Master Georgie Read online

  My mind wouldn’t let the matter rest, the argumentative words tumbling over and over in my head as I trailed Master Georgie the length of Bold Street. It was monstrous of William Rimmer to upbraid him. Why, when he’d caught an infection of the finger from slicing livers in the dissecting room, and lain at death’s door for two days, groaning under the fever, Master Georgie had spent a whole night sitting up with him. On his return, recounting to Mrs Hardy the torment his friend was enduring, tears swelled up in his eyes. It hurt my heart to have his devotion so easily forgotten.

  Master Georgie should have turned left when we reached St John’s Church; instead he swerved right, up the cobbled rise towards St James’ Mount. I reckon he was lost in thought, either that or putting time between himself and home. It had stopped raining and a watery sun floated above the chimney stacks. Mrs O’Gorman didn’t like setting foot in this part of the town. Poverty, she confided, sent her skittering, due to her having nudged too close to it on account of Ireland and the potatoes.

  Years past, when Mr Hardy’s father was alive, merchants lived in the streets nearest to their manufacturing businesses beside the river. It was expansion, Master Georgie said, and the inrush of humanity, that sent them scuttling upwards to build their mansions in the hills. The once pampered houses now stood in mouldering disarray, balconies rusted, windows stuffed with rags. Sometimes the crowded cellars flooded and infants drowned along with the rats. Such disasters afforded Mrs Hardy solace, for on her good days she attended committees for the relief of the poor, which took her out of herself.

  Miss Beatrice, in a spiteful mood, had implied that I too might have crawled in from the bogs of Ireland. She crowed that when found I had a scrap of green ribbon rotting in my hair. Mrs O’Gorman said it wasn’t true. She’d been the one to cut my hair off to be rid of the lice, so she should know. I didn’t mind one way or the other. It was of no interest to me where I came from, only where I was going.

  All the same, I quickened my pace as Master Georgie climbed the pavement of Mount Street. Poor people appear predatory owing to their bones showing, and bones were in abundance among the gaggle of ragged boys on the corner, the wild children squabbling in the gutter, the stupefied men slouched against the railings. They didn’t molest me for they saw I had nothing to give. A woman accosted Master Georgie but he waved her aside, not from lack of charity, simply from his being abstracted. Of average height, stout of build, he walked with feet turned out and back straight as a ramrod. I watched the way he swung his arms. How strange it is that even a mode of walking can inspire love.

  Suddenly he shouted over his shoulder, ‘Don’t lag behind, Myrtle. Keep up with me.’ For perhaps thirty seconds, until that scuffed front door opened, framing a screaming woman clad in a torn chemise, I was happy, for his flung injunction signified he knew I was there and didn’t want me lost.

  The face of the woman in the doorway was distorted with fright. She had few teeth and her mouth resembled a dark hole. Master Georgie was about to pass by when she screamed again, shrill and menacing as a swooping gull. The sound stopped him momentarily in his tracks. He looked about him to see who would come to her aid – but what did a scream amount to in such a wretched place? Mounting the cracked steps he followed her into the house.

  I scampered after, not wishing to miss the excitement. As the woman toiled ahead up the stairs I could see black hairs bristling on her plump white calves; breath needed for the ascent, she’d ceased uttering those ghastly bird cries. Someone climbed the stairs behind me and when I looked over my shoulder I was astonished to see the boy who earlier had rescued the duck. I half stumbled; the banister rail on the turn of the landing was broken and a splinter of wood pierced my palm as I propelled myself upwards.

  We came at last to an open door on the third floor. Master Georgie and the woman entered the room while I remained on the threshold. I could see a fire burning in the grate, its reflection flickering upon the rails of a brass bed. Close by stood a little round table bearing a bottle, a glass and a pocket watch. On the bed, face down, arms stretched above the head, both hands clenched in a fist about the bars, lay a figure clad in nothing but a shirt, naked buttocks exposed. It was a curious position to sleep in, for he appeared to hang rather than lie, back arched as though gathering momentum like the man on the flying trapeze. I knew it was a man because his breeches hung from the knob of the bed.

  Another harsh cry rang through the room, and it was worse than anything the woman had managed, for this time it came from Master Georgie. Startled, I was about to edge closer when the duck-boy pushed me aside and demanded, ‘What’s wrong, Margaret? Trouble, is it?’

