The Absolutist

  “An ex-army man,” I said, correcting him.

  “Yes, sir. Well, I believe it would be disrespectful of me not to tell you what’s gone on there and let you make up your own mind on the matter.”

  I was intrigued now and a variety of possibilities came to mind. A murder, perhaps. A suicide. A straying husband caught by a private detective in the arms of another woman. Or something less dramatic: an unquenched cigarette catching flame in a waste-paper basket. A guest absconding in the night without settling his account due. More tangles. More wasteland.

  “I’m happy to make up my mind,” I said, “if only I—”

  “He’s stayed here before, of course,” said the boy, interrupting me, his voice growing more animated as he prepared to let me have it, warts and all. “Mr. Charters, that’s his name. Edward Charters. A very respectable chap, I always thought. Works in a bank in London but has a mother somewhere out Ipswich way and goes to see her on occasion and usually comes into Norwich for a night or two before heading back to town. When he does he always stays here. We never had any problems with him, sir. A quiet gentleman, kept himself to himself. Well dressed. Always asked for number four because he knew how good the room was, and I was happy to oblige him. It’s me who organizes the rooms, Mr. Sadler, not Ma. She gets confused by the numbers and—”

  “And this Mr. Charters,” I said. “He refused to vacate the room earlier?”

  “No, sir,” said the boy, shaking his head.

  “There was an accident of some sort, then? He was taken ill?”

  “No, it was nothing like that, sir. We gave him a key, you see. In case he came back late. We give it to preferred clients. I allow it. It will be perfectly all right to give one to you, of course, what with you being ex-army. I wanted to join up myself, sir, only they wouldn’t let me on account of—”

  “Please,” I said, interrupting him. “If we could just—”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, sir. Only it’s a little awkward, that’s all. We’re both men of the world, am I right, Mr. Sadler? I can speak freely?”

  I shrugged. I expected I was. I didn’t know. Wasn’t even sure what the phrase meant, if I was honest.

  “The thing is, there was something of a commotion early this morning,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning forward in a conspiratorial fashion. “Woke the whole bloody house up, it did. Excuse me, sir,” he said, shaking his head. “It turned out that Mr. Charters, who we thought was a quiet, decent gentleman, was anything but. He went out last night but didn’t come home alone. And we have a rule about that sort of thing, of course.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Such niceties! Was this what the last four years had been about? “Is that all?” I asked, imagining a lonely man, kind to his mother in Ipswich, who had somehow found a little female companionship for the evening, perhaps unexpectedly, and had allowed himself to be taken over by his baser instincts. It was hardly anything to get excited about, surely.

  “Not quite all, sir,” said David. “For Mr. Charters’s … companion, shall we say, was no better than a thief. Robbed him blind and when he protested held a knife to his throat and all hell broke loose. Ma woke up, I woke up, the other guests were out in the corridors in their night attire. We knocked on his door and when we opened it …” He looked as if he was unsure whether he should go on or not. “We called the police, of course,” he added. “They were both taken away. But Ma feels wretched over the whole thing. Thinks the whole place is spoiled now. Talking about selling up, if you can believe that. Moving back to her people in the West Country.”

  “I’m sure that Mr. Charters feels wretched, too,” I said, experiencing pangs of sympathy for him. “The poor man. I can understand the young lady being arrested, of course, if she had become violent, but why on earth was he? Surely this is not a question of morality?”

  “It is, sir,” said David, standing up to his full height now and looking positively affronted. “It most certainly is a question of morality.”

  “But he hasn’t broken the law, as far as I understand it,” I said. “I don’t quite see why he should be held accountable for what is, after all, a personal indiscretion.”

  “Mr. Sadler,” said David calmly. “I shall say this plain, as I think you might have misunderstood me. Mr. Charters’s companion was not a young lady, I’m afraid. It was a boy.” He nodded knowingly at me and I flushed a little and looked away.

  “Ah,” I said, nodding my head slowly. “I see. That.”

