by Mark Morris
I opened the hamper and told Frith to help himself. Before I could think about what I was saying, I added, ‘There’s plenty more where that came from.’
As soon as the words were out of my mouth I winced at the insinuation that my resources were bountiful when so many were starving, but Frith made no comment. After I’d watched him eat his fill, cramming the food into his mouth and swallowing almost without chewing, as if afraid I might suddenly withdraw the offer, I hesitantly offered him a nip of the brandy ‘to keep out the cold’.
‘I’d best not, sir, if you don’t mind,’ Frith said. ‘Not if I desire to keep my wits.’
Once we’d wished each other goodnight, Frith blew out his lantern and melted back into the shadows. There were six men guarding the house, and I encountered them all as I performed my nightly circuit. They were all more or less like Frith – shabby and gruff, but polite, deferential. They were inordinately grateful for the food I’d brought, and they never ceased to be surprised by my concern for their welfare, though they tried not to show it. Their diffidence made me uncomfortable; this was one of the things I’d found hardest to come to terms with since arriving here. I wanted to tell them I was a fraud, that I was no more a gentleman than they were. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. The borders between the haves and the have-nots were too rigid. I knew if I’d tried to get closer to any of them, they would have regarded me with confusion and suspicion. The Victorian attitude, so alien to me, was that the rich and the poor held on to their pride by knowing their place in the scheme of things and sticking to it. There was little ambition among the working classes; the prevailing mood of aspiration, of attainment, hadn’t yet filtered down to the lower stratas of society. There were exceptions, but based on my experience over the past three months the general consensus seemed to be that the poor and downtrodden were where they were simply because God had decided that was to be their lot in life.
None of the men had anything to report. All was quiet. I reached the last corner, having done almost a full circuit of the house, when something caught my eye. Across the white blanket of snow leading from the dark mass of the hedge at the front of the house to the now-dormant flowerbed beneath the drawing room’s bay window, was a set of animal tracks. This wasn’t unusual in itself, but it was the nature of the tracks that bothered me.
Placing the now almost empty hamper on the snowy ground, I approached the line of tracks cautiously, wary that whatever had made them might be lurking nearby. My hand crept again to the pistol in my jacket as I followed the tracks to their source, the hedge at the edge of my property.
The tracks by the hedge were those of a small bird, like a sparrow, with three toes at the front and a clawed spur at the back. These tracks made just enough of an impression to be picked out by the moonlight, a series of regular, icy-blue scratches on the otherwise pristine blanket of snow.
What was unusual was that as the tracks got closer to the house, they changed. The twig-like toes became thicker and less defined, and the tracks themselves deeper. Within the space of half a dozen steps, the markings altered shape completely, the toes becoming broader, more rounded, the rear spur expanding and flattening out.
It was as though a bird had landed on the lawn, and then, as it approached the house, had changed into a cat or a dog. The creature had walked up to the house, hung around by the bay window for a while (there was a mess of footprints here to indicate it had moved around a bit) and then had padded back towards the hedge, where its tracks had transformed once again into a bird’s. The returning tracks then ended abruptly a few metres from the hedge, as if the bird had flown away.
Instinctively I peered into the moonlit winter sky, but saw nothing moving up there.
Nothing, that is, except a few random snowflakes spiralling lazily from the heavens to settle upon the earth.
TWO
ACROBATS
‘Good shot, sir.’
It was Boxing Day evening, creeping towards midnight, twenty-four hours since I’d found the tracks in the snow. Hawkins and I were in the snooker room on the second floor (I’d always loved the idea of a snooker room and now I had one!), potting a few balls, smoking fat cigars and demolishing another bottle of port. It should have been a relaxing, even mildly decadent end to the day, but as with almost everything I did here I felt like I was marking time. My overriding sense was one not of pleasure but of guilt. I carried it inside me like an ulcer. However much I rationalised it, however often I told myself the matter was in hand and there was nothing I could usefully do but wait, I couldn’t help feeling I should be out there, scouring the streets, asking questions, tearing London apart in my search for the obsidian heart.
