The American Boy (50 page)

I bowed. Neither of us spoke. There we were, four or five feet apart. I was aware of the cortège winding its way to an open grave within a stone's throw of the place dedicated to the mortal remains of Henry Frant. It was a fine afternoon, and there were others visiting the dead. Here, among the graves, a tide of living humanity ebbed and flowed around us.

She pushed the veil away from her face. It was always her eyes that drew me. I took a step nearer, then stopped as though chained to my situation like a dog in a yard. At Monkshill, seeing her every day, dining at the same table, walking in the same grounds – all this had bred a false intimacy between us, in the sense that it had seemed entirely natural for a woman in her position to treat me almost as her equal. But these last three months apart had dispelled this rosy mist of illusion: now, seeing her again, I could not help but be aware of the great chasm that lay between us: of the contrast between my shabby second-hand clothes and the dark elegance of hers. I did not recognise her cloak, or the pelisse or gown I glimpsed beneath.

“Tom,” she said, “I – I must not see you.”

“Then why did you not write me an answer to my note? Why leave me in suspense?”

She winced as if I had hit her. “That was not what I intended. I thought a clean, immediate break was best.”

“For whom?”

She looked directly at me. “For me. And perhaps for you. Besides, further intercourse between us would not be kind to my cousin.”

“To Miss Carswall? But what has she to do with it?”

“You should know that better than I, sir.”

I felt myself grow warm. “Sophie – my dear, please: if you mean that last evening in Monkshill, Miss Carswall came to the schoolroom merely to wish me goodbye and to lend me some money for my journey. It was an act of kindness, nothing more.”

She turned her head away, and her hat and veil obscured her face. “Even if that is true, there is another reason why I must not see you or write to you.”

“Is this because of the accusation Mr Carswall has fabricated against me?”

She shook her head. “I knew that was nonsense. So did Flora.”

“He had someone sew the ring into my greatcoat. I suspect it was Pratt. By great good fortune, I found it there when I reached London. I have made arrangements for it to be returned anonymously.”

“I have been so anxious. I did not know where you were, or how you were.” Sophie spoke more quickly now, and her face was alive with animation. “Mr Carswall changed his mind about withdrawing Charlie from Mr Bransby's. But you are no longer there, I collect?”

I nodded. “Mr Bransby and Mr Carswall came to an understanding. I resigned before I was discharged.”

“How do you live?”

I saw her looking at me, and knew the figure I must cut in my battered hat and threadbare coat. “I live very well, thank you. I am not without friends.”

“I am glad.”

“And you?”

Her shoulders twitched. “I live with my cousins, as before. Mr Carswall sees to everything. He pays Kerridge's wages, and Mr Bransby's bills. I want for nothing.”

“Sophie, there is still –”

“I am looking for Mr Frant's grave,” she interrupted, and her interruption was a form of reproof. “The headstone was set up only last week. I thought I should see it.”

I pointed. “It is over there.”

“Mr Carswall paid for that, too.”

Uninvited, I paced in silence beside her. I indicated the headstone and we stopped. Sophie stared at it for a moment, her face pale and still. I do not think there was any trace of emotion in her countenance. She might have been studying a bill of fare.

“Do you think he is at peace?” she said suddenly.

“I do not know.”

“He was always restless. I think he would have liked to be at peace. To be nothing. To want nothing.”

Her right hand gestured towards the grave, and the movement brought to mind the way a mourner throws a handful of earth on top of the coffin before it is covered over for ever. There was a finality about it. Without looking at me, she walked away. I replaced my hat and followed.

“Sophie,” I said, because after what had happened between us I would not call her Mrs Frant. “Will you listen to me?”

“Pray do not speak.” Her eyes were bright. “Please, Tom.”

“I must. There may not be another opportunity. You cannot stay where you are.”

“Why not? The Carswalls are my cousins.”

“What will happen when Miss Carswall marries Sir George? You will be alone with that foul old man.”

“That is my concern. Not yours.”

