Carver's Truth

by Nick Rennison

  ‘That is a possibility you have suggested more than once, Quint. I am coming to the conclusion that you are, in all likelihood, correct.’

  The two men stared down at the Ouse. A boat passed under the bridge, filled with passengers. One of them called up to them and waved his hand. Adam raised his hat to him and smiled. ‘Come,’ he said to Quint, ‘our hotel awaits our arrival.’

  * * * * *

  The following day, Adam set out to find the northern offices of the National Society for Returning Young Women to their Friends in the Country. The address he had been given was not, at first, easy to locate. In York’s twisting medieval streets it was all too possible to lose one’s way. Only the vast, looming towers of the Minster, which were visible – or so it seemed – from every point in the city, allowed him to orientate himself.

  Eventually, Adam found the place for which he was looking. It was a narrow alleyway which led off one of the main streets. This opened into a paved courtyard in which a stunted tree, starved of sunlight, was struggling to put forth a few green leaves. The court was surrounded by small houses built, Adam guessed, in the middle of the previous century. None of them was used any longer as a private residence. All were now offices of one kind or another. He could see the nameplate of a solicitor’s firm, and another that advertised the presence of a corn merchant.

  The house he wanted stood immediately opposite the exit from the alleyway. The Phoenix and Sun Fire Insurance Company occupied its ground floor. Up above were the offices of the National Society for Returning Young Women to their Friends in the Country.

  Adam climbed the stairs and knocked on the green door that immediately confronted him.

  ‘Come,’ said a reedy voice from within.

  The young man walked into a dark, wood-panelled room. Two small windows on the far wall allowed little sunshine to enter and Adam found it difficult at first to make out more than looming shadows in the gloom. As his eyes grew swiftly more accustomed to the half-light, he could see a large sideboard to the left with what appeared to be two blue Chinese vases sitting on them. On the right was a tall chest of drawers. In the middle, sitting behind a vast table that was the only other large piece of furniture in the room, his head silhouetted against one of the windows, was a man with a face as long as an undertaker’s, fronted by prominent teeth. From what Adam could see of his expression, it was not welcoming.

  The man put down a sheaf of papers he had been examining, then stood and gestured impatiently to a chair by the huge table. ‘Pray, take a seat. I shall be able to give you my undivided attention in but a moment.’

  As Adam lowered himself onto the uncomfortable, high-backed chair, the buck-toothed man re-seated himself and began to leaf through the pile of papers on the table once more. It was only too obvious that he was doing this more to impress upon his visitor the degree to which he was a busy man than to take note of what was in them. A minute passed. Adam felt himself growing irritated and was about to cough pointedly when the man finally put down the papers and spoke to him. ‘My name is Ridgewell. I am the secretary for the Society in the North of England. How may I help you?’

  Adam’s story of his search for Dolly Delaney was listened to in silence. Ridgewell’s face suggested that he was having difficulty believing that any of it was true. When Adam finished, the secretary sniffed loudly and turned to stare at the Chinese vases as if he had just noticed them and found them to be aesthetically offensive.

  ‘I will be blunt, Mr Carver,’ he said. ‘If the decision were mine to make, I should not divulge the information you require.’ Ridgewell now twisted his head to look coldly at Adam. ‘However, Miss Bascombe has written to me. You seem to have made a favourable impression on her.’ The man’s tone of voice indicated that he could think of no good reason why this should be so.

  Looking back on his meeting with Miss Bascombe, Adam reflected that the founder of the National Society for Returning Young Women to their Friends in the Country had given little hint at the time that he had met with her approval. Although his cheque certainly had.

  ‘She wishes me to offer you any assistance I can. I will therefore endeavour to answer any questions you may wish to ask me.’ Ridgewell settled back in his seat with the air of a man preparing to endure an unpleasant but necessary ordeal.

  ‘Dolly came to see you, did she not?’

  Ridgewell nodded briefly.

  ‘On which day was this?’

