Mr. Timothy: A Novel (8 page)

Dragging the river bottom. That's all we've been doing.

I understand now that I've been ready to give up, ready from the moment we began pulling. I've been waiting only for Gully's signal, but his eyes are still glazed with avarice, and his wrench is rotating for all it's worth, and I don't have the will or reason to stop on my own, so we keep cranking. And then, after another minute, Gully does stop, quite suddenly, but only to shout in my ear:

--Grapplin' iron!

I grope for it in the darkness--a cold, scabbed hook resting on a coil of rope. Heavy brute: I have to rest it on my shoulder before I can swing it, and it takes me three swings before the hook catches in the maze of the net. And just as it does, our cargo pulls away, pulls so hard it's all I can do not to be dragged over the side.

--Hold 'im, Tim! Hold 'im!

By now, at least two or three gallons of water have swamped the boat, and the line between us and the river has dissolved. My toes swim inside my boots, and the boots themselves gasp and swell with water, and the heels of the boots slide by slow, aching degrees along the planks below.

--Shit, it's too much mud, Tim. Shake it out! Shake it out!

But our haul is too heavy to be shaken; I can barely keep it from sinking. With a cry of muffled rage, Gully flings himself towards the net. His wrench pierces it like a lance, and the shock of the contact makes me flinch and stagger backwards, but when my eyes spring open again, I see Gully, stretched like a footbridge between the boat and the cargo, plunging his good hand into the net's cavity and scooping out great fistfuls of streaming black mud. There's nothing anchoring him to the boat but those two mite-sized feet of his, and my stomach clenches when I imagine him dropping into the water, dropping face-first and then sinking like marble, and me unable to follow, and I'm just about to let go the grappling iron and rush to his aid when I hear Gully snarling over his shoulder.

--Lever him up, lad!

Acting purely on instinct now, I lower the iron until it's lying athwart Gully's bench, and with that fulcrum in place, I throw all my weight to the far end. The handle creaks with the strain, and the boat lists back to port and swallows another couple of gallons of water, and the water ices my hot, chapped hands, gnarls and welds them so completely to the pick I don't think I could let loose now if I tried.

And after perhaps half a minute, our great bundle, with an almost human groan, climbs above the surface. And with it rises a measure of hope, for with each new second, the bale sheds weight, coughing up shards of fish, plumes of half-solid water. And there! Projecting from it like a buttress: mad Gully. Still anchored by his feet, still clawing his way to the prize. The mud has smeared his face, soaked him all the way to his shoulders, but he can't be deterred, keeps pumping his arms into and out of the cavity like a furious midwife, sending up storm clouds of rock and sediment and grease.

And just then a lathe of wind catches the shrunken bundle and swings it sharply to the bow. And Gully swings with it. Torn from his perch, kicking like a spider, the great dredger disappears into the fog and then, with a roar, reemerges on the other side.

--Captain! Are you-- But I cannot finish the question. My fist, you see, is crammed in my mouth to keep me from laughing, for Gully resembles nothing so much as an outraged crustacean: his upper limbs pinioned in the net, his bandy legs adangle, his red mouth sluicing out streams of oaths.

--I'm sorry, Captain, I can't hear you.

It's only when he stops to draw breath that I notice that his right arm is curled around something, some knob or appendage, rendered nearly amorphous by its silt coating. I realise now what Gully's been yelling.

--A foot! God damn you, a foot!

Snatching up the iron, I fling it one more time at the net and drag the bundle and its human barnacle back to stern. And Gully, once he's clear of the water, loosens his grip and, with a short, satisfied grunt, drops into the boat. The impact triggers only the slightest bend in his knees, and as he once again rears up to his full five feet, he looks unaccountably large, as though transfigured by Nike.

--D'you see that, Tim? Now was
that
a bleedin' horse's foot, I ask you? By God, it bloody well warn't.

No, indeed. But as Gully and I open the net's cavity, my eyes keep flicking back to that protruding appendage--that strange bare peninsula, extending from its still-dark continent-- and the more I study it, the more clearly I see something that Gully has, in all his excitement, missed.

I see how tiny it is.

