Tom All-Alone's (16 page)

‘F
or heaven's sake, let me hear no more of this sentimental claptrap! Can you not find something decent to read in that great stock of books of yours?'

Maddox aims a swipe of his walking-stick at his great-nephew's ankle, which very nearly meets its mark. He is lucid today, if a
trifle cantankerous; Charles' idea of reading
David Copperfield
to him started auspiciously enough, but as time has gone by Maddox has become increasingly restless, first muttering occasionally under his breath, and now breaking out in open rebellion.

‘Don't you like Dickens, Uncle?' says Charles. ‘They were queuing at the bookseller's for this last instalment – I very nearly didn't get one. Everybody wants to know if there's going to be a happy ending.'

Maddox snorts and looks at him with undisguised contempt. ‘Life rarely provides what you so tritely term a “happy ending”, and certainly not in the mawkish fashion to which this fellow seems so attached.'

‘What would you prefer? I think I have a Miss Austen somewhere.'

Maddox sniffs. ‘At least that woman could write decent prose, which is more than I can say for this hack of yours.'

Another swing of the stick, which this time succeeds in knocking the pages out of Charles' hands.

‘Though even
she
seemed to consider a wedding an ending, rather than a beginning. It is usually quite the opposite way around, in my opinion. And in my experience.'

Charles frowns. ‘I didn't think you ever—'

‘No, no, of course not,' Maddox snaps. ‘I was not talking about
myself
– I was referring to the observations I have made of other people. Marriage is at best a hazard, my boy; at worst, a snare from which there is no relief, and no escaping. So you mind my words, next time you find yourself following a well-cut spencer down the Strand.'

It's doubtful any woman has worn such an out-moded article these last twenty years, but Charles knows what he means. The next moment Maddox is wiping his hand clumsily across his eyes, and banging his cane heavily on the wooden floor.

‘Where is that wretched girl? It must be well past noon. What's got into her lately?'

Charles gets to his feet, feeling more than a little responsible; he's been trying not to notice, but Molly has become uncharacteristically unreliable ever since the incident in the attic. ‘I'll go and see what's keeping her.'

Down in the kitchen the delay is quickly explained. The air is full of steam and there's a tray overturned on the table, and something leaking from under it that looks suspiciously like Maddox's lunch. Molly is doing her best to clear up the mess, while Billy is standing nervously in the corner of the room, looking red-faced and awkward.

‘What's going on here?' says Charles quickly, addressing himself – ridiculously, in the circumstances – to the girl.

She looks up quickly, then resumes her scrubbing. He can see the tension in her pale, rigid knuckles. He turns to Billy. ‘What happened? Come on – out with it – I haven't got all day.'

Billy becomes – if that's possible – even redder about the face. ‘I was just trying to help – I mean, the tray's heavy up all those stairs—'

He's not a good liar, and even if he were, Molly has stopped scrubbing and is looking straight at him. Her mute recrimination reverberates through the room.

Charles turns to Billy and grabs him by the arm. ‘If you touch her again, you'll be out of here quicker than I can kick you, and counting yourself lucky to collect dog-shit for a living. Do you hear me?'

Billy is wincing. ‘I hear you, Mr Charles. Look it were only a bit of fun – she probably didn't understand, being one of
them
—'

‘I don't care what she is, you will behave properly in this house or get the hell out of it. I won't tell you again.'

He throws the lad from him and pushes him out of the door, which means he doesn't see the quick smirk on the boy's face as he disappears back to the scullery. For Billy has just had one of his suspicions well and truly confirmed. As far as he's concerned, it's a truth universally acknowledged that gentlemen only stick up for servants when there's something in it for them, and in this case it's not difficult to guess what that something might be. Despite the pain in his arm, he's grinning slyly to himself as he sidles back to his boot-blacking.

Charles turns to the girl. ‘Is there anything else Mr Maddox can have for lunch?'

