Kingdom Swann: The Story of a Photographer

by Gibson, Miles

  This state of affairs continued until Alice met with her accident. It was early one Tuesday morning. The house was quiet. Swann had gone to the studio to work on a series of fantasy views involving the Queen of Sheba. Ethel was in the kitchen with a tin of Monkey polish. Alice had found the Electric Atom and managed to haul the machine upstairs ready to vacuum the bedroom carpets.

  It might have been a frayed flex or a fault in the primitive engine. No one knew what caused the disaster. The explosion, when it came, set fire to the cleaner and gave Alice such a nasty shock that she fell to the floor in a shower of sparks. Her boot buckles glowed and her petticoats smouldered. Her long hair crackled like kindling.

  When Ethel reached the scene she thought Alice had died from spontaneous combustion, overheated and burst into flames. It could happen to anyone. Your vital organs caught alight and melted you inside out. There was no warning. It was like being hit by a thunderbolt.

  She looked at the corpse on the carpet, wrapped in a pall of Atomic smoke and she didn’t know what to do for the best. So she ran all the way to the studio and dragged Kingdom Swann from his work.

  ‘Alice! Alice!’ she shouted. ‘Alice is on fire!’

  Swann hurried back to Golden Square. When he reached the scene of the accident the corpse was sitting in a corner of the room, moaning and sucking her fingers. There was nothing left of the vacuum cleaner but a bad smell and a charred box. They opened the window and made Alice comfortable on the bed.

  ‘You’re a silly, stubborn, old bodger!’ roared Swann as soon as he had surveyed the damage.

  ‘I did it for you, Mr Swann,’ whimpered Alice, pulling her fingers from her mouth. ‘I wanted to make you happy.’ His anger took her by surprise. She didn’t deserve a scolding. She felt she had earned some sympathy.

  ‘You nearly killed yourself!’ he shouted.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alice.

  ‘Is that what you wanted to do for me?’

  ‘No,’ said Alice and glared at Ethel who stood there smirking with satisfaction.

  ‘I would rather we were living in filth than we found ourselves fully laundered and dead,’ said Swann.

  Alice nodded miserably. She hadn’t been badly injured but her eyebrows were scorched and her hands so blistered that the doctor was called to wrap them in goose fat and bandages.

  For a long time Alice was helpless and Ethel became her nurse. The girl sponged her face and scrubbed her teeth and fed her meals from a spoon. She combed her hair and tied her shoes and buttoned her into her underclothes. Alice complained but, in truth, she enjoyed the attention.

  When her hands, at last, healed they had grown so soft and white that, to everyone’s great relief, she took care not to callous them again. And, since she no longer placed any trust in mechanical cleaning machines, she seemed content to do nothing.

  The dust settled.

  ‘You’re a lucky man,’ said Cromwell Marsh, ‘to be living with a pair of such fine women. If it wasn’t for Mrs Marsh, may God keep her hale and hearty, I’d be inclined to envy you Alice.’ And his eyes glowed unusually bright.

  ‘I’m living content,’ admitted Swann. ‘I’ve no cause for complaint.’

  He was wrong.

  28

  He was sitting in the drawing room one evening, digesting a slice of veal and ham pie, when he noticed a strange clot of darkness trapped beneath a bonheur-du-jour. He lowered the newspaper from his face and stared at this murky ectoplasm and, as he watched, he thought it moved. It must be a trick of the light. He was going mad. He was going blind. His eyes had been hurt by the years of burning magnesium wire. He left his chair and crept towards the apparition and, as he approached, it seemed to change shape, grow arms and legs and a set of large, brown eyes.

  Swann sprang back in alarm. It was an idiot-faced boy, no more than six years old, dressed in a woman’s cotton chemise. They stared at each other in silence, both bewildered by the encounter. The old man pulled on his beard like a bell rope. The child took comfort by sucking its thumb.

  Once Swann had recovered from the shock of this sullen intruder, and was satisfied that it wasn’t likely to scratch or bite, he began to feel that perhaps it should give him an explanation. Who was it, by thunder, and by what odd sequence of events did it find itself in his room? He opened his mouth and shut it again. He didn’t know how to address a child.

