The American Boy (3 page)

“Ask that fellow what he's staring at.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” I said, and my voice sounded thin and reedy in my ears. “I stared at no one, but I admired your conveyance. A fine example of the coach-builder's craft.”

The footman was already looming over me, leaning close. He smelt of onions and porter. “Be off with you, then.” He nudged me with his shoulder and went on in a lower voice, “You've admired enough, so cheese it.”

I did not move.

The coachman lifted his whip.

Meanwhile, the man in the carriage stared straight at me. He showed neither anger nor interest. There was an impersonal menace in the air, as pungent as gas, even in broad daylight and on a crowded road. Like an itch, I was a minor irritant. The gentleman in the coach had decided to scratch me.

I sketched a bow and strolled away. I did not know the encounter for what it was, an omen.

Stoke Newington was a pretty place, despite its proximity to London. I remember the trees and rooks with affection. The youngest boy in the school was four; the oldest nineteen and so nearly a man that he sported bushy whiskers and was rumoured to have put the baker's girl with child. The sons of richer and more ambitious parents were prepared for entry at the public schools. Most, however, received all the learning they required at Mr Bransby's.

“The parents entrust their sons' board and lodging to us as well as their tuition,” Mr Bransby told me. “A nutritious diet and a comfortable bed are essential if a boy is to learn. Moreover, if a child lives among gentlefolk, he acquires their ways. We keep strictly to our regimen. It is an essential foundation to sobriety in later life.”

The regimen did not affect Mr Bransby and his household, who lived separately from the rest of the school and were no doubt sufficiently sober already. I was expected to sleep on the boys' side, as was the only other master who lived at the school, the senior usher.

“Mr Dansey has been with me for many years,” Bransby told me when he introduced us. “You will find him a scholar of distinction.”

Edward Dansey was probably in his forties, a thin man, dressed in black clothes so old and faded that they were now mottled shades of green and grey. He wore a dusty little wig, usually askew, and had a cast in one eye, which, without being actually oblique, approached nearly to a squint. Both then and later, he was always perfectly civil. His manners were those of a gentleman, despite his shabby clothes. He had the great merit of showing no curiosity about my past history.

When I knew Dansey better I found he had a habit of looking at the world with his chin raised and his lips twisted asymmetrically so that one corner of the mouth curled up and the other curled down; it was as though part of him was smiling and part of him was frowning so one never really knew where one stood with him. The cast in his eye accentuated this ambivalence of expression. The boys called him Janus, perhaps because they believed his mood varied according to the side of his face you saw him from. They were scared of Bransby, who kept a cane in every room of the school so he could flog a boy wherever he was without delay, but they were terrified of Dansey.

On my second Thursday at the school, the manservant padded along to the form room as the boys were streaming out to their two hours of liberty before dinner and requested me to wait on his master.

My immediate fear was that I had somehow displeased Mr Bransby. I went through the door that separated his quarters from the rest of the house, which was like stepping into a different country. Here the air smelt of beeswax and flowers and the walls were freshly papered, the panels freshly painted. Mr Bransby had silence enough to hear the ticking of a clock, a luxury indeed in a house full of boys. I knocked and was told to enter. He was staring out of the window, tapping his fingers on the leather top of his table.

“Sit down, Shield. I must be the bearer of sad news, I'm afraid.”

I said, “My aunt Reynolds?”

Bransby bowed his heavy head. “I am truly sorry for it. She was an excellent woman.”

My mind was blank, an empty place filled with fog.

“She charged the woman with whom she lodged to write to me when she was gone. She died yesterday afternoon.” He cleared his throat. “It appears that it was very sudden at the end, or else they would have sent for you. But there is a letter. Mrs Reynolds directed that it should be given to you after her death.”

The seal was intact. It had been stamped with what looked like the handle of a small spoon. I thought I could make out the imprint of fluting. My aunt had probably used the small silver spoon she kept locked in the caddy with her tea. The wax was streaky, a mixture of rusty orange and dark blue. Economical in all things, she saved the seals of letters sent to her and melted the wax again when she sent a letter of her own.

