Babbicam

by Rod Madocks

  —It was a terrible long labor. It was a Sunday, and all day there had been crowds going past into town, brought out to hear speeches—for the whole country was full of election fever. It was cold, with snow across the hills. I could see at once there was something wrong with the babby. It had cross eyes and a tongue too big for its mouth and its ears were folded over in a strange way. The nurse said he was bonny and there was nothing wrong. Jessie said he was a flower that would unfold.

  I paid out to see a doctor in his consulting rooms off Collingwood Street a few months later. He looked at our babby, turning his little head this way and that and looking into his cross eyes with a glass. At last he returned our son to Jessie and washed his hands in a basin and asked to speak to me alone. Once Jessie went out the room looking frightened, he told me that that he had to say was difficult. He was sorry to tell me my son was “defective”. That’s what he said, “defective”. That word fell like a stone. He said he was incurable and I must rid from my mind any notion of improvement. He said he was a sickly infant now and if he survived he would grow to be a feeble-minded adult. When I got my breath I asked what caused it. The doctor did not know. He said a Dr Down had described the condition. Sometimes it’s in the blood, he thought. I asked what should be done and he answered that I should put the child to a wet nurse and then into a home for the feeble-minded. It was best not to dwell on it, there would be other children. As I left he shook my hand and said that it was a sad fact that some are not fit to run the race of life.

  Things were different from then on. Jessie would not accept what the doctor said. She doted on the boy and a wall was quickly built up between us. I could not get over the terrible disappointment, though now I feel bitter sorry about it. I could not help from thinking that it was something come from her that had made our son like that, maybe it was the curse of the long bony reach of her mother from that Kentish asylum.

  Jessie drank and grew fatter. When she put out her hand to me I could not take it. I began to sleep back at the Chancellor’s Head, pleading long hours. She spent long teary nights tending to the baby while it whimpered in the dark. She tried to keep things going. She made me meals but couldn’t seem to do anything right. I ate them in silence, those awful dinners, then I would go back to town.

  The customers noted my black mood. They kept saying that their Jonty’s got the scunners. Mr Wears had to tell me to pull my socks up. The pub wanted jolly barmen to entertain the customers during Newcastle’s glorious triumphs in the new Football Association cup. Besides I was no longer so famous. That Dr Crippen, the dentist who had killed his wife and buried her in the cellar then fled to America, he was front page news now and I …

  [Clicking on spool]

  … is that Addie bringing me dinner? Don’t want any of it. Leave it on the side. Full up with everything anyway…

  Where was I? I made my mind up quick. By summer we headed south on a Great Northern express. We did not have much to take, just clothes and letters of introduction. Jessie had the babby in a carrying basket. Women sometimes made a fuss over him until they saw his yellow turnip face and cross eyes. Then they turned silently away. The steamer pounded south. I’d set on us going to London. We were falling into a new life.

  Homunculus

  Huh! I could tell Lee a thing or two about bad blood. At least he only hit his Pa over the head with a hammer. Georgia’s voice has escalated to a warning squeak. She keeps warning me about a mean man who is after me. He wants to consume me or I him. I don’t quite get what she’s saying. I keep seeing a young guy in my neighborhood, an ordinary-looking dude about my age who is always pushing a baby stroller. He came past as I was loading up my SUV in the front yard the other day. I nodded and said, “Wassup?” and looked into the stroller. There wasn’t a baby there, nor even a child. It was a child- shaped thing, shriveled and old with a thick head of black hair. The lips were drawn back to show yellowish teeth. It was a homunculus foundling of some sort. The guy pushing the stroller averted his face and passed by. I thought maybe that was what I looked like as a child. I was a sort of troll-kid when I was small. I did not belong in my folks’ world and they had no idea how to handle me. Whoever’s chasing me maybe it’s me they need to watch out for.

  Spool Eight

  Right across the ocean blue

  London, 1909

  —Coming to the big city was a big jump. A theatrical agent at the Sunderland Empire told me about the Old King’s Head on Borough High Street. I’d gone to him about exhibiting myself, and he said a lot of music hall acts stayed there and they also held events themselves. Bert Williams the landlord offered me a job as soon as I turned up. It was going to be just like the Chancellor’s Head: I was to be barman and freak show all in one.