  He tried a smile, half-closed his eyes and bared his teeth, but it made not the slightest impression. The child sat, chewing its thumb and blinking at Swann with large, suspicious eyes. Finally he rang for Ethel.

  ‘Please sir, with your permission, this one here is Billy,’ said Ethel, looking very flustered as she hurried into the room. She fished the child from its hiding place and lifted it into her arms. ‘I had to bring him along, sir, since the old one can’t care for him proper. He’ll be no trouble and I’ve got him sleeping with me and Alice until his chest is stronger.’

  ‘What’s wrong with his chest?’ enquired Swann, finding the courage to poke at the child with his finger.

  ‘He suffers from the damp, sir,’ said Ethel. She pulled the chemise around the child’s throat and gently chucked his chin.

  ‘And what happened to his clothes?’ said Swann. He accepted the creature now as one of the clothes-peg family, although with its hair combed down and the crust of filth gone from its face, it was changed beyond recognition.

  ‘Begging your pardon, sir, his clothes fell to bits when we washed him so Alice lent him a vest.’

  At that moment the child pulled the thumb from its mouth, cocked its face flirtatiously at Swann and gave the most enchanting smile.

  ‘Poor little bugger!’ grinned Kingdom Swann. ‘Why, he looks so small he must be half-starved.’

  ‘Oh, he don’t eat much,’ said Ethel quickly. ‘He’s not used to food – so he’ll be no trouble on that account. Can I have him stay, sir, until his chest is mended?’

  ‘You keep him here and fatten him,’ said Swann, ‘and tomorrow, you must buy him a suit of clothes.’

  Ethel was so happy that she burst into tears and spirited the child away for a cup of something in the kitchen.

  Swann settled back in his chair. He didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t like the idea of having children loose in the house, he was far too old to learn to like them, but the boy was here and couldn’t be sent back into the slums. Swann remembered the journey he had made with Ethel, the stinking maze of murderous alleys, the smell in that dreadful, crowded room. He supposed a small boy would present no trouble. As far as he could determine, the average boy had a talent for nothing much more than farting, scratching and picking the nose. But how did you look after one? Ask a woman. Leave the affair to Ethel and Alice.

  It was several days before he told Cromwell Marsh about the unlikely visitor. ‘He’s an ugly little squab,’ said Swann. ‘I can’t say I care for the look of him.’

  ‘A child can’t be judged by no physiognomy,’ laughed Marsh, amused by the old man’s predicament. He thought it would do him the power of good to have a child about the house. ‘I’ve known some horrible crawlers grow into splendid, big women. Besides, no matter how queer or demented they looks, you soon grows very fond of ’em.’

  ‘But when do they learn to talk?’ complained Swann. ‘This one must be six years old and doesn’t so much as blow a bubble.’

  ‘Well, that must depend on the size of the infant’s brain and the kinds of food you gives it,’ said Marsh. ‘It’s how you stuffs ’em makes all the difference. Mrs Marsh was most pernickety on the question of wholesome and healthy meals and we was blessed with seven children, if you count the three we lost to the pox.’

  ‘And what do you suggest?’

  ‘Plenty of white meat. Boiled chicken. Rabbit. Tripe and onions. Calf’s foot jelly,’ said Marsh, ticking them off on his fingers.

  ‘I’ll tell Alice to place an order with the butcher.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you know the whereabouts of the fa
ther?’ said Marsh, after a while.

  ‘I never heard speak of one,’ said Swann.

  ‘And the mother?’

  ‘Now there’s a curiosity,’ said Swann. ‘The one they call their mother looks too old to bear infants.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Marsh thoughtfully.

  ‘She’s a bundle of rag and bones.’

  ‘Well, children, in my experience, don’t grow from seed potatoes,’ said Cromwell Marsh with a grin.

  ‘Nothing would surprise me,’ said Swann.

  In the weeks that followed Billy’s arrival Ethel and Alice did everything they could to prevent the child from crossing their master’s path. He was kept shut away in the kitchen and yet, whenever he managed to escape, Swann seemed delighted to see him. The child was baffled by all the attention but quickly learned that the old man’s pockets were loaded with packets of aniseed balls.

