Читать книгу Burning Bright - Tracy Chevalier - Страница 13

Dick Butterfield could have been in one of several pubs. While most people favoured one local, he liked to move around, and joined several drinking clubs or societies, where the like-minded met at a particular pub to discuss topics of mutual interest. These nights were not much different from other nights except that the beer was cheaper and the songs even bawdier. Dick Butterfield was constantly joining new clubs and dropping old ones as his interests changed. At the moment he belonged to a cutter club (one of his many occupations had been as a boatman on the Thames, though he had long ago lost the boat) a chair club, where each member took turns haranguing the others about political topics from the head chair at a table; a lottery club, where they pooled together on small bets that rarely won enough to cover the drinks, and where Dick Butterfield was always encouraging members to increase the stakes; and, by far his favourite, a punch club, where each week they tried out different rum concoctions.

Dick Butterfield’s club and pub life was so complicated that his family rarely knew where he was of an evening. He normally drank within a half-mile radius from his home, but there were still dozens of pubs to choose from. Maggie and Jem had already called in at the Horse and Groom, the Crown and Cushion, the Canterbury Arms and the Red Lion, before they found him ensconced in the corner of the loudest pub of the lot, the Artichoke on the Lower Marsh.

After following Maggie into the first two, Jem waited for her outside the rest. He had only been inside one pub since they arrived in Lambeth: a few days after they moved in, Mr Astley called to see how they were getting on, and had taken Thomas Kellaway and Jem to the Pineapple. It had been a sedate place, Jem realised now that he could compare it with other Lambeth pubs, but at the time he’d been overwhelmed by the liveliness of the drinkers – many of them circus people – and Philip Astley’s roaring conversation.

Lambeth Marsh was a market street busy with shops and stalls, and carts and people going between Lambeth and Blackfriars Bridge towards the city. The doors to the Artichoke were open, and the sound poured across the road, making Jem hesitate as Maggie pushed past the men leaning in the doorway, and wonder why he was following her.

He knew why, though: Maggie was the first person in Lambeth to take any interest in him, and he could do with a friend. Most boys Jem’s age were already apprenticed or working; he had seen younger children about, but had not yet managed to talk to any of them. It was hard to understand them, for one thing: he found London accents, as well as the many regional ones that converged on the city, sometimes incomprehensible.

Lambeth children were different in other ways too – more aware and more suspicious. They reminded him of cats who creep in to sit by the fire, knowing they are barely tolerated, happy to be inside but with ears swivelling and eyes in slits, ready to detect the foot that will kick them back out. The children were often rude to adults, as Maggie had been to Miss Pelham, and got away with it when he wouldn’t have in his old village. They mocked and threw stones at people they didn’t like, stole food from barrows and baskets, sang rude songs; they shouted, teased, taunted. Only occasionally did he see Lambeth children doing things he could imagine joining in with: rowing a boat on the river; singing while streaming out of the charity school on Lambeth Green; chasing a dog that had made off with someone’s cap.

So when Maggie beckoned to him from the door of the Artichoke, he followed her inside, braving the wall of noise and the thick smoke from the lamps. He wanted to be a part of this new Lambeth life, rather than watching it from a window or a front gate or over a garden wall.

Although it was only late afternoon, the pub was heaving with people. The din was tremendous, though after a time his ears began to pick up the pattern of a song, unfamiliar but clearly a tune. Maggie plunged through the wall of bodies to the corner where her father sat.

Dick Butterfield was a small, brown man – his eyes, his wiry hair, the undertone of his skin, his clothes. A web of wrinkles extended from the outer corners of his eyes and across his forehead, forming deep furrows on his brow. Despite the wrinkles, he had a young, energetic air about him. Today he was simply drinking rather than attending a club. He pulled his daughter onto his lap, and was singing along with the rest of the pub when Jem finally reached them:

And for which I’m sure she’ll go to Hell

For she makes me fuck her in church time!

At the last line, a deafening shout went up that made Jem cover his ears. Maggie had joined in, and she grinned at Jem, who blushed and stared at his feet. Many songs had been sung at the Five Bells in Piddletrenthide, but nothing like that.

After the great shout, the pub was quieter, the way a thunderclap directly overhead clears the worst of a storm. ‘What you been up to, then, Mags?’ Dick Butterfield asked his daughter in the relative calm.