  Doctor Kaiser: You came to London when?

  —Nearly two year after my release. That’s where I met her downstairs. I noticed her that first morning while being shown around by Bert Williams. I saw an ’andsum maid with red-gold hair chasing some little figures and flicking a bar cloth at them. Bert said they were Harvey’s Midges, a dwarf variety act. He told me they were dirty, troublesome little tackers, always looking up ladies’ skirts. [laughing on recording] The one doing the chasing was Adelina. That’s what Bert called her. She was barmaid there. He introduced me to her as “Babbacombe Lee”. She asked what “Babbacombe” was and he told her to start reading the papers more careful. I said that it did not matter, it meant she could make up her own mind about me. She said to call her Addie. We’ve been together ever since.

  Doctor Kaiser: And what of your wife?

  —Jessie stayed in the lodgings in Lambeth, mainly spent her days wheeling little John around the streets in his perambulator. She struck up a bit of a friendship with the Portuguese family two doors down. What were their name? The Nascimentos, that’s it. They were a lively bunch of milliners who had a cripple daughter, all crabbed up and with a little head like an apple stuck on a stick. Mainly Jessie stayed on her own though. She didn’t come to the pub, I told her the landlord wouldn’t like it. They say that time turns love into corpses or wives. There is nort crueller than a dead love. I stopped touching or looking at Jessie, ’n our love vanished like the leaves from a frost-nipped tree. There was a sour quiet in the bedroom; I no longer watched her as she undressed; I turned my back and blew out the lamp. I was glad to hurry off in the mornings and come back late at night. Watching the pigeons fly off over the Lambeth rooftops from the cold bathroom when I shaved in the mornings and seeing my hopes fleeing with them. When she did speak to me it was often with bitterweed shrewish complaints about this and that. Sunday mornings were a torture, we used to wheel Baby John to Vauxhall Park then stand together by the pond, looking at the cloudy water, our feet all snared up by fallen leaves.

  Doctor Kaiser: How were you earning your living?

  —I got £9 a week from Williams as well as extra money from appearing at The Ring on Blackfriars Road. That was a boxing place. I worked long hours behind the bar. It was a busy drinking place and plenty of them came to gawk at me. I’d got the performing thing off pat by then. Nort they said fussed me and I stared coolly at them and smiled mysterious-like when they asked if I was innocent.

  Doctor Kaiser: And Adeline?

  —I started carrying out the crates of empties for her and wiping down the bar top until Minnie Williams told me off for taking a woman’s work off her. Addie seemed to know how to laugh and I felt she really wanted to know what I had to say. After hours, we leaned together side by side at the bar rabbitting about the customers or listening to Minnie in her cups talking about her ‘Cream City’ where she was brought up. Ess, of all places, she came from Milwaukee. She filled our heads with talk of Broadway Bridge, whaleback steamers on Lake Michigan, trolley cars, St Jo’s, holidays at Waukesha and all. Addie kidded her about exchanging all that for London soot and scabby old pigeons.

  There were threads, at first small, but growing stronger and stronger and binding round to pull us toge
ther. We walked out together after work to watch the lights of the city wobbling in the river. Addie told me about her life in Croydon. One of nine children in a crowded house with not enough love to go round them all. Her dad had been a sergeant in the artillery in Burma. Three of her sisters had been born there. He came out the army after getting a jungle fever and took a brewery job that he hated. Addie was eighteen when all of a sudden he drank a bottle of carbolic. She saw his screaming fit and the foam hanging out of his mouth when he was carted away. Her Ma struggled after he died. They moved to a scrag end of town and she leaned on her elder brother who also worked at the brewery and they took in lodgers. A little while later her brother Henry took on a new cycle-making business in Scarborough and her family went with him. Addie tried jumping away into a new life and took to barmaiding.

