Jesmond held the Lucifer to the candle lantern. In a moment the glass glowed bright sending shadows scuttling over the curved walls. It was late in the day now and almost dark outside. Then again, it was always shady up in the galleries. The light from the fans behind the stage would never make much of a mark up here.
He held the lantern between us. I saw the beads of sweat at his temples run grey down the sides of his cheeks and catch in the stubble of his jaw. His black hair – what was left of it – was mostly boot shine. Now we was close I recognised the waxy smell of the lampblack coming off him.
‘It … it’s rather …’ Jesmond blinked and swallowed. His eyes slid over my shoulder and up to the left. ‘I feel I should warn you that it’s quite … er. Quite …’
He didn’t finish his sentence. He handed me the lantern and bent to fiddle with another. His hands shook as he tried to strike a second Lucifer against the side of his match box. It took four tries to get a flame.
I held my lantern up. Tools, brushes, buckets, pots and strips of timber were stacked around us on the wooden benches of the second gallery. The ripe smell was sharper up here on account of the plaster drying out twenty foot above. I could almost reach up to touch the workmen’s boards overhead.
‘It’s just over there.’ He turned now to let the light of his own lantern show the way. At the centre of the gallery’s back wall a sturdy metal ladder rose from behind the second row of benches and disappeared into a black gap in the boards overhead.
‘As I said, it’s quite safe to go up. Some days there’s been nearly a dozen of them working up top. A couple of them are big lads – have to be, look you, for that kind of work. It will bear our weight – all of us.’
He held the lantern higher to take in Hari, who was leaning over the edge of the gallery rail and staring down at the stage. ‘I’ll light another for your … for Mr Hari, shall I?’
I shook my head. ‘I’d feel … better if he was down here.’
I hadn’t wanted Hari and Lok standing next to me at Bell Wharf Stairs earlier when I looked at that filthy picture and I didn’t want him up there with me now. Point of fact, I didn’t much want Jesmond holding my hand neither, but he’d already seen it – whatever it was – so the damage was done.
Anyway, he knew exactly where it was.
‘Just a moment.’ I set the lantern down on a pile of timbers and bent to hitch up my cotton frock to stop the material from catching around my legs as we climbed. I tucked the ends into my waistband.
‘Let’s get it over with then. You go first and I’ll follow.’
The air trapped beneath The Comet’s roof was hot and thick with the stench of the plaster, but that wasn’t what made my belly clench tight as a knuckle boy’s fist.
It was worse than the other one, far worse.
Jesmond set the lantern down below the panel and then he stepped back into the shadows like he couldn’t bear to look at me – the real me, that is, not the one rolling her eyes and arching her back on the wall. The flickering light gave the thing a horrible liveliness; it was almost as if all that flesh up there was moving of its own accord. The brown lines on the plaster shivered with the movement of the candle flame.
Something sweet, but sour with it, came burning into my mouth. It was the chai Ramesh Das had served up earlier, but now I wanted to spit it out onto the boards.
There were three figures this time, all naked and coiled around each other. Tell truth, I wasn’t sure it was actually possible to bend a body – or a tongue come to that – in the directions they was taking, not unless you happened to be a contortionist like Fitzy’s Man of a Million Bones. According to the picture sprawling across a newly plastered panel of The Comet’s ceiling I had a rare talent.
I recognised myself in the midst of it all and I recognised the two men with me. That was what punched me in the gut; it was Lucca and Joey.
The artist, if that’s what you could call whoever had done this, had caught all three of us very finely. There was no mistaking who it was making free up there. Lucca stared straight out over my shoulder, the leering expression of the good half of his face pulled the scarred side into a mockery of a smile. His hands slipped around the bodies so that …
Well, one was on a part of me and one was on a part of Joey.
Caught between the two of them, I was painted to face my brother. Our profiles – tongues twisted together – matched almost exactly. Someone was making a point to show the likeness off. One of Joey’s hands pawed an over-ripe breast, while the other, sliding lower, held Lucca tight.
Jesmond cleared his throat. ‘It will be gone by daybreak tomorrow, ma’am. I promise. I’ll have it removed.’
I didn’t turn to look at him. I didn’t want him to see my face. I could feel my cheeks burning with shame.
‘Who found it?’
