Crippen

by John Boyne

  James Munyon, the ageing owner of the company, listened to the unfamiliar accent and peered at him over his glasses, taking in his rather shabby clothes and shoes at a glance. Munyon was in his seventies and had worked in the medical trade all his life; his hands were stained with the colours of the various potions he had mixed up in pharmacies over the previous fifty years. His voice was raspy from a lifetime of breathing in their fumes. In all respects he resembled something out of a gothic horror story, a man half skin and bone and half chemicals. Hawley swallowed but held his nerve as he addressed him; he had determined that he would not be treated with the same level of disrespect in London that he had been shown in New York. After all, he was an educated man, a man of medicine, and not one to be looked down upon.

  ‘It’s not a medical position,’ said Munyon, presuming that when Hawley declared himself a doctor he was telling the truth. ‘I’m looking for an office manager. Munyon’s is an agency for homoeopathic medicines, not a surgery of any kind. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Hawley, aware that any income right now was better than none. Although he still had about half his savings left, some of which was deliberately hidden from both the eyes and the mind of his charming wife, he did not want to dip into them any further. And now that she was deter-minedly searching for a voice coach, he knew that a quick injection of cash was imperative; it was only a matter of time before she came demanding a handout. ‘And homoeopathic medicine,’ he began, struggling with the word and trying to recall the references to it he had read in the medical magazines at the British Museum. ‘That’s . . . ?’

  ‘We deal with complementary medicines, Dr Crippen. Our clients prefer to treat diseases with minute doses of natural substances which, taken by a healthy person, would produce symptoms of disease. However, correctly applied to the ill, they can provide a remarkable cure. You are familiar with the advances in homoeopathic medicine in recent years, of course?’

  ‘Naturally,’ he lied. ‘But in America, the market is currently small and medical attention to it has been slight.’

  ‘It’s still taking time to win over the disbelievers,’ Munyon admitted. ‘Many doctors won’t have anything to do with it. They still prefer to treat everything with potions and lotions, knives and bleeding. Leeches, even. Archaic methods, if you ask me.’

  Hawley was slightly surprised by the modern notions of Mr Munyon, for his frailty and age had made him believe that the old man would be a traditionalist. The offices had a close, unusual smell, the cabinets filled with rainbow-coloured cartons and packets of strangely named substances. ‘The clients come here?’ he asked, intrigued by the Aladdin’s cave he had walked into. ‘They seek medical advice here?’

  ‘Sometimes, but mostly they collect prescriptions,’ said Munyon. ‘There are several homoeopathic clinics around London and we keep in close contact with them, of course. They prescribe certain treatments and we fill them. In that manner, we work a little like a pharmacy. However, we also advertise the non-prescriptive treatments for regular consumer use. The early days were difficult, but times have improved considerably. Which is why I’m looking to hire an office manager.’

  ‘Well,’ said Hawley, fascinated by all he saw, despite his natural inclination to be suspicious of anything that was not entirely scientific. ‘If you will give me a chance, I’m sure that I won’t let you down.’

  Cora arrived home with a bag full of groceries under each arm and struggled to get her key into the lock of the front door without dropping any of them. After what she deemed a successful afternoon, she had decided to treat herself and Hawley to a more elaborate dinner than they were accustomed to. (Typically, she provided the ingredients and he prepared the meal.) It was a cold day and had started to drizzle while she was walking home from the grocer’s shop. Her dress, which was slightly too long for her, had dragged on the pavement behind her, soaking up the rain from the puddles as she walked. Her hands were occupied, so she could not lift it, and she sighed in frustration, looking forward to getting back to their rooms where she could strip off and make herself a cup of tea. She had worn the dress, her best one, only because of where she had been going earlier in the day; but she regretted it now, for it would need washing. Upon entering the house in South Crescent, one came first to a small lobby area which led to the stairway; on the ground floor lived the Crippens’ neighbours, the Jennings family, and although they were ostensibly polite to each other at all times it was clear that Mrs Jennings and Mrs Crippen could barely tolerate each other, desperately trying to outdo the other whenever they met. The Jenningses, Irish Catholics, had six children, aged from eight months to eight years, and they struck Cora as an unruly crew, forever smeared with the remains of their breakfasts or dinners, constantly staring at her as she passed by, like a bunch of suspicious cats. There was not an ounce of maternal instinct in Cora and, looking at the Jennings brood, she could not help but feel that these were children only a mother could love. Unlocking the door now and stepping inside, she was confronted by the smallest child, only ever referred to as Baby, crawling around the ground-floor area. Baby—Cora didn’t even know whether the Jennings had ever bothered to give the child a name—stopped his/her movements and watched her as she closed the door.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Cora a little nervously, for something about the infant always unsettled her. When forced to converse, she spoke in adult tones and words, refusing to kowtow to convention by gurgling and cooing at the infant like a demented person. She made for the stairway, but before she could set foot on it Mrs Jennings emerged from her living room, her hands and cheeks dusted with flour from the bread she was baking, in search of her smallest child.

  ‘Oh, good afternoon, Mrs Crippen,’ she said, affecting the upper-class tones she used when addressing her, in stark contrast to the East End accent she employed when screaming at Mr Jennings, who was frequently inebriated. ‘Look at you. Soaked to the skin.’

