by D. J. Taylor
“Now see here, Mr. Dewar. I don’t doubt there’s paper of yours all over the City. There may be a dozen Mr. Pardews after you. I don’t know. P’raps there’s more. However many there are, it’s no good to me. Still, there’s a way we might help one another, indeed there is. If the lady don’t mind, perhaps you could come along of me to somewhere we could talk more private-like?”
Dewar looked at him curiously for a moment, but in the end assented, muttered something in an undertone to his wife, drew off the tattered dressing gown and replaced it with an equally threadbare topcoat, which he took from a pile of clothing heaped at the end of the bedstead. Thus arrayed, he stood uncertainly in the doorway for a moment while Grace, tipping his finger to his forehead in salute to the occupant of the bed, led him out onto the landing.
“Your wife’s bad, ain’t she?” he remarked conversationally as they descended to the level of the street.
“Don’t take no nourishment from her food,” Dewar gloomily assented. “Thin as thin.”
“Consumption, I should say. I seen that kind of cough before. When the spots come to their cheeks. She’ll die on you, I shouldn’t wonder. I means no harm,” he admonished, catching the look in his companion’s eye. “Neither does Mr. Pardew, for all he’s a hard man. But there’s truth and there’s lies, you know. Now, from the look of you I should say that you could do with something ‘ot. Am I right?”
Dewar nodded his head. Glancing sideways at him as they passed through the door of the house into Clerkenwell Court, Grace satisfied himself that he seemed to shuffle rather than walk.
“Here,” he said. “How long since you had a square meal? Come on, you can tell me, you know.”
“Yesterday. That is, the day before.”
“And that bread and tea, I shouldn’t wonder. Never mind. Just step along this way.”
On the corner of Clerkenwell Court, where it verges on the green, there was a public house, empty now against the anticipated dinner hour, but emitting gusts of beer and spirituous liquor from its half-open doors. A potboy, one of those insouciant, devil-may-care potboys with a black eye and a cap pulled down low over his forehead, looking as if he had lately escaped from Mr. Egan’s Life in London and needing only the attentions of a beadle or two to drag him back, stood at the entrance polishing the dark windows and whistling horribly through his teeth. They passed into a dark, cavernous chamber, lit by a blazing fire which winked and glinted off the pewter mugs as if it were having a kind of round game with itself and these utensils were in the habit of passing the message on, where Grace, leaving his companion at one of the tables, went to the bar and returned from the bar carrying two steaming tumblers of brandy and water.
“You’ll find this warm enough,” he observed, jangling the change from the transaction in his palm and turning over the coins as he did so. “D——it, will you look at that?”
“I don’t see anything amiss,” Dewar commented, examining the florin that Grace threw down on the tabletop between them. “What’s the matter with it?”
“Coiner’s silver,” he elucidated. “See the colour of the metal next to a real two-bob. Probably made of one of them pewter pots. Now, as to our business. I daresay you’re finding the wind blows just a trifle cold around your legs at the moment. Would that be the case?”
“It does blow cold—very cold.”
“Well now.” Grace brought his face to within a foot of Dewar’s. “What would you say if I were to offer you a week’s work as could strike out Hodge’s bill and leave you with five pounds in your pocket? You’d be agreeable, I take it?”
“Naturally I should.”
“Very well. But there’s one or two particulars that I need to assure myself of, see. Mr. Pardew”—and here Grace paused, as if he somehow expected that his employer would take visible shape in the spirit fumes that rose above their heads—“Mr. Pardew don’t like sending good money after bad. It’s a thing he can’t abide. First point: have you a decent, respectable set of clothes as you can set your hands on?”
“I think I have.”
“In quod I suppose?” Grace deduced, more or less sympathetically. “How much needed to take them out?”
“Twelve shillings…twelve shillings and sixpence. I haven’t the tickets with me.”
“Very well again. Second point, and no offence meant or taken in return: can you play the gentleman? Meaning, if you was sent into a bank and asked to collect money that was due, could you act the high feller, come across haughty-like, and that kind of thing?”
