What Empty Things Are These

by Crozier, J. L. ;

  ‘Do you not wonder, Sobriety, who she was, or at least what she was named?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ Sobriety knew, of course, to whom I referred, though I had spoken without preamble. Sobriety stopped her rubbing at the silver on my brooch. ‘I wonder what we will do to remember her when time has passed and we cannot recall her face, or the sound of her voice.’

  ‘She will fade to nothing.’

  ‘It is not right.’

  ‘No, it is not.’

  That this child would vanish into the very air, as if she had never existed, set each of us into a silent pondering on disinterested fate. All had stood among the stenches and fog of the alleyway that night as the inspector’s young policeman raised the girl in his arms from the cobbles. The small head fell back and swung a little, lolled where life was gone that could have supported it, until the young man steadied it with the crook of his arm and a trickle of blood scribbled thick and black from the mouth across her cheek. The soft skin of a child was crusted with dirt behind her ears and at her neck, and the childish soft lips were loose in death, and the patches of wet glistened still beneath her eyes and at her reddened nostrils. Scrapes and bruising showed dark and ready to bleed, the blood halted because the heart was stilled. Here was the small face, individual in death, that I could yet not have described in life, for fearful flight had always intervened. I had never even seen the living girl properly, could only ever have described her by her trappings: the strands of her dark hair, her youth, her red skirt.

  Fled, always, before anyone could come close.

  Outside this comfortable dwelling now, the weather moaned, its insinuating fingers seeking out any in this great city who shrank for protection into the rat-filled crannies of alleyways, the rotting bales upon the docks, those places where the stinking Thames lapped refuse up to the shore where the mudlarks waited to search out small broken treasures.

  We sat, each wrapped against the cold despite the struggles of my morning room fire and each with a cup of coffee cooling beside her, until the conversation began again.

  ‘Do you know what I would like now?’ said I.

  ‘No, indeed. What is that?’

  ‘I have a yearning to play some tune, perhaps sing a little. Will you join me?’

  Sobriety turned her plain-dressed head to look at me, and raised her brows a little. ‘What would you sing? I do not—’

  ‘—yes, yes. I do not propose popular songs or prepared pieces for Mr Hadley’s unsmiling set. We are of a quiet mood, and we might sing some thoughtful hymn of your liking.’ Sobriety seemed uncertain, for it was not the Sabbath. ‘Oh come, it would do us good,’ I said, and rose to my feet.

  The drawing room was now like a field of tossed snow with its furniture and the ornaments under sheets. So the pianoforte must be uncovered, the sheet folded back, and the stool pulled out. I essayed a few minutes to find the chords for accompaniment, and sang a descant to Sobriety’s choice until my fingers grew too cold to play:

  Jesus my Shepherd is,

  ‘Twas he that loved my soul,

  ‘Twas he that wash’d me in his blood,

  ‘Twas he that sought the lost,

  That found the wandering sheep;

  ‘Twas he that brought me to the fold,

  ‘Tis he that that still doth keep.

  Then, the stool pushed back and the sheet drawn over the instrument, we returned to the morning room fire. The flames licked and played, as they did not in dark alleyways where the rain dripped chill and unchecked by any ceiling. We held our hands out to the warmth.

  It was thus that Sobriety came to ask her inspector for his help and his authority, and he approached the governor of the prison, and we three—for Mr Broadford did insist on accompanying us—went to visit Mr Farquharson-Forster in his room therein, where he passed his sentence. We watched while the turnkey twisted at the key, his lungs bubbling rot with each breath.

  It was ill lit, to be sure, for the window was tiny and let in a niggardly light. Yet there was evidence again that Mr Farquharson’s own will had made him wealthy—his determination to pursue riches

  and power whatever the means or consequence for others—and that his will now provided furnishing about which other prisoners,

  no doubt, could only dream. His bed was draped in figured

  brocade with a burnished fringe; there was a fine piece of embroidery framed on the wall, perhaps Chinese; he had a desk that was small but well-crafted and polished to a glow that smiled in the feeble light; indeed, he had a light, a crystal fluted lamp. A small Turkey rug lay upon the floor. There was a chair, and this, too, was made by carpenters and upholsterers who knew their own worth, and I was ushered into it.

