The Clay Dreaming (13 page)

What more the Aborigine could see, Sarah was not to know. Thanks to the untimely intervention of the clerk, King Cole had withdrawn back into himself.

The little busybody set off across the grass lawn between the twin courtyards of William and Mary. As they approached the adjacent Queen Mary building, open ground afforded a splendid view of the domed clock-tower. Sculpted faces roared from each of its corners – Neptune the sea-god presumably, wearing shells for ears.

Sarah felt provoked to ask an obvious question.

‘The Pensioners, sir, the gentlemen you speak of, whom Mr Cole tells us he saw this last night,’ she said, ‘where are they all now?’

‘Last night?’ said Dilkes. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’ He took his glasses in his hand, and nervously rubbed at the lenses with a pocket-kerchief.

Sarah wasn’t sure she followed either, but that was what he had said – in the night, or perhaps the day before. He had been there before?

‘Where are they all now?’ she persisted. ‘The Pensioners.’

‘They are all below,’ said Dilkes.

‘…Dead?’ said Sarah.

‘Heavens, no…at their lunch.’

A thunderous roll and a clatter loud as cannon-shot rent the air.

The sky was full of cloud, but not dark; and anyway the noise seemed to come from somewhere beneath their feet. Dilkes Loveless started laughing, and then so did King Cole. Rather than delay their mission any further, Sarah resolved to overlook her frayed nerves, in fact all further phenomena: she preferred they press on.

Arriving at the East Gate, they passed out of the Hospital complex and across Park-row, a perimeter road. The Hospital’s Civil Offices lay directly opposite, housed in a relatively modest two-storey outbuilding.

They made their way through the lobby and up the stairs, entering into a plain and undecorated suite. As he passed an open doorway, Dilkes Loveless acknowledged an inquisitive glance from one of his industrious colleagues.

‘Horatio,’ he said. ‘Still on lunch! I’m escorting these strangers to the Secretary’s office.’

Arriving at the relevant door, he turned a key in the lock and bade them enter. Once all were settled within the cramped confines, he began to rummage around, sorting through mounds of paperwork and the bound volumes carelessly heaped on every side.

‘The former Secretary would have taken care of all deeds and documents relating to the Hospital, kept all the necessary books, and…ah, here we go!’

Dilkes carried a few dusty articles over to the main desk, and started to leaf through them, opening and discarding them at great speed. Sarah watched King Cole, who waited patiently – but also, she felt, dispassionately.

Dilkes heaved an impressive tome over to one end of the table and laid aside the others.

‘These are the relevant Burial Registers for the Hospital,’ he said. ‘If there was no monumental inscription, and indeed no stone, then we are dealing with a Naval rating, an ordinary seaman. The marker on the plot you are enquiring about…’ The clerk seemed to have arrived at a relevant page. ‘Fourteen twenty-nine, did you say?’

Sarah sat forward. ‘Yes?’

Dilkes Loveless stabbed the open page with his finger, and began to read aloud. ‘“Burials in the Parish of Greenwich in the County of Kent, No.1429.
Greenwich Hospital, 12th February 1819.”’ His eyes flickered over the top of his glasses, examining Sarah’s face a moment before he resumed his reading. ‘“George Bruce,”’ he said, ‘“age 41, ceremony performed by William Jones.”’

‘George Bruce.’ Sarah repeated the name. She looked towards King Cole in the hopes of some sort of response. He blinked perhaps, but that was all. He looked at Sarah – equally hesitant, equally hopeful.

The clerk sat with his chin in his hand. The name seemed to mean something to him, at least.

‘Bruce,’ he said. ‘Yesss, George Bruce. I’ve heard talk of him, once or twice. Not in many years, mind.’

For a silent moment or three, the clerk researched his excellent memory. Seated facing, Sarah Larkin and King Cole teetered on the edges of their seats, postures comically identical.

‘If I am thinking of the right man,’ said Dilkes, slowly, ‘and I
am
, then his face was most
horribly
disfigured.’

Sarah was taken aback. How terrible! ‘Was he…was he very badly wounded?’ she asked.

‘George Bruce…there’s more, there’s something else,’ said Dilkes. ‘I’m sure it will come to me, given time.’

Leaning forward, he deigned to show to them the open page of the Burial Register, even as he snapped it shut. Dilkes Loveless spoke with total confidence.

