by Louis Bayard
He stops himself in the act of throwing another blanket over Philomela.
—Something wrong, Captain?
—No. No, indeed, Tim. It’s just she looks very like the gal Gully left behind in Majorca. We’ve told you ’bout her, ain’t we? Drambusca was her name. A few years older than this one, but built along the same planes, no mistake.
And where is Drambusca now? I wonder. Longing for Gully as he for her? Chasing little Drambuscas through the olive groves? It matters not, she dwells forever in the captain’s heart. Still unravished bride of time, as the poet says.
—Have no fear, Tim. Anyone so much as tries to board this little ship, they’ll get themselves a broadside from yours truly, make no mistake.
He punctuates this with the fiercest of glowers, which expands to include Colin.—See here, young fellow, we don’t want no beasts of hell a-wakin’ this girl afore she’s ready, now do we?
—S’pose not.
—What say you and Gully goes on a cat expedition?
—Can I keep one if I catches it?
—You can keep ’em all, lad, God shield you. Kill ’em, too, while you’re at it.
They close the door behind them. A minute later, I hear the muffled howls of Gully’s quarry, the scraping of claws and shoes on wood, and the ostinato of the good captain’s voice, calling down a lifetime’s worth of oaths. And it may be the instinctive need for counterpoint that draws the song from my mouth, and places it in a lower octave than I was once used to hearing it. Something, something about this new register transforms the music, so that it becomes as remote in my mind as Majorca.
O, slumber my darling, thy sire is a knight,
Thy mother’s a lady so lovely and bright;
The hills and the dales, and the tow’rs which you see,
They all shall belong, my dear creature, to thee.
—Not bad, says Colin. Bit sharp on that last note.
—Oh.
My face is still smouldering as I walk to the window.
—Something my mother used to sing, I say. Some years back.
—She about, your mum?
—No.
—Dad?
—Gone, too.
—Huh. Wish mine was. Always turnin’ up when you least wants him. Mr. Badpenny, I calls him.
—We’ll talk again tomorrow, Colin.
—Oh, yes. Regardin’ the dress for this here whorefest at which I am to shine—
—Here’s some money. Find something suitable.
—Squeeze out another pound, it’ll be even more suitable.
—Good night, Colin.
—Good night, then.
The door closes softly after him, and with him goes most of the sound. Nothing beyond the final protest of a cat in the distance, and the captain’s low humming as he pours himself another glass of Madeira, and the patient respiration of the Dutch clock.
As good a time as any, says the clock.
First the blankets: peel them carefully from the shoulder, one after the other. Then the sheet. The obscuring fronds of hair, they must go. And now, in short order, we arrive at the bared skin of the shoulder.
Except it is no longer bare; it has company.
A remarkable creature, only superficially resembling the letter G, but glimmering through it, a pair of piercing eyes and an undeniable animal intelligence.
The rudiments of a snore rise up through Philomela’s throat. And behind me, the strand of Captain Gully’s humming broadens into knots of language: Rest ye…dismay…saviour.
It’s eleven o’clock by the time I let myself in at Mrs. Sharpe’s. Peak working time for the staff, so it’s a bit disconcerting to find the good madam tending not to patrons but to me. Sitting in a bare wooden chair in the foyer, in a nightgown and shawl that look calculatedly dowdy, her arms folded, her face sectioned into frowns.
—Good evening, Mrs. Sharpe.
The frowns carve themselves deeper.
—I trust you’re well.
The eyes are hard as cherry stones.
—Well, I think I’ll retire now, if that’s all right with you.
I get as far as the stairs before her voice stops me.
—I waited for you.
It’s the aggrieved voice of a young girl, and when I turn around, I see there’s a pout to match, the upper lip swallowed entirely by the lower.
—Ohh. Your lesson….
—Maybe your other women don’t mind being jilted, Mr. Timothy, but I run a business. A great many people depend on me.
—Please accept my—
—I can’t be wasting half the day waiting for an employee to, to condescend to…why, if you must know, people wait on me, never the vice versa.