  Look at him, I thought. Who would think that he is in disgrace? For Mr Farquharson-Forster stood as straight as ever, his cuffs as neat as ever, his waistcoat with a satinate embroidery, and in his cravat the pin of sterling silver glinting in the muted glow of lamplight. The image of a gentleman, as ever.

  Mr Broadford spoke first, from the shadows it seemed, for the lamplight barely reached where he stood. ‘Mr Forster, you will recall these ladies, Mrs Hadley and Miss Mullins—’ Mr Farquharson-

  Forster glanced at me but not at Sobriety. ‘—and they visit today to ask a question of you.’

  The tall man took breath and seemed to expand, to loom over us all as if we came cap-in-hand and he were not a miscreant. ‘You will address me as Mr Farquharson, sir,’ he said in his great voice. ‘And madam. It is my name.’

  He looked down at me and folded his arms.

  ‘Folk make a grave mistake in questioning my business, madam, if that is what you have come about. Though I recall of your family only your brother had investments with me.’

  ‘No, no, I—’

  ‘He is a foolish man, like others. I cannot regret their failure, since nervous fools cannot be countenanced in business. I shall not have truck with them again—’

  ‘Indeed not,’ began Mr Broadford. Sobriety laid a hand on his arm, for it was clear irritation was growing. Nonetheless, Mr Broadford continued. ‘I fancy your sentence will not be so short when the truth of your financial fraud is uncovered.’

  ‘You know very little about business yourself, Inspector, it is clear.’ Mr Farquharson smiled a little at this, as if there were some secret of which the others knew nothing. ‘You have worked to bring me down, but I have my servants and admirers still, and this sojourn here will be a short one.’ He looked into the dark where Mr Broadford stood. ‘Rest assured, there will be no proofs held against me.’

  I looked up at him and believed, at least, that he believed this. I wondered if it were true that Mr Farquharson would rise again from the ashes he had made of the fortunes of others, and never be brought to book. All things, sadly, are possible.

  ‘You have not the foresight, Mr Broadford, Mrs Hadley,’ the man made a mocking bow to each, ‘to see what an intellect such as mine can bring about.’

  ‘I have begun lately to think on money and the getting of it,’ I said at last, my voice wobbling a little around the exaggeration. ‘And it seems to me, as I have read recently—“No man ever knew, or can know, what will be the ultimate result to himself, or to others, of any given line of conduct. But every man may know, and most of us do know, what is a just and unjust act.”’

  Mr Farquharson looked at me fully now, and in the poor light it seemed the lines were deep and shadowed with contempt. For the moment he said nothing. Instead, he reached for the watch hanging on its chain at his front. He opened it, looked at the time (he makes as if he had an appointment), and clicked it shut. His hands, I was reminded,

  were massive, but deft and confident, cared for with creams and manicured well. His hands, certainly, had no doubt about the future.

  ‘Madam, I suppose your innocence of the facts behind business does you credit as a woman. The truth
is more subtle: that there is art to the making of money, and that success rests with he who tells the best story. And I always tell the best story. The making of money has nothing to do with justice. However, I am come to the end of my patience with this.’ He stepped to the wall and leaned against it, his arms folded once more. ‘What are you here about? Not the child, surely?’

  We all three looked at him, not certain of which child he spoke.

  ‘Not the baby, taken off by my silly chit of a wife to her parents, as if it were hers to take?’ He lowered his brows to look at us, the shadow falling across his eyes. ‘He will be back with me, soon enough.’

  I opened my mouth, about to defend the poor young woman, Mrs Farquharson, whose life would truly never be the same again, wreckage created as if by afterthought. But I thought better of it, swallowed what I knew now to be rage, and said instead, ‘No, sir. I speak of the other child. The mother of your baby.’

