Devil Take the Hindmost

by Martin Cathcart Froden

  I put the blade back into my pocket and try to look out for something beautiful or interesting in the city I’m travelling through. I fail to find anything. And in this mood I enter the juggernaut that is the Carousel.

  ‘Silas, come have a seat’, I hear his voice from up above. He’s leaning against the door frame of his little office above the bar. Trudging up the stairs it strikes me I have no idea what the meeting is about. It could be my execution, my promotion, the way I wear my hat, the price of sand in Arabia. I never know what to expect, and that counts for more than half of my fear, a fear that increases with every footstep. It culminates in a little spray of stomach acid coming up into my gullet as my foot hits the last step. I disguise it as a cough and quickly swallow the drink he offers me. An unusual, and frankly worrying, gesture.

  He thinks it old and venerated whisky. Casked and kept at great cost. I know how his bar works, possibly better than him, and how his distributors work. They know as well as I that he can’t tell the difference between a good and a bad drink, or even a terrible mix of leftovers. Between rainwater and the Virgin’s tears. He keeps a little vial of her tears in a shrine on one of the walls in the office, imported from the Holy Land for a small fortune.

  He pours me another drink and smiles – looking just like the stuffed head of the Grizzly he has put up over his head, only the bear, even dead, has something regal about him.

  ‘I’m going to cut straight to the point Silas. I’m looking for someone to send to prison. Not now, not for another six or seven months. I need this someone to be a known associate of our band of brothers.’

  If it was me he wouldn’t have told me. If this was some sort of blackmail he wouldn’t have chosen me, he knows my finances as well as I do. Probably better. It’s not hard to work out who he means, but it galls me that he thinks Paul is a crippled race horse. Something easily sent to slaughter.

  ‘I’m not sure I can help,’ I say, hoping to evade the inevitable. He turns to me with a look like he has just found a molar in his morning porridge. One that isn’t his.

  ‘I’m convinced you can. I need someone to find things out. Someone who’s not going to die on me. A tough nut,’ he says.

  ‘As in someone quite big? And ginger?’ I answer unprompted, a faux pas usually punished.

  ‘You’ll go far Silas, that’s what I’ve always said,’ he muses, rolling a cigar between his fingers.

  ‘How long?’ I ask, trying to get myself to sit straight.

  ‘Just a couple of years. Seven to ten should do the trick. I’ll even pay him a sort of nominal wage while he’s in. Providing he supplies me with a steady flow of information.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t?’

  ‘No one is strong enough to survive a knife through a kidney. Inside or outside prison.’

  He plies me with drink and talks to me about boxing, something else he’s ignorant about. An hour and forty minutes later I stagger down the stairs, back into the world I know. It seems both brighter and a lot more sinister than I remember it. I am very drunk, but can’t recall having more than three or four drinks. There’s a hairy sensation on my tongue, and my hands are itching. I wonder what I’ve agreed to, what I’ve been punished for, what we’ve been celebrating.

  I conclude that Mr Morton has spiced up my drink with one of the many cones of powder he keeps in his office cabinet. I should be fine, I just need to remember to drink lots of water and to do what I set out to do. Stick to my plan. Maybe get a Bibi or two down me. I should manage, the drugging is not insurmountable, though it will soon start to feel like it.

  I’m outside, trying to walk off the seasick feeling. The street lights are floating around in clouds of nausea. I try not to look at them. I walk, slowly and in as straight a line as I can to an all-night pharmacy I know: Peat and Pepper on Lafone Street. The man behind the counter mixes me a drink with caffeine, digitalis and turmeric, as well as sugar and acetylsalicylic acid. Then, commenting on my pallor, he adds a little something new. He says it’s something that will perk me up.

  ‘Very popular with sportsmen these days,’ he tells me, adding quinine into the mix for good measure, without asking me if I’ve been to the tropics lately, or have malaria. Then the doctor, who I’m pretty sure is a quack, tells me his drink has become a real hit with some of the wealthier people returning from foreign countries. So popular in fact that he’s been thinking of patenting it as ‘Dr Pepper’s All-Curing Tonic’.

