Ester turned her plump face to the stuccoed ceiling. The rims of her eyes were red and her complexion was a greyish yellow from lack of sleep.
‘I was about to turn out of Saint John’s Lane on to Christchurch Lane . . . I saw a chink of light. I knew it to be the streetlight that burns on the corner there and I ran toward it, but me side split, yer honour. I got such a cramp. I doubled up to catch me breath and in that one moment, out from the wall stepped the Dolocher.’
A thick silence descended on the courtroom: no one breathed, no one blinked, no one moved. Everyone sat on the edge of their seats, waiting.
‘I heard him first. He come from me right side and I saw his boots. It happened so quick, yer honour. I saw his great big head and his tusks and I couldn’t scream. He flung out his hand and he grabbed me shoulder and I made a swipe at him with me stick with the nail in it. And he let out a roar and I dropped me basket and me lantern and I swung at him again and this time I struck him so hard that when I pulled the stick away the nail dragged a lump of muscle with it. But that didn’t stop him, yer honour, he kept coming at me and I fought and kicked trying to get away until I managed to get me chance and I took it, leaving all I had behind, including me cloak. Me cloak got caught on his tusk, yer honour.’
Solomon stared down at Ester Murphy, searching her face, looking for some trace of dementia or latent hysteria. But there was something about her manner, a gravitas in her tone which made it obvious she was struggling with having to recount the experience: the very centre of her being, loaded with common sense and practicality, couldn’t quite believe what her mouth was reporting. When he interviewed her friends later, Solomon discovered that Ester Murphy was a sensible woman with no interest in religion, known to be down to earth and the giver of sound advice. She particularly frowned upon gossip and told people off when they exaggerated facts or embellished the truth for the sake of a good story.
The Judge rattled out a statement – a summary of Ester’s account was to be recorded – and rounded off the acknowledgement with a quote from the Bible and a warning for everyone present to guard their souls by pious devotion and a rigorous adherence to the Ten Commandments.
On the way home, neither Solomon nor Corker spoke for a long time. Corker was preoccupied by his bleak future, Solomon was confounded by the Dolocher. He looked along the winding streets, dodging the passing men and women all busy about their everyday tasks. On the horizon he saw the distant spires and domes of four churches pressed against the baleful yellow sky and an uncertainty crept into his bones. He’d seen the surgeons carve up Olocher’s body; the corpse had split with a sucking noise as the ribs were pulled asunder and the heart was produced. There was nothing left of the man but limbs and cold flesh. No inkling of Olocher’s appetite had been retained in his organs, no sign of his lust for murder or taste for young girls was to be detected in his dead, expressionless face. And yet, had something imperceptible to the naked eye, his malformed will, managed to keep a hold on this earth? Had Olocher’s black soul the power that Boxty insisted it had? Could he really have come back from the dead?
Solomon remembered the other corpses he knew. His mother’s worn face, waxy smooth and unlined as she was laid out on the kitchen table and waked for three days before being buried in a wicker casket. She’d have fought heaven and all the angels to come back and console Solomon in his grief.
He thought of Eliza, dragged from the river. Unable to bear the recollection, he shivered and shook himself, pushing the memory back, a wave of guilt crushing his heart.
‘Have ye me eight pennies?’ Corker said sharply, drawing Solomon out of his dark thoughts.
‘Sorry?’ Solomon seemed confused.
‘Me eight pennies.’ Corker had decided to withdraw all his charm and affection and to keep a businesslike tone with Solomon.
‘Of course, yes.’ Solomon rooted the money out of his pocket and Corker squeezed his mouth tight as his fingers closed over the coins.
‘This story has legs, hasn’t it, Corker?’
‘If you say so.’
Corker sulkily turned his face away and shrugged.
Solomon frowned. ‘Are you all right?’
‘What would be wrong with me?’
‘I don’t know. You seem . . . off.’
Corker kept looking away.
‘Is it something to do with the Dolocher?’ Solomon asked softly.
‘Don’t be a thick—’
Solomon took hold of Corker’s shoulder, drawing the boy to a halt.
‘You’re annoyed with me about something. Come on now, spit it out, you’re having a fit of pique like a woman, cross on some account and expecting me to read your mind.’
