The Clay Dreaming (30 page)

‘And she called his name Joseph; and said, the LORD shall add to me another son.’ Mary Druce had named her son Joseph, meaning ‘may God add’ – for the sake of his twin brother? Or was it perhaps after the husband of the Virgin Mary, the man who played no part in Christ’s conception.

‘They are relations of yours?’ the rector enquired.

‘Yes.’ Sarah blushed. It seemed easier to tell a lie than to try to explain the truth.

They quit the vestry, retracing their steps along the south aisle. Sarah, all aglow, congratulated herself on her persistence, her thoroughness; hang the sin of pride! Two, committed in as many minutes!

The main body of the church was lit by two tiers of square, domestic-looking windows, surrounded with Bath Stone. Sarah gazed at the triplet window
high on the east wall, and across to the organ gallery above the west end, the entrance beneath the steeple. She tried hard to imagine how the original church, Druce’s church, must have looked. Her eyes fell on the fat wooden pulpit. Even under several coats of varnish, and with much damage to the carving, it was the best piece of furniture there, stolid and dignified, and not without a certain presence.

‘You are admiring our pulpit,’ observed Kingsford. ‘John Wesley preached here on a number of occasions, during the late decades of his life.’

‘And was it a part of the old church?’ Sarah asked.

‘I believe so.’

Sarah was reminded of the tragi-comic arguments between Druce’s parents, his mother the ‘Methodist Dog’, and his father the ‘Old Church Lion’. Mary Druce might well have brought the boy child along to meetings here. Wesley had died in 1791, the same year Druce was sentenced to sail aboard the
Royal Admiral
, East-Indiaman, a deportee. That must have come as a double blow to his poor mother.

She looked to the ceiling. His local parish church, in which Joseph Druce had been baptised, had been demolished in the same year that he died.

‘The roof fell in, you say?’

‘Yes!’ said the rector. ‘Gave the congregation quite a turn, I should imagine. As the area fell into decline, so I suppose did its church.’ He shook his head. ‘The banns had to be called and marriages performed at St George’s, until the rebuilding,’ he said. ‘A dreadful state of affairs. The Bishop of London granted us a special licence, and for four years services were held in the parish workhouse. Still, better a living dog than a dead lion, as they say.’

They had returned to the lobby area. Brenchley Kingsford came to a halt, his hand resting on his chin.

‘Your father,’ he said. ‘Tell me, my dear, is he a ritualist?’

Sarah hesitated to answer.

‘He…does not hold with it, no.’

The Reverend Kingsford drew close, to whisper in conspiratorial fashion. ‘At St George’s,’ he said, ‘Father Lowder and his cabal…’ he checked over his shoulder a moment, and then hers ‘…they process, they genuflect, they make the sign of the cross.’ He implored heaven. ‘They swing thuribles!’

The rector drew back, assuming his full height. His eyes were no longer kind. ‘The wearing of vestments alone is abhorrent enough, without the lighting of candles upon the altar, and…incense!’

He might as well have pronounced it ‘incest’.

Within the Establishment Church, much attention was currently focused on forms of expression, considerable antipathy fermenting between the low Church, of which St Paul’s Shadwell was a prime example, and the high. The
rectory of St George’s in the East, among the foremost proponents of the celebration of the sacraments and the preaching of the gospel, had, in recent years, been the
locus
for a series of scandalous riots: protestors releasing packs of dogs and even pigs among the pews.

In the face of such misery as she had witnessed that day, Sarah thought, obsession with the minutiae of doctrine was worse than meaningless. Schisms within the Church all but destroyed its effectiveness. How much more might be achieved if, rather than divide and sub-divide their efforts in the face of sin, or rather in the face of mortal need, they were to present a unified front, give coherent direction towards a supreme form of worship, all-embracing, all-encompassing.

Or perhaps her notions of universal succour were naïve. Her business concluded, all Sarah knew for sure was that she wanted to leave.

She stood framed within the light of the doorway, while the rector retrieved his outdoor gear. Something said earlier coincided with something else she had read: Joseph Druce had been sent to the workhouse while very young.

‘You mentioned the parish workhouse, reverend,’ said Sarah. ‘Where was that?’

Brenchley Kingsford fixed his hat just so and snipped his shears. ‘
Angel-court
,’ he said, ‘in the Chancery, off what is now Albert-street.’