  ‘I got caught in the rain,’ Cora explained, irritated that she should be seen like this, her dress wet and dirty, her hair falling down in soaking strings from beneath her hat.

  ‘You poor thing. Don’t you look like a wet dishcloth!’

  ‘Oh, but you’re covered in flour, Mrs Jennings,’ Cora said sweetly. ‘Hawley and I always buy our bread from the store. It must taste so much better when circumstances force you to make your own. A sense of achievement brings a smile to even the poorest faces.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Jennings replied, more than capable of responding in kind. ‘And it must be so much easier, bringing your shopping home when you’re a muscular thing like you are. Why, the first time I saw you I thought you were a man with those broad shoulders of yours.’

  Cora smiled. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said, gritting her teeth together but too wet and cold to continue the badinage. ‘But you know what it’s like, Mrs Jennings,’ she offered, before continuing on her way. ‘Once I start to shop I can’t seem to stop myself. I can’t bear to wear last season’s clothes. Some people manage to do so and keep them amazingly fresh, but I just don’t have that gift. That’s a lovely blouse you’re wearing, by the way. I used to have one just like it.’

  Mrs Jennings smiled. For her part, her main reason for disliking Cora was the American accent which still poured through the affected upper-class tones.

  ‘Not that I was just out shopping, you understand,’ continued Cora, placing her bags on the ground now as their conversation continued. ‘I had a meeting earlier with Señor Berlosci, my voice coach. The air in London is so vile that I need a little help to retrain my vocal cords.’

  ‘Really,’ said Mrs Jennings, her smile a frozen block of ice anchored to her face. ‘I was always under the impression that singing was a natural gift. One could either do it or not do it. One didn’t need to be trained for it. A little like motherhood in that way.’

  ‘For the average person, yes. But I am a trained professional, Mrs Jennings. Why, in New York I was the head
line act in music halls throughout the city. Someone with my abilities needs to value their voice like a musician would a Stradivarius. That’s a violin,’ she added with a smile. ‘Do you know, I spend almost a shilling a week on honey, just to lubricate my voice every morning and evening? Why, that’s probably as much as you spend on feeding Baby.’

  Mrs Jennings considered grabbing Cora by the hair and pounding her head against the wall until blood poured from both her ears, but she restrained herself. An uneasy harmony resided between the two floors on South Crescent and an unspoken feeling that those who were on the ground floor lived below stairs, while those above were the gentry. For their own parts, the ladies’ husbands scarcely spoke to each other at all, being entirely different sorts. Hawley Crippen was as far removed from the drunken sloth that was Paddy Jennings as could possibly be imagined. It astonished him that the man’s face was permanently covered in a thick stubble which he never shaved off but which never seemed to develop fully into a beard. He wondered whether this was a medical marvel and considered writing a paper on it for the British Medical Journal. They had met from time to time in the corridor or on the stairs, one in his vest and trousers, smoking a cigarette and reeking of body odour and alcohol, the other in a suit and tie, his moustache finely combed, a walking stick in hand, his face tired and weary. They had little to say to each other, and Hawley always moved away with only a nod of greeting, aware that he was being watched contemptuously.

  ‘He’s the kind of man I want to punch on the nose,’ Mr Jennings said to his wife frequently, before doing the same thing to her. ‘I don’t know why, it would just make me feel better.’

  Señor Berlosci lived not far from the Crippens in a comfortable house in Tavistock Square which he had inherited from an aunt who had died childless. Cora had seen his services advertised in The Times and had visited him earlier in the week, when he had made an appointment for her to come back to see him that day. Seeking to make a good impression, she wore her finest dress and hat and was immediately taken by the opulent, if rather gaudy, surroundings in which Berlosci lived. An Italian, he had lived in London for almost eight years and coached many aspiring singers and actresses, considering it a personal failure if they did not find success within a year of completing his programme, which included breathing exercises, vocal techniques and seduction by Berlosci himself. A single man, he had fathered seven children that he knew of, but recognized none of them. His recent birthday, his fiftieth, had seen no decrease in his libidinous appetite; if anything, he saw age as a challenge to it and continued to seduce his way around the theatres and music halls of London shamelessly. Although he was not immediately attracted to Cora—her wide shoulders were always the first thing one noticed about her, followed closely by her grizzly dark hair and thin lips—he made it a personal rule not to reject a potential lover on the grounds of attraction alone. Personal pleasure was all that was important to him, both musically and romantically, and even ugly women could provide that.

  ‘Mrs Crippen,’ he said, exaggerating his Italian accent somewhat as he entered the room in a wave of lilac aftershave and hair tonic. (First impressions were also important to him.) ‘Delighted to see you again. You are here to excite me with your talents, are you not?’

  ‘I hope so, Señor Berlosci,’ she replied, flattered and attracted at the same time. ‘Honestly, I don’t think I need too much work, just a little help, that’s all. I was quite the star in New York, you know.’

  ‘You sang in New York?’

