by Esi Edugyan
“And what do you think?” said Mister Saunders, leading us to the wall at the far back. In a tidy line our tanks sat stacked, clean and new and gleaming. They ranged in size from sixteen inches to nearly eight feet, their bottoms made of slate and their framework of iron.
“They are wonderful!” said Tanna, kneeling to touch at the glass, her skirts pooling on the wood shavings. “I wish I could live in one myself.”
Mister Saunders smiled, a single crooked tooth creeping over his bottom lip. “Said Mister Wolcott here, We must endeavour to get them right, Saunders. These are for Miss Goff.”
Wolcott frowned at his labours and did not look up.
“Well, I am ever so grateful for the extra care taken,” said Tanna. “I can already see the small worlds they will hold.”
“Ah now, we were glad of your business, dear. And we welcomed the challenge.” He laughed lightly. “The design I will say was quite complicated. I see you are very modern and do nothing by half measures.” Saunders glanced over to me. “You will take them away on Wednesday?”
“A week Wednesday,” said I. “We must return with the proper transport.”
“Aye, yes. Just as well, with that business out at Newgate. The streets will be black with people.”
“Another one?” frowned Tanna. “It is as though they mean to save on food, the rate they are dispensing with those poor men.”
“Indeed,” said Saunders. “But you mustn’t be so modern as to forget they are robbers and killers.”
“How many this time?” said Tanna. “What are their crimes?”
Saunders hesitated, as if he hated to speak so before a lady. Treading over the slippery wood shavings, he plucked a newspaper from a counter strewn with stained and discarded papers and handed it to me.
“Here, give this to Mister Goff,” he laughed. “It’s a father’s prerogative to tell a daughter, if he chooses.”
Tanna smiled politely, but in the dim light I could see Wolcott set his lips, as though he was displeased she should be exposed to such iniquities.
Tanna bade them good day and I led us out. Stepping into the cool, grey air, I felt I could breathe again, the breeze fresh and biting.
“You are happy with the tanks, I hope?” Tanna looked up at me, and a soft anxiety entered her face. “You are thinking of Amsterdam.”
But I was scanning the newspaper, and seeing his name I stopped short in the street and could find no words.
8
GOFF HAD DECLARED that morning that he desired a winter picnic. And though we were in no mood for it, still we found ourselves dining, impossibly, that evening at Regent’s Park.
The air was already golden with the faltering light. It had been a milder afternoon than the previous, though still cold. Tanna and I had spent the rest of the day wandering the city aimlessly, in a silence that deepened by the hour. We did not speak of the upcoming hanging, but it stayed uneasily between us, a web. I was quiet, gloomy; I went about in a stupor, hardly knowing how to hold my body. The shock of it was too much: seeing his name printed with such matter-of-factness on the finger-smeared page, as if he could as easily have been a Member of Parliament as a criminal. I did not want to have to go and share a casual meal with Goff; I urged Tanna to beg off. But she did not want to disappoint her father, and so we went, filled with our quiet horror.
We arrived in Regent’s Park to find, laid out before a bone-white copse of birches, a simple picnic on a checkered blanket in the damp grass. There were cold meats, salads, a frosted and unevenly tiered white cake. Seeing the bounty, I was relieved we had not abandoned Goff alone to his meal. He lay sidelong on the blanket, like a Roman senator. He had already begun eating.
“Now what is all this?” said Tanna with a soft, tired smile. “Surely you did not make all this food yourself?”
“Eliza was in this afternoon. She cooked and she brought it down for us.”
“We are late,” said I. “Forgive us, the fault is mine.”
“Nonsense,” said Goff, smiling. “Now tell me, how were the tanks? Did Wolcott succeed?”
Tanna settled down on the grass, pulling her shawls around her. “This is hardly the season for a picnic.” She shook her head. “Of course you would not hear of it, Father. Truth is, you love the cold and feel at your liveliest in this weather.”
Goff grunted. “Well, I am old. And I will be dead soon. What’s a little inconvenience for you young ones, to allow an old man a late pleasure? Eh?”
