Walking in Pimlico (9 page)

It is as though it was written by fairy folk, so small is the writing. But it is round and clear, addressed to ‘My dearest Helen’ and finishing
up ‘Your Phyll’. I can make nothing of it, and feeling tired with the sadness of it all, I put the picture back in its case with the glass and hair and the tiny note.

I am fond of shabby-nobby places like Springwell, but it is not often that a fellow like me can find a shop there for they are, as Gov reminded me when I asked him for a character, ‘inclined towards the refined’. It is true there are some smart hotels, and rooms also (which will stretch a pocket), but mostly Springwell is not for the nobility, but their long-lost cousins. For pretty girls looking for a husband, and their mothers looking for money, and young men not minding overmuch what they look for, as long as they have some fun. These are the same young men who, the week before, have been drinking and poking their nights away at the Constellation and places like it, have slept in shop doorways and alleys, and the next morning cannot even pass as a half-hour gentleman. There are many such in Springwell, and while I don’t despise their sixpences and shillings, I do not want their company. But Mr Cashmore, the manager of the Springwell Pavilion, Pump Room and a couple of concert rooms does, and is of the opinion that a funny fellow with some funny songs will be just the encouragement they need. He it was who placed a ‘Wanted’ ad in the
Era
(the Bible of the Profession) for a comic singer, and who wrote by return to offer me a shop for the season – ‘two turns every other eve., and a Grand Fashionable Night once a week’ – when he had received my character from Gov and read my notices.

I was much pleased, for though I have worked such places before, it has always been ‘on the road to somewhere else’ as it were, a passing-through rather than a stopping-off. I might be a city concert-room man by habit, and appear to flourish in the hurly-burly world, but I am quiet by inclination. The concert room was my place of business, you might say, but like so many lawyers and City
men, I liked to retire to the birdsong and bees, pulling up the drawbridge, and putting out the ‘Not at Home’ notice. Springwell was that sort of place, and if I had to warble for my supper and be agreeable to young cubs with more money than sense, then I would if, in return, I could sit of a dinner-time in the Old Pitcher with my Bunty’s Best and a plate of bread and cheese.

Mr Cashmore was a gloomy gent with a face much struck by misery (for it was a veritable criss-cross of lines and furrows all hoving downwards and with the expectation of no bright conclusion) and, though he claimed he was pleased to see me, it was not painted on his clock. I produced his letter and whipped out my notices (for I had sent him hand-copies), and another testimonial, all to prove that I was bon. fid., and he nodded and we agreed terms. He showed me his new pleasure punt on the river (asking if I would do boating serenades, which I declined, not having sea-legs). He told me of his ailing wife and the downturn in the bottled sauce trade, and even walked me around to Mr Flynn’s the Old Pitcher and recommended me for a room. And that was that. Shop found, room found, friendly landlord, quiet parlour. After Whitechapel, it was like taking a holiday.

I now had only one concern, and for them not in the business, it might seem a surprising one. I had not seen the orchestra yet and this played upon my mind somewhat. A comic singer is often anxious about his orchestra. I have known men who, on finding that their ‘superior accompaniment’ is nothing more than a chesty catgut scraper, have walked twenty miles and paid their own money to bring in a proper musician. Many caterers think it’s of no importance to have a band what can play
and
read music, and consider any old broken-down ivory-thumper will do.

But Mr Cashmore, for all he was a Jobanjeremiah about the phys, did not stint on his orchestra. Every morning when I attended on the Pavilion, here were four fiddlers, sober and ready, and with instruments so tuned they might play a jig along themselves! And a piano
with its master, both of them polished and waiting. Here were men with proper sheets of music, covered in a black forest of dots and dabs, none of your scraps of paper with ’2 bars agit, D major and wait while chorus’. I was comforted and impressed. Here was an elegant hall, with gas lamps (all working), a platform and curtain (no holes in either), a backcloth showing a street so full of horses and carriages and people and shops that to wander into it might be a positive danger, and out in the front a cheerful box-keeper, Mr Beeton, who shook me by the hand and told me that I was a particular favourite of his, and that my rendition of ‘The Whistling Oyster’ had lingered with him for many weeks. (I believe he was confusing me with some other fellow, and not wanting to take credit for another man’s work, I obliged by including the ‘Oyster’ in my programme.)

