by Alis Hawkins
‘Whassamarrer wiv you?’ he wanted to know.
I shook my head and looked away, straight into another shop window. My legs stopped moving. The window was full of naked women. Photographs of naked women. Sitting with one leg crossed over the other. Looking over their shoulders. Some had corsets on, some had hats with feathers. But, mostly, they had very little on. Or nothing.
Mr Gelyot was watching me. ‘That’s what Wych Street’s famous for. That and seditious literature.’ He moved on to the next shop and waved a hand at the window. I looked in. No photographs this time, just books, open to show title pages which had words I’m not even going to write down. The kind of words you’d never expect to see in print. Language boys use when they’re trying to sound like men. I couldn’t look at Mr Gelyot. Just hoped he thought I’d seen it all before. But he wasn’t fooled.
‘Some people call it erotic literature,’ he said. ‘Others call it pornography. You’ve studied some Greek so you’ll recognise the root. Pornographos – Prostitute writing.’ He pointed at one large book whose title wasn’t as scandalous as the rest. Fanny Hill or The Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. ‘The most famous of them all and the book most of the rest are trying to be.’
My face was burning and I had to move my bag in front of me so nobody could see what was happening in my trousers but I couldn’t see anybody else who looked even the smallest bit uncomfortable. The men who were going in and out of the shops looked about as guilty as if they’d gone in for an ounce of tobacco or a pair of bootlaces.
The shops themselves were just as brazen. Not one of them made any attempt to hide what they were selling – the books spilled out on to the street, stacked on packing-boxes, just like the clothes from the second-hand sellers.
‘This is why I wondered what sort of book you’d come to collect,’ Mr Gelyot said. ‘Holywell Street is a little less lurid than this, these days, but not much.’
We walked to the end of Wych Street, where it widened out as it joined an open area with a large church in the middle. Mr Gelyot nodded towards it. ‘St Clement Danes. Don’t ask me why it’s called that, or whether it’s got anything to do with the Danish.’
But, instead of walking towards the church, he turned back, almost the way we’d come, and went down another street parallel to Wych Street. I looked up at the corner and saw the sign.
Holywell Street.
If Wych Street was a warning, what was I going to see in Mr W. Gordon’s bookshop?
Harry
At the advertised hour of eleven o’clock, Minnever and I, in the company of several members of Cardigan’s Liberal organising committee, sat on the stage in front of the grammar school, waiting for the Tories to make an appearance. In front of us, an ever-increasing number of people gathered in Cardigan’s high street; beside us, on the platform, sat the town clerk and borough magistrates.
‘If he doesn’t turn up,’ Minnever murmured, his head turning this way and that as he scanned the crowd for any sight of our opponents, ‘his agent may try and persuade us to postpone the meeting.’
‘Should we agree?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely not!’
The words had scarcely left his mouth when, to my left, somebody said, ‘There’s Tom Elias.’
‘But no Caldicot,’ Minnever said, as what was evidently the Tory contingent finally pushed through the crowd towards us, heckled and catcalled on their way by the Liberal-voting populace.
We stood as they climbed the steps on to the stage.
‘You’ve not found your candidate, I see, Crowther.’ Minnever’s tone suggested that he was relishing our opponents’ predicament.
‘Good morning, Minnever,’ Caldicot’s agent replied.
‘Good morning be damned! Will he appear and address the electorate or will he not?’
Before Mr Crowther could reply, a large man wearing a suit in an unfortunate shade of green stepped forward. ‘Perhaps your candidate can shed some light on that. He was seen, yesterday, speaking to Mr Caldicot in a very underhand manner.’ The man turned his face to me. ‘I don’t know what you said to him but, whatever it was, you had no right to approach him in such a way. In a back alley!’ Evidently, that last comment had been made to his companions. ‘I’ve a mind to speak to the magistrates!’
‘And say what, Elias?’ Minnever was, I realised, acquainted with all our opponents. ‘That our candidate had a quiet chat with yours? I can’t imagine what you’d expect the magistrates to do with that information.’
‘A quiet chat? It was nothing of the sort! Your candidate was threatening Mr Caldicot!’
A figure moved to my side. ‘Gentlemen, please!’ This was Cardigan’s town clerk, Mr Lewis. We had met the previous evening and I recognised his very upright stance and pleasant baritone. ‘I’m sure there’s no need for accusations. Our only concern must be to find Mr Caldicot and ensure his wellbeing.’
‘It’s not we who are threatening his wellbeing.’ Thomas Elias was not going to give up his bone of contention simply for the asking. ‘Ask this gentleman what he said to Caldicot yesterday!’
Lewis turned to me, his unflamboyant competence and natural authority offering a welcome corrective to Elias’s bluster. ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd, I’m quite sure that nothing untoward took place between you and Mr Caldicot yesterday, but perhaps you’d be so good as to tell us anything you know? Anything that might help us understand why he’s not here?’
By now, the crowd had grasped that something was afoot and had begun to press in around the stage, booing and jeering.
