The Dolocher

by Caroline Barry

  ‘I take it ye have some shekels in yer pocket from yer broadsheet sales.’ His eyes flicked to Solomon’s pocket.

  ‘I . . .’ Solomon clamped his teeth together, organising his thoughts. ‘I can pay in instalments,’ he ventured, ‘come to an agreement with Mister Knox, a weekly stipend.’

  Pearly shrugged, ‘If ye like. But there’ll be interest charged because of the massive inconvenience.’

  Solomon sighed, watching Pearly pull out his notebook and scribbling Solomon’s name.

  ‘Yer landlady,’ Pearly cocked his head to one side, ‘does good business. Couldn’t get into her place yesterday.’

  ‘You sick?’ Solomon’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  ‘Nah,’ Pearly grinned. ‘Knoxy likes to know what businesses are thrivin’. Good trade in tea and chronic nerve problems,’ he chuckled. ‘Good trade in potions and herbs, who’d have thought.’

  ‘Yeah, well, tell Knoxy—’

  ‘Billy Knox to you,’ Pearly interjected sharply, pointing his pencil at Solomon’s nose.

  ‘Tell Mister Knox,’ Solomon growled, ‘that if he keeps expressing an interest in Merriment O’Grady’s business he will have the Sheriff’s office on his back.’

  Pearly was greatly amused by this threat.

  ‘Y’er well connected.’

  Solomon shook his head. ‘No,’ he replied bleakly. ‘But Merriment O’Grady is.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Pearly added cryptically, ‘not all fees are collected through the front door.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Solomon frowned.

  ‘Ah now, pretty boy.’ Pearly tapped Solomon’s forehead with his pencil. ‘Stop asking me questions.’ He scribbled in his notepad and cocked his head to one side. ‘Do ye like yer landlady?’ he asked, his eyes dancing with a provocative light.

  ‘No,’ Solomon snapped.

  ‘She like you?’

  Solomon shook his head. ‘Let me cut you short . . .’

  Pearly grinned. ‘She a follower of Sappho? Not interested in yer charms. I knew it. I said so.’ Sniggering, his shoulders bouncing up and down, he muttered, ‘Knoxy owes me four guineas on that one.’

  He snapped his head up, held out his hand, his expression suddenly hard and sharp. ‘What are ye paying off then?’

  Solomon handed him five shillings, wondering how he was going to square things with Chesterfield Grierson.

  ‘Right.’ Pearly counted the coins, slipped them into his pocket, closed his notebook and sauntered off, leaving Solomon bewildered by his assailant’s hasty departure. There were no goodbyes, no ‘see you next week, farewell’, and then Solomon realised that Pearly’s sudden departure was intentional. It was to keep Solomon on his toes, always ready to pay. As he watched Pearly march away, he heard him whistling, understanding clearly the unspoken message. Solomon would be followed and pounced on whenever and wherever it suited Billy Knox.

  He banged the back of his head off the brick wall behind him, furious that now he would have to figure out how to repay Chesterfield. Why hadn’t he told Pearly that Merriment was no longer his landlady? That information would at least have protected her. He clamped his jaws, suppressing the stinging sensation in his chest. When would he see Merriment again? Exhausted and depressed, he sighed through his teeth. He dragged his right hand over his face, pulling on his flesh, his fingers digging into his jaw, dragging his chin, trying to wipe away the mess he was in.

  ‘To hell with this.’ Solomon launched himself forward and quickly hurried after Pearly. He followed a good twenty paces behind, ducking out of sight whenever he had to, his eyes fixed on the blue coat, watching it dip and weave through the throng of city dwellers. It was over near Cornmarket, down from New Row that Solomon squeezed into a doorway just as Pearly was met by a small man with an angular face. This was the second time that Solomon had seen Pearly meet with Hawkins.

