Death and Mr. Pickwick (132 page)

So let us imagine the lugubrious man, who does ‘the heavy stuff' in the drama, sitting in the Leather Bottle public house in Cobham. Rather than mail the story to Mr Pickwick, Jemmy has mailed an invitation to listen. So, an audience gathers: Mr Pickwick, Mr Winkle, Mr Snodgrass, Mr Tupman and Sam Weller. Jemmy takes from his pocket a long and dirty strip of paper, and, after stirring a hot, strong rum, he begins to tell his tale, sometimes holding the paper close to his face to read the lines aloud, and sometimes merely using it as the inspiration for an extemporised account.

*   *   *

‘There is nothing exotic or foreign in these events,' said the dismal man. ‘I shall not speak of distances far from here. All took place but a few miles from this very house, in the depths of Cobham Woods. Those woods deserve more notice than is usually bestowed, for they hold an extraordinary building. A building which has that most mundane of purposes – to hold the dead remains of human beings. It is a mausoleum.

‘Sickness and old age might add to this building's occupants, but never poverty and want, for no poor man would have his final resting place in such an edifice. I speak of the mausoleum of the ennobled Darnley family. It is strange, singular and impressive, with a stone pyramid incorporated into its structure; yet its strangest feature is not architectural – but that it was never used. No coffin was ever deposited within its walls, and there has been just one resident, and he a living man, whom I knew before he entered the mausoleum, and whose downwards path is also known to me.

‘The circumstances of the mausoleum's construction are worthy of note. The Earls of Darnley were wont to be buried at Westminster Abbey, but too many deaths and too little space resulted in the filling of the family vault to capacity. Thus, an architect received the commission to create the mausoleum, to serve the needs of the Darnleys for generations ahead. The location was chosen to yield a view of the Thames, and the Medway and the Kent Downs, and in due course a square building in Portland stone, incorporating the prominent pyramid, arose upon Williams Hill, the highest local point.

‘Inside were its empty coffin shelves. All that was required for the building to begin its working life – if I may use the expression – was a death and a consecration. Death there would have been, but consecration was down to the Bishop of Rochester. I have heard that he required a fee of five hundred pounds to perform the service, though I would not care to speculate on whether that was true or not. The significant fact is that the consecration did not take place. The result was that this building – this grim hotel – did not receive any guests.

‘It is easy to imagine the earl's craving to put the building to use. It is easy to imagine his private cursing of the bishop. And one day, a peculiar notion occurred to the earl.

‘He decided that, if a man could live alone in the mausoleum for seven years, like a religious hermit, the building would be spiritually stamped. He put the suggestion to his wife. “He must truly be alone,” she said, “with no visitors, and no contact with human beings at all”. She decided also that all the basic politenesses of civilisation should be dispensed with – and so, as well as spending seven years on his own, the occupant must never wash, never shave, never clip his hair, and never trim his nails.

‘The earl and his wife derived considerable amusement from this idea, and servants often heard laughter behind the stately door, and conjectures of a man with fingernails the length of a gardener's shears, and a beard like an overgrown hedge.

‘So a large sum of money – a virtual
fortune
– was offered by the earl to anyone who stayed in the mausoleum for the seven years, according to the stipulated conditions.

‘Many applied, and each was personally seen by the earl and Lady Darnley, but one man stood out: a sailor, with a well-worn leathery face, and an unyielding stare. I first met this sailor in a public house in an alleyway not far from the Thames – I forget which alley now, but we remained in contact. He told me of his plan to enter the mausoleum; and though I warned of possible consequences, he was determined upon the course.

‘“I can do seven years easy,” he said to the earl. “Few luxuries on a ship. Long time away from home. If I can call England home. Seven years in a mausoleum would be a merry break.”

‘“Are you quite sure?” said the earl. He said it with a hope in his voice that the man
was
sure.

‘“I shall occupy myself with my thoughts and come out a wiser man – aye, and a rich man too, if you keep your promise.”

‘“Rest assured we shall, sir,” said the earl. Documents were drawn up.

‘It was arranged that the sailor's supplies for seven years, including the limitless grog he insisted upon – “The best part of a sailor's life”, he said – would be delivered in the middle of the night, once a week, and placed outside the entrance to the mausoleum. The sailor must under no circumstances communicate with the man who delivered provisions. A bell would be rung to indicate the arrival of the delivery cart, and its departure.

‘Late one summer evening, outside the mausoleum, the sailor shook hands with the earl and Lady Darnley. He passed the earl a piece of paper with my name and address upon it, as he had neither family nor friends. If he should be found dead, I was to be informed. And with that, he entered the empty abode of those departed.

‘You may ask: “What went through the sailor's mind?” I know something of this.

