The Dolocher

by Caroline Barry

  Every few moments he recalled the Dolocher staring down at him, and the shock of the memory drove his hands together. Was he praying? He couldn’t pray. There was no God. He wanted to tell Merriment everything, wanted to talk to her, tell her what he had seen. He wanted to see her, look at her face, wanted her to listen.

  He blinked at the dying ash in the hearth, what would she say when he told her it was true? That the devil walked the earth and Olocher’s rank soul had crawled up out of dead flesh and had taken the form of a black pig. What were they to do, now that he knew the Dolocher was real?

  15

  New Beginnings

  When Ruth clipped back the shutters, Solomon jolted awake. He had dozed off and slid along the wall, his head resting on a panel that jutted from the fireplace. Lar was still snoring in bed and four hungry children were seated in a line in front of the fender, all gawping at the stranger snoozing in the corner.

  ‘Morning.’ Solomon sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. He smiled weakly at the children. They stared blankly back. Ruth offered Solomon a measly chunk of stale bread and patted his shoulder.

  ‘Always better when the sun’s up,’ she whispered. ‘Bless us and save us, it’s a calamity having the devil himself abroad. Can’t bear the night. Sup of milk, Solomon?’

  Solomon dipped his bread in the watery milk and shared it with the littlest child. The room looked even bleaker in daylight. There were rat holes in the skirting and gaps in the floorboards. Chunks of the ceiling plaster had come loose and the slats were visible. The children wore threadbare shifts and a boy, no more than five years old, had a runny nose and sores around his mouth. The sound of feet moving crossed the ceiling above and outside on the landing he could hear someone running up and down the stairs.

  ‘Others live here?’ he asked.

  ‘Course.’ Ruth tapped Lar and handed him his breakfast, a bigger slice of stale bread and a mug of cabbage broth. ‘Twelve families.’ As she spoke the whole building seemed to come alive. Solomon could hear a baby crying, someone shouting to ‘watch out below’, another woman was calling the name ‘Frank’ over and over.

  ‘I thought the place was empty. Last night . . .’ Solomon stopped. A skinny man with no teeth lifted the grey linen sheet that served as a door and poked his head in.

  ‘Someone scattered the wood,’ he complained and Ruth waved at him to come forward. She pointed at Solomon and said, ‘He saw the Dolocher hanging from a wall.’

  Within minutes the room was crowded. Word was out that a stranger had taken refuge in the tenement and the stranger had just missed being skinned alive and carted off to hell. Solomon told the crowded room everything he had been through and the terrified congregation nodded and conferred, throwing out wild theories as to why the devil himself had come to Dublin to cleanse the putrefied inhabitants.

  ‘What’d ye do wrong?’ one woman wanted to know.

  ‘Didn’t pray enough,’ Solomon said sarcastically, then added, ‘I don’t know. All I know is Gertie didn’t do anything.’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ Ruth told her neighbours. ‘Makes ye dread bringing a child into such a place.’

  Solomon stayed an hour talking to the fascinated residents, all of them advising him that his civic duty was to report the apparition to the beadles, with the men of the group insisting on setting up a vigil to guard the street. He left as the men discussed making weapons, fetching scythes and hooks and blades that would later be hammered onto sticks. He picked his way along the musty passageway, past the clutter of scattered planks he had knocked over the night before, and stepped out into the cool dull morning.

  He had never been more grateful to see the daylight. The street was narrow and twisting, lined by tenement after tenement. A throng of ragged children swarmed entrances, running in and out, emptying chamber pots into the gutter, kicking vermin out of the way and scolding each other or hollering at their parents that they were coming or going depending on which they were doing. The stench of excrement was overpowering, the gutter was awash with thick clumps of undiluted waste and screaming from a room somewhere overhead was a woman complaining about ‘me only decent skirt’. Solomon heard a loud smash as glass shattered and a young bow-legged boy bolted from a dark alley way.

  ‘I hope ye rot in hell, ye bitch,’ the boy screamed. ‘Sellin’ me shoes, ye bitch, ye wicked drunken hussy bitch of a whore.’

  ‘Corker!’ Solomon called and Corker rounded on his feet, tears streaking his filthy face.

