The American Boy Page 2

  “You have a gift for instructing the young,” the doctor said to me one evening.

  “I show them no mercy. I make them work hard.”

  “You make them wish to please you.”

  It was not long after that he declared that he had done all he could for me. My aunt took me to her lodgings in a narrow little street running up to the Strand. Here I perched like an untidy cuckoo, mouth ever open, in her snug nest. I filled her parlour during the day, and slept there at night on a bed they made up on the sofa. During that summer, the reek from the river was well-nigh overwhelming.

  I soon realised that my aunt was not well, that I had occasioned a severe increase in her expenditure since my foolish assault with the Waterloo Medal, and that my presence, though she strove to hide it, could not but be a burden to her. I also heard the groans she smothered in the dark hours of the morning, and I saw illness ravage her body like an invading army.

  One day, as we drank tea after dinner, my aunt gave me back the Waterloo Medal.

  It felt cold and heavy in the palm of my hand. I touched the ribbon with its broad, blood-red stripe between dark blue borders. I tilted my hand and let the medal slide on to the table by the tea caddy. I pushed it towards her.

  “Where did it come from?”

  “The magistrate gave it to me for you,” she said. “The one who was kind, who had served in the Peninsula. He said it was yours, that you had earned it.”

  “I threw it away.”

  She shook her head. “You threw it at Captain Stanhope.”

  “Does not that amount to the same thing?”

  “No.” She added, almost pleading, “You could be proud of it, Tom. You fought with honour for your King and your country.”

  “There was no damned honour in it,” I muttered. But I took the medal to please her, and slipped it in my pocket. Then I said – and the one thing led to the other – “I must find employment. I cannot be a burden to you any longer.”

  At that time jobs of any kind were not easy to find, particularly if one was a discharged lunatic who had left his last teaching post without a reference, who lacked qualifications or influence. But my aunt Reynolds had once kept house for Mr Bransby’s family, and he had a kindness for her. Upon threads of this nature, those chance connections of memory, habit and affection that bind us with fragile and invisible bonds, the happiness of many depends, even their lives.

  All this explains why I was ready to take up my position as an under-usher at the Manor House School in the village of Stoke Newington on Monday the 13th of September. On the evening before I left my aunt’s house for the last time, I walked east into the City and on to London Bridge. I stopped there for a while and watched the grey, sluggish water moving between the piers and the craft plying up and down the river. Then, at last, I felt in my trouser pocket and took out the medal. I threw it into the water. I was on the upstream side of the bridge and the little disc twisted and twinkled as it fell, catching the evening sunshine. It slipped neatly into the river, like one going home. It might never have existed.

  “Why did I not do that before?” I said aloud, and two shopgirls, passing arm in arm, laughed at me.

  I laughed back, and they giggled, picked up their skirts and hastened away. They were pretty girls, too, and I felt desire stir within me. One of them was tall and dark, and she reminded me a little of Fanny, my first love. The girls skittered like leaves in the wind and I watched how their bodies swayed beneath thin dresses. As my aunt grows worse, I thought, I grow better, as though I feed upon her distress.

  3

  Once again, I walked to save money. My box had gone ahead by carrier. I followed the old Roman road to Cambridge, Ermine-street, stretching north from Shoreditch, the bricks and mortar of the city creeping blindly after it like ants following a line of honey.

  About a mile south of Stoke Newington, the vehicles on the road came to a noisy standstill. Walking steadily, I passed the uneasy, twitching snake of curricles and gigs, chaises and carts, stagecoaches and wagons, until I drew level with the cause of the obstruction. A shabby little one-horse carriage travelling south had collided with a brewer’s dray returning from London. One of the chaise’s shafts had snapped, and the unfortunate hack which had drawn it was squirming on the ground, still entangled in her harness. The driver was waving his blood-soaked wig at the draymen and bellowing, while around them gathered a steadily expanding crowd of angry travellers and curious bystanders.

  Some forty yards away, standing in the queue of vehicles travelling towards London, was a carriage drawn by a pair of matching bays. When I saw it, I felt a pang, curiously like hunger. I had seen the equipage before – outside the Manor House School. The same coachman was on the box, staring at the scene of the accident with a bored expression on his face. The glass was down and a man’s hand rested on the sill.

  I stopped and turned back, pretending an interest in the accident, and examined the carriage more closely. As far as I could see, it had only the one occupant, a man whose eyes met mine, then looked away, back to something on his lap. He had a long pale face, with a hint of green in its pallor and fine regular features. His starched collar rose almost to his ears and his neck cloth tumbled in a snowy waterfall from his throat. The fingers on the windowsill moved rhythmically, as though marking time to an inaudible tune. On the forefinger was a great gold signet ring.

  A footman came hurrying along the road from the accident, pushing his way through the crowd. He went up to the carriage window. The occupant raised his head.

  “There’s a horse down, sir, the chaise is a wreck and the dray has lost its offside front wheel. They say there’s nothing to do but wait.”

  “Ask that fellow what he’s staring at.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir,” I said, and my voice sounded thin and reedy in my ears. “I stared at no one, but I admired your conveyance. A fine example of the coach-builder’s craft.”

  The footman was already looming over me, leaning close. He smelt of onions and porter. “Be off with you, then.” He nudged me with his shoulder and went on in a lower voice, “You’ve admired enough, so cheese it.”

  I did not move.

  The coachman lifted his whip.

  Meanwhile, the man in the carriage stared straight at me. He showed neither anger nor interest. There was an impersonal menace in the air, as pungent as gas, even in broad daylight and on a crowded road. Like an itch, I was a minor irritant. The gentleman in the coach had decided to scratch me.

  I sketched a bow and strolled away. I did not know the encounter for what it was, an omen.

  4

  Stoke Newington was a pretty place, despite its proximity to London. I remember the trees and rooks with affection. The youngest boy in the school was four; the oldest nineteen and so nearly a man that he sported bushy whiskers and was rumoured to have put the baker’s girl with child. The sons of richer and more ambitious parents were prepared for entry at the public schools. Most, however, received all the learning they required at Mr Bransby’s.

  “The parents entrust their sons’ board and lodging to us as well as their tuition,” Mr Bransby told me. “A nutritious diet and a comfortable bed are essential if a boy is to learn. Moreover, if a child lives among gentlefolk, he acquires their ways. We keep strictly to our regimen. It is an essential foundation to sobriety in later life.”

  The regimen did not affect Mr Bransby and his household, who lived separately from the rest of the school and were no doubt sufficiently sober already. I was expected to sleep on the boys’ side, as was the only other master who lived at the school, the senior usher.

  “Mr Dansey has been with me for many years,” Bransby told me when he introduced us. “You will find him a scholar of distinction.”

  Edward Dansey was probably in his forties, a thin man, dressed in black clothes so old and faded that they were now mottled shades of green and grey. He wore a dusty little wig, usually askew, and had a cast in one eye, which, without being actually ob
lique, approached nearly to a squint. Both then and later, he was always perfectly civil. His manners were those of a gentleman, despite his shabby clothes. He had the great merit of showing no curiosity about my past history.

  When I knew Dansey better I found he had a habit of looking at the world with his chin raised and his lips twisted asymmetrically so that one corner of the mouth curled up and the other curled down; it was as though part of him was smiling and part of him was frowning so one never really knew where one stood with him. The cast in his eye accentuated this ambivalence of expression. The boys called him Janus, perhaps because they believed his mood varied according to the side of his face you saw him from. They were scared of Bransby, who kept a cane in every room of the school so he could flog a boy wherever he was without delay, but they were terrified of Dansey.

  On my second Thursday at the school, the manservant padded along to the form room as the boys were streaming out to their two hours of liberty before dinner and requested me to wait on his master.

