Tom Bedlam

by George Hagen

  Tom thought briefly. “Chapel. Dr. Chapel.”

  “Chapel?”

  “A good Christian name, I heartily approve,” said Pendleton. His protégé nodded in agreement.

  “Very well,” said Tom's father to Pendleton. “If Tom Chapel is what the young man wishes to be called, Tom Chapel it is. Dr. Tom Chapel.”

  Though Tom sensed a hint of scorn in this last expression of his name, he turned to his father and said, “I thank you for your approval.”

  Bedlam swallowed his son's bitter reply as if it were Mrs. Brasier's medicine. “Goes without saying. In that case, we shall visit the firm of Griff and Winshell tomorrow and make the necessary arrangements to secure your education as Dr. Chapel.”

  “My what?”

  Bedlam tucked his thumbs under his lapels. “Your education, my boy. The solicitors of Mr. Shears—your deceased grandfather—found a provision in the man's will for his issue, and the issue of his issue, to receive funds for their education. I have spent the last three years in negotiation with them, to release the money.”

  “Why so long?” Tom exclaimed.

  Bedlam wilted. “Well,” he said, “as husband to your dear mother, I asserted my right to be a beneficiary—after all, I am a son-in-law! I petitioned for that right but was rebuffed. Thrice! The law is unkind, Tom, very unkind.”

  Pendleton snorted.

  “But I shall be able to go to a medical college?” said Tom.

  “You shall, Tom. You shall become a doctor, and perhaps I shall be compensated at a later date.”

  “Compensated for what?” asked Pendleton.

  Bedlam's expression froze. “Well,” he began, “as Tom's father, I am entitled to something for my troubles, am I not?”

  AFTER THE MEAL, Tom left to meet Audrey. He walked the streets, reconciling his memory with their twists and turns, noting the shops that no longer existed, and reading the signs that had meant nothing to a boy but had significance to a young man: army recruitment posters, shop fronts with signs that beckoned help wanted, inquire within. Had Bill Bedlam spoken the truth, or was there some catch? Tom hadn't forgotten the man's theft of Emily Bedlam's savings. His knees weakened. He had let a murderer go free for the sake of his education, and his father had gained a house from the same act. He was filled with fresh despair.

  He strode towards the setting sun, hand shading his eyes, along the crowded streets, until he saw a public house called the Red Boar. A few drinkers sat at an oaken bar, huddled over their glasses like parishioners in their pews. In one corner, a party of six sang a song (with not a soul singing the same words). The smell of stale beer, grease, and wet sawdust held Tom's attention until he saw a figure sitting in a corner in a white shirt, loose tie, trousers, and black shoes.

  Audrey had always been odd-looking, and slapdash in her dress— understandable for a sister minding her baby brother—but her recent letters to Tom had evoked a noble spirit with a sharp moral strength. It seemed to him now that her features had come to match this temperament. Her straw-colored hair was cast back to reveal a slender if prominent nose, kindly blue eyes, full cheeks, and her mouth seemed poised to reveal some delightful truth. Though several inches shorter than Oscar (who was not a tall man), Audrey seemed tall. Perhaps it was her posture or her confidence. When Tom greeted her, she smiled as if he was the secret she had been nurturing.

  “Tom Bedlam!” she said. He was about to embrace her, but she held his wrists to remind him of her disguise as Edmund. Grabbing her jacket, which she swung over her shoulder with casual ease, she led him outside.

  On the street a lamplighter ignited a gas flame, closed the glass, and climbed down his ladder, whistling. In this light, Tom tried to reconcile Audrey's gentle features with the roughly shorn hair, the tie and jacket, and at once had no doubt that his dearest dream stood before him—the compassionate voice that had sustained him when he was alone at school without another soul for comfort. She had won his affection with her letters, her empathy, counsel, and constancy.

  Overcome, he seized her in an embrace. Audrey hung limp in his arms, her feet dangling off the ground.

  A chorus of hoots and whistles erupted from a group of young men passing them.

  “Come, Tom,” she said softly. “We look like mollies to them.”

  AUDREY AND THE ORFLING

  THEY WALKED QUICKLY TOWARDS WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, THEIR conversation brief and breathless.

  “Oscar told me you'd been promoted.”

