Perry Scrimshaw's Rite of Passage

Perry
Scrimshaw’s Rite of Passage

Chris
Hannon

Copyright
©
2015 Chris Hannon

All rights reserved. This
book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any
manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the
publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book
review.

The right of Chris Hannon to be identified as the Author of
the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN
9781849147743

Published through Completely Novel.

We must scrunch or be scrunched.

Charles Dickens
,
Our Mutual
Friend

(for Toby)

T
he crescent moon cut belts of
shimmering silver onto the black water beyond. Perry gazed up at
the desolate sky, clear and starry. Was God watching him? Wooden
decking creaked underfoot, though he trod cautiously, seeking out
forms in the shadows under the iron benches and checking behind for
ambushes. The icy breeze buffeted and nipped at his ears, water
licked and lapped in the darkness, stifling his senses. At the end
of the wharf there stood a figure, black as a crow, waiting for him
to come.

Perry took a moment to dab a
handkerchief at the worst of his cuts, though there were too many
to attend to. He settled for tying it around the biggest wound on
his knee. The pain was sharp and true. He cursed his stupidity for
falling for that old trick, one he had played himself when he was
younger. But that wasn’t what really hurt, what really fuelled the
anger and hatred deep within. Would killing him assuage it? Right
the wrongs? Perry didn’t know anymore, but he knew he would
continue on to the end of the wharf.

With each step, the figure grew
larger; he was on the edge, facing out to sea, back turned to
Perry’s approach. Perhaps he wouldn’t need the knife at all, a push
might be all that it would take.

1

Bishopstoke, Hampshire,
1883

Atop a ladder, Samuel Scrimshaw
could see his kitchen table through the hole in the roof. He had a
lead sheet ready and his hammer was cradled safely in the iron
guttering. Samuel covered the hole with his palm.

‘
Perhaps I
should just stay up here and plug the breach with my hand,’ he
called down. It had been a rainy springtime and he’d patched it up
three times already. If only he could haul summer closer with his
bare hands…it would be less work.

‘
No,’ his
son’s voice carried up, ‘who’d cook for us if you’re stuck up
there?’

‘
Well,’ he
took four nails from his pocket, ‘I suppose I’d come down if it
wasn’t raining,’ he placed the nails between his teeth and slid the
lead sheet over the hole.

‘
Who’d walk me
to school if it was raining?’

Inwardly, he tightened. It was
Perry’s schooling that meant he couldn’t afford to replace the
leaky tap in the kitchen or repair the roof properly. Samuel
plucked the first nail from between his teeth and slotted it into
the hole in the corner of the sheet. Making young ‘uns attend
school by law and expecting common folk like him to stand the cost
didn’t seem fair or right. It was hardly the boy’s fault but still,
what was wrong with starting a prenticeship early? He brought the
hammer down with a satisfying thump.

Once the sheet was in place he
climbed down.

‘
That should
do it,’ he said, ‘thanks for holding me steady.’ He mussed up
Perry’s golden-brown hair with his big gardener’s hands. Perry
beamed back at him. ‘Can we go guddlin’ now?’

‘
I thought you
might say that.’

Bishopstoke
was a small place, caught between Winchester and Southampton,
provided for by the changeable River Itchen and surrounding
woodland. Perry’s favourite guddling spot was a short hike into the
woods. On the way, they both gathered kindling and small branches.
Samuel tied them into a bundle and carried them on his back.
Their riverside route was damp and
addled with tree roots, the air ripe with the dewy
spring.

‘
Silver
birch,’ Samuel pointed, ‘look at that cobweb stretched across that
alder.’

Perry
dutifully followed his signals. Samuel guessed that he liked it,
but perhaps didn’t love these small things as he did.
He was only a boy after all and
perhaps took for granted the countless shades of green the Lord had
created. Silver water gushed past, swollen by recent rainfall.
Samuel led Perry further upstream, where the trees on the bank
began to thin out and a flint footbridge came into view.

‘
I’m going ahead!’ and Perry sprinted off as boys that age
do. By the time Samuel got to the bank, Perry was already wading
into the river, trousers rolled up beyond his knees and sleeves
past his elbows.

‘
How cold?’

‘
Very,’ Perry replied.

Brave boy.
‘Let’s
see…how many will it be today?’

Samuel
sat on the bank
and let his feet dangle a few inches above the flow. Perry crouched
below, his chin an inch or two above the rippling water. Samuel
loved moments like this: wind rustling in the trees, a woodpigeon
cooing from some branch above and his son, staring into the glassy
current, showing patience and skill. Perry smiled. Good
boy.

Slowly, Perry lifted the trout from the
water as gently as if it were made of crystal.

‘
Good lad,’ Samuel whispered. ‘P
op it in the bucket and get another while I deal with
this one.’

Deal
was a kind word.
He didn’t want Perry to see him killing the fish proper. As he got
to his feet, the fish squirmed and writhed, its tail flicking the
pit of the bucket. It was a beaut, on its own enough for two
dinners at least. He thanked the Lord for his son and this knack he
had.
Not even his old grandpa could
match-

‘
Pa?’

