Cannonbridge

by Jonathan Barnes

  He starts to turn the pages, his disbelief increasing. Written for a popular audience in the manner of a don slumming it on a teatime magazine show, the writing is awash with cliché and has no discernible ambition beyond offering feeble synopses of Cannonbridge’s most famous works and dramatising, with hagiographical solemnity, the flashpoints of his long, his improbably long and many-textured, life.

  It starts to rain. Warm summer rain. Droplets fall to the paper like tears.

  Toby Judd looks up again and stares once more at that brick wall. There is something there he sees now, something that has been troubling him—something not quite in the right place.

  Is it just his imagination or does one brick seem darker than the rest?

  He goes back to his book, turning page after page, tutting at the predictability of it, not caring about the damage that the rain is doing to the pages, but urging it on. Salazar’s lazy phrases multiply before him: ‘the greatest,’ ‘the most gifted’, ‘belongs to the ages’, ‘literary rock star’, ‘national treasure’.

  The rain intensifies. The wall troubles him still further.

  That one brick, he sees now, that one brick in particular, does not seem to belong.

  Toby reads on and the titles of Cannonbridge’s novels and plays and poems, flutter before him—The English Golem, Ezekiel Frye, The Seasons of Sorrow, Plenitude—then the list of all those who knew him, Dickens and Collins, Byron and Wilde, Polidori and Arthur Conan Doyle.

  All at once, something seems to bother him about those stories which has never—at least not consciously—bothered him before.

  It’s too neat, he thinks.

  It’s too… schematic.

  Even, yes—too contrived.

  In fact, the names of Matthew Cannonbridge’s fictions sound more like the fruits of a single afternoon’s work than the output of a long (a fantastically long) literary career.

  He looks again before him—at the darker brick.

  It’s a downpour now. Seized by a desire to know for certain, Toby gets up and strides—or, more accurately, he weaves his way—across to the wall. His hands reach out in the darkness for that one, troubling brick. His fingers move closer and closer… and touch something soft and slimy and wrong. He jerks away his hands with instinctive disgust.

  Then, warily, peers closer.

  Paper. Old, damp paper stuffed into a hole in the wall. He understands then that it was only ever the darkness which had made it seem like a brick at all.

  Back he goes now, enlightened, Toby Judd, back to his swing and to the book that is growing fat and swollen in the deluge.

  The brick and the book.

  The brick. The book.

  The brick.

  The book.

  He feels a kind of swelling in his head. More than a mere ache, more than some preliminary hangover. No… this, he thinks, this must be something else. It must be understanding. Realisation. Epiphany?

  Newton beneath the apple tree. Darwin in the Galapagos. Archimedes in his bloody bath.

  And now… can it be? Toby Judd in a children’s playground with a brick made of sodden paper?

  What might some neurologist see at this moment were the brain of Dr Judd to be subjected to a scan? What strange leap of particles? What dizzying surge of mental electricity? What fantastic, unprecedented mutation of thought?

  Half-energised, half-nauseous, Toby looks again at the picture of Matthew Cannonbridge, that dark, handsome, saturnine old devil. He looks at the list of his works, at the man’s extreme longevity. He considers everything he knows, everything he’s ever been taught— and accepted, largely without question—about that individual and all of his works—and, in a single, shining moment—he dares to reject it all. Making his second, more complicated and still more terrible deduction of the day, he comes to the following conclusion, spoken, defiantly, aloud: “This is bullshit.”

  And again, with more volume, not caring about how it might look, a drunk by the swings at night, quarrelling with the rain: “This is bullshit.”

  He realises then that he is being watched. A handsome, thickpelted fox is observing him from over by the roundabout. Toby directs his subsequent thoughts to the animal who, oddly, neither turns nor flees at the attention.

  Judd sees it all. “Cannonbridge is a delusion.”

  The fox’s ears twitch as if in understanding or encouragement.

  “Cannonbridge is a lie.”

  The eyes of the creature seem to gleam in pleasure and in pride.

  “Cannonbridge has been made up.”

  Finally, understanding hits Toby like a blow and he finds himself staggering back, having to work hard to keep his balance. “But…” Gasping. Short of breath. “How? A fantasy on such a scale. Why?”

  A second, keening sob escapes him. The last of the night.

  When he recovers, the course of his life now changed forever, Toby lifts his gaze once more and sees that the fox has vanished.

  1820

  THE FULLWOOD ROOKERY NORWICH

  THE PLUMP YOUNG doctor lies in the gutter, gazes up at the night sky with ravaged eyes, and braces himself for the attack to begin again. He manages a long, rattling breath through teeth which feel looser than they ought. Every part of him aches. He just has time to blink once more before he is kicked hard in the stomach.

  There are four of them. Four very big men, all muscled and thick-waisted, all with a lazy, heavy-lidded artistry to their violence. They take turns to kick him hard and with a sober relish. He submits, tries to arch his body in such a way as to minimise the damage.

  He has learned by now, of course, not to inflame them by crying out. The thugs say nothing, engrossed in the execution of their task with all the furrowed intensity of children at play. Everything takes place in a curious state of silence.