Corker shook his head.
‘Nothin’ wrong with me,’ he sniffed. ‘Ye’ve a bag full of money there, more to write about and the prospect of a new job in the offing, so everything’s fine and dandy.’
‘I see.’
Solomon scratched his ear. The splint over his nose was coming loose. He walked on.
‘Now why would I take a job offered by Chesterfield Grierson when I can rake in three times what I would earn sitting at a desk in his office?’
Corker’s eyes lit up and he trotted after Solomon.
‘That’s right,’ he nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘Chesterfield sees I have a talent and, well, let me put it this way, the only person I will let exploit me is myself.’ Solomon pointed to his own chest. ‘And you and me make a great little team, don’t we?’ he added.
‘Yes, we do.’ Corker beamed, showing all his haphazard teeth. His solemn mood vanished and, galvanised by the good news that Solomon and him were still in partnership, he pointed to the paper under his arm and rattled out a proposition. ‘I’ve to do up these sketches proper, Sol, they’ll be brilliant and we’ll get seven thousand copies printed.’
‘Ah now,’ Solomon interjected.
‘Five hundred each of the first, second, third and fourth broadsheets and the remainin’ five thousand of Ester Murphy’s testimony.’
Solomon hadn’t thought of reissuing his previous copies.
‘That’s not a bad idea. People can collect all the instalments. By God, that’s genius, Corker. And we can charge five pence for the package or a penny ha’penny for a single sheet.’
As they turned onto Cooke Street, Solomon’s chest instinctively constricted. His fingers tightened around the handle of his carpet bag. The sun was low, casting a jaundiced yellow light and to his right was the high imposing wall of the Black Dog Prison. He thought of Charlie, lying in his bed, and felt a surge of guilt.
I should go in and visit him, thought Solomon. Then his sensible side interjected. And have the Keeper refresh his signature and steal my best day’s earnings yet? I don’t think so.
As he was staring up at the monolithic gateway, two men burst out onto the streets laughing. One of them, a wizened little man with leathery skin, crashed into him, knocking his bag onto the cobbles.
‘Hey,’ Solomon blustered.
‘Hey,’ the little man yelled back, ‘you watch where y’er going.’ His high-pitched voice was electrified by a touch of insanity; he danced from one foot to the other and wagged an accusatory finger. Behind him, his companion, a colossus with hard suspicious eyes and a jowly face, looked bleakly back at the steps and poked his little friend’s back.
‘Come on, Fred, go on before Hawkins gives us another job.’
Fred did a little jig and sucked on his false teeth, then, picking up the bag, he shoved it into Solomon’s stomach and said, ‘Here, you, don’t be dropping yer things.’ He flicked Corker’s nose and turned back to his large friend.
‘Fuck Hawkins,’ he chuckled gleefully, ‘we’ve a new thing going. Come on, big man.’
As they made their way to the quays, Fred skipped up onto the pavement and down onto the road while his enormous companion grumbled and huddled close to the prison wall.
‘One for the lunatic house,’ Cork
er snapped.
Solomon glanced into the forecourt of the Black Dog: a small group of villainous-looking rogues were offloading crates and barrels from a battered cart and bringing the goods down into the cellars, while over at a storehouse next to the prison graveyard a fresh delivery of lime was being carried out back.
‘What a sink of vice,’ he grumbled, turning away, ‘a nursery for thieves and robbers.’ Then, ruffling Corker’s hair, he grinned. ‘You don’t want to end up there.’
They weren’t ten paces from the Black Dog’s gates when an incredulous voice called out his name and made him spin on his heels.
‘Solomon Fish, as I live and breathe.’
Coming across the road, carrying an empty basket and wearing a ruby-coloured shawl, was a stout woman of about fifty.
‘Maggie.’ Solomon’s eyes widened with delighted surprise. ‘Maggie Fines.’
He scooped the old lady up in his arms and swung her about while she protested.
‘Put me down. This is no way to treat an old friend.’ The woman patted down her skirt and tugged her shawl tight. ‘I wouldn’t have known ye from yer face,’ she said, tapping his jaw lightly, ‘but I’d recognise yer gait anywhere. I said to myself it is Solomon and I took the chance of calling out yer name, and here ye are.’
