The Clay Dreaming (27 page)

‘Oddly enough, Dargane shares a joke with Bruce over precisely this: his ability to be in two different places at the same time.’

Brippoki looked guarded. His face, drawn, seemed a shade paler than before. He had definitely lost a touch of his former pristine colour.

Whilst enjoying his grisly supper, and whenever she looked to him as they read, he had seemed much at ease in her company. It was only when she caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye – when he was not concentrating, not overly conscious that she observed him – that Sarah sensed collapse in his posture.

He looked so very far away, lost among his private thoughts.

However hard she worked, she really was no wiser than when they had first met.

‘If you don’t mind,’ Sarah said, ‘I think that’s where we’ll leave the reading for tonight. It has been rather a long day…as I’m sure it has been for you, too.’

He should have been at the cricket match, in Richmond.

‘Tomorrow,’ she continued, ‘I shan’t be able to read to you. The Readingroom is not open on Sundays. And anyway, I should spend the day with…with my father.’

Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
.

‘He is not well,’ she said.

Brippoki stood, and bowed. Sarah stood also.

‘Are you…I can get you something,’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps a drink. You can stay a while longer, if you like.’

He shook his head and made for the open window. The night was mild and the curtains hung slack.

‘We can reconvene on Monday, in the evening,’ she told him. ‘There is some way I can contact you, in the meantime?’

‘I will come,’ he said.

‘I can’t fetch you anything? You’re sure?’

Sarah had intended passing him a few coins: the man was reduced to eating cats! But he was already gone. He had got all that he wanted, which was for her to continue with Bruce’s story. She returned to the table and gathered up the various texts.

Dargane had very obviously feared that Bruce might strike, or even possibly kill his accuser. It seemed all the more remarkable that Bruce, while protesting of his innocence, should freely admit the same; a lively bit of drama, relived in the moment, and, Sarah felt, played successfully to much the same end.

As in the library, when first reading these innocuous-seeming phrases, she was struck by a vivid mental image – that of the escaped convict beating the boy; not praying, but cursing God the while. Why continue to doubt the truth behind what she read?

Sarah began to suspect herself of base prurience.

Bruce sounded beatific, resigned to his fate or his fortune. She wondered how he must have looked – probably wild, his flesh torn, and horribly burnt by the Australian sun.

Sarah closed the window, and climbed the stair. She would clean up the supper plates in the morning, making sure to dispose of those bare bones Brippoki had left behind.

Feeling a little queasy, she stopped on the middle landing, next to the door to Lambert’s room. She couldn’t hear anything.

She opened the door a crack. It was too dark to see within.

‘Father?’

She barely breathed the word. Opening the door wider, she peered towards the bed. It was so very dark.

‘Father?’

Her throat caught. Sarah saw the shape of him, sat up in the bed. She caught the glint of his eye, and heard a faint sound.

‘…Lambert?’

A chill finger ran the length of her spine.

Lambert Larkin was sound asleep. The rattling in the darkness was his lungs as they laboured. 

All is without form. Then comes red brick and hard paving, the sting of grit on flesh, in eye. The street swirls into focus for a few rapid heartbeats, before layers of burning gauze again strip it away.

Brippoki jogs through billowing swells of vapour: the white mist at the base of a storm-fed cataract, turned acrid and choking. It leaks from every open window, through hot grilles underfoot. He glimpses the bodies of men, below the level of the ground, stripped naked against fearsome heat. They stir at great vats of boiling red liquid, a stew of raw sugar, blood, and charcoal. The smell is astonishing, and soaks into everything. Brippoki beats at his sleeves and chest as he progresses from one cloud to the next.

All turns white, then again red. The earth shakes, and the air fills with hammering and screams from a sky plunged into sudden darkness. He feels his clogged lungs about to burst.

Sweet sticky steam – the same taint he suffers to linger since that first night, deep in the Well of Shadows – threatens to swallow him whole. He is not Dreaming. Here is death, physical death.

