Escape From Home

by Avi

  Laurence stopped just beyond the pool of lamplight. He said, “Can you tell me where the railway station is?”

  The old man considered Laurence thoughtfully while flicking bits of muffin into his mouth. “Which one?” he finally said.

  Laurence’s heart sank. “Is there more than one?”

  “Bless me,” returned the muffin man. “’Course there is.”

  “I want to get to Liverpool.”

  The man gazed at Laurence. “Shippin’ out, are yer?”

  Laurence nodded curtly. “I’m … I’m going to America.” He found the word still strange to say out loud.

  The muffin man offered up a wide gummy smile. “To make yer fortune, I suppose, like Dick Wittington. And well yer might, says I. If I were younger, I’d join yer. What yer wants is Euston Station.”

  “Euston Station,” Laurence repeated, trying to fix it in his mind. “Can you tell me where that is?”

  “Bless me, yer a bit innocent to be aimin’ so far. And yer got a fancy way of talking, yer ’ave. Just where yer from?”

  “Somewhere,” Laurence answered evasively.

  “Right-o,” said the muffin man with a sly smile. “Yer don’t want to let on, do yer? As for Euston Station, ’tisn’t that far neither, no more than a mile or two along Tottenham Court Road, which is but three streets over.” He pointed in the general direction. “Yer can’t miss it. Big as a blessed cathedral, it is. Now then, did yet want to buy a muffin against yer going?”

  Laurence eyed the bread hungrily. The thought of food made his mouth water. He started to reach into his pocket for his money but hesitated. He was afraid to show it. It might be stolen. “Not now,” he said, turning away reluctantly.

  “’Ere then, lad,” the man called after him. “Come on back.”

  Laurence turned. The man was holding a muffin out. “This one ’ere has gone flat stale,” he said. “Bless me, yer can pay me after yer gets rich in America. Go on. take it. No shame to be poor and ’ungry, not in this world.”

  Laurence took the muffin.

  “What’s yer name then?” the man asked.

  “Laurence.”

  “Laurence wot?”

  Laurence was about to give his name but suddenly shut his mouth.

  The man laughed silently yet so hard all his wraps quivered. “Right yer are, lad. Yer don’t want to give that either, do yer? Not if yer’ve run away, and they’re trying to catch yer back.”

  Laurence retreated a step. “What … what do you mean?” he stammered.

  “That stripe on yer cheek,” the muffin man said, “it’s not what yer’d call natural, is it? Bless me, of course yer wants to run away. I don’t blame yer. What I say is, God give yer luck! Now, look here, yer got me bread. Why don’t yer take me name to America too? Bless me, it’s mine. I’ve a right to lend it, I suppose, same as the muffin which yer already ’ave.”

  “But why?” Laurence asked.

  “Look ’ere, lad, let an old man who knows naught but muffins give yer a bit o’ advice. Keep yer real name close. A man’s name is as much as his soul. Yer wants to protect it, don’t yer?” He offered up a tiny wink. “All right then, Worthy is my name. Solomon Worthy. Yer can borrow ’alf of it and make yerself up to be, wot? Laurence Worthy. Bless me, but it’s got a decent ring to it, don’t it?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Then it’s yers.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Laurence replied, confused but grateful. He turned abruptly and began to run.

  “Worthy,” the man called after him. “Don’t yer forget it now! Laurence Worthy!”

  No sooner did Laurence round a corner than he stopped and devoured the muffin in three gulps. He was certain it was the best food he’d ever eaten. He heard the tinkle of the muffin man’s bell. How gentle and soothing it sounded. But the very next moment—as though to mock the tiny, tinny sound—a church bell boomed from somewhere in the dripping and dreadful darkness. Ding-dong, the notes echoed. To Laurence, it was his name being called. Lau-rence! Lau-rence! Deep solemn claps they were, as if tolling a death, his death. These first strokes were answered by yet another bell and then another and another, until the whole London night itself seemed to be shouting his name into the frigid dark. Lau-rence! Lau-rence! Then, in reverse order—one by one—the bells grew dim, then stilled until the city was silent. Now Laurence heard only the beating of his heart within his chest.

