The Candle Man (23 page)

‘Come on, you pathetic fool,’ he snapped at himself irritably, and reached for the door, pulling it open. A rare stream of autumn sun warmed his face and immediately the stifling
quiet of the hallway, marked only by the ticking of a brass clock on the side table, was flooded with the noise and bustling activity of Holland Park Avenue.

He shuffled his still-numb left leg over the dust mat onto the top step outside. The bad leg was behaving itself this morning. He decided he no longer needed the walking stick that Mary had
bought him a couple of days ago. It made him look, feel, older than he was. As for that wheelchair, it was already just an embarrassing memory tucked away in the back room, out of sight and
mind.

He took the steps down carefully, one at a time, through the wrought iron gate and onto the pavement, tapping his forehead in a polite gesture at the police constable passing by on a
bicycle.

The fleeting sunlight felt good; he savoured the warmth on his face, the noises of midday business going on around him. He looked up and down the street. To his right, he remembered, was Hyde
Park, a mile or so along. And halfway between there and here was Notting Hill with, as he recalled from their last walk to the park together, a number of pleasant-looking teashops and cafes.

A walk. And perhaps a little something to eat?

He realised he was getting peckish. Mary had been gone awhile now and it was almost lunchtime. He had a pocket full of jingling coins and a rumbling stomach.

‘Why not?’ he uttered resolutely. Pleased with himself so far. He smiled. Mary was going to be impressed when he told her later that he’d actually managed to take himself out
for a walk and order something to eat and drink. All by himself. She was going to be so pleased with him.

Half an hour later, a faltering and cautious stroll had brought him to Notting Hill, busy with a farmer’s market; a cacophony of traders’ barking voices and chattering women; carts
parked on one side of the road, ponies and horses tethered together to railings on the other. The main road was thick with small mounds of drying manure that he didn’t fancy stepping in. On
the far side of the busy road he saw a nice-looking tea house with broad, sunny windows that were trapping the fleeting sunlight. He hesitated and took several abortive steps into the road.
Hesitated long enough that an old woman eventually reached for his arm and helped him across. Argyll doffed his hat and thanked her on the far side, pink-cheeked at the thought that she’d
been helping him instead of the other way round.

A bell jingled above the door as he entered the tea shop. He picked a small round table for two by the front window, sat down and watched the market through a window spattered on the outside
with spots of pigeon droppings, until an old woman with raw red hands and a crisp white apron asked him what he fancied. He ordered a pot of tea, a round of toast and butter and a slice of bacon,
quietly pleased with himself for his impressive show of independence. His life story might still be a complete mystery, but good grief, at least he was able to order a spot of lunch.

Ten minutes later, he was enjoying the activity of the market, sipping tea and savouring the warm toast thickly spread with melting butter. He watched a fishmonger in a leather apron behind a
propped up pallet of filleted mackerel; fillets lined up like soldiers on parade, the shimmering blue of their scales interlaced with the puckered pink of exposed flesh. A fat greengrocer almost
lost behind a veritable mountain of soil-covered potatoes, each the size of a boxer’s fist. A butcher hacking at cuts of mutton, observed by the dead eyes of a row of pigs’ heads
arranged along the edge of his stall like jurors in a court. The space between the stalls was teeming with bonnets and feathers, bowlers and tops hats, flat caps and forage caps; a painter’s
palette of so many different-looking faces all intent on the same errand, the same mission:
something nice and tasty for our tea tonight
.

He looked at them.

Yes, why not? Go on . . . take a good look at them.

Argyll stirred uneasily. He recognised that voice and his good mood soured. The voice brought with it an unpleasant sensation; the notion of things left undone, obligations unfulfilled. A
spiteful, mean-spirited little voice that he was certain didn’t approve of him merely sitting here watching the world go by.

You’re right. Because you are not looking closely enough. Look at them. Look at them, ‘John’. Do you see that fishmonger putting spoiled fillets in behind the good? Do you
see the butcher trimming rancid corners off his meat? Do you see that gentleman walking with his wife and yet his eyes lingering on the baker’s boy? Do you see the beggar over there with
crutches he pretends to need? Do you see that small boy flicking dirt into his baby sister’s face behind his mother’s back?

He saw those things, like the small background details of a giant painting; brush strokes that told stories hidden amidst swirls of oil paint.

They’re all rotten, all spoiled stock. The good people, ‘John’, all the good people went on from this world long ago. In far better times than this.

He hated the tone of the voice, the unpleasant sharpness to it. It was the hectoring of a disapproving tutor. The nag of an unsatisfied creditor. The persistent chase of a debtor. The spiteful
ridicule of an older sibling.

Do you remember anything?

His eyes narrowed. There’d been another dream last night, hadn’t there? In it he was young, much younger, perhaps in his early-twenties. He remembered catching a glimpse of a
reflection of himself in a store window: a wild-looking young man in deerskins and a threadbare and faded red polka dot shirt staring back at him. He looked like a frontiersman. A trapper? He
vaguely recalled docks and sailboats, steamships, wagons. Someplace busy, just like the market out there.

Then a second strange, dislocated dream that made little sense to him again. He had a feeling that chronologically, it was some years earlier. He remembered an Indian, ghostly white with chalk
powder, standing over him and shouting something he didn’t understand, pushing him and pointing a finger. The Indian had the same shrill, nagging tone as the voice. He had the distinct
impression the Indian was saying the same thing in his coarse, guttural tongue.

‘Do you see? Do you see? Do you see?’

And then he saw a village of those tall, cone-shaped tents that Indians live in. Yes, tepees, that’s what they’re called . . .