Sarah’s eyelid twitched.

All had gone quiet behind her, and she turned. Classes must have reconvened: the yard was empty.

‘And Malin-walk?’ she asked. ‘Do you know it?’

Brenchley Kingsford took up a position by her side, standing at the top of the porch steps. ‘Yes, I have heard of it,’ he hummed. ‘Let me see. It was to be found along Mercer’s-row, now Mercer-street. It no longer exists.’

A mercer was a dealer in cloth, most especially silks: a remnant, perhaps, from the days when Shadwell was but a hamlet, and relatively well-to-do.

‘Mercer-street,’ mused Sarah. ‘Is it close?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the rector. ‘Just across the road.’

‘Sergeant!’

Hearing Sarah’s voice so strong, so filled with vindication, Tubridy started.

‘Ma’am?’ he said. ‘Your mission was, I take it, a success?’

‘Very much successful,’ she declared. ‘Yes, and not quite done. I would be most grateful if you could direct me towards Mercer-street.’

‘Certainly, ma’am,’ he said. ‘We have passed it already.’

With a slight lean of his upper body, he indicated for her to follow on. She should still have her police escort, it seemed. Sarah’s attitude softened slightly.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for waiting for me, sergeant. I would have expected you had better things to do than to be my guide.’

She spoke modestly, pleasantly. He returned a broad and cheery smile.

‘Other t’ings, ma’am, maybe,’ the policeman admitted, ‘but none better.’

In close alliance, they re-crossed Shadwell’s High-street, walking west, back towards the city. They had gone about five chains, less than 400 feet, when they met with a familiar sight. The same turbulent crowd as before had swelled, entirely blocking the road.

Tubridy uttered an impatient oath. ‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ he said.

Advancing with intent, he forced his way through the outer ring, the more idle part of the mob. Sarah tripped along behind. Faces turned to stare, malevolent glitter in their eyes. The noise level was excruciating. Sarah crept closer to the sergeant’s dark uniform, to peer over the broad blue expanse of his shoulder.

She was astonished to see, in the hollow at the heart of the matter, that same impromptu sideshow as passed previously. Events had processed but a short distance, across a side street and one or two doors on from outside of the Albion: her performance still ongoing a full half-hour later, Gaiety Gertie reprised her role as the Ratcliff Highwayman. She supported herself, barely, against the closed shutters of a shop, James Jelly Perret the baker’s. The wooden hobby-horse, dropped, lay forlorn at her feet. It appeared her necessary prop in more ways than one. Despite all manner of hazy endeavour, she was either too drunk, too fat, or some combination thereof, to pick it up – or even to locate it. Head nodding beneath the outsize hat’s broken plumes, her fleshy features were flushed and drooping. Her arms dangled useless at her sides, as if weighted with lead cuffs. The miserable woman was hopelessly besotted – drearily, desperately, falling-down drunk.

A ridiculous object in quite so many ways, she had, not unsurprisingly, gathered up an enthusiastic audience. The cackling pack of hyenas circled, baring yellow teeth, to snarl and snap at her heels. She feebly struggled to keep them off with a little halfpenny cane, wielding it like a miniature riding whip, and all the while pathetically weeping, great cow tears rolling down her cheeks.

Her chief tormentors were mostly small boys. Jeering, they offered choice cuts of advice as to how she should recover her mount.

‘Hit ’im on the ‘ock!’ they cried; and more explicitly, ‘Shove ’im up beyind!’

Having grasped the tenor of the event, Sarah had no wish to tarry.

Tubridy assumed a more commanding aspect. ‘
See here naow
,’ he bellowed. ‘
show’s over!
’

He spoke to the mob in an entirely different tone from that which he employed with her: and in a colloquial sort of idiom that might as well have been Greek or Chinese for all Sarah understood by it.

‘
Let hir alone!
’ shouted the sergeant. ‘
Moo falong naow, moo falong. Leave hir be. Lift Leg and Stride Wide!
’

A rattle of wheels and a sudden screeching behind them all, and Sarah turned to glimpse a shock of feathers, spangles and rouge: Tattercoat’s Ugly Sisters, piled in a hansom cab. Others drew up alongside, seemingly part of a small fleet, having spent the night at the same tuppenny
bal masqué
as poor Gertie and only just now surfaced. Spidery arms reached out from the nearest carriage window, eager to snatch her up into its recesses. There was hardly room.