  ‘Between you and me, these East India men are happy to buy this for twice the price. The mark-up potential is substantial. I’m looking for investors actually. Would you be interested?’

  I nod and down the drink he’s prepared while talking. It tastes vile, like licking a wet wolfhound, but I know it will help clear my head in a matter of minutes. Like it has many times in the past. I ask him to make me another and to make it extra potent. Fighting fire with fire in a way. At first he refuses, but when I pull out my billfold he relents.

  I walk for hours, quite detached from myself. I’m gesturing, speaking, probably crying. Caught in the embrace of Mr Morton’s dark fairies. My feet ache but the view of Hyde Park first thing in the morning is a great way to be compensated for a night’s walking. The sunlit frost. A dark coppice of trees. Trying to ignore my broken mind, I revel in the things that are beautiful about the day. The lack of people, the three Royal Guards in shiny uniforms, galloping towards me, horses steaming like transatlantic ships going against the tide. I force myself to stop mumbling and gesticulating. Solemnly nod to the men who ignore me. I take a quick note of the horses they’re on – adequate but no more.

  The result of the two concoctions is that I can’t sleep. I’m more alert and it feels like my eyesight has improved to the point where I can spot gravy stains on people’s neck ties from miles away and wood lice in the crowns of the trees lining the streets.

  What Mr Morton has planned is obviously out of the question. I didn’t suggest that. When he ran out of boxing anecdotes I made sure we talked about my first love: horses. I told him the mile would one day take over from the furlong, and pretended to be outraged about that. I told him a funny story about a vet castrating the wrong horse because the stable boy couldn’t read properly and had mixed up the horses.

  I was hoping to get him mired in the subject. I’ve seen this happen before. He has an idea, and he talks about nothing else for a month. Then something else comes along and drowns that idea out. He’s not stupid, but in many ways he’s a simple man. He can’t keep to many ideas in his head, which is great for me. I’ll just have to be drowning him in ideas and updates. The unfortunate side effect of this is that it’ll bring me closer to him. It will make me see him more often, something I’m trying to avoid. This is the tightrope I’m walking.

  I head towards the coppice in the middle of Hyde Park. I’m deadly tired. Once within the evergreen bosom I lie and watch the clouds. I speak to my dead mother for what turns out to be four hours.

  ***

  Getting up, aching terribly and shaking from the cold and from the substances leaving my body I resolutely walk out to Marble Arch where I get into a taxi. I ask the driver to stop by the nearest coffeehouse. Tell him there’s a hot drink in it for him if he’s quick about it.

  Mr Morton’s words still haunt me: ‘Paul will have to take a dive. That’s not unreasonable. I’m the one who put him where he is now. I can retract that offer any time I want. And I will. In the summer.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I know you don’t.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘Just don’t tell him. This stays between you and me. We wouldn’t want our little ginger bird flying the coop would we?’

  With a shudder I get out of the taxi and buy the man sitting in the idling car a cup of tea. Then I look for answers in my deep mug of black, tarry brew. I can’t find any.

  Chapter 30

  Paul does well in Coventry. He’s not on the podium on the Friday, but he’s in with an overall chance if h
e places within the first five on the Saturday. He is used to riding every day, not just once or twice a week for a race like some of the others, so he’s quietly confident about his overall chances. That’s about the only advantage his job has.

  In the evening of the Friday he wants to stay in the room. Rest, drink water, sleep. He knows full well the pain he will have to endure in the morning. The initial one before his creaking joints have gotten used to moving again, then the other kind of pain once he starts racing, and then the same, but worse, the morning after that. That’s part of his life. The cyclist who can endure the most pain over the longest period of time, is a sure winner.

  But one look at her, in a new dress, with her hair piled high, appraising him as he gets out of the quick bath he’s earned after the race, tells him otherwise. She comes close to him. Kisses him and tells him the salty taste on his lips is gone. They kiss some more, just to make sure the salt has been washed off completely.