  ‘He died on me,’ the woman wailed. ‘It weren’t nothing to do with me.’

  Master Georgie fell to his knees beside the bed. He made no attempt to turn the body over or feel a pulse; poking a finger out he traced the fold of the shirt where it rucked at the neck. It had gone very quiet and a feeling of dread began to steal over me, as though something horrible was about to happen in that darkening room with the watch ticking and glinting on the table.

  At last Master Georgie looked up and the dread became palpable, for his face was drained of colour and his eyes as bewildered as my own. I ran to him then and put my hand on his shoulder, and though I don’t believe he knew who it was, for a fleeting moment he inclined his head and rested his cheek against my wrist. Then he shrugged away and stood up.

  ‘We must move him,’ he said, addressing the boy. ‘You must help me move him.’ He was pleading rather than asking.

  ‘Is it to the Infirmary?’ the boy wanted to know, at which Master Georgie shouted out, ‘God damn you, no.’ After which outburst, visibly struggling to gain control of himself, he added more reasonably, ‘I know this gentleman. It will be kinder to his family if I take him to his house.’

  Seeing me standing there he ordered the woman to put me into another room. ‘I ain’t got no other room,’ she said. All the same, she hustled me on to the landing and endeavoured to shut the door in my face, only I fought her and she gave up. She had no power in her arms and her breath stank of drink.

  It took strength to unclasp the hands from the bed rail and turn the body over. Quick as a flash Georgie pulled down its shirt, for decency’s sake. And now it was my turn to cry out, for it was Mr Hardy who lay there, grey hair lank as seaweed, lips purple as the plums in his orchard.

  The woman came to me then and whispered, ‘Who is he, dearie?’ but I stayed mute. She tugged at my hair to make me tell, and I never even whimpered. She could have pulled out every hair on my head and still I wouldn’t have told, for that would have been a betrayal.

  ‘I need a conveyance to take him home,’ Master Georgie said.

  The boy nodded in the direction of the window. ‘There’s a van out in the alleyway and a horse in the stables. I’ll need money.’

  ‘I have money,’ said Master Georgie, digging into his pockets.

  The woman had sidled closer to the bed, her eyes concentrating on the watch on the table. I guessed what she was about and darting forward snatched it up and held it fiercely to my chest. She struck at me, catching me a blow on the ear which sent me tumbling backwards on to the bed. My leg touched Mr Hardy’s ankle and its fading warmth sent such a shock through me that I jerked upright as though galvanised by lightning.

  I gave the watch to Master Georgie. He was standing at the window looking on to the alleyway below. He took it without acknowledgement, flopping it over and over in his cupped hands. So as to be less noticeable I sat on the floor with my back to the stained wallpaper.

  Presently, the duck-boy returned. He said the horse was being put into harness and we should go out the back way, through the scullery and into the yard. Master Georgie said, ‘Good, good,’ and stared down at the bed. Plucking the trousers from off the brass rail he began to steer Mr Hardy’s feet into the funnels of cloth; there were corns round as beads embossed on his white toes.

  The woman, her assistance
required, flapped her hands and shrank away. I stood up, prepared to help, but the boy got there before me. When they humped the breeches over Mr Hardy’s backside, his shirt rolled up and I was taken by surprise at the limpness of his private parts. I’d seen them before, one Easter when he’d felt compelled to show them me, only that time a thing rigid as a carrot had stuck out between his fingers.

  Master Georgie and the boy carried him down between them. He was a well-built man and his weight sank him in the middle. The woman, who had been given money to open up the yard, defaulted and scuttled back into the room, whining she had palpitations. I was clutching Mr Hardy’s boots, and when his hat tipped off on the bend in the stairs I harvested that too. His eyes were closed but his mouth sagged open, from his being jogged.

  I had to squeeze past to unlock the scullery door into the back. Once it was ajar, the light of the waning afternoon caught our faces. Master Georgie’s cheeks had flushed pink again, though that was due to exertion. The gate into the alleyway was insecure on its hinges and had been nailed shut to hold it fast. Master Georgie and the boy swarmed over the wall to look for something that might serve as a battering ram to burst it open. They sat Mr Hardy against the stump of a sycamore tree and told me to keep an eye on him, as though he was likely to stroll away. I did, yet I kept my distance, watching the rain glistening on the buttons of his coat.

