by Louis Bayard
—Come with me.
—Where we headin’?
—Come.
Night has fallen quickly on Oxford Street, but the plate-glass storefronts are still aglow with candlelight. Even this establishment, with its thyme-coloured awning and golden scrawl, even Cratchit’s Salon Photographique burns bright. And there in the front window, Father’s face stands proudly illuminated; his anxious squint has never tasted more of beatitude.
As I raise my hand to knock, Colin grabs me by the sleeve.
—They’re closed, Mr. Timothy. I’m sure of it.
—They’re at home.
It’s just a matter of pounding and then pounding more fiercely, that’s all, and before another minute has passed, Peter is hustling over, rolling down his sleeves, and Annie is one step behind him, making quick reparations in her hair, and all the adjustments cease as soon as they see who it is.
Peter wrenches the door open. His mouth forms my name, but Annie is the only one who speaks.
—You look like death, Tim.
I feel a bit like Death, too. Merciless and unstoppable. Even Annie is too cowed to block my way. I stride into the shop and march past the souvenir case and the seashells, past the entrance to the studio, past the painted backdrops of Mont Blanc and the Parthenon, only half listening to Colin’s bleating voice as it trails after me.
—I told him he weren’t well enough…head like a furnace…no weather for bein’ out of doors….
And still I keep going, until I have reached the wine table at the shop’s western end. The table with its pocket-sized prints on thin paperboard mats—the cartes de visite that have become the last word in fashion.
And there, rising from the maelstrom of imagery, is 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. And wearing on his index finger a very heavy Spanish ring of carved rose gold, with an inset gem, large and square and perfect.
I snatch the card from the table. I dangle it in front of Peter’s astonished face.
—Who is this?
—What’s the matter with you, Tim? It’s one of our patrons.
And that’s when I start to roar. I wouldn’t have thought I had the strength for it, but I do, I indisputably do.
—Tell me his name! Tell me his damned name!
Chapter 18
ANNIE IS THE FIRST TO SPEAK.
—What are you going on about, Tim? That’s Lord Frederick Griffyn.
She tilts her face towards mine, awaiting, demanding an explanation, but she will have to wait, for only now are things being explained to me. Explained not in words but in a whirligig of associations: an incised G with raptorial eyes…the sound of flapping wings…a lion’s haunches on a coat of arms…all coalescing at last into a single coherent figure. A name.
Griffin.
The image that has eluded me for so long, the image that breaks down every time I contemplate it, is now freely assembling itself in my mind. It is as if Mr. McReady had torn the frontispiece from one of his mythological compendia and dangled it before my eyes. I see the eagle’s head and wings, tapering and blending almost imperceptibly into the body and hind legs and insouciant tail of a lion. I see it all so clearly I can almost breathe on it.
The griffin, Tim. Common decorative motif in ancient Asian and Mediterranean tombs and sanctuaries. Mythological function not clear. Perhaps there was none; perhaps it laid a purely visual claim on the viewer. What claim does it lay on you?
A ripple of dread is all I remember. The puissance of a lion, expanded unimaginably by the addition of wings. There would be no stopping such a creature, surely. The entire world would have to bow down.
—Shall we have some tea? asks Peter.
And, at first hearing, it is an indecent suggestion, it is perfectly appalling. A good man has been brutally murdered, a young girl may well meet the same fate unless something is done now, there’s no time. There’s no time for bloody tea!
This, at any rate, is the remonstrance I am prepared to make, and then I see Annie striding forwards, with a heavy green tome pressed against her collarbone. A book as large as a bank box and as freely consulted as an almanac, judging from the ease with which the dog-eared pages pry themselves apart.
—Annie?
She drops the book on the nearest table, blows out a cupful of air.
—Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage. You wish to know about Lord Griffyn? Here is the place to start.
While Peter serves the tea, she bends her head over the gilt-lettered volume. Five minutes later, the head is still bent, and a low grumbling rises from her throat.
—Oof! I can’t get anywhere. Llewelyn of Llanishen, Williams of Llangeinor—they must invent these names. The only thing…well, what do you make of this? The family returned to Denbighshire in eighteen thirty two and very shortly afterwards Lord Thomas Griffyn—that would be Freddie’s grandfather—sold the Llanbradach estate; why, no one can tell. The estate had been in the family for nearly 600 years, and Lord Combermere told me upon the authority of Lord Griffyn himself that no Welshman ever boasted greater pride in his lineage.
She scans the succeeding paragraphs.
—I don’t see…no, there’s no sign of their acquiring another property in Wales. All one can assume is they hoofed it straight to London.
—Very sad, says Peter.—Landed gentry with no land. The heart cracks.
—Not much in the way of money, either, remember, darling? He hasn’t been able to pay for the cards. That’s the reason they’re still sitting here.
Peter looks up from his teacup.
—I do remember! Most of our patrons would sooner die than admit to money troubles, but he was unusually frank on the topic. Quite disarming, really.
—I’m sure.
—Of course, I told him he was welcome to have them on credit, but he said not to worry, he had no need of them just yet.
Peter’s cup pauses in the air.
—And he said something else.
—What?
—He said he would be coming into additional income by Christmas.
—Christmas?
And with that, all the urgency, all the dread that drained off with the tea return a hundredfold.
For Christmas is less than thirty hours away. Lord Frederick Griffyn has less than thirty hours to come into money.
There, next to Peter’s elbow, lies the carte de visite. There lies the author of Gully’s death, with his annealed face, his squirrel’s nest of light curls. And there, on the back, his gracious inscription:
*
LORD FREDERICK GRIFFYN
presents his compliments
*
Just so. Mr. Timothy Cratchit is about to send his compliments right back.
Starting up from the table, I reach for my coat and motion to Colin, who makes ready to follow me. We have not reckoned, though, on a superior force: Mistress Annie, the reigning monarch of Cratchit’s Salon Photographique. A full head shorter than me, and for all that as unassailable as the Tower.
—You’re not to go anywhere, Tim, do you hear? Not until you tell us truthfully. Has Lord Griffyn done something terrible?
—Yes.
—What is it?
—I can’t say.
—Why not?
Because the people I tell get killed for their pains.
I can’t bring myself to say it, and perhaps Annie divines it anyway, for she passes with all due speed to the next question.
—The police won’t do anything about it?
—I doubt it.
—And you mean to say you are the only man alive who can remedy this…this crime?
—Apparently.
—And you won’t let anyone else help you?
—No.
At an impasse, finally, Annie stalks off to the far end of the room. Peter, for his part, never leaves his seat, only lowers his cup of oolong to the table.
—And just wh
at do you intend to do, Tim?
It is my obligation, I know, to answer him. It is my full intention. I do everything within my power to summon the necessary words, but they don’t come when I call them, and so the silence lengthens, and Peter after a while turns away.
—Mother’d never forgive me. You know that, don’t you?
—I know.
—Father, too. He’d haunt me to the end of my days.
I nearly laugh then.
—I promise you, Peter. He won’t be haunting you.
And because he looks so thoroughly unconvinced, I add:
—As soon as I can, I’ll get word to you.
—In another sixmonth, you mean.
—No, you’ll have news sooner than that. Much sooner. I promise.
And still he won’t look at me, not for love or money. It is left to Annie to tie things in a bow. Advancing on me at her usual brisk clip, she slaps a piece of paper into my palm, folds my fingers over it.
—What’s this?
—The address, Tim. You’ll find Lord Griffyn in Portland Place. And if it will help you at all, you can always say you’re making a delivery from us.
—Thank you, Annie.
My gratitude makes not the slightest impression on her. Wrapping her arms about herself, she gives her lower lip a pensive chewing and turns away again. And Peter, rising slowly from the table, transfers his attentions directly to Colin.
—Now see here, young fellow. You’re to look out for my brother, do you understand? He won’t let anyone else do it, so it’ll have to be you.
—Yessir.
—And tell him for God’s sake to keep warm. And tell him I’ll be looking for him Christmas Day. At Uncle N’s. Tell him he’s expected.
And with that, Peter turns away, too, so that my parting glimpse of the Cratchits is of two eloquently slumping backs. Eloquence enough to make me pause there on the threshold, draw my lips apart for some final valediction. But words are scarce for me these days. Best to hoard them.
And what, anyway, could I say that would make it better? No, let them begin the necessary work of erasing me. Just as Sam was erased, over time. Belinda and Jemmy…Mother…each of them less legible with every passing hour. Father, too, one day. Perhaps.
The door whispers shut behind us. Above us, the moon drives its sickle through the encumbrances of cloud. Beneath us, veils of mist blossom from the pavement, weave through the ochre day-fog, and bind it tight. The world is falling away. My feet have vanished from view, and the madman’s comforter I wear about me has become indistinguishable from the air that surrounds it, and my companion, not two feet away, is dissolving into a palette of greys and browns and tans.
—Colin.
—Hm?
—I’m sorry my brother spoke to you that way.
—Oh, he were right gentle, Mr. Timothy….
—No, the point is, you’re not accountable to me or responsible for me or…or anything, and given that I can’t answer for what happens from here on out, I can’t…I suppose what I’m trying to tell you is I can’t, you know, in good conscience subject you to the dangers.
—’Course you can.
—No, Colin. We parted friends once before. We may do so again.
Through the mist, I can just make out the glimmer of a wry smile.
—Well, yes, we could part right easy, Mr. Timothy, if it were but the two of us. But there’s Filly to think of, now, ain’t there? And the cap’n, too, leave us not forget. I mean, if you must know, this is what he wanted I should do.
I squint at him.
—Oh, it’s hard to wrap a mouth ’round it, Mr. Timothy. All I can tell you is when I left the cap’n—him a-layin’ there on the cold, hard floor—I don’t know, it were like he were speakin’ to me. God’s truth, Mr. Timothy, he came to me strong and clear. “Now, don’t you worry over me,” he were saying. “Acoz I’ve gone to a better place. But you, young fellow, you got yourself a great labour to perform. And you make sure it gets done afore you take up anythink else.” So that’s how it stands, Mr. Timothy.
Colin sidles away just then, disappears into the mist, and for a few seconds, I lose track of him entirely—and then that sward of wavy black hair swims back into my ken. The cheeky, coal-eyed face climbs towards mine.
—And look at it this way, Mr. Timothy. You can’t run worth shit, you don’t mind my sayin’. You want a healthy pair of legs, you do. And a cove like me don’t often get a chance for real live Ad-ven-ture, now do he? Not like this. So lay on, Mr. Timothy! That’s what I got to say to you. Lay on!
I nod, very slowly.
—Cat got your tongue, Mr. Timothy?
—No. I was only wondering if your parents know about you.
—’Course they do.
—I mean, do they know you? As I do?
—Oh, Gawd, no. Better that way, ain’t it?
Colin procures the clothes: pilot’s trousers and oilskin caps and a pair of black pea coats purchased from the patrons of a public house in Coventry Street. (Colin’s coat is too large for him by half; he has to roll up the sleeves almost to the elbow.) I am in charge of the gear: a rope ladder and a butcher’s hook, secreted in a tartan knapsack.
And a butcher’s knife, filched from Mary Catherine’s pantry.
The cab we engage from a taxi stand in Piccadilly Circus. It is a little down at the heel, as hansoms go, with doors that sag and sigh, and ratty curtains over the side windows, but even so, it is positively sprightly in comparison with the cabman. He is as grim, as bedraggled, as mournful-looking a gentleman as ever sat atop a carriage, and rather than give our mariner’s garments the suspicious eye they deserve, he seems to derive from them fresh evidence of the world’s perfidy. Oh, he seems to say with every crevice of his being. It’s come to this, has it?
—What’s your name, driver?
With a long, trailing groan, he confesses:
—Adolphus.
—Very well, Adolphus. I wish to engage your services for the rest of the evening. Is that acceptable to you?
Job, at his deepest ebb, never took things so hard as Adolphus. He cups his hands and raises them to the heavens, as though he were pleading his case with the Great Celestial Mediator.
—“Acceptable!” He asks if it’s acceptable! As if a fellow had any choice on a night such as this, with a wife and three young ’uns home abed, and who knows where I’ll be when they wakes up? “Acceptable?” he asks!
—You’ll be paid liberally for your time. And your discretion.
—Oh, “discretion!” It’s discretion he wants!
This invites yet another discourse on the absurdity of free will (at least as practiced by one Adolphus the cabman), a treatise that carries on even after Colin and I have taken a seat inside and closed the door after us. The roar of the city dies down, but the dirgelike cadences of Adolphus continue pelting the roof of the cab like so many dirt clods. Dame Fortune’s grindstone…family obligations looped round a man’s feet like an anchor…rentin’ a cab and horse no better than slavin’ on a sugar plantation, and that’s a fact. Our cabman, it turns out, is a bard of despond, and now and then, when the vehicle comes to a halt and the wind quiets, his lyric odes chime out in the chill night air.
—And he wants me to be discreet, does he? Why don’t he ask me to be wealthy, too? That’d be summat. Adolphus with money in his pocket! He could afford to be discreet then, couldn’t he?
The longer I listen, the more pleasing the sound becomes—as fixed and reiterative as a lullaby. Adolphus’s children, I think, must go to sleep to this every night. Even now, I can imagine the sound worming its way back home to them, through the extinguishing blanket of fog that lies all round us. Although it would be hard to imagine anything penetrating this, for we are in the grip of a real London particular: whole buildings not so much hidden as excised, monuments decapitated, light swallowed entire. The fog doesn’t roll in; it pushes outwards with a hydraulic force. It boils like the sea, burns in our nostrils, and e
ats at our skin.
And under its influence, my shivering fits return, like old family. I sit there in the corner of the cab, in the darkness, with Father’s comforter wrapped round, a finger inserted between my teeth to keep them from chattering. And even still, my body shakes for all it’s worth, and whenever a streetlight manages to bleed through the mantle of fog, it illuminates the look of wavering consternation in Colin’s eyes.
Danger is one thing, those eyes say. A companion unfit to meet danger…that’s another.
The church bells strike the nine o’clock hour, and still the fog rises, muffling the very tongues of the bells, and as we continue northwards, the city itself seems to fall back before the wall of tawny grey. But here it is not the fog that has pushed the buildings away, for this is Portland Place, widest and grandest of all London avenues.
At least by repute. There is not tonight a great deal of grandeur on display, or if there is, it has been wiped clean by the fog. A sepulchral quiet reigns, and that quiet is not so much dispersed as reinforced by the orderly clatter of hooves, the creaks of waggons, all dying in the uttering.
—Driver! Stop here, if you please.
The cab lurches to a halt. From above comes the aggrieved timbre of Adolphus:
—What’s he goin’ on about? We hain’t reached the address yet.
—We’d prefer to walk the rest of the way, if that’s all right with you.
—Oh, if it’s all right with me.
The reins are thrown down, and with a polysyllabic sigh, Adolphus lowers himself to the ground, jerks open the carriage door, and stands there, glaring at our feet.
—No doubt you’ll expect me to wait.
—Why, yes, if you would be so good.
—As if it were up to me. As if I had any say in the matter.
Not even the coin I place in his hand will brighten his mood; it is simply one more shackle in the chain that binds him to earth. With a gesture of martyred resignation, he pockets the copper and hauls himself back up to his box.
—Oh, driver, one last thing. We may have an additional passenger when we return.
—Additional? There’s but room for two in this cab.
—And we may be in something of a hurry.
