Death and Mr. Pickwick (54 page)

The ginger man took the hint, and bought another rum.

‘But,' said Sam Vale, ‘I am
not
so certain that there was much truth in the other things he said about himself. There are some people – well, put it like this: an actor gets a feel for when a man isn't being honest. Beazley said he served in the war on the Peninsula. He may well have done. But as he chattered away, I thought to myself – is all this true? See, he started talking about why young men went to war. Not for the glory of king and country, he said, but for women. “For who is more charming than a man who has been on the battlefield?” he said. I started to get a bit suspicious – not because it was unlikely for men in general, but because it was unlikely
for him
. He had already said that he was married, and why would a man like that volunteer for the Peninsula?'

‘Perhaps
because
he was married,' laughed the ginger man.

‘That
is
a possibility, I agree. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Then he went on about how every bullet faced made a man more attractive to women, and the result was hundreds of dead beaus spread all over the battlefield – or cartloads of 'em, when they picked 'em up.

‘Well, he told me there was one dead young man who was put in a cart and taken to a mortuary in Lisbon. His uniform was removed, and he was lying naked on the slab being washed with a flannel by one of the attendants, ready for a shroud. Suddenly – the body opened its eyes! The man with the flannel was so frightened he screamed. Then Beazley told me: “That man, who was dead, and yet came back to life, was me.”'

‘No!'

‘He told me he looked around himself, stretched, rubbed a bump on his head and said in perfect Portuguese, “Do you have a strong drink? I am awful thirsty, coming back from where I have been.” Beazley calmly put on his uniform, and walked outside. I can remember him talking about it now: “Rather pleasant to spend the afternoon walking among the orange trees in the public gardens of Lisbon, observing the Chinese architectural influence on Portuguese roofs” – as the man said, after he had woken up on the mortuary slab!'

The two did not notice a young fellow at the other end of the bar, who had once had a theatregoing companion called Potter when the two were clerks at Ellis and Blackmore, but now attended the theatre alone. He wore a coat that was too large for him, and he stood with his forearms bent upwards, so the surfeit of sleeve would not be apparent. The coat had been borrowed from a friend one cold night, and should have been returned, as the owner had complained. He would definitely write a letter in the morning, apologising for not returning the coat. But at that moment, he listened intently to Sam Vale. He had heard Vale use his peculiar comparisons on many occasions, as a member of the audience at the Surrey, but had never been this close to the actor before.

The next day, the young man wrote the letter, stating that it was really not his fault about the coat. He added: ‘Appearances are against me, I know, as the man said when he murdered his brother.'

 

*

‘SO WE HAVE THE ORIGIN
of his pattern of speech,' I said to Mr Inbelicate. ‘We now need his profession.'

‘The reason for that is almost
too
well known. I hear a – I don't know – a sort of
clunk
whenever I hear it mentioned, Scripty. But cover it we must. We must talk of what happened to Chatham Charlie when his family fell into difficulties, and his father was sent to the Marshalsea.'

From one of his files he produced a rare item which he had acquired from a dealer in ephemera. It read:

Warren's Original Japan Liquid Blacking made only by Jonathan Warren established 1798 – 30 Hungerford Stairs, Strand. Use: stir it well from the bottom with a stiff stick. Rub the stick on a soft brush, then black your boot and shine it while wet. Don't put the boot to the fire to dry.

 

*

THERE WAS AN ODOUR OF
vinegar which pervaded the factory premises, but in certain spots was overpowered by another smell, elusive to describe, but similar to old, damp cloth, and at its worst on the staircase where the wood was splitting and splintering, and one stair was just a half-stair. But when the window was open, there would periodically be a third smell which, in some respects, was the worst of all: the tantalising aroma of an itinerant vendor selling hot food would waft upwards into the factory and battle against the other odours. The craving in the boy's stomach was then at its greatest.

