by Louis Bayard
Why the bulk of it should have been directed towards you, I cannot say. I know only that it became a kind of pastime of mine to enumerate your failings. Your dirty gloves, your dirty handkerchiefs. The way you smacked your lips over jam or dunked your toast in your tea or cried “Huzzah!” every time someone pulled out a deck of cards. All those times you couldn’t find a proper scarf and had to make do with that bloody comforter, wrapping it round you and sauntering down Crowndale Road as though you were Beau Nash.
These were, all of them, crimes. Crimes against me. And there was no tribunal to plead my case to. There was only you, with your soft, pliable, anxious face—ready to please, perfectly incapable of pleasing.
I remember one night in particular, a few months after Mother died. You were listing all the various routes by which you came home from the office. Looking back, I can see that even then you were failing, in some indeterminate way. Uncle N had by then taken the unusual step of engaging an additional clerk, and while there was no question of letting you go, there was less and less for you to do, and so you were channelling all your remaining mental energy into the task of identifying the optimal escape route.
—The key, Tim, the absolute key to all this is to leave the office via Cornhill. Don’t even think of Lombard Street, because everyone on the ’Change is travelling by Lombard that time of day. Cornhill’s your man. And this way, you’ll catch the Kentish Town omnibus before the masses get there, and you’ll nearly always get a seat down below, which in cold weather, I don’t mind telling you…but there’s a catch, you see. There’s a catch. You must get off at Bloomsbury, and then you must walk for two blocks, so that you may catch the Hampsteads bus. Why, you may ask? Because the Kentish Town, depending on the driver, will at times make detours down Paddington, round Euston Square, Clarendon Square. But the Hampsteads, why, that’s a straight shot up Tottenham Court Road, and once you’re on it, the only thing you need remember, Tim, is to get down at the next-to-last stop, not the last one, else you’ll have a longer walk home by way of Plender….
It was something to behold. You had spent months, apparently, determining this configuration—poring over maps, consulting with omnibus drivers, timing every leg of every day’s journey. Had I been older, I would have realised: here is a man who wants to come home. But all I felt at the time was a hollow reverberation…because you no longer had anything to say to me, Father. Nor I to you. And that was the point at which you began to lose me, or rather I began to be lost.
I thought it was for the best. I had left you behind, hadn’t I? And so rather than dwell on our difference, I thought it best to erase it.
Perhaps you came to understand what had passed, I don’t know. We were still together in the same empty house, and I was doing my best to keep up appearances: I put my room tidy every night, I made the occasional supper, and when your birthday came round, I ran down to Hobhill’s Bakery to buy a cake—some German-chocolate confection, I think, which I remember our eating in perfect silence in the parlour in the twilight.
And I was there, in your bedchamber, when you finally slipped free. Remember, Father? That was me, by the door with Uncle N.
It is a curious irony, Father, a not altogether unwelcome irony, that in the act of dying, you forced me once again to be a Good Son. I had forgotten how strict were the requirements. I was the one, for instance, tasked with carrying the news to Peter and Martha; the rest of your children were beyond telling. I was the one who received the well-wishers, dispensed the necessary Christian consolations, saw to all the logistics of mourning. It never occurred to me to complain. If you must know, it was a strange relief, this whirl of doing, for beneath it was only more hollowness—the kind that comes from missing an opportunity, the nature of which one cannot ascertain. What was it, this lost chance? Was it lost for good?
One of the pallbearers never turned up, Father. (It was Mr. Dyer from round the corner—sleeping off a rather long toot, I was later told.) No recourse but to offer myself for the position. I duly took my place under the coffin and gave the signal to the other bearers, and up you went and up we went—the slow, rising grade to the cemetery.
Even for June, it was humid; the rain was constantly threatening, never breaching. And what with all the encumbrances and the weight of the pall and the scratch of my mourning scarf, I was perspiring inside of a minute. What a weight you were, Father! Who would have thought such a reedy fellow as you could attain to such bulk? And as we groaned beneath your coffin, as we ground our way up the hill, my muscles seemed to bristle with a new and human consciousness, as if they were flinging memories, still aflame, into the coals of my brain.