Here was the shop I had longed for, then. Refined, in a country sort of way. Clean and tidy. Friendly associates, and the sort of respect to which I could become accustomed and indeed, after all these years in the profession, it was nothing but my due. In Springwell there was no ‘Ho there, Corney Sage! Get yer arse in yer pants!’ but a polite enquiry from Signor Frazerini as to whether Professor Moore (that’s me, Professor Hugh Moore) was ready. And genteel applause all round, though more rorty when there were military about. Even so, there was not a man in his cups, not a woman bawling him out. There were no fights, no shouting matches.

And there were no murders.

Lucy’s letter recalled to me that unpleasantness, for I had tried to put it out of my mind, good and sure. But to have it spread out on the table before me even when the parlour of the Old Pitcher was so warm and cosy, and Mr Flynn’s beer drank sweet as a nut, well, it made me shiver some, especially when I thought of the dark Row and the footsteps tearing after me.

Lucy’s packet sat in my pocket again, tied up with brown paper now and string, and I sometimes took it out to read her letter or the
bits from the newspaper. Or look at the picture of the beautiful woman. Like I was on this particular evening. She was easy to look at, a regular angel, and whoever had caught her likeness had made a good job of it, anyone could see. I turned it round and round in my hand, and not for the first time thought how Bessie must have grabbed it in her struggle, and how she held on to it in all her agonies. And here I wiped my eye, and thought that I was a fond fellow for all my guff.

The door opened and the girl (whose name was Hope but was called Topsy on account of her clumsiness) fell in. I say
fell
for that was indeed what she did, knocking over a chair and rearranging a table on the way. The pot of beer she had brought me had watered the front of her apron and acquainted itself with the floor, but there was enough left to wash down the rest of my bread and cheese, and as she put it on the table I could see her eyes drawn to the picture, so I pushed it towards her.

‘Now, Topsy,’ says I, ‘here is a beautiful lady who you would do well to imitate. Look at her fair skin and her golden hair. You have those features in abundance, and it would take only a pot of powder and a handful of pins for you to pass off as a lady yourself.’

Indeed, I flattered the poor child, for although she had indeed fair skin and golden hair, her other features were less striking, unless of course it was her two eyes, both of which were trained on the tip of her nose at the same time. She took up the picture in both hands like it was a jewel and gave it good scrutiny.

‘If I was to ask the lady what powder she used, and how many pins, Mr Professor, would she tell me?’

I had to smile, for she was solemn in her fancy.

‘I have no doubt, if you was to ask her in the proper way, polite and not forward, and did not spill anything on her good dress, nor knock her to the ground with your elbow, Topsy, I am sure she would tell you.’

She smiled. ‘Then I shall go on my next day off with my friend Agnes, who is Mrs Garnett’s scullery, and I shall be polite and not clumsy.’

‘Where shall you go?’ says I, thinking that, as well as all her other faults, the girl was soft also.

‘To the George. She stays at the George, and walks out with the other lady, and a tall man. Very handsome. And as tall as a tree.’ Topsy turned about and dashed a stool and the firedogs to the floor as she mopped up the spilled ale. ‘I thought they was a family, two sisters and their brother. But Agnes says they are not, though they are very great friends, and sit with each other constantly. Shall I bring you another glass, sir?’

I think I nodded, though I am not sure, for my poor brain was considering Topsy’s words. And it was still turning them over when she came back into the parlour, carrying a jug, and walking like there was glass or eggshells under her feet.

‘So,’ says I, trying to appear unconcerned, ‘you say this lady is at the George?’

Oh yes, she was there. Didn’t I know? Isn’t that why I’d got the coin? She supposed I was a cousin, at least, though I didn’t look at all like her, but then
she
didn’t look like any of
her
cousins (which I could well understand). Her name? No, she didn’t know that, but she could find out. Indeed, she would have to know that, wouldn’t she, in order to call upon her and be introduced.