Turning aside from the main street, Brippoki runs through a small square. He takes this brief opportunity to breathe, only to be faced with more of the same. Unwilling to backtrack, he has no other choice but to plunge headlong, deeper into the miasma.

For all of the reasons the manuscript brought back to mind, Sarah Larkin no longer went to church, not even – most especially not – on a Sunday.

Throughout her childhood she had been forced to attend twice daily on the Sabbath, in addition to at least two visits during the week. Her own father
was ever the main speaker, and Lambert would speak at the pulpit in the same way he did at home – stern, didactic, above all disapproving, inspiring more of fear than devotion. His business often seemed less about heaven and happiness than the threat of banishment from the same. Petitioners and practitioners of other religions, notably the multiplying sects within the Anglican faith, were his particular targets.

Above all reproach when it came to his own moral conduct, he had never to her knowledge touched a drop of alcohol. And he never, ever went out at night. Between the hours of eight and nine o'clock in the evening the curtains would be drawn and the holy candle lit for family worship; she was taught early to kneel separately, in private prayer. A Bible reading, then a half-hour's discussion concerning the text, and she would be put to bed.

On rare occasions, at least while Sarah's mother was still alive – Lambert being somewhat highly regarded within his own professional circle – they would receive other ministers as their dinner guests. Conversation after the meal invariably turned to examination of doctrine and a re-establishment of principles. At needlework and such in the same room, Sarah and Frances were allowed to attend, but only on the understanding that they were strictly forbidden to speak, unless spoken to.

And as for the ‘blessed elect' themselves, her father was a rare bird among them. Although ministers of God who lived by His Word, many obeyed nary a syllable of it. They held no qualification, to pass judgement on the behaviour of others. Prideful thought though it might be, Sarah recognised in herself, by true nature – in her spirit or soul – what they were only by profession.

Her upbringing, then, had made her perfectly faithful, a cynic and a sceptic resistant to any and all indoctrination. She knew her own mind, and in her own mind she trusted. The dutiful daughter, compliant and obedient, was no sheep to follow blindly in her father's footsteps, without question.

Thus far, at least, Sarah hoped that Lambert could be proud of her.

Brippoki gulps air, careful not to take in too deep a draught of an atmosphere still noxious and repellent. He filters each small mouthful, before swallowing it down. Unsure how far, or for how long, he has sprinted and shouted, he has at last outrun the awful corruption. It clings fast to his hair, and to what remains of his garments.

Come to rest a little way west of the London Hospital, he sits at the foot of a curious-looking hillock. Whitechapel Mount is a dust-heap, a truly enormous accumulation of every sort of household refuse. Hogs snuffle and root at the base. Children delight on its artificial slopes. They run up and slide down, joyously rolling in the muck below. Elsewhere about the sides, solemn and solitary, clamber the adults. Each carries a sack, collecting from the discarded
materials that form the mound: horse-dung, cinders, and scraps of cloth. Scavengers, they never raise their eyes from the ground.

Brippoki runs at the heap and in short order gains the summit. From the top he can see, further north, the mesh of railway lines, and enormous factory chimneys smoking. Turning, he faces the imposing hospital building and its grounds. Everywhere else, as far as the eye can see, street after street after street, are the endless piles of brick, carelessly and randomly deposited.

The sky hangs low. Buffeted by the strong winds, Brippoki begins his descent. Near to the mid-point his way is barred. The dirt itself stirs and rears in front of him. A grubbing toiler, rags greased with marrowfat, caked in dust and birdlime, totes its bag of slime. Brippoki recoils. A claw-like hand extends to lift a long, dirt-yellow shaft. Bone-pointer! In a blind panic he swerves. Losing his footing, he tumbles head over heels the rest of the way down.

Landing in a thrash of limbs at the bottom, Brippoki leaps to his feet and immediately runs. Hitting a busy street, one of the widest he has seen, he flings himself across both lines of roaring traffic.

