Mad Hatter

CHAPTER 4

Saturday had been so fully occupied that Moscrop found himself on Sunday morning at half past ten in the odd predicament of starting out for Morning Service without knowing which of the Brighton churches was a suitable place of worship. St. Stephen’s, in Montpelier Place, looked convenient; indeed, Miss Lyle, his landlady, had recommended it. But was it a fashionable church? She had not been very clear on that point. St. Peter’s, the parish church, at the top of the Grand Parade, was better known, she thought, and St. Bartholomew’s in Ann Street was certainly the biggest, even if the building was not to everyone’s taste, but both of those were a long way to walk, and most of it uphill. St. Stephen’s, after all, was just round the corner.

The notice-board outside confirmed that St. Stephen’s did not cater for fashionable visitors. The list of parish activities included a blanket-lending society and a coal club. He winced and walked past, eventually catching sight of a silk hat turning down Dyke Road. It led him to West Street and St. Paul’s. It was obvious, really; this was quite the most convenient venue for the socially-inclined. The King’s Road, where everyone of note took carriage-exercise between the conclusion of service and luncheon, was a mere hundred yards away. The line of phaetons outside made it quite unnecessary to inspect the church notices here.

He was forced to admit, before the clergy appeared, that he was not in good shape for church-going. The organ-notes produced uncomfortable vibrations in an area at the top of his head which he had known to be sensitive this morning, but had succeeded in preserving in a quiescent state until the first blast from behind of New Every Morning. Saturday night at the Canterbury was about to take its toll.

He had not planned his night of gin and song. A visit to the Canterbury was not indelibly inscribed in the social diary, like evenings at the Dome and the Theatre Royal. On the contrary, it was an event one took care not to record, for it was a third-rate music hall in Church Street, on the fringe of Brighton’s poor quarter, where policemen patrolled in pairs. By eight o’clock on Saturday evening it had suited his spirits better than Bernhardt in La Dame Aux Camelias. He had settled down with his opera-glasses among the soldiers and shop-assistants and wallowed in the banalities exchanged across the footlights, drinking steadily until the last wounds to his self-respect were rendered painless by the alcohol.

He had made his decision to have no more to do with the Protheros immediately after talking to Bridget the previous afternoon, but it took a long, brooding lunch at Booty’s and a chastening march over the shingle to Black Rock to convince him that there was any point in continuing with the holiday. The experience should not have affected him so; his hobby, by its very nature, was devoted to the ephemeral, the few, fleeting seconds of clear vision before a subject moved beyond the reach of the lens. To feel deprived each time your observations were frustrated was monstrous. If he had only kept within the rules and sought nothing more than the Prussian Officer’s glasses had revealed, she would still be a charming recollection, a miniature to store among the most precious in his mind’s eye. Now that she was undeniably identified as a married woman and the mother of a young child, he was morally bound to dismiss her from his thoughts. He was not going to spend his holiday following other men’s wives around the town. Behaviour like that was totally repugnant; it would class him with the sad-eyed squad who sat on the pebbles in front of the female bathing-machines, pretending to read The Times. No, dammit! He was a respectable optical instrument enthusiast. A man of science.

He turned his head slightly to take in the occupants of the pew behind, not the lady worshippers, but the men: two within view, decent, devout individuals in their Sunday suits, prayer books in hand. You would think their attention was wholly on the Second Lesson, until you watched the tiny movements of their eyes. There was the difference between your layman and your man of science; he had hardly registered until then that he was sitting beside one of the fair sex. Yesterday’s observation of Mrs. Prothero had been in a different class altogether, a piece of scientific research. He had needed to verify the accuracy of an optical instrument by making a closer study of the subject. That was all she was: a legitimate subject for his researches. Much encouraged, he stood with the congregation and joined passionately in the singing of Bright the vision that delighted.

His head felt distinctly better. My, it did one good to go to Morning Service, particularly when it clarified one’s thinking. It was all too easy for a scientist to be deflected from the mainstream of research by secondary discoveries. If, by some strange combination of circumstances, his glasses chanced on the white hat again, he need feel no stirrings of conscience. He would clear his mind of irrelevant associations; she meant no more to him than a butterfly under a microscope.

