Titmarsh had thought she’d looked guilty, and when Mr. Crowder warned him, quite severely this time, to have no more to do with “that one,” he promised himself he’d obey.
But most mysteriously (and Tom Titmarsh couldn’t understand how it had come about), here she was again, sitting on the bishop’s sermons and scuffing her feet against the bindings, as if she’d been asked.
He was on the point of coming to his senses and bidding her to be off, when she gave him her most Satanic smile and asked, “Sold any good books lately?”
“Why, them you’re sitting on, miss,” said Titmarsh, surprised, “are selling very brisk. Very fine they are, too.”
Miss Sparrow sniffed and, lifting her skirt, stuck her head down between her knees in order to read the title.
“I’ve seen,” she said, coming up with a grimy grin, “paper put to better use in a bog house.”
She slid off her perch, wiped the seat of her skirt with fastidious hands, and clattered out of the shop. Titmarsh, catching sight of the waiting stranger’s snarl of amusement, thought that whatever Miss Sparrow had inherited from her schoolmaster pa was nothing beside what she’d got from the Prince of Darkness, who, when he fell from heaven, was well known to have splashed down into a vat of printer’s ink.
He busied himself in wiping the mud off the bishop’s sermons until his master returned.
“This gentleman to see you, sir,” he said quickly, and was glad that he wasn’t obliged to confess to Miss Sparrow’s visit.
“The name is Match, sir. Match,” said the stranger, dragging his hand out of his pocket and offering it to be shaken.
He was fearfully thin, and his skin, stretched over his joints, shone as if, like his clothes, it had been worn threadbare. He turned out to be an author with a manuscript that he pulled out of his pocket and offered to the bookseller. He smiled as he did so, and Titmarsh saw that the snarling effect of his expression was due to the general tightness of everything that covered his bones.
Mr. Crowder, who could hardly refuse the ragged notebook without letting it fall, opened to the first page.
“Thine Is the Kingdom”! cried Mr. Match eagerly, before Mr. Crowder had had a chance to read. “That’s the title, sir! Thine Is the Kingdom! A good one, don’t you think? From the Gospel of St. Matthew, of course!”
Mr. Crowder nodded and closed the book.
“Won’t you read it, sir? Please read it! You must read it!”
“We’re in business here,” said Mr. Crowder wearily, “to sell books, not to read ’em, Mr. Match.”
Mr. Match snarled and laughed, but he was remarkably persistent. He wouldn’t take the book back, and Titmarsh could see that he was really quite desperate. He kept clutching at his narrow chest and revealing wrists and arms like old bleached sticks.
Patiently Mr. Crowder explained that, although he was sure Mr. Match’s work was worthy to appear in print, a small edition of it, bound in cloth, would cost somewhere in the region of fifty pounds; and, as Mr. Match was, as yet, unknown—
“But I’ll pay!” cried Mr. Match eagerly. “I’ll pay for the printing myself, sir! I was quite prepared for that! I understand it all. I’ll pay every penny!”
Mr. Crowder compressed his lips and examined the book again. He believed the cost would be nearer sixty than fifty pounds. It was possible that he felt sorry for Mr. Match and hoped to put him off throwing his money away, but the author, who didn’t look as if he had two pennies to rub together, closed with the bookseller instantly. He shifted his ugly boots as if he were about to dance with delight. He was enormously grateful.
“Will it come out quickly, sir? It must come out quickly. You see, there’s topical matter here that will lose by delay. I beg of you, sir, bring it out quickly!”
“Topical matter, eh? Are you going to set the town on fire, Mr. Match? Ha ha!”
“That’s right! That’s exactly right!” cried Mr. Match, snarling and laughing. “The town on fire! Everybody will be reading it! But only if it comes out quickly! Please, sir!”
“I’ll send my boy here round to the printer’s today,” said Mr. Crowder indulgently. “If it’s as topical as you say, we mustn’t lose a minute, sir!”
When Titmarsh came back from Angel Court, where he’d taken the manuscript, he was still out of breath.