“It is my concern: I cannot stand back and leave you there unprotected.”

“I do not want your pity, sir.”

“I do not wish to give you pity. I wish to give you love. I cannot give you much, Sophie, but I believe that I could through my exertions preserve you and Charlie from absolute want, even now. If you would let me, I would offer you my hand with all my heart.”

“I cannot entertain such a proposal. It is quite out of the question.”

“Then let me support you without marriage.”

“As your mistress, do you mean?” she said sharply. “I had not thought you –”

“No, no. I mean as a sister, as whatever you wished. My lodgings are perfectly respectable, and I would put you under the protection of the woman of the house and move elsewhere.”

“No, sir, no.” Her voice had become gentler. “It cannot be.”

“I know we should be poor at first, but in time I hope to earn a modest competence. I have friends, I am willing to work. I would do all in my power –”

“I do not doubt it, Tom.” She touched my arm. “But it cannot be. When my year of mourning is up, I am to marry Mr Carswall.”

I stared appalled at her for a moment, my mouth open like an idiot's. Then I grasped her hand and said, “Sophie, my love, no, you must not –”

“Why not?” She moved aside, pulling her hand from mine. “It is for Charlie's sake. Mr Carswall has promised to settle a considerable sum on him on the day we are married, and to provide for him in his will.”

“It is damnable. Carswall is a monster. I –”

“It will be a perfectly respectable arrangement in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of our family and friends. We are cousins. There is a disparity of age but that don't signify. I have no doubt we shall do very well. Charlie will be provided for, and I shall live in comfort. I cannot pretend these considerations mean nothing to me. And, as I have accepted Mr Carswall as my future husband, I must respect his wishes. Any acquaintance between you and me must come to an end.”

I looked aghast at her pale, determined face. Something inside me shivered and broke. I turned and ran. My vision shimmered. Tears chilled my cheeks. I pushed my way through a knot of mourners who had attended the cortège and burst through the gates of the cemetery.

Drawn up outside was a row of carriages. I glimpsed a face I recognised at the window of the nearest one, a hackney. Mrs Kerridge was waiting for her mistress.

I ran on. In my mind, the cry of that damned bird ran round like a jingle.

Ayez peur, ayez peur.

I must have walked more than thirty miles that day, from one side of London to the other and then back in great zigzags. At nine o'clock of the evening I found myself in Seven Dials. It had come on to rain, but that did not deter the drinkers and the prostitutes, the beggars and the hawkers.

By this time, I was long past the surge of misery that had enveloped me as I left the graveyard. I was cool, entirely rational. I was no longer blind to the need for self-preservation, that most resilient of instincts. I had a firm grasp on my stick, avoided dark entries and kept a wary eye on those I met.

I had walked so far with a simple purpose in mind, that I might sleep eventually, for a weary body is the best of all soporifics. I had come to Seven Dials with a purpose, too. A drowning man will catch at a twig and hope against hope it will bear his weight.

Ayez peur, ayez peur.

I turned into Queen-street. A moment later I was strolling past Mr Theodore Iversen's shop. There was a light in the window. I crossed the road and went into an alehouse a few doors further down. I ordered a pint of porter, pushed my way through the crowd and leaned against a wall beside a grimy window that gave me a view of the other side of the street.

I drank slowly, rebuffing attempts at conversation. I was caught on the horns of a dilemma. I did not wish to make my interest in the shop too obvious, but unless I went closer, there was no possibility of my finding what I sought. It soon became apparent that there was a good deal of coming and going at Mr Iversen's – both at the shop door and at the passage leading to the backyard, where the men had attacked me. Respectability was an uncommon quality in Seven Dials, but all things are relative and I gradually came to the conclusion that those who patronised the shop were, taken as a whole, less disreputable than those who came and went by the passage.

In general, the better sort of Mr Theodore Iversen's customers emerged from the shop with a package or a bottle. Apart from the ghostly movements I sometimes discerned on the other side of the glass, all I saw clearly of the interior was revealed in the moments when the door opened. However much I peered, my vantage point would not allow me to see into the back of the establishment.

