Death and Mr. Pickwick (16 page)

*   *   *

That summer, Joseph Grimaldi sought the salty, healthy waters of Cheltenham, and took his son with him for company. But while the older Grimaldi remained content to stay indoors at night, so as to rest his limbs, the younger wanted, and went for, whatever sorts of sin the town could offer. Within a few days, he had gathered a coterie of drinking partners, and they wandered the streets after midnight, bottles in hand.

Along one pavement, an ageing nightwatchman walked in the swinging-leg manner of a man uninspired by his own existence. He smoked a pipe. Sometimes he would tug on a shutter to test its security, then moved on, and returned to his sentry box. When his pipe went out, he took from his pocket a cheese sandwich. After eating, he did another circuit of the streets. He stroked his truncheon upon the railings, making the dull noise of a badly tuned percussive instrument. He did his duty of crying out the hour. He coughed, but whether this was from being out in all weathers, or from heavy smoking, would be impossible to state. He returned to his sentry box.

JS and his gang had reached the corner of a street, from which point they spotted the nightwatchman. The young clown swigged, and swaggered forth, followed by his associates, and gave the side of the box a knock.

‘Hey, Charley,' he said, ‘having a good night?'

The watchman scowled. ‘Be off with the lot of you.'

‘Reckon we could lift his box and tip it over?' said JS, turning and grinning, and receiving grins back from his mates. He gave the box a provocative push with his finger.

‘I know your sort!' said the nightwatchman. ‘Don't think you can catch me out!' With astonishing speed for a man of his age, he drew his truncheon. JS waved an empty hand, as though he had a truncheon too. At that point, his mates bolted. JS turned at the sound of their diminishing footsteps.

‘Where are you going? He's just an old man.'

‘Think I'm old, do you?' At that moment, the nightwatchman's truncheon fell upon the crown of JS's head. There followed another blow, and Grimaldi fell to the pavement. ‘Think it's funny to attack watchmen in their boxes? I'll show you how funny!' The truncheon descended again and again.

*   *   *

JS lay unconscious upon a soiled mattress in a cell when his father arrived in the morning. At the cell door, the older Grimaldi could see no sign of life. A gash on the crown had been opened by the nightwatchman's truncheon and the blood had flowed all over JS's hair. Much of his face too lay beneath dried streams of blood.

‘He is not – he is
not
dead – is he? Ha ha ha.' The trembling old clown could not help a composition of laughter and hysteria. ‘Why was no doctor called? He needs a poultice.'

‘He didn't deserve help,' said the bull-faced officer. ‘It's the third case this month of an attack upon a watchman. You people in London think it's a joke. Now it's spread here. As soon as you've paid the fine, he can have all the doctors and poultices you like.'

Grimaldi paid, and the officer gave the younger clown into the older clown's care.

For several days afterwards, JS sat in the front room at Cheltenham while his gravely concerned father looked on. JS suffered splitting headaches; sometimes he screamed out with the pain. Frequently he talked to himself, as though fighting the nightwatchman once more, and in his imagination he would dodge the blows. ‘Ha! Missed me, old man!' he said. JS pointed to his crown, as though inviting a blow, and suddenly drew back into his armchair. ‘Ha! Missed again!'

Meekly, Joseph Grimaldi asked his son whether he wanted a cup of tea. JS's head jerked round. ‘No I fucking don't!' The son's face showed a savagery the father had never seen before. Old Grimaldi was still weak himself, and the condition of JS weighed him down to the point of breaking.

*   *   *

It was October when Joseph Grimaldi wheezed and hobbled into Dr Abernethy's consulting room. Even the short trip from the reception area to the chair tired him out, and he sat gasping for breath. When he was able to describe his ailments, the great surgeon gave professional nods, and made notes, and carried out an examination. Then he sat down and looked deeply into Grimaldi's face.

‘You have come to me seeking hope, Mr Grimaldi,' he said. ‘You will receive none. Look at yourself.' Dr Abernethy stood and turned a cheval glass to face the patient. ‘The doctor who gives you any hope at all is a quack. You will
never
recover the full use of your limbs – and the thought of you, in your state, putting on a strenuous performance in the theatre is, I have to tell you, the funniest jest that any clown anywhere ever uttered. You are a cripple wanting to be a clown! How ridiculous can a man be? Listen to yourself – you struggle even to breathe. Give up!'

