Infernal Revolutions (26 page)

Honoured that he had remembered my name easily enough, I bowed and flourished my hand Macaroni-style. Immediately they all backed away, as if I had the plague.

‘Where did you learn to do that?'

‘Do what?'

‘That, what you just did.'

‘What, this?'

I performed for them once more my courtly hand flourish, leaning forward from my waist, keeping my left hand tight by my side, and rolling over my right hand in graceful diminuendo until it almost touched the floor.

‘That looks suspiciously like Court of St James stuff to me.'

‘There are many international influences one picks up living in a great cosmopolitan port, gentlemen. One acquires them, as it were, unwittingly; one absorbs them through one's skin; one drinks in the atmosphere.'

‘New York is neither great nor cosmopolitan, though I'll grant you it's a port,' objected one farmer, a provincial's chip on his shoulder. ‘I went there once – a stinking rathole of a place.'

‘Is that what they're doing in New York now, then?'

I could tell many were eager to try it out.

‘The sign of good breeding there.'

‘Let's see your friend do it.'

Dick, grimacing, obliged.

‘He's not drunk in much of the atmosphere, has he?'

‘His stomach pains him too much to perform it well.'

‘'Tis obscene,' cried some.

‘Oh, I don't know,' said a man in a periwig, carefully holding his pot high and awkwardly mimicking the movement himself, ‘'tis not too dissimilar to what we do when we sow corn, or feed the chickens.'

This was the homely referent the conservative Revolutionary drinkers had been waiting for, and soon the whole tavern was at it, bowing and scraping to each other with great delight, until the place resembled the House of Lords as seen though an opium haze.

‘Well, Mr Oysterman,' said Major Thunders, looking round in amazement at the damage done to the dignified demeanour of his Noble Boys, ‘I have been trying since this great war began – through meetings, inspirational talks and lengthy draughts of the Bible – to instil in the young fellows of this town a proper sense of dignity and manliness, so that they are prepared to fight when the British come spreading death and terror throughout our great land. And then you come along. Just look at them.'

‘We cannot take credit for that,' Dick shrugged. ‘Anything could have set them off.'

‘But nothing
did
, until you came along.'

‘You can't suppress Fun,' I said, ‘'Tis liable to break out any time. Often in the most unlikely place and at the most unlikely time.'

‘We normally have no room for Fun around these parts, Sir. We have much work to do – cultivating our land, raising our families, building homes. And now we have a war to contend with there is even less room for it. I despise it personally, gentlemen. Life is too precious to waste on mere Fun.' He peered into his pot and swilled the contents round. ‘We take alcoholic refreshment merely to oil the wheels of intercourse, not to have, as you put it, Fun.'

‘Something's gone wrong here then,' said Dick, as we took another look at the intemperate mirth prevailing in the tavern.

‘'Tis unaccountable,' said Major Thunders, shaking his head, ‘'Tis as though some Force or Evil Spirit has gotten into them.'

Perhaps my Muse, always heavy and electric and threatening, had tired of waiting for action from my pen and earthed itself through these Fun-starved gentlemen, and they were partaking severally of what was rightfully all mine. I began to view their Fun in a less sanguine manner, a change of outlook that seemed to communicate itself to Major Thunders.

‘Business that bad then, Mr Oysterman?'

‘It is since our shop burnt down in the Great Fire, with nearly all of our stock in it.'

‘Ah yes, the famous fire. I wonder who started that?'

He started to chuckle to himself, my Muse having descended on him now.

‘You know?'

‘Let's just say,' he said, tapping his nose, ‘'tis a Revolutionary secret.'

‘If you would be so kind as to let us in on the secret,' said Dick, ‘'twould greatly facilitate our insurance claim.'

‘Yes, I am sure it would, Mr Lickley, but you need to be in the higher echelons of the Revolutionary movement to be privy to such information.'

‘Perhaps we could gain temporary access to those heights if we buy you and your boys another pot of beer?'

‘The Hackensack Militia is above bribery, Mr Oysterman, and I would ask you not to offend our honour by making such a proposal again. Besides, at times like these surely the interests of our country come before a little financial loss. For I take it, gentlemen, you would not be in this town unless you were true-blue Patriots at heart?'

