The Skull and the Nightingale

by Michael Irwin

  The creature turned to me, with a derisive grimace that made me laugh.

  “Do you ever let him out?”

  “At least once a day,” said Crocker.

  He opened a small gate at head height. Trinculo emerged, and with a deft spring landed on Crocker’s shoulder. He made himself comfortable, with one small hand clasping the curls of his master’s wig.

  “It is a favorite perch of his,” said Crocker. “As yet, I am glad to say, he has neither bitten me nor pissed upon me.”

  When he returned Trinculo to its cage, the creature leaped round and round it, jumping and swinging with extraordinary agility. Having completed this performance, he sat on a branch and smirked at us.

  “The poor wretch has been shipped across oceans,” said Crocker. “He will never see his home again. The lost Gulliver will live and die in Brobdingnag.”

  As we returned to the house he remarked that he had heard from Miss Page that I was acquainted with her friend Kitty Brindley.

  “Both she and Jane,” said he, “are shortly to appear in Love at a Distance, and I am advised that Miss Brindley will win all hearts as Lydia Lark. We must surely attend on the opening night and dine with the ladies afterward.”

  I hope these inconsequential recollections may be of some slight interest—

  By this point in my letter I felt that I was wading through clay. My godfather would expect substantial news concerning Sarah, yet here was mere chatter. I was hemmed in by symmetrical difficulties. I had nothing new to report but a brief conversation. Less obviously, while I felt that the meeting in the park had given me fresh hope, I was unwilling to tell Gilbert why. I could not do so without disclosing feelings that I wished to keep to myself. Puzzled, I pushed my pen aside.

  Distraction was provided by the arrival of Matt Cullen, who walked up and down the room grinning and rubbing his hands.

  “What has roused you?” I asked.

  “Today,” said he, “I saw the duke and at last spoke out. ‘Enough, dotard!’ I told him. ‘Enough of empty smiles and false promises: I have cringed too long. Strike my name from your list of pitiful petitioners. I will make my own way in life.’ With that, I swept out.”

  He stopped his pacing and looked at me. “How do you like my story?”

  “I like it so well,” I said, “that I wish I could believe it.”

  “So do I,” said Matt. “But one day it may come true: I feel my manhood boiling within, only just below the level of speech. Meanwhile—and hence this visit—I have done you a useful service. I have information concerning the life and character of Walter Ogden.”

  I sat up at attention. “How did this come about?”

  “I will tell you.” Matt threw himself into a chair. “I have again encountered Mr. John Gow, who works for Ogden. He is a good witness in that he has no great fault to find with Ogden as an employer and so has no cause to lie. But he seems to have little liking for him.”

  “How did you explain your interest?”

  “I said that I was slightly acquainted with the woman Ogden has married—which is literally true. Gow made no further inquiry.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  “Ogden was the only child of an English diamond merchant and his Dutch wife. He was but twenty when his father died, leaving him to take charge of the business. His mother returned to Amsterdam, where he regularly visits her.”

  “Then he has few relatives in this country?”

  “I think none.”

  “But as to character—what are his tastes, his vices, and virtues?”

  “There is little to learn, according to Gow. Ogden is esteemed an honest man, but seems to have few friends. No vices were mentioned: he drinks little, and neither gambles nor whores. There was surprise at his sudden marriage.”

  “What of his pleasures?”

  “He will go to the theater—sometimes to a concert.”

  “Then what, in God’s name, keeps the fellow moving and breathing? What prizes him out of bed in the morning?”

  Matt raised a finger.

  “Mr. Gow said something on that score. Apparently your friend has become absorbed by the topic of light and the distribution of light within doors—a field of endeavor in which there would seem to be little competition. He has an interest also in color and design. His ambition is to do for the interiors of great houses what Spence and Brown have done for the gardens outside them. There lies his master passion. Three or four men of consequence have already made use of his services. He may have it in him to found a new profession.”

  “Meanwhile,” said I, “can he satisfy the needs of his wife?”