  My immediate fear was that I had somehow displeased Mr Bransby. I went through the door that separated his quarters from the rest of the house, which was like stepping into a different country. Here the air smelt of beeswax and flowers and the walls were freshly papered, the panels freshly painted. Mr Bransby had silence enough to hear the ticking of a clock, a luxury indeed in a house full of boys. I knocked and was told to enter. He was staring out of the window, tapping his fingers on the leather top of his table.

  “Sit down, Shield. I must be the bearer of sad news, I’m afraid.”

  I said, “My aunt Reynolds?”

  Bransby bowed his heavy head. “I am truly sorry for it. She was an excellent woman.”

  My mind was blank, an empty place filled with fog.

  “She charged the woman with whom she lodged to write to me when she was gone. She died yesterday afternoon.” He cleared his throat. “It appears that it was very sudden at the end, or else they would have sent for you. But there is a letter. Mrs Reynolds directed that it should be given to you after her death.”

  The seal was intact. It had been stamped with what looked like the handle of a small spoon. I thought I could make out the imprint of fluting. My aunt had probably used the small silver spoon she kept locked in the caddy with her tea. The wax was streaky, a mixture of rusty orange and dark blue. Economical in all things, she saved the seals of letters sent to her and melted the wax again when she sent a letter of her own.

  The mind is an ungovernable creature, particularly under the influence of grief; we cannot always command our own thoughts. I found myself wondering if the spoon would still be there, and whether by rights it was now mine. For an instant the fog cleared and I saw her there, in my mind but as solid as Bransby himself, sitting at the table after dinner, frowning into the caddy as she measured the tea.

  “There will be arrangements to be made,” Bransby was saying. “Mr Dansey will take over your duties for a day or two.” He sneezed, and then said angrily, “I shall advance you a small sum of money to cover any expenses you may have. I suggest you go up to town this afternoon. Well? What do you say?”

  I recalled that my sanity was still on trial, and now there was no one to speak for me so I must make shift to speak for myself. I raised my head and said that I was sensible of Mr Bransby’s great kindness. I begged leave to withdraw and prepare for my journey.

  A moment later, I went up to my little room in the attic, a green hermitage under the eaves. There at last I wept. I wish I could say my tears were solely for my aunt, the best of women. Alas, they were also for myself. My protector was dead. Now, I told myself, I was truly alone in the world.

  5

  My aunt’s death drew me deeper into the labyrinth. It brought me to Mr Rowsell and Mrs Jem.

  Her last letter to me was brief and, judging by the handwriting, written in the later stages of her illness. In it, she expressed the hope that we might meet again in that better place beyond the grave and assured me that, if heaven permitted it, she would watch over me. Turning to more practical matters, she informed me that she had left money to defray the expense of her funeral. There was nothing for me to do, for she had decided all the details, even the nature of her memorial, even the mason to cut the letters. Finally, she directed me to wait on her attorney Mr Rowsell at Lincoln’s Inn.

  I called at the lawyer’s chambers. Mr Rowsell was a large, red-faced man, bulging in the prison of his clothing as though the blood were bursting to escape from his body. He directed his moon-faced clerk to fetch my aunt’s papers. While we waited he scribbled in his pocketbook. When the clerk returned, Rowsell looked through the will, glancing up at me with bright, bird-like eyes, his manner a curious compound of the curt and the furtive. There were two bequests of five pounds apiece, he told me, one to the maid of all work and the other to the landlady.

  “The residue comes to you, Mr Shield,” he said. “Apart from my bill, of course, which will be a charge on the estate.”

  “There cannot be much.”

  “She drew up a schedule, I believe,” said Rowsell, reaching into the little deed-box. “But do not let your hopes rise too high, young man.” He took out a sheet of paper, glanced at it and handed it to me. “Her goods and chattels, such as they were,” he continued, staring at me over his spectacles, “and a sum of money. A little over a hundred pounds, in all probability. Heaven knows how she managed to put it by on that annuity of hers.” He stood up and held out his hand. “I am pressed for time this morning so I shall not detain you any longer. If you leave your direction with Atkins on your way out, I will write to you when we are in a position to conclude the business.”

