The Clay Dreaming

by Ed Hillyer

  ‘Here is the Court of King William,’ said the clerk. ‘King William the third, for whom this block is named, and there, his queen, Mary.’ Dilkes indicated the next building along. ‘It is, I must emphasise, a Royal Naval Hospital, the land granted by Warrant in 1694!’

  He pronounced the date most emphatically, as if the lapse of years alone made it impressive.

  They passed beneath the eaves of the nearest colonnade.

  ‘A hospital in the sense of an almshouse. The Pensioners who are the objects of this noble institution must be seamen or mariners disabled by age, or those maimed in the King’s…or Queen’s service…those veterans of the main who on our widest Empire bleed.’

  This last said leeringly, Dilkes rolled his eyes for melodramatic effect.

  Sarah saw once more the door, the door in the wall that enclosed the secret garden of the Helpless Ward.

  She checked again for Cole’s reactions, hoping for the slightest clue as to what they might be doing there. He placidly examined stone-carvings directly above their heads, floral designs set into the portico ceiling: oak; daisy; sunflower or buttercup? Thistle…

  Sarah yelped. A massive carriage lamp seemed to swing too low overhead as she passed beneath. It was bigger in the body than she was. As they turned the corner, great oak doors on their immediate left towered more than twice her height.

  ‘A royal palace,’ Dilkes was saying, ‘provided solely for the solace and repose of those Pensioners…’

  More than a palace, Sarah thought, they intruded on a colossal temple, fit for the gods of ancient myth and constructed on their scale.

  ‘As a gesture of munificence, it is unsurpassed!’ cried the impassioned clerk. ‘The very conscience of civilisation!’

  Looking at the place, at its very generous extent, Sarah decided that it must be a guilty conscience.

  Just across the way, to the east, loomed Queen Mary Court, a matching double of the building they skirted. In viewing the colonnade opposite, Sarah could better appraise the details of their own: Doric columns standing 20 feet tall were paired in a long row – gigantic open cloisters, equally, breathtakingly beautiful. She looked across into a mirror in which they themselves did not appear.

  King Cole, at her side, began to act most peculiarly. Twitching and jumpy, his dark eyes darting about, he appeared seized with convulsions. Faced with the Aborigine’s eel-like contortions, Sarah felt almost relieved to have the Hospital clerk for company.

  ‘What on earth…?’ stuttered Dilkes. ‘Does he suffer fits?’

  It seemed prudent to confront the issue.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she said to Cole. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘One dark ago,’ said the Aborigine, ‘manypella this place. Many many. Sickpella, sailorpella, around, around, around, around.’

  King Cole turned the four points of the compass and threw out his hands at each one.

  Dilkes Loveless stared at these curious antics, the even curiouser language. This was by far the strangest stranger he had ever been obliged to escort.

  ‘Arm gone pella, leg gone pella, all drinkin’ pellas,’ said King Cole.

  Pausing first to roll up one trouser leg, he enacted a crazed mime-show of amputation and deformity. One sketch, highly convincing, featured a drunken sailor; a balancing act in search of equilibrium, elastic limbs all at sea.

  Startled, Sarah’s breath caught, before exploding in a burst of laughter. Its immediate loud echo silenced her just as swiftly.

  Dilkes Loveless clutched at his jacket buttons. His mind boggled.

  King Cole fixed the pair of them with his large black eyes, genuinely spooked, his whisper barely audible. ‘Everypella gone.’

  He leant in close to confide, darkly. ‘Manypella,’ he said, ‘manypella him pinis in dem ’ouse.’

  A great many men had died there.

  With admirable aplomb, Dilkes Loveless confirmed his story. ‘He’s quite right,’ said the clerk. ‘At one time, you would have felt these ambits intolerably crowded. The Hospital in former days housed many more patients than it does now. A great deal more. I say, how do you know that?’

  Receiving no answer, Dilkes carried on regardless.

  ‘The old Pensioners would idle out their days, sitting about the place, smoking and chatting amongst themselves…’

  Unexpectedly, Cole took up the thread of yarn the clerk was about to spin. ‘Manypella old and sad,’ he said. ‘Very tired. Him like a lizard on a rock, lying on him back and him belly…’

  He moved towards one of the alcove seats, spread his limbs slightly, and directed himself towards the sun, as if to soak up some of its heat and energy. His body again folded in on itself. He motioned further along the deserted colonnade.

