by Will Thomas
I held the barrel, while he pulled the peg and opened the spigot. A brown liquid filled the glass, producing a tan collar on top. It was porter. He transferred the tan froth to his mustache.
“Eminently drinkable,” he pronounced, and poured me a glass.
“What are we doing, sir?”
“That should be obvious. We are getting drunk and hearing the story of your life. Where was I? Yes. You are not the sort to suddenly refuse to do work that is required of you. Something of immense personal import to you made you leave the office suddenly. Obviously, something that happened before your employ, unless, of course, my numerous foibles finally grew to become too great. So, come, lad. Spill it. Confession is good for the soul.”
“But, sir,” I protested. “I saw you sip at the stout at the pub the other day. It is evident that you dislike it.”
“There you go inferring again, without evidence, Llewelyn. What you have taken for dislike is in fact an overfondness. I could pour this stuff down my throat by the gallon, and did, in fact, during my wilder days. But now I must be abstemious, save upon an extraordinary occasion such as this. Tonight we shall drink ourselves into a stupor, and tomorrow morning conduct ourselves once more as sober men, and this occasion need never be discussed again. So tell it, man, and no blubbering. I can take anything but blubbering. Good porter, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Excellent.”
“Mac makes it himself. Never trust a butler that can’t make first-rate spirits.”
“I shall remember that.” I was trying to put together all the disjointed thoughts in my head and to be coherent. This was a subject I had never spoken of with anyone before. I wanted to get it right.
“Well, sir, I first met my wife—”
“No, no,” Barker broke in. “You’re making a hash of it already. Go back to the beginning, Thomas. Tell me about your family and your village.”
I took another sip of the porter, then a large gulp. I’d never had the luxury of being drunk in my entire life, but this seemed as good a time as any.
21
I WAS BORN IN CWMBRAN, IN GWENT, SIR, the sixth of nine children, and the fourth son. My father was a miner, and my mother took in wash to make ends meet, not that they ever did. We also had a grandfather living with us, my mum’s dad, who was retired from the mines after a lifetime underground. He used to take us on long walks around the hills, as a means of coughing up fifty years’ worth of coal dust from his lungs. His years in the hole were secondary in his mind, and in that of the town. He was primarily a bard. The townfolk were proud of old Ioan Llewelyn, for he’d won several eisteddfods, storytelling competitions, traveling as far as Cardiff. Granddad used to tell us children stories on our long walks, to entertain us and to keep his skills sharp, and so I grew up on the old tales of Pwyll and Math, and the brave queen, Rhiannon. The stories meant little to my brothers and sisters but were all the world to me. When I was younger, I was sure they were all true, as if they’d just happened. I trembled in terror at the thought of the dark underworld of Annwn more than any glimpse of Hell’s fire and brimstone imparted to us children by our Methodist minister. But I was nothing special, just number six of the Llewelyn brood, destined for the coal mines, a family distinct only because my grandfather chose to spell the family name a little differently from the established and royal spelling.
“The first inkling that I was a little different from my family and friends occurred in my fifth year of schooling, when I began to set some of my grandfather’s tales down in class for my teacher. Mr. Wynn was something of a hedge bard himself, and he was impressed more by my memory than my syntax. He pushed me to learn English as well as Welsh and drilled me in all the rules of grammar and punctuation. He also undertook to teach me elocution, an hour after school twice a week. In lieu of any payment, I furnished an introduction to my grandfather, and the two gentlemen who were my mentors became fast friends. Mr. Wynn himself set down all my grandfather’s tales verbatim, and they were published in Cardiff shortly before Granddad passed away that year. By that time, everyone was convinced that my grandfather’s ‘gift’ had been passed down to me.
“Under my tutor’s encouragement, I entered a countywide eisteddfod when I was but twelve. I didn’t win, of course, for who would have presented an award to little Number Six, the collier’s boy? However, my tale did come to the attention of Lord Glendenning, who was most impressed to have a savant in his district. With Mr. Wynn’s encouragement, His Lordship agreed to sponsor my education at a public school in Cardiff. I’ll never forget the day I was seen off at our little station by my parents, in the best clothes cobbled together from the family’s wardrobe.” I paused for a moment. “Could I have a bit of that cheese, there?”
