Collected Stories

by Beryl Bainbridge

  We will leave now, dear readers, the bright Ledwhistle parlour and, like a bird, pass out into the November night. We will journey down to a wharf where the slimy Thames moves like some loathsome adder, and the houses huddle together in squalid patterns. Here the lamplight falls on wasted limbs and shaking hands. It lights up sin and filth while, all aware, the cruel river twists its reptile course.

  In one miserable hovel we will linger. The lamplight shines into the broken panes and struggles manfully to press yellowly into the gloomy interior. On the narrow bed is a young man. The room is in a state. Shoes, socks and trousers lie on the bare floor. A few blankets are flung over the thin form. Over him stands another young fellow, who has a bright red-check coat, green breeches and a top-hat full of dust on his head. Observe, reader, what now takes place. Read more slowly, because this is the plot of the whole story of the Tragedy of Ernest Ledwhistle and Richard Soleway …

  The boy on the bed groaned. His skin was like wax flowers in a Victorian vase. The eyes, instead of being warm and kindling, as was their wont, were infused with a metallic glitter. At a glance one could see he was struggling with the fever.

  The man in the check coat sat down on the bed. His teeth bit fiercely into his lip, and his eyes had stormy clouds swirling round their vision.

  ‘And this,’ he muttered, ‘is what that damned doctor called unimportant.’

  While stout aldermen swill their ale and talk of the ingratitude of the poor, while their gross wives whom nobody loves laden with costly jewels, pick with lecherous fingers their dainty food, this is allowed to exist, dear reader! And, mark you, people of England and Wales, this does happen in these Satanic years, when justice is sat upon by the strong body of Gold.

  The man picked up a spoon and poured a little water down the waxy throat. The hot hands grasped convulsively with weakening fingers and sweating palms at the sordid coverlet.

  ‘Richard,’ the boy said faintly, ‘dear Richard, I wish to ask you something.’

  The man sank to his knees and supported the palpitating head.

  ‘Richard,’ the gasping breath came again, ‘dear Richard, promise me, promise me you’ll go to Andrew Ledwhistle’s in the morning. You see, Richard, Ledwhistle’s father was the partner of my grandfather. Grandfather entrusted into Richard Ledwhistle’s care a certain amount of money for me. He, when he died’ – here the boy seized Richard Soleway’s hand in a fierce grip – ‘entrusted it to his son Andrew. Andrew Ledwhistle cheated me. I know he did, I know.’ He lay back panting on the pillowcase bed. ‘He cheated me of something like £35,000. Do you hear, Dick? Do you hear?’

  The boy’s voice rose like a plume of smoke. Richard never took his eyes off his friend. ‘Yes,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Yes.’

  ‘By the merest fluke,’ Martin Andromikey went on, ‘by the merest fluke I got to know that he was leaving and that his son Ernest was to carry on. I wrote to him telling him who I was. He doesn’t know that I know he cheated me. I suppose his conscience made him give me the partnership. I was going to do such a lot, Dick.’ The boy’s eyes gazed with black intensity. ‘Dick, I was going to make him suffer as he made me. But, Richard, listen. I want you to go and see him tomorrow. Do you hear, do you understand?…’ The boy’s words trailed off. ‘What was I saying,’ he muttered. ‘Oh, tell me, Dick, quick – before it’s too late, Dick.’

  ‘You were saying I was to see this Ledwhistle tomorrow, Mart,’ his friend answered soothingly.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ cried Martin Andromikey. ‘Go and see him, Dick. Say you are Martin Andromikey … Make him suffer, Dick … make him suffer.’

  Richard’s eyes dilated. ‘You want me to impersonate you?’ he asked incredulously.

  ‘Dick, Dick.’ His arm was seized in a crushing grip. ‘Promise me you will make him suffer. Promise me that, promise me.’ The veins in his forehead swelled and filled, while his eyes started from their sockets.

  ‘All right, Martin, all right,’ soothed Richard.

  The boy forced his hand away with dreadful strength. ‘Promise me, dear Dick, promise me.’

  Richard Soleway stood up. ‘Before God,’ he said with direful quietness, ‘before God, I, Richard Howard Soleway, swear by all I hold true to make Andrew Ledwhistle suffer, if suffering be his due.’

  Martin fell back. ‘Dick,’ he whispered, ‘dear Dick.’ That was all.

