For a horrible moment I did not know what she was referring to. My lap-hand leapt up to reveal my innocence, but the waitress was already turning away. Bugger bed-hair! It was Lilly’s fault, for encouraging me to grow it long. I resolved to visit the barber’s at lunchtime.
‘Thank you, Mary,’ I said to the waitress’s retreating back.
Mornings present a circular problem. Until I’ve had a cup of coffee, I can only ever manage this confused, half-awake state. At its worst, the torpor glues my head to the pillow. But to get that first cup I have to prise myself from bed. Which means that although my desk in Adam Carthy’s office is in the same building as my own bedroom (lodgings were part of the deal as an articled clerk: I’ve not found the time or inclination to move out since qualifying) I invariably manage to arrive at work late.
My pocket watch suggested I was already late that morning.
But I’ve been a bona fide attorney for six months now. Though my work – and wages – still come through Carthy, it is surely up to me to decide exactly when I do it? As ever, the coffee – venomous, scalding – worked its wonders on my powers of reason, or at least my instinct for self-justification.
I sipped at my cup, considering the travails waiting for me back across the street.
As the week before, and the week after next, I would be spending much of my day sifting through dock records. Reconciliation. Carthy won the Dock Company as a client recently, and consequently the job of cross-checking port records for the past umpteen years, in the hope of rooting out and chasing down ships and traders who hadn’t paid their dues. This has necessitated a thorough examination of the documented history of port fees paid and import duties levied and bills-of-lading disclosed and wharfage accounts and … I found myself yawning and reaching for my cup again, not halfway through the list. A forced march, infantry work, which Carthy, the cavalry, passed straight on to me, eyes blazing beneath bristling brows (they own his face, Carthy’s magnificent eyebrows) when he described the importance of the job. Try as I might, I couldn’t quite muster my master’s reformist zeal. Where Carthy saw an opportunity to help the Dock Company bring the port into the new century, I could not help thinking that the recently formed authority was made up of the very people responsible for bogging the city down in the corruption of the century just gone. The Society of Merchant Venturers, who also make up most of the City Council, as it happens: the same folk who set the port duties so prohibitively high (double London, three times Liverpool), exacerbating the problem of fee-avoidance in the first place.
Any consternation I might have shared with Carthy in the face of such entrenched crookedness was dampened by the fact that I, and not he, was the man facing months amongst the document crates.
Two
Better equipped for that morning, at least, I drained my cup, buttoned my fly (the coffee had galvanised me: I did not care who noticed), and headed across the street to my office, where I discovered that a four-year-old girl had chosen to pitch her tablecloth tent beneath my desk. Anne Carthy has pigeon toes and a marked squint, but she was born laughing and is the only person alive her father considers more important than his work.
‘Apologies for the intrusion,’ said Carthy, appearing in the doorway. He looked from my desk to the mantelpiece clock. ‘I thought somebody might as well make use of the facilities, until you need them, that is.’
I squatted behind my chair, peeled back the tent-flap and asked, ‘Can I have a pound of eels’ eyes and some minced dog?’
Anne squealed and wriggled out from the far side of the desk, then busied herself seriously, reefing in the tablecloth.
I took in the terrain of my desktop. Unread files lay to one side, and the papers I had already examined stood in their neat heap to the other. Between them were the documents I’d been working on last night, corners squared, next to my ledger, inkpot and quill pen. All as it should be. Yet the carefully imposed order was upset by an extra sheaf of papers, bursting from their blue ribbon, plonked at an angle on top of my blotter.
I reached quickly to remove the offending bundle, prompting Carthy to laugh behind me. His office is always a bugger’s muddle.
‘Keep your hair on!’ My resolution to visit the barber hardened despite his jovial tone. ‘I took the liberty of prioritising that folder for today. Assuming, of course, that it’s no trouble for you to do some work. I thought you could perhaps even make a start before lunch.’
‘I’ll consider it. No, really, I will. What’s inside?’
‘The Belsize made port today. She’s owned by the Western Trading Company. I thought I might add a bit of urgency to your quest by suggesting you examine their records today. That is the most recent instalment.’
‘Ship arrives in port. Stop the press. Why the sudden rush to welcome the Belsize?’
Carthy’s lips folded into his beard and his porcupine eyebrows dipped. But he seemed to think better of what he was about to tell me. ‘Check the file. See if it turns up anything,’ he said.
He stood aside to steer his daughter, now a ghoul beneath the tablecloth, from the room, following her before I could add another question. This has long been his method as a teacher, to set me off on a journey with the barest clues as to the destination, and let me feel my way there for myself. I hung my jacket on the back of my chair. The strip of wallpaper to the right of the window casement lolled at me, an indolent tongue. It hadn’t unpeeled further since yesterday, and the stain behind it had not spread, which suggested that the previous evening had not been Anne’s bath night.
I prised up the sash. Fresh air could only help me in my battle to stay awake.
Which I managed, despite the stultifying muddle of paperwork that sprang from the blue ribbon once I’d undone it. Why couldn’t shipping clerks sequence forms chronologically? And, given that they could not, why hadn’t somebody at the Dock Company imposed order upon the chaos before passing the bundle on? The knowledge that this was what they were paying me to do didn’t help. Boredom gnawed at my resolve. Once upon a time, lawyering promised liberty from Father and the family business, but no such freedom has materialised; I am still in debt for the payment he made to Carthy to secure my articled clerkship. What’s more, the old man accepted my decision not to join the family firm with an equanimity bordering on relief. He even assured me that my share of the business would be well looked after by Sebastian and John, until such time as it became my inheritance, effectively placing me in the thrall of my younger brothers.
I chose lawyering because it’s more sensible than art, but in truth that’s where my heart lies. Unfortunately, heart and talent do not always coincide. I have a limited aptitude for pictures: though I can form a drawing well enough, I am completely bamboozled by paint. I’ve tried watercolours, egg tempura and oils, all with the same, muddy results. So my artistic endeavours are limited to the making of sketches in ink … and in private. Who would want to hang a scratchy impression of a spade, rain-cloud, or side of beef on their wall, anyway? Nobody. Since those are the sorts of things I find myself compelled to produce, I prefer to keep the results between shut covers. The only time I’ve made an exception to this rule still makes me wince: in a fit of openness – or to impress her, if I’m honest – I showed a series of unconvincingly optimistic drawings (a robin’s nest, daffodil bulbs, a rowing boat) to Lilly not long after we first met. She declared herself ‘charmed’ by them. Ever since then I’ve kept my sketchbooks in a strongbox with a good lock. The law is at least a realistic means of making my own way in the world.
I ground on through the remains of that morning – more out of loyalty to Carthy than anything else – only pausing once, towards lunchtime, when I came across a document which, when I’d read it, propelled me from my desk to stand before the window again, eyes lifted to the sky. I thought for a moment, chewing on my lower lip. Seagulls knifed this way and that above the rooftops.
‘You may as well call on her for lunch if the alternative is such productive mooning.’
Carthy had appeared in the doorway again. I would have liked to tell him that I had not paused to think of Lilly all morning, but in trying to persuade him of that, I sensed I would achieve the opposite, and besides, I felt a stab of something approaching shame at admitting the omission to myself.
‘Perhaps I will,’ I said.
‘Don’t look so happy about it! This phase will soon pass. I remember it well. No sooner have you popped the question than the napkin-and-bunting conundrums begin.’
Carthy was avoiding addressing the contents of the folder with this prattle. For now I did so, too.
‘After submitting to the colour swatches for half an hour, I’ll be sure to return to work refreshed.’
‘All excitements are relative, it’s true,’ said Carthy, brows creased in mock-concern. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it. Pass on my condolences to the bride.’ Continuing in his attempt to lighten my mood, he pushed off the doorjamb as if underwater and lurched down the hall affecting the walk he’d developed for his Caliban in the Law Society’s last Tempest.
Three
I went out. I set off across Queen Square in the direction of the Alexanders’ great house, but found myself dawdling, and ultimately doglegged right towards the docks. I would be seeing Lilly soon enough. Now wasn’t the moment to go visiting. Instead I allowed the thought of the down on the back of her neck, visible in strong sunlight when she wears her hair piled on top of her head, to buoy me on to the waterfront, where the sun was indeed out, and swarming in the harbour with a violence that made molten gold of the water’s surface.
Before my eyes had adjusted to the brightness a cart was upon me – my fault, I had walked into its path – and the horse drawing it, unable to sidestep or stop, had shouldered me into a stall selling fruit, vegetables, and trinkets made from animal parts. This produce was now rolling with me on the filthy cobbles.
‘Out of the fucking way!’ called the driver, after the event.
I could not recall the last time I’d had the breath knocked from my lungs, but the feeling (and taste, of gunpowder and rust) was instantly familiar, and sickening. I gathered myself on to all fours. The stallholder, a woman with sideburns and a dusting of grey moustache, was also bent double, yammering in my face. One or two of her colleagues from the neighbouring stalls were apparently under the impression that I had launched myself at the woman’s mean trestle of goods on purpose. They surrounded me now in a show of solidarity. Try as I might, I could not speak. Shaking my head from side to side in an attempt to clear it only made matters worse. The throng seemed to think I was denying something. Wrapped around one of my hands was a string of severed rabbits’ feet. In reaching for my wallet, I must have looked like I was trying to pocket the charm, a manoeuvre the crowd did not appreciate. Having drawn back, one of the circle now saw fit to produce a blade. It winked cheerfully in the brightness. On such a day – how could this be happening? But it was. In the absence of me explaining myself or attempting flight, the stallholders were closing in again. Absurd! I’d have to hold them off until I could find the wind to speak. But when my first breaths came, they exploded from me in threatening gasps. Never mind summon the composure to fight, I hadn’t even managed to let go of the wretched rabbits’ feet. The circle tightened further.
From nowhere, a presence arrived at my side.
A black man, in baggy cotton trousers and a sleeveless shirt: bull-shoulders and muscle-cabled arms. He nodded at me and took hold of my hand, from the fingers of which he unwound the good luck charm. This he presented to the stallholder. Then he began to pick up the spilled fruit.
The man’s calm was so deep it felt threatening.
My breathing sawed slower in my chest.
I wanted to apologise, but I found myself taking the sailor’s lead instead, picking apples and blackberries from the dirt. When I looked up the circle of assailants had dilated, leaving onlookers, who in turn drifted away. In silence I fished some coins from my pocket and offered them to the stallholder, who wasted no time vanishing them beneath her skirts. When I turned around the Negro was already walking away.
I caught him up, offering thanks.
‘You had bad luck.’ He nodded back down the dock. ‘I saw the whole thing.’
‘For a moment there …’ I trailed off. In the presence of the sailor, the spat seemed inconsequential.
‘It was no trouble. Think nothing of it.’
I extended a hand. The black sailor shook it, then turned and walked straight up a ship’s gangplank. From the look of her, the ship had only just arrived; her sails were still partly unfurled and the stevedores were just beginning to bring her cargo above deck. As often happened in the immediate aftermath of a shot of fear – or strong coffee – I experienced a moment of prescience: I knew before I had advanced to the ship’s prow, where her name was painted red in deep carved letters, that I was standing alongside the Western Trading Company’s three-masted frigate, the Belsize.
I am no sailor. Nevertheless, as I stood on the quayside, looking up at the swaying masts, I felt my heartbeat slow.
The Belsize struck me as a tidy ship.
And my ribs ached. I knew they would be sore in bed that night. Yet I had to admit that the confrontation had been more viscerally involving than the morning’s work; it had pitched me to a precipice from which I could better contemplate the possible import of the ship.
The document to prompt my early lunch break had detailed investors in the Western Trading Company, among whose number stood my father, Michael Bright. Carthy knew as well as I did that my father’s firm had interests in ships which journeyed to the West Indies, but the bulk of the family business lies in refining the trade’s fruits, which suggested that my master must be expecting me to turn up something else in the file as well. What, exactly? A sense of disquiet swept over me, subtle as a breeze serrating still water. My eye ran the length of the Belsize. She was big, over a hundred feet from bow to stern. There were few sailors visible on board, save an officer, with two grey lines in his beard, standing on the quarterdeck. One hand worked his brow, the other dived inside his coat and pulled out a silver pocket watch. The man checked it perfunctorily, then looked over the rail. When the sweep of his gaze reached me it continued past without snagging, taking in the quay with a look of distrust.
My legs had grown heavy. It would be the shock passing. To counter the leadenness, I returned to Thunderbolts for lunch and to take stock. Though I’d have preferred peace and quiet, the place was abuzz, and Alan Faulks saw fit to include me in the morning’s gossip. Something about a drunken labourer in Clifton roasting women over hot coals. The news is always broadcast here first, but it is usually wise to wait until Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal has sieved it of the worst embellishments. Though Faulks talks with a fat-tongued lisp, the impediment hasn’t curtailed his enthusiasm for speech. I found myself explaining that I had to get back to work, then discovered – with some surprise – that I did in fact feel a sense of urgency about returning to my desk. I would have drained my cup in one swig if I’d been a man of fashion: these days it is becoming popular to pollute coffee with cream or milk, which cools it, and so speeds up an establishment’s custom.
But I prefer my coffee black.
So I let the man’s prattle wash over me, and finished my drink slowly, apprehension shivering beneath my skin.
Four
Though Oni rubs her sides, crouching over the fire of her panic, there is no warmth to be had in the cellar. She shivers in the dark. The crack of light above the door has long since disappeared, leaving cave blackness, a blinding nothingness.
She listens for the other girls. Both are sleeping. Abeni draws deep, regular breaths, waves on a distant shore. Idowu fights a more ragged battle with the damp, underground air. From time to time one of them moves on the straw. The outside noise, which filtered into the hole during the day, is gone now, apart, that is, from the distant song of the bird. It starts, and stops. A bird singing at night is wron
g. Oni shivers again, draws her knees to her chest and stands up slowly. She puts her arms out in front of her and, shuffling with the chain, sleepwalks the few paces to the opposite wall.
Her fingers find a hardness, rough as bark, running with cold sap. Wet bricks. The sap tastes of iron when she licks it. Everything about the hole is damp. It has a wet-fur smell, unpleasant, but nothing like the putrid stench of the ship.
Why build a wall underground?
Oni digs her fingernails into her thigh as a punishment because that is a question and she must not ask questions. If you make the mistake of looking for answers, you go mad. She saw that happen so often below deck it became boring. Didn’t they realise? Questions are as pointless as days, hours and minutes. Better to navigate heartbeat by heartbeat, blink by blink, breath by breath.
There is a cough, followed by a shuffling sound as Idowu shifts in her sleep. She will die soon. They all will, but Idowu will be first, because of the wet air. Her lungs can’t cope with it; she is coughing up bits of them in protest. No, Idowu’s only hope is in following Ayo soon. Again Oni digs her fingers into her thighs.
Breathe in, breathe out. At least that is possible. During the first crossing the air in the hold was so thick that at times she thought she was suffocating. She feared she would choke to death as others around her did. A gap of just three hand-spans separated the boards they lay upon from those above their heads. Here she can stand up, walk these few paces even, right to the end of the chain. Oni bends to adjust its grip on her ankle, then picks up the first links and follows them to their fixing on the wall. The hoop of metal through which the chain passes is as thick as her wrist, the bolt attaching it to the wall is as big as her closed fist. Where do they think she will run? Oni feels her thigh burn and then glow dully with the punishment of another pinch, but it is no use, the next thoughts tumble through her head regardless. So strong a chain cannot be explained by her worth to these devil people; it is instead a warning of how hard they know she might fight to get away if she understood the worse terror that lies ahead.
The Devil's Mask Page 2