  The doctor closes his eyes again and tries to imagine himself far from here, far from these narrow walls, this stinking alleyway, this quartet of men and their awful expertise.

  Another kick. Another. The sound of splintering bone. At this, he cannot help but loose a little whimper. The sound of it seems to cheer his attackers and the next intersection of boot and skin seems to be arrived at with more pleasure and more glee.

  And then, all at once and without warning, it ends.

  The pummelling ceases. The four men step back. The doctor assumes at first that this must be due to boredom or even exhaustion or that their employer—she who requested the beating—has ordered them back indoors to attend to other duties or to some other unfortunate.

  Yet none of these things are true. Struggling up, the physician sees that another man—one whom he takes at first to be a stranger—has come amongst them.

  The newcomer is tall, dark-haired and clad in black. His face is obscured by shadow. Evidently, he is strong for one of the men has already been sent sprawling onto the ground and another is staggering backwards after the delivery of what the doctor guesses to have been a swift and brutal upper-cut. It is as though a circle of enthusiastic amateurs have been interrupted by some wilier and more experienced professional. The third of the thugs moves towards the newcomer who, with a whirl of black cloth, his frockcoat fluttering about him like a cloak, parries the attempted blow and sends the ruffian to the ground, nose bloodied, spitting teeth, squealing like an infant. The violence happens both obscenely quickly and with improbable slowness.

  The newcomer speaks, authoritative, declamatory: “I believe that you gentlemen have done enough for tonight. I believe that you have all drunk your fill.”

  As he is talking, the boldest of the doctor’s tormentors practically throws himself at the speaker, running hard at him from behind. The black-clad fellow turns fast and delivers a blow to his attacker’s gut. A groan and the ruffian sinks, in a single, undignified motion, to his knees.

  “I would ask you all politely to disperse.”

  The men on the ground stumble back to their feet again. They hang back, deciding their move.

  One of th
em speaks: “Why are you doing this?”

  “My motives are not for you to know.” A strange, alien smile.

  “You’re a gutter-creep. A nightingale.”

  The tall man replies, with a kind of verbal lunge: “Disperse. My next request shall not be so courteous.”

  A long pause, pregnant with the possibility of further violence. Somewhere deep in the rookery, a baby cries out. A rough voice demands silence and an instant later, the wailing ceases.

  In the end, there is no need for action. As one, the men make their choice. They wheel about, flee and are gone. The clatter of their footsteps soon fades.

  The rescuer steps forward and extends his hand. “Dr Polidori?”

  “It’s you…” The doctor gasps. “Isn’t it?”

  “Let me help you to your feet.”

  “Thank you. Thank you.” Polidori lets himself be aided, allows himself to be pulled up and dusted down, feeling all the while as if every part of him has been broken and trampled upon. “Sometimes,” he murmurs, “we wondered if we’d dreamt you. If we hadn’t somehow summoned you up from our imaginations. But that isn’t so, sir? Is it?”

  “In truth,” says the black-clad man. “I cannot be certain.”

  “Are you quite well?” Polidori, though aching and raw, is filled with concern. “You seem a little out of sorts.”

  “Quite well, thank you. Yes. For the time being.” And Matthew Cannonbridge smiles as if in muted happiness.

  CANNONBRIDGE AND DR Polidori walk together through the streets, the handsome man strolling with natural grace, the chubby physician moving with a fragile survivor’s gait. Hurrying away from the low district of the rookery, they move into a more respectable quarter, from poverty to a quiet affluence, from corruption into apparent health. The city here is still, the honest majority of her population abed.

  They pass few other human beings—a tottering reveller, a bearded beggar, a pair of vergers from the Cathedral—but no one stops or questions them. These men aside, the cobbled streets are theirs alone, the echo of their footsteps sounding almost impertinent in the cloistered hush.

  Passing by the closed and shuttered ranks of the market, only a few hours from its daily renewal, from its earthy clamour and brand of good-natured villainy, they turn right towards the heart of the city, towards the Close and the vigilant spire of the Cathedral.

  As they walk, they speak of many things.

  “I suppose you must want to know,” Polidori finds himself saying, “exactly why it was those men had so fierce a disdain for me.”

  “I had assumed that to be your own affair. But, if you wish it, then, please, tell me.”

  Polidori shrugs. “Gambling debts.”

  “I had deduced something of the sort.”

  “It’s my little weakness. One. One of my little weaknesses.”

  Cannonbridge lowers his head in such a manner as to suggest that he is not the kind of man who would ever judge another for some minor—even for some major—flaw of character. “How have you come to be in this city, doctor? So far from Geneva.”

  “I thought to practise here. To be frank with you, it’s not been a terrific success. I’ll be moving on soon enough.”

  “And your lord?”

  “Oh, we’ve long since parted company. He tires of his friends, you see. The rich man’s prerogative. No one lasts for long.” Polidori winces, either at the memory of Byron or at the ache of a recent wound, the two things being, perhaps, not so very different. “And you? What brings you to this place?”

  Cannonbridge hesitates. “I am not entirely certain.”

  “Indeed?”

