Ollie's Cloud (18 page)

Eardley suspects that payment to Hasan for ‘favors’ had bought more than English lessons.

“A few months ago,” Hasan continues, “with the war going badly, I was asked to come to London and appeal for more support. How fortunate for me that you and your mother also wound up in London. Now, please, tell me your story. I understand that your English family is rich and powerful. It appears that you descend from the Qajar empire on one side, and a British publishing empire on the other. For Persians, you would be considered the first-born of a strategic union between cultures. Who would have thought that your slave-mother would turn out to be a British heiress? That would have been useful to know.”

Ollie looks at this man and no longer sees his father. Instead, he sees a cold and conniving Persian diplomat.
Had his father changed over the years, or was he always like this?
Maybe his mother’s book, with its vivid portrayal of the villainous kelauntar, had more truth in it than Ollie had known.

“I am at a disadvantage,” Ollie says. “It seems you already know my story. And since I know so little of yours, may I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“What do you want?”

Mirza Hasan Qasim stiffens in his chair. The accusatory tone of his son’s question startles him. He had hoped that Ali would be glad to see him, but there is no sign of sentiment or love in this boy.
His mother must have poisoned his mind!
“All right, you want to know my intentions? They are quite simple. I am here to take you back with me to Persia.”

Now Ollie stiffens. Surely this is a joke!

“Why would I return to Persia?” Ollie asks.

“To help your country,” Hasan replies.

“My country is England.”

“You were born in Persia, the son of a Persian prince. You are a
Persian
, not an Englishman.”

“My country is England now. I was born in Persia, the son of a slave. My mother is an Englishwoman, and England is my home.”

“Ali, in the name of Allah, and for the sake of Muhammad—praise be unto Him—please reconsider. Your country is at war with Russia.”

“
In the name of Allah
, did you say? Maybe your agents failed to inform you that I am a Christian now. Whatever I do, I do in the name of Jesus. And for the sake of Jesus, I will remain in England.” Ollie has not experienced such religious stirrings in a long time, but his father has confronted him directly with his past, which he now considers pagan. His emotions are roused, and he finds himself saying things he only half means. “I will never return to Persia! I will never leave England!”

At these words, Hasan seems to slump. The pomp has leaked out of him. He lowers his head for a moment, then raises his eyes. Ollie detects moisture in those eyes—tears, or maybe just the sting of cigar smoke—but says nothing. An awkward silence envelopes them.

Finally, Eardley clears his throat and mutters a nervous, “Well, then—”

In a quiet voice, Hasan interrupts. He says to Ollie, “I can see that an appeal to your patriotism was a mistake. Let me confess my real motive. I am a father who has lost his son. When you left Bushruyih, my heart was broken. Every moment of my life has been spent trying to find you. I sought my new position as a diplomat hoping it would give me certain advantages in gaining information about you and your mother. You were my only son. You
are
my only son. Now I’ve found you, and my heart aches as it did the morning I discovered you gone.”

Ollie begins to soften. He can recall the gentleness and emotion with which the kelauntar agreed to send him to the madrisih in Mashhad. Perhaps there is a middle ground here. What would be the harm in reestablishing a relationship with his own father?”

“I never gave up hope of getting you back,” Hasan says. “And your mother.”

These words cut Ollie like a dagger.
And your mother!
Anisa the slave girl. Yes, it is becoming clear now. This is about
possession
. About Mirza Hasan Qasim’s pride and the humiliation of losing his cherished objects. He wants them back! And he will stop at nothing until he succeeds. Now his son is not just a son, but a political advantage, a blood relation to a potential ally. How much of his father’s story is true? All of it now is suspect. Looking back on this conversation with a fresh perspective, Ollie detects a pattern of deceit. Hasan had changed tactics too quickly, had sprouted tears too early, and most likely had bent and twisted every element of his story to suit his selfish interests.

Ollie grows angry but contains his emotions long enough to quietly say, “Father, you never had a son.” What he means is that Hasan had always viewed Ali as a possession, but Hasan takes from these words a different and more provocative meaning—that Ollie is denouncing his father.

Hasan erupts, slamming a fist on the table. The glasses and mug jump. “It is not for the son to denounce his father!” Hasan fiercely proclaims. “You are mine! You were taken from me, and I will have you back.” The outburst cracks Hasan’s thin veneer of reasonableness, confirming Ollie’s suspicions.