And before I knew it, I was six again, and I was back atop your shoulders, borne aloft through the streets of North London. Miles and miles of street, every kind of pavement, every degree of inclemency, and me stuck on the whole way like the cock on a weather-vane. And now and again you would stop and let me off because, you said, you needed to scratch your back. But all you did, really, was rub the hurt out of your neck and shoulders and then hoist me back up as though nothing had happened. That was as close as you ever came to protesting. And so I never once suspected how much I was taxing you—you laboured on and pretended it was sport.
How fitting, then, how fitting that in the act of shouldering you, I should come to see how much larger you were than I.
Oh, yes, Father. Large enough to march me round London without a care for your own comfort. Large enough to go hungry so the rest of your family would not. Large enough to keep your cheer when there was nothing left to cheer for. Large enough to spend your entire life scratching out figures in a small, draughty office, in the service of a changeable and all-mastering man, so that your children—your children, Father—might aspire to something better.
But there was one thing you didn’t count on: we could never be better than that. We were too compromised—too addled, too egoistical—to match you gesture for gesture. And here is the final proof of our unworthiness: we thought you were dragging us back. When in fact, you were just leaving us behind.
And so if we do meet again, you must stop and let me catch up to you. And tell you all. For there is so much love in me, Father. Love for you, most dreadfully deferred, and no avenue for it now. Nothing but these words—insufficient—the barest, the meagrest of tokens—all I have. Accept them, and know that your son loves you still. And forgive, so that he may one day extend the same benediction to himself.
Well, Father, there I was, assuring you we had found the most isolated spot in all of London, and I have now discovered persuasive evidence of a nighttime visitor. A small fleet of rain, too soft to wake us but enough to leave smears of frost on the tree trunks and slicks of black ice on the walks. The fog, which last night had the quality of something permanent, has receded into a long ribbon across the green. Hanging just over the northern horizon is the scar of last night’s moon. A troop of ducks is scattering across the boating pond, and somebody’s dog, or nobody’s dog, is wrestling himself silly in the damp grass. I have been up for close to an hour, still awakening.
Chapter 22
IT IS WELL PAST TWO IN THE AFTERNOON when Philomela wakes with a start. Clawing her eyes open, she swallows a spadeful of air and swings her head from side to side…looking, I suppose, for the creature that has chased her out of her dream.
From a remove of several yards, I call out:
—It’s all right. All right.
Hard to say if she believes me. Her face does not clear so much as it concentrates. She jumps to her feet and swipes the mud from Father’s comforter. Frowns and mutters:
—Food.
—Yes, well, Colin’s run off to fetch us something. He’s not exactly a hunter, but he’s quite resourceful.
Rather than reply, she twitches away. It doesn’t matter; I am in no hurry to talk. Truth be told, I have been conversing all morning. Not half an hour ago, I was having the most intense discussion with a flock of pigeons. One thinks of them as ete
rnally ambulatory, and yet they are altogether lovelier in their rare bursts of flight—bodies darting in perfect synchronicity, wings flapping in and out of shadow. They toss the light amongst them like a rugby ball. I wasted no time in telling them that.
—Are you cold, Philomela?
She shakes her head.
—I was thinking perhaps we might build a fire.
She shrugs. And because she shows no further inclination towards speech, I resume my silent colloquy with the air, until the resolution that has been gathering inside me all morning clamours to the fore.
I press my bandaged hand against my belly. I clear my throat.
—See here, Philomela. It’s occurred to me that…what with all the proximity we’ve enjoyed…may still enjoy…it seems but fitting that you should, should know certain things about me so that you might, I was going to say understand me a bit better, and inasmuch as I know something, a very little something, of your past, why should I begrudge, as it were, providing the same courtesy to you?
