CHAPTER 5

 

 

Mr. Lamppost

 

 

Meanwhile, I’d begun to wonder about Maurice. He often went out, and I rarely knew where. I envied him for the freedom. In our village, I used to escape into the countryside to clear my head and calm myself, enjoying many a ramble along a quiet country lane. But in London, our flat seemed to be the most bucolic place inside a violent jungle.

As I gazed out the windows, I began to notice a particular young man. This character spent much of the day lounging against a lamppost some yards down from the corner newsstand. He wore no hat, so his longish red hair made him stand out. His skin stayed relentlessly pale, despite his ever-present location in the sun. He wore a short green jacket of padded silk covered with dark vines, with green velvet trousers to match. The nap on the latter had been dulled by time and weather. In the manner of the truly poor, I never saw him in a change of clothes, and he seemed determined to wear his present ones until they fell off his body.

He did not have--or at least did not appear to need--any employment, and only broke his routine when carriages halted nearby. When they did, the young man would speak to the passenger a moment and climb inside. The carriage would then drive away and return a while later, leaving the young man out on the corner to recommence his loitering.

Once, venturing out, I crossed the street to fetch some breakfast tea from the eatery, carefully glancing around for the constable. But I halted as I passed the young man. I had not planned this encounter, yet found myself turning towards him. His features were clear-cut and regular, and even in his worn finery he was a remarkable, if almost too-vivid sight. His eyes caught my attention immediately. When he glanced my way in his half-bored fashion, I saw they were yellow, feral, and as unblinking as an animal’s.

“Excuse my interest, but may I ask you a question?”

“It’s five shillings,” he replied. He did not look at me.

“Pardon? I just wanted to ask what you’re doing here all the time.”

“You’re Seth Keane. You live with Maurice Fitzpons. He pays your expenses.”

“Er,” I faltered. Maurice must have been chatting with him.

He looked me up and down. “One pound for you. Stupidity’s extra.”

“I don’t quite--”

“Push off.” He spoke without emotion.

I took a breath to control myself, nodded politely to him, and crossed the street.

“I like to let them dine, first,” said a voice behind my back. “It’s not as nice when they’re on an empty stomach.”

Mad, I decided. Completely mad.

 

 

“I can’t understand it,” I said to Maurice over dinner that evening. When I described the young man’s odd behavior to my lover, Maurice threw down his fork and began to shake with helpless laughter, his fist beating the table.

“All right,” I said sourly. “Explain.”

Maurice was wiping tears from his eyes. “No. I want to preserve your innocence. My love, you are the Eighth Wonder of the World.”

“He’s a receiver of stolen goods.” I thought it a clever guess.

“Wrong.” Maurice chuckled. “I’ll give you a hint. His line of work is the same as yours.”

“You’re calling me a lazy idler,” I said, nettled.

“No. Think of how you earn your keep. Your job. Don’t you understand?”

My mouth fell open. I dropped my napkin on the table and went over to the window to look out. The young man was there, as usual.

“All of them!?” I exclaimed.

Now Maurice positively roared. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of a male whore.”

“No!” I stammered. “I mean to say, I’m familiar with the female kind, but I’ve never heard of a man doing such a thing, my own case excepted, and anyway I’m not fucking you as a profession.” I looked at Maurice skeptically. “Are you certain? I can’t imagine going from man to man a dozen times a day. I find you trying enough as it is. But him? With half the population of London?”

Maurice struck his forehead with his fist. “Unbelievable.”

“I’m from a small village,” I protested.

“I’m from the same place, yet I’m not that ignorant.”

“My stepfather never talked to me about prostitutes. Besides, I doubt he’d ever heard of male whores.”

Maurice smiled. “Speaking of which, I’m interested in a trial of skills. Come over here.”

I ignored my lover. “He’s entering another carriage.” My face was pressed against the glass. I was spying with the eagerness of a child, and I felt the heat of my own foggy breath. “Think of the danger, going from random man to man like that!” I imagined him kneeling inside the carriage, easing himself with soothing, servile words between the spread knees of some nervous patron. The client would grasp his walking stick with trembling fingers as he was being serviced, becoming apoplectic as that cool-eyed face slowly sucked and mouthed on his genitals.

“Seth.”

