Walking in Pimlico (10 page)

The Figgises had no kids of their own and were Baptists through and through, but they gave me a name – Cornelius, of course – and a home, clean as a whistle. But that life would never do for me, though, and I can see Mr F even now, looking heavenward for assistance. Kind as they were and never a thought for themselves, they were not the mother and father I knew had started me up, so to speak. When I was older, I quizzed them till Mr F lost his patience and Mrs F started to cry, and then I asked everyone from the turnkey to the tanner. But it was like looking for an honest man in a court of law. I never knew my mother and she never came to find me, though I searched the face of every small, red-haired woman (I fancied I had inherited her looks) who crossed my path. Even now I often thought of her, the mother who had wrapped me in the only thing she could find, and left me with only hope and charity as protection.

I fell to musing on this, and certain the mild night air and the bubble of the distant water was very pleasant. For though I sometimes felt sad that here was a mother I never knew and perhaps brothers and sisters also, Springwell was so comfortable a shop, so very mild and easy compared with what I had been accustomed to, I could generally bring myself about, and dwell upon more cheerful matters. And this I tried to do, sometimes with success, but other times, like tonight, to no avail, for what crept into my thoughts were darker memories. Cold nights in doorways. An empty belly and the pain that goes with it. Thoughts of murder and someone who might be connected with it sleeping in a bed only a few steps up the street. I could not help myself but lean out and look upon the windows of the George, some still lit, and wonder if the lady on Bessie’s locket
was in one of them. And whether the Mr Shovelton that Topsy was so struck by was indeed her brother. And how all these little things might drop together into something bigger.

And so I was considering the likelihood of these rags and trifles together, and feeling not a little careworn by them, when the sound of footsteps brought me up. Springwell was such a quiet, out-of-the-way place that anyone out after ten o’clock was probably up to no good. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do in Springwell when the night drew on, except sit by the fire or go to bed. But here was a gent striding out, heels striking the pavement like hammers and not caring who heard them, and stopping in front of the Old Pitcher, my little crib. I watched him cross the road and try the door, but Mr Flynn had turned down the lamps and turned himself into bed hours before and all was in darkness in the snug and parlour. His footsteps echoed around the side of the Old Pitcher and into the yard. My eye, I thought, he’ll be for it if he discovers Mr Flynn’s mastiff, and without thinking too much on it I leaned out of the window and cried out, not too loud so as to wake everyone, but enough to get the gent’s attention.

‘Hello, below!’ I cried, and the clattering footsteps stopped. I couldn’t see him owing to the deep darkness, and so I called out again, ‘Hello, below there! Sir!’ The footsteps turned themselves about and cracked across the cobbles, as I charged on, little thinking, desiring to be helpful.

I leaned out further from my nest and called,
piano
-like, ‘What is it you want, sir? Can I help you?’ He was as still as you like. I could almost hear him breathing. But, fool that I was, I kept at him. ‘Are you lost, sir, or taken ill? Shall I call Mr Flynn, sir?’ And then came again the sound of his boots, striking the stones like hammers and echoing around the yard. For he must have seen me, framed like a picture in the window, calling down to him. And I knew him. Or I knew his boots and their melody and their agony and what horrors
they might create. It was as though I was back in Whitechapel, back in the Row behind the Constellation, back in my nightmare where he runs after me. The gent, Bessie’s murderer, after me now, as Lucy said he would be.

I have no recollection of how long I stood at my little window looking down into the darkness, searching out the face that went with the sound of those footsteps and which I knew was looking up at me from the shadows. Searching it out, but not finding it. It might have been minutes or hours, but something decided me that the only thing I could do was, like a rabbit bolting into its hole, to slam the window and secure the catch, and then check the bar on the door, and put my chair against it also.

