Mr. Timothy: A Novel (17 page)

Colin claps me on the arm.

--Don't trouble yourself, Mr. Timothy. Who's to say they'll even recognise you from the description?

--All the same, I think this young lady here will be wanting a new place to stay.

With his index finger, Colin gives my sleeve a caressing stroke.

--And a certain young hero will be wantin' a raise in his salary. Retroactive, like.

Chapter 11

A FLEET OF COAL BARGES is moored at its base, but these days, Craven Street, the Strand, belongs to the law. The limestone fronts wear their attorneys' shingles like so many lesions. Houses that once harboured wood-carvers and poets and doctors are now devoted to the promulgation of paper, more paper, and more paper still--a constipation relieved only by the periodic effluence of barristers carrying their hard-earned paper in bursting octavos as they hustle over to Lincoln's Inn in search of new trade.
At night, though, the buzzing paper factories fall silent, and the buildings empty out into tall and imposing shells, and it becomes all the stranger to find, halfway up the block, this twostorey hunchback, gasping for air, stunted and squeezed by the terraced fronts and, for all that, curiously hardy--a gnarled cypress that finds its own way to the light and promises to outlast all its companions.

Perhaps this abiding quality is what infuses Colin's voice with such respect when he first beholds the place.

--A right shitheap, ain't it?

Hard to quibble there. The knocker swings off its screw, the windows sag in their frames, the walls go concave or convex according to whim--we might as well be back in Drury Lane. And when we open the front door, five shrieking cats burst upon us, slip through our legs, and scatter into the street like minions of Chaos. I smile a little to think that tomorrow, these creatures will be invading some attorney's office, knocking over inkwells, befouling foolscap. Still, I can't be too happy about the prospect, for these same cats are the bane of Captain Gully's existence.

The house, you see, is owned by a corpulent spinster who has dedicated her life to felines and whose daily mission it is to add one new member to her collection. As a consequence, cats do not overrun this place so much as they bleed from every pore of it. Squeezing through the railings, swarming along the gutters, leaping from door lintels, copulating on the landings and in the stairwells--there's not a floor, wall, or ceiling they haven't colonised in some way. Such is their artfulness they can even penetrate the closely guarded fortress of Gully's upstairs flat.

--Don't understand it, Tim, he once lamented to me.--Gully keeps the door closed, stops up the holes in the floorboards, jams the windows shut...they gets in all the same! It's diabolic. And don't you think they
knows
how Gully gets to sneezin' round them? Sneezin' his brain halfway out his head? Why, they makes sure to pass under his nose every time, and as soon as he's done with one fit, they makes one more pass and starts another. Instruments of Lucifer, Tim, sure as I breathe.

It is said that every man needs a vocation, and this, I fear, is Gully's: defending his person from the daily--hourly--onslaught of cats. I have seen him sprinkle gunpowder under the door, pour pools of tar along the windowsill. I have seen him hang dummy kitties from the ceiling. Nothing works. The cats keep coming, and Gully takes up his vocation with an urgency that verges at times on the monomaniacal.

Tonight, for instance, he answers our knock by throwing open his door and roaring into the hallway, all five feet of him. Arms swinging, eyes bulging, he looks ready to seize us by our tails and hurl us to Lambeth Palace.

--It's Tim, Captain. I've brought a couple of friends.

He passes his hand across his eyes.

--Tim. 'Course, it's Tim. Well, come in, then. Quick, before they notices. Ushering us inside, he makes one last reconnaissance of the hallway, then slams the door after him. And for another full minute, he is still and silent, his ears pricked for the slightest whisper of paw on wood.

--Aye, they're gone.

Mindful now of his hostly duties, he claps his hands together and beams all around.

--Well, ain't we pleased as punch, havin' company in this blessed holiday season? Sorry, place is a bit of a stable, as you can see, and we don't have much for the young 'uns, but we can spot you some Madeira, Tim, if you're agreeable.

