The thick rain clouds had completely blown away during the evening and the temperature had dropped a little, so that the sky was clear and showed a multitude of stars. The moon was three quarters full, riding high like another ship over the water and giving enough pale light to see by. I stood and, for a moment, closed my eyes and breathed in the river smell, its sourness and dampness, the pungent mixture of rotted wood and oil and tar, the faint fish stench, and, mingled with it, the distant smell of the open sea. A boat or two slipped secretly down the dark water, lamps bobbing astern, and then another came close to the bank, creaking as it passed me. Farther to my right, the great ships loomed up, somewhere among them the one upon which I had travelled. But I had no yearning to return with them when they sailed away again, no feeling of nostalgia for any of those countries I had left behind. A curious sense of belonging here, of having come home, had settled upon me, so that the smell of London’s river seemed a welcome, and even an old familiar, one.
I spent some time walking alongside the wide, flowing water, and then turned away and into a maze of streets and yards and passages and squares that led me towards the city. I felt a strange excitement, as keen as any I had known in my youth, when first arriving in some new land, a desire to see, to know, to discover.
Beside the river it had been quiet, save for the silky sound of the craft through the water and their gentle wash against the bank. I had scarcely seen another person. But now, although at first the streets seemed deserted, I became gradually aware of a hidden life on all sides of me, of figures huddled on steps and in doorways, of footsteps and of sudden hissing, whispering voices. Once or twice a cab passed me, once I caught sight of a constable a little way ahead.
Then I turned again and found myself beside a church, and, hard by it, another, whose spires and roofs were silver as fish scales in the moonlight, and below them, behind locked iron gates, graveyards and vaults, casting long shadows. But they were places of great beauty to me, they held no horror or dread, and I gazed at them in wonder, for these were the very places of which I had read and dreamed, these ancient, graceful London churches.
I passed between tall, narrow, shuttered buildings, the daytime offices of bankers, lawyers, merchants, and, cutting through more alleyways, came upon handsome squares, and gardens in their midst, and, shortly after, a foetid area of yards and tenements and pawnbrokers and little greasy shops, and now there were people, like creatures scuttling through undergrowth, muffled figures, who did not glance up or show their faces, but only vanished quickly, out of sight and earshot.
I should have felt uneasy or afraid, so strange was it all, and so entirely alone was I, but I did not, I felt alert, my mind keen and sharp, crackling with intense awareness. I had the odd sensation that I was following after someone, or that I was in quest of something, and very close to finding it, around the next corner, or the next. I walked well and steadily, my limbs easy, and it was only when I came out upon a broad road that seemed to be leading away from the more densely packed streets of dwellings, that I stopped and came back to a measure of sense. A hundred yards or so ahead of me stood a great, black railway arch, and beyond that, there seemed to be higher, more open ground.
I was lost. I had wandered and wound my way far from the river, and the Cross Keys Inn, probably by several miles.
I stood beside the entrance to a grand, stuccoed mansion, gathering my wits and wondering what best I might do when, catching some slight movement a yard or two behind me, I turned and, again, glimpsed the figure of the boy. He had been following me then, I was quite sure; I saw his face, his dark, anxious eyes and thin neck that protruded above the collarless shirt. He looked at me, and yet once again, somehow into the distance, too, over my shoulder.
Well, I resolved, if he had followed me here, for whatever reason, he could lead me back, and I took a firm step in his direction, half raised my hand to stay him. At that moment, a railway train came roaring across the bridge in a great clatter and belch of smoke and livid flame, sparks showering upwards from its funnel, the men, silhouetted within the cabin, backs bent, black as pitch. It was a magnificent, exhilarating sight, and I spun round to gaze at it with all the astonishment and wonder of a child. The engine seemed like some fabulous monster devouring the darkness in its path.
And then it was gone, and the smell of soot and steam drifted down to me upon the cold air.
I turned back towards the boy. But, once again, he had slipped away, melting into the darkness, and I was left to try and get my bearings and make my way back alone, only vowing, in my irritation, that when I caught up with him, I would tan his hide for teasing me.
