‘Ti posso aiutare? Sei perso?’ I asked him. He stuttered out a few apologetic phrases, and I wondered if I could pass myself off as a native. I pointed to a brass plaque on the wall – dentista – and explained, in genial Italian, that I was waiting for the man. Had a toothache all week. I reckoned it best (here I opened my mouth and mimed a violent tug) to pull the damned thing out. Stop it bothering me for good, I added.
He squinted at me in uncomprehending anxiety. Possibly the mimicking of the dental extraction troubled him. ‘Mi dispiace,’ he muttered, and withdrew.
There is a shop a few streets from here which displays in its window a glass case full of pistols. Attached to the case is a little placard, announcing, without a trace of irony, Variato assortimento in corone mortuarie (‘Varied assortment of funeral wreaths’). It makes me smile every time I see it.
A few days later the inglese was on the prowl again. My Italian hadn’t fooled him. This time I would not be so accommodating. I wandered for a while, just to lull him, then turned towards the river. A little-used towpath invisible to the street traffic above would be the place – that is, the place to dispose of someone. It was late afternoon as I dropped down there, my footsteps ringing on the lonely flags. A leary man would have tumbled to the danger of following a mark to a riverbank; my fellow was far too complacent.
I heard his steps as he entered the shadowed walkway beneath the bridge. I let him pass, then on stockinged feet (my little precaution) crept up behind him. He jumped as he felt the knife pressed against his jugular, and groaned in fear as I walked him the few paces to the river’s edge.
‘Mi dispiace,’ I said in greeting, then changed to our own tongue. ‘Let’s have this done with. Who sent you?’
He hesitated, until I nicked his flesh with the blade. Then he stammered it out: ‘The party’s name is Elder.’
Strange to hear it again – and somehow inevitable. ‘Not a man to have trusted, my friend,’ I said softly, and readied myself for the fatal swipe. He sensed it, and cried, ‘No, no – my office told me it was a lady, not a man!’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t meet the client – I rarely do. They said her name was Catherine Elder.’
Keeping the blade tight at his throat I used my other hand to dip into his coat pockets. His travel documents revealed him as one Philip Tarlton. His employers, whose name I recognised, operated from two addresses, one at Cheapside, the other off Pall Mall. Amongst the papers was a folded sheet, its ragged edge indicating it had been ripped from an album. I opened it, and saw a pencil sketch of a face – my face. It was dated June ’82, in Kitty’s hand. I had never seen it before. I asked him why she had sent someone after me, but he swore on his life he didn’t know. He had no message. His brief was to find me, that was all.
My mind raced. I didn’t want to be found, by Kitty or by anyone else. The solution to ensuring that was clear: a quick flick of the blade, a discreet splash as his body disappeared into the river. Even if they fished him out at some point, they would be a long time tracing his identity. Without papers his connection to me was – niente. Perhaps he heard something in my sigh, because when he next spoke his tone was meekly imploring. ‘Please. Sir, I have a wife and child. I beg you. I shall reveal nothing of your whereabouts – I swear it.’
It would be so much safer to kill him. I know it, and so does he. And this would be the moment. Taking him by the scruff I force him to his knees, so that he is only inches from the drop into the river. My knuckles whiten around the knife’s handle. I wish he hadn’t told me what he just did . . .
He is trembling as I crouch down beside him. ‘Well, Mr Tarlton. Listen to me carefully. I too have a wife and child. Their safety and well-being are my dearest concern. Should I ever suspect that you or your employers have endangered them, in any degree, I will come and find you.’ I lift the blade to within half an inch of his eyeball. ‘And I swear you’ll not have the chance to beg for your life a second time.’
I do not want his thanks, though he is tearfully eager to bestow them on me. I dismiss him with a look, and listen as his steps quicken into a run along the towpath. Kitty’s pencil portrait is still in my hand.
The blame is mine, I own it. I can trace it back to a moment, two months ago, whilst I was having my hair cut. The barber, Rocco, a tall, taciturn cove with a conquistador beard, did the same thing as always after he had wristily cast the sheet over my seated form. He handed me an English newspaper. It was an edition of The Times, from ten days before. (All the English come here, Rocco shruggingly told me.) I sat there, half absorbing the newsprint, when a name sprang out from the Announcements column, ELDER, Catherine, only daughter of Sir Martin Elder . . . It seemed that she was engaged to be married, which meant that her previous affianced, Douglas, had failed to lead her down the aisle. It rejoiced me to think that Kitty, by whatever means, had escaped the ruddy-cheeked brute.
