The Dickens Boy

by Tom Keneally

  I thought it might be time for me to mention Urania Cottage and my father’s attitude to those girls. But before I could, she looked at me intently and then smiled and said, ‘You haven’t read it, have you, young Dickens?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I admitted. For some reason I was not ashamed to tell her. ‘Not yet. But I am pleased that I will have time to read all his books.’

  ‘Yes. Between you and me, the capacity to deal with books is something that comes with years. I was an idiotic little thing, let me tell you, when I was at school.’ She lowered her voice further. ‘Forgive me for suggesting it, but it might be politic for you to speak to Mrs Cowper.’

  I agreed, and turned to do my duty, even though Mrs Cowper was talking about predestination to the bishop on the other side of her. I sat looking towards her and waited for the honour of my turn for her ear. When she looked at me, I said, ‘You must thank the premier, Mrs Cowper, for all he has done for my father. I am sure that today was a finer ceremony than the burial in Westminster Abbey, for my father did not want much fuss there. He’d be delighted to know how he was honoured, and indeed missed, here in Sydney.’

  She thanked me and asked me questions about Gad’s Hill. ‘Ah yes,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Kent. I come from a little north of you, in Colchester. You would have eaten our oysters.’

  ‘My father was very partial to them indeed,’ I told her.

  ‘He was such an Englishman,’ said Mrs Cowper. ‘Such an Englishman!’

  ‘He ate them, even with mutton,’ I told her.

  ‘What a good colonial he would have made,’ she said, laughing.

  The bishop leaned forward and said, ‘I was ordained a deacon in Rochester. It’s an exquisite town. And the Medway, as you say, is also wonderful. But my work was carried out in Liverpool chiefly, and I had just been inducted into a new parish – indeed, one formerly occupied by my brother – when I was called to Sydney.’

  I had the impression that the bishop was not an easy man, that he had tolerated the near levity of the memorial service because it was Charles Dickens, but that it would take the death of another equal figure for him to let the churchgoing multitudes back into his cathedral.

  At last I was able to turn back to Mrs Wivenhoe and wait for her to notice me. Eventually she herself turned and examined me with her dark eyes. ‘When did your father speak to you last?’

  ‘I think it is nearly eighteen months past,’ I admitted, a little surprised myself at the passage of time. ‘No, nearly two years. We caught the train together from Higham to Paddington and then he said goodbye. My older brother Henry saw me as far as Plymouth.’

  ‘Oh, so sad,’ said Mrs Wivenhoe. ‘And, as it transpires, so final.’

  ‘It was,’ I agreed and my eyes filled with tears.

  It was as if she was searching for something in her lap, and I could not be of assistance to her. With a lightning little dab of her left hand she placed a small card on my knee. As if I knew we were conspirators I covered it.

  ‘The place and time, Mr Dickens,’ she told me, with a nod.

  Like a polished intriguer I put the card in my side pocket. Soon after, dessert was served. I spoke some more to Mrs Cowper – pious stuff about Father. Finally, the governor and Mr Cowper rose as one, and men began to leave the table for cigars and brandy. I said a regretful farewell to Mrs Wivenhoe and a sincere one to Mrs Cowper, and when I entered the drawing room I noticed that Alfred and Fred Trollope were standing together happily discussing the challenges of their situations.

  The Midlands accent of the famed New South Wales orator Henry Parkes dominated the after-dinner conversation. He did not drink much and had a cigar in hand but no brandy. He was all at once addressing Alfred, saying, ‘If I asked you whether you might enjoy a snifter, Mr Dickens, I hope almost certainly you would tell me, “Barkis is willing!”’

  Everyone thought this side-splitting and Alfred was not averse to the suggestion. ‘Barkis is willing indeed, as it happens, Mr Parkes. But I wonder which of you gentlemen knows the origins of that saying.’

  ‘Why,’ Henry Parkes objected in artificial dudgeon, ‘you should know that I have a substantial library as well as being an habitué of the Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts, and there was a list run by that library to register readers for your father’s novels, of which the one featuring Barkis, who is willing, is I believe his gem, his superlative. To protect your challenge, Mr Dickens, I will say only that it is a book published in the 1850s and so famous that it’s almost vulgar to ask its name. I could say also that a fine friend of the chief character is actually a lawyer, but another character is a vain and empty-headed politician.’