‘This an’ that. I was at his house—’ she pointed at Jem ‘—this is Jem, Pa – lookin’ at his pa making chairs. They just come from Dorsetshire, an’ are living at Miss Pelham’s in Hercules Buildings, next to Mr Blake.’

‘Miss Pelham’s, eh?’ Dick Butterfield chuckled. ‘Glad to meet you, Jem. Sit yourself down and rest your pegs.’ He waved at the other side of the table. There was no stool or bench there. Jem looked around: all of the stools in sight were taken. Dick and Maggie Butterfield were gazing at him with identical expressions, watching to see what he would do. Jem considered kneeling at the table, but he knew that was not likely to gain the Butterfields’ approval. He would have to search the pub for an empty stool. It was expected of him, a little test of his merit – the first real test of his new London life.

Locating an empty stool in a crowded pub can be tricky, and Jem could not find one. He tried asking for one, but those he asked paid no attention to him. He tried to take one that a man was using as a footrest and got swatted. He asked a barmaid, who jeered at him. As he struggled through the scrum of bodies, Jem wondered how it was that so many people could be drinking now rather than working. In the Piddle Valley few went to the Five Bells or the Crown or the New Inn until evening.

At last he went back to the table empty-handed. A vacant stool now sat where Dick Butterfield had indicated, and he and Maggie were grinning at Jem.

‘Country boy,’ muttered a youth sitting next to them who had watched the whole ordeal, including the barmaid’s jeering.

‘Shut your bonebox, Charlie,’ Maggie retorted. Jem guessed at once that he was her brother.

Charlie Butterfield was like his father but without the wrinkles or the charm; better-looking in a rough way, with dirty blond hair and a dimple in his chin, but with a scar through his eyebrow too that gave him a harsh look. He was as cruel to his sister as he could get away with, twisting burns on Maggie’s arms until the day she was old enough to kick him where it was guaranteed to hurt. He still looked for ways to get at her – knocking the legs out from the stool she sat on, upending the salt on her food, stealing her blankets at night. Jem knew none of this, but he sensed something about Charlie that made him avoid the other’s eyes, as you do a growling dog.

Dick Butterfield tossed a coin onto the table. ‘Fetch Jem a drink, Charlie,’ he commanded.

‘I an’t—’ Charlie sputtered at the same time as Jem said, ‘I don’t—’ Both stopped at the stern look on Dick Butterfield’s face. And so Charlie got Jem a mug of beer he didn’t want – cheap, watery stuff men back at the Five Bells would spill onto the floor rather than drink.

Dick Butterfield sat back. ‘Well, now, what have you got to tell me, Mags? What’s the scandal today in old Lambeth?’

‘We saw summat in Mr Blake’s garden, didn’t we, Jem? In their summerhouse, with all the doors open.’ Maggie gave Jem a sly look. He turned red again and shrugged.

‘That’s my girl,’ Dick Butterfield said. ‘Always sneakin’ about, finding out what’s what.’

Charlie leaned forward. ‘What’d you see, then?’

Maggie leaned forward as well. ‘We saw him an’ his wife at it!’

Charlie chuckled, but Dick Butterfield seemed unimpressed. ‘What, rutting is all? That’s nothing you don’t see every day you look down an alley. Go outside and you’ll see it round the corner now. Eh, Jem? I expect you’ve seen your share of it, back in Dorsetshire, eh, boy?’

Jem gazed into his beer. A fly was struggling on the surface, trying not to drown. ‘Seen enough,’ he mumbled. Of course he had seen it before. It was not just the animals he lived among that he’d seen at it – dogs, cats, sheep, horses, cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, pheasants – but people tucked away in corners of woods or against hedgerows or even in the middle of meadows when they thought no one would pass through. He had seen his neighbours doing it in a barn, and Sam with his girl up in the hazel wood at Nettlecombe Tout. He had seen it enough that he was no longer surprised, though it still embarrassed him. It was not that there was so much to see – mostly just clothes and a persistent movement, sometimes a man’s pale buttocks pistoning up and down or a woman’s breasts jiggling. It was seeing it when he was not expecting to, breaking into the assumed privacy, that made Jem turn away with a red face. He had much the same feeling on the rare occasion when he heard his parents argue – as when his mother demanded that his father cut down the pear tree at the bottom of their garden that Tommy had fallen from, and Thomas Kellaway had refused. Anne Kellaway had taken an axe later and done it herself.

