Points of Departure: Stories

by Pat Murphy

  Vance told the clerk. “Eighth wonder of the world.”

  While Vance was talking to the clerk, Charlie stepped outside. He looked down the narrow street. In the distance, he saw the open sky and a spot of green. He left Vance behind, drawn to the greenery.

  The River Thames flowed through London, bringing water to the city and carrying away the sewage and refuse.

  Charlie walked down the street and found himself on steps leading down to the river. A tall tree grew on the riverbank, providing a restful spot in the gray stone of the city. In the tree, a bird was singing.

  Charlie sat on the stone steps. A sea gull landed beside him and cocked its head from side to side, studying him with one yellow eye and then the other. Charlie smiled at the bird, then tilted his head back so that the sun shone on his face. The river water lapped gently against the bottom step, whispering comforting words in a language all its own. He rested there, soaking up the warmth of the sun and feeling a portion of his strength returning to him.

  Sean was a mudlark, one of the filthy crew who made their living by scavenging bits of saleable refuse from the mud of the River Thames. When the tide was out, he and his two brothers waded into the dirty water, foraging for bits of rope and old iron to sell to the ragman, or for lumps of coal that their mother could burn.

  Sean was seven years old, and he had been mudlarking since he was six. His father, a laborer on the docks, had died after being crushed between two barges. With Sean’s father’s death, the family had fallen on hard times. His mother did char work when she could get it, and all the children scavenged.

  On warm days, it was not so bad to wade in the river: they could clamber from the water and let the sun warm them every now and again. But when the wind blew, there was no comfort for them—just cold mud and cold water and a gray and cheerless sky.

  On that sunny day, Sean and his brothers had been both lucky and unlucky. Over by the docks where some men were repairing a ship, they found a dozen copper nails, worth a half-penny for the lot. That was good luck—but bad luck came with it. Sean had stepped on one of the nails, running it deep into his foot. When the sailors chased them away from the docks; he could scarcely run for the pain. Even now, hours later, his foot throbbed with a hot pain and he hobbled after his brothers, walking on his heel to avoid touching the wound to the mud.

  “Look there,” David, his oldest brother, called. “By the river steps.” The tallest man Sean had ever seen was lounging in the sun on the stone steps that led down to the water. “Come on,” David said. “Let’s go talk to him.”

  The three boys approached cautiously, marveling at the size of the man. Their mother had told them stories of the giants who lived in Ireland in the early days. This man might have emerged from such a story.

  Sean was in shallow water just a few yards away from the giant when the man opened his eyes. “Good day, sir,” said David, the boldest of the three. “Have you a penny for some poor lads?”

  The giant blinked at them. “A penny?” He shook his head. “Not so much as a penny, though Joe Vance says that I will be a wealthy man soon enough.”

  Encouraged by such an amiable response, Sean stepped closer. “You’re very big,” he said. “Are you a giant, like the ones in the stories?”

  The man nodded. “My father was a giant. I suppose I’m one too.” He held out his hand. “Come up out of the water if you’d like.” He took Sean’s hand and lifted him from the water. “There now,” he murmured. “Sit down here.”

  Sean limped up the steps to sit beside the giant. His brothers hung back, gaping at him from the safety of the river. But the giant seemed friendly enough.

  “What have you done to your foot?” the giant asked him.

  “Stuck it with a nail,” Sean said, bending his leg and twisting his foot around so he could examine the wound in the sole. The skin around the puncture had turned a deep purple. The chill of the river water had numbed the foot somewhat, but when Sean tried to wipe the mud away from the wound, he winced at the stabbing pain.

  The giant’s hand closed over Sean’s, engulfing the boy’s hand and foot both. “Don’t poke at it, lad. Let it be, and perhaps I can help.” The giant’s hand was warm and it seemed to soothe the pain.

  The boy gaped up at the giant. “Are you a doctor?”

  The giant shook his head. “Not a doctor. But it seems I sometimes have a healing way about me.” He wet his lips.

  Suddenly, for all his size, he looked like he was not so much older than Sean. “My father gave me a magic sword,” he said softly, jerking his head toward a stout wooden staff that leaned against the steps beside him. “It has a power to it. You can touch it if you like.”

