Mr. Timothy

by Louis Bayard

  —Trust you. Let me see, you steal scarves, you beg for change, you extort money. How could I fail to trust you, Colin?

  —Well, I’m glad you sees it that way, sir. For an instant there, I was concerned.

  It takes some doing to get Colin out of the house. He is hell bent on sampling the local merchandise, and it doesn’t matter that the girls are all asleep in their beds and won’t be stirred for love or money, he wants me to sound the morning reveille, send them all running into his welcoming arms. Only after I have slipped him a few shillings and promised him introductions at a future date does he agree to vacate, and just in time, for not half a minute after he has slipped out the back, Mrs. Sharpe comes charging through the front, laden with festive petticoats, bottles of brandy, and, pinned between the crumbling chalk cliffs of her teeth, a frond of maidenhead fern.

  —There you are, Mr. Timothy. You have found me in shocking dishabille. A poor, wretched woman, ready to throw herself at your feet. Tell me! Tell me that your circle of acquaintance numbers at least one professional musician!

  It is startling, I own, to be addressed in the same manner as her patrons.

  —Musician, Mrs. Sharpe?

  —I have just learned—and with the greatest chagrin—that the harpist engaged for our petite soirée de Noël has come down with catarrh. Why this should prevent him from strumming his damned stringbox, I cannot tell you, but our little holiday function teeters, teeters on the precipice, and so I must repeat, Mr. Timothy: Do you know of anyone? With the slightest inclination to carry a tune in any direction?

  At such moments, I find it always best to simulate thought: peer at the ground, wrinkle the brow, shut the eyes halfway. This time, against all odds, a thought emerges, actually stamps its feet in my ear.

  —I know a young boy. With a fine voice.

  Sniffing speculatively, Mrs. Sharpe strokes her temple with the fern frond. The public madam drops away.

  —You vouch for him?

  —Oh, yes. I have heard him.

  —And what would he need by way of accompaniment?

  —None, I believe. He prefers to work a cappella.

  —So much the better! We won’t need to get the piano tuned. Now, he’s not one of those beastly little altar boys?

  —Very much not.

  —I only ask because one of our guests, I won’t mention names, has come within a whisker of being defrocked on at least three separate occasions. We don’t want to be throwing the wrong kind of temptation his way.

  —Of course not.

  —Boy singer, eh? He might be charming. Invite him, by all means, and let me know if he’s free. We can discuss his fee at today’s session. Oh, but I must tell you, Mr. Timothy, I’ve been all in a stew over Mr. Crusoe ever since he promised to return Friday to his native land. All those dreadful cannibals and bearded Portuguese and whatnot, what can he be thinking? But hush, I’m a foolish old woman, keeping a well-dressed young man from his appointed rounds. Confess, you scoundrel! Which lucky jeune fille will be receiving a caller this afternoon?

  —No girl. Just my brother.

  This information produces a small puff of surprise in Mrs. Sharpe’s cheeks, and I can’t say I blame her. All these months behaving as though I had no relation in the world, and now alluding to one as casually as if he were a greengrocer. I think I must be taken in by my own nonchalance, for as I stroll up Great Windmill Street, I feel soft and half-attentive, as though I really were shopping for apples. Or women. Passing the shuttered-down face of the Argyll Rooms, I feel a prick of longing for the gay ladies who will be gathering there tonight: the whispering dresses, the fumes of champagne. And it is with a start that I see the newly erected edifice of St. Peter’s Church rearing up before me—its very name a prod and rebuke.

  Casting my eyes down, I hurry on towards the other Peter’s. Up Poland Street, then a quick left just shy of the Oxford Market…walking at such a clip and dodging so rapidly between carriages and hansoms and growlers and omnibuses that I have to stop myself after a stretch to make sure I haven’t gone too far.

  And that’s how I discover I am just where I need to be. The very block. There’s the draper’s with the misspelled placard. There’s the fruiterer’s, its barrels of oranges cursorily inspected by a wandering heifer.

  And there’s Peter’s store. The thyme-coloured awning and the golden scrawl: Cratchit’s Salon Photographique.

  And there’s Father in the window.

