The Gentleman and the Lamplighter (2 page)

“Are you all right?”

“I am, though I’d best come up with a more interesting story for the scrapes on my side or get laughed at. I’m a clock-lighter, you see, and the fish-tail men look down on our sort as it is.”

Giles wondered what he was talking about but ventured, “You might blame those blood-thirsty cannibals of yours. You could claim a tribe of them ran after you.”

Banks’s bark of laughter was loud, too raucous for this quiet place and time. “Whoops,” he said. “Beg your pardon for the noise.”

They both waited in the darkness, but no one else stirred or spoke out.

The lamplighter tilted his head back. “Sun’s on its way. I got another ’leven, no, twelve, to put out. I’d invite you to come along walking since I know it’s your hobby, but I suppose that wouldn’t do.” He walked back to his ladder and hoisted it with a grunt.

“Why do you carry that?”

“A few of the lamps need repair.” Banks yawned. “I best be on my way, and you can probably sleep now, I think.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You don’t have that restless air now. Some nights I’ve seen you, you’re a caged animal, as though London’s a big prison and you’re looking for an escape.”

“First I was a spy and then a prisoner. You have thought about me that often?”

“Often enough.” Banks carefully drew his cap from the jacket where he’d stuffed it and jammed it back onto his head. Giles wondered if the care was due to his injuries or the ladder balanced on his shoulder.

Banks loomed, a dark silhouette. “Some people fire the imagination. Ha, fire, like a lamp burning in my brain.” His voice was amused and so quiet, Giles wondered if he heard right.

A little louder Banks said, “Good night or good morning, sir, whichever you prefer. I’ll watch for you, now I know where you live.”

He walked away without looking behind him.

Giles stayed on the step watching him melt into the darkness, wondering at the very strange encounter. Shakespeare, penny dreadfuls, a slender man with broad shoulders and a cheerful intrusive manner. Within a few minutes it felt as if the whole event had been a dream Giles had had whilst sitting on the stairs outside his home in the middle of the night.

He rose feeling as stiff as a lamplighter who’d tumbled from halfway up a ladder.

***

John walked away smiling. Giles. Giles Fullerton. Before this morning, he had called the ghost-walker Adam because on those nights the dark-haired man paced the streets of the city, he’d seemed as alone as the man in Eden before the arrival of the rest of humankind.

Oh, how lowering to know the man who’d kept John’s brain busy through long hours hadn’t so much as noticed him.

He knew from the start the man ran from some sort of devils inside. The first time John set eyes on the gentleman, he’d felt a stab of resentment. How could a man with such good looks and so much money—those fine clothes—have the gall to be eaten up with sorrow?

But the next time he saw him, up near Pall Mall one cold slippery night, John softened. The haunted look on that handsome face made John long to stop him, perhaps buy him a mug of hot grog and coax out the reason for the misery. Never mind the fact that a man wearing a fine calf-length coat probably would never touch the stuff any lamplighter drank to keep off the chill.

Giles Fullerton.

Maybe the bookseller would recognize the name. Abrams actually read the Debretts he kept at the back of the shop, and if Fullerton wasn’t a peer or a muckety-muck, he had to be related to such as earls, dukes, or lords. John had pegged that fact of him right off.

But then he decided, no, he wouldn’t share the details of the gentleman with Abrams. He liked holding the truth of Fullerton as a secret.

He hadn’t figured the man out yet. Perhaps the gent had a disordered mind and was mad. That would be a pity, though a reasonable explanation. Yet surely even madmen needed friendly conversation now and again.

And wasn’t that thought as full of lies as any tale with pirate vampires. The simple fact of the matter was John wanted Giles Fullerton. Friendly conversation didn’t involve naked skin and moaning bodies. He burned to touch the man and had for months.

He’d never be fool enough to say those words aloud to Fullerton or anyone else, but he enjoyed the fact in his own world and used his experience of desire to help him work with Abrams.

Last autumn, Fullerton had once passed so close to him on the pavement, John had seen the setting sun light the reddish gleam of the man’s glossy dark hair. Such clean and well-ordered locks, and that evening Adam/Giles wore no hat to bar the view of his face. On the nearly deserted street of this neighborhood, John had watched him striding along and had memorized the fine nose, clean-shaven cheeks, and those blue or green eyes fixed on a distant sight, a gaze so far away he might have been a brainless fool or a storyteller lost in another world.

