Mr. Timothy: A Novel (33 page)

I whisper:

--
Do
something.

But their rustling is so loud by now that the boy's appeals are barely audible, even to me.

--Here, you got the wrong impression--I'm a bloke, I tell you...God's truth, I'm a bloke....

And still the birds close in, craning their heads, thrusting out their chests, sweeping their feathers higher and higher, and now Colin draws on a new fund of rashness. Jumping backwards, he claws open his trousers and, with wildly scrabbling hands, drags out the nearest available evidence of his sex. Holds it there in his hand like a pickled eel, freshly wrapped.

Circling their inamorato, the cocks take turns inspecting the offering, and as they gaze, they draw back again, widening their circle as they go, and before another minute has passed, the first peacock has angled off onto his own tangent, in search of more promising love objects, and within another minute, the others have followed his example, ducking their heads and retracting their plumage and vanishing into the fog.

Colin is the last to know. His eyes are welded shut, and his hand trembles beneath its pale cargo.

--It's all right, Colin. You may put that away now.

--Oh. Thanks.

And so we are alone once again. Alone in the mantle of night, afraid to draw breath, pricking our ears for the faintest reports of our discovery. But the silence only thickens and deepens round us as the night broods on, and this silence becomes to my ear more appalling than anything else. Huddled there by the hedge, I find myself longing for the scrape of a heel or the groan of a door.

And at last, after a wait that feels like many days, I am met with a quick burst of sensation: a blaze of light in the portico.

It is the former Sergeant William Rebbeck, holding a match to a cigarette. Long after the cigarette has been lit, he peers through that corona of light while the flame works its way down to his thumb and nestles against his skin and then, exhausted, blows itself out.

A mere fifteen seconds of illumination, twenty at best, but enough to determine that the famous bowler is gone, replaced by a top hat of medium distinction and supplemented by a frock coat, a velvet collar, a large bow tie, and gloves of the downiest white. Willie the Slasher is hobbing with nobs tonight.

Wonder enough, but there is an even greater wonder: apart from Rebbeck and the two policemen in front, not another soul is afoot, either at window or out of doors. Where is the butler? The liveried footmen? The hostlers and grooms? Can Lord Griffyn's economizing have extended to ridding his house of help?

Or have the servants of Griffyn Hall simply been given the night off?

They were delighted to have it, I've no doubt. Seized their unexpected gift and never, in deference to their employer, taxed themselves wondering what would happen in their absence.

By my watch, it wants only a few minutes to ten o'clock. Griffyn and his men will have many hours yet of protective cover. Many hours before dawn claws away the night, more hours still before the fog lifts.

But there's one thing to be said for this fog: it is too fickle to be yoked to one master. Even as it shields Griffyn Hall from the world's scrutiny, it shields us from Griffyn Hall. We need only bivouac behind one of the marble maidens to be effectively hidden from view, and in this position, we might bide all night long, if necessary.

Let us hope it won't be. The air is frosting our bones, and my comforter is back in the cab, and the effort of sitting back on my haunches has set my chronically ailing knee to a rare pitch of protest. The only comfortable attitude, after a time, is to sit squarely on my buttocks in the damp, smeary grass and feel the cold steal its way up me.

Just like the old dream. The paralysis, as the doctor foretold, rising through me, up the thigh and hip, through the lower vertebrae, the breastbone and lungs...all the way to the heart, vainly protesting....

Colin nudges me, holds a flask to my mouth. It is a labour, prying these lips apart, but I am soon rewarded with an infusion of fire, and under its influence, I experience one last fit of shivering before the paralysis departs. All that remains is this throbbing purple ache, not comfort exactly but a kind of expectancy, faintly underlaid with hope--all I need, apparently, to weather the dogged passage of hours. That and the silent witness of Colin, who, though half obscured, is yet close enough for our breathing to coalesce.

It is ten minutes to midnight when the sounds reach us. A carriage. No different at first from the usual clatter of hooves, but for the slow deceleration of wheels against slick macadam.

Shaking off our listlessness, Colin and I rise to our knees. We hear the cry of a coachman, the answering cries of the Myrmidons. A carriage door opens...a pair of descending feet....

