Mr. Timothy: A Novel (4 page)

--George, d'you know Shakespeare had an
e
at the end of his name? Just like
moi
! This, I believe, is the mark of a true scholar: to be unfazed by the world's skepticism. The one thing she can't abide is the thought of her girls finding out. She fears it will cost her some of the sovereignty she has built up over the years. Of course, she's perfectly capable of enforcing that sovereignty when the need arises. I once saw her box the ears of an employee who had refused to lick a vice admiral's scrotum. And when she learned that one of her girls was privately blackmailing a married barrister, Mrs. Sharpe sent the girl packing before another half hour had passed:

--If there's any extortin' to be done, it's I as will do it!

And yet she can be very good to her girls. She will not allow them, for instance, to be punished for anyone else's pleasure (although they may freely inflict punishment when called upon to do so); whenever a customer indicates such a preference, she refers him to Mrs. Lee's on Margaret Place. I am told that one gentleman was so very persistent on the subject that Mrs. Sharpe herself agreed to be spanked with a pillow--but only while clothed, and only while standing. As soon as the gentleman had taken five passes at her, she snatched the pillow from his hands and informed him that he owed her five pounds.

Thus, between Mrs. Sharpe's general good nature and her occasional royal edicts, none of her girls would ever dare cross her. Or even speculate openly about what she and I do during our daily sessions. They assume, probably, that I am Mrs. Sharpe's concubine. At least, I have seen them wink at one another as they ask me leading questions. Iris is the boldest in this regard. She will open her eyes wide and inquire:

--Have you seen the madam's cherries about?

Iris has never truly forgiven me for that first night--I can see I was a pique to her professional pride. She wastes few opportunities to get her own back.

--Mr. Timothy, wasn't Lord Byron quite the swordsman?

On this occasion, I was lulled, I confess, by the sound of a poet's name emerging from Iris's mouth.

--Yes, I suppose he was.

--And is it true he had a club foot?

--I think so, yes.

--Then there's hope for you, isn't there?

No one else generally rises to the bait, and in fact, most of the girls are quite lovely to me. Pamela, for instance--the former governess--always has a kind word. And Sadie, too, sweet little thing, tiny of bosom, tiny of voice. Mrs. Sharpe tried to fatten her up in the beginning, then headed full steam in the other direction, with the result that Sadie is now known to patrons as Wee Lucy, a twelve-year-old milkmaid with extravagant ringlets and flimsy peasant bodices that rip very neatly down the middle.

And then there's Minnie, a plump Christmas goose of a girl, with stately carriage and a heavenly coral complexion and two toffee drops for eyes. Quite the catch, is our Minnie. It's rumoured that the second son of the Bishop of Exeter has larger designs on her: he sees her three nights a week and has lately broached the possibility of introducing her to his mother. Minnie knows better than to believe a boy's promises, but everyone agrees that if ever a girl was marked for rapid social promotion, it is she.

And lest I forget, there is Mary Catherine, boiler of beef and maid-of-all-work. Nurses a dream of someday becoming a top-of-the-bill attraction herself, although it must be acknowledged that her chances in this regard are slight. Tenterhook hands, pachyderm elbows, turnip nose, and potato chin...she is not built for love's work. She is, rather, one of those people who spread love as they go. Even the act of cleaning water closets becomes, through her good graces, a ritual of devotion. On her hands and knees, scrubbing deep veins of grime from the front staircase, she is yet able to lift her head and toss you a smile as you step over her.

Yes, all things considered, they're a fine mess of humanity, my fellow employees. I can't say I fancy any of them in particular--excessive proximity has a way of ruining that--but I do hold them in the highest regard. I have seen them go out of their way to drop coins in a beggarwoman's apron. I have seen them squeeze spare shillings from a tightfisted customer to help a friend pay his rent. I have seen them comfort men in every degree of affliction. I have been one of those men.

Sometimes just coming home to them is a comfort. I walk up the stairs of a December evening, and the sounds of Mrs. Sharpe's boardinghouse come floating up to me. The phantasmal whispers and elongated moans. The creaking of a floorboard, the thumping of bedpost against wall. A shriek, brief and genderless. I feel strangely welcomed in these moments. Embraced.

