The Skull and the Nightingale

by Michael Irwin

  “I am told that your daughter has an extraordinary talent for the game of chess.”

  I had made some such comment in passing, but would not have expected Crocker to remember it. Mrs. Deacon was plainly gratified to hear her daughter praised. After further conversation Charlotte was sent for and introduced to our guest. She was too shy to venture more than a few words, but proved willing to be drawn into a game.

  The chessboard was set out on a low table between Crocker, whose haunches filled most of a settee, and Charlotte, whose slender form was perched on a stool. To the eye they were comically mismatched. Mrs. Deacon and I sat side by side watching and exchanging occasional remarks. I found the scene pleasing, partly for its peacefulness, partly because it held four such contrasting individuals in unlikely equilibrium.

  Crocker was probably a more skilled player than I, but he fared as badly: a brisk defeat, which took him by surprise, was followed by a longer, more considered game in which he was again the loser. He had tried his best (as he later confirmed to me), but was delighted to be beaten, shaking his head in bewildered admiration for his opponent’s skill. Before leaving the house, he took Mrs. Deacon aside and insisted, despite her protests, that she accept five guineas to be put toward the education of her daughter.

  “You have produced a young prodigy, madam,” said he. “I feel honored to be able to offer this small gesture of further encouragement.”

  Crocker’s cheerfulness was by now entirely restored. He and my landlady parted on excellent terms, pleased with one another.

  “You are fortunate,” he told me. “Female company is a fine thing: it civilizes a man.”

  I described this interlude in my journal as an odd fragment of London life agreeable to me but quite outside my godfather’s range of interest.

  My dear Richard,

  I have read your recent letters with close attention. Your life has become interestingly turbulent. The nocturnal entertainment that you describe would seem to have been the kind of revelry I shunned as a young man. But I was glad of the chance to glimpse it through the window of your narrative. If I had been present Miss Cartwright’s excesses would have put me out of countenance, yet I found pleasure in reading about them. As to the brawl that ended the evening, it may be that a powerful nation needs to tolerate such aggression in its day-to-day doings as a resource it can turn to account in time of war.

  Mrs. Jennings I remember well. She was Arabella Thorpe when I knew her in London, a lively coquette admired and courted in fashionable circles. She married Ben Jennings, a bluff soldier, and had several children.

  The highwayman, Gardiner, whom you mention, is well known in these parts. He was born in Worcester and commenced his career within the county. Rumor has it that he has left more than one local girl with child.

  You have been frank in your communications; let me reciprocate by admitting to a certain envy as I read of your doings. Given that I myself had these desires and capacities, why was it that I could not achieve the satisfactions you have achieved? How mysterious and devious I always found the negotiations needed to bridge the great gap between the social proprieties on the one hand and shared animal nakedness on the other. Where is a young man to learn—where did you yourself learn?—the art of these transactions? Starting from mere conversational exchanges, somehow the deed is brought about, somehow the genitals are brought into conjunction. One day you must explain the transition to me. Those like Miss Cartwright would seem to offer a welcome shortcut through these complications: so much money is to be paid for so much in the way of intimate display. Here, it would appear, is a clean bargain, well understood on all sides. Such performances suggest the nature and the extent of the furtive hungers in our society—I mean among men, for I cannot imagine that a Mr. Cartwright would be in request to reveal his body to an audience of ladies.

  To particularize further: I am in some admiration at your conquest of Miss Brindley. She would surely have wanted far more than you were ready to give. Yet there was something sufficiently appealing in your advances to persuade her to accept an arrangement both precarious and temporary. I assume that a decisive element in such a case must be the woman’s gratified awareness that she has excited the desires of an eligible man. But could she be sufficiently inflamed if the man in question behaved with the respect that polite conduct dictates? Somehow animal responses must be signaled from both sides. It seems that, like your father, you have mastered the secret language that resolves this dilemma.

  I look forward to hearing more about Miss Brindley. You must let me know whether your desire for her person has been dissipated by that one night of copulation, or whether hot blood and imagination may in time revive it.

  In the course of our moonlit conversation, however, you mentioned your interest in a married woman. I would be glad to learn more, since such a pursuit would surely provide a greater challenge, and therefore shed a stronger light on the strange operations of lust.

  I remain interested in your unusual friend Mr. Crocker, and would even infer that there might be an improbable element of affinity between him and myself. The eccentric man who has resources without responsibilities is equipped to experiment with life.

  I have told you of my interest in the working of the Passions. It has traditionally been argued that a man’s character is defined by the predominance of some single Passion, such as Pride, Avarice, or Ambition. My own belief is that the determining impulse derives from a combination of passions. Thus we see in Shakespeare’s Moor a fatal blending of Pride and Jealousy. It may be that Mr. Crocker is doubly driven—it is to be hoped to less deadly effect—by his love of novelty and a need to be distracted from his physical condition.

  I look forward to hearing more from you.

  I remain, &c.

