Parrot and Olivier in America (7 page)

"Ah, ain't that lovely?" said my da who would say anything to get a nice hot feed. "See that Parrot--you are to be measured. What a treat," he said to Mr. Piggott.

Mrs. Piggott slipped her tape measure into the pocket of her pinny. Mr. Piggott thumped his fist twice against the ceiling, which was even more alarming than the butting. At this signal each printer bowed his atheistic head.

"Benedictus benedicat per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum."
Then, moving from Latin to English without a cough, Mr. Piggott formally employed my father, passing down to him, from hand to hand, a copy of Miss Parsons'
The Castle of Wolfenbach
which, just published in London for ten shillings, he would soon have on the roads at six shillings and sixpence.

My father said, "Good-oh," and did not seem to worry about what might happen to me on account of the measuring. My racehorse was left with all the bread crumbs. I never had so little praise before.

Even when we went out after dinner my dad said not a word about what had happened. Instead he lit his pipe and told me this was certainly the River Dart. It was a place where cattle crossed, so the bank was bad smelling from their droppings mixed with earth. "Lovely night," my father said, turning with one arm behind his back to survey the printery which occupied what might have once been a grand house but had long been encroached upon by woods, tangled in wild creeper, guarded by thistles on the riverbank, surrounded by carts and wheels in such a style you would think it the graveyard for old carriages.

Piggott's was what was called a
black house
, not because of the grimy slate tiles that wrapped themselves around the soft contours of the roof, but on account of printing what was
on the cross
. To make this cheap edition of
The Castle of Wolfenbach
was an offense against the crown.

Soon Mrs. Piggott gave us each a bundle of bed linen and when my father paid her a florin, she silently showed him to a bed by the dormitory door. Me she led to the far end and left me in what was once a kind of scullery. My da said it was a fine accommodation but this was like him, to become most enthusiastic when most oppressed by life. He showed me how I could lie in bed and watch the cattle go home for milking. His bright eyes were a fright to see.

On this first night, I was sitting on my bed, wondering if I dare walk outside to do my business, when something attacked my shoulder, I thought a bird or bat but discovered a pile of quarto proofs wrapped in string.

My da was always at me with a book and I was not displeased. When I had unwrapped the bundle I was excited to find engravings for a picture book. Alas, these were depictions of human congress too disturbing for a child. I could chop the head off a king, but I was not strong enough for this.

I never told my father what I had seen, or why I abandoned my own place and walked the length of the dormitory in my nightshirt and squeezed into his narrow crib.

"Oh this is a grand place," he said, and I agreed it was and got ready to protect myself from his nightmares and his bruising knees.

II

THAT FIRST MORNING our bathing in the river provided amusement for the printers whose yawning faces appeared in a line of windows like noggins at a fair. One of them asked us were we mermaids--it was not what he said, but he was a Londoner with all his lovely London sounds, and I did adore the voices of mankind.

"Meer-mayds," said the Parrot to his da.

My dad tried to wad the washcloth in my mouth. If I was a good boy I should have let him, but I squirmed away as wicked as a slippery eel.

"Meer-mayd," I called.

"Shush," he said. And ran away, my da, sausage bouncing, splashing nudey through the water, lurching toward the riverbank with the idea, I suppose, that I would have no one left to talk to if he was not there.

"Oh, lor," I shouted from the middle of the stream. "Blow me down. It must be a meer-mayd."

Came my father's voice, faintly, from the shore. "Shush."

"Meermayds!" I cried, making a funnel with my hands. "Meermayds." I had the lovely vowels, I was a Pearly King.

My daddy dressed and walked back to the printery, head down, combing at his wet hair in such a way I knew he was trying to hide his grin. He had a soft sweet heart, it was a burden to him. "How
do
you do that?" he would often say. He could not whistle either although he often tried.

When breaking fast the cockney fellow winked at me and I knew I had made a friend not the enemy my father must have feared.