  This caused the men around him to show how entertained they were by Mr Parkes’s teasing out of the matter.

  ‘Yes, what is the title of this book then, gentlemen?’ he called.

  ‘They all blur,’ a colonial gentleman complained. ‘Excellent reading. But they all blur.’

  Indeed, there were cries of ‘Oliver Twist’, which Alfred and Henry Parkes derisively rejected. There were further cries of ‘Pickwick Papers’ and then ‘Barnaby Rudge’ and ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ and ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’. It was a classic case of people, half-inebriated, avoiding the obvious answer because it was obvious. As well as that, this little quizzing seemed to me to show how shallow literary fame could be; how, as the gentleman said, ‘They all blur.’ A quiet young man, half-tipsy but reverential, restored the guvnor’s credit by saying, ‘It is the deathless David Copperfield. And Barkis is proposing to Peggotty by way of David Copperfield – or Trotwood, as his aunt insists on calling David.’

  ‘A scholar,’ Henry Parkes cried, ‘and a reader and retainer! I did not know I had one in my entire constituency – I had only heard rumours of the mythic existence of one, rarely sighted. But here he is, Mr Dickens! He redeems my electorate of its vacuity.’

  But then Parkes grew sober amidst the laughter. ‘Please forgive me – I do not mean to be frivolous in the light of your dear father’s decease. I have read he was a sociable fellow and enjoyed a joke.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Alfred. ‘He abominated people who were falsely solemn in the face of death.’

  Parkes’ eyes surveyed the room and found mine. ‘And you, young Mr Dickens? We are aware a great light has gone out, but that, thanks to your father’s works, it has not faded.’

  I bowed to Mr Parkes to show I was not offended by his little joke. The truth was my mind was possessed by Mrs Wivenhoe and the message she had given me.

  The young reader said, ‘And the lawyer David Copperfield approves of, by the way, is Tommy Traddles.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alfred as if in a public house. ‘Tommy Traddles. Drinks are on me!’

  Everyone laughed and Henry Parkes remarked, ‘I read a story in one of the scandal sheets concerning a great creation of your dear father’s. I was telling the company . . . Now, Miss Haversham, Great Expectations. Miss Haversham, the woman – above all women – left at the altar and living amongst the ruins of her marriage feast and its ornamentations! I have heard it sworn that you and your brother told your illustrious father about our permanently jilted Miss Donnithorne in Sydney, not three miles from here, who famously still keeps the marriage cake and all the nuptial appurtenances in place in her father’s house in the suburb of Newtown and has never left the house since her failed wedding fourteen years past. Now is that the truth or not that you two gave him that story?’

  Alfred and I looked at each other with amazed smiles.

  ‘My brother and I have never heard of Miss Donnithorne, Mr Parkes,’ said Alfred, to which I agreed.

  ‘Great Expectations appeared in 1861,’ Alfred assured the orator. ‘I did not come to Australia until four years later. And my brother arrived two years back. So, we could not have contributed the Australian version of Miss Haversham to our father.’

  ‘Oh desolation! You are stripping our colony of its literary status. I accept what you say, Messrs Dickens,’ said jovi
al Parkes with another bow to each of us. ‘But I am devastated and, like a true colonial, will simply go on repeating the story.’

  We all laughed and I know the guvnor would also have laughed. ‘I rather regret it myself,’ I suggested. ‘I need a little literary credit.’

  Alfred said, ‘When Great Expectations appeared in volume form, it was dedicated to Chauncy Townshend, who taught my father how to mesmerise people.’

  ‘Your father is indeed a mesmeric writer!’ one of the men called out.

  ‘Father was actually to mesmerise people in the flesh,’ said Alfred. ‘He had a gift for it, but seemed to give it up because it made my mother uneasy.’