As Tanna began to describe the tanks, she glanced sadly across at me. I could see it exhausted her, this having to perform for her father. But still she did it. It struck me that her whole life had something of this theatre, this desire to shelter Goff’s happiness at all costs. I constituted, I thought, her sole rebellion.
I tried to smile. “I see you have brought spirits and good wine to warm us, sir. Very thoughtful.”
“Do help yourselves,” said Goff.
“We have been walking along the Thames,” I continued. “I was afraid we would not be back in time. Tanna has been a most accommodating guide. I think there is not a sight in London that she does not know the history of. It is an impressive city.”
“And an ugly one.” Goff shrugged. “But there is enough goodness in its people to make it worth the saving. Some of its people, at least.”
Taking up our plates, we began to eat. But I tasted nothing, feeling myself entirely elsewhere, absent, as though another man had taken my place.
“It is pleasant, is it not, my dear?” said Goff. “Having a winter picnic again?”
“I do miss Henrietta.” Tanna turned to me. “Sometimes, when we would dine outside in winter, we would be joined by my favourite aunt, Madame Lemieux.”
“She is French?” I said.
“Her husband was French,” said Tanna.
“Her last husband,” said Goff with a grin. “There have been four.”
“So many?” said I.
“Four so far,” said Goff. “French all but one. Henrietta is in Paris now, likely hunting for a fifth. Otherwise I would insist on introducing you.”
“If you would like an example of the extraordinary English temperament,” said Tanna, though somewhat distractedly, “you could not do better than Madame Lemieux. I daresay you will not encounter a more accomplished woman.”
“That is arguable,” I said with a gentle smile.
“She would tell you so herself, if she were here,” said Goff. “Though accomplished in what is the real question.”
Tanna smiled reproachfully at her father. “Madame Lemieux is a respectable woman, Wash. Do not let my father mislead you. She has been ninety-eight times to Paris, has ridden camelback in the East, and was once nearly killed by a flying horseshoe in the streets of New York City.”
“Ninety-eight visits to Paris?” said I.
“You are impressed.”
“Impressed that she has not lost count.”
Tanna gave me a tired smile. “In addition to her four marriages, she has declined no fewer than five proposals. The last, an industrialist by the name of Horne—you may have heard of him? Horne’s Confectioneries?—she turned down because, one evening, he removed his shoe in her presence.”
“She is very proper?” I said.
“Henrietta has been married to Frenchmen half her life, Washington,” said Goff. “She is most certainly not proper. It was the man’s foot she objected to.”
“Would you like to tell it, Father?” asked Tanna. But Goff waved her on. She continued, “It seems Mister Horne inadvertently pulled off a sock with his shoe. And in the strong candlelight she saw he had very small, hairless, finely made white feet. Like the feet of a young girl.”
“Tell him about Dover,” said Goff.
“Dover?” I said.
“My sister has sworn to never again set foot in
Dover,” said Goff.
“When last there, it seems, every woman she met was named Lemieux. No relation, of course,” said Tanna. “A coincidence, it seems. Mrs. Adele Lemieux, Miss Martha Lemieux, Mrs. Margaret Lemieux…”
“I did not know there were so many in England,” said I.
“Nor did she,” said Goff. “Some of them were holidaying from the Continent. But some were English through and through. I think she means to get married again, just to rid herself of the name.”
“She fled Dover just as fast as she could,” said Tanna. “When we saw her, she looked like she had seen a ghost.”
“And this had never occurred, on any of her ninety-eight visits to Paris?” said I.
“My sister amuses us,” said Goff dryly. “I think she does it out of pity for our modest lives.”
“She has actually been a great help,” said Tanna after a moment. “There was a time when we could not get on without her. She used to accompany us to the seashore—she is a wonder at the keer-drag. Though of late she has been rather more interested in her glass-blowing.”
“And her husbands,” said Goff.
“Glass-blowing is an art and a wonder,” I said, somewhat absently. My mind was exhausted, drained; I wanted nothing but a good bath, the comforts of my warm cot. “I have always longed to learn it.”
