Tom All-Alone's (19 page)

W
hen the clear cold sunshine slides between the shutters of the attic at Buckingham Street the next morning, the first thing it finds is a pile of jack-towels discarded on the floor. White towels they must have been, but they're stained now with blotches of a rusty deadened red. Slowly, slowly, the sun inches obliquely through the silent room – the corner of a table, a chair, the beautiful coil of a sleeping black cat – until it finally edges across the bed, and touches the two bodies lying there. They are together, there is no doubt about that, but they lie now slightly apart, their naked limbs barely meeting. One is a man. His face and body show the signs of recent violence – old bruises ripened to a greenish yellow, weals and grazes all but mended – but there is also a new bandage bound tightly about his hand, and a smudge of deep scarlet where new blood is still seeping through. The other is a woman, her black skin luminous against white sheets bleached almost dazzling by the strengthening sun.

I suspect you've been expecting this. I suspect, in fact, that you've been expecting it for a good deal longer than at least one of the two people involved. But the fact that it
has
now happened is only half of the story. You will want to know how, and you will want to know why – or at the very least, why now.

So we will back-track, just for a moment. Charles clearly did not bleed out his life in the mud of the City Road as you might have feared. But by the time he came to, his assailant was long gone and he was staring, somewhat dazedly, into the face of one of the early-morning coffee-vendors so common in that part of town. The man was shaking him vigorously by the shoulder, worried – clearly – that he had a corpse on his hands. His barrow was pulled up against the kerb behind him, smoke rising gently from the charcoal burner, and even with his hand pulsing like underground thunder, Charles was almost overwhelmed by the glorious smell of freshly made coffee. The man helped him roll over and lever himself up, and it was only then – with the man's staring eyes round with fear – that he realized, finally, what had happened. The little finger of his right hand was gone. Severed below the knuckle with one slicing incision. Strange what the mind does with such explosive irrevocable information – all Charles could think was how expert this cut must have been – how sharp the knife – not who did this, or what the consequences might be. You don't die of such a wound as that, even in Victorian London, but there was a lot of blood on the pavement and more still throbbing from the wound. Was it the medical or the police training that kicked in next? Or merely the adrenalin? Who knows. Whichever it was, Charles managed somehow to staunch the worst of it with the coffee-seller's handkerchief, and then stagger with him to the nearest cab-stand, where the man was clearly mighty glad to see the back of him. Nor was the cab driver particularly pleased at the prospect of a haemorrhage all over his hansom, and Charles had to pay well over the odds for the fare – ‘You're goin' to get blood all over me seats, mate. That'll take hours to get off. Three shillin's to the Strand – take it or leave it.'

It was near five when he got back to Buckingham Street, and Molly had clearly just got up – she hadn't yet put on either her
apron or the ungainly cap that covered her hair. He had no idea what he looked like and loomed at her out of the night like a dead man, his coat drenched and the blood still running down his arm where he was holding it clutched to his chest. He'd seen terror on her face once before, but for some reason he didn't have the energy to analyse, he did not see it now. His mutilated hand looked far worse in the glare of the lamp, but the girl did not flinch. The wound was bathed and cleaned, brandy poured, bandages brought, and hot water carried up to his room so he could wash. Only he could not wash, because he couldn't use his right hand. So the girl came back and stood behind him as he sat in the tub and the water around him ran red and redder still. As the brandy kicked in and the pain dulled, he shut his eyes and tried to close his senses down to only the smooth rhythmic rasp of the cloth against his skin. He willed it to be neutral – willed it to be nothing more than an impersonal physical sensation entirely distinct from the girl – but every now and again he felt the quick edge of a fingernail, or the lightest skim of the fabric of her sleeve, and as his body started to respond, he sensed the pressure shift to his shoulder, his neck, his chest, and knew that her face was only inches from his own. And then, without warning, the movement stopped and when he opened his eyes he saw there were tears in hers. What could he do but what he'd once dreamed of doing, and touch that cheek. The girl, in her turn, pushed her face hard against his hand like a cat, and as the two moved slowly together, a rush of energy ripped through Charles' body and all pain was forgotten in a surge of desire.