  ‘I should say so!’ the man said with a guffaw, but then looked about him, unsure of what the joke was supposed to be. It had not been a joke with Mama. I somehow knew it was an area of shadow.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Alfred, ‘Chauncy Hare Townshend died before I left England. I mention that as proof that I could not have sent my father notes from Australia to contribute to a book dedicated to a living friend who was already dead when I got here. I’m sure, Mr Parkes, you get the point.’

  I thought, even in my impatience, that Alfred had done a wonderful job of debunking.

  Dear old Alfred even winked at me then, stalwart in the face of rumour.

  While milling in the panelled hall of government waiting for our carriages, Alfred approached me, eyes shining from his social success, and ready for a wild time.

  ‘Fred and I were settling on the Australia Hotel bar,’ he said. ‘Let’s go together, brother Plorn.’

  I was beginning to colour before I replied, ‘I can’t be there for a time.’

  Alfred raised an eyebrow, and I fell back on the best lie I could find, saying, ‘The bishop’s grandson was injured in a riding accident and I thought it was only polite of me to visit him at Sydney Hospital.’

  I knew it sounded ridiculous.

  ‘At this hour? The bishop’s grandson?’ said Alfred.

  Alfred looked towards Fred Trollope. It was as if Alfred intended to invite Fred in to mark what I had said. I lowered my eyes. But then it was as if some worldliness and mercy entered Alfred. ‘Very well, old son,’ he murmured. ‘You have your own arrangements, I understand. Simply be careful though. I can’t risk losing my brother to someone like Mrs Chard.’ He lowered his voice further still. ‘Do you have precautions?’

  I looked at him, bewildered, as he reached inside one of his pockets and dropped a small, flat package in my hand. ‘Put it away.’

  I swiftly did so. He winked in his normal jaunty way and whispered, ‘Actual rubber not sheep guts. And later, we’ll either be in the Australia Hotel or a short walk away in the bar of the Pioneers’ Club, should you want to say goodnight.’

  He left so immediately and graciously that I felt a surge of love and gratitude for him. He knew I was marching to some drum or answering some fixed idea that had come on me. I hope he didn’t guess the drum in question was Mrs Wivenhoe’s.

  When my coach arrived I asked the driver if he could take me on a little spin around the city, explaining I was new to Sydney and hadn’t seen it by night.

  ‘Sir, without offending you, I do not let streetwalkers enter the coach.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘nothing like that. I have an address I want to be dropped at after we have had a little . . . a little spin.’

  The driver said he’d take me to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair first and we set off. It turned out to be a handsome rock outcrop where, the driver explained, the wife of an earlier governor had sat and yearned for home. After that we headed down towards the Circular Quay and along to George Street, where the public houses were still rowdy. Then across to the stores and emporia of Pitt Street, up around the park, and by the Papist cathedral. By now I had read the fragments of paper Mrs Wivenhoe had put on my knee. It gave an address for a house in Elizabeth Bay, and a further number, twenty-three, which I presumed and hoped was a room number. So now I tapped on the window and opened the communication flap and asked could the gentleman take me there.

  He said he would, and that it was less than a quarter of an hour away. I was convinced that a quarter of an hour away lay, therefore, the resolution of the arc of wanting that had built between me and Mrs Wivenhoe. Arriving at the address, I gave the driver ten shillings to wait for me and went up the stairs of a quite elegant house.

  A well-dressed old man in the lobby asked for my room number, and then a boy about my age led me up the stairs to the door of twenty-three, which he opened and then gave me the key. I went inside. Somehow I thought it had promising wallpaper, thick and blue and gold. But the space lacked Mrs Wivenhoe.

  I consulted the piece of paper and amongst the other figures it declared 12.30, so I was half an hour early. At twenty past the hour, the young man arrived with a bottle of chilled white wine and two glasses and politely asked me if there was anything else I needed. My need was not to have a seizure before my expectations were resolved. I am ashamed to say that the memory of Connie did not distract me nor did it even as yet arise. I wanted the lineaments of gratified desire, as improbable as that seemed, given I had never had them before and could not imagine what said lineaments resembled.

  At thirty minutes after midnight there was a tap on the door and before I could frame words Mrs Wivenhoe was there, compellingly present in a jaunty, forwards-sloping silk hat and a fur stole about her shoulders.