  No mistake this time. Really him. Glazed and enamelled in a brass frame, frozen a few weeks shy of his forty-ninth birthday. Peter had told him not to move for a good two minutes, and he took this admonition so seriously that his body went quite rigid from the effort—I remember it took us several minutes afterwards to uncoil him. The exertion is still visible in the portrait: he has the strained, fatalistic look of someone desiring only to please.

  You won’t find any pictures of Mother here: she couldn’t abide cameras, hated the way her smile went crooked on her. Nor will you find one of me, but that’s only because I was one of Peter’s first subjects. By the time he took the glass out, the image was almost completely black. Give it a few hours, he said. It’ll brighten as it dries. It never got an ounce lighter, and I was too young then to attach any symbolic value to it.

  Peter soon realised, of course, that on sunny days, he needn’t let his plate stop quite so long. And as his understanding of the medium improved, so did his clientele and his surroundings. A shilling portrait gallery in Whitechapel, followed by a half-guinea photographic saloon in Old Kent Road, and then this last, most spectacular leap: a plate-glass storefront in Oxford Street, swarming with London luminaries. Even I recognise a few of them: a twice-widowed marchioness; one of the generals charged with stamping out the sepoys; a sporadically infamous actress, recently decamped from a cotton plantation in Alabama and rumoured to be plotting a return to the stage. Unimpeachably correct portraits, all of them, propped on tiers of red velvet or hanging from wires, unmoored and isolate, like warring satellites.

  And then, from deep in the heart of this galaxy, a planet emerges—a living, breathing head. Just the crown at first (poignant little bald track) and then the face, tilting upwards. A contented sort of mug, all of its adolescent excesses planed away, and a new bourgeois fullness swelling its jowls. Only six months since I last saw him, and already the scraggly black hair has started to recede, and a new beard has rushed to fill the vacuum—a tentative growth, much lighter than the hair and rather too carefully trimmed to be fashionable, but strangely hopeful all the same.

  He doesn’t notice me at first. Too much to do. Has to adjust the angles of the frames, doesn’t he? Swipe specks of lint off the velvet, primp a garland of mums…only then can he look to see who’s on the other side of the window.

  I see his mouth form my name: a quick drop and then a resealing of the lower lip. The pure shock of me. I’m surprised he can even make it to the shop door, but he’s there when I walk in, clapping me on the shoulders, grabbing my elbow, feinting a punch to my jaw—and then, for a few seconds, doing nothing at all. Only looking.

  —Christ, Tim, where in hell have you been keeping yourself? God above me…Annie! Annie, look who it is!

  From an adjoining room, a cool voice answers:

  —I’ll be there presently.

  —Oop, says Peter, winking.—She’s with someone, I half forgot.

  —Duchess? Empress?

  —Somebody’s aunt, that’s all I know.

  I take a few interrogative steps into the shop, rest my fingers on a tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl visiting-card case. Always the trinkets, isn’t it? The petits objets, shouting the big news of success.

  —A long time you’ve been, Tim.

  —Yes. Well.

  And rather than incriminate myself further, I jerk my thumb towards the front window.

  —Nice to see Father in such good company.

  —Yes, I thought he’d quite enjoy it.

  —Still can’
t believe the nobs let you hang them out like this. A bit vulgar for that crowd, isn’t it?

  —Ah, but they get the portrait for free. You’d be amazed how cash-poor some of them are.

  —Shake ’em by the heels next time.

  —Doesn’t make for a good likeness, I’m afraid. Ah, here she is! Say hello to your prodigal brother-in-law.

  No hanging back for our Annie. Once she spots you, she takes the shortest possible route there—you feel as though you were the very terminus she had in mind entering the room. Such a ravishing directness in such a small, muscular figure. Jutting out her chin like a train bumper, opening her steam-whistle mouth.

  —Oh, he’s thin as gristle, I knew it. Didn’t I say? I told Peter, “He’s starving half to death. No woman to cook for him, no one to sew his buttons on.”

  —Annie, I was waiting for you.

  —He doesn’t look half bad, says Peter.—All things considered.

  —Half bad? He looks a fright. You’re to stay for dinner, there’s no arguing.

  —Who could argue?

  And having swept the field of me, Annie turns her full arsenal on her husband.

