The romantic, p.23
The Romantic, page 23
Cashel told him of his good fortune and how his book was continuing to sell in cheaper editions. Sir Guy asked for news of his Oxford family and any London gossip. As Cashel chatted away he kept telling himself that the wheezing invalid in the bed opposite was his father. But, strangely, he found that concept as hard to grasp as the certain knowledge that he was now a rich man. Why were these facts so hard to integrate into his sense of himself? Why couldn’t he acknowledge the genealogical reality? Perhaps, he thought, the first stories we tell ourselves about our lives when we are young and forging our personalities are the ones we find hardest to relinquish. Would he always be the orphan boy, raised by his loving aunt, victim of a seafaring tragedy that had claimed the lives of his mother and father? Was this the narrative that gave him the bedrock of his being, however false it had turned out to be? And when the facts emerged or changed – that he was the bastard son of an Anglo-Irish baronet, or that he was the wealthy owner of a house in Chelsea with servants and a horse and carriage – why did that reality seem chimerical, somehow? Why did this tangible, verifiable state of affairs seem alien from the person who was Cashel Greville Ross? Even the name he went by was a construct.
Having left Sir Guy after an hour, seeing that he was tiring, Cashel wandered about the parterre at Stillwell Court. He felt somewhat disturbed and reflective, pondering these questions and emotions and found – to his vague surprise – that his thoughts had begun to congregate around his memories of Raphaella. Not just an orphan boy, turned bastard son; not just a young soldier turned successful writer; but also a man in love, with love freely given back. That situation was as much a part of the definition of the person he was as anything else. And he was still a man in love, he told himself, even though his stupid, impulsive pride had made the love suddenly impossible. He stood still in the shock of a revelation: his love for Raphaella still defined him, as much as the colour of his eyes did. And with that revelation came the immediate conviction that he should write the sequel to Nihil and call it Amor Retribuit – Love Requited. There and then, he resolved to go to Milan, find Raphaella and, somehow, win her back.
Back in London, Cashel began to make concrete plans. He would travel to Milan, rent a property there and establish himself as an English gentleman of means – now that he had his new financial security – and see how he could infiltrate the circle of Count Mazzolino. Once Raphaella saw him, he knew, everything would change. All the powerful emotions they had shared would be immediately present again – irresistible. But an unwelcome warning voice in his head told him, Remember, she’s married. Remember she’s had a child, maybe another, by now. It didn’t matter, he responded to his cautious self, all that was required on his part was action – whatever the reaction might be was unknowable, but there would be one.
Then, one morning, going to the post office, he found a letter waiting from Harkin Brothers, Bankers. His six-month loan had fallen due and ‘the prompt repayment of £1,100 would be gratefully appreciated. We remain, sir, your most humble and obedient etc., etc.’
Cashel felt a lurch of panic. This was not how events were meant to play out. Where was Yelverton’s accounting of monies due? He had promised a full statement in six months. Moreover, he, Yelverton, had volunteered to pay the interest so why was he being dunned for it? No, no – Yelverton had to repay this loan or else give him the funds that were due to him so that he could settle everything with Harkin. He had to confront his publisher himself.
As he stepped into White Cross Court, Cashel felt his foreboding in a series of physical effects – a coldness at the centre of his being, a sudden thirst, a smear of sweat on his brow. Yet there was the stairway, there was the familiar sign: ‘Yelverton & Bale, Publishers’. He climbed the rickety staircase thinking it had always been rickety. But the door to the office was locked; the brass letterbox and door-knocker were tarnished black. The blinds at the windows were down.
He descended the stairs and went into the button-mould maker’s shop where a tired, white-haired man in a leather apron told him wearily that Yelverton had decamped over two months ago. The tired man was Yelverton’s landlord and there was a year’s rent owing. Cashel felt sick.
‘What about the partner? The sign says “Yelverton and Bale”. Where is this Mr Bale?’
‘There is none,’ the landlord said. ‘There never has been.’
