The Skull and the Nightingale (12 page)

I scarcely took in the postscript at the time in my disappointment at Matt’s absence. But I was cheered by a second note, delivered only hours before my arrival:

If you should be free to pay him a visit around noon tomorrow, Tom Crocker would be pleased to see you.

* * *

My dear Godfather,

I was pleased to find at my lodgings an invitation to visit Thomas Crocker, although surprised to see that the address given was not that of the house he had formerly occupied. He is now to be found in Wyvern Street.

There were to be further surprises. Assuming that the occasion would be a formal one, I dressed accordingly. When I arrived, however, I was admitted to a large house, in which were to be seen no guests and very little furniture. I was left to wait in a high drawing room, containing no more than a single table and a few chairs. The walls were bare and the windows uncurtained. To increase my confusion my host shuffled in wearing no wig and clad in a loose coat and slippers. However, he greeted me with a smile.

“Mr. Fenwick, I must apologize: you will think my invitation misleading. It was sent on impulse, without sufficient thought. I hoped to welcome you informally and get to know you better. I should have made my purpose clearer.”

It was curious to see Mr. Crocker in this altered guise, like an actor who has stripped off the trappings of the dramatic role you have just seen him playing. He had shambled in inelegantly, but was serene in his own domain. Even his gestures and facial expressions were altered: he could almost have been a huge schoolboy. I infer that his public appearances require contrivance. The large legs must be constrained by tight stockings, the loose bulk strapped into a corset, so that he can preside and move with a show of dignity.

Crocker sent for some coffee.

“You see the place three quarters empty,” he said. “I am at present moving house. Here—let me show you something that may amuse you.”

He led me to the far side of the great room. Leaning against a shuttered window were a number of paintings, loosely wrapped with paper and apparently to be hung on the bare walls. Crocker tore the paper from one of the smaller ones.

“Thanks to my excessive wealth,” said he, “I have been enabled to have my features recorded by the ingenious Mr. Hogarth.”

It was a fine portrait of Crocker’s face, full of wit and intelligence.

“Would you not say, Mr. Fenwick, that here is a handsome man?”

“I would indeed,” I replied, surprised by the self-regarding question.

“Then what say you to this?”

He ripped the paper from a larger work, over six foot in height. Looking out from it, all but identically, was the same face, but in this case providing merely a summit to a bulging pyramid that filled the frame—Crocker’s body, finely dressed, but grotesquely abundant.

“I fancy Mr. Hogarth enjoyed the joke of this double commission,” said he, “though he was too courteous to say as much. Which of the pictures would you call the truer?”

I hesitated. “They are equally true. But they tell different truths.”

“That is justly said. I know which of those truths I find the more flattering, but I am obliged to inhabit both of them. I had it in mind to hang these pictures here side by side, by way of a satire, but I think the gesture might make my visitors uncomfortable.”

Coffee being brought, we sat down to it—or in Crocker’s case sprawled back at ease in an oversized chair. He launched companionably into conversation:

“This year I decided to rearrange my life. I came to London and looked about for a large property. You see me in the course of migration.”

“And your country estate?”

Crocker blew out his cheeks and then drank some coffee. “I think to sell it. Lately I found that the countryside lowered my spirits. I would trudge round my land and return to the house despondent. The sheep and the cattle, grazing the fields year after year after year, filled me with melancholy. I am glad to be away from them.”

“Was that a sufficient reason for migration to the capital?”

“It was but part of the reason. The chief motive was a desire for diversion.”

“Diversion from what?”

“From monotony. From cows and sheep. From thought. From myself.”

“Does the remedy work?”

“It has kept my mind busy. Here is a mansion with many rooms. I am having it painted, and have chosen the colors to be used. I have brought in some furnishings and carpets and curtains and ordered many more. When all is in place I must host a great party to declare the house open. But there is also work to be done outside. Let me show you.”

He drained his cup and led me to a great window at the rear of the room.

“As you can see,” he said, “we have hardly begun.”

Here was a large space, apparently a courtyard. What chiefly took my eye was a broken wall at the far end, where some workmen were busy.

“Surely,” said I, “that was the wall we pushed down the other week?”

“Of course,” he replied. “Thomas Crocker is a gentleman and would push down no wall but his own. As you see, it is being rebuilt with a wide gateway, to admit carriages.”

“Might not your workmen have taken it down more efficiently?”

“Much more efficiently. But I had read that a wall could be demolished by the method we attempted, and it tickled me to try the experiment by moonlight.”

“Another exercise in diversion?”

“It was.” He was suddenly rueful. “But such pleasures are short-lived. I felt a pang of glee as the wall began to yield; then in the morning all I had for our pains was a mound of dirt and broken brickwork. No matter”—he brightened once more—“the men are at work and elegance will be retrieved from chaos.”

“Was there not some pleasure in recruiting your friends to perform this task?”

“Certainly. And it was healthy exertion for a band of tipplers and tattlers—the most useful work they had done in months.”

He broke into a chuckle at this, his stomach shaking, but then apologized:

“You must excuse me, Mr. Fenwick: I laugh too easily. My life is often ridiculous—and like Laurence Sterne I believe that laughter does us good.”

As we wandered back toward the coffee he broke into song, his voice echoing through the hollow room:

“Now to sweeten the night

Let the bow sweep the string.

Hear the music take flight

As the violins sing—”

I chimed in for the chorus:

“Sing, sing, sing—

As the violins sing.”