“Madame Lemieux makes tiny glass trees,” said Tanna. “Tiny glass winter trees, leafless ones. They are astonishingly beautiful.”
We fell silent then. And as she smiled across at me, sadly, tiredly, I was relieved to understand we had finally come to the end of our performance. Goff smiled all about, chewing his food, happy.
9
WEDNESDAY ARRIVED with excruciating slowness. Only then did Tanna and I reach our final, mute conclusion, staring across at each other over dishes of cold mince and pickled smelts. We would go to the hanging; how could I fail to? I would never accept the death if I did not myself see it.
We sat in silence on the drive over, the sound of our breath filling the carriage as it swayed and rumbled under us. Tanna removed her gloves to clutch my hand in her damp grip.
We heard the crowd at Newgate long before we saw it. As we rounded the corner, the crowd seemed to rise out of the muck like some rabid hallucination. There were so many people we did not argue when the driver barked for us to climb down long before we’d actually reached the prison. My mind was afire, my limbs sluggish, and I trod silent through the rain-damp streets, Tanna studying me nervously. By my own rough count there were no fewer than four hundred souls churning through the mud.
I was of goodly height, and despite my thinness there was a power to my wide shoulders, so that I was able to shove open a clear path for us through the crowd. The people gathered here were rough, men who but for God’s grace might themselves be hanged; sailors; a few ex-slaves; but also women in tattered hats, their dresses ugly with torn stitching. The stench of onions and sour wine clung to the air. Even the children, the many children, darted among the gathered, slicing pockets and collecting a good day’s earnings.
In my seven months in London, I had never set eyes on Newgate Prison. Nothing had brought me to its gates. I saw now a hideous brick building, tall and looming, before which had been erected a large platform with a gallows. The platform was surrounded by a low wooden fence barely strong enough to fend back a dog. And it was behind this fence that the crowd surged, hissing and laughing, gazing up at the nooses swaying there as if already savouring the spectacle.
We pushed onwards. I felt a growing anxiety as I listened to the low roar of the crowd. I glanced back at Tanna, at her quiet, nervous face. I should not have brought her here, I thought. As we neared the scaffold, something—a strong nausea—cut through me. I understood that what I was nearing might be the final scene in the terrible drama that had ravaged these last five years of my life. Was it really to be? Was this truly how it would end? The newspaper had stated that two were to be hanged: Louis Hazzard, a Negro, for the crimes of theft and arson; and John Francis Willard, a Scotsman, for the crime of murder of a Freeman. And so what had happened to him, in these intervening months? Had he been unable in the end to swallow his vengeance and killed another man, believing him me? Or had it been a more random act, a striking out at a black man whose freedom seemed unnatural to him? I stood in the cool air, watching the great irony of it—his indictment for the crime of killing my double, and his sharing of this legislated death with yet another black man.
Vendors cried out their wares; men carried trays of hot chestnuts slung about their necks. A group of fiddlers stepped over the thin fence and began tuning up to play. We continued to push our way forward.
I could see the scaffold clearly now, a grey, rickety wooden structure, the steps half-buckled on the far side. Guards stood in a loose semicircle around the works, their weapons at the ready. The crowd was tense, but not angry. There was an air of holidaying to it all.
At last, on the stroke of noon, the two men were led out.
I strained to catch sight of them. The black man came first, and though he resembled no one I knew, I started at the sight of him, as if I were gazing upon a familiar. He was neither young nor old, his hair shorn and his face squinting. He wore no boots. He walked slowly, as though savouring the damp brick on the soles of his feet—or perhaps as though he feared collapsing. He appeared momentarily confused.
Peering at the second man, an anguish came over me. How was it we stood on opposing sides of this fence, as if it were the dividing line between death and life? I began to shiver; Tanna gripped my arm harder. I saw clearly the damaged eye behind the glinting spectacles, white and sightless. I saw his grey prison shirt immaculate as if just pressed, and I saw the blond head with its air of a scholar as he stared out over the crowd, seeming to seek someone. He looked terribly, impossibly tired.
