Under the Poppy (23 page)

Of course, as you wish.
No point to detain him, he can always be followed; but this does not smell like betrayal—indeed its opposite, as if Hanzel has been recalled by a master he serves most gladly—though the General is shrewd enough to know, has always known, with both approval and regret, that Hanzel feels no loyalty at all to him.
Still, the roads are uncertain these days—will you have an escort?

I’ll have my mecs.

The General smiles.
Well. Woe betide the man who halts you, then. Safe travels, Hanzel. I hope your affairs meet all success.

The smile offered in return is so extraordinary—a glimpse into a palace, a prison, a place without a name—it is as if the General sees Hanzel for the first time, or rather not “Hanzel” at all, but the man whose true name he has never learned. That man gives another bow—
I am counting on it, sir—
and then is gone, leaving a certain emptiness in his wake.

The General toils alone until the evening, until a visitor arrives without announcement, a pleasant man with no accent at all, who accepts a glass of brandy and asks,
Where is your actor, then? I had hoped to see a show.

There’s no bottling a firefly. Hanzel has gone.

It was Dusan, your gipsy? Well! That is disappointing. I much enjoyed his performances in Brussels.

Perhaps you’ll see him elsewhere,
says the General, reaching to take a map case from the shelf.

False dawn, the bedclothes’ musty rustling, Istvan dozing, does he? or no, awake and watching as Rupert sets the silent body of Pan to one side, the knowing wooden eyeballs and “You used to ask me,” Istvan’s smile, “ ‘cover him,’ remember?”

Slipping back beside him, into the fugitive warmth. “Who?”

“Marco. Remember? You’d say, ‘Cover him, I don’t want him to watch.’ ”

Somberly, “I remember.” His own gaze half turned away. “Whatever happened to Marco?”

“He’s here,” Istvan pointing back to Pan. “The arm joints, and the feet—all I could salvage, really.”

“Salvage?”

“Bits and pieces. They fucking
broke
him, yeah? Past where I could fix. If I had him now, may be I could do a better job of—”

“Who broke him?”

How long to suffer it, yet how briefly told: in the cold of the Cell, Istvan’s murmurs, Rupert’s stillness, one arm locked around his shoulders, holding him close: “—and made this other, right there in her rooms. She wasn’t a bad sort, Lucienne, it’s thanks to her I’ve got the Chevalier. Though she’d not thank me herself, I suppose.”

“She cared for you, this woman?”

“Who knows?” and back to the story, the chateaux, the drawing rooms, the jewel-box theatre where “I saw you,” Rupert’s murmur. “And—” a nod toward Pan. “I watched you sing.”

“In Prague? You were—You
saw
me? What in the
fuck
, Mouse!” to bring Rupert’s own tale, spooling backward, the words welling up like wrack on the tide—

“—a berth aboard the
Queen Maritsa
—”

“You, on a boat? You hate the sea.”

“Yes, and casting up every hour, hung over the rail. But that was before—” that ship and that journey, Agatha peering like a starving cat, Ag turned Decca and “She said she’d had no word of you since. So we fetched up here. Until I left her with Mattison—”

“To go to fucking Prague?”

“To look for you. You seemed—well-tended.”

“But you told none of this to me?”

“When, then? or now? I am telling you now.”

Istvan’s face is white. “And to walk away, as you did before—”

“I was weary of your whoring!”

“And look at you now! Partner in a brothel.” Silence. “ ‘No word’? And then to say she’d no clue of
you
, where you were.” Furiously: “Her fucking letter, you in the next fucking room, yeah? Who’d ever guess she was such a cunt of a liar? Let me go, I have something to say to her—”

“No.”

“Mouse, let me—”

“No, I said. First tell me—” the rest of it, all of it, the two stories made one at last: the deed to the Poppy, the toffs a fortune earned and pissed away, and what of “You and Georges?” Rupert staring down at the creased and rumpled coverlet. “You know him, I can see.”

“Not the way you’re thinking. I’ve been of use to him a time or two—I said, not that way! I carried his messages, in Brussels, stuffed up in the mecs. So he owed me.”

The relief almost weakening, a sour weight removed but “Men like him owe nothing to men like us. They make certain of that.”

“Men like him can never accomplish all they fathom to do, that’s why they need other men, like your friend Vidor, or Arrowsmith, or even mutts like me. Like having extra fingers on your hand.” Istvan twitches his fingers. “Wouldn’t that be helpful. So I mentioned to him—”

“Mentioned?”