She nods, her eyes cast down, and steps quickly to the pan smoking on the stove, where she takes a long wooden utensil and fishes a pudding wrapped in muslin from the boiling water. It's so hot she can't handle it at first, but it's eventually unwrapped, plated, and on the tray. Then she collects a knife and fork and moves to the door, glancing once and once only at Charles before disappearing in her turn. Charles is left in the kitchen, feeling rather stupid and extremely hungry. In all probability he's just given away his own meal; he's rather partial to steak pudding and Molly makes a very good one. He's still standing there a moment later when his eye is caught by the rapidly cooling cloth lying discarded by the stove. There's something about the pattern left on the fabric – the pleats radiating from where the pudding was wrapped – that he's sure he's seen before. Seen before, and seen recently; but his power of recall has deserted him for once, and he cannot for the life of him think where it was.

He returns to the drawing-room, and takes his seat by Maddox again. The old man has rather disordered table manners these days, and sometimes forgets which implement to use. Indeed when Charles enters he is hacking at his pudding
with his fork, while the knife lies unregarded on the tray. There are dribbles of gravy on his shirt, and a smear across one cheek. Looking at him now, mumbling and staring, it's hard to credit that only a few minutes before this man was sharp, astute, categorical. This happens so often now that Charles is no longer surprised, but all the same he's by turns baffled and horrified by the speed of the change – Maddox's mood can plummet and soar as quickly and as violently as his command of his reason. Most of the time he seems completely unaware of these sudden and vertiginous shifts, but there are occasions, much like the one we saw once before, when his face is haunted – when he grips Charles' hands and stares out at him from eyes that are a long way back, and drowning in the dark. It's as if a rent has been torn in his mind, and corners of his character long dormant – or long controlled – are flooding through in rising and regular tides, one moment overwhelming all that made Maddox the man he was, the next ebbing back to reveal the battered wreckage left by the last swell. Even now, more than a century later, there's no aid or succour for those devastated by this disease but patience and understanding, and a great deal of what Thomas Hardy will call ‘watchful
loving-kindness
'. Charles is doing his best to provide all this, but he lacks a map, to use another obvious if pertinent metaphor. So he sits longer than usual with Maddox, aware that he hasn't been at home much these last few days, and that he has hours to make up in his own conscience, if nothing else.

The meal finally eaten and the tray removed, Charles fishes in his pocket for his notebook and starts pulling together his thoughts about Sir Julius Cremorne. He's done more digging since we last saw him and is diligently pursuing both of the two fronts that have now opened up to him, both the pecuniary and the promiscuous. Like any self-respecting detective – then
or now – Charles had his contacts in Fleet Street, which was then very much a physical location and not merely a metonym. And he has been mightily intrigued to find that there is no word – whispered or otherwise – on that crowded chattering thoroughfare about Sir Julius' less than reputable after-dark existence, which suggests that the man may well be prepared to go to considerable lengths to keep it that way. Indeed it showed all the signs of being an extremely productive line of enquiry, but it has already run into the sand; as far as Charles can see, there's only one way that Boscawen could have met Cremorne or his associates – one way that he has any chance of tracing, at any rate – but a tanner would have been very rough trade even for the lowest end of the West End ‘sodomitical' clubs, and a series of discreet enquiries has turned up nothing. Of course, Cremorne's companion could simply have picked the man up casually on the street and concluded his business in a darkened alley, but in 1850 homosexuality is still a capital offence, and the risks of such a rash proceeding would surely be higher than any transitory danger-driven satisfaction it might provide. Nor is there any evidence that Cremorne's own tastes extend in that particular direction, which still leaves the letters unexplained. It may be that Ockham's razor applies here as it does in so much else, and the simplest explanation is indeed the right one, but if that's true and it's Cremorne's own whoring that has been behind this all along, Charles is struggling to fit Boscawen into that all-too-commonplace picture. London is at once the most swarming and the most stratified city in the world – class and nationality forge unseen barriers as remorseless as
barbed-wire
, but as Dickens never ceases to remind us, sin and contagion observe no such boundaries and permeate every order of society up to the proudest of the proud, and the highest of the high. But what deadly link can it be that binds
these two men so wide asunder? ‘Only connect' is proving a difficult aphorism to follow, and Charles has been forced, however reluctantly, to park the idea for the present, merely for lack of avenues to pursue. Nor is high finance proving much more fruitful. Charles has turned up the names of a number of investors who might have a legitimate complaint against Sir Julius' bank; several of them are prominent men in their own right, but most are wealthy enough to withstand this little local difficulty and none, as far as Charles can see, would have any cause to resort to the services of a man like William Boscawen to resolve the problem. But there is one fact of which he is completely unaware, though I do not see why you should share his ignorance: all four of the men who gathered together in Tulkinghorn's chambers nearly two weeks ago appear somewhere on this swindled list. What Charles
does
know, thanks to his friend at the
Morning Chronicle,
is that at least two of the other names are rumoured to have received substantial payments from Cremorne de Vere – no doubt for silences rendered – and a third is menacing to file a suit in Chancery. But given that institution's reputation for ruinous and
soul-crushing
delay, Charles suspects the prospect of litigation to be more in the nature of a lever than a real threat.

