by Louis Bayard
A few more minutes, and we have passed into a small court, even darker and colder than the one we just left. We sidestep a recumbent, bloodstained man…thirty? sixty?…He opens one eye to us, then slowly, regretfully closes it again. From off in the distance come the sounds of a German band warming up for nobody.
—Ssst.
Colin puts a finger to his lips, motions me to stop.
—Over there, sir. That’s the churchyard.
I will have to take his word for it. Through the haze and sleet, all I can see is a large blotchy archway, with a listing iron gate and, above it, a single lamp, still burning. The rest is intuition: a row of crumbling, unevenly laid bricks; an inscription; wrought-iron tracery.
—I don’t see her, Colin.
—What’d you expect? She’d be waitin’ there with a pie for you?
We ford the muddy street and come to a halt by the gate. From the blackness on the other side, a dank sulphurous gas billows forth, but this is less terrible than the sheer unmitigated dampness of the place. I wouldn’t have imagined we could be any wetter than we already are, but standing here, I think we must have stepped into a great panting, oozing mouth.
Through the bars, I can just make out isolated heaps of stones and markers, and as the haze slowly lifts, I begin to see the true method therein: grave piled upon grave in promiscuous confusion. As unhallowed a ground as one could wish for. Even Colin sounds awed by it.
—Fearful spot to be dead in.
The gate, deprived of its hinges, has managed to cling to the outer wall through some stubborn oxidation, and so the only way to enter the enclosure is to squeeze through the crevice between the gate and the archway. Colin takes less time about it than I do. By the time I’m through, he is already leapfrogging over the gravestones, dropping into handstands—and then stopping suddenly, his body poised and quivering like a pointer’s. And when I come up alongside him, he is indeed pointing—to a small grey figure twenty yards off, kneeling before one of the stones.
—It’s her, sir.
—Are you sure?
—’Course I’m sure.
But before we can take another step, a titanic howl sets us back on our heels. A large black-whiskered dog has darted from cover and crouches now before us, snarling and bellowing to beat Cerberus, slashing the ground with its forepaw and spitting drool. I take a step back, but Colin, with truly alarming aplomb, picks up a fragment of crumbled stone from the nearest grave and shies it at the dog’s head.
In that instant, the dog ducks its snout, lowers its ears, and dashes past us in a most un-Cerberal fashion, squeaking where it once howled, scrambling through the gap of the gate and making off down the street with nary a backwards look.
Its flight serves at least one function: it rouses the hooded figure in the distance. Rising to her feet, she wraps herself round with a cloak—a new addition, that—and glares through the mist. Locked in her sights, I grow as still as if I were the quarry, and it seems she is under the same impression, for she shakes off her own stillness and comes hard on. Running, she is. Charging with such ferocity I find myself virtually helpless before it. She dodges grave markers without even seeing them, so merciless is her intent, and the closer she gets, the greater her velocity, until at last she is almost airborne, flinging herself not at the sky, as I half imagined, but at the boy standing frozen next to me. I hear Colin’s startled cry:
—Goomf!
And down he goes. Kneeling on his stomach, the girl rears up in a towering rage and rains down punishment, blow after blow to Colin’s face and shoulders and chest, as he squirms and grunts beneath her. I grab her round the waist and pull as hard as I’m able, but she won’t budge, just keeps raking and pounding. I pull harder, harder still, and at last she gives way, but only of her own volition, I know that much, and when I have dragged her a few paces away, I understand the reason for her acquiescence: the blue woollen scarf has been wrenched from Colin’s neck and hangs now from her still-clenched fists—a conqueror’s tribute.
—Christ almighty! says Colin.
He wipes a smear of blood from his lip, climbs to his feet with a long, dissipating groan, and stares at me with glassy eyes. I hand him his cap, grab him by the shoulders, and turn him round until he is facing the girl.
—Young lady, you must excuse my friend Colin. He would like you to know how very sorry he is for stealing your scarf.
It takes a poke to the ribs to jar the necessary words from Colin.
—Very. Awf ’lly.
Still glaring, the girl slowly winds the scarf round her neck, taking special care, I notice, with that last dangling fringe, draping it just so between the folds of her cloak, so that the two articles of clothing form a single continuum.
—We only wanted to be sure you were all right, I tell her.—You mustn’t be crawling about in sewers, you know, it isn’t safe.
She takes a step back. Another step.
—We won’t come any closer.
Another step.
—You needn’t be afraid.
She’s not afraid. That much is clear. The simple act of plying her fists has stiffened her spine, pushed her chin into a promontory.
—If you…if you wish to leave now, we won’t follow. I can’t run very fast. As you know.
I make a quick little running motion with my arms, then frown and shake my head: No runny runny. And strange to say, this desperate pantomime manages to reach her—elicits the barest ghost of a smile. Or am I imagining it? Colin, at any rate, is ready with a translation:
—He means he’s a bloody cripple!
And whether it is his mode of expression or the reaction it produces on my face, her smile does draw a little wider.
