Drood (46 page)

We walked the Ternans to the carriage.

“Thank you for a lovely—if unusual—afternoon,” said Ellen Ternan, taking Dickens’s cold hand in her gloved one. “It was a great pleasure seeing you again, Mr Collins,” she said to me, her cool tone and curt nod belying the warm words. Mrs Ternan clucked similar sentiments while exerting even less effort to make them sound convincing. Then the servant was up on the box again, the whip was out, and the carriage clattered away into Rochester, presumably towards Ellen Ternan’s waiting uncle.

I could tell by the concupiscent gleam in Charles Dickens’s eyes that he knew he would be seeing Ellen that very evening, most probably in the privacy of his or her secret house in Slough.

“Well, my dear Wilkie,” he said in a tone of pure satisfaction, tugging his gloves back on, “what did you think of our luncheon?”

“I thought it delightful, in a terrifically morbid way,” I said.

“Mere prelude, my friend,” chuckled Dickens. “Mere prelude. Fortifying ourselves for the serious purpose of our day… or evening. Ah, here’s our man!”

T
HE MAN APPROACHING US
there in the gathering gloom with his shapeless hat in hand was ragged, short, dirty, and drunk. He was clothed head to foot in layers of grimy grey flannel that seemed to have been liberally dusted with flakes of stone and a frosting of lime. At his feet he had dropped a heavy bundle tied in a grimy canvas cloth. I could smell the rum fumes flowing from him—from his pores, from his clothes, most probably from his very bones. At the same time I was sniffing him, he seemed to be sniffing me; perhaps he could smell the opium on me through his own reek. We stood and stared and sniffed each other like two dogs in an alley.

“Wilkie,” said Dickens, “I would like to introduce Mr Dradles, who goes by just Dradles, although I have heard folks in Rochester say that his first name is Granite, which I have to assume is a nickname. Dradles is a stonemason—chiefly in a gravestone, tomb, and monument way—but he is also hired by the Cathedral for rough repairs and thus is the holder of all the keys for the Cathedral tower, crypt, side doors, and other such obvious and forgotten entrances. Mr Dradles, it is my honour to introduce you in turn to Mr Wilkie Collins.”

The stooped, bewhiskered figure in the rough flannel and chipped horn buttons grunted something that might have been a greeting. I bowed and offered a more polite salutation in return.

“Dradles,” I then said brightly. “What a marvellous name! Is it real or a by-product of your profession in some way?”

“Dradles is Dradles’s name,” growled the little man. “And Dradles wonders—is Collins your real name or made up some way? And Dradles don’t remember Wilkie as being no Christian name.”

I blinked and straightened, gripping my walking stick more tightly in pure manly reflex to this hint of an insult. “I am named after Sir David Wilkie, the famous Scottish painter,” I said stiffly.

“If you say so, gov’ner,” grunted Dradles. “Although I never heard of a Scotsman who could paint a stables right, much less a church or house.”

“Wilkie’s given first name is actually William,” said Dickens. He was smiling as if amused.

“Billy Collins,” grunted Dradles. “Dradles knew a Billy Collins when Dradles was a lad. A troublesome Irish boy with no more brains nor common sense than a sheep.”

I gripped my stick harder and looked at Dickens, sending the clear message—
Must I stay here and suffer this from the local village drunkard?

Before Dickens—who was still smiling—could answer, we were both distracted by a missile that flew between us, barely missing Dickens’s shoulder and my ear, and which then bounced off the russet-coloured cap that Dradles was holding in his filthy right hand. A second small stone zipped by my left shoulder and hit the stonemason squarely in the chest.

Dradles grunted again but seemed neither surprised nor injured.

Dickens and I turned in time to see a young boy, no more than seven or eight and all unkempt hair, ragged clothes, and untied bootlaces, hide behind a headstone near the wall that separated this graveyard from the road.

“It ain’t time! It ain’t time!” shouted Dradles.

“Yer lie!” shouted the ragged youth and pitched another stone at the mason. Dickens and I took a step away from the boy’s sturdy target.

“D—— n your blasted eyes!” shouted Dradles. “If Dradles says it ain’t time, it ain’t time. No tea today! Get yourself off to the Thatched and Twopenny and leave off on the pitching or there’ll be no ’apenny from Dradles to you today!”

“Yer lie!” returned the Young Devil and pitched another rock, a larger one this time, which caught the stonemason just above the knee. Dirt, tiny chips of stone, clumps of old mortar, and lime dust flew from the man’s trousers as his tormentor screamed, “Widdy widdy wee! I—ket—ches—’im—out—ar—ter—tea!”

