“You have a husband and children, do you not?”
“How do you know that?”
“You have a ring. And you look tired. You want to escape for an hour or so. Is that not right?”
She was drawn to this stranger with the precise, careful voice. Then, with an elation she could not explain even to herself, she joined him at his table.
She told Harry that she saw Asher Ruppta from time to time after that first meeting. “Your father,” she said, “knew nothing about it. He didn’t know about a lot of things.”
“Such as?”
“I had been on the game before I met him. In Soho. Just for the extra cash, you see. So when we needed the money, after you three boys were born—” She grew silent, fearful that in her desire to tell her son everything she had in fact said too much.
“And when you were put in prison?”
“After I got out, I went to Asher Ruppta. I lived with him for a while.”
“That’s when you had a son.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him?”
“Nothing happened. He’s at a good school. A boarding school.” She paused for a moment. “Life had been hard, Harry. I always wanted to have money. To be free. But then I met your father.”
“I think you ought to go now.”
So she walked past him and went out into the corridor. The story soon spread around the office that Harry was not a Barnardo’s boy after all.
XV
Don’t stick it out like that
“HOW ARE you feeling?” Daniel asked Sparkler one morning.
“All right. What’s the weather like?”
“Well, it’s winter.”
“I know. The sun is low in the sky. Like me.” Daniel looked down at his friend’s pale face bathed in sweat, and at his trembling limbs; he heard his rasping persistent cough. “Is that window open?”
“No.”
“I feel a cold breeze. Could you close the window?” Daniel pretended to close it. “I won’t go to no hospital. The nun is here, isn’t she? The doctor says he has given up on me. He can’t find nothing wrong, he says. No cause, he says. What is that supposed to mean? The nun says that there’s no earthly cause. She has a funny way of talking. Meanwhile I am burning to death.” He seemed to lose consciousness for a moment, and his fingers played listlessly against the sheets. It was as if he were plucking a string. “Well,” he said, after a while, “at least I won’t grow old.” His face was thinner; his eyes were brighter and more protuberant; his voice was higher. Then there was a flash of his old self. “I told the nun that I needed strength to steal again,” he said. “So she went down on her knees to pray for me. ‘Oh Lord, let him be a thief once more.’ ”
When Daniel had arrived that morning, he had found a small phial of water outside the door to Sparkler’s flat. It had a piece of paper taped to it, with the words “Holy Water” scribbled in biro. One of the inhabitants of the house must have left it there. Daniel put the phial in his pocket, deciding at once that he would not let Sparkler know about it.
When Daniel left the flat that evening, he almost walked into the nun. “Have you been to see your friend?” she asked him.
“Yes. I have.” He did not know how to address her, and he could not focus upon her face. It floated in front of him like some bright moon.
“You are anxious, I know,” she went on to say. “But there is no need to worry. He won’t die. He is being purged.”
Daniel was so surprised by this that he took a step back. “Is that so? Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I have come across this sickness before. It is suffering with a purpose.” She smiled and walked past him towards the door of Sparkler’s flat.
Daniel returned by train to Cambridge in a state of relief close to euphoria but, as soon as he got back to his familiar college rooms, his exhilaration vanished. He had had no dealings with nuns before, but he suspected that they were superstitious to a dangerous degree. There was something about her, too, which had seemed to him to be elusive; she had possessed no strong presence.
He looked from the windows of his rooms, and saw Paul Wilkin walking across the quad; from this height he noticed how bald he had become. To his annoyance he then heard footsteps slowly mounting the staircase to his rooms. He closed his eyes briefly at the knock on his door. “Oh, Daniel, I’m glad I caught you. I thought you might be here.”
“And here I am. Won’t you come in, Paul?”
Wilkin entered the room and accepted a glass of sherry. The lines were evident upon his face, and strands of hair had turned greyish-white. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said. Already Daniel feared the worst, and said nothing. “My editor has left Aylesford & Bunting. Well, retired, actually. And the bastards there don’t want to publish my new book.”
“Of poems?”
“Of course.” For a moment he seemed offended. “Written over the last ten years. Some of them are bloody marvellous. So I wonder if you could put in a word for me with Aubrey Rackham.”
“Hanky Panky? I thought you despised him.”
“Well, my personal feelings are neither here nor there.” Wilkin was blustering. “It’s important just to get the work published. Connaught & Douglas is a good firm. I have always said so.” No you have not, Daniel thought. “It would be an honour to be published by them again. They were once my mentors. You can tell them that from me.” No I will not, Daniel thought.
“You had better give me the typescript then,” he said quietly.
“I think it would be better, actually,” Wilkin replied, “if Rackham wrote to me.”
“You would then avoid the humiliation of seeming to plead.”
Wilkin gave Daniel an angry glance. “Something like that. Yes.”
“I will certainly mention it to him. I’m having lunch with him on Friday.”
“Oh yes?”
“He wants a progress report on my book.”
“How is the book?” He had obviously decided to treat Daniel with more deference than he had done in the past.
“I’m going to concentrate on the city’s popular culture. Music hall. Penny dreadfuls. That sort of thing.”
“Barn-storming?”
