by Ed Hillyer
The Greenwich Pensioner lay awake, staring at them. His beady eyes, bloodshot, glittered with suspicion.
‘WHO ARE YA?’ he shouted. Although minus a pair of legs, he retained a healthy set of lungs.
‘Salty old sea-dog…’ said Dilkes. He moved to the head of the bed and laid a hand on the old sailor’s shoulder. ‘Many of our residents exhibit a supernumerary vitality…’
‘BUGGER ORF!’ yelled the sailor. ‘Who are ya?’ The inmate’s body jerked in the bed as he tried to get a better look at who stood beside him. ‘Lieutenant Loveless!’ he said. ‘Beggin’ y’r pardon, sir, only I was sleepin’ and not expectin’ ta meet with anyone. I didden know quite wheres I was f’r a moment!’
‘That’s quite all right, Siddon,’ said Dilkes. ‘Settle down.’
Sarah gave a gentle smile. King Cole peeped out from behind her skirts.
‘Siddon,’ said Dilkes.
‘Sir?’
‘This is Miss Sarah Larkin. Oh, and a Mister Cole.’ The clerk bowed on his ward’s behalf. He said, ‘May I present Percival Siddon, R.N.’
The inmate’s beady eye rolled over them, exploring Sarah’s charms only briefly before settling on Cole’s black face. He squinted in a most unfriendly fashion.
‘Siddon celebrated his 75th birthday less than a week ago,’ boasted the clerk. ‘Didn’t you? And that is nothing unusual. At the turn of the century, records state we had near to a hundred inmates, disabled, mind, at well over 80 years of age. One particular fellow was still going strong at 102!’
‘I remembers him,’ grunted the sailor. ‘Awkward old – ’
‘Then,’ Dilkes said, ‘there was John Rome, the signalman of Nelson’s Victory. “England expects”, and all that! The very man to hoist the flags before the Battle of Trafalgar. He passed on only eight years ago.’
‘Arrrh,’ roared Siddon. ‘The Battle of Trafalgar! I was there! We showed those F – ’
‘Now, Percy,’ said Dilkes, ‘you know that isn’t true.’
‘Those flaming Frenchies had – ’
‘Percival.’
‘Ahhh…’ Siddon rolled his head, defiant to the last. ‘Well, Rome isn’t ’ere to tell it any more, iz’e?’ he said. ‘So I might as well! If it warn’t for our spinning a yarn now and then, why, sir, we should spit and sputter at each other like a parcel of cats in the gutter!’
Disconsolate, the old seaman started to cast around. ‘Who’s got my bottle?’ he shouted.
Sarah worried over which end of him had need.
‘Anybody seen my bottle? Who’s nicked my drink?’ roared Siddon. ‘Blarm me, I needs a drink! Me stumps is plaguin’ somethin’ rotten!’
‘The Governor recognises,’ galloped in Dilkes, ‘that for many veterans, life can be a little dull – ’
‘Yurrr, the Guv’nor,’ Siddon interjected. ‘Tha’s very big of ’im. More of a man than me…he’s still got hisself a leg to stand on!’
‘Unavoidably,’ Dilkes persevered, ‘shut out from wholesome interests – ’
‘I saw ’im,’ said Siddon. ‘In the middle of the night it was, only a day or two gone.’ He flicked his head towards one of the east windows.
The clerk’s face dropped.
‘They’d sat me in a chair and forgot me,’ Siddon shouted. ‘Sat there all night I was, staring out that damned window like an owl! Saw him out on the Court. Raisin’ a toast to King George, he was, then fell over backwards!’
Dilkes Loveless rushed at them. Before they knew it, Sarah and Cole were through the next set of doors.
The old sailor could still be heard, blaspheming away behind them. ‘Arsy-varsy, ha HA!’ he cried. ‘Such a laugh came ’pon me, I ’ad like to beshit meself!’
‘Admiral Sir James Alexander Gordon, the Governor,’ gabbled the clerk. ‘Roses in his cheeks, lovely fellow, very kind. Heart of gold, but wooden-legged… Not a well man, sadly.’
Dilkes Loveless smiled and frowned and looked about, assessing their next move.
