Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“Thank you.”

“Ah, no bother. It tickles me. Being friendly with a toff. Now off with you, I have business to conduct.”

ф

It takes Charlie until dusk to get to Oxford. The train is steady but very slow, huffing and puffing up every hill. Charlie spends the hours squeezed in between a row of other tramps, one of whom unceremoniously dips his hand in his pocket to search it for money, all the time smoking like a chimney from both mouth and ears. When they stop, Charlie does not recognise the station at once: they are far from the public platform, their view obstructed by a dirty brick wall. Farther up the train, he sees a number of shadows leap out of railcars and clamber over the wall. He follows their example and is spilled into a warren of backstreets and courtyards, alive with smells and noise and people. Navigating by the setting sun, Charlie heads to the western edge of town, looking for the road that will lead him to the school. A league out of town a cart driver rolls past and offers Charlie a ride in exchange for his coat, dirty though it is.

“Where you headin’?” the driver asks him.

When Charlie, too honest to lie, names the school, the man eyes him narrowly.

“Going there to beg? I shouldn’t bother. It’s half-term. No one around. Besides, they are skinflints they are. Tight as a trout’s arse. You’re better off tryin’ your luck in the village.”

Is Charlie going there to beg? Well, in a manner of speaking he is. But Charlie merely mumbles something about knowing one of the porters, speaking indistinctly, hiding his accent. The thought of Cruikshank, sour and stupid, puts a stitch in his heart.

The man lets him off near the village, an hour’s walk from school. It must be nearing ten at night. The sky is clear now and it is growing colder. None of the snow that marked December remains on the ground, but there is a smell to the wind that promises more.

Charlie hurries along until he sees the dark shadow of the school ahead. He has seen it before from this angle, in similar light: the night they returned from London. A single window is lit, high up, where Trout has his chambers. He asked Charlie to spy on the Naylors and would be keen to hear his report. But it is not to Trout that Charlie is heading.

Instead he takes a path that leads past the rugby field across the little creek, to a cottage that stands alone there, surrounded by a picket fence. Most of the teachers live in, inside the main school building itself, and leave for the holidays, to see their wives and children at home or go up to their alma maters, to stay in chambers there. But a handful of the masters — the poorer it is sometimes said, not without derision; those without good family ties or their own estates — have houses at the edge of the grounds that are rented to them year-round. This one is Renfrew’s. A lamp is lit above the narrow door, and another light shines dimly through drawn curtains. Charlie stops by the creek before he enters, dips his hands in the black and icy water, washes his face. There is not much he can do without a bar of soap, but at least he can face his teacher wide awake. The door knocker has the shape of a silver owl. Minerva, goddess of wisdom.

It may be childish, but Charlie crosses himself, before engaging its taloned feet to knock on the door.

ф

The knock is answered with an alacrity Charlie does not expect. It is almost as though someone had been waiting for him by the door. Indeed there is a stool in the plain little hallway that opens up to him. But no person. Charlie has to adjust his gaze, downward, to understand who worked the doorknob. Dressed in a plain grey shift, the fair hair braided into pigtails, the girl can’t be any older than eight or nine. Her face is narrow, the eyes large and scared. Her shoulders and upper body are encased in a strange metal harness. Two spokes run upwards, at both sides of the neck before they stop just under the point where the chinbone bends and charges up to the ears. At the harness’s front, at the centre of the sternum, rides a little brass wheel. She stands in the hallway, quivering, like a rabbit caught out in the open by a fox.

“Hullo,” Charlie greets the girl, and then once more, softer now, crouching down on the threshold as he does so. “Hullo there. Don’t be scared.”

The girl does not move, shivers, looks across at him, then reaches to her chest and turns the wheel on her contraption with a quick jerky movement. Next Charlie knows, her eyes have filled with tears. But she does not start crying.

“My name is Charlie,” he says, still crouching in the open door. “I am looking for Master Renfrew. I am one of his students, see. Is he at home?”

The girl shakes her head: stiffly, the chin pushed very high, avoiding the spokes of her harness.

“Then you are waiting for him.” Charlie points to the stool. “Are you his daughter? I did not know Master Renfrew was married.”

But the strange, half-mechanical girl only shakes her head again, with that same stiff gesture.

“Well, perhaps you help him keep house.” Charlie rises, pats the top of the stool. “Here, please, sit down. Perhaps I can keep you company while you wait? Yes? That’s kind of you. It’s cold outside. Do you think we should close the door? We are letting all the heat out, and you’ll catch your death, standing there in the draft.”

ф

Renfrew returns within the hour. They have not moved, Charlie and the little girl, are standing in the hallway, two paces apart, the stool she is too scared to use standing between them. At several points Charlie considers leaving and waiting outside. But it disturbs him, the thought of this young child alone in the house. Even though he has no success in drawing her into conversation — even though he cannot rouse from her even a single smile — he is aware that his presence soothes her; that he is not the cause of her fear but something else, some weight on her childish heart so heavy that she hardly dares breathe.

Then they hear the sounds of steps crunching on the gravel path. Charlie opens the door long before his teacher can reach the house, wishing to reveal himself to him and apologise for intruding. Dr. Renfrew wears dark leather riding gear, mud-splattered and steaming with the heat of his exertion. The horse is nowhere in sight, and must have been left with the school’s groundsman. When he catches sight of Charlie, the teacher stops in his tracks, his features registering surprise, even alarm. Then he collects himself, strides on, and shifts his riding crop from right hand to left. It frees the former for a handshake.

“Mr. Cooper. This is most unexpected! Most unexpected indeed. Do come in.”

Renfrew passes his hat and gloves over to the stiff little girl, sits down on the stool, and peels himself out of his boots.

“If you will excuse me. I have just returned from Parliament. I was asked to speak on issues pertinent to the future of the realm.”

He winces as his feet leave the long shafts of his boots and accepts the slippers the girl hastily brings out for him, each movement made oddly formal by the bulk of her contraption.

“A wretched session. Rows and rows of perfect blockheads, jabbering away about ‘tradition’ and drowning out the few beacons of science and reason in the room. It is enough to drive a man out of his mind.” Renfrew frowns. “But listen to me prattle on, when it is you who should be talking. You have a tale to tell, Mr. Cooper! Half of England is looking for you — including your father who has rushed back from Ireland and is calling for a closure of the borders! Last anyone heard you were abducted by Gypsies. Though there are other rumours even more outlandish than that! It is good to see you are safe. But out with it: what on earth happened to you?”