  Sean reached out and fingered the white blossoms that grew from the wooden shaft.

  “Do you come from Ireland?” the giant asked.

  Sean shook his head. “My mother came from Ireland. I have never been there.”

  “Ah,” the giant said. “But still you are Irish by blood.”

  He nodded slowly. “I have come to take the Irish back home. You’ll be coming with me.”

  Young as he was, Sean knew the way of the world. He frowned at the giant. “We can’t go to Ireland,” he said.

  “We don’t have money for the fare.”

  The giant studied him solemnly, as if this were the first time that he had thought of the fare. “Bran the Blessed once waded across the water between England and Ireland. He could have carried the Irish home—but he was a bigger giant than I am.” He hesitated, frowning. “Maybe we could walk.”

  Sean shook his head. “We can’t walk across the sea.”

  The giant looked mournful, and Sean cast about in his mind, trying to think of something that might help. “Moses parted the waters,” he said. His mother made a practice of telling them stories from the Bible, on nights when she was not too tired. “Maybe you could do that.”

  The giant studied the Thames. He lifted his staff and waved it at the water, as if pushing it back. “Go back,” he rumbled. “Show me some dry land.”

  The water obeyed sluggishly, drawing back away from the base of the steps to reveal the black muck of the bottom. It stopped a few feet from the steps, and the giant waved again, as if herding a reluctant cow. “Go on now. Move yourself.” The water drew back another two feet, forming a smooth green-brown wall that was as smooth and shiny as glass. Sean’s brothers stood ankle-deep in the mud, gazing at their own feet in amazement.

  “Charlie! Where are you, you blasted Irishman? Charlie!”

  Hearing an angry voice, the giant lowered his staff. The waters flowed back into place and lapped quietly at the base of the steps. Sean slipped off the steps and returned to the safety of the river. A small man appeared at the top of the steps and shouted again at the sight of the giant.

  “Where have you been, Charlie?”

  “Right here by the river,” the giant said with quiet dignity. “Just talking to these lads. They’re from Ireland.”

  Vance glared at Sean and his brothers. “Half the mudlarks in London are Irish,” he grumbled. “Come on now, Charlie. We have business to attend to.”

  “They are my people, Joe. I’ll be taking them back to Ireland presently.”

  Vance nodded impatiently, but softened his tone.

  “Certainly you will, Charlie. But now we must be going.”

  Sean watched the giant go. It wasn’t until he followed his brothers that he realized that his foot no longer ached.

  That night, he sat by the fire and searched for the wound.

  But the sole of his foot was smooth and unblemished; with nary a puncture, a hole, or a scrape.

  There are no gardens in Covent Garden. The square that bore that name was in the heart of London’s West End, in the shadow of St. Paul’s Church and not far from the decaying tenement houses of St. Giles Rookery, a slum inhabited by the Irish. By day, costermongers, people selling fruit and vegetables, filled the square. As they called out their wares, their cri
es competed with the braying voices of would-be entertainers: a juggler who sent sharp knives dancing through the air, a Welshman who swallowed live mice and snakes, a man with a monkey that danced on its hind legs to the music of a handcranked organ, another with a chicken that walked a tightrope.

  In nearby Drury Lane, gentlemen wagered on the cockfights. In the coffeehouses, gamblers favored games that depended on the spin of a wheel or the toss of the dice, playing roulette and faro, brag and basset, crimp and hazard and rolypoly. For those gamblers with money to spare at evening’s end, the south side of the square offered Mother Needham’s and Mother Cole’s, well-known among London’s brothels.

  An Irishwoman named Kathleen had a stall in Covent Garden. Her face was pretty enough—she had even features and her eyes were the color of the ocean caught in a tidepool. But most people didn’t notice her eyes or her face. Instead, their gazes lingered on the hump that rose from her back like the pack on a peddler. Kathleen was born with a twist in her back, and with this she made her living.

