Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

Mrs. Lumbey left me speechless. Her facility for innuendo and double entendre reminded me of the lustful little book that circulated amongst my playfellows when I was much younger and when manly stirrings had driven my mates and me to engage far less in field games and childish pranks and rambles, and far more in thoughts ineffable, and then in the end interminably effable: A Young Man’s Fancy OR Tit for (Mr.) Tat by Francis Micawber. Micawber extolled the art of the salacious double meaning and even knocked the virtuous Mr. Dickens from his pedestal of respectability by quoting the following scandalous line from Dickens’ otherwise respectable Martin Chuzzlewit :

“She touched his organ, and from that bright epoch,

even it, the old companion of his happiest hours,

incapable as he had thought of elevation,began a

new and deified existence.”

(A line that was purposefully omitted from the expurgated edition of that popular novel, though one had only to ask Mr. Graham, the chief librarian of the Academic and Lending Library of Dingley Dell, for a copy of the original edition or, for that matter, Mr. Micawber’s A Young Man’s Fancy , or any of the other scandalous writings by the Dinglian Diddlers, to be offered the volumes in their circumspect whitey-brown paper-wrappers with a solemn nod that was more in keeping with Graham’s refined nature than would be a wink or a nudge.)

“We’ll go to the stables to-night,” said Mrs. Lumbey, relenting, “after Jemmy has finished his work for the day. Have your word with Jemmy and I’ll have my customary appraising look at the gorgeous young man myself whilst partaking of my free visit with that other most adorable creature in my relatively empty life, Mister Jip. But you’ll have to go to the greengrocer’s and get me some apples, Frederick. I’ve got the sugar cubes but Mister Jip will neigh most crossly at me if he doesn’t get his pippins to boot.”

Late that afternoon I did indeed have my interview with Jemmy, a fairhaired and fair-faced young man of eighteen. Sitting alongside him upon his flockbed in the rough-and-tumble hayloft lodgings that had been assigned to him, I came quickly to the point, not knowing just when the head groomsman might return from his afternoon visit to the ale-house in the company of his equally thirsty colleagues in the equestrian currying and equipage trade, and put a summary finish to our colloquy. “Jemmy, there’s a question or two that I must ask you, not for publication, mind, nor should you concern yourself that my queries will in any other way bring you under uncomfortable scrutiny.”

Jemmy nodded.

“You’ll consent to my questions, then?”

Jemmy nodded again. “But I’ll tell you right up front that I don’t know nothin’ about what happened to poor Mrs. Pyegrave. We was friends and friends was all there was to it, I swear upon my mother’s grave.”

“If your mother had a grave, Jemmy. I know for a fact that she isn’t dead. Nor would it be my guess that she’s already purchased her final resting plot, now has she?”

“No, sir. I was pulling one on you. My mum told me never to lie outright, but she said that a man can stretch the truth now and again like India rubber if there’s a good reason for it and it don’t do no harm to nobody.”

“What’s the good reason for wanting to lie to me about Mrs. Pyegrave, Jemmy?”

“What do you think, Mr. Trimmers? I ain’t a child no more. And I ain’t rich. And if there be ladies what come hither with a few coin to give me and if there ain’t no harm to be done, I’ll do a thing or two for them for a few florin, I will. I got to eat, Mr. Trimmers, and they pay poorly for what I do here as a stableboy and I got no other prospects right now that I can see in the offning. I do things for the ladies what have money and everybody walks away with a smile on they faces, even the horses, ‘cuz I’m a little kinder to ‘em and brush ‘em a little more gentle-like knowin’ I got money for my mama and enough left over to buy a pint or two for meself of a Saturday night.”

“So you were never in love with Mrs. Pyegrave. There was never any sort of romance budding betwixt the two of you.”

“I don’t mean to sound like an odious, um, ogre or nothin’, gov’ner, but I ain’t ever been in love with any of ‘em. Love got nothin’ to do with what I do with these women. They know it, I’m right sure they know it.”

“ All of them, Jemmy? Did Mrs. Pyegrave know it?”

Jemmy got himself up from the cot and took a sprig of hay and chewed upon it for a moment. “Come to think of it, maybe she didn’t.”

“Perhaps she actually thought that you had true and sincere feelings for her.”

Jemmy nodded. “Could rightly be.”

“And of course you never thought to disabuse her of this notion.”

“No, sir. I suppose I didn’t.” Then earnestly: “But how could I, Mr. Trimmers, even if I wanted to, ‘cuz she paid me the most of all them ladies. And it warn’t even like I was being paid, come to think of it, which made

it all the more better. It was like we was friends, it was. And she saw where I lived and the rags I got to wear for clothes, and then I tell her about how sick my mama is, and it breaks her heart it does, and she decides what she’s going to do is she’s going to give me some money to help me out, be my patroness , is what she calls it. And it’s a lot of money, Mr. T. And maybe in getting that much money, maybe I did put on a little bit. No, I put on a lot; I’ll admit it. Turned my gratitude into something she thought was a lot stronger than what it really was.”

I nodded and considered in silence what Jemmy had just said. Then I asked, “Did she ever happen to mention something called the ‘Tya-dya-dya Project’?”

“The what?”

“The Tya-dya-dya Project, or anything that might have sounded like that.”

“No, I don’t believe she ever did. We didn’t talk about much that didn’t have to do with me or the horses or the stables or them fellows what I work

with or my supposed-to-be-sick mama. She liked hearing me talk about myself. She said there was nothing much about her hoity-toity life — them were her words — that a person would care to hear about. And so no, I don’t

believe she ever mentioned whatever it was you just said.”

“But you would tell me if she had?”

Jemmy nodded. “What’s the reason I shouldn’t want to tell you? What is it anyways?”

“I don’t know, Jemmy. I don’t know anything about it. I thought you might know.”

Jemmy shrugged.

“Thank you for sitting down with me.”

I stood to shake Jemmy’s hand.“Mrs. Pyegrave was a nice lady,” he said

“She might have been a Patricia, but she was still the best lady what ever came to ride here.”

“A Patricia? I don’t understand. Her Christian name was Janet.” Jemmy shook his head. “Patricia’s what the grooms and hostlers all call the lady patricians.”

“Patricias. Yes, I see. And was Mrs. Pyegrave, the Patricia, nicer to you than even my friend Mrs. Lumbey has been?” We could both at that moment see Estella through the window standing by her Mister Jip and singing softly into the quadruped’s ear.

Jemmy nodded and then delivered in a confidential whisper, “Mrs. Lumbey ain’t one to ask from a stableboy more than is normally required. And she don’t even tip all that good. But I grant you she’s a decent woman. I’m sorry her daughter got so sick and died. And your nevvie, Mr. Trimmers. I was sorry to hear about him, too.”