The American Boy (22 page)

“No, no. He could have thrown something as small as that on the fire. Or into a cesspit. Or the river, for that matter. God damn it, we are no nearer proof, one way or the other.”

I thought, but did not say aloud, that this might have been just what the man who left the satchel had intended. Nor did I mention that the finger looked oddly shrivelled and yellow. What had happened to it since it had been parted from the rest of the hand? Was there some clue in its present appearance to where it had been kept? Could one even be sure it was a forefinger?

“I am obliged to you, nonetheless.” Carswall took out his watch. “There is nothing more we can do at present.” Then without any change in tone he went on: “I have written to Mr Bransby and told him you will be returning tomorrow.”

I bowed.

“I daresay you will be relieved to resume your normal duties. I shall make a point of saying to Mr Bransby that you have given satisfaction, and shown yourself trustworthy.” Carswall pawed his watch. “I am awaited in the City. You may spend the rest of the day with Charlie.”

A moment later I trailed up the stairs to the drawing room, where Pratt, the footman I disliked, had told me I would find Charlie. There was no schoolroom in the house in Margaret-street, and in any case the drawing room was warmer and more comfortable. I will not disguise the fact that as I mounted the stone treads of the staircase my heart beat a little faster at the thought of whom I might find with Charlie.

Miss Carswall looked up as I entered the room, her face breaking into a smile. She was alone, sitting by the fire with a screen to shield her face. A folded newspaper lay upon her lap.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “They told me Charlie was here.”

“He will be down presently, Mr Shield. He has run up to his mama for a few moments. Pray come and wait by the fire. The cold is bitter, is it not?”

I was glad to fall in with this suggestion. I saw that she had been reading the
Morning Post
and my eye caught the word “murder” on the page lying open before her.

“Am I to understand that Mrs Frant has had a relapse?” I asked. “She seemed much improved when I saw her yesterday.”

“I am rejoiced to say that she is much better. But she tires easily, and her physician recommends that she rest in her room during the afternoon.” Miss Carswall looked directly at me – there was a frankness about her demeanour, an openness, which I found most appealing – and said: “While we are on the subject of health, you are looking rather better than I feared you would. Mrs Frant told me that you were attacked.”

“It was unpleasant rather than serious.”

“I suspect you make light of it.” She shivered deliciously. “We are none of us safe!”

“No harm was done. Mr Harmwell beat back my assailants, and then he was kind enough to escort me home in a hackney.”

Miss Carswall's smile broke out like the sun from behind clouds. “Is it possible that his motives were not entirely disinterested, sir? Bearing in mind that touching scene we witnessed in Piccadilly?”

I grinned at her. “I understand that Mrs Kerridge has been copying out receipts for Mr Harmwell's mother.”

The smile turned into a giggle. “Tell that to the Marines.” As she spoke, Miss Carswall moved in her chair and the hem of her skirt rose up, exposing pretty ankles and elegant calves encased in French-silk stockings. “Why, it seems unnatural for Kerridge to have a follower. She must be old enough to be my mother.”

At this, she coloured and fell silent, for the remark was not the best of taste, especially from one situated as Miss Carswall was. I wondered, not for the first time, if there was more than met the eye in Harmwell's interest in Mrs Kerridge. She was better placed than most to know exactly what was going on in this family. She was Mrs Frant's maid, the only servant who remained from that lost house in Russell-square. She had also looked after Miss Carswall when she had lived with her cousin for upward of two years while Mr Frant was in Canada, and of course she had known Charlie since he was a baby. The three of them held her in great affection, and often confided in her. On account of this, perhaps, Mrs Kerridge wielded an influence over the other servants out of proportion to her official standing among them.

“Mr Carswall tells me you are soon to remove to the country,” I said, to break the silence before it grew awkward.

“We are indeed. Papa is so provoking. He talks of unnecessary expense, which is nonsense. But he will not listen to reason.” She spoke these words in a self-mocking manner, which converted them from a criticism of her father to a commentary on her own shortcomings.

“You prefer the town, I think, miss?”