Here is Drury Lane’s gift. Standing in this tenement of the dead, this girl and I at last approach some degree of ease together. If ease it can be called, both of us coated in rime and soot and fixed in place, several yards separating us and not even the glimmer of a conversation on our horizon.
It will have to do for now. It is enough, at any rate, to embolden me towards something that only a minute ago I would not have attempted. I point to the place where she was lately kneeling, and I ask her:
—Is that someone you know?
A shade comes rolling down over her eyes; she turns away. Not the retreating motion I remember from our first encounter, but a slow, graceful circling, almost flirtatious in its delicacy. And in that moment, the very arc and style of her movement become a form of permission, and so, taking Colin by the elbow, I make for the graveside she has just vacated.
The stone is new, but it might as well be a century old, for all the care that has been taken with its carving and placement. It leans back at a crazy angle, almost kissing the turf, while a small bouquet fans across its base. A paltry collection, given the season: flowerless dandelions, a couple of pansies, the snipped-off heads of chrysanthemums. Snatched from curbs and refuse bins, no doubt, and so ragged I’m not sure even a flower girl would try palming them off, but a gentle hand has slapped them back into life, interwoven them in such a way that their old identities have reemerged.
Colin is kneeling now, tracing the letters on the stone, and as he traces, the syllables seem to bleed from the marker and rise up through my mouth before I’m even sure of them.
—Serafino Rotunno.
I had meant only to whisper it, but I see her head whip around and her body plant itself in a defiant straddle, as though preparing for a new outrage.
—Did I pronounce it correctly?
No yielding. Not a smile, not a frown.
—Is he related to you?
And now she begins to circle us—moving faster and faster as she spins farther away. Despairing, I call out to her:
—Do you speak English at all?
A slight tilting of the head, the barest shrug of a shoulder.
—My name is Timothy.
And still she keeps marching in her steadily expanding circle. Marching us out of her head, very likel
y.
—And this, as I mentioned before, is Colin.
Nudged once more in the ribs, the boy doffs his cap, lowers his head. But even this piece of decorum fails to move her. Her circle grows still wider…extravagant apiarian loops…she’ll have reached Lincoln’s Inn Fields by the time she’s done.
Half frantic, I dig through my trouser pockets for the article I took from Iris’s wardrobe this morning, and for a few grisly seconds, I think it must have tumbled out somewhere back in the wastes and been tramped down into the deepest geological depths, and I have just about given it up for lost when my hand at last closes round it…and raises it carefully into the half-night of morning.
A ribbon, that is all. Scarlet and satin. Burning off the grey light like a tiny volcano.
—I thought you might like this.
She has stopped now.
—Your old one…was a bit torn, I’m afraid.
One hand plunges into the mess of matted black ringlets. The other rests apprehensively on her belly.
—You may pick it up whenever you like. I’ll leave it here, shall I?
My first instinct is to drape it over the headstone, but the crazed angle defeats me: unanchored, the ribbon slides earthward, catches on a chrysanthemum. I point towards it, vaguely, but she’s not looking at the ribbon, not looking at anything.
I whisper to Colin:
—Time to go.
He whispers back:
—Where’s my bloody remuneration?
—You’ll have it when you lead me back.
That’s all the assurance he needs. He claps his cap back on his head and gallops for the gate…trips once over a sunken marker but rights himself quickly and keeps moving, and it seems I am moving as well, for I am only a few yards behind him when her voice comes.
A huskier voice than I would have thought, but soft, too, as though the abrasion of the vocal cords had served only to plane it down. It blows through us like a wind through rocks, rising on the third syllable and singing into silence.
—Philomela.
And when I turn round, the ribbon is already in her hair, tied in a neat bow without benefit of a glass.
—My name is Philomela.
She clears her throat, swallows twice, and walks towards us. From the recesses of her apron she extracts a discarded cigar box and then opens it, carefully, to reveal a week’s worth of secreted treasure: row after row of copper nails, salvaged from wharves and riverbeds and God knows where else. Bowing her head over her luminous currency, she says:
—For ribbon. I pay you.
It’s the last thing I would have expected. This proud collegial air! It brings quite the blush to my cheek.
—Oh, well, thank you, but you see, these would fetch you…oh, my, dozens of ribbons, so it wouldn’t…and besides, there’s no need, really, it’s my pleasure.
And it’s Iris’s ribbon.
For the next few moments, she contents herself simply with searching my face. Whether she finds what she is looking for, I cannot say. All I know is there is one final beat of hesitation before she says:
—Serafino Rotunno is my father. He is dead. He make frames.
Chapter 9
VERY DAINTY SHE IS AT FIRST, freeing the roast potato from its cocoon of whitey-brown paper, peeling back a segment of skin, pausing a moment to let the aroma tingle in her nostrils. And then hunger, as it must, takes over. She plunges her mouth into that warm bank of tuber and doesn’t emerge for a good two minutes. I think I can feel each of her senses prickling back into life. She never notices the fork I have proffered, and even I am hard pressed to notice, for I am too busy planning her next meals. Smoked herring and pickled eels at Billingsgate…roasted chestnuts from the Lambeth market…one of Mary Catherine’s famous Christmas cakes, with the currants and candied orange peel and the breath of brandy in each bite….
