by Louis Bayard
Another slow intake of breath…but this time, no apparent release. The air simply expires inside his chest, and his shoulders bow, and his head lowers, as though he were bracing for a punch.
—Tim, would you kindly fetch my little casket?
No additional instruction necessary. I glide across the room to the secretary, reach into the upper-left-hand drawer, and feel for Uncle N’s miniature vault with its mother-of-pearl veneer. I take it back to the bed, as smoothly and unthinkingly as a trained pony. And then I retreat a few deferential paces, almost to the doorway.
Ward of the state.
That’s how Mother once referred to me. Not to my face. She was complaining to my father about Uncle’s habit of disbursing monthly remittances.
—If he cares for their welfare, Robert, if that is truly his prime consideration, why not settle a sum on them once and for all and be done with it? Why make them come begging the first of every month?
Can’t recall now what Father said. Something, I’m sure.
I do remember, though, the day Peter made his break. He had me follow him over to the changing house for reinforcement, but he never needed it. Never once looked my way, never spoke for anyone but himself.
—Listen, Uncle. You mustn’t think me ungrateful, because I’m not, and I could never be, but from here on out, it will have to be just me, I’m afraid. That’s how Annie wants it, that’s how I want it. It’s the only way it can work.
I’m atingle just recalling it now, and for a moment, I wish Peter were actually standing alongside me, filling my ear with jests. But there’s no sound now save for the soft rustle of Uncle’s bank-notes. The quiet must be a kind of itch under his skin, for he begins chattering in a way that doesn’t really suit him.
—Dreadful weather, eh?…T’rifically biting…. Must tell you, wonderful organisation, had the honour of endowing them just last week…Society for Something T’Other…blankets for the destitute…I believe nothing quite so lovely as a blanket, is there?
He looks up suddenly.
—Oh, and Tim, I’ve asked some guests for Christmas Day. Your brother and his wife have done me the honour of accepting. I’ve sent an invitation to Martha, as well, but…
—Yes.
—That husband of hers…
—Yes.
—Well, there you are.
—I will see if I can come, Uncle. I’ll do my best.
—I only thought I’d mention it, you know. So you’d have a few days’ notice.
—It’s most kind of you.
He’s been so busy chatting he seems to have forgotten why I am hovering there. With a kind of infantile surprise, he raises his arm and finds the bank-notes protruding from the crevices of his fingers. The hand is moving autonomously now—a flirtatious fanning motion—and as it moves, the fingers loosen their grip, and the notes work their way free, fluttering to the floor on a rocking cradle of air.
—Terribly…sorry….
They’re on the floor for only half a second before Uncle N’s beneficiary snatches them up, tucks them inside his shirt pocket, and mumbles a curt prelude to the more elaborate thank-you still to come. But he interrupts his beneficiary:
—No. Please. Listen to me, Tim. I am certain you have your own reasons for remaining apart, and I will do my best to honour them, I promise you. All I ask in return is that every now and then, when it crosses your mind, you send a little word to me, by whatever means possible. To let me know you are well.
He laughs just then, a rueful hiccough.
—That I may cross you off my ever-lengthening list of worries.
—I will do that, Uncle.
—And you know you are always welcome here. At any time.
—I know that.
It is the moment, I know, for my gracefully understated exit, but I’ve lost the knack somehow. I stand there fidgeting and irresolute, and I can’t think what can be keeping me, and then I hear myself ask:
—Do you believe in ghosts, Uncle?
—Ghosts.
The word catches in his chest. He has to speak it again to jar it loose.
—Why do you ask, Tim?
—I’m not sure. I do seem to see Father everywhere I go, but I imagine that’s quite common when you’ve…when someone has been lost. I’m sure it happens quite often, really. Curious though, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Mother since she passed on. She was only too relieved to be gone, I expect.
—And is that all? Your father?
No, Uncle, that’s not all. I have seen young girls—dead, mostly. I have been stumbling across them at regular intervals. No, that’s not quite right: they have been stumbling across me, or rather, seeking me. And I am convinced they are trying to communicate something, and perhaps it’s the same thing Father is trying to tell me, but I cannot be sure because I cannot divine it. There is no interpreter to be found, and no one to apply for the position. No one but me. And I’m not certain I’m up to this line of work. In fact, I’m almost certain I’m not.
—Please tell me, Uncle says.—If there’s anything at all.
I go to him now. I lower my face to his and press my mouth against his forehead. My lips linger there for a second or two, and they seem to absorb something from his skin, from the very fibres of his body. It has a taste: acrid and tart. Like fear. And from the look in his eyes, I can’t tell whether I have received it or imparted it.
18 December 1860
Dear Father,
Having failed to waylay you during our last encounter, I find myself obliged to communicate the way I know best: by post. A spectral post, to be sure. You will find no postage attached; indeed, you will find no envelope, for I am committing my message to the stationery of the air, in the hope that you may stumble across it during your peregrinations. A ghost, I imagine, needs quite as much entertainment as the next fellow, and if my words can add a bit of pigment to your day, so much the better.