If she is attending, she gives no sign. Her back is turned; her hands are busy rubbing the warmth back into her body. Not a single outward show of encouragement, and even so, I am undeterred. I speak of the first thing that comes to mind, which is to say, the first thing I remember. Which is to say, Christmas.
And as I speak, I find there are not enough words any more to tell everything. The chestnuts shovelled into the fire. The goose, fresh-cooked from the local bakehouse, and the sage-and-onion stuffing, and Peter mashing the potatoes, and Father’s hot gin-and-lemon and the steam from the coppers, and everyone beating on the table, and Sam dousing the candles. And the pudding, yes. Bodied forth on a brandy pyre.
And as momentous as the pudding itself: the pudding postmortem, led as always by Mother.
—Too much flour, that’s my considered opinion.
—But my dear, it’s pure magnificence.
—Be that as it may, there’s a touch too much flour, and a fraction too little treacle. And if you were to haul me before a court of law, I would have to confess that the potatoes were wanting for pepper.
It is Mother who, more than anyone else, seems to preside over these memories. She is central to them, and if I were to summon one image to evoke the holidays of old, it would be the sight of Mother’s commodious posterior bent over a saucepan of potatoes or a bowl of apple sauce.
Is this perhaps too intimate a memory to share on such short acquaintance? Philomela gives no indication one way or the other. Merely sits propped against a willow tree, exuding a great cloud of weariness.
—Funny thing about Mother, she always believed in the dignity of extra syllables. My father, you know, he was Bob to the world, but with her, it was always Robert. And with me, it was Timothy from the time I was ten. My brother used to say if Mother had got her way, we’d all have been called the Cratchitmagillicuddywhatchamacallems. But you see, she had a great-great grandfather on her mother’s side who was said to be the bastard son of a Staffordshire baronet, and she was always wishing the Cratchit line would cough up more than a few poor, honest tradesmen and perpetual curates. I’m sure even a pirate might have been preferable, provided he had a nice house in the country….
Oh, I could go on for days, couldn’t I? I have become quite profligate with memory. Watch me spend it down.
But the vault of reminiscence abruptly snaps shut in the face of a rough, buzzing sound, emanating from the direction of Philomela’s larynx.
She is still snoring ten minutes later when Colin returns, his cheeks slapped red by the morning air, his arms heavy laden. A marvel of resilience he is. Here am I, still working up the gumption to stand and shake off the various contusions and abrasions, and Colin was on his feet the moment he awoke, hunting down food as diligently as a mother bear, returning in triumph with…with…
—What are these, Colin?
—Crusts of bread. Some biddy as was feedin’ ’em to the ducks. Wouldn’t give me none till I promised to give ’em to a bird. So I says to her, “Word of honour, ma’am, I got two coves just up the hill, they’d like nothin’ better.” So she let me have ’em. This one still asleep, then?
With his foot, he taps Philomela on the flank.
—Actually, she was awake, but I bored her straight back to insensibility.
—Best thing you could’ve done. She were right tuckered, I expect.
—And what of you?
—What, me sleep? With a grand old bloody Ad-ven-ture still a-rollin’ on? Fuck off.
The bread, it turns out, is just about right for ducks—no taste to speak of but a fairly pleasing texture, a bit like dry toast left too long on the hob. It contracts the moment my teeth touch it, then dissolves and slides down my throat so quickly I lose all memory of it.
Colin chews his portion in a slow, ruminative fashion, as though he had days to devote to each crumb.
—Mr. Timothy.
—Yes?
—What d’you reckon’s to happen? Once all this is done with?
—How do you mean?
—Well, Filly, for an instance. What’s to become of her?
—That’s a good…yes, that’s a good…
—Not that it matters, but we’d hate to think of her…
—What?
—Well, in some workhouse or other. That ain’t no life, you ask me.
—No, it’s not.