Eardley tries to patch the crack with a paste of soft words and sentiment. “Ollie, surely you can understand the heartbreak of a father,” he says desperately. “He is only angry because he loves you. I’m sure you didn’t mean what you said. Tell him that you’ll reconsider. Maybe take a little time—”

“I meant what I said!” Ollie says firmly. “Now please leave!”

“The conversation is not over until I give the order!” Hasan insists. “There is another matter that may change your mind.”

Ollie bristles at his father’s arrogance. “As the host, I declare this meeting adjourned.”

“No! The conversation is not over.” Hasan’s face glows red with anger. He is not accustomed to defiance. This is now a test of wills, and Hasan has underestimated the will of his son. Ollie is no longer the meek twelve-year-old who dwells in Hasan’s time-sweetened memory.

Ollie motions to the barmaid, who within seconds materializes at the table. “These gentlemen have been invited to leave,” Ollie explains. “Would you inform the proprietor that they may need to be escorted out?”

At first the barmaid does not understand, but when she peers into the angry face of Hasan it all becomes clear.

“I’ll have something for you afterward,” Ollie suggests.

The barmaid scurries off to get help.

Eardley, seeing his life suddenly crushed between the feuding parties, dissolves into a porridge of self-pity.

Charles seems invigorated by his companion’s spunk, even though he understands little of the conversation.

Hasan leans over the table, glaring at Ollie. “You are not considering the interests of your mother in your decision,” he says.

Ollie sits back in his chair. “What do you mean?”

“If you returned to Persia, you could spare her.”

“Spare her—from what?”

“From humiliation. Do you know how she humiliated me with the lies in her book? Of course you do. But my mortification is nothing compared to what she will face.”

“What do you mean?”

“No one in Persia will read your mother’s book, so my humiliation will not exist there, where it would most hurt me. But consider what disgrace your mother will suffer when certain information is revealed within her own circle here in London.”

The barmaid returns with two hulking men wearing scowls. “Are your friends ready to leave, sir?” the barmaid asks Ollie. For a moment, Ollie ignores the barmaid and the two men. Staring at Hasan, he asks, “What information?”

Hasan leans close to Ollie, whispers into his ear. As he speaks, a faint sneer deforms his lips.

When Hasan is finished speaking, Ollie leans back in his chair, visibly shaken. “You would do this?” he asks his father, who merely nods yes.

Ollie turns to the barmaid and says, “They are ready to leave. Please show them out.”

The two hulks step forward threateningly, but Eardley and Hasan rise without further encouragement. As he begins to walk away, Hasan turns to Ollie with cold, passionless eyes, and again nods
yes
—an exclamation point to his warning.

On the street, Eardley turns to Hasan. “I was hoping it would go well,” he says nervously. “I’m sorry. Perhaps he will change his mind.”

“He won’t. He’s a Qasim—and all Qasims are stubborn.”

“But maybe—”

“I will need you to do one more thing for me.”

“Of course. And then?”

“And then I suggest you seek employment elsewhere. You remind me of a most unpleasant evening.”

Through the window, Ollie watches his father turn his back on Eardley and arrogantly strut away. Eardley seems to deflate as he walks, disappearing into his greatcoat.

“Ollie, are you all right?” Charles asks.

“No, not really.” Ollie tells the truth. He is scared, angry, frustrated—and very, very sad. He is at war with his own father, who holds his mother hostage. An unfair advantage. He continues to look out the window, pretending to watch Eardley melt into nothingness, but in reality Ollie is choking back tears.

His reflection in the glass gives him away.

Chapter 22

Ollie is drunk. The George and Vulture is a block behind him, perhaps two. Maybe three. He chokes back a burning finger of bile squeezed up from his stomach, stumbles over the jutting lip of a cobblestone, steadies himself against the sooty brick of a building—or is it a wall? He had set off for the river to clear his head—a simple excursion—but his rudderless brain has steered him into a murky backwater of dark, stinking alleys that twist like the entrails of a great beast. As he coughs and dizzyingly turns around, searching for some marker, some indication of where he is, an awful panic seizes him. He cannot remember which way is forward. Another alley converges on this point.
That way?
The stench of garbage and human waste surrounds him like a fog and he chokes, falls to his knees, heaves up a sour stew of old wine and chewed sausage, wipes a string of vomit from his mouth, and finally sits down in the filth, leaning against the cold brick wall where he passes out.