  —Darling, listen. The session is over, but Miss Ashbee’s still inside. She’s under the impression we’re mesmerists, and she won’t leave until she’s sure the spell has been broken.

  —Perfect! We can give her any picture at all, she won’t know the difference.

  —No one ever does. The point is she’s already paid up, so if you see her wandering about, just push her nicely through the door: “Have a lovely afternoon, mind the step.” Do you think you’re up to it?

  —I believe so, my love.

  —In the meantime, gentlemen, I have refuse baths to empty, and you two have mouths to empty, I’m sure. You’ll pray excuse me….

  She backs her way into the adjoining storeroom and, at the last minute, aims a quick wink in the general direction of her husband. It leaves Peter dazed…still dazed!…after three years of marriage.

  —The brains of the establishment, Tim. I’m just…I’m towing along in her wake, that’s all.

  —Do you object?

  —I do not. Come, though, we’ve got—oh, hang on, we can’t pop into the studio just yet, but do please note the furniture. It’s nothing like what you’d find at Sarony’s studio, not exactly Louis Quinze, I mean, but it’s all new, except for the fire screen, that belonged to Annie’s grandmother. The souvenir case, we picked up in Guildford. And the seashells—well, we just plucked ’em right off the shore in Portsmouth. I don’t know, it all seems very cluttered to me, but Annie says it’s just the right note of romantic disarray. Says it’s expected of an artist. Imagine, Tim, me an artist! When I couldn’t even draw a window, remember?

  I do remember. But Peter’s covered some distance since then, and for the last three years, he’s done it without Uncle’s money. And as I follow him through the lanes of professionally arranged bric-a-brac, past the rows of oxyhydrogen gas lamps, as I absorb his sloping, unhurried gait and his foreshortened gestures—an open palm, a casually raised finger—I think: Yes. Yes, this is what it looks like. To be a man. And I want to embrace him right there, in the middle of his damned shop. Or throttle him.

  —’Course, Annie’s the real artist. No one like her for tinting out the faces a bit, bringing out the blue in someone’s coat. Ah, and here’s a little theatrical trickery on our part: painted scenery, Tim. The young gentlemen love it. We’ve got backdrops of Mont Blanc, the Parthenon, Colosseum—they can tour the Continent now without ever leaving home. Oh, and you must look at these.

  He gestures towards a wine table, laid over with pocket-sized prints on thin paperboard mats. The prints are still slightly damp from their recent immersion. They exhale clouds of nitrate of silver, and smelling them is a bit like mashing one’s face into an old woman’s hair.

  —The newest thing, Tim. Cartes de visite. I ask you, likenesses like these, who needs tiresome old calling cards?

  —Who indeed?

  My fingers flutter across the image of an upright, swarthy man, on the far side of forty but dressed like a smart twenty-fiver, in a full-sleeved frock coat and a crossed tie and high collar. Nothing behind him but the recumbent swag of an organdy drape—as fraudulent as Mont Blanc, for all I know, but the impression is authentic. To think it is with personages like this that my brother, who once threw rocks at constables on Camden High Street, now spends his days. The contrast with my own circle is almost too much; I shall have to invite them all to Mrs. Sharpe’s party.

  —Not to paw the merchandise too much, Tim.

  —Sorry.

  —If you like, I’ll make a card for you. Free of charge.

  —I can’t think when I’d ever need it.

  I say it simply for something to say, but it casts a strange pall over us. He steps back a pace, fiddles with his watch key. I stroll another loop around the room. Then another.

  —See here, Peter, I know it’s an odd thing to ask, but I was wondering if you might enlighten me on a particular point.

  —Certainly.

  —Well, you remember how…in the old days…

  —Which old days would those be, Tim?

  —When you…when you got around a bit.

  His dark eyes twinkling, he lowers himself onto a settee.

  —Bless me, Tim, where can this be leading?

  —Well, I was thinking how you used to know a certain class of person. Not that you…any more, I know that….

  —Go on.

  —Did you ever hear talk of girls being…you know, for any reason, branded?

  —Like cows, you mean?

  —Like that, yes.

  —Hoomm. I can’t…no, I can’t really…Tattoos now and again, that goes without saying, but brands…. It’s what they do to slaves, isn’t it?

