Master Georgie

by Beryl Bainbridge

  Snatching Master Georgie’s fur-lined cloak from off its hook, I sped down the stairs, along the passage and out into the garden. In my flight the cloak swung out at the hollyhocks beside the water-closet wall, sending the withered petals flying. The orchard had dimmed now, the shadows swaying beneath my feet. I misjudged the width of the ditch and trod its muddy depths. Bedraggled, I sprinted across the field to where the Punch and Judy van stood waiting.

  The duck-boy sat on a bank of earth, head back, with Master Georgie standing over him, engaged in examining the mulberry stain on his lip. I expect it kept his mind off things to play the doctor. When I approached he took the cloak from me without comment, though its hem was soaked. He neither thanked nor scolded, which made me sullen, for either praise or censure would have been some indication of my existence. I told him that the visitor was gone and that Miss Beatrice and Dr Potter were sparring in the parlour. I didn’t have to report on Mrs Hardy, slumber being her regular afternoon activity. ‘Mrs O’Gorman,’ I said, ‘has nodded off. I don’t believe she’ll stir for a good half-hour or more.’

  ‘Who was the visitor?’ he asked.

  ‘A young lady,’ I said. ‘She’s sweet on someone Miss Beatrice knows.’

  ‘Keep an eye on the house,’ he ordered, and I wandered away and watched from afar as he and the duck-boy lumped Mr Hardy out of the van and laid him in the cloak. Slung thus, he was carried across the field. At the start his boots and his hat were balanced on his chest, only they kept sliding off. I ran back to help but Master Georgie waved me aside and finally the duck-boy jammed the hat on his own head. I don’t know what happened to the boots, for I never saw them again and possibly they’re still lying mildewed in the ditch.

  Wading ahead through the wet grass, my thoughts became melancholy. The hidden sun was beginning to set now, staining the scudding clouds with crimson, and I took its bloody aspect for an omen. I didn’t like Mr Hardy being dead, because it meant my life would be different than before. I tried to bear in mind the example of King David, who, as long as his son lay on a bed of sickness, implored Jehovah to let him live, and when he didn’t, snapped his fingers and thought no more of it. Everything that happens, I told myself, is the result of necessity, and therefore inevitable. It was of little comfort.

  They got Mr Hardy into the house and up to the second floor without mishap, and deposited him on his bed in the blue room at the end of the passage. Mrs Hardy didn’t often allow him into the master bedroom one floor below, owing to headaches and differences of opinion. Mr Hardy’s chamber was a man’s room, devoid of furbelows and knick-knacks apart from a china vase which his mother had cherished and a pennant belonging to the 52nd Light Infantry that an uncle had carried at Waterloo.

  Mr Hardy’s hands and face were streaked with dirt from his recent journey, and I was dispatched to bring up water from the kitchens. There was a full pitcher on the dresser but Master Georgie had his wits about him and said it would arouse suspicion if it was found to have been used; Mr Hardy wasn’t a great man for washing.

  The cook and Lolly, the maid-servant, were sat at the table playing cards. Mrs O’Gorman was awake, though still in her chair. She wanted to know where I’d been and I replied truthfully that I’d followed Master Georgie into town. Before she could question me further I complained of thirst and once in the scullery filled up a basin and took it out by the side door and in through the front. In my haste, half of the water got spilled, but by good fortune Dr Potter was busy tickling the ivories and the parlour door remained shut.

  The duck-boy had gone when I returned, and shortly after, when Master Georgie told me to pull up the window – I reckon he was concerned about Mr Hardy’s approaching decay – I saw the purple van bouncing along the path beside the pig field.

  Soon Mr Hardy looked peaceful enough, clothes brushed, hair combed back, cheek to the pillow so as to keep his mouth closed, one fist prised open, the other thumped against his chest. He had died with his eyes shut, either from pain or not wanting to confront what was coming, so he didn’t need pennies on his lids. He was laid out on top of the counterpane, to foster the illusion he’d thrown himself down after a rollicking visit to the Roscoe Club. When we were done I threw the dirty water out of the window and Master Georgie ferreted out a second pair of boots and positioned them under the wicker chair by the wardrobe.

