TWENTY-TWO
The Death of
Abel Mundy
BY PATRICK MARCH
Gods‚ judge me not as a god,
but as a man
whom the ocean has broken
WHOLE DAYS together I dwell among ghosts.
I saw Abel Mundy in a dream again last night, drowned and dripping, with dead eyes, and river water running from the folds of his drenched clothes. His cold fingers burned like whipcord where I shook my wrist free from his grip.
I pleaded with him. ‘Abel Mundy,’ I said, ‘let an old man rest.’
His voice uttered from somewhere inside him as softly as his last breath. ‘Where was your pity?’ he hissed at me, in an awful parody of my words to him. ‘Where was your pity?’
*
I REMEMBERED this morning the name of the man who gave me instruction in boxing during my early years in the city: R.M. Fernshaw. When I close my eyes, I seem to see the brass plate that was fastened to the door of his gymnasium in Golden Square; and when I open them, I can read the inscription on it, reflected at me in the dull gold nib of my pen:
R.M. FERNSHAW, LATE 2ND LIFE GUARDS,
EXPERT IN PUGILISTICAL AND FISTIC SCIENCES:
GIVES INSTRUCTION DAILY IN
FENCING, SINGLESTICK, SABRE, BOXING,
MILITARY DRILL,
CLUB AND DUMB-BELL EXERCISES &C.
And beneath it were posted the hours of admission.
It was a habit with me to take exercise here at least once each week: vigorous endeavour being the only proven tonic against my melancholia and the tendency to corpulence which ultimately triumphed over all my countervailing intentions.
It was one of Dick Fernshaw’s less likely contentions that a person’s griefs are buried in the fat which exertion dissolves. On this plan, Fernshaw himself must have been the most sanguine man on the planet. There was not an ounce of fat on his spare frame. In the words I once heard him use admiringly of an aspirant boxer: there was more fat on a butcher’s apron.
In those days, I was spare and quick myself, lacking the heft to deliver a resounding blow, but strong and fast enough to give a good account of myself against most opponents. Of course, this was gentleman’s boxing: the Prize Ring had been extinct for more than ten years, and the young men who came to Fernshaw’s gymnasium fought with the mufflers on.
Fernshaw often talked of his Prize Ring days, though I calculated that he hadn’t had above two bareknuckle fights in his career (to his credit, he won them both). He always maintained that a man who had boxed only wearing gloves would never be more than an amateur, but he disapproved strongly of brawling. He insisted on discipline in the ring, and would berate both boxers if a bout threatened to degenerate into ‘a rough unmeaning unscientific scramble’.
I well remember Dick Fernshaw, not less than sixty years old, interposing his spry frame when sparring threatened to become too warm. The bobbing fringe of red hair ringed his pate like a hedge round a ploughed field. ‘Never forget: in the midst of impetuosity remember coolness, my lads,’ he would say. ‘Be manly; seek no undue advantage. Science and pluck give advantage enough. Pluck! Science!’ Then, after a pause to restore calm, he would have them go at it again.
It was at Fernshaw’s school of arms in the autumn of 18— that I first met Abel Mundy. He was older than most of us, forty, florid-faced, with a distinctly military deportment. I knew at once that he had seen service in India, and surmised from the oakum and tar on his boots – and the ink on his cuffs – that he was now employed as a shipping clerk at one of the warehouses on the river.
It was some time before I could verify my hypotheses. Mundy was a quiet, some would say brooding man, of a formidable intensity, great physical strength, but few words. That first day, he was matched with another heavyweight, Dickinson, a solicitor and Blue, for light sparring after the dumb-bell exercises. Dickinson was a more than capable boxer, and the two men finished amicably enough, but Mundy gave him a rough time of it. Fernshaw, without being partisan, urged Dickinson to counter when he was having the worst of it on the ropes. ‘Come on, lad. Don’t let him hang you. He’s older than I am.’