As the service ended and the congregation streamed out into dazzling sunlight, the West Pier cannon boomed. He reached the promenade in time to see a small white cloud disperse in an otherwise flawless sky. The gulls returned swooping to the strips of sand exposed by the low tide.

Matins at St. Peter’s must have been short, for already a line of shining carriages was sweeping from the Old Steine into Junction Parade at a rate suggesting they had cantered all the way down Grand Parade. Perhaps when the vicar was writing his sermon, he made allowance for the half-mile his flock had to make up on the St. Paul’s congregation.

He started to stroll along the King’s Road in the direction of Hove, not too quickly, because he would soon reach Preston Street, the western limit of the fashionable drive along the front. He was in a much better frame of mind. Brighton was quite the most exhilarating place to be this Sunday morning. Where else could you see a sea-front so broad that carriages could drive four-deep? And what carriages! Society was coming on parade in force, declaring its arrival in landau after landau, hauled by impeccably groomed pairs in swagger harness. Liveried coachmen in tall hats (at least two of whom he recognised from the audience at the Canterbury) sat aloft with straight backs and expressionless faces, while their passengers kept up animated conversations behind. The most resplendent carriages had their page-boys in identical livery, seated on the dickey beside the driver.

It was a field-day for the riding academies, too. Mounts of every size and breed had been hired for the morning. The strain on the resources of the stables was clear from the number of handsomely-dressed riders in the saddles of unmistakable hacks, but they scarcely detracted from the elegance of the parade.

Quite rightly the ladies took the eye, stiff-backed as guardsmen, whether mounted on saddles or carriage upholstery; a severity matched by the style of their costumes- starched collars stretching high up their necks, coats fronted with double ranks of buttons, long kid gloves-and, for the equestriennes, black riding habits, squat, shiny hats, gloved hands managing reins and crop, and a glimpse of boot-heels. The effect was mitigated in a most stimulating way by tiny outbreaks of frivolity-white lace, swansdown, ostrich feathers, the bloom of Piver’s powders and the flash of kohl-washed eyes.

He was studying a team of magnificent black geldings drawing a large family phaeton, when a familiar profile crossed in front. Prothero-riding a bay. And wearing a dapper set of riding-clothes, tailor-made for certain, and a grey top hat.

The doctor’s appearance in the King’s Road was no surprise- where else would a professional man go after church on a Sunday morning? — and on consideration it was understandable that he was in the saddle and not with his family in a carriage. Presumably a locum-tenens was managing his practice and would have need of whatever form of private transport he maintained. No, what made Moscrop stand stupefied on the pavement was Dr. Prothero’s patently flirtatious exchanges with a young woman riding beside him who was certainly not his wife. She was as young as Mrs. Prothero, perhaps still in her twenties, but her hair, drawn back into a chignon beneath a small black riding-hat, was a quite extraordinary shade of red, almost-was this a perverse thought? — the colour of the storm-warning cone kept on the West Pier-head. Her features were neatly proportioned, not beautiful, but lit at this moment with a radiance one could not put down alone to Brighton’s bracing air.

They were past in seconds. The grate of carriage-wheels made it quite impossible to overhear their conversation. Moscrop walked on towards the Pier. Fashionable Brighton trotted past him unnoticed.

Monday it rained. He spent the morning looking at the antique shops in West Street and East Street; it was a longstanding hope of his that he would one day discover an early Venetian wooden telescope among the usual assortment of scientific bric-a-brac. He was not fortunate on this occasion, but it did provide an interesting alternative to the reading-rooms in the public and private libraries, or the humid corridors of the Aquarium, which were sure to have been well-patronised. He felt no enthusiasm for fish that morning, in spite of the attraction of a close-packed crowd of visitors.

