The Blooding of Jack Absolute (19 page)

‘B … bad oyster, sir?’

‘Oyster. Ballocks,’ said Sir James. Lifting the garment, he sniffed. ‘It may be fish but it is no oyster. Smells of perfume.
Cheap perfume. You’ve been with a whore, haven’t ye?’

Jack’s mouth dropped. As it did, there came a memory of gums, a croaking laugh. He shuddered. ‘No, sir, I …’

‘Take care, boy. You know I will forgive almost any sin bar lying.’

As his backside could bear testimony. But what little could Jack tell him of the previous night that would not lead to revealing
it all? ‘I … did spend some time with a … young … young-ish … a lady, sir, but …’

‘Jack! Did you at least heed my advice at our last talk?’ Jack looked confused. His father sighed. ‘Did you at least go “armoured”?’

‘I … did, sir.’ Jack had no idea what conversation his father was referring to. They had never discussed carnal matters until
this moment.

‘At least you showed some sense. “Absolute Sense”, eh?’ A brief smile came, vanished. ‘Boy, you are young and seem to have
inherited insanity from my father, for it is rumoured to miss a generation, but,’ he sniffed disdainfully, ‘aim a little higher,
eh?’ His expression, ever changeable, shifted again, became stern. He dropped the breeches, continued, ‘And now, ye dog, at
our last talk you attempted to—’

Jack never found out which sin his father was going to refer to for there came a loud banging on the front door, together
with muffled shouts.

‘Who the Devil …’ He turned back to Jack, saw the whiteness of his face. ‘Someone for you, is it? Creditors? Or … you did
pay
the whore, didn’t ye?’

‘I … uh …’

Sir James sighed. ‘Boy, you and me need to have another long talk.’

‘Could you, Father …’

‘It will be deducted from your allowance, you may be sure,’ Sir James turned as he spoke, raising his voice over the hammering.
‘Where’s that fat-ars’d bastard who calls himself my footman? Sitting on it, no doubt. William! William!’ he shouted, as the
bangs on the door grew ever louder.

He left, still shouting, and as soon as he did, Jack snatched up his cloak and crept from the room behind him. Whereas his
father went down the main stairs, he went the opposite way, up to the attic. There was a skylight there and from it a short
leap to the neighbour’s roof. As he climbed, he suddenly remembered a place in London where he could hide. He’d make his way
there directly, stay till night, then creep back to school in the darkness. Once at Westminster, he’d not stir again this
side of the Michaelmas term. He’d even sit the Election to please his mother. Trinity College, Cambridge had high walls to
hide behind, no doubt.

*

In St Anne’s Court, the doors to both the house and to Matilda’s attic were unlocked and the room itself empty, as he suspected
it would be. She had clearly departed. The gaudy forestage of the screens had been stripped back to reveal the full poverty
of the chamber, its patchily whitewashed walls relieved by blooms of blue-black mould, its sloping planks unvarnished and
broken here and there with copses of splinters.

Laying himself down, despite the discomfort of the floor and the distractions of the day, he slept.

The bell of St Giles woke him too late to count the hour but St Anne’s followed hard upon it and he found, to his surprise,
that it was seven in the evening. The shutter, raised, admitted the last of the day’s light. He had a flask of ale and a pie
with him and now made a supper, delighted that it brought him pleasure not revulsion; he resolved to buy more of the same
on his walk back to Westminster. By the time he’d finished, full night had taken the town and, rising and brushing himself
down, he set out.

Since he had resolved to bury himself at school, there were two farewells he had to take. He had no doubt that both buildings
would be watched by Melbury’s jackals, but he would approach both carefully; no one would notice him standing briefly outside
them, nor the silent kisses he’d dispatch between his raised cloak and uncocked tricorn. Though Golden Square lay on his route
out of Soho, Jack decided he would visit there first. He adored Fanny; but he recognized that the adoration lodged more in
his loins than his heart. Since Clothilde held the supremacy in that organ, he would make his final farewell there.

The coaching mews that led to the rear of Fanny’s house was still busy with the industry of stables. But shadows between their
open doors let Jack flit by, swift and unobserved. He had thought merely to hoist himself upon the wall and gaze upon
his mistress. But something made him reach up to see if the key – their key – was still in position. It would be a sign that,
despite everything, Fanny still desired him to visit.

