Читать книгу Arrowood - Mick Finlay, Mick Finlay - Страница 14

Chapter Eight

There had been an accident outside The Fontaine when we arrived that evening. A horse had fallen over and died, pulling its carriage onto its side. A lady was sitting on a step howling, blood all over her face and a posy of flowers in her hand, while the cabman tried to uncouple the carriage from the horse’s corpse. A crowd had gathered to poke at the horse and stare at the howling woman. The guvnor bent down to her as we passed.

‘Are you hurt, miss?’ he asked, holding out his handkerchief. ‘Here, take this.’

Her crying calmed as she peered through her teary eyes at the guvnor, then at the tattered red cloth. Seeing the tobacco stains and the dangling threads crusted with who knows what, she shuddered and turned away.

He quickly pocketed his rag.

‘Can I send for someone?’ he asked.

‘Don’t touch me,’ she hissed, covering her face with her hands. ‘I don’t need your help.’

He tapped his stick against his boots and nodded, a look of sadness on his face. He didn’t seem to know what to do.

‘Come along, sir,’ I said, taking his arm. ‘Cabman’ll sort her out.’

Eric stood in the window of the studio, watching the crowd. As we pushed open the door he stepped quickly behind his counter. He wore a spotted cravat and a high-collared shirt of some yellow fabric. He recognized the guvnor immediately.

‘Ah, sir, you’ve come to make an appointment for your portrait. I’m so pleased. I’d absolutely relish the opportunity to record your noble features for posterity. You’ve precisely the profile that I’m in this business for.’

‘Well, yes, indeed,’ burbled the guvnor, blown off course by this rare flattery. I’d never heard anyone describe his great potato head in such a way before. Never before.

‘When did you have in mind?’ asked Fontaine. ‘Mmm?’

He had opened his appointments book and taken up his quill.

‘But first, we’d appreciate a short meeting with Miss Cousture, sir,’ said the guvnor. ‘If that’s not too much trouble. Only a brief meeting.’

Fontaine’s firm lips drooped, revealing two front teeth that overhung his bottom lip like a hare.

‘She isn’t here. She went out for soup several hours ago and didn’t return. And if you see her you can tell her I’m very close to finding another assistant. You know, sir, I hired a woman because I believe in the emancipation of the female species.’

‘My sister, also,’ said the guvnor firmly.

‘Well, this is how I am treated.’

He had got irked, just for a moment, and it was then his accent slipped. I could distinctly hear a flavour of Irish in his vowels. The guvnor shot me a glance.

‘It certainly does you credit, sir,’ replied the guvnor. ‘How long did you say she’s been working here?’

Fontaine sighed and raised his quill.

‘You said an appointment?’

The guvnor nodded and looked around the portraits on the wall. ‘You have a very fine eye,’ he said, scratching his chin. ‘I see such spirit in these people.’

‘That is my goal as an artist,’ replied Fontaine seriously. He pointed to a portrait of a soldier that hung behind the counter. ‘This one is my finest.’

‘Ah! It is indeed a work of art,’ declared the guvnor.

Fontaine gazed at it for some time.

‘You have a good eye yourself, sir,’ he said, turning to the guvnor.

‘I wonder if perhaps you might have time now for my portrait?’

‘Why, yes! I believe I do. Just enough time before my next sitting, I believe. Come, come.’ He gestured for the guvnor to go through the black curtain. ‘Enter! A man like yourself should absolutely have a representation of his fine visage for his hallway, or his drawing room, or perhaps his library – absolutely!’

He was still talking as he disappeared behind the heavy curtain. I waited a moment or two before taking the opportunity to explore the drawers of his counter. They were full of screws and plates and bulbs. In the bottom drawer, I found his accounts book, from which I learned that he’d begun to pay Miss Cousture in January of this year – not four months previous. I hunted for an address and eventually found it written on the back leaf of a small notebook.

The guvnor appeared twenty minutes later, his side-hair combed and greased down, his whiskers trimmed, his cravat tied neatly at his neck.

‘Yes, sir,’ Fontaine was saying. ‘One week. And your address?’

‘Fifty-nine Coin Street. Behind the shop.’

‘I’ll put a small frame around it, the same one as around the soldier’s portrait. Your sister will be most taken with the picture, I assure you.’ He held open the door. ‘No doubt at all, sir.’

