The Skull and the Nightingale

by Michael Irwin

  At the bedroom window I watched and listened to the great downpour. The rain fell vertically and with such force as to shut out the view across our narrow street. It drummed on the roof above me and sent water streaming down the panes so thickly that soon I could scarcely see out at all. Lightning flashed and flashed again, and peal upon peal of thunder broke out, with the crack of a cannon followed by a rumbling echo. I could fancy the whole house shook. In the space of a few minutes the air had become noticeably cooler, and there crept into the house through chinks or chimneys the delicious clean scent of this liquor from the skies.

  Exhilarated beyond description, I suddenly stripped off coat and wig, clattered down two flights of stairs, and ran out into the street in my shirtsleeves. By now, indeed, it could hardly be called a street, for a dark stream filled the whole breadth of it from wall to wall and was swirling away down the slope. In seconds my garments were saturated, clinging to my body, and the water was over my ankles, filling my shoes. I cared not at all, and laughed at the next flash of lightning in a kind of crazed exaltation. I had an image in my mind of this great flood purging the whole filthy city, laying the dust, sluicing away the accumulations of dirt, decay, and stench. It was a joy to breathe the fresh, cooled air.

  Half blinded by the rain, I waded my way to the end of the street, where it joined Tanner Hill, and clutched at a post to hold myself upright. What had become the Tanner Hill river—to which the Cathcart Street stream was but a tributary—was flowing away in a torrent destined, round a dozen corners and curves, to pour into the Thames.

  I had thought myself the only human being abroad in the storm, but just beyond the corner I saw a ragged old man, perhaps a beggar, standing with closed eyes, folded arms, and a contented smile, delighting to be washed by the rain. As thunder pealed again I greeted my fellow idiot, shook his hand, and on the cheerful impulse of the moment forced two fingers into my soaking pocket to find a guinea for him. He cackled in wonder at the acquisition, as though it had been a gift from the heavens—which in a sense it was.

  With some little difficulty I splashed my way back to the house against the stream, losing a shoe along the way. Only when I reached the front door did I realize that I had left my keys upstairs. Mrs. Deacon answered my knock, plainly astonished that anyone should call in the midst of such a storm, and still more astonished to see her tenant in such a plight. She looked at me doubtfully as I stepped into the hall, and seemed at a loss as to what to say. But as I smeared the water from my face with the back of a hand I began to laugh, and I heard her laugh, too, as she hurried away to fetch me a towel.

  Chapter 14

  The following morning the sky was clear, but gutters and kennels were still flowing fast, and great ponds of water lay in the streets. Donning stout boots, I walked down to the Strand, slithering on the wet stones. A few shop signs had come crashing down in the storm and were lying amid broken bricks, but those in place were legible once more, washed clean by the rain. Shops and stalls were doing a lively trade and the whole town seemed refreshed.

  Outside the Pumpkin, in Tyler Street, I was hailed by Nick Horn, comically resplendent in scarlet coat and embroidered waistcoat, and brandishing a cane.

  “To judge from your grimace,” he said, “you think me overdressed.”

  “I do. Your shoes will be sodden and your clothes splashed with mud.”

  “No matter,” said Nick. “I am bound for the park. At last a gentleman can wear a little finery without sweating like a bricklayer. So I play the popinjay for once, and preen a little.”

  He postponed his parading, however, till we had taken coffee.

  “We have not spoken since the masquerade,” said he. “Such an interval should spawn two hours of gossip, but the damnable heat so reduced us that nothing has happened: we have all gone to ground.”

  “Have you seen Latimer?”

  “Only once; but thereabouts lies a crumb of news. Miss Page has rejected him, which does not surprise me—but in favor of Mr. Crocker, which does. She must esteem the size of that gentleman’s fortune more than she dreads the weight of his body.”

  “Perhaps she finds Mr. Crocker more interesting company.”

  “That may be: Latimer has turned respectable, and respectability makes a man dull. I believe Miss Page’s friend Kitty is a lady in whom you take an interest?”