The key was indeed there but it did not rest alone above the lintel. It was wrapped in paper and, squatting on the edge of
a spill of lanterns, Jack unfolded the sheet and read: ‘Vauxhall. Tonight. I
must see
you. F.’

The ‘must’ was underlined and Jack traced his finger along it. Of course, she ‘must’ see him! She would wish to make amends
for their all too hasty separation. Perhaps his Lordship had proved adamant in anger and thrown her out. Jack was almost tempted
to go to the Pleasure Gardens at Vauxhall; he was concerned for her. But he knew he could not help her with some bravo’s knife
in his guts. Safety now dictated he stuck to his plan, and stayed in School till the furore died down. After the Election
for Trinity, in ten days, two weeks perhaps, he would emerge and see Fanny again.

With a sigh, he retreated back into Soho. ‘Clothilde,’ he whispered to himself. After all the women he’d had dealings with
in the last days – Matilda, even Fanny and especially the nameless Cyprian he’d woken beside – Clothilde shone, a beacon of
purity. He didn’t know why he’d entangled himself with these others when his ‘little mermaid’ was the only one who had true
possession of his heart. How he longed now just to sit beside her, tentatively reach for her soft white hand, gaze into those
blue-green eyes. How peaceful would that be. For now, it had to be a paradise postponed, but no one would stop him gazing
a last time upon the Promised Land.

He knew something was wrong before he’d turned the corner. Something pierced the street vendors’ cries, rose above the shouts
and guffaws of the taverns’ clientele, a wail of such agony that it even rode through the roar of London; and there was something
in that wail, so familiar that the pudding he had just purchased was thrown down upon the cobbles. Jack began to run.

The house of Guen was far enough away still for Jack to
believe that the pack of shouting people was gathered before another door, that the cries came from another throat, the neighbour’s
daughter, not hers, not hers. Yet when he reached the edges of the crowd, he knew. Close-built and slim though these Soho
houses were, there could be no doubt – something terrible was happening in Clothilde’s home.

The backs before him did not want to give so he forced them to, using an elbow here, a shove there, a collar caught and yanked.
The voices were angry already and that only increased with his treatment of those who stood before him. Blows were aimed,
some landed, but they delayed him not at all. Every obstruction cleared made the sounds ahead sharper, the girl’s cry – Clothilde’s
cry! – counterpointed now with another note, a man’s bass bellowing in rage and distress.

The final crowd, standing deep on the stairwell, was harder to thrust through but he did it, losing his tricorn to the mob,
which thinned on the last flight. Two men, with arms spread like nets, held back the surge. But they couldn’t hold Jack, who
dodged their grasping hands and fell up the last few steps, halted finally by the scene there.

Claude, the apprentice-cousin, lay on his back on the top landing, a man crouched over him, pressing already bloodied towels
to his head. His face was pale, though beneath the eyes and at the throat, startlingly blue. Indeed all the colours were vivid
set against that chalkiness but none more so than the scarlet of the blood which seemed to have poured in quantities beyond
credit upon wood, cloth, skin. The man was alive, Jack saw, but barely.

There was more blood in the room beyond, the room of wailing that Jack now entered so reluctantly. He saw it straight away
from the threshold, even though it was not indiscriminately spread here, indeed because it was quite contained. The contrast
was even more vivid than on the face outside for the stain of it against the ivory of Clothilde’s dress, the one she’d worn
new for him two days before, made it stand out. It was a ripped and shredded thing now, desecrated as a sacked church.

As soon as he saw, he knew. It held him in the doorway as if he’d used all his strength to get this far, had none left to
propel him any further, only his eyes seeking something, somewhere else to look at in her room – the spilled chair, the broken
porcelain shepherd, the tumbled fireguard. At last the merman, his most recent gift to her, its monkey grin transformed to
a scream.

Then she saw him and her cry, which, it had seemed, could not ascend any higher in pitch nor volume, did.
‘Non! Non! Non non non!’
she shrieked, throwing herself off the chair, her legs scrabbling against the floorboards, driving herself toward the corner
of the room, pushing down against the bloodstained skirt that would rise as she moved. Her father, who had started toward
her when she fell, now looked where she was staring and as soon as he saw who it was, he was off the floor, grabbing Jack
by the lapels, propelling him backwards to crash against the wall.

