Читать книгу Arrowood - Mick Finlay, Mick Finlay - Страница 8

Chapter Two

We were just finishing the pie and potatoes I’d fetched for our dinner when the door from the shop burst open. There on the hearth, carrying a carpetbag in one hand and a tuba case in the other, was a woman of middle age. She wore grey and black; her bearing spoke of a well-travelled soul. The guvnor was immediately struck dumb. I jumped to my feet and bowed, quickly wiping the grease from my fingers onto the back of my trousers.

She nodded briefly at me, then turned back to him. For a long time they looked at each other, him with a look of surprised shame, she with a righteous superiority. Finally, he managed to swallow the potato he held in his mouth.

‘Ettie,’ he said. ‘What . . . ? You’re . . .’

‘I can see I’ve arrived just in time,’ she replied, her noble eyes travelling slowly over the pill jars and ale flagons, the ash spilling from the fire, the newspapers and books piled on every surface. ‘Isabel hasn’t come back then?’

His big lips pursed and he shook his head.

She turned to me.

‘And you are?’

‘Barnett, ma’am. Mr Arrowood’s employee.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Barnett.’

She returned my smile with a frown.

The guvnor eased himself from his chair, brushing the flakes of pastry from his woollen vest.

‘I thought you were in Afghanistan, Ettie.’

‘It appears there’s much good work to be done amongst the poor of this town. I’ve joined a mission in Bermondsey.’

‘What, here?’ exclaimed the guvnor.

‘I’m going to stay with you. Now, pray tell me where I shall sleep.’

‘Sleep?’ The guvnor glanced at me with fear on his face. ‘Sleep? You have a nurse’s quarters of some kind, surely?’

‘From now on I’m in the employ of the good Lord, Brother. It’s no bad thing, by the look of this place. These mountains of papers are a hazard, for a start.’ Her eyes fell on the little staircase at the back of the room. ‘Ah. I’ll just see the space now. No need to accompany me.’

She put her tuba on the floor and marched up the stairs.

I made tea for the guvnor, while he sat staring out the murky window as if he was about to lose his life. I broke a piece of toffee from my pocket and offered it to him; he put it greedily in his mouth.

‘Earlier, why did you say Miss Cousture is a liar?’ I asked.

‘You must watch more closely, Barnett,’ he said as his teeth worked on the toffee. ‘There was a point in my speech when she flushed and refused my eye. Only one. It was the moment I told her I could see into a person’s soul. That I smelled out the truth. You didn’t notice?’

‘Did you do it deliberate?’

He shook his head.

‘It’s a good trick, I think,’ he said. ‘I might use it again.’

‘I’m not sure it is. Lying’s a way of life where I come from.’

‘It is everywhere, Barnett.’

‘I mean they won’t flush if you accuse them.’

‘But I didn’t accuse her. That’s the trick. I was talking about myself.’

He was making hard work of that toffee, and a little juice escaped the side of his mouth. He wiped it away.

‘What was she lying about, then?’

He held up his finger, grimacing as he tried to work the toffee off his molar.

‘That I do not know,’ he replied when he’d freed it. ‘Now, I must remain this afternoon and find out what the deuce my sister intends to do here. I’m sorry, Barnett. You’ll have to visit the Barrel of Beef yourself.’

I was none too pleased with this.

‘Maybe we should wait until you’re able to come,’ I suggested.

‘Don’t go inside. Wait across the street until a worker comes out. A washerman or a serving girl. Someone who could do with a penny. See what you can find out, but do nothing that’ll put you at risk. Above all, don’t let Cream’s men see you.’

I nodded.

‘I’m quite serious, Barnett. I doubt you’d get a second chance this time.’

‘I don’t intend to go anywhere near his men,’ I said unhappily. ‘I’d as soon not be going there at all.’

‘Just be careful,’ he said. ‘Come back here when you have something.’

As I made to go he glanced up at the ceiling, where the scrape of furniture being moved could be heard.