“Yes indeed.”
“Good for you.” He did not sound particularly enthusiastic, and he took a large gulp from his glass of sherry. “I might as well tell you, Daniel. I’m having a spot of bother with Phyllis.”
“Oh?”
“She found out somehow that I was having a fling with one of the students. She started shouting. And I walked out of the house. Haven’t been back.”
“I see.”
“I suppose it could end in divorce. But how much is that going to cost me?”
Daniel was early for his lunch with Hanky Panky, at the usual restaurant, so he took a walk down Regent Street. He had gone only a few yards when he was suddenly astounded to see Stanley Askisson walking towards him. He had not encountered him since their undergraduate days; they had made no attempt to contact one another. As they met and passed, their eyes swerved away from each other. Daniel quickened his pace.
Aubrey Rackham was already in the restaurant when he arrived; he had his hand on the arm of one of the Italian waiters. “No more than a drop of vermouth. All the rest is gin.” He caught sight of Daniel at once. “I always think of Hogarth when I order gin. Gin Lane is in my neighbourhood.” He had a surprisingly deep laugh. “What have you been up to? I mean, more precisely, how is it going?”
“By next month it will be finished.”
“You astonish me. You are one of my most remarkable daughters.”
“I have become, you know, by bits and pieces, really interested in the London music hall.”
“The Crazy Gang?”
“No. Further back. Dan Leno. Harry Champion. Charles Coborn. They are the real heroes of London.”
“I really don’t know—”
“Do you not? That’s a good reason to write about them. Their son
gs are rather wonderful. ‘Why Can’t We Have the Sea in London?’ ”
“Good question.”
“ ‘Young Men Taken in and Done For.’ ”
“Landladies?”
“Yes.”
“Hussies.”
“ ‘Don’t Stick It Out Like That.’ That was sung by Bessie Bellwood.”
“Lucky Bessie.”
“The sad songs are the greatest. ‘When These Old Clothes Were New.’ ‘My Shadow Is My Only Pal.’ Far better than the poetry of the period. And then their routines—”
“I suppose their language was choice.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Blue.”
“Oh yes. Very. Indigo.”
Towards the end of the meal Daniel asked, “Do you remember a poet by the name of Paul Wilkin?”
“Of course. I never thought much of him. Dora Dreary. Rather spermy.”
Daniel did not know what he meant, but he was reassured by his disdain. “He has a new collection he wants to show you.”
“Oh dear. Isn’t he a little bit dated?”
“I would have thought so. But I promised him that I would mention it to you.”
“You have done. He may have been good at the time. But fashions change. Now what about pudding?”
After the meal was over, Rackham sipped his coffee with evident relish. “I suppose,” he said, “that Limehouse comes into your book?”
“Of course. Sax Rohmer.”
“I have to go there after this.” He put down his tiny cup with a sigh. “A dear young friend of mine has become frightfully ill.”
Daniel was surprised by this coincidence with Sparkler’s sickness in the same neighbourhood—or perhaps it was not coincidence at all. Could this dear young friend also be Daniel’s friend? One of the themes of Daniel’s book concerned the patterns of association that linked the people of the city; he had found in the work of the novelists a preoccupation with the image of London as a web so taut and tightly drawn that the slightest movement of any part sent reverberations through the whole. A chance encounter might lead to terrible consequences, and a misheard word bring unintended good fortune. An impromptu answer to a sudden question might cause death.
Flushed by a gin martini and several glasses of white wine, Aubrey Rackham rose majestically to leave. He caught sight of himself, plump and red-faced, in a mirror by the door of the restaurant. “Just look at me,” he said. “Not the ruins, but the ruins of those ruins. Silly old cow.” He put out his tongue at his own reflection.
Daniel decided, at that instant, to travel to Britannia Street. He would wait there and see if Rackham arrived and entered Sparkler’s building. “Are you going straight there?” he asked him.
“Where?”
“Wherever you said you were going.”
“No. I must pick up one or two things from the office.”
When Daniel reached Britannia Street he meditated on where he might conceal himself so that he could watch Rackham without himself being observed. He found a deserted shop on a corner of the street; from here he had a wide view. The wind on this corner was strong, and scraps of paper were being lifted upwards into the air. Suddenly Daniel saw the nun walking along the street; she looked straight ahead, and seemed uninterested in her surroundings. Daniel knew that she was going to see Sparkler. She went straight up to the door, turned the handle and walked in; he surmised that she must have a key. A few minutes later he saw Aubrey Rackham walking along the street; so he had been right in his assumption, after all.
Daniel walked away from Britannia Street, but he decided to wander through the neighbourhood. After a few minutes he heard music and singing; he walked towards the apparent source of the sound, a building of red brick behind a red-brick wall. A door in the wall was partly open, and he could see a small square yard with a statue at its centre. He could now hear very clearly the words of the song. Veni Creator Spiritus. The voices were all female. A nun came into the cloister and walked towards him.
“Have you come about the drains?”
“I haven’t come about anything.”
She looked at him with more interest. “How did you find us?”
“Accident.”
“Oh? That’s interesting.”
“I heard the music.”
“I suppose you did. You should be grateful.”
