Good Man Friday (39 page)

‘If they can get married,' asked the child, ‘why can't Mama marry Papa? They're in love.'

Why can't Mama marry Papa?
January looked again at the couple in the chaise, as Henri talked Minou out of her anger: held her hand, joked her gently … got her to laugh.
Saying what?
January wondered. Making what grave little observations that – in spite of his bug collection and his overwhelming fondness for truffles and crème caramel – tickled her sense of humor?

His gaze went across the heads of the crowd and picked out Chloë Viellard, in a handsome barouche between Congressman Adams and a frail, bent, white-haired gentleman in shabby tweeds, whom he had last seen as ‘Mr Leland' at Gurry's asylum. Chloë caught his eye and beckoned him, and he edged through the growing crowd toward her; Mr Noyes and a half-dozen of the Massachusetts abolitionists were grouped around the other side of the carriage, talking eagerly with the Right Honorable Representative from Massachusetts. When January reached the place he saw Poe by the nearside wheel, bowing to Chloë: the poet had walked out to the field by himself, lest he be seen publicly strolling with the rowdy crowd of black folk, a disgrace from which neither his reputation nor his self-respect would ever recover.

‘They're late already,' he heard Noyes say on the other side of the carriage. ‘They could be delaying, to push the game into the hours of twilight—'

‘Or they could be planning something,' retorted someone else. ‘Getting the police – or O'Hanlon and his boys …'

‘M'sieu Janvier.' Chloë inclined her head, and January bowed – carefully. ‘M'sieu Singletary, allow me to present to you M'sieu Janvier, the man who had most to do with us finding you.'

‘Sithee, then.' Singletary addressed him in thick Yorkshire English, held out one hand, disproportionately large on his narrow wrists and gloved in shabby and ink-stained kid. ‘I'm that beholden to you – and they mun be needin' other words for such occasions, think on.
Thank you
is what you say for a plate of sandwiches.'

‘And another expression is needed,' replied January, taking the arthritic fingers, ‘to acknowledge thanks that isn't,
The pleasure is mine
. It was no pleasure whatsoever, though I'm extremely glad to see you well, sir.'

‘I bahn to write Cuthbertson on t' subject,' agreed Singletary absently. ‘Head of t' London Philological Society, sithee. Wrote
Syntactical Observations on the West-Country Dialects
. Lot of slum, think on, but that sound on Old Norse numismatics …'

‘Sir.' Chloë laid a hand on the old man's thin arm. ‘M'sieu Janvier is a surgeon of considerable skill. As Dr Gurry is of the opinion that you will need to remain under a physician's care for many months, would you consent to appoint M'sieu Janvier your personal physician, when we take ship for New Orleans at the end of the week? The
Bordeaux
leaves for home on Thursday,' she added, turning those enormous blue eyes on January. ‘I thought it best to depart as soon as possible …'

Especially in the light of a general search for the murderers of Kyle Fowler and the slaves who escaped from his coffle?

January bowed again, and said, quite truthfully, ‘I will be more than grateful to get home.'

Chloë gave him her wintry smile and held out her hand to Poe. ‘Henri will be delighted to hear you're preparing an American version of Wyatt's
Conchology
.'

Adams sniffed. ‘I hope you do not live to regret your choice, young man.'

‘I expect I will, sir. It shames me to say so, but storming the madhouse in the lovely Madame's company – and hunting grave robbers with Ben here – have shown me how … how impossible it is for me ever to consider a government job in some post office somewhere …'

‘My mother would have had it that a man with true strength of character would be willing to set aside his foolishness for the sake of his family.' The old diplomat regarded him with bright, pale eyes. ‘But having set aside foolishness in my time, I can't say my life has been the happier.'

‘Happy or not,' replied Poe quietly, ‘I've come to realize that it is … almost immaterial. It's like those magic squares of Mr Singletary's: whichever way I add up the numbers, the reply is the same. I must be as I am. I must write. It's not that I must take that road – it's that
all
roads turn out to be that road. And whether it leads to my salvation or to my destruction I do not know. Nor does it matter.'

Adams said, ‘Hmph,' and Chloë squeezed Poe's hand.

‘
Bonne chance, M'sieu
.'

‘
Et vous aussi, Madame
. They are,' Poe added, looking at the dimming sky, ‘leaving it rather late—'

Voices rose in anger at the fringes of the crowd. Noyes and his abolitionists looked as if they might go seek the cause of the trouble, but the shouting died away almost at once as someone – who probably had money on the game – broke up the fight.

Close-by, someone said Mede Tyler's name – ‘He gonna show up, or ain't he?'

‘They'll be in a heap of trouble if he does …'

‘You think he's hiding out?'

‘Got to be. O'Hanlon and his boys …'

It's a goddam game
…

Is it all
, January wondered,
a goddam game?

He thought of Mede Tyler, asleep in his unmarked grave.

Of Rowena Bray, buried yesterday in the Christ Church cemetery not far from where January had lain in wait for Wylie Pease.

He looked up at Chloë, in the carriage above him. It would be good beyond computation to be back in New Orleans, with Rose and Baby John, Gabriel and Zizi-Marie, his real family, instead of this strange artificial family, assumed out of regard for the conventions of ‘good society', which would not let women travel alone nor white men legitimize their love for women of color. Muggy heat would be settling in on New Orleans by the time they returned, but Chloë, no doubt, would go with her elderly guest to one of the Viellard plantations along the river while Henri retired to his cottage at Mandeville, to live with Dominique for the summer.

Chloë lifted her head, and January thought, for a moment, that those enormous blue eyes rested upon his sister and Henri over the heads of the crowd. Jealous? Wistful? Irked at the way he held her hands, in front of half the clerks and junior Congressmen in Washington? Or merely scientifically curious about the foolishness to which humankind subjected itself, when it loved?

I am not capable of making him happy
, she had said once …

Shouting again, elsewhere in the mob; serious, this time. January scanned the fringes of the crowd, calculating the quickest way to get the women and children away, if real trouble started. Far off, the bells of the Presbyterian Church on I Street struck six. The light was fading.

Already, some of the women were leaving, children in tow. Henri flicked the reins of his team, turned the chaise. As they passed Musette, the fat man leaned down to lift his daughter up to sit between them. A few minutes later, Adams observed that the oncoming evening chill was not doing either of his passengers any good and turned his own team back towards Connecticut Avenue.

Across the deep grass, straggling groups of men were walking back toward town. January saw Poe stride away, carpet bag in hand, a dilapidated raven in the twilight. He thought he saw Wylie Pease and skinny brass-haired Miss Drail emerge from the crowd and stroll back toward the new-twinkling lights, hand in hand.

From the edges of the crowd, curses were beginning to drift on the damp air.

The Stalwarts hurled the ball to one another to practice striking, or trotted between the pegs, warming up their bodies, waiting for the Warriors to arrive.

Darkness fell, the Warriors disdaining to accept the challenge of lesser men.

With darkness came curfew, the time for all good niggers to be indoors.

Among the last of the groups to leave, January walked back through evening stillness and deep grass, to pack.