The Devil's Mask (7 page)

Noises filter in from the outside world, and the repetition of these noises creates patterns, and familiarity, and the creeping threat that this place will start to make sense. The same thing happened on the ship. Human resourcefulness and adaptability are a curse: despite everything, they will normalise hell.

So, the fact that there is a bucket with water here, and one for them to fill, because it is an improvement on the filth-flooded hold, becomes a privilege. The same is true of the straw. The cows at home sleep on a softer bed, but it is better than the dark planks she had grown used to during the first voyage, and when the man comes to spread a fresh sheaf on the ground she has to fight a sickening gratitude. Yesterday, after he had kicked clean straw around the cellar, he took a key from his pocket and unchained Idowu and took her away. There were no tears left in the sick girl, but Abeni and Oni held each other and sobbed for her, which changed nothing.

Oni thinks about the insult of this clean straw and gathers an armful and pushes it away as far as she can, and then she clears all the straw from within the circumference of her chain, exposing a half circle of bare dirt. You can taste the damp in it, the mould. She starts digging with her fingers. She's not trying to escape, she's digging because the futility of it is an antidote to the fake normality.

She has no way of protecting herself when she's asleep. There's 
no such thing as a good dream. She can sleep through the happiest memories – a kingfisher arrowing into the mirrored lake-surface beside her father's canoe; the pink instep of her brother's foot held warm against her lips – and still wake up screaming. In some ways nightmares are easier. The rat gnawing at the base of her skull, the gag and rope and weight of him forcing her apart.

She's still scraping at the floor. They took Idowu away. She cannot allow herself to imagine where, or what has happened to the sick girl since. There are pebbles in the dirt which she digs free, and then further into the hole her fingers close over a knot that won't budge. She picks at the soil around it, uncovering a length of tree-root as thick as her wrist. That this root feeds a living tree is momentarily comforting. But though its roots share Oni's cell, the tree's leaves must reach up into the light. She pushes the earth back into the hole and drags a clump of straw across it with her heel.

Suddenly, there's the birdsong again, whose faint melodies are as terrifying as the smile of a snake.

The light was fading in Queen Square. Shadows cast by the plane trees stretched in long diagonals, streaks of tar thrown across a dirt floor. I paused outside Lilly's house. I brushed myself down and attempted to rearrange the flowers. A bouquet had seemed the right thing when I bought it from the flower-girl outside the Exchange at lunchtime, but the thing had a limp, doomed air about it now. I was looking forward to seeing Lilly again, of course. The twinge of uncertainty in my belly had nothing to do with my fiancée, and everything to do with my prospective father-in-law. The invitation I had accepted for this evening came from Heston Alexander himself. If I found myself talking nonsense to brush over the awkwardness between myself and Lilly's mother from time to time, my confusion before her father welled up into ridiculousness. I took a deep breath and set my jaw and raised my hand to the lion's head mounted high on the big front door … which opened before I had a chance to knock upon it.

The footman, Spenser, had either intuited my loitering on the steps or spotted me from a window. His bow was an inch or two deeper than necessary. A pianoforte was playing somewhere within. I followed the man further into the hall and allowed myself to be steered towards the music, into the drawing room.

‘Here he is, let's ask him,' Heston's voice boomed, before I was quite through the door. I had already determined to greet Mrs Alexander first, and pressed on despite her husband's interjection. She took my offering with a smile that told me I should have trusted my instincts and consigned the flowers to the waters of St Augustine's Reach.

‘Why thank you, Inigo. Very kind.'

I scrambled up the rope of Heston's question. ‘Ask me what, Sir? I'll do my best to answer.'

‘Of course you will.' Mr Alexander leaned back in his seat and drummed his fingers on the expanse of fine cotton between the splayed lapels of his frock coat. ‘Say your good father began making mistakes. Taking bad decisions, giving voice to inappropriate utterances, issuing idiotic decrees. And say these mistakes had consequences for the whole family, and that they were born of a failure of his reason which everyone could see but nobody felt they could mention. Wouldn't you, as his son and heir, have a duty to intervene?'

Suspecting a trick, I bought time, nodding thoughtfully before crossing the room to kiss Lilly's hand. It seemed this had been wise when her father continued.

‘Mind you, mistakes or no, the old man is still in charge. He holds the whip hand. You'd be challenging his authority, etcetera.'

Lilly's younger sister, Abigail, had risen from her seat at the pianoforte. I took her hand, too. Addressing my response to the back of it seemed the safe thing to do. ‘I suppose,' I said, ‘it would depend upon the extent of his failure of reason. It would be a matter of degree.'

‘Pah! The lawyer in you gave that answer. Swing both
legs one side of the fence. Would you have a
duty
to intervene?'

Mrs Alexander was making no attempt to hide her pleasure at my discomfort; Abigail had already returned her attention to the sheet-music on the piano; an accomplished musician, she now began playing something I can best describe as explicitly saccharine. I turned to Lilly. Her smile of encouragement was girlish.

Heston Alexander himself came to my rescue. ‘I'll give you a clue. It's the King to whom I refer. Farmer George. From what I hear he no longer has the wit to steer a plough straight, much less an empire. And with the French threatening …'

‘Of course. If the reports are true, the Prince must intervene on the nation's behalf,' I said, conscious that this reply was as limp as the flowers now lying on the occasional table at Mrs Alexander's elbow.

Heston Alexander's fingers were still on his shirtfront, beating time to Abigail's playing. His mouth, a firm line set in the rampart of his face, gave nothing away. Though he lacks his wife's overt hostility, he still has a knack of making me feel I am off the pace. When I asked for Lilly's hand in marriage, he assented with a speed which suggested that the deal had been done before I formulated the question.

‘Well said. Old George makes less sense than a box of bats these days, by all accounts. Young George should have himself declared Regent without further ado.'

‘Eighty years of Georges,' said Abigail, pausing at the piano. ‘With another one still to come. You'd think they'd give a different name a turn.'

This sparked a conversation between the two sisters about
the name Lilly would give her new puppy, when it arrived, which subject, I realised glumly, aroused as little interest in me as did the state of the monarchy. I accepted a glass of punch and sipped at it politely as I took in the softness of Lilly's throat, the curve of her shoulder, and my eyes came to rest on the faint blue line in her upturned wrist. How could blood ever run blue? A streak of royalty. Heston Alexander was a Member of the Society of Merchant Venturers, like my father. Maybe he
did
know more about my prospects than I knew myself. The terms of my inheritance spelled out in Venturer-code over cigars. That would explain Heston's ready consent to the forthcoming nuptials. The bride-to-be was averring that a dog's name should be immediately recognisable as belonging to a dog, which explained why Buttons and Dash and Princess topped her list. You had to admire the smooth plane of her cheek. The angle of her sister's jaw was somehow more severe. That said, Abigail's advocacy was the more persuasive; I couldn't help agreeing with her suggestion there might at least be some humour in a dog called George.

We ate dinner in a room which Mrs Alexander had recently decorated in an oriental style. This seemed principally to involve lacquer. Lilly had helped her mother pick out the new furnishings: I did my best to signal appreciation. I thought I caught a glimpse of Heston winking at Abigail as I nodded approval at a black-wood lamp-stand, and their apparent collusion in a private joke, by placing me in league with Lilly and her mother, was oddly dispiriting. I found myself fiddling with the underside of the new dining table. There was some sort of ingenious mechanism beneath it which meant that the surface could be extended or contracted to
suit the number of diners present at any given meal. My fingers brushed the teeth of a ratchet, found the gap between slats, tested the edge of a cogged wheel. I had a ridiculous urge to get down on my hands and knees to examine the device properly, but was drawn up by Heston Alexander's insistence that I describe, of all things, exactly what it was I was working upon. The man's eyes, set in his square face, had creased into smiling enthusiasm.

‘A number of cases. Contractual disputes and so on. Some regulatory work involving the Dock Company. Nothing much of note.'

‘Come now. There must be some juice in it to keep you going. Mount the thing a credible defence!'

I was tempted to rise to this challenge, but suffered a sudden realisation that I had no real idea how far Mr Alexander's interests in the dock extended. In all probability he was up to his neck in the silt. I found myself flannelling.

‘The work doesn't tell well at dinner, but rest assured there's interest in it close up.'

‘Lord above! Doesn't sound like much of an advertisement for the legal life. The cut and thrust of commerce is much more entertaining. That's where you should reconsider applying yourself. The sharp end!'

Was that it? Mr Alexander's tone was jocular, but jokes, like pearls, have a heart of grit. Did he imagine that I would eventually end up working for my family firm, or perhaps even take a position working with him? I smiled back genially. My fingers, beneath the table, had found their way into a
sharp-edged
recess between two cogs. I dug a knuckle into the gap.

Lilly was speaking. ‘Business, lawyering, they're both as
dull as each other, aren't they? I can't see there's much fun to be had in a counting house. A playhouse or the recital rooms – those are the place to find entertainment. And I've got tickets for us all to go to a poetry recital tomorrow night!'

There was a false gaiety in Lilly's voice, yet it was less worrying in that instant than the fact that my finger, pushed into the table's winding mechanism, had somehow contrived to get … stuck. It would not wriggle free. I gave a tug, which caused the cutlery to shiver and the teeth of the device to dig painfully into my knuckle, but the finger would not budge.

‘That's settled then,' Heston Alexander boomed. ‘A family outing!'