  ‘An’ him, slither up an’ down all same. Him got head in a sling, and him got head in him hands.’

  He pointed in specific directions, as if the figures described were arranged in a sort of tableau in front of them.

  ‘All sad,’ he said. ‘All tired. Is one big cage for them, this pretty place.’

  Sarah stared at him in both alarm and wonder. The empathy in his soft voice she found moving; the slight sibilance that made ‘thad’ of ‘sad’, endearing.

  Cole overtook the lead, just as he had when she became lost amongst the side streets of the Fleet: until this moment, it had not occurred to her how odd that should be.

  Who was the stranger here, who the guide?

  Cole continued to bob back and forth, interacting with the various persons that, for him perhaps, still populated these stone corridors. His descriptions were so vivid, his disturbed imagination so infectious, she could almost see for herself the figments he narrated.

  Sarah looked again to the colonnade opposite, at an empty spot exactly the same as where they were standing. She knew then, for certain, that the Aborigine perceived the world in ways she could not understand. If only she could see the world through his eyes.

  ‘They…uh…yes,’ said Dilkes Loveless, clearing his throat. ‘They would gather here in scores and loll upon these benches, the old sailors, smoking the while, and entertaining the strangers, visitors such as yourselves, with their fanciful stories…’

  Dilkes eyed the other man warily.

  ‘The only occasion they bestirred themselves for would be mealtimes,’ he continued, soon recovering his stride. ‘Or when going over the details of some long-ago engagement led to disagreement, and they fought their old sea-battles over again…’

  What more the Aborigine could see, Sarah was not to know. Thanks to the untimely intervention of the clerk, King Cole had withdrawn back into himself.

  The little busybody set off across the grass lawn between the twin courtyards of William and Mary. As they approached the adjacent Queen Mary building, open ground afforded a splendid view of the domed clock-tower. Sculpted faces roared from each of its corners – Neptune the sea-god presumably, wearing shells for ears.

  Sarah felt provoked to ask an obvious question.

  ‘The Pensioners, sir, the gentlemen you speak of, whom Mr Cole tells us he saw this last night,’ she said, ‘where are they all now?’

  ‘Last night?’ said Dilkes. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’ He took his glasses in his hand, and nervously rubbed at the lenses with a pocket-kerchief.

  Sarah wasn’t sure she followed either, but that was what he had said – in the night, or perhaps the day before. He had been there before?

  ‘Where are they all now?’ she persisted. ‘The Pensioners.’

  ‘They are all below,’ said Dilkes.

  ‘…Dead?’ said Sarah.

  ‘Heavens, no…at their lunch.’

  A thunderous roll and a clatter loud as cannon-shot rent the air.

  The sky was full of cloud, but not dark; and anyway the noise seemed to come from somewhere beneath their feet. Dilkes Loveless started laughing, and then so did King Cole. Rather than delay their mission any further, Sarah resolved to overlook her frayed nerves, in fact a
ll further phenomena: she preferred they press on.

  Arriving at the East Gate, they passed out of the Hospital complex and across Park-row, a perimeter road. The Hospital’s Civil Offices lay directly opposite, housed in a relatively modest two-storey outbuilding.

  They made their way through the lobby and up the stairs, entering into a plain and undecorated suite. As he passed an open doorway, Dilkes Loveless acknowledged an inquisitive glance from one of his industrious colleagues.

  ‘Horatio,’ he said. ‘Still on lunch! I’m escorting these strangers to the Secretary’s office.’

  Arriving at the relevant door, he turned a key in the lock and bade them enter. Once all were settled within the cramped confines, he began to rummage around, sorting through mounds of paperwork and the bound volumes carelessly heaped on every side.

  ‘The former Secretary would have taken care of all deeds and documents relating to the Hospital, kept all the necessary books, and…ah, here we go!’

  Dilkes carried a few dusty articles over to the main desk, and started to leaf through them, opening and discarding them at great speed. Sarah watched King Cole, who waited patiently – but also, she felt, dispassionately.