  She read palms and told fortunes. Her stall was not far Tom King’s Coffeehouse where gentlemen gambled, and many a gambler came to touch her hump for luck. Sometimes they asked her if they should gamble that night. She would study their palms and give them advice. “Not tonight, Your Grace. There’s a bad look to the moon and the luck is not with you.” “Stick to the wheel: The dice will be against you.” Maids, out shopping for fresh fruit, would give her a penny to tell them about handsome young men. “His heart is false, dearie,” she told them. “Look elsewhere for your true love.”

  On a sunny morning, she sat on a stool outside her stall, letting the warmth of the day soak into her bones. The weather had changed from foul to fair, and the changes made her hump ache with a deep abiding pain. She had smeared on a salve that a patterer had claimed would heal any misery, but the ache remained.

  Above the cries of farmers hawking their vegetables, she heard a trill of birdsong. She looked to see if someone had caged birds to sell. The men with caged birds and the boys with nests to sell were the first and sometimes the only signs of spring in London.

  When she heard the song again, she looked up and saw a songbird perched on the pole that supported her rain cover. He tilted back his head and loosed another sweet song.

  “Look there,” an apple seller cried. When she looked toward the voice, she saw a man who towered above the rest of the crowd. He wore the garb of a country lad and carried a walking staff decorated with hawthorn blossoms.

  “That’s right, look sharp, lads,” said the small man who walked beside the giant. “My name’s Joe Vance and this is Charlie Bryne, the Irish giant, descendant of kings. I’ll wager you’ve never seen his like before. Tell your friends to come and see him. On display every day except Sunday.”

  While the small man shouted his pitch, the tall man glanced at the crowd, clearly a little bewildered by all the noise and confusion around him. If it hadn’t been for his size, he would have looked like a schoolboy, visiting the big city for the first time.

  When Kathleen smiled at him, he smiled genially back.

  “Good day to you,” she called to him. “Would you have your fortune told, Charlie Bryne? No charge for the descendant of kings.” Telling his fortune for free would be worth her while, she knew, attracting attention to her and bringing her business after he was gone.

  He came to her, the crowd moving aside before him like wheat before the wind. “Where in Ireland are you from?” he asked, his voice a deep grumbling that blended with the noise of the crowd.

  “My parents came from County Cork,” she said. “But I have been in England since I was just a babe.”

  He held out his hand and she took it. His skin was warm and rough, like a boulder that had been warmed by the sun. The lines on the palm were etched deep, like cracks in a granite boulder.

  “Someone is looking for you,” she said. “You have a secret he wants.”

  “I have no secrets,” Charlie said.

  “Someone wants something you have. There will be pain and sorrow, and you will die far from home.”

  He shook his head stubbornly. “That cannot be,” he rumbled. “I promised my father that I would return to Ireland.” He smiled down at her. “I will take you with me.”

  Vance called to Charlie then, shouting across the crowd.

  He squeezed Kathleen’s hand gently. When he walked off through the crowd, the songbird followed, circling the giant. After he left, Kathleen realized that her hump no longer ached. For a time, she was free of the pain.

  The clock on the mantel struck eight and Joe Vance moved into the crowd. “That’s the end of today’s visiting hours, ladies and gentlemen. Come again tomorrow. The amazing Irish giant will be accepting visits from the gentry from eleven to three and from five to eight each day. Tell your friends.”

  Charlie stood by the fire and watched the crowd leave the room, glad to see them go. For the past four hours, he had answered the same questions over and over again: he was twenty years old; he stood eight foot two inches in his stocking feet; his foot was fifteen inches long.

  He was uncomfortable in his new suit. The tailor had cut it too tight in the chest and shoulders. Whenever Charlie took a deep breath, the seams threatened to split.

  Joe Vance had advised him to breathe shallowly.

  Joe Vance sat in one of the chairs by the fire and spilled a handful of coins onto a kerchief that he had spread on the hearth rug. He was counting out Charlie’s share: one-quarter of the take. Vance took the rest. He had explained to Charlie that out of this share he took care of all the necessities of business—paying the rent, arranging to have young boys hand out advertisements in the streets and so on.