  Minutes after his interview, Mr. Phineas Pickler stood upon the sidewalk in front of Lord Kirkle’s home. As the thick fog floated about him like a cold web, he turned to consider the dwelling from which he had just departed. How solid and secure it seemed to him, the home of a family that stood among the most powerful in England. And yet Lord Kirkle had turned to him—Phineas Pickler—to bring his son home. If Mr. Pickler had been a rooster he would have crowed: Could any man ask more of life?

  From his pocket he took out and contemplated a small daguerreotype Lord Kirkle had provided of the boy. Mr. Pickler peered at it, trying to read young Sir Laurence’s features. He saw the face of a healthy, happy boy. No willfulness. No stubbornness. It made Mr. Pickler smile to think how delicate these young aristocrats were. This one had run away from home because he’d been sent to his room at teatime! Such cases were easy. A kind but stern word from him, and the boy would be safely home.

  All the same, Mr. Pickler decided it would be best if he assumed the boy was indeed trying to go to America. One had to give these young sirs their due.

  Travelers to America generally embarked from Liverpool, to which a late train departed nightly. Mr. Pickler, noting the time, eight-thirty, upon his pocket watch—a recent birthday gift from his wife—hailed a hansom cab for Euston Station.

  Hardly had Mr. Pickler taken himself from Lord Kirkle’s home than the front door opened and Albert, the collar of his overcoat upturned, stepped into the evening cold.

  A servant looked out after him. “Will you be long, sir?”

  Albert looked about. “Going for a walk,” he said.

  “Very good, sir.” The servant shut the door.

  Albert proceeded down the steps, made certain the servant had retreated inside, then hurried to the avenue. Once there, he hailed a cab. “To the City,” he commanded. “Watling Street.” The driver, high up and behind the cab, watched the young gentleman clamber in, then flicked the reins. The horse trotted briskly off.

  Not far from the great dome of St. Paul’s Church, Sir Albert alighted. Through the murk of fog and rain, he called up, “Stay here,” to the driver. “I’ll need you again.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Quickly, his boot heels beating loudly on the cobblestone pavement, Albert walked down Watling Street. The way was narrow, dark, and at the moment deserted, but he kept close to buildings to stay out of the rain. Those establishments that did business upon the street had long drawn their shutters. Even the public house was closed. Puddles of water were stiffening into ice.

  Halfway along the street, Albert turned into Bow Lane, a passage even more gloomy, more constricted. At the farthest end stood a narrow stone building blackened with the grime and soot of years. It was five stories tall, barely visible in the fog save for a morbid glow from one window at the top.

  Sir Albert pulled the bell next to a brass plate proclaiming:

  From deep within he heard a clanging noise.

  Not long after, the front door creaked open. A rather portly man of middle age and height peered out. His smooth face was not unlike a cherub’s, round, red, rosy. His head was bald but for a fringe of hair that ran ear to ear at the back, an incomplete halo. He held his plump fingers before him as if plucking—and sounding—the invisible strings of a harp. The cutaway coat he wore was gray, his cravat a fashionable maroon. When he recognized his young caller, he blossomed into an agreeable smile.

  “Ah,” the man exclaimed with enthusiasm, “Sir Albert! How very pleasant to see you again, m’lord.”

  “Clemspool,” Albert said sharply
, “I need to see you!”

  “Sir, to make my point precisely, I am always available for you. Do be kind enough to step into my office.” He wafted his hands as if unrolling a carpet.

  The two climbed five flights, arriving finally at a small cubical room that contained, principally, a great rolltop desk lined with pigeonhole compartments, most of which were empty. An oil lamp stood atop this desk and cast a meager circle of sickly yellow light. There was a stool before the desk and a more comfortable second chair off to the side. Mr. Clemspool beckoned Albert to the comfortable chair. Albert sat.

  With hands pressed together in a prayerful attitude, the cherubic man considered the youth before him. He did not like Sir Albert. The young man was arrogant and often patronizing. But he paid well, exceedingly well.

