The English Monster

by Lloyd Shepherd

  But his sons had moved away at around this time, and his dear wife had begun to suffer from an occasional absentmindedness, which had taken root in the past year and which terrified him more than he cared to admit. She remained the serene, kind, and patient creature she had always been, but now there was a darkness between them, the presence of something just over the horizon which could sail into dock and destroy them in their sleep. His financial affairs, while steadier after his years in London, remained in some unspoken disarray. Dead wives and an absence of money. His daily realities, as they always had been.

  And then, finally, these despicable murders. Harriott was again forced to face his growing irrelevance to the glorious project that was Great Britain, because even in the face of abject incompetence, even when the senior representative of investigative authority on the case was Story, a man who believed that Judgment Day was literally in the coming weeks, even when the response of London’s nascent police forces was to arrest anyone who fell into an assumed but never described set (Irish and/or Portuguese and/or Jewish, poor, drunk, male, sailor, lame, tall, short, ugly, missing, seen in the area), even when it was his own people who’d found the best clues and made the best connections, even then it was Harriott who’d earned official displeasure, Harriott who’d been told to back off, Harriott who felt that the powers-that-be had used up their capacity to tolerate him and even now were plotting his removal and expulsion from the only social position in which he any longer felt vested with any relevance at all.

  The waves had destroyed his farm. Gentoos had destroyed his leg. Circumstances had destroyed his fortune on more than one occasion. And now They were out to get him. He ponders the flat, brown, freezing waters, the thick air and the dimly perceived shapes of ships out on the waves. He remembers the title of his memoirs: My Struggles Through Life. Perhaps the time is coming for those struggles to cease.

  “Well now, my friend. You do look preoccupied.”

  And there is Graham, wandering toward him with an indifferent but welcoming air, smoking a thin cigar and tapping the ground with his elegantly carved cane.

  “Morning, Graham,” says Harriott, studiously adopting his professional face, hiding his embarrassment at the directions in which his thinking had been turning.

  “Morning, indeed,” his friend replies. “And what a quite disgusting sight the morning brings, if I may say so.”

  “Indeed. The weather is beastly.”

  “I was not speaking in reference to the weather, my dear old friend.”

  “Then in reference to what?”

  “Oh, in reference to the unpleasing prospect of a fat lame old man gazing into the middle distance over the ugly, flat, lifeless sea, looking for all the world as if he feels more sorry for himself than old Robespierre when they came to fetch him to Madame Guillotine. You have solved the crime, sir! Why the ridiculously long face?”

  “Solved, Graham? Solved how?”

  “Well, this Morgan fellow, whatever his real name is, has obviously been up to no good. Horton’s efforts, his—how shall we say—investigations, have unearthed powerful explanations for the deaths of Marr and Williamson.”

  “But why kill them?”

  “I do not understand why the why is so important to you.”

  “Because without motive, I cannot understand the sequence of events.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. They must have upset him somehow.”

  “But that won’t do, Graham.”

  Glimpses of the old Harriott were coming back: perspicacious, intolerant of laziness and shoddy thinking, energetic, determined. The old man did not even notice.

  “Motive offers explanation, Graham. Men do not kill each other randomly, other than in war. If we seek out motive, we find explanation.”

  “Harriott. My dear friend.”

  Graham places a brotherly hand on Harriott’s shoulder. For a moment the mask of genteel display drops and beneath one can see a warmer, kinder, and cleverer person than the public man suggests. His eyes almost twinkle with fellow-feeling.

  “Harriott. John. You are cut from a different cloth to the rest of us. You represent an older, braver, and in its way infinitely kinder way of approaching the world.”

  “Graham, I . . .”

  “No, John, do let me finish. You see, something is being built here. Something rather new and rather grand. Britain will win this war with the French, believe me, and do you know why? Because we know what we are fighting for. Those idiots over the Channel have had two decades of their mouths being filled with talk of liberty, fraternity, even equality, Lord preserve us. They have somehow been led to believe that this world can be made better, can be reforged into something with nobility and humanity. Or rather, they think they believe that.

