The American Boy (11 page)

She moved to the barred window, which looked across an eighteen-inch lead-lined gully to the back of the parapet of the street façade. She wore greys and lilacs today, a transitional stage before the blacks she would don when her uncle died. A strand of hair had escaped from her cap, and she pushed it back with a finger. Her movements were always graceful, a joy to watch.

She turned towards me, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth as though impatient with herself. “You must have lights,” she said almost pettishly, tugging the bell. “It is growing dark. I cannot abide the dark.”

While we waited for the servant to come she questioned me about how Charlie was faring at school. I reassured her as best I could. He was much happier than he had been. No, he was not exactly industrious, but he coped with the work that was expected of him. Yes, he was indeed occasionally flogged, but so were all boys and there was nothing out of the way in it. As for his appetite, I rarely saw the boys eating, so I could not comment with any authority, but I had seen him on several occasions emerging from the pastry-cook's in the village. Finally, as to his motions, I feared I had no information upon that topic whatsoever.

Mrs Frant blushed and said I must excuse the fondness of a mother.

A moment later, the footman brought my tea and a lamp. When the shadows fled from the corners of the room, then so did the curious intimacy of my conversation with Mrs Frant. Yet she lingered. I asked her what regimen she would like us to follow while we were here. She replied that perhaps we might work in the mornings, take the air in the afternoons, and return to our books for a short while in the evening.

“Of course, there may be interruptions.” She twisted her wedding ring round her finger. “One cannot predict the course of events. Mr Shield, I cannot –”

She broke off at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. There was a tap on the door, and Mrs Kerridge and Charlie entered.

“I saw him,” Charlie said. “I thought he was dead at first, he lay so still, but then I heard his breathing.”

“Did he wake?”

“No, madam,” Mrs Kerridge said. “The apothecary gave Mr Wavenhoe his draught, and he's sleeping soundly.”

Mrs Frant stood up and ran her fingers through the boy's hair. “Then you shall have a holiday for the rest of the afternoon.”

“I shall go and see the coaches, Mama.”

“Very well. But do not stay too long – it is possible your uncle may wake and call for you.”

Soon I was alone again in the long, narrow room. I drank tea and read for upwards of an hour. Then I became restless, and decided to go out to buy tobacco.

I took the front stairs. As I came down the last flight into the marble-floored hall, a door opened and an old man emerged, wheezing with effort, from the room beyond. He was not tall, but he was broad and had once been powerfully built. He had thick black hair streaked with silver and a fleshy face dominated by a great curving nose. He wore a dark blue coat and a showy but dishevelled cravat.

“Ha!” he said as he saw me. “Who are you?”

“My name's Shield, sir.”

“And who the devil is Shield?”

“I brought Master Charles from his school. I am an usher there.”

“Charlie's bear leader, eh?” He had a rich voice, which he seemed to wrench from deep within his chest. “Thought you were the damned parson for a moment, in that black coat of yours.”

I smiled and bowed, taking this for a pleasantry.

The elegant figure of Henry Frant appeared in the doorway behind him.

“Mr Shield,” he said. “Good afternoon.”

I bowed again. “Your servant, sir.”

“Don't know why you and Sophie thought the boy ought to have a tutor,” the old man said. “I'll wager he gets enough book-learning at school. They get too much of that already. We're breeding a race of damned milksops.”

“Your views on the rearing of the young, sir,” Frant observed, “always merit the most profound consideration.”

Mr Carswall rested one hand on the newel post, looked back at the rest of us and broke wind. It was curious that this old, infirm man had the power to make one feel a little less substantial than one usually was. Even Henry Frant was diminished by his presence. The old man grunted and, swaying like a tree in a gale, mounted the stairs. Frant nodded at me and strolled across the hall and into another room. I buttoned up my coat, took my hat and gloves and went out into the raw November air.

Albemarle-street was a quiet, sombre place, lying under the shadow of death. The acrid smell of sea coal filled my nostrils. I crossed the road and glanced back at the house. For an instant, I glimpsed the white blur of a face at one of the drawing-room windows on the first floor. Someone had been standing there – staring idly into the street? or watching me? – and had retreated into the room.

