Babbicam

by Rod Madocks

  Doctor Kaiser: What was your actual job there?

  —Kisler kept me running about, boot cleaning, lamp trimming and message carrying and that was the before breakfast jobs. I did all sort of things a footman really shouldn’t do. I thought I was a slave, a Johnny-for-all-jobs. I messed about with Clara a bit, she was willing but it was a pity about the teeth. I’d moan that the house was full of a load of vurriners and she told me that the mistress was Spanish or something like. She warned me about Kisler. Said he was fearful strict and had a son called ‘little Michael’. He was a nosy varment and told tales to his pa. She warned me that Kisler would get in a right fizz when…

  [Gap in the recording]

  …not that bad though. My room at the top of the house was better than the cupboard at my Aunt’s and better than Miss Keyse’s pantry by far. I could see the moors from the top windows away to the north. I would hunker down there at night reading my Bear Hunters book or picking over my naval discharge papers. The days passed quickly enough. All the mornings were spent cleaning and in the afternoons I ran errands to town. Sometimes I took messages down to Miss Keyse at Babbicam. She would stop me and ask how I was faring and sometimes she gave me a penny to buy a bag of cherry gob sweets as if I was still a little boy.

  Worst was serving those nobs at drawing room tea or dinners at Ridgehill. I’d hand out cream, sugar or cakes while the master fixed me with a look. He probably regretted taking me on because of my rough ways. I used to get in the pantry and stick my fingers in their cakes and puddings and lick them before serving. In the six months service there the colonel spoke no words to me at all but he got Kisler to chase me all the time on this thing or that. The young mistress seemed a lonely ’umman, always sitting in the conservatory, wrapped in a shawl, playing patience with those big Spanish cards.

  The rich bellies came and went in their carriages all that winter season and …

  [Gap in the recording]

  …aid it was nothing but a passel of auld crams and had a good laugh about it.

  I was off on one of my errands, hanging about near the villa gardens hoping to chaff with the house maids when I saw Kisler walking to the Ilsham junction. A sailor-looking fellow came up on the same side of the street. The only thing I marked about him was he walked with a bit of a limp. When he reached Kisler he turned on his heel and made to light his pipe all casual and at the same time he gave a good look around the street. I popped down into the laurels and thought I’d keep an eye on them. Kisler and that sailor stood together a good while. It seemed strange to see that stiff Frenchie with a poor rough sailor but I thought no more of it. A few nights later something woke me in the early hours. I crept down to see the glow from a shaded lantern and Kisler rolling something into the cellars. I had to be careful as young Michael was on the lower stair, watching over his father. I asked Clara about the cellar later but she seemed frit when I mentioned it.

  Doctor Kaiser: What did you think he was doing?

  —I thought he was watering down and selling off his master’s cellar most like. I kept an eye on Kisler and his son but marked little else that late winter. Sometimes I laid a thread across the pantry servant’s exit to the garden. Oftentimes it was broken in the morning yet Kisler kept up his cold prideful air as ever and gave no clue to whatever he was doing of a night. I saw the same sailor several times, once quite close to Ridgehill, sitting on a low wall close to a water trough just puffing on his pipe and watching.

  Then, one afternoon, walking to Ellacombe to deliver dinner invitations, I heard a voice calling to me to hold up. He called me “my beauty” and asked if I worked with Frenchie Kisler. It was that same lean sailor man I had seen over those weeks before. He told me he was Cornelius Harrington and I would thank my lucky stars for meeting him. Aye well, I was a young vul then, a prapper mump aid. It’s hard to fathom it, how he sucked you in and won you to his will. It’s still a mystery to me though I’ve puzzled over it many a time. He took you in, and molded you like a piece of clay in …

  [Gap in the recording]