Cashel went to his bank – Brookes in Newgate Street behind St Paul’s – and asked to be given the balance of his account. The clerk returned with a ledger and showed him that his account stood in credit to the sum of £187.7s.8d. Cashel made the quick calculation: even if he offered every penny he had, he would still owe Harkin Brothers, Bankers, something over £900.
Back at 23 Bond Street, he composed a relaxed, informal letter asking if Mr Harkin might be so obliging as to extend the period of his loan for another six months. He was writing his next novel, he said, which showed every sign of exceeding the revenues generated by his last, and the extension would be greatly appreciated. I remain, sir, your most obedient servant, etc., etc.
He needed some time, he realized. Time was the most precious commodity at the moment. He was solvent, in a sense, and he could take himself off to Milan with the funds he had. Nihil had sold in its thousands and any publisher would buy the sequel and pay handsomely for it. Surely Harkin could see the sense in extending the loan?
Cashel left the house with John Proudfoot a few mornings later, heading for the stables in the mews, full of new resolve. Having heard nothing from Forbes Harkin, Cashel thought a personal visit was the answer – man to man, eye to eye. Integrity was better demonstrated by physical presence – far more effective than formulaic words penned in ink.
Two men in identical brown overcoats and tall hats were approaching from the other end of Bond Street. Cashel noticed that one of the men looked as if he was carrying some sort of cudgel in his hand.
‘Watch out for those fellows, John,’ Cashel warned quietly.
‘Mr Ross, sir?’ one of the overcoats addressed him as they drew near.
‘Yes. What can I do for you gentlemen?’
The other man tucked a sheet of paper into the breast pocket of Cashel’s topcoat.
‘You’ve been summoned, Mr Ross. We’re here to take you to the magistrate’s court in Westminster.’
These brown-overcoated men were bailiffs, Cashel realized.
‘How dare you! Summoned for what?’
‘For debt, sir. Seems you owe a certain person a great deal of money.’
9
Every morning when Cashel woke he would say to himself, ‘I am in prison. I am a prisoner.’ And yet the Marshalsea – the ‘New’ Marshalsea to be precise – was very unlike a prison in every sense of the word as it was commonly understood and Cashel was very unlike an archetypal prisoner. Visitors came and went; he had no cell but instead a small room that he furnished and decorated himself, and if he wanted anything – food, drink, sex – it was there if he had money to pay for it. Yet – despite this licence – in subtle ways his felony, his custodial life, his punishment, was always being gently reinforced, come what may. Whatever small freedoms he had, whatever privileges, had to be bought while money lasted. And, while he was relatively comfortably incarcerated, he was still in a prison and that incarceration had no end – until the debt was paid and the creditor satisfied.
The entrance to the New Marshalsea prison was on Borough High Street in Southwark. Once through the main gates you were faced with what looked like a house with two doors. The door on the right led you to a long, thin, paved quadrangle with high fifteen-foot walls topped by chevaux de frise spikes. These high walls enclosed a crude barrack-like building – a four-storey undecorated block that contained fifty or so rooms, about ten feet square, off a series of staircases or closes, so-called. These were the rooms for the imprisoned debtors – the ‘collegians’ as they drily dubbed themselves. Solitary space could be purchased for two shillings and sixpence and if you were a solvent debtor (strange oxymoron) you could live in some comfort. If you were poor you might find yourself sharing the small room with three or four other indebted souls. The great majority of the prisoners were men but there were always half a dozen, or a dozen, women. Fallen women in the main, free to fall further in the Marshalsea.
Beyond the barrack-block were the privies and a smaller, lower building that housed the taproom – where beer and food could be purchased – and a ‘snuggery’ where they could be consumed. Beyond this building was another cruder prison, separated by a wall, known as the Admiralty Yard, that contained convicted smugglers and others who had fallen foul of the excise men. The collegians and the smugglers rarely mixed.
