The Skull and the Nightingale (25 page)

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 produced 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 would 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.”

The creature turned to me, with a derisive grimace that made me laugh.

“Do you ever let him out?”

“At least once a day,” said Crocker.

He opened a small gate at head height. Trinculo emerged, and with a deft spring landed on Crocker’s shoulder. He made himself comfortable, with one small hand clasping the curls of his master’s wig.

“It is a favorite perch of his,” said Crocker. “As yet, I am glad to say, he has neither bitten me nor pissed upon me.”

When he returned Trinculo to its cage, the creature leaped round and round it, jumping and swinging with extraordinary agility. Having completed this performance, he sat on a branch and smirked at us.

“The poor wretch has been shipped across oceans,” said Crocker. “He will never see his home again. The lost Gulliver will live and die in Brobdingnag.”

As we returned to the house he remarked that he had heard from Miss Page that I was acquainted with her friend Kitty Brindley.

“Both she and Jane,” said he, “are shortly to appear in Love at a Distance, and I am advised that Miss Brindley will win all hearts as Lydia Lark. We must surely attend on the opening night and dine with the ladies afterward.”

I hope these inconsequential recollections may be of some slight interest—

By this point in my letter I felt that I was wading through clay. My godfather would expect substantial news concerning Sarah, yet here was mere chatter. I was hemmed in by symmetrical difficulties. I had nothing new to report but a brief conversation. Less obviously, while I felt that the meeting in the park had given me fresh hope, I was unwilling to tell Gilbert why. I could not do so without disclosing feelings that I wished to keep to myself. Puzzled, I pushed my pen aside.

Distraction was provided by the arrival of Matt Cullen, who walked up and down the room grinning and rubbing his hands.

“What has roused you?” I asked.

“Today,” said he, “I saw the duke and at last spoke out. ‘Enough, dotard!’ I told him. ‘Enough of empty smiles and false promises: I have cringed too long. Strike my name from your list of pitiful petitioners. I will make my own way in life.’ With that, I swept out.”

He stopped his pacing and looked at me. “How do you like my story?”

“I like it so well,” I said, “that I wish I could believe it.”

“So do I,” said Matt. “But one day it may come true: I feel my manhood boiling within, only just below the level of speech. Meanwhile—and hence this visit—I have done you a useful service. I have information concerning the life and character of Walter Ogden.”

I sat up at attention. “How did this come about?”

“I will tell you.” Matt threw himself into a chair. “I have again encountered Mr. John Gow, who works for Ogden. He is a good witness in that he has no great fault to find with Ogden as an employer and so has no cause to lie. But he seems to have little liking for him.”

“How did you explain your interest?”