‘No further details here,’ he said. ‘Nor, I doubt, to be found anywhere. A great many sailors, you will appreciate, have lived and died here at the Hospital over the years…
hundreds
of years. Unless there were
exceptional
circumstances, the records will not enter into any greater detail than what you are already privy to.’

Dilkes paused a moment while his audience slumped.

‘If I were to look at the
Admissions
,’ he went on, slyly, ‘I dare say I might find out the name of the last
ship
on which he served, and so forth. There is nothing to indicate he was anything out of the ordinary, for an ordinary seaman… although I
have
heard the name before…

‘It does not mean anything at all?’ He addressed the question directly to Sarah.

King Cole’s wide eyes met hers, open, trusting. It was up to her, then.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘would you look to the Admissions, Mr Dilkes? I think it might help us to know a little more.’

‘
Hmph
. Very well.’

Dilkes Loveless only pretended to be irked. He smartly located another, larger tome on a high shelf, brought it down with mock ceremony, and began to leaf through it carefully.

‘This is the rough entry book of In-pensioners, from 1846 all the way back to 1756,’ he said. ‘Of course I don’t
know
the year in which he came to the Hospital; we are tackling this somewhat
aft about
. But if I make a start from the date of his burial in 1819…’

Beginning somewhere around the final third, scanning each page as he flipped them over, he studiously worked back towards the middle of the great book.

‘This
may
…’ he hummed ‘…take some time…’

Sarah idled awkwardly, monitoring proceedings. She felt indebted, surely the clerk’s every intent. Since the moment he had entered his office, he had adopted a manner more official. She had preferred him, if that was the word, when officious.

King Cole still wore his trouser-legs hitched at half-mast, the muscles of his lower leg appearing almost wasted. Discreetly, Sarah motioned that he should re-adjust his clothing.

Dilkes Loveless’ clearing his throat caused her to stare guiltily down at her shoes. With a slight intake of breath she saw how terribly muddy they were: she must have tracked mud throughout the office suite.

It came from when she had stumbled about on the grave.

If she understood Cole correctly, the fresh blood she saw there was his own – red, like hers. Why should he have thought that detail reassuring?

‘Ah!’ announced Dilkes. ‘Here we are! “April 18, 1817. George Bruce,”’ he read. ‘“Age: 40. If married: no. Girls: 1. Born: Shadwell. Last residence: Glocester Court.” I can’t make out the next word.’ He smiled. ‘It should, by rights, be the name of the admitting doctor…’

Dilkes continued with the reading.

‘“Number of years in King’s service: 17. Trade: sea. Last ship:
Congo
, sloop. If ruptured: no.”’

Sarah had produced a small scrap of paper from an inner pocket, and with the worn-down stub of a pencil hurriedly took notes. These extra details might later prove valuable clues. Assuming, of course, that any of this should lead anywhere.

‘Here there is an additional note…’ he concluded. ‘“Lost 2 fingers right hand.”’

Sarah looked up to see the clerk studying her.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Dilkes. You’ve been very helpful.’

Pish posh, some slight concession seemed in order.

‘Dilkes
Loveless
, Mrs Larkin,’ he said. ‘
Lieutenant
Dilkes Loveless.’

Sarah bridled at the firmness of his correction. The air temperature in the office palpably dropped a degree or two.

‘
Miss
Larkin, lieutenant,’ she answered.

Dilkes Loveless, immediately regretful of his tartness, thrilled at the cold spark of her temper. He took delight in confirmation – and from the lady’s own not unlovely lips – that she, too, went unmarried.

‘Please,’ he said, ‘Miss Larkin. Call me
Charles
.’

She was no great beauty, to be sure, but her peal of unguarded laughter had brought the old colonnades – and him – to late life.

‘Would you like to take the grand tour?’ he said. ‘Really, one cannot visit the Hospital without seeing all of the glorious sights it has to offer.’

Sarah considered their position for a moment. The Observatory was all but forgotten, if indeed it had ever been a part of the Aborigine’s original design. For some unfathomable reason, events now appeared to revolve around the occupant of an anonymous grave.

The baldness of Bruce’s identity was disappointing, appearing to mean little as it did to King Cole. From his abiding silence, all she could assume was that they should carry on.

‘We have barely scratched the surface, thus far,’ chimed in Lieutenant Charles Dilkes Loveless.