Dradles sighed and said, “Dradles sometimes pays the lad a ’apenny to pelt him homewards should Dradles forget to head home for tea or t’ the house after ten. This is my usual tea time and I forgot to turn the reminding apparatus off, as it were.”

Dickens howled and slapped his thigh with delight at this information. Another small stone flew by us and just missed the stonemason’s cheek.

“Hold your hand!” bellowed Dradles to the tiny loose-laced phantom flitting from headstone to headstone. “Or there’ll be no ’apenny for you this fortnight and more! Dradles has business with these here gentlemen and they don’t ’preciate the pelting.”

“Yer lie!” shouted the boy from the gloom behind some shrubbery between ancient headstones.

“He’ll not bother us more ’til our business is done,” said Dradles. He squinted at me and then squinted less malevolently at Dickens. “What is it you wanted Dradles to show you this evening, Mr D.?”

“Mr Wilkie Collins and I would like to see if there’s anything new down in your place of business,” said Dickens.

Dradles grunted rum fumes at us. “Anything old is more what you mean,” he growled. “The crypts ain’t much for novelty. Not in these days, at least.”

“We shall be delighted to see what is old, then,” said Dickens. “Lead the way, sir. Mr Collins and I shall offer our willing, if not broad, backs as a shield between you and your quick-armed tormentor.”

“Bother the Deputy,” Dradles grunted cryptically. “Stones is Dradles’s work and life and only love, other ’n drink, and a few more pebbles won’t bother him none.”

And thus, with Dradles striding ahead and Dickens and me muddling along shoulder to shoulder behind him, we proceeded towards the great cathedral whose cold shadow had now enveloped the entire graveyard.

B
EYOND THE EDGE
of the graveyard there was a high-mounded pit with fumes rising from it. Dradles, clutching his heavy bundle to his chest, walked past it without comment, but Dickens paused and said, “This is lime, is it not?”

“Aye,” said Dradles.

“What you call quick-lime?” I asked.

The old man squinted over his shoulder at me. “Aye, quick enough to eat your suit and buttons and boots without any help, Mr Billy Wilkie Collins. And with a little stirrin’, quick enough to eat most of your spectacles, watch, teeth, an’ bones as well.”

Dickens pointed to the fuming pit and smiled enigmatically. I removed my spectacles, rubbed my watering eyes, and followed them.

I had assumed we were going up into the tower. Dickens often brought guests to Rochester—it was a short enough ride from Gad’s Hill—and he almost always arranged to have them go up into the tower to take in the view of the old city, all grey blocks and shadowed streets, and of the sea beyond to one side and the forests and roads stretching back to Gad’s Hill and beyond to the other horizon.

Not this day.

After much clanking of key rings (the old man seemed to have keys in every oversized pocket of his flannel trousers, jacket, and waistcoat), Dradles opened a heavy side door and we followed him down narrow stone stairs into the crypt.

I do not mind telling you, Dear Reader, that I was terribly weary of crypts. I do not blame you if you are as well. I had spent the previous night in an opium-scented space that resembled nothing so much as a crypt, and too much of my following Charles Dickens the past year and more had led into dank places like this.

Dradles had brought no lantern and we did not need one: the dying November light came down from above in dim shafts through groined windows that had long been devoid of glass. We walked between massive pillars that rose above us up into the cathedral proper like great roots or tree trunks of stone, and in their shadows the darkness was almost absolute, but we kept to the narrow lanes of fading light.

Dradles set his lumpy bundle on a stone ledge, untied laces at the top, and fumbled in the bag. I expected him to disinter a bottle—I could hear it sloshing—but instead he came out with a small hammer.

“Watch this, Wilkie!” whispered Dickens. “And listen! And learn.”

I thought I had learned quite enough for one day, but I followed as Dradles re-lashed his bundle and led the way down an even narrower corridor between even thicker columns and darker pools of shadow. Suddenly he began tapping the inner walls.

“Hear that?” the old mason asked—absurdly, I thought, since the taps echoed and rebounded everywhere in the crypt. “Tap and solid,” he whispered. “Now I go on tapping… solid still. And more. Solid still. And more… halloa! Hollow! We keep going around the corner here—mind your step; there’s some stairs there in the dark—we keep going and keep tapping and Dradles’s ear keeps hearing what your ear and others’ don’t and can’t hear and… ahah! Solid in hollow there! And inside solid, hollow again!”

