Philip Gooden - The Salisbury Manuscript

So you could have knocked Seth Fawkes down with a feather when, one evening in The Nethers scarcely a year before, he noticed a weathered individual eyeing him. The moment Seth caught his glance, the other moved towards him though he was plainly sitting and drinking and minding his own business in a corner. Seth wasn’t a great one for company but he did enjoy a jar or two after he’d been to visit Mrs Mitchell. He liked to wet his whistle and sink himself in memories of Mrs Mitchell’s frowsty bed before it was time to return to Northwood House and the stables.

‘Mind if I join you?’ said the weather-beaten man with a crooked grin.

Seth Fawkes looked round. The place was full of laughter and smoke. There were other empty seats and benches. He shrugged, although when the other sat next to him on the bench Fawkes instinctively shifted a few inches away. He would have moved further but he was wedged into a corner.

‘You don’t know me, do you?’ said the man, placing his pint carefully on the table before tapping his fingers on the battered surface.

‘No.’

‘I know you though. . Seth.’

Fawkes looked at the other man properly. ‘Mr Fawkes to you,’ he said. His companion wore an expression that wasn’t so much cheerful as filled with glee. He said, ‘It’s like a birthmark on you, that hole. Can’t get rid of it this side of the grave.’

Automatically, Seth Fawkes’s hand flew to his shaven chin, to the great dimple that sat in the centre of it.

‘Mind you, you could grow a beard to disguise it,’ said the other. ‘I have found that small things are the best disguise, Seth. Even a change of name can work a trick. Spectacles now, they’re good. When people look at a face, see, they notice the spectacles but they don’t take notice of what lies beneath ’em. Or you can change the colour of the hair with a dye. I recommend a touch of rastik, comes from the East and gives a reddish tinge to the hair. Women of a certain sort use it but I always say why should we be denied the benefits available to the fairer sex, eh? Then, afterwards, you wash it out, see — ’

‘Why are you talking to me?’ said Fawkes. But there was a sinking in his guts even as he said the words.

‘I haven’t finished yet, Mr Fawkes. Let me finish and the answer to your question will be clear. And you might learn something useful. The point of using this dye on your bonce, this rastik, is that people remember reddish hair just like they remember spectacles. And that will be how you’re described afterwards if there’ve been any witnesses, described as ‘a fellow with red hair’, see. By that time naturally you’ll have washed all the red out and, well, nobody is going to know you from Adam. From Adam , I say. Do you know who I am yet, Seth?’

As if to reinforce what he’d just said about dyes, the man took off his cap and ran his hand through his short, sandy-coloured hair.

‘Jesus,’ said Fawkes. ‘It can’t be.’

‘You’re right there, mate. It’s not Jesus.’

‘You bugger,’ said Fawkes.

‘Closer,’ said the weather-beaten man, replacing his cap. ‘I’ve been called worse in our own tongue and in many other tongues besides.’

‘Adam, it’s you,’ said Fawkes. ‘Jesus.’

The man called Adam made to stretch out his hand towards Seth’s face. He seemed to want to touch the dimple in his bare chin, the mark by which he’d been able to identify him, although it was more of a mocking gesture than an affectionate one. But Seth jerked his head away and rammed himself further into the corner.

‘Aren’t you pleased to see your long-lost brother, Mr Fawkes?’

‘I’d rather you’d stayed lost.’

‘Well, there I cannot oblige you. Fact is, I have decided after a lifetime of wandering round this great globe of ours to return to the land of my birth, to the very town where I first saw the light of day.’

‘How can I be sure you’re who you say you are?’ said Fawkes. He knew the truth well enough but was desperate to pick holes in it.

‘Oh-ho, like the Claimant, is it? You think I mightn’t be who I say I am?’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Fawkes. He had an inkling, though. Like the rest of England he had heard of the Tichborne Claimant but he did not read the papers and was not interested in long-running law cases.

‘This geezer who everyone thought went down with his ship off South America somewhere but, lo and behold, he turns up in England after many years trying to claim a fortune. Lord, Seth, I have been away many years and I’m better informed than you are. But if you want to be certain I am Adam, then let me tell you this. . and this. . ’

And he went on to reel out a string of family details about their dead parents and their dead siblings (Abel and Shem and Abigail and so on) — details of which any trace or memory, apart from with these two, had long since dropped off the face of the earth. Seth Fawkes admitted defeat. He took a long draught from his pint and, sighing, screwed himself further into his corner. Adam grew more cheerful or gleeful and went off to get their pots refilled.

When he came back, Seth said, ‘What do you want here, Adam Fawkes?’

‘I admit to Adam but not to Fawkes , no, it’s. . something else instead. I have enjoyed a variety of surnames. Let me see. I have been called Farmer in Australia and Quarles in Canada and Leigh-Smith in the United States and other things in other places. But I’ve always kept the name of Adam through thick and thin, ’cept once when I passed as a woman. Wasn’t Adam then, oh no.’

‘None of that tells me what you’re doing back here,’ said his brother, both disturbed and faintly disgusted by the other’s account of his false identities.

‘Now, Seth, the way you say those words tells me you think I’m up to something.’

‘You’re always up to something, Adam. Mischief and the like.’

‘Nothing could be further from my mind,’ said Adam with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I wanted to breathe my native air, return to the bosom of my family or all the family that’s left me. By the way, I hear you’re not married, Seth, you’ve got no woman, no little nippers to trouble your slumbers.’

‘Suits me,’ said Seth Fawkes, realizing with irritation that his brother must have been asking questions about him.

‘I heard old George Slater had died quite a while ago and that Percy lives in Northwood now. I always had a soft spot for Percy. He comes here sometimes for the ratting in the barn, doesn’t he?’

Seth said nothing. He wanted to keep Adam out of his life even though the younger man had only just elbowed his way back into it. He certainly did not want his brother returning to Northwood House and attempting to strike up some sort of acquaintance with Percy Slater. Perhaps he feared they might hit it off.

‘What happened to that holy joe brother of his?’

‘He’s in the Church,’ said Seth, squinting down his finger at Adam as though he was sighting a gun and half wishing that he was holding an actual weapon. ‘He’s what they call a canon in the cathedral.’

‘Is he now?’

‘There’s no place for you here, Adam,’ Seth suddenly declared. ‘Northwood isn’t like it was when — when you last saw it. The place has gone downhill. There’s only me and Nan left now — ’

‘Nan? That old bat. She must be a hundred and six if she’s a day.’

‘Percy’s wife is never there but passes her time in London.’

‘Do not trouble yourself, brother,’ said Adam, patting his neighbour on the shoulder. Again, the gesture was more mocking than reassuring. ‘I haven’t come back to go and bury myself at Northwood. The place was a country hole all those years ago and I don’t suppose it’s any different now. Although there was one thing. .’