“Jesu you’re tiresome! I fucking
asked
, Mouse, I called in my chits and asked if, whatever war he studied on brewing, could he keep you and your stupid building out of the stewpot! Since you refused to do the sensible thing and leave with me after I came all this God damned way to get you! Why do you think he quartered here—because he fancies your fucked-out whores?”

For a moment Rupert can say nothing. Finally, deep and soft, a voice even Istvan has rarely heard, “I cherish the gesture. But it is dangerous, to consort with someone like Georges. The world’s not your puppet-stage—”

“Nor your God damned fancy-house. And my ‘gesture’ worked, yeah? You may have soldiers pissing in the lobby but at least they’re not using us for kindling. Now let me up, I want to have at Ag.”

“No,” again and tenderly, arms around him in the darkness, the enormous and delicate stillness of refuge restored, holding him in that quiet until he quiets as well, like boys on the roof asleep at last beneath the braided greatcoat, sheltering both into the chill gray gleam of morning.

And later still, Istvan up on one elbow, light striping bars across his chest, his face: “Think of it, the waste of it. All that time.”

“We have time.”

That very morning, Istvan’s toys, strings, glycerin caps and traps and all are transferred into Rupert’s rooms, the hobnailed outer parlor, the tiny bedchamber beyond as clean and spartan as a lonely boy’s. The Chevalier and Miss Lucinda stand in comfortable ease against the windowless far wall, the bundled Bishop beneath them, Pan alone at the table like a guest about to dine. Omar helps carry the largest trunk, as Puggy watches, a furrowed frown to meet Lucy’s knowing smile: “Now we’ll have some larks,” she says.

“If we survive.”

Downstairs, in the kitchen, Velma feeds the fire, as Decca listens to the footsteps above, to and fro, purposeful and quick; she rations out the oatmeal, she steeps the tea as ruddy-black as blood.

Walter Porter

I sent young Andrew up there myself, I said, Andrew, get yourself in tight with them army officers while you can, this place is drying up like a fly in a windowsill. “War,” they’re calling it. For those boys up in the hills I wager it is, they die as if it’s war for certain. Saw a pair of them brought in yesterday with their heads blown straight off, just neck-stumps left, atop the dead-wagon. Saw another come in this morning all dazed-like, asking after his mother, “Mummy, Mummy?” and wandering around, they had to shoot him when he climbed up the mercantile roof. That’s why I wanted Andrew in tight with the officers, because there’s no place safer in any battle than a general’s berth, wheresoever it might be.

Hunkering at the Poppy, though, that’s pure smarts on Bok’s part. Keeps the hearth burning, and the building safe as a babe at its mother’s tit, since the building’s what truly matters anyroad. You can always get more girls, even if they fancies themselves actresses; they do that here, too, girls calling themselves the Jersey Lily and Sarah Sweetheart, flouncing up and down the stage. But without a place to house ’em, you may as well be out in the Alley with the strays, and how long can you last like that?

Figures Bok would get the army in afore we thought to do it, or Faulk, either, who lost his nerve and took that bitch up to Victoria after all. Bok’s got a good nose for business, and a brass set for sure; I always said so. That set-to he had with Artie Redgrave, I knew he’d come out on top, and he did. Artie’s a fool for giving tuppence credit to that stupid wight Elwin, who must of been dropped on his head by his mother, herself no better than she should be, me
and
Artie both had her more than once…. Anyone who shot Elwin would do this town a mighty favor.

Ought to shoot that jumped-up dollmaker, too, or drive him off anyroad. Frenchman, Dutchman, whatsoever he is, he’s the type that likes to stir the pot, then hop off when it gets to bubbling. I knew ones like him, we had one or two here at the Gaiety years back, penny opera or some such foolishness. Come from the road, we sent ’em back up the road, and good riddance. This one too, oh he’s here there and everywhere, with Bok over there and the army man here—I saw him myself, gave me a coin to lead him—and the other Frenchman, who I hear’s booked himself onto the train; it’s got too hot for him here, I’m guessing, or maybe just too cold…. The only one the dollmaker don’t consult with is that Mister Vidor, which maybe shows some smarts after all.

