Mr. Timothy: A Novel (11 page)

--Oh, no, sir. Nothin' in
coin
. I got ya.

His tongue slides with agonizing slowness around the oval of his mouth.

--Do you go out of your way to offend, Colin? Or is it just like breathing for you?

--Listen to him! When I'm the one as should be offended. You ain't even asked why I come. --Then tell me and be gone.

--I
found
her, sir.

And now the excitement of his errand finally overtakes him. It roils his carefully composed face, sets his hands to dancing on the frame of the chair.

--Found whom?

--
Whom
, the man asks.
Whom
. That gal you was takin' on about, that's whom.

--Where?

--Oh, now he's risin' to it! Wants to know, don't he? Well, I'm afraid, sir, this being highly confidential intelligence, I cannot part with it on account of I am unremunerated.

--
How much
?

--Well, it all depends, sir. On one's eagerness to possess the aforementioned--

--How much?

--Half a pound to say where. Another half to take you there.

--Done to both.

And simply for the pleasure of checking his pleasure, I add:

--Payment upon completion.

--Oh. Well, speakin' frankly, sir, we were...we were hopin' for a bit up front, just to tide us over....

--You'll get the full amount when you lead me to her.

Frowning, he bangs his cap against the back of the chair. For the first time in our brief acquaintance, he is acting his age.

--Drury Lane Garden, he says.--By the churchyard. It's no good goin' now, she only comes first thing in the morning. And it's no good goin' on your own, you'll never find it, not in a million years.

--Well, then, I look forward to your enlightened escort. Meet me tomorrow morning at Covent Garden, by the blind woman's cabbage stall. Eight o'clock, shall we say?

He gives me a tetchy shrug, which I take for consent.

--Honestly, sir, don't know what you wants with her. She's a bit touched, if you ask me.

--Touched how?

--Well, she don't...she don't speak the language, do she? --And how would you know that?

--Seen her chasin' down some cove as stole her scarf. All in a righteous fury she were, ascreamin' and a-hollerin'. Didn't understand a bloody word she were sayin'.

--And would that be the same scarf you have wrapped round your neck?

His hands fly to his throat, bury themselves in the blue woollen folds. His eyes form great cracked moons.

--Why, so it is, sir. Acquired it, I did, from the fellow as took it.

--And would that fellow be you, Colin?

--Sir, you wound me, truly you do. I mean the very...to even think you'd--

--It
was
you.

--Bloody hell, I had to have
somethink
, didn't I? So you'd know it were really her. Had to be sure you'd trust me, sir.

--Trust you. Let me see, you steal scarves, you beg for change, you extort money. How could I fail to trust you, Colin?

--Well, I'm glad you sees it that way, sir. For an instant there, I was concerned.

It takes some doing to get Colin out of the house. He is hell bent on sampling the local merchandise, and it doesn't matter that the girls are all asleep in their beds and won't be stirred for love or money, he wants me to sound the morning reveille, send them all running into his welcoming arms. Only after I have slipped him a few shillings and promised him introductions at a future date does he agree to vacate, and just in time, for not half a minute after he has slipped out the back, Mrs. Sharpe comes charging through the front, laden with festive petticoats, bottles of brandy, and, pinned between the crumbling chalk cliffs of her teeth, a frond of maidenhead fern.

--There you are, Mr. Timothy. You have found me in shocking dishabille. A poor, wretched woman, ready to throw herself at your feet. Tell me!
Tell
me that your circle of acquaintance numbers at least one professional musician!

It is startling, I own, to be addressed in the same manner as her patrons.

--Musician, Mrs. Sharpe?

--I have just learned--and with the greatest
chagrin
--that the harpist engaged for our
petite soiree de Noel
has come down with catarrh. Why this should prevent him from strumming his damned stringbox, I cannot tell you, but our little holiday function teeters, teeters on the precipice, and so I must repeat, Mr. Timothy: Do you know of anyone? With the slightest inclination to carry a tune in any direction?

At such moments, I find it always best to simulate thought: peer at the ground, wrinkle the brow, shut the eyes halfway. This time, against all odds, a thought emerges, actually stamps its feet in my ear.
--I know a young boy. With a fine voice.

