The Clay Dreaming

by Ed Hillyer

  FAITH IS THE SUBSTANCE

  OF THINGS HOPED FOR

  THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS

  NOT SEEN

  Faith, on their immediate right, held aloft her book and cup. Hope, opposite, leant decorously on a ship’s anchor.

  WHICH HOPE WE HAVE

  AN ANCHOR FOR THE SOUL

  BOTH SURE AND STEADFAST

  Meekness, the other side of a descending stairwell, clutched a bunch of lilies and exchanged loving looks with a lamb. The plaque beneath this statue had been obscured.

  Sarah threw the clerk a quizzical frown.

  He quoted, sight unseen. ‘“Blessed Are the Meek, for They Shall Inherit the Earth”.’ Dilkes smirked. ‘The text was ordered covered up,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever for?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘Her Majesty’s Navy does not approve the sentiment,’ said Dilkes.

  He was not joking. Extraordinary!

  Sarah looked across to the fourth figurine, Charity, who suckled and cradled various infants. Troubling not to meet the glare of the thwarted sentry, sat below, she missed out on the final verse.

  Something else had caught her eye: a painted plaque, occupying a recess in between Faith and Hope, listing the names of ‘CHAPLAINS’. Among these, Sarah noted ‘Samuel Cole D. D. (1816–1838)’. A man by the name of Cole, in service at the same time George Bruce had been an inmate! Turning to King Cole, she remarked on the coincidence.

  He seemed unfazed.

  Out of politeness, she thought to explain to the clerk.

  ‘My friend goes by the name of Cole,’ said Sarah. ‘I thought there might be a connection…’

  Dilkes Loveless, giving her black-skinned companion a briefly appraisal, visibly doubted it. ‘Coal, you say?’

  Sarah finger-tapped the wood of the plaque.

  ‘King Cole is currently visiting England as part of a cricket team,’ she said. ‘The Aboriginal Australian Eleven. Maybe you’ve read about them. They are all over the newspapers.’

  ‘Cricket, hm?’ Dilkes feigned interest. ‘Is this your first time in England, Mr Cole?’

  A very good question, and one Sarah wished she had thought to ask herself.

  King Cole nodded, somewhat curtly.

  Sarah’s finger, trailing down the board, came to rest on the name of the incumbent just as Dilkes Loveless happened to pronounce it aloud.

  ‘Our current chaplain is the Reverend William G. Tucker, M.A.’

  ‘Tucker!’ blurted out Cole. His body suddenly bucked and contorted, in the grip of violent amusement. ‘Tucker…! Tucker! Tucker!’

  The Aborigine cackled, patting his distended belly as it poked through a gap in his shirt. Sarah blushed, embarrassed. Dilkes Loveless scooted them up the short flight of steps, through folding doors of mahogany.

  ‘Sir.’ He shushed. ‘You are in a House of God!’

  Once inside the nave, Cole immediately quieted.

  The chapel itself contained plenty of interest, rope-chain and anchor designs within the flooring, waveforms abounding. Sarah’s ears pricked up when the Hospital clerk invoked St Paul: already more than once that day he had made his saintly presence felt. Coade Stone medallions within the body of the pulpit represented scenes from his life, and in the massive dark altarpiece painting that enclosed the apse, The Preservation of St Paul, Sarah recognised events recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.

  They turned and left by a different door, situated next to the list of chaplains – ‘Tucker!’ King Cole barely suppressed a giggle – and climbed down a flight of steps into the basement. Queer sounds rumbled down the sub-corridor: a succession of dull thuds, as if somebody was upsetting furniture. Sarah shivered. Even on a relatively fine afternoon the air was very chill underground, and she felt a strong draught.

  A large refectory room, deserted and dusty, extended to the east. Turning to the south, they entered a subterranean piazza.

  ‘This,’ said Dilkes, ‘is the former Chalk Walk.’

  The crypt-like archway was both long and narrow.

  ‘A Smoking Gallery,’ he said, ‘so-called for the vast quantities of “chalkies”, those long clay pipes the sailor-Pensioners favour, being dropped and crushed underfoot. On wet and wintry days the old tars would stow themselves away in the stone lockers you see lining the walls, where fires were always kept burning… the only place they were allowed to smoke indoors, due to the obvious fire risk. As you may have gathered, sailors are very great smokers, forever spitting.’