  ‘Perhaps a week ago.’ The man reached for a large morocco-bound ledger on the tabletop and pulled it towards him. He took a pince-nez from the top pocket of his jacket and placed it precariously on his nose. Turning the pages of the ledger, he came eventually to the one he required and peered at it. ‘Yes, I wrote a note of it. I record all the visits made to this office in here. It was last Tuesday. Eight days ago.’

  ‘She asked for help?’

  ‘She demanded it. She wanted money. However, I had already decided that the best action the Society could take for the girl was to find her work. Not to hand her further monies to squander in self-indulgence.’ Ridgewell closed the ledger with a sudden bang and pushed it away from him. He settled back in his chair, his pince-nez still perched on the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Were you successful in finding her employment?’ Adam asked, struggling to keep his distaste for this self-righteous pedant from his voice.

  ‘I had arranged for Miss Delaney to take up a position as a maid in a very respectable household in a village not ten miles from the city.’

  ‘Let me hazard a guess. She did not take it.’

  ‘She did not.’ Ridgewell pursed his lips in disapproval. ‘A most ungrateful young woman she proved herself to be. She told me, in the most unmannerly terms, what she thought of the post.’

  ‘And what did she think of it?’

  ‘She thought it was beneath her dignity. Although what dignity a young chit who has cavorted on a public stage can be said to possess, I do not know.’

  ‘So she refused the job of maid. Did you offer her any other assistance?’

  ‘Even supposing that I had felt inclined to offer her further help – which I did not – I had no opportunity to do so. When she realized that I was unprepared to give her money, as she requested, she swore at me and left.’

  ‘Where do you suppose she went after she had left you? Back to London?’

  ‘She had not the wherewithal to return to the city. I formed the very definite impression that she had come to our offices here in York with the sole intention of cozening more money from the Society.’

  ‘Surely Miss Bascombe had requested that she be given more money?’

  ‘I am made of sterner stuff than Miss Bascombe. I am less easily taken in by the stories young women like Miss Delaney invent to account for troubles which, in truth, their own sins have brought upon them.’

  ‘So she had such a story?’

  Ridgewell waved his hand in the air as if to disparage anything Dolly might or might not have told him. ‘I scarcely listen to these tales, Mr Carver. I have heard so many of them in my time with the Society, and so few of them are true.’

  ‘But she did tell you something of her circumstances,’ Adam persisted.

  Ridgewell sighed. It was clear that he was growing weary of the conversation. ‘She had some cock-and-bull story about a gentleman of high standing who wished her dead. Who might have followed her to York in order to do away with her. It was so obviously fantastical that I paid it very little heed.’

  ‘You did not think it might have contained any truth at all?’

  Ridgewell laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh nor, indeed, one that indicated much in the way of genuine mirth. ‘It was nonsense, Mr Carver. Smoke and gammon, to employ a vulgarism. The girl was desperate to gull us out of further monies. She was inventing some fairy
tale based on her reading of cheap novelettes.’

  ‘I do not think the girl can read, Mr Ridgewell,’ Adam said, remembering what McIlwraith had told him.

  ‘It scarcely matters from where she took her story. She was foolish enough to believe that I would be foolish enough to believe her. That is all.’

  * * * * *

  ‘The girl has no money. So it is unlikely that she has left the city. To do that, she needs cash. How will she get it?’

  ‘Spread her legs,’ Quint said shortly.

  ‘Crudely expressed but that is a possibility. I think, however, that Dolly would have to be very desperate before she sold herself on the streets.’

  ‘If she’s out of blunt, she has to do something to get it,’ Quint said, with the air of someone pointing out an obvious truth. ‘And I ain’t sure ’ow she’s going to crack an ’onest crust.’

  ‘True enough. She might, I suppose, look for a photographer to take the kind of pictures of her that the seedy Mr Pennethorne did, but I think that such men might be hard to find outside London. It is much more likely that she would try to gain employment on the stage once more.’

  ‘Ain’t so many places in a town like this to flash her pins.’

