Tom Bedlam

by George Hagen

  The details took an agonizing length of time to draw from Mr. Pendleton, as pauses were required for him to hawk his pamphlets, press the gentry for donations, and remind passersby of the revised date of Doomsday. But the important facts were that Pendleton had helped Bedlam to a rooming house not far from the river. Since the hooligans accompanying the assassin had robbed Bedlam of his day's earnings, the services of a doctor were not to be found, though Mr. Pendleton had eventually engaged a fellow in the tavern next door who claimed to be a dentist. Upon sight of Bedlam's bleeding leg, however, this fellow had passed out and, when revived with a few drams of whiskey, proceeded to sew the cavity.

  “For ten days—feverish, wretched, and consumed by pain—he tossed in his bed like Jonah in the stormy sea,” explained Pendleton, “and when, in charity, I paid for the services of a real doctor, Mr. Bedlam was advised that the damaged leg would be his undoing if he did not have it removed.” Pendleton shuddered, placing his hand on his heart in memory of the lost limb.

  “So it was done. With a poker, they sealed the, eh, matter, and after several weeks, he rose, like Lazarus, to walk among men, due in no small part to my prayers, I'm sure.”

  Until this moment, Tom had managed to contain himself, but this was too much. “He is my father, Mr. Pendleton. I beg you to tell me where he is now,” he cried.

  “Cast out, my boy just yesterday, for failure to pay board.” Pendleton sighed. “The economics of recuperation are harsh indeed.”

  “But how couldhe pay? Surely the landlord—”

  “The landlord understands only one thing, lad. The beginning of the month and what comes with it. All else matters not.”

  “What will he do now?” wondered Tom. “How can I find him?”

  Pendleton shook his head. “A few months, my boy is all we have left on this earth. It hardly matters what your father does. I urge you to pray for him, and for humanity!”

  WHEN TOM TOLD his mother about his father, she said a prayer for him, and the matter might never have been discussed again. Oscar, however, sensed that something was up and pried the news out of Tom. The Limp-kin boy couldn't resist a good story; in a matter of hours, the entire factory resonated with talk about the matter. Folk in the furnace room claimed to have seen Bedlam crawling the streets, still wearing the tattered and bloody bridal gown, begging with a tin cup. Others suggested that his career would surely be ruined and predicted his suicide.

  Oscar Limpkin disputed this. “He could still play pirates. Plenty of them had wooden legs!” he declared and conjured an image of Mr. Bedlam sporting a new leg of carved ivory, with a knife, a compass, and a shiny doubloon secreted in one of its many compartments.

  Brandy told Tom that he was sure Mr. Bedlam was in hot pursuit of the man who had stabbed him and that the other's leg would be taken in retribution for the loss of his own.

  Mrs. Bedlam would entertain none of these rumors. Tom noted that she included his father's health and salvation in her prayers that evening.

  “Perhaps he's with family?” Tom proposed.

  Mrs. Bedlam shook her head. “Your father was an orphan,” she said. “No relations. A stray cat.”

  Tom shivered. He and his mother were little more than strays themselves. “And you have only a father?” he inquired.

  Mrs. Bedlam nodded. “My mother died when I was young. And my father was so intolerant that I considered myself lucky not to have uncles, aunts, and cousins who may have been blessed with his temperament.”

  WHEN EMILY BEDLAM began to complain of headaches, Tom put aside his concern for his father. She started missing work once or twice a week and claimed that the slightest noise rang like a hammer against her skull. “What is that din?” she would moan as a horse passed by.

  She would huddle in a fetal position with a sheet wrapped around her head to block out light and sound. When her son arrived home in the evening, she resembled a turbaned apparition—cross-legged on the bed, silhouetted by the dying light of a blue sunset, her head swathed in linen.

  One morning she tossed and turned, complaining of a ceaseless drumming sound. Tom could hear nothing until it occurred to him that his mother's heartbeat was probably the source of her torment. Mrs. Limpkin visited, bringing soup and bread. Gently, she prepared Tom for the possibility that his mother was suffering from a disease of the brain.

