The Clay Dreaming (31 page)

Hearing itself addressed, the creature arched its neck backward and produced a volley of sounds, exactly like the popping of a multitude of corks. ‘
Go on wit’ yaself! What’s the time? What’s the time? Find yer frying pan!
’ The bird studied the policeman for a moment, then began to bob up and down excitedly, executing a rapid series of glottal clicks. It sounded exactly like a large clock being wound. ‘
Now we’re busy!
’

‘“Frying pan”?’ queried Sarah.

Tubridy pulled his beer-pot aside. His mustaches wet with froth, he looked a mad dog indeed.

‘Those vaaast silver watches the tars do wear,’ he said. ‘Sure ’n’ you’ve seen ’em? Jolly Jack cannot pass a church tower without checkin’ yon vane and givin’ his pan a wind! Them’s the two things thought worth knowing by every mariner worth his salt…which way the wind blows, and the roit toime!’

Sarah squinted through the thick haze of smoke at sailor-folk collapsed around the pub. Every one of them seemed to be pulling on a short pipe, regardless of whether it was lit, or they were themselves awake.

The sergeant, however, was on the move.

They threaded their way through to a corner table. All of the street folk appeared to be on the best of terms with Sergeant Tubridy. More than one insisted he join them for a drink, but he politely declined. In deference to the sergeant, little notice was taken of Sarah.

Resettled, she returned to examination of the seafaring gentlemen that surrounded them. The nearest sprawled but three feet away, lids at half-mast, and both hands thrust deep into his pockets. She recalled a favourite saying her mother would often repeat, on those days when they scanned cloudy skies in hopes of brighter weather: ‘just enough blue to patch a sailor’s trousers’. Legs outstretched and pockets distended, this sailor presented canvas aplenty. His shirt was open at the neck, and she could almost count the black hairs swarming thick across his chest.

Another man leaned forward and spat on the floor, before replacing his pipe. He affected all the airs of a crude philosopher. Around his table, a loud discussion raged in several languages all at once; each man seemed to wear a different national dress, lending the everyday scene a carnival aspect.

‘You hear the babel, don’t you,’ remarked Tubridy. ‘Up and down the Highway they go a-strolling, the sailors of every cuntery under hiven. The Greyks, Norway-gens, the Eye-talians and Purtu-geese. Vikin’ Danes and Uncle Toms, Spaniards and Chinees. Men who warship a thousand gods, and men who know of none. Sailors, yes, of all kinds…and wimmen but of one.’

He leant heavily across the table, his voice falling to a dark croak.

‘The Marys,’ he pronounced.

As in Mary Magdalene?

His eyes roamed the tavern. Hesitant at first, she followed suit. There was no shortage of women present. Of undeniably low character, they intermingled shamelessly with the men. The alcohol, presumably, inclined them to fatness.

‘The social evil, as ’tis rightly known,’ said Tubridy. ‘Shall I tell you, miss, how to spot a whore?’ His blood was up and the beer was downed: he spoke indiscreetly.

Sarah flushed and stared at the table-top, but said nothing. She was keen to know.

‘White dresses, and white shoes, that’s what they likes to wear,’ said Tubridy. ‘Not that they’re apt to keep clean for very long.’

Sarah saw evidence of a grubby sort of muslin, cheap blue silk, but nothing recognisably white. It could be as he said.

‘Their cheeks, they redden with a little rouge, to give ’em life.’ The burly policeman daintily patted his face.

Sarah conjured a mental image of the termagants shrieking from their cab, the hoops of their large skirts – an imitation of high fashion – splayed. As the carriage flew away, she had noticed one whose chignon had fallen loose, hair trailing like a streamer. What was that he had said about her bonnet?

‘And always, near always, they walk twirling a small ha’penny cane in thir mitts. ’Tis a sly form of “advertisemint”.’

Tubridy thwacked his beer-pot down on the table, sending up a whale-spout of ale.

‘Red rag to a bull, it is!’ he said. ‘Spy a lady in the street without her bonnet, and sure you are to see her pocket-hankerchiff worn across her back. Their heads they keep bare, and instead drape it thus around the shoulder. Silk, those as what c’n afford it. Cotton will do the rest.’

Silken handkerchiefs: for the theft of a few such items, the boy Joseph Druce had been imprisoned and sent halfway around the world.