And then, like a hand pulling away the fog, the voice of Willie the Slasher.

--Good evening, your grace.

Colin grabs my sleeve.

Him?

I shake my head.
Not him
. Only dukes are addressed as "your grace."

--'Evening, Rebbeck. Is Freddie receiving yet?

--Waiting in the library, your grace. The front door is opened; a fusillade of feet issues forth. Griffyn Hall, it turns out, is not the abandoned hive it proclaimed itself to be. The bees have merely been biding their time, and here they come, a horde of drones, with droning voices to match--the flat, half-respectful monotones of clerks.

--In here, if you please. That's right. Bernard will take your coat, your grace. You know the way to the library, I expect?

Four, five men--it is hard to disentangle their voices, and before long, new sounds are added to the welter. More carriages, each following hard on the last, each paying homage to the Myrmidons, each disgorging a new gentleman. And each gentleman receiving, from Rebbeck's lips, his due honourific.

--'Evening, Sir Reginald...Dr. Earnshaw! So nice of you to come....

Lord Northdown, Baron Keble, Sir Leicester--Rebbeck's old colleagues would be astonished to hear him so at ease among the gentry.

The church bells strike the midnight hour--a symphony of chime--and still the carriages keep coming. I can hear them now, backed up halfway down the block, the horses quiescent in their harness, the coachmen impatiently tapping their crops. The delay is enough to goad some of the gentlemen into the heresy of letting themselves out of their own carriages. Converging at the front gate, they stroll up the front walk together, filling the air with their banalities.

--Beastly business!

--Not a night to be abroad.

--Dog of a driver nearly struck an omnibus.

--
Mine
will be given his notice before the year is out. One can't go on like this....

Rather than stay to hear themselves maligned, the coachmen, as soon as they have discharged their loads, tear off down the lane, clearing the deadlock as quickly as it formed. The street empties out again, and within another few minutes, the lawn, too, has emptied.

Griffyn Hall, however, has sparked into life. Candles now burn from the front windows, shadows flit across the curtains, and through the ancient stones creep the sounds of holiday revelry: halloos of recognition, muffled shouts, a tinkle of glass.

Screened by the marble maidens, Colin and I steal towards the house, feeling our way through the mist until we reach the staircase. There we crouch beneath a huge globe of a stair cap and peer up the stone steps. But the fog has thrown up a wall so dense that an entire cavalry might be sequestered there in the portico, and we would be none the wiser. And so we linger there by the base of the stairs, frozen by irresolution or, more accurately, by certainty. For I know, as sure as the breath on my hands, that Rebbeck is out there somewhere. Waiting.

Have another cigarette, damn you!

And in direct response to my prayer, a match flares up once again to reveal Rebbeck's blunt, dogged profile--uncomfortably closer than last time--and the fixed outlines of two other men, likewise dressed beyond their station, and spaced on either side of Rebbeck before the portico entrance.

No question of trying to slip by them. What, then, is left?

Nothing
, proclaim the frowning, implacable stones of Griffyn Hall. But as I gaze up into the murk, I discern for the first time a purchase: a cornice or ledge, about ten feet over our heads, running along the front of the building.

Not much, but something. It seems to me if we can gain that modest height, we can lift ourselves out of Rebbeck's ken and, more to the point, gain access to one of the windows-- and if God so chooses, a stolen view of Philomela.

But the ledge is quite high up, and reaching it will take some ingenuity. The best course I can see for us is to climb onto the stair cap at the bottom of the steps and haul ourselves straight up.

I mime my plan as best I can to Colin, and then I hoist myself onto the smooth stone globe. It is no easy task, finding my balance with a knapsack wrapped round me, but when I stand on my toes, I find I can just clasp my hands round the ledge, and after several trials, I can even swing my boot onto it. Several more trials later, I have prised my torso up, and soon thereafter, my fingers find a tiny crenellation in the house's wall, which affords me enough leverage to lift myself to a standing position.

Perched there on the ledge, I feel a ripple of pride.
Hark the cripple boy
. All those years of plying a crutch, not wasted after all.