  “But one day they will look at their ridiculous little emperor and say to themselves, ‘Now, just wait a while. I’m fighting for him? And what do I get out of the deal?’ And when the answer comes ‘The glory of France!’ or ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity,’ more and more of them will reply: ‘Not good enough, chum. Not good enough by half.’ ”

  “Now take your English soldier. He’s not fighting for values or philosophy. He’s not even fighting for his King. He’s fighting for his God-given right to raise his family, till his plot, fill his belly and his purse. That’s the new reality, John. We’re a nation of shopkeepers. Hadn’t you heard?”

  “Shopkeepers.” Harriott says it with deliberate sarcasm, yet Graham’s speech has stirred him. The black dog is creeping away, its tail beneath its legs. “It somehow does not set the heart racing, Graham.”

  “Oh, but it does. It certainly does. A nation of profitable souls, each fighting for their patch of land, their slice of cake, their chance at riches? The dreams of wealth, Harriott. These are the dreams which propel this nation forward.”

  “It is a picture which is perhaps not as compelling to me as it is to you, Graham.” And yet, of course, it is.

  “Indeed not, John. Indeed not. Which is what I intended to say when I said you were cut from a different cloth. The world you fashioned is still with us, John. But a new world is being built upon it.”

  “An uncaring world.”

  “Perhaps. But John.” And here Graham taps the ground with his cane, almost in exasperation. “This world will not be built on the backs of slaves kidnapped from one country and transported to another for the profits of Liverpool and London and Bristol. It will be built on industry. People like you built an empire, John. But they also built the Zong.”

  The three men meet again at the inn for luncheon, and the weather has not improved a jot. The skipper of the Antelope has already indicated how reluctant he is to head upriver in the current conditions, and how unpleasant the trip would be for his passengers if they forced him to do so. Harriott is now determined to get them back to London quickly and by any means necessary, and takes it upon himself to investigate the stage as an option for the return trip to London. There is one leaving that afternoon which could have them in London by midnight, subject to successfully crossing the Swale in this fearsome weather.

  Graham agrees to the plan. The three men get into an empty stagecoach and proceed southeast (away from London, much to Harriott’s frustration, but the coach driver is adamant that this is the best chance for finding a working ferry, and in any case that is where the best road is).

  But when they reach the Swale, their plans are again thwarted. The ferry is suspended due to the bad weather, and no amount of shouting by Harriott can convince the old ferryman that a crossing in this weather is anything other than madness. They are forced to take shelter in a small inn on the banks of the Swale, another night away from London. There follows an uncomfortable evening for Constable Horton, during which Graham affects a studied cheeriness while Harriott glowers, staring into the fire and ignoring all efforts to engage him in something like a conversation about anything other than motive and explanation.

  The following morning is calmer, both meteorologica
lly and, apparently, with regard to John Harriott, who wakes seeming somewhat lighter than the night before (in actual fact, he has slept better than he has for months in the quiet, comfortable little bedroom, sheltered from the winds by the shape of the building and from his own concerns by the future visions conjured by Graham). They cross the Swale successfully, and soon reach the turnpike south of Gillingham and Rochester which takes them up and over the steep North Downs, then down into London via the villages and open fields of Blackheath and Peckham, through New Cross and the Elephant and Castle with its new turnpike gate and then over the bridge at Blackfriars.

  Here they leave the coach. Graham makes his way west toward Covent Garden, while Horton and Harriott take a hackney to Wapping. The two of them get out at Harriott’s residence, and they take their leave. Horton begins his walk westward to Lower Gun Alley, where Abigail is waiting for him.