He worked with paper – small square pieces of oil paper. He would cover a piece with another piece of similar proportions, but blue, and then the two were placed on top of a pot of blacking, Then string was applied to hold the papers in place, and finished off with a knot. He scissored in a circle to trim the paper – with a little practice, this had become a smooth slide of the two blades – and when four gross of such pots had been prepared, he pasted a printed label on each.

Always in the background there was the sound of hammering, as the coopers put together the casks for the transportation of pots and bottles. Beyond was the tun room, with scores of tuns on trestles, all filled with blacking – some of thicker consistency than others, containing a higher proportion of molasses to vinegar – but gradually emptying and then suddenly filling as the day proceeded. New supplies of pots and bottles came by the wagonload from Derbyshire: huge crates filled with straw, and hundreds of bottles capable of holding a pint, or two-thirds of a pint, or one-third of a pint. The crates were opened as soon as they arrived, and the bottles passed rapidly from hand to hand, making up rows of perfect regularity, like earthenware soldiers marching in an exercise. If only, thought the boy, the soldiers would hunt and kill the rats.

For the boy would not want to be alone in this factory at night, with the rats moving up and down the crumbling stairs, sniffing the air. It was bad enough in the day, when the men threw bottle bungs at the rodents, and occasionally hit one – and when they did, the men gave a horrible laugh. One cask packer developed an extraordinary ear for the rats, and he hurled a bung at the skirting when he heard them run, sometimes sending up splinters of half-rotten wood. Occasionally, the boy caught a glimpse of a rat spotted with blacking, giving its pelt a diseased look; other times he saw a trail of tiny black footprints, from running across spillings. The worst sight of all was a particular rat scuttling beside a wall, the largest of the factory's pack. It was fat, brown and longer than the supervisor's foot – the boy was there when a foreman held up a lantern, and the light caught the small, black, shiny eyes. The rat ran away instantly, vanishing into a hole smaller than itself. Once, the boy saw this rat carry away a bone, and although it was probably a chicken leg, the dread thought that it could be part of human anatomy was inescapable.

This blacking factory was his lot, for ever – that was his thought in moments of despair. His father, he believed, would not leave prison, and the life the boy might have led would happen to someone else. The future was a brown glazed earthenware jar, to be labelled. There was no hope. No one to rescue him. He was to label blacking pots for the rest of his time here on earth, and the smells of blacking would eat away at his brain like a dark quicklime. He might have been a man of distinction, he thought to himself, and worthy of respect. Not now. Soon he would be suited to his employment, and a smile of contentment, unstriving cow-like satisfaction, with a lolling tongue, would come upon him. In the evening he joined the line of men who washed their hands and faces with milk, which counteracted some of the odour on the skin, and the thought of the cow-like future was never more prominent.

The one time of respite was lunch. Then he often watched the river. He knew exactly those moments when boats made slow progress upstream. He noted the barges taking crates, and the furniture roped together, just as his own family's possessions had been transported when they came to London. The river resisted the barges as if it too did not want to move the possessions to poorer circumstances, and was trying to turn the barge back to a better, happier place.

There was another unexpected happiness at lunchtime. One worker, with a kindly face and pink, protruding ears, had acquired a copy of a book, already shabby, by that former resident of Canonbury Tower, Mr Washington Irving, which he read at lunch sitting on a barrel; the worker must have noticed the boy giving jealous and inquisitive stares, and so he summoned the boy over and said: ‘When I have finished this book, it will be yours.' Oh the pain of the wait for the man to complete! The man had a habit of kicking his heels against the barrel as he read, and the tone altered as the contents gradually emptied – how the boy wished for the tone to reach higher notes! Only to find that his hopes were dashed as the barrel was refilled, and the bass register resumed.

But eventually the book was his. What a delight! What's more, he
knew
places and people described in its pages. There was a tallow-chandler's widow, whose house had a glass door, and a flower garden about eight feet square. He knew precisely this spot, and he had seen the old woman looking out on to the garden, her eyes full of wisdom. Then he read of the small cemetery adjoining St Michael's, Crooked Lane – another place he knew! He read of the tombstone there of Robert Preston, a waiter at the nearby Boar's Head Tavern, who had died a century ago. He knew the very inscription on the stone! And here was a fact he did not know! That, one night, when the wind was howling, a call of ‘Waiter!' in the tavern was carried all the way to Preston's grave, whose ghost still felt the call of duty, for Preston arrived in the middle of a crowded gathering to take the order!

