T. Boyle: Water Music

♦ LEAVENING♦

Ned Rise saunters out the door of the dram shop, brushing at his clothes and boxing the collapsed hat against his thigh, when he is suddenly leveled by a blow to the nostrils. As he ripples to the pavement like a deflated balloon, fear, pain and bewilderment cloud his perceptions. Once there, however, he finds himself admiring the rich mahogany gloss of the riding boots that scuffle and rise with choreographic precision to deliver a succession of blows to his vital organs. Then he wheezes. Hacks. Pukes. The boots are affixed to the nimble feet of Daniel Mendoza, the pugilist, the Jew, the ex-Champion Fisticuffer of London, friend and associate of George Bryan “Beau” Brummell. Mendoza is dressed to the nines: starched linen collar, scarlet waistcoat, striped trousers and boots of morocco. A dandified young prig of twelve or thirteen stands beside him, folding the blue-velvet jacket across his forearm like a maitre d’ with a napkin, Mendoza’s face is red. “So!” he shouts. “Chinee silk is it?”

From the cobblestones Ned mutters a combined apology, denial and plea for mercy.

“Dutch sateen, twelve pence the yard!” shouts Mendoza. “And you, you scum, charges Beau six pund for a pure and original unadulterated quality Chinee silk cravat straight from the looms o’ Oriental Pekin, you says. Eh? Am I royt?”

Ned stiffens for the blow. He receives it just under the left armpit.

Mendoza is leaning over him now, knife in hand. The coatboy looks like an angel of the Lord. It is beginning to snow. “I’ll just relieve you of this little trifle,” Mendoza says, slicing through the strings of Ned’s purse, “as a partial recompense for the ‘eartache me friend ‘as suffered.” The toe of Mendoza’s boot finds Ned’s spleen — an organ he didn’t even know he was possessed of — three times in quick succession. “And don’t let it ‘appen again, arseole. Or I’ll cripple you up like I crippled Turk Nasmyth in the second round at Bartholomew Fair. ‘Ear?” There is the swish of cambric against velvet, and then the tattoo of receding footsteps, two pairs. The snow sifts down like crushed bone, and the air is sharp as a bloodletter’s lancet.

Ned pushes himself up from the ground and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He is grinning. Sick from gin, smarting about the nostrils, kidneys, spleen and armpit, a victim of assault, battery and robbery, he is grinning. Grinning over the thought of Mendoza’s face when he opens the purse and finds that it contains eight ounces of river sand, two copper buttons and a pig’s tooth. He passes a hand over his crotch and grins wider: the prize is secure. A strip of muslin swaddles his privates, fixed by means of pine stickum to his belly and buttocks. Nestled within, warmed and coddled by the downy flesh of his balls, are twenty-two golden guineas, the fruit of a week’s frauds and chicaneries. Ned plans to invest them, and watch them grow.

♦ ♦ ♦

At the Vole’s Head Ned calls for rashers, mutton chops, wheatcakes, boiled eggs, tongue, ham, toast, pigeon pie and marmalade —”and a pint of bitter for lubrication.” Then he sends a boy out to one of the pawnshops across from White’s Gaming House to pick him up a suit of clothes, “as what a gentleman would wear,” from pumps to cravat to topper. The boy’s feet are wrapped in rags, his eyes, mouth and ears are running, and he’s lost all his teeth to scurvy. Ned gives him half a crown for his trouble.

The landlord at the Vole’s Head is one Nelson Smirke. Smirke is a big man, scabious, with bald patches along either side of his head and a mad electric growth of hair across the crown. The overall effect is vegetal: he looks like nothing so much as a colossal turnip. “Ah, Smirke!” says Ned over his pigeon pie. “Draw up a chair, my friend — I’ve got a proposition for you.” Smirke sits and folds his massive hands on the table. “I’ll give it to you straight,” says Ned. “I want to let the Reamer Room for tonight, from eight to maybe three or four in the morning. I’ll give you two guineas and no questions asked.”

“Wot’s it, a party then?”

“That’s right. A party.”

“Yer not plannin’ to tear up the cushings and piss in the tea service like ye done last time, is ye?”

“Smirke, Smirke, Smirke,” says Ned, clucking his tongue. “Have you got no confidence in me? This is a gathering of gentlemen.” The head of a buck hangs on the wall behind him. Coals glow in the grate. Ned lays his fork aside and thrusts a hand into his trousers, plumbing for gold. He takes a deep breath, tears the muslin (and hair) from his abdomen, and digs into the hoard.

“Gennelmen, my arse,” says Smirke. “I know the sort of turks and derelicts and ‘uman garbage wot calls you friend, Ned Rise.”

Two guineas clank down on the table, sweet music. Smirke covers them with a fat fist. Ned looks into the landlord’s eyes, then rams down a wheatcake, champing like a refugee. He folds a slice of ham and wads it in on top, then slips a boiled egg up inside his cheek. “Three,” says Smirke, “and it’s a deal.” Ned chokes briefly, something caught up the windpipe, then spins the third coin across the table. Smirke rises. Points a thick finger between the entrepreneur’s eyes and snarls: “There’ll be no trouble in my house or be Gad I’ll ‘ave yer liver out.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Seven-thirty. Ned stands at the door of the Reamer Room, decked out like a young lord. From a distance, and in the murk of the hallway, he could almost pass for a solid citizen. Up close the illusion fades. First, there is the matter of his face. No matter how you look at it, from whatever angle, in light or shade, extremity or repose, it is at bottom the face of a wiseguy. The face of the young lout who lolls in the classroom with his boots on the desk, sets fire to old ladies and drinks ink. The face of the teenager who saunters and slouches and terrorizes the fruit seller, smoking opium, bathing in gin, making a chamberpot of the world. The face of the young panderer arranging something improper, scurrilous even, outside the door of the Reamer Room at the Vole’s Head Tavern, the Strand. Then there’s the matter of his clothes. The pin-striped trousers and engage jacket droop like a tailor’s nightmare, and the collar, maculated with sherry, gravy, ketchup and Worcestershire until it resembles the hide of some howling jungle beast, has already gone limp as a bathtowel. The gold watch chain? Buffed copper. The bulge in his waistcoat pocket? A stone impersonating a pocketwatch. The stockings are cut from a pair of wool socks and the boutonniere is a scrap of colored paper. But all this is nothing when compared to the cape, white stars on a cinnamon background, which billows round the impresario’s shoulders like a gypsy encampment.

Nevertheless, Ned is doing a brisk business. Gentlemen, in pairs or trios or even individually, make their way down the narrow hallway, press golden guineas and silver sovereigns into his palm, and pass through the doorway of the Reamer Room. Ned deposits these coins in the Bank of the Bulge. And grins the grin of a burgher. Inside, the sounds of revelry: clinking glasses, squealing chairs, yar-hars and yo-hos. Smirke’s cue. He appears at the far end of the passageway, a tray of drinks hoisted in one meaty hand, a pair of barmaids sweeping along before him like bubbles riding the crest of a breaker. “Get yer merrytricious arses in there now and keep the spirits flowin’ or be Jozachar they’ll tear the fookin’ joists down, “ he roars. The girls giggle past Ned and into the room to a burst of applause, catcalls and rabid whistling. Smirke pauses at the doorway. “I’ll ‘and it to ye, Ned — ye’ve got yerself an audience of drinkin’ gennelmen wot’s already been through half a cask of Scots whisky and fifty-three bottles of the grape.”