  ‘Exactly, Quint. As so often, you hit the nail on the head. In London, as we discovered to our cost, there are hundreds of theatres, great and small, where an actress or a dancer can ply her trade. Here in York, there are but few in comparison. We can visit them all in the course of a single day.’

  The two men were sitting in a chop house in Davygate. They had just finished a midday meal. Quint had also finished the pint of ale which had accompanied the food. Adam had drunk only half of his. He picked up the pewter tankard and tilted it towards what little light succeeded in struggling through the place’s grimy windows. The liquid in the tankard glowed amber and briefly looked more appetizing than it was.

  ‘Ain’t exackly cheery here, is it?’ Quint remarked. ‘It’s like a boneyard on a wet Sunday.’

  ‘I have eaten in livelier establishments,’ Adam agreed.

  They were very nearly alone in the place apart from a surly waiter. Across the room was the only other customer, a tall, melancholy man in a greatcoat and muffler. He was dressed to suggest that, even though spring had arrived, he had every reason to believe that winter was about to make a comeback. He was sitting at a table on his own, eating a plate of bacon, sausage and black pudding as if his life depended on finishing it as quickly as possible.

  ‘He’s a heavy grubber, ain’t he?’ Quint said, watching with some fascination as the man pushed meat unrelentingly into his mouth.

  ‘Never mind our fellow diner,’ Adam said. ‘Concentrate your thoughts upon the fair Delaney. The story she told the egregious Mr Ridgewell is a curious one.’

  ‘What?’ Quint tore himself away from his examination of the over-dressed man. ‘That some nob wanted her dead?’

  ‘Why should she believe that her life was in danger?’

  ‘Mebbe she got wind we were on ’er tail. And reckoned we were out to make cold meat of ’er.’

  ‘Perhaps she did learn that we were in search of her. But, suppose she did, why should she assume the worst?’

  ‘It’s a licker to me,’ Quint said, shaking his head. He gave the impression he was losing interest in the subject. His master took another taste of his ale and then pushed the tankard to one side. He had drunk enough of it, he decided.

  The man dressed as if for the depths of winter, having now finished his meal in double-quick time, was making his way out. Adam nodded at him as he passed their table. With courtesy and a look of infinite sadness, the man raised his hat and then made his way into the street.

  ‘’E’s left ’is paper,’ Quint said. He stood and walked over to the table where their fellow diner had been bolting his meal. He picked up a copy of the York Herald. ‘’E ain’t even cut the pages.’

  ‘Bring it over here, Quint.’ Adam took a small, folding paperknife from his pocket. His servant handed him the Herald and he carefully slit open the pages. ‘The theatres will all advertise in here, I am sure. Yes, here we are.’ Adam gave a small smile of satisfaction. ‘A whole column of dramatic and musical delights. There is, of course, the Theatre Royal. It is the oldest and most distinguished theatre in the city.’

  ‘Likely she went there, then.’ Quint was leaning back in his chair and picking his teeth.

  ‘No, I think not.’ Adam ran his eyes down the page of advertisements in the newspaper. ‘I think she would avoid the best-known establishment. She needs a job but she also needs to remain anonymous. She could not do so at the Theatre Royal. And she would have a better prospect of employment in one of the smaller companies.’ The young man stabbed his finger at the page. ‘Here we are. The Grand Theatre, Goodramgate. Alfred Skeffington presents his world-renowned company of players in The Skeleton in the Cave, or, The Bloody Crime of Eugene Aram. This is the one we shall try first.’

  * * * * *

  On entering the Grand, the first person Adam saw was an elderly, grey-whiskered man who was pushing a broom half-heartedly across the faded tiles in the theatre lobby. Bent almost double, he seemed to be tracing some elaborate pattern on the floor rather than cleaning it. When Adam spoke to him, he was so lost in his private task he had not heard the young man approach. He straightened up in surprise.