And her brother, I said, as though it didn’t matter one jot, but holding my breath all the same, did she know
his
name?

She blushed again, and almost nudged my beer to the floor. She
did
know
his
name. Every girl knew the name of Mr Shovelton. And wasn’t he the handsomest man in Springwell? So tall. So dark. Such blue eyes, such an elegant figure. He had noticed Mrs Garnett’s girl, and she was not even a proper lady’s maid. No, he was not in the military, though his bearing was so straight he might have been.
She had taken particular notice of him. Was that all, sir? Thank you, sir.

I turned the picture over and looked hard at the writing.

My room in the Old Pitcher was a simple affair, above the stables. Clean, yellow walls, an iron bedstead, a mattress without extras (the biting kind), and the friendly scent of four-footed companions shuffling and snorting below. I had lain there on my first night and stretched my bones till they cracked, and I felt all the hardness and difficulty of my life ease out and ebb away. I had woken up to birdsong not yawping, and the scent of stocks and sweet william rather than cat’s meat and bones. Seated to my breakfast in Mr Flynn’s parlour, his wife had brought creamy milk, still warm from the cow, and good thick slices of salty ham and white bread and flavoursome butter. I had found a berth here with which I could be content, and it occurred to me that I was tired of trouble and the hardness of city life. The clean air and bright sun, trees bursting with greenness, and the lapping river, all these simple things had been missing, and here they were in abundance.

But after Topsy had blushed her story out about the ladies and gent at the George, it seemed that a shadow was cast across me. When I reached my room, I locked the door, for the first time since I arrived in Springwell, and when I lay down on my bed, I felt as though all my bones were set agin each other. But it was an uncalled-for fear, I thought. Topsy was no great judge of features, surely? Here was a girl who was blind to tables and chairs when they was in familiar places! What chance that she should recognize this strange face as one she’d seen in the street? And how very strange it should be for this woman to be here! Out of all the women and all the places in this great country, how should
she
be in Springwell? And how should
this
picture, what I had now slipped under my pillow for safe-keeping, and its owner, and Bessie and Lucy and me, how should all this be threaded together?

I took off my boots and lay on my bed (which might have been in a corner of the Little Ease for all it gave me comfort) and thought about things.

I am no scholar. Mr Figgis (who brung me up, so not my father, but as good as) always said that I should use the bits of brains the good Lord gave me, rather than wonder about them what he didn’t. Or something along that way. But it was beyond me to work out how I, not for the first time, was troubled by business that was not of my making. This picture of a young woman had found its way to me, just as surely as I found my way into the back yard of the Constellation and into the eyeline of the swell who did for Bessie, though it would take some clever Oxford fellow to explain how and why. And yet here they were, joined up like a Roman’s rosary beads.

There was a bright moon and, wonder of wonders, shooting stars bursting across the sky. I leaned out of the little window and watched them make trails across the sky, and looked up and down the Parade, and I breathed in the clear air which I own I could not get enough of, after the stink of Whitechapel. It was all dark and quiet, only the distant rush of the water over the stones by the River Gardens. It was a perfect berth for me and no mistake, and felt like home. Whatever that might be.

I never knew my own mother, of course, though I understand she was a kindly, welcoming soul, and made comfortable any soldier or sailor who could find the coins to buy her a bed, and the appearance of yours truly was no inconvenience to her either, though perhaps something of a surprise. So surprising that she left me on the corn chandler’s doorstep, wrapped in a large poster (torn from a hoarding) announcing a balloon ascent the following day, which she attended with a mulatto mariner. (I think this last bit about the mariner is not all the truth and, true to you, I don’t know where it has come from. But it has become part of my story, so often have I
told it.) The tale of finding me, the swaddling in which I was wrapped up like a parcel of fried potatoes and the search for my mother, was the sole subject of Mr Figgis’s conversation for many weeks.