Jem dipped his finger into the beer and let the fly climb onto it and crawl away. Charlie watched with astonished disgust; Dick Butterfield simply smiled and looked around at the other customers, as if searching for someone else to talk to.

‘It wasn’t just that they were doin’ it,’ Maggie persisted. ‘They were – they had – they’d taken off all their clothes, hadn’t they, Jem? We could see everything, like they were Adam an’ Eve.’

Dick Butterfield watched his daughter with the same appraising look he’d given Jem when he tried to find a stool. As easy-going as he appeared – lolling in his seat, buying drinks for people, smiling and nodding – he demanded a great deal from those he was with.

‘And d’you know what they were doing while they did it?’

‘What, Mags?’

Maggie thought quickly of the most outlandish thing two people could do while they were meant to be rutting. ‘They were reading to each other!’

Charlie chuckled. ‘What, the newspaper?’

‘That’s not what I—’ Jem began.

‘From a book,’ Maggie interrupted, her voice rising over the noise of the pub. ‘Poetry, I think it was.’ Specific details always made stories more believable.

‘Poetry, eh?’ Dick Butterfield repeated, sucking at his beer. ‘I expect that’ll be Paradise Lost, if they were playing at Adam an’ Eve in their garden.’ Dick Butterfield had once had a copy of the poem, in among a barrowful of books he’d got hold of and was trying to sell, and had read bits of it. No one expected Dick Butterfield to be able to read so well, but his father had taught him, reasoning that it was best to be as knowledgeable as those you were swindling.

‘Yes, that was it. Pear Tree’s Loss,’ Maggie agreed. ‘I know I heard them words.’

Jem started, unable to believe what he’d heard. ‘Did you say “pear tree”?’

Dick shot her a look. ‘Paradise Lost, Mags. Get your words right. Now, hang on a minute.’ He closed his eyes, thought for a moment, then recited:

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and providence their guide:

They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way.

His neighbours stared at him; these were not the sort of words they normally heard in the pub. ‘What you sayin’, Pa?’ Maggie asked.

‘The only thing I remember from Paradise Lost – the very last lines, when Adam an’ Eve are leaving Eden. Made me sorry for ’em.’

‘I didn’t hear anything like that from the Blakes,’ Jem said, then felt Maggie’s sharp kick under the table.

‘It was after you stopped looking,’ she insisted.

Jem opened his mouth to argue further, then stopped. Clearly the Butterfields liked their stories embroidered; indeed, it was the embroidery they wanted, and would soon pass on to everyone else, made even more elaborate, until the whole pub was discussing the Blakes playing Adam and Eve in their garden, even when that was not what Jem had seen at all. Who was he to spoil their fun – though Jem thought of Mr Blake’s alert eyes, his firm greeting, and his determined stride, and regretted that they were spreading such talk about him. He preferred to speak the truth. ‘What do Mr Blake do?’ he asked, trying instead to guide the subject away from what they had seen in the garden.

‘What, apart from tupping his wife in the garden?’ Dick Butterfield chuckled. ‘He’s a printer and engraver. You seen the printing press through his front window, han’t you?’

‘The machine with the handle like a star?’ Jem had indeed spied the wooden contraption, which was even bigger and bulkier than his father’s lathe, and wondered what it was for.

‘That’s it. You’ll see him using it now and then, him an’ his wife. Prints books an’ such on it. Pamphlets, pictures, that sort o’ thing. Dunno as he makes a living from ’em, though. I seen a few of ’em when I went looking to sell him some copper for his plates when he first moved here from across the river a year or two ago.’ Dick Butterfield shook his head. ‘Strange things, they were. Lots o’ fire an’ naked people with big eyes, shouting.’

‘You mean like Hell, Pa?’ Maggie suggested.

‘Maybe. Not my taste, anyway. I like a cheerful picture, myself. Can’t see that many would buy ’em from him. He must get more from engraving for others.’

‘Did he buy the copper?’

‘Nah. I knew the minute I talked to him that he’s not one to buy like that, for a fancy. He’s his own man, is Mr Blake. He’ll go off an’ choose his copper an’ paper himself, real careful.’ Dick Butterfield said this without rancour; indeed, he respected those who would clearly not be taken in by his ruses.

‘We saw him with his bonnet rouge on last week, didn’t we, Jem?’ Maggie said. ‘He looked right funny in it.’