  ‘Sol.’ His jaw dropped, his brown eyes flitting back the way he had come. There was a rustle from the alley; something sailed past Corker’s head and landed with a wallop on the cobbles.

  ‘Missed, ye bitch,’ Corker hollered. Then running his hand under his nose, he wiped a long string of snot onto his sleeve.

  ‘She’s a drunk.’ He shrugged and sauntered towards Solomon. ‘Were ye looking for me?’ he said hopefully and Solomon patted his shoulder and nodded.

  ‘Did she sell your shoes?’ he asked.

  ‘Bought a bottle of gin.’ Corker sniffed. ‘I wish she’d just topple into the Liffey and drown.’ He shooed away the toddler coming out after him. ‘Go home, Joey, get Effie to mind ye, I’m working.’

  The toddler sucked on the corner of a cabbage leaf and shook his head.

  ‘Effie,’ Corker bawled at the top of his lungs. ‘I’m off to work. Joey’s goin’ to fling himself under a horse.’

  The little girl that Solomon had seen shivering the day before skidded out onto the street. She nodded at Solomon and grabbed Joey up in her arms.

  ‘Get us a bit of poison, Corker,’ Effie grinned. ‘We’ll do her in tonight.’

  ‘Right ye are, Effie love,’ Corker nodded. He gave a casual wave and sticking his hands in his pocket asked Solomon, ‘What’s the plan?’

  *

  Chesterfield Grierson was smoking a carved bone pipe trimmed with silver. He sat behind a large oak desk that was covered in files and open volumes and wore his usual surprised expression when his clerk announced that a Mister Solomon Fish and associate were asking to see him.

  ‘Show them through,’ Chesterfield said, his exaggerated brows lifting a fraction.

  Solomon gave his conditions. He and Corker were a package. Grierson did not disagree, but he made it clear that Corker’s wage came from Solomon’s pocket, only to be renegotiated when distribution figures had been reviewed. Solomon looked about the well-furnished office. There were two upholstered chairs for guests, lines of shelves crammed with volumes and files, two desks holding more files all piled at least three feet high, and a small table laden with decanters and glasses and a globe. Hanging from a cabinet was a map of Dublin, decorated with red dots. Solomon examined it.

  ‘You need to add a new dot,’ he told Chesterfield.

  ‘That right?’

  ‘The Dolocher was spotted last night near New Row, in an alleyway not far from Corn Market House.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  Chesterfield Grierson’s long, meticulous fingers tapped the gold lid of a delicate inkwell filled with crimson ink and without speaking invited Solomon to draw a red dot marking the latest sighting.

  Is this where we will be working from? Solomon wondered, re-arranging the room in his mind, imagining his desk facing the door, his back to the window, the fire across the way to his right. Chesterfield slowly rose from his comfortable chair. Today he was dressed in a dark, sleek suit, trimmed with pale grey threads at the cuff that matched his grey silk cravat. He looked very sober, almost funereal, Solomon thought.

  ‘My secretary will show you to your office, Mister Fish. Once we’ve signed a contract. I like to copper fasten things. If I’m to invest, I expect a reciprocal commitment from my investments. Philmont will allot you your hours, the days we go to print, my expectations of you as editor, your entitlements, your obligations, all the tedious nitty-gritty that this litigious age requires.’

  As he spoke, Chesterfield was slowly usherin
g Solomon out of the room.

  ‘Suffice it to say, I am delighted that you have chosen to come and work for Pue’s Occurrences. I expect to read your editorial this evening. Meanwhile you can leave the leading headline article on my desk in one hour. We go to print this evening.’

  He opened the door and waved to Philmont.

  ‘Seems you’ve just stepped into the breach.’

  Chesterfield bowed deeply and retreated backwards through the door, closing it slowly.

  Corker rolled his eyes at Solomon. ‘That lad moves like he’s dancin’ with ye.’

  Philmont led them to a tiny room with a single window and a narrow fireplace. There was a desk, a chair with a broken back and a wastepaper basket. A long grey cobweb fluttered across the chimney breast.

  ‘The contract will be on your desk in an hour,’ Philmont said, looking forlornly about like he’d lost something. He bowed and slipped quietly away.