‘Unfortunates, so some folks do call ’em,’ Tubridy was saying, ‘to earn thir fortune in such a way. Hellcats, says I. Beggin’ yer puddin’, ma’am.’ Clutching his beer close to his chest, he leant in a little. ‘They serve men’s baser passions. Men, mark you, of every colour betwixt black and white.’ His free hand swung in a wide arc. ‘A whole world a races an’ religions gathers here, for express purposes of profligacy and sin. That, or else I can’t tell their pastime. An’ each man idle worships in his own way.’

He had begun to talk in a circle.

The desperate clutch of churches strung along the Highway was perhaps a necessary evil, to cater to men’s various needs, their spiritual comfort, in as many
familiar and traditional forms as possible. Necessary evil – Sarah shuddered at the compact.

Tubridy, however, had in mind another sort of ministry altogether. He swung back.

‘Oh, when his vessel is landed in the docks, and Jolly Jack Tar is a-port, the Highway’s his
peed-a-terre
, his “tempawrary residawnce”.’

He screwed up his mouth and dangled his beer-pot daintily, as if it were a tea-cup.

‘The goodly folk of Ratcliff, they do live on Jack, as fleas on a dog,’ he said. ‘Twice as numerous. He arrives pockets full, an’ they’re jest as soon emptied, long before he must leave. He gets hisself into awful debt, poor Jack!’

‘
Poor Jack!
’ A high-pitched echo filtered down from the rafters.

‘Jack may even pick up with his Jill,’ Tubridy drawled. ‘Some doxy to whom he will give in trust all the money he has earned from his latest voyage. They live with the wimmen until th’ money is gone, an’ consider themselves married,
pro tem
. He thinks himself in his element, does Jack, but his thinking’s all at sea…

The sergeant exhibited a fine bass voice, soon joined by others. Applause followed, and laughter. Pausing only to draw another cork, from back above the bar Cutlass launched into more of his rowdy repertoire – swearing and laughing, then screaming and swearing some more. Sarah spotted his green crest weaving deliriously side to side.

Tubridy searched the bottom of his beer-pot in hopes of finding a dreg. Sarah had hardly touched her own drink, and, seeing Tubridy smacking his lips, rather feared he was about to order another. The ginger beer and the
pipe-smoke
were burning in her throat.

‘Mercer-street, sergeant,’ she insisted. ‘I must find Mercer-street!’

‘Mercer-street?’ He looked a little surprised. ‘You are there!’

If, for the sake of argument, they were said to have entered the Albion by its front door, then they left by that door at its side. It opened directly onto
Mercer
-
street
, formerly Mercer’s-row, and Joseph Druce’s birthplace. Unsure what she expected to find there, Sarah felt obliged to visit.

The road, wider than many she had seen that day, ran north to south, perpendicular to the Highway. To the east was a shipwright’s yard, and another, belonging to a builder. Attractive to the eye, a little way north, stood a tall building with a grand frontage: the commanding façade resembled somewhat that of St Martin-in-the-Fields.

‘What is there?’ asked Sarah.

Tubridy’s attention had wandered. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Oh. British and Foreign Sailor’s…something something.’ He stroked his beard, throwing longing looks back into the Albion. ‘It isn’t good,’ he said, ‘f’r you t’ stay out here alone.’

‘But I’m not,’ replied Sarah. ‘Am I?’

She knew well enough by now the root of his concern. Respectable women didn’t venture out unaccompanied, unless married, and, married or not, never after dark. She had seen him, unsure of her status, checking for rings.

She wore gloves.

Her eyebrow arched.

‘I think I’ll take a closer look,’ she said.

Tubridy waggled his little finger. ‘Oi must needs perform…a wee investigation of me own,’ he said.

He disappeared inside the pub. Instantly his head popped back through the doorway.

‘Oi’ll keep me ears open,’ he said.

Sarah headed for the tall building. A high tower raised above its centre looked to be a minaret or belvedere, with a balcony rail for a lookout. Atop a row of four columns, beneath the carving of the large, central pediment, she read a bold inscription, ‘BRITISH & FOREIGN SAILORS’ INSTITUTE’, dated 1856.

One of the lower window-panes was broken – starglazed, perhaps, by a thief.

Long before he fell by the wayside, Joseph Druce was born on or near to this very spot. It seemed somehow appropriate, that a means of salvation might present itself precisely here. Had his health been improved, then his spirit might also have been: and, had he survived, he might yet have returned to end his days – happily – where they began.

