Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

She looked at me and smiled brightly – and she had a smile that would charm the Grand Inquisitor himself. I thought I knew what she was at. Mrs Johnson's death at Monkshill-park was bad enough, and could not be concealed, but Miss Carswall did not want any more scandal to cast a blight upon her forthcoming nuptials. This evening she had set out to ensure I understood her position: and that was the purpose of her visit. For all her appearance of candour, she had told me very little I did not already know or guess.

Miss Carswall stood up. "And now I must leave you. In a moment, the gentlemen will be wanting their coffee." She took something from a reticule she carried over her arm. "I beg of you, Mr Shield, do not be offended, but I think my father has his head so full of other matters that he may not have considered your expenses."

"Miss Carswall, I-"

She waved aside my attempts at protest. "Pray consider it a loan. I would like to think of you travelling back to town in some comfort. It is such an inhospitable time of year for a journey."

She held out a five-pound note and would not allow me to refuse it. I did not protest so very much, because I had scarcely any ready money at Monkshill. But it felt like a bribe or a payment, a transaction to be entered in her account book.

"Well, goodbye, Mr Shield. I hope we shall meet again."

As I took her hand, she came a step closer, raised herself on tiptoe and kissed my cheek.

"There," she said, smiling at my confusion. "Consider that a payment of interest on my loan."

Miss Carswall turned and waited for me to open the door. I stood in the doorway and watched her walking along the landing to the head of the stairs. Her hips swung as she moved, a fluid, graceful motion that reminded me of a snake I had seen at a fair, swaying to the flute of his Hindoo master.

But we were not alone. Sophie was at the other end of the landing, in the doorway of the room the boys shared, and her eyes were fixed on my face.

The following morning, Wednesday, I knew that the temperature had risen for the contents of my pot had not frozen over and the ice was less thick on the windowpane. At eight o'clock, they directed me to the stableyard, where I found a groom waiting impatiently with the

gig. Soon we were jingling down the back drive, our progress impeded by the snow and ice. A fine, persistent rain began to fall, lent periodic venom by gusts of wind. I craned my head to have a last view of the blank windows of Monkshill-park. Our speed improved a little once we reached the high road, but there was no other reason to rejoice. Cowering beneath our waterproofs, we had a wet and miserable journey. The groom hardly said one word, replying with monosyllables and hisses to my attempts at conversation. His salient feature was his neck, a broad trunk ending in a head of much the same diameter, which gave him a hybrid appearance: from shoulders downwards he was a man; but the rest of him was closer to a reptile.

At last the spires and towers of Gloucester came in sight, the snow-covered roofs of its buildings gleaming brightly even in the dreary light of this January day: the celestial city itself could hardly have been more welcome to me. On Westgate-street, we passed Fendall House, its prim modern frontage concealing the little room where the most joyful scene of my life had been enacted. Further on, I saw the doorway of the bank where Sophie and I had discovered Mrs Johnson in a drunken stupor on the night of the ball.

The street grew increasingly congested as we neared the Cross, and the groom muttered continuously under his breath as we waited to turn into Southgate-street. At length, we drew up in the yard of the Bell. The man waited, reins in hands, staring fixedly at his horse's head, leaving me to summon a servant myself or to carry my luggage unaided. I beckoned a boy, who ran forward and lifted down my bags. Next to them was a large leather satchel.

"Leave that," the groom snapped at the lad. "It's mine."

Having no desire to stay at the Bell, where Carswall and his people usually put up, I walked down to the Black Dog in Lower Northgate-street, with my little porter staggering behind me. A few minutes later I had bespoken a room and was steaming gently by a fire. I felt better after I had dined. It is much easier to contemplate an uncertain future on a full stomach than on an empty one.

Afterwards, I discovered that I had left a parcel containing my clean shirt in the gig. I walked rapidly to the Bell, hoping that the groom had not yet returned to Monkshill, and nursing a suspicion that he had intentionally allowed me to leave without it. But I had wronged him. The gig had been backed into a corner of the big coach house at the Bell, and my parcel was where I had left it, tucked under the seat to keep off the rain. The groom himself had gone.

"Hired a horse and off he went," an ostler told me. "He'll have a wet ride." He spat and grinned up at me. "Can't look much sourer than he already does, can he? That face would turn milk."

Later that afternoon I went to the coach office at the Booth-Hall Inn. I was fortunate enough to get an inside seat on the Regulator, the London day coach, leaving the following morning at a quarter before six, and reaching Fleet-street by eight in the evening. I went early to bed, leaving orders that I be called at five o'clock in the morning. I dropped into a deep, dreamless sleep from which I was only awakened by repeated knockings on my chamber door.

The Regulator was a light post-coach, hence both its speed and the fact that it carried only four passengers inside. I was lucky in that my companions were as disinclined for conversation as I was – a stout farmer going as far as Northleach, a clergyman returning to his Oxford college and an elderly woman with a prim mouth and a pair of knitting needles that were never still. The other passengers came and went, but the knitting lady and I were both going all the way to London. I spent the journey reading, dozing and staring out of the window.

The recent events at Monkshill unfolded again in the theatre of my mind as the coach rolled through the bleak winter landscape. I felt a profound and paralysing sense of loss. For the first time, I allowed myself to look long and hard into the future and what I saw there was desolate. But there was no help for it. At least I had employment, I told myself, a roof over my head and the prospect of food in my belly.

The last of the daylight had long gone by the time we reached London. The familiar stench and taste of the metropolis oozed into the coach. The glare of the gaslights in the West End loomed out of the fog. We set down the knitting lady in Piccadilly. I let the Regulator carry me a mile or so eastwards to the Bolt-in-Tun, its terminus in Fleet-street.

In the yard of the inn, they were bringing down my luggage from the roof when I felt a tap upon my arm. Turning, I recognised with surprise the face of Edward Dansey.

"How very glad I am to see you," I said. "How do you do?"

"Very well, thank you. Is this all your luggage?"

"Yes." By now I was puzzled, for the strangeness of the situation had become apparent to me. "How did you know that I was travelling on this coach?"

"I wasn't sure you were," he said. "It was a probability, no more than that."

"I – I do not understand."

Dansey presented me with the grimmer, graver aspect of his Janus face. "We must talk, Tom. But we cannot do so here."

I left the luggage to be collected at the coach office and followed Dansey out into the murky bustle of the evening. He took my arm and guided me through the fog to a chophouse filled with lawyers' clerks in one of the streets running into Chancery-lane. I did not see him clearly until we were sitting in a booth and waiting to be served. It struck me immediately how pale and drawn his face had become. The two vertical lines scored in his forehead were deeper than I remembered.