  When Mrs. Bedlam could get out of bed, Tom would lead her to the factory. Friends and foes alike steered clear of her now, for she truly resembled a Delphic sibyl, a stick in one hand, the upper part of her face wrapped in linen, revealing only an odd, beatific smile. Once Tom settled her at her potter's bench, she worked on the clay, never missing her quota. She removed the linen from her eyes for the last details—the petulant smiles, delicate hands, lacework, and ruffled collars—then shrouded herself again to shape her next creation.

  RUMORS OF WILLIAM BEDLAM'S fate had one beneficial aspect; his status as husband and father was validated. With everybody talking about him, a taboo had been lifted. Tom, however, was filled with dread at the possibility of the man's exit from the world. Was he to be the only member of his family left alive?

  Audrey often found him sitting alone with his legs dangling through the banister, eyes red and his shoulders low—a picture of sorrow. When she lavished her sympathies on him, offering him a kiss, Tom was disconsolate.

  “I know it's much the same thing,” he confessed, “having a father who's never home and not having a father at all—but it would feel so much worse if I knew he had gone for good.”

  “Oh, Tom,” she cried, “I wish we could adopt you; if Father didn't fret so about his accounts, I'm sure he would welcome you into our home, and Oscar would be glad of a friend, and I… well, I would make you lemon tarts every evening, and we could marry as soon as Father permitted it!”

  Audrey's sweet remarks didn't allay Tom's fears, but they did assure him that he was loved. As for the future, Tom prepared himself for the likelihood that he would be an orphan before his fifteenth birthday.

  AN INCIDENT CAUSED Tom to reconsider his plight. One day at the factory he observed Mr. Todderman catch Brandy Oxmire having a t'baccy break on the roof. It astonished him to see the tiny man fly at Brandy like a harpy, striking about him with stinging blows from his own walking stick while the cripple whimpered but barely raised a hand to defend himself.

  “Why did you let him abuse you?” Tom asked later. “You're twice his size!”

  Brandy shrugged. “He's like a father to me, I s'pose. If I defended me-self, I might hurt him. You can't hurt your father, can you now?”

  Tom decided he was better off without any such figure in his life, then changed his mind again when he caught sight of Mr. Limpkin sitting with Oscar on the tenement steps one evening. The gangly clerk was teaching Oscar the lyrics of a rude song out of his mother's earshot, and Oscar looked both shocked and thrilled by his father's confidence.

  One evening Tom watched the Witters making their way to the top floor, Mr. Witter's hand resting affectionately on his son's shoulder for support. It was another pleasure denied him by Mr. Bedlam's strange fate.

  Even Mr. Todderman made a remark about Tom's father one day: “Awful luck, your father has; one can only hope he doesn't darken the family door with it.”

  When he had put his mother to bed (for that had become his ritual now), Tom watched the streets from the window for signs of William Bedlam's new incarnation. He imagined him as a ghostly phantom in a dark coat, bent on revenge for his lost leg and, alternately, as the buccaneer pictured by Oscar reeling about on a leg of pure ivory. In the mornings, when Todderman peered from the parapet at his minions, Tom half-wondered whether the factory owner was intent on scaring the man away too.

  There was an odd exchange one brisk morning in April. Mrs. Bedlam was sick, complaining about the pounding in her temples. Tom stayed at home to tend her. He had made her breakfast but found her asleep when he brought it to her. He peered out the window and saw Mr. Todderman perched
behind the red-brick parapet staring at an elderly man in a blue frock coat who stood on the opposite side of the street.

  The man must have been about sixty, stocky, red-nosed, with a curly thicket of white hair bursting out from beneath a cream-colored top hat. He wore fashionable striped gray trousers and shiny black shoes. His attention was fixed on the workers passing from the tenement into the gates of the factory; he examined each woman's face thoroughly, as if in search of someone. Todderman seemed to take offense at the man's scrutiny and barked an inquiry as to his intentions.

  THE FACTORY COURTYARD carried sound with all the clarity of an amphitheater. From Tom's window perch he could hear the man's sharp and dismissive reply. “None of your business, sir!” Then a coach rattled by, and nothing could be heard for a moment, though the man clearly conveyed his disgust for the premises by sweeping his hand from the foundation stone up to the stain of smoke disappearing over the rooftops.

  Todderman answered with a more provocative hand gesture.