  “Yes! I have my father's job!” said Audrey. A crease of amusement appeared in her cheek. “They say I'm a better behaved boy than all the others.” Her eyes danced at this irony.

  “You must hate not being yourself.”

  “Must I?” Audrey sounded surprised. “It's rather fun. You should try it.”

  Tom looked startled. “Wear a dress?”

  “Yes.” She laughed. “Put a man in a woman's shoes, and you'd see society improve overnight.” She paused, as if startled by the despair in her own remark.

  “Oscar seems troubled by the life you're living.”

  “Oh, Oscar!” Audrey laughed again, and Tom wished he could listen to that laugh forever, because Audrey's humor was not careless, or foolish, or coy but the joyful expression of a warm spirit.

  “He thinks you're afraid to be a woman,” Tom explained.

  “Stuff and nonsense!”

  They were crossing Westminster Bridge now, and rain was swirling around them—a confusion of droplets flying every which way that gave the lights a hazy glow. A sickly orange fog hung over the water—the product of coal fires, hemmed in by rain and London's peculiar topography.

  “I think,” Audrey continued, “that nothing is more terrifying to a man than a woman unafraid to act like one! And even worse, a man acting like a woman. People are stoned to death for that !”

  “I wouldn't want you to be in any danger,” he replied.

  “I'm safe, Tom,” she assured him. “I make a good living—for an impostor.” She met his eye to emphasize her disgust at the necessity of her disguise. “Nobody bothers with me,” she added softly.

  Tom observed that Audrey received few glances from passersby Women and men alike seemed to regard her as a slight young man; a few men of her physique passed by, and Tom wondered if they too were women passing themselves off as men.

  The south bank of the Thames was enveloped in the same sulfurous mist. A red-faced old lady wearing a little candle on a strap around her forehead issued a catlike yelp that pierced the fog. “Flowers here!” she cried, gesturing to the carnations in her basket. Audrey drew Tom's attention to the lady's oilskin sailor trousers. “See, Tom? In Vauxhall, people don't care how anyone dresses!”

  Audrey pulled her shirt free so that its crinkled tails hung to her knees, and her step changed; even her shoes sounded different on the cobblestones.

  “What news of the Orfling?” asked Tom.

  “Oh, as sweet as ever, though I have to keep an eye on him in shops because of his sticky fingers. Elsie and Eloise still squabble, mostly about boys. We can't imagine who would marry them.”

  THE OLD TENEMENT BUILDING beside Todderman's factory seemed even shabbier than Tom remembered. The wet streets reflected the gaslight, and fine black soot wafted down past the streetlamps from Todderman's eternally smoking chimneys. On the walls, Tom noticed the accumulation of finger marks since his departure. He paused on the landing before the Limpkins' door and glanced towards his old room. The door was open a crack, and through it he saw a small face raise its eyebrows expectantly. Tom recognized its expression: the child was in a torment of neglect, waiting for a parent to pick it up and make it feel loved.

  IN MANY WAYS time appeared to have frozen in the Limpkin household, except for the absence of the late Mr. Limpkin. Mrs. Limpkin greeted Tom warmly, and in her embrace he realized he equated maternal affection with her features—the pink, bloodshot eyes, the warm, buttery smell, and the gentle pressure of her full breasts.

 
“Oh, dear me, Tom, sit down! Have something to eat. Oh, where are those girls? Elsie, bring us the gingerbread from the stove, dear!”

  “I'm Eloise!” declared a tall girl, scowling and pulling strands of her hair between reddened fingers. Her sister became visible only after Tom made out a figure, beneath a sheet, seated on the floor.

  “What on earth is Elsie doing?” cried Mrs. Limpkin.

  “Vapors, for her skin,” replied Eloise. “She wants a rosy complexion.”

  “Say hello to Tom, Elsie,” said her mother.

  A high-pitched sneeze answered from the folds of the tent, and two pale knees shook, which caused the steaming bowl of water in her lap to spill. There was a shriek, the tent collapsed, and Elsie appeared, sweat rolling down pimpled cheeks. She gasped for air, eyes closed. “How do I look?” she inquired.

  “Like a boiled chicken!” her sister remarked.

  Elsie fumed, threw the sheet back over her head, and shouted, “Pig!”

  “Sow,” countered Eloise.

  “Mama!” moaned Elsie, a demand that Eloise be reprimanded.

