The Clay Dreaming (17 page)

Sarah, shy and concentrated, was inclined to keep her head down. She walked around the outermost of the central bars, renewing acquaintance with its banks of red and blue catalogues, their several titles arranged under general headings –
Academies – Bible – England – Shakspere
(sic).

Handwritten slips, pasted-down, filled the pages of these bound volumes. Sarah soon found various entries under ‘Bruce’ or ‘Greenwich Pensioner’ that promised much. She followed a cross-reference leading to a garland, chasing it down in that forest of dark-green binding housing the
Music
catalogue. Satisfied,
she at last proceeded to the very centre of the room, where she filled out a
pre-
p
rinted
form for each item, before depositing them with one of the clerks at their raised desk.

‘A-5?’

‘E-3.’

The clerk looked up. ‘Fancied a change today, did you?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Sarah. ‘Thank you, Mr Baynes.’

The junior assistant retreated up the avenue behind the glass screens and disappeared through one of the two small doors at the north end of the Reading-room. These led to the old libraries of the Museum, quite closed to the public, where most of the request materials were stored.

With time to kill, Sarah turned her attention to the open presses that lined the Reading-room walls. Divided into sixteen distinct classes –
Law, Philosophy, Fine Arts
, and so on – these could be accessed by readers
ad libitum
, without the trouble of writing out requests. She concentrated her efforts on
Biography
, and then
Geography, Voyages, & Travels
, but without significant result. Having made reference to ordinary or standard works, she rambled freely for a bit. Often, one simply fell across the very thing, even when unsure what it might exactly be. No such luck this time.

There was little else she could do except wait.

The horizon always hangs too close. One after another, bloated shapes crawl over it – enormous monsters made of metal or wood, crushing stone giants bearing relentlessly down on him. Soot-caked, they are indistinguishable one from the next.

King Cole’s frustration mounts. The city, vast and timeless, is unremitting, beyond reason. It has no end and no beginning. Unless he forever remains atop One Tree Hill, he fears he will never again see more than a few hundred paces ahead.

Without the Guardian tripping along beside in her formidable female armour, he is no longer obliged to moderate his pace. Cole strides out.

About 45 minutes following her submission, the first of the requested materials was delivered to Sarah’s desk.

‘Thank you, Mr Tate,’ she said. Sarah made a point of remembering everyone’s names, and using them; the favour was not often returned.

She turned the small octavo booklet over in her hand. A disappointingly familiar object, it was a compilation of religious tracts. The paper quality was poor – coarse, chipped with flecks of wood pulp, and frail to the touch. The original publications, taken individually, would have been short pamphlets: cheaply printed, mass-distributed, designed to be given out on the street – an
antidote to the proliferation of penny-bloods. Copies might be left atop inn tables to instruct travellers strayed from the path, or to catch dissolute drinkers in an impressionable frame, and remind them of the error of their ways. For ‘wide
is
the gate, and broad the way, which leadeth unto destruction’, and ‘strait
is
the gate, and narrow
is
the way, which leadeth unto life’ (
Matthew
7: 12–15).

This looked to be a set of twelve chapbooks written by Robert Hawker, the famous pulpit orator, and grandfather to Robert Stephen Hawker, the poetvicar of Morwenstow popularly known as ‘the Sailor’s Friend’. The publication date given was 1806. In intervening years, the method and means of wayside proselytising had changed very little.

As she flicked back and forth through its pages, a portion of the book’s brittle back broke away. Sarah felt frustrated. This was not the book she sought, merely a general commentary of some sort, unconnected to George Bruce. Still, she located the frontispiece to the second entry, and began to read.

The title page featured a simple engraving, such as one might find in a children’s storybook, of a sailor-Pensioner, resplendent in tricorne hat and greatcoat. A singular fellow – one-armed, one-legged, one-eyed – he tottered unsteadily, walking stick clutched in his remaining hand. Sketchily indicated behind, evoking Greenwich Hospital, were the twin domes Sarah had admired the day before.

The document might have some bearing after all. She read on.

Prefatory remarks sang the praises of both the Royal Navy and its ‘noble Institution’, sentiments that conjured the charmless face of the clerk, Dilkes Loveless. Reading through, she could almost hear them expressed in that whining voice of his.

Then, before her eyes, the address transformed into something else, an accusation of drunkenness against the ‘Greenwich Pensioner’ of the title: ‘the prosecution of a path so evil’ that the author ventured to present an extract from
The Sailor Pilgrim
, a small work, lately fallen in his way, on the subject of intemperance. But of course, Robert Hawker was not about to address the worthy Pensioners other than to berate them for their sins. She had seen and heard more than enough sermons on the evils of the demon drink in her time, and from far less estimable sources. Sarah lent the remainder but a cursory glance.