  There was silence for a while. Then the body on the bed stirred. ‘Pray for me, Dick,’ he said. ‘Pray for me.’

  Richard knelt beside the fever-racked boy and prayed with all the simple fervour of his soul. The boy smiled and shut his eyes.

  When the first ribbon of the sun threaded between the hovel window and trailed lacklustrely on the floor, Richard eyed its transfusing glow with distrust. Though it was yet early, that same sun had no doubt pried into scenes of dismal horror and human degradation. It would be better if there was eternal night, he thought. He gazed down at his friend with pity and with envy, and gently crossed the two poor hands on the weary breast. For Martin Andromikey was dead.

  CHAPTER 3

  Ernest waited impatiently in the little office. His father was in the outer room talking to Jacob Steinhouse. The young man paced up and down. There was a quill pen on the desk and he picked it up and scrawled the words ‘Ernest Ledwhistle and Martin Andromikey’. It sounded important and he flushed with pride as he thought that all this was to be his and Martin Andromikey’s.

  There was a sudden commotion on the stairs. A voice was raised in anger, and a young man shot into the room.

  Ernest got to his polished feet. Facing him was a ballistic young man in a brilliant red-check coat and tails. His brown hair lay flatly on his head and curled sleekly onto his neckcloth. His long legs were wrapped in green breeches, and he held in his hand a top-hat of doubtful age.

  Old Ledwhistle came into the room. He turned to West-bury, the junior clerk, in alarm. ‘Who is this?’ he asked, his very beard quivering like wheat in wind.

  ‘My name is Andromikey,’ said Richard quietly.

  Ernest gasped.

  Old Ledwhistle started forward. ‘My dear young friend,’ he amended, ‘I had no idea.’ He went on, ‘Pray, pardon me for my incivility, but for a moment I was at a loss.’

  Richard said nothing as he mentally sized up the cause of Martin’s death. He hardly looks like a man who would cheat his dearest friend’s grandson, he mused.

  He became aware that Ernest was endeavouring to shake his hand. He bowed and sat down at length.

  Old Ledwhistle took up his favourite stance, his back to the grate, hands clenched behind his coat-tails. Richard crossed his legs and hung his hat nonchalantly on his protruding foot. Ernest stood very straight and grave at his side, his clean young face flushed and nervous. As his father talked to them he could not help but let his eyes wander constantly to the person in the chair. He could not avoid admiring the gay coat and the careless way in which Richard looked about him.

  Old Ledwhistle was thinking too. ‘Damned self-assured,’ he muttered inside. ‘Still, that’s what the firm needs. Ernest’s got plenty of backbone, but he needs leading.’

  At the end of the morning he had explained to them every slightest intricacy and deed. He took them both home to lunch and introduced them to his family.

  As he bowed over the hand of Jane, Richard Soleway’s heart gave an uneasy lurch. Was Martin in his true senses when he had accused Andrew Ledwhistle of his debt? Or had the boy been labouring under misapprehensions brought on by his burning fever? Yet, when he thought of the boy’s black eyes, and felt again the desperate grasp on his arm, he felt sure this was not so. If Andrew Ledwhistle had cheated him he certainly did not show it. His manner was calm and friendly, and it was with a feeling of regret that Richard left the pleasant household for his own.

  As he walked home down the dingy streets where men, whose very clothes were foul with the stink of beer, slouched, he thought of his own life in contrast with Ernest’s. His th
oughts wandered back to ten years before when a boy of 12 had gazed in horror at the prone figure of his dead mother. He had no recollection of a father, and it was 13 years since he had glimpsed his step-brother, a greasy man of 37 or so. The yellow lamplight, as shallow and artificial as the inmates of the wharf, found no responsive glow in the surly Thames. As he passed a broken shop, a figure came out of the shadow.

  ‘Hallo, Mr Richard,’ a voice said.

  Richard faltered, and then walked on. At the door of his hut he turned and found the stranger behind.

  Richard lighted a candle and set it on the broken table.

  ‘What do you want?’ he said hoarsely, as he shut the door.

  The man sat down quickly on the bed on which a short time before the bitter body of Martin Andromikey had lain. In the glaring candlelight Richard saw the face of the man he was going to hate for eternity. The eyes were the grey of sleet, not the grey of a sparrow’s wing, the lips were thick and rich red blood coursed through them. His chin had a deep cleft down it. His face was crossed with furrows like a ploughed field, and the cracks were filled with dirt. He wore a brown coat with tails and breeches, no shirt, and a blue spotted neck-cloth.

