The Custodian of Paradise (55 page)

“Then I should leave.”

“I still have the ring I gave her, you know. She gave it back to me and I have kept it ever since in the closet in my room.
My
ring, the one she gave me, I have worn that one around my neck since she left. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“There is much, girl, that you don’t know.” He sat forward and, putting his hands beneath the collar of his shirt, drew forth a silver chain on which hung his wedding band. “Such a fool I am, to love her so much still in spite of everything. Do you think she’ll come back?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Whose child are you?”

“Yours.”

He shook his head.

“Go to sleep,” I said. He nodded.

Removing my shoes for fear of waking him as I crossed the rug, I turned down the lamps. I crept down the stairs, lest he wake to see me leave him there.

I visited my father every evening, though he barely noticed I was there. Always I found him in his sleeping chair, facing the fire but wide awake, forearms on the arms of the chair as if he was about to get up, though he remained in that posture for hours. He responded to things I said by nodding as if my words were merely part of his train of thought, my reassurances his own, my questions hypothetical ones he posed to himself and need not answer.

LOREBURN

I just heard what might have been someone drumming their fingers on the kitchen window. I almost fled the kitchen until I heard a gust of wind against the house.

The sound I heard I remembered from my childhood. A certain kind of snowstorm has begun. A southeaster. An anomaly that may not last for long. On this coast, especially this early in the year, a southeast wind almost always means rain. But, when I dimmed the lantern and went to the window, I saw huge snowflakes pattering against the glass, each leaving what might have been a thumbprint. I half-expected to see someone outside, peering in, face pressed against the glass like mine, our noses a pane apart as we stared into each other’s eyes.

I wrote to Sarah and David in my journal on a succession of their birthdays, letters they would never read or answer.

Years went by with a letter every other month from my Provider. Not rebukes, but cautionary letters just the same.

When my children were old enough to have finished high school and, for all I knew, had moved away from home to attend college, I thought of writing to my mother to ask how they were occupied and where they were. I knew she would not divulge addresses or telephone numbers—nor did I want her to. I could not bear to contact them while posing as their half-sister and was not sure that, if I knew how to reach them, I could resist telling them the truth.

David and Sarah. A young man, a young woman. The children of a child. I still thought of them as babies and of myself as a girl younger than Sarah was now. I knew that, unless I met them, this would never change. I told myself that it was best to leave things as they were, as they had always been, the three of us stalled in time.

The ’Stab, whom I had never written about in my column and who had never paid me much attention when I passed them in the streets, night or day, now took every opportunity to speak to me.

“Here she comes,” one of a pair said as I approached them one night where they were standing at the foot of Garrison Hill. “Fielding the Forger.”

“And what are you famous for?”

“I’ve made something of myself.”

“If you make any more of yourself, you’ll need a new uniform.”

“Never wedded, never bedded, never sober. That’s what they say about you.”

“The toadies of the merchants. The pawns of the politicians. The brawn behind the Crown. But does anyone ever give you the credit you deserve? Challenged by me to prove that he could write, a constable once urinated his initials in the snow.”

“That’s more than you could do,” the other constable said. “Bet ya had fun watchin’, though. Prob’ly never seen one before. Unless it was yer daddy’s. Whoever he might be.”

“Police should be visible deterrents to crime, not to those considering careers in law enforcement.”

In a mock tribute to the Constabulary called “A Trib’ to the ’Stab,”
I wrote that the chief recruited from the “quantity” in adherence to the “it-takes-one-to-know-one school of law enforcement,” and that upon swearing in a recruit he said, “Just keep doing whatever it is you’ve been doing all your life.”

I explained in rhyme how the force became known as “The ’Stab”:

“No word as long as Constabulary/can be found in their vocabulary/The ones they like, so goes the song/Are ones that are four letters long.”

I was terrified of them as a child after several times seeing them driving the Black Mariah through the streets like charioteers.

Now they had begun to watch me as they never had before. And I watched them.

I saw them on their night patrols. And they, seeing me watching them, demanded to know what I was staring at.

“Nothing,” I told a constable.

“Tall one, aren’t ya,” he said.

“How tall are you?” I said.

“Five-nine. More than regulation minimum.”

“Really?” I said. “On foot or on horseback?”

“Smart mouth. Forger. I know another six-letter word that starts with
F
and ends with
R
. Suits ya better.”

“I have never been a fencer in my life. Though you, I imagine, have done quite a lot of fencing. They say that, in fencing, even the slightest little prick counts.”

At night they gathered in groups and talked for hours. I passed a number of them while heading west across the city—and encountered the same number in the same place when heading east, hours later.

“Well, if it isn’t the Confabulary.”

“Big words. Big woman. Big mouth. Big deal.”

“You’re very fond of that word ‘big,’ small as it is.”

“Just pullin’ yer leg. Might match the other one if I pull it hard enough.”

“Pull all you like. You’ll never make it longer. The same goes for my leg.”

“What’re you doing out this time o’ night? Tryin’ to sell something? You won’t get any takers, not even if it’s free.”