A few minutes later, Stornaway returns with the newspaper and sits down on the sofa to read it to Maddox. Stornaway is not much bothered by what he reads, and Maddox is – now – not much bothered by what he hears, so the two of them move jerkily from a review in Hyde Park, to a meeting in Manchester, to a thunderous account of a recent shipwreck in the East Indian seas – dreadful sights – death and dying – thunder and lightning – heaps of bodies cast on the shore – young physician steps forward – saves hundreds – clothes dozens – cares for the injured – buries the dead. By the time Stornaway reaches
the point where the wretched survivors are falling at their saviour's feet in adoration, Charles has grown rather irritated with the hero of this piece and decides it's time to slip away. The day is wearing on and he has an appointment to keep. In Curzon Street.

It's a fine day and the demi-monde are out in force; those with title, fashion, money, or merely nothing better or more pressing to do are taking advantage of the pale and watery sunshine to stroll in the rather breezy air and gossip in their latest finery. There are, today, quite shockingly delighted rumours of something amiss in a mighty marriage, a whisper that the husband, poor unfortunate man, has been sadly used, and his lady no better than she should be, for all her pride, beauty, and insolence. The promenaders are passing on all sorts of delicious speculations on this subject, snips and scraps of which reach Charles' ears as he skirts the ribbons and flounces set equally aflutter by the steadily increasing wind, which is whipping up the last leaves left on the pavements into sudden eddies and squalls.

Curzon Street looks lively this afternoon – rather livelier than Charles was expecting at this time of day, and it's clear from the bustle of activity outside number 46 that something out of the ordinary is afoot. There are servants rolling out a strip of crimson carpet and attaching flower garlands to the gleaming railings, and two footmen in powdered wigs are erecting a red and white striped awning over the steps. And then Charles remembers – as you probably do – that the eldest Miss Cremorne is about to be married, and to the son of an earl, no less. These are no doubt the preparations for one of the innumerable splendid and excessive society parties deemed necessary to mark such a momentous event. But given all this activity, Charles is somewhat surprised that his new informant
has the spare time to devote to idle tale-telling, so when he asks at the tradesman's entrance he's exasperated but not unduly surprised to find that the man is no longer in Sir Julius' employ; that he has, according to the vinegar-faced housekeeper, been banished bag and baggage that very morning and not before time, neither. No wonder the man was so willing to dish the dirt on his erstwhile employer – he must have seen this coming when Charles first ran him down two days ago, and decided that discretion no longer had as much currency as cold hard cash. But that particular equation only works if Charles can find him and conduct the exchange. The housekeeper claims a sour disregard for anything concerning the blackguardly Milloy, but when Charles asks the footmen at work on the awning, one of them tips him off that the Graham Arms, off City Road, might be a good place to start, ‘It being Monday, and all. But the show don't start till late. About nine, front row, right-hand end. If you want my advice.'