  He said, ‘Remember, Myrtle, he died in bed from a cessation of the heart.’ It was, after all, no more than the truth, if one didn’t dwell on which particular bed.

  Just as we were quitting the room, a cabbage butterfly flittered in through the open window and settled on Mr Hardy’s naked foot. I made to chase it away but Master Georgie stayed my hand. ‘Think, Myrtle,’ he said, ‘of the contrast between what is fleeting and what is permanent.’ He was weeping, though silently. Afterwards, he went straight to the stables and, saddling his horse, cantered into the gloaming.

  When the gong was beaten for dinner and Mr Hardy didn’t appear, it was assumed he was out. It was the maid-servant who found him, an hour or so later, having gone upstairs to see to the fires. She was too shocked to scream and broke the news in a whisper. She told the cook she thought his toes moved, but it was a trick of the candle flame. I was sent off to bring back Dr Potter who had only just left.

  I witnessed some of what followed and won’t forget it; Miss Beatrice dashing her head against the metal petals circling the oval mirror in the drawing room, pummelling Dr Potter with her fists as he attempted to mop her bleeding brow with his handkerchief; Mrs O’Gorman kicking the dog for scratching at the lino outside the blue room; Mrs Hardy, composed and quiet as the grave, standing in the hall and staring at the front door as though she expected her husband might yet come home.

  Around midnight, Master Georgie returned, accompanied by a distant relative of Mrs Hardy’s, a Captain Tuckett, who happened to be staying in the neighbourhood. Dr Potter took them upstairs to the drawing room to tell them about Mr Hardy, so I didn’t see Master Georgie aping surprise. Mrs Hardy stayed below, and when Captain Tuckett came down again to proffer his condolences, she nodded in a business-like way and turned her back on him. He stood a moment, looking suitably sorrowful, then he put on his hat and took himself off. When I told Mrs O’Gorman she said Captain Tuckett had gained notoriety in bringing an action against the Earl of Cardigan for taking a pot-shot at him on Wimbledon Common, and in any case was so distantly connected to Mrs Hardy that he scarcely counted.

  The comings and goings went on into the small hours, though I was sent to my bed. I didn’t fall asleep until it was almost light, which was odd seeing I’d been run off my feet.

  The maid-servant woke me the next morning, shaking my shoulder and urging me to get up. I opened my eyes to a flood of light and the noise of bird-song. Each pane of glass in the window held a square of cloudless sky.

  ‘You’re wanted downstairs,’ Lolly said. ‘Master Georgie needs you in the blue room. By the state of him, he hasn’t been to his bed all night.’

  He appeared just the same to me – that sweet mouth, those wide apart eyes whose gaze never looked, merely flickered over me; but then, I didn’t suppose I saw him as he really was, and never had. He had his camera set up and all his trays placed about the floor. A globule of quicksilver had spilled on to the carpet, where it flashed in the sunlight.

  When I glanced at the bed, the events of the day before, until that moment indistinct as a faded dream, returned in odious detail. Mr Hardy had shrunk and his skin grown blotchy, like fruit left too long in the bowl. Someone had kept vigil round him in the night: tears of congealed wax bobbled the stems of the silver candlesticks.

  Master Georgie said, ‘You and I share a secret, Myrtle. I blame myself for burdening you with it.’

  ‘I won’t tell,’ I said.

  ‘I should never have made you a party to it—’

  ‘Wild horses wouldn’t make me tell,’ I insisted.

  ‘I don’t wish you to lie, Myrtle. That would be w
rong.’ He was fitting his plates into his camera as he spoke, fingers stained yellow from the iodine mixture. ‘I’m not worried on my account. It’s my mother I have to protect.’

  It puzzled me what it was Mrs Hardy needed protecting from. After all, it wasn’t the first time Mr Hardy had been carried home the worse for wear, though certainly it was his last.

  ‘Am I to be sent away?’ I asked, and my voice trembled at the enormity of the question.

  He didn’t answer, being occupied in adjusting his tripod. I knew that speed was of the essence once the plate was slotted into the camera, and struggled to be patient. When he was satisfied all was ready, he tugged at my arm and positioned me at the head of the bed. ‘Put your hand on his shoulder,’ he bid.