I ignored the urgent tone. I slid my hand along the front of my trousers, half-wishing the strange young man could see my gesture. For one mad moment, I wanted him here for vicious, anonymous sex instead of Maurice. I turned around with the heat of shame and betrayal flooding my face.

“Yes,” my lover breathed, looking at my crotch, then at my eyes. “Come here. I can read your mind. The thought of him excites you, doesn’t he?” His voice became cold and insulting. “You want to pay him, move inside him, let his body spoil you for me. Is that it? Come here, my black swan. I know I must buy you with hard money. Come here and earn your keep.” Maurice removed a shilling from his pocket, laying it on the table. “Show me your famed dexterity. Open my trouser buttons with your teeth, and I’ll reward you. You’re worth a shilling, I suppose. Can you do it?”

I snorted. “Cover the Queen’s face. No reason why Her Majesty should be subject to such a debased transaction.”

Angrily, I fell at his knees and began, as aroused as an animal.

 

 

One evening, we finally had too dangerous a quarrel.

Maurice had been drinking, and he could be unreasonable in this condition. The subject, alas, was a sketch I’d been working on. I’d been considering ways to earn money without leaving our room, and it occurred to me I might be able to submit some humorous sketches to a magazine.

My stepfather often said I had an immense capacity for irrelevant labor, and I’d been totally consumed by the sketches for the last several days, and Maurice was showing impatience as he sat watching me with his wine bottle. I had spent hours that day, bending over my pen, and--ignoring Maurice. When Maurice is ignored, he behaves like a small child. Teasing at first, but when he loses patience at your lack of response, he becomes desperate. So he insulted my drawing.

“Are you going to spend all day on that dung heap?”

I exploded. After enduring years of scorn from my stepfather, I was raw from the flailing. I went wild. “What do you mean by calling my sketch a dung heap! You stinking aristocrat. Why don’t you go out and shoot people? That’s all you’re good for!”

Maurice reacted to this jab with fury. “And all you’re good for, Mr. Keane,” he sneered, “is for a quick fuck, and living like a leech off my money. You’re nothing but a parasite.”

For a moment, I went still. Then I picked up the ink bottle and threw it at him. In my rage, my aim was poor, and the bottle glanced off the edge of the table as it flew towards Maurice, exploding in a shower of glass and ink. Maurice was spattered with both, as were the carpet, the chair, and the wallpaper.

At first, he did not react except for a start of surprise. I watched a trickle of ink drip off his cheek. Then his expression changed to a wounded, defenseless hurt. A little blood was on his chin from a piece of flying glass. It could easily have gone into one of his eyes and blinded him.

I ran out of the room, down the stairs, and out into the street.

I am not a man who tolerates the feeling of guilt. My stepfather had tried hard to inculcate it into me to make me obedient, and I had reacted by developing the sort of pride that insists I am never wrong. Consequently, this makes guilt so much more scorching when I know I deserve it. For all my anger at Maurice’s insults, I should never have lost control of myself in that manner.

I could not return to him with things as they were between us. Eventually, I slowed to a fast walk, my face stiff to keep the agony out of my expression. I debated never going back to the flat at all. And then, as you sometimes do after a quarrel, I began to wonder if Maurice had only spoken the truth about me.

Remorse can become an avalanche of pain if you allow it into your soul. My eyes turned hot with unshed tears. I walked far, unheeding, and when I came to myself saw I had arrived at the Thames. Along the bank stood a fisherman smoking a pipe. The early evening was gloomy and dark.

I stood on the edge of the embankment and listened to the wet lapping of the cold water against the concrete. As I contemplated its murky depths, I thought to myself that all I had to do was let it cover me completely, and I would be just one more pitiful, unknown corpse to be fished out and reported to the authorities.

Just one single breath of water. It would not be difficult. No cruising police boat was in sight. Most river craft were finished with their daily work and in dock for the evening, and only a few steamboats still chugged along, spouting trails of white smoke behind them like boiling kettles.

“Young man?”

It was the fisherman. He was a lean person of about late middle age with greying hair and mustache. He was wearing a rubber mac over a bow tie and a white shirt. Shrewd eyes studied me through spectacles, and he lifted his line out of the water.

“Pardon me for interrupting,” he continued, removing his meerschaum from his mouth, “but you seem very interested in the river.”

I almost laughed at these words. Interested.

“I am.”

“Is it a girl?”

I was surprised by his question and avoided looking at him.