Indeed.

‘And it would help to walk off my lunch,’ he added, patting his belly.

Instead of answers, only more questions presented themselves. With the clerk’s help, perhaps…

‘Of course,’ said Sarah. ‘We would be happy to.’

Who knew where it might lead?

The Admiralty clerk escorted his guests across a wide, green lawn – the Royal Naval Hospital’s Grand Court, where their promised tour would begin. They came to rest near to the middle, close to the banks of the Thames.

Sarah Larkin glanced over at King Cole. He watched intently a small gathering, sitting on the river steps some way behind them, smoking – a few of the uniformed Pensioners, the first they had seen; even at this distance, Sarah could hear their pebbledash-dry coughing. Looking around, she spotted more. The sailor-gentlemen emerged from a recessed doorway built into the base of the King William building.

‘Ah,’ said Lieutenant Dilkes Loveless. ‘You see our good masters
are
at home. They’ve had their lunch and are now coming up for some air. What’s today,
Monday
? Boiled beef and broth! A meal well garnished with vegetables and potatoes, the same to be enjoyed on Wednesdays. We shall proceed to the chapel.’

Their guide sped towards the broad stone steps to the upper lawn, making for the Queen Mary building – and away from the Pensioners as they finally materialised. He led them through the west door into an octagonal vestibule. As soon as Sarah and King Cole entered, a uniformed guard sprang up.

‘Tickets,’ he rasped.

Dilkes Loveless waved him aside. They advanced into the middle of a lofty antechamber, putting them – as Sarah calculated it – directly beneath the
clock-tower
of the eastern dome. Four tall Coade Stone maidens occupied niches in the stonework, one to each angled corner. Plaques beneath bore inscriptions, carved in bold type.

Faith, on their immediate right, held aloft her book and cup. Hope, opposite, leant decorously on a ship’s anchor.

Meekness, the other side of a descending stairwell, clutched a bunch of lilies and exchanged loving looks with a lamb. The plaque beneath this statue had been obscured.

Sarah threw the clerk a quizzical frown.

He quoted, sight unseen. ‘“Blessed Are the Meek, for They Shall Inherit the Earth”.’ Dilkes smirked. ‘The text was ordered covered up,’ he said.

‘Whatever for?’ asked Sarah.

‘Her Majesty’s Navy does not
approve
the sentiment,’ said Dilkes.

He was not joking. Extraordinary!

Sarah looked across to the fourth figurine, Charity, who suckled and cradled various infants. Troubling not to meet the glare of the thwarted sentry, sat below, she missed out on the final verse.

Something else had caught her eye: a painted plaque, occupying a recess in between Faith and Hope, listing the names of ‘CHAPLAINS’. Among these, Sarah noted ‘Samuel Cole D. D. (1816–1838)’. A man by the name of Cole, in service at the same time George Bruce had been an inmate! Turning to King Cole, she remarked on the coincidence.

He seemed unfazed.

Out of politeness, she thought to explain to the clerk.

‘My friend goes by the name of Cole,’ said Sarah. ‘I thought there might be a connection…’

Dilkes Loveless, giving her black-skinned companion a briefly appraisal, visibly doubted it. ‘Coal, you say?’

Sarah finger-tapped the wood of the plaque.

‘King Cole is currently visiting England as part of a cricket team,’ she said. ‘The Aboriginal Australian Eleven. Maybe you’ve read about them. They are all over the newspapers.’

‘Cricket, hm?’ Dilkes feigned interest. ‘Is this your first time in England, Mr Cole?’

A very good question, and one Sarah wished she had thought to ask herself.

King Cole nodded, somewhat curtly.

Sarah’s finger, trailing down the board, came to rest on the name of the incumbent just as Dilkes Loveless happened to pronounce it aloud.

‘Our current chaplain is the Reverend William G. Tucker, M.A.’

‘Tucker!’ blurted out Cole. His body suddenly bucked and contorted, in the grip of violent amusement. ‘Tucker…! Tucker! Tucker!’

The Aborigine cackled, patting his distended belly as it poked through a gap in his shirt. Sarah blushed, embarrassed. Dilkes Loveless scooted them up the short flight of steps, through folding doors of mahogany.

‘Sir.’ He shushed. ‘You are in a House of
God
!’

