The Black Joke
Page 5
Chapter 5
Horror hath taken hold upon me because of the wicked that forsake thy law (Psalm 119)
It was generally agreed that Mistress Urethra Grubb, proprietrix of Grubb’s Emporium (Fine Fashion, Drapery and Haberdashery) and owner of most of the poorer houses in town, was the worst, most truly awful woman in the world. Short and stout and square and strong, her broad red face lit the street like a beacon as she stood in the shop doorway. Her nostrils were revoltingly broad and her mouth under an undeniable moustache had the wide gape of a frog or toad.
Always truculent and never known to smile, her voice was coarse and vicious as she hectored the little shop-girls and sent them scurrying to fetch bolts of silk, rolls of fine dress material, bobbins of cotton, packets of pins and all the other things necessary to dress the town’s womenfolk. She modified her tone but little when addressing the other members of the Town Council or the Poor Relief Fund or the Workhouse Governors, for she was afraid of nobody and would not be gainsaid.
Nor on those obligatory occasions when she was invited by the town’s tradesmen and dignitaries to their social gatherings, did she condescend to smile graciously and lower her voice by the slightest degree. Did she not know all their secrets, and were they not just as afraid of her as the little girls who scurried and cried behind her counter? The tradesmen did not want her in their houses, but such was the power of her overbearing will that they had no choice. Neither did the girls want to work at the Emporium. It was just that once Mistress Grubb had set her mind on you, sensing some innocence to be spoiled or vulnerability to be explored, it became mysteriously difficult to find employment anywhere else.
From the seaweed-fronded harbour to the great grey church on the hill, from the quayside hovels of the fishers to the elegant crescent where the civic dignitaries and the owners of the better shops ruled their households with sarcasm and petty cruelty, you would be hard pressed to find a single person to put in a good word for her save possibly her closest cronies, the Widow Dolphin, sharp-faced Miss Throstle and the Vicar - and who knew what even they thought about her in their deepest hearts?
Her presence made itself felt far beyond the dark confines of the shop she had inherited from her father. Rumour had it that she had poisoned him with a pie made of rotten fish and leaves of purple wightsbane. He had lingered in pain for a week while she had allowed nobody near him, not even the old Vicar, and so intimidated the doctor that he left town and had not been seen since. Why were they interfering, she'd asked them, what did they hope to gain? After the old man's money, was that it? Hoping to catch him in a weak moment and milk him for cash, was that it? Well she was in charge now, and it would be a strange day indeed when some useless quack of a pill-monger or mewling hypocritical fairy-tale preaching priest could put one over on her, oh yes.
As Bodrach Nuwl loomed over the little town, so Urethra Grubb loomed … not over it but, as it were, through it. Not a gull-stalked street, not a narrow alley, not the broad avenue that led from the Town Hall to the Fish Market, not the cosy flowered lanes at the edges of the town nor the stews and drinking parlours behind the harbour, was free of her. Her malignity crept through the town like a fog, oozing into doorways and round the cracks of the windows, drifting between the curtains, entering every house and home to sour the family supper and dampen the beds, flattening the singing in church and chapel, wilting the lettuces on the market stalls, frightening the dogs and startling the horses, a miasma of wickedness that touched everything and everyone and made life dark and pointless.
Strapping lads failed to live up to their promise and became gamblers and drunkards for no reason. Fair maids in the rosy glow of youth squandered their innocence, contracted diseases, gave painful birth, despaired and took to wandering the streets dragging their grizzling children behind them. Prosperous merchants closed the doors of their fine houses and spent the evenings counting their money, ignoring their wives and children and bothering the servant girl in the garret. Honest shop-keepers scowled at their customers, abused the delivery boy, short-changed anyone they could, and closed early.
The Vicar read his sermons from a book and drank half a bottle of whisky before every service. Schoolmasters found amusing things to do with children who misbehaved or couldn’t say their lessons, instilling in them such fear and disgust that many, arriving at half-past eight in the morning, had soiled themselves by ten and spent the rest of the day sitting in their own ordure. It was a rotten town full of rotten people, with Mistress Grubb curled like a maggot at its rotten heart.