  “A gross question,” said Matt, grinning again. “Who knows what those needs may be? But I have not done, and I have saved the best till last. Ogden is about to make one of his visits to Amsterdam. And the ingenious Cullen extracted further particulars. Ogden travels on Friday next, and will be away for a week. He will leave for Harwich by the morning coach and then take ship for Rotterdam.”

  The opening performance of Love at a Distance amply fulfilled Jane Page’s predictions. Johnston’s comedy had made little impression when originally presented, but this revival found unexpected life in it, and the audience were soon roaring approval. Miss Page played Miss Melville, the heroine, with her usual elegance, but it was Kitty, as the country girl Lydia Lark, who presided over the evening. She invested a trite comic role with a humor hard to describe. Speaking artlessly, she yet managed to convey, by small drolleries of voice or facial expression, that she knew just what she was about and was relishing her own ingenuous flourishes—as when composing a letter to her cousin in the country:

  “You will hardly believe me, dear coz, but yesterday I took tea with a beau whose leg was skinny as a chicken’s, and his wig so monstrous great that it would stuff two chairs or a sofa at home in Tapperton . . .

  “I can’t but giggle to see how the fine ladies of London paint their faces white as a corpse. If ’tis true, as I have been told, that they do so to hide their blushes they must have great cause to be bashful.”

  There were shouts and whistles at the close, and flowers were flung onto the stage. Given my prior claim to Kitty, I found myself both proud and proprietary. Who were these impudent fellows making so free with their plaudits?

  Crocker had made good his undertaking that after the performance we would meet the leading actresses. The ladies were in the best of spirits, exalted by their triumph. Manifestly they were true friends, Miss Page rejoicing in Kitty’s more obvious success. It appeared also that she felt genuine affection for Tom Crocker: the two were very easy together.

  I was gratified to find that Kitty still appeared to regard me with favor, although having received little from me for some time, beyond a brief note or two. I did my best to explain away that neglect and seem worthy of a loyalty that I had scarcely earned.

  We spoke of the evening at Vauxhall, at which we had all been present, and Crocker announced that he himself planned to host a masquerade to inaugurate his new home. Later, to unanimous approval, he suggested that we four should make an expedition along the Thames to Richmond the following week.

  Before concluding the letter to Gilbert I reviewed my situation, heartened by what I had learned from Matt. I could surely turn Ogden’s absences in Amsterdam to account.

  But doubts remained. Hurlock I could see through, and see round: there was nothing to him but empty bluster and an overcharged stomach. By contrast in Ogden there was something I could not reach: he was as alien to me as Crocker’s frisking monkey. I resented his capacity to keep some essential aspect of his nature hidden. But this secret self, if there was one, would in due course be cuckolded along with the rest of him.

  In a different vein of thought I wondered how I could reconcile my intentions concerning Sarah with my renewed interest in Miss Brindley. I fell back once more upon
the comfortable theory that I was inhabiting two distinct narratives. The affair with Kitty was a subplot, a matter of physical pleasure merely. She well understood the limited scope of our unwritten contract. My essential undertaking, to lead me who could tell where, was the conquest of Sarah. And there, principles would surely come into play.

  Yet I felt twinges still. What the devil was I about? Could I lay claim to any sort of morality at all? Which of the ten commandments was I still willing to observe? At least I had no mother or father to honor, felt no interest in false gods, had no need to steal, and no intention to kill. And surely the man—at any rate the young man—who habitually kept all ten of the commandments would be both less and more than human?

  Returning to my letter, I left the last sentence incomplete and reported, half truthfully, that I had been interrupted at that point by a visitor. The individual in question (it seemed advisable not to name Matt, given my godfather’s curious warning) had proved, by chance, to be an acquaintance of Ogden, and had remarked that he was next week to visit Amsterdam. I would try to use this opportunity to call at the Ogdens’ house, talk with Sarah, and learn more about her circumstances and her mood.