The sergeant caught hold of Gertie so that they all stood together, arm in arm, a picaresque tableau. Her would-be rescuers kicked up a hail of abuse, not only verbal, but also flinging whatever came to hand. The injustice was plain, from both sides.

Somewhere in the uproar, a wag began to sing a Gentleman’s Song, a version of ‘The Amiable Family’, otherwise known as ‘The Irish Policeman’.

Tubridy caught on immediately. The first verses were rude enough; the last, as well he knew them, Unprintable Monosyllables almost entirely. He stood tall and sang loud to drown out the scandal of it.

Not a shred of pity in his face, Tubridy snatched up the moll’s trailing hobby-horse and thrust it roughly between her legs. He then grabbed her dull, questing hand and made sure that it firmly gripped the handle.

‘See here, my Dandy Lion, y’ feel that?’ he roared. ‘There’s yer damned ’obby ’oss! G’wan naow, get y’self back home to Hairy-fud Shire!’

Roundly he slapped her horse’s arse, to send her on her way. Game Gertie fair leapt into the clutches of her bosomy confederates. At their signal the cab pulled away, Gertie half in and half out, bloomers and cloak flapping three sheets to the wind.

‘Blowzybellas! Doxies! Beggin’ y’ pardin, ma’am.’

Tubridy removed his helmet to mop his brow. ‘I needs a drink.’

The grumbling crowds dispersed, variously scheming or proclaiming their fresh intentions.

‘
Le’s up Wilton’s, or Paddy’s Goose
.’

‘
Enny penny wot’s goin’, wir th’ performince ent enter-feared wiv by no oaf-vicious black-beetle!
’

A spit. ‘
Bleedin’ Peeler
.’

Tubridy replaced his headgear, tapping it for good measure. ‘’Tis a good fortune,’ he said, ‘that we both be wearin’ our bonnets.’

‘I don’t follow you,’ said Sarah.

‘Well,’ he remarked, ‘you should!’

Pulling his jacket taut, Tubridy marched straight into the nearest pub.

Sarah, still in tow, for the first time in her life entered into a public house. The degree of heat, smoke and noise was truly intimidating. Peripherally aware of the gayest and rummest goings-on in every dim corner, Sarah kept her head down. She dared not look too closely, but cleaved to the blue of the sergeant’s uniform.

‘Tubridy! Most welcome, sor!’

The manner of the man who spoke was the pink of politeness. He laid a proprietorial arm across the array of barrels, and cast a bold eye over Sarah’s huddled form. ‘A touch of Angel’s Food for you, is it?’ he said.

‘Have a care, Clewley,’ growled Tubridy.

The barman would have none of being cautioned in his own domain. ‘Ah! What then is your poison, sargint?’ he said.

Turning to meet Sarah’s eye, Tubridy’s face brightened.

‘Hivens, James, h’what are you thinking?’ he said, his accent much altered. ‘Hai’m on duty. Can’t you see hai’m on duty?’ He twirled his moustache, before reverting to a stern blast of Irish. ‘Oi’ll ‘ave you up in front of the aldermaaan!’

Clewley chuckled, Tubridy winked, and Sarah felt much older than her 27 years.

The police sergeant looked along the bar, considering.

‘I’m for a touch of Mad Dog, if you please, Jim,’ he said. ‘And a pint of whativer the lady wants.’

Sarah’s eye lit on a bottle of bright blue liquid that all but glowed in the dim light. The landlord, following her line of sight, put his hand to it. Seeing his eyebrows raised, she shook her head. She spoke to the policeman’s sleeve.

‘I don’t…I don’t drink,’ she said.

‘Very wise,’ said Tubridy. ‘Leave out the gin, try our ginger beer. It’s
local-produced
, froma Signor Agostino Rolando ata numero twinty-tree.’ To the barman, ‘She’ll have a ginger beer.’

‘
Gin blear
,’ a strange voice mocked.

At first, Sarah was unsure who had spoken. Only an old soak propped up the bar, and he seemed beyond all speech.

‘
Ark!
’

She looked up. An enormous acid-green parrot patrolled the timbers above their heads. It bobbed and turned its head, fixing her with a single, wicked
eye. The bright curve of its beak was cruel, like the blade of the Reverend Kingsford’s secateurs.

‘Cutlass,’ cried Tubridy, ‘you old rapscallion!’