Sniffing speculatively, Mrs. Sharpe strokes her temple with the fern frond. The public madam drops away.

--You vouch for him?

--Oh, yes. I have heard him.

--And what would he need by way of accompaniment?

--None, I believe. He prefers to work a cappella.

--So much the better! We won't need to get the piano tuned. Now, he's not one of those beastly little altar boys?

--Very much not.

--I only ask because one of our guests, I won't mention names, has come within a whisker of being defrocked on at least three separate occasions. We don't want to be throwing the wrong kind of temptation his way.

--Of course not.

--Boy singer, eh? He might be charming. Invite him, by all means, and let me know if he's free. We can discuss his fee at today's session. Oh, but I must tell you, Mr. Timothy, I've been all in a stew over Mr. Crusoe ever since he promised to return Friday to his native land. All those dreadful
cannibals
and bearded Portuguese and whatnot, what can he be thinking? But hush, I'm a foolish old woman, keeping a well-dressed young man from his appointed rounds. Confess, you scoundrel! Which lucky
jeune fille
will be receiving a caller this afternoon?

--No girl. Just my brother.

This information produces a small puff of surprise in Mrs. Sharpe's cheeks, and I can't say I blame her. All these months behaving as though I had no relation in the world, and now alluding to one as casually as if he were a greengrocer. I think I must be taken in by my own nonchalance, for as I stroll up Great Windmill Street, I feel soft and half-attentive, as though I really were shopping for apples. Or women. Passing the shuttered-down face of the Argyll Rooms, I feel a prick of longing for the gay ladies who will be gathering there tonight: the whispering dresses, the fumes of champagne. And it is with a start that I see the newly erected edifice of St. Peter's Church rearing up before me--its very name a prod and rebuke.

Casting my eyes down, I hurry on towards the other Peter's. Up Poland Street, then a quick left just shy of the Oxford Market...walking at such a clip and dodging so rapidly between carriages and hansoms and growlers and omnibuses that I have to stop myself after a stretch to make sure I haven't gone too far.

And that's how I discover I am just where I need to be. The very block. There's the draper's with the misspelled placard. There's the fruiterer's, its barrels of oranges cursorily inspected by a wandering heifer.
And there's Peter's store. The thyme-coloured awning and the golden scrawl: Cratchit's Salon Photographique.

And there's Father in the window.

No mistake this time. Really him. Glazed and enamelled in a brass frame, frozen a few weeks shy of his forty-ninth birthday. Peter had told him not to move for a good two minutes, and he took this admonition so seriously that his body went quite rigid from the effort--I remember it took us several minutes afterwards to uncoil him. The exertion is still visible in the portrait: he has the strained, fatalistic look of someone desiring only to please.

You won't find any pictures of Mother here: she couldn't abide cameras, hated the way her smile went crooked on her. Nor will you find one of me, but that's only because I was one of Peter's first subjects. By the time he took the glass out, the image was almost completely black.
Give it a few hours
, he said.
It'll brighten as it dries
. It never got an ounce lighter, and I was too young then to attach any symbolic value to it.

Peter soon realised, of course, that on sunny days, he needn't let his plate stop quite so long. And as his understanding of the medium improved, so did his clientele and his surroundings. A shilling portrait gallery in Whitechapel, followed by a half-guinea photographic saloon in Old Kent Road, and then this last, most spectacular leap: a plate-glass storefront in Oxford Street, swarming with London luminaries. Even
I
recognise a few of them: a twice-widowed marchioness; one of the generals charged with stamping out the sepoys; a sporadically infamous actress, recently decamped from a cotton plantation in Alabama and rumoured to be plotting a return to the stage. Unimpeachably correct portraits, all of them, propped on tiers of red velvet or hanging from wires, unmoored and isolate, like warring satellites.

And then, from deep in the heart of this galaxy, a planet emerges--a living, breathing head. Just the crown at first (poignant little bald track) and then the face, tilting upwards. A contented sort of mug, all of its adolescent excesses planed away, and a new bourgeois fullness swelling its jowls. Only six months since I last saw him, and already the scraggly black hair has started to recede, and a new beard has rushed to fill the vacuum--a tentative growth, much lighter than the hair and rather too carefully trimmed to be fashionable, but strangely hopeful all the same.