  ‘What would I be wanting now?’ leered he.

  Richard gritted his teeth. ‘Get out,’ he said slowly and clearly.

  The man backed. ‘All right, Mr Richard,’ he whined.

  When he had gone, Richard shuddered. That evil waterman knew who he was! He would interfere with his plan! He fell once more to wondering if Martin had been wrong, but dismissed the idea. He felt hungry. The lunch he had eaten earlier had stimulated his appetite. When he did not eat he did not feel hungry, but the thought of that mutton and sponge-pudding tormented his stomach.

  He did not take his clothes off, but lay far into the night thinking of the years to come. As he mused so, the water lapping by the bank sucked him down into darkness.

  If, readers, you had journeyed into Richard’s soul that dark night you would have passed down two channels: one bitter and twisted, filled with an all-enveloping swamp of hatred against the man who had caused Martin Andromikey’s death. The other one would have been bitter too, but in the spaces there would be pictures of the effect the firm’s ruin would have on Ernest, his musical sister, his small brother and his pretty young mother.

  Finally, Richard fell into a sleep, in which evil forces dragged him down with hypnotic eyes into the ever-waiting Thames.

  CHAPTER 4

  Gasper Liverwick slouched down the back streets. He made his way through the many alleys, and finally reached Thames Street. Here the lamps were yellower, the public houses more frequent and the people more degraded.

  If, dear readers, when you come to the words ‘public houses’ and see in your mind’s eye the bleary eyes and wasted limbs of the men and women staggering from such places, their yellow-skulled babies mewling in the gutters, do not call a curse on the wretched mortals who so displease your thoughts! Rather, call a fervent curse on the nobles and bishops of our London, for not giving the poor support and, what is more, self-respect – for regarding the silken coats of their many horses with delight, and for ignoring the parchment skins of their fellow-humans breeding and dying and neither eating or living, from one end of the town to another. When a heart is sick, and a mind stunted without education or enlightenment, when bodies curve unhealthily and carry disease in a warped line from head to toe, it is surprising how a glass of ale or spirits fills the guts and brain-matter with explosive feelings of relief, temporary well-being and a kind of gaiety. That is why the poor drink. To them the public houses, with warm fires kept burning to tempt the passer-by, serve as vast communal homes. Little matter that even their small coins go once more to furnish the rich brewery-owners with finer clothes and bedding, with more silken horses to pull their ladies’ carriages, with more power to extract rents, taxes and tolls.

  In such a home Gasper Liverwick sought refreshment. Sitting on one of the stools, sipping bad brandy, he waited for a friend. Round about on the benches ugly-looking sailors from the waterfront sprawled, and filled the air with brutal jests. Gasper smiled at the rude remarks and jeered in approval when one big brute swung the woman at his side out of the door by her hair. Blue-smoked air filled the room, and Gasper leaned back and waited and picked his teeth, which were very bad. Half an hour passed and the door swung back and a man slapped his shoulder, and called loudly for a jug of beer.

  Rupert Bigarstaff was a man of about 36 years. His eyes were blue and twinkling, his features regular and pleasant, the cloth on his back of good quality. He was an odd fellow, known the length of the waterfront as the cruellest of men. He would not hesitate in doing the foulest murder, or torturing a reeling drunkard, but at the sight of a dog in pain, or a bird with a broken wing, his eyes would fill, and his hands grow as healing as the Apostles’. Many a person swore that he had the gift of healing, but he was feared for this the length of the water world. Some of his more personal acquaintances said he held the rich spellbound outside St Paul’s of a Sunday. True, Rupert Bigarstaff was a strange man.

  The two of them talked in low voices.

  ‘It’s getting hotter,’ hissed Gasper Liverwick. ‘I went to his place tonight and told him I knew, more or less.’

  ‘He’s out for Andromikey’s money,’ said Bigarstaff, and his face grew contorted. ‘But he won’t keep it long, will he, Gasper?’

  His friend laughed, and such was the nature of it that the sailors on the benches stopped jesting, arms hung lifelessly round the narrow shoulders of their wenches. One man, with a big nose and a beautiful cloud of sunny hair that made him look lost beneath it, slapped his thigh and swore.