  “So you can understand why Ma is upset. If word gets about …” He looked up quickly, as if he had just realized something. “I trust you will be discreet about this, sir. We do have our livelihoods to consider.”

  “What?” I asked, staring at him and nodding quickly. “Oh yes, of course. It’s … well, it’s nobody’s business but your own.”

  “But it does leave the matter of the room,” he said delicately. “And whether you wish to stay in it or not. As I say, it is being thoroughly cleaned.”

  I thought about it for a moment but could see no objections. “It really doesn’t bother me, Mr. Cantwell,” I said. “I’m sorry for your difficulties and for your mother’s distress, but if the room is still available for the night, I am still in need of a bed.”

  “Then it’s all settled,” he said cheerfully, opening the door and stepping back outside. I followed him, a little surprised by how quickly our interview had been terminated, and found the boy’s mother still in place behind the desk, her eyes darting back and forth between us.

  “Mr. Sadler understands everything perfectly,” announced her son. “And he would like to avail himself of the room after all. I have told him that it will be ready in an hour. I was right to do so, I presume?” He spoke to her as if he were already master of the house and she his servant girl.

  “Yes, of course, David,” she said, a note of relief in her voice. “And it’s very good of you, sir, if I may say so. Would you care to sign the register?”

  I nodded and leaned over the book, writing my name and address carefully on the ledger, the ink splashing a little as I struggled to control my grip of the pen in my spasmodic right hand.

  “You can wait in the drawing room, if you wish,” said David, staring at my trembling index finger and, no doubt, wondering. “Or there’s a very respectable public house a few doors down if you require a little refreshment after your journey.”

  “Yes, that I think,” I said, replacing the pen carefully on the desk, aware of the mess that I had left behind me and embarrassed by it. “May I leave my holdall here in the meantime?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  I leaned down and took my book from inside the bag, fastened it again and glanced at the clock as I stood up.

  “If I’m back by half past seven?” I asked.

  “The room will be ready, sir,” said David, leading me towards the door and opening it for me. “And once again, please accept my apologies. The world’s a funny place, sir, isn’t it? You never know what kind of deviants you’re dealing with.”

  “Indeed,” I said, stepping out into the fresh air, relieved by the breeze that made me pull my overcoat tightly around my body and wish that I had remembered my gloves. But they were inside, in the bag, in front of Mrs. Cantwell, and I had no desire to engage in any further conversation with either mother or son.

  To my surprise, I realized for the first time that day that it was the evening of my twenty-first birthday. I had forgotten it entirely until now.

  I made my way down the street but before entering the Carpenter’s Arms public house, my eyes drifted towards the brass plaque that was nailed prominently above the door, where the words PROPRIETOR: J. T. CLAYTON, LICENSED TO SELL BEERS AND SPIRITS were etched in a black matted script. I stopped short for a moment and stared at it, holding my breath, a sensation of dread soaring through my veins. I longed for a cigarette and patted my pockets, hoping to find the packet of Gold Flakes I had bought in Liverpool Street that morning, already knowing that they were
lost, left behind on my train-carriage seat when I reached up to help the novelist with her suitcase before disembarking, and they probably lay there still, or had found their way into the pockets of another.

  PROPRIETOR: J. T. CLAYTON.

  It had to be a coincidence. Sergeant Clayton had been a Newcastle man, as far as I knew. His accent had certainly betrayed him as one. But had I heard that his father had been something high up at a brewery? Or was I confusing him with someone else? No, it was ridiculous, I decided, shaking my head. There must be thousands of Claytons spread across England, after all. Tens of thousands. This couldn’t be the same one. Refusing to succumb to painful speculation, I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  The bar was half filled with working men, who turned to glance at me for only a moment before looking away and returning to their conversations. Despite being a stranger, I felt at ease there, a contentment born out of a sense of isolated companionship. As the years have passed, I have spent far too many hours in pubs, hunched over unsteady, ale-stained tables, reading and writing, tearing at beer mats as I’ve raised my characters from poverty to glory while dragging others down from mansion to gutter. Alone, always alone. Not drinking too much, but drinking all the same. A cigarette in my right hand, a scorch mark or two on my left cuff. That caricature of me, writing my books in the corner snugs of London saloons, the one that irritates me so and has caused me, in later life, to rise up, bristling and whinnying in interviews like an aggravated horse, is not, in fact, a mistaken one. After all, the clamour of the crowded public house is infinitely more welcoming than the stillness of the empty home.

