Richard and Judy Bookclub - 3 Bestsellers in 1: The American Boy, The Savage Garden, The Righteous Men

She took a long swallow from a tankard in her hand and set it down on a nearby shelf. Turning back towards me, she wiped the foam from her moustache and said, “I am afraid you are come too late.” Her eyelids fluttered over small brown eyes like specks of dried fruit in a pudding. “A gentleman with a wonderful fund of poetry. Such recitations we had of an evening. And such a gentlemanly hand, too, he was never short of work. A petition here, a letter of advice and admonition to a beloved child there, a plea to an aged parent beyond the seas.” She took another swallow from her tankard. “Mr Poe has a style for each eventuality.”

“But he is no longer with you, madam?”

“Alas, no, though he had the bed by the window in my second-floor front for so long he was like one of the family. ‘Maria, my love,’ he’d say to me, ‘you treat me like a king; you are my queen and this room is our palace.’”

She brought her face close to mine and grinned at me, revealing a mouthful of pink, swollen gums. I smelled the sour tang of spirits and the rich, dark odour of rotting meat.

“Why, I could show you the room, if you liked, sir. ‘Such a comfortable bed,’ Mr Poe used to say, and he had no need to share it, not unless he wished to, if you take my meaning. Well? Should you like to see it with me?”

“You’re too kind, madam. Unfortunately, I have pressing business with Mr Poe –”

“There’s pressing and pressing, I always say,” Maria said, nudging me with her great bosom. “Not so pressing, I hope, that you may not take a glass of something warm to keep out the chill? Once this fog gets in the lungs, it can do for a man in a matter of days. My first husband was consumptive, and my third.”

I recognised the force of the inevitable, and requested that she might do me the honour of taking a glass of spirits with me. She relieved me of a shilling, opened a hatch above her shelf and produced tumblers of gin and water.

Shortly afterwards, my hostess became indisposed. First she leaned back against the wall and, grasping my shoulders with a pair of muscular hands, informed me that I was a fine figure of a man. She attempted to kiss me, then drank some more gin and wept a little for her third husband, who she said had touched her heart more than the others.

“Mr Poe’s direction, madam,” I broke in. “You were so kind as to say you would let me have it.”

“Mr Poe,” she wailed, trying without success to throw her apron over her head. “My Mr Poe has forsaken his little love bird. He has flown our happy nest.”

“Yes, madam – but where?”

“Seven Dials.” She sniffed, and suddenly she might have been as sober as a nun. “Got himself a job clerking for a gent, he said, needed to move nearer his new place of employment. Truth was, Fountain-court wasn’t good enough for him no more.”

“Where in Seven Dials?”

“He lodges in a house in Queen-street.” As she spoke, her legs gave way and she slithered slowly down the wall, with her knees rising like mountains until they touched the jutting precipices of her bosom. “There’s a man tells fortunes in the house. Ever so genteel. He has a parrot that talks French. Mr Poe said he looked at him – the man did, not the parrot – and told him he saw beautiful women at his feet, and riches beyond the dreams of avarice.”

Chapter 26 (#ulink_24640272-1e4b-59cc-853d-12fddfb53500)

By the time I left the Fountain, the fog had grown even worse. My eyes stung and watered. My nose streamed. I swam through the coughing, spluttering crowds down to Seven Dials. On the way, I passed through St Giles’s churchyard. The church itself loomed like a great, smoke-stained whale on the ocean floor. It was as though I were travelling through a city at the bottom of the ocean, a drowned world.

The fancy had barely formed in my mind when I recalled that St Giles was indeed a place where people drowned. A few years before, within a stone’s throw of the church, an enormous vat had exploded at the Horseshoe Brewery. Thousands of gallons of beer washed like a tidal wave through the parish, sweeping away stalls, carts, sheds, animals and people. In this locality, many people live in cellars. The beer flooded into these underground homes, and eight people were drowned in ale.

The thought of this vengeful wave sliding through the streets and lanes lent weight to a growing suspicion that I was pursued. The sensation crept upon me by imperceptible degrees, gradually more palpable like a hint of damp in one’s sheets. Though I turned and looked over my shoulder again and again, the fog made it difficult for me to identify individuals in the mass of humanity that pressed immediately upon my heels.

I stopped at a street corner to get my bearings, and a set of footsteps behind me also seemed to stop. I turned right into New Compton-street, away from Seven Dials. By now I had convinced myself that someone truly was following me. I continued in a westerly direction, and then swung down and round into Lower Earl-street, and so towards Seven Dials. My conviction wavered. I could hear so many footsteps around me that I could not identify the ones that I thought had been following me.