—I promise it won’t happen again.
Unmollified, she gives herself a shake, glares at the hall clock. She says:
—Mr. Crusoe has just saved a Spaniard from being eaten.
—Oh! So you’ve…you’ve read ahead.
—It wasn’t the same, doing it myself. It lacked something.
—I imagine it did, I’m very sorry.
She fiddles with the drawstring of her nightgown.
—Well, I know how the world works. A young man can’t be expected to do an old woman’s bidding, not forever.
—Oh, well, it’s…
—He must follow his heart, mustn’t he?
—Heart, yes.
She studies me as one might study a cloud formation.
—You’re not yourself, Mr. Timothy. These past few days, you have most certainly not been yourself.
I lean against the banister. Very tired, all of a sudden.
—A friend of mine is in some difficulty, Mrs. Sharpe. That’s all.
—Perhaps there’s something I can do?
—No. I don’t think so.
—I am, after all…known to a few personages. I’d be glad to speak to them if you—
—It’s most kind of you, but not just yet. Thank you.
If she feels rebuffed, she gives no sign of it. Rises to her feet, adjusts her shawl. Honours me with a seasonal smile.
—Well, we’re sure to be busy as goblins the next few days, so I thought I might give you this now.
It has been hiding under her chair all along, a tiny bundle in embossed forest-green wrapping. Inside is a casket, which opens to reveal a silver horse the size of a fingernail, so small it nearly vanishes into the folds of my palm.
—It’s very nice. It’s…
—A charm, Mr. Timothy. For your watch chain. Merry Christmas.
Stricken, I look up at her.
—I haven’t…
—No matter, Mr. Timothy.
—I’ve been fully meaning to get you something. I’ve been strapped for time of late.
—There’s no need, you’ve, you’ve already…I mean, it’s been lovely, the lessons and…and all of it.
I have no idea what to say, and Mrs. Sharpe contents herself with brushing a spot from my waistcoat.
—Look at you, such a state. What, have you been sleeping in a sawmill? And where’s your hat? We’ll let Mary Catherine have a go at the jacket, it’s a horror.
It does bring back Mother, I won’t deny it. The whole performance: impersonal inventory, flurrying hands, deliberately brusque tone. All that’s missing is the concluding “Get on with you now.”
And then Mrs. Sharpe says:
—Get on with you now.
The sight of the smile drifting across my face must alarm her, for she takes a couple of backwards steps and clutches her shawl even more tightly round her.
—And don’t forget the party tomorrow night, Mr. Timothy. I won’t be stood up twice.
—I’ll remember.
—And my poem? You won’t forget that, either?
—Of course not.
—Good night, then.
—Good night.
Coming back from Gully’s, I confess I envisioned an uninterrupted line straight from the front door to my bed. But once I have cle
ared the obstacle that was Mrs. Sharpe, a new one confronts me: George. Waiting in the hall by my bedroom in list shoes and a rather natty flannel dressing gown, scanning the inflammatory headlines of the News of the World. How long he has been there, I cannot say, but when he spies me, he contrives to look as startled as if we had collided in a Chinese pagoda.
—Why, Mr. Timothy! A bit late for you to be turning in, isn’t it?
—The holidays are rather a full time, George. As I’m sure you appreciate.
—Full, that’s it. Why, things have got so full even the police have stopped in. To partake of the fullness. Did you know that?
—Can’t say I did.
—Odd, they were looking for some sort of dangerous criminal, but I don’t know how dangerous he could be, since he sounded a bit like you. From the description, I mean.
—I’m a fairly nondescript sort, George. I imagine there are any number of people who resemble me.
—Imagine so, yes. All the same, this particular description was quite close to the mark, right down to the…oh, well, limp is such an un-Christian sort of word, isn’t it?
—I have heard worse.
—Well, why go on? I mean to say, even if this fellow, this criminal…even if he looks like you and…and limps like you…well, London’s spilling over with nondescript cripples, is it not? Turn over a rock, I mean to say, and you’ll find one.