  My face heated at this, this intimation of the foulest abuse and the basest of animal lusts, and I knew it to have turned the deepest red. I felt queasy, as if I smelt his sin. Here was this prison cell bedecked as if it were the miniature of a gentleman’s chamber, and here was this man, who behaved as if the very dust of the streets would move aside for his sake…and yet. And yet—here my eyes pricked—he flounders—nay, he revels—in the sewer, and drags all down with him. I looked at the corner of the bed, near where Mr Farquharson stood, breathed in for courage (while my breath shook) and blinked so that I may face the man himself. He looked as if he had no idea of whom I spoke, and then the set of his face changed with realisation.

  Yet surely there must be some tender place still for the girl with whom he—

  ‘You have come here for that?’ He looked at Mr Broadford. ‘She wastes my time with talk of flotsam and jetsam? What were you thinking, Broadford?’

  The inspector spoke from the shadows. ‘We were thinking that this girl has been murdered, sir, and by your man.’

  ‘Which man?’

  ‘Mr Spillane, and he has run off.’ This was from Sobriety, her voice no more steady than mine. There was movement from the two who stood there in the dark, and I felt that the inspector patted Sobriety’s hand, which still rested on his arm. I myself felt such a flood of revulsion at Mr Farquharson’s evil that would have me flee from this presence. My body clenched in resistance.

  ‘Did he now. Did he.’ Mr Farquharson nodded, as if he were thoughtful, and then as if he acknowledged something, was admiring, or approving, or simply appreciative of his henchman’s blind loyalty. ‘Well, now.’

  There was a silence, in which we three waited, until Mr Broadford said, ‘The man killed the girl, Mr Farquharson.’

  ‘That girl barely lived. If that is all—’

  ‘No.’ I felt unable to sit longer, and rose suddenly to my feet. ‘We come for her name, Mr Farquharson, for she had one.’

  He straightened at that, looked at me with a surprise on his face, his eyebrows raised, and laughed.

  ‘Her name? Good God, madam.’ He went to the door and banged upon it. ‘Turnkey!’ he called, and spoke to us as the lock rattled from outside.

  ‘She was a little night animal into which I planted a seed. There it begins and ends.’

  ‘Her name, Mr Farquharson.’ I felt both cold and ill, my stomach roiling at his statement of loveless appetite, my mind flinching from an image of his great-coated presence hunched over her tiny form, heaving in a cobbled, stench-filled corner…

  But here he only walked, in silence, the few steps to his small desk, drew out the chair there and sat with his back to us.

  ‘Her name. Please.’ I wished, unbearably, to go and shake the man. I swallowed against the desire, and my own queasiness, and knew that I had never before felt such a rage as this.

  Yet he did not speak, and neither did he move, and the door was by then opened, with the turnkey standing in the doorway, his keys clanking still and the foetid air in his wet lungs bubbling back and forth.

  Sobriety went to speak, but had to cough before she could make a sound. ‘Come. This man only proves once more he has no human feeling.’ She took my arm. ‘Come.’

  We heard him chuckle as we left. ‘You could call her Flotsam…’

  Chapter Forty-one

  Tristram James

  By A. Hadley

  . . . Her boy, his mother felt, had had to learn much. Fine feeling dwelt in his breast after all—for his cheeks were wet with tears—despite his father’s attempts to instil heartlessness therein. Tristram’s soul could melt, she could see, in what was a truly manly sensitivity toward another’s need. His stricken silence at the fading of this ragged girl told her all of that.

  Yet, what of this realisation that not all was gentle and just in this world, that the poor and helpless could be trampled thus and no rescue snatch them from pain and death? Would this knowledge of sad injustice slow his feet along his path? Which way would that path lead?

  Tristram put his hand to the young girl’s hair, and the girl opened eyes already shadowed as the light within dimmed, and tried a weak smile for him.

  ‘Young master, do not forget me. And dry your tears, for you have brought some brightness to me with your presence, and I do not die alone.’ Her eyes drifted shut and she sighed. ‘God takes me now, to my rest.’

  There was a hush, which Tristram filled with a quiet weeping, until he turned his face to his mother. This new knowledge was a weight upon them both.

  ‘Why, Mother?’ he asked. ‘Why must it be so?’

  I sat at my post by Mr Hadley’s bed, my writing box open before me. The fire snapping behind the grate made no difference to the cold. Outside, a wind had picked up. My thoughts occasionally wandered there, to the savagery that both drew and repelled with each rattling fling of cold temper. I sat wrapped to my neck in my woollen shawl, and watched Mr Hadley’s face.