  This was by far the longest and frankest letter I had ever received from my godfather. I read it repeatedly, anxious to grasp everything that was implied. At first sight I thought it a pitiable production; Mrs. Jennings’s opinions about him were proved to be well founded: it seemed that his habitual correctness was indeed a mask for timidity. Yet here he was, so hungry to glimpse what he had been too hen-hearted to experience, that he was willing to set aside his hard-won dignity and show himself envious and inquisitive. Was it not demeaning to be the partner in prurience of such a man? Yet there was an underlying wistfulness in these admissions. I could almost find it in me to be sorry for the old fellow.

  It occurred to me that these disclosures could strengthen my position. After the years of formality my godfather and I were sharing an exchange of confidences. When I next met him, how would he be able to retreat into his distant, authoritative manner? Had he not put himself, at least to some small extent, in my power?

  Unfortunately it was easy to turn these arguments about. Would he have taken such risks unless he knew me to be inescapably a dependent? All my hopes remained vested in him: he had nothing to fear from me. Nor did I doubt that his remarks concerning the Passions were seriously intended. I had seen ample evidence of his speculative bent. His fastidious mind could readily set aside his own erotic appetites to enable disinterested speculation on the workings of the Passions at large. There could be a clue in his suggestion that such Passions might work in combination. Perhaps in his own case Lust was awkwardly allied with Circumspection, or—as he had shrewdly hinted concerning Crocker—with a growing awareness of his own mortality.

  The worst of his letter was his eager sniffing after an adulterous affair. How had the old hound picked up so faint a scent? I would need to head him off.

  My dear Godfather,

  Nothing is more expressive of the monstrous energy of London than the continuous process of building and unbuilding. Construction, of course, is everywhere visible, perhaps most admirably in the vicinity of Grosvenor Square and Berkeley Square, where I often pause to watch the workmen at their task. The phenomenon I have called “unbuilding” I had wi
tnessed only in its consequences until yesterday, when by chance I saw it in action.

  I was walking northward from Leicester Fields, near the district of St. Giles, when I heard, somewhere to my right, a loud rumbling, followed by a more general commotion of shouting and screaming. Hurrying in the direction of the noise, I turned a corner and saw a remarkable sight: an old house, four stories high, in the very process of collapse. There was a widening crack almost from top to bottom. Part of the upper front wall had already fallen and smashed to pieces, producing the sound I had heard. Even as I watched, another great slab of brickwork broke away and came thundering down to the cobbles, raising a cloud of dust, as the spectators leaped back, shrieking. The portion of roof above the lost wall then sagged and crumbled, spewing out a shower of splintering tiles.

  The din from this avalanche gradually subsided. When the air cleared somewhat we could see the rooms of the upper stories thrown open to view, with the floors sloping toward us and broken staircases leading out into vacancy. At intervals a bed, a table, or a chair would slither forward and drop onto the broken brickwork piled below.

  One could judge from the appearance of the interior that this was a building in a wretched state of dirt and disrepair, destined to founder. I learned from those around me that it was the third house in the district to fall this year. This particular street is one of the last resorts of the destitute, and should no doubt be razed in its entirety in the interests of public safety, but the power and will to take such radical measures seem to be lacking. In consequence one sees many houses such as this dying from old age and decrepitude, the crooked window frames sustained by wedges and the broken panes stopped up with rags.

  I was told that on this occasion, by good fortune, those within had seen or felt the early signs of disintegration and saved their lives by rushing out before the walls began to crack. In other such cases there have been deaths, particularly among small children and the old. I went on my way somewhat discomposed. Such a collapse seems to take on emblematic force in this time of changing beliefs and toppling ministries.

  It also serves as a reminder of the provisional nature of all buildings. It comes naturally to us to accept our houses as so many settled facts of existence, when they are truly no more than accumulations of convention and contrivance. We glue our bricks together with mortar, nail down slices of tree trunk for a floor, build into our walls brittle sheets of glass, to admit light but shut out wind and rain. Then we have curtains to exclude the very light that the glass admits, and candles or lamps to restore the light that has been excluded. It is perhaps less wonderful that some of these structures should collapse than that the great majority remain stoutly upright and protect us from wind and weather.

  When Crocker’s platoon of inebriates pushed down his wall, it appeared that vibration might have been the crucial element in their success. Might it not be the case that the seemingly solid streets of London are so abused by continual traffic as on occasion to impart an accumulating tremor sufficient to unsettle foundations from below?

  I have received your long letter and studied it with care. It is gratifying to me that some of my anecdotes have stirred your interest. You may look to hear more in subsequent communications. Your hint that “hot blood and imagination” might revive my flagging desire for Miss Brindley’s person has already proved prophetic. Those lively partners have once more been working in collaboration. When I was physically replenished my mind quickly generated a strategy, which I will later describe to you, for recuperating the lady in my eyes.

  The other campaign to which you distantly allude will proceed but slowly, if it proceeds at all.

  You broached a number of personal and general issues of great interest to me. Aware of my youth and inexperience, I will not presume to comment upon them at this early stage; but I shall be returning to them in subsequent letters.

  Yours, &c.

  I was relieved to have completed this composition: several days had elapsed since I had heard from my godfather, and a reply seemed necessary. Lacking suitable subject matter, I had invented the falling house, having occasionally, like most Londoners, seen the aftermath of such a collapse. Once more I had secured myself a respite: but I knew that my next letter would have to provide livelier reading. My hope was that the masquerade at Vauxhall would supply what I needed, particularly given that Kitty was to be present.