  “Yes, sir?” said a hearty-looking man standing behind the bar in his shirtsleeves, wiping a cloth along the countertop to remove the beaded lines of spilled beer. “What can I get for you?”

  I passed an eye across the row of taps that stood before him, some of the names unfamiliar to me, local brews perhaps, and chose one at random.

  “Pint, sir?”

  “Yes please,” I said, watching as he selected a glass from the rack behind him and then, in an instinctive gesture, held it by its base up to the light to examine it for fingerprints or dust marks before, satisfied, tilting it at a precise angle against the tap and beginning to pour. There were flakes of pastry in his heavy moustache and I stared at them, both repulsed and fascinated.

  “Are you the proprietor?” I asked after a moment.

  “That’s right, sir,” he said, smiling at me. “John Clayton. Have we met before?”

  “No, no,” I said, shaking my head as I rooted a few coins out of my pocket. I could relax now.

  “Very good, sir,” he said, placing the pint before me, apparently unconcerned by my question. I thanked him and made my way across to a half-empty corner of the pub, where I removed my coat and sat down with a deep sigh. Perhaps it had been for the best that my room had not been ready, I decided, staring at the dark brown ale settling in the glass before me, its frothy head winking as the tiny bubbles made their way north, anticipating as I did so the great satisfaction that first mouthful would offer me after my train journey. I could sit here all night, I thought. I could become very drunk and cause a scene. The police might arrest me, lock me in a cell and send me back to London on the first train tomorrow morning. I wouldn’t have to go through with it. The whole thing would be taken out of my hands.

  I sighed deeply, dismissing the notion, and took my book from my pocket, glancing for a moment at the jacket with the feeling of safety that a set of bound-together pages has always afforded me. On that mid-September Monday of 1919, I was reading White Fang by Jack London. My eyes focused on the dust-jacket image: a silhouetted cub testing the air beyond some trees, the shadows of their branches suggesting a road cut deep into the heart of the mountains ahead, the full moon guiding his way forward. I turned to where my page holder rested, but before reading, I glanced again at the title page and the words inscribed there: To my old pal Richard, it said in black ink, the characters elegant and well formed. No less of a mangy ol’ dog than White Fang himself, Jack. I had found the book a couple of days earlier on a stall outside one of the bookshops on Charing Cross Road and it was only when I had taken it home and opened it that I noticed the inscription. The bookseller had charged me only a ha’penny for the second-hand volume so I presumed that he had overlooked the words written inside, but I considered it a great bonus, although I had no way of knowing whether the Jack who signed himself “Jack” was the Jack who had written the novel or a different Jack entirely, but I liked to believe that it was him. I traced my right index finger—the one whose inconsistent trembling always caused me such trouble—along the letters for a moment, imagining the great author’s pen leaving its trail of ink along the page, but instead of being offered a curative through literature, which in my youthful fancy I hoped it would, my finger trembled even more than usual and, repulsed by the sight, I pulled it away.

  “What are you reading, then?” asked a voice from a few tables away, and I turned to see a middle-aged man looking in my direction. I was surprised to have been addressed and turned the novel around to face him so that he could read the title, rather than simply answering his question. “Never heard of that one,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Any good, is it?”

  “Very good,” I said. “Terrific, in fact.”