After breakfast we were taken to the printery. The cockney announced he was known as Gunner and proceeded to show my da his frame. Piggott watched suspiciously, it seemed to me, as my dad set up the implements of his trade and mounted a pair of cases full of shining type in readiness for
The Castle of Wolfenbach
. Then I was set to clean the proofing press.

It was not only Gunner who had a nickname. There was also Weasel, Bunter, Chooka, Chanker, to name a few. Gunner was a pressman who operated his machine with the darting little Weasel. Bunter was tall and gone to fat, a slovenly worker, scrambling and shoveling his types together without any regard to the exact mechanical neatness which is an instinct with the good compositor. All this I observed as I cleaned the ink slab. When that dirty task was done I was set to work humping heavy bundles of the Dit'sum newspaper from the back door to a trolley. After this, with my hands already harrowed and scarified from binding twine, I was ordered by Bunter to clean myself with spirit and printer's soap, and this hurt a great deal as it had the texture of coarse sand. Then I was ordered to drag this four-wheeled monster up a rutted road and then along a maze of lanes and footpaths which--being always unsure if I could find my way home again--I did not like at all.

Dit'sum being a decent size and the people of a secretive disposition, it took the best part of the day to get the newspapers to their subscribers. I was relieved to find my way back to the old printery, gray and lumpy, like a turtle in the mud.

After supper my father and I bathed again. He had the hands of a drowned man, my dear daddy, blanched to death by endless washing. When we were dry and decent we found the men gathered by the broad dormitory steps pursuing what was clearly an ongoing argument about the utility of kings in a republic. My father was excitable by temperament but cautious by habit, and he smoked his pipe, nodded his head but offered no opinions.

In the night he was alarmed by some bad turn his dream was taking and nearly took my eye out.

The second day involved washing in the river and then getting dirty and then delivering a job lot of docket books to the Swan. This was formally received by an older girl who looked me up and down like I was the living filth. She took me into a dark parlor where some old ladies sat wetting their hairy chins with stout. Thus it was at a table in a pub I first saw the quality of Piggott's engraving which was what you might call
cack-handed
.

She said, "What happened to Sniffy?"

I said I did not know.

She said, "Did Sniffy die?"

"I don't know, miss." I thought I could draw a swan much better. I was bursting to show her what I could have done.

The third day began just the same. I washed. I got dirty. Mr. Piggott himself came to give me my instructions.

"Get the trolley, lad," he said. "Today it is a pickup."

I set off at a great speed in order to get the heavy trolley up onto the road, but he snatched the machine from my care, and shoved it underneath a pussy willow. He then led me through some stinging nettles, arriving hard against the backside of the house, at a place where there was a stink of moss and lichens, also a peeling gray door, which I was told to open. I found myself in an empty dark stale-smelling room which had once been a kitchen. From here I was shooed like a hen into another room which held nothing but a big fireplace of gray carved stone.

"Now," said Piggott, "come in the fireplace and I'll show you."

I said I was not allowed in fireplaces.

For answer Mr. Piggott threw his head back against his wide shoulders. Then he folded himself up, all shoulder, head and knees and--maintaining this strange arrangement of his limbs--edged himself inside the fireplace.

"Come here with me," he said, taking off his spectacles and sliding them inside his apron.

"I'm going to fetch the trolley," I said.

"Forget the blessed trolley. We need no trolley." He came crabbing out to snatch at me, his naked eyes gone wet and fishy. He twisted up my shirtfront in his fist. I tore away and broke my buttons and rushed out into the dappled woody light of morning, bawling in fright, but I wanted a sleep and a feed and so fetched the stupid trolley from its hiding place and brought it back to the main door of the printery where I met my father rushing the other way, a stick of type grasped in his hand.

Mr. Piggott rounded on us, arms swinging, head nodding.

"What's he done now?" my father said.

Mr. Piggott removed the stick from my father's hand, assessed the type composed there, before laying it carefully on a windowsill. Then he led my da away from me, down toward the stream. I saw the water sparkling behind their dark figures, light shining like a halo through Mr. Piggott's ring of hair. The Master stroked my da on his long back, then watched as he returned to his son.

"What?" I asked.