  And then, one night, there were two of them. The second was even smaller and more downcast than the original. It had ginger hair and a squint. Billy led him to the big man’s pockets where they both fished in silence for aniseed.

  ‘This one here is Wilfred, sir, who we had to bring to stay since he pines so hard for his brother, Billy,’ explained Ethel, when called upon for assistance.

  ‘Where will you keep him?’ said Swann, peering down at the child. Wilfred grew bashful and squirmed and pretended to study his feet.

  ‘He’ll sleep with me and Alice, sir,’ she said hopefully. ‘There’s plenty of room if we squeeze together.’

  Swann frowned. ‘It doesn’t sound entirely decent,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem altogether hygienic.’

  ‘We’ll wash him regular, sir, and make sure he don’t wet the sheets,’ said Ethel anxiously, pulling Wilfred towards her legs and wrapping his head in her skirt. The child gave a yelp and the aniseed ball fell out of its mouth. The sugar pill rolled across the carpet gathering crumbs and dust.

  ‘No,’ said Swann firmly, shaking his head. ‘It’s time we took up another bed that’s a suitable size for infants.’

  Ethel felt so relieved she threw her arms around Kingdom Swann and pushed a kiss through his beard.

  Swann soon accepted Wilfred as easily as he’d taken to Billy and ordered new clothes and a greater supply of calf’s foot jelly.

  A month later there were three of them. The two small boys had been joined by a girl no more than four years old. Her name was Grace. She was found in the dining room, sitting behind a scuttle of coals. Her arms and legs were covered in sores and most of her teeth were missing. She looked very similar to her mother.

  ‘She ain’t catching,’ said Ethel, ‘and she’s ever so good-hearted. It seemed too cruel to keep her away from her little brothers since they’ve always been so attached.’

  ‘But she needs attention,’ protested Swann, as he looked at the rash of sores. ‘This poor child needs a doctor.’

  He would have said more but Ethel had gone. She ran for her coat and hat and in less than half an hour a doctor had been summoned to examine the child. He painted the sores with disinfectant, prescribed fresh greens and regular fruit and told Swann to put the patient to bed. She couldn’t sleep with the others so they gave her a room of her own in the attic.

  By the end of the summer there were four children in the house. The fourth was called George and came to stay because he was missing his sister.

  ‘She was like a mother to him, sir, and he won’t touch his food since she’s been missing.’

  He was a sad little creature with a mournful face and a nose as bent as a cashew nut. He was wearing a second-hand birthday frock and had a ribbon in his hair.

  ‘What’s the time, mister?’ he said, when Swann bent down to admire his frock.

  ‘He talks!’ said Swann drawing back in astonishment.

  ‘Well, he does and he doesn’t, sir,’ said Ethel, rather perplexed. ‘I suppose he talks, in a manner of speaking, but them are the only words he learned.’

  ‘What’s the time, mister?’ said George.

  Swann found he couldn’t resist him.

  Ethel and Alice scrubbed the children and dressed them and kept them as neat as dolls. But they were a strange crowd with their lopsided faces and stunted limbs. They clustered in corners, shocking and silent, staring at Swann in fascination, while he for his part took to looking through cupboards and boxes, searching for others from the tribe who might yet be waiting, undiscovered.

  29

  The last child home was little Bertie. He was three years old and blessed with a face like a small bull-terrier. He arrived one night, howling with cold and wrapped in the arms of the mother. Alice let the old woman into the kitchen and sat her down to warm in front of the Livingstone range. She had been evicted from her room in Heaven’s Yard since, without her team of peg-doll makers, she couldn’t afford to pay the rent. It was no surprise to Swann.

  They gave her the room with the Chinese curtains, which she took without a word of protest and, once she’d been washed and fitted with one of Ethel’s clean frocks, they led her back to the kitchen for a hot plate of kidney and bacon.

  It was then that Swann discovered she was far less decrepit than he had supposed and might have passed for handsome had she but owned a set of teeth. She was a small woman in her late forties with a hollow face and shrunken jaws. It was only her mouth, her wild hair and the noises she made as she sucked at her food, that made her seem so demented.