  Until he was dead I’d liked Mr Hardy. He was cheerful and lacking in malice and on the few occasions he’d noticed me his eyes twinkled. At parties he always sang after his dinner, and you could hear his voice all over the house. It was usually the same song, about a little drummer boy who called for his mother as he lay dying on a battlefield, and when it was over and the guests clapped their appreciation he sang it again. It had very sad words but he bellowed so heartily when it came to the line, Mother dear, I am fading fast, that no one could forbear laughing.

  Now, if proof were required that the soul flees the body, I might have pointed the finger at him; there was no mistaking his emptiness. For his sake I hoped Mrs O’Gorman had been in the right of it when she’d asserted that rich people always had a friend waiting for them beyond the bright blue sky; he was no great shakes without his cronies round him. Standing there, listening to the melancholy gurglings of roof-top pigeons, I dwelt with pleasure on the unstable and transitory nature of life, seeing I was fortunate enough to be alive. Although the better part of me felt distress, I did know that I revelled in the moment. The mind, like the eye, perceives things more clearly in daylight.

  There was a sudden thud against the gate, though it merely shuddered, and then two more blows, after which it gave and swung wide. Outside stood the purple van with its letters gaudily outlined in gold. It wasn’t the Punch and Judy man’s beast between the shafts, for that was no bigger than a donkey and this was the size of one of the dray horses that thundered from the cobbled courtyard of the brewery.

  I held open the van doors while Master Georgie and the duck-boy lugged Mr Hardy across the yard. Once the boy stopped to catch his breath and Master Georgie cried out, ‘Hurry … we must lay him flat.’ Possibly the boy thought this levelling was required out of respect, but I knew haste was a necessity, owing to the danger of rigor mortis taking a grip. It wouldn’t do to have Mr Hardy arrive home shaped like a jack-knife.

  The interior of the van still held the twisted remains of the puppet box, though Mr Punch wasn’t there, or Judy or the constable. We had to push the lengths of wood to one side to make space, and when it was done and the stiffening legs were straightened I was urged to jump in. Master Georgie was going to sit up with the boy, to give him directions. I didn’t care for the arrangement, but before I could demur the doors were slammed shut, the outside bolt pulled to, and Mr Hardy and I sank into a blackness as impenetrable as the tomb.

  The journey was a bumpy affair, the van being light and the horse powerful. I had to put my legs across Mr Hardy and press down hard to keep him pinned flat. When the wheels hit holes in the road we fairly bounced in the air; flying round a corner a sharp object hit me in the chest. Reading it with my fingers, I recognised Mr Punch’s poor baby and stroked its wooden cheek against my own, crooning it mustn’t be afraid.

  In the darkness, pictures floated in my head of Mrs Hardy and Miss Beatrice becoming acquainted with the dreadful news. Miss Beatrice was weeping, for herself rather than her departed father, because now he was gone she’d have to stay with her widowed mother and give up the idea of running away to sea. Mrs O’Gorman blamed education for putting the notion into her head, because she’d never pined for anything so outlandish until she was sent away to boarding school in Lichfield. Mrs Hardy was lying in bed calling out for Dr Potter to fetch the port wine. He was too occupied in comforting Miss Beatrice to pay heed, for she was in his arms at last, and his face, loony with delight, beamed above her trembling shoulder. I poured out the wine from the cooler on the dresser and took it to Mrs Hardy; before she sipped she seized my wrist and murmured with popping eyes, ‘You are the only true friend I have in this dark world.’ I replied, ‘It is my duty,’ which struck me as not friendly enough, so I added, ‘and my pleasure.’

  Just then, Mr Hardy rolled under my legs. I was frightened his face might get splinters from the lengths of wood, though I imagined dead flesh needed no protection against the arrows of life. All the same, I tugged at his jacket to bring him closer; it was Master Georgie I was shielding.

  Tears had sprung into my eyes when I’d thought about Mrs Hardy, for I reckoned she loved her husband in spite of all her moanings to the contrary, and I expect things were different between them when they were first joined. She was cleverer than him and didn’t like his singing and perhaps that had driven them apart. Mrs O’Gorman said they’d met at a horse race in India, where it was so hot that everyone’s judgements got muzzy and they had to lie down every afternoon. It was a question of old habits dying hard, for Mrs Hardy did that even if the weather was cold.