The Barrel of Beef was a four-storey building on the corner of Waterloo Road. In the evenings it was patronized mostly by young men arriving in hansom cabs from across the river, looking for some life after the theatres and political meetings had shut down for the night. Downstairs at the front was a pub, one of the biggest in Southwark, with two floors of supper rooms above that. The rooms were often booked out by dining societies, and on a summer’s night, when the windows were open and the music had begun, it could be like walking past a roaring sea. On the fourth floor were gaming tables, and these were the most exclusive. This was the respectable face of the Barrel of Beef. Around the back, down a stinking lane of beggars and streetwalkers, was the Skirt of Beef, a taproom so dark and so fugged with smoke you’d start to weep the minute you stepped in.

It was a cold July so far, more like early spring, and I cursed the chill wind as I set myself up on the other side of the street, slumped in a doorway like a tramp aside the warm cart of a potato man, my cap pulled low over my face, my body covered in an old sack. I knew too well what Cream’s men would do if they discovered me watching the place again. There I waited until the young men got back into their cabs and the street went quiet. Soon a group of serving girls in drab grey clothes came out and marched down eastwards towards Marshalsea. Four waiters were next, a couple of chefs behind. And then, at last, just the kind of old fellow I was looking for. He wore a long ragged coat and boots too big for him, and he hurried and stumbled down the street as if in urgent need of a crapper. I followed him through the dark streets, barely bothering to keep hidden: he’d have no reason to suspect anyone would be interested in him. A light rain began to fall. Soon he arrived at the White Eagle, a gin palace on Friar Street, the only drinking place still open at that late hour.

I waited outside until he had a drink in his hand. Then I strode in and stood at the counter next to him.

‘For you?’ asked the fat bartender.

‘Porter.’

I had quite a righteous thirst and downed half the pint in a single swallow. The old fellow supped his gin and sighed. His fingers were puckered and pink.

‘Troubles?’ I asked.

‘Can’t drink that stuff no more,’ he growled, nodding at my pint. ‘Makes me piss something rotten. Wish I could, though. I used to love a drop of beer. Believe me I did.’

Sitting on a high stool behind a glass screen was a man I recognized from the street outside the Beef He wore a black suit, rubbed thin at the elbows and ragged at the boot, and there was not a hair on his head. His match-selling business suffered on account of his habit of exploding into a series of jerks and tics that made people passing him jump back in fright. Now he was muttering to himself, staring into a half-pint of gin, one hand grasping the other’s wrist as if arresting its movements.

‘St Vitus’s Dance,’ whispered the old man to me. ‘A spirit got hold of his limbs and won’t let them go – least that’s what they say.’

I sympathized with him about drinking beer and we got to talking about what it was like to get old, a subject about which he had much to say. Presently I bought him another drink, which he accepted greedily. I asked him what was his occupation.

‘Chief sculleryman,’ he replied. ‘You know the Barrel of Beef, I suppose?’

‘Course I do. That’s a fine place indeed, sir. A very fine place.’

He straightened his beaten back and tipped his head in pride. ‘It is, it is. I knows Mr Cream as well, the owner. You know him? I knows all of them as run things down there. He give me, last Christmas this was, he give me a bottle of brandy. Just comes up to me as I was leaving and says, “Ernest, that’s for all what you’ve done for me this year”, and gives it to me. To me especially. A bottle of brandy. That’s Mr Cream, you know him?’

‘He owns the place, I know as much as that.’

‘A very fine bottle of brandy that was. Finest you can get. Tasted like gold, or silk or something like that.’ He supped his gin and winced, shaking his head. His eyes were yellow and weepy, the few teeth left in his mouth crooked and brown. ‘I been there ten years, more or less. He ain’t never had one reason to complain about my work all that time. Oh, no. Mr Cream treats me right. I can eat anything as is left at the end of the night, long as I don’t take nothing home with me. Anything they ain’t keeping. Steak, kidneys, oysters, mutton soup. Don’t hardly spend any money on my food at all. Keep my money for the pleasures of life, I do.’