  ‘Am I to be sent away?’ I repeated, and he replied with some irritation, ‘No, Myrtle, no. All I ask is that you hide what you know. It wouldn’t do for Mrs O’Gorman to learn of the facts.’

  ‘I don’t tell Mrs O’Gorman most things,’ I protested. ‘Not even when she whips me.’

  ‘Lower your voice,’ he begged. ‘Walls have ears.’ Then he added mysteriously, ‘Things will be different from now on … you’ll see. We won’t go on as before. Now, incline your head … a trifle more … stretch out your fingers … you’re bidding him farewell.’

  I was saying goodbye to a stranger, because the figure on the bed no longer resembled Mr Hardy. His mouth was a thin, grim line and there were hairs crinkling out from the nostrils of his mottled nose. I could smell something pungent, a combination of iodine and honeysuckle, and wrinkled my own.

  ‘Stop that,’ Master Georgie ordered. ‘Stand stock still. Don’t blink.’

  I fixed my gaze on the dead man and told myself God would strike me blind if my eyelids quivered. So intense was my concentration, it was only Master Georgie who breathed in that sun-dappled room. Outside, the birds continued to twitter. All my life, I thought, I will stand at your side; and then I did blink, for the grandness of such a notion welled up tears in my eyes.

  Plate 2. 1850

  A VEIL LIFTED

  George Hardy had called at my lodgings on his way home from the Infirmary. He’d wanted to know whether I was willing to work for him the following morning. I’d replied I was.

  ‘I suggest you be at the house at five o’clock,’ he said.

  That was just his manner of speaking. Had I taken it simply as a suggestion and arrived five minutes later he would have bitten my head off. Most people thought of him as bookish and of a saintly disposition, but I knew better. He’d said he could promise me an interesting day, which, when it was explained what he had in mind, was nothing short of the truth.

  I walked up from the town, the sky still starry, and got to the house an hour early. I was familiar enough with its domestic arrangements to know that the servants would still be in their beds, it being winter. And if it should happen that old mother O’Gorman was up and stirring, she’d have to climb the stairs to catch me. She’d grown deaf over the years and now that the dog was buried in the orchard there was no one to alert her to footsteps. Even if she did rumble me, why, I could sweet talk her round in no time, and be given a bite of breakfast into the bargain. Consequently, I was easy in myself when I stole through the dark yard, past the stables and outhouses, and lifted the latch of the kitchen door. I took my boots off before I stepped inside.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been in the house without anyone guessing. I did no harm, at least not of the lasting sort, and I didn’t thieve. That would have been foolish and against my own interests. Nor did I ever venture above the ground floor. What I did on my dawn perambulations through the parlour, the dining room and the study was in the nature of an experiment. I moved things around – and waited to see who noticed. I’d begun in a small way, changing the poker from right to left in the grate, shifting a vase from the front to the back of the mantelshelf, altering the order of the musical boxes on the piano top. Then, after a few months, I became bolder and swapped the pictures from one wall to another. It took five weeks for Dr Potter to spot that the painting of ships in the river, previously situated behind the desk in the study, now hung beside the door.

  The resulting rumpus, reported to me below stairs, was all I could have wished for. Potter repeatedly quizzed Mrs O’Gorman as to the character of the servants. She, good soul, swore they were all honest, and in their right minds besides, so he drummed up a notion about sleep-walkers and stayed up two nights on a chair in the hall, hoping to catch someone. Young Mrs Hardy, sickly again following another of her unsuccessful confinements, was kept in the dark on the matter. As for old Mrs Hardy, it didn’t affect her in the slightest, she being uninterested in where anything was, as long as her bed stayed in its usual place.

  Then, just as I was growing bored with the whole caper, Mother O’Gorman let on that Beatrice Potter was convinced there were ghosts in the house and had even asked her husband to consult a clergyman. He’d refused and called her a fool, and there’d followed a shouting match in which Mrs Hardy added her pennyworth, informing Dr Potter he was the only fool she knew of and that she cursed the day Beatrice had ever married him. Later, Beatrice told Mrs O’Gorman she was worried it was the restless spirit of her dead father that was causing the mischief – which was the reason, this particular morning, for my being so early in the house. I intended to play one last joke.