  There was another matter that I had deliberately omitted to mention: namely an entirely unexpected visit from Mr. Quentin. I had forgotten his existence, and recalled only when he was in front of me the likely reason for his journey to London.

  He proved an awkward guest, refusing refreshment and offering no clue as to the motive for his visit. His manner was nervous, his dark eyes constantly glancing about the room, as though he feared that there might be a spy in hiding in a cupboard or behind a chair. When I asked about Mrs. Quentin’s dental treatment, he shook his head gloomily.

  “It has been a protracted business,” he said. “Yes, and a painful business. The teeth were worn and brittle, Mr. Fenwick. Several of them broke—broke in the course of extraction, making it hard to remove the root. My wife was distressed—greatly distressed. She bled profusely. Her mouth is much swollen, but we are told that it will settle—gradually settle. Meanwhile she is reduced to a liquid diet until she has sufficiently recovered to allow for the provision of artificial teeth.”

  Not greatly exhilarated by this information, I said what I could to express sympathy and convey good wishes. For some time thereafter we continued to make conversation of a strained and desultory kind. Having disposed of his wife’s misfortunes, Mr. Quentin seemed to have little more to say. If I asked a question he offered no more than a brief reply. Only rarely did he volunteer a remark of his own; the several silences between us being such as to make me think either that he was about to announce his departure or that there was some topic he secretly wished to raise—as, for example, when a man means to ask for a loan but cannot nerve himself to blurt out his request. If that had indeed been the case, I would gladly have offered him the loan—or a gift, for that matter—to be rid of his oppressive company.

  When eventually my improbable guest did take his leave, suitable courtesies were of course exchanged, but they rang hollow. The seemingly purposeless visit could not but seem strange to me, and it was plain that Quentin knew it.

  Later I wondered whether he had been sent by Mr. Gilbert himself to see me in my quarters and report on anything exceptionable. But even if he had, there was nothing to fear: I had been as sober and courteous as my godfather could have wished. It would be interesting to see whether word of this encounter reached Mr. Gilbert.

  I soon received a more welcome visitor in the shape of Matt Cullen, newly returned from Worcestershire. I sent out for wine, Mrs. Deacon had a meal cooked for us, and Matt and I sat talking till late in the night. I was immediately in better heart merely for seeing him. As always, there was something in his comfortable manner, and habitual half smile, that made life in general seem a more lighthearted affair. He spoke cheerfully even about his father’s gout, although it became clear that the attack had been severe, and that Matt himself had been at pains to provide necessary comfort and assistance.

  When I told him how matters now stood between myself and Mr. Gilbert, he listened intently, even while grinning as though there were something droll about the entire situation. I showed him my godfather’s recent letter, drawing attention to the curiosity expressed concerning Sarah. Matt sat musing for some few moments and then chuckled aloud.

  “You find yourself in a strange pickle, Master Fenwick,” said he. “I heard Mr. Gilbert’s name mentioned several times in Malvern, and always to the same effect. It seems that his influence has extended throughout the county. He has earned the respect conferred on those who are owed money. Some of our best-known landowners are said to be in his debt. Whether he is liked, I cannot say, but he is feared. This
is a patron well worth pleasing, Dick—even at the price of kissing his withered arse.”

  “I could wish that that was the extent of the problem,” I said. “He’s a dainty old fellow: I’d as lief kiss his arse as yours. The case is more serious. I ask myself whether my godfather may not be corrupting me.”

  “Is he not asking you to enjoy the very pleasures you prefer?”

  “Yes, but he now goes further. He transgresses boundaries. You know that my feeling toward Sarah is a solemn matter. If I pursue her it will be in deadly earnest. I cannot lay the matter open for my godfather’s entertainment.”

  “Have you not already done so?”

  “I have hinted—no more. But I seem to have whetted his appetite.”

  “You should whet it further. In that direction lies prosperity.”

  “Am I to be allowed no life of my own? Am I to be my godfather’s performing dog?”

  “You put the case prejudicially,” said Matt. “But why not? Provided that the performance guarantees you a sufficiently fat lamb chop.”

  How seriously he was speaking it was hard to judge: we had both drunk well.

  “Cullen,” I said, “you are a man without principles.”

  “I have numerous principles. But I resort to them only in emergencies, for fear I should wear them out.”

  When I told him how Gilbert had warned me against him, he feigned offense.

  “Here I am, pleading his cause. This is a dotard blind to true merit.”

  “Then my case is hopeless,” said I.

  Chapter 10

  I called on Tom Crocker to see what progress he had made in furnishing his house. He and Francis Pike were engaged in unpacking a number of objects purchased at an auction. These were miscellaneous goods indeed, including a large mirror, a tiger skin, a fat smiling Buddha (purchased, said Crocker, because it reminded him of himself ), and a huge carving in dark wood of a snarling wild boar. Crocker expressed himself particularly pleased with this latter purchase, which he said he proposed to use as a seat. When with some effort he straddled it, animal and rider did indeed look oddly comfortable together.