  Suddenly the van slowed to a halt and then unaccountably bucked backwards. I could hear the horse’s great hooves ringing on the cobblestones as I tipped towards the doors. After some manoeuvring we lurched to the left, which slid me forward again. I don’t know where Mr Hardy was and didn’t care. I drew my knees up to my chin and gabbled over and over that the Lord was my shepherd and I should not want.

  Some minutes later, during which we swayed over rough ground, the vehicle juddered to a stop. The bolt was pulled back and no sooner had I scrambled down, blinking in the light, than Master Georgie took me by the arm and drawing me to one side began to whisper urgent instructions.

  ‘There’s a carriage at the front of the house, Myrtle … use the back stairs and see where Mrs O’Gorman and the servants are … find out what room Miss Beatrice is in …’

  While his breath deliciously quivered against the rim of my ear, far away on the horizon a smudge of smoke blew from the engine box of a scuttling train.

  ‘… Return as soon as you can … keep a sharp watch on the garden in case that fool Potter is still mooning about the orchard. Don’t let anyone see you, and if they do, don’t utter a word of what has happened.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a fair trudge to the house,’ observed the duck-boy. ‘We need something to carry him in.’

  ‘Not a single word,’ repeated Master Georgie, looking as though his life depended on it. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘My lips are sealed,’ and with that I was off, running across the pig field at the side of the house, skirting the fierce rooting sow with the cruel pink eyes, leaping the ditch that ran beside the walled garden.

  Mrs O’Gorman was slumped in her chair by the kitchen fire, pinny over her head to keep out what remained of the light. She dozed soundly, the white fabric flaring in and out as she snored, her hand clutching a slice of toasted bread; the dog had its nose on her knee, licking off the butter. I could hear the cook and the maid-servant chirruping above the cl
atter of pots in the scullery beyond. One exclaimed, ‘Oh, he never, he never,’ and the other screeched, ‘He did. Yes, he did.’

  Creeping up the back stairs I peered out into the hall. There was a bluebottle spinning round and round beneath the chandelier, and what with the whine of its dizzy spirals and the thumping of my heart, I didn’t immediately detect the buzz of voices droning from within the parlour. Not daring to go too close, for the door was ajar, I tiptoed as far as the grandfather clock and listened from there. I caught only snatches of the conversation and none of it made sense.

  ‘It’s true, I promise you … all the way home.’ That was Miss Beatrice speaking.

  Then another voice, one I didn’t recognise, pleaded, ‘Did he? Are you sure?’

  ‘Hand on my heart … look into my eyes—’

  ‘I beg you not to be swayed by sisterly feelings—’

  ‘I assure you it’s the truth. All that is required is a little feminine cunning.’

  ‘Of which you have more than enough to spare,’ interjected a masculine voice, that of Dr Potter and remarkably bitter in tone.

  There followed an interchange concerning a proposed tea party, the prospect of which seemed greatly to excite the unseen and unknown young woman, for she cried out, ‘You’re sure he can be persuaded to come?’

  Miss Beatrice said, ‘You may depend upon it … although he always has his nose in a book—’

  ‘Oh dear,’ came the response, ‘perhaps I should go home and read one at once—’ at which both the speaker and Miss Beatrice squealed with laughter.

  ‘Poor boy,’ observed Dr Potter gloomily. ‘I fear he is doomed,’ and with that the door was flung wide and the hall became loud with the swish of skirts. I was out from behind the clock in a flash and into the clothes cupboard.

  They stood by the front door for an age, kissing and exchanging pleasantries, though I could tell Miss Beatrice’s interest was beginning to flag. Her voice declined in fervour and shortly, the rain having temporarily ceased, she declared that ‘dear Annie’ should make haste to her carriage. Dr Potter said he would escort her along the drive but Miss Beatrice cut in and said there was no need. Finally the door slammed shut. There followed a silence broken by a slight scuffle. Dr Potter said, ‘You must think I’m made of stone,’ and Miss Beatrice said, ‘I might prefer it if you were.’ Then their footsteps retreated in the direction of the parlour and I heard the door close.