‘You will find it quieter out here,’ he said.
‘The man’s bottle?’ said Sarah. She searched the face of the clerk. His eyes met hers, and in that fleeting instant she witnessed a spark of panic.
‘The Pensioners,’ he said, firmly, ‘are given a daily allowance, much as they were in the service. They have ways and means of getting their hands on more, of course, and are often found…’ His voice trailed away. ‘The Trafalgar Tavern,’ he said, recovering, ‘the Red Lion, the Man in the Moon, the Victory…all a hop, skip and a jump away. When it comes to pubs and taverns, we enjoy a surfeit.’
Sarah recalled the Chalk Walk: perhaps the men needed places where they might smoke in company, and keep warm at the same time. What with the grog, and the London fogs, it was no wonder that their chest ailments were aggravated.
‘Things in general, however,’ said the clerk, ‘are not as bad as they used to be.’
He led the way down a back staircase, smaller than the first.
‘And how did they used to be?’ said Sarah, a slight note of challenge in her voice.
The angle of the dim stairwell was tight, the party almost turned back on themselves.
‘Drunkenness, quarrelling…fighting…’ Perhaps for the first time, Dilkes hesitated to speak. They had rather left behind his regular patter. ‘It was, in truth, an absolute pandemonium,’ he said. ‘A personal filthiness prevailed that would stand your hair on end.’
They emerged into a stone-flagged foyer of sorts, open at one side to the grassy sward of the Grand Court.
‘The Surgeon-General himself made complaint,’ said Dilkes. ‘Unless he be a patient in the Infirmary, it was difficult to find a Pensioner who washed his feet or body from the time of his admission till his death.’
‘They were not made to wash?’ said Sarah.
‘There was no means of washing back then, other than in the chamber pots they had just emptied,’ said Dilkes. ‘There are washbasins in the wards now. Conditions, I assure you, are very much improved!’
The clerk pointed out a set of stone troughs at one side of the lobby. Underneath each, Sarah noted a second trough intended to capture and recycle the spilt water.
‘The water-closets originally stood outside, a good hundred feet or so away from any building. In consideration of sanitation, you see. That did prove a trial for many of our less capable veterans…’
To say the least – Sarah tried, but not too hard, to imagine their struggles in the depths of winter. She shivered.
Dilkes entertained only fond memories of his own designated toilet, out on the west lawns. It was in the same approximate spot where he chose to take his lunch.
They passed through another set of double doors, into a ward that was completely empty.
‘Lieutenant Loveless…’ said Sarah.
She heard the echo of her own voice, and looked around the stark white room. ‘You – um – you refer to the inmates as those “remaining”. May I ask… where have all the others gone to?’
‘Dear lady,’ he replied, ‘to the only better place there is.’
‘I’m sorry?’ she said.
Dilkes Loveless threw open the next set of doors with a flourish. ‘My office,’ he said. ‘Or my sometime office, I suppose I should say now.’
The room was spacious, under-furnished, and utterly charmless.
‘Please, sit,’ urged Dilkes. ‘May I offer you some light refreshment?’
Already his hand clasped a small bell. Sarah consented. The bell was rung, and in short order a smart young purser appeared through a smaller side door to receive his orders. They were soon settled and, indeed, glad of the rest.
Dilkes Loveless leant forward across his desk.
‘The Hospital opened 100 years already, it was following Trafalgar that numbers reached their peak,’ he said. ‘We hit full capacity by 1814, housing nearly 3,000 sailor-Pensioners!’
He felt gratified to see her thickish eyebrows raised.
‘The end
of the Napoleonic war brought with it peace,’ said Dilkes. ‘Our source of income was sharply reduced, just when the payment of pensions was at its greatest. Out-pensions especially cut into our capital at an alarming rate…two million pounds wiped out inside of four years!’
This, then, would have been around the time that George Bruce was admitted; and shortly thereafter died.
The clerk took up his teacup and slurped.
Sarah’s cheek twitched, while King Cole idly twirled a quill feather between his fingers.