  Mr. Clemspool put on his most ingratiating smile. “What, Sir Albert, may I have the honor of doing for you today?”

  The young man grimaced and cracked his knuckles. Then he said, “Clemspool, we’ve talked about a certain person.”

  Mr. Clemspool nodded agreeably. “Sir Albert, I am not a man who forgets. You are alluding to your brother, Sir Laurence.”

  “Look here, Clemspool,” Albert said, “I’m not interested in your memory, just what you can do for me now.”

  Taking no offense at Sir Albert’s rudeness, Mr. Clemspool said, “Sir Albert, I trust I have always been of good service, often suggesting various stratagems. Were you able to put the last one into play, my suggestion that you stage a small theft of some kind—?”

  Albert shook his head to stem the flow of words. “Your idea worked well. Too well. Laurence has run off.”

  “Run off!” Mr. Clemspool cried with something like glee. “Surely you don’t consider that a misfortune, do you?”

  “That all depends.”

  “Ah, yes, depends on your famous father’s will, the one, to make my point precisely, in which he leaves too little to you and too much to your younger brother.”

  Albert, who wished he had not told this man quite so much of his business, nodded disdainfully.

  Mr. Clemspool wagged his head. “A second son should get very little,” he said smoothly. “As I see it, it’s a law of nature. The will—considering your father’s position in the government—sounds almost treasonable. Do you read your Bible, sir?”

  Albert drew back as if stung. “Bible?”

  Mr. Clemspool placed his hands together as if in prayer. “Genesis. Chapter four. Verses five through nine. Cain and Abel. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Right from the beginning, Sir Albert, the very beginning, the second son has proved to be a problem.” Mr. Clemspool let one hand go limp—as if it had died.

  Albert shifted. Then, leaning forward out of his chair, he said, “What I want, Clemspool, is to make sure my younger brother stays gone.”

  “You wish to encourage his emigration.”

  “As far away as is possible.”

  “When did he run off?”

  “This evening.”

  “Do you know his destination?”

  “America.”

  Mr. Clemspool puckered his lips. “Do you know his route?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Is your brother an experienced traveler?”

  Albert snorted. “He hasn’t even been to Kensington Park on his own.”

  Mr. Clemspool considered. “Sir Albert,” he said, “the most direct way to America is to take a packet boat from Liverpool. Will he know that?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Steerage goes for barely four pounds, and prices go up from there according to class of ticket. Will he have funds?”

  “I don’t know how much he’s got with him.”

  Mr. Clemspool smiled. “I am sure I can be helpful.”

  “Mr. Clemspool,” said Albert, “get proof to me that Laurence has landed in America”—he reached for his wallet and provided Mr. Clemspool with a wad of bills—“and you can count on more.”

  Without looking at it, Mr. Clemspool accepted the payment. “I have no doubt more will be required, sir.”

  “You’ll get it when you do what you’ve promised to do.” Albert paused, then said, “Mind you, I want no foul play. Is that understood?”

  Mr. Clemspool turned up his plump palms to show he hid nothing in them. “Of course,” he said blithely.

  “People say America is uncivilized. A violent place….” The young man’s voice trailed away.

  Mr. Clemspool smiled. “You are, sir, a man of my heart. You have made your point precisely. I shall need a description, and not a general one. I know what he looks like. You have pointed him out to me. Now you must tell me what he looked like the moment you last saw him.”

  “Should I write it out?”

  Mr. Clemspool wagged a finger. “No paper, young sir. Paper is evidence and evidence is bad. You don’t want to end up in Chancery courts. In matters of law, m’lord”—Mr. Clemspool plucked his harp—“courts are to be avoided.”

  Albert described Laurence as he had last seen him upon the floor of his father’s study.

  “And you say you cut him about the face?” Mr. Clemspool asked.

  “He deserved it.”

  “No doubt. Did you leave a mark?”

  “A decent one.”

  “Which side?”

  “Right.”

  “Making it much easier to snatch him out of a crowd. Well done, sir! If he is at Euston Station, I shall find him without fail.”