The news was still preoccupying me when, a few days later, I was mooching about a market and happened upon a stall offering multifarious gewgaws for sale. My eye fell upon it instantly: a paperweight monkey, daintily carved from ivory. It recalled a certain primate whose disobliging behaviour had once, inadvertently, saved my life. I asked the stallholder how much he wanted for it, and paid him without haggling. Back in my rooms I had another long stare at the thing before swaddling it in tissue paper and making a parcel of it. I wrote the briefest note of congratulation to Kitty, without signing it; I felt sure she would know from whom it came. Obeying a cautious instinct, I took the package to a post office on the outskirts of the city and wore a slouch hat over my brow to prevent anyone there taking a close look at me. The address on the label was for Kensington Palace Gardens, London, a house that still returns to me in dreams. The clerk took it, I paid him, and left.
I see that it was imprudent. A provincial post office would seldom handle a package bound for Inghilterra, let alone a fashionable address in London. With or without my hat I would have been noticed, by somebody. And why send Kitty a gift in any case? If she thought of me at all it would very probably be with anger and disgust at my behaviour towards her sire. Or did some of the old affection linger in her heart for me? I would never know. I dispatched the thing as one might cast a stone into the sea, without thought of consequence. My mistake. Kitty has sent a man in search of me, the hireling of an agency that deals in cases of missing persons. Why? Philip Tarlton was no assassin, but he would have little trouble contracting one around here. Or did Elder somehow get wind of Kitty’s secret commission and pervert it to his own use?
Whatever the reason, I am at present comprehensively alarmed. Those two street musicians I saw earlier today have been watching me, I feel certain of it. Tarlton is a professional and, in spite of his close shave, might easily have set them onto me. The way they hurried off before I could get down to the street . . .
I am humming that song – it has taken up residence in my head – when I hear footsteps slap on the tiled stairs. A man’s. This tenement shares a common courtyard and entrance. The tall oak door, with its gigantic iron fanlight, is open all hours of the day – anyone can come and go. A knock at the door.
‘Signora? ’
I go to open it, then stop. Signora. Nobody comes up here without an invitation. And my next thought is: They know she lives here. They will get at me through her. I feel my whole body tense and close, like a fist. He knocks again, and I hear his hesitation before he retreats back down the stairs. I silently open the door and sneak onto the landing in time to catch his face as it vanishes down the stairwell. A lean fellow with a swarthy, stubbled face; something crafty about the eyes that unnerves me. I should follow him, but I’m still barefooted. I dash back in and haul on my shoes, then hurtle down the staircase and into the courtyard. The big door stands open. On the street I look this way and that, but it’s a market day, and the crowds ambling along have swallowed any trace of him.
The bells from the nearby church ring eleven – no, twelve o’cloc
k. Midday. They ought to be back by now. I look up, distractedly, to find that it’s a beautiful day. The sky is a deep cornflower blue on which the clouds have been spread, like fresh laundry. A feather-light breeze riffles through the long-suffering streets. And I am in a panic. I join the drift of folk dawdling towards the market, where I know she will be. I hear singing from somewhere – is it those shifty musicians? I find myself hurrying, dodging between people (‘scusi, scusi ’), my steps light with dread. I am convinced that Elder’s spies have come to snatch away my wife and child. The market’s hubbub encloses me; faces loom and pass, one stranger after another, not caring. And then a voice startles me.
‘David?’ It is Roma, staring at me in puzzlement. She is wearing a faded black cotton dress and a mulberry-coloured headscarf. She seems to have been in the middle of a purchase, because a coster piling oranges on his scales has paused too, interested in her distraction. The boy is at her side, gazing fixedly at a bird in its cage. He could almost be in a trance. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ I reply, relief flooding me. ‘I only wondered where you’d got to.’
Roma stares at me, searching for a clue to my odd behaviour. ‘I took his nibs for a walk in the park, then we came here. Like we always do.’
She touches my shirt, which is damp with sweat. ‘What is the matter?’ she asks again. I have told her nothing of my suspicions – nothing of my encounter with Tarlton, of the musicians outside our window, of the fellow who has just been knocking at our door.
I put on a smile, spreading my palms and hunching my shoulders in the exaggerated manner of the locals. ‘Niente.’
She gives one of her choked-off laughs. My Italian shrug never fails to amuse her. She picks up the boy, and fits him against her hip. I take her laden basket from the coster (‘Grazie! ’). We start walking back home.