  ‘Oh yes. All over Broadway,’ she lied. ‘As Bella Elmore. I’m very well known there. I only came to London because my husband, Dr Crippen, is setting up his own medical practice in the city. He’s gone to receive his English licence today, as it happens. But I want to sing in London.’

  ‘And become a star, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said determinedly.

  ‘Well, London is the place for it,’ he said, smiling coyly. ‘New York is all well and good, but to the more refined person it can be quite cheap, quite tasteless. But London—and Paris and Rome of course—these are centres of excellence. The truly great singers must ply their trade there, don’t you agree?’

  ‘I do,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Oh, I most certainly do.’

  Berlosci positioned her by the window and offered her a few instructions as to what she should do; he sat by the piano and played a middle C, to which Cora responded with an arpeggio C-E-G-high-C-G-E-C. He played a D and she moved up a tone, then an E and she moved up another. He stopped at G and turned around to stare at her. Cora gave a gentle cough, as if to suggest that she had a cold and might not be performing at her best, making excuses for herself already.

  ‘Very beautiful,’ said Berlosci in a quiet voice that suggested he had just listened to a soloist from the heavenly choir of angels. ‘You have a fine voice.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, feeling relieved for, despite her confidence with others, she was never entirely convinced at heart that she had what it took.

  ‘We have much work to do, however.’

  ‘We do?’

  ‘Certainly. The natural gifts are there, but they need refining. Your breathing is poor. You are singing from the throat and not from the diaphragm, where truly the notes are formed. But these are techniques. They simply take work to perfect them.’

  ‘Well, I’m willing to work, Señor Berlosci,’ said Cora. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes.’

  ‘And, of course, work is expensive. I charge two shillings an hour, and we would need to meet for four sessions a week, for an hour each time. How are these terms to you?’

  Cora made a rapid calculation in her head and swallowed nervously. That was a lot of money to be found, particularly on the salary Hawley was earning from Munyon’s. ‘All right,’ she said, nodding forcefully. ‘When can we start?’

  Waiting for Hawley to return now, Cora said a silent prayer that he would not refuse her the money to attend the voice lessons. He had been a lot more short-tempered with her recently and she had begun to worry that he was not as much under her control as she wished. That was something she needed to beat out of him. Their relationship could never survive, she knew, if he had too much to say for himself. She would simply inform him that she needed the money—that they needed it if they were to have a successful future together—and he would turn it over, no questions asked.

  She heard him come in and walk up the stairs quickly. He hated lingering in the hallway in case Mr Jennings saw him and, drunk, challenged him to a fight. Stepping through the door, however, she saw something different in his eyes tonight, a look of utter frustration, anger and even hatred. He nodded at her and threw his hat on the bed, walking straight into the bathroom without a word, and she heard the sound of water running in the sink. When he emerged, a few minutes later, his face was pink and his collar wet, as if he had been washing away the filth of the day relentlessly.

  ‘What an afternoon,’ said Cora, declining to ask him whether anything was the matter, even though something clearly was. ‘I went to see Señor Berlosci for my first lesson.’

  ‘Who?’ Hawley asked, distracted.

  ‘Señor Berlosci. I told you about him. The voice coach. Over on Tavistock Square. I went to see him.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, looking away and frowning when he saw the condition of their flat. The dirty dishes were still in the sink from last night’s dinner and clothes were hanging down to dry from a rope extended from wall to wall. He saw a pair of Cora’s stage tights suspended behind her like a pair of amputated legs, and they disgusted him, made his stomach turn. One thing he could say in Charlotte’s favour was that at least she had kept a tidy home. ‘That was today, was it?’

  ‘Yes. And he’s a real professional, Hawley. He said that in fifteen years of teaching he had never come across a more natural singer than me. He said that with the right guidance I could be the most successful singer on the London stage.’ Naturally, he had never said any such thing.

  ‘Tha
t’s good news,’ he muttered, clearing away some of the debris from the armchair and falling into it heavily, covering his eyes with his hands. ‘I, however, have the opposite.’

  She narrowed her eyes and stared at him. For a moment—just a moment—she felt concerned for him, as if some great calamity might have occurred and a little personal feeling was for once emerging in her. ‘Hawley,’ she said. ‘What’s happened? You look so tense.’

  He gave a bitter laugh and shook his head, looking away from his wife so that she would not see the well of tears forming like puddles in his eyes. He was afraid to blink in case they tumbled down his cheeks like waterfalls. She had never seen him cry before and he did not want her to witness it now. ‘I went to the Medical Association,’ he began.

  ‘Of course. I forgot. I wasn’t thinking. Did you receive your licence?’

  ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘I did not.’

  Her heart sank and she sat down on a kitchen chair, praying that this was just a temporary setback. ‘Why not?’ she asked, when it was clear that he was not going to expand on this. ‘Was it money? Do you need to pay for it?’

  He turned and looked at her now and she could tell that he was genuinely upset. ‘The Medical Association say that my diplomas are not valid in England. They say that to practise as a doctor I need to attend medical school in London and pass their certified exams. Which would, of course, take several years and more money than we can afford.’

  Cora gasped. ‘No!’ she said. Her husband merely nodded. ‘But Hawley, that’s ridiculous. You’re a trained doctor.’