“Yes.” I had to say something.

“Has she left you?”

I could not reply for a moment. “She might. We quarreled.”

The man grunted dismissively and gestured with his pipe. “A quarrel? That is nothing. All lovers quarrel. You will make up tomorrow.” The man cast his line into the water again. “No reply?” he commented. “Was it serious?”

“Yes. Our worst.”

“But what of your family? Will they not be overcome by grief?”

“No,” I replied shortly. “I have none.”

The man glanced at me a moment, then went back to studying his line.

If anything, my stepfather would be pleased to hear of my suicide and say, ‘I knew Seth would come to nothing; he was never good for anything.’

Pleased.

And not for the first time, my pride began to succor me. If it would please my stepfather to hear of my downfall and destruction, then of course I could not kill myself. I had to defy him. Damn Maurice and everything else.

“Young man?”

I startled. I had forgotten the fisherman.

“If I may be so bold, what was this quarrel about, the one that was so serious?”

I gave a short, bitter laugh. “I need work.”

The man grunted and fanned his pipe in an arc. “There are situations all over. You only need to begin looking. What can you do?”

“I have done the work of a shoemaker, and I write with a good hand.”

“A shoemaker?” The fisherman looked thoughtful. “You must be nimble. Can you handle things carefully? Measure ingredients without dropping or spilling anything? Are you quick at learning odd names and the properties of things?”

My hair seemed to stand on end at these words. “Yes,” I said.

The fisherman smiled a little. “Then I will hire you. I’m an apothecary and could use a clerk in my shop. My name, by the way, is Joseph Phillips.”

 

 

I returned to Maurice’s rooms later that evening. Yes, Maurice’s rooms; I was only a guest there, nothing else, I finally admitted. A guest who had overstayed his welcome.

I climbed the stairs uneasily, not knowing how he would react. I’d pack my things and leave. I could sleep on the streets for a few nights if I had to.

When I entered, our charwoman was on a ladder sponging the wallpaper. But the stains had sunk in too deeply to be removed, and I think the carpet was beyond cleansing. The broken glass had been swept up. Maurice was nowhere in sight, and I wondered what to say about the carpet and the wallpaper.

“Mrs. Carter, where is Mr. Fitzpons?”

My drawings still lay on the table. Thank God Maurice hadn’t burnt them in revenge. It did seem rational to think this at the time.

“He went out a short while ago,” said Mrs. Carter. “I’ve spent an hour trying to remove these marks! Why on earth were you playing such a silly game, throwing the bottle into the air and trying to catch it, over and over?”

Is this what Maurice had told her? “I was being foolish. I won’t do it again.” Quickly, I backed away and went into our bedroom. I opened our wardrobe and started removing my clothes after pulling my valise out from under the bed.

Hinges squeaked in the next room.

“These stains are impossible,” the charwoman said to someone. “The paper will have to be covered by more sheets from the same pattern. As for the carpet, it’s hopeless!”

Maurice’s voice said, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Carter. I’ll pay for the damage. Give Mr. Flanagan an estimate and I’ll settle up with him.”

My throat tightened, and I froze. I could not avoid Maurice.

“Mr. Fitzpons,” continued the charwoman, “I hope you will speak sharply to your friend in the next room.”

“I--I will.” Maurice’s voice faltered. “Mrs. Carter, you’ve done all you can. Don’t trouble yourself about the wallpaper and miss your dinner.”

I considered jumping out the window, but it looked like I was going to have to face Maurice.

Our eyes met when he entered the bedroom. He glanced at the open valise lying on the bed, and whatever he intended to say dried up inside his mouth. I could see a blotch of blood on his chin. He had changed his clothes, though his blond hair still bore a few black stains.

In his hands was a silver inkwell. For a second, I had the mad thought that he was going to throw it at me in retaliation.

“I bought you this,” Maurice said hesitantly, “so you could finish your drawing.”

All the fear, the distant echoing rage, the dread went out of me at these words. Maurice’s eyes made a nervous flit to the valise again.

I threw myself at him, my arms going around him.

Maurice gave start, and then a laugh of relief. “Just a moment, my passionate young man,” he said to me, easing his way out of my embrace. He removed my clothes from the valise and called, “Mrs. Carter, before you go, I’d like to offer you this old valise, if you care to have it. It’s no longer needed.”