  Once he’s dressed they stand on the little French balcony together. Their room overlooks nothing more spectacular than the rail yard, something she has almost forgiven him for.

  In the dark, with the lights of the city reflecting on the tracks, the long silvery strands leading into the eternity of the English countryside, even the most trivial of industrial scenes has become a pretty postcard.

  He has apologised profusely for getting a room at the station hotel despite her explicit wishes. It was a matter of money, there’s still some left of the Christmas bonus from Silas, but it wouldn’t stretch very far, and he thought that a place with a lot of people passing through would be better for them – an unmarried couple, a pair that shouldn’t be seen together, an athlete and a night moth.

  They are both unused to moments of stillness and the quiet acceptance that only a town smaller than London, and a hotel room, their kingdom while in Coventry, can bring.

  Downstairs they find a porter in the vestibule and he tells them that if he had a fiancée or wife, he would take her to the Alma. It’s not far. Especially not on an evening like this. Paul winces as he walks down the stairs in front of the hotel, but smiles and she smiles with him.

  They stroll down Broadgate, her arm linked through his. Occasionally stepping out of the way when trams pass by. Most of them are returning to the terminus. Slow, elephantine in the night. Legions of men are pulling in awnings displaying shop names. Ones that have protected wares from the sun all day. Women leaning on brooms or carrying pails of water talk about the day which has passed and the night to come. What they have sold, what they will eat. Who they served, what they will drink, and with whom.

  Once at the restaurant Paul orders one, and then another, pint of oatmeal stout. A dark mass of alcohol. They are both for her, but she wouldn’t be sold them. The Alma is both traditional and foreign to them. He has steak, unusual for him as he seldom eats much after a race. Either because he’s not hungry, because he’s had so much to drink that he doesn’t think he’s hungry, or because he’s nervous about the following day’s race. And because of the foreign substances slowly leaving his bloodstream.

  She has plaice. Unremarkable. And, after, they both have jelly.

  The meal passes almost in silence. A comfortable suspension of dialogue, punctuated by ‘Pass me the salt please’, by ‘How’s the fish?’ Not deep, not soaring, not dangerous, not words that have to be guarded or pored over. Not things you have to worry about being overheard. Just the things you say. He drinks two jugs of iced water and she finishes the beer. They both have coffee, but it’s so weak it doesn’t do them any good. He holds her hand, not under the table, but in plain sight.

  Leaving the restaurant they leave a huge tip, not because the patron was very nice to them, but because their waitress looked the other way when it was clear that it was Miriam who was drinking the beer. Also the meal was so cheap compared to the London prices they’ve gotten used to. Happily they meander back the way they came. One of her hands dwarfed in his, fingers laced like the congregation in This is the church, and this is the steeple. Her other hand twirling a parasol. Both full. Him on beef, her on hop and malt.

  When Paul checked into the hotel he paid a little extra to bring the bike up to the room, and gave an additional two banknotes to the man behind the counter. This made the man ask, ‘Mr and Mrs MacAllister then I presume?’ to which Paul nodded.

  Paul and Miriam ride the elevator in silence, inspecting each other’s contorted faces in the polished brass work. Paul’s holding the key to the room, and she’s already unpinning her hair with one hand, her other hand looking for his.

  They kiss all the way from the lift to the door. He struggles with the lock and then they struggle with each other’s clothes while tripping to the bed.

  Afterwards he asks her, ‘Who is Mr Morton?’ He’s been up to get a drink, the race still in his legs and torso. She’s putting on a nightgown and lighting two candles.

  ‘Please don’t bring that man into the room,’ she says, suddenly subdued.

  She walks over to the window and pulls the curtains shut, as if to hide, as if to shut out the world. ‘Look Miriam, I know he’s not a nice man. I’m just saying that maybe once I start winning a few more of these races like the one today, it can lead to who knows, races on the continent, maybe even America. You can come with me, not always be in London.’

  ‘It’s a nice dream to have,’ she says shaking her head.

  ‘But what’s stopping us? What’s stopping you?’