  “Terrific?” he repeated, smiling a little, the word sounding unfamiliar on his tongue. “Well, I’ll have to look out for it if it’s terrific. I’ve always been a reader, me. Mind if I join you? Or are you waiting for someone?”

  I hesitated. I had thought that I wanted to be alone, but when the offer of company was made I found that I didn’t mind so very much.

  “Please,” I said, indicating the seat next to mine, and he slid across and placed his half-finished pint on the table between us. He was drinking a darker beer than mine and there was an odour of stale sweat about him that suggested a long, hard-working day. Curiously, it wasn’t unpleasant.

  “The name’s Miller,” he said. “William Miller.”

  “Tristan Sadler,” I replied, shaking his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “And you,” he said. He was about forty-five, I thought. My father’s age. Although he did not remind me of my father in the slightest for he was of slender build, with a gentle, thoughtful air, and my father was the opposite. “You’re from London, aren’t you?” he asked, sizing me up.

  “That’s right,” I said, smiling. “Is it that obvious?”

  “I’m good with voices,” he replied, winking at me. “I can place most people within about twenty miles of where they grew up. The wife, she says it’s my party trick but I don’t think of it that way. It’s more than just a parlour game to my way of thinking.”

  “And where did I grow up, Mr. Miller?” I asked, eager to be entertained. “Can you tell?”

  He narrowed his eyes and stared at me, remaining silent for almost a minute, save for the sound of his heavy, nasal breathing, before he opened his mouth again, speaking cautiously. “I should think Chiswick,” he said. “Kew Bridge. Somewhere around there. Am I right?”

  I laughed, surprised and delighted. “Chiswick High Street,” I said. “My father has a butcher’s shop. We grew up there.”

  “We?”

  “My younger sister and I.”

  “But you live here? In Norwich?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I live in London now. Highgate.”

  “That’s quite a distance from your family,” he said.

  “Yes,” I replied. “I know.”

  From behind the bar, the sound of a glass crashing to the floor and smashing into a million fragments gave me a jolt. I looked up and my hands clenched instinctively against the side of the table, only relaxing again when I saw the shrugged shoulders of the proprietor as he bent down with pan and brush to clear up his mess, and heard the delighted, teasing jeers of the men sitting close to him.

  “It was just a glass,” said my co
mpanion, noticing how startled I had become.

  “Yes,” I said, trying to laugh it off and failing. “It gave me a shock, that’s all.”

  “There till the end, were you?” he asked, and I turned to look at him, the smile fading from my face as he sighed. “Sorry, lad. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “It’s all right,” I said quietly.

  “I had two boys out there, you see. Good boys, the pair of them. One with more than his share of mischief about him, the other one a bit like you and me. A reader. A few years older than you, I’d say. What are you, nineteen?”

  “Twenty-one,” I said, the novelty of my new age striking me for the first time.

  “Well, our Billy would have been twenty-three now and our Sam would have been about to turn twenty-two.” He smiled when he said their names, then swallowed and looked away. The use of the conditional tense had become a widespread disease when discussing the ages of children and little more needed to be said on the matter. We sat in silence for a few moments and then he turned back to me with a nervous smile. “You have the look of our Sam, actually,” he said.

  “Do I?” I asked, strangely pleased by the comparison. I entered the woods of my imagination again and made my way through gorse and nettle-tangled undergrowth to picture Sam, a boy who loved books and thought that one day he might like to write some of his own. I saw him on the evening he announced to his parents that he was signing up, before they came to get him, that he was going out to join Billy over there. I pictured the brothers finding solidarity on the training ground, bravery on the battlefield, heroism in death. This was Sam, I decided. This was William Miller’s Sam. I knew him well.

  “He were a good boy, our Sam,” whispered my companion after a moment, then slapped the flat of his hand three times on the table before us as if to say, No more of that. “You’ll have another drink, lad?” he asked, nodding at my half-finished beer, and I shook my head.

  “Not yet,” I said. “But thank you. You don’t have a tab on you, by any chance?”