‘
Violeur! Violeur!’
he screamed, again and again, and though he did not know that word in French, Jack had no need for a translation. He also
had no will to resist as he was jerked from the wall, slammed back on each repetition, the watercolours that Clothilde adored
falling, the few plates left on the mantelpiece tumbling to smash. Only the merman stood, unshiftable, mocking, as the room
shook.

Monsieur Guen was small and Jack large, but the little man did not slacken his assault till Jack slumped further down the
wall and could not be lifted. Still the older man tried, pulling at his shirt, popping the buttons there, crying all the time
that same accusation. And when Jack reached the floor, in the pause after the last unavailing tug from above, both men at
last heard the words Clothilde had been shouting all the time.

‘Ce
n’était pas lui, Papa. Pas lui. Pas lui.’

His breaths coming in huge gasps, Monsieur Guen staggered away to tumble by his daughter. She thrust her face, her muttered
denials, into his shirt front.

Jack crawled across the floor to them. He reached out to touch her arm but it was as if he’d stung her, so quickly did she
withdraw it. ‘ Clothilde,’ he said, his hand still outstretched, ‘my dearest, my sweet …’

Still she would not look at him. ‘How …’ he tried again. ‘Who … ?’

Suddenly she forced her face away. ‘I fought, Jack,’ she whispered fiercely.

‘Of course you d—’

‘Look!’ She thrust out her fingernails, torn, bleeding.
Re-garde!
I …’ She made slashing motions through the air. ‘But there were two … three … they beat Claude … they …’ The fierceness passed,
more weeping came.

‘Clothilde, did you … did you know him?’

A slight shake of the head. The words, when they came, were muffled yet clear enough and the worst he’d ever heard. ‘They
look for you.’ She did not raise her face when she said it, which Jack thought just as well. If she had looked at him at that
moment, he was sure he would have died.

While I lay skulking in a rat hole, they came for her.
The thought tore at his guts, worse than any result liquor could have achieved. Melbury had stalked him and failing to find
him had traced Jack’s haunts, taken his vengeance. While the schoolboy had played at being a savage, the Noble Lord had proved
he was one.

Tears came. Through their blur, he looked to the floor, to broken glass shimmering amidst shards of pottery. His mind suddenly
too full to think, he could only look, stare … here, half a porcelain rose, there a piece of lapis that had once rested on
the side of a wine cup. Amidst them all something glittered, something silver. At first he thought it a coin; yet though it
was a similar size to a crown, even through his tears he saw the shape was different. Reaching for it, wiping his eyes, he
recognized the metal tag he held. It was a season’s ticket for the Vauxhall Gardens. He knew it was not Clothilde’s for she
had been begging him for months to take her there. The front side
held a design of the statue of Handel that dominated the south walk. The rear, as Jack knew, held the ticket holder’s name.

For the longest moment after turning it over, his mind could not take in what was engraved there. A number, ‘178’, and below
that, a name. His family name. But it was not preceded by J, Jack or even John. This token’s owner was a ‘Mr C. Absolute.’

Craster.

He knew his cousin often frequented the Gardens; knew because his father complained at the expenditure.

Jack wasn’t sure how he got up nor when he crossed the room. He was just in the doorway, looking back at the stained dress,
the shuddering figures, trying to speak, failing, finding that all his concentration was in his right hand where he was crushing
a silver token. Turning, he began to push through those still bunched on the stairs. Yet his departure was very different
from his arrival. No one sought to hinder him now.

Perhaps it was his face.

It was a hard pull against the tide from Dung Wharf to Gunhouse Stairs but Jack was grateful for the distraction the exercise
provided. Despite the late hour, the river was still crowded with coal barges and cockboats, nightsoil cogs and wherries.
The Thames was never at rest. Jack had no flint to light the oil lamp in his bow and had had no will to seek one. He’d wasted
enough time in his detour to Mrs Porten’s, his boarding house, grabbing only what was essential to what lay ahead: another
cloak to replace the one he’d lost at Clothilde’s; his sword. But he was well used to the handling of the skiff the Mohocks
kept at the dock near the school and if others could not see him, he was aware of them. Using the tide, driving the oars individually
and together, he slipped through the traffic and soon was stepping onto the stairs below Lambeth. A rung and a long rope secured
his boat. It was not the closest landing to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens but that one would be crowded and well lit to welcome
the night’s revellers and Jack needed to arrive unobserved.