  …whatever the truth of it, I was easily netted. Harrington took me to The Man o’ War down the road in Plainmoor. Said I was a careful lad, just what he was looking for. He said that Frenchie had a position to keep. Said that they needed me for something important. Well, no-one had needed me the whole of my short vulish life so far so that hooked me in. Harrington told me that he and Kisler had a business. The Brownlows would be going on their summer trips and that’s the time their little arrangement got going. I was a slow wit about it and could not understand what business he was talking about. He kept on about the Frenchie schooners that came in on the new moon. I still didn’t get his riddling talk of tipple for the parson an’ baccy for the clerk until he spelt it out that he and Kisler paid for stuff that arrived on the beaches at night. Smugglers, you know? Stuff the revenue men have an eye out for. They needed the cash to buy so it could be sold on at a profit. That’s where I came in according to Harrington. They wanted me to take the silver plate, pop it and then they would buy from the French boats coming in to Watcombe and Anstey’s and I’d get a snip also. I really didn’t like it. I was frit about the Brownlows missing the plate. Cornelius said that they had a ton of it and besides we would straightway redeem it from Uncle Peter, the pawnbroker. We’d sell the stuff at profit and get back the silver and replace it in the strong room and all would set right again. We would be the richer, they none the wiser. He asked if I got it and did I want a guinea or two or not. I wasn’t sure that I did get it but somehow I felt obliged to go on with the scheme that those sharp fellows had cooked up.

  Doctor Kaiser: Let me grasp this. The plan was to take and pawn the family’s silver plates and use the cash to buy smuggled goods?

  —That’s it, and to sell it all on and redeem the silver before the family noticed it was gone. We were to pocket the profit. I thought there must be benefit in it. I thought it might be the leg-up I needed to make something of myself in the world.

  Harrington told me that to reach him I should leave a note slipped down the back of the water trough set into the wall at the bottom of Middle Warberry Road. Ess, that same one I’ve spoken about afore. Before leaving, Harrington said to give my hand on it. I was to read in his eye and hand that we were together in this. “Mates and for profit,” he kept saying.

  Harrington turned out right about the Brownlows. Within a week in April there was a great commotion at Ridgehill, steamer trunks were piled and topped with hat cases and valises, carriages were drawn up and there was a rush about for the servants. The family were on the move: the Colonel and his wife, Hélène, and the maid Eugenie and a young nephew called Master Fiennes who ran about everywhere waving a net. Someone told me the net was for catching butterflies in the south of France. Imagine that.

  The Colonel kept giving orders to Kisler right up to the last minute. We stood in a line on the gravelled drive and watched them go and said “Good riddernce” under our breath. Kisler said they’d be back in September and we still had work to do. He drew me to one side and told me to do his bidding in the house and to follow Harrington in all else. He said that if I obeyed him in this then all would be well. He still made it plain he thought little of me even though we were in business together.

  That’s how I ended on the down train from Newton Abbot to Plymouth. Kisler had given me the first bit of silver wrapped in brown paper. The train was full of sailor boys all laughing and ragging about, going back to their training ships on the Hamoaze after shore leave. Only a year before I would have been one of those careless lads; now I was about serious matters. Harrington had said I was to go straight in and get it done, to say no word to any man about the business and then I’d be seen right.

  Doctor Kaiser: Why were you going to Plymouth? That was some distance from Torquay, was it?

  —Harrington had chosen Devonport, his home town, not far along from Plymouth. I knew it also from my two years on the training brigs. He chose it as it was far e
nough away from any busybody’s gaze and only twenty miles by rail.

  I got off there and footed it along the Western Approach up towards the dockyards. It was strange to be back. I’d heard that Captain Jackson, who had signed my Bear Hunters book, was now Admiral of the Yards. I hadn’t looked forward to coming back to this place where hopes and dreams had come to grief. The tub-sided Torpoint hulks still rolled in the tide.

  I was supposed to go straight to Emdon’s, the pawnbrokers, near to Gun Wharf. Everyone knew the place, said Harrington. I was not so sure. I kept away from such places as a cadet, never wanted to hock my kit for drinking money like some of the lads did. They were places for the poor, putting all their stuff up the spout. Like those yardies, the dock workers that us boy sailors used to look down on, they swarmed in and out of the pawnbrokers like flies.

