The Meaning of Night (2 page)

down the path towards the gate, a little lace parasol laid against her shoulder. Tom was

panting up the hill from the church as she reached the gate. I had not long commenced

under his tutelage, and supposed my mother had seen him from the house and had come

out expressly to speak to him about my progress.

‘He is’, I heard him say, in reply to her enquiry, ‘a most resourceful young man.’

Later, I asked her what ‘resourceful’ meant.

‘It means you know how to get things done,’ she said, and I felt pleased that this

appeared to be a quality approved of in the adult world.

‘Was papa resourceful?’ I asked.

She did not reply, but instead told me to run along and play, as she must return to

her work.

When I was very young, I was often told – gently but firmly – by my mother to

‘run along’, and consequently spent many hours amusing myself. In summer, I would

dream amongst the branches of the chestnut tree or, accompanied by Beth, our maid of all

work, explore along the shore-line beneath the cliff; in winter, wrapped up in an old

tartan shawl on the window-seat in my bedroom, I would dream over Wanley’s Wonders

of the Little World,? Gulliver’s Travels, or Pilgrim’s Progress (for which I cherished an

inordinate fondness and fascination) until my head ached, looking out betimes across the

drear waters, and wondering how far beyond the horizon, and in which direction, lay the

Country of the Houyhnhnms, or the City of Destruction, and whether it would be possible

to take a packet from Weymouth to see them for myself. Why the City of Destruction

should have sounded so enticing to me, I cannot imagine, for I was terrified by

Christian’s premonition that the city was about to be burned with fire from heaven, and

often imagined that the same fate might befall our little village. I was also haunted

throughout my childhood, though again I could not say why, by the Pilgrim’s words to

Evangelist: ‘I am condemned to die, and after that to come to judgment; and I find that I

am not willing to do the first, nor able to do the second.’ Puzzling though they were, I

knew the words expressed a terrible truth, and I would repeat them to myself over and

again, like some occult incantation, as I lay in my cradle of branches or in my bed, or as I

wandered the windy shore beneath the cliff-top.

I dreamed, too, of another place, equally fantastic and beyond possession, and yet

– strangely – having the distinctness of somewhere experienced and remembered, like a

taste that stays on the tongue. I would find myself standing before a great building, part

castle and part palace, the home of some ancient race, as I thought, bristling with

ornamented spires and battlemented turrets, and wondrous grey towers, topped with

curious dome-like structures, that soared into the sky – so high that they seemed to pierce

the very vault of heaven. And in my dreams it was always summer – perfect, endless

summer, and there were white birds, and a great dark fish-pond surrounded by high walls.

This magical place had no name, and no location, real or imagined. I had not found it

described in any book, or in any story told to me. Who lived there – whether some king

or caliph – I knew not. Yet I was sure that it existed somewhere on the earth, and that one

day I would see it with my own eyes.

My mother was constantly working, for her literary efforts were our only means

of support, my father having died before I was born. The picture that always comes to

mind, when thinking of her, is of spindles of grey-flecked dark hair escaping from

beneath her cap and falling over her cheek as she sat bent over the large square

work-table that was set before the parlour window. There she would sit for hours at a

time, sometimes well into the night, furiously scratching away. As soon as one tottering

pile of paper was complete and dispatched to the publisher, she would immediately begin

to lay down another. Her works (beginning with Edith; or, The Last of the Fitzalans, of

1826) are now quite unremembered – it would be disloyal to her memory if I say

deservedly so; but in their day they enjoyed a certain vogue; at least they found sufficient

readers for Mr Colburn? to continue accepting her productions (mostly issued

anonymously, or sometimes under the nom de plume ‘A Lady of the West’) year in and

year out until her death.

Yet though she worked so long, and so hard, she would always break off to be

with me for a while, before I went to sleep. Sitting on the end of my bed, with a tired

smile on her sweet elfin face, she would listen while I solemnly read out some favourite

passage from my precious copy of Monsieur Galland’s Les milles et une nuits, in the

anonymous translation published by Bell in 1706; or she might tell me little stories she

had made up, or perhaps recount memories of her own childhood in the West Country,

which I especially loved to hear. Sometimes, on fine summer nights, we would walk,

hand in hand, out onto the cliff-top to watch the sunset; and then we would stand together

in silence, listening to the lonely cry of the gulls and the soft murmur of the waves below,

and gaze out across the glowing waters to the mysterious far horizon.

‘Over there is France, Eddie,’ I remember her saying once. ‘It is a large and

beautiful country.’

‘And are there Houyhnhnms there, mamma?’ I asked.

She gave a little laugh.

‘No, dear,’ she said. ‘Only people, like you and me.’

‘And have you been to France ever?’ was my next question.

‘I have been there once,’ came the reply. Then she gave a sigh. ‘And I shall never

go there again.’

When I looked up at her, I saw to my astonishment that she was crying, which I

had never seen her do before; but then she clapped her hands and, saying it was time I

was in my bed, bundled me back into the house. At the bottom of the stairs, she kissed

me, and told me I would always be her best boy. Then she turned away, leaving me on

the bottom stair, and I watched her go back into the parlour, sit down at her work-table,

and pick up her pen.

The memory of that evening was awakened many years later, and has ever since

remained strong. I thought of it now, as I puffed slowly on my cigar in Quinn’s,? musing

on the strange connectedness of things: on the thin, but unbreakable, threads of causality

that linked – for they did so link – my mother labouring at her writing all those years ago

with the red-haired man who now lay dead not half a mile away in Cain-court.