  Mrs. Limpkin's nose wrinkled. She would not be drawn into the dispute. “I'm late,” she cried. “Audrey will you please make them behave?”

  Audrey murmured from the back room, and Mrs. Limpkin gave Tom another bosomy embrace. “Come again soon, Tom. You bring with you so many memories!” she said, with a melancholy sniff. Clutching two baskets of pastries, she disappeared through the front door.

  “She still works?” inquired Tom.

  Eloise nodded. “Sells pastries to the night shift.”

  Elsie's face came up for air; she narrowed her eyes at Eloise, cried, “Baboon!” and disappeared under the sheet.

  “Shrew!” countered Eloise, but the tent did not respond.

  “Where's the Orfling?” Tom inquired. Both girls pointed to the doorway, where Audrey held a baby who looked no more than nine months old with a big, drooling smile, a bald scalp, and wide eyes, his head tottering on tiny shoulders.

  “Here he is!” said Audrey, kissing his pudgy cheek. “Here's my little dumpling!” The Orfling giggled with delight.

  Tom's smile faded. He peered closely at the boy. “He hasn't grown a bit since I left!”

  This was apparently the wrong thing to say. The Orfling suddenly burst into sobs.

  “Look what you've done!” said Eloise.

  “Hurt his feelings,” said Elsie.

  “He understands everything you say!”

  “I'm so sorry,” said Tom, bewildered. “You mean that, although he looks like a baby, he thinks like an eight-year-old?”

  The baby let out a fresh bawl.

  “Stop mentioning his age!” whispered Eloise.

  “You're a wonderful baby,” said Tom hastily, but it was no good: the Orfling was wounded and indignant, and cast woeful glances at Tom as if he had been deeply maligned.

  FOR AN HOUR THE Orfling was inconsolable—his cry as sweet as it was pitiful, his little chest heaving, and tears pouring down his cheeks. When he had no breath to cry, he whimpered, and when he lost the energy to whimper, he burst into a fit of sneezes, then settled into a low wail.

  They tried everything to comfort him. Audrey sang to him, the twins danced, told rhymes, and tickled his toes, but just when the Orfling seemed to forget his misery, he would steal a glance at Tom and begin to weep again.

  When the girls had run out of ideas to cheer him, Tom pulled his lower lip over the upper, which seemed to startle the baby into silence. Then the child emitted a deep gurgle of amusement. Gently, Audrey placed him on Tom's lap, and for the next ten minutes Tom talked with fish lips and rolled his eyes until the Orfling closed his eyes, and began to snore.

  “He's forgiven you,” Audrey said.

  Tom's shirt was flecked with spittle and stained with the Orfling's grubby finger marks; a pungent smell indicated the baby had wet himself.

  An unfamiliar sense of peace overcame Tom as he sat in the muddled squalor of this family. He tried to commit it all to memory: the boxes stuffed beneath chairs and tables, every available surface covered with jars, bottles, and used crockery, the linen hanging from the ceiling. It was chaos. It was precious. It was home.

  “Mother thinks he's waiting for the right time to grow,” explained Audrey, “and hasn't the desire to become older.”

  It was agreed that the sleeping Orfling should remain in Tom's lap. Audrey turned down the gaslight and placed some cold pork on the table with a loaf of bread and a pat of butter. After she had sliced the bread and handed it around to Tom and the twins, she tried to make light of the Or-fling's condition. “You couldn't wish for a nicer baby.”

  “Except when he steals,” remarked Elsie.

  “He only steals the things he knows we need,” added Eloise.

  “It's remarkable, Tom,” Audrey said. “Once when we were about to be turned out on the street for the rent I found a pound note balled in his fist. It made up the difference, so you see, he knew, somehow.”

  “That makes him remarkably intelligent,” Tom said.

  “He's a blessing,” Audrey responded, “and I know that one day he'll choose to grow up.”

  “But how strange,” said Tom, “for a baby to decide not to grow.”

  “Strange?” huffed Elsie. “Hardly! Look at us: one awful thing happens after another. We never know what's around the corner. The Orfling clings to the one good thing in his life: babyhood!”

  “Come, Tom,” Audrey said. “We'll put him to bed.”

  Tom smiled, reminded of their pretend games long ago, when she had tried to make him kiss her.

