Tidetown, page 13
‘Mr B,’ shouted Mrs M, appearing from the scullery door, twining a tea towel between her hands. ‘Your soup. Cream of broccoli.’
‘On a mission, Mrs M. On a mission,’ said he without casting a glance kitchenwards.
So there he stood: a solitary figure in front of the huge house. Upstairs, languidly, luxuriously, the mayor completed his morning sport with Fraulein Rumple, swapped a heavily studded collar for his mayoral chain, pecked his paramour a kiss on the cheek and headed down the grand staircase to greet the duties of this brand-new day. Flinging open the heavy front doors he was surprised to see his deputy mayor standing to attention at the bottom of the steps, now completely soaked through, rain running off his hat and down his cheeks. Joshua’s face lit up, his eyes opened wide, he pointed a finger to the sky.
‘I have a great idea. It came to me as a feather fell from the rafters,’ said Joshua, as if this in itself was explanation enough.
‘So,’ says Joshua to Spider, who has yet to ask the identity of the Judas in question, ‘I have a proposition for you, which I believe that you, so much reminding me of my younger self, will be more than inclined to accept.’
Spider looks up. He no longer feels the need to ask the question on his mind. He looks Joshua in the eyes, and indeed, sees something of himself.
‘We’re each of us on our own, aren’t we?’ he replies. ‘Judas or not.’
Joshua sighs and scratches his ear. ‘Welcome to our world, Master Spider. It’s a sad and sorry fact, but not so far from the muddy truth. At the beginning and the end of the day we are, one and all, all on our lonesome.’
Next day Joshua’s great idea, as whispered to the mayor in the dripping rain in the driveway, is put into operation. The ruffians, spruced and polished, sit on a wooden bench by the pagoda. Nathaniel Mars from the Tidetown Chronicle is setting up his large box camera. Gathered around, nibbling on cucumber sandwiches and drinking tea from bone china cups, are carefully selected members of the community. Later on they will recount the afternoon’s events, spreading far and wide the news of the mayor’s noble deeds. The next day’s edition of the newspaper will extol the mayor’s great service to the community and will recommend that the townsfolk vote him in for another term. The photo on the page will show the soon-to-be-reformed and smiling ruffians with the mayor in their midst, flanked by Headmaster Rodwell and Jack Haynes from the Farmers’ Union (the wealthiest cattleman of his day). A smaller photo, on the inside page, will show the assembled dignitaries, those deemed of most importance towards the centre, others fanned and cramped at the margins. Chests are puffed out, heights extended, hats and ties adjusted.
‘Big smiles and as still as can be,’ says Nathaniel from under his photographer’s cloak.
Once the photos have been taken the mayor climbs to the podium to address the crowd. He starts by listing some of the major achievements of his time in office: the new sewerage pipe, the returfed school playing field. He proceeds to outline his stunning new pledge: the revised bylaw to improve cargo clearance from the wharves (which will, as a by-product of the bylaw, fortuitously enhance his commissions as well as appease and enrich the Captain’s Table and all who sup at it).
Then he gestures to the boys on the benches.
‘Now I turn my attention, and indeed my heart, to these poor waifs displayed before you. These children, these ruffians as they are called, lost and abandoned, having long since drifted into mischief and misdemeanour, will have a second chance at life. Recognising their needs, as well as the needs and safety of our community, we have taken them from the streets. They have spent some days in our care, but now Mr Rodwell is here. They will be placed under his guidance at his acclaimed school for the poor. There they will learn obedience and industry.’
The gathered dignitaries applaud and nod their heads in approval. Joshua, standing to one side, leaning against a silver birch tree, waits eagerly for the next announcement.
‘And,’ says the mayor, raising his hand to acknowledge the support of his audience, ‘I have one further announcement to make. The leader of the group, known to his fellows as Spider, being somewhat older, and shall I say more needy than the others, will be taken into my own home. He will join my staff and I, personally, will undertake to oversee his moral education, to shape him into a model of a hard-working citizen of our town.’