In the end, after half an hour or more of wandering, I stopped a wagon that was going east in the direction of the river, and rode with it, and then got directions which, after one or two false twists and turns, I more or less followed, until I came to the docks, and the streets leading to the inn. Now, I was cold and tired again, I had been far further than was sensible, and for the last mile, walked with a heavy tread indeed. I saw no one now, and the moon had gone behind a fresh bank of cloud. It was the very dead of night. I forgot the boy, poor-looking wretch, lost all interest in anything save my own weariness, and as I flagged, and grew ever tireder, I realised how strange it was that I should long for the sight of that drear, dark, unfriendly inn as if it were home. The smell off the river, when it came to me at last, and the sight of the dim alley that I knew led up to the street, lightened my heart. Yet why should that be so? For where was ‘home’? I had no home. If by home I meant a living hearth, a place dear to me, in which there would be a welcome from those to whom I mattered. I had none of these. But, as I went at last down the steps that led off the street to the closed door of the Inn, I resolved that one day I should have those things, and that they would be here in England – though not, perhaps, in the city of London. For I was as sure as anything, after my night’s walk, that it was in England that I truly belonged and, moreover, that I had always, from my very beginning, done so.
There was one further incident that night.
The Inn was in darkness. I barred the front door, shot the iron bolts and then felt my way across the hall, groping with my hand outstretched for the stair rail, for there was no window through which the moonlight could penetrate, and no lamp or torch had been left out for me. I thought that by now I knew my way to the upper floors and my own room but at the second landing must have taken a wrong turning, for up here was a warren of short, narrow passageways leading out of one another, and, finding only a blank wall immediately ahead of me, I backed a few yards, before moving cautiously on again. I edged forwards step by step putting my hand out again to keep in contact with the wall on my left. I was afraid of pressing the latch of the wrong door and entering a strange room, uncertain whether to call out, though quite sure that the morose landlord would not thank me for disturbing him.
Then, at the end of the passage, I made out a dim, reddish glow, as if from the last embers of a fire, and began to move towards it, thinking that I might somehow get my bearings there, or at least recognise some familiar-looking corner.
The light did not increase greatly as I drew nearer but seemed to be oddly veiled or obscured. The distance along the corridor was only a few yards, and yet to traverse it took an eternity, I was so tired and dazed.
Then, abruptly, I came much closer to the source of the light, and at the same moment, missed my footing on the single step that was in my way. I reached out my arm, flailing, to save myself and just managed to do so, but I reeled nonetheless, and my hand touched not empty air, nor any solid wall or door but instead, to my horror, came up against and went straight through a screen or curtain made of beads that clung and trailed about me like skeins as I stumbled, so that I felt them not only on my hands and arms but about my head and face too. The sensation in the darkness was a horrible one, but worse was to follow.
Looking up I saw that the curtain did indeed cover an open doorway and that behind a small
, dark inner lobby, at the entrance to which I was now standing, lay a room. I could make out little and my impression of it was swift and muddled, in my own confusion and the shock of almost falling. I saw a round table and, beside it though set back a little, a chair, in which sat an old woman. The glow came from a single dim lamp which stood on the table, its lights veiled by some kind of reddish-coloured cloth. The woman wore a scarf, tied gypsy-fashion about her forehead, and she seemed to be dressed in shawls of some dark flowing stuff. All of this I no more than glimpsed before she looked up and directly at me, though how much she could see of me in the dimness I do not know. But I saw her. I saw the black pits of her eyes with a pin-prick gleam at their centre, and a swarthiness and greasiness about her skin; I saw her hands laid on top of one another, old, scrawny, claw-like hands they seemed to me; and the flash of a spark from some jewelled or enamelled ring.
It has taken minutes to describe, and I break out in a sweat as I re-live the scene, and yet to see the picture of her there beyond the bead curtain in that dark, redly glowing room, took only seconds, but in those seconds it impressed itself upon my inner eye and my imagination and memory forever, and awoke some deep, fearful response within me.