There was a pause.
‘It was there this morning when I came to unlock for the works. It appeared overnight.’
‘But why did you come all the way up here first off? What made you look for it?’
I heard Jesmond shuffle on the boards behind me. I turned around now.
‘Well?’
He stepped into the circle of light and bent to retrieve his lantern. Of an instant the image seemed to move again.
‘It was the smell. With everything closed up and the heat …’ He blinked. ‘See, it’s not entirely the plaster – the stench, I mean. When I came this morning I thought something had got in and died up here – an old tom cat maybe. But then when I saw it up close, I realised what it was.’
I turned to look up at the plaster panel again as Jesmond carried on.
‘It’s the shit. Whoever did this used shit, not paint. And I don’t think it’s animal, if you understand me. Question is: how did they get in? There’s only two sets of keys and I’ve got them both.’
I took in the sweeping greasy lines and fought down another bitter mouthful.
‘How many of the men have seen it, Mr Jesmond?’
‘None of the men, just … just me, ma’am. I turned them all away this morning, gave them a story about the plaster not being dry enough to work on. I thought it was the proper thing to do under the circumstances. I was going to cover it over myself, but then I thought you should probably …’ He stared up at the picture. ‘I thought you should see it. To my mind there’s something … vicious about it – and I don’t just mean the … flesh of it. It’s more than that – it cuts deeper. I’m no artist, but I can see it has a quality. Whoever came up here and did this, they knew you and Mr Fratelli and …’ He paused for a moment, picking over the bones of his next words.
‘I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t much like your brother, Joseph, but to blacken the memory of a dead man …’
‘Dead!’ I whipped about, almost dropping the lantern to the boards. ‘What do you mean by that? What have you heard?’
Jesmond stared at me like I was a Bedlam. He blinked and took a step back. ‘He … he’s been dead for nearly three years now.’
I wiped a sticky hand across my forehead. Sweat was streaking down between my shoulder blades. I’d changed gear back at The Palace before setting out again, but now I felt rank as a herring girl. I glanced at Jesmond, who was watching me close. No wonder he thought me mad. As far as he was concerned, Joseph Peck – the bones of him – was most likely wrapped in a bit of old oilskin and resting at the bottom of the river with his pockets full of stones. Most of them in Paradise thought Joey had been dead a long while.
As if he read me, Jesmond went on. ‘That accident at the docks – it was a bad business, ma’am. And his body never came to light so you couldn’t even bury him. I won’t pretend your brother was a friend of mine, but I wouldn’t wish it on a man. And I wouldn’t wish this …’ he raised his lantern to the picture again, ‘on anyone. I called it vicious, but my old father, see, he would have another word for it – drwg. It means evil – this painting is evil, that’s what it is.’
I stared up at the plaster panel. He was right. It was more than an insult. There was something dark and unnatural about those clever curling lines. It was evil all right. I remembered how Ramesh Das had made the sign of the eye when he talked about Matthias Schalk and I shivered, even though you could crisp a meat pie up there under the roof.
I set the candle lantern down and rolled my sleeves up as far as they would go.
‘What are you doing?’ Jesmond frowned. His black eyes almost disappeared into his head.
‘I’m getting myself ready. You might want to do the same if you want to keep that shirt clean. Is there white paint in any of the pots lying about downstairs?’
He nodded. ‘Thirty pots of the stuff – all accounted and paid for.’
‘Good!’ I took up the lantern again and started towards the top of the ladder. ‘Because we’re going to need it. You and me are going to paint this over before we leave here tonight, and I don’t care if it takes every one of those thirty pots to clean this shit away.’
We washed layer after layer of paint over that picture until there was nothing left to see. Just the filthy stench of it remained and I’m not entirely sure if – at the end – I was really taking it in or imagining it. When I was done it felt like my arms had been pulled clear of the sockets.
It was light again when we stepped outside. Not full day – everything was coated in the milky grey that washes up just before dawn. Hari, who had stayed below while we worked, went to stand a little way from us, turning to take in both ends of the street. I didn’t want him to see that painting, but now it was covered over I was grateful to have him there. As I watched him scan the cobbles I saw plaster dust in his beard.
Jesmond turned his bowler about in his hands. I watched him pick at some white spots caught on the brim, but he only made it worse. I put a hand out to stop him.