  He rose with the baby and followed her across the room to a chest standing beside a cast-iron stove. Audrey opened the bottom drawer to reveal some bedding and a small lace pillow that was yellow with age. Tom laid the sleeping baby in, and Audrey pushed the drawer in a little, leaving just a space for the Orfling's little pink face.

  Kneeling a few inches from Audrey, Tom inhaled, breathing in her hair, admiring the glow of her cheek and the pale down above her lips. As he drew in her gentle essence, he realized that the sour milk smell was gone. In its place was something much more intense, primal and intoxicating. Tom was about to close his eyes and surrender to it when he became aware of Elsie's watchful eye. “Are you leaving soon?” she asked sharply.

  “Do you want me to?” he responded.

  Elsie's gaze was direct. “Audrey's perfectly fine, and so are we. We're happy together” Her defiant tone surprised Tom. He never imagined that his affection for Audrey might be seen as a threat to the Limpkins' harmony.

  “Don't take her away,” she warned him.

  Audrey escorted Tom into the hall. “Don't mind Elsie,” she said. “Since Father's death, everything is a near calamity to her.”

  “Perhaps she's entitled to be worried about me,” Tom replied.

  “Nonsense.” Audrey kissed his cheek. “You have a good heart, Tom.”

  “I don't know if that's true. I've done some awful things,” he confessed.

  Audrey shook her head. “You'll make it all up raising your own loving family, Tom. I can see your life,” she whispered. “Dr. Tom. Like a picture before me.” She smiled. “Do you remember how I used to bring you lemon tarts, and you would kiss me in return?”

  Tom recalled that he had passed the tarts on to Sissy.

  Audrey tugged at his coat lapel, drawing his face level with hers. He thought she was going to confess something, but her eyes indicated another purpose. She put her lips to his, as if she meant to remind herself of their youthful exchanges.

  The pressure of her lips against his made Tom's heart start to pound. He wanted her and put his hands on her waist. The Limpkins' door creaked open.

  “What's going on?” cried Elsie.

  “Nothing!” Audrey replied. She pushed Tom towards the stairs.

  At the bottom step he stopped and looked up. Audrey was gazing down at him anxiously. She blew him a kiss, and disappeared.
r />   GRIFF & WINSHELL, SOLICITORS

  THE ESTABLISHMENT WAS FILLED WITH HIGH DESKS, EACH WITH A clerk poised over his work, just as a jockey would ride his steed, scribbling across a sheaf of paper with his quill and tapping it periodically against his chair. Each man was working intently, his back crooked, quill trembling, eyes fixed on the paper, while the leaden smell of a dozen inkwells competed with the odor of parchment dust and pickled cabbage—one clerk's lunch. The floor was gritty with blotting sand and the ceiling blackened by a fireplace roaring even on this warm day, which made the room oppressively hot. The Bedlams were greeted by Samuel Winshell, a man with thick spectacles who stroked the desks with gaunt knuckles. His eyes settled on the fellow eating the pickled cabbage. “That writ will be flawless, Duckworth, or you'll swallow it with your cabbage!”

  Mr. Winshell directed them to Mr. Tobias Griff, who occupied an office at the rear. As they approached the door, a gentleman passed with the momentum of a tornado. He wore a shiny black top hat and a black morning coat. Wiry black muttonchops splayed from his cheeks like ravens' wings.

  Mr. Bedlam greeted him loudly. “Sir, perhaps you remember me! I'm Bill Bedlam. I wonder if I might—”

  But the gentleman strode past. His dark stare acknowledged Tom just long enough to remind him of their last meeting, at the inquest into Arthur Pigeon's death. He threw open the door of a hansom cab and vanished into its dark interior. A moment later, Bronson Mansworth was no more than memory again.

  Tobias Griff emerged from his office clutching a pair of brass tongs in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other. Tom noticed that the tongs' handle was in the shape of a goat's head, with a tuft of hair on its chin that matched the gray curl on Mr. Griff's. He threw the papers into the fireplace and poked at the curling ash with the tongs until the flakes separated and floated upwards into the flue.

  “Few problems, Mr. Bedlam, vanish as simply as that,” he said with solemn satisfaction. “The affairs of many fine men in London are safe here. Your secrets are safe. No indiscretion has ever passed my lips.”