  From his expression, Sarah understood the clerk was not a smoker.

  ‘Common rooms are discouraged, for this very reason. We have a library…’ Dilkes Loveless turned to her, his face twisted into a smile ‘…but old sailors, although great smokers, are not great readers. And so the Governor proposed the provision of a Bowling Alley.’

  Two young men wearing stained white aprons, having the appearance of cook’s assistants, trundled their bowling balls lazily down a wooden track – the source, Sarah divined, of that previous and alarming roll of thunder.

  Presumably, that put them somewhere below the eastern colonnade.

  Turning at right angles, the clerk ushered them along another corridor even narrower than the first; an undercroft, he explained, connecting the William and Mary Courts. They walked at this very moment beneath the upper lawn.

  Whether or not he understood their situation, King Cole gave no sign.

  They approached a second dining hall beneath the King William block.

  ‘Here,’ said Dilkes, ‘you may see one of the more domestic parts of the institution, not so generally known to the public…’

  Unlike the other refectory room, it showed signs of recent occupation. Serving staff still cleared the long barrack-tables. The air retained a certain pungency.

  Dilkes Loveless backed out of the doorway, seeming surprised. A dribble of inmates limped past them, silent with famished concentration. Be it knife, fork, or spoon, each man carried a clinking utensil, and also – by hook or by crook, where they lacked for a hand – some sort of makeshift container; tin can, jug or basin slopped a-swill with a steaming stew.

  Sarah remarked on the lateness of the hour.

  ‘Some prefer to take their meals apart,’ said Dilkes. ‘They may fetch rations, returning with them to their cabins, but only once the main sitting is done.’ The clerk shrugged. ‘These days,’ he offered, ‘we tend to let them sleep late.’

  That same mournful lassitude seemed, Sarah thought, to pervade the Hospital’s entire fabric.

  As the last awkward straggler staggered by, he revealed a diamond-shaped design on the back of his blue coat. Divided into quarters, each contained initials, lettered and numerical. Sarah’s curiosity was piqued.

  ‘These correspond to an individual’s quadrangle,’ confided Dilkes, ‘his ward, cabin number, et cetera, so that we may readily identify where each man belongs. Accidents, you understand, are of frequent occurrence given their, um… constitution.’

  He leant in close to dispense another exclusive dollop.

  ‘A man dies, on the average, daily.’

  ‘An’ yellowcoat?’ asked King Cole.

  ‘Offenders against Hospital rules were called “canaries”,’ said Dilkes. ‘They wore a yellow coat and performed menial tasks…but…’ the clerk stared at the Aborigine, mystified ‘…that punishment was abolished many decades ago…!

  ‘Their uniform…has altered of late,’ he said, ‘the original design felt to be outmoded. Knee-breeches have been exchanged for full-length trousers, and round hats allowed for daily wear, instead of the old tri-corner.’

  Long after the Pensioners had disappeared from view, King Cole continued to stare into the depths of the corridor. His concern, Sarah observed, was for the Hospital’s inmates – the people not the place, exactly the opposite case to when they walked the streets of Bloomsbury.

  She herself wished to know more about how the old sailors lived; the evidence of things seen preferred to that hoped for.


  ‘Mr Dilkes,’ she said, ‘would it be possible for us to see more of the domestic arrangements? One of the wards, perhaps?’

  ‘We shall visit the wards, yes,’ he snapped, ‘all in good time. First, you must witness the Painted Hall. It is the jewel in our crown!’

  They mounted another stairwell, ascending into a second vestibule, below the dome of the King William building. A prominent notice declared an admission charge. Sarah reflexively reached for her purse, neither desiring money of King Cole, nor stopping to consider whether he carried any.

  Dilkes Loveless shooed her coins away. ‘You are my guests!’ he said.

  Climbing more steps, they entered the Great Hall. Over 100 feet in length and at least 50 high, trompe l’oeil painted arches suggested a ceiling twice its actual height.

  ‘Whitepella!’ exclaimed Cole, and expressed a click of wonder.