Cashel’s £900 debt to Harkin Brothers made him one of the largest debtors in the Marshalsea and generated a certain notoriety. But because he still had funds in his own bank he was able to purchase a room of his own. Visitors were permitted between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. Cashel and John Proudfoot painted his room – white walls, dark blue ceiling – and set up a green Venetian blind over the barred window. A bed, a table, a chair, some etchings and a bookshelf were salvaged from the house in Bond Street before the bailiffs moved in and the lease was foreclosed. Once a week Isabella Proudfoot would give the room a sweep and a dust and do whatever shopping and laundering was required. Everyone assumed that Cashel would be free within a matter of weeks.
However, for all these domestic comforts, Cashel settled in to his new quarters with real despondency, not remotely sure of how he was ever going to repay Harkin. The lease on the house had gone, his furniture and his horse and carriage as well, but their re-sale would barely make inroads into the debt – where interest was also steadily accruing. While he was still in funds at Brookes & Co. he could live as well as the Marshalsea allowed but the bigger problem seemed insuperable. Only Harkin, paid off, satisfied, could bring about the crucial change in his circumstances.
He had several visitors in the early weeks of his confinement. Both Hogan and Buckley came up from Oxford. Ben Smart and Arthur Greenstock popped in once a week for a drink and a chat in the snuggery. Cashel had written to his mother outlining his problems in all outraged candour but had forbidden her mentioning anything of what had happened to Sir Guy. Cashel knew how seriously unwell he was, not to mention his own ongoing and considerable financial crisis at Stillwell Court. There was no need to break his back with Cashel’s final straw. He wondered, even, if Sir Guy could have raised the £900 – he was mortgaged to the full.fn1
The only solution to his predicament lay with Yelverton, it was clear. He had stolen Cashel’s lawfully earned money. If Yelverton could be found then perhaps he could be ‘persuaded’ to pay up …
He suggested this course of action to Hogan on his second visit. Cashel was impressed with his brother’s righteous anger on his behalf while he reluctantly noted the cleverness of Yelverton’s scheme at the same time. Cashel suggested that Hogan might sniff around Cripplegate and see if the publisher had unwittingly left a trail; if he had confided with someone about his new whereabouts. Where had Yelverton lived? Was there a Mrs Yelverton? A family or any dependants? They might know where he had disappeared to.
Hogan was very keen to help.
‘And if I find him, Cash, I’ll do for him – I swear.’
‘Get my money first, please.’
Ben Smart also agreed to do some investigating and very quickly discovered that Yelverton had perpetrated the same fraud with two other of his authors – but not to Cashel’s degree of indebtedness. Harkin had, in good faith, advanced loans to these two authors at Yelverton’s asking – pro-tem, a question of waiting a few weeks – but for sums of £80 and £120. In this way the financial burden of modest literary success was transferred from publisher to banker.
‘It’s quite a clever scheme,’ Ben said. ‘You have to admit. The author is paid, the author is pleased, the author spends – then discovers that he’s in debt to a bank, not a publisher.’
‘I refuse to admit it,’ Cashel said. ‘It’s disgraceful.’
However, it was obvious, Ben analysed, that the degree of success with Nihil was incomparable. He thought that Nihil must have grossed several thousand pounds over its many editions – far beyond anything that Yelverton & Bale had ever experienced – and the temptation had proved too great. It was too much to share with author and printers (they hadn’t been paid, either, naturally) so he had absconded with his loot.
‘But where?’ Cashel asked futilely.
‘Somewhere in Europe, no doubt,’ Ben said with a hopeless shrug. ‘That’s where all thieves and debtors go.’
Cashel painted small white stars on his dark blue ceiling at the prison and he would lie in bed imagining he was looking at a night sky above him. Sometimes the wavering candle flame seemed to make the stars wink and twinkle and the illusion became almost perfect.
Cashel glumly celebrated his thirtieth birthday in the Marshalsea. He and Arthur Greenstock went to the taproom, bought two pots of beer and sat as close to the small fire in the snuggery as they could without burning their trouser-cuffs. Newspapers were provided here but Cashel couldn’t be bothered with reading them. They were full of analysis of ‘Reform’ – the extension of the franchise. What did he care for Reform? The only reform he was interested in was one that affected his situation.
Greenstock had brought a small pint flask of gin and he added a slug to their watery porter. He could sense Cashel’s glum mood.