  ‘If it’s Mr Skeffington you’re wanting,’ the man said, after he had recovered his composure and returned to pushing his broom. ‘He’s backstage somewhere.’ He pointed along a narrow and dusty corridor that circled the Grand’s auditorium and led further into the building.

  ‘How shall I know him?’

  ‘Oh, you’ll know him all right. There’s no mistaking Mr Skeffington. Just follow the sound of his voice.’ There was a pause and Adam could hear, at the other end of the passage, a distant booming, like a bittern calling for its mate across the reedbeds of East Anglia. ‘There it goes now. He’ll be reciting what he calls “the Swan of Avon” to himself. That’s bloody Shakespeare to you and me. I reckon he’s outside one of the dressing rooms. Down there to the end and then bear right.’

  Adam did as the doorman suggested and walked along the passageway. The rumbling sounds of blank verse grew louder as he did so. The words were those of Othello telling how Desdemona had come to love him. As he turned a corner, his boots clicking on the wooden floor, Othello’s speech came to an abrupt end.

  From the shadows of a doorway, a figure emerged and approached Adam. It spoke in the same reverberant tones in which the Moor of Venice had just described the winning of his wife. ‘You have travelled, young sir, from that vast and ever-proliferating metropolis to which William Cobbett once attached the epithet, “The Great Wen”?’

  The man who addressed Adam with these words presented a strange spectacle. His body was small and compact and cloaked in a billowing dressing gown of purple serge. His head, out of all proportion to the rest of him, was huge and surrounded by a straggling mane of hair and beard. His voice thundered resonantly as if its owner was always projecting it in the direction of the Gods. Adam could not easily tell the man’s age. Alfred Skeffington – for this must surely be the man for whom he was searching – could have been a slightly decrepit fifty-five or a sprightly seventy-five.

  ‘I have come from London, sir, that is true. I am not certain how you could have known that so instantly.’

  ‘You have the look of a denizen of the Wen, my boy. You do reside there, do you not?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then, my dear young fellow, you have my deepest sympathies.’ Mr Skeffington held out his hand. ‘I have lived there myself,’ the actor-manager said, shaking Adam’s hand vigorously. ‘Several lustra have passed since last I was obliged to trudge its chartered streets but I have never forgotten the horrors’
– here he dropped the young man’s hand but continued to stare intently at him – ‘the horrors, I repeat, of existence within its confines.’

  ‘Horrors, Mr Skeffington?’

  ‘Ask me no more, young sir. I implore you, ask me no more. Memories too painful to contemplate begin to burst the tombs in which I have long succeeded in burying them.’ The old actor took a small white cambric handkerchief from the pocket of his purple gown and began to dab at his left eye.

  ‘I am sorry that I have aroused unhappy recollections of your past, sir.’

  Skeffington raised his hand, waving it slightly in Adam’s direction. ‘It is no matter, my boy, no matter. “I would forget it fain, but, O, it presses to my memory” – Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 2.’ He returned the handkerchief to his pocket and seemed almost immediately more cheerful. ‘But how can I help you? Your name, young Londoner, your name.’

  ‘My name is Carver, sir, Adam Carver. I have come to York in search of a runaway.’ Adam had decided already on the story he would tell to explain his interest in Dolly. ‘A girl who has deserted her family to flee to the city. I have been commissioned by them to find her. It is thought that she might have attempted to join a company such as yours.’

  He held out Dolly’s now much-thumbed cabinet card. Skeffington showed no interest in it. Instead, he turned to open a door to one of the dressing rooms behind him. ‘Follow me, Mr Carver.’

  A desk in the corner of the room was piled high with papers and manuscripts. Others were heaped about it. Skeffington strode through them all. When he reached the desk, he swept his arm across it, knocking further small hills of paper to the floor. ‘Take a seat, sir, take a seat.’

  Adam looked about him. Parts of a small wing-backed chair could be glimpsed beneath another miniature mountain of paper. He hesitated, wondering whether or not to perch on it.

  ‘Throw them to the ground, young man,’ Skeffington said airily, ‘throw them to the ground. Let them find their rightful level.’