  “I do—a lively interest.”

  “Did you see her in The Relapse?”

  “I did not.”

  “A sad omission. Take my word, Dick, this was something out of the common run. If the damned heat had not kept people away, she would by now be the toast of London.”

  A day later I myself visited St. James’s Park. It had recovered its freshness and color with remarkable speed and was again a place of aristocratic resort. To stroll along its paths was to engage in a kind of dance, the elegant pedestrians moving at a measured pace, pausing to nod to an acquaintance or stopping to speak to a friend. There was always the chance, of course, of an unexpected social encounter. On this occasion I saw, with a sense of shock, that Mr. and Mrs. Ogden were approaching me, he heavy in black, she graceful in blue and white. Here was a chance that I had at all costs to seize. They had plainly seen me and were calculating whether it would be courtesy enough to pass by with no more than a formal acknowledgment. I stepped into their path, bowed, and greeted them. Wary courtesies were exchanged. Ogden was dour, but I flattered myself that there was a hint of amusement in Sarah’s response. For the moment my only recourse was courteous affability.

  I asked Mr. Ogden about the progress of Crocker’s house.

  “I was last there two days ago,” he said. “The renovation is all but complete.”

  I asked Mrs. Ogden whether she had seen the house. She said that she had not, but that she hoped one day to do so.

  I observed to Mr. Ogden that it seemed to me interesting and unusual that through dealing in diamonds he had found a second vocation.

  “It is perhaps unusual,” said Ogden. “I know of no other such case. To me the transition seemed a natural one.”

  I smilingly asked Mrs. Ogden whether her husband had applied his talents to their own home. She replied that he had, and to distinctive effect.

  Turning once more to Mr. Ogden, I inquired whether his work had perhaps derived from, or led him to, a study of the science of optics.

  “My knowledge of that subject is superficial. I deal in practicalities.”

  “You will have surely visited Greenwich.”

  “On several occasions.”

  During these drab exchanges I was observing both husband and wife. My opinion of Ogden was confirmed: the man was impermeable. His eyes communicated nothing and his inexpressive face could have been made of clay. He spoke tonelessly, seeming to have no ear for conversation, no taste for pleasantry or humor: I could not imagine him smiling. His responses had a deadening effect, in that he disposed of ideas rather than developing them. It might be that he had little time for social exchanges in general or that he found me personally uninteresting—a possibility I resented. I stifled an impulse to strike him a blow to the guts that would double him over and compel him to take me seriously.

  If Ogden was inscrutable, his wife was not: the shifting expressions on her face provided a commentary upon our scanty verbal gestures. From old acquaintanceship I knew how to read them. She was by turns amused, mocking, or indulgent in her responses to her husband’s remarks, but I got no sense of fondness. How could this mercurial woman endure the company of so sluggish a man?

  Nevertheless I was losing heart as our little conference began to flag. It seemed that I would gain no ground. Help came from an unexpected quarter: a smiling Mrs. Kinsey appeared and greeted me most warmly. Ogden immediately made an excuse for departure, claiming that he had a meeting to attend, and I was left with Sarah and her aunt.

  This unexpected situation might have pro
duced embarrassment had not Mrs. Kinsey’s cheerfulness carried all before it. She was as talkative as Ogden had been taciturn, falling into a vein of raillery I had quite forgotten, although it had been familiar to me as a boy:

  “Here’s a strange situation. When did we three last talk together? It must have been two years ago—two years and more—in our house in Pitman Street. But when did we last talk in the open air? There’s a question for you. I say, not since we all lived in York and were walking by the river one Sunday afternoon, with a great wind blowing. You had a cheerful face, Mr. Fenwick, because you were soon to leave for the university; and, Sarah, yours was as long, for the same reason.”

  Sarah made to interpose, but her aunt was scampering in a new direction:

  “We were interrupted—our conversation was interrupted. Who was it now? I can see his yellow face—that dreary fellow who worked at the cathedral.”

