The Skull and the Nightingale. Michael Irwin

work and elegance will be retrieved from chaos.’

       ‘Was there not some pleasure in recruiting your friends to perform this task?’

       ‘Certainly. And it was healthy exertion for a band of tipplers and tattlers – the most useful work they had done in months.’

       He broke into a chuckle at this, his stomach shaking, but then apologized: ‘You must excuse me, Mr Fenwick: I laugh too easily. My life is often ridiculous – and like Laurence Sterne I believe that laughter does us good.’

       As we wandered back towards the coffee he broke into song, his voice echoing through the hollow room:

      Now to sweeten the night

      Let the bow sweep the string.

      Hear the music take flight

      As the violins sing—

       I chimed in for the chorus:

      Sing, sing, sing—

      As the violins sing.

       Catching one another’s eye we launched with spirit into the topers’ second verse:

      Let horse-hair scrape gut

      Till the cat mews away,

      And we caper and strut,

      As we hear the horse neigh—

      Neigh, neigh, neigh—

      As we hear the horse neigh.

       ‘I observe, Mr Crocker,’ said I, ‘that you do not care to be confined by formalities.’

       ‘I have made the same observation regarding yourself, Mr Fenwick. It was one of my reasons for inviting you here this morning.’

       We proceeded to converse with great freedom. I felt flattered when he remarked that he is rarely so open: he has many drinking companions but few friends. He frankly disclosed his view of his own situation: fate has been hard on him with regard to physical appearance, but correspondingly generous in terms of wealth. He will use this asset to minimize his disadvantages and make his life as agreeable as it can be.

       One aspect of his philosophy would, I think, particularly interest you. Speaking again of the party he would hold when his house was ready he declared that it would be not merely a lavish but a provocative affair.

       ‘It has been my practice,’ he said, ‘to host entertainments that surprise and bewilder the guests. Since life is short I try to make it richer by brewing up extravagant mixtures of sensations. I hope you will partake of them.’

       And I will. I feel drawn to Mr Crocker, and pleased to be accounted his friend.

       Later that day I paid a second visit, this time to Miss Brindley. Over tea we embarked on a negotiation as delicate as the construction of a house of cards. Without an indecorous word being said it was somehow agreed:

       that it was in our power to contrive a pleasure that both of us might welcome;

       that the necessary arrangements and expense should fall to my charge;

       that though the pleasure might be equal the potential sacrifices were not;

       that the female party should therefore receive financial compensation;

       that in the event of unsought consequences the female party should be provided for.

       All this, and more, was satisfactorily communicated with the lightness and sweetness of the chirruping of spring birds. The pleasing prose of the matter is that late next week we will be spending an evening and a night together.

       I am, &c.

      Although I had enjoyed both these encounters, the need to describe them was irksome to me: my social life had become my profession. Perhaps for that reason a venture still outside Mr Gilbert’s knowledge assumed greater importance for me. My mind returning to Matt’s postscript, I several times walked down Duke Street during working hours. Not until my third such excursion did I see the gentleman I was seeking. Mr Ogden was standing outside his own premises, my conjecture as to his identity being confirmed when a passer-by addressed him by name. I was able to observe him unremarked as he engaged in a brief conversation. He was a thick-set, short-necked fellow who would have been credited with brawn and vigour had it not appeared that his physical solidity might be compacted fat. His face was pasty and serious, suggestive of the determination Sarah had mentioned. He might have been a dozen years my senior, but it was hard to judge, since he looked to be one of those stolid, under-spirited fellows who resign youth for middle age at fifteen. His stockings showed a weighty calf, but not a shapely one. During the short colloquy he spoke little and displayed no change of expression. Yet this dull merchant had seen what I had not seen and been where I had not been. The thought induced such a spurt of rage that I could have dashed my fist into his big face. As it was, I stalked back to Cathcart Street hot with disgust.

      That evening, still unsettled, I rifled through a packet of correspondence to find a letter Sarah had sent me soon after I went to France – a letter I had left unanswered.

       Dear Mr Fenwick,

       Following your advice I shall direct this communication to Paris; but I cannot rid myself of a superstitious fear that I am sending it into thin air – that it will prove no communication at all, because it will never reach you. It will seem wonderful to me if that fear proves unjustified, and somehow by coach and by boat and by coach again my letter will be conveyed from England to France and left where your hands will take it up and open it, and your eyes peruse it.

       I hope that you will write soon and tell me about your travels. Having experienced only York and a little of London I cannot imagine what you are seeing or doing, or how you have been faring. Take me with you through your letters, so that I may feel I am beside you in Paris or Rome as an unseen fellow traveller.

       Nothing of note has happened to me since I bade you good-bye. You know enough about my life in London to imagine every one of my days. I have not enjoyed a serious conversation – I mean a conversation about anything other than small social matters – in all these weeks. My aunt, of course, continues kind: I live comfortably enough at the level to which I am accustomed, and know that I have nothing to complain of. Yet in my mind there is a very great alteration. You were the one person who opened windows through which I could glimpse a wider world of learning, wit, and discovery. It hardly needs to be said that I read still, and read eagerly, but I feel that I am cut off, like one in prison, from the life that books reveal and the life you now inhabit.

       I suspect you may not realize how greatly the partial similarity of our lives has influenced my disposition. If I had never known you I think I might have been sufficiently contented with the life I now lead, rather as a caged bird may flutter and sing without apparent envy of his free-flying cousins beyond the confining wires. But I have seen you, like myself an orphan, like myself left to the care of an aunt, find your way into that outside world and flourish in the liberty it affords. Even when we were both in York you seemed to me destined for such freedom. I need not refer to the prospects that may arise from your godfather’s generosity: whatever happens you will remain a free man. I have seen you flower. You are educated and accomplished, and converse with educated and accomplished men. I cannot help wondering whether, with my far more limited abilities I might not myself have made shift to survive and modestly prosper in that richer, more diverse life.

       Now I am ashamed of what I have written, for it seems selfish and envious. Pray interpret my message as what I intended it to be, a means of conveying, with strong feeling, if with all due decorum, how much I have missed