  I went past Stoneham Creek and thought on being landed there by launch, all swaddled in a blanket. I’d somehow caught the neumonee on the damp old Implacable and was taken past those green iron gates into the cool sheets of the Royal Naval Hospital. It did flood back on that journey up to Devonport. On I went, past the first dock yards, the mewies calling and with all that banging and hammering echoing out over the Sound. Like the carpenters on the wooden training ships always clappering away at something. There was gunnery booming away in the distance, like the training we did on the Foudrayant. Those quick firers were my favorite, letting fly at a dragged target. I had been best boy on Commodore Jackson’s pinnace and had been going along fair and making progress afore I got sick. Well, that was what I kept on telling myself though now I know it was lies. In truth, navy service didn’t suit me. But in those days I kept a story in my head that I’d been cheated out of a grand career, screening out the truth like I screened out the fact that this Harrington business was knavery and bound for ill. So there I was, with hands full of silver and a head full of mumpsy ideas.

  The parcel I was carrying held a pair of candlesticks, two snuffers and two silver trays—value twenty pounds. It was a tidy sum, twice what I’d earn in a year. Harrington has said ‘Ordnance Street’ but I wandered onto Fore Street as the dockyard signal gun went off at noon. I could see the great dock yard gates ahead of me and there was a shop front with the gold balls hanging and the sign in the window, “Emdon, Jeweler and Pawnbroker”. I had a closer look and there were more signs about money being advanced on plate, jewels and all types of property. It was not Ordnance Street but quite near it. I thought maybe they had gone up in the world since Harrington had last been there. It seemed grander and more gentrified than I expected. I took the plunge and rang the bell. The jeweler came to the window and looked suspiciously at me then signed for me to come to the side door. I stood there at the side entrance while he looked out at me through a crack in the door. I said I had things to pawn and that he was recommended. The sharp little man wanted to know who had recommended. I muttered something about a gennelmen of Torquay. The narrow-faced pawnbroker kept up a sharp watch on me all the time I was talking.

  In the end he let me in and held the candlesticks up to the light. He said they were odd sticks, an unmatched pair. I told him I could get a pair from someone I was in business with. He didn’t say anything, only gave me another crabby look. He picked at the other things and spent time looking at a crest marked on the trays. He said he was going to fetch his scales. I heard a door open and close somewhere in the back. It was all taking too long. I looked around at the ranks of snuff boxes, foreign carvings, telescopes and such. It seemed too good a place, not like the heaps of old clothes and shoes from other pop shops I’d seen, nor was there any of the racket of the desperate poor. Still, Harrington must have chosen the place for some reason although the shopman clearly didn’t favor me much. He had been gone a hell of a time when eventually I heard a door bang and the man came back. He spent another age weighing the items and looking at the marks with a glass. He then said he’d advance three pounds on it. I said it was worth twenty and that was never enough. He said that was his price. I was all of a diz and just wanted to get out and in the end accepted it. I said I wanted a better price on my other stuff. He began to write out a cheque. A cheque! Hell, the whole thing kept getting worse. I said I wanted no paper, I wanted the readies. He said he had no cash, it was Saturday and close of business. I folded up and let it happen. Everything was going to scat. I told him to pay the cheque to “Mr Lee for M. Kisler”. I couldn’t think of anything else. I tumbled out from the pawnbroker with that Devonport bank cheque. Everything had gone screwy and I did not like the look in the man’s eye at all. I went into Tozer’s outfitters next door to cash the thing but the clerk had pointed out that the date was two days in advance. I reeled out again. Gar, it was all a botch!

  The yardies came clattering out of dock gates for their Saturday half day. I had walked back to Emdon’s thinking to have it out again with that damned clerky shopman when I saw the pawnbroker pushing his way towards me through the crowds of dock workers. Beside him walked a big bearded man in a long coat. The big fellow held me by the wrist and told me to come along. He said he was Detective Slee, Devonport police.

  Doctor Kaiser: So, you ended up getting arrested?

