Another day we walked by the river and Boyer pointed to the cranes near Queenhithe. “There now, you see,” he said, “that is where the wine barges carrying our good Bordeaux are unloaded. And across the river,” he added, pointing again, “are the pits for the bears and bulls that are tormented by the dogs. You hear great shouting from there in the afternoons. It seems barbarous to me, but you English appear to enjoy such things.”
“Not all English, Uncle,” I said. “I myself, for example, have no wish to see a bear or bull tormented by dogs.”
“Yes, yes, perhaps,” he said, “but most do. I’m talking of the common people.”
I could see that he had no wish to be unanchored from the generality of his observations about England and its people.
“And those big buildings beyond,” he said, “are playhouses. I have never been to one myself, but many of my customers enjoy such entertainments. Even some of the ladies, I am told, like the comedies.”
So that, I thought, was where my father’s plays were performed. In those very buildings across the river. Perhaps one of his plays was being enacted that afternoon. But how could I find out? There was so much to learn
about London, but that day Boyer was also remembering my mother, looking at me sideways from time to time.
“You’re not as comely as your mother, Aerlene, but you have a ready wit, as you English like to say. Elizabeth was very pretty, but she was also gentle. I used to think that there was about her an air of tender.”
“Tender?
Tenderness,
the noun,” I said.
“Tenderness, yes. Exactly. A kindness in her. Rare in a pretty woman. They are usually so vain. I see it every day in my business. But vanity after all is my bread and butter. Is that not an English saying?”
“I suppose it is, Uncle,” I said.
“Yes,” he continued, “your mother was
une femme douce.”
“Well, Uncle,” I said, “I will never be as pretty as Mam. When I was younger they called me an elf.”
Philip Boyer laughed.
“Une elf.
But that’s so unkind. Who would say such a thing?”
“Other children in the village.”
“Well, those are unpleasant memories you must put away.”
“My head was too big for my body,” I said. “Of course, I have grown since those days.”
“Of course. And you have a fine head on your shoulders. It’s a great storehouse for your wit. Aerlene is a pretty name, too.”
“Do you know what it means, Uncle?” I asked.
“I do not,” he said.
“It was my mother who named me,” I said.
“Aerlene
means ‘elf’ in some old storybook.”
He put his arm around my shoulder. “My little niece, the elf.” He laughed, and so did I.
One morning three weeks or so into that September, Boyer showed me the stockroom at the back of the shop, where his two apprentices were at their workbenches. I had seen them coming and going with material to display for customers, but had spoken to neither. The older one, Corbet, was perhaps eighteen, fair and handsome, though his manner was disdainful; the other, Prew, was dark and small, his skin blemished by pox marks that put me in mind of poor Tom Bradley in my uncle’s workshop. Prew was shy and kept his head bowed, his eyes on the needle and ribbons he was attaching to bonnets.
Both boys were born in London, but their parents were French and they considered themselves French like their master. Corbet, for instance, soon corrected me on the pronunciation of his name; the ending, he said, rhymed with
say,
not
set.
Prew’s name was originally Proulx. When together alone, the boys conversed quietly in French, and if I came upon them they would stop at once. Jenny, who was often coming and going, didn’t appear to mind this, but I found it unsettling.
I was put to work unpacking the crates delivered by the draymen to the rear entrance off the laneway. That first day Corbet showed me how to use an iron bar with a claw at one end to open the crates. Uncle Jack had taken me once to see the brilliantly coloured peafowl strutting in the royal park at Woodstock, but never had I seen such glorious plumage as the feathers that lay beneath the straw in those crates: the pink of flamingoes and the blue of egrets, the pure white livery of ostriches and swans from Africa. There were soft grey lambskin gloves from Spain and France and multicoloured ribbons from Milan, cotton fabric to be knitted into nightcaps for elderly men and bolts of wool to make boys’ caps, as Boyer had a contract with a nearby chapel school.
