Curiosity (4 page)

The towpath ends at the foot of Cookham Bridge – it must resume on the other side. A smell of cut hay rises from the fields. A hayfield would be a fragrant bed, but the thought of lying on the ground brings up childhood memories of Jamaica, of serpents slithering through grass. Instead, he climbs over a wall into a yard and eases himself down on a bench. Lying flat on his back with his knees up, he feels the pain less. Something (roses?) climbs the wall opposite him, although by the smell of rust and iron he would say he was in a smithy. A lopsided moon perches on the roof-edge. He wonders sleepily if it’s waxing or waning. The phases of the moon will matter to him now, in his new vagabond life. (“On your honour,” says the subaltern with the
iron cleats. “It’s rather touching, his faith in us” – this time he gives that line to Wyndham. “No,” Henry answers. “It’s just Marlow – they never see what anything really means.” His mother bends towards the roses, snipping off faded blossoms. “They never see the meaning of anything,” he explains to her. “They’re stupid, shrivelled, small-minded old fools.” “Oh, my darling boy,” she says, straightening up and reaching her gloved fingers out to touch his face.)

When he wakes, the sun is rising over the wall and the sky is the blue of an enamel bowl. The play is over, his mind is scrubbed clean. Dew furs the wool of his breeches. He was right – it’s a smithy’s yard he’s lying in. What he took for climbing roses is a tangle of rusting wire and pig iron tossed against the wall. A hen picks its way through the dirt and flaps to the window above him, settling onto the ledge. He rolls gingerly onto his side. Lying on the bench with his arm bent under his ear, he listens to the carts go by on the road. I’ll go into the city, he thinks. I’ll go to Clement’s, he’ll feed me. He reaches down to brush at his breeches and the wool turns wet against his skin.

It’s mid-afternoon before he comes up on Hampton. He’d thought to take the towpath all the way to Westminster Bridge, but he’d be days following the wanderings of the river. He turns up the first major thoroughfare he comes to – Talgarth Road, someone tells him – and walks into the clamour of London. Darkness falls and the gaslights glow green in the east. He saw them the year before, when he was on Christmas leave and stayed at his uncle’s. Afterwards, it seemed likely he’d embellished them, confused them with the light from a dream. But apparently not. There’s the first one on a pole, a fabulous stemmed flower dropping its secretive light on an ordinary patch of pavement, showing the dark up for what it is.

A half-hour later, he emerges from the shadows at his uncle’s club. Boodle’s squats yellowly under a gas lamp with saddle horses and tilburies crowding the pavement in front. If Henry goes in, there’ll be a plate of oysters and a cab ride the rest of the way, Uncle Clement taking him confidingly by the arm, telling about driving drunk through Covent Garden in 1794, being arrested for shouting, “Liberty while you live,” from the window of a carriage, oh, the rake he was! Henry’s hunger carries him up to the door and then carries him right on past, keeps him on a giddy trajectory up St. James Street. A boy holds out a man’s hat to beg. He’s in red knee breeches, his feet and legs bare. Henry touches his pocket to say,
empty
.

Then he’s on Piccadilly, and then it’s another mile or more and he’s at his uncle’s corner and his uncle is descending a cab. “The young cadet,” Clement says, without surprise and with something like pleasure, giving a mocking salute. Henry moves towards him, trying to walk normally. He nods to the doorman, takes in the smell of cigars in the hall, and follows his uncle up the stairs. The false calves sewn into Clement’s hose are turned slightly awry.

“Club night,” says his uncle at the door of his rooms.

“I thought so,” says Henry. “I passed by.”

The doorman has given Clement a lamp and now he lights another one. In the blue-papered drawing room, he busies himself with tumblers and a dusty bottle of port from the sideboard, moving through the answers to questions he hasn’t asked. “Half-holiday, eh. A rum business, officer training. Lucky with this war, bound to be commissioned. Regardless, eh?” He hands Henry a drink. “At the Beach family seat in Bristol, then, your mother?” He’s the uncle on the other side – it’s his way to affect distaste for the De la Beche family, as though Henry’s connection to his father is a youthful folly he’ll outgrow.

“No,” says Henry. He settles himself on the divan with his legs foppishly scissored to take the pain off his right hip. Clement doesn’t ask. “You wouldn’t have a bit of bread or cheese about, would you?”