How few letters I sent you, Father, while you were alive. It’s a bitter thing to reflect on—nearly stops me in my tracks outright—but I stay the course, for no other reason than that I wish us to come to an understanding. Or something perhaps better than understanding.
I was going to ask you first of all what you think the letter G might stand for. But there are so many possibilities, I think it would take us many lifetimes to sort through them all. And so I will pose another question to you.
Who shall be the narrator of us?
Of you and me, I mean. Of all of us.
As a narrator, of course, I’m still feeling my way, but I do have quite a lot of practice being narrated. The holiday season always calls one particular instance to mind. You may yourself remember. I was six at the time, and it was Christmas Day, and I was sitting in the next room when you told Mother what I’d said to you in church. Let me see if I recall aright. Let me see.
—O, Father, I hope the people in church see me, because I’m a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.
It was still novel then, that feeling of going over ground I thought familiar and finding nothing I could recognise. Everything had been transformed by an alien sensibility. Yes, I could remember going to church with you. I could remember saying how cold I was and why couldn’t they get on with the service and why must Mrs. Groundley wear such a frightful bonnet with all those dead pansies. But I couldn’t recall even thinking the words you assigned to me.
But those were the words I was assigned, and so they became my words, and you became my teller.
There were more words, I know, more narratives, but they tend to merge into a single strict mythos, a unitary tableau. You and I returning from our ramble, coming through the front door, and Mother there to greet us—always there to greet us—and before you had even removed your scarf, you’d have launched your latest narrative.
—Oh, my dear, I must tell you what this boy of ours said. Right as we were passing the canal, we saw an old woman with a missing leg. And
Tim said to me, “Father, I wish I could make my crutch a thousand times longer, so that I could share it with everyone in the world who needs one….”
It was a bit like a serialised novel. By which I mean that I was always eager for the next installment. What was it Tim had said today? Of course, I knew that certain formulae applied: the pious, improving cadence, the little grace note of hope. Although if I might step outside the story for a moment—allow me, if you would, this textual insult—I was never particularly hopeful in those days. If you must know, I was absolutely convinced that I would die…very soon…and the only thing I ever really hoped for was that death might come quickly and not leave my heart fluttering in my chest like a bird trapped in a chimney. That was all.
In any event, it was a complex business, Father, this dual imperative of being primary character and audience. There were times, I admit, when I found myself bouncing between the ontological poles—bouncing so hard it smarted. Well, of course it did. Those tales of yours came complete with implicit morals, didn’t they? Little barbs of reproach for the things I hadn’t thought to say, the things you had been forced to say for me. Why else would you go to such lengths of invention?
Or was it the mere act of inventing? Did that carry its own reward?
Because there truly was a rapture about you, Father, in those moments of telling, more than I could stomach, for if you weren’t reproaching me in disguise, then you were believing. All those words, all those stories were being dredged up from some secret and inaccessible well, drawn up through your head and into my mouth, and what was that if not faith? The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen….
Well, it’s only proper, I suppose. Every storyteller must have faith in his story. And so must his audience. And so I did, a bit—and then a little bit more. And if I never believed wholeheartedly, I was moved at least to become a part of your story, which is close to the same thing. I wanted to be the boy you told Mother about.
And if I couldn’t quite manage that—not every minute—I could at any rate take a turn at narrating him. And so when you bore me through the streets on your shoulders, I did my best to speak in his voice.
—Look at that poor lad on the corner selling buttons—how happy is my lot compared to his!
Even then, it was too obviously theatrical for my tastes, but your tastes were different. And whenever the family was gathered, I could never be obvious enough. A dewy look at Sam when he carried me to the table. A dewy look at Belinda when she slid me some of her potato. Prayers at pregnant intervals. And then, when the plates had been cleared, songs: lovely maudlin songs, full of tremolos and cadenzas.
And Lord help me, how I smiled. Which came in handy, Father, because I soon learned that, going out in public as often as we did, we could no longer keep our text private; we would have to contend with rival interpreters. They had no compunction about calling after us.
—Lookit! It’s the two-headed beast! And the top un’s the ugliest!
—Sir, you got a wart comin’ out your hat!
Critics.
You never heard them, Father, I’m convinced of that. Faith was your stanchion, and more power to you.
The mistake I made in those days—pardonable, I hope, in one so young—lay in thinking that by occupying your narrative, I might exert some authorial power over it. But in fact, the more thoroughly I inhabited it, the more completely it became your story. It took me many years to scribble out my own, which, I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn, was rather different from the one you and I created. (I claim coauthorship only on corporeal grounds.) This boy…this newboy…well, he was much angrier, for one thing, terribly angry. And funnier, too: that was a surprise. I remember sitting in the British Museum and telling Mr. McReady about the religious enthusiast Uncle N sicced on us one summer, that Welsh Congregationalist with the walleye and pitted nose and the extraordinary breath.
—Like rotten ham soaked in turpentine, I said.—I think I shall have to get well so as never to inhale him again.
And Mr. McReady got that look on his face, that strange halfway condition between laughter and outrage. And over time, such remarks created in us a state of mild but chronic alarm, as though I had daggers secreted in places neither of us knew about. And I came to realise that those daggers were nothing but the proddings of me, desperate to emerge.