“Grateful? To whom?”
“To your good spirit.”
Daniel walked out of the courtyard and was just turning a corner when he caught sight of Aubrey Rackham.
“Whoops,” Rackham said. “I hope you’re not following me.”
“No.”
“Shame.”
“After you mentioned Limehouse at lunch, I thought I’d come.”
“Opium dens. Sailors with pigtails. What more could you ask?”
“How is your friend?”
“He is very poorly, I’m afraid.” He sighed. “I don’t know what else I can do. He won’t go into hospital. A nurse comes round in the morning, but—”
“A nun?”
Rackham looked puzzled. “Nun? I don’t think you’ll find many nuns in Limehouse, my darling.”
Daniel visited Sparkler three days later. “Here! I’m here!” Sparkler answered him from the kitchen; there was excitement, even exhilaration, in his voice. Daniel found him sitting at the kitchen table, a plate of biscuits in front of him. He jumped up when Daniel entered the room, and kissed him on the cheek. His face was flushed, his eyes sparkling. “I’m all mended,” he told him. “She said I would come through it. And I have.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t you see? I’m better. I’ve been cured. She did it.”
“The nun?”
“Yes.”
“How did she do it?”
“I don’t know. I have to tell you something, Danny,” Sparkler was saying. “When I knew that you fancied me, I thought I could use you. But then I fell in love with you.”
“What?” Daniel was seized by panic. He did not want to be loved by him. He went over to the window and glanced down into Britannia Street; he thought that he could see the nun on the opposite side of the road. She was looking up at him.
He returned a week later, and found Sparkler still shining. “I saw him,” he said. “The jackdaw. I thought I would see him again. It’s not a very big world, is it? I was just idling along the Gray’s Inn Road, as you do, getting acquainted with the neighbourhood hounds, when I saw him. As large as life. In an old blue coat. Where he got that from, I don’t know and don’t want to know. Then he clocks me. He smiles in a queer sort of way, sticks two fingers up, and disappears down Baldwin’s Gardens where the pump is. I follows him smartish of course. He turns left down Leather Lane at a fair rate of knots, and then sort of loses himself in the crowd. There was a market, I’m sure of it. It weren’t a market day but there were a market. Otherwise where did all the noise come from? Anyway I just keep my eyes on that old blue coat and stick to him. When he gets to the Clerkenwell Road he stops and looks back at me and makes a sign which is too disgusting to repeat. Then he turns right. This is when these ideas just come to me. He’s heading for the river, I say to myself. River? What river? Then I think to myself, maybe he wants to hide in the orchard. But there is no orchard, is there?”
“I don’t know the area.”
“Where can you find an orchard in London? There is no such animal.”
“So why did you say it?”
“Most likely my sickness. I am still invalid.”
“An invalid.”
“That’s what I said. So then I thought he was going up Saffron Hill, but he turned left down Herbal Hill. More hills in London than in Scotland. He went into Ray Street and then crossed the Farringdon Road. I stopped at the corner there. Where the pub is. Coach and Horses. I could hear the sound of running water coming from the grating. Funny what you remember. Sewer probably. Then I’m on the chase again, and I follow him down to Clerkenwell Green. A lot of people we
re demonstrating there. Flags and such like. So he slides right through them. He’s more like a fish than a jackdaw. Off he goes down Jerusalem Passage with me in pursuit. I hear music. I look up and see an old man smiling and nodding at me. What’s that all about?
“He scarpers across the open space there and goes towards the old gate. I forget what it’s called. I must have been sweating by now, and I swear that the ground felt hot beneath my feet. It was like walking on fire. And then do you know what happened?”
“What?”
“He vanished. Just like that.”
“He probably turned a corner. Or ran down some alley.”
“I know that’s what he ought to have done. But I swear he just vanished. Well old mate, I said to myself, you are up a gum tree.”
“Oh well.” Daniel looked around the room incuriously, as if he were simply exercising his eyes.
“You are not really interested, are you?”
“Of course I am.”
“No you’re not. And I think I know the reason. You’re not really interested in me.” Daniel stared at him, not knowing what to say.
XVI
An absolute brick
SAM HAD no reason to think that anything was wrong. Asher Ruppta had telephoned the office the previous day, and asked for certain papers to be brought to his house in Highgate.
“I can’t go,” Julie said. “It’s my day off. I’ve earned it. I’m visiting my sister in Folkestone. Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh. I love Folkestone.”
“I’ll go.”
“There’s a good boy. I’ll get the address for you.”
“What if he’s out?”
“The keys are in the filing cabinet under Q. In case of burglars.”
So it was Sam who had the task of delivering the papers to his employer. He set off with them on the following morning, and made his way by bus to Highgate. The road in which Ruppta lived was quiet, lined with large and solid houses of various styles. It was a reassuring, a comfortable, street. He soon found the house, surrounded by high brick walls and two electric gates. Sam pressed the entry button, but there was no response; so he took out the keys and tried each one in turn before eventually unlocking the gates. He walked up the gravel drive, his attention momentarily distracted by a large crow that hopped along the brick wall nearest to him. It was scrutinising him with evident interest.
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