  The image of Abigail is welcoming, but nonetheless he stops in at one of the taverns on Wapping Street and with a growing, screaming sense of panic enveloping him he pays for a bottle of rum (Jamaica rum) and a glass. Where does this panic come from? He does not know. Something about the enormity of his discoveries of the last few days, and the conclusions he is beginning to draw about them. But more than that the panic stems from the suppression of himself which was forced upon him at Sheerness.

  He pours a full glass, fully one-quarter of the bottle, and upends it. The strong Jamaican liquor burns his throat and squeezes his forehead, but at least it suppresses the tidal wave of anxiety that has been threatening ever since he climbed into the hulk on Sheerness. For the best part of a week, he has been a visitor to the scene of his own defining moral crime, standing on the spot where his fellow-mutineers were hanged, constantly petrified that someone, anyone, would recognize him, the Judas of the Sandwich, the man who’d bought his freedom with information on the conspiracy which may even have led to the capture of Parker himself. Not even thirty pieces of silver. Just a nod, a wink, a look the other way, and he was gone, to build a new life for himself upstream, buried among the crushed-in houses along the river.

  He’s back now. Back inside the shelter of London. The first enormous slug of dark rum has pushed the panic back down, but it’s still there, swirling away in his stomach like a sea snake. Even while he drinks and frets and remembers, his antennae, finely tuned to the rhythms of the chatter in the bar, have begun to take in what is going on around him. He’s sat for many evenings inside saloons like this one, minding the conversations and the emphases, picking up fragments which could be assembled into something later on. And he’s noticed something now. An excited chatter. At the table next to him, a drunk woman is regaling her male companion.

  “Just fink, luv. Just fink. ’Is body’s out there right now, innit? Festerin’ away. He fawt he woz gon get away wiv it, dinnen he? He rilly fawt that. But he won’t. He won’t. We’ll gets our chance to say goodbye to the unholy bugger. Day after tomorrer. I’ll be there, right at the front.”

  Horton looks away and toward an old couple hunched over a single tankard directly in front of him. The man is speaking.

  “It’ll be all right, luv. It’ll be all right. They got the bastard. They got ’im. It’ll be all right.”

  Horton turns toward a young buck with his gang of courtiers, dressed to impress in clothes which cost less than a bottle of gin but over which such care has been taken that they could have come from the finest boutique in Covent Garden.

  “Well, lads. Well, now. New Year should be summat special, you ’ear me? Lots of young ladies passin’ out in the street. ’Ear me. ’Ear me now. Nuffin’ a young woman likes more than swoonin’ at the evil of it all. When his body passes, mark my words, they’ll be fallin’ like pins. And who’ll be there to catch ’em if not us? Am I right? Raise your glasses to John Williams, lads. We’re goin’ to be oiling our cocks on terrified fanny well into 1812. Mark my words, lads. Mark ’em.”

  Horton looks out. And there are voices everywhere:

  “. . . his body’s out there . . .”

  “. . . dead in the prison . . .”

  “. . . thought he could top himself and get away with it . . .”

  “. . . John Williams . . .”

  “. . . we’ll get ’im . . .”

  “. . . we’ll get ’im . . .”

  “. . . evil bastard . . .”

  “. . . we’ll get ’im . . .”

  27 DECEMBER 1811

  While Horton, Harriott, and Graham are sleeping in their Sheerness hotel, all of them dreaming of a black ship in stormy waters wreathed in wails and screams, John Williams is sleeping in his cell in Coldbath Fields. He is lying on a small bench with only a thin sheet full of holes to keep him warm. The cell is ten feet to the side, with one barred window looking out onto a mournful little courtyard with a single lamp to illuminate it. The window is permanently open, dropping the temperature in the cell by a dozen degrees and causing the breath from Williams’s nose and mouth to cohere into little clouds of fog.

  Despite his circumstances, Williams smiles in his sleep. Smiling is his normal state. He is an attractive, popular man in his late twenties, with a good hand and a pleasing face. Women like him and this simple fact is the one that has formed him more than any other. With the right clothes and a bit of work on his manner he could even be taken for an out-of-town gentleman from Ireland. Just now he is dreaming a particularly vivid dream, sun-drenched and pleasant.