—Very true.
—So I suppose we’ll just have to stay on the watch for this dangerous criminal.
—Naturally.
Smiling, George takes a step towards me. Wriggles his fingers down the center of my waistcoat.
—You see, the thing is, Mr. Timothy, we’re on very favourable terms with the police, the missus and I. It’s something we take pride in, if you must know. I’d hate for all that to be jeopardised by someone who doesn’t…oh, let’s be charitable and assume he simply doesn’t know any better. Insists on doing things he oughtn’t.
—You may depend on me, George, never to lower the moral tone of this establishment.
His fingers linger on one of my waistcoat buttons.
—Just thought you’d care to keep these things in mind. Please do keep them in mind, won’t you, Mr. Timothy?
By the time he’s gone, I am so exhausted I barely have the power to undress myself. I lie there in bed with Father’s old comforter round my neck, but when I close my eyes, the creature is still there—that carnivorous G, branded inside my lids. I give my eyes a rub, I try to blink it away, but it only transmogrifies into something else: a man in a carriage, tracing a line along his lips.
I know you, he says.
No. No, you don’t.
We carry on the argument for some time, well past the bounds of consciousness, until the flapping of wings sends us both scurrying.
20 December 1860
Dear Father,
Have I described my bedroom to you? It’s ugly, but it has its fascinations. For instance, there’s not a right angle in the whole space. The walls meet at acute or obtuse angles, and the ceiling line ripples like water, and the floor slopes downwards, so that, lying in bed, I feel the faintest tug of gravity on the soles of my feet. Some mornings, that pull is the only thing that gets me out of bed.
Not a bad place for a bachelor, but all the same, I’m rather glad Philomela hasn’t seen it; she might not approve. I don’t know why I should be jealous of my standing in her eyes; I can’t honestly say I have any. All the same, better she should imagine something a bit grander than this.
We were talking of narrators the last time we spoke. No; I was talking of narrators.
When I was still young, Father, I assumed yours was the only story that could bind me. But that was before Uncle N introduced an entirely new version, one that is still unfolding in directions I can’t predict.
Now, if I were to compare the two texts—yours and Uncle N’s—I would say that yours was exclusively present-tense, while his was oriented almost entirely towards the future. Also, his had a guiding metaphor—rather an exhausted metaphor, but there you are.
Are you ready for a story, Father?
A young boy—roses blooming in the hollows of his cheeks—is deprived by cruel Fate of the use of one limb. He is clasped in the bosom of a warm, distracted family, who dote upon him but fail to understand his intrinsic worth. For this boy, the reader soon learns, is nothing less than a changeling, a prince of nature whose birthright was stolen from him in infancy (even as his leg was robbed of its motive force). The infamy might have stood uncorrected were it not for the intervention of a kindly family friend who detects something unusual in the boy, something no one else can see, the boy least of all. An effluvium of gentility that burnishes the very air around him. And so this kindly old gentleman resolves to restore the changeling to his proper place in the cosmic hierarchy—to raise him up, as it were, to the life for which he was originally destined.
This ambition will, of course, be realised through the means closest to hand: relentless philanthropy. And so there are doctors—galloping hordes of doctors, from every point on the medical spectrum, and a few from far off the spectrum. There are trips to Bath and Brighton, and there are accompanying wardrobes, for what passes in Camden Town will not always do elsewhere. There are incidental gifts, tokens and knickknacks and party favours, unaffiliated with any holiday or celebration.
The child is grateful for these attentions and not, perhaps, as puzzled by them as he ought to be. He assumes only that his medical condition has sparked the gentleman’s latent Christian sentiments. But as the months pass, and as the attentions increase, another possibility dawns on him. Perhaps this gentleman has divined something in him—some germ of potential waiting to be cultured.
And in this way, the boy becomes slowly acculturated to his own mythos, and over time, so does the rest of his family. With mysterious unanimity, they accept the central premise of the story—that great things are expected of this boy, and so great things are to be given—and they none of them bat an eye, with the possible exception of the eldest brother, who is left to moulder away in the local grammar school while the young changeling is offered his pick of Charterhouse and Harrow and Rugby.