‘Our resources stretched,’ resumed Dilkes, ‘affairs struggled on in this un-Bristol-fashion for the next 30 or so years, before the men began to die off. You’ll forgive my bluntness. These last two decades have seen a sharp falling off in numbers.’
Dilkes Loveless gathered up a sheaf of papers and tapped them briskly on the desktop, before moving them over to the opposite side.
‘Disarmament, you see, cuts down Royal Navy ships,’ he said, ‘while the Merchant Service ever expands. All part and parcel of increased settlement of the colonies, the very fruits of our exertions. The real problem is we haven’t had a Naval conflict worth its salt in over 50 years!’
‘You speak as if that were a bad thing!’ said Sarah.
‘Oh, but it is!’ Dilkes Loveless took another urgent sip of tea. His cup rattled in its saucer. ‘Valour, duty, honour, loyalty,’ he said, ‘our national symbol, Jolly Jack Tar, is but a pale shadow of his former self!’
Sarah thought of Lambert in his bed.
Entirely uninterested, King Cole monopolised the sugar-bowl.
‘Of necessity,’ said Dilkes, ‘we are obliged to maintain Hospital security, and management, of course. Where once there were 20 officers in charge, today there is only the Governor, a captain, a commander, and three lieutenants, including myself. Seven wards closed, two out of the four blocks no longer in use… The expense! You can’t imagine! Annual running costs have doubled in the last eight years, to 114 pounds per capita!’
Sarah gasped. An entire family might be supported on half as much. She and her father survived on little more: only because there were just the two of them could they class themselves better off.
Dilkes, carried away with the matter of accounts, looked a little abashed. He finger-traced the lip of his teacup.
‘It is the payment of out-pensions,’ he said at last, ‘Government’s previous great mistake, which may finally do for us. Recently reinstated, they have proven too popular, two-thirds of residents taking up the Duke of Somerset’s offer. Out-pensioners, you see, can draw their money whilst living with their families. It is tantamount to an inducement to leave…in search of those consolations, dear lady, which only social and domestic affection will bestow.’
An odd sort of transparency appeared in his wide blue eyes: he was looking at Sarah through bottle-top lenses with what might, in another, have passed for a soulful expression. She looked away.
For a breathless moment or two, Dilkes Loveless fell silent. His empty gaze shuttled around each wall of his office in turn.
Abruptly, he stood.
Sarah turned around to find that King Cole, too, was standing. She turned back. The clerk, his hand outstretched, was showing them to a small side door.
‘Shall we?’ he said.
They made their exit via a small antechamber, and then across a dark corridor. Outside once more, they paused, standing within what appeared to be the inner courtyard of the King Charles block. King Cole’s attention had begun, rather obviously, to drift. Sarah wondered how to bring their tour to a close without offending the clerk unduly.
‘Just 371 inmates survive,’ he was saying, ‘including those in the Infirmary. That’s what we have left, rattling around, in an institution built for 3,000.’
Dilkes Loveless moved on, the gravel grinding beneath his heel.
They passed beneath an archway at the riverine end. The clerk came to a halt beside a length of railings that, bordering the Hospital grounds, overlooked a narrow strip of pathway beside the Thames.
The tide was coming in.
He talked incessantly, like a tap that could not be turned off.
‘We would be closed already,’ he said, ‘were it not for the “Guv’nor”, bless his old boot. Closed by the suffrage of those for whom the Hospital was originally founded!’
Curiosity got the better of her; Sarah advanced a few steps to peer through one of the lower windows of the riverside apartments. The superiority of fixtures and fittings to anything seen in the wards was immediately obvious. The ceiling was vaulted, the handsome door-cases carved from stone.
‘What’ she asked, ‘is through there?’
‘Why, the Governor’s apartments,’ said Dilkes. ‘Even if their posts have been abolished, the majority of officers and their families have of course chosen to remain in residence.’ Dilkes Loveless seemed to indicate the entire southeast pavilion.
‘Of course,’ echoed Sarah.
She was wrong in her earlier assessment: no guilt of any sort found its expression here.
‘The conscience of civilisation’ was not troubled in the slightest.
King Cole, head dreamily inclined to one side, listens to faint strains of a weirdling music. He feels it in his liver as he knows it in his bones: this sad place contains too many dead. Reason enough for the site to be abandoned. It is contaminated, destined to lie empty forever.
Sarah felt a slight panic rising in her breast. King Cole, who always lingered a little too far behind for comfort, was missing.
She hurried back, passing through the courtyard to the centre of King Charles, just catching sight of his muddied trouser-leg as it disappeared through a doorway.
Sarah followed on, back to the stone-flagged foyer where the water troughs were gurgling. No sign of Cole.
A door stood ajar opposite that to the deserted ward. It had not been open before. She ran to the threshold.
The Hospital clerk, puffing along behind, struggled to keep up. When he came to the inner doorway he found Sarah just inside. The Aborigine gentleman hesitated a few steps further on, at an apparent loss.
Brows pleading, King Cole communicated his vexation to Sarah.
‘Where are we?’ she asked of Dilkes.
‘The Peacock Room,’ he said.
A sculpted bust topped an ornamental fireplace, below which knelt the melodramatic figure of an angel, weeping abject tears.
‘There we are,’ Dilkes suddenly announced. ‘I knew it would come to me. George Bruce!’
Looking again at the bust, Sarah performed a neat double-take.
‘No, no,’ gasped Dilkes. ‘That is Charles Dibdin. Died 1816…so the pair, to my knowledge, will never have met. Not in this life.’
‘I don’t follow you,’ she said.
‘Dibden was the author of a great many sea-shanties, and the like,’ said Dilkes. ‘One of which was “The Greenwich Pensioner”.’
Sarah nodded, still unsure of his logic.
‘George Bruce,’ he said again. ‘I knew the name was familiar to me from somewhere! He wrote a book, you see, detailing his own extraordinary story.’
‘A book?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ said Dilkes. ‘He called it The Life of a Greenwich Pensioner!’
Sarah scrabbled for her stub of pencil.
‘Well, I say extraordinary, never having read the thing,’ added Dilkes, ‘but he crossed the oceans more than once. Every sailor has his stories, and his poor face must have got like that somehow!’
Excited, Sarah looked from the clerk to King Cole and back again.
‘Guruwari,’ hissed Cole. ‘Guruwari!’
The meaning behind his expression was a mystery, yet he too seemed provoked by the mention of a book. And something must have sent him racing in there at such a clip.
‘Do you know where I might find a copy of this book?’ she said.
‘Let’s see,’ hemmed Dilkes, squinting. ‘No longer here, I’m sure of that. No, I must confess, I�
�m not sure where it might be. Most likely among the paper ephemera we’ve cleared out along the way. Your best bet would be the library at the British Museum.’
CHAPTER XXIII
Whit Monday, the 1st of June, 1868
ONE TREE HILL
‘Fixed on the enormous galaxy,
Deeper and older seemed his eye:
And matched his sufferance sublime
The taciturnity of time.’
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Character’
Fresh and lovely-sounding, Sarah Larkin’s laughter echoed throughout the flagstone lobby, and – louder, longer – inside Dilkes’s loveless head.
The clerk returned his guests to the grass lawns of the Grand Court, the Royal Naval Hospital’s open quadrangle, and the spot where their official tour had begun. Sighing loudly, he turned to observe the incoming river traffic. A flotilla of trade vessels crowded their way upstream.
‘Greenwich Hospital,’ Dilkes Loveless said, ‘is much endeared to an Englishman’s heart.’
He twinkled meaningfully at Sarah. His transparent looks lingered; she turned aside.
Raised on a plinth beside them was a statue of King George II, face worn away by the action of the elements. King Cole regarded it suspiciously.
Met with awkward silence, the clerk returned to looking out across the waters, his attention drawn by the sailor-Pensioners still huddled or hobbled at the riverside.
‘Little accustomed to kindness of any sort,’ said Dilkes, ‘wanting everything that tends to enliven or endear a home. It is perhaps the monastic character of the place that has proven distasteful to so many.’
Self-pity had crept into the clerk’s droning voice, and Sarah felt he eyed her ring finger, gloved though it was, with rather too much significance.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘thank you, lieutenant.’
They had what they needed. King Cole drifted, patently keen to leave.