But there will be time enough for that later. For now, I am content to watch her eat this potato, piece by piece, and chase it down with gargles of ginger beer.
Around us: Covent Garden Market, all joints and jaws. The squawks of the costers, the brays of the donkeys, squeaking shoes and squealing children and tipped-over waggons and the haggling murmurs of gentlefolk—none of it subdued in any way by the day’s ceaseless drizzle, which freezes as it strikes the cobblestones. The only stationary point is a silent man ten yards off, encased in an advertising placard for the Christmas pantomime at Theatre Royal. He is grimly dedicated to his profession. Two boys Colin’s age have already given the man a kick in the hindboard, and yet he stands, frowning and rigid, ever so slowly resolving into ice.
How can his vigil, though, compare with young Colin’s? Having already pocketed his pound, and a few shillings’ surcharge, he abides with us still. No explanation has been tendered, and a credulous soul might suppose it was loyalty to me that keeps him here, but the evidence points in other directions. Look, if you please, at the impatient arcs he sketches round the girl’s indifferent person. Watch him repeatedly tear the cap off his head and put it right back on. Listen to his apologetic mumbling, directed, one might think, at anyone other than the intended object:
—See here. Hope you know. Scarf ’n’ all. Strictly business. No harm meant.
And the only face Philomela turns on him is a blank one—the look a baby might give a large dog poking its head into the bassinet. For poor Colin, this is just an invitation to more locomotion. He whirls on his toes, scuffs his heels in the dirt, and swings his hat in fidgety circles, as if marching in a sulky and invisible regiment. It’s enough, finally, to make me tap him on the shoulder and say:
—Colin, I think our young friend might still be hungry. Do you think you could fetch us some pease porridge?
His lips draw back from his teeth.
—I ain’t your bloody servant.
—I know it well.
—I don’t fetch for nobody. In case you forgot, old brown son, I’m an artiste.
—Of course you are. And just wait until Mrs. Sharpe’s girls get a glimpse of your art tomorrow night.
This reminder of his prospects must stir him down to his tiny loins, for in response, he squares his shoulders, thrusts out his chest, and hurls himself into the market throng. Claws his way past an orange merchant, nearly upends a turnip vendor, pauses only long enough to ascertain that we are still where he left us before charging on.
As oblivious of his departure as she was of his presence, Philomela tears off a strip of potato skin and lowers it suspensefully into her mouth. Then another strip, and another. How good it must taste. No potato, I think, ever aroused such gratitude in its consumer or went to its end more gratefully.
I am grateful myself. Her raptness allows me to study her in profile, the way a sidewalk artist might. The long, slightly arched, womanly nose and the hard, almost mannish chin: two parents happily conjoined, with almost nothing left of girl save for the round, brown, exuberantly lashed eyes and that sleek young skin, darker than its English counterpart but with a clarity and creaminess all its own. No wonder Colin can’t see straight.
Which makes it all the more incumbent on me to see straight, or at least true. And so I find myself craving not romance but fact, some shard of hard knowledge to drive into this still life.
—Philomela. I don’t know a word of your language, I’m afraid, so we are left with mine. If I were to ask you questions, do you think you might be able to answer? Do you…can you even understand what I am saying now?
The chewing stops; the eyes retreat; the face hardens. And here I was thinking we had already surmounted our barrier, but no, this is the real barrier, and it has less to do with comprehension than apprehension. Once she answers the first question, who knows how many more may be in the offing?
The seconds pass, the sleet turns to cold feathery rain, the shoving and squawking carry on unmodulated around us, and yet I feel the two of us becoming more and more isolated, as if the noise were calling down a mantle of silence over us.
And t
hen she nods. Curtly but unequivocally, she nods.
I understand.
—Very well, then. Can you tell me how old you are?
—I am…I am ten years.
—And how long have you been here? In London?
She considers a moment, then holds up one of her hands. The fingers spring out like quills.
—Five? Do you mean five weeks? Five…
—Months.
That th sound slides away, leaving a tapering sibilance. Unsatisfied, she repeats it: Months.
—And your father…Signor Rotunno…how did he die?
She looks at me as though waiting for something more. I start again.
—How did—
—Sick. On boat sick. More sick here.
The advantage of speaking tragedy in a foreign language. One concentrates only on the pronunciation. Everything else flies to the back of the brain.
—When did he pass on, Philomela?
—When…?
—Did he die when you arrived? Did he—
—No-vem-ber.
—Just in the last month?
She nods.
—My father died, too, I say.—Six months past.
She frowns a little, absorbing this intelligence. I can’t be sure whether it’s some spark of sympathy catching inside her or a lingering distrust. She purses her lips and, in a risibly solemn tone, asks:
—His trade?
—Oh, what was his trade? He was a clerk, actually, all his life. He worked in an office. A changing house.
Clerk in a changing house. As though that were all one could say of a man. And indeed, the very sparseness of the description compels me to add more.
—He was very kind. A good man. Was your father a good man?
Another nod, this one slightly aggrieved.
—And he made frames, is that right?