Roma. Yes: Roma. She decided the matter, not I. Once I was settled here I wrote to her, as promised, though without daring to renew those avowals I made that winter’s night on the river at Gravesend. I simply recounted the story of my journey, and how I had chosen this city as home. Perhaps that was my way of asking her, though I wasn’t conscious of it at the time. I recall the shock – the shock of delight – on reading her reply, in the thick-nibbed cursive I had not seen before. I have thought of that night, when you asked me to come away with you. It seemed impossible to me then. But in the weeks since you left, your words have kept with me, and it seems not impossible at all. If you wish it still, then tell me, and I will come . . .
No expressions of love or longing followed. That has never been her way. But she did come.
As we near our home, I am outwardly all smiles; inside, I am taut with consternation. Adopting a casual tone, I ask her if she has ever considered leaving the city – for a quieter place, perhaps.
‘I like it here,’ she says mildly. ‘Why should we move?’
‘Well . . . there’s a whole country to discover. Would you not like to see the town your grandparents came from?’
She ponders this in silence for some while, then turns a curious look on me. ‘Are you not happy here?’
The question takes me by surprise. ‘Yes . . . that is, I’m happy to be wherever you are. And he is.’ I nod to the infant. ‘But it doesn’t have to be in this city. We could find somewhere else.’
She stops, and takes a breath. ‘David. This is our home. I don’t want to live anywhere else. If you’d only tell me what’s wrong – you’ve been as jumpy as a cat these last days.’
She searches my face, waiting for me to confess. When I say nothing, she gives a sad little shake of head and walks on. I cannot tell her. I don’t want to frighten her for the sake of mere inklings.
Children are playing on the street outside our front door. Roma puts the boy down and enters the high-walled courtyard, a cool refuge from the noonday sun. As I follow within I see the silhouette of a seated figure, who rises to meet her. It’s the crafty-eyed fellow who knocked at our door, returning to – what? My hand is already on the knife concealed in my back pocket, and as I close the distance between him and Roma I have a sudden presentiment of thrusting the blade in his neck and twisting it, the dark blood spurting from him in great gouts as he collapses to the ground. And just as I am about to interpose myself I hear her talking to him: they know each other. She is thanking him for something. I leave the knife in my pocket.
She tells me, in Italian, that this is Signor Riva, a carpenter who works nearby. We shake hands, then he picks up the wooden stool he’s been sitting on, and hands it to me, with a grin. It looks new.
‘For me?’ I say, confused.
A gift from your wife, he explains. ‘Fatto di quercia – il migliore.’
I look to Roma, whose mouth is curved in a rueful smile. ‘That balcony is too narrow for a chair, so I asked him to make you a stool. Now you can sit and watch the street to your heart’s content.’ Perhaps I look rather dumbfounded, because she then says, ‘D’you like it?’
‘Si. Bellissima!’ I say, and she exchanges a satisfied look with the carpenter. It is indeed beautiful, but what makes it precious is that she took the trouble just for my sake. Can I continue to doubt that she loves me?
Later, now seated, I am back to watching the street. I’ve told Roma that I may begin to eat and sleep out here, too. I have just been listening to her and the boy singing together: no sound I love better. They come onto the balcony, and he totters over. He has his mother’s olive skin and serious expression, which I will do almost anything to provoke into gaiety. He watches with solemn eyes as I pare an apple. I hold out a thin translucent slice, which he immediately puts in his mouth. He makes an odd humming sound as he chews.
‘Doogheno or dabheno?’ I ask him.
He pauses, then says, ‘Doogheno.’
He doesn’t yet know who taught me the word, but he will recognise the name when I eventually tell him. How could he not? It is his own.
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to Dan Franklin, Tom Drake-Lee and all at Cape; likewise to Rachel Cugnoni, Laura Hassan and all at Vintage; and to my agent Anna Webber at United Agents. I am very grateful to Doug Taylor, whose close reading of the manuscript was, in Flaubert’s words, sévère mais juste. Katherine Fry was exemplary in her beadiness. Thanks also to Mike McCarthy and to Rupert Christiansen. Grazie to Tara Hacking and Anna Murphy.
Two colossi of 19th century journalism cast monumental shadows over this novel: Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor and Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People of London. Brief acquaintance with either will reveal how much I have depended on them. I am also indebted to Sarah Wise’s The Blackest Streets, a brilliant study of the vanished Nichol, which gave me the idea for a plot.
I am extremely fortunate to have in Rachel Cooke a loving helpmeet, an excellent reader and a constant bucker-up.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781448130078
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Jonathan Cape 2012
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Copyright © Anthony Quinn 2012
Anthony Quinn has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Jonathan Cape
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SWIV 2SA
www.vintage-books.co.uk
Addresses for companies within The Rando
m House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780224096911
The Streets Page 32