  Albert rose and stepped to the door. “Clemspool, I suppose I should tell you, my father has employed a man to find Laurence.”

  Mr. Clemspool frowned. “Has he?”

  Albert sneered. “But he’s Irish. At least his name is.”

  “Then we need not worry!” Mr. Clemspool plucked his harp.

  Albert closed the door behind himself.

  Once on the street he paused to savor a moment of satisfaction. All was in hand. But then, quite unexpectedly, a voice interrupted his thoughts: “’Cuse me, laddie.”

  Startled, Albert looked up and automatically backed away. A powerfully built young man was standing a few feet from him. He was dressed shabbily in an old army coat whose ragged hem touched the tops of broken, turned-up boots. An ill-fitting cap was pulled so low it almost covered a patched eye, but the cap was not so low that it hid a fierce face, whose open eye was staring right at him. In the man’s arms were a large number of parcels.

  “Were you addressing me?” Albert asked, more than a little apprehensive.

  “’Oo do yer think I was talkin’ to,” the man snarled, “the Prince of Wales? Look ’ere, ’appen to know if Clemspool’s in?”

  Albert, discomforted by the notion that he and such another should have business with the same person, and that the man should somehow recognize the fact, considered him with alarm. The staring eye was particularly disquieting. All he answered was a curt, “I believe he is.”

  “Then if yer don’t mind, laddie,” the man said, “I’d like to get on by.”

  Albert moved.

  “Much obliged,” said the man as he plunged into the building with all his parcels.

  Albert dismissed the man from his mind, hurried to his carriage, and ordered the near-frozen driver to take him back to Belgrave Square.

  Mr. Clemspool was sitting in his office, ruminating upon his talk with Sir Albert, when he heard a knock upon his door. It startled him. No bell had rung downstairs. There had been no sound of steps. Cautiously, he opened the door a crack, saw who his caller was, and frowned.

  “Mr. Grout, sir,” he said, “how many times must I tell you it’s unwise to come to Bow Lane unannounced. You might be noticed. But,” he added more graciously, “as it turns out, I have new and immediate work for you, and I was going—”

  “Never mind yer work.” The man chuckled as he pushed his way into the room. “I’m not the man I was. I’ve made me mint. From this ’ere day forward, I’m a bloomin’ swell.” No sooner did he say the words than he set his
parcels down and rapped sharply on the wood door frame two times. “If me luck ’olds, that is.”

  “And how did you achieve such luck?” Mr. Clemspool inquired.

  “Never mind the ’ow. Yer plays yer games, Clemspool, I plays mine. That’s our rule, isn’t it? We don’t ask questions ’less we’re workin’ together. And I’m ’ere to tell yer that I won’t be workin’ for yer no more. I’m leavin’ this miserable country. Emigratin’ to America!” He dumped his packages on the desk and from his pocket ripped out a false beard and flung it at Mr. Clemspool.

  “America!” Mr. Clemspool cried as he caught up the beard. “Just the place for a young man. Well then, Mr. Grout, I promise you there will be no questions about your good luck. But I do hope you are not entirely done working for me. I have one final job to offer you. Happily it pertains to America.”

  “Doin’ wot?”

  “Oh, my usual.” Mr. Clemspool plucked some invisible strings. “Making certain that someone who has left England … does not come back.”

  Mr. Grout frowned. “I don’t know as I wants to—”

  “How often have we worked together? Fifty times? A hundred? I assure you, sir, this event shall pay you so handsomely that even in your new circumstance you could not possibly refuse. And, since you are so intent upon commencing your new life, what would you say to starting this very night? The Liverpool train leaves, let me think … Yes! Within the hour.

  “Of course, Mr. Grout, as befits your new status, you must travel first class. I, in my more humble status, shall travel third. That way we shall cover both ends of the train. But in so doing we cannot fail to find our young man!”

  Laurence was so cold and hungry that as he trudged along Tottenham Court Road, he fancied he could smell food on every side. But the muffin man, as well as the muffin he had given him, was long gone. Once he reached Euston Station, the boy thought, he would find warmth and food. He did not care what it cost; he would get some.