I took another gulp of port – I’d end up with bloody gout at this rate! – and watched the white ball roll sedately back down the table to nestle against the bottom cushion. I’d become pretty decent at snooker over the past three months – no doubt partly due to my misspent youth playing endless games of pool in seedy clubs and pubs as a teenager. It had been years since I’d picked up a cue, but since arriving here I’d found that knocking a few balls around at the end of the day was often a good way of untangling the turmoil in my head, helping me to think.
Squinting at Hawkins through ropy veils of blue smoke, I sighed and said, ‘Are you ever going to call me by name, Hawkins?’
Hawkins paused, smiled. When he did so it transformed his austere, hook-nosed face. His smile was full of warmth, but there was sadness there too. I didn’t know why. Although he was fiercely loyal to me, he was also proud, secretive; he revealed his true self only in increments. It was another characteristic of this age. It wasn’t seemly to gush, to pour out your heart, to lay yourself open. Personal information had to be earned, eked out, like flecks of gold from hard rock.
‘It wouldn’t feel right, sir,’ he said. ‘You are the master of this house and I am the butler.’
I snorted. ‘Come on, Hawkins, you know I don’t hold with all that subservience crap. You know more about me than anyone here, except Clover. We’re friends, aren’t we?’
He inclined his head. ‘I like to think so, sir.’
‘Well, then.’
He regarded me a moment with his sky-blue eyes and then turned his attention back to the table. I’d partly snookered him behind the yellow. I could see him assessing the angles, wondering which red to go for. He strolled around the table, chalking his queue. He was around sixty, silver-haired, but he moved with the grace of a ballet dancer. Clover had a theory that he’d once been a cat burglar. ‘He’s like a cat,’ she’d said. ‘Or a panther. Silent and sort of sleek.’
He crouched, played the shot. A smooth, precise action. The white ball travelled up the table, kissing the side cushion, nudging the outermost red towards the top right-hand pocket. The angle wasn’t quite right; the red wiped its feet, but didn’t go in. But it was a speculative shot anyway. The white came back off the top cushion and rolled down the table unimpeded, stopping just short of the brown.
‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Haven’t left me much to go at there. You play a very cagey game, Hawkins.’
Once again a smile played on his lips. ‘I’m a very cagey man, sir.’
I had no idea whether the word ‘cagey’ was an anachronism, though Hawkins spoke it as though it was. I matched his smile with a wider one of my own.
‘I’ll say. I’ve been here three months now and I still don’t know all that much about you.’
‘There isn’t much to know,’ he said, but the way his eyes slid away from me belied his words.
Before replying I took another sip of my drink, another puff on my cigar. Then I said, ‘Oh, I think there is. I think you’ve got quite a story to tell.’ I approached the table, chalking my cue. ‘No pressure, of course, Hawkins, but you do realise that you’ll have to spill the beans sooner or later? Otherwise how will I find you to employ you in the future?’
I bent to take my shot. Before I could, Hawkins murmured, ‘It is a fair question, sir, to w
hich the answer is that you would doubtless find the search a difficult one.’
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘And why’s that?’
‘Because Hawkins is not my real name.’
I tried not to react in case it unsettled or embarrassed him, tried to pretend I was still focused on the table. ‘Really?’ I said airily.
‘My real name is Abel Benczik.’ He said this bluntly, as if it was something he didn’t want to linger over, a bad tooth that needed to be extracted quickly to minimise the pain.
Still I took my time, my eyes fixed on the arrangement of balls on the table. I chalked my cue, then tilted the blue tip towards my mouth and blew off the excess dust. Crouching low, lining up my shot, I asked, ‘What is that? Russian?’
‘Hungarian.’
I played the shot, made a mess of it. Too much weight, not the right angle. Instead of potting the red that Hawkins had left close to the pocket and screwing back, the cue ball cannoned into it, sending it ricocheting around the table, before bouncing off the top pocket and smashing into the rest of the tightly packed triangle, scattering red balls over the green-baize surface.