He attempted to mimic me but he did not have the ear. He was hangdog, red neck, and could not look at me. "Come on, my Parrot," said he at last. "Master needs your help."

"No," I said slipping from his grabby hand.

My daddy permitted himself to be led into the stinging nettles, through the empty kitchen, to the empty fireplace. I followed.

This time I noted Piggott took the trouble to explain, and when he did this his voice became both whispery and loud.

Said he, "I have a very good pressman working in a very hard-to-get-to place."

My father squatted and peered toward the chimney.

"That's right," said Mr. Piggott, jerking his head at my father. "That's it, John."

My father winked at me.

"Nothing's going to hurt the nipper," said Mr. Piggott. "All he has to do is."

I took a step back but my da had already locked his arm around my shoulder.

"That's it," whispered Mr. Piggott. "All he has to do."

He got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the fireplace. "Come on, young'un," he whispered, and I smelled an airy rush of peppermint.

"See up there?" My da pointed, squeezing in. "See that?"

I allowed myself to be pulled in beside my da and Mr. Piggott, who had a tussock of white hair growing out of his wattly ear.

"See that?"

"No," I said, but I did see: a little metal door inside the chimney.

"Yes, it looks all dark, don't it, but once inside, young'un, why you'll find an oil lamp burning. It's like bloody Christmas."

"Well, so to speak," my daddy cautioned.

"Yes, so to speak," said Mr. Piggott. "In a way of speaking. Not Christmas, of course, but plenty of surprises. You see, young'un," he said, plucking at my open shirt, "hold your lamp up high, you'll see there's a passage tailor-made for you, and even though it goes this way and that, it keeps on going just the same, and you come to a bit of a step which you climb up, and then there is another door. Doesn't look like a door at all, even when your nose is hard against it, but you give it a good hard knock. You will, I know you will. Because what's inside but a printer like your father, not so tall or so handsome. Mr. Watkins is his name. And he's going to give you something."

"What?" I asked.

"See," said Mr. Piggott. "It's not hard."

"What will he get given?" my father asked.

"Well, it's a funny thing when you say it, but it's as regular as your daily bread."

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's his chamber pot I suppose," said Mr. Piggott, "and the printer fellow would be very grateful if you could bring it back out here so we can nicely deal with it."

I was tremendously relieved to hear all this, and I was ready to set off immediately, but my father was now edging me back out into the room and Mr. Piggott had no choice but follow, although the three of us continued bunched together as if packed into a box.

"How was this job done previous?" my daddy asked.

"We had a lad, of course. It requires no training," said Mr. Piggott, who must have seen which way my father's mind was working.

"Ah, there you are," my daddy said. "Then he's better than an apprentice."

"How's that?" said Piggott.

"No training. Less eaten. Less laundered. Less found," my father said. "And why was he measured? Well, it's obvious. It was an act of employment. Speaking legally."

"A penny," said Mr. Piggott.

"Threepence each way," my father said, "and another threepence for each time he's needed."

"I could get anyone to do this," Piggott said. "Threepence in and out this first time. And a penny each way thereafter."

By now my father had his hair combed up into a big mess and he was scratching at his neck in an attempt to hide his happiness, but I had been there long enough to decide that the previous boy had been Sniffy, and although I allowed my father to lift me to the dark door, the tiny red hairs on my boy arms were standing up on end.

It was a tight fit in there but passing clean, and the so-called passage bent and twisted and arrived at a wall that I did not understand. This was what Mr. Piggott had called a step.

Then I was over this and soon I came to another dead end and, just as my throat was closing up with terror, I knocked. A hidden door swung open. And there it was--the printer's chamber pot, filled to overflowing, thrust right in my face.

"Take it," the pressman said.

He was a fright, I won't pretend he wasn't. For although he was a young man and had therefore often walked the earth and seen the sun, he seemed, at that moment, like one of those transparent creatures they say live in rivers far below the earth. His hair was fine as silk, and long and white, not like the English but the Swedes. His forehead was very tall, and so white and smooth it seemed as if it must be carved from ivory. He had pale projecting eyebrows, and eyes like water.