The street fell curiously quiet. As sunlight stole across the front of the Institute, before her eyes the Portland Stone began to glow. She turned, shielding her gaze, to stare up at the sky.

Just enough blue to patch a sailor’s trousers
.

If she concentrated just a little, she could still hear her mother’s voice. She blinked, temporarily blinded by tears – from staring at the sun, or too much pipe-smoke.

Sarah started back towards the Albion. Tubridy was waving her over from where he stood outside. She felt cheered to see him again.

‘You have suffered another bite,’ she observed.

Abashed, he wiped the foam from about his moustaches. ‘No, ma’am, oi’m all right, oi’m all right.’ Helmet tilted back on his head, he showed empty hands.

The barman from before stood by his side. He seemed to glare across the road in the direction from which she had come. ‘’Tis a noble institution,’ he sneered, viciously insincere, ‘most deserving of our cordial support.’

Tubridy furnished an introduction. ‘James Clewley, ma’am,’ he said. ‘He is boss o’ this grog-palace.’

The gust of raucous laughter that blew through the doors between them declined into shouts and curses.

‘Don’t get me wrong, lady,’ the landlord grunted. ‘Gawd bless the Sailors’ Home…but I would not choose it for a nay-boor.’

‘Surely, Mr Clewley,’ said Sarah, ‘you cannot begrudge what is a charitable society.’

‘Charity?
Wisht
!’

Tubridy’s eyes boggled. ‘Don’t let Jack hear you speak of it like that!’ he said. ‘He’s aw’fy high-spirited…an independent so’t.’ He wafted his sausage fingers back and forth in the air.

‘I can,’ replied Clewley, ‘and I do. Between the railways an’ Do-Good Societies there’ll soon be no livin’ off the Highway. It’s no good for business when a sailor buttons up his pockets, I tell yer, or makes a dart f’r the railway an’ never says nuffink to uz.’

The view through the open door to the saloon bar belied the landlord’s gloomy comments: the pub appeared more full than ever. To the accompaniment of screeching fiddles, bodies flung their selves about in reckless abandon, boots beating out a tattoo across the boards. Dancing, and singing: drunken sailors, and women who knew very well what they should do with them.

Affable strangers would keep offering the sergeant drinks, and once or twice a disreputable-looking female creature approached to demand that he join in the dance.

‘Oi’m all right,’ he repeated. So used to the assertion, Tubridy sometimes volunteered it apropos of nothing and no one. ‘Oi’m all right.’

The sky was growing darker. More drunken sailors went racing down the street on hired donkeys. They spat out a harsh vocabulary that, once communicated, one would be hard-pressed to forget; Sarah thought it a mercy that she could not better comprehend their speech.

Tubridy suddenly lurched forward.

‘Check y’r frying pan, missy,’ he said. ‘Time to go!’

Catching hold of her arm with a surprising tenderness, he directed her bodily up the street. ‘Oi’ll be seein’ you to the station,’ he said.

Sarah protested – she did not know the way by rail – yet he would brook no argument.

‘’Tis but a short step to th’ north, ’n’ time you went,’ he stressed. ‘High time! 
Upps
, pardin! Evenin’ will soon be fallin’ an’ events is rapidly declinin’!’

He kicked at a large stone. A crude painting, marked ‘Douro’, lifted from the pavement at their feet. A disaster-beggar scrabbled to gather in his canvas, as Tubridy bellowed after him. ‘AHTAVIT!’

At the top end of Mercer they turned left into Cable-street, and then very soon after swung a right. Up ahead was a raised viaduct, signal box just in view within the gap between houses. The air smelled of oysters and slow-baking potatoes. Shops were shutting, ready to be turned into ‘gaffs’ for the night, makeshift dance-halls and theatres, admission one penny. Provocative posters were being arranged outside to draw the punters in: lurid portraits of their star performers, caught ‘in the act’, and flash-card announcements scrawled in colour combinations gaudy enough to induce a headache.

‘Astounding!’ they screamed. ‘Startling!! Don’t miss it!!!’

But miss it Sarah would. Tubridy was walking almost too fast for her to keep up. ‘Monday,’ he said. ‘Th’ll be as many as six performances at each gaff, and every one bringin’ 200 gawkers. Y’ll want to be home before ony o’that, and so will oi. They know my face well f’r partic’lar reason.’

The whites of Tubridy’s eyes showed dreadful proof of his sincerity. Sarah knew those staring looks: Brippoki’s face lately wore that same expression. He was scared.