The Castaways (16 page)

“Very good, sir,” said Silbury.

“Have my coach brought round to the door. And send word to Doctor Kingsley that I’m on my way.”

“Very good, sir.” Silbury bowed, and crept from the room.

Mr. Goodfellow looked enormously pleased with himself.
“You see, Tom,” he said. “Even if money can’t buy happiness, it certainly buys power. In my mind it buys both by the gross.”

He took a cigar from a humidor made of oak and brass and mother-of-pearl. He severed its tip in a miniature guillotine that had a blade of glistening gold. Then he lit it from a gas jet that bubbled up at his touch from the top of his desk. He was soon enveloped in his own thick fog, as foul as the one outside.

“Now, Tom,” he said, peering through it. “I confess that I feel rather a kinship with you. You’ve grown, my boy; you’ve changed. You’re all the better for your travels, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer. He still hadn’t offered me a chair, and so I stood across that broad desk from him, feeling like an infant, for its top was nearly at the height of my shoulders.

“Well, you are, and you’ve me to thank for it. That goes without saying, though the words will never pass your lips.” He sucked on the cigar, and a cloud of smoke wafted from his mouth. “What would you think if I said I might find a place for you here in the business? A junior position, mind, with Goodfellow and Company?”

I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d asked me to sit in the House of Lords. It was a flattering offer, I had to admit.

“Don’t answer now,” he said, raising a hand from the smoke, palm toward me. “You’ll want to look before you leap, of course.”

He came down from his high desk, gathered his hat and walking stick, and took me out through the building’s front doors, to a busy London street. The fog restricted my view to
only a few yards in either direction, so that I felt as though I looked onto a stage, where countless actors made their entrances and exits through hazy curtains. Carriages and coaches went rolling by. Hurrying businessmen, flower girls, and costermongers passed before us, all fading in and out of view.

Four snorting white horses pulled Mr. Goodfellow’s wonderful carriage to the door. A footman jumped down and offered us a hand. He was wearing gloves with pearl buttons.

The coach was covered in gold leaf and gold trim. Even the rims of the wheels were polished and bright. Not a man passed without turning his head to admire it, and I couldn’t help my feeling of importance as all eyes watched the footman help me up. I settled onto a seat as soft as marshmallow, looking down at a toff who was eyeing me jealously.

Mr. Goodfellow plumped himself beside me, bringing his smell of pomade and perfume. He rapped on the roof with his stick, and the mighty pull of the horses jolted me back in my seat.

He didn’t ask me where the driver should go. We only started off into the fog.

I could feel the silence in the carriage, foggy thick, as we rode along. Mr. Goodfellow, sitting very stiffly, said not a word for twenty minutes. He shined his boots on his stockings, rubbing one against the other like a big white insect. But at last he started talking.

“Calliope came to my house last night,” he said. “She arrived dragging her girl—and a coffin, no less.”

“It was full of toys,” I said.

“Yes. I’d hoped it was full of her husband.”

The city went by in the fog. Mr. Goodfellow watched through his window. “She told me about the slaves, about Beezley and the voyage home. I nearly dropped dead when she mentioned your name.”

His head turned as we passed a fire-eater performing on the street. “I called straightaway for the soldiers. I went with them, down to the ship, but you’d already fled into the City.”

“Did Calliope tell you—” I started. I was going to ask if he knew where Midgely was, but Mr. Goodfellow interrupted.

“She told me she was leaving that hopeless husband of hers and needed my help. Again,” he said. “She had a scheme of some sort. It involved a ship—of course—and what else, I couldn’t say. I wouldn’t listen to a word of it, but showed her the door. The wretched woman. I put her out on her ear.”

“Your own sister?”

“My
half
sister,” he said.

I felt sorry for Calliope. I imagined her running from Mr. Goodfellow’s home, dragging poor Charlotte as fast as she could. She must have known that Mr. Goodfellow was sending soldiers to the ship, and would have been desperate to get there before them, to snatch Midgely to safety.

“The lingering stench of a rotted marriage, that’s Calliope,” said Mr. Goodfellow. “The miserable product of my prodigal father’s rutting with a whaler’s wife.” Just thinking of Calliope seemed to make Mr. Goodfellow boil with anger. “Wasteful, vulgar woman. Gallivanting across the oceans, turning up like a plague every seven years.”