  A hundred pounds! I walked down to the Strand in a daze similar to intoxication. My steps were unsteady. A hundred pounds!

  I went to the house where my aunt had lodged and arranged for the disposal of her possessions. Of the larger items, I kept only the tea caddy with its spoon. The landlady found a friend named Mrs Jem who was willing to buy the furniture. I suspected I would have got a higher price if I had been prepared to look elsewhere, but I did not want the trouble of it. Mrs Jem also bought my aunt’s clothes.

  “Not that they’re worth more than a few shillings,” she said with a martyred smile; she was a mountainous woman with handsome little features buried in her broad face. “More patches and darns than anything else. Still, you won’t want them, will you, so it’s doing you a favour. I’ve only thirty shillings. Will you wait while I fetch the rest of the money?”

  “No.” I could not bear to stay here any longer, for I wanted to contemplate both my loss and my good fortune in peace and quiet. “I will take the thirty shillings and collect the balance later.”

  “As you wish,” she said. “Three Gaunt-court. It’s not a stone’s throw away.”

  “A long throw.”

  She gave me a hard stare. “Don’t worry, I’ll have the money waiting for you. Six shillings, no more no less. I pay my debts, Mr Shield, and I expect others to pay theirs.”

  I could not resist a schoolboy pun. “Mrs Jem,” I said solemnly, “you are indeed a pearl of great price.”

  “That’s enough of your impudence,” she replied. “If you’re going, you’d better go.”

  The balloon of mirth subsided as I walked away from the house where my aunt had lived. So this was all that a life amounted to – a mound of freshly turned earth in a churchyard, a few pieces of furniture scattered among other people’s rooms, and a handful of clothes that nobody but the poor would want to buy.

  There was also the small matter of the money which would come to me. For the first time in my life, I was about to be a man of substance, the absolute master of £103 and a few shillings and pence. The knowledge changed me. Wealth may not bring happiness, but at least it has the power to avert certain causes of sorrow. And it makes a man feel he has a place in the world.

  6

  Wealth. That brings me to Wavenhoe’s Bank. It was Mr Bransby who first mentione
d its name to me. I never went there, never met old Mr Wavenhoe himself until he was on his deathbed, but Wavenhoe’s was the chain that bound us all together, the British and the Americans, the Frants and the Carswalls, Charlie and Edgar. Money plays its own tune, and in our different ways we all found ourselves dancing to it.

  Early in October, I applied to Bransby for leave to go up to Town. It was on that occasion that he mentioned Wavenhoe’s. I needed to visit London because Mr Rowsell had papers for me to sign, and I wished to collect the few shillings that Mrs Jem owed me. He made no difficulty about my request.

  “Upon one condition, however,” he went on. “I should like you to go on Tuesday. Then you may undertake two errands for me while you are there. Not that you will find them onerous – quite the reverse, I fancy. When you travel up to Town, you will take the boy Allan with you and leave him at his parents’ house in Southampton-row. Number thirty-nine. His father writes that his mother desires to have him measured for a suit of clothes against the winter.”

  “Will I collect him on my way back, sir?”

  “No. I understand he is to return later in the evening, and that Mr Allan will make the arrangements. Once you have left him at his father’s house, you may discharge your own business. But afterwards I wish you to call at a house in Russell-square so that you may convey a new pupil to the school. Or rather, he will convey you. The boy’s father tells me he will order the carriage.” Bransby leant back in his chair, his body pressing against his waistcoat buttons. “His name is Frant.”

  I nodded. I remembered the lady who had smiled at me at the gate of the school, and also the man who had nearly set his servants on to me as I walked up Ermine-street. I felt my pulse beating somewhere among the fingers of my clasped hands.