But there came the time the factory moved its premises.

Now, the table upon which he did his labelling looked directly out upon a busy street; or rather, the busy street could look directly in. A single gaze from a pedestrian could shrivel the boy with embarrassment. His overseer
liked
to see people looking in at the boy, winding the string deftly, swinging the pasting brush skilfully, stacking up the jars ever higher. ‘You are worth ten printed advertisements,' he told him.

Sometimes, if he saw a kindly-looking gentleman in the street, he imagined the gentleman would say to him, ‘Well, you
are
a bright young lad, as bright and shiny as well-polished boots, and the blacking factory is not for you.' He imagined that this gentleman would take him away and raise him properly, with care. The boy pledged in his thoughts:
how
he would show his kindness in return. That gentleman would
never
be neglected in old age.

After work, he lodged in a back attic in Lant Street, near Guy's Hospital. Often, medical students or would-be apothecaries stayed in the other rooms, and he heard their raucous celebrations, knocking back the wares of the wine vaults of Borough High Street.

His room, the worst in the house, had his bedding on the floor, and he overlooked a timber yard. Sometimes he watched pairs of young men, often the medical students in the house, go in the direction of the Grapes Tavern, but it was usually the case that familiar faces simply vanished – people came and went according to whether they could pay their bills. As a quarter-day approached and rents were due, some would be gone in the night, never to be seen again. So the whole street had a seasonal rhythm, driven by the solar forces of indebtedness. Its other characteristic was the smell of wet or scorched cloth, of washing and ironing, for that was how many women earned their pennies.

*   *   *

There came the day of his father's release from prison. There came another day when his father visited the factory. An argument began. His father saying: ‘No son of mine is working for
you.
' And his father saying: ‘Get your coat, you are leaving this place, and you are never coming back.'

The bliss of the walk home with his father! The bliss that his mother shattered.

‘We cannot afford to have him out of work!' she said. ‘You must plead with them to take him back!' His father standing firm, and drying the boy's tears. There would be no return to the factory. The boy was to go to school instead. He was to make his future. The boy caught the anger and disgust in his mother's face.

*   *   *

He had applied for a Reader's ticket at the British Museum Library on the day after his eighteenth birthday. He requested the ten-volume edition of Shakespeare:
Shakespeare. Dramatic Works by Singer and Life by C. Symmons 10 Vol. Chisw. 1826.
He closed a volume when his eyes were tired, and watched a scholar opposite, focused on a page behind his horn spectacles. Then he returned to the Shakespeare and reopened a volume, and as he did so, the title page was the first page he saw – a page whose details would normally be of little interest. Now he saw that Singer's full name was Samuel
Weller
Singer.

He emitted a slight noise, which disturbed the scholar opposite, who gave a ferocious look, as if to say: ‘Is something wrong, young man?'

He looked down again, as if to say: ‘No, nothing.'

*   *   *

He returned to his room with a small porcelain pot in his pocket. It was the most expensive he could afford, with a lid showing a muzzled Russian bear linked to a long chain, so long that it had to be draped over the animal's back. Standing before a mirror, he lifted the lid and the odour of cloves came to him, as well as a thick muskiness. The grease certainly
smelled
expensive. He took two fingerfuls, massaged them over his hands, and then stroked them through his hair, and applied a comb. He
shone
! He held up a lighted candle to his head, to affirm a truly magnificent reflection, as close to a halo as the grease of a bear could produce. He was satisfied. He put on a red waistcoat. At a pawnbroker's he had acquired a gold watch and a chain, rather more magnificent than that worn by the bear. Lastly he put on a long-tailed coat. He was ready.