  Meanwhile I had once more seen Miss Brindley—who had indeed made a great impression in her latest role—and hoped to be able to report in my very next letter on a warm resumption of our former intimacies.

  By way of a postscript I remarked that I hoped Mrs. Hurlock continued well. I also inquired solicitously about Yardley’s leg and Mrs. Quentin’s teeth. Having been in doubt as to what story to tell in my letters, I found it a relief to instigate a humdrum dialogue, however fragmentary, and thereby perhaps regain a foothold in ordinary epistolary commerce.

  Chapter 15

  My dear Richard,

  It became as intolerably hot here as you say it did in London. Our streams dried to nothing. The thirsty cattle were plagued with flies. Nor was it comfortable within doors: I found myself tetchy, restless, sleeping but fitfully, and puzzled by senseless dreams. It seems that the weather can influence even a sleeping mind.

  Here, too, oppressive heat was followed by mighty precipitations: rivers burst their banks, and Elstone Lake doubled in size. Our roads became impassable for a time. Safe on my hill, I did not greatly care: the air was cool once more, and my spirits revived.

  You ask about Mrs. Hurlock. I have seen her several times since your return to London. She has twice remarked to me how much she enjoyed our musical evening, on both occasions adding that she hoped it would not be the last of its kind. I think we may fairly claim, if only to one another, that the first of our experiments was a signal success: we concocted perhaps the most vivid experience of the lady’s life. I have an impression that she has even gained some slight advantage in her relations with Mr. Hurlock. She appears more assured, while he has been uneasy of late, perhaps humbled by financial difficulties.

  Mrs. Hurlock was in urgent need of what we provided for her. I well understand that in the case of Mrs. Ogden no such immediate conquest can be expected. The husband would seem to be both uxorious and forceful. However, I may be able to offer assistance. On a visit to Newbridge I learned that Lord Downs is contemplating renovations to Holbrook Hall. When I repeated your account of the work of Mr. Ogden, he expressed no little interest. At my suggestion he wrote him a letter of inquiry, which you will find sealed inside this epistle. I assured him that you would pass it on. You therefore have an excuse for visiting Mr. Ogden’s home. If he pursues the opportunity, of course, he must spend time in Newbridge . . .

  Yardley is recovering and can get about a little. I learned this from Thorpe, who also brought me news of a disturbing kind. It seems that Quentin has disappeared. He left his house two days ago, saying that he needed a long walk. Apparently he was accustomed to such solitary excursions. On this occasion, however, he did not return and there has been no further news of him. It is to be hoped that he has not come to harm.

  I have been musing again on the extent to which the pastoral ideal, in its various guises, is invoked to dignify our animal appetites. Unwilling to admit that we couple like dogs or horses, we proclaim an artificial iridescence. Do our most exalted invitations to love amount to more than the howling of wolves or the bellowing of bulls? Even the preliminary outcome is an animal one: mouths are pressed together.

  Unfortunately reflections of this cast tend toward an all-consuming skepticism or cynicism. Does not the rhetoric of the Christian faith relate to human life at large as does the poetry of love to fornication? In either case a higher significance is boasted, by no means deducible from the physical facts. If my comparison is just, the post coitus disappointments you experienced with Miss Brindley foreshadow post mortem annihilation.

  I tell myself that I should shun such aridities of thought—such inability, despite all the claims of poets and theologians, to see beyond animal explanations. As yet, inexplicably, but perhaps fortunately, this habit of conjecture has failed to diminish my interest in the human appetites and activities that it belittles. I look forward to further news of your dealings with Miss Brindley and Mrs. Ogden. They may tell us something about human nature in general, and the female constitution in particular. Will that at last amount to merely a roguish chapter in Peregrine Pickle or to a whole novel by Mr. Richardson?

  I remain, &c.

  * * *

  My dear Godfather,

  You raise certain abstract issues which I may take up at a later date. For the moment I will stay with practicalities. The letter from Lord Downs may indeed prove useful. I shall put the matter to the test and will let you know the result.