But I never made amusing remarks around you, Father; I couldn’t. They would have been out of character.
Mother, though, might have appreciated them. I’ve always suspected she was closer to me in spirit than she ever let on. The week before she died, she said:
—You know, Tim, I wish we hadn’t got rid of that crutch of yours.
I asked her why, thinking perhaps she’d gone a bit soft on the old artifacts. She said:
—It was the best back scratcher I ever had, wasn’t it?
There was a wag for you. I wish I’d known it sooner.
Do you remember what you told Mother right after The Change?
—I think, my dear—no, I am absolutely sure of it. Things will never be the same.
And on this occasion, you were right, Father. They weren’t.
Chapter 7
—MR. TIMOTHY?
Timid and sore flustered, Mary Catherine twines her head round my bedroom door.
—Mr. Timothy, there’s a…there’s a Colin the Melodious here to see you.
—You’re jesting.
—No, sir, he’s…I left him in the—
She is cut off by the sound of her own squeal. The visitor in question has followed her up the stairs, crept up behind her, and made his presence unequivocally felt. And even as she reaches back to swat the offending hand, he ducks under her arm, darts into the center of the room, and stands there in diamonds of morning light, his shoulders thrown back like a barnyard cock.
—Filthy little…
—It’s all right, Mary Catherine. Leave him to me.
She retreats with all the pride she can muster, but he ogles her all the way back down the hall. Very serious about his work. Robed in abstraction by the time he turns back to me.
—Nice rollickin’ bum on that one. Spoken for?
—I’m afraid I can’t say.
—Not that I got me room for any more. You can guess, my line of work, I’m always a-havin’ to beat ’em off like rats. Someday, though, a cove’s got to settle down, eh? What then, I ask you? What then, Mr. Tim-o-thee?
There’s only one chair, which he quickly seizes for his own, swinging it round so that his chest presses against the chair’s back. From my perch on the bed, I have the precarious sense of being a visitor in my own room.
—How did you find me, Colin?
—Followed you straight home the other mornin’. A right easy mark you was, sir, don’t mind my saying. Any child coulda done it.
He leans back and casually studies the room, in all its fourteen-by-ten-foot splendour. The sloping floor, the thin fault line in the ceiling above. The patternless carpet. Tiny table, tiny washing stand, tiny wardrobe—everything seems suddenly pitched to his scale.
—Wouldna guessed it of you, sir. Livin’ in such an establishment as this. Shameful.
—Well, I don’t…it’s not as if I were reimbursed….
—Oh, no, sir. Nothin’ in coin. I got ya.
His tongue slides with agonizing slowness around the oval of his mouth.
—Do you go out of your way to offend, Colin? Or is it just like breathing for you?
—Listen to him! When I’m the one as should be offended. You ain’t even asked why I come.
—Then tell me and be gone.
—I found her, sir.
And now the excitement of his errand finally overtakes him. It roils his carefully composed face, sets his hands to dancing on the frame of the chair.
—Found whom?
—Whom, the man asks. Whom. That gal you was takin’ on about, that’s whom.
—Where?
—Oh, now he�
��s risin’ to it! Wants to know, don’t he? Well, I’m afraid, sir, this being highly confidential intelligence, I cannot part with it on account of I am unremunerated.
—How much?
—Well, it all depends, sir. On one’s eagerness to possess the aforementioned—
—How much?
—Half a pound to say where. Another half to take you there.
—Done to both.
And simply for the pleasure of checking his pleasure, I add:
—Payment upon completion.
—Oh. Well, speakin’ frankly, sir, we were…we were hopin’ for a bit up front, just to tide us over….
—You’ll get the full amount when you lead me to her.
Frowning, he bangs his cap against the back of the chair. For the first time in our brief acquaintance, he is acting his age.
—Drury Lane Garden, he says.—By the churchyard. It’s no good goin’ now, she only comes first thing in the morning. And it’s no good goin’ on your own, you’ll never find it, not in a million years.
—Well, then, I look forward to your enlightened escort. Meet me tomorrow morning at Covent Garden, by the blind woman’s cabbage stall. Eight o’clock, shall we say?
He gives me a tetchy shrug, which I take for consent.
—Honestly, sir, don’t know what you wants with her. She’s a bit touched, if you ask me.
—Touched how?
—Well, she don’t…she don’t speak the language, do she?
—And how would you know that?
—Seen her chasin’ down some cove as stole her scarf. All in a righteous fury she were, a-screamin’ and a-hollerin’. Didn’t understand a bloody word she were sayin’.
—And would that be the same scarf you have wrapped round your neck?
His hands fly to his throat, bury themselves in the blue woollen folds. His eyes form great cracked moons.
—Why, so it is, sir. Acquired it, I did, from the fellow as took it.
—And would that fellow be you, Colin?
—Sir, you wound me, truly you do. I mean the very…to even think you’d—
—It was you.
—Bloody hell, I had to have somethink, didn’t I? So you’d know it were really her. Had to be sure you’d trust me, sir.