  That is, I had my eyes fixed there, since in reality it was only occasionally that I was aware of him, for my mind was alive with shadows, of which only one was his. The writing here before me, which did not yet give me that sense of completion that always told me when a thing was well written, was itself born out of the uncertain shapes and shadows of my mind. I could not help the feeling those shadows were yet to show themselves as beings that convince. Uncomfortable with what I had penned but uncertain as to what was amiss, I stared at the page before me, then raised my eyes in escape.

  For a moment now, Mr Hadley came into focus and I gazed at the skin draped so loosely over bone, the shapes of his skull asserting themselves as the flesh fell away. The stench of his sores (or perhaps they could be called ulcers by now) remained, but over it lay the scarcely less unpleasant smell of the doctor’s salve.

  His very character had long ago faded from sight, and what was left was barely reminiscent of him. His circle would scarcely know him; his colleagues would not recognise the imperious regulator

  of others—this characteristic so unnervingly like that of Mr

  Farquharson-Forster.

  Arrogance and evil, both so very well tailored for it. I know it now, George.

  I hesitated in my silent soliloquy, for I was aware that there was much I did not know of him, and never would. Of Mr Hadley. Of George.

  You must have had occasion to whisper to Mrs Charles things you would not whisper to me. But then, she did not know what you did to me, and to Sobriety, and so she did not know you either.

  George Hadley’s presence barely made an impression even upon the bed and pillow, where his hair floated like so much inconsequential silver fluff, now so thin and fine that his pate showed yellow and flaked through it. These last few days his breathing had diminished to the merest suggestion, with a light clatter behind it like the tremor of raffia. I waited, with the barely breathing body of my husband, for the visit of Doctor McGuiness, to be told what I knew already to be the c
ase: Mr George Hadley would soon slip from this world, with a barely audible sigh.

  There in the silence of home, with the great noise of angry nature without, I thought of the small face, individual in death, that I could yet not have described in life, for fearful flight had always intervened.

  Fled, always, before anyone could come close.

  I reached now for the page of writing before me and tore it across and across. False, insincere. A mere imitation of life itself. All is invention. All lies.

  I looked at the paper torn in my hands. It is not so easy to do justice to tragedy.

  Now, certain that these events must have some worthy record made of them, I took out another piece of paper, thought for a time, and dipped my pen into the ink. I wrote:

  The girl was still for a time, and it was clear that she was gone. The two young faces were lit by lamplight, the one flushed with knowledge, the other empty of all that she had ever known. Tristram’s mother felt it as a deep ache that her son should have come by such hard knowledge at such a young age, but then this girl was as young, and had had hard knowledge, and too much of it, and nobody had cared to keep it from her.

  There, it was done. I exhaled deep and slow, surprised to realise I had been holding my breath for so long. I considered how characters change under the nib; there was the suggestion—more than a suggestion—of Toby and the dead girl in the red skirt, and myself (I supposed), yet…yet Toby and Tristram were not the same, and this girl on the page was but a cousin to the one I had known in the dank streets of London.

  And Tristram’s mother draws closer to her son than I am to my own. But perhaps…perhaps. Toby swam into my mind, licking his ice yet refusing my hand. My throat closed for a moment on the thought and my eyes blurred.

  Gathering up my inky cloth, I began to clean the pen, sniffing a little. Then I gazed at the paper again, for the dead girl—my own, very real dead girl—rose up in my thoughts and I, as an offering perhaps, conjured what must have been nights sleeping in tunnels or alleys on rags, knees pulled up so far to leave little exposure to the winds. The knock of other boots against the cobbles, passing close by her vermin-ridden head where it rested. If there were no overhanging eave, the rain must splash cold and trickle to the warmest crevices, past the ragged collar. There must have been, before sleep were taken and chased away, a struggle with others or with animals for bones or crusts or the mouldering mushed remains of fruit. The hunger, always murmuring, sometimes clutching and roaring; the threat, always looming, from poor man or rich man alike.