‘Bollocks,’ I said. ‘Made a pig’s ear of that.’
I straightened up and glanced at Hawkins. His face was impassive, eyes fixed on the table.
‘I wouldn’t have guessed you were foreign,’ I said. ‘From your accent, I mean.’
His features barely flickered. ‘I have endeavoured to conceal it.’
I didn’t ask why. Having pried open the clam shell, I didn’t want to force matters. If Hawkins wanted to explain himself he would do so in his own time. I drank more port and puffed on my cigar as I watched him pot a red, the pink, another red, the black, another red, the pink again, another red, before finally coming a cropper on the blue, which drifted away from its intended destination, the middle pocket.
‘Mm,’ he said contemplatively as he stepped back from the table. I had never seen him unruffled, had never seen him express anger or disappointment or disapproval. The only time he’d appeared even mildly shaken had been during his recollection of the horrors he’d seen in Tallarian’s laboratory after he’d rescued me from the burning hospital. Even though I’d been known to describe Hawkins as uptight, he wasn’t really – he was too open-minded for that – but he was certainly self-contained.
As I approached the table again, I was hyper aware of him behind me, lifting his port, taking a sip, setting the glass down with a gentle clink.
All at once he said, ‘I am not ashamed of my homeland, sir. Far from it. Adopting a new identity was simply a matter of expediency. For your sake and my own it is best that I attract as little attention as possible whilst I remain in your employ. I have much to thank you for, not least of all my life, and I would never forgive myself if my… ah, colourful past were to become the beacon that brings your enemies flocking.’
‘You don’t have to worry about that, Hawkins,’ I said, thinking of the tracks in the snow. ‘I’m pretty sure my enemies are flocking already.’
‘Even so.’
I played my shot, potting a red that was hanging over the top left-hand pocket. For a few seconds there was no sound in the room but the click of snooker balls, the gentle crackle of the fire and the muted ticking of the clock in its glass case on the mantelpiece. As I stepped back from potting the blue, Hawkins spoke again.
‘My family and I were known as the Flying Bencziks. We were one of the foremost acrobatic troupes in the whole of Europe. Ours was a family tradition stretching back several centuries. Not only my immediate family – myself, my wife and my children – but also my parents, my grandparents and my great grandparents. We travelled many thousands of miles around the world, displaying our skills. Indeed, during the past two centuries members of my family have performed before most of the crowned heads of Europe.’
He broke off. This time I sensed he was eager to tell me more, to unburden himself.
‘What happened?’ I asked quietly.
He took a long, slow breath. ‘A little over two years ago my family and I arrived in London as members of a prominent and sizeable travelling ensemble known as Langorini’s Circus. Our one-week engagement in the city was to have been our first of a four-month tour, which would have seen us perform in over forty locations across the length and breadth of Great Britain. We had recently completed a similar and successful tour of France, and were feeling buoyant and optimistic. On our first day in the capital we set up camp in Bethnal Green and divided ourselves into small groups to traverse the local area and sell tickets prior to our first performance, which was to have taken place four days hence.’
Briefly he raised a hand and let it fall, a gesture of weary regret. ‘Sadly we were ill-fated. Even now I am not fully conversant with what occurred, and I doubt that I ever shall be. All I know is that one of our groups, which included our strongman, a Danish fellow called Jakobsen, became involved in a fracas with a gang of local toughs after entering a tavern in the hope of drumming up business. At the time we regarded the incident as trivial – an unsavoury but minor disagreement. Such happenings, though not frequent, tended to be common enough.
‘Unfortunately the local men did not view the incident so lightly. Or perhaps they simply took umbrage at our presence and would have acted whatever the provocation. The English, in general, are a tolerant race, though there are always exceptions to the rule. Whatever the reason, I was awoken in the early hours of the morning by a terrible uproar.
‘A large mob of men had surrounded our camp and were shouting out threats and insults, using the most appalling language. My wife, Marta, and my children – I had four, sir, three daughters and a son…’
He faltered, his voice falling away, his face twitching, crumpling. Then he pulled himself together, his features smoothing out, becoming impassive once more.
