Walking in Pimlico (24 page)

My train came in and I waited while two more emptied, looking for a familiar face, or for someone to approach with a clap on the shoulder and a ‘Corney Sage! There you are!’ But no one did, and though I hung about until the porters started giving me the evil (thinking I was up to no good), still no one did. So I didn’t notice this woman at all till I got outside, feeling not a little disappointed with the world. Now if I’d been of the thieving persuasion, I thought (and I was not in a sunny temper), I would have made straight for
her. Given her a nudge, since she looked none too steady, and have made off with her bag and purse before she knew what had happened.

Hello, I thought, there she goes. And the woman sinks down on cue, as it were, upon the bench. She was very pale, with great black shadows under her eyes and splashes of mud on her travelling coat, and I could see she had a little black purse on a string round her wrist, which was easy pickings. And no doubt she had a trunk too. I watched her for a while, and thought, Corney Sage, you’re getting city ways. You’re starting to think like a city cove. And I was in certain. I thought that if I didn’t look sharp and give her a friendly hand, someone else would guide her ever so carefully to the refreshment rooms, jostle her to the floor, and rob her blind.

So there was I, strolling across the road, avoiding the horses, chaffing the cabmen, and straightening my everyday, with this lady in my sights, when suddenly there’s a whistle and a shout: ‘Hoi! Corney Sage! H-over ’ere!’

I was, as the song says, ‘Somewhat inclined to give him the bird’ and continue on my errand. But – well, Mr Chittick, my new Gov’nor, had sent me out with orders what I couldn’t very well ignore. Round the back they was just unloading three great rolls of canvas from Mr Griffin in Bolton, and it was all for me. So I gave the lady a good looking at and told her, under my breath like, to stay where she was until I got back. And the fact was, I said to myself, giving her one last look over my shoulder, she didn’t look much as if she was going anywhere soon.

I hauled the handcart round and promised old Loudmouth (who was still shouting to me, and gave his haitches to everything what didn’t need them) a free pass to the show if he would help me stow the goods. The job was too big for one man, and Chittick might have sent a couple of others at least. But that was the trouble with some circus men. Mean-spirited. Not like your theatricals who look out
for each other and offer a helping hand when they can. Circus men are hard-hearted. Everyone knows they think more of their animals than their fellow men.

Of course, when I joined Chittick’s Mammoth establishment I was glad for the shop. What with that bad business in the other place, I was eager to jump the next wagon (not having the readies) and was pleased to find myself in the great city of Birmingham. On spec. The truth was, I should have been much relieved to find myself in Timbuctoo, so eager was I to be out of trouble, but I have never gone to any shop in the blind, so to speak, and the only thing I knew about Birmingham was what Lucy and her mother, Mrs Strong, had told me, for that lady had a sister living here who might take in lodgers.

But I looked like a hay-seed, my clothes were shabby, my clogs didn’t tell and even the ‘Flea’ and ‘Alonzo the Brave’ refused to go. Most of the city concert rooms were huffish, but finally I talked up Mr Blitz of the Harmony in Reed-street (the very same as I found in the
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), and he offered me a shop. Which I took for one night only. I think about it with shame now, for I must have looked a proper wall creeper. I was the first man on the platform (which I would never accept in the usual way of things), and gave them a round of clogs, two improving recitations about working hard and keeping on the right side of the law, and finished up with a motto song about caring for your mother before it’s too late. A tidy little programme, I thought, and well received, though the company was dull. But when Mr Blitz, a real dismal Jimmy, without a nod, give me notice to change my coat and wait on tables for the rest of the evening, I was struck to my liver and back again. This was something I have never done! Will never do, unless I am starving.

I’ve told this tale to several parties since, but for all the telling it is as close as a cuss is to damnation to what I said to Mr Blitz when I dropped my apron at his feet. He said not a word, and of course
he profited by my indignation for I got not a penny from him, having told him that he and his concert room might go and roast in another place. For I was straight away out of the door, and now without a shop or ready or lodgings. And I was wondering whether to pay a call upon Mrs Strong’s sister and appeal to her goodwill.

