Death and Mr. Pickwick (18 page)

Langley listened again. ‘Something about the waves, I think. What do you know about his past, Mrs Walker?'

‘I don't know much more than that he is an actor and his name's Grimaldi.'

‘
Grimaldi
? Is he related to
Joseph
Grimaldi?'

‘I don't know who Joseph Grimaldi is, Doctor. He did tell me that he got hit on the head once by a nightwatchman. He said he had never been the same since, and he showed me a scar in his scalp over breakfast. I was a bit scared to be honest. I wondered what sort of lodger I had taken on. But he has a nice smile, and he won me over.'

It was then that JS's eyes opened. They were glassy, and shone with a wild glare. ‘I am not scared of you, Charley!' he said, his mouth practically chewing the words.

If hearing his landlady's talk made a vision of the nightwatchman's sentry box come into his mind, it soon merged into another scene. ‘Here – dolphin – dolphin,' he said, ‘let me mount you – over the waves – you as my steed.'

Mrs Walker clutched her mouth.

‘Ah, macaroni! My favourite! Yes, a plateful,' he said. ‘What? No! No! The ghost is on horseback. It chases me. Ah, my poor master, Don Juan!'

‘Oh Doctor! He is reciting lines from his last performance!'

It was then that Grimaldi sat up in bed. With a crazy stare, he looked at the opposite wall. ‘They are not noisy enough tonight. I'll give them something to applaud!'

‘Lie down, Mr Grimaldi,' said Langley. ‘You are too weak. I am a doctor.'

Upon hearing the word ‘doctor', Grimaldi's head whipped round to face Langley. ‘Prescribe the patients liquor, then sell 'em medicines to mend their liver, do you? I know your sort! That's what you'd do to me.'

‘You must lie down, Mr Grimaldi,' said Langley.

The feverish man suddenly looked at his arms. His face became horror-stricken. ‘The costume! It is coming through my flesh! Oh – it has gone. Gone back inside.' He panted. ‘It is coming again! Tearing through my lungs!'

With a sudden surge of strength, he hit the doctor's hands aside, and resisted the efforts at restraint. He hauled himself from bed. ‘I am needed. I am needed on stage.' He pitched himself towards the wardrobe, and clutched at the door. Amongst the few clothes hanging within was a clown's outfit. He took it off the hanger.

‘Keep back, Mrs Walker,' said Langley. ‘We don't know what he is capable of.'

Grimaldi struggled himself into the outfit. After considerable effort, he pulled the tunic over his head, inserted one arm in a sleeve and, following unsuccessful attempts to insert the other arm, allowed the second sleeve to hang empty. He moved towards a chest, and picked up a hand mirror. Fumbling in a drawer, he found tubs of greasepaint and proceeded to coat his face with daubs of white, then added a roughly drawn triangle to each cheek. His hand shook as he coloured the lips, and when his finger slipped, he cursed, and finished by smudging the red across his mouth. ‘My lantern,' he said, looking around the room, ‘Where is my lantern? I cannot go on without my lantern!'

A new look, an awareness, then came over his features. It was the knowledge that he was in his landlady's house. He looked at the walls, he felt the chest of drawers, as though confirming by the details that he was not in a theatrical dressing room. He turned to his landlady. ‘Mrs Walker!'

‘Oh Mr Grimaldi, you must get back to bed, you are very sick.'

‘To bed? Yes, I should be in bed. You are right. You must give me a bowl of your jemmy soup to make me well again.' He lifted a corner of the bedcovers. Then his expression changed once more. ‘My scene is next – I am needed on stage! Why do you keep me here? They will dismiss me if I don't get on stage!'

‘Let us try to restrain him, Mrs Walker,' said Langley.

The doctor and the landlady pushed Grimaldi down on to the bed. He mumbled all manner of incoherencies, and made bizarre facial contortions. ‘I'll have that plate of tarts,' he said. ‘That's a pretty pocket watch, sir. You won't catch me!'

In his mind he was in the theatre, the footlights shining and, from a sudden look of satisfaction and a movement of his chin, it seemed he was taking his bow. ‘I thank you – the greatest clown in the world? Do you think I am, ladies and gentlemen? Do you really? That is an honour, and I thank you for it.' His chin moved again. Then his expression altered once more, to outright anger. ‘What do you mean? Apart from—!
No
!'