‘I have no idea why Mr Caldicot isn’t here,’ I said, conscious that, in raising my voice above the din of the crowd, I might make our conversation audible to those below the stage. ‘And, I assure you, I did not threaten Montague Caldicot in any way.’ I turned to the harrumphing Elias. ‘What do you imagine I might threaten him with?’
‘Threats apart,’ Crowther said, ‘Mr Caldicot’s failure to appear for dinner with the election committee last night and now, again, today, is a cause for concern. If he’d merely been detained, I’m sure he would have sent a note.’
Sidelong, I observed the man. He was a slighter, less bombastic figure than Thomas Elias and his dark suit and sober demeanour brought undertakers to mind.
‘Mr Caldicot and I met yesterday, by chance, when we both found ourselves at the police station to speak to Inspector Bellis,’ I told him. ‘I asked for a few moments of his time to speak in private – which, incidentally,’ I turned my head to Elias, ‘is the only reason why our meeting took place in a “back alley”. I suggested that it might be better for all concerned if we were to address the public in a civilised fashion and refrain from casting aspersions on each other’s integrity. Mr Caldicot, on the other hand, issued me with an ultimatum.’
That silenced them.
‘Are you prepared to tell us the nature of this ultimatum?’ Crowther asked.
‘Perfectly. He said that unless I ceased all further investigations into the death of Nicholas Rowland and assured him that I would not attempt to re-open the inquest, he would continue to call me a liar and a hypocrite at every public meeting we addressed.’
I heard a sound which might have indicated distaste. Then, with a polite, ‘If you’ll excuse us for a moment, gentlemen,’ Crowther moved the Tories to one side.
Two could play that game, so I took Minnever’s arm and led him to the back of the stage, leaving the rest of the Liberal retinue to resume their seats.
‘I didn’t threaten Caldicot,’ I told him, keeping my voice low lest the scholars sitting beneath the nearest grammar school window should be listening, ‘but it’s possible that he felt threatened when I told him John had gone to London.’
‘Why should he?’
‘This is what I was trying to tell you yesterday, Minnever. I think he was afraid that John would discover that he knew Nicholas Rowland far better than he’s been prepared to admit. John has believed, all along, that Caldicot was lying when he claimed he bare
ly knew Rowland. I think it’s possible Rowland was blackmailing him.’
Minnever’s sudden stillness suggested that he was digesting this. When he spoke again, his tone was unusually cautious. ‘Taking into consideration what we know about why Caldicot was forced to leave the army, do you think there’s any possibility that he might be … involved … with the sort of crime he chose to ignore?’
‘Involved?’
‘You know what I’m saying, Harry.’
I sighed. ‘I have no idea what – or who – Caldicot is or has been involved with. But there must be a reason he’s not here.’
We made our way back towards the Tories. They were still without a candidate and Crowther had no suggestions to offer but that we ‘wait a while’.
‘I think not.’ Minnever clasped his hands together as if only a significant exercise of will had prevented him breaking into gleeful applause. ‘The voters need to be presented with something to reward their patience, so I suggest that Harry speaks to them while you decide what to do about your side of things.’
Caldicot’s entourage could hardly complain, so everybody sat down, once more, save Mr Lewis who stepped up to the lectern at the front of the stage to introduce me.
As the crowd began to cheer the fact that something was happening at last, I leaned towards Minnever. ‘D’you think one of the Tories will say something on behalf of Caldicot?’
He grunted. ‘More likely they’ll just pray that he actually turns up.’
While I hoped, fervently, that he would not.
John
The bookshop wasn’t difficult to find. I’d memorised the number and, anyway, its owner advertised his name and business on the front. I looked at the books in the window of Wm. Gordon Bookseller & Publisher, almost dreading what I’d see. But I needn’t have worried. Most of the titles seemed to be to do with politics and government. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
One of the books particularly caught my eye. Like the others, it was propped up and open at the title page so you could see all the details. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters was its main title and, underneath, With Reflections on Female Conduct in the More Important Duties of Life. Its author was Mary Wollstonecraft and she’d written it – I worked the date out from the Roman numerals at the bottom of the page – in 1787.
Were we here to collect something similar? Had Rowland written a book arguing for free education for everybody who could benefit from it? Miss Gwatkyn’d told us that he’d been outraged by the Education Report and determined to do something. I could see Nan Walters and Ruth Eynon being keen to help him with a project like that.
‘Ah,’ Mr Gelyot said from behind me. ‘A Chartist establishment. Providing egalitarian literature and raising money for the cause.’
I thought he meant that Gordon the bookseller was raising money by selling this ‘egalitarian literature’, but then I looked at where he was pointing. The shop had two windows – one on either side of the door – and the second was full of the kind of thing we’d seen in Wych Street. I looked back at the window advertising radical literature. How could a man who believed in a better society sell – what was the word Gus Gelyot had used? – erotic literature alongside books like Mary Wollstonecraft’s?
Mr Gelyot obviously saw the question written on my face. ‘The fight for the vote is hungry for cash,’ he said. ‘And there are plenty of Londoners who are equally hungry for this sort of thing.’