Once inside the nave, Cole immediately quieted.

The chapel itself contained plenty of interest, rope-chain and anchor designs within the flooring, waveforms abounding. Sarah’s ears pricked up when the Hospital clerk invoked St Paul: already more than once that day he had made his saintly presence felt. Coade Stone medallions within the body of the pulpit represented scenes from his life, and in the massive dark altarpiece painting that enclosed the apse,
The Preservation of St Paul
, Sarah recognised events recorded in the
Acts of the Apostles
.

They turned and left by a different door, situated next to the list of chaplains – ‘Tucker!’ King Cole barely suppressed a giggle – and climbed down a flight of steps into the basement. Queer sounds rumbled down the sub-corridor: a succession of dull thuds, as if somebody was upsetting furniture. Sarah shivered. Even on a relatively fine afternoon the air was very chill underground, and she felt a strong draught.

A large refectory room, deserted and dusty, extended to the east. Turning to the south, they entered a subterranean piazza.

‘This,’ said Dilkes, ‘is the former Chalk Walk.’

The crypt-like archway was both long and narrow.

‘A Smoking Gallery,’ he said, ‘so-called for the vast quantities of “chalkies”, those long clay pipes the sailor-Pensioners favour, being dropped and crushed underfoot. On wet and wintry days the old tars would stow themselves away in the stone lockers you see lining the walls, where fires were always kept burning… the
only
place they were allowed to smoke indoors, due to the obvious fire risk. As you may have gathered, sailors are very great smokers, forever
spitting
.’

From his expression, Sarah understood the clerk was not a smoker.

‘Common rooms are discouraged, for this very reason. We have a
library
…’ Dilkes Loveless turned to her, his face twisted into a smile ‘…but old sailors, although great smokers, are
not
great readers. And so the Governor proposed the provision of a Bowling Alley.’

Two young men wearing stained white aprons, having the appearance of cook’s assistants, trundled their bowling balls lazily down a wooden track – the source, Sarah divined, of that previous and alarming roll of thunder.

Presumably, that put them somewhere below the eastern colonnade.

Turning at right angles, the clerk ushered them along another corridor even narrower than the first; an undercroft, he explained, connecting the William and Mary Courts. They walked at this very moment beneath the upper lawn.

Whether or not he understood their situation, King Cole gave no sign.

They approached a second dining hall beneath the King William block.

‘Here,’ said Dilkes, ‘you may see one of the more
domestic
parts of the institution, not so generally known to the public…’

Unlike the other refectory room, it showed signs of recent occupation. Serving staff still cleared the long barrack-tables. The air retained a certain pungency.

Dilkes Loveless backed out of the doorway, seeming surprised. A dribble of inmates limped past them, silent with famished concentration. Be it knife, fork, or spoon, each man carried a clinking utensil, and also – by hook or by crook, where they lacked for a hand – some sort of makeshift container; tin can, jug or basin slopped a-swill with a steaming stew.

Sarah remarked on the lateness of the hour.

‘Some prefer to take their meals
apart
,’ said Dilkes. ‘They may fetch rations, returning with them to their cabins, but only once the main sitting is done.’ The clerk shrugged. ‘
These
days,’ he offered, ‘we tend to let them sleep late.’

That same mournful lassitude seemed, Sarah thought, to pervade the Hospital’s entire fabric.

As the last awkward straggler staggered by, he revealed a diamond-shaped design on the back of his blue coat. Divided into quarters, each contained initials, lettered and numerical. Sarah’s curiosity was piqued.

‘These correspond to an individual’s
quadrangle
,’ confided Dilkes, ‘his ward, cabin number,
et cetera
, so that we may readily identify where each man belongs. Accidents, you understand, are of frequent occurrence given their, um…
constitution
.’

He leant in close to dispense another exclusive dollop.

‘A man dies, on the average, daily.’

‘An’ yellowcoat?’ asked King Cole.

‘Offenders against Hospital rules were called “canaries”,’ said Dilkes. ‘They wore a yellow coat and performed menial tasks…but…’ the clerk stared at the Aborigine, mystified ‘…
that
punishment was abolished many decades ago…!

‘Their uniform…has altered of late,’ he said, ‘the original design felt to be outmoded. Knee-breeches have been exchanged for full-length trousers, and round hats allowed for daily wear, instead of the old tri-corner.’