“I suppose I…”
“Come along! You’ve kept a shop in your day. You’ll have made a particular study of the breed, I’ll be bound. Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent! Couldn’t be beat. Now, there’s one or two peculiarities of the case as you should know of. First item, for the purposes of this job your name ain’t Dewar, it’s Roper. R-o-p-e-r. Got that? James Roper. Second thing: you’re a gentleman of means. Three days from now you’ll get a letter with a banknote in it. You’re to take that note to Bulstrode’s Bank in Lothbury—as Mr. Roper, mind—and open an account. Know the place?”
“I think I do.”
“Excellent again! I knew as we should be able to do business. Now, there’s one other thing. When you’re opening the account in Lothbury—and it’ll all be quite in order, no fears on that score—you’re to say that you’re paying a visit to Yarmouth (no, not the one on Wight, Yarmouth in Norfolk!) and that the money should be transferred to Gurney’s, as are their agents in the town. Once that’s done, you’re to go to Yarmouth—as Mr. Roper, mind—and make believe as you’re taking the sea air.”
The look on Dewar’s face as he stared up into his companion’s eyes suggested that this was a piece of jocularity too far. “You are making fun of me, Mr. Grace. Indeed you are.”
“I was never more serious in my life. Listen to me. You’re a gentleman that’s on holiday—well, on business then. Anything as looks respectable. You takes lodgings somewhere, and pays for them cash down. You go for walks along the promenade. Take a look at the sands—I b’lieve they’re very fine. And await our communication.”
“A letter?”
“That’s the ticket. A letter giving full particulars of what you’re to do. Couldn’t be easier, hey?”
It now wanted but a few minutes to midday, and the tavern in which they sat had lost its recherché air. Half a dozen workmen, come from manufacturing shops in the vicinity, now clustered by the bar ordering pots of porter. The musicians of a German band, their instruments propped against their feet, were regaling themselves with faggots purchased from a metal plate kept hot by jets of steam that surged beneath it, and a villainous old woman in a shawl and a poke bonnet was going amongst them selling exceedingly waxen apples. Seeing the crowd of people—none of whom, as is the habit of the Clerkenwell work horde, took the slightest notice of him—Grace grew taciturn, replying to Dewar’s questions in monosyllables and affecting a great interest in some sporting prints that hung from the far wall.
“See that Silver Braid? Now that was an ‘oss, that was. Ten guineas I’ve won on that animal in my time. But perhaps you aren’t a betting man?”
“I confess I’m not.”
“And with the Derby coming up again too! Well, never mind. Now see here, Mr. Dewar”—and here Grace lowered his voice significantly—“all this is going to cost money. Naturally it is. Couldn’t not. Now, what I suggest is that we go somewhere a bit out of the way of the generality.”
At the rear of the tavern there was a small anteroom set aside for the benefit of gentlemen who might wish to wash their hands or engage in other ablutions. As, however, very few gentlemen seemed eager to avail themselves of this amenity, the room was generally vacant. Here, beckoning Dewar to follow him, Grace unostentatiously repaired.
“Stinks to high heaven, don’t it? Never mind. Now, a sovereign to take your things out of quod and spruce yourself up—for you must look the part, you k
now, be able to tip your tile to the quality. Then there’s travelling expenses, lodgings and so forth. Five pounds should cover it.” And to Dewar’s astonishment—for there was a part of him that still believed their colloquy to have been an elaborate game, got up to mock him—he produced a battered purse from his pocket and counted out this much in gold coins. Then, abruptly, his manner changed.
“There you are. I don’t need no receipt—ha! You’d best go away and do what needs to be done. Ain’t no need to seek me out, for I shan’t be found. One more thing: anyone asks if you know anything about me or Mr. Pardew as employs me, you’re as silent as the grave. Anything goes amiss, and we never met, never spoke, never so much as nodded in the street.”
Seeing the look on Dewar’s face, he brightened and clapped him on the back. “Never say die, though, eh? Why, we shall see the Derby together maybe, you and me. Now, don’t cling so tight as all that while we make our way out of here, do you see?”