She grinned down at Corker and asked, ‘Is this yer young fella?’
Corker jigged his shoulders, feeling curiously proud.
‘This scallywag is my employee,’ Solomon said, patting the boy’s back.
‘Employee, no less. So ye got the bar, Solomon. I am glad to hear. Yer mother would have been very proud.’
‘Not quite.’ Solomon smiled, a little pained, instinctively looking down and shuffling his feet like he used to do when he was a boy of five and trusted to Maggie Fines’ charge.
‘He does this.’ Corker grabbed an old broadsheet from his pocket and gave it to Maggie.
‘I see.’ Maggie was still impressed. Then taking a quick scan of the headline, she gasped. ‘Olocher is back from the dead?’ Her jaw dropped.
‘It’s a peculiar story.’ Solomon dismissed his hack work with a quick wave of his fingers. ‘How have you been, Maggie, how long is it since we last met?’
‘It has to be ten years, Solomon, has to be. Poor Jack passed away, God rest his soul.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘We all wondered what happened to you, ever since, ye know, Eliza.’ Maggie looked softly into Solomon’s face and Corker wondered what the old lady was alluding to.
‘That was ten years ago, Maggie. Though you won’t believe, I was just thinking of her, not twenty minutes ago.’
‘Course ye were, Sol, God rest her. Who’d forget that blessed girl’s face. Ten years.’ She shook her head. ‘Seems shorter. It weren’t yer fault, ye do know that.’
Maggie patted Solomon’s arm and reassuringly left her hand softly pressed in the crook of his elbow.
‘Eliza always had a bit of tragedy about her.’
Solomon winced and looked away.
‘And what became of ya, when ya left?’
‘Ah, this and that.’ Solomon tried to shrug off his chequered past, but the images of his old lodgings, his card games, the miserable journeys over land and sea, the constant running and dodging and diving kept intruding as he chatted to his mother’s old friend.
‘We all thought ye’d run off with Sally Loftus when she went missing.’
Solomon shook his head and smiled sadly.
‘Ye didn’t think much of me so.’
‘Ah, Solomon, ye were a young lad, sure the heart recovers quickly when it’s young, and ye were as handsome as the moon itself. It pleased us to think ye might be happy after yer mam going so sudden, and after Eliza did what she did, and Sally had always given ye the glad eye.’
Solomon nodded bleakly and Maggie saw his pain. She changed the subject.
‘So y’er livin’ in the city now?’ She tugged her bonnet down further and shifted her basket to her other arm.
‘For the moment,’ Solomon said, squirming under the inquisition. ‘Don’t know if I’ll be here too long.’
Corker’s heart sank again.
‘It’s very noisy,’ Maggie complained. ‘Wouldn’t be for me. Do ye ever think of comin’ back to Saggart?’
‘No,’ Solomon said flatly. ‘No, Maggie. Those days are gone. Anyway . . .’ He buoyantly tossed off the dark mood and asked Maggie what she was doing in the city.
‘We come in once a season. I’m here with Gertie Baker, Misses Baker’s youngest, sure she’d have been only a wee little thing when ye left, Solomon. Gorgeous little young one now. We’re after sellin’ all our lacework.’
Maggie patted her right hip and her joint rattled with the sound of silver.
‘We’ve made a tidy sum for the comin’ winter.’
She paused and smiled up into Solomon’s bruised face.
‘Did ye get yerself into a spot of trouble, Solomon?’
‘Oh, this.’ He tapped his nose, the splint fell, and Corker and Maggie laughed. ‘I don’t think I need this anymore.’ Solomon put the curved triangular piece of wood in his pocket and smiled his boyish grin. His face was still discoloured but at least the swelling had gone down.
‘I had a bit of an altercation,’ he told Maggie, glancing up at the wall beside them. Then sweeping his arm around Maggie’s shoulder, he told Corker, ‘This fine lady used to babysit me when I was a toddler.’
‘When his mammy worked in the big house.’ Maggie squeezed his waist.
‘Will we go for a dram?’ Solomon asked her.
‘Sure why not. I don’t have to meet Gertie till seven.’