He finished his gin and began to cough. I bought him another. Behind us a tired-looking streetwalker was bickering with two men in brown aprons. One tried to take her arm; she shook him off. Ernest looked at her with an air of senile longing, then turned back to me.

‘Not the others,’ he continued. ‘Only me, on account of being there longest. Rib of beef. Bit of cod. Tripe, if I must. I eat like a lord, mister. It’s a good set-up. I got a room over the road here. You know the baker’s? Penarven the baker’s? I got a room above there.’

‘I know a fellow who works down there, as it happens,’ I said. ‘French lad name of Thierry. Brother of a ladyfriend of mine. You probably know him.’

‘Terry, is that him? Pastryman? He don’t work with us no more. Not since last week or so. Left or given the push. Don’t ask me which.’

He lit a pipe and began to cough again.

‘Only, I’m trying to get hold of him,’ I continued when he’d finished. ‘You wouldn’t have a notion where I can find him?’

‘Ask his sister, shouldn’t you?’

‘It’s her who’s looking for him.’ I lowered my voice. ‘Truth is it might do me a bit of good if I help her out, like. Know what I mean?’

He chuckled. I slapped him on the back; he didn’t like it, and a suspicious look came over him.

‘Bit of a coincidence, ain’t it? You happening to talk to me like that?’

‘I followed you.’

It took him a minute to work out what I was saying.

‘That’s the way it is, is it?’ he croaked.

‘That’s the way it is. You know where I can find him?’

He scratched the stubble on his neck and finished his gin.

‘The oysters is good here,’ he said.

I called the barmaid over and ordered him a bowl.

‘All I can say is he was very friendly with a barmaid name of Martha, least it seemed that way to anybody with their eyes open,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they left together. You ask her. Curly red hair – you can’t miss her. A little beauty, if you don’t mind Catholics.’

‘Was he in any trouble?’

He drained his glass and swayed suddenly, gripping the counter to steady himself.

‘I keep my nose out of everything what happens there. You can find yourself in trouble very quick with some of the things as goes on in that building.’

The oysters arrived. He looked at them with a frown.

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘It’s only as they go down better with a little drain of plane, sir,’ he replied with a sniff.

I ordered him another gin. When he’d just about finished off the oysters, I asked him again if Thierry was in trouble.

‘All I know is he left the day after the American was there. Big American fellow. I only know ’cos I heard him shouting at Mr Cream, and there ain’t nobody who shouts at the boss. Nobody. After that, Terry never come back.’

‘Why was he shouting?’

‘Couldn’t hear,’ he said, dropping the last oyster shell on the floor. He held onto the counter and stared at it as if he wasn’t sure he could get down there without falling over.

‘D’you know who he was?’

‘Never seen him before.’

‘You must have heard something?’ I said.

‘I don’t talk to nobody and nobody talks to me. I just do my work and go home. That’s the best way. That’s the advice I’ll give my children if ever I have any.’

He laughed and called over to the barmaid.

‘Oi, Jeannie. Did you hear? I said that’s the advice I’ll give my children if ever I have any!’

‘Yeah, very funny Ernest,’ she replied. ‘Shame your pecker’s dropped off.’

His face fell. The barman and a cab driver at the end of the counter laughed loudly.

‘I could give you a few names to swear as my pecker’s attached and working very well, thank you,’ he croaked back.

But the barmaid wasn’t listening any more; she was talking to the cab driver. The old man stared hard at them for a few moments, then finished his drink and patted his coat pockets. His skin sagged from his bristling chin; his wrists seemed thin as broomsticks under the sleeves of his thick overcoat.

‘That’s it for me.’

‘Could you find out where he is, Ernest?’ I asked as we stepped onto the street. ‘I’d pay you well.’

‘Find another fool, mister,’ he replied, his words slurring in the chill air. ‘I don’t want to end up in the river with a lungful of mud. Not me.’

He glanced bitterly through the window where the barmaid was laughing with the cabman, then turned and stomped off down the road.