That day was memorable for more than just the arrival of Abel Mundy. Fernshaw had been dropping hints to me for some time about his intention of distilling the wisdom he had gained cultivating the physical sciences in a book. It was a harmless enough ambition, and I confess I egged him on to it, because I found his cherished convictions amusing. He held, for example, as many do, that Onanism drained fluid from the brain and weakened the nervous system. He counselled the wearing of undergarments fashioned from a single strip of cloth folded around the nether parts in Hindoo style. He drank neat vinegar to strengthen his digestion. He – and I would not believe this, had I not seen it myself – he preserved the parings after he had dressed his nails and ate them, in the belief that it restored vital energies. All this, and a good deal of no doubt sensible information concerning boxing and physical culture, was to be collected in Fernshaw’s volume. It was almost too much to hope that all of his wrong-headed snippets of wisdom would be gathered in one place for the edification and amusement of the general public, and many of Fernshaw’s students looked forward to its publication for reasons quite other than the ones he supposed.
After our exercise was over, and Fernshaw was preparing the hall for one of his private pupils, I happened to mention the subject of the book to him, in the hope of teasing more foolishness out of him.
‘Ah – Mr Holmes,’ said he. ‘I’m glad you mentioned this to me. I was discussing the slim volume, or pamphlet – as you know, I’m not ambitious concerning its size, but merely concerned to preserve, as it were, some of the axioms of pugilistical science – I was discussing it, as I say, with my wife, and it was her contention – where she thinks of these things I don’t know – that a favourable commendation from someone highly esteemed might further its cause. I thought naturally of you …’
‘My dear fellow,’ I began, ‘I’d be flattered.’
‘And wondered if you might show it to your brother.’
‘My brother?’
‘Seeing that he is in an illustrious and some might say unique position, I thought a recommendation from him would carry the most weight. Naturally, I don’t want to put him to any trouble, but it would be rendering me a service. If he could see his way to penning a few lines as a form of introduction to the work … Well, that’s as much as anyone could want.’
‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Let me know when you have the finished draft and I’ll bring it to his attention.’
‘Much obliged to you, Mr Holmes. May I offer you in return a word of advice about your choice of undergarments?’
‘The deuce of the thing is I’m already late for a rather important engagement. I’m afraid it will have to wait until next Thursday.’
‘Until then, sir. Keep your guard up! Pluck, Holmes. Science!’
The last few words pursued me from the basement of the house and out into the warm twilight of Golden Square, while Abel Mundy looked on silently from one of the benches smoking a cheroot.
The truth of it was, I had no engagement, but I had found myself rather taken aback by Fernshaw’s request. As much as I thought his projected book a foolish undertaking, I couldn’t help but feel hurt that it was the commendation of my brother that he sought, rather than mine.
I lodged at that time in a set of rooms on Dover Street, where I had a bright drawing room that served me also as a studio. That evening, I remember, I did not return there immediately, but went from Fernshaw’s gymnasium to visit a young lady in Shepherd’s Market who worked as an artist’s model but who also submitted herself to the sexual attentions of wealthy men. After the knock-back of Fernshaw’s request, I wanted to restore my self-esteem with a vigorous rogering.
[NOTE by Damien March: The next two pages are just sub-Victorian pornography of the Pearl variety, but less effectively done. Since this section doesn’t further the plot of the
story or do my late uncle much credit I’ve left it out.]
ABEL MUNDY came regularly to Fernshaw’s gymnasium and was soon among the group – which did not include myself – who contested amateur prizes at tournaments. Despite his relatively advanced years, he invariably won and earned something of a reputation for his strength and ringcraft.
It was an unspoken rule among the men who trained with Dick Fernshaw that the subject of our occupations was never mentioned. In a city where too much store was set by a man’s work, his income, his place of residence, it was refreshing to consort with fellow humans on terms simply human.
It was another year before I deepened my acquaintance with Abel Mundy in circumstances that would have repercussions for both of us.
