Dan Simmons - Drood

Ellen Ternan was simply a bore. She was as dull as the proverbial ditch water and soon would be a matronly bore to boot.

We finished dining as the shadows of the afternoon were falling across us and as the chill from our gravestone chairs had begun to creep up through the cushions into our posterior regions. Tired of playing waiter, Dickens wolfed the last of his pudding, gulped the last of his champagne, and summoned his servant to tidy up. Plates, glasses, utensils, serving dishes, and finally the table cloth, napkins, and cushions all disappeared into hampers and then into the back of the carriage in a blur of liveried efficiency. Only crumbs remained as evidence of our graveyard feast.

We walked the Ternans to the carriage.

“Thank you for a lovely—if unusual—afternoon,” said Ellen Ternan, taking Dickens’s cold hand in her gloved one. “It was a great pleasure seeing you again, Mr Collins,” she said to me, her cool tone and curt nod belying the warm words. Mrs Ternan clucked similar sentiments while exerting even less effort to make them sound convincing. Then the servant was up on the box again, the whip was out, and the carriage clattered away into Rochester, presumably towards Ellen Ternan’s waiting uncle.

I could tell by the concupiscent gleam in Charles Dickens’s eyes that he knew he would be seeing Ellen that very evening, most probably in the privacy of his or her secret house in Slough.

“Well, my dear Wilkie,” he said in a tone of pure satisfaction, tugging his gloves back on, “what did you think of our luncheon?”

“I thought it delightful, in a terrifically morbid way,” I said.

“Mere prelude, my friend,” chuckled Dickens. “Mere prelude. Fortifying ourselves for the serious purpose of our day… or evening. Ah, here’s our man!”

THE MAN APPROACHING US there in the gathering gloom with his shapeless hat in hand was ragged, short, dirty, and drunk. He was clothed head to foot in layers of grimy grey flannel that seemed to have been liberally dusted with flakes of stone and a frosting of lime. At his feet he had dropped a heavy bundle tied in a grimy canvas cloth. I could smell the rum fumes flowing from him—from his pores, from his clothes, most probably from his very bones. At the same time I was sniffing him, he seemed to be sniffing me; perhaps he could smell the opium on me through his own reek. We stood and stared and sniffed each other like two dogs in an alley.

“Wilkie,” said Dickens, “I would like to introduce Mr Dradles, who goes by just Dradles, although I have heard folks in Rochester say that his first name is Granite, which I have to assume is a nickname. Dradles is a stonemason—chiefly in a gravestone, tomb, and monument way—but he is also hired by the Cathedral for rough repairs and thus is the holder of all the keys for the Cathedral tower, crypt, side doors, and other such obvious and forgotten entrances. Mr Dradles, it is my honour to introduce you in turn to Mr Wilkie Collins.”

The stooped, bewhiskered figure in the rough flannel and chipped horn buttons grunted something that might have been a greeting. I bowed and offered a more polite salutation in return.

“Dradles,” I then said brightly. “What a marvellous name! Is it real or a by-product of your profession in some way?”

“Dradles is Dradles’s name,” growled the little man. “And Dradles wonders—is Collins your real name or made up some way? And Dradles don’t remember Wilkie as being no Christian name.”

I blinked and straightened, gripping my walking stick more tightly in pure manly reflex to this hint of an insult. “I am named after Sir David Wilkie, the famous Scottish painter,” I said stiffly.

“If you say so, gov’ner,” grunted Dradles. “Although I never heard of a Scotsman who could paint a stables right, much less a church or house.”

“Wilkie’s given first name is actually William,” said Dickens. He was smiling as if amused.

“Billy Collins,” grunted Dradles. “Dradles knew a Billy Collins when Dradles was a lad. A troublesome Irish boy with no more brains nor common sense than a sheep.”

I gripped my stick harder and looked at Dickens, sending the clear message— Must I stay here and suffer this from the local village drunkard?

Before Dickens—who was still smiling—could answer, we were both distracted by a missile that flew between us, barely missing Dickens’s shoulder and my ear, and which then bounced off the russet-coloured cap that Dradles was holding in his filthy right hand. A second small stone zipped by my left shoulder and hit the stonemason squarely in the chest.

Dradles grunted again but seemed neither surprised nor injured.

Dickens and I turned in time to see a young boy, no more than seven or eight and all unkempt hair, ragged clothes, and untied bootlaces, hide behind a headstone near the wall that separated this graveyard from the road.

“It ain’t time! It ain’t time!” shouted Dradles.

“Yer lie!” shouted the ragged youth and pitched another stone at the mason. Dickens and I took a step away from the boy’s sturdy target.

“D— n your blasted eyes!” shouted Dradles. “If Dradles says it ain’t time, it ain’t time. No tea today! Get yourself off to the Thatched and Twopenny and leave off on the pitching or there’ll be no ’apenny from Dradles to you today!”

“Yer lie!” returned the Young Devil and pitched another rock, a larger one this time, which caught the stonemason just above the knee. Dirt, tiny chips of stone, clumps of old mortar, and lime dust flew from the man’s trousers as his tormentor screamed, “Widdy widdy wee! I—ket—ches—’im—out—ar—ter—tea!”

Dradles sighed and said, “Dradles sometimes pays the lad a ’apenny to pelt him homewards should Dradles forget to head home for tea or t’ the house after ten. This is my usual tea time and I forgot to turn the reminding apparatus off, as it were.”

Dickens howled and slapped his thigh with delight at this information. Another small stone flew by us and just missed the stonemason’s cheek.

“Hold your hand!” bellowed Dradles to the tiny loose-laced phantom flitting from headstone to headstone. “Or there’ll be no ’apenny for you this fortnight and more! Dradles has business with these here gentlemen and they don’t ’preciate the pelting.”

“Yer lie!” shouted the boy from the gloom behind some shrubbery between ancient headstones.

“He’ll not bother us more ’til our business is done,” said Dradles. He squinted at me and then squinted less malevolently at Dickens. “What is it you wanted Dradles to show you this evening, Mr D.?”

“Mr Wilkie Collins and I would like to see if there’s anything new down in your place of business,” said Dickens.

Dradles grunted rum fumes at us. “Anything old is more what you mean,” he growled. “The crypts ain’t much for novelty. Not in these days, at least.”

“We shall be delighted to see what is old, then,” said Dickens. “Lead the way, sir. Mr Collins and I shall offer our willing, if not broad, backs as a shield between you and your quick-armed tormentor.”

“Bother the Deputy,” Dradles grunted cryptically. “Stones is Dradles’s work and life and only love, other ’n drink, and a few more pebbles won’t bother him none.”

And thus, with Dradles striding ahead and Dickens and me muddling along shoulder to shoulder behind him, we proceeded towards the great cathedral whose cold shadow had now enveloped the entire graveyard.

BEYOND THE EDGE of the graveyard there was a high-mounded pit with fumes rising from it. Dradles, clutching his heavy bundle to his chest, walked past it without comment, but Dickens paused and said, “This is lime, is it not?”