  The gentleman, however, ignored Todderman as more workers passed through the gates; his scrutiny remained devoted to the women, and he peered at each face with his hands poised at his sides, fingers spread, in preparation for some sort of appeal if the right one should pass by. None of Todderman's epithets could distract him from this task, and only when the courtyard was empty did the gentleman finally turn his attention back to the proprietor on the parapet.

  He tipped his hat to Todderman with a bitter smile, and this time, his words rang out across the cobbled street. “May you rot in hell, sir!” he cried.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, spring announced its arrival with a weeklong torrent of rain. Todderman's factory roof sprang leaks in a myriad of places, and Tom was dispatched to stand buckets wherever water collected. He spent his days darting about the floors, from the sculpting benches to the glazing shops to the warehouse, emptying buckets out of the windows. He had never seen so much water. His mother started murmuring about Noah's flood, and it being the end of everything. Tom recalled Mr. Pendleton's prediction and assured his mother that they had at least until June.

  The deluge unsettled London's social order. Many citizens were forced out of inundated homes, and the homeless sought refuge in higher, more fashionable parts of the city. The rich complained about a flood of vagrants in their neighborhoods, while the poor coped with the water itself.

  The tenement building sprang its own leaks. The Witters complained of the ceaseless drips from their ceiling, but those at ground level endured the worst of it. The hole in the hall floor became a whirlpool until the basement filled. Clothes, furniture, and other possessions were ruined by mildew. The water would not leave; it turned foul. Tenants retreated up the stairs and slept on the landings to escape the creeping mold. Tom and his mother could hear their downstairs neighbors chattering and complaining on the second-story landing most evenings, their bedding spread about the steps, their laundry hung from the banisters. One fellow brought up his stove and cooked sausages outside the Limp-kins' door.

  When, after a week, the rain ceased, water still lingered in pools on the first floor, mold crept up the wallpaper in black streaks, and the smell of mildew seeped through every crack. The neighbors below inched their way up the stairs to escape it. Mrs. Bedlam boiled nutmeg and cinnamon to drive the odor out of their little room. With his ear against the wainscoting, Tom slept in fear that the neighbors would eventually advance through his door.

  Early one morning he heard a heavy step on the stairs that sounded like no neighbor he knew. It was matched by the cautious thump of a stick, or some other wooden support. After a lengthy pause, there was another step, and another thump. The isolation of each sound suggested a creature unused to stairs, perhaps even unused to walking, and this scared the boy; he had a suspicion, of course, that this was the visitor for whom he had been waiting.

  All of a sudden, Tom feared for himself and his mother. If it was his father, what horrible form had he taken? And what would he steal this time?

  Tom listened to the visitor ascend the first flight, then navigate the turn to the second. There followed a lengthy silence.

  The boy rose to shake his mother awake, but she was not in her bed. It was then that he realized she was already up, standing in the darkness, listening. “I hear him, Tom,” she whispered.

  They peered at the glow of gaslight beneath the door. Suddenly, a single obstruction appeared—one foot, and one foot only. Tom's heart leaped into his throat; he fought to breathe, chest pounding, knuckles trembling, and he let out a cry.

  “It's all right, Tom,” said his mother. “I'll answer the door.”

  GRATITUDE

  “WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?” BEDLAM ASKED MISERABLY. “HAVEN'T you seen a man eat before?”

  Tom conceded to himself that his father's mood was justified; Bedlam shivered beneath a blanket while his wet clothes warmed on a rack beside the potbellied stove. His eyes were hollow, fingers raw and trembling from the damp cold, and his white hair was matted, greasy, and receding at the temples. How much of this was age or the ravages of his recent infirmity, Tom didn't know. But he couldn't take his eyes off the man.

  “He's entitled to look at his father,” Mrs. Bedlam replied.

  Bedlam frowned. But the food was beginning to take effect, and he signaled the return of his sense of humor with a wink.

  “Much obliged for this, Emily…. Much obliged. Hadn't eaten in a week. You've saved my life, you have.”

  He paused to relish the sensation of food in his belly, and then his eyes surveyed the room and arrived at Tom again.

  “Look at 'im! So tall. Soon be as tall as me.” He presented the empty bowl to Mrs. Bedlam for another helping, but she shook her head. “The rest is our breakfast.”