  “That is, I cannot at present recall. There are… intermissions in my memory. There are ellipses. Sometimes I seem to appear at places with no real recollection of how I have come to be there.”

  Other men might have been more surprised than Polidori at such an admission. But veteran as he is of Byron’s household, he is better acquainted than most with missing hours, with lost time, with the warping of personal chronology. “I think I understand, sir.”

  Cannonbridge, suddenly confessional, announces: “I am on a journey, my friend. To find out who I am. My origins. My nature. My purpose. I want… You must see that I dearly want to be a good man. Yet there is something within me which suggests some different, some less noble path…”

  “A kind of mission, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like the hero,” Polidori murmurs, “of your romance.”

  “My...?” Cannonbridge tails off as though he’s forgotten the success that he enjoyed but two summers before.

  “ The English Golem.”

  “You read it?”

  “Several times. The first, concluded late at night, made sleep

  quite impossible. It represented the fruits, I take it, of our taletelling contest?” “In its essential conception, yes. As was Mary’s remarkable work. And your own full-blooded Vampyre.”

  The physician waves the compliment aside. “A trifle. Merely a bauble.” He coughs, a dank, unhealthy sound. “But how well I remember it all! So vivid and remarkable a time. You inspired us all that night, you know. Even…”

  The doctor tails off, winces.

  “Yes?” Cannonbridge urges on the other man.

  “It… it might not be proper. Or fair. Not after what you’ve done for me.”

  “Pray, doctor, continue. I am most interested to hear.”

  “You spoke of your uncertainty… of your origins and nature.”

  “You know something of this? Or perhaps you have suspicions?”

  “Not I, sir, but my lord Byron. Not long after that night of tale-telling he dreamed about you. And he wrote down the dream in verse.”

  “Did he indeed? That… Yes, that does interest me greatly.”

  The slumbering streets go by. The cathedral town seems to enfold them, safe from the rookeries, behind the ramparts of money and taste.

  “Let me see. I used to know it well.” Polidori closes his eyes and begins to recite from memory:

  “I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

  The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars

  Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

  Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

  Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

  Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,

  And men forgot their passions in the dread

  Of this their desolation…”

  Cannonbridge interrupts. “All this darkness… He thought it had aught to do with me?” He sounds hurt by the implication.

  “Not to do with you, sir. Not as you are. He said this was a potential in you only. He called it a possibility.”

  “You know I try my best, doctor, in spite of my confusion. To be brave. Philanthropic. To help.”

  “You do… You have… And yet…”

  “Yes?”

  “Forgive me, Mr Cannonbridge, it has been a long night. I have been drinking and I am not in my perfect mind.”

  Cannonbridge looks grave. “You sense something of this in me too?”

  Polidori does not reply.

  “Doctor?”

  “I want to thank you again—you understand—with all my heart for saving me. Heaven knows how much longer those men might have persisted had you not interrupted them with such vigour and force.”

  “You are most welcome. But there is more, I think, that you need to say?”

  Polidori swallows uncomfortably.

  “Doctor?”

  “I too have dreamed of you. More than once. Not, to be sure, as you are now but as, I am afraid, you will be.”

  “What have you seen? In these dreams of yours?”

  “Storm clouds, sir. Storm clouds in your future. And also, also in your wake…”

  “What?”

  “Something’s at your heels, Mr Cannonbridge. Something’s tracking you.”

  A moment’s silence. They have passed
the Close now and begun to move on towards the outskirts. When Cannonbridge speaks again, he does not sound certain.

  “It’s late, doctor, and the night is full of shadows. Perhaps we are both of us permitting our imaginations to get the better of us. Perhaps I shall before long make some other, happier discovery.”

  Polidori bows his head. “I dare say you are right, sir.” He holds out his hand. “Thank you. Thank you again. My lodgings are not far. I’ll walk alone for the rest of the way.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Quite sure, thank you. I doubt my creditors will trouble me again tonight.”

  “Do you need money?” He pauses, considers. “In my wanderings I have often seen the efficacy of money. It seems to grant men great power, one above the other.”

  “Oh, but you’ve done enough, Mr Cannonbridge. More than enough. There’s no need.”

  A furrowed smile. “If you insist.”

  “I do.”

  “Then it’s been my pleasure.”

  They begin to shake hands but Polidori, only ever in fitful control of his emotions, turns the gesture into an embrace and clings tight to the other man. “I wish you luck, sir. I hope you’ll beat it, whatever’s coming. I hope the good man in you wins.”

  “Thank you,” says Cannonbridge as they disentangle. “I have a long journey yet, I fear. But I also wish you well.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “So… It is to be goodbye, then?”

  “Yes, sir. It is to be goodbye, sir.”

  And with this, the two men part company—Polidori towards his lodging house, Cannonbridge the way they have already come.

  Not more than a minute or so after their farewell, Polidori, unable to staunch his curiosity, turns back. The street is empty and of Cannonbridge there is no sign. There are only shadows now and, in the distance, the dark and watchful silhouette of the spire.

  NOW

  THE HOUSE ON Akerman Road hasn’t been cleaned for a month, though you might be forgiven for thinking that it has been a good while longer.