Catching each other’s eye we launched with spirit into the topers’ second verse:

“Let horsehair scrape gut

Till the cat mews away,

And we caper and strut,

As we hear the horse neigh—

Neigh, neigh, neigh—

As we hear the horse neigh.”

“I observe, Mr. Crocker,” said I, “that you do not care to be confined by formalities.”

“I have made the same observation regarding yourself, Mr. Fenwick. It was one of my reasons for inviting you here this morning.”

We proceeded to converse with great freedom. I felt flattered when he remarked that he is rarely so open: he has many drinking companions but few friends. He frankly disclosed his view of his own situation: fate has been hard on him with regard to physical appearance, but correspondingly generous in terms of wealth. He will use this asset to minimize his disadvantages and make his life as agreeable as it can be.

One aspect of his philosophy would, I think, particularly interest you. Speaking again of the party he would hold when his house was ready, he declared that it would be not merely a lavish but a provocative affair.

“It has been my practice,” he said, “to host entertainments that surprise and bewilder the guests. Since life is short I try to make it richer by brewing up extravagant mixtures of sensations. I hope you will partake of them.”

And I will. I feel drawn to Mr. Crocker and pleased to be accounted his friend.

Later that day I paid a second visit, this time to Miss Brindley. Over tea we embarked on a negotiation as delicate as the construction of a house of cards. Without an indecorous word being said it was somehow agreed:

that it was in our power to contrive a pleasure that both of us might welcome;

that the necessary arrangements and expense should fall to my charge;

that though the pleasure might be equal, the potential sacrifices were not;

that the female party should therefore receive financial compensation;

that in the event of unsought consequences, the female party should be provided for.

All this, and more, was satisfactorily communicated with the lightness and sweetness of the chirruping of spring birds. The pleasing prose of the matter is that late next week we will be spending an evening and a night together.

I am, &c.

Although I had enjoyed both these encounters, the need to describe them was irksome to me: my social life had become my profession. Perhaps for that reason a venture still outside Mr. Gilbert’s knowledge assumed greater importance for me. My mind returning to Matt’s postscript, I several times walked down Duke Street during working hours. Not until my third such excursion did I see the gentleman I was seeking. Mr. Ogden was standing outside his own premises, my conjecture as to his identity being confirmed when a passerby addressed him by name. I was able to observe him unremarked as he engaged in a brief conversation. He was a thickset, short-necked fellow who would have been credited with brawn and vigor had it not appeared that his physical solidity might be compacted fat. His face was pasty and serious, suggestive of the determination Sarah had mentioned. He might have been a dozen years my senior, but it was hard to judge, since he looked to be one of those stolid, underspirited fellows who resign youth for middle age at fifteen. His stockings showed a weighty calf, but not a shapely one. During the short colloquy he spoke little and displayed no change of expression. Yet this dull merchant had seen what I had not seen and been where I had not been. The thought induced such a spurt of rage that I could have dashed my fist into his big face. As it was, I stalked back to Cathcart Street hot with disgust.

That evening, still unsettled, I riffled through a packet of correspondence to find a letter Sarah had sent me soon after I went to France—a letter I had left unanswered.

Dear Mr. Fenwick,

Following your advice, I shall direct this communication to Paris, but I cannot rid myself of a superstitious fear that I am sending it into thin air—that it will prove no communication at all, because it will never reach you. It will seem wonderful to me if that fear proves unjustified, and somehow by coach and by boat and by coach again my letter will be conveyed from England to France and left where your hands will take it up and open it, and your eyes peruse it.

I hope that you will write soon and tell me about your travels. Having experienced only York and a little of London, I cannot imagine what you are seeing or doing, or how you have been faring. Take me with you through your letters, so that I may feel I am beside you in Paris or Rome as an unseen fellow traveler.

Nothing of note has happened to me since I bade you good-bye. You know enough about my life in London to imagine every one of my days. I have not enjoyed a serious conversation—I mean a conversation about anything other than small social matters—in all these weeks. My aunt, of course, continues kind: I live comfortably enough at the level to which I am accustomed, and know that I have nothing to complain of. Yet in my mind there is a very great alteration. You were the one person who opened windows through which I could glimpse a wider world of learning, wit, and discovery. It hardly needs to be said that I read still, and read eagerly, but I feel that I am cut off, like one in prison, from the life that books reveal and the life you now inhabit.

I suspect you may not realize how greatly the partial similarity of our lives has influenced my disposition. If I had never known you, I think I might have been sufficiently contented with the life I now lead, rather as a caged bird may flutter and sing without apparent envy of his free-flying cousins beyond the confining wires. But I have seen you, like myself an orphan, like myself left to the care of an aunt, find your way into that outside world and flourish in the liberty it affords. Even when we were both in York, you seemed to me destined for such freedom. I need not refer to the prospects that may arise from your godfather’s generosity: whatever happens, you will remain a free man. I have seen you flower. You are educated and accomplished, and converse with educated and accomplished men. I cannot help wondering whether, with my far more limited abilities, I might not myself have made shift to survive and modestly prosper in that richer, more diverse life.

Now I am ashamed of what I have written, for it seems selfish and envious. Pray interpret my message as what I intended it to be, a means of conveying, with strong feeling, if with all due decorum, how much I have missed your company and your conversation, and how much I long to hear from you.