  —Yes.

  His eyes squeeze down into slits.

  —Someone you know, Tim?

  —No. No, it’s not even anyone alive.

  A hiccough of laughter escapes me. Most disconcerting. I keep talking simply to cover my embarrassment.

  —Well, you’ll be glad to hear I saw Uncle N yesterday. Quite filled my ear with all my obligations: A hard time we have of it in this world….

  —Yes, I’ve had that one.

  —But we know that coming in, he said. And that’s—that’s where I can’t follow him. We don’t know that coming in, how could we? And if we could, would we even bother?

  —You’re in fine holiday fettle.

  —I can’t help it. I can’t. One sees things, Peter. Young girls dead before they’ve even bloody lived. You think they didn’t wonder, with their very last breath, why in God’s name they’d been put to all this trouble? I don’t have an answer for them, do you? There’s no answer. There’s no reason to bring any child into such a world.

  And then Annie’s icicle voice comes scraping through the air:

  —Pardon me.

  How long she’s been in the room, I can’t say, but she’s making great haste to leave it. Peter is halfway out of his chair, but she’s too quick for him, the darkroom door is already slamming after her, and as he slumps back in his seat, he gives his head a slow scratch. His mouth twists into a grimace.

  —Well, it’s…you mustn’t mind her, Tim. We’re still…God hasn’t seen fit to bless us yet, but we’re still hoping, you see.

  My head drops into my hands.

  —Ohh, Christ.

  —You weren’t to know.

  —I damn well was to know. I’m just a great fat idiot, that’s all.

  —Not so fat.

  I love that smile of Peter’s: soft and reproving all at once. Judgement and then permanent amnesty.

  —I tell her all the time, Tim, if God means it to be, it’ll be. But that’s not enough, she feels it so. Can’t get around it. I think it’s to the point now she’d take any baby at all.

  He snorts at the floor.

  —Even branded on all sides. And shod by the loc
al smith.

  Suddenly, over his left shoulder, a strange and ephemeral vision: a woman, tall and straight and ancient, under a nest of strawberry curls. Drawn by some magnetic field all her own, too insensible, perhaps, to notice the slow, inexorable slide of her bonnet towards her left ear.

  —All right, Miss Ashbee?

  —Oh, yes. You know, while I was being mesmerised, I had the most charming dream.

  —Is that so?

  —I’m afraid I can’t recall a moment of it now.

  —Well, that accounts for its charm, perhaps. Shall we send on your portraits when they’re done?

  —That would be lovely. And do say good-bye to the other gentleman, if you would.

  —Other gentleman, Miss Ashbee?

  —Yes, he was standing very still and quiet in the center of the room. Three legs and one large glass eye.

  Chapter 8

  SWINGING HIS HEAD ROUND, Colin the Melodious fixes me with a basilisk stare.

  —Christ, is that the fastest you can go?

  Until now, he has been the most admirable of guides. With his low-slung gravity and busy feet, he can navigate any puddle, skirt the most treacherous morass, and he has a keen inner eye for the sheets of black ice that crop up every ten yards or so. A good thing, too, for it’s the dreariest, drizzliest of mornings—sleet and ice and rain sloughing down in a great numbing soup—and Drury Lane’s courts have never been mazier. Only fifteen minutes ago, we were in Covent Garden, surrounded by oxen and sheep, handbarrows and donkey carts, costers bawling for all they were worth: the holy din of the market. Now we might as well be in another hemisphere. The streets have vanished under drifts of mud. The houses charge at us like bellicose dart throwers, or else lean drunkenly on one another’s shoulders, and from their chimneys, parabolas of soot rain down on us in hard black flakes.

  —Lord bless me, Mr. Timothy! You must have a week’s worth of shit up your bum!

  It’s half past eight, but the morning hasn’t quite taken hold here. The street lamps still smoulder through curtains of sleet. Candles flicker from barely discernible windows. The sky holds far off, and the only sound is Colin’s occasional whistling—as lovely, in its way, as his singing—and even this dies away as the streets taper into tunnels and the houses close down on our heads. We step over shattered, frothing cisterns and wrenched-off water spouts, still clogged with black ice, and it seems to me we no longer have any location to speak of. We are off the human map.