Avery & Blake 02 - The Infidel Stain (2 page)

This time, I started with a hansom cab to the Strand – where else? It is ‘the first street in Europe’, at least according to Mr Disraeli. I walked its length from Temple Bar to Charing Cross, past its arcades and grand shops with square-paned windows, and the discreet plaques signalling the offices of various journals and newspapers. At Charing Cross I paused, new Trafalgar Square and the slowly rising girth of the column to Nelson on one side of me, and on the other Old Hungerford market and its rackety steps down to the River Thames. Ahead I could just see part of the fretted bulk of the unfinished Houses of Parliament. On the roadway, the broughams and chaises, drays and goods carts, rattling omnibuses and gilded chariots barely moved.

The noise was constant and deafening.

Apart from Calcutta, I had never been in such a vast multitude of jostling people, from fine ladies and gents peering into the shop windows, to Sir Robert Peel’s new police (not so new, I suppose, after ten-odd years, but that was how everyone referred to them) walking their ‘beats’ in their high-collared blue tunics, to the crossing sweepers, ragged half-starved creatures endlessly and fruitlessly sweeping away great mounds of ordure from the roadway. I strode among them in my paletot coat, my newish beaver hat pushed down over my ears against the wind, a reasonably well-to-do provincial a few months behind the fashion. I had never seen so many top hats in one place: as I looked down the Strand their bobbing throng seemed to me to resemble a moving city panorama all of its own.

The deluge of sensations was overwhelming. On the one hand, for the first time in months I felt free from the constant petty squabbles, the burdens, the boredom, the scrutiny, the disappointments of home. On the other, despite the crowds I had the strange and troubling sensation of being alone in a vast multitude of unsmiling faces; nor was I overfond of the ubiquitous, black grime – an oily, sooty extrusion that bore little relation to country dirt and seemed to coat all – and every once in a while I would taste coal dust in the air. Then there was the vast amount of ordure and dung from the horses, and everywhere glimpses of errant, ownerless children,
vagabonding, street-selling, begging. I had recently finished Mr Dickens’s
Old Curiosity Shop
, and the vision of little Nell, the pauper girl, seemed ever before me. It was a relief to return to the quiet, clean haven of Mayfair and Hanover Square.

This morning I had taken my second train, from hard by the Tower of London to the East India Dock on the Blackwall Railway. There was a crowd of gawkers around the gates of the Tower, for only a few days ago a fire had destroyed the Round Tower and almost consumed the Crown jewels. A twist of smoke still wafted upwards from within the battlements. The journey eastwards showed a meaner London: a moving picture of shabby streets, half-finished terraces and dilapidated workshops, then a scrubland of broken fences and overgrown market gardens, and behind all these vast stretches of open dock filled with masts, populated by beetling stevedores.

I walked towards the great stone gateway of the East India Dock, which loomed like the entrance to some vast Hindoo palace. The high walls of the dock were pasted thick with bills, most of them advertising the lower sort of popular papers, the
Ironist
,
Bell’s Life in London
and
Woundy’s Illustrated Weekly
. In the lee of the walls small sheds and shacks served drink and tobacco to a crowd of wretched-looking sailors. On I went, past a new church and an old timber-framed house to a rickety smoke-blackened edifice that announced itself in large faded letters as ‘The Hindoostanee Coffee House and Seamen’s Hostel’: my destination.

The door was stiff and rattled as I opened it. I found I was almost breathless. I pushed past a thick canvas curtain and entered. Perhaps twenty or thirty men sat at tables, eating. It took me a moment to see that all were Indian natives – Lascars, I guessed, from the docks. Rushing between the tables, two or three more young natives set down bowls and collected plates. The air was thick, warm and slightly fetid, a familiar marriage of perspiration and curry smells that I had not expected to encounter again. No one paid me any mind.

Most of the diners were dressed in the thin calicoes and canvases of the southern oceans, which must have provided little protection
against the bitter cold outside. Some looked quite ragged, and in far from good health. There was a low buzz of talk, but most simply ate with a dedication that bespoke considerable hunger. I looked about again, more carefully. In a fireplace at the far end of the room, a large grate overflowed with glowing embers. To the left of this, in a corner, sat a lone European eating his dinner. He seemed as down-at-heel as the Lascars around him.

It was over three years since we had last met.

He was scooping up stew with pieces of rotee. With a surge of concern and pleasure I pushed my way through the close-set tables towards him.