“Never keep victuals in the house,” says Clement. “Can’t tolerate the vermin. You should have come into the club if you wanted to eat.” Two carved chairs flank the bookcase and he settles on one. Columns of squashed laurel wreaths climb the paper behind him. He raises his glass. Victory floats in a halo around his limp fair curls. He’s joined the Headstrong Society at Boodle’s, he debated that night – what a pity Henry did not stop in! – he built an unassailable case for the affirmative. It was a debate on the poor tax, on parish relief and its folly. “Be it resolved!” he cries. “Be it resolved that the poor tax promotes growth in the underclasses!” He was proud to cite Malthus, starvation being one of nature’s checks on rampant breeding. He could see them sitting up straight at the name of Malthus – it was
science
that won the debate. He lifts his glass again, tips it to the light. “To science,” he calls. Then, seeming to see something in Henry’s silence, he suddenly abandons the debate, agrees to offer it up for ridicule. The comic mask falls over his face. “A riddle for you,” he says. “How is a Headstrong debate like a pint of Boodle’s ale?”

Henry has heard this before. “Foamy and frothy on top?” he asks heavily, feeling the port rise at that very moment to his head.

“Heavy and muddy within, haha.”

On the wall above, Beau Brummel stands in aquatint, a graceful hand on a graceful hip. “I was stood drinks all night by
Forester
,” Clement crows. “
Simon Forester?
” He lifts his eyebrows theatrically. London agent for Napoleon Bonaparte? Why, just last week Forester was commissioned by Bony to buy a thousand tickets from London bookmakers. Or so Clement had
heard. “It’s not right,” he cries, finding a segue to the evening’s hilarity. “Where does it leave the rest of us? There must be an exclusion for men of destiny.”

“Perhaps Bonaparte’s betting on his own defeat?” says Henry, feeling a violent longing for the towpath by the Thames.

“Haha,” says Clement absently. No contributions accepted, apparently: the hilarity was for members only. He crosses his legs, batting at one of the wandering calves, and then he reaches over to the table for his snuff box, passing it to Henry with a look of suppressed provocation. He knows Henry won’t take snuff. He wants to show the box, an enamel of an imploring Negro in chains. And the legend:
Am I not a man and a brother?

“Thank you, no,” says Henry, passing the snuff box back. His head is pulled irresistibly to the arm of the divan. The wall of the drawing room sags towards him, the lamplight swoons. “Where is she?” Henry mumbles. “My mother. Do you know where she is?”

The next morning, Clement takes Henry on a promenade through Soho. Rain overnight left pools of water lying on the streets, and women wearing pattens click along the pavement. Most of the grand houses are apartments let out to members of Parliament come in from the country, or to gentlemen about town and the ladies they consort with. Clement likes to tell about Mrs. Hamilton living on this street when Lord Nelson died, he shows Henry the very house (a different house, Henry notes, than the last time he was taken on this tour). And there’s the house where the celebrated actress Mrs. Pope died and from which she was taken to be buried. “In the cloister,” says Clement reverently. “In the Abbey.” Clement’s friend William Bullock, the famous collector, is building a new exhibition hall on Piccadilly. It’s a grand edifice, fronted in a fine granite. An immense statue, extravagantly roped as though caught in a poacher’s net, is being hoisted into place on
the first floor. William Bullock himself stands on the pavement in a horsehair wig in lieu of a hat, supervising the installation. This is the sort of marvel I can offer up daily, Clement says by his sparkling manner, pulling Henry along. Now that he’s had a proper breakfast of kippers and eggs at the Halfmoon Inn, Henry is sullen at having squandered his freedom. Mr. Bullock greets them with professional friendliness, but introductions are interrupted by shouts from the men on the pulleys. The statue rises serenely above them and settles heavily on its marble platform over their heads. Something about the statue’s hair is in keeping with the hieroglyphics carved on the granite facing stone. “Is your hall to house Egyptian artifacts?” Henry asks.

“No, no,” laughs his uncle, trying to draw Mr. Bullock into amusement at Henry’s ignorance.

