Dan Vyleta - Smoke

Charlie looks at the square, grave face of his teacher and does not know how to answer. So he does what he always does. Charlie smiles.

“I am hungry, Master Renfrew.”

Renfrew laughs. “So am I. Well, I suppose it can wait until after dinner. To table then. I see you have met my niece. Eleanor, please set another place, there’s a good girl. And here, let me wash up. You, too, might benefit from the application of soap, Mr. Cooper. Please tell me, my good boy, that you are not covered in Soot.”

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Dinner is a rather frugal affair of bread, cheese, and pickles. The bread is a few days old and there is no butter, nor any dessert. Renfrew has sat Charlie across from him and his niece by his arm. The Master of Smoke and Ethics says a short prayer before he cuts the bread, and eats in almost ritual silence. Charlie finds himself working hard not to make any noises with knife and fork. The little girl, too, eats with extravagant care and never raises her eyes from her plate. At one point she stops eating abruptly, puts down the slice of bread in her hand, and reaches to her chest to once again engage the little wheel that rises out of the harness like a growth. The action is followed by a strange, jerky shudder. Again, the girl’s eyes fill with tears. Her uncle watches all this nonplussed; he turns to her and asks her quite gently, “Did you smoke, my dear?”

The girl whispers her answer rather than speaking it, her eyes on the table.

“I thought I felt the seed of it.”

“You did well. You may go now and retire. It is well past your bedtime.”

Obediently, the girl pushes her chair back very carefully, rises, collects her plate and cutlery, and leaves the room: each action performed with an exaggerated slowness as though fighting the temptation for haste. When she has left, Renfrew, too, puts down his knife and fork and turns to Charlie.

“A lovely child. My brother’s daughter. Her parents died when she was but an infant. I have come to be very fond of her. How old would you say she was?”

Charlie thinks about it. “Nine?”

Renfrew smiles. It’s a proud smile and sits strangely on his self-denying face. For a moment the smile puzzles Charlie. Then he understands.

“She does not smoke.”

“Quite.” There is, to Renfrew, something of the glow that he had after London. “They say it is impossible to achieve self-mastery before the age of fourteen or fifteen, and even then imperfectly. But the girl is eight and has not visibly smoked in more than six months. You see, I have a pedagogic system.”

“The harness?”

“Is a small if important part of it, yes. An invention of mine as a matter of fact, modelled on something I saw during my travels. In Italy. Initially, I used it to correct her posture. But it proved more useful in correcting the soul. The wheel contracts the harness, you see, albeit very slightly. It causes a modicum of pain. Over time, she has learned to use it herself, warning her body against temptation. It will revolutionise child-rearing before too long. Assuming the government changes and permits the introduction of such innovations.”

Renfrew studies Charlie’s reaction to his explanation with detached amusement.

“There is no need to pity Eleanor, Mr. Cooper. She is quite used to the contraption. And with the progress she has made in the past two years, she is now allowed to take it off at night. Though she chooses not to, much of the time.”

He rises, walks Charlie over to the armchairs by the window, and pours out two glasses of water from a simple earthenware jug.

“But enough of this. It’s time you reveal your great mystery. Here you come to me late one evening a week after you have disappeared. Dirty as a sparrow. And looking, if you will excuse the phrase, rather shifty. What happened to you? And why are you here?”

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Charlie tells him the easy parts first: how they were attacked, their coachman killed and Thomas shot; how they ran away through the woods and were hidden by “good people.” He does not explain why they did not contact anyone after the attack; nor does he mention the wild woman who helped them staunch the bleeding; nor yet the miners and the week they spent hidden in the mine. Charlie grows even more evasive when Renfrew asks him about his time at the Naylors’ and inquires particularly after the baron’s health. His skin feels itchy where he scrubbed it with Renfrew’s soap and he feels oddly naked, sitting under the bright glare of the gas lamp, without the protective covering of coal dust. When Renfrew presses him for further details in his calm, systematic manner, Charlie pushes forward in his chair and looks him square in the eye.

“There is much I cannot tell you, Master Renfrew. I promised I would not.”

His teacher narrows his eyes, hesitates, purses his lips. “Then why are you here, Mr. Cooper?”

Now it is Charlie’s turn to hesitate, uncertain how to broach the topic. He finds refuge in a question.

“You said there were other rumours. Before, when you first saw me. A Gypsy attack, you said, only there were other rumours, too. What did you mean?”

Renfrew gets up, puts a kettle on the fireplace. Charlie is conscious of his thinking it over, calculating how much to reveal: just the same as Charlie. Another game of chess. Thomas would play it aggressively, threaten with his queen. But Charlie knows the value of positional play. And of patience.

By the time Renfrew has resettled himself in his chair, he has evidently made up his mind to be frank with Charlie.

“The rumours concern the bullets recovered from the horse carcasses,” he begins, his voice clear and firm, unadulterated by emotion. “An enterprising magistrate insisted on having them cut out. It’s quite unusual, as procedures go, and raised some eyebrows, amongst the Conservatives, you understand. An English magistrate, commanding the scalpel! It smelled of Continental methods.” Renfrew allows himself a smile. “Now, the bullets that were recovered are quite unusual. They are not of domestic manufacture and were shot by a rifle that must not exist on these shores, by the rules of the embargo. A very powerful rifle. Of course all this is hard to discuss out in the open. Officially, after all, we are not to know such weapons even exist. The report was circulated privately, which is to say it entered the world of whispers. I daresay half of England’s lords are kept awake at night, longing to own such a rifle.”

“You are saying it’s not the sort of gun a poor person would carry.”

“Precisely. Gypsies carry blunderbusses or something similarly crude. And you really did not see any trace of your attackers?”

Charlie shakes his head, thinking. Then he takes a risk.

“I have heard things,” he says. “About Smoke. I came here tonight to find out if they are true.”

“Ah,” says Master Renfrew. “I rather thought it might be something of that kind.”

Behind him, the kettle starts whistling and summons them to tea.

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It’s Charlie’s move. He cradles the teacup between both hands, lets the warmth spread through his fingers. He says, “There was a time before Smoke.”

Renfrew smiles, counters. “I see you spoke to Baron Naylor. How is he? He no longer answers my letters, not for many a year. It is most vexing. Suspicious, even.

“‘There was a time before Smoke.’ Yes, I remember his whispering those very words to me, and how shaken I was. Like a lightning bolt hitting me out of the clear blue sky. For three whole years I could think of nothing else.

“And the lengths the baron went to prove it! Hunting for paintings, letters, diaries. It was quite an obsession with him. ‘None of these accounts mention snow,’ he whispered to me once. ‘It’s changed our climate: all the Smoke in the atmosphere, it’s blocking out the sun.’ At times I feared he had gone mad. Before long I believed it as surely as he. We would sit together and discuss it, night after night.”