And this feeling follows me all the way to my room. I give my face a quick scrub from the basin. I blow out the candle by my bed. I throw off my clothes and pull Father's comforter over me. I rub my bare limbs to get them warm.

Some evenings, I even receive a parting benison. Tonight, for instance: the litany of Squidgy and Pamela, resounding from the adjoining room.

--What is thy duty towards God?

--My duty towards God is to...to believe in him...to fear him and...and...

Thwack!

--
Love
him! Oww, love him with all my heart!

And then I remember: it's ten days till Christmas.

Chapter 3

I SCARCELY NOTICE IT AT FIRST. The courtyard behind Mrs. Sharpe's boasts so many other late-night attractions, each making its own claim upon the eye. At this very moment, I can see, from the vantage of my bedroom window, a torn-off playbill from the St. James Theatre, a troop of rats gnawing on soup bones, crates and bins, an abandoned spittoon, and a long trail of cracked gin bottles ending in the crumpled heap of an old sot, sleeping off many yesterdays.

Amidst such a rich tableau, why pay any special mind to a tarpaulin, bunched and creased and billowed, its corners tucked in? Flung, probably, from some neighbouring window. I wouldn't even look at it twice were I not so struck by its whiteness--the absence of any paint or glue. A purely spotless tarpaulin, left for rubbish.

Even stranger: it begins to move.

Almost imperceptibly at first, by the barest of degrees. And then either my eye becomes attuned to its motion, or its motion accelerates, for it begins to pulse with a restless intelligence. It
wafts
down the alley, the most graceful of ectoplasms, with no definite point of attachment, no obvious axis, just a clear line of intent. And even when it jars against a refuse bin, retracts its border and adjusts its alignment, its movement is so deliberate that it seems somehow to have accounted for the bin in advance, and incorporated it.

A pantomime spirit. That's my best explanation. A children's pantomime, rehearsing well past midnight, and now one of its lead goblins has wandered offstage, stumbled out the side door, and headed down the wrong alley. The other cast members must even now be giving chase: "Have you seen our little goblin? Yea high? Moving rather slowly?"

And so I'm not surprised, not truly surprised, to see the tarpaulin drop away to reveal a child's uncovered head. And yet the effect of this head against the white of the cloth and the nearextinguishing black of the alley is so intense, so cauterizing, it stops the breath in my throat. I step back from the window, and my hand jiggles the candle on the sill. The barest flicker of light, that's all, and yet it might as well be the infusion of a thousand torches, because the child's head jerks towards my window, and in the ensuing second, her face--for the child is a girl--stands strangely segregated from the rest of her accoutrement. And in the next second, she has taken flight.

No longer a slow parabolic line but a clean, straight trajectory, accorded a special geometric purity by its sheer haste. She wants very much to be gone. Very soon she is.

Next morning I find the tarpaulin, snagged on the corner of an ash bin, three houses down. Cast off like the skin of an enchanted snake.

That night she colonises my dreams. We pick up almost exactly where we left off. The girl is running--running hard. Her tarpaulin streams behind her in a long, resplendent wake. Jermyn Street has disappeared, and the buildings have pulled back, and there's nothing now but a long track of pavement, wide enough to hold all of London's carriages. The girl is running, a blur of light and steam, and above her, a shadow gathers. A shuddering blue shadow that expands until it covers the entire track. I hear the beating of wings and a high, strangled call-- a sound from the furthest aeries of Asia. The shadow parts, and through the vent, a head emerges, eyes hard and unblinking, beak pointed like a butcher's hook at the running girl. The girl never looks up; she knows what's there. Her hands, flying before her, assume the guise of talons. An act of desperate cunning, I can see that: she wants the predator to think she's one of its own. But the creature is under no such illusion. It contracts itself into a bundle, a bale of infinite density, and, with one last burst of terrible power, flings itself towards earth...

--There! cries Mrs. Sharpe.--What think you?

From across the breakfast table, she slides a torn piece of green paper towards me. It's the backside of an empty ledger sheet.

Your Presents Is Most Humbly, Awflly Beseeched By Mrs Ophelia Sharpe
For an Our of Yule-tied Cheere

--The lettering is very fine, I say.