  I went first to the dining room. The curtains were still drawn and the room in darkness, but I knew it well enough to find what I wanted. Picking up the strip of Persian runner from beneath the windows, I crossed the hall to the study. The light of a gloomy dawn was already stealing though the glass, outlining the tiger’s head where it nudged the fender beside the desk. Pulling the rug out through the door, I laid the runner in its place at the hearth, and then, keeping an eye on the stairs, began to drag the tiger behind me. I froze instantly, for the creature’s claws screeched on the tiled floor and I was forced to hold it up by the paws and waltz it into the dining room.

  I had intended to arrange it under the windows, where it used to lie when Mr Hardy was alive, only I was chuckling so much at the absurdity of my dance through the hall that I dropped it in a heap and helped myself to a mouthful of port wine from the decanter on the sideboard. Though some of it slopped to my jacket, most went to my head, after which it struck me it would be more of a jape if I draped the rug over a chair and had the beast’s head pointing at the door. I drew back the curtains the better to see the effect. Beyond the windows the frosty orchard gleamed.

  I was sitting at the kitchen table when Mrs O’Gorman rose from her bed. She made a fuss of me, which she always did, and seeing I had my boots off and was rubbing at my toes to get them warm, poked the fire into a blaze and put the kettle on the coals. I played up to her and let my teeth chatter, for I knew she had drink in the cupboard, having supplied her with it myself, and bought with my own money.

  Not quite mine. Leastways, not at the start. It came from the proceeds of an investment provided by George Hardy some years past, to do with a woman whose memory he wanted stilled. He was a fool in the ways of the world, the woman in question being too addled with drink to remember anything longer than the immediate moment. I used the money to purchase a camera and the necessary chemicals, and once my enterprise was up and running I treated Mrs O’Gorman. She was an ignorant soul and I owed her nothing, but I hadn’t a family of my own and it pleased me to buy her little extras.

  Sure enough, when the kettle had steamed, she set before me a tumbler of brandy and hot water, to revive me, she said, and a slice of cold mutton to go with it. She wanted to know what Master Georgie needed me for at such a time in the morning.

  ‘We’re off to William Rimmer’s uncle in Ince Woods,’ I said. ‘We’re going to do something with an ape.’

  She didn’t hear me right away, and when I shouted louder and she understood, she screamed, ‘An ape … a wild beast?’

  ‘Dreadful wild,’ I hollered. ‘It was transporte
d yesterday from the Zoological Gardens in West Derby to Mr Blundell’s place. Mr Hardy and Mr Rimmer are going to cut out its eyes.’

  She grew quite pale and said she’d never heard of anything so horrible. That was a lie, or forgetfulness, for hadn’t she suffered worse agonies of her own? Last Christmas, around the time young Mrs Hardy underwent her third miscarriage, she’d told me, weeping, that she herself when little more than a child had borne an infant by an older brother who’d buried it alive in a turf bog.

  It took an age to get all the photographic apparatus loaded. Twice, we were half-way down the lane before George remembered something else that couldn’t be left behind. We started off with myself at the reins of the carriage and he ahead on horseback, but for no good reason he changed his mind and took back the horse and climbed up with me: there wasn’t room inside.

  ‘Blazes,’ he said, once we were on our way. ‘It’s infuriating the things one has to remember.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ I replied crisply, and bent my head against the wind.

  I didn’t wholeheartedly despise George Hardy, even though I considered him a hypocrite. He’d done me no harm, far from it, and I acknowledged his good qualities, including not being close-fisted. I dare say he could afford it, but often he treated broken bones and abscesses and the like, knowing full well his patients didn’t have a button to their names. Hadn’t he mended my mouth, damaged from my fire-eating days!

  At the beginning, when chance had hurled us together, he’d offered me full-time employment, of a menial sort, in his household – blacking boots, seeing to the horses, running errands – but I told him straight I wasn’t cut out to act the servant, not having the temperament to take orders. Some people find it comfortable to go through life on their knees, and good luck to them, but I prefer to keep my spine in the position nature intended. Besides, I already had my own means of keeping body and soul together, and after he’d learned me the tricks of the camera I earned a respectable living from the taking of shilling portraits.