She thought it a shame King Cole could not see for himself the engraving of the wobble-legged Pensioner – his instability, as she now understood it,
attributable to more than the sum of his missing parts. Whilst rambling the colonnades, the Aborigine had described just such a person, mimicked him even, right down to the antiquated mode of dress; a level of detail he couldn’t possibly have witnessed first-hand.

As to the character of their mystery man George Bruce, she entertained no ideas. He might well have been the kind of drunken sailor who could fall intemperate, and in Robert Hawker’s way. This particular ‘Greenwich Pensioner’, however, probably held little significance for her Aboriginal friend.

In case her father should ever wish her to compile another sermon on the subject of intemperance, one of his very favourite hobbyhorses, it would, however, be wise for her to summarise the text. Sarah slid one of the supplied blotters under a crisp new sheet of paper and took up her steel pen. Scribbling notes with skilful speed, she had made significant inroads on
The Sailor Pilgrim
itself by the time another of her request items arrived.

It was a small, pocket-sized volume, another collation of popular printed circulars dated
circa
1800, the pages very grey and semi-transparent –
A Garland of New Songs
. Beneath the list of contents, and registered very poorly, was another jolly little engraving, this time of a galleon tossed on the high seas.

The very last entry accredited a song called ‘The Greenwich Pensioner’.

These must be the lyrics as written by Charles Dibdin. Recalling how King Cole had been drawn to that strange and empty room within the Hospital, containing his bust, Sarah felt moved to transcribe them.

Sarah could only guess at how faithfully this bittersweet song represented the sort of men who put to sea to serve their country, adventurers who saw so many wonders, yet suffered so much.

Another attendant interrupted her labours.

‘Th-thank you, Mr…’

Too late – whoever it was had already stolen away.

She held in her palm an unremarkable bound volume, blandly designated
Tracts
. Sarah nevertheless became faintly light-headed. Promptly she forgot every other item pending on her desk.

The catalogue entry had included the right name, but other details had made it seem an unlikely match for the text she hoped for. The publication date of 1810 fell too early by a decade: George Bruce had been admitted to the Hospital in 1817, and died there in 1819. The total document was only sixteen pages long; too little for a
Life
, surely. And the mention of New Zealand had thrown her.

‘
Born: Shadwell
’, Bruce’s Hospital records had stated. Ratcliff-highway was in Shadwell.

Could it be?

She leafed through the yellowed pages urgently.

Sarah began to read. 

Keen though she was, her responsibility towards King Cole took precedence: she would rather not face him again empty-handed. She returned to the beginning, transcribing the
Memoirs
even as she read through them. So much time had already gone by: Sarah soon realised she would not be able to complete it all before the close of day. The library stayed open until 6pm, but her personal deadline loomed closer. She could not very well leave her father unattended, not two entire days in a row. At the very least his suspicions might be aroused, that Mary, the servant girl, was no longer with them.

‘REQUESTS FOR MATERIAL TO BE DELIVERED TODAY,’ announced a booming voice, ‘MUST BE MADE IN THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES.’

The appointed hour came and went. Sarah’s furrowed brow broke out in a light dew of perspiration. She had got as far page eight – exactly halfway. Flicking ahead very quickly, she noted some ominous-looking verse in bold type. No time, no time.

With a last stab of the pen she completed her closing sentence, and at the risk of smudging the latest page of notes began immediately to pack away her papers. She carried the various books to the central dais.

‘Do you wish for any of these books to be reserved,’ enquired the clerk, ‘or are you returning them?’

‘Yes,’ said Sarah. ‘Oh, except for that one!’

Sarah pointed to the
Tracts
. The book containing the
Memoirs
she very much intended to recover the next morning.

The clerk held the book aside from the others, as she had done. ‘This one?’ he said.

She saw that he held up the right book.

‘Mmm, yes,’ she said.

So scattered were her thoughts that Sarah entirely forgot to thank the attendant. They parted in a flurry of nods and smiles, semi-automatic on her part.

What a day for false starts! Still, she had transcribed a fair amount from the varying materials, and believed herself to have gathered something useful. A pearl of wisdom for her very own sundial: ‘It is the search that teaches, not the finding.’

Even if this curious memoir was not George Bruce’s purported
Life
, it seemed more than likely that she had found their man.

Home again, and with no sign of Cole, Sarah checked in on Lambert. His interest only extended to an enquiry about dinner. Dinner was duly prepared and served.

As evening fell she lit the lamps, and changed clothes. The paved backyard housed an outside toilet for the use of Dr Epps’ patients, a rainwater barrel, and a coal-bunker. Loading the scuttle, Sarah struggled up the stairs with it, and into their various rooms. After filling the fireplace in the front room she heaved the cast-iron grate back into place, readjusted the hearthrug, and gave the white marble surround and the floor-level fender a quick polish. She did the same in Lambert’s room, and thankfully he offered no direction.

She wiped down the tilework in the halls, stairways and kitchen, but decided to leave the cleaning of the rooms until before breakfast. Too much activity at once would only draw attention to the fact that she discharged all domestic duties herself.