Walking down towards the river, I felt strangely intoxicated by the thought that I

had escaped discovery. But then, whilst paying my halfpenny to the toll-keeper on

Waterloo Bridge, I noticed that my hands were shaking and that, despite my recent

refreshment at Quinn’s, my mouth was dry as tinder. Beneath a flickering gas-lamp, I

leaned against the parapet for a moment, feeling suddenly dizzy. The fog lay heavy on

the black water below, which lapped and slopped against the piers of the great echoing

arches, making a most dismal music. Then, out of the swirling fog, a thin young woman

appeared, carrying a baby. She stood for a few moments, obliviously staring down into

the blackness. I clearly saw the blank despair on her face, and instantly sensed that she

was about to make a jump of it; but as I moved towards her, she looked at me wildly,

clutched the child tightly to her breast, and ran off, leaving me to watch her poor phantom

figure dissolve into the fog once more.? A life saved, I hoped, if only for a time; but

something, perhaps, to set against what I had done that night.

You must understand that I am not a murderer by nature, only by temporary

design. There was no need to repeat this experimental act of killing. I had proved what I

had set out to prove: the capacity of my will to carry out such a deed. The blameless

red-haired stranger had fulfilled his purpose, and I was ready for what now lay ahead.

I walked to the Surrey side of the bridge, turned round, and walked back again.

Then, on a sudden impulse, as I passed back through the turnstile, I decided to take a turn

back along the Strand instead of returning to my rooms.

At the foot of the steps leading down from Cain-court, which I’d descended not

two hours earlier, a crowd of people had gathered. I enquired of a flower-seller

concerning the cause of the commotion.

‘Murder, sir’, she replied. ‘A poor gentleman has been most viciously done to

death. They say the head was almost severed from the body.’

‘Good heavens!’ says I, with every expression of sudden shock. ‘What a world we

live in! Is anyone apprehended?’

My informant was uncertain on this point. A Chinese sailor had been seen running

from the court a little time before the body had been discovered; but others had said that a

woman carrying a bloody axe had been found standing in a daze a few streets away and

had been taken away by the officers.

I shook my head sadly, and continued on my way.

Of course it was most convenient that ignorant rumour was already weaving nets

of obscurity and falsehood around the truth. For all I cared, either the Chinese sailor or

the woman with the bloody axe, if indeed they existed, could swing for my deed and be

damned. I was armoured against all suspicion. Certainly no one had observed me entering

or leaving the dark and deserted court: I had been most particular on that point. The knife

had been of a common type, purloined for the purpose from a hotel across the river in the

Borough, where I had never been before, and to which I would never return again. My

nameless victim had been entirely unknown to me: nothing but cold Fate connected us.

My clothes appeared to be unmarked by his blood; and night, villainy’s true friend, had

thrown its accomplice’s cloak over all.

By the time I reached Chancery-lane the clocks were striking eleven. Still feeling

unwilling to return to my own solitary bed, I swung northwards, to Blithe Lodge, St

John’s Wood, with the intention of paying my compliments to Miss Isabella Gallini, of

blessed memory.

Ah, Bella. Bellissima Bella. She welcomed me in her customary way at the door

of the respectable tree-fronted villa, cupping my face in her long-fingered, many-ringed

hands and whispering, ‘Eddie, darling Eddie, how wonderful’, as she kissed me gently on

both cheeks.

‘Is all quiet?’ I asked.

‘Perfectly. The last one went an hour ago, Charlie is asleep, and Mrs D. has not

yet returned. We have the house to ourselves.’

Upstairs I lay back on her bed watching her disrobe, as I’d done so many times

before. I knew every inch of her body, every warm and secret place. Yet watching the last

piece of clothing fall to the floor, and seeing her standing proudly before me, was like

experiencing her for the first time in all her untasted glory.

‘Say it,’ she said.

I frowned in pretended ignorance.

‘Say what?’

‘You know very well, you tease. Say it.’

She walked towards me, her hair now released and flowing over her shoulders and

down her back. Then, reaching the bed, she once again clasped my face in her hands and

let that dark torrent of tresses tumble around me.

‘Oh, my America,’ I declaimed theatrically, ‘my New-Found land!’?

‘Oh, Eddie,’ she cooed delightedly, ‘it does so thrill me when you say that! Am I

really your America?’

‘My America and more. You are my world.’

At which she threw herself upon me with a will and kissed me so hard I could

scarcely breathe.

The establishment of which Bella was the leading light was several cuts above the

usual introducing house, so much so that it was known to the cognoscenti simply as ‘The

Academy’, the definite article proclaiming that it was set it apart from all other rival

establishments and alluding proudly to the superiority of its inmates, and of the services

they offered. It was run along the lines of a highly select club – a Boodle’s or White’s of

the flesh? – and catered for the amorous needs of the most discerning patrons of means.

Like its counterparts in St James’s, it had strict rules on admission and behaviour. No

person was allowed entry to this choice coterie without the unequivocal recommendation

of an existing member followed by a vote: blackballing was not infrequent, and if a

recommendation proved wanting in any way, both applicant and proposer faced summary

ejection, and sometimes worse.

Mrs Kitty Daley, known to the members as Mrs D., was the entrepreneuse of this

celebrated and highly profitable Cyprian? resort. She went to great lengths to maintain

standards of social decency: no swearing, profanity, or drunkenness was tolerated, and

any disrespect towards, or ill-treatment of, the young ladies themselves was punished

with the utmost severity. Not only would the perpetrator find himself immediately barred

and exposed to public scandal; he would also receive a call from Mr Herbert Braithwaite,

a former pugilist of distinction, who had his own highly effective way of making

delinquent patrons understand the error of their ways.

Bella and her companions were thus a race apart from the doxies and dollymops

who infest the Haymarket and its environs, and with whom I had long been familiar.