And now it is morning. The air is still; motes of dust catch in the sun. Thunder is dreaming of rabbits, and his small whimpers and twitches are the only noise in the otherwise
silent room. Until a bell rings somewhere downstairs and the girl starts awake, aghast at the light, and what that tells her about the time. There are half a dozen tasks already neglected, and she slips quickly and silently from the bed, gathers up her clothes, and leaves without a sound. Charles stirs and turns over, aware, somewhere deep in his sleep, of a shift, and an absence. When the door opens ten minutes later, the breakfast tray is borne by Billy, who puts it down, none too quietly, on one of the packing cases and starts to move about the room, muttering self-righteously about the mess. He picks up the towels and starts to fold them for laundry, but comes to an abrupt halt when he sees the stains. He looks across at Charles, and sees that the hand lying on the pillow is swathed in bandage and the shirt lying half in and half out of the hip-bath is rinsed with red. His eyes widen and he hovers for a moment in almost pantomimic hesitation, before turning and all but running out of the door. By the time Abel Stornaway has scaled the stairs, Charles is sitting up and pouring coffee with his left hand, and spilling at least half of it on the floor as a result.

‘Good heavens, Mr Charles!' wheezes Stornaway, his hand still on the door-handle. ‘Should I send Billy for the doctor?'

Charles smiles weakly. ‘Another brandy would be more to the purpose, I suspect, Abel. But no – there's no call to trouble the doctor at present; he would only tell me to do what I've already done. Would you please ask Molly' – this with a slight flush – ‘if she would come up in half an hour and bind the wound again, and in the meantime I will need Billy to help me get dressed.'

‘Ye're never going out in that state.'

Charles leans over and lifts his pistol-case from the box where it has been all this time, then looks up at Stornaway.

‘It would appear,' he says drily, ‘that I've been in a far more vulnerable state than this for the best part of a week, had I but
known it. But I am ignorant no longer. Tulkinghorn has made a serious mistake in showing his hand so crudely. If I didn't know Cremorne had something dire to hide before, I do now.'

He flicks open the case with his left hand and looks at the gun. ‘Abel, am I right in thinking you know your way round one of these?'

‘Of course, Mr Charles,' says Stornaway, somewhat taken aback. ‘I had a pair of Nocks me'sel until only a year or so back. And your great-uncle swore by his Manton flintlocks. Finest gun-maker in England, that's what he allus used to say.'

‘Excellent. This one hasn't been fired for a while, so I need you to clean it and have it ready for me by the time I'm dressed. I've let myself get out of practice – quite possibly dangerously so.'

Dressing, eating, bandaging, all take far longer than he has patience for, and somewhere in the midst of it all he has a strange flash of almost gratitude towards his attacker that he did nothing worse – nothing that might have condemned him to such maddening slowness for ever, and not just for the time it will take this wound to heal. But the feeling is fleeting; he knows this was only ever meant as a warning, and that if he encounters the man again there will be no question, and no vacillation: it will be death, or nothing. By midday he's finally making his way through the crowded back-streets and alleyways between the Haymarket and Leicester Square to a long whitewashed passage which leads in turn to a large low brick building with a rather battered sign over the door that says GEORGE'S SHOOTING GALLERY, &c. Inside he finds half a dozen gentlemen at the targets, each stripped to his shirt, and all being assisted with weapons, powder, shot, and the occasional refreshment, by a strange little man with a large head, and a face smeared with gunpowder, dressed in a
greenbaize
apron and cap. He spots Charles straight away and comes limping towards him – well, not exactly towards him, for he has an odd way of shuffling round the room with one shoulder against the wall and heading off at a tangent to where he really wants to go.

‘Nice to see you, Mr Maddox, sir,' he says. ‘The guv'nor ain't here at the moment, but I expect him shortly.'

‘Can I pay for fifty shots?'

‘By all means, Mr Maddox. The stall at the end is free at the present – that's your preference, as I recall?'

‘It is indeed, Phil, thank you.'