“You needn’t have run so, my boy,” said Mr. Crowder, patting him on the shoulder. “There wasn’t that much of a hurry. Thine Is the Kingdom, indeed. Now what can be topical about that? Authors are always the same, Titmarsh. They’ll say anything to get their work out quickly. And shall I tell you why? They’re consumed with an absolute terror of dying before they’ve had a chance to become famous. It’s a kind of madness they have. Poor devils! Sometimes I think they’d be better off if they did die before seeing their masterpieces end up as wrapping paper for cheese!”
Titmarsh blinked and nodded. He felt an enormous pity for the starved looking Mr. Match, who was prepared to sacrifice everything he had in the world for Thine Is the Kingdom. He prayed with all his heart that somehow the book really would “set the town on fire,” and that, above all, the sharp and biting Miss Sparrow would be prevented from reading it and summing up Mr. Match’s eager dreams with, “I’ve seen paper put to better use in a bog house.”
“Printer’s!”
Titmarsh jumped in alarm and crept away from the shining shelves towards his brown nook. Miss Sparrow, fierce and filthy as ever, came clattering after.
“Proofs of the pudden’, boy!” she said, and slapped down the first proofs of Thine Is the Kingdom on Titmarsh’s plate of chopped ham.
She paused, and Titmarsh flinched in expectation.
“And if I was you, Tom Titmarsh, I’d read it. It weren’t half bad. You can take me word on it. Truly!”
Titmarsh gaped. In a moment all the melancholy thoughts he’d been harbouring during the past week, of Mr. Match hanging himself on account of his book’s failure, melted away. He felt so happy and relieved that had Miss Sparrow been cleaner he might have embraced her! He thought her to be the best judge of a book to be found anywhere in the town.
Miss Sparrow, happily unaware of the narrowness of her escape, lifted up the sheets and picked at the chopped ham beneath.
“Fruits of the Tree of Knowledge, Tom Titmarsh. That’s what I’d call it. Do you a sight more good than—” she said, making a wry face as she swallowed her mouthful, “—this!”
“I’ll tell Mr. Crowder,” said Tom Titmarsh cheerfully. “I’m sure he’ll want to read it!”
“That’ll be the day!” snorted the printer’s devil. “There never was a bookseller yet what read more of his stock than the title!”
She stalked out of the shop, pausing only to shout that she’d be back in three days to pick up the corrections.
“Well, Tom Titmarsh? Didn’t I tell you it weren’t half bad?” said Miss Sparrow, returning on the third day.
“I—I’ve not had time to read it yet, miss,” said Titmarsh, defensively. “But I will. I promise I will.”
“You can read, I s’pose?”
“You’ve got to be able to read in this trade, miss.”
“When will you read it then?”
“When—when it comes back from the binders.”
“Word of honour?”
“Oh, yes. After all, it’s not a very long book.”
“Christ!” said Miss Sparrow. “I don’t know why I bother with you!”
To be honest, Tom Titmarsh didn’t know either, but he couldn’t help feeling a little hurt that Miss Sparrow had actually said so. Nevertheless, he resolved to keep his word at the first opportunity.
The printed sheets were promised for the first week in July, and, most unusually, Gardiner’s was prompt in its delivery. Mr. Crowder had never known anything like it, and said so.
It was raining quite heavily when the cart arrived, and Titmarsh saw that Miss Sparrow had taken off her apron and laid it over the sheets to keep them dry. She
managed to squeeze Titmarsh’s hand meaningly while Mr. Crowder was signing for the delivery, and the apprentice nodded in confirmation of his promise.
“What’s that you’ve got on your hand, my boy?” asked Mr. Crowder curiously as Titmarsh began stacking the sheets in a corner for the binder to collect.
Titmarsh looked down. Black as Satan’s shadow, the printer’s devil had left her mark. Her inky fingers had streaked the back of his hand.
“It—it must have come off the paper, sir,” lied Titmarsh, and was ashamed to see how readily he was believed.