Corney Sage – Springwell

I
spent a bad night, the first one ever in Springwell, and got up the next day feeling very cheap. It was Friday, and a Grand Fashionable Night at the Pavilion, and Mr Cashmore, being an exacting man, liked to ‘give patrons a taste of the Metroplis’, as he put it – and charge ’em Metropolis prices. No one minded. It was the only entertainment to be had and Grand or Fashionable or not, people bought their tickets and looked forward to it.

I attended business as per, talking myself up and feeling sunnier as I stepped out upon the Parade, and tipped my hat here and there, and was greeted most cordially by Mr Beeton, the box-keeper who, as far as I could see, never left his box, but lived there entirely. Indeed, inside the box, which was no more than a cupboard, he had everything a man could want. As it were, a home in miniature. A pail of water in the corner, covered by a towel, for washing. A small stove on which he heated water for his tea. Mr Kean, his dog, and Mrs Malibran, his cat, both settled in their places, one sleeping always at his feet and the other on the top of his ledgers on a high shelf where she kept down the spider population. An old hat box stood duty as a container for clean collars and handkercher, hair oil and toothpicks, and a small, round-headed punisher, for dealing
with difficult patrons. His meals (which he sent out for and which were brought round regularly by a crippled boy called Nidd) he ate in the box, so that there was always the lingering smell of mutton and greens to greet visitors. (But Mr Cashmore didn’t seem to mind, which surprised me for in every other way he was a to-the-letter man.)

Mr Beeton was, as I said, eager to greet me, and came out of his box (which he did so infrequently that he had to pause and adjust his pins and look up into the sky with an expression of wonder) and pumped my hand up and down like he was drawing water.

‘Professor Moore,’ he said in a high and whistling voice, ‘I’ve been looking forward to this occasion. Will you take a turn with me, sir?’

I was surprised and began to excuse myself, for I was due in the hall for a half past ten call, and do not like to keep musicians waiting.

‘Just five minutes, sir,’ he pleaded, ‘knowing your duties are onerous and time so precious, but feeling confident of your good nature. . .’

I had to give in. How could I not? At which he laid his hand upon my arm in a confidential way and we walked a few steps back and forth in front of the box.

‘It is a pleasure to me, Professor Moore, to talk to an educated man. Many persons pass by my window, sir, but few have a university education. From which university did you gain your degree, sir?’

Here was a puzzle and a dilemma. It was a surprise to discover that Mr Beeton was not wise to the world of the concert room. If he had been, he might know that most every comic fellow was a Professor or Doctor or Monsieur, and that these were adopted titles for the stage, and not signifying anything. But here was a man in earnest, with his hand upon my sleeve and a smile upon his lips, not
at all anxious to hear that I was found on a doorstep in Portsmouth and educated at the Ragged School, but rather that I was the son of a respectable clergyman, and that I had been to the best (the only) university I had heard of, so I said, with as careless an air as I could muster, ‘Oh, Cambridge, sir, but I got tired of all the talking and the reading, so I tried the stage instead.’

His earnest face lit up like a lamp. ‘Did you really, sir? Well! And what a thing to do! Get tired of reading books all day? And of educating young gentlemen in the philosophy and the Greek? Why, I can’t count the pleasure I have in my little library, sir. Every day I take down a volume and open it up, just so, and here is Homer, sir, and the letters of Pliny, sir, and the
Lives of the Emperors
, which are my favourites.’

I nodded sagely and said I was partial to the
Lives
myself, though I liked a letter or two if they had plenty of moment to them, and weren’t too much occupied with politics, which I couldn’t abide. He looked at me curiously, and then laid his hand across his mouth and laughed for all he was worth. Indeed, the tears rolled out of his eyes and down his cheeks in a way I have never seen before in a man.

‘Droll, Professor Moore,’ says he, wiping his eye with a handkercher, ‘which a man can be with a education such as yours. Could I ask you, would it be a great imposition to invite you into the box to look at my little library?’

I had already begun to shake my head, but he whistled on.