He runs a good thousand yards before daring to even think of slowing down, and never once looks back.

Little distinguishes a Sunday morning in London. Fewer omnibuses operate and there are no ‘cabs', so the roads are quieter, yet by no means quiet. The pavements remain as crowded as ever. Bodies spill over into the street at less risk of being run over, that is all.

The markets from the previous night continue, and Brippoki loses himself, gladly, in the crowd.

‘Awright, guvnor?' A Whitechapel man tips his hat and gives a wiggle of his moustaches. Whether he is polite or poking fun, Brippoki has no way of knowing. Unaccustomed to the least acknowledgement of his presence, he merely smiles and walks on. Compared to the intricate web of taboo that governs the British Islanders and their drawing room rituals – which Hayman and Lawrence have thoroughly schooled them in – there appears to be no etiquette for the street.

Along Brick-lane, the crush of bodies becomes intense. For minutes on end no one is able to move in any direction, neither forward, nor back. A whiskery man on his right-hand side, thin and shabby, reeks of alcohol, others of mildew, old sweat, and indigestive breath. Brippoki tries ducking forward, to no avail.

As they draw level with Thrawl-street the bottleneck begins to ease. From the back, a gang of young boys squeezes through the crowd, the smallest of them seeming to wriggle out from beneath Brippoki's arm. His upturned face whines for spare change.

‘Gerahtavit!'
shouts a stern voice.

Another grinds out a warning. ‘'Ang onter yer purses, ladeez and gents!'

The beggar boy, whip-smart, sinks from view. He pops up again a few yards further forward, rags fluttering. Minutes later, at the kerb, Brippoki sees him again. He stands proud among his peers, childish chest puffed out. An older youth taps his shoulder and again he sidles into the crowd. Brippoki follows the sightline of those remaining. They observe the opposite side of the street, where an old gin runs a fruit stall, a red-spotted handkerchief tied around her scrawny neck. A hand shoots out from the crowd, grabbing at her apples. The gang shout, betraying their agent. The stallholder turns, and, with a speed surprising for her age, lashes out with both her stick and her tongue. The small boy repays her foulest curse twofold and, unashamed, pitches a rosy pippin directly at her temple. The old woman falls, more from shock than from the force of the blow.

The crowd churns, and, though many hands grasp for the thief, none is able to catch him before he slides away. Sympathetic supporters gather up the victim of the assault. Grey hair in disarray, her dark eyes curdle to mud.

‘I'm an old woman!' she shouts, indignant. She wipes at the dirt on her cheeks as if to dry an imagined tear, and wails pitiably

‘Where's old Bandy Shanks?' someone demands to know.

‘Niver around when yer needs 'im,' comes the reply.

Brippoki has to admire the gang's cunning ploy. In all the excitement, no one misses the red-spotted handkerchief.

A teenaged coster, seeking to escort his gal in some semblance of fine style, delivers a sudden sharp dig to his ribs. A moment later the lad happens to shove the wrong person. With a butcher's shop smack of flesh on flesh, he is sent rolling into the gutter. He rises up swinging. Evil on their minds and in their hearts, the ugly mob gathers around. Broken-veined and wild-eyed, they howl for blood. Brippoki knows the signs of drunkenness all too well.

A stocky middle-aged man in a dark blue uniform intervenes. Finger stabbing, he cautions the complainants. Brippoki especially marks his pointed headgear. The majority he meets on the streets resemble to some extent those spirits that populate his Dreaming, but not this one.

Seeing there is to be no bloodshed, an old man next to him turns away. ‘Jest in time to prewent it,' he scowls, ‘the warmint.'

Grumbling and sour, the crowds move on. Brippoki no longer struggles, but goes with the flow. An accumulating lethargy has crept into his bones. Something deep inside him gives up.