  Rupert shot him a flashing glance and whispered in Gasper’s ear, ‘He overheard something, Gasper, me friend. Observe the way his fingers twitch.’

  As Gasper could not fathom how twitching fingers denoted a person overhearing things that were not desirous to both parties, he did not trouble himself, but answered in an undertone, ‘What do we do then, matey?’

  ‘Leave it to me,’ said Rupert, getting to his feet.

  The yellow-locked waterman had gone out a moment before. They strode out into the night. A slight drizzle met them, and they watched their quarry turn the collar of his pea-jacket up about his ears. They followed him through the main streets and mean ones until, coming out of an alley, they saw him descend the steps of the wharf bank. He stood before turning onto his barge, maybe looking up through the drizzle and the fog, to where he dimly thought, as a child, stars had been. Then Rupert moved. There was a soft noise and down went the yellow head into the abyss of the deep. He came up and struck out for the bank. As his fingers grasped at the parapet Rupert brought his shoe down sharply on the bones. There was a screech from the man and he sank, the head now dark with water. Again, and for the last time, the clinging hands were stamped to pulp, and the body slid relentlessly away.

  ‘Must we use violence?’ asked Gasper, as they made their way homeward.

  The friend at his side spoke in a soft crooning voice, the voice of a fanatic. ‘That was not violence, Gasper Liverwick, that was tidiness. No man is worth human kindness. They’re all soft relenting flesh, spineless. But in the next world there’ll be a special kind of hell. Their bones will stretch the skin and be like iron. They’ll scream for all eternity.’ He laughed, and it was a nice laugh – the laugh of a schoolboy.

  Gasper withdrew into himself and did not speak.

  ‘We have one more call,’ said Rupert finally. ‘My very good friend Richard Soleway will be very glad to see us, and no doubt make us welcome.’

  They came to the place where the said Richard lived, and Gasper peered through the window.

  ‘There’s no candle burning,’ he said softly, ‘but the lamp’s shining on his bed. He’s asleep – but fitfully, I should think, by the tossing of his body.’

  Rupert flung open the door and shut it carefully behind them.

  Richard sat up w
ith a cry. His hands fumbled with the candle, and he bit his lip when he saw his unwelcome visitor again. He could not help but start at the face of the man next to him. It was lit with a bright light from within, and it glowed through the skin and teeth of Rupert Bigarstaff.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked faintly.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ soothed Rupert, and such was his badness that Richard did feel soothed for the second.

  ‘We want you to be our friend,’ continued Rupert gravely. ‘But I think it would not be in the nature of friendship to keep you from your rest, so I will say goodnight.’ The glowing eyes lingered on his face. ‘Sleep well, my dear young friend, and dream sweetly.’

  When they had gone Richard lay shivering on his crumpled bed. He stumbled up at last and poured himself a glass of cheap whisky. He swilled it down and felt better, but he could not sleep. A thousand fears assailed him, fiery demons with sharp-pointed darts of hate attacked as he lay, his hand a-shaking on the coverlet.

  At last, worn out with fear and wrestling inwardly with a foe that would not be suppressed, his head sank onto his breast, and he slept the sleep of the uneasy.

  CHAPTER 5

  Old Andrew Ledwhistle settled himself comfortably in his chair and brought out his diary. Old Andrew’s diary was a kind of spiritual ritual with him; it was to him as water is to ducks. He opened it at March 9th, Saturday, the year 1851. His quill pen scrawled rapidly into the margin.

  Met Father’s partner’s grandson today. He looks an intelligent youngster.

  Here the pen pawed the empty air. Old Andrew leaned back and turned the pages slowly. November 11, 1783. He read slowly, as if savouring every word.

  Father told me today that I was to be his successor in the firm. Am delighted. Am to partner with Peter Andromikey, whom I like greatly already. He is 13.

  Old Andrew smiled and turned the pages rapidly.

  April 4th, 1811. Father gave his blessing to Ruby and me.

  His finger stopped at one page and, as he read the first lines, his head lifted and his eyes grew dreamy. ‘Owing to Peter’s death,’ he heard his father saying, ‘I am going to tell you the secret he entrusted to me. Richard Andromikey left to his grandson the sum of £45,000 in his will. He made one condition, however. Peter was not to give it to Martin unless he entered into the firm with your son and made good.’ Andrew frowned. His father had sounded very solemn; it was just after the death of Ruby, he remembered. He turned over. One page read: