Sweet Thames

by Matthew Kneale

  ‘You’re mistaken.’ I corrected him not without pleasure. ‘If the Committee takes up my plan the rates will not be increased by a penny. In fact the opposite will be true. My system is designed to create a profit – and a not insubstantial one – through sales of effluent to farmers. Within only a short time of construction parish rates should be appreciably reduced.’

  Sweet opened his mouth to retort, only to pause, the look on his face changed. ‘To farmers. Well why not, I suppose. And you believe this would be practicable?’

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  He pondered, tapping the desk with his fingers. ‘Mr Jeavons, I believe this project of yours interests me.’ He smoothed his beard. ‘And you say you’re pursuing it quite alone?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What of the noble Metropolitan Committee for Sewers?’ He made little effort to disguise a note of scorn in his voice as he recited the name.

  ‘They’re helping me as well as is within their powers. Their time is much occupied.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ He waved his hand in the air dismissively. Then sat back in his chair. ‘I wonder if I couldn’t help you.’

  A surprising suggestion. I learned, however, that the man had quite a number of connections within the labyrinth of metropolitan government, including the world of sewers; connections won through his work as a Poor Law Guardian. I listened with no little interest as he hinted at what help he might be able to supply in terms of favours and information.

  He regarded me with a faint smile. ‘Of course I might hope that, were I to assist you, you’d find yourself in possession of a little more time to deal with these little questions concerning my warehouse.’

  A businessman to the last; it was not simple charity that was being offered. Still his suggestion was enticing, especially in view of Hove’s irritating delayings. ‘Of course. I could have an estimate of the effect of your proposed savings completed by tomorrow.’

  ‘Excellent.’ He smiled broadly. ‘Now what exactly do you require?’

  Just when I had needed it most sorely, succour had come, as a gift from providence. I glanced up at the sky as I strode from the molasses yard, and could have laughed at the miasma. Best of all, I had won the support of an avowed anti-governmentalist. It occurred to me – not for the first time – that therein lay the beauty of my scheme. Though it had been called into existence by a committee of the state, it offered profits enough to satisfy the most determined of entrepreneurs. A meeting of state and enterprise, nothing less. I would have Messrs Sweet and Sleak-Cunningham shaking hands yet.

  Isobella I found in the dining-room, hard at work polishing candlesticks.

  ‘Careful,’ she told me, before I had greeted her. ‘Have you wiped your shoes?’

  I had, but I did so again for good measure, then took from my pocket the small wrapped package.

  She examined the thing, puzzled. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open it and find out.’

  She carefully untied the bow and freed the wooden box from its wrapping, then extracted the paper-knife.

  I had chosen it with care, and was pleased with its appearance. The handle was bone, with – painted in wonderful detail – a depiction in miniature of two Ships-of-the-Line, of the type involved in the last war with France, both under full sail as they blasted each other with all cannon. The scene was repeated, all but identical, on the reverse side.

  ‘It’s lovely.’ She examined the design. ‘So finely decorated. Far prettier than the old one.’ She placed it with her embroidery things. ‘Thank you.’

  I woke perspiring in the darkness – startled – then slowly took in, by the faint glow from streetlamps beyond the window, the calming sight of my study all about me; desk and chair, my books, the familiar patterns of cracks in the plasterwork upon the ceiling.

  My fingers were painful. It was prolonged clenching that had made them so; real clenching of an imagined weapon. I recalled the look of it, all too clearly; the bone handle with its painted warships, grappled in battle.

  Chapter Three

  Joshua and Isobella Jeavons, shoes squeaking on the floor, clothes rustling and brushing against the pews, part of the collectively hushed din as the congregation rises to its feet. Joshua and Isobella Jeavons, each taking a lungful of candle smoke scented air, that they may join with the others in singing the next hymn of the morning.

  It had been among Isobella’s first requests of me – one that had puzzled me at the time – that I take her to church for a Sunday service. This had been back in the era of our engagement, a tense, waiting season, when splendid triumph then fear of looming catastrophe seemed to chase each other back and forth through my thoughts. Isobella Moynihan, beautiful, graceful, to be my very own. But so many weeks till the wedding day, and every hour nothing to prevent her from changing her mind. Not that she gave me grounds for such doubts, but the fear persisted, of its own accord.

  I visited her as frequently as I was able, usually in the afternoons – a time she herself preferred – when we had tea. Though I never ceased to thirst for these meetings, they often proved something of a disappointment, frustratingly absent of intimacy. Present throughout was the plumply silent maidservant, juggling with the china and obstructing my urges to embrace Isobella. Traditionally we would sit by the window, the green of St James’s Park – now bursting with spring colour – just visible to the right, and the life of the street passing below.

  ‘A dog seller,’ Isobella might announce. ‘See? Over there by the lamp-post. What lovely spaniels. D’you think they mind being carried in that way, under his arms?’

  ‘They look content enough. Probably they’re used to it.’ I was happiest when she felt in a mood to comment on the menagerie of humanity striding and loitering below. I felt close to her, felt I was being admitted into something secret. There was an almost child-like quality to her delight – delight in wickedness – at observing the world from this place of concealment.

  ‘And what of that one, so small, with his eyes working hard. D’you think he’s a pickpocket?’

  ‘Very likely.’

  It was on such an afternoon, with an abruptness quite against the flow of the earlier conversation, that she enquired if I were a regular Sunday worshipper.

  ‘Not regular. I’m a believer, of course, but a poor church-goer. My father was the same.’

  ‘You dislike to go, perhaps?’

  ‘On the contrary.’

  ‘Then…’ She threw me a glance. ‘Will you take me?’

  She explained that Augustus, though a firm adherent of the Church of England, was usually too busy for such things. They rarely went except at Christmas and Easter.

  ‘It seems cruel of him not to take you,’ I remarked.

  ‘I’m sure he would were he able.’

  The conversation left me impressed by what I saw as her quiet devotion to her faith. But later, as we began to attend Sunday services at a nearby church, I found myself surprised at how little interest she displayed in the sermon, the prayers and the hymn singing. Indeed, she seemed to find no pleasure in any of these, but be waiting for the moment when they would be over. Only later, as the congregation gathered about the porch, chatting and gossiping, did she come to life.

  Then, gradually, I came to realize her true purpose was not one of worship at all, but rather to collect about herself new acquaintances; to assemble a social world.

  She began with the vicar, then, with his assistance, quickly became introduced – I with her – to other churchgoers. Despite her youth, she showed quite a talent for politely friendly chatter. Her progress was swift – I had had no idea that church attendance could be such an efficient means of growing to know strangers – and with every passing Sunday we learnt the names and professions of ever more Westminster Anglicans; of lawyers, traders, schoolteachers, retired officers, minor politicians, all their wives. As we walked back from the church, she would recount, with triumph, her discoveries of the afternoon.


  ‘Mrs Whitcomb says Mr Clement has the gout.’ ‘Did you see how grey that Mr Fielding looked – he’s a drinker, surely.’ ‘Mrs Diamond is expecting – I believe it’s already her third.’

  I was surprised by the fierceness of her interest in these people – many of whom were on the wrong side of dullness – amounting, as it did, to little less than a hunger. Nor was she any less determined that they should know about ourselves. In particular she would relate – in fiendish detail – the arrangements of our approaching wedding, until even the most chatter-loving among them began to show a certain glassiness about the eyes.

  It was a new and unsuspected side to her. Thereafter I found I could not but view differently her love of observing the world from her upstairs window.

  Also I became subject to a new concern. If she had – through her father’s negligence – been so removed from the world as to be thus starved of society, then was it not possible that her interest in myself had stemmed only from my having, by chance, stumbled into her life, rather than any firm and enduring attachment? It was a fear I kept to myself.

  Then, hardly less abruptly than she called this new world of acquaintances into being, she abandoned it.

  It was a change that coincided exactly with our wedding, although what connection might lie between the two I could not guess. From the first she had been most eager that we should marry in the church we had been attending, and that her new friends should be invited. Nor was it otherwise; quite a gaggle of them came, despite their foreknowing – in such fearsome detail – the planned agenda of the occasion.

  Yet, even after this ample show of loyalty, when the great day was over Isobella seemed suddenly changed towards her church friends. Gone was her fascination with their lives. Gone too was the desire to tell them all her news; indeed, when questioned she would give only the most arid and meagre replies, causing, at first, surprise, and later, resentment. She even ceased to show any enthusiasm for attending Sunday services, finding lazy excuses to remain at home; she was tired, or Pericles would be lonely in the house without us. That we continued to go, if erratically, was the result only of my insistence, as I felt it was wrong to cease worshipping so abruptly.

  ‘Why are you so altered towards these people?’ I asked her one morning, after she had hurried us from the church door with hardly so much as a hello to her old friends.

  She seemed surprised. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You treated Mrs Whitcomb as if you hardly knew her.’

  ‘I didn’t feel like talking. Is there anything so wrong in that?’

  Joshua and Isobella Jeavons rising to their feet with the congregation, filing out into the nave of the church at the same steady pace, dressed with the careful, sober finery of those shuffling all about them, negotiating their way through the eye of the needle of the church doors. It had been some weeks since our last visit – I had been so busy with my drainage research – and I hoped we would not receive disapproving glances from the vicar.

  I watched the faces all about. What did they see, these noisily chattering ratepayers, when their eyes chanced to rest upon the Jeavonses? What conjecture did they volley back and forth amongst themselves? A charming young couple? An ambitious young engineer who had managed to marry his employer’s daughter; his coldly proud wife who would appear so friendly, only to cut and ignore as if she never knew one. Some still more scandalous appraisal, perhaps?

  Whatever their conclusions, they were, I had no doubt, far away from the true history of Joshua and Isobella. We were as a passing carriage with blinds drawn, at once seeable and closed from sight. And were they not the same, these stoutly proud parents, spinster sisters, bachelor uncles, withered grandparents, cocooned in their privacy, unknown behind their public display.

  The day was a dry one – though, blessedly, the season still showed no sign of working itself into heat – and the current of worshippers emerging from the porch eddied into small chattering groups. The greetings and polite witticisms of that morning, I did not fail to observe, seemed altered from those of other Sundays; a touch stilted, hinting at nervousness concealed. It was hardly surprising considering the sermon. The vicar, the Reverend Michael Bowrib, was not usually one to subject his flock to harsh moral warnings, but that day he had changed his tack, preaching on times of looming peril; citing biblical instances of sinners who had saved themselves from various vile fates by constant prayer, dynamic reformation of their decadent lives. His words were received with a discernible hush. Only Isobella seemed unaffected by his delivery, sitting well back in her pew and yawning several times, as if she could not have cared less if the Good Lord gave her the Cholera that very afternoon.

  ‘How lovely to find you here.’

  We had been discovered, I realized unhappily, by the Lewises; Gideon was bobbing along beside us, his sister Felicia close behind.

  ‘Thank you again for that splendid lunch.’

  ‘Don’t be foolish. I should thank you for the splendid letter you sent.’ Isobella treated them both to a bright smile, of a kind long denied her other church-going acquaintances. The Lewises. Her choice seemed to defy all reason.

  Gideon jabbed a finger into the air, struck by a thought. ‘If you’re not dashing off anywhere, then why not take tea with us? Bowrib’s coming. We’re waiting for him now.’

  Tea with the Lewises and the Reverend Michael Bowrib. My response was swift. ‘I fear we ought to be on our way home. Miss Symes has been preparing Sunday dinner.’

  ‘The house is near,’ he insisted keenly, more to Isobella than myself, then glancing round to his sister, perhaps hoping to enlist her help. If so, he was disappointed; she remained a yard removed from the rest of us, emanating faint disapproval. In honour of the church service she had clothed herself even more thoroughly than usual, and yet those small pieces of body showing maintained a disturbing presence; spongy neck and padded wrists seeming somehow unhappy sprouting from a dress, giving her the look of a boxer in a frock. Was it my imagination or was there an awkwardness between her and her brother? Perhaps they had had some domestic disagreement.

  ‘We don’t need to rush back, Joshua.’ Isobella, to my annoyance, was already at work undermining my objection to taking tea with the pair. ‘Miss Symes is always late with dinner. I’m sure we’d have time.’

  ‘But that’s splendid.’ Gideon’s head bobbed with delight.

  I saw no escape.

  Though my wife had been to the Lewises’ home many a time, attending Felicia’s Bible afternoons, I had successfully evaded paying a visit. Walking inside, I found it much as I had imagined; the dark dullness of colour and the hangings that modestly concealed every table leg reflected amply the prudish natures of its inhabitants. Bowrib – out of his pulpit a small and rotund fellow with a loud laugh quite out of scale with himself – was most surprised I had not visited before. ‘Then you won’t have seen Gideon’s paintings. You should take a look, really you should. The man’s nothing less than a genius, believe me.’

  ‘Take no notice, Joshua,’ retorted the artist himself, fidgeting with delight at the compliment. ‘It’s nothing more than a little pastime of mine. I’m sure you’ll find my efforts very poor.’

  He spoke more truth than he knew.

  To see his works entailed nothing less than a full tour of the house; the man was no miniaturist, and his canvases measured a good six feet across, some far more, causing them – of necessity – to be placed in every place where the walls were spacious enough. Thus we passed through the sitting-room, dining-room, study, a bedroom, even a bathroom. Throughout I racked my brain for phrases to sacrifice to Gideon’s hungry smile; phrases neither so outrageously offensive that they would anger my wife, nor so dishonest that they would offend my own pride.

  Not that the fellow was wholly without talent. He showed a certain full skill in depicting buildings – hardly surprising in view of his profession – which, though they tended to resemble giant boxes drawn upon with ink, were always recognizable for their f
unction. It was in the little matter of the human form that he ran into trouble. Unfortunately the subject he had chosen for his inspiration – biblical episodes of sublime heroism, suffering and strength of character – required more than a small dose of humanity to be present.

  His men were a particular problem. While his women, if fibrously Felicia-like, were always convincingly discernible for what they were, this was not so of their biblical fathers and brothers. These seemed lacking in any certainty, even of their own gender, a difficulty which their beards – a universal and, I suspected, desperate addition – did little to overcome.

  Most troubling of all, however, were the expressions upon the faces. These were awesomely wide of the mark. Thus Moses discovering the stone tablets displayed not the sombre enlightenment one would expect, but a disagreeable smile, worthy of some old miser perusing the begging letter of a little-loved nephew. Likewise Adam and Eve, in the midst of their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, seemed possessed not of the regret one would imagine of two who have just stained humanity for ever, but rather a lively eagerness, as young waifs on their way to Greenwich Fair for Easter. And Mary the Virgin watching over the baby Christ in his crib – a poor sort of fellow, more likened to a punctured football than a child – emanated not divine contentment, but a shocked stare, as a cook who has left the goose too long in the oven.

  The maid caught up with us in Gideon’s study. ‘The tea’s ready now, sir.’

  At last.

  Gideon seemed put out. ‘We’ve hardly seen half of them.’

  ‘It would be a shame to have it grow cold and waste,’ I suggested.

  ‘True enough, I suppose,’ he agreed, reluctantly. He began making his way back towards the parlour, Bowrib and my wife close behind. Nor, as you may imagine, did I have any wish to linger. Before I had had a chance to escape the room, however, I found myself detained, by Felicia’s voice.

  ‘Perhaps you’d be interested in seeing my brother’s depiction of the Crucifixion, Mr Jeavons. I believe it to be one of his finer attempts.’