“There
will
be a mummy in permanent exhibit, lad,” says Mr. Bullock kindly. “But the Egyptian is just a style the public’s enamoured of at the moment. This hall will house all manner of objects from around the world.” The inaugural exhibition, just two weeks away, is to be souvenirs from Captain Cook’s voyages, every sort of natural curiosity and artifact of native manufacturing. Spices, shrunken heads, feather cloaks, masks, rattles, helmets, spears, shells – this spiel is word for word from the posters pasted to the hoarding in front of them. “Taking the lad to see the Hottentot, eh?” Bullock asks when he’s come to the end of it. “Go ahead, spend your brass at Schmitt’s. I’ll get it out of you another day.”

“Hottentot?” says Clement. “Schmitt?”

“Up at 225. Had a chance to bring her in myself.” He’s shouting over the din, the story coming rapid-fire from the puckered pouch of his mouth. “I was dealing with Dunlop on a came lopard skin and he offered her to me for thirty pound. The Hottentot Venus, he’s calling her. From Cape Town. Says she’s a corking
example of the type. Grab a chance to lift her loincloth and you’ll see the whole business. I was keen. I could have shown her at Bartholomew Fair. But by the time I counter-offered, that dirty Schmitt was in. Oh, well, he can take the fall. The Attorney General’s got his nose in, he’s taking it to the Chancery. He’ll shut it down. You’d best go today.”

“He
bought
this woman?” says Henry, trying to understand. “From South Africa? He will be charged under the Wilberforce Bill!”

“Oh, he’s the one for niceness,” cries Clement, making a little hop. “Allow me to present my nephew, young Henry De la Beche. Officer cadet at Great Marlow. Son of Halse Hall plantation, Clarendon, Jamaica. Commission to be paid in bananas and cotton.”

“Cane sugar, actually,” Henry says. Clement looks at him sharply. Perhaps only now is he registering Henry’s diminished uniform, the crossed white sash from his tunic missing and the plume from his shako gone. His hose filthy, perforated by sharp branches along the towpath, his shoes muddy.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” says Bullock. “But that’s just the thing. Apparently she wasn’t bought. She’s a full partner. She’s on shares of the gate. There’s moaning about it all down the street. But think about it. She’s got as much right to display herself as your common dwarf, don’t she, eh?” He brings his wrinkled lips down to Henry’s ear. “But what part is she displaying? That’s the question, eh. It’ll be a public decency charge they get them on.”

The exhibition hall of Mr. Bullock’s rival is close to Piccadilly Circus. Henry thought he understood Mr. Bullock’s meaning, but still they go. Maybe he got it wrong – there is Clement, strolling blithely along. “I’m not going in,” he says, and he sees Clement’s eyes light up: here’s a story he can trot out for the
amusement of his friends. The crowd thickens. They’re beset by vendors hawking matches, eels, rat poison, eggs, wooden dolls. Henry tries to put his mind to a pretext for borrowing a couple of quid so he can leave. Clusters of girls in striped gingham stroll the pavement. Clement has clamped an arm around Henry’s shoulder. He digs his fingers in as a confiding signal each time they pass a comely one. And then they’re at 225 Piccadilly and there’s the sign tacked by the door:
Outlandish Beast in a Raree Show
. A permanent all-purpose sign, judging by its patina of grime and tobacco spit. Clement’s arm is still around his shoulders, he tries to wheel Henry towards the entrance. Henry stiffens his legs, resisting, and an old affection rises, a habit of play that makes him lean suddenly into the turn. He’s as tall as Clement now, he’s heavier, and his reversal almost topples them. Then they’re at the wicket after all, where Clement parts with four shillings, squeezing them one by one out of the purse at his waist. They’re directed to wait in the crowd of chattering sightseers on the stairs. Spectators exiting the exhibition hall have to use the same stairway, and Clement and Henry are pressed into a conglomerate of bodies at desperate cross-purposes. Finally the deadlock is broken and they’re carried bodily up by the crowd and deposited in a lofty hall lit by windows in the ceiling.

Beside a placard reading
THE HOTTENTOT VENUS
, a boy is hawking two-foot lengths of willow for three pence. “What are the sticks for?” Henry says, but Clement is out of hearing. A keeper, curiously costumed in a beefeater hat and a kilt too short for him, directs the crowd.
Here decorum prevails
, he says by his expression, ushering Henry into a stream of curious Londoners milling around a platform, and through a trick of centripetal action Henry finds himself on the inside of the stream, just a few feet away from the subject of the exhibition, who stands still and erect and bare-breasted.