‘Happy birthday, Ross. If I had a spare nine hundred pounds I’d give it to you.’ He made a face. ‘I do blame myself – a bit.’
‘You weren’t to know Yelverton was a villain.’
‘But I suggested him to you.’
‘And it was a good suggestion. I made the judgement to sell my books to Yelverton on my own. And, look, both of them were successful. Any author would be delighted.’
‘Except …’ Greenstock looked troubled, as if he were wrestling with a thorny philosophical dilemma. ‘You had great success – and look where it got you. That’s what bothers me. Success brought you to prison.’
‘It wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t mine. I fell in with a clever thief.’
Just then a wan-looking man wandered up to them, somewhat sheepishly. Cashel had seen him in the yard. He was one of the ‘scavengers’, so-called. Impoverished debtors, they paid their way by doing the worst jobs in the prison, including emptying the privies when the night soil was collected, and lived off charitable monies. He was on the bottom rung of the Marshalsea ladder. The man was extremely thin with lank long brown hair tied behind his head with a greasy ribbon, and a patched greatcoat buttoned to the neck that flapped around his ankles.
‘Apologies for troubling you, gents,’ he said. ‘I can tell from your conversation you’re educated men and I wonder if you might be interested in this.’ He produced a folded pamphlet from his pocket and held it out. ‘Yours for sixpence.’
Cashel looked at it.
‘COR-ISM. A New Religion of the Heart.’
‘Cor is the Latin for heart,’ the man explained.
‘Cor blimey,’ Greenstock said sarcastically.
‘Tell us about this Cor-ism,’ Cashel said. The man had an open, honest face, despite its stark thinness, and a dark scab at the corner of his mouth.
He tapped his head.
‘People think all the answers are in here – with the brain. Reason, intelligence, deduction. They think thinking will solve all problems.’ He put his hand over his heart. ‘But no – the answers are here. Your heart will tell you what is right or wrong. Your best guide through life – this vale of tears – is not your brain but your heart.’ He shook the pamphlet. ‘It’s explained here in more academic detail. But that’s the essence.’
‘And thus, your heart, sir, led you to the Marshalsea,’ Greenstock said scathingly. ‘Your Cor-guide.’
The man stiffened, almost offended.
‘I don’t claim Cor-ism will spare you from the corruption and evil in this world, or the iniquities of your fellow man,’ he said reasonably. ‘Nothing can protect you from that.’ He gestured at the others sitting in the snuggery. ‘Ask these people, here. But when it comes to choosing your own way it’s as true a method as you’ll find.’
Cashel fished in his pocket for some coins and bought the man’s pamphlet.
‘Thank you, sir,’ the man said. ‘May I know your name?’
Cashel told him.
‘And I am Ebenezer Farley.’ He smiled. ‘No doubt our paths will cross again.’
That night, by the light of two candles, Cashel read the pamphlet. The philosophy was almost endearingly simple, namely that the heart was the root of all instinct, whereas the brain, with its propensity to rationalize and analyse, actually stifled instinct. Cor-ism led its adherents back to the simple, innate knowledge of what was good and bad, right and wrong, that every human being possessed as a birthright. Various authorities were presented to back up the theory and Cashel recognized some – Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine – but not others. When in doubt about anything, Farley advocated, listen to your heart and follow its dictates unswervingly. Cor-ists would be astonished at how straightforward and fulfilling their lives would become.
‘Trite homilies,’ Cashel said to himself and tossed the pamphlet on the fire – and then immediately retrieved it before it ignited. Something about Farley’s modest thesis made a strange impression on him. He found himself returning to moments in his own life and the mistakes he had made. If only he had listened to his heart, he found himself thinking, then he might still be with Raphaella. For God’s sake! Every decision he had made in Ravenna had been wrong – so disastrously wrong. And it was his brain that had led him to those fatal, irreversible conclusions, he could see that. His brain. Too much thinking; too much irate, convoluted speculation leading to false conclusions. Maybe there was some deeper truth in Farley’s homespun ruminations, after all …