  Dilkes heaved an impressive tome over to one end of the table and laid aside the others.

  ‘These are the relevant Burial Registers for the Hospital,’ he said. ‘If there was no monumental inscription, and indeed no stone, then we are dealing with a Naval rating, an ordinary seaman. The marker on the plot you are enquiring about…’ The clerk seemed to have arrived at a relevant page. ‘Fourteen twenty-nine, did you say?’

  Sarah sat forward. ‘Yes?’

  Dilkes Loveless stabbed the open page with his finger, and began to read aloud. ‘“Burials in the Parish of Greenwich in the County of Kent, No.1429. Greenwich Hospital, 12th February 1819.”’ His eyes flickered over the top of his glasses, examining Sarah’s face a moment before he resumed his reading. ‘“George Bruce,”’ he said, ‘“age 41, ceremony performed by William Jones.”’

  ‘George Bruce.’ Sarah repeated the name. She looked towards King Cole in the hopes of some sort of response. He blinked perhaps, but that was all. He looked at Sarah – equally hesitant, equally hopeful.

  The clerk sat with his chin in his hand. The name seemed to mean something to him, at least.

  ‘Bruce,’ he said. ‘Yesss, George Bruce. I’ve heard talk of him, once or twice. Not in many years, mind.’

  For a silent moment or three, the clerk researched his excellent memory. Seated facing, Sarah Larkin and King Cole teetered on the edges of their seats, postures comically identical.

  ‘If I am thinking of the right man,’ said Dilkes, slowly, ‘and I am, then his face was most horribly disfigured.’

  Sarah was taken aback. How terrible! ‘Was he…was he very badly wounded?’ she asked.

  ‘George Bruce…there’s more, there’s something else,’ said Dilkes. ‘I’m sure it will come to me, given time.’

  Leaning forward, he deigned to show to them the open page of the Burial Register, even as he snapped it shut. Dilkes Loveless spoke with total confidence.

  ‘No further details here,’ he said. ‘Nor, I doubt, to be found anywhere. A great many sailors, you will appreciate, have lived and died here at the Hospital over the years…hundreds of years. Unless there were exceptional circumstances, the records will not enter into any greater detail than what you are already privy to.’

  Dilkes paused a moment while his audience slumped.

  ‘If I were to look at the Admissions,’ he went on, slyly, ‘I dare say I might find out the name of the last ship on which he served, and so forth. There is nothing to indicate he was anything out of the ordinary, for an ordinary seaman… although I have heard the name before…

  ‘It does not mean anything at all?’ He addressed the question directly to Sarah.

  King Cole’s wide eyes met hers, open, trusting. It was up to her, then.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘would you look to the Admissions, Mr Dilkes? I think it might help us to know a little more.’

  ‘Hmph. Very well.’

  Dilkes Loveless only pretended to be irked. He smartly located another, larger tome on a high shelf, brought it down with mock ceremony, and began to leaf through it carefully.

  ‘This is the rough entry book of In-pensioners, from 1846 all the way back to 1756,’ he said. ‘Of course I don’t know the year in which he came to the Hospital; we are tackling this somewhat aft about. But if I make a start from the date of his burial in 1819…’

  Beginning somewhere around the final third, scanning each page as he flipped them over, he studiously worked back towards the middle of the great book.

  ‘This may…’ he hummed ‘…take some time…’

  Sarah idled awkwardly, monitoring proceedings. She felt indebted, surely the clerk’s every intent. Since the moment he had entered his office, he had adopted a manner more official. She had preferred him, if that was the word, when officious.

  King Cole still wore his trouser-legs hitched at half-mast, the muscles of his lower leg appearing almost wasted. Discreetly, Sarah motioned that he should re-adjust his clothing.

  Dilkes Loveless’ clearing his throat caused her to stare guiltily down at her shoes. With a slight intake of breath she saw how terribly muddy they were: she must have tracked mud throughout the office suite.

  It came from when she had stumbled about on the grave.

  If she understood Cole correctly, the fresh blood she saw there was his own – red, like hers. Why should he have thought that detail reassuring?

