by Jon Clinch
When the rehearsal is over, Belle goes to sit alongside Fan and wait for Scrooge to come by.
“The bass section has never sounded better,” Fan says when he does.
“It was a group effort,” Scrooge demurs. “All I did was give them confidence.”
Belle stifles a tinkling laugh. “Oh, I believe Fan is the one who did that.”
He stops and thinks for a moment and has to allow that she’s correct, the trumped-up story of his remarkable musicality having been his sister’s idea. “At least I didn’t disappoint them,” he says.
Belle rises. “Oh, Ebenezer,” she says, “you did marvelously.”
Scrooge blushes and studies his feet.
“So—can we look for you on Sunday?”
“I shall be here.”
“And the next Sunday, too?”
“I suppose.” Whatever enthusiasm he has developed for the music seems to be slipping away under the assault of commitment.
“You suppose?”
“Never mind our Ebenezer,” says Fan from out of nowhere. “I’ll see to it that he comes.” She stands alongside her brother and puts a hand on his forearm, which gives him a start.
“And every Sunday after that?”
“Don’t.”
Belle leaves off with a pout. Hope still glows in her flashing gray eyes, though, and the halo of her golden hair gleams like possibility in the candlelit loft. “There’ll be a reception after the service. With tea and cakes.”
Scrooge tugs at his sister’s hand. “If I can spare the time away from my desk,” he says. After all, he has even now begun to adopt the work habits that will serve the enterprise of Scrooge & Marley so very well and for so very long.
“On the Lord’s day?” She is incredulous. Truly.
“As far as I know, the Lord has never balanced the accounts without my assistance.”
If he means this as charming or ironic or even merely clever, it misfires. Belle turns away and attends to her hymnal. Fan pats her on the shoulder and watches dully as her brother vanishes down the dark stairs. “He’ll warm up,” she reassures her friend. “Just not quickly.” And with that she too is gone.
* * *
A summer chill has coalesced in the night air, and the fog that blooms in the streets is damp but not dense. Lanterns glow within it like dandelion heads gone to seed. Belle hugs herself and moves from one pool of light to the next, all alone in the universe except for certain distant and muffled sounds: the clopping of horses’ hooves, the grinding of iron wheels, the disconcerting laughter of unknown men. She lives with her parents and her sister in modest rooms above a stable, behind a house so grand as to be nearly invisible. Her grandmother served in that house and lived in these selfsame rooms a long time ago, and she was so beloved that when she fell ill the owner of the house, a gentleman called Liveright, granted her and her son permission to stay there in perpetuity. The incautious naming of Belle’s father in the paperwork, capitalized upon by a young barrister called Tulkinghorn interested more in establishing his reputation than in achieving any immediate profit, kept him ensconced there even after his mother joined the heavenly choir—a condition which still brings endless delight to him and endless torment to Mr. Liveright. “There are limits to all things,” Liveright likes to say, “even kindness”—although he cannot prove it to be true.
Belle’s father is a clerk, skilled and loyal and well trusted by an employer of some generosity, and the effect of his good income upon these poor premises is considerable. The walls are freshly painted and the furniture, although not of the latest fashion, is clean and sturdy. The dishes are unchipped and the utensils are untarnished. Fresh fruits and vegetables abound in the larder during the warmer months, and in the winter a fire blazes in every hearth with no regard to the cost. In short, funds that ordinarily would have gone to merely getting by have been freed to be lavished upon the niceties.
Such conditions are agreeable in the present but precarious in the long term. Upon many occasions Fairchild has warned his daughters, “Beware of getting too comfortable, my dears, and never forget that these premises are not mine for you to inherit. When I pass away, it will be Mr. Liveright’s duty and no doubt his pleasure to cast you both out into the street—and your mother, too, provided she fails to predecease me.” He swears that he takes no special pleasure in limning this tragic scenario, but he rehearses it so often and so vividly that it’s impossible to say for certain. Either way, with the passage of time Belle has begun to see the prospect of a life on the streets or in the poorhouse as a genuine possibility. Thus as she climbs the narrow stair and lets herself into her family’s quarters she finds herself reflecting upon the qualities and possibilities of young Mr. Scrooge.