“I liked her,” I said. It eased my mind that Midgely was safe with Calliope.

Mr. Goodfellow didn’t answer. He sat grinding his hat between his hands, and it turned round and round like a black boulder in a stone mill. We traveled on through the fog.

Despite my company, and despite myself, I enjoyed that
journey. I sat at the side of the man I despised more than any other, the one I blamed for the death of my mother, the loss of my father, the ruin of my own life. Nothing but my hatred of him had kept me going through the perils of the sea, through convicts and cannibals and castaways.

Yet, somehow, it all seemed long ago and far away. There was now only this one moment of grandeur, and I let myself imagine that the carriage and the horses were mine, that I had finally attained the things I’d only dreamed of.

I sat high enough that I looked down on the crowds of people. We swept them aside as our horses cantered through the business district, our wheels spraying water from the puddles. Street sweepers bowed their heads as we passed; tradesmen touched their caps; gentlemen leapt like fleas as the water splashed on their trousers.

It occurred to me that I could do this every day if I joined Mr. Goodfellow’s company. I could dash through the city and dine in the clubs. I could join the rich tide that flooded and ebbed through the doors of splendid theaters. What a flash fellow I would be! So young and so rich.

“Do the handsome thing, my boy.”
I heard the words as clearly as if my father had spoken them aloud.
“Do what’s right by me, Tom,”
he’d said. Well, I was doing it! My father had spent his every penny—he’d given his all—to see that I would one day go riding through London in a fancy carriage. Oh, he’d despised the toffs himself, mocking their manners and accents, and the only swells he’d cared about were the rolling waves on the ocean. But he had wanted so badly for me to be a gentleman.

My mind suddenly leapt to the last moment I’d spent
with him. I lived it again, with every sound and smell and image. I saw the cannibals surging toward us through the shallow water, saw Father put all his strength into the last push that sent the little steamboat sliding away to safety. I heard his final words:
“Godspeed, Tom. You’ve done me proud, my son.”
I saw the savages close around him and—

I didn’t want to see any more. The pictures dissolved, leaving only the carriage window and the shapes flickering by in the fog.

A terrible emptiness followed. I found myself missing my mother with an ache that was overwhelming, longing for someone to come and tell me: What’s the handsome thing to do? It was surely folly to think that Father still lived. Better to forget any hope of seeing him again, and to honor him instead. If I were rich, I could build a spectacular memorial, a tower in the middle of London, and carve his name two feet high on a tablet. Wouldn’t that do him proud?

As these ideas tumbled through my mind, Mr. Goodfellow and I barreled along the streets. The carriage rocked and swayed to the surge of the horses, while a new scene appeared every moment before me. It was both grand and miserable. The fog swirled in its putrid curds, dusting the city and everything in it—from people to pigeons—with a fine coat of soot. The driver shouted; he cracked his whip. I looked out at rich and poor all squashed together, miserable beggars holding out their hands to gentlemen and ladies. Street sellers babbled about muffins and hot eels, and there was such a din of horses and crowds that I wondered if I could ever get used to it. Strange as it seemed, I missed the silence of the sea, and a fresh wind in the sails.

Mr. Goodfellow misunderstood my interest in the passing scenes. “Yes, it’s all wonderful, isn’t it, Tom?” he said. “No place on earth like London. You should see the Exchange, my boy; money flowing like water. Lives bought and sold. I offered to make your father a part of it, Tom; did you know that? He turned me down; said it wasn’t to his liking. Well, there was never enough polish on
that
tin, if you know what I mean,” he said, and he chuckled.

I didn’t even smile in return, but turned my head away. We were passing through ever poorer parts of the city, so the buildings were getting smaller, the streets more narrow, as though everything was shrinking. It seemed all sad and dreary, and I thought we’d come to a part of London I had never seen. But then out from the fog slid a big wooden boot, an enormous construction hanging above a cobbler’s door. I turned to watch it pass, and saw the sign of a publican that I remembered at once. Snatches of my little verses returned to my mind.

“Turn left!” I shouted.

Mr. Goodfellow nearly jumped from his seat. “Why?” he said.

“I know where the Jolly Stone is.”

For a moment he gaped. Then Mr. Goodfellow banged his stick on the roof and shouted up to the driver, and I heard the horses snort as their heads were dragged around. We went clopping to the north, from street to alley. “Now turn right,” I said.

