The Lost Journals of Benjamin Tooth

by Mackenzie Crook

  As I took in my surroundings Mr Gadigun went to a cupboard and fetched out an object which he proudly set down on one of the surfaces. It appeared to be a circular polished wooden base such as many of his pieces were mounted upon, only this one was very small, about the size of a crown piece. He pointed to it.

  ‘My most ambitious project to date!’ he announced. He could see that I was confused and with a grin produced from behind his back a large magnifying glass, which he thrust towards me. ‘Go on,’ he urged, ‘take a look!’

  I took the glass and peered through. There, standing arm in arm upon the small wooden disc was a pair of fleas dressed in full wedding costume. Astounded, I looked up at the taxidermist.

  ‘It is their wedding day!’ he said with glee.

  *

  ‘Look again! Do you see Mr Flea’s cane? And Mrs Flea’s bouquet?’

  It was extraordinary. Mr Flea was indeed leaning on a minute walking stick and his bride, dressed in silk and lace, carried a microscopic posy of flowers.

  ‘Incredible!’ I said. ‘But how …?’

  ‘With these!’ replied Mr Gadigun and held out his hand to show me a set of miniature tools no bigger than sewing needles. ‘I hold my breath as I work and, with much practice and great concentration, I am able to slow my heart rate. I can then time stitches and incisions between the beats of my heart which would otherwise jog me and make work impossible.’

  It was a fantastic thing to behold and I told him so.

  ‘Well, young Tooth, if you work hard at your studies and do as I instruct then you will one day produce such beautiful things.’

  ‘You mean,’ I said in incredulity, ‘that I have the job?’

  ‘Why yes!’ he exclaimed with a B sharp. ‘You shall be my apprentice! And I shall teach you all the secrets and tricks of the trade!’

  And so I found myself apprentice to Mr Pansas Gadigun the taxidermist and started my training the very next day.

  *

  Mother was predictably scathing about my choice of trade, saying that nobody ever became rich by stuffing dead animals. If anything this disapproval confirmed that I had made a good decision and spurred me on.

  I threw myself into my apprenticeship and learnt quickly. Mr and Mrs Gadigun were kinder to me than anyone since Grandfather and oft-times I would sleep there under my workbench to save going home to that joyless house in Church Street.

  When my mother died and I found myself homeless my employer happily welcomed me into his home and the workshop floor has been my bed ever since.

  Friday 21st August 1772

  I have been working in my spare time on a surprise for Mr and Mrs Gadigun for their wedding anniversary.

  I wanted to make a stuffed griffin, a mythological creature from ancient Greece. A griffin had the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle.

  I obviously can’t get hold of a lion so I am making a baby griffin using a rabbit and a seagull. I have affixed cat’s claws to the rabbit’s feet and swapped its cottontail for that of a stoat (the closest match I could find in Mr Gadigun’s box of tails).

  I think they will be delighted.

  *

  Dined today of pigs’ ankles and blancmange.

  Tuesday 1st September 1772

  Mr and Mrs Gadigun were less than delighted with their stuffed baby griffin.

  They gawped at it and Mrs Gadigun gasped. I sensed I had overstepped a line.

  Mr Gadigun took me through to his workshop and explained, in a kindly manner, that there is an unwritten taxidermists’ code which says that the natural world cannot be tampered with.

  ‘There is such a rich variety of creatures out there in the world, Ben,’ he explained, ‘many of which have yet to even be discovered, that we have no need to try and improve upon or embellish nature.’

  I told him that I understood, that I hadn’t meant to offend, and the matter was over. Mr Gadigun went back to working on his water vole cricket match display.

  Tuesday 29th September 1772

  Today is my sixteenth birthday. Mr and Mrs Gadigun made me a gift of a new set of scalpels, an old volume entitled How Humans Descended from the Giraffe and a magnificent display of a stuffed fish at a weaving loom. A quick scan of the book revealed it to be utter rubbish but it is good to become familiar with these ridiculous theories in order to then reject them.