Grace’s anxiety appeared to be misplaced. Certainly no one—not the workmen, now conversing animatedly among themselves, or the members of the German band, or the old woman selling apples—so much as raised an eye as they made their way to the door. Outside the sky retained its singular, slate-grey shade. The dolorous bells of St. James’s, pealing across the square, disclosed that the midday hour had come. At the tavern door Grace halted, plunged his fist into his trouser pocket to jingle his change, and caught the eye of the potboy, who, having completed his polishing, was pushing a wretched broom listlessly across the flagstones.
“Here,” he said, producing a florin from his pocket and flinging it across in what Dewar, who followed the coin’s arc, registered as a single movement of his arm. “Something to remember me by.”
At the street corner he turned and brought his face, now grinning from ear to ear, to within an inch or two of Dewar’s. “Ha! Fancy the look on his face when he goes a changing of that, eh?”
Dewar shook his head. “Why should that be?”
“Why? For it was the snide that I gave him, don’t you see?”
He laughed again, turned his head and was gone, and Clerkenwell knew him no more.
Dewar’s behaviour, once he became aware of his companion’s disappearance, was of a very singular kind. Having witnessed the trick played upon the potboy, which seemed to him in his mild way a very cruel piece of spite, he was struck by a sudden anxiety that the coins given to him might be similarly false. For a moment this possibility affected him so forcibly that, standing alone on the street corner, with the midday crowd flowing around him, he began to shake with fear. Yet a glance at the five sovereigns, which he now took out and arranged in his palm, reassured him. Indisputably, the coins were real. Still nervous of his good fortune, he put one into his mouth and bit down on it, but no, all was as it should be. For a brief second the action reminded him of other experiments, carried out behind the counter of his grocer’s shop, and his frame shook once more. Then, in an instant, his head cleared and he realised—something that had scarcely occurred to him in the time since he and Grace had passed out of the tavern—that he was standing on a street corner in Clerkenwell, very wet now, to be sure, yet with money in his hand.
Several thoughts now crowded in upon him: that the nature of the business that Grace wished him to transact both now and in Yarmouth had altogether escaped him; that he was exceedingly hungry; and that he was now in a position to assuage at least some of the sufferings of his wife. However, for some reason that he could not properly fathom, it seemed to him that it was inadvisable for him to return home at the present moment, that there were things that he needed to establish to his inward satisfaction and that, above all, more pressing than any of these concerns, he needed food.
There was a luncheon bar ten yards down the street—a poor place, his eye told him, catering to the lowest navvies and street women, but no matter. At this moment it seemed to him the most delightful refuge on earth. In a few seconds he was inside it, pressing his fingers into the breast of his coat to feel the outline of the coins within its threadbare lining. A cup of tea or coffee? the proprietor, a gaunt man in an extremely dirty apron, proposed. No, he was half starved. He must have something to eat. What was there? Seeing the fearful, flustered look in his eye, the man regarded him suspiciously for a moment until he saw the glint of gold in his hand. Why, what—sweeping his hand above the giant urns and the metal trays kept hot by various patent apparatus—would he have? Within a further few seconds, it seemed, Dewar found himself at a table at the rear of the shop dining off a plate of fried ham and eggs, the luxury of the poor. No sooner had the last morsel passed his lips than he called for a second plateful. He ate with relish—no food he had ever tasted seemed so good—and yet he was aware, as he did so, that his thoughts were not pleasant ones, and that the figure of Mr. Grace, with his smile and his fascinating jargon, wandered through them like a ghoul. By now he had finished his second meal, and the proprietor was bearing down on him again. Would he take anything else? Let him say the word, and a dessert should be brought. But Dewar’s euphoria had altogether evaporated, to be replaced by a feeling of the deepest trepidation. He rose from his table, paid the man and strode out into the street, there to brood on the tasks to which he had committed himself.