‘Well, that was interesting, Barnett,’ said the guvnor as we turned the corner at the end of the street. ‘It would appear that our client was not introduced by her uncle the art dealer as she says. According to Mr Fontaine, it was a minister of the church who approached him – last Christmas, if you will. The minister offered the lady at half the wage Fontaine would have to pay anyone else. She knew nothing about the art of photography, it seems. Nothing at all. But, you know, a pretty face and the soft persuasion of the Church can make up for much.’

‘And the cheap labour.’

‘Indeed.’

‘He only began to pay her in January,’ said I. ‘Least that’s what his account book says.’

‘I see you’ve been busy too. And something else: Miss Cousture has turned down Mr Fontaine’s intimate advances, and yet he will not give up the possibility of bedding her.’

I laughed.

‘I’m amazed what people’ll tell you, sir.’

‘Oh, he didn’t tell me. I read it in him.’

‘You read it in him?’

‘Yes, Barnett. It seems that her disappearances are quite regular and unexpected. He told me as much. More regular than one would tolerate from an employee. Yet still he doesn’t dismiss her, despite his obvious anger. Why? As Mr Darwin tells us, we need look no further than man’s essential animal nature. It is because she’s beautiful and he yearns to find himself between her thighs, as I’m sure many men do. No doubt, given his position, he believes it’s his right. It isn’t his fault. It is the lion’s right to take the females of his pride, and Mr Fontaine is his own little lion. I’ve no doubt many shopkeepers on this street bed their assistants. The city is awash with little lions. It must stick in his craw that she doesn’t offer herself. It’s as if he’s purchased a beautiful cake, which sits all day on his counter. Yet he cannot eat it.’

‘Perhaps he’s married.’

‘Oh, Barnett, you’re quite sweet sometimes.’

‘How can you be so sure he desires her?’

‘Because she’s beautiful. I desired her. You desired her.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You did, my friend. I saw you lose your usual brute composure in my room. Despite your commitment to the formidable Mrs Barnett, even you were taken by her.’

We had to stop as a costermonger pushed a wide cart piled with coats across the pavement and into an alley.

‘Your deductions are more like Sherlock Holmes than you think,’ I said when we were walking again.

‘No, Barnett. I decipher people. He deciphers secret codes and flowerbeds. That man and I are not alike, and frankly I’m getting tired of your jibes about him.’

I laughed to myself as we walked.

‘Why did she lie to us?’ I asked as we passed under the railway bridge.

‘I don’t know. And since Mr Fontaine wouldn’t agree to tell me where she lives, we’re going to have to wait until she reappears to find out. Another job for you, Barnett, tomorrow. Pray the rain doesn’t return.’

I held out the scrap of paper on which I’d scribbled the address.

‘Lucky I found this, then, sir.’

A smile broke over his ruddy face. He clapped me on the back.

‘Excellent, Barnett. Let’s hope she’s in.’

I noticed the fellow as we turned into Broad Wall. He wouldn’t have been a noticeable man ordinarily except he had a piece of torn, brown paper stuck to his trouser leg. I’d seen it earlier in the coffeehouse, and wondered as I drank my brew if it was stuck on there by a smear of treacle or somesuch. And there it was again, attached to the same man who was walking along the other side of the road looking up at the high windows.

‘Shall we turn down this alley, sir?’ I asked as we approached a narrow lane on our right.

‘But why?’

‘There’s a man might be trailing us. Don’t look back. He’s on the other side of the road. Medium size in a grey coat.’

The guvnor clenched his hands and bit his lip, itching to have a little peep as we made our way forward.

‘No, don’t,’ I said. ‘Don’t look.’

‘Yes, yes, Barnett,’ he replied, chafing against this restriction and trying hard to keep his eyes on the way ahead. He was limping with his tight shoes and puffing with his weight. ‘I heard you the first time.’

‘You were about to look.’

‘No, I wasn’t.’

Presently, we reached the alley. It was a narrow, dark track, the workshops and factories on each side built high and leaning in towards each other as they rose to the grey sky. Most were closed for the night but a few had faint lights behind their grimy windows. Tired people trudged past us, their clothes thick and frayed, their eyes cast down. The ground beneath us alternated between gravel and mud. Up ahead, a cart was being loaded with crates. We continued past it, then turned again into an even smaller passage. We didn’t look back, and at the end turned into another alley, this one darker still. I pointed at a bend in the road ahead where a small wall jutted out.