  She turns to him, eyes wet. ‘I’m stuck. You might not be, but he owns me,’ she says.

  ‘What are you talking about? You work for him, but that’s not the same. Surely you can just tell him you’re leaving?’

  ‘Paul, you’re a darling,’ she says smiling. A smile which doesn’t reach her eyes.

  ‘Don’t treat me like a child,’ he says and drinks deeply from a bottle of cordial on the bedside table. His muscles screaming in protest as he moves around the room.

  Miriam walks away from the window. Doesn’t look at him. Fingers a lampshade, picks up a cushion from the floor and places it back on the bed. Then she walks over to a little table with a mirror. Still not looking at him she sits on a chair and combs her hair, slowly. Counting. Once she’s reached a hundred she looks at him in the mirror.

  ‘Oh, Paul.’ Her eyes wet. Her eyebrows angry.

  ‘We can do something about this Miriam. But you need to tell me what’s going on.’

  She starts to say something. Then she waves him to her side, puts an arm around his waist and looks at him in the mirror. He puts a hand on her hair. It’s as smooth as water. ‘When I came to live in London, Mr Morton took me in,’ she begins. ‘Trained me, treated me like I was a niece, as one of his little family. I came here with nothing. I don’t know why but he gave me a home, an education of sorts, and a job. He has always been eccentric, and I knew that some of what he did was on the wrong side of the law. But to my mind he was a harmless, likeable buffoon, even a good Catholic. Because that’s what he let me see.’

  ‘And you didn’t mind that he was running a criminal gang?’ he asks.

  ‘At first I liked it. I had money for the first time in my life. And I was known, respected.’ She looks down into her lap. Tears falling, staining her nightgown.

  ‘Soon after I was initiated into the family I was making a living out of debt collecting and other bits and pieces. It was a quick rise in ranks people told me. Then one day I saw the sinister side of him emerge. And it was too late to get out.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He told me he’d been checking up on my background. That he knew where I came from. Who my parents were. The whole sordid story. My new beginning started to crumble before my eyes. Mr Morton told me he knew all about my father, and what I had done to him. He told me he had proof and a witness, and he told me the name of my old friend, and that she was willing to denounce me, so I knew it wasn’t a hoax. Paul, the information he has at his fingertips is more than enough
to see me hang.’

  Paul’s hand has stopped moving on her head.

  ‘If I ever lie to him, or leave him, that’s what awaits me. As he never tires of reminding me. That’s why my loyalty to him is so unquestioning.’

  Paul feels stuck in an icy chokehold, as Miriam continues, ‘Every morning I pray to a God I no longer believe in that someone somewhere hates Mr Morton more than they fear him and decides to kill him.’

  ‘That might take years, decades,’ Paul says, shaking his head.

  ‘Worst case there’s always the pearl-handled revenge in my handbag. First him. Then myself. I’d be a double murderer, but at least my death would be on my own terms.’ Then she stares at her own reflection in the mirror. Dangerously composed. Only a small streak of mascara giving away any emotion.

  Paul can’t breathe. He tries to get her to stand, so that he can hold her, but she slips out of his grasp. Hides her face in her hands. She collapses in the seat and it’s only much later that she allows him to carry her to bed. To tuck her in. He turns off the light and tries to sleep. He can’t. Not for hours. Instead he lies and listens to the sound of a clock ticking in the room.

  In the early hours of Saturday he reaches out for her. He thinks she is sleeping but when she turns his way he can see she’s wide awake.

  ‘Not been able to sleep either?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘And you?’ she says.

  ‘Not really. I’ve been thinking too much.’

  Outside, dawn arrives with its cries of birds and men shouting at horses. The hotel room is warm from the heater he has been keeping half an eye on through the night.

  He says, ‘You are risking death by being here aren’t you? In Coventry? In this room with me?’

  She nods, ‘Now do you understand how much you mean to me? How special you are?’

  ‘But why? I mean, you hardly even know me. What have I got to offer that’s worth risking your life for?’