‘Jeremiah!’ I said as I reached him, my arms outstretched.

‘Captain Avery,’ he said. His lips barely moved. His eyes were veiled and wary.

I felt a plunge of dismay. I dropped my arms, embarrassed.

‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating a chair with his piece of rotee, and returned to his food.

I pulled it out and wedged myself in, looking for somewhere to place my coat and hat, electing at last for my own lap. A plate was set down before me, along with a steaming bowl of curry. Reluctantly, I put a spoonful upon my plate and took a furtive look at him, remembering as I did so that insistently solitary, aloof quality that I had conveniently forgotten. He was frailer and more lined than I remembered, but his features were vividly familiar: the white scar through the eyebrow, the ragged ear, the once-broken nose, the hooded eyes. His left hand, with its two missing fingers, was beneath the table. His rusty, threadbare coat had clearly been through several owners; his waistcoat had lost all but one button, and the collar – closer to yellow than white – was pinned on, no doubt to hide a tattered shirt beneath. Next to him was a small bundle that included a battered hat.

Through the awkwardness of my reception, questions began to surface. What had become of him? How had he learnt I had returned from India? How was he earning his living – was he earning his living at all?

I took a breath. ‘What is this place?’ I said.

‘Hostel for Lascar seamen,’ he said. He scooped another mouthful of curry on to his rotee and crammed it into his mouth.

‘So,’ I said. ‘Three years. More.’

Blake chewed and nodded.

‘How have you been?’

‘Well enough. You were in Afghanistan.’

I had forgotten how he intensely disliked talking about himself. I nodded.

‘Decorated for bravery, promoted to Captain, I heard.’

‘Yes.’ I shifted uneasily.

‘Papers say the war’s going well.’

‘Is it?’ I said.

‘Isn’t it?’

‘I do not keep up.’

‘You’re living in Devon.’

‘We have taken a house near my family.’

‘You married Miss Larkbridge.’

‘Yes.’ I did not know how he knew these things, but I was not surprised that he did.

Silence.

Long pauses, I recalled, did not discomfit Jeremiah Blake.

‘My wife is with child … That is to say, it was one of the reasons we decided to return home,’ I blurted to fill the void.

‘Must be near her confinement.’

I nodded. I did not wish to speak of my marriage. He leant back and wiped his hands on a handkerchief but so swiftly that I barely glimpsed the two stumps on his left hand, which he immediately returned to his lap. His right hand seemed red and chafed, but it was hard to be sure if this denoted he had fallen on hard times or was simply due to the ravages of the winter.

‘Have you,’ I said, casting around for another subject, ‘visited Mr Haydon’s painting at the Egyptian Hall?’

‘
The Death of Mountstuart
?’ He shook his head.

‘I went yesterday. There was an hour’s queue.’

‘Mmm,’ said Blake. He took another bite of rotee.

‘I would say it is lively rather than accurate.’

Mr Benjamin Haydon, the history painter, was exhibiting a large canvas purporting to show the now notorious ambush and murder of the poet and adventurer Xavier Mountstuart by a gang of Hindoostanee bandits known as the Thugs. Death had transformed Mountstuart into a saint and martyr, famous and revered across Europe. In the painting he lay in the foreground, cast upon the ground in a laundered white shirt, one arm raised in elegant defiance as a mass of bloodthirsty Thugs attacked him with knives. To the left, in the background, two other Europeans fought off a battalion of savages with pistols. Jeremiah Blake and I were those two Europeans, the only living witnesses to what had actually taken place.

‘Mr Haydon wrote to me in India,’ I said, ‘asking for an account of what happened. He said he wanted “colour” and “detail”.’

‘Didn’t listen to you then.’

‘I said that I could not help him. I didn’t get the impression he would much have appreciated my version. I find I do not like to talk of it. Did he approach you?’

Blake nodded.

‘I don’t know much about art,’ I said, ‘but I should have said it was not a very good painting.’

He met my gaze at last.

‘Are you in trouble, Blake? Is that why you wrote to me? Forgive me, but I cannot but notice you seem, well, not exactly flushed with good fortune. Finding you here, among these poor wretches, I …’ I trailed off, not sure how to proceed. ‘If you are in straitened circumstances, please, Jeremiah, let me be of assistance.’

He looked almost amused. ‘No,’ he said.

‘No, you will not accept my help?’ I said.