That Vidor—I told Artie, I said, watch out for that one, he’ll do you down, money or no money. But Artie’s too greedy to listen, greedy and dim. That’s why Elwin’s his deputy, he looked around town for someone to make him feel clever, and Elwin was what he found. Does he know that that Vidor’s got a deal set with Rawsthorne and Pepper, them out of Gottsburgh with their sawmills and ironworks? The man drives the munitions cart, his son saw Vidor there in the yards, saw him plain, ugly as he is you can’t mistake him. Standing there all a-smiling, shaking hands with Victor Rawsthorne—and
his
son, now, the skinny one, used to bang down our Carrie something awful, it got so she’d run when she saw him coming:
Warn me, Walt,
she’d say.
Warn me when you see that beanpole, and I’ll put the “Out” sign on my door sharpish.
Carrie was the last of our girls to go, Carreen O’Brien up on the stage, sings the Scottish laments real pretty, but she’d no mind to end up dead, she said, said she’d flip her skirts for the conductor and keep what cash she nicked to pay her way once the train reached its end, wherever that may be…. Makes sense that a gent like Vidor would be cozy in with Rawsthorne, you got to smash buildings flat before you can rebuild ’em, and to rebuild ’em you need lumber and nails. But you try to tell that to Artie, or anything sensible at all.

Me, I been watching, and waiting, keeping my head down: I’m too old to be a soldier, but old men get shot by accident, too. Andrew thinks I ought to pull up stakes before it gets rougher, and what am I staying for now? I been on the door at the Gaiety since it opened, just about, since that mick Halloran and his brother’s time, but my time here is just about through. We’re closed down even though the door’s still open, without girls there’s no reason to come in, and anyroad we’re out of drink. Owls in the roof now, and the rats are everywhere…. Andrew’s the last of my kin in town, and he’ll go with the army when it leaves, which he says will be more than soon:
There’s almost nothing left to burn, Uncle,
he tells me,
we’ve got to be movin’ on.
“We,” mark it. There’s plenty more he could tell, following that general all around, with his gloves and map box and cigars and whatever else, but Andrew keeps his trap shut to keep his post. Well, that’s as it should be, the boy’s got to look out first for himself.

If I do stay, I may go over to the Poppy. I knew that Mattison, we was never friends but I knew him; I helped bury him, too. Thought I’d seen the end of the Rose and Poppy then. But I watched them bring it back, Bok and his red-headed sister, or whatever she is, who was Mattison’s concubine, they may yet bring it back again though this war’s stamped us flat to the weeds. Well, the weeds will survive it, they always do. And, like the Good Book says, the chaff’ll be blown away.

Hard snow has come to Gottsburgh, and with it a consumptive’s wind, cold and viscous, surging in waves. The General curses softly to himself, young Andrew stoic behind him, as they splash and plow through muck and slush, heading for a grand, well-lit hotel, white Doric columns and the scent of brandy, a suite of rooms stoked blessedly hot, where in some hours they will be joined by several compatriots, and, later, by Mr. Arrowsmith, before beginning a longer journey over the water. Andrew carries the map box, lights the General’s cheroots, and keeps to himself both his thoughts and his excitement over their eventual destination. Several of the junior officers have detailed the moral elasticity of the young ladies abroad, with thrillingly explicit examples, and he is eager to put this knowledge to firsthand test.

There is no snow, yet, in the town, though one can smell its advent on the thin wind that sifts through the forest, that frame of trees protected from the ax by the gun, the soldiers it shelters; the trees closer to the town were chopped for warmth long ago. The churchyard ground is frozen, so the bodies still requiring burial—many have already been burned—lie stiff in the back of the shuttered mercantile; otherwise the wolves and the packs of stray dogs will make of them a swift and handy meal.

When the wind shifts, it drives off the smell of burning so the smell of decay might rise, astonishing its potency even in the cold. It reaches Mr. Arrowsmith in his rooms, through the windowsills stuffed with rags, and lends a spur of further energy to his penultimate chore; the trunk gone on ahead, his only luggage is an oblong writing case, polished teakwood and mother-of-pearl; this he secures and carries underarm down to the lobby, drafty with the loss of its plundered hangings, the sourly sober desk clerk informing two wary drummers of the last train’s scheduled departure. They retreat, to huddle over a bottle they are loath to share, even for coin, even when the clerk threatens. Mr. Arrowsmith, passing, reflects that greed is a sin, though he himself feels a great and simple inner famine for a cup of Assam tea, very hot, drunk in his dressing gown, with his sweet Liserl at his side; ah, well. There is little left to do, now, but make his final visits, and stay alive a few hours longer, until the evening train departs.