I walked rapidly down towards the lights and the bustle. Charlie had said he wanted to watch the coaches, and I knew where he would have gone. During my long convalescence, when I was staying with my aunt, I would sometimes walk to Piccadilly and watch the fast coaches leaving and arriving from the White Horse Cellar. Half the small boys in London, of all conditions, of all ages, laboured under the same compulsion.

I stepped briskly into Piccadilly, dodged across the road, and made my way along the crowded pavement towards a tobacconist's. The shop was full of customers, and it was a quarter of an hour before I emerged with a paper of cigars in my pocket.

A few paces ahead of me walked a couple, arm in arm and muffled against the cold. The man raised his stick and hailed a passing hackney. He helped the lady in, and I think his hand must have brushed against her bosom, though whether on purpose or by accident I could not tell. She turned, half in, half out of the hackney, and tapped him playfully on the cheek in mock reproof. The woman was Mrs Kerridge, and the cheek she tapped had a familiar dusky hue.

“Brewer-street,” said Salutation Harmwell, and followed Mrs Kerridge into the coach.

There was nothing suspicious about that, of course, or not then. It was not unusual to see a white-skinned woman arm in arm with a well-set-up blackamoor. Dusky gentlemen were rumoured to have certain advantages when it came to pleasing ladies, advantages denied to the men of other races. But I own I was shocked and a little surprised. Mrs Kerridge had seemed so sober, so prim, so old. Why, I thought to myself, she must be forty if she's a day. Yet when she looked down at Harmwell, her face had been as bright as a girl's at her first ball.

I stared after the hackney, wondering what the pair of them were going to do in Brewer-street and feeling an unaccountable stab of envy. At that moment a hand touched my sleeve. I turned, expecting to see Charlie at my elbow.

“I always said Mrs Kerridge was a deep one,” said Flora Carswall. “I believe my cousin sent her on an errand to Russell-square.”

I raised my hat and bowed. An abigail in a black cloak hovered a few paces away, her eyes discreetly averted.

“And where are you off to, Mr Shield, on this dreary afternoon?” Miss Carswall asked.

“The White Horse Cellar.” It did not seem quite genteel to confess that I had been looking for a tobacconist's. “I believe Charlie may be there.”

“You are looking for him?”

“Not really. I am at leisure for an hour or so.”

“It is vastly agreeable to see the coaches depart, is it not? All that bustle and excitement, and the thought that one might purchase a ticket, climb aboard and go anywhere, anywhere in the world.”

“I was thinking something very similar.”

“Most people do, probably. How I hate this place.”

I stared at her for an instant. Why should a girl like Flora Carswall dislike a city that could gratify her every whim? I said, “Then for your sake I hope your stay here will be brief.”

“That depends on poor Mr Wavenhoe. But it is not being in Town that I dislike – quite the reverse, in fact – but the gloom of Albemarle-street and some of the people one is obliged to meet there.” She smiled at me, her outburst apparently forgotten. “I wonder – if you are at leisure, might I request the favour of your company? Then I could send my maid home – the poor girl has a mountain of sewing. I have one or two errands to run; they will not take long.”

I could hardly have refused even if I had wanted to. Miss Carswall took my arm and we threaded our way through the crowds down St James's-street. In Pall Mall, she scanned the latest novels in Payne and Foss's for a few minutes and spent rather more time with Messrs Harding, Howell, & Co. The people there made much of her. She bought a pair of gloves, examined some lace newly arrived from Belgium, and inquired after the progress of a hat she was having made for her. She even asked my opinion about whether a certain colour matched her eyes and prettily deferred to my verdict. She was excessively animated; and the longer we were together the more I liked her, and the more I wondered whether our meeting had been coincidental.

On the way back to Piccadilly, neither of us talked much. Once she slipped in the mud, and would have fallen if I had not been there. For a moment her grip tightened on my arm and I saw her looking up at my face. When at last we returned to Albemarle-street, she removed her hand from my arm and we walked side by side but unattached. As we drew near to Mr Wavenhoe's house, she walked more slowly, despite the cold and despite the rain which had begun to fall.