In the afternoon he visited the roller-skating rink in West Street-a concert hall recently converted to give facilities for the newest craze. Not that he was interested in learning to skate-it looked quite as dangerous as bicycling and just as difficult to master-but he obtained a spectator’s ticket and enjoyed watching less cautious spirits go through the experience. That evening he attended a concert at the Dome and found it much less diverting. His appreciation of the music ebbed away alarmingly when the thought occurred to him that he had not advanced his scientific knowledge all day.

Nor was Tuesday any more rewarding, although the sun returned and he was able to use the Zeiss from the West Pier. Repeated scannings of the beach produced not one image worth adjusting the screw-focus for. After Saturday’s sighting, the number of subjects that met his criteria seemed to have diminished dramatically.

It was Wednesday morning when a routine sweep with the Zeiss of the sections of beach on the Hove side of the pier stopped abruptly on a group of bathing machines a little to the west of the Bedford Hotel. Fortunately, he was prepared for just such an occurrence. He took out the Negretti and Zambra, his most powerful portable telescope, and mounted it on a tripod, indifferent, in the way dedicated surveyors are, to the idle curiosity of passers-by. It gave him a diamond-sharp image, a positive identification that set his heart pounding with excitement. For this was a coup unequalled in his experience: he had spotted Dr. Prothero’s second son, the child Jason, sitting in his perambulator playing with a small Union Jack in front of the bathing-machines. Who else among the thousands who held telescopes to their eyes around Her Majesty’s coasts would have been so observant as to recognise that tiny scrap of humanity in a sailor suit-and wearing a large white sun-hat that almost obscured his blond curls?

Curiously, young Jason appeared to be quite unaccompanied, although he was amusing himself contentedly with the flag. The beach west of the pier drew few visitors. Almost all of the Corporation’s two hundred and fifty-eight machines (Moscrop had found nothing better to do the previous afternoon than count them) were concentrated in the stretch between the two piers. A few were clustered in front of the Bedford, but only the most decrepit of that hotel’s guests made use of them, everyone else favouring the facilities farther along. A brief peep at the scene without the aid of the telescope showed Jason to be in sole occupation except for two couples spooning against the breakwater, and the bathing-machine attendant. The latter was a mountainous, bare-armed woman with an incipient moustache, a worthy descendant of Martha Gunn, Mrs. Fitzherbert’s dipper in Regency times. As Moscrop watched, she ambled over to the child, took the slack of flesh on his cheek between the first two knuckles of her right hand and jerked his head affectionately. Jason looked surprised and stopped waving his flag.

What possible reason could there be for the child’s evident abandonment on that desolate stretch of beach? Where on earth was Bridget, his nursemaid? Moscrop’s sentiments plunged from triumph to acute anxiety. Could Jason have been snatched away from his nurse and parents and deposited down there? Having sighted the child, he felt increasingly responsible for its well-being. He pulled distractedly at the ends of his moustache and beat a tattoo on the pier-deck with his left heel. With an air of decision, he dismantled the tripod, put the parts in his bag and left the pier at a quick step.

The bathing-machine woman was monstrous, quite capable of earning a second living in one of the freak shows in the arches under the promenade. When Moscrop reached her, she had taken Jason out of his pram and put him into a Corporation bath-towel which she was holding at both ends and using as a swing-boat. The child was taking the exercise manfully.

Moscrop coughed. ‘You’ll pardon me for asking? I think I recognise the little fellow. Is it Dr. Prothero’s child?’

She stopped swinging and Jason came to rest with a springy impact against the swell of her stomach. ‘What?’

‘The child, Ma’am. I was inquiring if it was young Jason Prothero.’

‘Couldn’t tell you.’ She had tiny brown eyes that seemed devoid of intelligence. ‘Couldn’t tell you nohow.’

‘That’s his pram for sure.’

She wriggled her shoulders in a non-committal way and her chins vibrated. Jason rebounded against her stomach. ‘If you say so.’

‘I’m certain of it.’

There was a period of silence between them with only the roll of the waves intervening.

‘I see that you’re looking after the boy,’ he began again. ‘He’s in good hands.’

There was no response.