I was surprised one night to see Prowse, accompanied by two constables, standing at the foot of the courthouse steps.

“It’s been a long time since last we spoke,” he said.

“Yet I remember it so well.”

“What’s it like, Fielding,” Prowse said, “living at the Cock?”

“If you mean the Cochrane Hotel, I find it to be a first-rate establishment.”

“First-rate whorehouse.”

“I will leave the rating of whorehouses to you.”

“Proper place for you. You must fit right in.”

“I’m told by my fellow tenants that
you
have trouble fitting in. Or is it fitting
it
in? I can’t recall.”

“Whore.”

“Rumour must have it that I’ve had a busy week. Last Monday I was called a virgin. I fear that, in my haste to be offensive, I have overlooked some people and in some obscure corners am still regarded with respect.”

“Not many. Did you really think you could make a fool of me in public and get away with it?”

“Why give me so much credit for doing once what you have done a thousand times?”

“You turned the whole city against you, years ago. As for me, my fortunes have risen.”

“What never rises never falls. I’ll be on my way if you’ll get out of it.”

“You’re on your way, all right.”

He kicked my cane from my hand so quickly that I had no time to catch my balance and fell forward onto the ground at his feet, my hands skidding on the gravel.

“That’s more like it,” he said. “You look good down there. You’d
look even better on your knees. Something in your mouth to shut you up is what you need.”

The two constables laughed.

My cane some distance away, I tried to stand. I leaned my weight on my good foot, fingers splayed on the ground, and rose enough to drag my left foot into place. Thus crouching, I made a tentative effort to push myself upright, but, as I began to list to one side, I dropped my hands to the ground, again squatting on my haunches. My bad leg felt about to break.

“If someone comes by—”

“They will see what we see. A woman so drunk she cannot stand without her cane,” Prowse said.

The constables murmured and nodded.

“It seems you need some help. You won’t get it unless you ask for it.”

“You’re the one who’s asking for it.”

“You’re in no position to make threats.”

“I’d give you credit for that pun if I thought it was intentional. But you are right. It seems I cannot stand up without my cane.”

“What can you do without your flask?”

“What?”

“Give me your flask and I’ll give you your cane.”

“And then what?”

“We’ll see.”

I got down on all fours and, reaching inside my coat, withdrew the flask and extended it to him. He took it from me and, unscrewing the top, raised the flask to his lips and tilted his head back. I watched the muscles of his throat contracting as he swallowed.

“It seems that it was empty after all,” he said, glancing at the constables, who again nodded their assent, then slipping the flask into one of his breast pockets.

“Where did you find Beadle Dim and Beadle Dumb? They must owe you something more than their allegiance. They seem to be afraid of you.”

“How typical of you to confuse respect with fear. Have you ever had
anyone’s
respect?”

“Perhaps I have had the respect of some who were afraid to show it.”

“An imaginary faction of secret admirers. How pathetic.”

“What do you want, Prowse?”

“What do
you
want?”

“My cane,” I said.

He retrieved it but did not give it back to me.

“Could be used as a weapon,” he said. “I’d better hold on to it for now. Your nightstick, Constable.”

One of them extended his nightstick.

“Here,” Prowse said to me, “take hold of this and I’ll pull you up.”

I thought he meant to play some trick on me but could think of nothing but to do as he said. I grabbed the nightstick with my right hand and, though I all but pulled him on top of me, I managed to stand.

Breathless from the effort, pulse pounding in my temples, I looked down at him. He took a step backwards, then another, the nightstick in one hand, my cane in the other.

“Stay right where you are.”

“You’re
the one with the weapons,” I said. “A cane, a club and two constables. I am unarmed. Almost unlegged.”

“We can’t have you getting hurt,” he said. “You
are
a woman, despite all evidence to the contrary.”

“The evidence leaves no doubt as to what you are.”

“You’ll be relieved of those boots when we get inside. Talk about weapons. You could beat a man’s brains out with that left one.”

“That your ability to assess an object’s skull-cracking potential is superior to mine I am willing to admit. But why are we going inside?”

“Because you are under arrest for prostitution.”

“On what evidence?”

“These constables have been watching you. You have been seen accepting money from men with whom you have then gone to what is widely known to be a brothel.”

“It is widely known to be my home.”

“And that of many other prostitutes.”

“Whose invitations to enlist in their profession I have many times declined. As they will tell you.”

“You think they will admit to prostitution in order to absolve you of it? You think that, in open court, they will contradict the testimony of these constables or dare to make an enemy of
me?
That is the problem with having nothing but secret admirers. They want their admiration to remain a secret. There is not a person of consequence, Fielding, who will speak in your defence.”

“What do you hope to accomplish, Prowse? It’s not as if I have a reputation to protect.”

“No. You have nothing but a father to protect.”

“My father is in his dotage. He is barely aware of his surroundings. Nothing I do or that is done to me will have any effect on him.”

“You’re willing to take that chance?”