I do not know whether I cried out, I only know that I recoiled almost at the very instant of first feeling the curtain and seeing the old woman, and backed away, stumbling again, wrenching my hands from the wretched, clinging strands – I can still hear the soft slack noise of its falling off me and back upon itself as I fled. But in my haste I fell again, this time against a piece of furniture set back to the wall, and jarred myself badly and, through the noise and my own cursings, heard a peremptory voice and saw a light, as a door at the end of the passage was opened.
The landlord showed me the way back to my room, from which I had been only a few paces, with an ill grace, and I could not have blamed him for that, but in fact I was very little aware of his sullen complaints and remonstrations, I was so caught up within my own disorientation and fear.
I did not come to or calm myself until I had been alone for some time, sitting in the silence on my bed. I had been badly frightened, not by the dark nor by losing my way of course, those were trivial matters, but by what I had seen, the old crone draped in her gypsy-like scarves and shawls, sitting at a table in a dark room before a veiled lamp. Yet rack my brains as I might I could think of nothing in the reality of that to terrify a grown man who had travelled alone to some of the remotest parts of the world and seen almost daily sights a thousand times more horrifying and strange. My heart had pounded and was still beating too fast, my mouth was dry, my brain seemed to burn and crackle with the over-alertness of a state of nervous dread. Yet why? I had to conclude that I was not frightened by what I had actually seen so much as by some memory it had stirred, or something that had terrified me long ago. I could recall nothing, though I beat at my brains for most of that night, for I did not sleep again until dawn. I only knew that, whenever I saw the old woman with my inner eye, I started back, wanting desperately to get away, avoid the sight of her face and figure, her look, and, above all, to avoid entering the darkened room that lay beyond the beaded curtain.
CHAPTER THREE
I spent the following week walking about London, and with every day that passed the dreadful nightmare glimpse of the old woman receded from my mind and my nerves became quite steady again, for nothing else at all disturbing or untoward came about, and it was a week of remarkably fine weather, with clear cold air and brightness in the sky both early and late.
In that week I came to know the great city as well as any man who does not live in it for years; I gave myself over to it. I walked the length of the River Thames, and up to the Hampstead heights, I walked south and east far along the wide roads leading out to the country, I paced around square after square of graceful, fashionable houses, and lost myself repeatedly in the maze of huddled, smoky terraces that cluster behind the railway stations of Euston and St Pancras, Marylebone and Victoria. I went among the lawyers in their shady courts and ancient inns, I stood deafened by the thundering of all the presses of Fleet Street and strolled with the throngs up Ludgate Hill and through the Park and down Piccadilly. I looked at towers and palaces and statues and monuments, I came to recognise the cries of costers and flower girls, paper-sellers and draymen. I walked in the half-empty streets among the milk carts and hurrying clerks at early morning, and again and again took to them at night, in every well-lit thoroughfare and dim side-alley. I drank my fill of London and was intoxicated by it.
Some weeks before embarking on my voyage to England I had written two letters, the first to an antiquarian bookseller and private publisher of a few monographs of biography and travel who, I had reason to know, had some interest in the voyages of Conrad Vane, and the second to the High Master of the public school Vane had attended, some twenty miles up the river from London.
On the Friday of that week I went to the shipping company offices to make arrangements for the continued storage of my bags, for I had not yet decided in which part of London I wished eventually to take rooms, and there found replies from both men suggesting that I make contact with them when I arrived in England.
I now did so, and arranged to meet the Reverend Archibald Votable, High Master of Alton, at the Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall, but first, to visit Mr Theodore Beamish’s bookshop and offices in the district of Holborn.