*
AN ERRAND had taken me far out of my usual haunts, east of London Bridge to the wharves on the south bank of the river. The scents of a hundred nations mingled here: spices, sugar, exotic banana-fruits from the West Indies, tea from the East, chocolate beans from Java and Sumatra, and bolts of Calico were stacked in the warehouses that fronted the busy Thames.
It was past five, and the flood of commerce had slowed to a trickle. A few clerks lingered over their account books, but ships lately in waited until the morning to be unloaded. A lamplighter was working his way along Tooley Street, confounding the darkness with a twinkling yellow flame.
Some distance away, a man emerged from a doorway, glanced upwards to ascertain the clemency of the weather, pulled his greatcoat around him, adjusted the hat on his head, and made his way along the pavement with a broad-backed, hunched-over walk that gave me his identity as certainly as his face did, lowered and concentrating as if examining the paving stones for fallen pennies.
‘Abel Mundy,’ I said, and on hearing his name he started upwards with a hunted expression and peered at me through the darkness.
‘Who the devil …?’ he began to say.
‘Mycroft Holmes.’ I extended my hand to him. ‘We box at Fernshaw’s together. I never expected to encounter a friend so far east. You work here, I presume?’
The explanation of our acquaintance and my use of the word ‘friend’ appeared to set him at his ease.
‘Well,’ he said, gruffly, ‘I’d wager long odds against this encounter. What brings you here?’
‘A combination of business, bad luck and curiosity‚’ I said, thinking that this was a tactful way of explaining that I was visiting the unfortunate Richard Doriment, an artist of my acquaintance who was incarcerated in a lunatic asylum not far from the docks.
‘Ah,’ said he, ‘the three most powerful forces in a man’s life.’
‘You forget two more powerful,’ I said: ‘God and woman.’
‘Yes,’ he said, with an odd look. ‘There is that.’
We fell in together and crossed London Bridge, engaging in pleasant enough conversation, until our ways parted at the Monument: his to the east, mine westwards to my lodgings.
‘You’ve come this far,’ he said. ‘Do me the honour of having your supper with me at my house.’
I must admit that even then there was something about Mundy that struck me as not altogether canny. There was a submerged malevolence, a quiet kind of anger that I found all the more unsettling for its being hidden. Still, I assented, because the pull of curiosity had always got the better part of me than the push of fear, I also had a sense that the invitation was made more for the sake of form than from a real desire to share his repast with me.
As we walked together to a house near Fenchurch Street, Mundy confirmed my suspicions, apologising in advance for the frugality of his table, and hinting that I might in fact be happier to have my supper at one of the ordinaries near his home. This only strengthened my desire to see where he lived. I told him to set his mind at rest, saying that I only ever took a cold supper in the evening myself, or sometimes a little thin soup. We drew nearer to our destination – a house of average size, none too smart from the outside, in which the Mundys occupied the upper two storeys – when he turned to me again, stopping altogether this time.
‘Holmes,’ said he, drawing his large hand down his face from his cheekbones to the tip of his chin, ‘the other thing you should know is that my wife and children are deaf–mutes. We converse in gestures.’
It was hard for me to know exactly how to respond to this. ‘Deaf from birth?’ I said.
‘Deaf from birth,’ said he, cleaning his shoes on the cast-iron scraper inside his gate.
‘Deafness is a terrible affliction,’ I said.
‘It is,’ he said; and then with a glint of pride: ‘But I consider myself lucky not to be one of those husbands who must suffer a wife’s constant prating, chattering, idleness! I have what all men want and few have: utter obedience. You’re not married yourself, Mr Holmes?’
I told him I was not.
‘You’ll want a wife for three things, Mr Holmes,’ he said. ‘Fucking, cooking and bearing children. Given those three things are of sufficient quality, the absence of speech will not, I assure you, appear to be a heavy burden.’
I was glad it was dark here, because the coarseness of his expression brought the blood to my face. We had by this time ascended the creaky interior staircase of the Mundys’ home. On entering their house I was struck by two things. The first was the heat of the fire. It was not a cold day, but the coals were piled high in the grate and burning merrily. The heat of the room was such that even far from the fire, I was uncomfortably hot in my jacket. ‘Time in the tropics thins a man’s blood, Holmes,’ Mundy said. ‘Were the fire any smaller I would be freezing to death.’