Barker cut a thick slice of Stilton for me and put it on a plate, along with some Huntly biscuits. I poured another glass from the cask. Storytelling is thirsty work.
“In my new school, I kept to myself as much as possible and strove to excel at my schoolwork. I had few friends, for I was a poor lad among all those rich merchants’ sons. I did make one friend, though, an English lad named Bryan Pill. It was Pill who introduced me to English literature, which is to say, the modern literary journals: Blackwood’s, Cassall’s, Pearson’s, and others. I became as much addicted to them as he. In my naivety, I began to send them odd pieces of prose, poetry, reviews, and the like. In their complete ignorance of the fact that I was but a youth, they accepted one or two.
“I was called into the headmaster’s office one morning, during my final year at school, to find myself in the presence of Lord Glendenning himself. He had been watching my progress, his ‘investment,’ and had even gotten wind of my work in the periodicals, from Mr. Wynn, no doubt. The headmaster was able to offer encouraging words on my academic standing, and the outcome was that His Lordship wished me to sit for the examinations to enter Oxford. If I passed with high marks, he would see fit to finance a frugal year’s tuition at Magdalen College. I passed with very high marks indeed.”
“Good, lad.”
“Thank you, sir, but nothing had prepared me for the enormity that is Oxford. When I was not reading Classics or attending tutorials, I worked at various odd jobs, as well as serving as a batman for an upperclassman, cleaning his rooms and waiting on him, which is a requirement during the first year. The upperclassman, the Honorable Palmister Clay, was a sleek and odious fellow, a peer’s son who spent his money on fine clothes and all the rigors of dissipated living. He found occasion to criticize my dress, my speech, my manners, and everything else about me.
“Up to that time, I had lived a Spartan life and, of course, a celibate one. The only females I had known were my own sisters and classmates, and I had been cloistered among boys since I had begun attending public school. Love was something I read in the story cycles of King Arthur and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. So I was utterly unprepared when Cupid’s arrow finally pointed my way.
“I was on my way to one of my numerous jobs one evening, having come from a bit of tutoring I was doing for a student without much brain but with a wealthy father. I was walking along Holywell Street when I noticed a shape on the ground ahead of me. It was early evening, but it being late October, the day had already grown dark. The gaslights glowed in the midautumn fog, and by their light I saw the shape ahead of me move. I slowed down, realizing the bundle of cloth was human. Even Oxford streets could be dangerous at night. Then my ears detected the sound of abject weeping. Some poor wretch was sobbing piteously, a beggar’s child or an old crone decrying her fate. The sound of my shoes on the paving stones must have alerted her, for her face suddenly appeared from under her shawl. I thought then and there that it was the most beautiful face I’d ever seen. Her hair—”
“Spare me the romantic descriptions, lad,” Barker interjected. “We’ll accept she was pretty. Get on with it.”
“Yes, sir. Her eyes were red from crying. She gasped when she saw me.
“ ‘Don’t be afraid,
’ I told her. ‘Have you been hurt?’
“ ‘No, sir. I’ve lost sixpence,” she sobbed. She’d been working several hours, taking care of some children for a woman who worked in a factory. She’d been paid sixpence and had accidentally dropped it in the street. She was afraid to go home without it.
“ ‘I shall help you look,’ I answered, bending down and beginning to search about. I thought it possible, even more than likely, that she had not dropped any money at all. It is a dodge I have seen done before. But she seemed honest enough and determined to find the coin. Cautiously, I examined every inch of light about us, but the desire to please her was just too great. I palmed sixpence and pretended to find it just outside of the circle of light. I needed the coin myself, but the smile she gave me more than paid for the loss.
