Sharpe.

--Ha! The best way to distinguish a bore. He will tell you he is listening to the music. Come. You can't still be worried about your friend?

--Not at present.

How could I be? When I left her, she was sitting on the arm of Gully's chair, watching him unveil the wonders of his scrimshaw collection. Each fragment of whale evoked a different destination--Tunis, Lisbon, New Bedford--and each destination called up a new story, and I couldn't be sure how much of it Philomela understood, but her response was something deeper than politeness. At one point, leaning over to inspect a particularly diminutive figurine, she placed her hand on Gully's shoulder, and the hand stayed there, to neither party's consternation. I left them in a daze of wonder. Who would have thought that Gully's warren would so easily admit a visitor? Or that Philomela would burrow in with such a native air? See how quickly a family can be assembled, from the least auspicious ingredients.

--Well, if you are not worried about your friend, Mr. Timothy, perhaps you can tell me:
Where is my poem
?

Oh, dear God.

I clap my hand over my eyes. The beginnings of an apology, of many apologies, form in my throat, expire on my tongue. All that emerges is a small, helpless gasp.

--Never mind, young man. I have taken the liberty of preparing something of my own.

And with a tap of her Chinese fan on my arm, she turns and gives a quick signal to George, on the far side of the room. Whereupon George, brimful of what might pass for Christmas spirit, sets to rapping a spoon on his glass.

--Oyez, oyez! he calls.

The voices die down, and the white-whiskered faces swerve towards the center of the room, where Mrs. Sharpe is even now advancing in her crinoline armour, one hand pressed against her breast, the other frozen in a mime of royalty.

--Dear friends, a merry welcome to you all. George and I and, of course, the girls--we mustn't forget the girls--are all so piqued and pleased to see you masticating our humble Yuletide repast. It was a wise man who wrote,
I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore
. And I may add that far from surprising us, the naked feet we have housed in this establishment have been a source of great and well-nigh overweening pride to us. How
enchante
we have been to cater to so many distinguished members of society. And now in this holy religious time, we sacredly lay ourselves at your feet in meagrest thanks and devotion. And we echo the saying of a very fine savage who once said...

Here she steals a covert glance at the square of paper secreted in her palm.

--Me die when you bid die.

She delivers this last remark at such a high volume that the ensuing silence is like the plunge from a cloud. The room grows smoky with confusion. Every face in the crowd peers at Mrs. Sharpe, waiting for a cue that will never come, and she peers right back, all words exhausted, and it looks to be something of an impasse, possibly eternal, until Mrs. Sharpe, shaken, whips her face round, searching for mine. Her lips form a mute entreaty:

Did I say it right?

And rather than answer, I start clapping. And George takes up the cue on his side, and the silence soon gives way to a round of huzzahs and hear-hears and scattered outbreaks of she'sa-jolly-good-fellow, and Mrs. Sharpe is ushered out of the room with the full blessings of a relieved populace. Pausing once in the doorway, she blows a kiss to the still-applauding room, flutters her hands in farewell and, with one last lethal swirl of her crinoline, exits. I bid fair to say that the applause that follows her into the hallway is, by this point, almost sincere. Mine is, at any rate, and I might even go on applauding were I not presented with the beaming face of Squidgy, only a few hours past his most recent whipping, and wearing a black frock coat as negligently as if it were a towel.

--See here, Timothy. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind too awfully doing me a favour of sorts.

--Of course not.

--Might be best if we stepped down the other hallway. Not so inhabited. Oh, and there's George, give him a little wave. Looks quite bothered about something, doesn't he? I shall have to make it up to him. By the way, I've been reading the most peculiar book lately, can't recall who...all about species and whatnots and finches and quite a lot on pigeons. Lovely drawings, but I can't make head nor tail of it, I'm afraid. That's a pun, you see, bit of a play on the bird business....

His conversation is the barge that floats us out of the parlour and down the hall towards the back of the house, where he stops just shy of the cellar door, leans in to me, and murmurs:

--Most embarrassing. Seems Pamela was off duty tonight. Home with her mother or some such creature. For the holidays.

In fact, Pamela will be spending the holidays in the infirmary, getting a couple of buboes lanced, but that is not for public bruiting.

--Don't mistake me, Squidgy adds.--I'm not in the least put out. Girl's obliged to steam by the old homestead now and again. But you see, the replacement girl, Sadie, lovely thing, but not quite so experienced with the old lasheroo. As a consequence, I believe some of it may still be lodged in the back, for I don't mind telling you, I've got the most horrible itchies.

--I'm sorry to hear it.

--If it's not too much of a bother, would you mind, you know, giving it a bit of looky-look, pokey-prod?

Before I can assent, before we have even fully ensured our privacy, Squidgy is peeling off the frock coat, whipping off his braces, undoing the studs of his shirt, and stripping to the waist. It is a sight I never expected to see again: that naked white back with its topography of torture, the pink ridges of flesh running up and down his spine like telegraph wires. And Squidgy's voice, breezing through:

--Lovely woman, isn't she, Mrs. Sharpe? Absolutely lovely. Never serves the port chilled, always puts out the best vintages for the guests. Don't know where she keeps them all, the cellar, perhaps, but the only person I know who's been down there is Iris, although who can believe a word Iris says, nothing against her, mind, just not airtight. Oh, yes, right there, do you see anything?

--There seems to be a...horsehair of some kind. Still lodged in the skin.

--Very like.

--Shall I...shall I pull?

--If you would.

The hair comes clear after just three tugs and produces in Squidgy a lingering shiver that leaves me wondering if I have just unwittingly pleasured him.

--Oh, dear. Oh, my, yes. Infinitely better.

--I'm glad.

--Stay a minute, Timothy. Some token of appreciation?

He reaches into his trouser pocket, jangles a mess of coinage. Feeling exactly like the servant he takes me to be, I tell him it isn't necessary, sir. Anyone would have done the same, sir. Really, couldn't accept it.

--Are you quite sure? Well, then, do accept my thanks, Timothy. I shall always remember your kindness. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm in the most dire need of a catnap.

The only proper thing to do, I suppose, is wait for him to reclothe himself, but it turns out Squidgy has no intention of reclothing. Still topless, he gives me a brief nod and a smile, then ambles back down the hallway, trailing his coat, tie, and shirt after him. What I wouldn't give to see him dragging his scarred carcass across the parlour, like Banquo's ghost, startling the punch out of everyone's glasses. But my attention now has shifted to a small wine table, where sits the parrot of the house. Banished here because his featherless appearance was judged too discomfiting for the guests, he shivers now in his enamelled cage, balancing on one foot and greeting me with soft, convivial eyes.