“Did he appear?” her sister, Daphne, asks from over by the hearth. Daphne is the mirror image of Belle, with the burden of eight additional years heaped upon her. She has not yet given up on her marital prospects but is beginning to weaken in that regard. Failing the arrival of some spontaneous good fortune, she shall soon resign herself to being no more than a spectator in matters of the heart, and it is a spectator she seems to Belle just now, alone in the lamplight, squinting over her needlework, inquiring hopefully as to Mr. Scrooge’s presence in the choir loft.
“Oh, he most certainly appeared,” says Belle.
“And?”
“I’m afraid he is not much of a singer.”
“Too bad.” Daphne frowns, almost sympathetically. “But I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Miss Percival says he’s too thin. Not enough resonance.”
“She’s being kind,” says Daphne.
“Miss Percival? Kind? Have you made her acquaintance?” This last is pure irony, for Daphne studied the piano under Miss Percival for many of her childhood years. She has forgotten most of her lessons now, but under close inspection her knuckles still bear the marks of Miss Percival’s application of that long whalebone baton.
“She’s always had an eye for a handsome gentleman,” Daphne says, “although it does not become her any longer.”
“Are you saying that you find Mr. Scrooge to be handsome?”
Daphne lowers her lashes. “When we were in school together, he was quite admired—by some.”
“By you?”
“By some.”
“Was this before he was sent away, or after he was brought home?”
“After.”
Belle’s face takes on a faraway look. “The return of the conquering hero.”
“You could say that. I’m sure there were some who did.”
“But you weren’t among them.”
“No. I always found him… cold.”
“Cold?”
“It’s why I’m not surprised that he isn’t much of a singer. He doesn’t lack resonance—he lacks feeling. And how is a person to sing without feeling?”
“You’re being cruel.”
“I have experience.”
“Because you’re older.” She says it like the slight that it is.
Their father’s voice comes from the makeshift parlor. “Ladies, ladies,” he says.
Daphne whispers, “I’m only as old as your Ebenezer.”
“He is not my Ebenezer.”
“You’re interested in him.”
“I find him interesting. That’s different.”
“Not very.”
Again, from the parlor: “Ladies.”
Belle tries a different tactic. “Perhaps you don’t know that Fan’s heart was broken when he was sent away.”
“She was not much more than an infant.”
“She was old enough to know that her brother had been wronged.”
“She was young enough to idolize him for no reason other than the difference in their ages. Ebenezer was difficult even then. Everyone knew it.”
“So you don’t blame the father for shipping him off like some criminal transported to Australia for life?”
“It wasn’t Australia, it was a boardin
g school. And it wasn’t life, it was three or four years.”
“Did he improve, then? Is that why his father had him brought home?”
“His father relented. Ebenezer came back unchanged.”
“According to Fan, he came back broken.”
“Humbug,” says Daphne. “And even if he is broken, you’ll never fix him. You’re interested only in his finances.”
In the parlor, their father groans as he hoists himself from his chair. “That’s enough, ladies!” With a shuffling of slippered feet he heaves into view, his waistcoat buttoned crosswise and his hair on end and his pipestem clenched between his back teeth. He has just now gotten a full charge of Virginia tobacco going, and he squints through the smoke with a look suggesting that he mistrusts the entire world. “I’ll have you know that the finances of your fascinating Mr. Scrooge simply will not endure scrutiny.”
“Daphne is the one who brought up his finances.”
“More blessings upon her, then. Mr. Scrooge is, after all, not to be separated from his finances, as anyone with knowledge of the Exchange will tell you. Nor is he to be separated from his partner, Mr. Marley.” He says this last as if the two businessmen are doomed to be joined together not just in this world but forever and ever, even into the afterlife, even unto the extinguishing of the last sulfurous ember of the last burning chunk of brimstone mustered up by Old Scratch himself. “The disreputable Mr. Marley, if I may make myself abundantly clear.”
If Belle desires to offer up a word in defense of Scrooge, or if Daphne desires to offer up further condemnation of the man and his business connections, the wrath upon their father’s face prevents them. He takes the pipe from between his teeth and studies the little inferno within it as if he’d like to try its heat upon Mr. Marley’s immortal soul, and then he jams it back into his mouth and goes on around it. “You know what line those two are in, do you not?”
A shrug from Belle.
“You know why the sign over their warehouse door reads simply ‘Scrooge & Marley’?”
Another shrug from Belle.
“Because those two gentlemen like to keep things mysterious. Vague. Nebulous. Hazy.” From behind the fog of his pipe, he would seem to know what he’s talking about.
“I assume they’re in shipping,” says Daphne, thinking to put an end to this interrogation by means of her superior knowledge of the world.
“Yes,” agrees Belle. “Import and export.”
“Oh,” nods Fairchild. “They’re in import and export all right. And do you know exactly what they import and export? Hmm?”
“Tobacco, sugar, rum?” offers Belle. And then she has an idea. “Is it the rum you object to?”
“No. And certainly neither the tobacco nor the sugar.” Patting his little round stomach.
“What then?”
Fairchild sighs theatrically. How shall these innocents survive without him? He wrests his pipe from between his teeth and fastens upon his daughters a penetrating look. “I object, children, to the slaves.”
Belle stiffens. Daphne cringes. Every atom of breathable air evacuates itself from the room.
“Slaves?” inquires Mrs. Fairchild from the parlor. “Do I hear that Mr. Scrooge is keeping slaves?”
“He’s not keeping them, Mother. He’s transporting them.”
“Transporting them?”
“Yes, Mother. That’s where the profit is.”
“Oh my.”
“Oh my, indeed.”
“That nice young Mr. Scrooge, of all people.”
“Yes, Mother. That nice young Mr. Scrooge.”
“A churchgoing man.”
“He is that. In fact, I hear that he’s recently joined the choir.” He shoots Belle an even darker glare than he has already been maintaining.
“Perhaps it will do him good.”
Fairchild scoffs. “It will do little enough good for those poor savages whose blood taints every farthing in his pocket.”
“I wonder, though—do you suppose he tithes?”
“I wouldn’t know, Mother.”
“That would be blood money, then, wouldn’t it?”
“Indeed it would.” He turns and makes as if to regain the parlor, but before he goes he favors Belle with a parting glance. “On the other hand,” he says, “the church has relied upon worse. And besides—when I’ve crossed the Jordan at last, blood money could be the only hope of those I’ve left behind.”
Whether that’s a tear in his eye or a twinkle is impossible to know.
Four
Scrooge is no Marley, and Marley is no Scrooge, and their partnership is the better for it. A matched pair of oars may propel your boat nicely across a placid country pond, but real navigation on the perilous waters of the world, be they aquatic or financial, requires resources more sophisticated and diverse.
Ebenezer Scrooge does the ciphering and is himself something of a cipher. Tall but not overly so, slender but not exceptionally so, he is remarkable mainly in his unremarkableness. Time will work its changes upon him, of course. Unrelenting labor will crook his back and a stubbornly suppressed appetite will waste his flesh and a narrowness of mind will twist his features into a perpetual scowl—but for now he is undistinguished and undistinguishable from the general run of young men of his class and position. When he emerges from his countinghouse he goes garbed in a rusty suit and a threadbare collar and raveled stockings, all of which serve as unconscious concealment for the dreams of avarice that flare unsummoned within his heart.
He is happy at his desk if he is happy anywhere, for in the progression of inked digits along closely ruled lines he detects something close to the music of the spheres. The numbers sing to him, and he attends with an open heart. In their rising and falling, in their entries and omissions, in their conflicts and resolutions he hears symphonies—complex and vast and endlessly beautiful. This is nature’s gift to him, and in turn it is his gift to Marley.