Freed for the moment of his vocation, he hums a scrap of carol to himself as he wraps his box wrench around a well-handled cork and pops it free. I hear Colin murmur:

--Most buggered excuse for a hook I never saw.

At once, the humming grows louder and more confident, erupting now and then into fits of language:
Herald
...
glory
...
born king
. Gully's head rocks back and forth, his foot keeps the beat, the box wrench follows in time.

Mercy
...
sinners
...
recon
--...
joyful
.

And then, in a burst of combustion, a blur of calico streaks past him, so blinding in its speed it spins Gully round like a top.

--Aaaahh!

He raises a fist to the sky.

--D'you see? D'you
see
? Where'd he fuckin' come from, eh? Bloody fan
-tooms
is what they...what they...

The rest is lost in a titanic sneeze, a sound so ferocious it sets the whole house to rattling, and it seems to rattle Gully, too, for he forgets that one of the glasses is mine and promptly drains it, then the other. Collapses into his chair and closes his eyes, as though there were no one else present.

--Fiends, he mutters.--Devil's issue.

--Philomela, come meet Captain Gully.

Small wonder she is apprehensive. Has to be dragged part of the way. Doesn't quite know whether she should curtsy or kneel. Compromises by lowering herself onto her haunches and giving her host a curt half-nod.

--Captain, I say.--I would appreciate very much if you would put this girl up for the next few days.

His face opens into a mask of remonstrance.

--Days, Tim?
Days
? --Not so very long, I promise you.

--But we--you see, we're a bit cramped as we are, Tim.

--I understand, Captain, and I should have been glad to keep her with me, but I'm afraid there were some men lying in wait for us near Jermyn Street.

--Men?

--Rather sinister men, Captain. Who may well know by now exactly where I live.

His brows converge. He leans into my ear, speaks in a stage whisper.

--She some kind o' criminal, Tim?

--No, Captain. Just an orphan.

--Not one o' them Belgian girls, is she?

--Italian, actually. Which does make conversing with her a trifle sticky, but I'm expecting to bring in a translator tomorrow.

--An' she won't steal nothin', will she?

--If anything, she'll offer you all her copper nails.

He nods, then raises himself to his full height and fixes Philomela with an interrogatory stare.

--See here, young miss. Has you ever been to Majorca?

Whether it is the name itself or his tone of voice that flummoxes her, I cannot say, but she takes some time before shaking her head. And Gully, far from accepting this denial, appears to find in it some positive assertion of the highest order. For he winks at her and nods very slowly and says:

--Ahh. Ahh.

And then he is thrown back in his chair as a screeching blur of orange flies up his front and vanishes over the top of his head.

--We'll skin you from head to tail! Just try us if you don't believe it!

The girl is up on her feet now, not in alarm, as I first think, but only to survey her surroundings. The Dutch clock and the tiny coal scuttle and the teetering column of atlases. (The captain these days travels mostly by armchair.) And there, over the door, a bedraggled rope of privet--Gully's best approximation of mistletoe. I believe she is even smiling a little by the time she sees that.

I touch her on the shoulder.

--Do you think you would mind staying here for a few nights? Until we can find you something more permanent?

She makes a second perusal of the privet, considers a while longer, then says:

--I was having the cat once.

To which Captain Gully mutters:

--Cats, my eye. Spawns of Beelzebub, that's what.

--And perhaps tomorrow we can talk about those men, I say.--The ones who were chasing you.

How familiar it is already, this closing down of her face, like a bank on holiday.
Come Again Tuesday
. But rather than sending me on my way, it makes me want to rap on the glass.

--You must tell us who they were, Philomela.

Nothing.

--Were they with the police? What did they want from you?

More silence. Deeper silence. And behind me, Gully's voice, softened.

--Leave the bitty thing alone, Tim. She's done in, we're sure of it. My dear...

He cups a hand to his mouth, until his already penetrating voice is cannonading off the walls.