‘I’ll buy you another. You worked hard tonight.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’ He scraped again at the felt. ‘It was the right thing to do, showing you, I mean? Only it …’
‘… wasn’t something fit for a lady to see?’ I finished off for him.
He nodded. Even though it was early it was already warm. The metallic tang of London soot scraped the back of my nose, but I was glad to be on the street. The air out here was a thousand times sweeter than the fug under the dome of The Comet.
‘I don’t want word of this going round – not to the workmen, not to Fitzy, not to no one. Is that understood?’
‘Completely, ma’am.’ Jesmond blinked.
‘I mean no one,’ I went on. ‘If I hear a word about this, I’ll know where it’s come from.’
His lips twitched as he fixed on his shoes. The conker-brown leather was spotted with paint like his hat. Of a rule, Aubrey Jesmond was a sleek one. I had no doubt he was weighing up the price of a new pair. That wasn’t what I wanted him to think about just now.
‘That’s an order.’ My voice came sharp. Hari turned to look at us. He started back towards me, but I shook my head.
Jesmond looked up and his fat little fingers fluttered to his lips. ‘Well now, the thing is that – ah – this puts me in rather a delicate position, ma’am, seeing as how … well, I wasn’t actually the one who …’
His voice petered out. He didn’t sound like a silky chapel preacher now.
I planted my hands on my hips. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I … I wasn’t the one who … found it, not exactly.’ He mumbled the reply.
‘Who did, then?’
Jesmond coughed. ‘Netta.’
‘Netta found it?’
‘Indeed she did. And she came straight back to my lodgings to tell me.’
I didn’t catch on at first.
‘But you told me that when you came here to unlock yesterday morning it was you who went up there to the roof.’
Jesmond swallowed. I actually heard the gulping sound of it. ‘That … now, that wasn’t entirely true, see. Netta and I had made … what you might call a night of it before. It’s her first turn at The Carnival tomorrow – today as it happens now – as a solo. Paddy thinks she’s ready. He doesn’t know, but I’ve been giving her some … advice. Helping her with her performance. Coming from a chapel background, I’m not usually one for strong liquor but she …’
‘You had a skinful with her, is that it?’
Jesmond nodded. ‘I’m not used to it you see, ma’am.’
I saw it all now. No wonder he was blacking his hair. If he was trying it on with Netta Swift, he’d want her to think him at least twenty years younger than he really was. Mind you, I wondered if he realised she was trying it on with him.
I’ve been working on something in private with a friend. That’s what she told me when she signed that contract. I knew who she meant now. I took a step forward. ‘And you were too far gone yesterday morning to unlock for the workmen, so she came over here and did it for you?’
Jesmond nodded. ‘That’s about the sum of it. I took it as a kindness. What with Paddy watching for a slip. He doesn’t like me being here.’ He blinked. ‘When Netta couldn’t rouse me, she took the keys and came here. Then she came straight back and told me what she’d seen. Shocked she was.’
I bet she was.
I folded my arms. ‘And I took you for a shrewd man. I’m not saying I thought I could trust you, not entirely, but I reckoned you could do the job well enough on account of wanting to look after yourself. Well, as it turns out you’ve been doing that all right. Now I see it quite clear – you’re no better than old Fitzy, and Christ knows he’s as low as a rat’s arse. I’ve a mind to be rid of the pair of you. Come on, Hari.’
I started off up the street, my heels drumming on the cobbles.
‘What … what will you do, ma’am?’ Jesmond’s plaintive voice came from behind.
‘I’ll have a word with your fancy piece, that’s what I’ll do. You and Netta! That’s a rare joke. You’re catching the wind in a sieve there, Aubrey Jesmond. If you think you’ve been helping her you’re most probably right, but not in the way you think.’
Hari loped along next to me. His shadow almost reached the end of the street as the sun came up full behind us. I didn’t look back as I called out.
‘You stay away from me. I don’t want to see your face at The Carnival tonight mooning after Netta Swift. Meanwhile, you better look sharp. I want The Comet ready to open again by October. If you want to keep your place, Jessie, you’ll make sure that happens. October the first, not a day later.’
I stopped now and swung round. ‘And you can buy your own bleedin’ hat.’