A human foot, no question, but too small, surely, for a stoker from Jamaica Road. And when I try to imagine who could own such a foot, my mind stops me from venturing any further.

Gully, though, soldiers on.

--Who's to say, Tim? Sod may've been carrying two weeks' wages in his pockets. On his way to the pub, like. Oh, we'll shake him head t' foot, Tim. Such a Christmas it'll be! And with luck like this, why, we'll be in bloody bleedin'
Majorca
by Holy Week, can you doubt it?

And just then, our cargo, stripped of its swaddling mud, plunges into the boat with the muffled, otherworldly force of a meteorite. The boat lowers to accommodate the new weight, and Gully and I, acting on the same sacerdotal impulse, remove our caps and sink to our knees. In lieu of prayers, the captain begins muttering instructions.

--Don't pass over the shoes now. Amazing how many on 'em keeps bank-notes next to their feets. And mind, if there's a watch, you leave it be. Just the sort of thing they trace, ain't it? And no breakin' the fingers, the coroners can't abide it. If he's got hisself a ring on, Gully has a special grease, slicks it right off.

I don't think he's even addressing me in particular. I think it must be the litany he goes through each time.
--And don't be goin' and gettin' any of them
screw
-pulls. You think the police'd have any? Gorr, they'd be doin' the same as us, and it'd be them gettin' rich 'stead of us, is the only difference.

And now, through its vestments of mud, our haul begins to assert some of its original identity. The crook of a knee, the swoop of a buttock, an arm bent at the elbow--all of these point synecdochically to a larger whole, a life once lived. Funny how long one can carry on before fronting such a basic fact. Even Captain Gully seems daunted by it: his voice has dropped to an awestruck whisper.

--My, but he's a little un, ain't he?

Like the boy pharaohs, I want to say. The ones Mr. McReady used to show me in the British Museum. Except that instead of being fitted out for the afterworld, this one has his knees drawn up to his chest and one arm flung behind his head and a torso so contorted it seems locked in eternal recoil.

And something else: a pair of hands, curled into the form of talons.

I don't remark the transition. All I can say is that one moment I'm crouched next to Gully, and the next I'm sprawled headlong in the boat, grubbing through the mud, wiping the dead face clear. In the dim nimbus of Gully's lantern, I see two distended eyeballs, bleached grey and jellied over. Then a pair of water-bruised lips. And as my hands smear away the clay remnants, the bladders of the cheeks emerge from a field of purple-blue skin, skin of an ancient pallor, like the frontispiece of a medieval romance.

--Bollocks!

I turn and find Gully straddling the torso, gesturing bitterly at something I can't quite make out--a bare leg, perhaps? a telltale declivity? I can guess his import even before he declares himself.

--A bloody
girl
, ain't it?

Sore disappointed is our captain, and I should be the last to blame him. Someone of such a young and female persuasion--from such a low aquatic vicinity--how likely is
she
to be carrying coin or valuables? Tuppence at best, for butter and potatoes (her mother still wondering, weeks later, where she's made off to). No, it's a fair waste of good net, as far as Gully is concerned. Small wonder the fire has gone out of him.

--Dunno, dunno...maybe got a, a bag tied round her, like. Got a, got a change purse, p'raps.... Could be lots of places for secretin'....

But his heart's not in it. He's written her off, hasn't he? Whereas to me she has become steadily more engrossing. Holding the lantern just above her head, I examine with great interest the short, blunt object that is her nose: a speckled mushroom cap, frozen in the act of tipping upwards. Nothing like the dark, aquiline version I saw on the Embankment yesterday.

My hands travel to the hair, which after a week's immersion in the Thames, clings stubbornly to its original curl, and which, even in its owner's lifetime, could never have reached her shoulders. Nothing like the lank black hair I saw yesterday, done up with red ribbon. Nothing at all like that.
How strange! To stare into a dead girl's face, to study it as intently as one would a rune, and to feel at the same time such a curious lightness, as though one had just saved a life.

--Come away, Tim. There's no use worryin' it.

And I want to tell him I'm not worrying--not at all--but already, I feel the lightness in me filling up with something else.

It's the hands.

Tiny, brittle talons, exotic and also familiar, doubling and redoubling in my mind until they rhyme like a bad pun.