During the following week Miss Sparrow called at Crabtree Orchard twice. Titmarsh noticed that she’d cleaned her shoes and had sewn up the trailing hem of her dress. He flattered himself that she’d done it on his account, and he responded by taking an extra pride in his own appearance. He bought a pair of stockings with green silk clocks; but she didn’t notice them, so Titmarsh grew gloomy and supposed her improvement was on account of the book she esteemed so highly. Either that, or somewhere she had found another friend.
She barely exchanged half a dozen words with him, so that Titmarsh found himself unwillingly obeying his master by having nothing to do with the printer’s devil. He tried to swallow down his disappointment and derive some pleasure from being able to face Mr. Crowder with a clear conscience.
Plainly Mr. Crowder appreciated this, and he treated his young apprentice with exceptional kindness. Several times he urged him to take advantage of the sunshine in the middle of the working day.
“Take a walk round Covent Garden, my boy,” he’d say, with his fatherly smile. “Buy yourself some fruit. It’ll do you more good than books, Titmarsh.”
Indeed, the weather was outstandingly fine, and the whole world went about strawberry-cheeked and apple-eyed. Titmarsh walked among the flowers, bought peaches and apricots . . . and wondered about Miss Sparrow and Thine Is the Kingdom. He wished he could be thoroughly happy, but somehow that was denied him, and he obscurely felt that the sunshine couldn’t last.
On July 10 the binder’s boy delivered twenty gilded presentation copies of the Bishop of Southwark’s sermons—and the first two hundred of Thine Is the Kingdom.
Mr. Match came in almost at once. Titmarsh wondered if he’d been waiting in the street all night. He stood and gazed at his printed work with tears streaming down his cheeks. Then he shook hands with Mr. Crowder and with Titmarsh. He had been sweating so much that the apprentice felt he’d shaken hands with a drink of warm water.
“I hope it goes well!” he muttered. “You see, I’ve put so much into it! It’s very important to me. . . . It’s my heart and soul . . . in print!”
He took away six copies, and Mr. Crowder remarked that authors were always their own best customers.
“And sometimes,” he added, with a melancholy smile, “they are their only ones.”
Titmarsh hoped, from the bottom of his heart, that this would not be so. He felt in the strangest way that Mr. Match desired something more than fame: he longed to give rather than receive. The apprentice was profoundly moved, and when the Bishop of Southwark called in to sign his own presentation copies, he took the liberty of recommending Thine Is the Kingdom with great warmth.
The bishop shrugged his broad shoulders. The work of other authors did not really interest him. Nevertheless, he accepted a copy of Mr. Match’s book and promised to give his opinion on it. Titmarsh felt that Miss Sparrow would have been proud of him.
“You’ve not read it?” asked Mr. Crowder when the bishop had gone.
“Oh, no, sir!” said Titmarsh, and, for the last time felt able to look his master straight in the eye.
That night, with beating heart and carefully shielded candle, Tom Titmarsh settled down to keep his promise and read Thine Is the Kingdom. Even before he had opened the book, a feeling of intense secrecy overcame him, so that several times he had to creep out of his brown sanctuary to make sure that the slight sounds of the night were not his master’s slippered footfalls approaching to find out what his apprentice was doing.
Then he began to read . . . and the warm night seemed to grow cold about him, so that he actually had to put on his coat and breeches to stop himself from shivering.
Very quickly he understood why Miss Sparrow had been so deeply stirred, for the book enshrined her own words about the devil sharing in the profits of the angels—not that there was anything in the least angelic about it. It was a frantic and nightmarish book, and it seemed unbelievable that it had sprung from so frail a man as Mr. Match. It was a wild and savage book that made Titmarsh’s eyes smart and burn as if from smoke.
It was about a walk the author had taken one black night, from London Bridge to Covent Garden. Everything was described in the sharpest detail, so that the reader was forced to believe in every word.
For a penny the author had had the light of a linkboy’s torch to guide him through the night, and as he’d walked he’d seen such sights thrown up out of the darkness that he’d screamed out, in his heart of hearts, and cursed the first day of creation that had brought light into being and so revealed the agonies of hell.