--Oh, do you think? I'm feeling very glum about my
f'
s; they keep curling back on themselves. I think they must secretly want to be
g'
s.

--Everything looks very nice. Shall I correct the spelling?

--Please.

I work in silence for a few moments, waiting for Mrs. Sharpe's voice to fill the void round us. It soon does.

--The whole party is George's idea, isn't it? Competition being what it is, tooth-and-nail, dog-eat-dog, what's a genteel operation to do? Why, find some way to thank its most loyal customers, that's what. Nothing awfully grand, just some eggnog and negus. Christmas crackers....

--Sounds delightful.

She waves an admonitory finger.

--Expect no trees!

Christmas trees are closely allied in Mrs. Sharpe's mind with Prince Albert and hence with Germany, a country that arouses in her the most pronounced animus. No one quite knows why. There's talk she was swindled many years ago by a Prussian arms merchant, and the wife of the local baker says she knows for a fact that one of Mrs. Sharpe's earliest and most bestial husbands was a Bavarian pastry maker.

--Oh, and Mr. Timothy? I should like to read a poem for the occasion.

She's hunched over now, stammering like a child. --I'm, of course, I'm aware...this poetry business...not exactly in my line, is it? P'raps you could proffer a few suggestions? Something with a lovely holiday spirit.

--I will certainly think on it, Mrs. Sharpe.

--Nothing too wordy, dear. Seeing as I'm only now getting my sea legs....

--Short would be best.

--And nothing too gruesomely moral. We don't want to be spoiling anyone's fun. Oh, and you're certainly welcome to invite someone, if you...if there's
someone
and they're willing....

--Thank you, Mrs. Sharpe.

She worries, I know. I speak very little of family (although I still wear my black crepe hatband). I don't bring any friends home. I go off alone, come back alone, never take even a complimentary poke at one of the girls. It can't be healthy.

But I do have company--all the company a fellow could need. Girls in alleys and a dead father and mother and a dead brother. A sister buried somewhere in Nova Scotia. Another sister dropped out of view. Yes, a whole vanished history, crowding round me wherever I go. I would venture to say I am one of Her Majesty's more haunted subjects.

Then again, how am I to know? Londoners give so little away. They stride past you in their black dresses and black lounge coats and black mackintoshes, keep you at bay with their black umbrellas, do anything to avoid the human gaze: tug at their gloves, study their watch chains. Who's to say they aren't all communing with invisible attendants, expending vast logistical powers on behalf of their spectral households?

Therein the virtue of walking down a crowded London street: everyone's spectres draw away, and the living are left unaccommodated. It makes you feel quite liberated, even on mornings like this, when the wet, knuckle-scraping cold works up through the feet, clusters in the knee. I have to walk just to keep my leg from locking up. I wander down Regent Street (unconscious gentleman, collapsed atop unconscious lady). A nod to the Athenaeum, a left onto Pall Mall. Before me, the freshly washed dome of the National Gallery and the ugly steeple of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and the poised arses of Lord Nelson's lions. Down Northumberland, past the turn for Scotland Yard--and the whole way, that slanting feeling beneath my feet, that sense of being decanted into the river like a long-lost tributary.

This is where I come most mornings: Hungerford Pier. Up the hill, there used to be a market--plumpest chickens in town, Mother always said--but that's gone now. From its ashes rises a great six-platform railway station, not quite finished, and stretching to meet it, a nine-span wrought-iron lattice girder bridge, not quite finished. And up from the pier, earth for a new embankment garden is being laid (per Prince Albert's orders) over the remains of rotting sewers and wharf shops. The garden isn't quite finished, either, but that's Progress for you.

And what better occupation for a man than to observe Progress unfold? Me, I'm a natural watcher, anyway. Most comfortable with other watchers, like the silent watermen who share the pier with me. Lord, they do nothing
but
watch. Little call for their services, even now, with the river steamers stowed away for winter. It was different, of course, in the old days. A landlubber like me couldn't have cleared the arches of London Bridge without some stout oarsman poling him through. But then came the new London Bridge, and then came the steamers. And now the watermen sit. The same sons of Neptune who used to shoot London Bridge are huddling for warmth along the Hungerford Stairs and breaking one another's noses over three-penny fares.