Feral Park (38 page)

At four o’clock that afternoon, in the midst of all of the final preparations for the dinner, which was to commence at the fashionably late hour of six o’clock, Anna was summoned to the door by the Alford Brothers’ butler Mr. Harding, who had come from the Super House to say that the youngest brother Colin Alford wished to see the mistress of the Park within the next half hour—if it would not be a terrible inconvenience—with regard to two matters of great urgency, and to say that Mr. Alford was mindful of the inopportunity of the request, but that it could not be avoided, and to promise that she would not be detained for too long, and to say in addition that no, the Alford Brothers were not angling for an invitation to the already crowded card table dinner upon the terrace and this was not at all the purpose of the meeting. They would—each of them—the Alfords and their own servants and the superannuated servants once in service to Feral Park, both those with and without their teeth—be enjoying something French in a sauce that was easy to chew—or mumble— and afterwards there would be a little port and some cards and songs until the oldest of the tenants fell fast asleep within their chairs, and so Anna was not to worry that anyone in the Super House would be missing out.

“Where does he wish to see me?” queried Anna, both with impatience and some trepidation over the reason for the pressing interview.

“Young Mr. Alford is aware that your foot will keep you from traveling too far from the house, madam, and so he has suggested the apple orchard. It is nearby and its fragrance appeals to him.”

“The apple orchard will serve. Tell Mr. Alford that I shall see him there in a quarter hour, for I cannot wait longer, as I must allow myself sufficient time afterwards to dress for dinner and prepare for the arrival of my guests.”

“Yes, madam.” With a bow, Mr. Harding turned to go.

“Mr. Harding?”

The old man stopt and turned. “Yes, madam?”

“Tell Mr. Alford that he is to come fully clothed.”

“Yes, madam.”

“And Mr. Harding?”

“Yes, madam?”

“Tell me, if you would, just how things are in the Super House? Is it comfortable?”

“It is most crowded, madam, but we are all making do as best we can. You see, those of us who work for the Alford brothers would prefer not to serve anyone else, even given the present inconveniences, for they are the most liberal of employers, and quite kind. The house is small, and I have taken to sleeping upon a blanket in the passage, but it will not be long ere my turn comes to be rotated into a bed, and I firmly believe that all will be better in the end.”

“And how is Mr. Perry Alford?”

“Did not you see him only this morning, madam?”

“I did, but now I am wondering how he has been getting on
since
our morning visit.”

“I should leave that to Mr. Colin Alford to tell, madam, for his brother’s condition is one of the topics that he intends to discuss with you.”

The succeeding minutes were wretchedly protracted ones for Anna, who worried all the while that something terrible had befallen the man whom she had so thoroughly insulted several hours earlier even as her heart spoke his name in an affectionate whisper. She reached the orchard a full ten minutes before Colin was to arrive and leant against a tree and absently kicked at the withered apples under foot that had lain about since the previous autumn harvest. At precisely the appointed time Colin Alford appeared upon the path that led from the Super House. He was fully dresst, as Anna had requested (and wearing Turkish pantaloons at that!), this being the very first time that she had seen him sporting anything more than a shirt tied about the waist.

“Thank you for meeting me,” said Colin in a serious tone.“I realise that now is perhaps not the best time to impose upon you, but it could not be postponed.”

Anna could not hide the concern in her own voice: “Have you come to tell me something about your brother?”

Colin nodded. Anna noticed now that there was an envelope in his hand. She could scarcely draw out the words: “Is that a letter from him to me?”

“As a matter of fact it is not. It relates to the other matter that I intend to discuss with you shortly. But permit me first to speak of Perry.”

Anna nodded compliantly.