The fragments of speech came and went, with greater or lesser strength. When Mr Glendinning entered – a sober-looking gentleman with a humble manner – he apparently provoked some painful recollection, for the feverish man growled and sat up in bed again, thrashing his arms in wildly dramatic gestures, and all three struggled to hold him down.

In the early hours of the morning, J. S. Grimaldi passed away. He was barely thirty years old.

*   *   *

A knock came at the door of Joseph Grimaldi's house later that morning, when he was upstairs, attempting to adjust his wife's pillows. He descended, slow painful step by slow painful step, sighing because he knew that soon would be the greater difficulty of ascent.

When he unbolted, he saw the grave face of Glendinning, and knew.

‘The worst part was trying to restrain him,' said Glendinning, as the two sat beside each other in the parlour. ‘As his life ebbed away – I can barely describe how
awful
that was – but as we held him down, it was as though the air went out of him. And he was gone, I am so sorry. He was gone.' Grimaldi sobbed throughout the account.

When Glendinning had finished, he raised a hand to the old clown's shoulder to offer comfort. The moment the hand touched, Grimaldi leapt from his chair – for suddenly Grimaldi's limbs were as they had been, when he was a young man. Full of energy, with impossible nimbleness and speed, he virtually ran up the stairs to his wife.

Once the message was delivered, Grimaldi fell back into a bedroom chair, and here he continued to sob. He sobbed all the energy away. He was once more a cripple, the old clown who had fallen apart and seized up. There was no hope now. The Grimaldi legacy was gone.

 

*

AFTER THE CLOWN AT BARTHOLOMEW
Fair had told the audience not to believe a word, that all was gammon, there came a comic song from a plump contralto, who put her soul and considerable flesh into a rendition of ‘He Loves and He Rides Away'. The orchestra's percussionist banged a gong, and the great Richardson himself stepped on stage, to great applause. He removed his top hat, and bowed.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' he said, ‘for these marks of your favour, we beg to return you our sincere thanks. Allow us to inform you that we shall keep perpetually going on, beginning again, regularly, until the end of the fair.'

The audience, sweating from their own heat and the oil lamps within the temporary theatre, filed out, to be replaced by a new audience, already gathered, and the show indeed began again.

‘I do not want to go back to Vaughan's,' said Wonk, as he and Seymour crossed the grass. The dispersing crowds demonstrated, in every particular, a happier existence than producing patterns for calico: couples putting sweet morsels into each other's mouths, tumblers and jugglers performing tricks, puppet booths, women with pinafores full of prizes, and more, wherever Seymour and Wonk cast their eyes.

‘They don't prosecute runaway apprentices any longer,' said Seymour. ‘We could leave tomorrow. Mrs Vaughan would probably encourage it. And Vaughan himself came to accept what I am years ago.'

‘But what would we do?'

‘I could keep us. Miniatures alone should bring in reasonable earnings.'

‘And what do I do while you work on your pictures?'

‘You can find commissions for me. You can make suggestions for what I draw and paint. You can learn how to draw and paint yourself. And when that's not going on, we go fishing, and catch our supper.'

‘I am not sure, Robert. Drawing patterns is dull, but it is a future.'

‘You do not believe I can succeed?'

‘With my soul I believe
you
can succeed. My position is different.'

*   *   *

There was a triangle of countryside in Islington, defined by Upper Street, Lower Street and Hopping Lane, which corresponded exactly to the boundaries of the ancient manor of Canonbury. In the middle of this triangle, on rising ground, and visible from miles away, stood a square-sided sixteenth-century construction – Canonbury Tower, once the property of the church of St Bartholomew. Seventy feet tall, it was overgrown with ivy so thick that scarcely any brickwork appeared, and the spaces for the tower's windows had been hacked among the leaves. Whenever the wind blew, the ivy trembled, creating the impression that the plant was sucking life from the mortar. Certainly, the ivy was well nourished – in places the trunks grew as thick as a man's wrist. And every Sunday, when the weather was fine, families strolled in the fields nearby, as did the sick and infirm, who took their coughs and crutches to Canonbury, and breathed the far-famed Islington air.

In the tower there lived a constantly changing group of residents, prominent among whom were drunken writers, poverty-stricken artists and miscellaneous seekers of renown, who had scraped together the rent for a room on one of its floors. It was not at all surprising that, once the decision to abandon the apprenticeship had been taken, Robert Seymour made enquiries about lodgings in Canonbury Tower.