I reach for the shears. Working with great method now, as metronomically as a carpenter planing a table, I scissor away the cloth from the girl's right shoulder. And as the scissors round the last corner, I wait for the sounds of Gully's protest, for "What in God's name are you a thinkin' of," but I think the calmness of my demeanour must be disarming him. And it may be the calmness is no pretense, for when I pull away the swath of cloth, my fingers show not the slightest sign of trembling. And my eyes refuse even to blink when they behold the letter
G
rising from the purplish-white skin, glaring outward with raptorial eyes.

Behind me, I hear Gully's piercing, irascible voice.

--Christ almighty, has you ever seen such a botched tattoo in your life? It'd been
our
mother, we would've got what for, take our word, gettin' ourselves all carved up as that. You all right, Tim? Lookin' a bit green roun' the...if you don't mind us...well, never fear, there's bound to be some inquest money, 'less she's a foreigner, and hospitals is always a-wantin' bodies, ain't they, and tomorrow we'll have us another go downriver. So keep the chin up, that's the spir-- oh, it's
that
, is it? Not to worry, boy, just lean the head over the water. No, downwind,
down
wind, there's a good lad.

Chapter 6

I WAS SIX THE FIRST TIME I CAME TO THIS HOUSE. It was a Sunday in March, a volatile day, variously spitting and smiling, and I remember thinking as we arrived that the Maker had not yet decided what sort of day he wanted to make. But it was the rooms inside that I was most struck by. Three months into the new year, and they were still decorated for Christmas. A half-eaten Yule log in the grate, a brace of empty stockings on the mantel. Sprigs of holly dangling like aged coquettes from the door lintels; the wattled remains of a bough of mistletoe swinging disconsolately from the hall lamp; and all round us, overwatered poinsettias, sapped of their red and collapsed like Bedouin tents.

The candles, at least, were new, and the air was quick with oranges and cloves, and there on the hearth, beneath a garland of bay leaves, stood a half-sized Father Christmas, almost sinfully hearty in his purple ermine. But much as he glowed, he could not compete with the efflorescence of our host, who, as soon as we arrived, informed us with a cackle that he had given his housekeeper the day off so that he might personally minister to his guests. It was with some trepidation that we realised we were the guests in question. Mute we sat, in our starched Sunday finery, while this twiggy, animated man in slack breeches danced attendance on us.

--Come now, Martha, more eggnog, don't be bashful. And if I'm not mistaken, there's a boy who needs another helping of wassail, is that not so, Sam? And behold yon Master Tim! Not a crumb left on his plate. Oh, it can
not
continue, it cannot. He must have plum cake.

Some consciousness of our situation, of the strangeness of being served wassail in March, made me resist initially, but not too long, for the cake proved delicious, very much like Mother's but with a new flavour that my tongue tried in vain to isolate. Not so chewy as currants, not so pungent as grapes. Pulpy and sweet and very slightly bitter, giving up its juice reluctantly at first, yielding only after additional acquaintance. A
sultana
, I later learned, and something of that name's exoticism must have come through even then, for I found myself suffused with an equatorial warmth, and tingling with gratitude towards the man who had, in one stroke, so altered our climate. I said:

--Thank you very much, Mr. Ogre.

I am to be faulted, I know. But in my defense, we were just a few months into The Change (as Mother called it), and we had been so long in the habit of referring to him as Ogre that it seemed only natural to attach a business address to it. I didn't recognise my error until I saw Mother's face crumple and dive from view, and then I noticed Father running his hands up and down the arms of his chair, as though he were trying to propitiate the furniture. A dank silence fell over the room as one by one the Cratchit children set down their plates and cutlery and waited. I closed my eyes to the terror, and then I felt myself being borne aloft, and when I dared to open my eyes again, Mr. Ogre's face was three inches from mine, and an irreducible grin was pushing through his scraggly lips.

--There, there, you've nothing to fear, my boy. But you know, surnames will no longer do for us. From now on, you're to call me Uncle.

He paused for a moment, as though to make sure he had heard himself right, and the realisation that he
had
said it seemed only to embolden him. He swept his gaze round the room until he had caught the eye of every Cratchit child.