  “Surely not the archbishop?” suggested Sarah.

  “No, no, you foolish girl. Perhaps a canon or deacon or some such thing. A yellow face and a big lower lip.”

  “Mr. Donaldson!” cried Sarah.

  “Of course,” said I. “It comes back to me. The wind blew his wig away, and I had to retrieve it.”

  We were all three laughing, attracting curious glances from the passersby.

  “And to see the two of you now—” exclaimed Mrs. Kinsey. “Nay, to see the three of us, passing for elegant gentlefolk. But I know better!”

  “My dear aunt, you are talking nonsense,” said Sarah. “Here is Mr. Fenwick with a frilled shirt, a velvet jacket, and a sword—every inch a London gentleman.”

  “And here you see Mrs. Ogden,” said I, “a picture of elegance in her white dress and blue cloak. Kings would fall at her feet.”

  “They would do so in vain,” said Sarah, “because Mr. Ogden would remove them.”

  She and her aunt both laughed at this.

  “Mr. Ogden would protect you to the last,” said Mrs. Kinsey.

  “Unless he were in Amsterdam, or immersed in one of his projects.”

  Again the two laughed with shared understanding, while I smiled politely.

  We conversed a little longer, in this same affable spirit, until I broke off, on the pretext that I, too, had an appointment. The chance meeting had gone so well that I wished to make the most of it by leaving on warm terms. Sarah gave me a parting glance of such friendliness as almost to confuse me.

  I strode away elated. Mrs. Kinsey’s cheerful garrulity had instantly permitted me the very thing I had wished for, an amicable encounter with Sarah. We had briefly talked just in the old way. Surely I had regained much of the ground lost at our last meeting? She had even made a disparaging remark at her husband’s expense. A lighthearted one, certainly, but could she have made any such comment in my presence without thinking how it might be construed—especially given that I had just spent ten minutes in the man’s torpid company?

  Strangely Mrs. Kinsey’s random reference to that autumn day in York had brought to life some pleasant recollections that I had long suppressed. Sarah and I had a shared past out of which, for good or ill, my present character had grown. I needed to be close to her again. Mr. Gilbert’s promptings were neither here nor there.

  My dear Godfather,

  It is some little time since the town was purged of its accumulated dust and dirt by a thunderstorm of Old Testament ferocity. I can breathe deep once more, and my energy returns. I look about me with restored curiosity. As I came out of Grey’s Coffee House this morning I found myself staring at a chimney boy across the street. He was waiting for his master, as I assumed, and seemed listlessly unaware of his surroundings. I could study him without impertinence, as Mr. Yardley might study a beetle. He was so blackened by his labors, from head to foot, that I found it difficult to construe him, even when I crossed the road to examine him more closely. I took him to be eight or nine years of age, but he might have been a stunted twelve-year-old. One sleeve of his soot-caked shirt had been torn away, revealing great calluses on his elbow. I spoke to him, and his eyes turned toward me, white in his black face, but he said nothing. When I offered him a shilling he seized it and hid it in his clothing, but still neither spoke nor smiled. The poor child seemed less alert and intelligent than some dogs I have known, hardly more than a living flue brush. As I left him his master appeared. No doubt within a few minutes the boy would once more have been embedded in stifling soot. I was haunted by thoughts of him for the rest of the day. How long can this creature have to live? What pleasures, if any, will those few years offer?

  I saw Crocker some weeks ago, but found him so distressed by the heat that I resolved not to call again until he had had ample time to recover his spirits. Within a week of the change in the weather I was pleased to receive a note from him:

  Mr. Thomas Crocker is surprised, if not downright offended, to have seen nothing lately of Mr. Richard Fenwick. A visit from that gentleman tomorrow afternoon would go some way toward stemming the rising tide of Mr. Crocker’s resentment.

  When I duly made my way to Wyvern Street, I found Crocker at ease once more, resplendently huge in a white silk shirt.