Colin is just barely visible below, poised on the stone cap and swinging his arms like an organ grinder's monkey. Clearly, the gap between the staircase and the ledge is too great for him: he will have to make up the difference by leaping.

And leap he does--hurls himself at the stone face. His fingers land just to the left of my boot; his body slams into the building. A grunt of pain breaks free from him as one hand clamps down on his bruised face, and the other lingers on the rim of the ledge. Four tiny fingers, clutching for all their worth and already losing their grip on the cold stone, sliding with agonising slowness towards the edge.

They have given way altogether by the time my own fingers lock round them. The weight of him jerks my arm taut, nearly pulls me from my perch. It takes a pair of scarifying wobbles before I can regain my balance, but Colin has no balance to regain. He hangs suspended now, twelve feet from the ground. Gravity drags at his boots; blood smears his chin. And his free hand--I have just enough presence of mind to notice this--is shoved in his mouth to stifle the pain.

From this charged silence emerges the sound of footsteps, passing down the portico and advancing down the steps towards us. Leading the way, that minute corona of match-flame, nestling against the callused skin of former Sergeant William Rebbeck.

The fog has closed round us, but that oncoming light leaves little doubt: Colin's hanging figure will be in full view once they reach us. Closing my eyes and uttering a silent orison, I draw three breaths...and then I haul upwards with all my might. My shoulders tremble with their burden; my chest swells with spent air; but Colin does begin to rise--in spasmodic hitches, like a piece of rickety scenery--and my labour is eased by the sight of his bloodsmeared face heaving into view, his blood-smeared hand clutching the ledge with renewed authority.

Another hydraulic surge with my left arm, and Colin's feet at last find their foundation. Trembling, he lets go my hand and throws himself against the stone wall as though it were a nursing breast.

Below us, the match-flame flutters out, then starts back into life--hovers now directly below us. We stifle our panting, we flatten ourselves against the wall...and we wait, in an agony of suspense.

A full minute passes before we hear Rebbeck's flat, hard voice, calling:

--Fetch me a lantern.

Which is to say, we have not escaped; we have only purchased time. Time enough, anyway, to examine our options, which, on closer scrutiny, dissolve into one. We must follow this ledge away from the portico entrance...plunge into the mist in the hope that we can take ourselves out of the range of Rebbeck's search party.

From the direction of the portico comes the next wave of light, larger and more assertive and moving more rapidly than before. A prod to our own feet, which take longer, quicker steps and carry us with relative ease along the stone ledge, even as the light bears down on us.

I can't say how exactly the equilibrium shifts, but at some indefinable moment, we look down and realise, with a salutary shock, that the light is falling further behind, dropping lower and lower as the search party descends the steps towards the lawn.

Before much longer, the light has come to a complete halt, and now only a single conclusion is possible: they have reached the bottom of the stairs. Some five minutes pass before the light streams back up the stone stairs to the portico entrance, where Rebbeck and his two minions, to all appearances, take up their old vigil.

Liberated for the moment, we unclench our bodies and move along the front of the building in an easier rhythm, until we have attained something approaching relaxation. A little too close to relaxation, as I discover when my leading foot, expecting more ledge, finds nothing but wobbling air, and my torso, weighed down by the knapsack, makes ready to follow. It is Colin's turn to grab me.

--Bleedin' corners, he whispers.--Get you every time.

Fortunately, the ledge, like the building, makes a ninety-degree turn to the west, and we follow it round, resuming our single-file pilgrimage. Ten feet along, we are slowed by something new: an amber vent in the fog, diffusing and then disappearing entirely, only to resolve again as a plain double-hung window, smouldering with refracted light.

Here, before we even expected it, a vantage point on the house's interior, and yet whatever germ of excitement opens inside me is at once smothered by the instinct for caution. Signalling to Colin to wait, I sidle over and tip my head into the outermost part of the window frame.
The room inside is dark and uninhabited, a sealed box, with the exception of a door that has been thrown open to admit the light from a larger room. It is this farther sanctum to which my eye unavoidably turns. Convex walls festooned with looking-glasses and torcheres and ancestral portraits of varying sizes, all of them dreary with soot. Unless my internal compass deceives me, this is Lord Griffyn's front hall.