Someone touched my arm. I wheeled around, twisting my features into a scowl. For an instant I thought there was no one there. Then I lowered my gaze and saw in the dim light of the taproom what at first I took to be the pale, dirty face of a child with ragged ginger hair hanging loose to her shoulders. A moment later, I realised that the shape beneath the torn shift she wore was womanly, and almost at once I recalled her identity.

“Mary Ann,” I said. “I – I hope I find you well.”

The little dumb woman uttered the high, bird-like sound I recalled so well from our meeting in the yard behind Mr Iversen's house. Her face was working with fear, and perhaps anxiety. She seized the cuff of my coat with grubby hands and pulled me towards the door. For an instant I resisted, fearing that she was leading me into a trap. A ripple of notes, as pure as a chorister's, burst out of her. I allowed her to tow me into the street.

“What is it? What do you wish to show me?”

This time her cry was sharper, even with an edge of anger. She gestured vigorously with her right arm, pointing towards the end of the street, and motioning with her other hand, as if to reinforce the urgency. Then she pushed me away from her, and as she did so, her eyes slid across the road to the shop. I saw the fear in her face, this time quite unmistakable. She bunched her hands into fists and pretended to punch me in the chest again and again and again, the blows light, meant for show, not for harm: to tell me something.

“They are coming to find me?” I said. “They mean to hurt me?”

Her mouth opened into a great oval, showing the rotting teeth within. Her squeals became louder. She passed the flat of her hand across my windpipe.

Cut-throat
.

“Tell me one thing before I go.” I felt in my pocket for my purse. “Has Mr Iversen still got his bird? The one that says
ayez peur
, the one he used to keep in the shop?”

She shook her head and shooed me, as if I were a wandering chicken.

“What happened to it?” I opened the purse and showed it to her. “Where did it go?”

She spat at the purse, her spittle spraying on my hand.

I cursed myself for a fool. “I'm sorry. But when did the bird go? Within the last week?”

In the dull evening light, dusk contending with flaring lamps and torches, Mary Ann's face grew even paler and the freckles stood out like typhus spots. She was looking not at me but across the road. Two heavily built men in black coats had emerged from the passageway beside the shop. One of them glanced at me and I saw him touch his companion's arm.

At the same time, I saw something else, something so wholly unexpected I could hardly believe it. Passing in front of the two men, impeding their rush across the road at me, was a small, lopsided but intensely powerful figure. He pushed open Mr Iversen's door – by some acoustical freak I heard the jangle of the shop bell – and vanished inside. But I recognised him. It was the tooth-puller, the man called Longstaff, who lived with his mother in Lambert-place, quite a different neighbourhood from this; the man who had given me the satchel containing the severed finger.

Mary Ann screeched and ran away down the street. I walked hurriedly in the opposite direction, towards the crossroads that gives Seven Dials its name. I glanced back and saw the men plunging across the roadway, careless of the traffic. I abandoned dignity and broke into a run.

For the next quarter of an hour, we played fox and hounds, and all the time I made my way south and west. In the end I lost them by ducking into an alley off Gerrard-street and working my way along the backs of the buildings till I could emerge at the eastern end of Lisle-street. I slowed to a more comfortable walk and took my time strolling among the bright lights of Leicester-square. I did not think they would dare attack me there, even if they had been able to follow me. I made two leisurely circuits of the square, enough to convince me that I had thrown them off.

At last I made my way back to the Strand and Gaunt-court. I was exhausted, and faint with hunger for I had not eaten since long before I met Sophie. Far worse than weariness and sore feet, though, were the anxieties that weighed down my spirits.

A hackney was waiting near the entrance to Gaunt-court, its driver huddled under his greatcoat on the box. The glass was down and the smell of a cigar wafted out into the evening air, its fragrance momentarily overwhelming the smells of the street. I had a glimpse of two eyes, their whites quite startling in the half-light of the evening, and heard a deep, familiar voice.