When I’d caught sight of his name in the paper, I had been filled with relief. Now, seeing him standing so straight-backed there, as if trying to maintain a dignity long ago lost, revulsion washed over me, an astonishment at my own blood lust. I had not killed him all those months ago in Nova Scotia because I had not wanted to take a life. It had been a badge to me, a triumph of decency. Seeing him now, I understood how false was my self-congratulation, my high moral stance. I had been afraid, that is all. The true mercy would have been to kill him, to give him the death he had been thirsting after all these years. For that had been the true prize in all his years of hunting me: the gift of a death at my hands, a death befitting his ideals, a martyrdom.
I held my breath as the men were led to the scaffold. Without any theatrics a young hangman came forward and shuffled the prisoners into place, drew the nooses down from the beam and loosened them, then set bags over the prisoners’ heads. In the seconds before it was covered, I saw Willard’s face, fleetingly. He flinched in panic, his eyes white with terror.
A man of God stepped forward with a Bible held before him like an open hand. When he lifted his face, I saw a large purple birthmark under his chin. He said some words I did not hear, and the young guard nodded. The crowd had begun to hoot and jeer, as though they were a single animal, all teeth and vicious anticipation.
Dread filled me; I clutched Tanna’s face to my chest, so that she might not see. The preacher stepped back, and the hangman took his position. He drew hard on a pulley; the floor swung noiselessly away. The two men kicked and struggled, and then were still. The crowd had fallen terribly silent. From where I stood, I could hear the creak of the ropes. The hangman made his unhurried way down the scaffold, ducking underneath. He gripped first the legs of Hazzard, then Willard, and pulled with all his strength, holding them for two minutes each to be sure of their deaths.
The crowd erupted in cheering, laughter and singing. Then it turned away from the spectacle and upon itself: fist fights broke out, men yelled and scuffled. A guard was standing nearby, bored.
&nb
sp; And so it was truly over, done.
I stood among the crowd, rocked on all sides. Tanna lifted her face to stare grimly at the lifeless legs swaying there, the trousers darkening with urine. Watching her fascination, I felt a mild irritation at her interest, though it was only natural. And then, just beyond her head, I caught a strong flicker of colour, and I glanced past her to see.
A figure stood half-obscured by the crowd, gazing up at the gallows. He was tall and slightly corpulent, with a long, equine face. He wore a lovingly tailored blue frock coat with a sunflower-yellow waistcoat underneath. In his hands, naked and unadorned, he held a black top hat, which he turned and turned by the brim.
My body drained of all blood, and I felt myself going cold. I stared as the man angled his head to restore his hat. Then he began to turn away.
I stepped forward into the crowd, yelling out, shoving past.
“Titch!” I cried.
I could hear dimly behind me Tanna calling my name, but I did not stop, clawing my way past sweat-laced men, their breath stinking of beer and foul meat. The bright-blue coat was swallowed cleanly by the sea of bodies, then became suddenly visible again. I pushed and shoved my way closer, repeating his name. Just when I believed him altogether lost, he turned, gazing past my head to the gallows beyond. And I saw then the general shape of his face—the bulbous nose, the cheeks rounded and bloated with drink. He was, I understood, another man entirely, a stranger unknown to me.
10
OVER THE NEXT DAYS I could not get the hanging from my mind—the fear in Willard’s eyes before the hood was lowered; the vicious, feral crowd; the sight of Hazzard peering about as if he couldn’t understand how everyone could fail to accept that he was not guilty. There was but a thread between life and death, and he had stumbled blamelessly onto the wrong side of it. I felt for him, and was surprised at how intensely I felt for Willard also. He was a wretched man, a pox, but I did not rejoice at the brutality of his end, however well deserved. He too had been a boy once, desirous of understanding the world. And how he had wasted all his talents, all his obvious facility for learning, twisting every new fact and arranging it into senselessness and cruelty. He had spent years trying to cultivate an ethos, and despite possessing a clear intelligence, he had lived his whole life in avoidable savagery.