  Everything else they had seen was as nothing compared to the astonishing painted ceiling, which was all the clerk had promised and more. A lavish Baroque masterpiece, thunderously it trumpeted the manifold virtues of Imperial monarchy. Neck straining, Sarah could hardly tear her eyes from the lofty pageant, an orgy of allegory. Peace handed King William an olive branch; he passed the red cap of Liberty on to Europe. Old Father Time flexed his muscles and held naked Truth up to the light, while impervious Minerva thrust a spear, and Hercules swung his mighty club in a ferocious arc.

  ‘Time exposes Truth,’ proclaimed Dilkes Loveless. ‘And Wisdom and Strength destroy the Vices.’

  Vices represented, in this instance, by Louis XIV of France, being trampled under the royal foot.

  Much like the other tourists scattered about the Great Hall, the small group slowly drifted across the open floor-space. Upwards of 200 framed paintings lined the walls, arranged in tiers three deep between towering Corinthian pilasters, themselves almost hidden by long crimson hangings: the Naval Gallery. The walls also were painted. The nearest arch presented a life-size man-of-war, gunports open and threatening a blast; the other held captive a treasure ship piled high with booty, the spoils of military conquest. Amid potent symbols of England’s Naval power – cannon, coils of rope, spars, drums, and muskets – eight gigantic slaves broke their backs in support of the massive oval frame depicted overhead.

  A riot of fleshy figures tumbled in and out of the heavens above, the tableau abundant with plump, pink nudes. Out of nerves, fatigue, or both, King Cole finally succumbed to a prolonged fit of giggles.

  Irked, Dilkes Loveless smacked his lips. He rushed them onwards, passing through an arch – genuine, proscenium, by Hawksmoor – into the Upper Hall.

  ‘Your quest,’ he said, ‘might once have brought you here more directly. What used to be the Hospital’s Record-room now contains pictures and relics appertaining to Lord Nelson.’

  Mural paintings bracketed the archway through which they had just walked; Dilkes proudly narrated their details.

  ‘Plenty pours riches into the lap of Commerce,’ he said, ‘whilst Britannia, trident at the ready, ensures Public Security. It is the might of the Royal Navy, above all else, that protects Mother Nation’s merchants, and sustains in turn the Divine Right of Britain’s Royal Family.’

  Sarah began to feel a little dizzy from the surfeit of imagery; she would have relished a cup of tea and a chance to sit down.

  King Cole approached the far wall.

  ‘“Iam Nova Progenies Coelo”,’ Dilkes read aloud the Latin inscription there. ‘“Now a New Race from Heaven.”’ The vast wall-painting portrayed the Hanoverian royal family, King George I surrounded by his children and grandchildren. The image of St Paul’s Cathedral loomed large behind; what Sarah assumed had caught Cole’s eye.

  ‘The West Wall,’ said Dilkes, ‘celebrates the Protestant Succession. No, please don’t touch!’

  Cole obeyed. He pointed at the figure of a small boy: Frederick, Prince of Wales, dressed in a bright red coat, stood with one hand on the King’s knee. In the other, he held out a royal orb. King Cole grinned. ‘Howzat!’ he cried.

  The orb did resemble a cricket ball. What was more, the boy in the painting had Cole’s eyes, those same dark pupils, eerily ablaze.

  ‘Yes, it’s ironic,’ said Dilkes. ‘Cricket was supposedly the death of him.’

  According to popular tradition, Frederick, in line to the throne, was slain by the pitch of a cricket ball. Sarah recalled the cruel Jacobite verse commemorating the event:

  ‘Here lies Fred,

  Who was alive and is dead.’

  She turned aside.

  The ceiling of the Upper Hall was no less impressive than that in the Grand Hall. From the four points of the compass, the Four Corners of the Known World, feminised, paid homage. To the west, Europe was accompanied by a white horse; Asia, in the north, adorned with a particoloured turban, presented a camel; Africa, east, a lion at her side, modelled a nonsensical elephant hat; and finally, to the south, rose the Americas – personified by Pocahontas, the Indian princess who had so tragically fallen for a stranger to her shores.

  If London, the nation’s capital, was the seat of Empire, then standing in the middle of this room effectively situated them at its dead centre.

  ‘Where is Australia?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘When this painting was done?’ replied Dilkes. ‘My dear, Australia was yet to be discovered.’