‘My apologies, sir. I am afraid—’
‘No!’ I said, raising a hand. ‘I won’t hear an apology, Hawkins. You’ve nothing to be sorry for.’ I crossed the room, topped up his glass and carried it back to him. ‘Drink this,’ I ordered, ‘and sit down.’
He hesitated a moment, then did as I suggested.
‘You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to,’ I said. ‘It can wait. Forever if needs be.’
Hawkins shook his head. ‘No, sir. I have waited long enough to tell my story. I have carried it within me these past two years like… like Jacob Marley’s chain.’
‘I know the feeling. Tell me the rest of your story then, if you feel up to it.’
I leaned my snooker cue against the table and sat down opposite him, the fire crackling between us. I topped up our glasses and took another drag on my cigar as he continued.
‘Marta, my wife, and my children were terrified. Even with the blinds covering the windows in our wagon, there was sufficient play of light and shadow in the gaps around the edges for us to ascertain that the men were armed with burning firebrands.
‘Against Marta’s wishes I pulled aside one of the blinds and looked out. There was a furious tumult of noise – banging and thumping – which reverberated like thunder, and I realised that the mob were striking the wagons with their fists in an attempt to goad the inhabitants to emerge.
‘I am not a coward, sir, but concern for my family was uppermost in my mind. As such, I will admit that I prayed no one would rise to the provocation, that my fellows would sit tight in the hope that eventually the mob would become bored and disperse, or even that members of the constabulary would arrive to dispense justice.
‘But it was not to be. Among our number was a small contingent of hotheads – not least the strongman, Jakobsen. He was a giant of a fellow, with long, flowing, yellow locks and a great beard to match.
‘My heart sank when I saw Jakobsen’s door fly open and the man emerge, roaring and swinging his fists. Some of the invaders, surprised by the attack and intimidated by Jakobsen’s size and deportment, took to their heels – though many did not. Emboldened by thei
r sheer numbers, and by the burning firebrands they held, these men advanced on Jakobsen, thrusting their flames into his face, driving him back.
‘I saw his beard catch afire and then his clothing. The mob pressed forward, screaming with bloodlust – it was a terrible thing to see. Jakobsen fought like a bear, but eventually he fell, whereupon the mob, regardless of the flames that were rapidly consuming him, began to stamp and kick at his body, as well as to beat at him with clubs and lengths of metal.
‘This was too much for many of the men of our company, myself included. Marta implored me to stay where I was, but I couldn’t stand meekly by and watch one of our number be slaughtered like an animal. And so I ran outside, as did many of my friends and colleagues, and within moments battle was joined. Our company comprised a multitude of nationalities, but the mob, in its ignorance, began to chant anti-Semite slogans – which I suppose was their simplistic way of expressing their hatred for anyone born beyond these shores.
‘The conflict was brutal and bloody. We were hopelessly outnumbered. We fought against the mob with all our strength, but we couldn’t prevent them from…’
Hawkins’ voice abruptly cracked again and I saw his head dip. I tensed, thinking he was about to slide from his chair on to the floor, but then he cleared his throat and carried on.
‘…we could not prevent them from setting our camp afire. I was so intent on defending myself from the blows and kicks raining down on me that I didn’t realise at first what was happening. I was only vaguely aware of flames leaping higher all around me, and of a ferocious roaring.
‘I slipped, or perhaps I was pushed, and I fell down. I thought my time had come, but then I heard a cry, which I only realised afterwards must have been an order to the mob to retreat. All at once men were running past me, departing from the camp, disappearing into the shadows and the darkness beyond the flames like sewer rats.
‘I was dazed and bleeding and bruised. I felt myself being hauled to my feet, and at first I thought my assailants had come again. But then I realised the hands belonged to my fellows, and that they were every bit as beaten as I was. But we had no time to dwell upon our injuries, because our homes were aflame. Every wagon within our camp was burning. And our families… our families…’