  For the first few days she did nothing but lie in her bed, groaning and grinding her gums, hoping to win Swann’s sympathy by feigning a close acquaintance with death. But then, since no one threatened her, she soon found her health completely restored and spent all her time in a kitchen chair, taking tea and biscuits with Alice.

  The family flourished in its new home and Swann learned to live with the infestation of children. It was a big house and he tried to keep to his own private quarters. But he found there were children everywhere. They piddled in his Sunday best boots, puked on his carpets and picked the paper from the walls. They trapped themselves in his wardrobe and crawled beneath his bed. They wedged themselves up chimneys and ate the coals in the grates.

  When these things happened he called for Alice who scolded Ethel who tried to keep order by banging skulls with a clothes brush.

  ‘They don’t have enough to occupy ’em,’ Alice warned him. ‘They need a regular thrashing. A leather slipper night and morning.’

  ‘It sounds rather harsh,’ said Swann.

  ‘They appreciate the security when you give it to ’em regular,’ said Alice.

  ‘Why aren’t they at their lessons?’ said Swann.

  ‘Lessons?’ said Alice, looking alarmed.

  ‘Reading, writing and arithmetic,’ chanted Swann. ‘Geography, history and music. Poetry, painting and literature. Latin and Greek. Education. Lessons for life.’

  Alice frowned and shook her head. ‘I don’t know much about learning,’ she said suspiciously. ‘I keep the account books nice and neat and that’s enough for me. I never had no complaints. And I never met a butcher yet who spoke to me in Latin. If you want to know about education I think you’ll have to ask Ethel.’

  ‘They can’t be allowed to grow up wild,’ grumbled Swann, ‘or we’ll find them into all kinds of mischief.’

  ‘I’m sure I do my best to keep them from under your feet,’ said Alice, looking wounded.

  ‘I caught Wilfred eating a bag of buttons,’ said Swann gravely. ‘And when I tried to open his mouth the little bugger bit me.’

  ‘A good thrashing night and morning. That’s my prescription,’ said Alice stubbornly. ‘You can’t have a better lesson for life.’

  Swann now felt responsible for his newly adopted family. It was a burden at his time of life. It wasn’t enough, as he’d fondly supposed, merely to feed and clothe them. He’d been given the task of taming them. He must educate this barbarous tribe and lend it some sense of purpose. He could organise drawing lessons and tutor them
in the rudiments of anatomy and perspective. But he lacked the patience or skill to teach them to read and write.

  After brooding on this problem for several days he decided he should recruit a properly qualified governess. An energetic, modern girl with a general knowledge of the arts. If he couldn’t drive the children to school then the school would be brought to them.

  And then, one evening, Swann came home to the smell of paint and hot fish glue. When he followed his nose he found the Spooners at the scullery table, putting together clothes-peg dolls.

  ‘What’s happening here?’ he roared.

  ‘They’re making their dolls, sir,’ said Ethel, looking startled as he thundered into the room. She must have forgotten the time and his supper wasn’t ready.

  ‘What dolls?’ demanded Swann, charging forward and snagging a clothes-line with his head. ‘Dolls? What are they planning to do with dolls?’

  ‘Little George goes out to sell them,’ said Alice. ‘He shows a natural gift for it.’

  ‘You send him out on the street?’ shouted Swann, trying to pull himself free from the line and trampling a basket of clothes-pegs. ‘A child of mine sent out walking the streets!’ He had rescued these people from poverty and now, here they were in his scullery, rebuilding the room they had shared in the back of Heaven’s Yard!

  ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said Ethel proudly.

  ‘We send him out along Regent Street,’ said Alice, ‘when the weather permits and he comes home by way of Bond Street. When the weather is nasty he goes down as far as Oxford Street and shelters under Selfridges.’

  ‘Folks can’t resist him,’ said Ethel.

  ‘They think he’s simple,’ said Alice.

  ‘He is simple,’ said Ethel.

  ‘But it don’t stop him counting his coppers,’ said Alice.