The mind is an ungovernable creature, particularly under the influence of grief; we cannot always command our own thoughts. I found myself wondering if the spoon would still be there, and whether by rights it was now mine. For an instant the fog cleared and I saw her there, in my mind but as solid as Bransby himself, sitting at the table after dinner, frowning into the caddy as she measured the tea.

“There will be arrangements to be made,” Bransby was saying. “Mr Dansey will take over your duties for a day or two.” He sneezed, and then said angrily, “I shall advance you a small sum of money to cover any expenses you may have. I suggest you go up to town this afternoon. Well? What do you say?”

I recalled that my sanity was still on trial, and now there was no one to speak for me so I must make shift to speak for myself. I raised my head and said that I was sensible of Mr Bransby's great kindness. I begged leave to withdraw and prepare for my journey.

A moment later, I went up to my little room in the attic, a green hermitage under the eaves. There at last I wept. I wish I could say my tears were solely for my aunt, the best of women. Alas, they were also for myself. My protector was dead. Now, I told myself, I was truly alone in the world.

My aunt's death drew me deeper into the labyrinth. It brought me to Mr Rowsell and Mrs Jem.

Her last letter to me was brief and, judging by the handwriting, written in the later stages of her illness. In it, she expressed the hope that we might meet again in that better place beyond the grave and assured me that, if heaven permitted it, she would watch over me. Turning to more practical matters, she informed me that she had left money to defray the expense of her funeral. There was nothing for me to do, for she had decided all the details, even the nature of her memorial, even the mason to cut the letters. Finally, she directed me to wait on her attorney Mr Rowsell at Lincoln's Inn.

I called at the lawyer's chambers. Mr Rowsell was a large, red-faced man, bulging in the prison of his clothing as though the blood were bursting to escape from his body. He directed his moon-faced clerk to fetch my aunt's papers. While we waited he scribbled in his pocketbook. When the clerk returned, Rowsell looked through the will, glancing up at me with bright, bird-like eyes, his manner a curious compound of the curt and the furtive. There were two bequests of five pounds apiece, he told me, one to the maid of all work and the other to the landlady.

“The residue comes to you, Mr Shield,” he said. “Apart from my bill, of course, which will be a charge on the estate.”

“There cannot be much.”

“She drew up a schedule, I believe,” said Rowsell, reaching into the little deed-box. “But do not let your hopes rise too high, young man.” He took out a sheet of paper, glanced at it and handed it to me. “Her goods and chattels, such as they were,” he continued, staring at me over his spectacles, “and a sum of money. A little over a hundred pounds, in all probability. Heaven knows how she managed to put it by on that annuity of hers.” He stood up and held out his hand. “I am pressed for time this morning so I shall not detain you any longer. If you leave your direction with Atkins on your way out, I will write to you when we are in a position to conclude the business.”

A hundred pounds! I walked down to the Strand in a daze similar to intoxication. My steps were unsteady. A hundred pounds!

I went to the house where my aunt had lodged and arranged for the disposal of her possessions. Of the larger items, I kept only the tea caddy with its spoon. The landlady found a friend named Mrs Jem who was willing to buy the furniture. I suspected I would have got a higher price if I had been prepared to look elsewhere, but I did not want the trouble of it. Mrs Jem also bought my aunt's clothes.

“Not that they're worth more than a few shillings,” she said with a martyred smile; she was a mountainous woman with handsome little features buried in her broad face. “More patches and darns than anything else. Still, you won't want them, will you, so it's doing you a favour. I've only thirty shillings. Will you wait while I fetch the rest of the money?”

“No.” I could not bear to stay here any longer, for I wanted to contemplate both my loss and my good fortune in peace and quiet. “I will take the thirty shillings and collect the balance later.”

“As you wish,” she said. “Three Gaunt-court. It's not a stone's throw away.”

“A long throw.”