One afternoon, he and Wonk climbed the tower's staircase, negotiating its white-walled flights and black balusters, passing doors with yard-long hinges. One curiosity was that every landing had a cupboard, provoking irresistible interest in Seymour. He tried every cupboard they encountered, and finding one on the second floor that was empty and unlocked, he stepped inside. He beckoned to Wonk to join him. They shut the door, and laughter and other suggestive noises might be heard. Then the door reopened, and they climbed another flight. They were passed by a man and a woman on the way down who, from their chatter, had obviously been to view London from the roof.

‘People will say, Wonk, that we are filled with a mania for high art – so we do our painting in a tall building. But I like that joke!'

They climbed more stairs and stepped out on to the roof. A brick wall led from the tower to the New River where mallards swam, and anglers sat upon the banks. A large pond lay north of the building, and further away a cricket match of old men was in progress, and there was the thwack of the ball. More distant still, the herds of the Islington dairies grazed, and beyond were Hampstead, Highgate and countryside for miles. There was also the dome of St Paul's. The Thames could be seen, here and there, as far as Gravesend.

‘It is the best location in London,' said Seymour.

‘We merely need to keep up with the rent,' said Wonk.

‘I am thinking of the wisdom of my cousin Edward. He says afflictions and miseries are better to be endured in the countryside, and I think he is right. So here, on the threshold of the countryside, we shall be happy as sand-boys, Wonk.' From his pocket, he produced the key to the top-floor room.

Seymour had refused to allow Wonk to visit until the room was prepared exactly as he, Seymour, wanted. Accordingly, Seymour had conducted the moving of their possessions, from clothes to fishing rods, without any involvement on Wonk's part. Now the pair entered a wainscoted space full of light. There were chairs, tables and bookcases, a sofa and a wide bedstead; and framed engravings, vases and other items acquired from second-hand suppliers, all according to Seymour's taste – and two easels, placed side by side.

‘Your easel and my easel,' said Seymour.

Wonk opened a diamond-paned window to let in the air.

*   *   *

Next morning, a Sunday, with the sun streaming in, Seymour rose early and bolted a breakfast of bread and cheddar, and then stood at his easel, naked apart from a loosely tied dressing gown. He sketched quickly in charcoal, sometimes rocking upon his feet, in the intensity of his concentration. He began with a pugilistic scene, showing the vehement faces in the crowd, shouting for the fighters. When he had done enough, he started on another ardent crowd, but this time around a battle-royal cockfight, with half a dozen roosters pecking for supremacy.

Wonk took his time to rise, and then smoked a pipe before he approached his own easel. After a few tentative charcoal strokes, of a tree and falling leaves, he returned to the breakfast table to smoke another pipe.

Before midday, Seymour and Wonk set out from the tower and walked along the New River, with its clear and gentle water and pleasing windings. There were also swarms of half-dressed boys to admire, brought out by the sun. The boys sat upon the railings holding willow-wand rods. Seymour and Wonk paused when they saw a line go taut, and then clapped behind a boy, as a minnow was brought glittering to the surface and deposited in a jar.

They headed for the Sluice-House Tavern, a small wooden building on the river, famed as the public house of anglers, where the fattest roach in London were caught, along with gudgeons and barbels, and many a jack pike. Just as they arrived, a party of four old anglers drew up in a wagon, rods and equipment stashed in the vehicle, and the four were greeted by a party who came from within the tavern – friend shook hands with friend, and opinions were exchanged about the water's prospects. There was abundant animation in their faces and gestures, as though, whatever the dreary regulation of their lives away from the river, fishing made these men come alive.

At a stall beside the tavern entrance, was a sign which said ‘Have a go', and below it sat a sunburnt old countrywoman selling twopenny fishing-lines and penny rods, along with Barcelona hazelnuts and oranges as sour as her face. Seymour and Wonk resisted her enticements, for today they would drink, not fish. Inside, they ordered ale and a steaming puff-paste pie to share – the pie was rich with the flavour of shallots, nutmeg and lemon juice, and sweet, succulent eels. ‘Eels Fresh from the New River' said a sign above the bar. Although, as they ate, they overheard a muscular man at the next table point to the sign and remark to a tattooed companion: ‘They're fresh, but they ain't New River. I've seen the Dutchman deliver a hogshead of eels in the early hours. The miserable old woman at the door checks they are wriggling, and takes 'em in.'