For Marley has no patience for numbers. His gift is for a different sort of complexity altogether, a theatrical one constructed of fantasy and façade. Down to his very blood and bones he is the man for the job, as suited to this role as Scrooge is to his. Not that he differs from Scrooge to any significant physical degree. Should they be laid out side by side upon a mortuary table, measured for their shrouds and fitted for their coffins, they would not seem so very different. Marley might be a shade broader in the shoulder and more narrow at the hip, Scrooge a bit scrawnier in the leg and a trifle less deep in the chest, Marley a bit squarer of jaw and Scrooge a trace weaker of chin, but otherwise they differ little—so long as they are spread out inanimate upon our imaginary slab.
For it is movement that makes the difference. In motion, Jacob Marley possesses a grace that his partner lacks and may not even perceive, so fixed upon the numerical is the automatic counting machine known as Ebenezer Scrooge. Utterly in command of himself and finely attuned to the perceptions of others, Marley gives up nothing to the resourceful cuttlefish in the matter of camouflage. His coloration, his appearance, good God his very dimensions, seem amenable to modification in service of the moment’s need. A rough giant when some thieving miscreant requires intimidation, a wise counselor when some wealthy young widow knows not where to invest her inheritance, Jacob Marley can be all things to all men. And especially to all women.
As for the specific nature and fruits of his work, consider the good ship Seahawk, sister to the Marie, of which the chartered joint-stock company known as Scrooge & Marley is sole owner. Scrooge & Marley paid not a crown toward her purchase, having gained ownership through a long and cloudy sequence of transactions involving shell companies and false fronts registered in places as distant as the Polynesian islands and as close as the lockbox beneath Mr. Marley’s own bed. If any actual funds changed hands anywhere along the line, they did so without his knowledge or intent. The Seahawk’s last-known quasi-legitimate owner, a certain Sr. Giovanni Cavalletto, whose only reported address was a room in a broken-down p
ensione on a flooded street in Venice, is surely still awaiting payment from someone or other.
Marley has all the paperwork, though. All the charters and forms and licenses and documents of transfer, signed and witnessed by a dozen hands in a dozen languages, sealed with the waxy impressions of officialdom from a dozen faraway territories. All of it indisputable, and all of it false.
While Scrooge is in the countinghouse, then, Marley is to be found either at home among his forger’s tools or at large in the world, sniffing the air for possibilities. He lives by himself in a lowering pile of a great gloomy house set alone up a deep yard behind an iron fence, and although his own suite of rooms is modest, he keeps the rest to himself rather than renting it out. He shall have a use for each of these empty rooms, by and by. Marley has a use for everything.
There are funds coming in, of course. That’s the essential thing. A certain amount unavoidably arrives in bank drafts and other traceable legal transfers, a fact that Marley has accepted as an unfortunate cost of doing business. The remainder, to such an extent as he can arrange it, comes in cash. Scrooge & Marley will accept the currency of most any nation, provided a favorable exchange rate can be negotiated and a means of conversion found. In a pinch they have been known to accept gold and silver bars and even the occasional velvet bag of uncut gemstones, although in Marley’s mind such transactions smell a bit too much of actual high-seas piracy of the old sort, treasure chests and desert islands and all.
It is he who physically handles negotiables of this kind, secreting them about the empty chambers and hidden passages of his crumbling house, and it is he who oversees their metamorphosis from one form into another. He has established a large undercover network for these purposes. An assistant sub-clerk in the Liverpool Custom House, for example, will turn Spanish pieces of eight into British pounds sterling for a modest fee. A dustman off Regent Street has anonymous connections that can do the same with Dutch guilders, no questions asked. Only a few of these individuals are privileged to know him as Mr. Marley. He rarely signs the same name twice, or in the same way.