The Anatomy Of Ghosts

5

When Holdsworth left Golden Square that morning, he did not know whether he would accept Lady Anne’s commission. He could not rid himself of the memory of Elinor Carbury’s face. He walked slowly down towards the river. It was only when he reached the Strand that he realized Mrs Carbury reminded him in some way that he did not entirely understand of Maria. Maria had been fair-complexioned and small of stature, whereas Mrs Carbury was dark and tall. But the two women had a similar build, and a similar habit of looking very directly at one.

The Strand was full of shoppers and noise. He walked slowly towards the City. After all that had happened, he was very tired. He was foced to stop on Ludgate Hill, where three sedan chairs and their bearers had entangled themselves; the chairs were swaying dangerously and the bearers were swearing, and the chairs’ occupants were rapping on the glass and, in one case, screaming. Through the racket, Holdsworth heard somebody behind him say his name. When he turned he found Mrs Farmer was at his shoulder with a basket on either arm. Her face was pink, the skin damp with the heat.

‘Madam – good day to you.’ Holdsworth tried to bow but the crowd made that difficult.

‘I looked for you this morning, sir,’ she said, ‘but you had slipped out of the house before I was awake.’

‘I am in the habit of rising early. May I relieve you of those baskets?’

She thrust them at him. ‘I wish to speak to you, Mr Holdsworth. We cannot do it here. Let us cross the road – I am going home.’

She threaded her way between a stationary wagon and a coach and passed unscathed on to the other side of the road. Nature had made her a short, broad woman with a nose like a beak and the smallest of chins. With a little help from Ned, she was now broader than ever, for she carried within her their first child and she was within a month or so of her term. Holdsworth followed, marvelling at the way the woman strode through the foot passengers in an unswerving straight line as though they were the Red Sea and she had been miraculously assured that they would part before her, as indeed they did. With Holdsworth in her wake, she set off down Newbridge Street. She was taking him out of his way – so far as he had any plan, he was making for Leadenhall Street.

As they were passing the Bridewell Hospital, Mrs Farmer stopped so sharply that Holdsworth almost collided with her. ‘Have you seen Mr Farmer today, sir?’

‘Yes – I have.’

‘And did he find the opportunity to mention that we shall soon need your room?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘We both regret the necessity,’ she said in a perfunctory way. ‘But when the baby is born, we shall need to house the nurse somewhere. Besides, I am sure you yourself must wish to remove somewhere more convenient.’

Holdsworth did not ask in what way convenient, or for whom. Instead he listened to the mournful rattle and clanks of the treadmills and stared through the hospital’s gates at a group of vagrants picking hemp under the shelter of the arcade. He did not wish to become one of those. He did not want the poorhouse, either.

‘It will not take you long to find somewhere,’ Mrs Farmer assured him, or even herself. ‘I am sure Mr Farmer will give you every assistance; that is, everything within his limited powers, though of course his resources are much stretched at present. But perhaps there may be somewhere in Leadenhall Street.’

He bowed. A corner in a cellar, perhaps, or the bench in the workshop where he left the barrow. Mrs Farmer might even have calculated that he would be useful there, a night-watchman who required no wages.

They crossed Blackfriars Bridge and turned along Bankside. Neither of them spoke. The house came into view, with Goat Stairs beyond. He fixed his eyes on the worn paving slabs beneath his feet to avoid looking at the stairs themselves and the water slapping and rustling at the foot of them. Gulls flew up around him, their wings beating with a swift, irregular rhythm. On the ground he saw the head and tail of a dead fish, lying among its own entrails. Above him, the wheeling birds cried savagely, waiting to return to what was left of the fish. They twisted in the air like scraps of charred paper above a bonfire.

Gulls would eat anything. He had seen men and women pulled from the water with their eyes pecked out and the fleshy parts of their faces eaten away. It was lucky that Maria had been found so soon, her body wedged against a cable a few yards downstream, or she might have suffered the same fate. It came to him very suddenly, and with the force of a revelation, that he did not want to be here any longer. He did not want to be beside the river. He did not want to be in Leadenhall Street either. He would not be a ghost in his past life.

‘What’s that?’ Mrs Farmer said, for she had sharp ears when she wanted to hear, and he had muttered the last words aloud.

‘Nothing, madam.’

A moment later they entered the cool, dark hallway of the house on Bankside. Holdsworth left the baskets on the kitchen table.

‘I do not wish to be inhospitable, sir,’ Mrs Farmer said, resting her hands on her great belly.

‘You are kindness itself,’ Holdsworth said and stared at her until she looked away.

The mound was near the west wall. The earth was no longer freshly turned, no longer as shockingly naked as a suppurating wound. Nature had scabbed it over with a tangle of weeds and grass. The wooden marker was askew and Holdsworth had abandoned the struggle to make it stand upright. Sprays of herb Robert had sprouted around it, a green ruff, and Maria had liked green, growing things. She had tried to grow plants in tubs in the dark, damp yard behind the house but the experiment had not been a success.