In the end, of course, it is decided the boy isn’t up to outdoor sports, and so various tutors are co-opted in the great work of making him a gentleman. Quite dreary, these tutors, and as itinerant as apple peddlers. The boy runs through four or five of them a year. Whether this is his doing, no one can say, but it is clear that the prospect of spending months in a North London garret whipping a cripple’s vowels into shape and quizzing him in cognates does not excite the ambitions of the average educator.
And here comes a break in the narrative: Mr. McReady.
Oh, you must remember him, Father, I don’t care how long you’ve been dead. He had furnace-red hair and a gold-tipped cane that he held like an épée, and outsized russet cravats that spilled halfway down his chest, and a new flower poking from his lapel every day—not simply the petals but the entire stem, winding down his torso like an extruded vein. The first time he saw me, he tilted his hat to one side and cried:
—Up, up and quit your books, or surely you’ll grow double!
I was thirteen at the time. I had no idea he was quoting someone; I took it simply as a call to action. That very day, we marched out of the garret and into London’s waiting arms, and we never really came back.
Days would go by with neither of us opening a book; we chose instead to tour the city (in a landau, usually, leased for us by Uncle N). Sometimes Mr. McReady would order the carriage to stop and would drag me out to inspect a floral display or to meet an especially eloquent shoeblack or racetrack tout or to make covert study of the profile of a recruiting sergeant at Westminster.
We did eventually get round to the books, but only the right sort of books. Mr. McReady had no use for Latin, you see; Greek was the language for him and Hellenism his most exalted theme. He would speak at great length on Plato’s Symposium an
d Lacedaemonian beauty, on Castor and Pollux, Damon and Pythias, Heracles and Hylas. And even the non-Greek passages tended to follow the same line. We read long excerpts from Li Amitiez de Amis et Amile, and the first hundred or so of Shakespeare’s sonnets, over and over again, and everything by Marlowe and nothing by Jonson. And on occasion, Mr. McReady would gladly abandon his role of tutor, would actually plant himself at my feet and demand to know what I thought of a particular strophe, and he wouldn’t relent until I said something, and at first I had nothing to say, and then finally I did have something, and as I gazed down at Mr. McReady, sitting rapt at my feet, I thought perhaps I was different—different from you and Mother and everyone else.
In the end, Mr. McReady lasted only a little longer than the others, although he would have stayed for the rest of his life. That, at any rate, is the vow he made me in his letter, the one he sealed inside a perfumed envelope and slipped into my coat pocket. A fascinating document—I wish I still had it with me. Disjointed autobiography, for the most part: the salad days of Oxford and Professor Jowett and Professor Pater and the Newdigate Prize and then some shadowy ellipsis and Eden gone like smoke. None of it made much sense to me, but the closing peroration was extraordinary. A hymn to the love of Jonathan and David. And yes, a pledge of undying fealty. Most embarrassing to a thirteen-year-old; it seemed an act of kindness not to mention it. But as luck would have it, Mother found the letter—probably smelt it during her daily house rounds—and complained to Uncle N, and that was all for Mr. McReady.
You probably didn’t notice his absence, Father. He was just another tutor.
Back to our story. Having witnessed the dismal progress of the tutoring profession, the kindly old gentleman resolves to take the boy’s education into his own hands. Pedagogy is not his natural bent, but what’s to be done? He’s the only one who can be trusted with this precious cargo. And so the boy and the gentleman travel to the Crystal Palace (the old man grumbling the whole while at the profligacy of it, the foreignness). They attend operas and plays. The boy is especially struck by Charles and Ellen Kean in Much Ado About Nothing at the Princess’s Theatre. The dazzling intimacy of their exchanges—the boy flushes and looks away, as though he has blundered into someone’s boudoir. At some point in the middle of the third act, the old gentleman leans in to him and says:
