Keeping Bad Company (7 page)

‘All too well.'

My work sometimes took me into these horrors. Seeing them at close quarters was one of the reasons why I'd resisted my friends' efforts to marry me off to socially acceptable men.

‘Well, imagine all these things with the thermometer at ninety degrees in the shade, with husbands absent on tours of duty, children at school thousands of miles away, sick with low level fever half the time, and so many people attending to your wants that you never even have to open a sunshade for yourself. All the tedium of being a fine lady in London multiplied a hundredfold.'

He smiled when I shuddered.

‘Poor Tom,' he said.

We arrived back in town ahead of Mr Griffiths, who said he had business to finish off in Richmond, and Tom suggested that we should go to his new lodgings to superintend the unloading of his things. Mr Griffiths had rented rooms in the City, not far from where the coach set us down at St Paul's, so we strolled there slowly to give the carter time to arrive. On the way, we passed Tom's temporary workplace, the headquarters of the East India Company. It dominated Leadenhall Street with its great columned front, like an overgrown Greek temple but with top-hatted businessmen instead of priests pacing up and down the steps. A few minutes' walk away, Mr Griffiths had taken two floors of a tall grey stone house. The rooms were elegant and decorated in modern taste but had the lifelessness of a place let out by the month. A porter came up from the basement and helped us oversee the unloading of the packing cases, mildly curious about the new tenant. Would the gentleman be bringing his own servants? The porter's wife could oblige with meals sent up and laundry done. Would the gentleman be staying long? One servant only, Tom told him, and probably not long. He left the question of meals and bed linen for Mr Griffiths.

The cottage in Richmond had seemed much more cheerful and homely. I was surprised he'd decided to leave it when he could easily have travelled in and out for the hearing. Tom admitted he was surprised as well and said it had been a decision made in the last couple of days. We both wondered if this restlessness might be a sign that Mr Griffiths's nerves were not under such iron control as he liked to pretend. When I suggested that we might unpack to make the place more welcoming for his arrival, Tom instantly agreed. We spent a pleasant couple of hours unrolling carpets and silk wall hangings and placing books in the bookcases. Most of the books were leather bound and gilded, with titles in Latin, Greek, Arabic and others that Tom identified as Sanskrit and Hindi. Tom unpacked Mr Griffiths's personal kit and laid out in the bathroom his sponge, razor and razor strop and bronze mirror. It was a fine room, with a gauze curtained window looking out over the street, black-and-white tiled floor and a fixed bath. You only had to turn a tap for a rush of cold water, presumably from a tank in the attic. Two gleaming cans stood beside the bath, ready for the servant or porter to carry up hot water from the basement. We walked round the rooms, satisfied with our efforts, and left the key with the porter for Mr Griffiths's arrival later.

That was the day before Tom's evidence to the parliamentary committee on East India Company affairs. I knew he didn't want to talk about it, so had just wished him good luck when we parted. When the day came, I couldn't help thinking about him and around midday I put on my cloak and bonnet and walked through Green Park and St James's Park to Westminster. I knew that the committee was holding its sessions in a room off Westminster Hall. The great hall, nearly eight hundred years old, had miraculously survived the fire that had destroyed the rest of the Palace of Westminster six years before. While our legislators argued about plans for rebuilding, they had to carry on their business as best they could in what was left to them. Of course, the public weren't allowed into the committee but there was nothing to stop anybody lingering in Westminster Hall. I thought I'd just wait there to watch Tom come out. If he looked reasonably composed and had people with him, I should keep in the background and not ever let him know that I'd been there.

Inside, the hall was like a cathedral – stone-flagged floor, great wooden roof beams, dim light from small windows high up. But the atmosphere was alive with men walking and talking, quietly in conspiratorial groups or calling to each other loudly, like boys in a playground. Frock-coated servants of the House hurried around, with messages for MPs. Ordinary people, nervous in best clothes, stood on the edge of things, probably hoping for a word with somebody willing to listen to their problems. Lawyers in wigs and silk gowns swept past, clerks loaded with papers trailing behind them. There must have been two or three hundred people there, dwarfed by the size of the hall, and only a few women. Other committees beside the one I was interested in were sitting in various rooms off the hall and each one had its own group of men waiting outside. In one group, some of the faces between the tall black hats and white stocks looked more sun-browned than the rest. A clerk confirmed that, yes, this was the East India committee. I found an inconspicuous place by the wall, where I could keep the door to the committee room in sight and waited.

It was the glint of the thing that caught my eye. In the dim light, with most of the men in black coats, it flashed like a sudden jet of water. A group of men, five or six of them, had come in to the hall and were walking in my direction. The tallest one was leading the way, the others following him like courtiers. He was perhaps in his early fifties with a square, forceful-looking face. His broad nose looked as if it had been broken and reset badly. Even in this setting, there seemed a piratical air about him, as if he'd be in his element superintending the firing of cannons. Dark eyebrows with traces of grey jutted over narrow eyes that were moving all the time, as if observing the people round him then discarding them as not important enough for lingering. None of these were the first things anybody would notice about his appearance. What was drawing most of the eyes in this part of the hall, as well as mine, was the ornament he wore on the lapel of his coat: a diamond hawk as big as a woman's hand, with ruby eyes and talons. On a man who was otherwise in conventional business clothes it should have looked absurd, but the fierce beauty of the thing and the confidence of the man wearing it made it look like a declaration of power.

A buzz went through the group waiting outside the committee room. Some of them walked up to the man. I didn't need the ‘Hello McPherson', to tell me who he was. He asked a question I couldn't hear and nodded at the answer. Watching him, I didn't at first notice the man who was walking in our direction from the far end of the hall. As he came closer I saw it was Mr Griffiths, strolling along and looking up at the great roof beams as if simply out for a constitutional walk. I guessed that, like me, he'd come to meet Tom and probably had no idea that McPherson was there. Then one of McPherson's group noticed him and said something. McPherson had been chatting to his neighbour, but instantly his head came up. Almost at once his posture became challenging, bull-like, feet braced, eyes glaring. Almost at once, but not quite. I doubt if the men around McPherson saw it, but from where I was standing I had caught the first expression on McPherson's face and it had looked very like alarm. By then, the men around McPherson had gone quiet and were all staring at Mr Griffiths. It must have been a shock to him when he looked down from the roof beams and caught that collective stare, but he held his nerve and kept walking. When he came to a halt, a few yards away from them, there was a smile on his face. Everybody had gone quiet so that it seemed as if the great hall was concentrated on the meeting between the two enemies.

Mr Griffiths spoke first, in a conversational tone, but loudly enough for bystanders to hear.

‘Good afternoon, McPherson. Sporting your jewellery collection, I see.'

McPherson gave him a hard look down his boxer's nose. ‘I'm surprised you've got the face to come here. Or are you getting up a protest meeting?'

His voice was a deep and arrogant drawl. If he'd ever had a Scottish accent, it had vanished in his time out east. Some of the men round him tittered as if he'd made a good joke. It seemed an unfair encounter, McPherson surrounded by his cronies, Mr Griffiths very much alone.

‘I don't need protest meetings,' Mr Griffiths said, sounding quite unworried. ‘I think actions are better than words. Although words have their uses too.'

‘Are you threatening me?'

McPherson's voice was a bull-like roar. It looked as if he was having to restrain himself from charging at Mr Griffiths and tossing him aside.

‘With words?'

If McPherson was the bull, Mr Griffiths was taunting him like a picador, though it was hard to see why what he said should annoy his target so much.

‘You're determined to slander me, aren't you?' McPherson said.

‘How could any words of mine hurt the reputation of a man so prosperous and well regarded?'

Mr Griffiths's tone was satirical, but it seemed an odd thing to say for a man who had spent years bombarding McPherson's reputation with words.

‘If you have anything to say against me, why not come out with it?'

Mr Griffiths smiled. ‘I shall, in the fullness of time.'

‘So I suppose I must wait and tremble,' McPherson said.

His attempt to meet sarcasm with sarcasm sounded forced, but it brought louder sycophantic titters from his supporters.

‘Just so,' Mr Griffiths said. ‘Meanwhile, make the best of what's left to you.'

He nodded towards the hawk, turned and walked away and out of the hall as steadily as he'd walked with me by the river the day before.

McPherson stood looking after him, the men round him chattering and laughing as if he'd scored a victory. I was worried about Mr Griffiths and might have gone after him but at that moment the door to the committee room opened, Tom came out and McPherson was called inside. It was his turn to give evidence. Tom was pale-faced and miserable. Some of the men who'd been waiting closed round him, obviously wanting to know what had happened. When they'd got their answers they strolled away, leaving Tom standing there on his own. By this time, there was no sign of Mr Griffiths. I went up to Tom. He might have been angry that I'd come there, but I could no more have left him than when he'd been lost and alone in the woods at home. He came towards me and gripped my hand.

‘Oh Libby, I feel like Judas.'

I tried to reassure him that none of it was his fault. We walked together through the hall and out into the sunshine.

‘Was it worse than you'd expected?'

‘Not really worse, but bad enough. Some of them were really out to destroy Griffiths, every little rumour and sneer from cutting one of the governor's dinners to wearing native dress sometimes. Why shouldn't a man dress as he likes in his own bungalow?'

‘I can't see what that's got to do with the proper government of India.'

‘Disrespect for the authorities, bringing the English into disrepute. As if some of the wine-swilling bullies we send out there weren't doing that all the time. McPherson will twist that committee round his finger. I suppose he's in there now, demanding compensation for his opium.'

We walked alongside the river for a while, watching boats going up and down. The tide was out and even this early in the summer the smell was so bad that we walked back to St James's Park. In the sweeter air by the lake he relaxed a little and sighed.

‘At least it's over now.'

I didn't like having to tell him about the scene between McPherson and Mr Griffiths, but it would be worse if he heard it from anyone else. I tried to play it down as much as I could, but it depressed his spirits all over again.

‘It won't help him,' Tom said. ‘Griffiths himself has to appear before the committee on Monday. After the poison McPherson and his cronies had been spreading, what I had to tell them and now this, they'll tear him apart.'

‘I don't think he's so easy to tear,' I said.

But Tom wouldn't be comforted. We stood for a while, watching ducks upend themselves in the water.

‘So what happens to you, now you've given your evidence,' I said.

He shrugged.

‘Another few weeks here, I suppose, then back to Bombay.'

My heart lurched. Having found Tom again, I dreaded losing him.

‘Only a few weeks?'

‘A month perhaps. Now the other men have come all the way to England they're in no great hurry to go back, and I suppose they'll send me on the same ship.'

With men he thoroughly disliked, to a career he'd probably blighted by being on Griffiths's side.

‘Must you go back? I'm sure we could find work for you here.'

I had a few influential friends, but not many. I'd struck the wrong note and Tom frowned.

‘Using my sister's kind influence to get me a job on a clerk's stool? No thank you. Liberty, I want to talk to you seriously.'

I'd known this was coming, though I'd hoped it wouldn't be today.

‘Well?'

‘I've done what you wanted. I've talked to Daniel Suter and Legge. I know the life you've been leading while I've been away.'

‘Quite an eventful one,' I said.

His grave manner was sparking off the spirit of contradiction in me again, even though I felt sorry for him.

‘I can see that in some cases you had no choice . . .'

‘And in others I made a choice.'

‘. . . and your motives have been honourable on the whole . . .'

‘On the whole! I've never done anything that's dishonourable.'

‘I'll accept that. But setting up to earn your living as . . . as . . .'

He was almost choking on it.

‘As a private inquiry agent,' I said. ‘It's more interesting than giving music lessons, though not much more profitable on the whole. Still, we live.'