  Corker got a fire going and Solomon wrote a hurried note.

  ‘Take this to Merriment’ – he folded up the paper – ‘and don’t be long, I want you to hurry back and draw the Dolocher looking down from a ledge, high up.’

  Corker nodded and, grinning broadly, tugged at his cowlick.

  ‘Right ye are. But, isn’t this dandy, Sol? An office, be the hokey and me workin’ as yer assistant.’ Corker shoved his hands into his pockets and licking his lower lip, risked asking the question he most wanted to know the answer to.

  ‘Yer stayin’, so?’ Corker couldn’t hide his delight.

  ‘I’m staying,’ Solomon said, his stomach surging. He clenched his jaw, forcing a smile, and nodded at the door, sending Corker on his way.

  When the boy left, Solomon looked about the tiny office, fighting the rising panic that his decision to stay had created. He felt like he was sinking, plunging into a depth of suffocating responsibilities. In the cold light of morning last night’s plan began to fracture. Change, as it turned out, was deeply unpleasant. Biting down, he resisted the urge to get up and head for the docks and take a ship to Scotland. Instead, he forced himself to lift the quill on his desk and smooth out a flat sheet of paper, then began writing his editorial.

  ‘A Personal Encounter with the Dolocher.’

  He was indulging in grand adjectives and baroque hyperbole, quoting scripture and musing on Dante when Corker belted into the office in a flap.

  ‘Yer one’s dead, Sol. Maggie, yer friend.’

  Solomon froze.

  ‘What?’ he whispered.

  ‘Sorry, Sol, Maggie has passed away.’

  Solomon flung his work to one side and grabbed his jacket.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last night. And I think Merriment is mad at ye.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Nothin’. She read yer note and said nothin’. That’s when ye know a woman is furious with ye. It was Janey told me about yer one, dead up in yer bed.’

  ‘Right.’

  Chesterfield Grierson was standing at his door proofreading some document and telling Philmont where to make alterations when Solomon and Corker ran by and vanished down the stairs.

  ‘He’s one of those new breeds,’ Chesterfield remarked dryly, ‘prone to excessive reaction.’

  *

  Merriment was serving four customers at once and at the same time giving a statement to two beadles from the sheriff’s office when Solomon and Corker barged into the shop.

  ‘Sorry.’ Solomon rushed to the counter.

  Merriment pressed her lips together and folded mawseeds into a sheet of brown paper.

  ‘This is the man,’ she said to one of the beadles. ‘He knows where the lady lives. The corpse has to be removed, there’s a little girl upstairs won’t leave her side.’

  Merriment passed the envelope to a skinny woman with wild eyes and took the money, while Solomon ran his hand through his hair, anxious to do the right thing.

  ‘I had an appointment this morning.’ He pointed at his note by way of explanation.

  ‘Well, you’re here now,’ Merriment said quietly, annoyed that she was inexplicably furious with him. She served the other customers while the beadles went upstairs with Solomon and Corker to inspect Maggie Fines lying in the bed, ready to be removed.

  Solomon sank onto the trunk, appalled that this was how Maggie had died. All those evenings as a little boy he had crept onto Maggie’s knee, all the days she’d spoiled him with apples and honey and milk and sugar. The times she had wiped his cuts and grazes, the stories she had spun, all to entertain and care for him. Little did he know then how she would die or that he would be the one to oversee her funeral arrangements.

  ‘She wasn’t alone.’ Janey Mack slipped her arm around Solomon’s neck. ‘Me and Merri stayed the whole night long with her, told her grand tales and kept her company.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Solomon stared down at his hands, his fingers entwined. He wasn’t praying.

  The beadles looked at the wound underneath Maggie’s bonnet, undid the ribbon of her nightdress and looked at the bandages wrapped around Maggie’s ribs.

  ‘The Dolocher,’ one of the men whispered.

  Solomon turned away. As he stood up, he brushed down his breeches and fixed his jacket.

  ‘I’ll arrange for her to be brought back to Saggart,’ he said. ‘She’d no family. No one left.’

  The beadles were satisfied, took Solomon’s details and told him they would be reporting the matter to the House of the Sheriff and Commons and he may be called before a magistrate to have his statement entered into court records.