  He is walking along beside a fast-flowing river, crocodiles basking on its banks. Insects buzz in the thick humid air. As he walks, he sees something impossible: a serpent in the water which is perhaps twenty feet long and as thick as a man’s leg.

  Ahead of him, his friend Billy is tramping purposely along; he is not aware that John is following him. Their ship, the Roxburgh Castle, lies at anchor underneath the fort at Braam’s Point. Billy slipped away during the breakout of a near mutiny against Captain Hutchinson, which had forced the captain to call for reinforcements from the fort. Billy (who has been distracted these past few days, and has done more than his fair share of encouraging mutinous thoughts belowdecks) took the opportunity to slip away, climbing down a rope ladder and slipping into the water to swim to the shore. John, who had been watching and recording everything Billy does for some time now, followed him. They were the only two men in the crew who could swim. They may also have been the only two who could read and write, a fact which had brought them together early on in the voyage. John and Billy, the belowdecks scholars, the young man from Ireland and the strange man from Oxfordshire who looks so young but whose stories tell of experience beyond his years.

  Billy looked back to the ship once as he walked up onto the beach from his swim, but John was anticipating that, and ducked his head underwater to avoid being seen. Even in his dream he can remember the cool, salty taste of the water.

  Since swimming up to the beach they have been walking for twenty minutes or so, from the point at which the river poured into the sea in the little bay. Now, only minutes after seeing the crocodiles and the gigantic serpent, John begins to hear different kinds of sounds amid the jungle wildlife. From around a curve in the river come the sounds of shouting and singing and the occasional crack as if from a whip hurtling through the air. Also, a new smell comes to him: a sweet smell which hangs rotten and liquid in the air around him. He is near a sugar plantation.

  Billy disappears around the bend in the river ahead, and soon John reaches the same bend, hurrying slightly in case he loses sight of the man he is following. But in fact he is nearly discovered, as just around the bend Billy has stopped dead, staring at a rise in some cleared ground on which stands a white single-story house above the river, surrounded by a white fence and green lawns. Behind it, undulating in their own cultivated echoes of the wild jungle, swaying, thickset crops of sugar cane shimmer in the sunlight. At the ridge of a hill John sees a field gang of black bodies bent over and scything away at the shining green, as if praying to the crop which towe
rs above them. Two overseers sit on horses observing them. As John watches, one of these men on horseback sends a whip sailing through the air, and it explodes against the back of one of the slaves, the sound of the crack reaching Williams moments after he sees the whip come down on the slave’s back. The slave makes no sound that John can hear, not even a shout, but simply bends further and moves a bit faster.

  John looks back to Billy, who is surveying the scene in much the same way. After a few more moments, Billy begins to walk toward the main house. John follows him, through the open gate and up the neat little drive that climbs up to the house, lined by trees between which John skips to avoid detection. A black child is playing beneath one of the trees and John nearly steps on her and she shrieks, but John reaches down and puts his hand over her mouth and pulls them both behind the tree and waits, not daring to look. After several moments, he whispers fiercely into the black girl’s ear and then drops her, leaving her to run wildly and tearfully toward a low single-story building down at the side of the plantation estate. His heart pounding, John looks back around the tree, half-expecting his friend’s furious face to appear from behind the line of the trunk. And in the strange language of dreams, this does happen—Billy is standing there, his face pale and ancient, his hands strong and secure, grabbing John’s throat and digging his thumbs in to choke him off, the life running out of him just as the black girl ran, away and off down the hill . . .

  But Billy is not there, and that part of the dream splits into another possible future, and in this dream—the one which is mostly memory—John is still there behind this tree, watching Billy standing in the middle of the driveway, some twenty-five feet from where John is now, unmoving and looking up at the house.