Corker said he’d go on to Merriment’s. ‘I’ll get on with the sketches and give ye two a chance to catch up on old times.’
As he was leaving, Maggie Fines gave him a penny.
‘Don’t spend it in one go.’
‘Sure, what else would ye do with a penny,’ Corker quipped, running off and waving back at Sol.
‘He’s a good lad,’ Maggie laughed. ‘Has a bit of yer quickness about him. Now where will we have the dram, young man?’
Solomon took Maggie to a coffee house and treated her to supper. He flirted with the waitress and Maggie teased him about his love of the women and prophesied that he’d never settle down.
‘These are my carefree days,’ Solomon said with a wink, feeling more cursed than blessed.
They chatted and laughed and reminisced while they ate pigeon stew, followed by sponge cake filled with cream and fresh tea all the way from India. Afterwards Solomon walked Maggie to the side gate of the Christchurch market.
‘This is me,’ Maggie said, ‘You go on, Solomon, Gertie will be along any minute now. There she is.’
Maggie pointed down the road, past a phaeton being pulled by two glistening black horses. A young girl in a pale cloak waved and started running towards them.
‘You go on, Solomon.’
‘All right so.’
He gave her a tight hug and kissed her cheek, the sudden memory of his mother making his eyes sting. He said a fond goodbye and pushed through the traffic, sidestepping a huge hole in the pavement and rushing down to Fishamble Street, keen to be in before it started to rain.
*
There was something about the warmth of the anteroom that made Solomon fidgety: the amber light thrown by the fire, the chatter of Corker telling yarns to Janey Mack, Merriment preparing prescriptions. He ate his dinner quickly, frantic to get away. He glanced over at Merriment, watching her move. As she stooped over her powders and scales, her face illuminated, her eggshell skin radiant, reading and rechecking her lists, he watched her fingers tap and measure and move with authority. Her whole form was intelligent and unflappable and that made him curiously restless. He washed his dinner down with milk and asked Janey Mack if there was a fire lit in his room.
‘There is.’
‘Good.’
And without giving a reason why, he to
ld everyone he was writing upstairs.
‘Leave your sketches there on the table for me for tomorrow and then head off home; your mother will be looking for you,’ he told Corker.
Corker didn’t nod.
‘I’ll be heading out later,’ Solomon told Merriment and, grabbing his bag and a candle, he stormed out of the room and up the stairs.
‘What’s got into him?’ Janey Mack asked.
‘He’s not staying long,’ Corker said. ‘He did something to someone called Eliza and then everyone thought he ran off with a girl called Sally Loftus.’
Merriment paused, silently taking in the information and reflecting on it.
Solomon flung his bag on the floor, got on his knees and pulled up the loose floorboard where he had stashed his most prized possessions. He put five pounds into a tin box among his belongings and kept out two pounds for himself, intending to go to the Cock and Hen later and try his luck in a game. He’d had enough. He wanted to get lost, be with a woman who could laugh and distract him. He felt reckless, like taking all his money and heading to a club and flinging it in the centre of a card table and shouting out, ‘Cut me in.’ He wanted out of his own skin. He pulled open his bag, agitated, full of shame and anger and the unbearable weight of knowing that the past was something that could not be undone. He grabbed a sheaf of paper and some ink, hardly able to sit still. He drew his chair to the dresser and caught his breath when he spotted his own reflection in the oval mirror Merriment had left him to use for shaving.
His eyes were surrounded by dark bluish circles tinged with yellow, the side of his nose was discoloured and his lip was scarred a little, but it was the sharp, bitter glint in his expression that shocked him. Was this it? Was this who he was? Solomon Fish, a vagrant writer, fleeing from town to town, flirting with barmaids and shop hands, scribbling salacious broadsheets that either inflated terror or inflamed scandal? He tried to look away but couldn’t. When he was young and fond of philosophy he used to believe in right action, in the law of responsibility, in the idea that there was a noble, aspirational quality in man and that all good deeds were rewarded. His oratory dazzled then and he was so oblivious to his own hypocritical behaviour that he seduced whoever he wanted and bore little of the consequences, until one day someone showed him who he really was and that day the whole course of his life changed.
The Dolocher Page 17