‘I know something of the family, you see. It’s unusual for them to be this far along the beach. Most irregular. I wonder now, would you-er-happen to have noticed who left him here?’

She took the two ends of the towel in her right hand, so that Jason was suspended inside like Baby Bunting, and pointed out to sea with the left. ‘Her.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘Her. She left him here. Asked me to keep him happy.’

He climbed on the first step of the nearest bathing-machine for a better view and followed the line of her finger. There was undoubtedly someone in the water. Two people. A man and a woman bathing together. Deuced irregular. One heard that such things went on, but hardly expected to see it at Brighton in the season. Just as well they had picked one of the most isolated sections of beach.

He delved into the bag for his binoculars. Not from any indelicate motive; he merely wished to investigate a little notion that had burgeoned in his brain. The sea was choppy this morning and there was a deal of spray about. It took almost a minute’s diligent work with the glasses to locate the bathers. They were holding hands, if you please, and jumping the waves together as openly as if they were fully clad and performing a schottishe in the Pavilion ballroom.

The man wore university costume of dark blue wool, rendered skin-tight by the water. The shoulder-straps could not have been more than two inches wide. His partner’s bathing-dress of vertical red and white stripes was revealed only in glimpses, for she modestly (if such a word could be applied) endeavoured to keep her shoulders below the surface. Her hair was held in place by an oilskin mob-cap.

Then, as he watched, she was caught in the cusp of a larger wave, tipped off-balance and swept several yards inshore, shrieking in delighted panic, and ending inelegantly on hands and knees in the shallows. From there she subsided, laughing, into a sitting position, tugging down the sailor collar that had ridden up around her head. How it was that her companion was thereupon similarly upended by the action of the water and carried irresistibly towards the same spot must remain one of the ocean’s mysteries. Suffice to say that the next moment Moscrop saw the red, white and blue in a conjunction that had nothing to do with patriotism. Moreover, the colours were unconscionably slow in disentangling. When at length they did, he was able, before the bathers plunged back into the deeper water with hands still linked, to confirm his earlier suspicion. The young woman in the red and white stripes was Bridget, Jason’s nursemaid.

How confoundedly mistaken one can be about the fair sex! When he had helped her up the Aquarium steps with the perambulator, he had thought her a modest and responsible young woman. Yet here she was shamefully handing over the child to the mercies of this imbecilic bathing-attendant, in order to consort in the water with some inamorato from the hotel kitchens along the front.

He put down his binoculars. ‘Tell me, is this assignation in the waves a regular occurrence?’

‘What d’you say?’ asked the fat woman.

‘Have you been asked to look after the child before?’

‘Oh yes. Most days. He won’t come to no harm with me. I’m not over-busy, you understand.’ As if to show how capable she was, she held Jason under his armpits and dandled him at arms’ length above her head. ‘He’s a nobby little lad, don’t you think?’

‘I’m sure he is. Perhaps you have met his parents?’ One could not take anything for granted in the modern world. It was always possible that Dr. Prothero knew about the goings-on here.

‘No. I just see the girl and her brother. If they bring the young’un this way for a walk it’s no hardship for me to keep an eye on him while they enjoy themselves in the briny.’

‘Her brother, you say? Are you sure of that?’

‘Sure? Well, it’s obvious, ain’t it? He’s only a lad out there. Can’t you see through them things? I hope you ain’t suggesting I’d be a party to anything improper.’

‘Not at all. Not at all.’ But he had already put the glasses to his eyes to test the truth of her words.

Now that he looked more closely at Bridget’s companion, he did perceive a certain boyish leanness in the physique. However, the antics in the spray looked most unlike the behaviour of brother and sister. Even as he watched, an arm crept around Bridget’s waist and another lifted her at the knees. She made a show of protesting, but allowed herself to be carried, with some difficulty, into the shallower water.

‘I don’t know what it is you’re being a party to, Ma’am,’ Moscrop told the bathing-machine woman, ‘but I’m not standing here to watch it any longer.’

No question of it: the youth with Bridget in his arms was Guy Prothero.