It was by now about half past twelve—early still for Clerkenwell, much of whose business, it may be remarked, takes place in the hours of darkness. The rain had ceased; a ray or two of watery sunshine penetrated the flint-hued cloud wall to the north. All of this Dewar ignored. His duty, he knew, directed him to Clerkenwell Court and the woman to whom he had bade farewell an hour or so before. Such, though, was the pitch of Dewar’s disquiet, a paroxysm of nervousness that could only be quelled by the rapid movement of his limbs, that he began to walk not westwards towards his home but northwards across the square and to the dim and even less respectable regions beyond. With the food that he had eaten he felt better, physically, than he had for many a day, and yet inwardly his mind was altogether restless. He saw Grace everywhere—on every street corner, grinning from every omnibus, his coattails descending every area step. He moved on rapidly, taking due care of such hazards that lay in his way but, it later seemed to him, blindly, with no thought of the direction he took. In this way he traversed great areas of the northern city. He walked to King’s Cross and stared at the railway work. He wandered through Somers Town, along shy, empty streets where it appeared that no man before had ever trod. All sorts of queer things caught his attention and held him mesmerised: a street clown turning lugubrious cartwheels; a bolting cab horse that had overturned hansom and driver into the road and now lay quivering beneath the press of onlookers; a white-faced prisoner, with a grim woman pulling at his arm, led out of a house by three policemen.
All this Dewar saw, or rather did not see, for his mind was lost in ceaseless calculation. He knew little of the money world, the world of Grace and his master, but he knew sufficient to be aware that the tasks he had been commissioned to perform could not, of their nature, be legitimate. He knew, too, that should he prove unsuccessful—should some authority take an interest in his masquerading as “Mr. Roper”—his protestations of ignorance would be altogether disbelieved. At the same time, he was conscious that having taken Grace’s money, spent two shillings of it and having nothing with which to replace it, he had, perforce, incriminated himself already. Seeing that he could not go back, he could only go forward. And meanwhile what was he to tell his wife? How to explain the five sovereigns, the requisitioned suit of clothes, the “playing the gentleman” and the going to Yarmouth? On this he brooded fruitlessly, yet not altogether unhappily, as the afternoon wore on, the sky darkening by degrees as he did so, until at length, scarcely knowing how he had come there, he found himself on the summit of Primrose Hill looking down on the distant city.
A Londoner for half his forty years, he swiftly identified the various landmarks that lay before him. Far away, rising from the lower masses of buildings, there stood in
black majesty the dome of St. Paul’s. Scraps of murky vapour, softening its outlines as they flew around it, gave it the appearance of something less than solid, floating almost on a sea of penumbral brick. Nearer, amongst a myriad of spires and steeples, lay the bulk of Newgate, its countless little windows glittering out of the shadow. Nearer still Smithfield, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, the glimmer of the railway line, like an enormous artery, which spreads between Clerkenwell Road and Charterhouse Street.
The enormity of the scene, and his own insignificance in the face of it, impressed him, and he began rapidly to descend the slope, reaching decisions of which he had not formerly thought himself capable as he went. He would find some form of words that would satisfy his wife without telling her the exact truth. As for himself, he would shut his mind to all extraneous thoughts and fix his concentration on the task in hand.
Reaching the foot of the hill once more, he plunged southeastwards into more familiar territory. Dusk had fallen now, and the pavements—garishly illumined by the flaring gas lamps—were crowded with costers’ barrows and roadside shops. Here he wandered for a while, his hand tightly clutched once more in the pocket of his top-coat, in search of some inexpensive delicacy that might be a comfort to his wife. A handful of shrimps and a tin of salmon having completed his purchases, he moved off in the direction of the Farringdon Road. The house in Clerkenwell Court was quite dark. Entering his room he found it unlit, the fire extinguished in the grate; only the sound of his wife’s breathing denoted that any living thing inhabited it. Presently, although he had been silent in his movements, merely squatting by the hearth and with infinite patience attempting to rebuild the fire, his wife stirred.
“Is that you, John?”
“Yes, but don’t trouble yourself. Look, here is the fire nearly alight. And there shall be supper presently.”
“I declare I do feel that bad. As if my head would tumble off my shoulders. Supper, you say?”