  —Ess, the whole thing was a skiddy bum mess. I had made a terrible mistake. I found it out later. It turned out that I, the baffle-aided vul, had gone to Mark Emdon, jeweler on Fore Street not his cousin Eleazer Emdon who ran a much more rackety place in Ordnance Street, up snug to Gun Wharf. He was the man who Harrington knew would take in all manner of things with no questions and certainly no running to the police.

  I was clapped in the cells and the police were at Ridgehill soon enough. I had put together the pieces during the trial that came after. Slee had gone to Ridgehill three days later. Kisler took the detective to the Brownlow’s plate room and mocked surprise at the empty places on the shelves where the silver had once stood. He said how the footman had been acting suspicious of late. Kisler must have gone in my little box bedroom and palmed the spare plate room key under the mattress for the detective to find a few minutes later. So was my fate sealed up. I was charged with theft and rattled up to the magistrates then to the Assizes for sentencing. I never said a word about Kisler or Harrington but watched Kisler give evidence against me and I swore revenge in my heart. I got six months. No-one could understand why I did the crime. It had seemed such a senseless stupid thing to do, to steal from my employer and to think not to be caught.

  “Mr Creed, my defense solicitor had said at the trial that he could not say why I did it. “Explain? How will I ever explain?” I said to Ma when …

  [End of recording]

  Who Is Haunting Whom?

  Sometimes you can’t help but feel sorry for him. He blundered from one disaster to another. At other times you know he’s a meanball and you wouldn’t like to be close to him. I have the feeling I should pay more attention to Lee’s capabilities before I play Orpheus much longer leading his sorry ass back up to the light. I’m distracted though, that medium has definitely unsettled me. She’s opened a door in some way and I don’t at all like what’s come in. I’m not great at sleeping anyway. Noises trouble me, something seem to scuffle in my yard and the apartment has these fruit flies that breed somewhere, gnat-like bugs that move about when the light goes out, I can sense them soundlessly maneuvering. They are waiting to land on my face. It got worse the other night, I was half- awake when I heard a whirling buzzy sound at first faint then getting louder. The sound stopped and I heard a voice, real distinct, say “That didn’t work”, it was a tinny little girl’s voice but clear. It seemed to be coming from inside my head as if from a dream. I ignored it—or tried to. But it came again this time I heard the words “Don’t hurt me, it’s Georgia”. I sat right up. Bummer! I’ve got schizophrenia on top of all my other problems. That’s what I thought. Hearing voices was not good news. I stayed up the rest of the night and played Katie Scullin tracks on headphones to drown out any more of that shit. Same deal the next night. That
whiny voice saying “I’m trying”, over and over. The next day my ears seemed to keep buzzing with a high frequency modulating sound. A tinnitus-type problem according to my online symptom checker. I have no friends or confidantes. I sure wasn’t going to see no doctors. All I could think was to ring Mulvina Schott.

  “I’m not surprised,” she said after I explained what was bugging me, “I told you that you were a sensitive. You evidently have some psychic ability.”

  That was not good news. All my life I’ve been told I’m out of kilter. Worse, she told me that little voice was probably my spirit guide trying to get through. Great, I thought, had Georgia on my case as well as John Lee. Mulvina told me to relax and go with it. The spirit world wasn’t out to harm me. Little Georgia was my friend.

  WTF did she know?

  Spool Six

  Will there be any stars in my crown?

  Portland Prison, 1907

  Doctor Kaiser: I think we dealt with your prison time last time we spoke.

  —Not quite done with, doctor. Why don’t you puff on that pipe of yourn while I tell a bit more about prison. Something important. I don’t mind about the smoke. Quite like it in fact.

  Doctor Kaiser: Very kind of you, Mr Lee but I’ll leave off for now.

  —As you wish, sir. Now, in clink, time crouched. That’s what I used to think. Time was crouching in my cell. Everything was so frozen up when you were in jug. The rest of the world had forgotten you. Especially those long nights all alone there in Portland with the far-off sound of the sea coming to you. Time still went fearful slow even in the last months when I was waiting to be released. In a way, it goes slow now these last days also. I’m lying here all alone in my bed waiting for time to make his jump on me.