That had to be the night John’s vague curiosity about the well-dressed gentleman turned into a more intriguing interest. And now they’d spoken at last.

John walked along after the curious meeting. He finished the round without finding another lamp in need of repair—good thing, since he didn’t relish the thought of climbing with aches from his fall. He quickly reached up with the pole and turned off the last lights without even putting down the ladder.

He stopped to admire the first watery, cold rays of the sun, then hurried to the auxiliary sheds and said his good mornings to the others.

They invited him to breakfast, but he barely had time to head back to his lodgings and grab a bit of breakfast before moving to his next job, finishing up some work with Mr. Abrams.

As he walked home, limping a little, he relived the strange sensation of being noticed. The fine gentleman he’d dreamed of actually talked to him, even laughed with him.

John had said something to Fullerton about looking out for him in the future, but no, he wouldn’t. It had been a way to say good-bye to the fantasy of the man. The imaginary Adam he carried in his head was as attractive a creature as John was likely to encounter. It would be a pity if the real Giles Fullerton turned out to be unpleasant enough to ruin the pretend version John enjoyed.

Giles returned to bed and slept reasonably well. Hours later, just before he opened his eyes, a mild sense of anticipation warmed him.

The fact of Wool’s death came to him, as it always did as soon as he gained full consciousness, though a weight rather than a blow now. The wisp of anticipation dissolved with that blast of truth. He sat up scratching his head and yawning, wide awake, wondering what had formed the fragile pleasure. A good dream?

Then he remembered the lamplighter and smiled at his folly.

He didn’t think about John Banks again until the sun began to set. When he looked out his window at almost seven that evening, he felt a strange disappointment when he saw that the streetlamp near his house already glowed. He stared out at the flame and thought of all the times he’d seen men like Banks without really noticing them. Servants, people he passed on the street—everyone, actually. Grief made one rather blind and stupid, particularly about other people.

Giles resolved to be a better friend, son, and master to the people in his life. He had made that resolution nearly every day for almost two years, but now he thought he could do more than go through the motions.

That early morning or very late at night he woke in the dark with a start, but instead of despair, physical excitement coursed through him. He chose to ignore his body’s arousal. One could never fully eradicate the symptoms, but they might be relegated to the background. Usually.

He walked down the stairs softly in the dark and slipped out of his house.

The light still burned bright, a halo around its glass, the light forming a circle reflecting the dissipating fog. He stared at the light and realized the glow was beautiful.

He heard no footsteps and the time was early yet, not even four. He rubbed his unshaven jaw and wondered if he could pretend he was simply out for a walk. Yes, and so he was.

Giles stood and walked down the street in the direction he expected John Banks to come.

He had to stop on the corner because he didn’t know which way the lamplighter came in the mornings. Something moved in the dark and he waited, his heart pounding far too fast and hard. He leaned against the lamppost and waited.

A dog trotted by. It caught sight of him and shied away, moving fast and with purpose, busy on its canine errand.

Then came a quick, light step.

The shape loomed in the fog and then became a man.

“Good morning, Banks,” Giles said in a low voice. No need to wake the neighbors.

“Is that really you, sir?” Banks sounded completely amazed.

“It is Mr. Fullerton.”

“Oh, yes, I know you. How do you do? Are you restless again tonight?”

“Yes.” He hesitated. “Or rather, no. I suppose I came looking for you.” Now why would he admit such a thing to anyone?

But Banks’s gasp was rather gratifying. “Really? ’struth?”

“God’s truth.”

“That’s lovely.” Banks stood in front of him now, no ladder, just the pole resting against his shoulder like an overlong, thin rifle. “It truly is lovely.”

Giles smiled. “Now you’re mocking me.”

“No, I’m not. Here, let me do this one and then shall we take a walk? Two men out for a stroll.”

Smiling, Giles stepped aside and Banks brushed past him to reach up for the light. Once again he caught the smell of the man, but rather than move away, he stayed still to take in a great lungful of the scent.

No one need know, he told himself. No one ever had, except Wool.