Samuel looked up from the
slithering fish.

‘
Hurry up.
I’ve got another.’

That eve they feasted on fish
stew, cooked up with onions, leeks and carrots all grown by his own
hand on the Hebblesworth estate. He tucked Perry in and lay on his
own bed across the room. Though he wasn’t sleepy yet, he liked to
lie in the warmth and thumb through pages of his tattered bible by
candlelight. He didn’t have his letters, but it felt good to hold
something holy while he assembled his prayers in his mind. He
prayed his wife was looking down on them favourably, keeping them
both safe and healthy.

Before sleep
finally came, he was dimly aware of movement in the bed opposite.
Perry wriggled and laughed through his dreams yelling out ‘hey
leave that, it’s
my
slate!’ and ‘Five and twelve is seventeen!’

Schooling or no, it was good to
see his boy learning some.

At the start of June, Samuel,
the two other gardeners, the maids, servants and kitchen staff were
told to assemble on the lawn in front of Hebblesworth House. It was
the wife, Lady Hebblesworth who addressed them, talking at length
about the stock exchange before Samuel realised what was happening.
The husband, he assumed, was cowering inside somewhere. Only one
maid and the cook were to be kept on.

He queued on the perfect lawn
with the rest, waiting for his envelope.

‘
Thanks.’ he
took it off Lady Hebblesworth, but didn’t mean his words. He felt
the sorrow in her eyes. She hated having to do this. It was wrong;
this wasn’t woman’s work. He almost felt sorry for her but however
bad their fortunes, they wouldn’t struggle to feed their son. He
walked away, tearing open the envelope. A week’s pay. Dread filled
his heart.

Hands trembling, he stalked
over to the flowerbed and yanked a digging fork up from the
soil.

‘
Don’t do
anything stupid,’ one of the gardeners said.

The spikes were blunted and
claggy with soil. All eyes were on him.

‘
What’s he
doing?’ murmured Lady Hebblesworth, her hand flush against her
chest.

What
was
he doing? He wasn’t
sure. He glanced up at the house. Was that a figure in one of the
windows? The husband? The spineless bastard who couldn’t meet the
wronged faces of his own mistakes?

‘
Sam?’ one of
the maids said, taking a step towards him.

He met the troubled faces but
found he had nothing to say. His son. That was what mattered.
Digging fork still in hand, he stormed away from the house, away
from the frightened people on the Hebblesworth lawn. Samuel
snatched up a weeding sack. At the vegetable patch, he stabbed the
fork down, half-imagining it was Mr Hebblesworth’s throat. When he
levered up the soil, there was no blood. Just a clutch of carrots.
He tossed the stolen vegetables in his weeding sack and moved the
fork along to the next lot.

Summer passed, but Samuel
couldn’t find regular work. He foraged for berries and wild
mushrooms, went fishing while Perry was at school - at least he’d
scraped enough together for the boy’s tuition.

One November’s eve, he sat with
Perry by the hearth, warming his feet by the fire. Samuel felt the
cold more now that he was thinner. Perry’s weight held up right
enough, always accepting the bigger portions: a father’s toll.
Gusts of wind buffeted the house, whipping the fire into a
mesmerising dance in the hearth.

‘
It’s amazing
ain’t it?’ Perry said.

The fire crackled and hissed.
‘A warm fire’s the heart of any home. Throw another log on will you
son?’

Perry slithered out from under
his blanket. Samuel rubbed his hands together and splayed them out
to the flames.

The front door creaked.
‘Pa?’

‘
Any of them
will do Perry, they’re all dry.’

‘
There’s some
people here.’

Samuel twisted round. Perry was
flanked either side by a policeman, one with a heavy black
moustache. In the soft light, their uniforms were dark midnight
blue, buttons glittered silver.

‘
Come to me
Perry,’ he turned to the policemen. ‘Don’t you fellows
knock?’

‘
We were about
to but then the boy opened the door.’

‘
Are you
Samuel Scrimshaw?’ cut in the other.

‘
Yes, what’s
this about?’

‘
Perhaps you
should send your boy to his room for a minute.’

A cold shiver ran through him,
he looked down at Perry, clutching onto his hip. ‘Go on son, to the
bedroom.’

Perry did as he was told.

The moustachioed policeman took
a step towards him, ‘I think you know what this is about.’

He did.

‘
Please,’ he
said, ‘it was only for my boy. Some blackberries, a few apples here
and there. We can barely scrape together enough to eat,
please.’

The policeman had a set of
wooden cuffs dangling in his right hand. Surely they weren’t here
to take him away? This was all wrong.

‘
Please…I-’

‘
-Apples did
you say? Wasn’t at Mr Sexton’s place past the Anchor
inn?’

‘
It was,’ he
admitted slowly, wondering why two policemen would be sent to
question a scrumper. Wasn’t there enough real crime going on? But
he knew he couldn’t say as much.

‘
They’ve an
orchard there, fruit just falling to waste and rotting on the
ground. Me and my boy have to eat - you wouldn’t put a man in
lockup for that, surely?’