  Solomon would never forget the Keeper of the Black Dog. He recalled the brutal savageness of Hawkins’ temper, the wanton glee he expressed in violently attacking Charlie, the spiteful pleasure he took in robbing Solomon, the pounding weight of his fists, the unremitting pummelling, as over and over he punched Solomon’s face. Hawkins was the kind of man that revelled in violence, found a sick pleasure in beating a man half to death, delighted in dominating and crushing, seemed nourished by the crack of bones and the splatter of blood. His swagger and bluster were backed up by a deep-rooted lawlessness. He looked at Hawkins as he cheerfully greeted Pearly, his flinty eyes shifting right to left. It scalded Solomon to see the brigand who had beaten him black and blue and robbed him blind walking free and easy in the streets of Dublin, but he was intrigued that Billy Knox’s right-hand man was creeping about meeting Hawkins in the shady side streets, looking shifty as he muttered something under his breath.

  Solomon tried to read what was going on. It was obvious that Pearly and Hawkins had something going. A smuggling caper perhaps? Some kind of illicit racket? They were up to no good, whatever it was they were plotting. They chatted hurriedly for a moment, both of them parting quickly and heading their separate ways.

  Perplexed, Solomon wondered if it would be worth looking into Hawkins more. There was something about Pearly’s manner, a faint subservient bow of the head, the barest flicker of anxiety in his expression. Perhaps Hawkins had something over Pearly and if Solomon could find it out, then maybe he could find a way to extricate himself from his current debt to Billy Knox. Solomon made his way back towards Christchurch. He thought of heading down to the Cock and Hen to do a bit of asking about, see what he could find out, but something in him couldn’t face Jenny. He sighed as the dusk began to turn a garish yellow, the failing light tinged with purple, his heart like lead in his chest as the unbearable weight of no longer living under Merriment’s roof struck him hard. Going home had become a thing. Returning to the warm fire in the anteroom, writing at the supper table while Janey Mack and Corker chatted, sneaking glances at Merriment while she worked, had become part of his evening routine. Heartsore and miserable, he turned onto Purcell’s Court and smirked when he saw a painted sign for the Boar’s Den tavern. He made for the peeling black door, thinking, This is appropriate, and stepping into the warm, grubby interior he pulled a chair over to the blazing fire.

  The tavern consisted of a grimy room with a squat roof and a mud floor strewn with straw. Scattered in odd corners was a collection of rickety tables and cobbled-together benches. Two windows criss-crossed with diamond-shaped leaded panes faced onto the street but gave little light. A make-shift snug had been constructed from salvaged wood and hammered together to make a wall. Sitting to one side of the snug, wrapped in thick brown shadows, was a large man with a massive, jowly face and hard suspicious eyes. He seemed to melt into the darkness as soon as Solomon acknowledged his presence with a nod. It took a few moments for Solomon to place the man. He knew him. It was the colossus who had emerged from the Black Dog the day that he met Maggie. His thoughts immediately drifted to his mother’s old friend, to a time when things seemed simpler and easier, when life was less complicated.

  Solomon shifted towards the fire, spreading his fingers wide, his hands tingling as they absorbed the scorching heat. He watched the flames dance and the flakes of thick black soot that lined the back of the chimney breast flutter like soft black wings. As his body began to thaw out, his resolve began to melt away. He felt broken and lonely.

  ‘What’ll ye have?’ asked a gruff woman with two top teeth missing while she poked her index finger into her ear and twisted it, pulling out a wodge of dark, crumbling wax.

  Solomon swallowed, taking a chance.

  ‘Have you stew?’

  ‘We do.’

  And without further repartee the woman turned and limped away, her filthy skirts smeared with gravy and stinking of turnips. Solomon glanced over to the snug. The man in the shadows glowered back then hacked up noisily and spat a long, dark streak of spittle onto the sawdust floor. Solomon averted his eyes, looking back into the f
ire. He thought of ambling down to the docks and taking a boat to somewhere warm.

  Nothing to stay for, he told himself.

  He knew this inner voice very well. How often had he absconded? Just left? Ten? Twenty times? That was what he did. He wished he could drown out the voice once and for all, could make a decision and stick to it. He was sick of hearing himself think.

  He sat in the gloomy tavern, staring at the floorboards, breathing in the faint stench of urine mingled with the stale smell of sweat and chewed tobacco. Consumed by the half-light, in this dark pit, he searched the depths of his bones, trying to drag up the will to stay. If it killed him, he thought, scratching his jaw, he would force himself to try. He recalled the jagged dark hairs bristling from the Dolocher’s fleshy skull peering down at him from a height. He remembered the Dolocher hunched over him like a grotesque living gargoyle and the image sent a flood of liquid fear coursing through his chest. His heart began to shiver and palpitate. The devil was after him. In an effort to bite away the fear he clamped his jaws tight and shut his eyes, straining to block out the Dolocher’s fearsome visage.