‘I am a clown! I must perform!'

‘You
were
a clown. I have seen pictures of you, Mr Grimaldi, in your outfits, on song sheets and in the print shops. You must console yourself with your past.'

Grimaldi covered his face with his hands, and began sobbing. The surgeon rose and grunted: ‘The consultation is over.'

*   *   *

The next morning, Grimaldi sat staring at the parlour wall. Odd twitches came into his limbs, as though he were recalling some tumble. In the afternoon, he said to his wife, a small, kindly woman who was still pretty, but not in perfect health herself: ‘I must tell Covent Garden.'

‘That is the proper thing to do,' she said. ‘They have a right to know that you cannot continue.'

‘Yes, but I meant that I must inform the manager that JS will take over as principal clown in the Christmas pantomime.'

‘He isn't well enough, Joe. You know that he still gets the headaches.'

‘Have I ever stopped performing because I was off-colour? Have I ever let a few bruises, or worse, stop me? He will go on stage. An audience's laughter can cool fevers and set broken bones.'

*   *   *

The next morning, Joseph Grimaldi sat opposite the theatre's manager, another member of the Kemble family: Charles, the uncle of Henry Kemble, a well-built man whose nose evoked the imperial glories of Rome, but whose long, dark hair suggested a passionate and eccentric violinist.

The old clown spoke of his son's great abilities. The features of Charles Kemble remained immobile and unconvinced.

‘I have heard reports,' said Kemble, ‘frankly, of an unwholesome nature, concerning your son.'

‘They are not true.'

‘He is, I understand, a close associate of my nephew – who himself does not always uphold the best traditions of my family.'

‘My son believed he would learn aspects of stagecraft from your nephew. Afterwards the association ended, except on a casual basis. Out of respect for the Kemble name, my son says hello to your nephew if he sees him, but the relationship is not much more than that.'

‘If you say so, Mr Grimaldi. But not every Kemble is a great actor, and perhaps not every Grimaldi is a great clown. Can your son leap like you?'

‘He is a frog itself!'

‘Can he tumble like you?'

‘Rolls like a ball.'

‘Can he eat like you?'

‘I am a monk on a fast compared to my son.'

*   *   *

It was a cold night that December when Joseph Grimaldi, warm within, sat in Covent Garden's front row, and watched his son perform as the clown in
Harlequin and Poor Robin
. He observed the extraordinary suppleness of the young man's body – as though bones could bend, and shins and forearms were cats' backs. With every contortion of the son's body on stage, there was a resonance in the father's body in the stalls: crippled and stiff though he was, there were echoes of movement in the old clown's limbs. When the performance came to a conclusion, Joseph Grimaldi wept tears of joy. He was back on stage.

*   *   *

Four years passed.

The freckled stagehand walked by J. S. Grimaldi's dressing room in the early evening – the door was open, and he saw the clown through the gap, with no make-up, and no costume, gazing into the mirror.

‘Shouldn't you be getting ready, Mr Grimaldi?'

JS gave the stagehand the briefest look before returning to his reflection. ‘I was wondering what sort of actor I might have been,' he said. ‘I am handy with a sword. My face used to be considered handsome. There is no chance of knowing now. My hair is thinning and will soon be gone. Yet I am not old!'

‘Now, now, Mr Grimaldi, you of all people shouldn't be down.'

‘Look at my face. I could leave two circles in the white greasepaint and let my own cheeks be the red.'

‘Moderation might be recommended.'

‘But the liquor in my veins makes me strut. Drink is the bravado I need. The crowds come to watch me fall over – get hit – be hurt. How could I go through that sort of degradation every night without gin or a shovel of malt?'

‘Your father could.'

‘
Don't fucking talk to me about my father
!' Then he put his face in his hands, until he recovered his calm. ‘I am sorry. I should not have spoken to you like that.'

‘Let me help you to get ready. It
is
time, sir.' He took the outfit from the hanger and placed it on the chair beside JS.

‘You are right, it is time.' He began applying his make-up. ‘The truth is that, once on the clown's path, it narrows behind, and there is no return. I will be found dead one day, on the path.'

‘Don't talk like that, sir. You are doing well in your profession.'