Since it is not in my disposition to remain silent long, I asked questions of Corbet and Prew, but neither seemed inclined to talk. I had better fortune with the draymen and was soon trading wits with those hearty fellows in their leather aprons, their ale-and-onion breath. At eleven o’clock Jenny brought in a tray of bread and cheese, and for each of us a tankard of weak beer. Prew always finished his meal quickly and returned to work, but Corbet took his time, eating slowly, even scrupulously, I thought, as I watched him pick the last crumbs of cheese from the trencher.
At the end of the day, I swept the floor of cuttings and began to feel the onset of dread at the long evening awaiting
me, for there were no books in the household save two large Bibles, one in English and one in French.
After supper I would go to my room and watch the darkness filling the window, trying to summon up my bedroom in Worsley and the sounds of village life when the air itself seemed to breathe in the darkness; and reading my father’s words, I would listen to the cries of a nightjar or the hooting of an owl, or hear my uncle snoring from along the hallway. In my room in London, I heard faintly the voices of people on Threadneedle Street, and now and then I would be drawn to the window to look down at the laneway. In the room next to me Jenny might be moving about, coughing or farting or muttering to herself. She often went to bed early because she had to prepare Boyer’s breakfast and he liked his bread and hot chocolate at first light. Other times I heard the murmuring of the two apprentices in the room above me. Lying there I would write to my uncle telling him of my life in the city, but the words remained in my head, for I had no money to post a letter.
One night I was awakened by cries that made me think of village cats, and when I hurried to the window I saw a man and woman coupling against the wall of the building opposite. He was thrusting himself at her as she cried, from happiness or pain I couldn’t say, but then above me I heard laughter too. It was hard to imagine Corbet laughing at anything, but there it was, and even more astonishingly
there too was Jenny, for her giggling was unmistakable. The man and woman were perhaps too drunk to care, for they soon finished and staggered off arm in arm.
I returned to bed thinking of Jenny with the two boys upstairs and feeling obscurely jealous; but apart from my jealousy, I was more troubled at how wrong I could be in my assumptions. How little I really knew of others. People were far more complicated than I had imagined, and what appeared to be often was not so. I lay thinking that a great writer like my father understood this; he had created Mercutio and Juliet, Beatrice and Benedict, Sir John Falstaff, and Shylock, all of whom are complicated, by turns baffling and surprising us. They were like old friends and I missed them.
A stroke of good fortune, then, because on the following Saturday, Boyer came to my room and gave me a tester. I looked at the silver sixpence in my hand while he told me that Corbet had given good report on my work in the shop, and therefore I deserved a wage and would be paid accordingly each Saturday at noon, when our work was finished for the week. I asked him then if I might venture out by myself to St. Paul’s to visit the bookstalls, as I had lost all my books in the fire. It was only minutes away, I said, and by now I was familiar with the streets around the great church. I would be cautious. He looked doubtful.
“I should ask your aunt about this,” he said, “but she has gone marketing with the maid.”
I promised him I would be back within the hour, and he said he would hold me to the promise.
“I know you love books, Aerlene,” he said, “and I see no harm in it, but you must watch your purse and your virtue in this city.”
On that Saturday afternoon in October, I was happy, if a little nervous, to be on my own in London with a sixpence in my pocket. At St. Paul’s churchyard I marvelled at the variety of books on offer, mostly religious in content: Bibles and prayer books, anthologies of sermons, volumes of inspirational sayings and lessons on Christian living, pamphlets of Puritan zeal on the coming of Armageddon, miscellanies of prayers and devotions. But there were almanacs too, and books on travel with accounts of voyages to distant lands, some with engravings of fantastical creatures, enormous serpents, crocodiles and leviathans. Such books were costly and one vendor rebuked me as I turned a page. “No thumbprints on my wares, Miss. That book is beyond your means.”
True enough, I thought, taking no offence, for I had already grown accustomed to the rough-and-ready manner of Londoners. But where were the books of plays? They seemed but a small part of the general trade and I was disappointed, for
I had imagined my father’s playbooks would be everywhere. Then on a table I saw an old favourite from childhood,
The Hundred Merry Tales,
and beside it a bound copy
of Richard III.
