The Underground Man (21 page)

His skull was covered with the same curious inscriptions. The porcelain was as inviting as it had always been. But my father was no longer there to scold me and I was no longer a worried young boy and I found myself reaching a hand into the crate … tentatively, as if towards a cornered animal.

When my fingertips were less than an inch from the porcelain they froze. I listened for the voice of my father, booming down the years. But he was quiet and too distant. And my finger touched the skull.

‘Cold,' I whispered into the cold air.

With the cuff of my sable I wiped the window pane and located my gardener, fifty feet away. Managed to open the window without it coming away from its hinges and called down to him, to ask if he might lend a hand. Again, there was nothing in his attitude to suggest he had heard me – he did not look up, there was no discernible shift in direction or speed – so that I was considering calling out a second time when I saw how he was, in fact, banking slightly to the left
and, in a roundabout way, wheeling his creaking barrow towards the stable door below.

The bust is no more than a foot and a half tall, but I was anxious no harm should come to it and did not trust myself to carry it all the way round to the front of the house. So when we were safely down the stable stairs my gardener (whose name, I discovered, was George) suggested I place it in his barrow with his decomposing leaves. Then he wheeled it gently around the network of paths, with me walking by his side.

‘Is it heavy, George?' I asked him as we went along.

‘No, Your Grace,' said George. ‘It is just right.'

When we reached the front steps George lowered his barrow and offered to carry the head into the house for me. I thanked him for the offer but told him I thought I should be able to manage the rest of the way, took the head up in my arms like a baby from a perambulator and went carefully back up to my rooms.

The plinth is inscribed …

 

From the base I note that he hails from Staffordshire.

A damp cloth cleaned the dirt and rotten straw from his face. He is about as good as new. He sits in his shadowy corner, pondering the same intractable puzzles he has always pondered.

Nothing seems to come or go between him and the world. His thoughts are buried deep in the pot. He might almost be a member of some shaven-headed tribe who communicate silently and on a different plane. But what lends his appearance
such peculiarity are the lines which map out his skull. His face is blank but his cranium is parcelled and labelled like so many cuts of meat. Friendship, Approbativeness, Mirthfulness. All the things which fail to register on his face.

I wonder if this is the fellow. My long-lost phrenological man.

First thing this morning I sent a note to Mellor.

And in no time the reply came back …

So after a lunch of buttered comfrey greens and a slice of seedie-cake I called down to Grimshaw had him hitch up a coach and bring it round to the tunnels' landing stage.

My sable has become a little damp, lately. Smelt a bit mouldy when I put it on today, so swapped it for a redingote and cape and even forwent the beaver (I found I was in no mood for hats). Then, with one hand on the banister and the other round Fowler's head, I slowly made my way down the back staircase to the tunnels below. Clement roped a rug or two down in the dumb waiter and we were still sorting ourselves out when Grimshaw came trundling around the bend, looking very smart in knee boots, gauntlets and goggles.

Clement sat with his back to the horses and I settled Fowler's head down next to me among the tartan rugs. Then, with Grimshaw under strict instruction to avoid every pothole along the way, we set off for Holbeck village.

The floating boy grows in confidence. He came along for the ride, for most of the journey quite content to hover at the same speed as us just outside the carriage door. Like the moon on a crystal-clear night, he was, keeping up with us and peeping in. But when we neared the end of the tunnel he decided to slip inside the coach. He is a sly fellow and no mistake – always receding from view. Like the eye-detritus of hair and such which obscures my vision on sunny days. Always skimming off into the periphery and impossible to pin down.

I did manage to snatch a glimpse of him today before he ducked out of sight. He is a tiny fellow, not much more than a babe-in-arms. His flesh is the same colour as Fowler's head – luminous-white, like the clouds – which made such an impression on me that, without meaning to, I blurted out, ‘Both so very white,' which caused Clement to give me a most quizzical look. I had to pretend I had nodded off for a second and was talking in my sleep.

When we reached Holbeck I asked Clement and Grimshaw to wait in the carriage and assured them I would not be long. Gingerly made my way up Mellor's garden path with Fowler's head peeping over one shoulder and the boy-in-the-moon floating on the other. The Reverend, clean shaven this time, opened the door straight away, saying, ‘I see you have brought a friend along,' and I was stumped for a second as to which of my creamy companions he referred to.