‘Yes, ideal,’ said the guvnor.

We hurried towards it and concealed ourselves there, myself peeking out the way we’d come, the guvnor behind me, leaning against a door, catching his breath.

Very soon the man appeared, walking quick towards us.

‘He’s coming,’ I whispered.

‘Hold tight,’ murmured the guvnor.

There was a sudden noise behind us. The door the guvnor was leaning on was wrenched open and there stood a woman in rags holding a chamberpot full to the brim with a filthy stew. She looked taken aback to see two gentlemen standing on her doorstep awaiting the delivery of her family’s ordure. Perhaps unable to stop her muscles from doing what they were surely accustomed to doing at such a moment, she swung the pot back as if to chuck it into the street.

The guvnor, startled, backed away quick from the woman and straight into full view of our pursuer. Seeing him, the man turned and ran back the way he came.

‘Curses!’ exclaimed the guvnor, and as he spoke he received half the woman’s delivery on his trousers.

I set off after the man. As I turned the first corner I saw him running up ahead, dim against the black brick. All the way down I was gaining on him, so that by the time he reached the next alley I was sure I would catch him. He turned right, leading us further away from the lamps of Broad Wall, further into the maze of damp buildings. I was slowed by a cart trying to turn, the horse blocking my path.

‘Hold up, hold up,’ whined the deliveryman. ‘You’ll spook him.’

I scrambled over the empty cart.

‘Bloody prick!’ shouted the man, taking a swipe in the air with his whip.

The alley ahead was empty. I ran on, soon coming to a junction. On an instinct, I turned left again, seeing the lamps of a proper street some way up ahead.

It was as I was noticing this that I felt my legs swiped from under me and came crashing down hard onto the gravel. And right when my hipbone hit the ground another blow fell on my spine. I cried out in pain, just managing to twist my head to see the man, his narrow eyes burning in his bearded face, raising his truncheon to strike me again. My eyes fixed on his hand clasping the truncheon, on the bruised and crushed fingernail of his first finger, and in that moment the ruined nail seemed angry and vengeful, as if the man himself was only its tool. I held out my hand to stop the blow, receiving it instead on my forearm. Immediately, a great wave of nausea came over me and the strength flew from my body. My ears were ringing like the bells of Christ Church; my eyes were full of tears. I was helpless. I wrapped myself up tight in a ball, clenching, clenching even my eyes, readied for the next blow.

It didn’t come. Afraid to turn my head in case I was smashed in the mush, I listened. Slowly the bells faded and I could hear a woman’s voice talking from inside one of the buildings. I got my courage up and turned my head. The man was gone.

I sat up, not sure I could stand. Every little movement made me jerk with pain. I looked up and down the alley until I was sure he was gone, then, leaning against the wall, pushed myself to my feet.

A mighty ache in my back caused me to sit down on the floor again, where I rested, rubbing my arm, waiting for the sick feeling to leave my belly.

A woman came round the corner ahead, a heavy cooking pot in her hands.

‘You fall over, mate?’ she asked.

‘Just a bit, mum,’ I said, trying to make my voice sound normal. ‘Tripped myself up.’

‘Want a lift?’

She put her pot down and helped me to my feet. She was as well built as Mrs Barnett, and her presence alone made me feel stronger.

‘You pass a short man with a beard up there?’ I asked her. ‘Would have been running, most likely.’

‘He was in a right hurry,’ she replied, picking up her pot. ‘He rob you, did he?’

‘You might say that.’

‘Well, you don’t want to bother with the police, less you want to waste half a day or more.’

‘Did you see what he looked like?’

‘Not much in this light. Thin little eyes, though, suspicious-looking, I’d say. But like I say, you don’t want to bother with the police this time.’

We walked along side by side. With each step I had a jarring pain in my back.

‘Ask me why,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘’Cos he had a police truncheon in his belt. And it was a police belt, mate. Wasn’t wearing a uniform, though. Just the standard copper’s boots.’

‘You know a lot about copper’s clothes, do you?’

‘My old man was a constable,’ she said. ‘Before he croaked. I was the one used to polish up those boots each day. You married?’

I nodded. We walked together until we reached the main road, where she waddled off towards the bridge. When she was out of sight, I lowered myself down onto the steps of the Home and Colonial to give myself rest from the pain. It was an hour before I had the strength to go on.