  I will change, he told himself. I will change.

  He would remain in this friendless city, working at a writing job, hawking newspapers and keeping his head low. This was where he was going to start. He thought of Corker and Chesterfield Grierson, of Eliza May and Sally Loftus, and at the edge of his consciousness, on the distant horizon of his thoughts, was the faint hope that perhaps, some days, when he walked to the office or walked by her shop, he would catch a glimpse of Merriment and her assessment of him would improve and maybe . . .

  He snapped the idea in half, relinquishing his longing, and looked around the bleak interior.

  ‘Here.’ The limping woman handed him a bowl of grey, oily stew and a wooden spoon. ‘Anythin’ else?’ She sucked her upper lip noisily through the gap in her teeth. Solomon recoiled from the odour of the meal before him.

  ‘Do you have any beer?’

  The question made the limping woman snort.

  ‘We’re a public house, aren’t we? Course we’ve beer.’

  ‘A tankard please.’

  The woman shuffled away grumbling, while Solomon picked at the slop in the bowl and stared at the fatty globs of gristle floating in a pool of sloppy potato and greenish-coloured parsnips. Outside the sun was setting and the clouds were heaping up over the rooftops. The limping woman lit a candle and placed it on a stray table. She coughed into her tea towel, wiping the filthy rag across her mouth before flinging it over her shoulder. She brought Solomon his beer, slamming it down onto the mantelpiece. The drink was flat and faintly sour. Solomon didn’t care.

  He was fishing for an edible sliver of onion in his mystery stew when he heard footsteps trot across the room behind him. Glancing up, he saw a little man with leathery skin wearing a patchy jacket and tattered boots and immediately recognised him as the one who had barged into him that day outside the Black Dog, knocking his bag to the ground. The little man scurried into the snug and addressed the lumpy man sitting in the shadows.

  ‘There ye are, Jessop. It’s freezing brass monkeys out there.’ The little man’s high-pitched voice chimed through the gloom.

  Jessop leaned forward and grunted. ‘Y’er late, Fred.’

  Fred plunged his fingers under his threadbare wig and scratched his bald pate.

  ‘Am I?’

  Fred didn’t care. He spun round and greeted Solomon with a blank, toothy grin, before sliding into his seat and pulling out a cube of tobacco.

  ‘Here, Ethel,’ he called, his voice rising an octave, ‘bring us a candle to warm me fingers – I can’t hold me penknife I’m that cold – and a bowl of stew and a nip of whiskey.’

  Ethel pointed at the candle over on the empty table.

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ she scowled, pouring a shot of whiskey into a smeared glass.

  ‘Nothin’.’ Fred grinned, hopping off his stool and fetching the candle, the sole of his right boot flapping as he walked.

  ‘Well?’ he asked Jessop, sliding his knees back under the table and lowering his voice. Solomon picked up the word ‘merchandise’ and remembered the cartload of barrels and sacks being hefted into the prison cellar. Fred and Jessop obviously ran some business over in the Black Dog, and Solomon’s interest was piqued since all roads seemed to lead back to the prison. He strained to listen to what they were discussing.

  Jessop pulled his huge shoulders forward and smirked. ‘I have it sold.’ His eyes darted around the room, the candlelight washing over his wide, unshaven face, falling into the creases of his jowls and highlighting the folds of skin bulging above and below his eyelids. Solomon stared into his bowl, looking preoccupied with his food.

  Fred stopped peeling his tobacco and paused as Ethel handed him his whiskey and grey stew, his black fingernails reaching for the bowl and spoon.

  ‘Have ye been out there?’ he hissed at Jessop, his wizened profile exaggerated by the candlelight. ‘The town criers are bawling about a curfew.’

  ‘We’ll be grand.’ Jessop shrugged.

  Fred wasn’t so sure. He clacked his wet tongue, his false teeth moving independently as he spoke.

  ‘Will we now?’ he queried, shoving a spoonful of stew into his wide mouth. ‘How will we be grand with a rake of soldiers patrolling the streets?’