The second thing that struck me was the pungent aroma of exotic spices. This was not fully explained until we took our seats at the supper table.
The two floors which the Mundys had to themselves were furnished comfortably, but not lavishly. We sat until the meal was ready in the overheated drawing room, where the air was made more oppressive by the fumes of Mundy’s cheroots. He offered one to me which I declined.
Finally, Mrs Mundy bid us to table. It was my first sight of her, and I was surprised to see that she was as dark as a lascar, with ebony hair and skin the colour of horse chestnuts. She was a handsome woman, of some elegance, thin; silent, of course – and in all things so attentive and deferential to her husband that I felt uncomfortable on her behalf, recalling his harsh words as we stood on the threshold of his house: ‘Fucking, cooking and bearing children.’
The two Mundy children were of a colour somewhere in between that of their parents, as though the hue had been formed by the admixture of her skin to his. The younger, a boy, was three years of age; the elder, a girl of thirteen or so. Mundy did not bother introducing me to any of his family, and communicated only sporadically with his wife in gestures that sent her scurrying from the table for a dish of pickle or more ale.
The food Mrs Mundy had prepared was unlike anything I had ever eaten. It was an array of meat and vegetables in sauces served with rice, and all of such barbarous hotness that I felt as though each mouthful was taking off the skin of my tongue. It was far more highly spiced than the mild karhi served at tiffin during my time in Madras. Since there was no possibility of conversation during the meal, the chief diversion was supplied by my discomfort with the highly spiced food, which entertained Mr Mundy so much that he roared with laughter until tears ran down his cheeks.
All the way through our meal, Mrs Mundy and the two children ate silently and watchfully, their attention fixed on Mr Mundy with a keenness that seemed slightly unhealthy.
It was nearing nine o’clock when I got up to leave. Abel Mundy had retired from the table to sit by the fire and smoke another of his infernal cheroots. I told him not to trouble himself to see me out. The daughter lit me to the door with a candlestick – the staircase by that time being as black as pitch. I looked up from the street to the lighted windows of their home. Naturally, I could see nothing from where I stood on the pavement, but I imagined Abel Mundy with his glitterin
g eyes and his deaf family around him, breathing smoke from his nostrils as though the sea-coal fire burned within him, instead of in his hearth. I swore from that moment to have nothing more to do with him, and I turned my back on that house and set off towards my own home with a shudder.
The reader will very likely wonder what on earth could bring me to such a drastic resolution after what must seem like a comical encounter with a family more remarkable for its oddness than its viciousness. But the short time I had spent observing the Mundys had been enough to inform me of the real state of marital relations in the household. It was quite clear that Abel Mundy was a wife beater.
For a number of reasons, this would not have been apparent to most visitors to the house. The style of Mrs Mundy’s dress concealed all but her face and hands, and these were unmarked. The outward signs of the abuse were very few, though apparent enough to me.
I had noticed, when she was carrying dishes between the table and the kitchen, that, while she had the use of both arms, her left elbow was carried very close to her chest, and that she winced from the effort of lifting a heavy pile of plates. This disability would at least have occasioned comment in any normal house, but here it passed without remark. Secondly, though she was, I concluded, in some pain, it struck me forcibly that she was endeavouring to conceal it from me. It occurred to me that my presence was a kind of added torment for her – but whether this was her husband’s motive for inviting me there, I could not say. The show of fortitude was a necessary charade, and I could easily guess the consequences for her if she let it slip for a moment. There is no victim more cowed than the one who conspires with her persecutor.
The final proof was in the eyes of her children. Even the younger, the boy, displayed an anxious wariness that was entirely in advance of his years, and which increased whenever Mr Mundy gestured to his wife, or when, in response to a gesture, she had to gather or fetch articles from the kitchen, all the time in pain, and all the time concealing it.
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