  Also today a most intriguing letter, addressed to me, was delivered to the shop.

  It is from a law firm in London and reads thus:

  D. C. Ounaloos & Cuck, Lawyers

  10 Great Warner Street

  Clerkenwell

  London

  Dear Mr Tooth,

  May we congratulate you on the occasion of your sixteenth birthday and invite you to visit us, at your earliest convenience, at our London offices where we have some legal documents that will be of interest to you.

  Yours faithfully,

  Mr Digby Charles Ounaloos &

  Mr Archibald Cuck

  What this means I have no clue and I will have to wait to find out. There is no question of me taking time off for a week or more as there are several urgent orders to finish.

  The prospect of visiting the capital city is a daunting one. I have heard nothing but frightening reports of the place.

  *

  Today, as a birthday treat, Mrs Gadigun served cold eel pye with a baked pickle pork pudding.

  Wednesday 7th October 1772

  Today, amongst my various errands, I had to deliver a finished piece of work for Mr Gadigun. The piece, a beautifully stuffed spaniel puppy, had taken some weeks to complete and was to be taken by hand to a house in Stonebridge. It was only as I approached the house in Fishpool Lane that I thought to check the name of the customer. I was, at the same time, thrilled and horrified to see the name of my beloved Izzy Butterford upon the invoice. I had not seen her since I left Miss Ormeroid’s dame school and though I love my job and my employers it is not the celebrated scientific world that I once boasted to Izzy I would belong to. I knocked at the door of a pretty cottage (exactly as I imagined it would be) and the maid showed me to a parlour room while she went to find the mistress of the house. As I waited I caught sight of myself in a looking glass. Journal, I looked dreadful. My hair was lank and greasy, my tatty clothes stained with all manner of grime. There was nothing I could do and no time to do it as the parlour door opened and in walked Izzy looking more beautiful and radiant than ever. She stopped in her tracks when she saw me and all but burst into tears. ‘Benjamin? Is it you?’ she said and I reluctantly owned that it was. ‘But what has happened to you? Are you fallen on hard times? Have you come to ask for charity?’

  I wished the ground could have opened up and swallowed me as I told her my circumstances and tried to persuade her that things weren’t as bad as they appeared. I thought that she would be cheered that I had brought her puppy but this just made her sob at the memory of him. Things went from bad to worse as I tried to comfort her and she recoiled in horror with a ‘Pooh! What on Earth is that revolting stench?!’

  I have been living and working with Mr Gadigun so long now that I have become insensible of the smell but my clothes and probably my very person are impregnated and I take the essence of the shop around with me wherever I go.

  And so, having caused her horror, sorrow and revulsion in quick succession, I decided to grant relief and take my leave. I did not get to talk to her as we used to talk. I did not find out what she is now doing and it was with forlorn step that I made my way back to the shop.

  On the morrow I will ask Mr Gadigun for an advance of my wages that I may buy a new suit of clothes to wear when I travel to London. I cannot present myself at a respectable city lawyer’s smelling like rancid ditchwater.

  Thursday 8th October 1772

  My guardian insisted that, rather than advance my wages, he would loan the money for a new outfit at no interest and to be paid back at my convenience. Mr Gadigun and his wife really are the sweetest (if not the swee
test-smelling) people I have ever met and I shall repay them a hundredfold when I am rich.

  Mr Taylor the tailor measured me for new britches, vest and a coat of cobalt blue and also a shirt and stockings to be collected Wednesday next before I go to London. Then to Mr Lincolnsob the milliner for a fine tricorn hat. The hatter offered me a job but, apart from the fact that I am already happily employed, Mr Lincolnsob is as mad as a March hare and in all honesty, who wants to be a milliner? Last to Mr Last the cobbler for shoes.

  The problem will be where to store the new garments the night before and indeed where to change into them for as soon as they are brought into the shop they will assume the pungent air of that establishment.