“Oh, indeed. I remember how delightful it was when I first came to live with Sophie in Russell-square, and suddenly Bath itself seemed no more interesting than a village. I know Town is practically empty now, and it will be even emptier after Christmas. But even in that condition, it is far more agreeable to me than the vacant prospects and unpolished inhabitants of the countryside. I – I shall miss my friends, too. In London, one knows so many people that one may to a large extent choose with whom one associates. But it is quite different at Monkshill. We have a very limited acquaintance.” She paused a moment and then added, with peculiar emphasis: “Yes, I shall miss certain friends very much.”

She had been gazing at the paper on her lap, but when she spoke those last few words, she raised her face to mine, which gave what she said a particular force, and made it difficult not to place a particular construction upon the words. Miss Carswall smiled at me and was about to say something else. But at this interesting moment, the door of the drawing room flew open and Charlie burst in on us.

“Cousin Flora!” he cried. “Mama says I do not have to go back to school!”

I returned to Stoke Newington on Thursday, the 9th December. As the month progressed, the weather grew worse. The cold and the lengthening nights were perfectly in tune with my gloomy spirits. Sometimes I slipped into a fit of wild despair. When my mind was unoccupied, two faces rushed to fill the vacancy, those of Mrs Frant and Miss Carswall. I was amazed by my own folly: if it were ludicrous to pine for one lady so far removed from my own sphere of society, then how much more absurd to pine for two? Yet however much I brought philosophy to my aid, I could not expel those two lovely images from my thoughts.

“You are out of sorts, Tom,” said Edward Dansey one evening as we sat over the dying fire.

“It is merely a fit of the dumps. I beg your pardon – I do not wish to be a plague.”

“One's spirits have their seasons, just as the weather has. What is it you are reading?”

I passed the book to him.

“The
Carmina
of Catullus?” He held the book up to the candle and turned over the pages. “Charming, charming,” he murmured. “All the passion of youth is here, and all its folly. I should not let Mr Bransby see you reading it, however.”

“I am re-reading the poems not for their matter but for their metre,” I said.

“Yes, there are elements of interest in Catullus's use of phalaecians and scazons. As for the hexametric poems, it is undeniable that he handles the metre with far more elegance than Lucretius contrives, though to my mind a greater employment of enjambment would have improved them still further. His elegiacs, on the other hand, do not merit the compliment of imitation, and his pentameters are often positively uncouth.” He looked up, saw my face and turned his lopsided smile on me. “You must not mind me, Tom, I am a little out of sorts myself.” He returned the volume. “Have you heard the news? Quird is to be withdrawn from the school.”

“I cannot say I am sorry to hear it.”

“It appears that his father was badly hit when Wavenhoe's collapsed. The family has lost nearly all it had.”

“It is, I'm afraid, a common enough story.” I held out my hands to the fire. “I hope they are not in actual want?”

“Not quite. It is a dreadful business.” Dansey's eyes glowed orange in the candlelight. “But of course few have suffered as Mrs Frant has suffered. Is it true that she is entirely dependent on the charity of her cousin Mr Carswall?”

“I believe so.” I heard a trace of agitation in my tone, for I remembered that fatal codicil that had removed, with my unconscious assistance, her last hope of financial independence. I forced myself to continue: “And Charlie, too, of course.”

Dansey waved a long-fingered hand. “At least he is young. Youth has astonishing resilience. But Mrs Frant's position must be truly wretched.”

I mumbled agreement, not trusting myself to speak.

“No doubt she loved him?”

I made no reply, though Dansey waited for one.

“Yes, but then love is a curious emotion,” he went on in a moment, as though I had answered in the affirmative. “We commonly use one word where at least three are required. When poets speak of love, they describe a passionate attachment to another individual. It is perhaps less an attachment than a form of hunger. However they dress it up in the language of sentiment, it is at bottom a physical appetite for the sexual act, a desire to enjoy the last favour. It is an extraordinarily powerful appetite, it is true, and one directed with remarkable intensity at a single individual, an intensity that may border on madness – as, perhaps, it did for poor Catullus with his Lesbia. Yet it is usually short-lived. I have known many young men who fall in love once a week. And when such a man marries the beloved of the moment, the passion rarely lasts at the pitch it attained before it was satisfied.”