  We were together more and more often. We found any excuse to go out together on errands, fetching household stuff for the Williams or taking packages and post. Then, between work, we slipped away past Montague Chambers and down Borough High Street to the river. Here we liked to lean on the parapet of London Bridge with all the carts and omnibuses going past. We passed the time watching the river traffic go past. Addie knew all the big buildings, Fishmongers Hall, St Magnus spire—I can’t remember them all now. I mainly noticed the big white front of Croll’s American Merchants. I kept saying that was the place to go.

  Over time we went further down Southwark’s dark lanes and waterside places. Once, at Greenland Dock, we found a crowd gathered around a sale of dead sailors’ clothing and effects. Lord, that was a sad sight, how everything could just go scat. Down Clink Street one time we came on a Lascar funeral. The Indian fellows seemed to be having a good time, singing and laughing around that open casket. I told Addie about how back in the village the sin eater would take onto themselves all the badness from the dead person. Maybe the Indians did the same. Addie thought that it was what you did in life that was important, grabbing your chance when it came. Although there was so many strange sights it was being with Addie that made the difference. It was so good being with her. Specially compared to those dreary sad Lambeth rooms that awaited me at night.

  I began to put off going to Jessie more and more. She complained about being lonely, said I felt far away. Lying in bed with her all I could think of was Addie.

  I might have stayed for a long time being pulled between two women if I had not set on going to Deb’m one last time. I wanted to go back to the start of it all to work out what to do. I told Jessie in the back end of that year that I was going to see Ma and I could not afford to take her with me.

  Doctor Kaiser: What were you planning to do in Devon?

  —I wanted to look at it one last time because a plan was forming in my head.

  The auld place looked much the same when I did get there, although new tractors were grinding up the fields and Ma seemed weaker and slower. The Bonds brought her food over now every day and it was pitiful to see her going all bent over and shuffling to look at her bees. She told me that no-one hung flowers on Ladywell at midsummer no more. The Newton Times somehow got to hear of me and sent a reporter to the village. I gave an interview at the cottage door about how people outside Deb’m were treating me fair, how I was making my way in business and had no plans to come this way again. On my last day I went to visit my kin, the Marles at Tormahan. Old Aunt Millie was dead now. They had moved to Grafton Terrace, a few doors down from where Katie Farmer used to live. Katie herself was long gone. I sent Addie a postcard from Babbicam. It was called Rustic Bridge: Torquay and showed a rope bridge over by the Palace Hotel at Anstey’s Cove. I sent a cheery few words to Addie on it but I had chosen the card as a sort of sign. The Palace Hotel had once been the big house called Bishopstowe where the foreman of the St Marychurch inquest had lived. It was that inquest that had really done for me. In a queer way I had picked the card to signify I was making an ending. I weren’t never coming back and “Babbacombe Lee” was going to be no more.

  Doctor Kaiser: What were your intentions?

  —I was going to skedaddle, as they say in these parts. When I got back I went straight to the Old King’s Head and Addie took me to the big church of St Saviour’s nearby. She said I should light a candle to make peace with those that had gone. There was a memorial stone to William Shakespeare’s brother there that Addie pointed out. Not read a word but I know folks think him the best. I used to think you needed your name in stone, to last, like those names I once saw in Kent’s Cavern in Torquay long ago, scratched into the rock, outlasting the centuries. I think then I wanted my name to wash away. I wanted my name to be remembered kindly by family and that was all. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe that’s why I’m speaking like this.

  Where was I? I was telling about London…

  The Williams kept on advertising me and we all made a bit of money from the last of my fame. I even did a turn at Southwark Fair that autumn. The Old King’s Head made good business those days, people packing in to stare at ‘the man that could not be ’anged’, especially with the Crippen business all in the papers, about how he had buried his wife in the cellar and tried to escape across the Atlantic with his lady love and was facing the noose.

  The Williams told us they’d be leaving in the early spring, going to South Africa to seek new fortune. Addie received letters from her ma begging her to give up the barmaiding and join the family in Scarborough. The Crippen trial at the Old Bailey came to its ending and the little dentist was hanged in late November at the Pent. The drinkers had a song about him taken from the music halls. I soon got sick of hearing it. How did it go? “…right across the ocean blue, followed by Inspector Drew. Ship ahoy! Naughty boy!” There you go.