It was like seeing an old if unsavoury friend, and I turned to the opening speech, where the misshapen Gloucester declares his hatred for all those of fair proportion:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
“Are you reading, Miss, or just looking at the words?”
Scarfe’s first words to me, framed, of course, as a sarcastic question. And what a question! Could I read? Looking up I saw watery blue eyes, a foxy grin, the unkempt hair stuffed beneath a cap, this boy of sixteen, as pale and thin as London air. I had seen dozens like him on the streets, apprentices with their insolent tongues and swagger, their caps askew.
“I can read the words,” I said.
“Can you, now?” he laughed. “Then read something to me so I know you’re not here to filch a book and put us out of business. How old are you, anyway?”
“Sixteen,” I said. “Is there an age you have to be to buy a book in London?”
He was still grinning. “Why, you don’t look above twelve.”
“Shall we divide the difference, then, and get on with our business? How much for this copy of Shakespeare’s
Richard III?”
It gave me a shiver of delight to say my father’s name to another.
“How do you know it’s by Shakespeare? His name is not upon it.”
“I know it is his work,” I said.
“Could you read a passage for me?” he asked.
I handed him the book. “Select one.”
He gave me another of his crooked smiles as he leafed through the book before handing it back. “There,” he said. “Begin there.”
I can’t remember what I read that day; it wasn’t an opening scene. Let’s say the following, or something like it:
Look, what is done cannot be now amended:
Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes,
Which after-hours give leisure to repent.
Holding up a hand, he said, “Enough.” And taking off his cap he bowed. An absurd gesture and I had to laugh. “Scarfe at your service, Miss,” he said. “In the employ of my master, Henry Sharples, London’s finest bookseller.”
Everything about him suggested a careless mockery, and he reminded me at once of Mercutio. He pointed at another table, where an awkward-looking boy with reddish hair beneath his cap was stacking books.
“That is my fellow slave, Gideon Parrot, and the white-haired gentleman you see within is the master himself. I can see now that you are not just another light-fingered soul, but a small person of some learning. You read that passage well, Miss.” Again he took off his cap and bowed. “I am humbled in your presence and offer my apologies.”
I could see that he wasn’t really sorry and that this politeness was but acting. Those pale, restless eyes were full of mischief. And the underfed look of him, the prominent Adam’s apple—he was like so many other boys in that city. Raised in houses whose overhanging roofs shut out the sky. Did they ever see sunlight?
“Where do you hail from, Miss?”
“What business is that of yours?”
“Well, none if it comes to that, but I am interested in the various tongues of my fellow countrymen, since our city appears to be filled with such folk these days.” He paused. “I would say somewhere in the Midlands. Gloucestershire?”
“Wrong,” I said. “I come from Oxfordshire.”
“Ah well,” he said, “I’ve never been to those parts. I’d be frightened to death in those extremes with your wild animals and such. Now, what do you lack, Miss?”
“I can’t imagine you pleasing many in this trade with your manners,” I said.
He shrugged. “I do hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”
“I shall take this book by Shakespeare,” I said.
“Very well, but we have a third printing of that play freshly out and bearing his name.”
I couldn’t help myself. “I have read many plays by Shakespeare. He is my favourite poet. I have read
Richard II
and
III
, and
Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry IV, Parts I & II, Henry V and The Merchant of Venice.”
Scarfe’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes, really. How much are you asking for this? It’s well used, I see.”
“That particular item,” he said, “will cost you nine pence.”
“I bought one new in Oxford two years ago for six pence. How can you charge nine pence for this? I’ll give you four.”
“I know where you’re from now. You’re from Warwickshire. People from Warwickshire are known for their bargaining skills. And you admire the work of the Warwickshire man Mr. Shakespeare. He’s a fine fellow. He’s been in our shop.”