He had seen, in a lane off Fleet Street (everything was named and described), a woman running from a house with blood pouring from her cut throat; he had seen a family of beggars (in an alley that Titmarsh knew well) eating a dog that was scarcely dead; he had seen a strangled baby lying outside the very church where Titmarsh worshipped every week. He had seen a dozen other sights, no less monstrous and no less precise, until at last he’d come to Dorset Street, where he’d begged the linkboy to halt awhile, for his soul ached as if it had been put through a mangle.
They stood outside St. Bridget’s; a brown light gleamed from the church windows, and the soft, gentle sounds of a service could be heard.
“Our Father which art in Heaven,” chanted the clergyman, and the unseen congregation followed suit.
“Hallowed be Thy name . . .”
“Hollowed be Thy name,” said the congregation.
“Hallowed! Hallowed!”
“Hollowed! Hollowed!” echoed the congregation.
“Thy kingdom come . . .”
At these words, there was a noise in the churchyard, a straining and a grunting that caused the linkboy to lift his torch and push it inquisitively through the iron railings.
At first it seemed that the motion of the light was causing the shadows to move and swim among the tombs; then Mr. Match saw, to his creeping terror, that the stones themselves were shifting. Slowly and inexorably they were being shrugged aside by some commotion in the ground beneath. He supposed it to be an earthquake until he saw what seemed to be a host of pale mushrooms sprouting from the disturbed earth.
But they were not mushrooms. They were the seamed tops of skulls. The dead were rising up. Bony and splintered by the torchlight, they clawed their way up the sides of their own headstones and glared eyelessly into the night, as if astonished to find the world still standing.
With open-work arms akimbo, they leaned and looked until, with an angry rattling of jaws, they fell aside; for others were rising up. More and more they came; many generations had been buried at St. Bridget’s, too many, indeed, even for standing room. They began to jostle one another with a dreadful snapping and clicking. Presently they began to climb on top of each other, bone fitting into bone as if mortised.
Higher and higher grew the pile till it formed a kind of spire, level with the church’s and closely cobbled with polished heads. Indeed, it was a church itself—a church of bone.
“Care to go inside?” said the linkboy, pushing open the gate as if what had happened were the most natural thing in the world.
Helplessly Mr. Match nodded and followed, picking his way across the upturned earth.
“Forgive us our trespasses,” came the clergyman’s voice from St. Bridget’s, and Mr. Match and the linkboy went inside the bone church as if for the last Sunday of the world.
It was bitterly cold within, and rags an
d dusty sinews hung down from the lofty vaulting of ribs and spines like a host of battle honours. Mr. Match looked up, and the dead looked down, and one of them began to preach a sermon. He never knew which one, for all their mouths were open, and all their eyes were wide.
“In the beginning,” whispered the preacher, “in the very beginning, that is, God made the devil, and that was His greatest creation. When He made the devil, He made Himself, because before there was the devil, there was no god. Before there was evil, there was no good. Then He made darkness to make light, because without darkness, there can be no light. Nothing can exist of itself alone.
“He thought of guilt, so that He might create innocence. He caused Cain to kill Abel; he caused Judas to betray Christ. Without Cain, there is no Abel; without Judas, there is no Christ. Without guilt, there is no innocence; without agony, there is no joy. . . .”
So the sermon went on, heaping paradox on paradox, even as the dead were piled on top of one another, while the author, by these strange and wayward means, struggled to answer the questions in his own tormented heart. He was trying as best he knew to come to terms with all the cruelties and miseries he’d seen in the night. He was trying to begin again and see which way reason had really gone, and whose was the kingdom.
At last, Titmarsh finished the book. He closed it with shaking hands, and a feeling of unutterable distress filled him, together with a sense of shame. The shame was because he had read the book in secret and did not want his master ever to find out the thoughts it had put into his head. He lay down but did not go to sleep. He was too frightened of the dreams that might visit him.
“Printer’s.”
Miss Sparrow crept in at the morning door. She’d washed her face and combed her hair, so that she looked vaguely familiar rather than instantly recognizable. She came quietly into Titmarsh’s sanctuary and gazed at the bound copies of Thine Is the Kingdom.
“Well?” she asked. “Did you read it, Tom Titmarsh?”
“Yes, miss.”
The Apprentices Page 23