“I offered to walk her home, and she settled her hand on my arm as lightly as a dove. Her name was Jenny Ashby. She asked me if I was a student at university, and that was it. We were off on a long conversation, as we walked along Holywell together. Whatever I possessed, and would ever possess, I was willing to throw at her feet by the end of that walk.
“Had I been given the training I have now, sir, I might have noticed her clothing more, but then I’d grown up in cast-off clothing, myself. The building to which she led me was one of the worst tenements in Oxford. I’d grown up in poverty but never in squalor. I could tell she was embarrassed by her surroundings. With a murmured ‘good night,’ she flew into the doorless opening. I went back to my rooms with my heart and mind in a tumult.
“I took to passing by the old building several times each day, trying to screw up my courage enough to walk into that gaping hole and track her down. Jenny told me she lived with her mother and seven siblings. Her father had taken to drink and run away, but Mrs. Ashby called herself a widow. They made their meager living making paper flowers. Jenny was the eldest. She was sixteen.
“Finally, by the third day, I’d scraped together enough courage to go in. It was even worse than I expected. The halls smelt of decay and unwashed humanity. The fellow whom I asked about the Ashbys was reluctant to tell me, thinking me a creditor. At last, I found her door and knocked. Jenny opened it, and her hands flew to her face at her being discovered there by me. Before we spoke a word, she was elbowed aside by a wan-looking woman whose resemblance to her was coarsened by the ravages of alcohol. It was her mother. She latched onto my arm and drew me into the room. The place was worse than a sty. A broken table was covered with crepe paper, wire, and other detritus of the paper flower trade. Odiferous clothing stood in piles, but whether it was other people’s washing or their own, I did not know. Seven half-starved, half-naked children ran about the room or mewled in broken drawers. I asked Mrs. Ashby if I might take her eldest daughter out for a cup of tea and a bun. She seemed ready to protest, but then a cunning look came over her face and she agreed. Looking back on it now, I think she smelled money. Meager as my finances were, they outstripped their own.”
“Your mother-in-law was some bit of work,” Barker said, pouring me another glass of porter. “I looked up her record by the address on your antecedents. Cora Ashby. She had quite a long sheet. Fraud. Theft. Public drunkenness. Vagrancy, and worse. She was quite a dollymop in her younger days.”
I looked up at my employer. “I’m not making a hash of it, am I, sir?”
“No, no. Pray continue.”
“The common proprieties of polite society are far different from the economic realities of the English poor. With her mother’s subtle conniving, Jenny and I were wed within a month, and I suddenly found myself almost the sole support of a family of nine. No change in our domestic arrangements was possible, and I continued living in my room at Magdalen, while Jenny stayed with her family. I couldn’t mention my marriage to my family, my classmates, or the administrators, because it was forbidden to underclassmen. I was a naive nineteen-year-old at the mercy of an older woman with much experience and few scruples. She had me in her clutches. If I’d worked hard before, I did so doubly now.
“Between attending lectures and tutorials, studying, and the odd jobs, I was hard at work eighteen hours a day. I lost weight and began to look sallow. All my money went into Mrs. Ashby’s hands. Luckily, the tuition and boarding payments were paid by Lord Glendenning’s solicitors directly, and she could not get her hands on them.
“Things can always get worse, and they generally do. That winter, Jenny developed a cough. Her mother treated it with alcohol and morphine-laced patent medicines, but it was not until she coughed up blood one morning that I realized it was more than a cold. With her delicate constitution, she was a natural victim of consumption, and with unheated rooms and scant food, she wouldn’t last long. During the few minutes I saw her in and around my work, she was fading like a bouquet of roses.
“At this time, I was still batting for the odious Mr. Clay. If anything, he’d gotten worse. He was complaining constantly now that I was an embarrassment to his rooms. I admit I was looking rather shabby. My clothing was wearing out, and my hair needed a barber’s attention. But the worst thing about serving him was the stack of gold sovereigns that sat on the edge of his mantel. They had been won in some sort of wager, and Clay kept them there to rankle his friend who had lost. They meant nothing to him, since his father was one of the richest men in Manchester, but they meant the world to me. With just one of those sovereigns, I could bring a doctor to Jenny’s side. I had never stolen in my life, but that stack of coins became an obsession. I was aware of it, no matter what I was doing in the rooms, and no matter who was there.