Mercifully, the family's attention shifted from me as they discussed the arrangements for the theatre trip. As a boy I got my leg enmeshed in a set of wrought iron railings at Bright House. Panic, that was the problem. Clarissa had eventually freed me, as much with calm reassurances as by rotating my foot, calf and knee. I licked the palm of my free hand surreptitiously and greased the trapped knuckle under the table with spit, all the while nodding and giving the appearance of listening, though the conversation had moved on and, in truth, I had no idea what Abigail and her sister were talking about. It was no good. Maybe the ratchet had tightened a notch, or perhaps the cog I'd slid my finger past was in some manner … barbed? Lilly was breathlessly recounting the story of another dead woman, found stuck in the mud of the river, and the sound of that word …
stuck
… worked on me with a suddenness which caught me unawares. Before I could stop myself I yanked my hand back ferociously, causing the plates on the table to jump and wine to slop and my trapped
finger to rip back free of the confounded pernicious device beneath the table's polished leaves.

Everybody stopped talking. Mrs Alexander reached out a hand to steady her glass. ‘My!' she said. ‘What on earth is the matter?'

I pressed my torn knuckle into the knot of my napkin. ‘Nothing. I'm sorry. A cramp.'

‘Might it have been the story of the woman murdered in the mud?' Abigail offered. ‘A spasm of sympathy, perhaps? I know how much the Clifton Killer has played on poor Lilly's nerves.'

‘Cramp,' I murmured.

‘But, but … she
wasn't
murdered,' Lilly explained, happy to offer me consolation, but unable, it seemed, to erase entirely her disappointment with that anticlimactic fact. ‘They have the Clifton Killer' – here she shuddered theatrically – ‘locked up safely. It seems this unfortunate soul either fell into the river and drowned, or was caught unawares by the rising tide, or, most likely, through force of circumstance, was driven to … well … the article mentioned
felo de se
… by which I think they mean there's evidence to suggest the poor woman robbed herself of her own life.'

‘God forgive her!' said Mrs Alexander absently. She dabbed at the slopped wine, adding, ‘Shocking!' as she inspected the napkin.

The spillage, it seemed, concerned her more than the lost soul; she kept glancing from the stained cloth to her napkin as the meal wore itself out. We left the scene of one crime for another then, retreating en masse to listen to Abigail's syrupy piano-playing again.

Mary was working the morning shift. As an excuse to waylay her again, I asked for a copy of the latest edition of
Felix Farley's Bristol Journal
when I was halfway through my second cup of coffee. She fetched it and brought it down on the table in front of me with a thwack. The place was full; she was busy. Did that explain her confrontational air? I glanced up to see her looking me over, a red hand planted on the swell of her hip.

‘Sorry to have troubled you.'

‘You didn't.'

‘Well, you have my thanks.'

‘Thank goodness. Can I get you anything else?'

‘No.'

‘You're sure?'

Another customer called out from the café's darker recesses.

‘I'm fine, for now,' I said.

‘Anything at all, you just ask.' The waitress smiled, still surveying me levelly. As she turned away I was sure I heard her add, ‘Even a comb.'

I watched her rounded skirt swish between the chair-backs, and was unable to resist the temptation to run my hand through my hair. The barber's, today, definitely.

I turned the pages of the paper and sipped my coffee. A house of ill-fame had been discovered in Marlborough Street.
Its existence having been common knowledge for as long as I could remember, The Society for the Prevention and Suppression of Vice had apparently grown new teeth of late. What else? Yet another story about mad dogs plaguing the townspeople. Two children having died from the rabies this last week, there were further calls for a general culling of any unattended cur within the city limits. Cull away. Overleaf a chair-mender specialising in rush-bottomed something or other was touting for etcetera. His advertisement stood above the story of the discovery of a drowned woman in the river downstream of the Hot Well. I found myself reading the article. This was the case Lilly had spoken about so warmly last night. I ran my cut knuckle across my lips. A suspected suicide, as Lilly had said. No mention was made in the paper about a link – or lack of one – to the recent murder in Clifton. That had been Lilly's imaginative leap. But it mattered, somehow, all the same. I drained my already empty cup. The story made it clear that the drowned woman was as far from a Clifton lady as could be possible. She was a Negro. This, the writer seemed to imply, was justification enough for her having seen fit to do away with herself. Most likely the corpse belonged to a domestic servant, a one-time slave perhaps, shipped over from the Indies.

I shuddered and shut my eyes and pressed my torn knuckle to the softness of my lips again. I heard the wet thump of the cask hitting the stevedore aboard the
Belsize
, and the gravelly echo as it rolled across the deck, initials burnt into the wood of its lid. The Western Trading Company had dealt in slaves pre-abolition. There were no connections between these things, no logical links. I knew that.

I cast my eyes back over the story again. The body had been discovered by children playing on the banks of the Avon, a brother and sister from across the river in Long Ashton. It wasn't a big village. I left a tip generous enough to draw attention to itself next to my spent cup and sidestepped my way to the door. Gulls, more gulls, slashed about high above Carthy's rooftop across the street. I turned away from them and my office and headed to the docks. Work could wait.