He dreams of his mother. She is on the deck of a ship, waving. At him—no, at a gathering of Evangelicals on the shore, admirers who wave back and blow their loving kisses in her direction. Ollie stands alone on a bridge, watching the ship, watching the crowd, watching his mother steam away. His mother—she is not alone. She stands with her arm around Jalal, who is still twelve years old. Standing behind them in her beautiful green gown is Mum. They are leaving, all of them. Abandoning him. So happy they seem! So eager to get on with their new lives in their new destination. Ollie waves frantically, trying to get their attention, but they don’t notice. Or don’t care. At last he can no longer see them—only the silhouette of the ship. He sinks to the floor of the bridge, sitting there for a moment silently, sadly, then lying down, his back pressing against the cold iron platform.

Oh yes, he is lost.

A seagull lands on him and starts to peck at his chest. It hurts! His hands flail, trying to slap the gull away.

Not a gull!
A snake.

No, a
stick
poking him in the ribs.
Get it away!

He grabs the stick, opens his eyes. The world is dark and blurry, his head swirling. The ship’s bridge is gone. He is in a dark alley, holding a stick that wiggles and prods. A shadowy face looms over him. The filthy face of a boy.

“He’s alive, I told ya.”

The voice is young, a child’s. There are more faces staring at him, half-moons in the dim light. And more children’s laughter.

“Hey mister, whatcha doin’ ‘ere?

“Drunk, ‘e is. Get ‘is money.”

The jostling stick grows dead in Ollie’s hand. A mouse is in his pocket, wiggling. He grabs it.
A hand.
A tiny hand!

“Ouch!”

They are stealing his money! Slowly, Ollie’s brain begins to engage. He grasps the hand firmly, but it fights to get away. Suddenly he is beaten by more sticks, a full-body bastinado. He lets the hand go and the faces retreat.

The thrashing stops. The boys are seven, maybe eight years old. A half-dozen of them. They point their sticks at him threateningly.

“I says, forge’ ‘im, ‘e’s not drunk enough.”

“Will yer ‘ave a look at ‘im, eh? Them not so bad kit, ‘e’s got notes on ‘im, I tell yer.”

Ollie must be drunker than he thought. These filthy urchins are ragged and small. But aggressive. Maybe this is still a dream.

“Poke ‘im in the bloomin’ eye wiv a stick, see wot ‘e does.”

Ollie doesn’t like the sound of this. With great effort, he pushes his back up the scummy brick wall and points a menacing finger at the Lilliputian mob. The boys take a step backward, jabbing at him with their sticks.

“I don’ like th’ looks of dis,” one of them says.

“There’re six of us and one of ‘im, right? I says ‘e’s too drunk ter hurt us.”

“Go fer ‘is shins!”

The boys raise their sticks like lances and prepare to charge. Suddenly terrified, Ollie holds up his hands and shouts, “Nooo! What do you want, money?”

The boys look at each other. One of them, the tallest boy with a strikingly handsome face, speaks in a high-pitched voice. “Wot do ya fin’? We’re not aht ‘ere for the chuffin’ fan of it.” The gruff words spoken in such a soft, childish voice, are almost comical.

Ollie’s head is clearing. Maybe he had slept for a while, shaking off his drunken stupor, before the boys discovered him. He licks his dry lips, looks around the shadowy maze of alleys and decides on a reasonable course of action.

“Maybe we can strike a bargain,” he says.

“A
deal
, is ‘at wot ya mean?”

“That’s right. If we don’t fight, no one gets hurt. I have money. I’ll give you money if you do something for me.”

The boys consult—
argue
is a better word. Finally the tall boy addresses Ollie. “Ya sum kind of pervert or summit?”

Pervert?
The boys have the wrong idea. “No, no, not that,” he says. The boys seem puzzled.

“We could take yer bread ‘n ‘honey if we bleedin’ wanted to.”

“Yes, I’m sure you could. But some of you would be badly hurt. No sense in that.” Ollie is astonished that this gang of youngsters is roaming the alleys so late. He reaches into a pocket and takes out a handful of schillings, keeping his notes and guineas carefully tucked away.

The boys’ eyes grow big as they stare at the money.

“I’ll tell you what,” Ollie says. “I will pay you to answer questions. One schilling per answer. Does that seem fair?”

The boys consult again, their heads nodding up and down.

“Awright. But yer ‘ave ter pay us after each answer.”

“Then put down your sticks. My first question is, where are your parents?”

The tall boy objects. “That’s six questions!”

“All right,” Ollie agrees. “Then it’s worth six schillings. Who wants to go first?”