‘No, I am perfectly well. I eat here because I like it. It reminds me of Calcutta. I talk to the sailors, keep up my dialects. And Mohammed cooks the best Bengalee food in London.’

‘Really?’ I said. I glanced doubtfully down at the dark-brown mess on the plate before me. It did not smell too bad. ‘I have taken rooms at the Oriental Club. They say it has the finest curry chef in England – you really should let me take you.’

‘No,’ said Blake.

‘No?’

‘I’ll never set foot in that place.’

‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘Foolish of me. But, Blake, I have to say, you do not look well. And your clothes are …’

‘I’ve had a bout of fever,’ he said testily. ‘That’s all. It returns once in a while. Especially in winter.’

We glared at each other.

‘Well, you have managed to mystify me entirely, Blake. You should know that when I received your letter I dropped everything and came at once. I have journeyed seventeen hours to see you. Why we are here, save that you have a taste for the cooking, I have no idea. I suppose I should not be surprised. But I would be grateful if you would oblige me with some explanation.’

‘I wrote to you because I have an appointment with someone who wishes to meet you too.’

‘Me?’ I said, bemused.

‘You may decide you don’t want to meet him, but since you’re here …’

‘Someone in London who wants to meet me?’

‘Viscount Allington.’

‘Viscount Allington, the peer? The evangelical? The Factory Act peer? The one who helps the chimney sweeps?’ I said, even more puzzled.

Blake nodded.

‘Asked for me? For us?’

‘He has some particular work – a case. But you are under no obligation. You can leave if you want.’

‘But how—’

‘Theophilus Collinson knew you’d returned. Recommended you.’ He raised his eyebrows for a moment and the white scar through the left one lifted into his forehead.

We had both had dealings with Collinson, the former head of the East India Company’s Secret Department. In India, it had been said that he had a finger in every curry. Blake did not trust the man, but when both were returning to England, Collinson had very forcefully offered his patronage. It seemed Blake had accepted it.

He brought out a small envelope and drew from it a leaf of paper of fine quality. He handed it to me. The writing was an elegant, spidery scrawl:

Lord Allington has a fancy to employ both you and William Avery, whom, as you may recall, is now returned from India.

Below was written my address in Devon, and at the end, in a less formal hand:

I think that in this case even you will not be able to question the client’s principles.

I was flattered, and at the same time felt a pang of disappointment. It was not Blake who had summoned me at all.

From outside there came a great jangling of trappings and horses’ hooves. Through the small, smutty panes of the establishment’s front window I glimpsed a large black coach and four draw up. Four figures alighted from it.

The front door opened. Drawing aside the canvas curtain with great aplomb, a black-and-gold-liveried footman stepped in, bringing with him a blast of cold air which caused many of the diners to look up apprehensively from their bowls and hunch their shoulders. Through the door, dressed in black, processed a tall, gaunt gentleman and a youngish woman, quite handsome. They were followed by a short man in a brown cape with a small, fussy moustache who clutched a brown leather bag – clearly a secretary. The room fell silent. From a door near the back fireplace there now issued a middle-aged Indian native wearing a small white cap and an approximation of Indian dress – kurta, waistcoat and pyjamas – but made in thick grey worsted woollens. He was followed by a white woman anxiously smoothing her hair and struggling to tie a clean apron, and behind her a small golden-skinned child, about six. The Indian native, whom I took to be Mohammed, the proprietor, bowed, then righted himself and spread his arms in welcome. The white woman in the apron curtseyed low.

The gentleman visitor removed his shining beaver hat – his face was pleasing in an ethereal, ascetic manner, though very pale – and nodded loftily to his hosts, leavening his regal manner with a brief, serious smile. Then, to my surprise, he knelt before the little child and very solemnly took her hand. She grinned and kissed him on the cheek. His female companion watched, her expression demure but guarded. The man in the brown cape stood behind, hat in hand, very much the practised, impassive retainer. The gentleman straightened, and the small girl ran up to the Indian proprietor and took his
hand. With the other the proprietor beckoned one of the rushing waiters and had him lift a bowl of curry up to the gentleman. He bent slightly – with a hint of trepidation – sniffed, his pale nostrils quivering, and gave a tiny nod. The proprietor lifted his daughter into his arms and ushered the visitors around the room, stopping at a few tables where the tall gentleman made short solemn inquiries of the diners, and the proprietor appeared to translate their replies. At last the visitors were conducted through the far door by the white woman, who was if anything more flustered than she had been before, and they all disappeared.