‘He’s a braver man ’n many,’ Dick Butterfield declared. ‘Not many in London show such open support for the Frenchies, however they may talk in the pub. P.M. don’t take kindly to it, nor the King neither.’

‘Who’s P.M.?’ Jem asked.

Charlie Butterfield snorted.

‘Prime Minister, lad. Mr Pitt,’ Dick Butterfield added a little sharply, in case the Dorset boy didn’t know even that.

Jem ducked his head and gazed into his beer once more. Maggie watched him struggling across the table, and wished now that she had not brought him to meet her father. He did not understand what Dick Butterfield wanted from people, the sort of quick smart talk required of those allowed to sit with him on the stool he kept hooked around his foot under the table. Dick Butterfield wanted to be informed and entertained at the same time. He was always looking for another way to make money – he made his living out of small, dodgy schemes dreamed up from pub talk – and he wanted to have fun doing it. Life was hard, after all, and what made it easier than a little laughter, as well as a little business putting money in his pocket?

Dick Butterfield could see when people were sinking. He didn’t hold it against Jem – the boy’s confused innocence made him feel rather tender towards him, and irritated at his own jaded children. He pushed Maggie abruptly from his knee so that she fell to the floor, where she stared up at him with hurt eyes. ‘Lord, child, you’re getting heavy,’ Dick said, jiggling his knee up and down. ‘You’ve sent my leg to sleep. You’ll be needin’ your own stool now you’re getting to lady size.’

‘Won’t nobody give her one, though, and I’m not talking ’bout just the stool,’ Charlie sneered. ‘Chicken-breasted little cow.’

‘Leave off her,’ Jem said.

All three Butterfields stared at him, Dick and Charlie leaning with their elbows on the table, Maggie still on the floor between them. Then Charlie lunged across the table at Jem, and Dick Butterfield put his arm out to stop him. ‘Give Maggie your stool and get another one,’ he said.

Charlie glared at Jem but stood up, letting the stool fall backwards, and stalked off. Jem didn’t dare turn around to watch him but kept his eyes on the table. He took a gulp of beer. He’d defended Maggie as a reflex, the way he would his own sister.

Maggie got up and righted Charlie’s stool, then sat on it, her face grim. ‘Thanks,’ she muttered to Jem, though she didn’t sound very grateful.

‘So, Jem, your father’s a bodger, is he?’ Dick Butterfield said, opening the business part of the conversation since it seemed unlikely that Jem would entertain them further.

‘Not a bodger, exactly, sir,’ Jem answered. ‘He don’t travel from town to town, an’ he makes proper chairs, not the rickety ones bodgers make.’

‘Course he does, lad, course he does. Where does he get his wood?’

‘One of the timber yards by Westminster Bridge.’

‘Whose yard? Bet I can get it for him cheaper.’

‘Mr Harris. Mr Astley introduced Pa to him.’

Dick Butterfield winced at Philip Astley’s name. Maggie’s father could negotiate good deals most places, but not when Mr Astley had got in before him. He and his landlord kept a wide berth of each other, though there was a grudging respect on both sides as well. If Dick Butterfield had been a wealthy circus owner, or Philip Astley a small-time rogue, they would have been remarkably similar.

‘Well, if I hear of any cheaper wood, I’ll let you know. Leave it with me, lad,’ he added, as if it were Jem who’d approached him for advice. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call in one day, shall I, and have a word with your pa. I’m always happy to help out new neighbours. Now, you’ll be expected back home, won’t you? They’ll be wonderin’ what kept you.’

Jem nodded and got up from the stool. ‘Thank’ee for the beer, sir.’

‘Course, lad.’ Dick Butterfield hooked his foot around Jem’s stool and dragged it back under the table. Maggie grabbed Jem’s half-drunk beer and took a gulp. ‘Bye,’ she said.

‘Z’long.’

On his way out, Jem passed Charlie standing with a crowd of other young men. Charlie glared at him and shoved one of his friends so that he knocked into Jem. The youths laughed and Jem hurried out, glad to get away from the Butterfields. He suspected, however, that he would see Maggie again, even if she had not said ‘Bye for now’ this time. Despite her brother and father, he wanted to.

She reminded him of September blackberries, which looked ripe but could just as easily be sour as sweet when you ate them. Jem could not resist such a temptation.