“Come. Let us sit upon that log and take the weight off your injured foot.” Colin took Anna by the hand and gently guided her to the log seat. “My brother has told me of your interview this morning, and how badly things went. I cannot acquit you fully for your part, as I shall always take my brother’s side to some degree given the family allegiance, but neither can I censure you without extenuation for saying things which I myself have thought on many an occasion. I believe that we are both in agreement, Miss Peppercorn, that Perry is killing himself with his addiction and that there is little time left to reverse this deadly course. I know that he loves you and I had thought that these feelings of attachment would give him reason to end this deadly dependency. Yet as you have discovered—and I see upon your face the hurt you have endured because of it—he will not give it up if there stands any chance that he will leave behind a literary legacy such as to make him immortal upon the page. It is a ridiculous wish and it robs him of the potential for any other form of happiness, including that which he could experience with you as one poised to love him and to shew him a species of joy—romantic, impassioned joy—which exists not in abstraction but in the flesh. What I am saying, Miss Peppercorn, is that my brother derives pleasure
these
days only in the laudanum, and as such, he is missing all which is there in the world to
naturally
delight and enthrall and set to fervent flame the heart and soul. He is blinded by the drug except for the visions he may transcribe upon the page with some pride and pronounce like Little Jack Horner, ‘What a good boy am I!’ His feet rarely touch the ground. He does not smell the loam, or stroke the rippled bark of a tree, or marvel upon the unusual shape of a particular cloud, but that the laudanum directs him and tells him what he is to feel and to discern in some vaporous, incorporeal sense. I doubt that he has kissed the hand of a single girl during this long opium season. He is living in a delusional world and he must be rescued or he will surely die. His soul is all but transferred already.”

“But what may
I
do, beyond countenancing his dependency, which I
will not
do, for I refuse to smile and offer silent approval as he slips into the grave through calculated self-destruction? It is far too much to ask one to make such a sacrifice simply because the object of her affection will not amend.”

“Nor would I ever ask such a thing of you. On the contrary, inaction is the last thing I would advise for any of us. In fact, my brother Wallace and I believe that there is something that we
can
do—and most actively so—and we both live on hope that the scheme will succeed.”

“Tell me then, Mr. Alford. Tell me every detail of it.”

“I have the verses he has written for you. He completed the poem this afternoon, only to look at it and say, ‘But she will never read it, for she despises me now.’ I took it from his escritoire and have it now at the house amongst my own effects. I will come late to-night to give it to you to read when your dinner is concluded and you are able to devote all of your thoughts to receiving its lines. No doubt, you will find it to be a beautiful ode with an agreeable sentiment. I place it amongst his very best work. But you are to go to him tomorrow, Miss Peppercorn, and pronounce it shite.”

“I am?”

“Yes. The very word. Or say that it is turd writing. Or that it is the most execrable piece of dung-reeking balladmongering you have ever read in your life.”

“But I
cannot
say such a thing!”

“Yet you must. For the poem—
all
of it—was written under the influence of the opiate. He therefore believes it to be genius. And perhaps it is. But you must tell him that it is nothing more than a bum squirt upon the page.”

“But what will keep him from thinking that I am only saying this through the anger and resentment that were bred from my previous interview with him?”

“Because you will not be alone in your assessment, for we will
all
be saying that what he has penned is poetic rectal wipe—all of us who love him and do not wish to see him die. He must know that his best writing could never come from the laudanum but from his own sober heart, his own unfiltered, unclouded head. So I will tell him myself that the poem is shite. So will my brother Wallace. Our butler, Mr. Harding, has agreed to do the very same thing, as will several of your superannuated pensioners who have volunteered to join our cause—at least those who can comprehend the words. Even your own milkmaid Betsey will come by to-morrow to deliver milk and will pretend to read the poem when it is offered to her (for I have learnt that she is in truth illiterate) and will pinch her nose and say a nasty thing or two which I will direct her to say.”

“So I will not be breaking his heart alone; my evaluation will constitute only one voice from amongst a chorus of voices in orchestrated disparagement.”

“Aye. And after all the voices have been heard, we will entreat him then, nay—
order
him to give up the habit—to give it up then and there, for it is of no benefit to his writing, and if he replies that it will not be done, we will say that it
must
be done. And here is how: my oldest brother and I have learnt from one of your Park pensioners that there is a woman in Smithcoat by the name of Pickler, and though she purports to run a house of ill repute, she provides certain secretive offices behind closed doors, one being that she helps those like my brother extricate themselves from the lethal tentacles of all manner of narcotics and spirits. Wallace and I will therefore take our brother to her so that Perry may have the opportunity of freeing himself from this suicidal habit under her authority.”