  Firelight reflecting from the coins sparkled in Vance’s eyes. He finished counting and pushed a small stack of coins toward Charlie. Charlie picked up the coins and jingled them in his hand.

  “There you go, enough money to keep you busy for the night, eh?” Vance grinned at Charlie and slipped the rest of the take into his money pouch. “Now I’ll be I off—I have business to attend to.” He winked at Charlie and hurried off. In the dark bedroom, Charlie took off his new suit and his new shoes, and put on his comfortable old homespun clothes. The hawthorn flowers that bloomed on his staff perfumed the room with the fresh scent of spring. He took the staff in hand and set out to find the Irish and do his father’s bidding.

  Night was settling over London as he left his rooms and made his way down the dark alley toward Covent Garden.

  Here and there, an oil lamp in a doorway illuminated the threshold of a shop. Charlie kept to one side of the narrow street, ducking beneath the hanging wooden shop signs. A few industrious shopkeepers had scattered cobblestones in front of their doorways. The stones, embedded in the hard-packed dirt of the alley, hurt Charlie’s bare feet.

  The street opened into a square crowded with stalls and people. The air was loud with the cries of sellers. “Chestnuts, penny a score!” “Apples! Fine ’ating apples!” “Oysters, three for a penny. Fine and fresh. Oysters!”

  A candle cast an uncertain light over a vegetable stall. The hot coals of the chestnut seller’s stall shone with a hellish glow, painting the passersby as ruddy as devils. The oyster seller’s makeshift stall was beneath a streetlamp. The wick in the oil-filled globe cast a puddle of feeble yellow light. The flickering light distorted people’s faces, making them looked pinched and angry.

  Three gentlemen hurried through the square—swell gamblers by the look of them, on their way to a coffeehouse or a bordello. A young girl, no more than eight years old, trotted after them, calling out, “Please, gentlemen, do buy my flowers. Do buy a bunch please.” As she passed the oyster seller’s stall, the child lost her footing, tripping over a pothole in the street. She bumped into the stall and fell, dropping her flowers and knocking half a dozen shellfish into the street.

  She was in the mud, scrambling after her fallen bouquets, when the oyster seller swore and lif
ted his hand to cuff her. In the flickering light, his face looked frozen and masklike, as if all human feeling had left him.

  “Here now,” Charlie called out. He stepped between the man and the child. “She didn’t mean you any harm.”

  The oyster seller glared up at Charlie. “Blasted Irish whelp,” he muttered, but he lowered his hand and stepped back, putting his stall between himself and the giant, clearly fearful.

  Turning to the little girl, Charlie found her on her knees in the mud, gathering up her flowers. The blossoms were muddy and battered, and the child was weeping as she tried unsuccessfully to brush the filth from the bouquets.

  He squatted beside her. “Now, lass,” he murmured, not knowing what to say, “Come now, don’t cry.”

  She ignored him, continuing to inspect her flowers through her tears. Charlie studied her a moment, then held out his staff, where the hawthorn flowers still bloomed.

  “Look here, lass. You can pick a new bouquet right here.”

  She glanced up and Charlie helped her to her feet.

  “There’s a lass,” he said, still holding out his staff. His legs were tired from squatting, and so he plucked the child from the mud and lifted her, supporting her on one arm.

  He held the staff in his other hand, where she might easily reach the blossoms. “Pick a bouquet,” he urged her.

  A few passersby, intrigued by Charlie’s size, had stopped to watch him argue with the oyster seller. They lingered to watch the girl pluck flowers from the giant’s staff. She picked a bunch and bound them together with a dirty bit of string that she pulled from some hidden pocket in the rags that served as her clothes. She picked another bunch, larger than the first. The watching crowd grew larger.

  Though clearly the staff should have been plucked bare, it was as thick with flowers as ever.

  The girl picked a third bunch of flowers working awkwardly with her right hand while her left arm cradled an enormous bouquet: Her arms were full when the giant set her down, and yet the staff still bore a crown of white blossoms. As the little girl passed among the crowd, selling flowers to people who marveled at how sweet and fresh they were, the crowd watched Charlie expectantly, awaiting his next trick.