  Solomon agreed to everything as he guided the beadles downstairs, leaving Janey Mack sitting on the edge of the bed brushing the ends of Maggie’s hair and talking to the dead woman very gently.

  The beadles left and for a brief few moments the shop was empty. Merriment was in the anteroom and Corker was poised at the front door, ready to go wherever Solomon wanted.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ Solomon said, slipping into the anteroom and looking at Merriment standing by the fire gazing at the picture in the oval frame.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come home last night,’ he said sincerely.

  ‘I’m your landlady, Solomon. Not your mother.’

  Merriment forced a smile. Why was she so angry with him? She rested one hand on the mantle and hid her face by looking into the fire. She knew why she was angry with him. He hadn’t given her a second thought. He had sauntered out the door and left her with a sick woman to nurse, he hadn’t thought twice about her or the fact that she might need help. He was only concerned with himself and that disappointed her.

  ‘I know, but you might have been worried.’ Solomon sounded tired.

  ‘I assumed you fell into company.’

  Merriment trailed off but she fixed Solomon with her blue eyes, accusing him silently. Solomon smarted, recalling his debauched rollicking with two prostitutes, ashamed of his indulgence.

  ‘But . . .’ Merriment smiled a little, her eggshell skin glowing in the dim light of the anteroom, her wild hair tied back, her arms folded, her stance wide and confident. Even in breeches she was elegant. She brushed off her anger, realising that expecting more from Solomon was only part of the problem. The truth was she had wanted his company, wanted to discuss Janey Mack’s confession, Maggie’s last moment. For some reason she couldn’t fathom, she wanted to tell him about Peggy Leeson and Ashenhurst Beresford. Amused by her need for his company, she swept away her annoyance. Solomon didn’t think of her, why would he? She was his landlady; besides, she was older than him and dressed in breeches. She was androgynous, a brain to discuss things with. Wasn’t this how all men saw her? Hadn’t Beresford distanced himself from her and Johnny Barden before him? Why should Solomon be any different?

  Merriment suddenly thought of what her life had become. Everything had passed her by. She had had no real relationship to speak of. No bright future. She had used up her best years by locking herself in sickbay and avoiding the world. She
was getting older and her confidence had taken more than its fair share of beatings. Why was she fixing her hope on a young man who would grow tired of her? Why was she stumbling? She thought bleakly of her future, her old age. Was there nothing to look forward to? Will I be old and frail and poor? Merriment took a deep breath and scrambled towards her logical side.

  You’re tired and emotional, she told herself. Facts of reality cannot be changed. And, realising that there was no point in focusing on such things, Merriment let her disappointment evaporate. She was not going to relive the passion she had once harboured for Ashenhurst and Johnny. Solomon was a young handsome rake and she was a curiosity, an odd woman with whom he enjoyed talking.

  ‘I will be honest,’ she said. ‘I would have appreciated your company waking Maggie. Janey was—’

  ‘Thank you,’ Solomon interrupted, ‘for Maggie. For preparing her.’ Solomon caught his breath. ‘She was a lovely woman. Very kind.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Merriment felt a wave of guilt cut through her: all this anger and desire had blurred her thinking. Solomon was bereft and all she could think about was suiting herself, of wanting his company.

  She moved a little nearer. ‘Please, I’m sorry for your loss.’

  Solomon looked away and shook his head. ‘I should have been here. I shouldn’t have left you . . . I shouldn’t have left her alone.’

  ‘I thought she was getting better,’ Merriment said. ‘I thought . . .’ She looked into Solomon’s eyes searching for some way to comfort him.

  ‘Last night . . .’ Solomon frowned. ‘I saw something.’

  He wanted to move closer, wanted to stand beside her, wanted to slip back the collar of her shirt and rub his thumb along the little blue anchor tattooed on her clavicle.

  ‘I saw the Dolocher,’ he said, staring directly into Merriment’s eyes, waiting for her to look away and shut him out. Waiting for her to reject the unpalatable reality of what he had seen because it did not match her scientific principles. Instead Merriment’s arms dropped open. She stepped forward, her face intensely curious.

  ‘Where?’ she asked breathlessly.