He doesn't notice me at first. Too much to do. Has to adjust the angles of the frames, doesn't he? Swipe specks of lint off the velvet, primp a garland of mums...only then can he look to see who's on the other side of the window.

I see his mouth form my name: a quick drop and then a resealing of the lower lip. The pure shock of me. I'm surprised he can even make it to the shop door, but he's there when I walk in, clapping me on the shoulders, grabbing my elbow, feinting a punch to my jaw--and then, for a few seconds, doing nothing at all. Only looking.

--Christ, Tim, where in hell have you been keeping yourself? God above me...Annie! Annie, look who it is!

From an adjoining room, a cool voice answers:

--I'll be there presently.

--Oop, says Peter, winking.--She's
with
someone, I half forgot. --Duchess? Empress?

--Somebody's aunt, that's all I know.

I take a few interrogative steps into the shop, rest my fingers on a tortoiseshell and mother-ofpearl visiting-card case. Always the trinkets, isn't it? The
petits objets
, shouting the big news of success.

--A long time you've been, Tim.

--Yes. Well.

And rather than incriminate myself further, I jerk my thumb towards the front window.

--Nice to see Father in such good company.

--Yes, I thought he'd quite enjoy it.

--Still can't believe the nobs let you hang them out like this. A bit vulgar for that crowd, isn't it?

--Ah, but they get the portrait for free. You'd be amazed how cash-poor some of them are.

--Shake 'em by the heels next time.

--Doesn't make for a good likeness, I'm afraid. Ah, here she is! Say hello to your prodigal brother-in-law.

No hanging back for our Annie. Once she spots you, she takes the shortest possible route there--you feel as though you were the very terminus she had in mind entering the room. Such a ravishing directness in such a small, muscular figure. Jutting out her chin like a train bumper, opening her steam-whistle mouth.

--Oh, he's thin as gristle, I
knew
it. Didn't I say? I told Peter, "He's starving half to death. No woman to cook for him, no one to sew his buttons on."

--Annie, I was waiting for
you
.

--He doesn't look half bad, says Peter.--All things considered.

--Half bad? He looks a fright. You're to stay for dinner, there's no arguing.

--Who could argue?

And having swept the field of me, Annie turns her full arsenal on her husband.

--Darling, listen. The session is over, but Miss Ashbee's still inside. She's under the impression we're mesmerists, and she won't leave until she's sure the spell has been broken.

--Perfect! We can give her any picture at all, she won't know the difference. --No one ever does. The point is she's already paid up, so if you see her wandering about, just push her nicely through the door: "Have a lovely afternoon, mind the step." Do you think you're up to it?

--I believe so, my love.

--In the meantime, gentlemen, I have refuse baths to empty, and you two have
mouths
to empty, I'm sure. You'll pray excuse me....

She backs her way into the adjoining storeroom and, at the last minute, aims a quick wink in the general direction of her husband. It leaves Peter dazed...
still
dazed!...after three years of marriage.

--The brains of the establishment, Tim. I'm just...I'm towing along in her wake, that's all.

--Do you object?

--I do not. Come, though, we've got--oh, hang on, we can't pop into the studio just yet, but do please note the furniture. It's nothing like what you'd find at Sarony's studio, not exactly Louis Quinze, I mean, but it's all new, except for the fire screen, that belonged to Annie's grandmother. The souvenir case, we picked up in Guildford. And the seashells--well, we just plucked 'em right off the shore in Portsmouth. I don't know, it all seems very cluttered to me, but Annie says it's just the right note of romantic
disarray
. Says it's expected of an artist. Imagine, Tim, me an artist! When I couldn't even draw a window, remember?

I do remember. But Peter's covered some distance since then, and for the last three years, he's done it without Uncle's money. And as I follow him through the lanes of professionally arranged bric-a-brac, past the rows of oxyhydrogen gas lamps, as I absorb his sloping, unhurried gait and his foreshortened gestures--an open palm, a casually raised finger--I think:
Yes. Yes, this is what it looks like. To be a man
. And I want to embrace him right there, in the middle of his damned shop. Or throttle him.