At the edge of the sea of knick-knack laden tables I became worried lest I trip and smash my phrenology head. Asked Mellor if he would mind playing St Christopher.

‘Not at all, Your Grace,' he said, and took him from me
with admirable sureness (which I attributed to his many christenings) then he was off, gracefully weaving his rotund little body through the maze of book-towers and fragile glassware towards the fireside, while I did my best to stay on his tail. As we picked our way through the debris, Fowler's head peered back at me over Mellor's shoulder and a song of wonderful whiteness composed itself in my mind.

When we were seated and had cups of tea in our hands, Mellor allowed himself a closer look at the head. He seemed very pleased.

‘So what's your knowledge of Phrenology, Your Grace?' he asked.

‘Of the philosophy, next to nothing,' I admitted, but went on to tell him how, as a child, my head had been measured (very roughly, I might add) by some old gent with bony fingers, while my mother and father looked concernedly on. I recalled the phrenologist taking from his case a huge pair of callipers which he proceeded to place over my skull. I can still see me perching on my wobbly stool, overflowing with apprehension, convinced that at any moment the old fellow was going to plunge the tips of those callipers right into my temples.

‘Very fashionable at one time,' said Mellor. ‘You will have heard, perhaps, that Her Majesty had a phrenologist measure each of her offspring's heads?'

He is a regular treasure-chest of information, is Mellor. A walking, talking book. And, without the least bit of prompting on my part, I found myself the recipient of what turned out to be a great torrent of the stuff. This particular torrent was all to do with the science of Phrenology – the chap who had originally come up with it (named
suchandsuch
) and how the science had first spread across Europe (by two other fellows) then across the Atlantic (by some other chap). Names and dates swept all around me, as well as the marching feet of
large committees of medical men – some of whom were in favour of phrenology, but most of whom were decidedly against – until finally it was all I could do to hang on to the arms of my chair and try and keep myself from being washed away.

How much of this impressive oration was spontaneous and how much had been prepared I could not say. It is quite possible the Reverend had been cramming from some textbook right up until the moment I knocked at his front door. On the other hand, it might simply be that his is one of those minds which drinks up every drop of information it is offered and has no trouble in later pouring it back out. Either way, I just about managed to withstand Mellor's assault on me without either falling asleep or falling off my chair and came out clutching what I reckon to be the gist of the matter … namely, that phrenology was an attempt to gauge an individual's character by recording the various bumps and hollows on that person's head. Each bump, depending on its whereabouts, suggests a predominance of a particular quality – Hope, Spirituality, Firmness, etc. – so that by consulting a map (or a model, like Fowler's head) the phrenologist can assess the head in hand.

‘Not many of the old fellows left kicking about, Your Grace,' said Mellor. ‘The whole caboodle fell out of favour some years ago.'

Then he paused and looked me squarely in the eyes.

‘Beg your pardon in asking, Your Grace, but where does this sudden interest in phrenology spring from?'

Fowler's head sat coyly in Mellor's lap. The pair of them stared silently at me. If I had not known and trusted them both so well I might have imagined they were ganging-up on me.

The silence spread across the prickly room. I took the opportunity to look around for my boy-in-the-moon. I
searched every last inch of my periphery but found he had slipped away.

‘I have given the matter a good deal of thought,' I heard me say, ‘and have concluded that what I need is a good head-man.'

The Reverend nodded slowly at me, gently placed Fowler on the rug and hupped himself out of his chair. He then proceeded to spend the next five minutes clinging to the rock face of his bookshelves, picking over their spines with a tilted head. He hum-hummed to himself and ground his teeth and paused only to draw out some huge leathery slab. As the minutes crept by and the book-hunt pressed on I thought I saw him grow increasingly discouraged, until at last he stepped back from one shelf with an expression of great suspicion on his face – as if the books had been guilty of conspiring against him. He turned slowly, slowly … listening, it seemed, for the scurrying footfalls of his prey's retreat.

‘Ah-ha,' he said, and pounced upon a seemingly-innocent table. He wrestled briefly with its pile of papers, whipped out a cardboard folder from its base and left the whole precarious structure swaying from side to side.