“You have met my father?”

“Yes – as I was leaving the house just now.”

“I daresay you thought him a little brusque,” she said. “Pray do not answer. Most people do. But I hope you will not allow his manner to offend you. He is naturally choleric, and the gout makes it worse.”

“You must not distress yourself, Miss Carswall.”

“He is not always as amiable as he might be.”

“I shall bear it as best I can.”

She looked sharply at me and stopped walking altogether. “There is something I wish to tell you. No, not exactly: it is rather that I would prefer to tell you myself than have you discover it from someone else. I –”

“Sir! Cousin Flora! Wait!”

We turned to face Piccadilly. Charlie ran towards us. His cheeks were pink from the cold and the exercise. The side of his coat was covered with mud. As he came close, my nose told me that it was not mud but horse dung.

“Sir, that was the most famous fun. I rubbed down a horse. I gave the ostler sixpence and he said I was a regular out-and-outer.”

In his joy, he let out a whoop of delight. We were now standing beneath the very windows of the house where George Wavenhoe lay dying. I looked over Charlie's head at Miss Carswall. I think each of us expected the other to reprove the lad for making so much noise. Instead we smiled.

Then Miss Carswall went briskly into the house and left me to wonder what she had been about to tell me.

In my absence, the schoolroom had filled with smoke. No one could remember the last time a fire had been lit in there. The flue of the chimney appeared to be partly blocked. The sweep was summoned for the following morning. In the meantime, Mrs Frant decided that Charlie and I should use the library on the ground floor for our lessons.

We sat at a table drawn near to the fire. I set Charlie to construe twelve lines of Ovid. He was willing enough but his mind could not stay on the task for long. I too found it hard to concentrate. Then the door opened, and the servant showed Mr Noak into the room. He wore evening dress, plain but respectable.

I sprang up, ready to withdraw with Charlie. The footman said sulkily that he had not realised that anyone was using the room.

“Pray do not disturb yourself,” Mr Noak said to me. “If I may, I shall sit here and turn the pages of a book until Mr Frant is at leisure.”

The servant withdrew. Mr Noak advanced towards the fire holding out his hands.

“Good evening, sir,” Charlie said. “We met at my father's house a few weeks ago.”

“Master Charles, is it not?”

They shook hands. Charlie was a well-bred little boy, and he now turned to me. “May I present my – my tutor, Mr Shield, sir?”

Noak held out his hand to me too. “I believe I saw you on the same occasion, Mr Shield. We were not introduced, and I'm glad to remedy the deficiency now.”

The words were gracious but Noak had a harsh, staccato way of delivery which made them sound almost insulting. I moved aside the table so he could warm himself at the fire. He looked down at the open book.

“I do not approve of Ovid,” he said in precisely the tone of voice he had used before. “He may have been a great poet but I am told he was licentious in his mode of life.”

Charlie stared wide-eyed at Mr Noak.

I said, “We choose passages which display his genius but do not dwell on his less agreeable qualities.”

“Then again, one must ask oneself what is the utility of studying the languages of antiquity? We live in a world where commerce is king.”

“Permit me to remind you, sir, that Latin is the language of natural science. Moreover, the study of the language and the literature of great civilisations cannot be wasted effort. If nothing else it must school the mind.”

“Pagan civilisations, sir,” Noak said. “Civilisations that passed their peak two thousand years ago or more. We have come on a little since then, I fancy.”

“That we have been able to build so high is surely a tribute to the strength of the foundations.”

Mr Noak stared at me but said nothing. In my present position I could hardly afford to anger anybody. Yet he had talked such obvious nonsense that I felt it my duty to advance some counter arguments, if only for Charlie's sake. At this moment the door opened and Henry Frant came in. The almost foppish elegance of his dress was in stark contrast to Mr Noak's sober attire. Charlie caught his breath. I had the curious impression that he would have liked to shrink into himself.