The Clay Dreaming (29 page)

‘Not everyone is what they seem, down the Highway.’

The voice of a stranger at her shoulder made Sarah jump. A dark figure peeled away from the shadow of the lobby and advanced to stand beside her. His face was full – if not as florid as the other man’s – and his gingery beard was flecked with white.

‘’Tis a fiddler’s green, miss, beyond compare,’ he said. ‘Oh, some may look the part, dressed in their Guernseys ’n’ blue jackets, but in a mess of y’ars they’ll’ve sailed no further than the alehouse on the corner. Turnpike sailors they are, and that’s all. Lurchers, idlers, beggars and thieves, the Sons of Abraham!’

The man barked out loud, as if for the benefit of all. Sarah looked around, embarrassed, and saw that ‘Bruce’ had gone, leaving behind only an empty stool.

‘They sell a little fish fried in oil, or else keeps a lodgin’-house, but they’re no more sailors than you or oi, moi dear. They only mime the maritime.’

At that the man bunched his fists and performed a little jig, the hornpipe, stopped short as suddenly as begun. He leant in closer, as if to confide – she saw the freckles of his cheeks – but then his voice rang out loud as before, causing her to flinch.

‘One such beggar I knew with only the one arm,’ he said. ‘Every day he stood at the gates down in West Garden, the London Dock gates as you’ll understand me, and took up enough to live like a lord! The great idle selfish brute.’

He would not stop talking. Backed into a corner, Sarah felt a trifle alarmed.

‘Had a parrot, so he did, to sit on his one arm, and even then it had to do his begging for him! Language, warse than his own. Ev’ry sart a blasphemy an’ obscenity, the Twelve Unprintable Monosyllables!’

His pale, bushy eyebrows worked up and down like two birds in a mating dance. Seeing that he had her full attention, he settled his face almost at once into a more serious expression, the tone of his voice modulated to match.

‘Sargint Padraig Tubridy, ma’am,’ he said. ‘A water-rat operating out of Leman-street Police Station. An’ it’ll not be me you must be wary of.’

His fingers tapped the rim of his helmet. He turned to indicate their surroundings.

‘This here’s Tiger Bay, and here be tygers all right. No sart a place for the likes of you.’

He saw that she took offence.

‘Oh, no, milady,’ he said. ‘The fault lies with the place, not with your good self.’ Tubridy sniffed and wrinkled his nose, in what seemed a friendly fashion. ‘I dare say you’ll have noted the pertic’lar…atmosphere. T’ings go on here in Sailortown, such t’ings I scarcely durst mention. A reservoir of dirt, drunks and drabs, Mr Dickens has called it, and that should tell you sufficient. A respectable lady…a lady, that is, such as yourself…should not be out walking on her own.’

Sarah misunderstood. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I should.’ She decided to ask for directions. ‘I have business here,’ she said. ‘I am in search of a particular house of worship, only, I didn’t expect to see so very many – ’

‘Yus, ma’am,’ he cut her off, ‘one at ev’ry corner…’

She was smiling, nodding in agreement.

‘The Bridge of Sighs,’ he said, ‘Ward’s Hoop and Grapes, the Albion, the Prince Regent, the Effingham Saloon…’ He pointed just behind them, and then just ahead of them. ‘There’s the Duke O’Yark’s.’ He smiled. ‘And there, the White Hart.’

Sarah glared at him.

‘You may think the Highway bad,’ said Tubridy, ‘but the neighbourhood’s warse. Angel-gardins, Chancery-lane, Albert-square…’ The police sergeant gently let her know he had been following her progress for some time. ‘The genuwine sorry face of London’s East End,’ he said. ‘Streets filled wit’ houses of the vilest description, an’ frequented by those who call demselves the Farty Teevs, alley-barbers who’ll slit yer throat soon as look at you.’

‘The Forty Thieves’ – Sarah wondered if they bore relation to the child Bruce’s gang.

‘Lucky for you that you run into me,’ declared Tubridy, ‘before someone undesirable has done the same for
you
.’

She did not care for his familiar tone. Sarah thought to walk on.

‘You may count on being the innocent bystander,’ he was saying, ‘but they are as much at risk should a fight break out and the sea-knives flash. These forin sailors are a danger, a-stabbing with their Bowie. A gin-mad Malay goes running amok, a-waving of his glittery creese, bot a tiny Greek stiletto is all it takes, for eyes that were of a colour, ta turn one red, while de udder one stays blue.