But fortune smiles on those who don’t press her too hard, and one of my daily trips was down to the railway station (carrying bags and hailing cabs will put a sixpence in a man’s hand), where I was forced to pass the circus in the Cattle Market. It was not the great wooden building itself that stopped me, though I’d often peeped in and breathed that aroma you don’t get anywhere else. A regular mix of smells – tan, what is sharp to the nose, and animals and their sweet sweat, and human sweat too, which is never sweet. Not to mention the orange peel and damp shoe leather and the oats and straw wafting up from where the horses are bedded. I get quite lyrical about it, but I maintain that the smell of the circus is like nothing else. You couldn’t bottle it if you tried.

But what usually halted me was what was going on in the yard where they were exercising or walking the animals. I regular stopped to admire the fine physic of the strong man – and get an eyeful of the physic of the sawdust ladies while I was at it! By and by I got on chatting terms with everyone, and they would hail me as I went past. Then one day there were wagons in the yard, and everyone busy painting and carpentering. And, according to Herr Klein, the strong man, they were soon to leave for a tenting season in the country. As luck would have it they were in need of a funny man.

‘Some of your good fresh air. No?’ says Herr Klein who, by the way, was brung up in Builth Wells, but had talked in the foreign way for so long he couldn’t help himself and talked like it by habit now! I was quickly conscripted into the company. The previous talking clown had disappeared (to another circus company, Mr Chittick
believed), and anyway his jokes were old and dry. A bit like him. They wanted some fresh blood and new wheezes for the tenting season, and although I protested that I was no horseman, and had never tumbled in my life (except when I was on the lush), the Gov’nor would have none of it. I was transformed there and then into Funny Foodle with an orange wig (until my own grew) and white paint, and made my sawdust debut that very night.

They made me as welcome as they could any mummer, for ‘ne’er shall sawdust-men and mummers meet’, said Mrs Chittick when I found her alone on the steps of her living wagon. I made bold to ask if that applied to sawdust-women as well, and she smiled, and said that all joeys were alike. But she smiled at me again afterwards, and caught my eye a few times when her husband wasn’t looking.

So I felt not all out of shape. I had found a shop, made myself useful and agreeable, and would warm my feet on the Gov’nor’s wife at the first opportunity.

But back to my train and this interesting lady. The one sinking low outside the station? One thing at a time. I arrive at the circus as usual this morning and have Mr Chittick’s instructions to collect some rolls of canvas, ordered from Glasgow, for the new tilt (that is the roof), in readiness for our going a-tenting. I am listening to these instructions for the umpteenth time, when Mrs comes wafting across the yard (a fragrant lady, and no mistake) waving an envelope and crying, ‘’Ere, Foodle, it’s for you!’

Me? I have only ever had two letters in my whole life. One to say that Mr Figgis, my dear old father (only not my true father), had died and the other from Mrs Figgis, telling me I am left his Bible and a drawful of stiff collars if I would like to collect them. But here is a letter with my name upon it, ‘Corney Sage (Prof. Moore)’, and ‘care of Chitticks Circus, Birmingham’.

‘Chittick’s Mammoth Circus,’ the Gov puts in. ‘They’ve left out Mammoth.’

No one pays him any attention, for they are all waiting on me to open it. But inside is just an untidy note, requesting me to meet a train at a certain time on a certain day (today) and signed – but none of us can make it out. There is no ‘to your advantage’, no ‘you will learn something interesting’. Not even, ‘where you will receive a hundred pounds’. Just a day and a time and a train and a scribbled name that not even Mrs can read, and she is a scholar. From my circus pals, there is much advice offered, mostly to ignore it, for it can only mean trouble. Probably, says one of the grooms, I was going to be jumped at the station, and robbed of everything, which alarms Chittick no end. I am to guard those rolls of canvas with my life, he cries, and if any are missing he will turn my brains to butter. So off I go with the letter in my pocket and a frown upon my countenance.

Which did not lift, for the train came, and another, and the one after it, and there was no one to meet and no reward to claim, and no doubt some prankster in Wheezetown having a chortle at my expense. But there is no point weeping over an upturned churn (as Mr Figgis would say), so I turned my sights upon the interesting lady a-sitting on the bench.