I thought this was a rhetorical question at first, and did not bother to answer him – not wanting to commit – but the prolonged silence seemed to demand some response. So with great regret I told him that yes, of course we were true-blue Patriots, and – mad momentum carrying me on – said that we were willing to do anything for the cause.

‘Anything?' said Major Thunders, foxy.

‘Within reason,' said Dick, throwing me a very dark look.

‘Have you wives or families?'

‘No.'

‘Enlist then, gentlemen!' exclaimed Major Thunders, laying hands on our shoulders. ‘Now is the perfect time! Forget your books and debts and enlist! This is not the time for books anyway, as some poet or other said, and debts will always be with us. Look at Thomas Jefferson – he is in permanent debt, but that has never stopped him from getting on with the important things in life. Enlist, gentlemen, I beseech you! Have no more to do with the accumulated printed dross of dead centuries!'

‘We'll think about it,' said Dick, less gullible than me. ‘Once we have concluded our business in these parts.'

‘But now you've lost everything, what is to stop you enlisting? Look upon the Fire as a blessing in disguise. You are free to do what you've always wanted to do to those loathsome British customers of yours.'

‘Oh, we haven't lost everything; we have another shop in Philadelphia. We're on our way there now.'

‘Via Hackensack?'

‘We're collecting debts in these parts first,' Dick invented casually. ‘You'd be surprised how many farmers in Hackensack are secret readers. They order books from us by mail all the time, but few of them ever settle their slate.'

‘Name names, Sir.'

‘Bookseller's Secret, Sir,' said Dick, tapping his nose.

Major Thunders nodded wryly, but seemed keen to continue the conversation, as if – for all his former derogation of the business – he was thinking about entering the bookselling trade himself when the war was over.

‘Then may I ask what sort of books my fellow countrymen buy – if that is not a trade secret too?'

Dick's non-literary face glazed over.

‘Er…I'll leave my colleague Harry to answer that one, Major Thunders. He's the literary side of the operation; I'm more on the business side. Excuse me while I seek out the waiter. Now, are you sure I cannot buy you a drink, Sir? Purely without prejudice, no obligation to reveal secrets on either side?'

‘Oh, go on then,' said Major Thunders, after a brief struggle with his stern Revolutionary principles. ‘We are all Americans, after all, whatever our degrees of Revolutionary heat.' After supping up the dregs of his pot, he turned to me and pursued his enquiries. ‘I hope my countrymen are reading good Revolutionary standards, Mr Oysterman – Franklin, Paine, the French
philosophes
and the like.'

‘Some are,' I said, wincing at the word
philosophes
– I was sure the Americans only aped the loathsome French to spite the British, ‘but most prefer religious tracts, farming manuals, self-help guides, cookery books, and…er…erotic literature.'

‘Erotic literature!' exclaimed Major Thunders, in great perturbation that drew the attention of everyone in the vicinity. ‘What's that?'

‘'Tis books that make one's heart beat faster and bring up lascivious thoughts,' said a greyfaced man to looks of disgust. ‘Or so I'm led to understand,' he added hastily.

The heat in tavern became more intense.

‘Such as?' asked Major Thunders.

‘John Cleland's
Fanny Hill
is a perennial favourite, of course, but recently there's been an explosion of home-grown proponents of the genre.' I was a damned rascal, and I knew it, but I couldn't stop myself. I fancied my Muse was being sucked back into my chest. ‘Our most popular books in that line being
Love Me Till The Cock Crows
, by Miss Florence Tyler;
Last Summer At The Bee
, by Mrs Wendell Newman;
Impuritans
, by Miss Dympnah Hollywell;
Their Preacher, My Ploughman
, by Beth Gratton; and
Frenzy In The Fifth Month
, which is so lewd a mixture of the secular and the religious that the author has quite understandably chosen to remain anonymous.'

I fancied the temperature in the tavern had risen even further by the mere mention of these non-existent titles. Fingers were inserted between hot necks and stiffening collars.