‘For now I am. Yet I know – there will come the day – Lord knows, my limbs are thin enough now! But one day they will be snappable brooms! One day my stomach will be bloated with air – because there is seldom food on the old clown's plate. And don't mention my father.' He smiled.

‘I wasn't going to, sir.'

‘He says it's all worthwhile to hear the laughter of the audience; but, you know, it isn't even really laughter you hear when you are on stage. It is like a roar.'

‘Perhaps that is why he loves it, sir. Perhaps the clown hears roars in a way that's different from other performers.'

‘The other performers wouldn't want to be clowns. Of all performers, clowns are the lowest of the low,' he said as the greasepaint went around his chin. ‘Even my father, for all his greatness, is not truly respected by other actors. And, low as we are, we sink lower. One day, I will be a barnstormer, that's all the work I shall get – bundles of hay as my proscenium. I will tour the circuit of abandoned chapels and ruined coach houses, working for a shilling and the stubs of candles remaining after the performance. And one night the manager will say to me, “The ghost doesn't walk, Grimaldi, no sal at all.” Then, completely out of money, what shall I do?'

‘It is none of my business, sir, but you perhaps shouldn't see Mr Kemble so often. You'd save money, and you could put it aside for a rainy day.'

‘You know what Kemble says? “Paint on your grin, my boy, your g-r-i-n, and grin is a word that is three-quarters g-i-n.” He is right.'

‘Be careful, sir. That's my advice.' The stagehand patted JS on the shoulder.

*   *   *

A few days later, JS sought out the stagehand. To the latter's great delight, JS told of his decision to give up drink. He pledged that he would avoid Kemble, and also avoid all public houses.

Within a week, in the middle of the night, as JS lay in his bed, the creatures came.

He sweated in terror. They scuttled along his forearm with the speed of ants. They traversed his face, and their feet scratched, for they were not human feet, or even mammalian, but crustaceous. As the perspiration rolled down his neck, the creatures gathered to drink it, their mandibles gaping to catch the beads of boiling saltwater. He brushed the creatures aside, but they clung on, biting into his shoulders, hanging on by their jaws, never letting go.

The following night, too scared to go to bed, he wrote a letter to Kemble, apologising for not seeing the actor of late. ‘I have been busy, and I am afraid I will continue to be busy for some time.' A crack in the wall turned into a very thin snake, and he shivered. The ink of the letter ‘S' in ‘Sincerely' did the same, and Grimaldi recoiled. The quill pen he was holding twisted round, as though alive, and its nib developed a forked tongue. When he dropped the quill on the floor, the very patterns on the carpet were vipers, sleeping in their coils, but coming awake. Most terrible of all, the veins on the backs of his hands were vipers as well. They raised their heads out of his flesh and hissed at him, and he scratched at them, drawing blood. In abject fear, shaking all over, he knew what he had to do. He escaped to the nearest public house, bandaging his wound with a handkerchief even as he ran along the street.

As soon as he had the liquor on his tongue, he defeated all creatures.

Standing at the bar, he began muttering to himself, oblivious to the stares he received from the other drinkers. ‘Do you know what it is like always to see your name in the newspaper beside your father's name?
Never
my name on its own. Not even once. And they say my voice thickens into his tones. And they say my limbs start to spread in the way his do. They even say my eyes glint like his. And that is if I do well. If I do badly – oh, he is
nothing
compared to his father. Only my mistakes are my own. And my head hurts. It always does, unless I numb it.' He hit the counter. ‘Landlord! Give me some numb!'

*   *   *

On certain days, if overcome by an especially sullen mood in the morning, JS would pay his parents a visit in the afternoon, and sit at home in their parlour, and his brows would knit, and he would go for hours without a word, ignoring any questions. Then a strong emotion, which seemed to be building up under his skin, would work itself into his face, and his hands would begin to quiver, and he would pace the room, and then he would pace out of the house into the street. He sought the worst parts of town, to find prostitutes, and would not even wait to go to their rooms, but would make the woman lie down in the nearest patch of grass, or alleyway if there was nowhere else. His anger and violence often scared the whores and only the most desperate would go with him. After he had finished with a woman and he lay on his back, the thunder-and-lightning pains in his head would strike, and he would scream, and the woman would flee, and he would be left writhing on the ground, half-paralysed. He would stay there even if the rain started to fall.