  Sarah Larkin looked from the Naval clerk to her Aboriginal companion, but said nothing.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Whit Monday, the 1st of June, 1868

  PALE SHADOWS

  ‘For you, ye Naval warriors, you whose arms

  The trident sceptre of your Country’s power

  Fearless sustain, and with its terrors shake

  The shores of distant nations – yes, for you

  Your grateful Country frames the fondest cares.’

  ~ Thomas Noble, Blackheath

  No sign of his energies flagging, Dilkes Loveless turned to face Miss Sarah Larkin.

  ‘You were hoping to see life on one of the wards, were you not?’ he said. ‘King Charles is closest. Let us go there.’

  The Hospital clerk opened a small door and stood aside to let them pass. In the lobby area, a fine stairwell of dark wood curled its way up and around the interior. As they began their ascent, Dilkes Loveless regained the lead.

  ‘Just as it would have been for your man George Bruce,’ he said, ‘the daily routine for Pensioners remains much the same. Excepting, of course, their various comforts.’

  He pointed to wall fixtures, overhead – the gas-lamps.

  ‘When I joined staff here nearly 30 years ago,’ he said, ‘many areas, these staircases for instance, were only lit with oil…whale for the officers’ corridors, and fish for the ordinary seamen. Only the Painted Hall and Chapel had gas. Eventually, we hope to extend it to the wards as well.’

  On entering the room at the top of the stairs, Sarah’s first impressions were of scale: the doorway itself must have been at least eight feet across, wide enough for them to walk all three abreast.

  ‘Accommodation,’ Dilkes was saying, ‘is a mixture of smaller rooms, space for between four and eight curtained beds, and large wards such as this one, either side of the spine wall.’

  In support of the lofty ceiling, a double row of pillars neatly divided the spacious interior. At the centre a large fireplace dominated, with wood-panel surround. A room of such size, thought Sarah, must be very hard to heat in the wintertime.

  ‘The old sailors have never found these quarters much to their taste,’ confessed Dilkes. ‘Too big for their liking. Lest we forget, these men have spent years of their lives at sea. They become inured to life on board ship, where conditions are cramped, to say the least. In concession, a system of smaller enclosures has been introduced, reducing the available space to something more palatable.’

  The clerk indicated little wood cabins dotted about the room, suggestive of a haphazard street of tiny shop-fronts: wainscoted and cur
tained, their glass windows were filled with prints and knick-knacks, as if on sale. The group approached one of these cabins, the curtain of which was drawn aside. About a dozen feet in height and the same in depth, but only nine feet across, there were four bed-spaces crammed inside – very homely. Canopied with curtains, the individual iron-framed beds each included a sea-chest to the side, covered over with a cluster of sentimental keepsakes.

  Sarah had one, just the same, at the foot of her own bed; it had belonged to her mother. She ran her fingers over the gnarled wood, and gently warmed the brass.

  ‘Lockers for their worldly possessions,’ said Dilkes, ‘and souvenirs of their sea-voyages.’ Other chalets they passed contained anywhere between one and eight berths. Hammocks sometimes slung across in preference to beds reinforced the illusion of life below decks. It struck Sarah as immeasurably sad, that conditions at sea had left the old sailors so institutionalised; equally, that they lived out their days evidently wishing themselves elsewhere.

  ‘But, where is Mr Cole?’ she said suddenly.

  Even as the words left her mouth, he reappeared at her side. His ability to blend into any background could be at times disconcerting.

  He looked, and with obvious interest, towards the far end of the ward: only here were any of the beds actually occupied. Sarah noted the subtle presence of a few womenfolk, not so much in attendance as they were idly hanging about.

  ‘Are these…are these nurses?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, heavens, no,’ said Dilkes. ‘Widows, mostly.’

  They drew close to a bed somewhat marooned out in the open. A body lay on it, insensible.

  ‘Having dropped anchor, and snug-moored,’ said Dilkes, ‘our patriot and hero finally earns a modicum of peace here in a Greenwich harbour.’

  Sarah almost begged for the clerk to stop, but he continued.

  ‘As you see, the old sea-dog lacks for vigour.’

  They looked again at the body inert in the bed. The man had no legs.

  The clerk cut for himself a slice of Hazlitt. ‘“Stung with wounds, stunned with bruises, bleeding and mangled, an English sailor never finds himself so much alive as when he is flung half dead into…”’ Dilkes Loveless froze, mid-quote ‘“…the cockpit.”’