. . . They’re burning. Flames licking from the top of one tepee to the next, smoke blowing across snow-covered prairie grass. A thick blanket of snow stained a startlingly bright
crimson in places. Militia men in forage caps with thick winter beards, wearing navy blue army greatcoats and riding thundering horses that blast plumes of breath into the early morning air. And
the men are cheering, laughing, ‘yee-hawing’ at the thrill of the chase.

Between the flaming tepees, they’re chasing down terrified squaws; and their children and old men, hardly ferocious savage warriors, all of them half-naked, clearly freshly roused from
sleep. Chasing them down, running the slow ones through with their sabres rather than waste the cost of a bullet.

Do you see? Do you see the baby bayoneted against that small fir tree? Left there, lifeless, dangling like a decoration. Do you see those three men and the young squaw? Do you see what
they’re doing to her? Don’t look away. Look! And look down now . . . look down at your own hands. Do you see what you’re holding . . . ?

He’d awoken then, last night. Awoken in his dark bedroom, not quite sure if he’d screamed, if he’d roused poor Mary from her slumber yet again.

Oh, so you’re remembering just a little more now, hmmm?
Argyll did his best to ignore the spiteful voice.
Let me ask you . . . do you know what this place is?

‘Of course,’ Argyll whispered, almost immediately angry with himself for acknowledging the voice with an answer. It was only going to encourage the voice in his head.

Hmmm, yes, you do hear me. I know you do. So, what is this place, ‘John’? Where are we?

‘This is London.’

The voice laughed at him. Most amused at his naïve answer.

No, you fool. This place, this world, is purgatory. You’re as blind as everyone else, aren’t—

‘Be quiet!’ Argyll slapped his hand against the table. A couple of coke-men on the table next to his, broad-shouldered with coal-black hands that left finger marks on their
sandwiches, stopped mid-conversation and turned to look his way curiously. The waitress with the red raw skin and the crisp white apron bustled over.

‘Everythin’ awl-right, sir?’

Argyll looked up at her and looked around at the other eyes resting on him. ‘Uhh . . . yes, ma’am. Yes, I’m fine.’

‘Would you care for a top-up of your tea, sir?’

He looked down at the cup: old chipped porcelain, the blue and gold flower detail rubbed away on the handle. It was all but empty, the dregs of his tea long since gone cold. He realised he must
have been sitting here for quite some time, gazing out through the window in some sort of a trance.

‘No . . . err, no ma’am, thank you. I’m fine.’ He fumbled in his pocket for some coins and pulled out a handful, frowning to make sense of them as he pushed them around
the palm of his hand.

‘How much do I owe?’

She smiled sympathetically at his awkwardness. ‘Thruppence, farthing, sir.’

He picked at the coins, turning them over one after the other to read their value.

‘Shall I help you, sir?’ said the waitress. Argyll held his open hand out to her and she plucked out the coins. He thanked her before she turned to deal with the men sitting on the
next table.

He pushed himself up from his seat, a piece of toast and a rasher of bacon left on his plate uneaten. All of a sudden, his appetite was gone. All of a sudden, he wanted to be back home. Back
with Mary where things made sense. Their simple little world for two.

It was mid-afternoon by the time he clambered shakily up the steps to the front door. The noises of Holland Park Avenue, the faces, the confusion, and that hectoring voice had upset him.
Confused and frightened him. He wanted to be back home. Somewhere safe and quiet and comprehensible. He saw the net curtain in the bay window of the front room twitch and a moment later the front
door swung inwards.

‘John!’ cried Mary. ‘Oh, god help me, I was so worried about you!’

He smiled, pathetically pleased to see her, even if she was going to scold him like a small boy. ‘I went for a walk, and a spot of—’

‘You’ve been gone hours! I thought you’d
left
. . .’ Her voice caught. ‘I thought you’d got lost, forgot where we live!’

Her eyes were red-rimmed. She’d been crying.

‘I’m sorry, Mary.’ He reached for her arm. ‘I must have lost track of the time.’

She grasped his hand and all but dragged him into the hallway and slammed the front door shut behind him. Argyll swallowed nervously, expecting her wrath now. But instead he heard her breath
catch and saw in the dim light that her shoulders heaving gently.

‘I thought you went and left me,’ she whispered.

He reached out to her. ‘I . . . I think I’d be so very lost without you, my dear.’ He said it and realised how much he meant it. He was at sea in churning waters, a turmoil of
confusing, frightening memories and dreams that blew across his mind like a storm front. And Mary was the only thing standing still for him. A lighthouse, a beacon . . . a guttering candle.

Before either of them could utter another word, they were locked together hungrily, the hallway echoing their fluttering gasps, and the
tac-tac-tac
of the clock on the side table calmly
measuring what remained of the little time they were going to have left together.

A
nnie Chapman looked down Hanbury Street. She could still see another two of them beneath the gas light halfway down, chattering in noisy voices in
the stillness of the early hours. She recognised their faces, even if she didn’t know them by their names. They were the last girls on the street, apart from her. No doubt forlornly hoping
for one more customer before the sky started to lighten with dawn and the early-risers came for Spitalfields market.

Half an hour ago, they’d both spotted an old man staggering and tripping his way home. They’d caterwauled at him to come over, both lifted their skirts to show stocking tops and bare
thighs in an attempt to entice him, but he was too far gone to even acknowledge them.

She sat on a low wall in a pool of darkness, far away from the nearest lamp. Normally, like those other two, she would gravitate to the glow beneath a lamp for the sense of safety it provided,
but also to be able to show herself off to any passing potential customers. Tonight, though, she wanted to be entirely invisible until the morning returned and the streets were full and she could
feel safe again.

And she so wanted tonight to hurry up and be gone.