Spider looks over to Joshua, who nods in his direction. Nathaniel Mars writes in his notepad, then takes another photo for the newspaper. The mayor smiles happily, confident that he has taken a long stride towards another term at the helm of power.
As the crowd mingles to finish off the cupcakes and homemade lemonade, Joshua sidles up to Nathaniel. The old-time newsman, as much a fixture of Tidetown as the lighthouse on the reef, is busy reviewing his notes.
‘A fine and noble man, the mayor.’
‘Indeed, indeed,’ says Nathaniel, rubbing out a comma, adding an exclamation mark.
‘Front page, banner headline,’ suggests Joshua. ‘Along the lines of “Mayor’s Noble Act: For the Good of All, as Ever.”’
That night Spider is led to a tiny room under the main stairwell of the Mayoral Mansion, once the home for a second footman. He lies on clean cotton sheets, but sleep is hard to come by. On the far side of the heathland, in the hamlet of Thetford, the three brothers are herded into a damp and dark dormitory where twenty or so other unfortunates hack and cough and groan with hunger. Downstairs, Headmaster Rodwell dines on pork cutlets and apple sauce, licking his lips at the prospect of three more bodies to add to his workforce. The maths lesson tomorrow will be to calculate how many barrow loads of rocks twenty-six boys can shift in two and a half hours.
Perch sits up in bed. Her face is pale; there are shadows under her eyes. The nights have not been kind to her, have not offered her rest. Carp sits on the end of the bed, peeling an orange.
‘Here sister, eat.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ says Perch, pulling the blanket up to her chin, detesting her own vulnerability, even in front of her only sister. She licks the dried ridges of her lips.
‘Has the blood flowed from you?’ she asks without looking at Carp.
‘Yes it has … I was to tell you. When we were in the cells. Just before we were released. But you were unwell,’ replies Carp, realising that this is one of the very few things she has ever kept from her sister. That, and the doubting.
‘Something else to share,’ says Perch, reaching out her hand, sensing something is shifting between them, hoping to hold on to her sister.
‘Yes … to share,’ murmurs Carp as she grasps her twin’s fingers, wondering how she will ever be able to speak the unspeakable: the real crisis of her faith, of all they seemingly hold to be true.
‘Is that your real name?’ asks Mrs M, looking the boy up and down, assessing the strength in his hands and the intent in his eyes.
‘It’s the only one I know,’ says Spider.
‘Well, Spider it will be then. But there’ll be no webs to spin here, young man. You are here to work like the rest of us.’
The boy has a proud look upon his face, one that Mrs M both admires and suspects.
‘So what can you do?’ she asks.
‘Anything,’ he says with a shrug of the shoulder.
‘Well, anything it will be. The first anything is out there,’ she says pointing to the garden. ‘There’s a pile of anything, I call it manure, to be turned.’ Spider rolls up his sleeves, whistles a tune and begins his first day as the dogsbody and doer-of-anything.
The morning moves on and Spider goes about his: forking through compost, sharpening knives, gutting chickens. Mrs M, observing his every move, is quietly impressed by his composed and contained single-mindedness.
‘Here,’ she says as he stands in the doorway between jobs, ‘some bread and cheese and a glass of milk.’
She watches him as he sits in the corner, chewing slowly, taking in his surroundings. There’s something about his adolescence, mixed with a gentle assuredness, that warms him to her. He wipes his mouth after draining his glass.
‘The next anything?’ he says, raising an eyebrow.
She smiles at his familiarity, his robustness.
‘Wood, Master Spider,’ she says after a moment’s thought. ‘There’s a pile of logs outside that needs to be chopped up for the fires.’
Without further a word he ambles from his stool and is out the back door.
‘The axe is by the shed, by the hoes and the rakes,’ she shouts after him.
He enjoys the action, the weight and power of the axe, its sharpness, the way it holds its own balance as he lifts it above his head, the perfect arc through the air, how it splits the wood asunder, the sound and the smell, the splintered pieces falling in piles on either side of the chopping block.