  “When last you saw me,” said he, “I was laid low—a pitiful sight.”

  He adopted the declamatory mode:

  “Thus some vast whale, once monarch of the seas,

  Lies meanly sprawled on Norway’s barren shore,

  In fatal exile from the element

  That lent him life and power.”

  “But now you are afloat once more?”

  “More than that: I am wallowing and spouting. The builders have gone, and you see me master of a completed house.”

  Certainly much had been done since my last visit. In my experience a handsome face and graceful appearance will often disguise a commonplace disposition. Crocker may be physically an oddity, but in his home an intriguing personality is everywhere displayed, refracted into furnishings and paintings, colors and patterns. I have seen London houses designed to display, like a museum, the owner’s numerous possessions; by contrast Crocker has devised a comfortable space to inhabit. Ornaments and pictures are few but—to my untrained eye—of high quality. The walls are pale and plain, curtains and hangings strongly colored. Sunlight pours in through tall windows to bring everything within to shining life. This is the brightest, least cluttered house I have visited in London.

  I asked Crocker what had become of the Hogarth portraits.

  “A gentleman should not seem self-concerned,” he said. “I have concluded that they are a private joke, and have accordingly banished them upstairs.”

  When I remarked upon the light, he responded eagerly.

  “Being prone to melancholy, I dislike gloom of all kinds and can feel hemmed in by curtains and shadows. Your acquaintance Mr. Ogden was of great service to me. He has a keen awareness of the times and angles at which light will enter this or that aperture, and the skill to transmit it onward from room to room, by means of archways, internal windows, and artfully placed mirrors.”

  Unwilling as I was to hear the man praised, I could not but assent to Crocker’s opinion concerning his achievement here. I tried to learn more.

  “Did he talk to you about his strange craft?”

  “I could scarcely wring a sentence from him on any topic but the task in hand,” said Crocker. “He’s a queer slab of humanity, quite lost in his work. He paces the floors, squints round corners, calculates angles . . . But he can be insistent: he had me enlarge a window, put in a skylight, and shift my chandeliers. In every case his advice was justified by the result. As a gesture of thanks, I not only paid his bill but bought a diamond from him.”

  “I assume that each of his trades informs the other?” said I.

  “Exactly so. I had scarcely considered the matter before, but diamonds are abjectly dependent on light. In a dungeon a diamond wo
uld be useless to you, unless to scratch the Lord’s Prayer on a drinking glass.”

  “Will you wear this jewel on your person?” I asked.

  “My person is striking enough, without such adornment. No, the diamond, now a pendant, was my gift to a young lady whom I believe you have met.”

  “That is a handsome present indeed. Do we talk of Jane Page?”

  “We do.”

  I had heard of this attachment from Nick Horn.

  “What drew you together?”

  “This is a lady of beauty and character. As for her side of the affair, who can say? She speaks well of my wit. And she may know something of my financial circumstances.”

  “And accordingly she has enjoyed lively talk and one of Mr. Ogden’s diamonds.”

  We were both grinning now, but by no means jeering. It pleased me to see that his complacency was that of a man with a new lover rather than a new mistress.

  “I have made yet another friend,” said Crocker, “whom you can meet forthwith.”

  We went out to the courtyard, where he led me to a long cage. Perched high in a corner, on a bare tree branch, was a diminutive monkey. When Crocker approached it climbed slowly down and hung opposite his face, peering out with bright round eyes.

  “Francis Pike bought it from a sailor at Knott’s Market,” said Crocker. “He thought it would entertain me, and so it does.”

  “What was its native country?”

  “Pike could not say: the sailor who sold it was too lost in liquor to deal in such niceties. I have christened him Trinculo.”

  I looked at the little animal intently. “He is something of a miniature human being, especially about the face and hands.”

  “You are right; and for that reason I credit him with thought and feeling. Perhaps fancifully I see him sorrowful, mischievous, or bored.”