I crossed Seven Dials and walked slowly up Queen-street, keeping to the left-hand side and peering into each establishment I passed. Roughly halfway down, I found a little shop with a parrot’s cage discernible on the other side of its grimy window. I pushed open the door and went inside. The parrot squawked, a strange harsh call with three syllables, instantly repeated. In another instant the squawk became words and acquired meaning.

“Ayez peur,” cried the bird. “Ayez peur.”

The room was no more than eight feet square, and it stank of coal fumes and drains. For all that, it was a sweeter-smelling place than the street and certainly a warmer one. A man sat hunched over a stove at the back of the shop. He wore a coat that trailed to the ground, a muffler and a greasy skullcap of black velvet. A blanket covered his legs to shield him from the draughts. He turned to greet me, and I saw a clean-shaven face with fleshy features beneath a lined but lofty brow.

“Fortunes; ballads, whether political or amorous by nature; medicines for man and beast,” he intoned in a deep, cultivated voice, with a method of delivery that would not have been out of place in the pulpit; “remedies for the afflictions of venery; charms of proven efficacy to satisfy all human desires in this world or the next; rooms by the week or by the day. Theodore Iversen is at your service, whatever your pleasure may be.”

Not to be outdone in the matter of civility, I took off my hat and bowed. “Have I the pleasure of addressing the owner of this establishment?”

“Ayez peur,” said the parrot behind me.

“I hold the lease, though whether I shall be able to afford to do so next year is another matter.” Iversen laid down a pipe on the table beside the stove. “You do not want to know the future, I suspect, nor do you want a charm. That leaves medicine and accommodation.”

“Neither, sir. I understand that one of your lodgers is an old acquaintance of mine, a Mr David Poe.”

“Ah, Mr Poe.” He turned aside to stir a small iron saucepan standing on the stove. “A refined gentleman. A martyr to the toothache.”

“And is he at home at present, sir?”

“Alas, no. I regret to say he has left the shelter of my roof. Or so I assume.”

“May I ask when?”

Mr Iversen raised his eyebrows. “Two days ago – no, I tell a lie: it was three days. He had kept to his room for a day or two before that with his toothache, a sad affliction at any age; to my mind, we are better off without teeth entirely. I offered to give him something to ease the pain, but he declined my assistance. Still, if a gentleman wishes to suffer, who am I to stand in his way?”

“And did he say where he was going?”

“He said nothing to me whatsoever. He stole away like a thief in the night except, unlike a thief, he stole nothing. No matter – he has paid for his lodging until the end of the week.”

“So he has not left the room for good?”

“That I cannot say. I have a number of infallible methods of revealing what the future holds – and as the seventh son of a seventh son, I am of course gifted with second sight as well as extraordinary powers of healing – but I make a rule never to use my skills of prognostication for my own benefit.”

“Ayez peur,” said the parrot.

“Damn that bird,” said Mr Iversen. “There is a piece of sacking on the chair behind you, my dear sir. Be so good as to drape it over the cage.”

Turning, I caught the impression of movement in the corner of my eye. Had someone been peering at us through the window? The glass was grimy and contained impurities which made objects on the other side of it ripple as though under water. It was not impossible, I told myself, that my imagination had transformed such a ripple into a spy. I covered the cage and turned back to the shopkeeper.

“If you believe that Mr Poe may return,” I said, “does not that suggest that his bags are still in his room?”

Mr Iversen smirked.

I said: “I have a fancy to see my friend’s room. Perhaps it contains some indication of where he has gone.”

“I make it another rule that only lodgers are allowed in my rooms. Present lodgers and, of course, prospective lodgers, who may quite reasonably express a wish to inspect the outlook, the dimensions, et cetera.”

“So there would be no objection to my seeing the room if I were a prospective lodger? If I had arranged, perhaps, to take the room for a day when it should become vacant.”

“None in the world.” Mr Iversen beamed at me. “Five shillings a night for sole use of the room and the flock mattress. Shared pump in the yard. Extra charges should you wish the girl to bring you water or clean sheets and so forth.”

“Five shillings?”

“Including a shilling for sundries.”

I drew out my purse and paid his extortionate rate for a room I would never sleep in.

“Thank you,” he said, tucking the money away in his clothing. “And now I shall require your assistance.”