  ‘Mr Dickens,’ she said, slightly short of breath. ‘What a worldly young fellow you are to interpret my note.’

  ‘I am not worldly,’ I told her, though I felt that her arrival had increased my level of worldliness threefold. ‘But I am pleased I did not misunderstand you.’

  ‘Would you like to open the wine?’ she asked. ‘I ordered a muscatel rather than fizz. Fizz is a rather flippant drink, isn’t it? And I don’t intend to be flippant.’

  Setting to work with the corkscrew, I wondered what such an assertion could mean, that I was in for some level of instruction perhaps, a duty she had taken on herself.

  I noticed as I worked on the cork, that she was removing long gloves. I poured the wine in two glasses and took one to her. She accepted it and took a sip, then dragged me to her and kissed me in a way I did not know women of her kind ever kissed. It was an oral experience which seemed almost sufficient in itself, even as prelude to nothing more. And yet I knew by instinct and ache that there was more intended.

  She suggested we go to the bed, and I moved there quickly, as if it were not my baptism in the matter.

  ‘Do you know what this place is?’ she asked. ‘It is a house of assignation of great benefit to many ladies.’

  I was amazed by that. ‘Of great benefit to many ladies’ was a statement of female desire. Of the desire of wives! ‘Athwart’ was swamped – at least for now – by the scale of what she said, the world that was opened to me.

  ‘Please don’t think, though, that I make flippant use of it. And, please can you help me undress?’ she asked.

  I kissed fervently every area of flesh as it was revealed. She then helped me out of my courtly garments, even out of the expanders which kept my shirtsleeves up. I produced the small sachet Alfred had given me with the device inside and, seeing it, she said, ‘How thoughtful you are. You know more than a colonial young man your age!’ She counselled me how to put it on my trembling body and told me with stern humour not to give way yet. And so when I lay on the bed, and she lay by my side in a shift which exposed most of her legs, I saw her strong thighs, her solid-ankled legs poignantly like those, I imagined, of a farm girl. She was rid of the shift soon, and her upper body seemed a confection of desire and her breasts a miraculous and ample haven open to me. Her generosity was affecting to me – I felt an impulse to weep, though I was distracted by the chief lineament of my desire, heavy and gravid as it was, and demanding to be appeased only by her. She lifted her hips and told me, ‘This is where it goes, dear Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens.’

&nb
sp; Afterwards, my body seemed to have been wounded by its contacts with and invasions of Mrs Wivenhoe. It seemed to bleed away deliciously from the divine damage it had received. It cried out to be wounded and subdued again. But she had already stated as a necessary fact, ‘We will not meet like this ever again. You have had a grown woman and I have had my Dickens.’

  I did not know what she meant by that. Nor did I wish to inquire. ‘I will be an old lady before you are forty,’ she said. ‘There is someone young awaiting you. So please don’t come chasing me,’ she warned. ‘I have a husband.’

  I had told her I loved her. I’d even told her I could not stay away from her. I told her of Maurice and the French aunt, in the mode of escape together somewhere in the world. No wonder he had run away with her.

  ‘Listen to yourself! Will you take me back to Momba? No thank you.’

  So that was the rule. Her mercy, her pedagogy, extended once, would never be again extended. But if not, what was I to do with the world of sensual desire now residing inside me?

  37

  The next day Sir Charles provided us with a soothing cruise on the harbour. We travelled its charming reaches and saw the mansions amongst the bush of the eastern shore. The premier told us we were going to a small version of Brighton named Manly, which had been built on the northern shore of the harbour, under a great headland open to the massive tug of the Pacific Ocean, bright, choppy and un-Pacific today, its entering waves topped with spume.

  We landed at Manly, at the beach where the first governor had been speared by ‘manly’ natives, and drank a toast to Father. Alfred and Fred were a little fragile from their drinking session and seemed melancholy as the ferry reached up the harbour towards Sydney Cove, or perhaps it was my sadness at not being permitted the self-forbidden Mrs Wivenhoe. Where was I to take my aching blood?