We all stopped. It was very dark here around the corner, where more steps presumably led down to deeper vaults.

“What does it mean?” I asked. “Inside solid, hollow again?”

“Why, it means that there’s an old ’un tumbled and crumbled in there, Mr Billy Wilkie Collins!” growled Dradles. “An old ’un in a stone coffin, and the stone coffin in a vault!”

I could feel Dickens’s gaze upon me as if this Dradles-person’s deduction were a significant feat, but I reserved the right to remain something less than overwhelmed. This was not a case of that French phenomenon in which I had some interest—
clairvoyance,
or “bright seeing.” I mean, it was, after all, a church crypt. It did not take a rude, drunken man playing with a mason’s hammer to tell us that there were bones behind the walls.

Dradles led us deeper into the crypt vault. We needed a lantern now and we did not have one. I used my walking stick to sound out the irregular stone stairs beneath my feet as they spiralled down around one of the great stone trusses that housed the crypts and held up the cathedral. I had dressed for the unusually warm and sunny afternoon, and this subterranean cold made me shiver and wish for home and a fire.

“Aye,” said Dradles as if I had spoken aloud, “the cold here is worse ’n cold. It’s the damp. The rising damp. It’s the cold breath of the dead old ’uns on either side of us and beneath us and, in a minute, above us. The dead ’uns’ breath reaches to the cathedral up ’bove and stains the stone and discolours them pretty frescoes and rots the wood and causes the choir to shiver in their robes. Dradles can hear the rising damp seeping out of the chinks and crevices of these older coffins as surely as Dradles can hear the dead old ’uns echo back their answer to his taps.”

I started to give a sarcastic retort, but before I could speak there came the startling TAP, TAP, TAP of his hammer again. This time I imagined that I could hear something of the complex echoes myself. Dradles’s voice seemed extraordinarily loud in the winding stone chamber.

“There’s two of them about seven feet in, both of them old ’uns with a crook—I fancy they must’ve crook-hitched one another good when they met promiscuous-like, the way it must’ve been in the dark when candles were the thing—and they’re laid out in what was an underground chapel here long time ago, closed up back when all the heads was rolling and everyone was lifting toasts to Bonnie Prince Charlie and all that.”

Dickens and I stood in the dark where we were while Dradles descended another dozen steps. The chill touch of rising damp moving past our ankles and necks made my hackles rise.

TAP, TAP, TAP… TAP, TAP… TAP, TAP, TAP, TAP.

“There!” cried Dradles, his voice echoing terribly. “Hear that?”

“What do we hear, Mr Dradles?” asked Dickens.

There came a scraping and slithering sound.

“Just my foot rule,” said Dradles. “Dradles measuring in the dark. Measuring in the dark is what Dradles is doing. Wall’s thicker here… two foot of stone, then four of space beyond. Dradles hears the tap-back of some rubble and rubbish that the careless ones who interred this old ’un left between the stone coffin and the stone wall. Six feet in there an old ’un is waiting amidst the fall-down and left-behind—just lying and waiting, no top to his box. If I were to break through with my larger hammer and pick, this old ’un, bishop-hatted crook-type or no, would sit up and open his eyes and say, ‘Why, Dradles, my man, I’ve been waiting for you a devil of a time!’ And then he’d turn to powder sure as not.”

“Let us get out of this place,” I said. I meant to whisper it, but my voice sounded very loud in the winding dark and rising damp.

O
UTSIDE IN THE LAST OF THE NOVEMBER
evening light, Dickens paid the insolent man some coins and waved him off with thank-yous and what I heard as conspiratorial laughter. Dradles slumped away, still clutching his bundle. He’d not got twenty feet when there was a cry of “Widdy widdy wive! I—ket—ches—’im—out—ar—ter—five… Widdy widdy wy! Then—E—don’t—go—then—I—shy!” and there came an absolute hailstorm of small stones pelting around and against the grey-flannelled figure.

“What a character!” cried Dickens when Dradles and the insane child finally disappeared from sight. “What a wonderful character! Do you know, my dear Wilkie, that when I first met Mr Dradles he was busy tap-tapping away at an inscription on some headstone soon to be set in place—it was for a recently deceased pastry-cook and muffin-maker, I believe—and when I introduced myself, he immediately said, ‘Here in my world I’m a bit like you, Mr Dickens.’ And then Dradles gestured to all the tombs and headstones and headstones in the making around him and added, ‘Surrounded by my works and words like a popular author, I mean.’ ”