I found the shop with much difficulty. It stood in the middle of a row of tall, narrow brick houses that formed the east side of Crab Passage, a dark cobbled thoroughfare in the vicinity of Chancery Lane. It seemed to be unnamed on any map and unheard of by the passers-by from whom I sought directions, and I finally came upon it by accident, after cutting in and out, and had almost left it by the other side, for it was very short and bore no sign, when I caught sight of books, stacked from floor to ceiling, through the window of what I at first took to be a private dwelling, set between a dingy pipe and tobacco shop and a pair of high wooden gates leading to a drayman’s yard. It was only when I turned back and went to examine the place more closely that I saw the worn lettering Theo. Beamish, Bookseller, on a plate beside the door.
Although it was another afternoon of winter sunlight out in the open streets, here in the passage, and especially within the shop, no brightness penetrated, and the blue sky was visible only in fragments, like chips of mosaic, above the buildings.
Three stone steps led up to the door of the shop, which led directly into the ground floor room that ran some distance back. There was scarcely space to edge sideways between the shelves and stacks of books, mainly volumes of biography, history and travel, with many relating to the east. I hovered for some moments, getting my bearings and adjusting my eyes to the dimness – there was no light other than what filtered through the tall window, but no one emerged, so that at last I climbed a short steep staircase that led to an upper room, also full of books, but here the shutters were half-closed, so that I could not make any attempt to examine them. Next to this room was a cubby hole of an office containing a huge, overflowing desk, and stacks of boxes and piles of paper.
A doorbell had jangled rather rustily as I entered the shop below, my footsteps had echoed on the bare wooden floorboards as well as on my mounting the stairs but still no one came out to greet me, or enquire my business, no one seemed aware of or interested in my presence in the place at all.
I looked along the shelves at random, picking up a volume here and there, until I came upon a book about that part of China in which I had travelled only a few years previously, along the route set by Conrad Vane, and where I found most evidence of his presence. I opened it eagerly but as I began to turn the pages, I became aware of a strange, uncomfortable sensation. At first, it felt as if I were being watched and the impression was so strong that twice I looked sharply from the pages and over my shoulder around the room, and finally towards the window. But there was no one, I was quite alone, and there was no sound save for the crisp turning of the
pages under my hand. But the sensation did not leave me, and mingled with it was a prickle of unease, as though some sixth sense were warning me of danger. But what possible danger could there be? The sense of being observed became insistent, willing me to take notice of it, but again, on glancing round, even moving about the room and looking in every direction, I saw no one.
The shop was very cold, and the air musty with the smell of old books, but now I smelled something else, a very faint, distinctive and strangely sweet odour. It was pungent and yet the trace was so slight that, when I inhaled more deeply in an effort to identify it, it was lost. But I knew it, and it was linked to some place, some situation I had been in. For a few seconds there was a swirl in my brain as I struggled to place it, snatches of confused images, sounds, colours, together with an odd sensation of instability or faintness, yet it was all so fleeting I could scarcely grasp anything of it before it was gone, and the smell was gone too, as if it had never been. I concluded that, as I had turned a page or two of the book, some dust of an old fragrance, perhaps a perfume, a spice, a pressed flower petal, that had been lingering there had been released, and a last vestige of it had entered my nostrils, before it had disintegrated into the surrounding air.
I set the book carefully on the shelf, and as I did so, turned my head quickly. In the street outside stood the boy. He was dressed in the same, ragged, collarless shirt as before, but this time he looked even frailer, and distressed rather than merely preoccupied or distant, his mouth pinched, his eyes huge and hollow, and bright, as if he had a fever. But it was his expression which struck me with such force, and awoke an immediate response from deep within me, and chilled and frightened me too, it was one of such fear and misery and desperation, a pleading, anguished look that he directed at me, so that I could do no other than plunge out of the shop to try and reach him, rescue him – I scarcely knew what. But, as I flung open the door and hurtled down the steps into the lane, I was almost put on my back by a huge, gangling youth coming up to the shop door, and colliding with me. In his arms was a broad shallow basket, covered in a cloth, from which a hot savoury smell arose, and as I reeled backwards and tried to recover myself, he said reproachfully, ‘Mr Monmouth I take it, sir, and this ’n’s your and Mr Beamish’s dinner you had nearly spread across the street.’