  *

  The weather has been extremely warm all week for the time of year.

  *

  Dined tonight from the remains of last Sunday’s fish pye.

  *

  Up all night with greatly disturbed stomach. Cannot think why.

  Must be something to do with the full moon.

  Wednesday 14th October 1772

  Today I collected my new items from Misters Taylor and Last and secreted them in a hollow tree trunk by the millpond. I shall go there first thing in the morn to change before I catch the London coach.

  Mrs Gadigun was upset not to see me in my new finery though I claimed modesty as the reason rather than the offensive smell of her good home.

  Thursday 15th October 1772

  I need not have worried about my smell. London is surely the most fetid place on Earth.

  I rose before dawn and snuck quietly out of the shop and to the place where I hid my new clothes. Once dressed I made my way out to the London road and waited for the morning coach.

  There were two other gentlemen on the coach but not a word was spoken between us for the whole journey. As we approached our destination I called out to the driver to ask if I could sit up beside him and he agreed.

  From the top of Highgate Hill I got my first view of London. Though the morning was fine and clear a sickly grey cloud hung over the city and flocks of screaming kites wheeled and swooped over a hundred church spires. As we got closer and the red-brick buildings loomed up, as the fields of Marylebone gave way to streets and houses, I found myself apprehensive. I had not considered the size of the place. I felt as though I were a mere flea on the back of a huge, stinking animal. Deeper into the streets we drove and deeper under the blanket of smoke. Traders were beginning to appear carrying baskets of wares and all shouting for custom with cries I could hardly understand. Small boys in filthy rags were running like ants between the legs of the traders, trying to steal a bun or a pye. Packs of mangy dogs were doing the same.

  The streets were awash with slicks of oily mud in which floated putrid lumps of who-knows-what. The kites I had seen from the hill were all around, scavenging on offal and entrails thrown out of butchers’ shops.

  Some of the streets were very narrow but the coach driver plunged down them and left it to the pedestrians to dive out of his way. One street vendor was drenched head to foot with greasy brown muck thrown up by our wheels and shouted such curses as would make a sailor blush. The coach driver found it hilarious.

  We eventually reached Clerkenwell and I left the coach at Great Warner Street.

  Immediately my new shoes were ruined as I stepped in something unspeakable.

  With squelching stockings I made my way to the premises of D. C. Ounaloos and Cuck.

  Upon entering the shop I found myself in a dark, gloomy hallway that served as a waiting room. A dozen or so chairs were placed around the perimeter and on one sat a tattered old gentleman without a hat who glanced up at me hopefully before returning to stare mournfully at his grimy hands.

  I took this sorry heap of rags to be neither Ounaloos nor Cuck and so I sat and prepared to wait I knew not how long. The room was bare but for the chairs and a large clock in the corner that ticked and tocked monotonously and chimed the quarter hour. Throughout the morning I sat in that dingy room as the chairs gradually filled with a motley selection of Londoners. Each time the door opened we quickly raised our heads and then slowly lowered them again as another surly character shuffled in and took his or her place in line.

  Eventually at almost one of the clock the street door opened and everyone bar myself leapt to their feet and spoke at once, accosting the stooped gentleman that entered in. Mr Ounaloos (for it was he) clutched a large bundle of ledgers and documents under one arm and held up the other for silence.

  ‘Mr Thunder,’ he said, pointing to a man with a bloodied apron whom I assumed to be either a butcher or murderer, ‘I have no news for you so you are wasting your time in coming here. Next Thursday, Mr Thunder, at the earliest.’ Mr Thunder shuffled out muttering something under his breath. Mr Ounaloos then dealt with the others in similar fashion: ‘Mrs Foothead, we are still looking, come back Tuesday week. Mr Singletary, until you can present to me some documentary proof I cannot help you with your claim to the throne of England,’ and so on until the lawyer had dispatched all but the original ragged old man and me. He pointed first at me. ‘You, sir!’ said he. ‘I don’t know your face.’