I stared at the fire. Dansey's voice had taken on a slow, dreamlike quality. I wished I were alone in a silent room.

“As to the second meaning,” he said after another pause, another opportunity for me to speak. “On many occasions love is little more than a respectable synonym for lechery, a universal appetite for copulation, for unbridled carnality. The word love casts a veil of propriety over it. It is an attempt to disguise its nature, to shield it from the strictures of moralists. But, truly considered, the phenomenon is no more lovely or unlovely than the behaviour of a pig at a trough.”

I stirred in my chair.

“Pray do not be uneasy,” he said quickly. “The taxonomy of the emotions should be the province of the natural philosopher, as well as that of the poet. And, to the unbiased observer at least, it is clear that a mature person may feel for – for – another person a category of emotion which may properly be called love; indeed it may be argued that it deserves the appellation more than the previous categories. This would be my third definition of the word. I refer to an individual's calm and disinterested concern for the well-being of another.”

I suppressed a yawn. “It sounds remarkably like friendship. Or a mother's feeling for a child.”

“No, Tom, not exactly. It does not exclude passion, you see. Passion may play a part, albeit guided by reason, by experience. One sees it sometimes in married couples, in whom it may flourish after their initial ardours have subsided. One sometimes sees it, too, in friendships between members of the same sex, very commonly in soldiers or sailors who have braved terrible dangers together. If one had to characterise this type of affection, one could, I think, usefully entertain the notion of
completeness
. The lover feels incomplete without the beloved. It is an emotion that may flourish unobtrusively in unexpected places. Though it may embrace the sexual sphere, it is not confined to it.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees. I saw twin candle flames burning in his eyes. It is a terrifying thing to glimpse the depth of another's need.

I pushed back my chair and stood up. “Ned – pray excuse me – it has been a long day. I shall fall asleep if I stay another moment. You will not take it amiss if I withdraw, will you?”

“No,” Dansey said. “No, of course not. You were falling into a doze. I warrant you hardly heard a word I've been saying.”

I wished him goodnight. At the door, he called me back.

“You will want this,” he said. “Your Catullus.”

Neither of us referred to this conversation again. It was possible that Dansey believed, or affected to believe, that I had been on the edge of slumber during the latter part of it, and had not heard all he said, or comprehended the general drift of his remarks. So we lived and worked together on our old amicable footing. Yet something had changed. After that evening, I rarely sat with him late into the night beside the dying warmth of the schoolroom fire, or strolled smoking with him across the frosty lawn after the boys had gone to bed.

Nevertheless, I found my thoughts recurring to his remarks upon the subject of love on more than one occasion. If it were true that the tender passion could be divided into three categories, which category embraced what I felt for Sophia Frant – or, indeed, for Flora Carswall? I saw with peculiar vividness in my mind's eye the picture of Dansey's pig at his trough.

I could not say that I was looking forward to the end of term, to the six weeks of the school's Christmas holiday. Though a few boys would remain, the establishment would be considerably reduced, and Dansey and I would inevitably be thrown much together. I had agreed to eat my Christmas dinner with the Rowsells, but I had no other engagements or diversions in hand.

About a week before Christmas, I met young Edgar Allan on the stairs and he said to me, in that hurried and peculiarly breathless way that small boys have: “Sir, please, sir, but Frant begs me to give you his compliments and hopes you may be able to accept.”

I stopped. “Accept what, Allan? His compliments?”

“You have not heard, sir?”

“Unless I know what I am supposed to have heard, I cannot tell, can I?”

Something in the logic of this must have appealed to him, for the boy burst out laughing. When his mirth had subsided, he said: “Frant wrote me to say that his mama is inviting me to stay at Mr Carswall's during the Christmas holiday. And Mr Carswall is to write to my ma and pa, and to Mr Bransby, requesting that you should be allowed to accompany me, though I should be perfectly safe in the care of the coachman, but Charlie says that women always fuss and sometimes it is wise to let them have their head.”