When the mason in Queen Street had finished his work, and when Holdsworth had paid him, there would at least be a proper headstone. The stone itself was waiting in the yard. Unless Holdsworth could pay the balance of the money, it would soon have another inscription. But at present he could not even find the price of a good dinner and new shirt.

In the early days, he had worried that he would come to the grave and find it robbed. He had no faith in the gatekeeper’s honesty, and in any case the boundary walls of the burial ground were ruinous in several places. Despite attempts to prevent them, the resurrection men had plied their grisly trade in the past. A few weeks ago, Holdsworth had found an old woman weeping inconsolably beside the empty grave of her late husband.

As Holdsworth passed out of the gate at the corner of Red Cross Street, he saw a familiar figure leaning against a mounting block and paring his nails with a pocket knife.

‘John,’ Ned Farmer said. ‘I thought I might find you here.’

‘You might have saved yourself the trouble and found me at home.’

Farmer pushed up his wig and hat and scratched his scalp. ‘I wanted to speak to you away from the house.’

‘Then let us walk back together, and you may speak all you wish.’

Farmer took his arm and they set off in the direction of the river. ‘First, I am to command your presence at supper.’

Holdsworth looked sideways at him. ‘I should not like to intrude.’

‘Mrs Farmer will not brook a refusal. It is all arranged. I saw Sal coming in with our supper not twenty minutes since, and she is dressing it at this very moment. The nicest-looking veal cutlets you could hope to see, wrapped in a cabbage leaf and accompanied by a most tasty-looking rasher of ham. You must not disappoint us.’

He looked so anxious that Holdsworth said he should be glad to accept the invitation. He did not usually eat with his hosts – Mrs Farmer had contrived to make it clear that though he lodged in her house, he was not part of her household.

‘I am much obliged,’ Ned said as though he were the invited guest. ‘And John – I know Betsy seems a little harsh sometimes, but the truth is, she is a good woman and has all our best interests at heart.’

‘Indeed she has.’

‘She has a head on her shoulders, too – and – and she is wonderfully devout. I sometimes think she is almost too strict with herself on that score, and the devil of it is that sometimes the strictness rubs off in the way she deals with others. Yet there’s no help for it, John, and as I say she means it for the best.’

Holdsworth touched his arm. ‘There is no need to run on like this. I am perfectly convinced that Mrs Farmer is an admirable woman. And words cannot express my gratitude to you both for offering me shelter for so long.’

Ned strode onwards. He was a good man, and Holdsworth gave Mrs Farmer all credit for recognizing that. But she had also recognized that Ned was malleable, someone she could make something of. She had brought more than money to their union: she had brought resolution and a sense of purpose.

‘I wish I could do more,’ Ned burst out. ‘You know it. Yet between you, what can I do? You are as stiff-necked as a hidalgo, whereas Mrs Farmer – well, she examines the books every night, you know. She watches every penny. By God, she is a better man of business than I shall ever be.’

Holdsworth told him that he did not doubt it, at which Ned laughed at him and Holdsworth laughed back.

‘There,’ Ned said. ‘That’s better. Seems an age since I saw you laugh. Are you in a more cheerful humour than you have been? Were you offered a commission by the little monkey man?’

‘I was. I think he is a man of business or something of that nature. A steward, perhaps. At any event, he is acting for Lady Anne Oldershaw.’

‘Widow of the late bishop? Ah – I begin to see which way this is tending.’

‘Not entirely, I think. Her ladyship asked me to catalogue and value the bishop’s collection. But then it became apparent that the library was only part of the reason she had summoned me. She wishes me to go to Cambridge as her emissary. She has it in mind to donate some or all of the books to Jerusalem College there.’

‘Admirable. You are the very man for the task. And all this will occupy you for weeks, months even.’

They reached Maid Lane, where the crowd was thicker and the noise louder. Neither of them spoke until they had crossed the street and passed into a rent leading up to Bankside. The alley was so narrow that they had to walk in single file.

‘There is another reason why she wishes me to go to Cambridge,’ Holdsworth said over his shoulder. ‘Her ladyship wants me to lay a ghost.’

‘What? Are you raving?’

Holdsworth stopped and turned back to him. ‘It is perfectly true. She has read my little book and is convinced that I am the very man to send ghost hunting.’

‘You are funning me.’

‘I assure you, I am not. Watch your step.’ Holdsworth held up his arm just in time to stop Farmer walking into a neat coil of human excrement in the middle of the path. ‘She has a son at the University and he is convinced that he has seen a ghost.’