For half an hour we passed along the narrow streets where Worms had driven his three-legged horse. We saw not a soul, but heard on every side the howls of cats, the barks of
dogs, the colicky cries of babies. Mr. Goodfellow grew ever more excited, his voice rising in pitch as he called up directions to the driver. When we came at last to the churchyard, and I told him we’d arrived at the place where the diamond was hidden, he sounded like a little girl.

“Stop!” he cried to the driver. “Right now, do you hear? Stop!”

He fairly
hopped
from the carriage, then dragged me out behind him. “Where is it, Tom?” he said. “Where’s the Jolly Stone?”

I led him round the corner and through the iron gate, in among the headstones wrapped in fog. The yellow custard was now as thick as night, the stone wall of the church a mere shadow. I felt as though I was reliving the night that I’d found and lost the Jolly Stone. I walked directly to the grave we’d opened, where my dead twin had been put to rest six feet down.

“Right here,” I said, stamping my foot. “The Stone’s below us.”

Mr. Goodfellow went at the earth with his walking stick. He pried up the sod and the dirt. Half veiled as he was in the fog, he looked like a huge bird pecking at the graveyard grass. But his progress was slow, and his anger quick. “For heaven’s sake, make yourself useful,” he said. “Hurry! Go get a shovel.”

“Where?” I said.

“Confound you, boy!” He bashed a tombstone with his stick. So hard did he strike it that his stick broke in two, and he whirled the handle into the fog, destroying in an instant
what it would have taken my father months to earn. He cursed me. “Go tell the driver—Oh, never mind!” He cursed again. “The fellow’s as much a fool as you are. I’ll go with him, that’s what I’ll do!”

His side whiskers were shaking. “Now you stay here. Don’t move from this place, do you hear me?”

With that he went storming away into the fog. I heard him swear at the driver; he even swore at the horses. There was a squeal from the springs of his carriage, the slam of a door, and the horses clomped away down the street.

It was an eerie place to be alone, a graveyard in the fog. Ravens clattered their claws on the church roof, crying out in their strange voices. Suddenly the figures on the tombstones looked more like birds of prey than angels and cherubs. For months I’d had people around me at every moment, and now I missed the closeness of the ship, the company of my friends. From there my thoughts wandered to Weedle and Boggis; were they already back on the hulks? And on to Midgely Poor little Midge. I hoped that Calliope had taken him somewhere comfortable, that Charlotte was with him. I hated to think that he might be alone and scared.

I leapt up and paced round the graves. It was half in my mind to run from the place, and to keep running until I found Midgely. But there could be no peace for either of us without the pardons that would set us free. And for those I needed Mr. Goodfellow.

Back and forth I went among the tombstones, my eyes smarting from the yellow fog. I heard two people passing on the street, coming up to the iron gate. A woman shrieked
at the sight of a ghost in the graveyard, and the footfalls hurried away.

I feared they would send a watchman, who might find me and call for the soldiers. There was probably not a Charlie brave enough to challenge spirits, but still I settled on the ground, hidden by a marble angel. I prodded at the grass, plucking worms that oozed from the gouges Mr. Goodfellow had made. Soon I found a small slab much covered with moss, and picked at it idly.

A quotation appeared: “Every man is a piece of the continent.”

I took this as a wry reminder that our bodies return to the mud. Curious to see who would put a jest on his tombstone, I bared more of the tablet. Dates appeared: 1814-1827. Then the name of Jacob Tin.

I drew away from it quickly. The tablet had been shifted from its proper place, no doubt thrown aside by old Worms. It had marked the grave of the Smasher—my own twin brother—a boy I’d never known, but whose life had tangled so fully with mine.

There was a cold chill in the air now, all of a sudden. I rubbed my arms, for they’d pimpled with gooseflesh. But I couldn’t look away from the stone.

The words must have been chosen by the sisters of the charity who had buried Jacob Tin, a boy of the streets. They made me understand that we were
all
tangled together. Every person I’d met in the year gone by was now entwined with every other, like so many fish scooped up in a net. From the blind man and the body snatcher, to the yellow guard at Newgate; from the farm boy on the hulk, to Mr. Mullock on
his little island, they had all been drawn together, all netted from the twisting river of my fate.