As I hauled the handcart round the corner, I made a point of looking her up. She was still there, a bit brighter, but not much. And when she stood up, I conned what was going on with her, for in a few more weeks she’d be increasing the population by one.

She seemed to know I had her in my eye, and stared me down.

‘Afternoon, missis,’ says I cheerily, tipping my hat. ‘Can I assist?’

‘A cup of water, if you’d be so kind,’ she replied, and I could see her tongue was fairly cleaved to her mouth, and her lips were dry as dry. All about us were the crowds coming and going to the railway, and whistles hooting and cabmen shouting, and everyone giving her the curious stare but not wanting to enquire. (That is what I have found about city people. How they enjoy looking and will halt in the
middle of the roadway if something takes their eye, and before you can turn about there is a crowd. That’s how crowds are made, I believe, from one person’s eye-wagging. But that is all they wish to do. Eye-wag. And would not think to lend a hand.) So there was plenty of people, but not so many cups of water, and I said so to anyone who would hear, and that turned the army on to its back foot. But, says I to the lady, if she could step across the way there is the refreshment room in the Railway Hotel what isn’t nobby, but has water a-plenty. I thought she smiled to herself, a little smile that made her look away and draw her hand across her face.

‘You’re very kind,’ she says. ‘I will go directly to the Railway Hotel.’

And she got up, heavy like, and weary, and I wondered if she would get across the road without having to have another sit down, so bad did she look. But here was a how-d’ye-do as well, for I was encumbered with my cart and the great rolls of canvas sticking out and poking people, and causing cabmen to give me language, and here was an ailing woman, whose purse was hanging loose about her wrist, and who was not likely to cross the street without coming to injury. So I hailed old Loudmouth, who himself had come to get an eyeful of what was going on, and promised him a glass of Felkin’s Particular if he would take my cart back to the railway yard, when I would collect it later on. He gave me a selection of haitches again and attached some of them to his own variety of laughter (‘Haah!’ ‘Ha-aah!’ he goes, in a fashion I’ve never heard by any other mortal), but he took the cart and left me with two free arms to guide the lady across the road and into the Railway Hotel.

Now it is not a plush place, the Railway, and even though it calls itself a hotel I have never met anyone what has stayed there, nor has wanted to stay there. The Station Hotel is a different matter, having all manner of rooms and saloons, and a superior cove on the door what would knock your hat off in the street if he didn’t like the time
on your clock. I have had fighting words with this cove before, when he showed me his Oliver with the tattoo on each knuckle. So the Railway Hotel it was, and Rudd, the landlord (a decent bloke also with a tattoo but on his back, and this of a ship in full sail, which he will reveal for a penny, and a fine bit of artwork it is too), wiping his hands on his apron, kindly showing us into his parlour round the back and bringing the glass of water for her and the glass of neck-oil for me, while she insisted on coughing up for it. She was in the only comfortable chair in the whole house, what Rudd has dragged out and dusted off, and she has fallen dead asleep straight away, not minding that the room is chilly and dusty. Rudd’s wife (a mulatto and the most handsome woman I have seen in all my days) came in and took a look at her and fetched a rug to cover her up, then draws the curtains and shushes us out.

So, not knowing what else to do, I sit in the public with Rudd, and watch the clock and listen to the flies and take a glass, until Mrs Rudd goes into the parlour with a cup of tea and some bread and butter and comes out with a quizzical look on her face.

‘She wants you,’ she says, and I am regular put about by this woman’s beauty, which is considerable. (I do not know how she happened to get stuck with Rudd who, apart from his tattoo, which is artistic in the extreme, is horrible to behold. If I could have got to the Americas before him, I would have snapped her up right as right, but being a sea-William, I would never have the chance.)

Anyhow, I goes in to her, and she’s sitting up with the rug over her and the fire lit now.

‘Thank you. Thank you for looking after me.’

I said it was nothing. That any Christian man or woman would have done the same. But she wasn’t listening, for a look of panic was struck upon her face and she grabbed my coat sleeve and give me this piece of paper. I recognized it, for it was torn from the Professional’s Bible, the weekly
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edited by the esteemed Mr
Ledger (who I don’t know personally but believe to be a gentleman). Here it is.