When Carp appears he is so engrossed in the rhythm and action of the wood chopping that he fails to notice her. She stands to one side of the shed with a peculiar fascination for the twitch and shift of the muscles in his bare arms, the flow and wave of his hair as he thuds the axe through to the chopping block. She steps away, surprised and unsure of the feelings that course through her.
Then he turns to stretch his back and there she is. Their eyes meet. Some form of recognition. Some notion of their shared youthfulness. She says nothing, pretends nothing. Slowly, deliberately, she puts her hands deep into the pockets of her coat and walks back towards the house.
Night-time descends upon Tidetown as a welcome shroud. Something in the quality of the dark hides away the blemishes, the fears, stifles the coughs and softens the edges. The townsfolk retreat to their parlours and bedrooms, each nestled into a private space where the worries and cares of the day can be revealed and dissected, then held in check within soft down pillows, beneath duck-feather coverlets. The same moon, high in the sky, shared by a myriad of souls across the land and sea: bedding down, keeping watch. Another day done.
NINE
‘The infectiousness of crime is like that of the plague.’ – Napoleon Bonaparte
The winter had stretched into the new year as a creeping, sneaking frost. The land stayed frozen and silent. Temperatures plummeted and the spring barely thawed the earth’s crust. No one could remember a time like it. The previous summer had come overcast, as if the sun had found shelter elsewhere and hidden away, reluctant to illuminate and brighten what was to be seen below. The leaves on the summer trees seemed to be waiting to fall, eager to get any hope of regrowth and rejuvenation out of the way for the year. Crops failed miserably, animals stood subdued by shock in the fields. By that autumn the plague had as firm a grip across the land as had the blanket of ice the previous winter.
Nowhere was to be spared.
Mrs Barnum is glad when the handsome young man joins her in the coach at Keighly-upon-Lea. She has been alone for several hours, ever since the elderly couple alighted at Frampton, and she always prefers company to solitude. As soon as the man has settled on the bench seat opposite her, she nods by way of introduction.
‘Mr Duke,’ says the man, taking the feathered hat from his head and laying it on his lap. ‘On my way to Tidetown.’
‘I too am heading for that destination,’ she says delightedly. ‘So we shall be good companions to journey’s end. I am Mrs Frances Barnum, the very proud mother of that very town’s deputy mayor.’
‘Proud you must be, indeed.’
‘And, sir, what brings you to Tidetown?’
‘I am from the Provincial Medical Office, come to survey the health of the town … and its preparedness against eventualities, against disaster. “He who would valiant be”, you might say.’
Mrs Barnum is nonplussed, befuddled by this man who speaks so obliquely. He senses her confusion, but continues nonetheless.
‘… And to determine, and report back to my masters in Bray, of Tidetown’s ability to pay for assistance, where payment, as well as prayer for that matter, may be required.’
‘Oh,’ she gasps, physically taken aback at the intensity of the words and the worrisome glare that follows them. As if reading her mind, Mr Duke leans forward, as if about to impart a secret.
‘Busy, busy, busy. This town, then the next. No peace for the wicked, eh? Unto God give to God, but unto Caesar give to Caesar.’
Shifting in her seat, uncertain as to how she should respond, Mrs Barnum looks out of the window at the passing fields, wondering if sometimes solitude might indeed be the better option.
‘You’ve cut my sandwiches the wrong way!’
‘The wrong way, Miss Angelica?’
Spider stands against the wall of the morning room. The mayor has long since left for the council chambers, just a smear of strawberry jam on a napkin a reminder of his breakfasting.
‘Diagonal. I always have them diagonal. Do you know nothing, kitchen boy?’
Spider considers the question, takes a bread knife from the sideboard and, without saying a word, cuts the halved sandwich on the diagonal. The mustard that Angelica loves slavered on her bacon oozes from the now quartered sandwich as if from an open wound.
When Angelica looks up from the butchery Spider has left the room.