The little man helps him off with his coat, noticing – but knowing better than to remark – that his client's right hand is tightly bandaged, but also that someone has so contrived it that it appears he should still be able to hold a gun. And indeed he can, as five minutes' shooting proves. Firing the pistol is not an issue, though aiming it accurately quickly proves to be. Charles becomes increasingly red-faced and irritable as shot after shot goes wide, and the slick gentlemen in the stands next to his slip him condescending glances. He could out-shoot the lot of them – yesterday. It's as he feared – he's resisting admitting it, but the injury is not as insignificant as he insists, and his usual sure aim has quite deserted him. Not to mention the fact that he's still in severe pain and took a shot of brandy to numb it, neither of which are helping matters. Fifteen minutes later he wipes away the sweat beading on his brow and goes over to the rough oblong table near the door, where Phil is now busying himself preparing coffee, no doubt in anticipation of his master's return. Charles throws himself into a chair and casts the gun on to the table in front of him. Phil says nothing and concentrates instead on boiling the water, and stirring the coffee grounds. The need for conversation is obviated, in any case, by the arrival
of the gallery owner, a fine hearty-looking man of fifty or so, with a barrel chest and a slow and deliberate tread. He looks every inch the old soldier, from his weather-beaten face to his upright army bearing, and though he is clean-shaven now (every morning, by Phil), at moments of anxiety or reflection you will see him smooth his upper lip with his hand, as if his military moustaches were still there. He takes a seat beside them, nodding to Charles and making no more remark than his assistant on the bandage – now touched with blood – about his hand. He takes out his pipe and lights it with slow solemnity, then Phil pours coffee for the three of them and his master sits back with his mug and sets his pipe between his teeth. He takes his time, but eventually he leans forward with his elbow on his knee and stretches his neck a little. ‘How's the aim?'

Charles shakes his head. ‘Hopeless. I didn't make the mark once.'

Phil seems to be avoiding his master's eyes, and the latter fans his cloud of smoke away in order that he may see Charles more clearly. ‘In my experience,' he says at last, folding his arms upon his chest, ‘a good aim is a matter of mind, eye, and hand, marching in step, the one with the other. Now it seems to me, Mr Maddox, sir, that your mind is what it ever was; your eye, the same.'

‘But not my hand,' says Charles grimly, holding it out before him and feeling the change of position in a throb of pain. A thin runnel of red has leached from beneath the bandage and stained his cuff.

The trooper nods, his face serious. ‘What accident have you met with, sir? What's amiss?'

‘I no longer have all five fingers on my right hand. I thought it would make no difference to my grip. But alas, it seems I was mistaken.'

The trooper nods, then takes his pipe from his lips for a moment and knocks the ashes out against his boot.

‘It's a question of balance, I should say,' he says finally. ‘Balance and weight. You have been accustomed to hold the pistol in a certain way. Now you must make an adjustment. A compensation. D'you follow?'

Charles shrugs. ‘I've been trying to do so, but my shots still go wide.'

The trooper swallows the rest of his coffee, then puts his mug down and gets lumberingly to his feet.

‘If we give our full minds to it, sir, we may come upon an answer.'

The two of them return to Charles' stand and start again. For a good while they seem to be making little progress – shots fly as wide as they had before – but then the trooper hits on the idea of holding the gun with both hands.

‘'Tis not how the gentlemen do it, sir,' he says. ‘But needs must. Needs must.'

It feels odd at first, and Charles does indeed receive scornful glances from those at the other stands who have not yet abandoned the gallery for luncheon at their club, but there's no doubt of its efficacy. The second hand gives him precisely the measure of control and counterweight he needs, and he has just made his first mark when the two of them are distracted by footsteps in the passage and a commotion at the door.

The trooper casts an eye in that direction, evidently concerned, but Phil has forestalled him. Charles cannot see who it is and can only – for a moment at least – register Phil's low tones, and Phil's grimy hand on the door. No one is more surprised than he is when it becomes obvious from the noise that the intruder is a woman. She is young and, to judge by her accent, French.