  ‘I am Benjamin Tooth,’ said I.

  ‘Tooth! At last! I thought you would never show! Come, my boy, we have to speak.’

  *

  He opened the inner door through to the back office and ushered me in, turning to the old gentleman as he did. ‘You will have to wait, Mr Belch. I shouldn’t be more than a few hours.’ Mr Belch looked daggers at me as I went through and the door was closed behind me.

  The office of D. C. Ounaloos and Cuck was a place that daylight never penetrated. The walls were clad ceiling to floor with shelves that groaned under the weight of countless books, papers and files. Placed in amongst these were unguarded candles that flickered and spat and threatened to set the whole place ablaze at any moment. Two large desks were set facing each other and behind one I was surprised to see a huge gentlemen fast asleep and snoring with his mouth open. Mr Cuck (for it was he) had apparently been there all morning whilst my new friends and I waited patiently on the other side of the door.

  Mr Ounaloos rattled a poker in the fire grate by way of an alarm clock and yelled, ‘Mr Cuck! We have a visitor!’

  Mr Cuck hauled himself out of his slumber with much grunting and lip smacking, wiped the drool from his chin with the palm of his hand and blinked at me with a look of profound confusion. ‘Mr Cuck, this is Master Tooth,’ explained his colleague. ‘Tooth, Cuck. Cuck, Tooth.’

  ‘Tooth?’ said Cuck.

  ‘Tooth,’ said Ounaloos.

  ‘Oh Tooth!’ said Cuck.

  I proffered my hand and immediately regretted it as he grasped it in his, which was still glistening with dribble.

  ‘A pleasure, a pleasure, my boy!’ said he. ‘We thought you’d never come!’

  Mr Ounaloos in the meantime had been scouring a high shelf near the ceiling and, spotting the relevant file, now retrieved a folding stepladder from the corner of the room. Then, to my surprise, instead of climbing the ladder he held it above his head and knocked the ledger off the shelf, sending it clattering to the floor. He scooped up the scattered papers, dumped them on to his desk and settled himself in his chair. ‘Please,’ said he and gestured for me to sit.

  ‘We have had,’ began Ounaloos, ‘in our possession this last ten years or more a letter from your father, Josiah Tooth, with strict instructions that you were to received it not a day before your sixteenth birthday.’ With this he placed on the desk in front of me a yellowing, folded letter with a wax seal.

  Mr Ounaloos leant over and, with his fingertips, pushed the letter closer.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘open it.’

  I took up the letter, broke the seal and began to read.

  My dearest Benjamin,

  It is with a heavy heart that I sit down to write this letter, knowing that if you are reading it then it means I did not return from the Americas. I hope you will forgive me for
leaving you and know that my only reason was to secure for my family a comfortable future safe from the cold hand of poverty. If you are reading this then I failed.

  Perhaps I perished on the journey out, perhaps I succumbed to disease or starvation or to the elements. Whatever the reason, you have lived for more than a decade without a father and it is time to make some amends.

  Before I left I placed in the trust of the gentlemen lawyers, Mr D. C. Ounaloos & Cuck, a sum of money that, by the time you are of age, will have grown to a sizeable pension.

  I have instructed the gentlemen that you are to receive from the age of sixteen the sum of two thousand pounds per annum until the pension is gone. You are to use this as you see fit and with no restrictions only that I pray you will use it wisely.

  Also, on the occasion of the death of your dear mother, the house at Church Street will become yours.

  Your loving father,

  Josiah Tooth

  Wednesday 10th June 1761

  I stared at the page and read it slowly through once more until a loud snore brought me back to the room where Mr Cuck had fallen once again into a deep slumber. Mr Ounaloos, his chin resting on his fingertips, was observing me closely.

  ‘Well, Master Tooth,’ said he, ‘may I congratulate you on your new-found wealth and present you with this,’ he handed over an envelope, ‘the first instalment.’