  Jessop winked, his jowls wobbling slightly.

  ‘It’s organised,’ he said. ‘Let’s just say the boss has it under control.’

  Fred sat up and poked his lips out, his teeth shooting oddly forward.

  ‘Right. Good.’

  He dug into his food and ate noisily, making strange sucking sounds as he masticated.

  The Boar’s Den began to fill up with labourers from the docks and the tannery, all of them grabbing a quick drink before the curfew. Solomon sipped on his sour beer and handed Ethel back his bowl.

  ‘What was wrong with it?’ Ethel wanted to know, staring down at the remaining stew. ‘Ye hardly touched it.’

  Solomon shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he lied.

  ‘You’re still getting charged for it,’ Ethel warned him as she walked away muttering.

  She upended the contents of the bowl onto the floor, letting a skinny, three-legged dog lap it up. Solomon gazed out at the fading light. He knew he should find somewhere to stay for the night. For a time he toyed with the idea of going back to Merriment’s and begging her to reconsider. He just wanted to be near her. Was it her body? He imagined her naked beneath him. Yes. It was her body, her breath, her eyes, the way she moved, the way she paused, the slender gap in her front teeth, the thread-like scar above her upper lip, her long hair, her fingers, those legs, those breeches, the pistol by her side. Solomon sank back in his chair and sipped, his whole being aching when he recalled the little anchor tattooed into the base of Merriment’s neck.

  He wanted to touch all those years at sea, to explore all the nuances and changing tides that had turned Merriment into the woman she was. He saw her in his mind’s eye, working in the anteroom, moving around him as he wrote, adjusting the retorts, pouring and sifting, moving with an easeful grace that hinted at a profound sensuality. He imagined the glide of her fingers on his skin and smiled bitterly. For the first time ever he was trapped, stuck in the sticky web of longing and desire. For the first time ever he wanted a woman that did not want him and he was consumed by a kind of sweet agony. He understood that he was not staying to improve his character or right past wrongs. He was staying to seduce the one woman who had resisted his face and his charm. The devil could chase him and drag him to hell; at that moment, all he wanted was Merriment O’Grady wrapped in his arms, flush with passion.

  *

  Merriment stared at the neat lacework of stone decorating the gothic architraves spanning the side aisles, unable to take in a word of the book she had brought with her. She waited, worried that everything was taking so long. She calculated that it would take her twenty-five minutes to walk ove
r to Henrietta Street, longer if she took Janey Mack with her. Maybe if she could find Corker, he might mind Janey. She dismissed that idea immediately and gazed up at the darkening rays of the setting sun softly penetrating the stained glass trapped in the rose window above the altar. She’d have to bring Janey Mack with her.

  Across the way, a cluster of shabbily dressed people kneeled praying, while around them lines of slender tapers burned in thin brass troughs with finely wrought legs. The tapers balanced in sand, all slowly dipping to one side. The sea of tiny flames glittered off the polished vases that decorated the alcoves and niches, sending a golden hue up the pale walls. Merriment was tired. The events of the day had taken their toll. She stared blankly at her surroundings, sinking into a daze, waiting while Janey Mack confessed. The air about her was thick with whispered conversation. The lull of the vaulted atmosphere burnished by red terracotta tiles and quivering with the golden hue of reflected candlelight somehow eased her into a mild torpor and for a while she thought of nothing.

  She jumped a little when a low, soft voice whispered, ‘Hello.’

  Merriment looked up, surprised to find Stella standing over her.

  ‘Stella.’

  ‘Merriment, how are you? This is unexpected.’

  ‘Yes. Janey . . .’ Merriment flicked her hand towards the confessional by way of explanation. ‘She needs comfort.’

  Then, seizing the opportunity, Merriment clasped Stella’s hand and drew her down into the seat beside her. ‘I need you to do me a huge favour.’

  Stella was stunned; her long, pale face glanced at the row of plaster niches carved into the side wall.

  ‘A favour,’ she repeated, her frown producing a Y-shaped indent above the bridge of her nose.

  ‘Only for an hour,’ Merriment promised. ‘I need you to take Janey back to the shop.’

  Merriment pulled a large brown key from her pocket, while Stella blinked nervously, her thin lips open a fraction, ready to decline Merriment’s request.