‘I would deem it such an honour, sir, such a privilege to have your opinion and perhaps, though I should not impose but feel emboldened to do so, perhaps your recommendations. A bookseller in Plymouth sends me them cheap, if they are deficient by a page or two.’

He was so earnest and desirous of my attention that I could do no more than follow him into the box (and we were tight and cosy in there) and fix my eyes upon the twenty or so volumes ranged
upon a shelf above the window. Mrs Malibran, who I believe saw through me immediately and was merely waiting on her moment to denounce me to her master and to the world as a fraud, looked down at me from the shelf above, though Mr Kean, as usual sleeping under the table, was in no way interested in my dilemma. I scratched my chin and cocked my head this way and that (as I’ve seen men do outside booksellers), and I made murmuring noises (as above), while Mr Beeton looked anxiously on.

‘Well, Professor Moore?’

‘Mr Beeton,’ says I in my most serious tones, ‘here you have a very fine library.’

He was looking hard at me, and attending to my every word, and nodding too.

‘Yes indeed, and, confidentially’ – I inclined my head and he drew and, I believe, held his breath – ‘I consider this as good a library as the one I used to use for my studies.’

‘At Cambridge?’ said he, looking surprised. ‘Have they only twenty-three books in the library of that great university?’

‘Only twenty-three worth reading, sir,’ said I gravely. ‘And you have ’em all.’

He thought for a moment, and then clapped his hands. ‘Ah, Professor Moore, you are surely a great credit to the University of Cambridge! Tell me, was that where you became acquainted with Mr Shovelton?’

Shovelton.

I had not thought to hear that name spoken. No, allow me to correct myself. I had not
wanted
to hear that name, but now here was Mr Beeton obliging me with it and expecting a smile and a nod, no doubt. For some moments all I could think of was Topsy and the merry way in which that name tripped off her tongue. So, true to you Miss Topsy, I thought, you was correct. That is his name. The very same and no doubt residing, as she declared, at the George.

Mr Beeton was raising his eyebrows and licking his lips, still waiting for the smile and nod, and indeed Mrs Malibran trained her yellow eyes upon me and even Mr Kean raised his head to hear my answer.

But, ‘Mr Shovelton?’ was all I could muster.

‘He has enquired for you, sir. Wishing to renew your friendship, I expect. I told him he could find you here tonight, and he was delighted to be sure, and said he looked forward to it.’

Mr Beeton, I believe, was now waiting for a hearty college story. One that might have concerned youthful pranks and glasses of the best ale, while I was still hopeful that there had been some unfortunate error on the part of Topsy. And indeed on the part of Mr Shovelton, who surely was seeking out a different Professor Moore, one from Cambridge University, a gentleman who read many books of letters and lives, and who had never been so unfortunate as to have seen a murderer. So I played the donkey.

‘Shovelton?’ I says again. ‘No, I don’t believe I recall Mr Shovelton. Mr
Castleton
was certainly a good friend of mine. And Mr Middleton also. I remember lending money to a Mr Partleton, though I don’t begrudge it, since he was a Presbyterian. But Shovelton?’ Here I scratched my chin and my head and stared hard at Mr Beeton’s bookshelf. ‘No,’ I said, ‘he does not come to mind. Do you think he might have confused me with someone else, Mr Beeton?’

The box-keeper didn’t think so, saying that Mr Shovelton was most insistent on paying his compliments, and had already bought tickets for the entertainment that evening.

Tickets?

Three. For himself and his sister and her friend. He had knocked upon the door of the box today and enquired of Professor Moore in the most earnest terms. Indeed, I had missed him by minutes, and if I hurried along the Parade, I might even catch him up.

No, I had my call and I was already late, which Mr Beeton understood.

‘Ah, you professionals, if I might be so bold! Always at work and to the mark, and never time to indulge yourselves in ordinary pleasures! Professor Moore’ – and he took my hand – ‘it has been a pleasure and an education, sir. I salute you, sir, as you go to your task. As the esteemed Seneca put it,
ars longa, vita brevis
.’