The tall boy begins, and then each in turn tells his tale. Slowly, the boys begin to relax. Over the next hour they answer Ollie’s questions, taking seats on the garbage-strewn alley floor, gradually moving closer to Ollie, all the better to take the schillings. Ollie, too, sits down, drawn into their stories of neglect and abuse. Two of the boys had escaped from grim London orphanages in which they were poorly fed, worked to the bone, and sexually abused by the adults in power. One of them had been abandoned at the orphanage door by his mother when he was four years old. One of the others lives with an alcoholic father who beats him when he is sober, and beats him harder when drunk. The two youngest boys live in brothels with their prostitute moms, who work nights. Until a month ago, the tall, handsome boy had lived in a nanny-house, an abode of working child prostitutes. Four of them already had worked in organized child gangs—pickpocketing, thieving, selling the sexual favors of girls barely older than themselves—and had escaped the iron-fisted tyranny of their “boss” despite his menacing threats. If they should ever be caught by him…

As the boys talk, the alley fills up with their pain and grief and hopelessness. None of them believes he will live to see the age of ten. Something—starvation, murder, illness, accident—is sure to get them. But not to pity, for death will relieve their misery. If only the act of dying were not so terrifying! All of them have only contempt for adults, the tormenters of children and defilers of innocence. In just a few years, these little boys have experienced brutality and exploitation beyond measure.

And yet they have survived!

“Look after yorself, right, that’s the bleedin’ rule out ‘ere,” the tall boy says. “No bloke will do it for yer. It’s up ter yer alone. Even yor own mum won’t ‘ave a look after yer in the end, that’s ‘ow it is.” The words produce a long silence.

And that’s when Ollie realizes he is no longer lost. His despair over the dilemma presented by his father—should he go back to Persia to save his mother from embarrassment?—is ended. There is no dilemma. Adults can take care of themselves. But who will look after the children? He will
never
return to Persia. As for his mother—she has already steamed out of London on her own vessel, leaving him behind.
A curse on parents!
Let her deal with Mirza Hasan Qasim and his secret. Ollie will look after his own interests.

Ollie admires the grit and raw honesty of these boys. Without their pure selfishness they would perish in days, perhaps hours. This is what saves them. It is their secret to survival.
Selfishness.
Looking after themselves, in the direst circumstances, when no one else will.

The pause in the conversation has become awkward. One of the boys looks at his ragged companions and finally breaks the silence: “Wot now then, eh? We all gonna sit ‘round an’ sing hymns?”

The tall boy seems to break out of a coma. He looks up at Ollie. “Say, we’ve been answerin’ yor questions for a wile now, but yer ‘aven’t been payin’. I fink yer owe us some schillin’s.” The tall boy is right. As the boys had become drawn deeply into their own terrible stories, they had slowly forgotten about the reward. Until now.

“All right, I have an idea,” Ollie says. “Agreed, I owe you money, but none of us knows how much. Not for sure. So I have a proposal.” He fishes a gleaming guinea out of his pocket and shows it. The boys lean forward expectantly. “This is the last of my money.” Not quite true, but he has won their confidence. “I will give it to you on three conditions. First, you must agree to share it equally. Second, you must agree that this covers my debt to you. And third—please show me the way back to Lombard Street.”

“Yer ‘ave yorself a deal,” the tall boy says. “By the way, my bleedin’ name is Tim.” He extends a small hand. “Tim Shaw.”

Ollie takes Tim’s hand, pressing the coin between their palms. “And I am Oliver Chadwick. Remember—share the guinea.”

“Aye, it belongs ter all of us.”

Ollie silently follows the boys through the maze of alleys, jumping over piles of rat-infested refuse, tripping over squealing cats. He had drunkenly wandered much further than he had thought into the bowels of London. Suddenly the boys stop. The tall boy gestures Ollie forward, out of London’s entrails, back into the relatively civilized world of Lombard Street.

It is early morning. The sky is just a pale glow. Human life is emerging—the bill poster and his glue-pot, the scrubber, two or three cabs trolling for drunkards too soused to walk home, a scattering of shopkeepers rattling keys in their doors and dreaming of a new day better then the last one. Ollie steps into the street and takes a deep breath. Compared to the rancidness of the back alleys, even the soot-filled air of Lombard Street smells particularly sweet this morning. Ah, the fragrance of hot pies!

Ollie looks down at himself. What a mess! His clothes are stained with muck, his hands are black and sticky, and the foul taste in his mouth…!

Yet he feels oddly settled. He smiles. And then he turns to thank the boys.

But no one is there.