The wailing ting-ting of a thin bell wheedles and cajoles from a small gospel hall, hidden down a nearby side street. In the opposite direction, and then from a few blocks north, the summons is reinforced. The hour of eleven has arrived, and with it the chorus of church bells begins in earnest. Brippoki winces with each successive crack and clang.

‘Move along,' orders the policeman. ‘Move along now.'

Two dark-blue-suited colleagues wearing bright white gloves join him, to shoo the market away. The shopping crowds are swiftly dispersed. The traders wheel away their barrows, and retire to count their blessings. Within minutes the streets are emptied. Only Brippoki remains, rotting fruit at his feet, a scrap of waste paper, caught in the breeze, jerking before him like a fish on a line.

A new group slopes out of a side doorway. Young men, they wear their caps so far forward on their heads that their eyes are no longer visible. Eager yet wary, they creep about on the dead lurk, sizing up which of the surrounding shops or houses might be emptied during church services.

Brippoki wanders onto a patch of open ground, stretches himself out on the threadbare grass, and leaves them to it.

Eyes closed, he tries his best to envisage George Bruce. An English seaman, his weather-beaten face is the same colour as the brick. His actual features are a haze, impossible to resolve, soon dissipating, lost to the city.

Brippoki sits up. A bank of cloud has stolen away the sun, and in the chilly gloom he realises he is no longer alone.

The disused graveyard is bounded by the long side wall of a public house, and also the back end of a ramshackle terrace. A gravel path stretches down the centre. In amongst threadbare trees scattered either side drift maudlin figures. Anonymous bundles of rag, they eventually come to rest against the marginal walls, faces turned, obscured in shadow. In fear of the bone-pointer smuggled among them, Brippoki stays rooted to the spot.

From the west, out from beneath the terrible spire of Christ Church, a general hubbub arises. The congregation, outpouring, begins to filter onto the gravel path. As they draw near, the scrap piles animate. They drag themselves closer to where the worshippers file past, pious and hopefully charitable.

Looking at the folk coming out from the church, it is obvious that few are any the better off, yet many drop a penny where they can. One beggar, a blind man, has trained his dog to grip the begging bowl. The novelty secures extra success.

Gathered not far from where Brippoki stands, the same four thieves seen previously sing a saintly psalm; feet and heads now bared, a couple hold their jackets apart to assure that they possess no underclothing. The passing crowd loudly dismisses them; in comparatively rude health, they are branded ‘shallow coves'. Black looks aplenty are thrown in their direction, but no coin.

Once the last among the stragglers have quit the scene, the barefoot young men stride over to Brippoki, shoving him to the ground by way of an introduction.

‘Dog on it!' says the bravest. ‘Yew ain't no anvilhead nor Abr'am-man, any more'n we are!' 

‘There's nowt for you here, Tom,' snarls another. ‘Beat it!'

One of the group slyly coming up behind, Brippoki is struck a sharp blow on the back of the neck. They close in around his prone form, teeth bared, balling their fists.

‘Yer in the 'Ditch nah, mate, entcha,' one snaps. ‘In it up t'yer neck!'

‘This is
our
patch!' The last one to speak delivers a swift kick to Brippoki's belly, for emphasis. ‘
Right
queered our pitch today, you did!' he says. ‘Filthy cunt!'

Before Brippoki can catch his breath or reach for the
waddy
tucked in his belt, they bear down as one to redouble their assault, punching and stamping him into submission. His feeble moans and outstretched hand only spur them to greater ferocity. With every impact, bright starbursts of light fill his vision, until there is only blackness.

When he comes to, the first thing Brippoki registers is surprise that he still lives. He dares not open his eyes, but waits for the pulsating cycle of colours to slow. His conscious mind explores his various aches and pains. Checking bodily extremities, he assesses the damage. His breathing is fine, if a little ragged. He has probably suffered bad bruising, but nothing seems broken – at the most, perhaps, a cracked rib. Lucky.