“One day, I could fight temptation no longer and was just reaching out to touch the top sovereign when Clay and two of his cronies walked in the door unexpectedly. I flinched and dropped the coin, which was as good as admitting my guilt. I saw a look of triumph on the Honorable’s face. I tried to get past him, to get out of there and run, but he stepped in my way, seizing me by my thin jacket. My nerves had been at a fever pitch for weeks. He didn’t know who he was facing. I clouted him a good one on the chin and he was down. In five seconds I had compounded theft with assault. Clay’s friends, two strapping lads, seized me by the arms, while he struggled back onto his feet. Clay was an amateur boxer, but you might have thought him professional for the going-over he gave me. As I sagged, nearly unconscious, bleeding from the nose and mouth, they summoned a constable, who took me into custody.
“I’m sure you’ve inspected the hearing and trial records, and I’d rather not speak about the uncomfortable interviews with Lord Glendenning and my parents. Clay’s father, a merchant turned peer, brought all of his influence to bear on the case, and the result was eight months’ hard labor. I was broken to the treadmill, and my hands shredded from picking apart oakum. I endured beatings and surly treatment from the guards and from the other inmates. Worst of all, I was separated from my beloved Jenny. She came to see me twice before my trial and once in prison. After that, she was too ill to leave her bed and come to see me. The tuberculosis was consuming her from the inside. On the twentieth of March, she died in that squalid little flat and was buried in an unmarked grave.
“Directly after my release, I attempted to find Jenny’s family, but they had skipped out on the rent, and I never found them again. Eventually, I drifted to London, looking for work, as my name was thoroughly blackened in Oxford forever. What little I possessed, I pawned for food and shelter. Then, one morning at the British Museum Reading Room, I found your advertisement in the ‘Situations Vacant’ column of The Times, and you know the rest.”
“I know more than that,” Barker said. “You’d skipped out on your rent. The suitcase told me as much. And I suspect that you were considering killing yourself that day. I could see it in your eyes.”
“Why did you hire me, sir?” I asked, as Barker replenished my glass yet again.
“I wish you could have seen yourself through my eyes, Thomas. I was watching all of you outside from the bow window. You were the most nondescript fel
low I’d ever seen. It was as if you were trying to blend in with the brick wall. I almost overlooked you, standing among all the taller men. I was intrigued when you tossed your suitcase into the dustbin, right under my window. Then you came in and presented me with an Oxford education, or at least the beginnings of one. Better still, you had an eight-month tenure at Oxford Prison, which in many ways is more educational than University. You then sailed through every test as if you’d been practicing for weeks, and you kept your temper in check. A man would have had to be an idiot not to hire you on the spot. Whether you know it or not, you’re a natural detective’s assistant.”
“I thought I was fit for nothing.”
“You would think that, lad.” He patted my sleeve. “You undervalue yourself.”
“So, why did you hire Jenkins?” I asked.
I had made Barker chuckle again. “Jenkins came to fill the position temporarily and never went away again. I can sack him any time, and he can quit. He’s an odd fellow, but I’ve grown used to his ways.”
I sat up and put my glass down. The beer had thoroughly loosened my lips.
“So, tell me, sir. How did a Scottish boy end up in China?”
Barker put down his porter. He’d been matching me glass for glass, but so far, it hadn’t seemed to affect him.
“My father was a missionary from Perth. He followed the tea clippers to Foochow soon after I was born. My parents stayed several years, developing a congregation of Europeans and Chinese as well. They died when I was eleven. Cholera.”
“Good Lord!” I said. I could definitely feel the effects of the porter now. I nearly chipped a tooth navigating the glass to my lips. “So, did you go home?”
“That might have happened in England, lad, and possibly in India, but not in China. The right palms were never crossed, so the gist of it was that I was cut loose on my own.”