  Although I had been confidently assured that yesterday would be the day of Ogden’s departure, I was resolved to leave nothing to chance. I made my way to Gracechurch Street and lingered outside the Spread Eagle, near the departure point for Harwich. I was soon rewarded by the sight of Ogden alighting from a chair to join the travelers. To be doubly certain I stayed until the coach rattled away. As it did so I enjoyed a pang of excitement: horses, wheels, and wind were kindly combining to waft my rival to another country, leaving the coast clear.

  I will wait for a day or two: it might help my case if Sarah becomes a little bored with solitude. But rest assured that I shall soon be knocking at the Ogdens’ front door.

  I shall write again shortly, with an account of that visit. Meanwhile, I must hope that your next letter brings more encouraging news concerning Mr. Quentin.

  I remain, &c.

  I extracted this missive from a longer record in my journal. It had been written with Gilbert in mind, but in the event I omitted the latter part as being of more interest to myself than to him. It described my doings following Ogden’s departure.

  I was so dressed (I thought) as to be able to move unnoticeably through mercantile or maritime London. Here was a chance for another exploration: I felt a desire to breathe a different air—even a different stench. Accordingly I made my way through Houndsditch and the Minories toward the warehouses, docks, and countless bristling masts of Wapping.

  Turning the corner, I found myself in a teeming market of a kind I had never seen before. There was a singular contrast between the shabbiness of sellers and customers and the exotic nature of the goods on display. I saw cutlasses and daggers, pelts, masks, fans, ornaments of ivory and stone. One corner offered some unfamiliar livestock, including small birds, parrots, snakes, tortoises, and even a bear cub in a cage. In its diversity the place was like a fashionable auction house pushed out of doors. It came to me that I was in Knott’s Market, where Pike had bought Trinculo.

  I drifted from stall to stall, thinking to make a purchase or two. After some desultory bargaining I secured, as a possible gift for Kitty Brindley, a necklace of red stones, said to come from India. I was examining a brass pistol when I heard a murmur from behind: “Take care of your pockets, sir.” I turned to see Pike himself, in shabby hat and drab clothes.r />
  He led me out of the market and down a narrow alley to the World’s End Inn, a shabby wooden construction by the river and a great resort of sailors. We sat drinking beer by an open window, and I was glad of the air it admitted, for the crowded room was fogged by tobacco smoke. Pike could have passed as a regular customer—which for all I knew he might have been. I am not sure that I can capture the singular quality of our conversation. When he is not talking his face is without expression, showing no trace of response to what has been said. Yet he may then abruptly speak out, sometimes with blunt eloquence.

  “I saw you in the market, sir, and thought I should warn you. It can be dangerous.”

  “Because of pickpockets?”

  “Pickpockets, robberies, skirmishes . . . As for the market, the goods aren’t always to be trusted. I once saw a unicorn for sale here.”

  “A unicorn?”

  “So they called it—a small pony or some such, with a horn grafted into its skull. It would soon have been dead.”

  “Did the poor creature find a buyer?”

  “Immediately. Folk gladly pay money for magic.”

  “But who could devise such a vile thing?”

  “Someone wanting money.”

  He implied no moral judgment. Here was a man at home in a world of which I knew nothing: he had earned the right to his opinions or lack of them.

  “You are a regular visitor to these parts, Mr. Pike?”

  “I am, sir. There are genuine curiosities to be found here, and I sometimes deal in such things.”

  He gestured toward the window before breaking into the longest speech I had yet heard from him.

  “Look behind you, sir. What do you see? That’s a second London there on the water—merchant ships for mile upon mile. Goods from every part of the world. So there’ll be thefts and bribes and leakages. The spillage runs into Knott’s Market.”

  “You called it a dangerous place.”

  “So it is.” He looked at me appraisingly. “You’re a sturdy young gentleman, but you could be knocked on the head for your purse. A visitor here is seen as fair game.”