He returned, removing a single sheet from the file.

‘Here she is,' he said, and dropped it in my lap.

The paper was all yellowed with age and eaten away at the edges, but the illustration was perfectly intact. And what a strange and exotic picture, to be sure – a cross-section of a head, much like Fowler's, but nothing like as mundanely numbered or named. At first I thought it was some sort of head-hotel, for in each compartment miniature folk posed, in representation of all the characteristics of Man. Here in tableau-form were Self-Esteem (a proud couple strolling in the country) and Suavity (some slippery-looking fellow, drawing the reader in with a crooked finger). Here was
Combativeness, personified by two boxers … in fact, all the human qualities, good and bad, with a man or woman acting them out in their own little cell.

‘Wonderful,' I told the Reverend.

‘A gift,' he replied, before adding, ‘Not very rare.'

I thanked him all the same and was already planning how it might fit into my shrine. I continued to examine the picture while I got around to asking if he might know where I might find a good head-man.

I waited a second before looking up. When I did so I found he had fixed me with a wry expression.

‘A head-man? Well, as I said, Your Grace – phrenologists are very much a dying breed. But, if pressed, I would have to say Edinburgh. That's where the last of them retreated to.'

‘Edinburgh,' I said.

‘I know a professor there. An old friend of mine … I could introduce you. I'm sure he'd see you straight.'

‘And are there tunnels to Edinburgh?' I asked.

He shook his head.

‘Not yet, Your Grace.'

This was a big disappointment. I rather hoped there might have been.

‘Edinburgh,' I said. ‘Very well.'

I was making ready to leave when the Reverend caught me by my coat sleeve and whispered excitedly in my ear.

‘Before you go, I must show you my latest acquisition.'

And he trotted off to burrow in some corner, returning with what I first took to be a pair of thick spectacles which had a strip of card attached. He was fairly beaming as he handed the strange contraption over.

‘Try them on,' he said.

Well, I slipped the things over my nose and as I did so, a photograph came into view. But – how extraordinary! – one with lifelike depth of field. A young boy sat with an open
book in his lap, yet the table in the foreground and the wall behind seemed to exist on quite separate planes. Remarkable! As I moved my head from side to side I could even sense some parallax. For the sake of it I peeped over the glasses at the piece of card and saw two identical photographs, side by side, but when I looked back through the glasses they merged into a single, startling image with all dimensions accounted for.

‘Stereoscopic,' announced Mellor over my shoulder.

‘Very good,' I said. ‘And what is the scene?'

‘“A boy, reflecting”,' he told me. ‘What do you say to that?'

When I left I had my new phrenology head-map under one arm, all rolled up and tied with string, and Fowler's porcelain head under the other. Clement and Grimshaw sat stiffly in the carriage, wrapped in the tartan rugs. I must say, they looked quite cold.

It has long been a tradition at Welbeck that on Christmas Eve every employee of the House and estate drop by with their families in the afternoon. Nothing much, just a stand-up buffet in the ballroom and some games for the little ones. But mainly just an excuse for a get-together and the opportunity to wish each other well.

So, around three o'clock His Grace comes down for ten minutes or so, to help ladle out the punch. He was never one to make a speech or draw attention to himself and it is not as if anyone expected it. But when one year he joined in a game of dominoes with some of the children it was talked about for weeks on end. Just a little thing like that, you see, but it goes a very long way.

Well, me and the girls had put some effort into it the last time round. We'd made a big potato salad, brought up some smoked hams and laid it all out on the best tablecloths. But it had got to three o'clock, then quarter past and half past with nobody having seen hide nor hair of His Grace. So Clement goes off and searches for him and eventually tracks him down in some corner of his rooms with his books and charts. Tries to get him down, to show his face just for a second, but His Grace says that he is busy and to leave him alone.

Well, some of us see him every day of our lives but for others it might be the only time they will see him from one year to the next and when it becomes clear His Grace is not to make an appearance people begin to drift away. And all
this time he was upstairs reading. What is one to make of that?

It was later on that His Grace came down and apologized. Said he had not realized that it was Christmas Eve and was quite upset. But when a fellow forgets it's Christmas something is definitely wrong. It's not just the effort. It's people's feelings I'm talking about.