They emerged from the fetid little alley into the comparatively pure air of Bankside. Holdsworth glanced upriver towards Goat Stairs. The gulls were still quarrelling, this time over something that lay in the water.

‘Shall you go?’ Farmer asked.

‘I am undecided. The mother does not give a fig for the books, of course. She cares only for the boy.’

Farmer grunted. ‘There’s money there. And of course by birth she’s a Vauden, is she not? That means she will have the ear of those who have something more valuable than mere money at their disposal.’

‘When the fit is on him, the boy is violent,’ Holdsworth said. ‘He tried to strangle your monkey man. I have seen the bruises.’

‘Ah. That is not so good.’

‘The likelihood is that I should be of no use to the lad at all. In which case I can expect nothing but trouble from the mother.’

Farmer laid a hand on Holdsworth’s arm. ‘Who’s that, I wonder?’

He pointed to a tall, plainly dressed man thirty yards ahead. He was knocking at the Farmers’ door. As Sal opened it, Farmer and Holdsworth reached the house. Hearing their footsteps, the stranger turned. It was the footman from Golden Square. He held out a letter to Holdsworth.

‘Her ladyship desired me to wait for an answer, sir.’

Holdsworth broke the seal and unfolded the letter.

Sir,

Her Ladyship hopes it will be convenient for you to travel to Cambridge on Friday. All arrangements will be made on your behalf. Pray call at Golden Square tomorrow at eleven o’clock to make a preliminary survey of his Lordship’s collection, and to receive any further instructions she may have. She has instructed me to enclose a banknote for five pounds to defray your expenses. Pray sign the enclosed paper to acknowledge receipt of the money and hand to bearer. I am, sir, yr humble & obdt. servant,

L. Cross

Mrs Farmer came into the hall to see what the fuss was about. She eyed the banknote with curiosity. Her face looked softer, almost girlish. Money was a powerful thing, Holdsworth thought, the true philosopher’s stone, with the power of transmuting dreams.

Farther along Bankside, the gulls rose in an angry, squabbling group, their cries growing louder and more savage. Were there gulls in Cambridge? Surely not so many, surely not such predatory birds as these?

He handed the letter to Ned and went into the house. He turned into the little parlour. It was here that Maria and her friends had done their praying and wailing, their talking to ghosts. He found pen and ink on the table by the window and scrawled his name on the receipt. He sanded the paper, folded it and returned to the footman waiting at the door. He felt giddy, as though he had swallowed a bumper of rum.

The footman bowed and left. Mrs Farmer and Sal retreated towards the kitchen, where supper was moving towards the final phase of its preparation. It was a fine evening, and Holdsworth and Farmer lingered outside by the river. Holdsworth watched the gulls, which were quieter now but still darting and gliding about the water near Goat Stairs. He felt calmer than he had done for months.

‘Well,’ Farmer said. ‘She had already decided you were to go, and that is that. The wheel of fortune turns, eh?’

Holdsworth patted the pocket in which the banknote lay. ‘It is a bribe.’

‘It was delicately done. Not that a present of money needs any delicacy whatsoever.’

‘I shall call in at the mason’s yard in the morning,’ Holdsworth said.

‘To settle the matter of the headstone? Surely that expense might wait a little?’

‘Twenty-seven shillings and sixpence. That’s what the man wants. I shall have enough left over.’

‘I still think it might wait a little.’

‘No, I must do this for Maria if nothing else. I owe her a little square of stone.’ He hesitated, still staring downstream to Goat Stairs. ‘Then perhaps she will leave me alone.’

Ned frowned. ‘You’re full of fancies this evening. What do you mean now?’

Holdsworth waved his arm, taking in the river before them and the City beyond. ‘Sometimes I am – well, no – not haunted, not that, of course, never that. But my mind plays tricks at times, just for the merest instant, for the twinkling of an eye. I think I see the curve of a shoulder across the road, I hear her voice in a crowd, or – or – well, even a child weeping.’ He watched two apprentices sculling upriver against the tide and thought of black treacle rising to engulf him from the grave that Maria shared with Georgie. He said softly, ‘Perhaps the headstone will settle the business.’

‘This is grief speaking,’ Ned said. ‘It is nothing else. It is a natural consequence of an overactive imagination, exacerbated beyond endurance by the melancholy -’

‘Stop prosing. Advise me instead. Should I buy a shirt tomorrow morning? A new hat? I shall be calling on the quality, after all. I must be shaved – I must have my hair dressed. I shall dazzle Mrs Farmer and Sal with my splendour.’

Farmer shook his head. ‘You must go cautiously in this matter.’

‘You are become very serious all of a sudden.’

‘Money makes it serious. Her ladyship has given you all this before you have lifted a finger for her. She will expect a return. The rich always do.’

Holdsworth smiled at him. ‘That is why they are rich.’