—Now nobody’d call me a hexpert, Mr. Timothy. God forbid, I ain’t no hexpert. But it seems to me she’d be better off—so far as she’d be willin’ and all—better off with someone who’s taken a real interest, like, in her welfare. Some nosy bugger who’s gone and mucked about in her business without so much as a by-your-leave. That’s the fellow for her. ’Course what do I know, eh?
He stretches out his legs, wipes his lips free of crumbs.
—And what if this someone, Colin, were barely old enough to take care of himself? And possessed of a deeply melancholy disposition, let us say. And a questionable set of acquaintances. And not a penny to call his own.
—Well, it ain’t like the civil service, is it? A sod don’t need any qua-li-fications. You think my dad had qua-li-fications? Just a prick is all he had.
I have not laughed in some time. How strange it feels.
—And what of you, Colin?
—Me?
—What happens to you?
—Why, nothin’, that’s what. I go back to what I was a-doin’. And I mean to tell you, Mr. Timothy, after my blazin’ triumph at the whorehouse, the sky is the bleedin’ limit. I mean to say, the career of Colin the Melodious has just begun, Mr. Timothy.
—And you don’t sometimes…
—What?
—Nothing.
—What?
—Never mind.
A flock of seagulls, grounded, has colonised the nearest expanse of grass. Two black-necklaced swans sail down the moat, and there, on the hill just above, a duck works its way down to us with a pinched, peeved expression—annoyed, very like, at having its breakfast pinched. Its implacably officious walk brings to my mind the ravening strut of last night’s peacocks, and I shiver and turn instinctively for Colin, but he is staring quite peaceably at Philomela’s propped-up form.
—Mr. Timothy.
—Yes?
—How come she run like that?
—Like what? When?
—When you was takin’ her home the other day. There she was, a-lookin’ the place over like she were the bloody Queen. Next minute, it were like some ghost come along and pinched her up the hoozummy.
—Yes, I know.
—And that look she gave you, Mr. Timothy! Evillest eye I ever saw.
—I don’t…I can’t explain any of it.
It gives me a twinge of shame to admit it, for I have had three days now to consider the matter, and I am no closer to having an answer.
Why, Philomela? Why did you run?
Miss Binny was there, yes, but you had already contended with Miss Binny. Griffyn and Rebbeck were
waiting round the corner, but you didn’t know that, else you wouldn’t have run straight into their waiting arms.
It was someone else—something else—driving you down the same trajectory of flight on which I first beheld you. Perhaps only a memory, and yet how can a memory hold terror without having at its nexus an event? Or a person?
Here is where I fall back on the feeling that has been tasking me for the past twelve hours. The feeling—it’s too slight to be termed an intuition—that some human connection lies between us and Lord Griffyn.
I felt it first, oddly enough, in the presence of Griffyn himself. All during our brief interview, I had the tantalizing impression that someone had done more than simply warn him about me. Someone had actually gossiped in his ear.
Why else that absurd taunt? I’m not sure girls are quite to your taste. Baseless and, at the same time, eerily familiar—a chord of insult.
—Colin?
—Mm.
At first I don’t know how to frame the inquiry. I say, do you recall anyone impugning my manhood of late? But then the answer comes to me without my even needing to form the question. It comes not as a word or a name but as a pair of connected sense-memories.
An excruciating viselike pressure on my scrotum. A breath in my ear.
You can’t even put it in a woman. You think you’ve got enough to take me on?
And now I am seeing George once again, not as he was then but as he’d looked days before that, on the front stoop of Mrs. Sharpe’s establishment. In that frozen late-afternoon moment when Philomela had just broken free of us, and Colin had disappeared after her, and I was taking up the chase, and there, coming out the front door, was George, with his collar open and his sleeves rolled up and that air of middle-class entitlement. A man on an outing.
And here is the curious part. That memory of him has become indivisible, in my mind, from the bells of St. James, tolling now, the half hour and still tolling, days later, in the campanile of my memory.