  Bedlam seemed about to get angry, but again, he caught Tom's eye and instead smiled wistfully. “For what we've received, may the Lord make us truly thankful,” he murmured and winked again. “Look at you, Tom. Nimble too, I reckon. Think ye could walk the rope?” His eyes settled on his son in expectation of an answer.

  But Mrs. Bedlam interrupted. “I won't have him do that.”

  “It's work.”

  “He's got work.”

  “In a factory?” Bedlam sneered. “What about the open air?”

  “Honest, regular, dependable pay—even when it rains,” said Mrs. Bedlam.

  “Honest? What's more honest than risking your life, madam!” cried her husband. “He'd be an artist of the tightrope. Not like regular folk. A performer, a presence on the stage, a master of balance and grace!” Bedlam began directing his pitch with full intensity at the boy. “We're not land-bound, lad. We roam the clouds, we fly, we touch the angels!”

  “You almost took room and board with the angels,” added Mrs. Bedlam. “What happened to those lofty aspirations of yours—the stage and so on?”

  Bedlam's expression became haughty. “The world's a stage, my dear. People like to see children on the tightrope. Big crowds. Big receipts. There's no telling what people would pay to see Tom—”

  But Mrs. Bedlam finished his sentence: “—fall. Because that's why they watch.”

  Mr. Bedlam's humor vanished, and cold fury appeared in his eyes. “I never, ever fell, madam.”

  Without reply, Mrs. Bedlam looked at his knee, beneath which, braced by a leather harness, was a rough wooden peg. “Tom will grow up to be a gentleman,” she said. “Not a beggar” Her expression was bitter, and directed squarely at her husband. Bedlam looked at Tom, who looked away, sensing the man's humiliation.

  “Shame on you, Emily, for saying such a thing,” said Mr. Bedlam. “How dare you disgrace me before my protégé?”

  “Your protégé? You deserted him. As a father, you're a disgrace; as a gentleman, you're a failure; as a husband, you're nothing but a burden!”

  Mrs. Bedlam had never spoken with such clarity before, and Tom was surprised. She pressed one hand to her head, as if to soothe a headache, but there was no mistaking th
e disgust on her face.

  Rising from his chair, Bedlam whipped his clothing from the rack around the potbellied stove where it had been drying. He dressed himself without speaking and, once dressed, struck the floor with his wooden leg—it echoed loudly like a gavel in the small room, and he proceeded to argue in his own defense.

  “Know this, Tom Bedlam: I am not the man she describes! There are two sides to every story. And one day, perhaps when you have a wife”— here he glared at Mrs. Bedlam—“and a son, you will understand. You will think kindly of your father. And, in spite of Mrs. Bedlam's slings and arrows, mark my words, you will feel gratitude to me.… Gratitude”

  This last word was delivered to his wife, but it seemed directed at the world at large.

  The solemn echo of the wooden peg marked his departure. Down the stairs, thump by thump, it rang. Tom listened as the sound mingled with the other noises of London in the early morning—the cry of gulls, the clatter of wooden carts on the cobblestones, and the steady rhythm of horses pulling cabs, the calls of hawkers, tradesmen, and a wailing infant somewhere in the crowded tenement. Then the steam whistles of the factories of Vauxhall summoned the minions in a cacophonic blast, erasing his father's progress.

  Mrs. Bedlam collapsed on the bed, her reserves of energy and lucidity spent. She sent Tom to work that morning without her.

  All day long, Tom heard his father intoning gratitude. The meaning, implicit in its repetition, was that he had misjudged his father.

  “DO YOU EVER FIND, Oscar, that your parents see things in exact oppo-sites?” Tom inquired later.

  “All the time,” Oscar Limpkin declared. “My mother says we're a happy lot, my father replies that we're miserable. That's why I'm getting a job.”

  “A job?” Tom asked.

  “Selling newspapers,” said Oscar. “I shall bring the day's facts home and settle the matter of happiness once and for all,” he promised with a gleam in his eye. “One day I shall be a reporter, Tom, and I shall know what goes on in London, from the finest mansions to the most depraved cellars. Then I shall expose the corrupt, free the oppressed, and champion the truth!”