Long after the Pensioners had disappeared from view, King Cole continued to stare into the depths of the corridor. His concern, Sarah observed, was for the Hospital’s inmates – the people not the place, exactly the opposite case to when they walked the streets of Bloomsbury.

She herself wished to know more about how the old sailors lived; the evidence of things seen preferred to that hoped for.

‘Mr Dilkes,’ she said, ‘would it be possible for us to see more of the domestic arrangements? One of the wards, perhaps?’

‘We shall visit the wards,
yes
,’ he snapped, ‘all in good time. First, you must witness the Painted Hall. It is the
jewel
in our crown!’

They mounted another stairwell, ascending into a second vestibule, below the dome of the King William building. A prominent notice declared an admission charge. Sarah reflexively reached for her purse, neither desiring money of King Cole, nor stopping to consider whether he carried any.

Dilkes Loveless shooed her coins away. ‘You are my
guests
!’ he said.

Climbing more steps, they entered the Great Hall. Over 100 feet in length and at least 50 high,
trompe l’oeil
painted arches suggested a ceiling twice its actual height.

‘Whitepella!’ exclaimed Cole, and expressed a click of wonder.

Everything else they had seen was as nothing compared to the astonishing painted ceiling, which was all the clerk had promised and more. A lavish Baroque masterpiece, thunderously it trumpeted the manifold virtues of Imperial monarchy. Neck straining, Sarah could hardly tear her eyes from the lofty pageant, an orgy of allegory. Peace handed King William an olive branch; he passed the red cap of Liberty on to Europe. Old Father Time flexed his muscles and held naked Truth up to the light, while impervious Minerva thrust a spear, and Hercules swung his mighty club in a ferocious arc.

‘Time exposes Truth,’ proclaimed Dilkes Loveless. ‘And Wisdom and Strength destroy the Vices.’

Vices represented, in this instance, by Louis XIV of France, being trampled under the royal foot.

Much like the other tourists scattered about the Great Hall, the small group slowly drifted across the open floor-space. Upwards of 200 framed paintings lined the walls, arranged in tiers three deep between towering Corinthian pilasters, themselves almost hidden by long crimson hangings: the Naval Gallery. The walls also were painted. The nearest arch presented a life-size man-of-war, gunports open and threatening a blast; the other held captive a treasure ship piled high with booty, the spoils of military conquest. Amid potent symbols of England’s Naval power – cannon, coils of rope, spars, drums, and muskets – eight gigantic slaves broke their backs in support of the massive oval frame depicted overhead.

A riot of fleshy figures tumbled in and out of the heavens above, the tableau abundant with plump, pink nudes. Out of nerves, fatigue, or both, King Cole finally succumbed to a prolonged fit of giggles.

Irked, Dilkes Loveless smacked his lips. He rushed them onwards, passing through an arch – genuine, proscenium, by Hawksmoor – into the Upper Hall.

‘Your quest,’ he said, ‘might once have brought you
here
more directly. What
used
to be the Hospital’s Record-room now contains pictures and relics appertaining to Lord Nelson.’

Mural paintings bracketed the archway through which they had just walked; Dilkes proudly narrated their details.

‘Plenty pours riches into the lap of Commerce,’ he said, ‘whilst Britannia, trident at the ready, ensures Public Security. It is the might of the Royal Navy, above all else, that protects Mother Nation’s merchants, and sustains in turn the Divine Right of Britain’s Royal Family.’

Sarah began to feel a little dizzy from the surfeit of imagery; she would have relished a cup of tea and a chance to sit down.

King Cole approached the far wall.

‘“
Iam Nova Progenies Coelo
”,’ Dilkes read aloud the Latin inscription there. ‘“Now a New Race from Heaven.”’ The vast wall-painting portrayed the Hanoverian royal family, King George I surrounded by his children and grandchildren. The image of St Paul’s Cathedral loomed large behind; what Sarah assumed had caught Cole’s eye.

‘The West Wall,’ said Dilkes, ‘celebrates the Protestant Succession. No, please
don’t
touch!’

Cole obeyed. He pointed at the figure of a small boy: Frederick, Prince of Wales, dressed in a bright red coat, stood with one hand on the King’s knee. In the other, he held out a royal orb. King Cole grinned. ‘Howzat!’ he cried.