  ‘Ah!’ announced Dilkes. ‘Here we are! “April 18, 1817. George Bruce,”’ he read. ‘“Age: 40. If married: no. Girls: 1. Born: Shadwell. Last residence: Glocester Court.” I can’t make out the next word.’ He smiled. ‘It should, by rights, be the name of the admitting doctor…’

  Dilkes continued with the reading.

  ‘“Number of years in King’s service: 17. Trade: sea. Last ship: Congo, sloop. If ruptured: no.”’

  Sarah had produced a small scrap of paper from an inner pocket, and with the worn-down stub of a pencil hurriedly took notes. These extra details might later prove valuable clues. Assuming, of course, that any of this should lead anywhere.

  ‘Here there is an additional note…’ he concluded. ‘“Lost 2 fingers right hand.”’

  Sarah looked up to see the clerk studying her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Dilkes. You’ve been very helpful.’

  Pish posh, some slight concession seemed in order.

  ‘Dilkes Loveless, Mrs Larkin,’ he said. ‘Lieutenant Dilkes Loveless.’

  Sarah bridled at the firmness of his correction. The air temperature in the office palpably dropped a degree or two.

  ‘Miss Larkin, lieutenant,’ she answered.

  Dilkes Loveless, immediately regretful of his tartness, thrilled at the cold spark of her temper. He took delight in confirmation – and from the lady’s own not unlovely lips – that she, too, went unmarried.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘Miss Larkin. Call me Charles.’

  She was no great beauty, to be sure, but her peal of unguarded laughter had brought the old colonnades – and him – to late life.

  ‘Would you like to take the grand tour?’ he said. ‘Really, one cannot visit the Hospital without seeing all of the glorious sights it has to offer.’

  Sarah considered their position for a moment. The Observatory was all but forgotten, if indeed it had ever been a part of the Aborigine’s original design. For some unfathomable reason, events now appeared to revolve around the occupant of an anonymous grave.

  The baldness of Bruce’s identity was disappointing, appearing to mean little as it did to King Cole. From his abiding silence, all she could assume was that they should carry on.

  ‘We have barely scratched the surface, thus far,’ chimed in Lieutenant Charles Dilkes Loveless.

  Indeed.

  �
�And it would help to walk off my lunch,’ he added, patting his belly.

  Instead of answers, only more questions presented themselves. With the clerk’s help, perhaps…

  ‘Of course,’ said Sarah. ‘We would be happy to.’

  Who knew where it might lead?

  CHAPTER XXI

  Whit Monday, the 1st of June, 1868

  OMPHALOS

  ‘…this Petty Navy Royal is the Master Key wherewith to open all locks that keep out or hinder this incomparable British Empire from enjoying, by many means, such a yearly Revenue of Treasure…’

  ~ Dr John Dee, The Perfect Arte of Navigation

  The Admiralty clerk escorted his guests across a wide, green lawn – the Royal Naval Hospital’s Grand Court, where their promised tour would begin. They came to rest near to the middle, close to the banks of the Thames.

  Sarah Larkin glanced over at King Cole. He watched intently a small gathering, sitting on the river steps some way behind them, smoking – a few of the uniformed Pensioners, the first they had seen; even at this distance, Sarah could hear their pebbledash-dry coughing. Looking around, she spotted more. The sailor-gentlemen emerged from a recessed doorway built into the base of the King William building.

  ‘Ah,’ said Lieutenant Dilkes Loveless. ‘You see our good masters are at home. They’ve had their lunch and are now coming up for some air. What’s today, Monday? Boiled beef and broth! A meal well garnished with vegetables and potatoes, the same to be enjoyed on Wednesdays. We shall proceed to the chapel.’

  Their guide sped towards the broad stone steps to the upper lawn, making for the Queen Mary building – and away from the Pensioners as they finally materialised. He led them through the west door into an octagonal vestibule. As soon as Sarah and King Cole entered, a uniformed guard sprang up.

  ‘Tickets,’ he rasped.

  Dilkes Loveless waved him aside. They advanced into the middle of a lofty antechamber, putting them – as Sarah calculated it – directly beneath the clock-tower of the eastern dome. Four tall Coade Stone maidens occupied niches in the stonework, one to each angled corner. Plaques beneath bore inscriptions, carved in bold type.