‘And people read this nonsense?'

‘Well, they buy it, so they must do something with it.'

‘Your orders for these books come mainly from the New York area, though, I presume,' said Terence Deeps from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. ‘I can understand them wanting escapist literature of the countryside.'

There were hoarse mutterings of support for this sentiment.

‘No,' I said, fairly trembling with the bombshell I was about to drop in the minds and souls of these men, ‘most of our customers are married ladies from the Hackensack Valley. The area is a hotbed of unsatisfied flesh, gentlemen. They are always complaining to me in private that their husbands spend too long at their business, and do not pay enough attention to them in the boudoir.'

This was behind-the-lines sabotage work at its most deadly. Blowing up bridges and reconnoitring armouries were as nothing compared to the mental and emotional damage these lies were doing, as evidenced by the twisted, gnarled faces of the audience around me. Each man, I fancied, was busy ruminating on his wife's unexplained absences, and his own sexual failings. One or two men started to eye their friends suspiciously, and I felt that I had demoralized at one stroke a virtual platoon of New Jersey Militia. These men would be shooting each other before they even saw a Redcoat.

‘Well, Sir,' said Major Thunders, after a few moments of embarrassing silence, ‘I am sure I speak for all of us when I say that I am truly shocked. I did not realize that such filth, foulness and sin was going on beneath our very noses.'

‘Aye, aye,' came the dignified murmur of other shockees, ‘Terrible.'

‘And at a time like this!' exclaimed one young mandrake with the bright-eyed fervour of the madly religious. ‘Damn the women!' he added squeakily, dashing his fist in the air as he minced away, ‘Damn ‘em!'

‘So that's why we did not make a profit last year, and used up all them candles,' said another, agog with the horror of enlightenment.

‘I will turn my wife's belongings upside-down when I get home,' vowed another. ‘And then, if no evidence is found, I will turn my wife upside-down. If any of those books drop out she is for it, and no mistake.'

I felt bad about this turn of the conversation; I had done the wives of these men no favours. Or then again, perhaps I had.

‘Presumably your stocks of these books were wiped out in the New York fire?' asked Major Thunders, something on his mind.

‘Our New York stocks were.'

‘What about your Philadelphia stocks?'

‘Hundreds of each title left.'

‘Do you have a list of these books, Sir?'

‘Aye, in my head,' I said, knowing I could easily add as many fictional titles as I wanted, at a push. ‘Why, Sir?'

He made a great show of Thinking Hard.

‘I want to buy up your stock of these books, Sir. Every last one. I will get the Committee of Correspondence to vote me the money, and we will make the Hackensack Valley a decent place to live again. I want this loathsome business wiped out before it spreads its evil tentacles even further into our female community.'

Major Thunders' language and choice of imagery seemed even saucier than Mrs Wendell Newman's, had she existed.

‘And what will you do with the books? Burn them or something?'

‘Of course,' said Major Thunders, throwing a pose of such integrity that I knew the dog must be lying. ‘In a public bonfire of the vanities. I will consider inviting along the revolutionary leaders of the surrounding counties, and even George Washington himself, if he has the time to spare to grace us with his presence.'

‘Aye, and we could ask him whether he drinks eggnogs,' chipped in Half-Cock Henderson, to the approbation of his friends.

‘But what's to stop you buying all our stock and selling it again at a profit?' I asked, for the sake of verisimilitude.

From the look that flashed across Major Thunders' face, I had just run through his morals with a verbal bayonet.

‘Sir, how could you, how
could
you say such a thing? Have you no higher opinion of the Revolutionary Movement than that? Do you really think that the Sons and Daughters of Liberty would stoop to such depths of venality? I am horrified at such a suggestion, and I am sure my noble compatriots are too.'

After a bit of encouragement from some toughs at the back, they were, and began to jostle me menacingly.

‘Steady on,' said Dick, having returned and quickly grasped the gist of the conversation. ‘My partner was only expressing a standard business fear. Is not freedom of speech and the right of expression written into the very fabric of our great Declaration? Isn't this very openness of vigorous and manly expression what Tom Paine and others are advocating?'