He pushed the door open and the spring-bell brought a man into the shop from a dark room beyond. I noticed that he shut the door carefully behind him. What on earth did he think he should be hiding if he was prepared to display the books he had in his shop window?
‘How can I help you, gentlemen?’
I glanced over at Mr Gelyot but he was looking around the place as if he hadn’t heard a word. Letting me get on with it.
‘I’m here on behalf of Mr Nicholas Rowland, in Cardiganshire,’ I said. I didn’t want this man thinking I’d come in here for anything he had for sale. ‘You sent him a letter, saying that his copies and payment were ready. As usual.’
He looked me up and down. ‘Sounds as if you’ve come from all the way over there yourself.’
He had a rich, cultured voice and his clothes definitely hadn’t come from any of the Wych Street shops. I didn’t know what to make of him. Was this kind of thing acceptable in London? I couldn’t think of anywhere in the Teifi Valley where people’d be prepared to admit to selling what he had in his window. Even the Chartist stuff would’ve made booksellers a bit wary. Fair enough, the Newport Rising might’ve been a few years ago now, but convictions for high treason tend to stick in people’s memory. I could still see my father’s face when he told my mother that the Chartist leaders’d been sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. ‘What century do the judges think they’re living in?’ he’d asked her.
Luckily for the Newport men, some people in government’d had more sense than to make martyrs of them and they’d been transported to Australia instead. But if the executions’d gone ahead, there’d most likely have been risings all over the country and we might all have had the vote by now. Made you think.
I hadn’t answered the bookseller’s question about whether I’d come from Cardiganshire but that didn’t seem to have bothered him. ‘Normally,’ he said, ‘if Mr Rowland isn’t coming to London, the other gentleman calls in for the goods. I trust your being here indicates nothing untoward?’
I wasn’t going to lie to him but I wasn’t going to tell him Rowland was dead, either. ‘This other gentleman, that would be…?’
William Gordon looked at me as if he knew exactly what my game was. ‘I don’t believe we were ever introduced.’
I took a gamble based on nothing but suspicion. ‘A tall, upright kind of man with dark hair?’ I suggested. ‘About forty, well dressed in London fashions?’
Gordon’s eyes never left mine. ‘Possibly. I don’t have a terribly reliable memory for people’s appearance. My life is dedicated to words. I tend to remember people by what they say.’
I nodded as if he’d given me all the information I wanted. And he had, really. If people don’t answer the question you’ve actually asked, Harry’d told me once, the more they try and tell you, the less you should believe. ‘That’ll be Mr Caldicot,’ I said. ‘He’s no longer living in London.’ I raised Mr Gordon’s letter between us. ‘May I have the goods and the money owed to Mr Rowland, then?’
‘Might I just see that, please?’
I handed his letter over and Mr Gelyot spoke up. ‘Just for your information,’ he said, ‘as neither Mr Rowland nor his usual proxy were available on this occasion, that letter has been copied and the copy notarised as an exact reproduction by an attorney.’
It was a barefaced lie but it sounded so much like the truth that even I believed it for a second or two.
Gordon looked at him. ‘My dear sir, I do hope you’re not implying that I might, in some way, attempt to evade paying what I owe? I assure you that you will find neither printer nor customer in the whole of London who will tell you that William Gordon has ever been anything but scrupulously honest.’
He sounded genuinely offended and Mr Gelyot bowed his head courteously. ‘I apologise if I’ve given offence. I merely wished to make the situation quite clear.’
Gordon’s feathers unruffled a bit. ‘Very well. Please bear with me for a moment.’
He closed the dark door into the back room behind him, leaving us to look at the stock he was prepared to leave on the open shelves. I’d assumed that London bookshops would be stuffed, like the library at Glanteifi. But no. These shelves were no fuller than the bookshop in Cardigan. Obviously, it worked the same here as at home – you asked for the book you wanted, the bookseller told you whether he had it and, if he didn’t, whether he could order it in. Half the bookshops we’d seen in Wych Street and Holywell Street claimed to be publishers as well, so a lot of the time they must be trying to pass their own
books off as something similar to what was wanted. I could just picture Gordon with a new customer. Ah, I know just the volume to which you are referring. That, of course, is published by Messrs What-d’you-call and What’s-his-name but we happen to have a volume similar in subject matter but infinitely superior in style.
One of the titles I’d seen in Gordon’s window was The Amorous Adventures of a Thousand Arabian Nights by A Sloe-Eyed Seductress which, though it was a lot more tasteful than some of the titles in Wych Street, was very similar to several of them.
I looked at Mr Gelyot who raised his eyebrows. ‘Quick thinking of you to try and identify your Mr Caldicot.’
‘Thank you.’
Before he or I could say anything else, Gordon was back with a newsprint-wrapped parcel big enough to hold several smallish books or two large ones. ‘The remuneration is contained within,’ he said, handing me the parcel by its string. I noticed there was a label stuck on addressed simply to Nicholas Rowland Esq.