‘Anyone,’ he said, ‘wishing to visit the Highway, or any other part of the environmint, is, for their ain safety, recommendit to gain permission from
the authorities at Scotland Yard. Then they shall have an officer or inspector provided for their escort. Even a Metropolitain perliceman would be unwise t’ walk these by-ways alone. An’ here’s me, a sargint without ma carp’rill. I shall have to ask that you accompany me, miss, ta prevent me from comin’ ta harm…’

He touched his helmet again, in deference, and flashed a wicked smile.

‘Or ma’am.’

Sarah smiled but shook her head, and began to pick up the pace in order to put some distance between them. ‘I do thank you for your concern, sergeant,’ she said in parting, ‘but I think I shall be all right.’

‘As you like,’ he said. Following on at a discreet distance of about twenty paces, he called out after her. ‘Oi’ll feel safer, all th’ same, if I might keep you in sight. We are but travellers on the same road, after all.’

Pointedly, Sarah crossed onto the north side of the street.

Barely a block further on, with each swing of its doors, the Albion public house belched forth more of its clientele, swelling a sizeable crowd. Forced back out into the road, Sarah slowed. At the centre of the disturbance she spied a woman, spectacularly fat, and dressed in pantomime costume. The buttercup-yellow finery, filthy and torn, suggested Dick Turpin, Jack Sheppard, or some equally likely hero-villain. The vision sat astride a wooden hobbyhorse, and performed a halting gallop in tiny steps.

Sarah walked on past. A general hiss issued from among the spectators.

‘Cool ’im,’ she heard someone say, in their peculiar backwards slang. ‘Cool the esclop.’

Turning around, she was not the only one surprised to see the policeman walk by the crowd as if nothing were happening. He continued to dog her steps, at a distance no longer discreet. Her cheeks burned.

In this fashion the two of them continued on down the Highway.

Around King David-lane the street became yet more riotous. Whereas before she had been glad of Tubridy’s silence, Sarah soon found herself grateful of his company. First the Admiralty clerk, then young Jeffery, and now, further, this policeman – all positively falling over themselves to assist her. She had never known herself the object of so much male attention. It was a flattering sort of novelty, to be sure, a situation so absurd she didn’t know what to make of it.

Thus beguiled, yet innocent of vanity, Sarah discovered herself precisely where she wished to be.

Across the street lay the rectory and Vestry Hall; up ahead, rising over the tops of the surrounding trees, the piercing black spire of St Paul’s Shadwell.

Sarah turned to address her acolyte.

‘Much obliged, sergeant,’ she said. ‘I have arrived at my destination.’

‘Ma’am.’

Tubridy looked up at the tall spire; the monster Union Jack, flying atop.

‘I’ll wait for you,’ he said, ‘out here.’

‘Really,’ she assured him, ‘there’s no need.’

‘Along here?’ he said. ‘Believe me, there is need.’

The church itself was a very plain structure, a box of brick in the classical eighteenth-century style: large slates on its roof, tower and plaster-rendered steeple at the west front, but otherwise unadorned.

Sarah opened the gates and walked through, past a wooden board that read ‘St Paul’s Shadwell, The Church of the Sea Captains’. The screams of small children rent the air: the adjoining Vestry Hall doubled as both school and orphanage. Sarah checked that she had closed the gate properly behind her. In the midst of a clutch of the smallest foundlings stood a friendly-looking figure, dressed all in black. She could not get closer than a few feet, so they were obliged to shout their introductions over the nursery din.

Augustin Mellish, the vestry clerk, indicated another fellow a little farther on. He crouched beneath a rosebush – in the very middle of the graveyard. Steeling herself, Sarah picked her way in between the crowding stones. The rector wore a sun-hat. Pruning his roses, he remained unaware of her approach, even when she stood right beside him. The sharp beak of his shears worked nimbly. She cleared her throat.

‘Reverend… Reverend Kingsford?’

Perspiring slightly, he stood and removed his hat, revealing a shock of grey hair. He was a tall, thin man, with kind eyes.

‘Brenchley Kingsford,’ he said, ‘ye-e-es?’

The last vowel, elongated, sounded out a note of enquiry.

‘My name,’ she said, ‘is Sarah Larkin, daughter of the Reverend Lambert Blackwold Larkin.’