‘He stared at the recesses in the walls – those empty shelves for coffins. He did have some pangs of regret, for despite his boasts, seven years is a long time. The days passed, and weeks, and months, and seasons. What will loneliness, and an ever-present reminder of death, do to a man?

‘As he drank, and lost himself in a stupor, he believed he saw skulls stacked upon shelves, like the catacombs of Paris. When the wind blew outside, and it was bitterly cold within, he imagined he saw the skulls' teeth chattering, and he heard them too. One night he saw the earl himself huddled in a corner, grinning like a horrible gargoyle in ermine. On warmer nights, the sailor played games with himself, to pass the time, such as looking at the walls and trying to guess how many widths of his big toe, or his little toe, would correspond to the length of a coffin. He would even compete over the accuracy of guesses, in his stupor, with long-dead seafarers – the cabin boy who had fallen overboard, the quartermaster who had died in a scuffle – and sometimes they would win the game, and sometimes he would.

‘“The food here is better than on board ship,” he would say aloud. His spectral companions would say: “Aye! And the grog flows like the sea!”

‘Some moonlit nights, he wandered into the earl's grounds, and stared into the pond. Terrible, enticing thoughts entered his mind, and he could barely restrain himself from walking into the water, like a fallen woman. Moths may have their flames, but the water is the way for a human being!

‘Other times, he would scare the deer into flight, or run across the meadows under the stars, and clamber up the lime trees.

‘There was a narrow road through the woods called The Avenue and though on a summer's day this would be a pleasant stroll, at night it changed to its opposite, and induced in the sailor's mind
horrible
fears. But he pressed on to the village of Shorne, and would sit in its secluded churchyard, and stroll under its trees and walk among the graves. In the daytime, in summer, it would have been pretty and peaceful and the wild flowers growing nearby would form natural posies for the gravestones. But the sailor's mind was troubled; and in the barren winter he would look at the inscriptions of departed mothers and children, and he would approach the graves in the snow at night and talk to the occupants.

‘On other nights, he would visit the ancient standing stones of the area, like those at the foot of Blue Bell Hill. He would talk to the stones, and touch them. Was it here that Vortigern was laid to rest? Whenever he touched the stones, he heard the murmurs of ancient tongues.

‘With such diversions and amusements nearly two years passed.

‘Then one night, just when the delivery cart came, the sailor burst forth, raving mad, his hair reaching to his shoulders, his fingernails grown like claws, with which he slashed the air, his beard indeed like a hedge. The delivery man and his boy overpowered the sailor, though with great difficulty, for he had a madman's strength. But somehow they trussed him up in the ropes used for securing barrels of grog, and carted him off to the earl. I was summoned.

‘I sat with the sailor at his bedside as he told me of his time in the mausoleum. He spoke of the visions he had seen, and the voices he had heard. Often, he was barely coherent.

‘Then one day he developed a fever, and he rose up in his bed, and started calling to Neptune and his mermaids. He even called upon all the denizens of the sea, from the deadliest shark to the kindliest porpoise. Sometimes he would raise a fist to his eye, as though holding a telescope. He would make movements with his hands, as though he were pulling on a rope to raise a sail. This continued for hours. Suddenly, he emitted a terrible ear-splitting howl – I tried to calm him, but I had to cover my ears, it was unbearable. He called out to Davy Jones. Then he collapsed back on the pillow, dead!

‘He was buried in Shorne churchyard. I was the sole mourner.'

*   *   *

Mr Pickwick was about to offer some pronouncement on this narrative, but just as he opened his mouth, Dismal Jemmy said: ‘I must catch my coach, sir. I cannot delay another minute!' Seizing a brown-paper parcel, he left without hesitation.

*   *   *

It was shortly afterwards that Dismal Jemmy walked to the rear of a coaching inn. Checking in all directions to see that he was not observed, he entered the stables, uttered calming words to a horse, and undid the string on his parcel.

He took out a mirror, flannels, a towel and a bottle of fluid. There was also a mulberry suit, similar in fashion to the uniforms worn by liveried porters in some of the more respectable London streets, notably Doughty Street. He applied fluid to his face, and wiped off make-up. When that operation was done, he put on the mulberry suit and left the stable, dressed as that wily servant – none other than Job Trotter.

His master, Mr Jingle, was already in the coaching inn's waiting room, and they had a good laugh together about catching Mr Pickwick out, once again.

 

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Jarvis
was born in Essex, England. Following graduate studies at Oxford University, he quickly tired of his office job and began doing unusual things on weekends and writing about them for
The Daily Telegraph
. These activities included learning the flying trapeze, walking on red-hot coals, getting hypnotized to revisit past lives, and entering the British Snuff-Taking Championship.
Death and Mr. Pickwick
is his first novel. He lives in Berkshire, England. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

Thank you for buying this

Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.