--Would you care for a bit of washy-washy?

At a loss, she whirls back to me.

--He means a bath, Philomela.

To this she consents. Within a minute, Gully has set the water to heating, and he and Colin have dragged up a washtub and placed it behind the fireplace screen (only briefly arrested in their labour by a tortoiseshell thunderbolt). Looking dazed and fatalistic, Philomela disappears behind the screen. We hear a brief dappling sound and then a wholehearted plunge, followed by the smallest of exhalations. And then nothing for a good ten minutes but hands ladling water, and then only silence. And when our calls go unanswered, Gully, peeking round the screen, finds the girl asleep in her bath, head lolling against her arm, hair spilling over her shoulder.

Between the two of us, the captain and I manage to lift her from the bath, dry her off, and wrap a couple of blankets around her, and then, with Colin's help, we lay her on Gully's turnup bedstead. She makes barely a stir, opens her eyes only to close them again. And as soon as she is prone, she rolls over on her side, draws her knees up to her chest, and drops back into sleep.

Colin gives a whistle.

--She
were
a bit knackered, weren't she? --'Course she was, wee poppet. Now, Tim, don't you go a-frettin' on Gully's account. The chair's bed enough for us. Many's the night we've slept in it, anyways. Reminds us of some of our old berths, it does.

He stops himself in the act of throwing another blanket over Philomela.

--Something wrong, Captain?

--No. No, indeed, Tim. It's just she looks very like the gal Gully left behind in Majorca. We've told you 'bout her, ain't we? Drambusca was her name. A few years older than this one, but built along the same planes, no mistake.

And where is Drambusca now? I wonder. Longing for Gully as he for her? Chasing little Drambuscas through the olive groves? It matters not, she dwells forever in the captain's heart. Still unravished bride of time, as the poet says.

--Have no fear, Tim. Anyone so much as tries to board this little ship, they'll get themselves a broadside from yours truly, make no mistake.

He punctuates this with the fiercest of glowers, which expands to include Colin.--See here, young fellow, we don't want no beasts of hell a-wakin' this girl afore she's ready, now do we?

--S'pose not.

--What say you and Gully goes on a cat expedition?

--Can I keep one if I catches it?

--You can keep 'em all, lad, God shield you. Kill 'em, too, while you're at it.

They close the door behind them. A minute later, I hear the muffled howls of Gully's quarry, the scraping of claws and shoes on wood, and the ostinato of the good captain's voice, calling down a lifetime's worth of oaths. And it may be the instinctive need for counterpoint that draws the song from my mouth, and places it in a lower octave than I was once used to hearing it. Something, something about this new register transforms the music, so that it becomes as remote in my mind as Majorca.

O, slumber my darling, thy sire is a knight, Thy mother's a lady so lovely and bright;
The hills and the dales, and the tow'rs which you see, They all shall belong, my dear creature, to thee.

--Not bad, says Colin. Bit sharp on that last note.

--Oh.

My face is still smouldering as I walk to the window.

--Something my mother used to sing, I say. Some years back. --She about, your mum?

--No.

--Dad?

--Gone, too.

--Huh. Wish mine was. Always turnin' up when you least wants him. Mr. Badpenny, I calls him.

--We'll talk again tomorrow, Colin.

--Oh, yes. Regardin' the dress for this here whorefest at which I am to shine--

--Here's some money. Find something suitable.

--Squeeze out another pound, it'll be even more suitable.

--Good night, Colin.

--Good night, then.

The door closes softly after him, and with him goes most of the sound. Nothing beyond the final protest of a cat in the distance, and the captain's low humming as he pours himself another glass of Madeira, and the patient respiration of the Dutch clock.

As good a time as any, says the clock.

First the blankets: peel them carefully from the shoulder, one after the other. Then the sheet. The obscuring fronds of hair, they must go. And now, in short order, we arrive at the bared skin of the shoulder.