‘Oh, yes?’ he said. ‘And how may I be of assistance?’

Sarah said, ‘I should very much like to consult the church’s Baptismal Register, if I may. I have travelled some way in the hope that I might.’

Less than four miles distant from New Oxford-street, she had travelled to the ends of the earth.

‘Certainly, certainly, that we can do.’ The rector nodded; most readily, as if fully expectant of her request. He started to remove his gloves, finger by finger. ‘It has been quiet for most of this last week,’ he said, ‘but you are the second today!’

‘I…I’m sorry?’

Brenchley Kingsford paused to look at her a moment. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘you are not the only one. He has quite the fan-club, don’t you know.’

Sensing her confusion, doubt crept into his voice. ‘You are here for Captain Cook?’ he asked.

‘Captain…?’ Relief swept across her face. She was almost laughing. ‘I’m not interested in Captain Cook!’

The rector bridled, a touch peevish. ‘My dear, we would never have heard of the Pacific Islanders, let alone attempted to convert them,’ he said, ‘were it not for men like Cook!’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I meant…I didn’t realise. It’s another man I’m looking for, a different name.’

‘Forgive me, Miss Larkin,’ the rector said, ‘for jumping to conclusions. The names of over 175 sea captains and their wives appear in our registers. They surround you.’ He waved his gloves at some of the plots that they passed. ‘Not only sea captains and their families,’ he said, ‘but shipwrights, rope-makers, pursers and chandlers. Gone aloft, I hope, most of them, gone aloft!’

Navigating carefully between the islands of moss, Sarah noted stones sculpted with designs of compass and sextant, and tiny sailing ships. Beyond the far wall, the bare masts of vessels moored in Shadwell New Basin towered like skeletons over their tombs.

Unable to compete with the noise of the children, the two of them fell silent until the church steps were climbed and the door to the lobby closed. Sarah had been studying the fabric of the building.

‘I can’t help observing, reverend,’ she said, ‘the church does not look so very old…’

Brenchley Kingsford smiled. ‘Indeed not,’ he said. ‘The building is not the original.’

The rector having laid aside his hat and gloves, they entered into the main body of the church.

‘Thomas Neale, a speculator in the docks with interests in East India, oversaw the construction in 1656.’ He pointed upwards. ‘By the early years of this century,’ he said, ‘the church had become very dilapidated. One Sunday, a part of the ceiling fell in. The church was finally demolished in 1819, and rebuilt the following year. The vestry books were lost, so it is fortunate the registers were not. Shall we?’

‘Mmm,’ Sarah agreed. ‘But first, could I possibly trouble you for a glass of water…and avail myself of your water closet?’ She smiled, bashfully. ‘I should like,’ she said, ‘to wash away the dirt of the street.’

The reverend looked past her, in the direction of the Highway. ‘That, my dear,’ he said, ‘requires a flood.’

He apprehended the look on her face, and stood aside. ‘Through here. Through here.’

Sarah took the opportunity to check a small notebook, in which she had scribbled, in pencil, the most pertinent ‘facts’ – a compilation from Bruce’s
Life
, his
Memoirs
, and the
Literary Panorama
:

Not least, she looked to the note taken from that morning’s correspondence.

His exact date of birth conflicted according to accounts. Strict accuracy in such matters could hardly be expected, however, of people from impoverished backgrounds who could neither read nor write. Official figures within the Admissions and Burial Registers of the Greenwich Royal Naval Hospital recorded 1777, and, logically – from his stated age – after February 12th of that year. What any investigator should ask, Sarah believed, was whether a person should ever be required to give false information. In his
Life
, ‘Bruce’ or Dreuse had been sentenced to death at the apparent age of twelve, ‘so small that the ladies and gentlemen all pitied me’. Appearing a year or two younger than he actually was, and perhaps pleading the same, had saved his life. For all of these reasons, Sarah elected to initiate her search from February 1777 onwards.

The Baptismal Register was immediately located, being the same volume as that for Captain Cook’s eldest son, already well thumbed. Brenchley Kingsford happily chattered away while Sarah pored over its pages. Within less than five minutes she had confirmed all that she wished to know, and more.

The alternative spelling to ‘Dreuse’ threw her only slightly; Governor Macquarie had had no reason ever to have seen the name of Druce written down. Sarah copied out the relevant details.

Twins!