She gave me a hard stare. “Don't worry, I'll have the money waiting for you. Six shillings, no more no less. I pay my debts, Mr Shield, and I expect others to pay theirs.”

I could not resist a schoolboy pun. “Mrs Jem,” I said solemnly, “you are indeed a pearl of great price.”

“That's enough of your impudence,” she replied. “If you're going, you'd better go.”

The balloon of mirth subsided as I walked away from the house where my aunt had lived. So this was all that a life amounted to – a mound of freshly turned earth in a churchyard, a few pieces of furniture scattered among other people's rooms, and a handful of clothes that nobody but the poor would want to buy.

There was also the small matter of the money which would come to me. For the first time in my life, I was about to be a man of substance, the absolute master of £103 and a few shillings and pence. The knowledge changed me. Wealth may not bring happiness, but at least it has the power to avert certain causes of sorrow. And it makes a man feel he has a place in the world.

Wealth. That brings me to Wavenhoe's Bank. It was Mr Bransby who first mentioned its name to me. I never went there, never met old Mr Wavenhoe himself until he was on his deathbed, but Wavenhoe's was the chain that bound us all together, the British and the Americans, the Frants and the Carswalls, Charlie and Edgar. Money plays its own tune, and in our different ways we all found ourselves dancing to it.

Early in October, I applied to Bransby for leave to go up to Town. It was on that occasion that he mentioned Wavenhoe's. I needed to visit London because Mr Rowsell had papers for me to sign, and I wished to collect the few shillings that Mrs Jem owed me. He made no difficulty about my request.

“Upon one condition, however,” he went on. “I should like you to go on Tuesday. Then you may undertake two errands for me while you are there. Not that you will find them onerous – quite the reverse, I fancy. When you travel up to Town, you will take the boy Allan with you and leave him at his parents' house in Southampton-row. Number thirty-nine. His father writes that his mother desires to have him measured for a suit of clothes against the winter.”

“Will I collect him on my way back, sir?”

“No. I understand he is to return later in the evening, and that Mr Allan will make the arrangements. Once you have left him at his father's house, you may discharge your own business. But afterwards I wish you to call at a house in Russell-square so that you may convey a new pupil to the school. Or rather, he will convey you. The boy's father tells me he will order the carriage.” Bransby leant back in his chair, his body pressing against his waistcoat buttons. “His name is Frant.”

I nodded. I remembered the lady who had smiled at me at the gate of the school, and also the man who had nearly set his servants on to me as I walked up Ermine-street. I felt my pulse beating somewhere among the fingers of my clasped hands.

“Master Frant should suit us very well. His father is one of the partners of Wavenhoe's Bank. A very sound concern indeed.”

“How old is the boy, sir?”

“Ten or eleven. As it happens, this school was commended to Mr Frant by Allan's father. He is an American of Scottish descent, but resident in London. I understand that he and Mr Frant have conducted business together. Mark this well, Shield: first, a satisfied parent will share his satisfaction with other parents; second, Mr Frant is a gentleman-like man who not only moves in good society but meets wealthy men in the course of his business. Wealthy men have sons who require an education. I would wish you to make a particularly good impression, therefore, on Mr and Mrs Allan and Mr and Mrs Frant.”

“I shall endeavour to do so, sir.”

Bransby leant forward across the desk so that he could study me more closely. “I am confident that your manner will be everything that is appropriate. But I must confess – and pray do not take this amiss – that some alteration to your dress might be desirable. I advanced you a small sum for clothing, did I not, but perhaps not enough?”

I began to speak: “It is unfortunate, sir, that –”

“And, indeed,” Bransby rushed on, his colour darkening, “you have now been with us for nearly a month and your work has, on the whole, been satisfactory. That being so, from next quarterday I propose to pay you a salary of twelve pounds a year, as well as your board and lodging. It is on the understanding, naturally, that your dress will be appropriate to an usher at this establishment and that your conduct continues to give satisfaction in all respects. In the circumstances, I am minded to advance you perhaps half of your first quarter's salary so that you may make the necessary purchases.”