But the secretive appreciation, of stealing the man’s scent, made Giles feel uncomfortable as they began the walk down his street. He cast about for something to break the silence. “So do you like your work?” he asked.

Banks laughed quietly. “I do at the moment. And on any spring nights it’s not raining.” He walked a few steps in silence. “It’s a much sought-after position, and we have our pride, lamplighters do. My father was one and his before him. That poor man was swept off his ladder and right off a bridge during a storm. We are all part of an honorable society.”

“You have a society?”

“Tradesmen do. Secret rituals with hooded men and chanting.” Even in the dim light Giles could see the grin on the man’s face.

“Are you going to bring up fantasies like pirates and demons again?”

Banks laughed quietly. “You know me already?”

“You have a turn for the fanciful, I know that. Tell me about your work, your evenings and mornings.”

And so Banks did.

They walked and talked for what seemed like minutes but must have been far longer. Banks described the interactions he saw and had as he walked the streets. Sometimes a meeting might consist of a quick chat with a copper or a cup of tea thrust at him by an old lady unable to sleep. Dogs and sometimes children wandered along behind him and at one corner, a cat waited for him every evening and followed him amiably down the street past a few houses.

“Other nights I bundle up against the rain and cold and pray them lamps wouldn’t require more than a sparking and a dousing. I am cold days at a time. Here we are, at the last lamp.”

Giles realized he must turn around and walk home. He bid his new friend a good night. But the very next morning he woke before dawn, and went outside. And once again he didn’t take his old walks. He was waiting when the lamplighter came along.

They walked together and made interesting, though not intimate, conversation. Yet Banks infused every subject with a kind of enthusiasm that made objects as ordinary as street signs or roosters seem as if they were close to his heart. Giles listened to the man describe everything from people he knew to the plays he enjoyed. Some of the plays Banks described he apparently had invented in his head as he walked.

Giles was ashamed to have thought that a man such as a lamplighter wouldn’t have the mind to hold such an imagination. He, in his turn, talked about lessons he’d had in school, about his family’s country house, which he realized he must visit someday soon. “Have you been outside London?” he asked Banks.

Banks said, “Only the one time and I barely recall it. But I like the city well enough. It’s a dozen little worlds in one.”

“Where do you live?” Giles had become greedy for personal information.

“I have rooms, a small lodging, but it hasn’t been home since my Celia died. It stopped being a home the moment my wife’s heart stopped. I avoid the place.”

“How long ago did she die?”

“Three years.”

“You must have been a child when you married.”

“Eighteen, same age as her. We were friends from the time we met—met her just how I met you, lighting a lamp when she stopped to say good evening. We were married three years, until she died.”

“You’re twenty-four.”

“You sound astonished. You guessed me older, eh? About thirty or so? It’s being out in all sorts of weather.”

“Not at all,” said Giles, although, yes, Banks did have the air of an older man. “I’m twenty-four as well. But I interrupted. Tell me more about your wife.”

Banks hesitated, then said. “I miss her every day. She was my dearest friend. We knew the best and the worst of each other, and the way we laughed together … I don’t suppose I’ll laugh so hard again.”

Giles swallowed hard and held his breath against the familiar sorrow. To hear someone else echo his own pain. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” He managed to sound sympathetic but not choked with pain, thank goodness.

“It’s easier now. But I’m guessing …” His voice died away.

“Beg pardon?” Giles said.

“I wondered if that’s what ate you up, that sort of loss.”

“And here I thought I’d hidden it so well.”

“I saw you when you went out walking, remember?”

“Yes. I remember. It was a loss I don’t speak of.” He pushed his hands into his jacket pockets and balled his fists.

“I won’t tell anyone.”

Giles didn’t stop to consider the wisdom of what he said next. He’d never been able to breathe a word, and now the words came out, measured and careful, but the truth at last, bottled up for one, no, two years. “I lost someone I cared about a great deal, someone I loved more than anyone else in the world. A sudden death, unexpected, though we were no longer close. Before that we laughed, the way you said. We knew the worst of each other, perhaps not the best, and yet we still … we cared. It was a comfort and a balm to know that sort of absolute affection and a great hardship to lose it forever.”