“I was not aware, Mr. Alford, just what it is that Mrs. Pickler does. I know only that my cook Mrs. Dorchester is loathe to discuss why Mr. Groves the tailor goes there, and I assumed therefore that it was for
some
illicit purpose.”

“You must discover Mr. Groves’ reason for yourself, Miss Peppercorn, for to my own knowledge he is more like me in his indifference to congress with the female sex. Nor do I think he is manacled to an odious habit for which he seeks to break himself away. It is a mystery, but perhaps you may solve it when you see him. Aside, though, from her perceived occupation as a bawd, there does seem to be great good to be found in the offices of Mrs. Pickler of Pickler House in Smithcoat, and I will tell you another astonishing thing about her in a moment, which surely will confirm the fact. As for the succour she extends to those like my brother, I understand that she has succeeded in her methods when all others have failed, and has even saved the life of a baby or two, when the mothers and nurses have plied their little ones with unfortunate overdoses of Godfrey’s Infant’s Quietness Syrup, which is nothing but liquid opium with bergamot flavouring.”

“Oh, dear me, Mr. Alford, I did not know.”

“Which is why I find this letter that I hold in my hand to have been given to me at the very most perfect moment.”

Colin Alford upheld the envelope but did not proffer it.

“It is directed not to me but to my friend Mr. Groom, or rather Mrs. Taptoe’s manservant Tripp, whom you by now know with some intimacy. It was written to him by his brother Trapp. Tripp and Trapp—yes, it made me smile as well, and I also smile to imagine that Trapp is as handsome and as well-constructed as his brother, but that thought is a distraction and so I banish it. Away! Away! There. Now the letter, as I said, was written from Trapp to Tripp, but you see, Tripp cannot read, and so when it was put into his hand by a young errand boy, who would not say from whence in the parish he had come, but only
that
he had come from somewhere within the parish, Tripp brought it immediately to me, so that I should read it to him. He was quite eager to learn what his brother had written, for he had thought Trapp dead.”

“
Dead
?”

“To be sure, for Trapp has lived a life of crime in London town, ever since the two were separated in their youth. Tripp went into the horse trades and Trapp grew from boy pickpocket to pubescent house thief to adult robber of the well-heeled in Mayfair, before he became, in his fourth decade, a successful arsonist.”

“Upon my honour, Mr. Alford, an
arsonist
?”

Nodding: “But never did he burn a building that was not used for some disreputable purpose, for at a certain age Mr. Trapp decided that he would employ his incendiary skills only for good and become rather like the Robin Hood of fire-starters. He took great pride, in fact, in lighting a fire to a sequence of places where the rich and well-to-do go to conduct the sort of business that keeps the poor for ever poor and the rich for ever gratified in luxurious debauchery.”

“I do not understand.”

“The private clubs, for example, where the nobility and heel-nipping gentry go to scheme and machinate over how better to wrest those last few farthings from the lowly and the downtrodden—places where they may gamble away fortunes that they do not have, so that their tradesmen creditors are forced to go bankrupt from the nonpayment on accounts, and then, as well, places where they may lie with their courtesans—bawdy houses for the upper classes, if you will, and various pleasure establishments—the sort that do not get much talked about except in mortified whispers—such as the Grand Monkey Parlour in Belgrave Square—rather less a
parlour
, I should say, than a full
palace
. You recall the fire of three years ago, which burnt the place to the ground? It was set late at night and Tripp tells me it was ignited by his brother alone. (He conveyed this fact with some pride.) It was Trapp’s aim to put to flame every monkey parlour, both large and small, within London, and he would have achieved his goal, had he had not been caught and sent to Newgate Prison. So here is the cause for the letter: last week there was a large break-out from Newgate; a dozen men made their escape to freedom. Did you not read about it in the newspaper?”