  In that early winter of 1910 if you had looked up at the pub front you’d see Addie’s little flower boxes full of geraniums still blooming despite the sooty nip of London air. She could make love grow where it had no roots afore. The air smelt of cinders and the pigeons crept closer to the chimney stacks for warmth. Addie warmed my splintery heart though. She seemed to know how to live. I still think of her as I first met her.

  Doctor Kaiser: How did you break it to your wife?

  —It weren’t pretty and I’m not proud of it. Jessie deserved better. The holiday season was a big rush at the Old Kings Head. It was Christmas Eve when Addie suddenly told me it was her birthday. We kissed for the first time that night and all the bells of the parish St George’s, St Olave’s and St Saviour’s seemed to be ringing on my way home. That night I lay with Jessie for the first time in a long while. I filled her up although I was thinking of Addie’s soft lips. Poor Jessie was happy that next day. I heard her singing carols to the baby thinking everything was going to be alright agin.

  It all folded up quickly after that. The Williams were packing ready to leave. The new landlords, the Banburys, were shown round. Addie and I thought they were a sour-faced lot and not likely to give us a place. The boxing club boys from the Ring had a last do—Jimmy Clabby was just in from his Australian triumphs, middleweight champion of the world. Minnie gave him a party, especially since he was managed out of Milwaukee. She introduced me to Jimmy. She said I was the man who couldn’t be hanged and I was wanting to fly to new pastures. He shook my hand for luck as he was due to pound Harry Duncan at the National Sporting Club. He also told me about how I could get on in the States. He said how I wouldn’t get a fair do if I stayed in England.

  Doctor Kaiser: And Jessie?

  —In February I told Jessie I was going away on business for several months. She took it hard and screamed and clawed at me. As I struggled with her it reminded me of when Pa made me drown a young cat in the yard water butt, feeling its thin neck squirreling under my hand as it fought for life. I told Jessie not to take on so and it would be just for a while. For some reason, she did not tell me then that she must have been a month on with child. Straightaway after telling Jessie, I signed in at Peckham Clock House police station for my life license for the last time and found lodg
ings up in Islington. I took the rent book as proof of identity when we went to get our passports. Addie signed hers as ‘Jessie Lee’ and so our life of lies began. We kept on working at the pub for the last two weeks but moved in together in that little room on Copenhagen Street off the Caledonian Road, next to a home for orphan boys. It was not far from the Pent where I did my hard time. Our room was rented out by the Walters, a middle-aged couple who watched us as we dragged our bags up the stairs. Mr Walters gave me a wink and asked if I had been married long. I can never forget Addie kneeling to make a fire. Her hair was red-gold in those days and shining in the winter light from the sooty old windows. I’d already realized once before how a woman could take you so far down a road.

  We came back for a last shift at the Old Kings Head and to draw our pay. Jessie turned up looking for me and I said I would be by presently. Addie’s mother came from Scarborough to see us off. She was the only one who knew although Minnie suspected. Mrs Gibbs looked frightened and kept asking Addie if she really knew who I was and had she really thought of what she was doing. Addie asked her to be glad for her. She cried all the way down on the boat train to Southampton.

  Doctor Kaiser: And no-one else knew you were going?

  —Not a zaul. We took second class cabins. I should have taken steerage but I didn’t want Addie to suffer the dirt below decks and the wandering hands of the crew. It was an old steamer with a German name, the Crown Prince something. Other passengers came on at Southampton to second class. We had to dine with them all each night and I taught Addie what she should say. I was a ‘general dealer’ seeking a business opportunity for a short while in New York and she was my wife. We were also in practice for lying to the American immigration. They did not like men who had served prison time. We did not want to be turned back at Ellis Island. We spent most of our time up on deck all muffled up, watching the poor steerage passengers rolling on the quarter decks below. It was blawing enough ver to take the teeth off a saw and cold too for late February. The English papers said that Niagara Falls was all frozen up.