First of all she put it down to the long journey. The stagecoach was far from new and she felt every bump, every stone on the road from her village home in Woodford all the long and windy way to Tidetown. Mrs Barnum had been nervously anticipating for months the prospect of visiting her son, so proud was she when she heard he had become deputy mayor. So she assumed the strange tingling on the surface of her skin and her rising temperature (and, dare she say, sweats) were all due to the excitement and rigours of the journey.
‘You look flushed, Mama,’ said Joshua, as he took her hand and helped her down from the stagecoach.
‘All in a tizz and lather at seeing you, my precious boy,’ she said, lifting up the hem of her voluminous skirt to keep it out of the mud.
At dinner in the hotel that very first night she felt woozy and disconnected. As much as she longed for the company of her son and his regaling tales of the mayor and bugle calls, her body cried out to lie down and sleep.
‘I fear the journey is still too heavy upon me,’ she said, the dessert of treacle pudding and double cream, one of her favourites, barely touched before her. ‘I need to rest, darling boy.’
Joshua took his beloved mother up the stairs to her room. He waited in the corridor as she undressed and got into bed.
‘Come in now, Joshua,’ she called.
He sat by her bedside. She looked frail and delicate under the covers, the outline of her body, freed of skirts and corsets, almost childlike. On her head she wore a simple white nightcap that heightened and framed her wrinkled face.
She reached out for Joshua’s hand.
‘If only your father had lived to see you now,’ she said. ‘How puffed up he would have been. Deputy mayor of Tidetown! So very proud he would have been.’
‘Yes, Mama,’ replied Joshua, secretly doubting that anything he could ever have done would have satisfied or pleased his father.
Maybe sensing Joshua’s reservations, she squeezed his hand tighter.
‘He was hard on you, I know that,’ she said, wondering if the weakness spreading through her body was a result of the strain of all those years of marriage and motherhood. How often she had asked her husband to show some love to this boy, peculiar and detached as he was.
‘He was never an easy man and he had such ideals as to what he wanted from a son.’
‘Do not stress yourself, Mama,’ said Joshua, noting well the sadness in her voice, ‘you are tired and now you must rest.’
And so Joshua kissed his mother on the forehead, bade her to sleep well and left the room, not knowing that the next time he saw her she would be dead: the first Tidetown victim of the plague.
The emergency meeting of the Tidetown Council Executive takes place in the mayor’s office on the top floor of the town hall. With his back to the seated members, the mayor looks out of the large window. He can see the townsfolk busy about their evening activities as if nothing untoward, nothing disastrous was unfolding in their midst.
‘We have word from the Provincial Government,’ says Professor Wells, the Chief Medical Officer, ‘that fifty per cent of adults in some towns have been stricken. It seems that all die within days of infection.’
The mayor continues to stare out of the window. In the square below he sees an old lady look up at him. He must appear grand and aloof in the huge, brightly lit window, high up, framed by the solid granite facade. He turns back into the room. There, seated around the large oak table are his councillors, waiting for his command. Professor Wells, an elderly man of great integrity who has both brought into this world and seen into the next many citizens of this town, raises his hand.
‘One point that seems to have emerged,’ he says, ‘and this is corroborated by cases across the province, is that only adults have been stricken by this plague. No children have yet been reported to have died, or even to have become sick.’
Eyebrows, some quite bushy, most quite grey, are raised, as the members mumble asides to their neighbours.
‘What, good doctor, in your opinion, should we be planning?’ asks the mayor, standing at the head of the table, the military strategist overseeing the war cabinet.
‘There is a rumour, more than hearsay I hope, that the province’s pre-eminent scientists have developed a vaccine that will halt the spread of infection,’ says Professor Wells.
He looks around, raises his own bushy grey eyebrows and then lifts his hands in resignation.
‘This plague strikes so quickly we cannot even isolate cases as they become infected. Mr Duke, as you know, is with us today. He is from the Provincial Medical Office and has conducted an extensive tour of the province. I give him the floor.’
