The American Boy by Andrew Taylor Page B

been powerfully built. He had thick black hair streaked with silver and a fleshy face dominated by a great curving nose. He wore a dark blue coat and a showy but dishevelled cravat.
    â€œHa!” he said as he saw me. “Who are you?”
    â€œMy name’s Shield, sir.”
    â€œAnd who the devil is Shield?”
    â€œI brought Master Charles from his school. I am an usher there.”
    â€œCharlie’s bear leader, eh?” He had a rich voice, which he seemed to wrench from deep within his chest. “Thought you were the damned parson for a moment, in that black coat of yours.”
    I smiled and bowed, taking this for a pleasantry.
    The elegant figure of Henry Frant appeared in the doorway behind him.
    â€œMr Shield,” he said. “Good afternoon.”
    I bowed again. “Your servant, sir.”
    â€œDon’t know why you and Sophie thought the boy ought to have a tutor,” the old man said. “I’ll wager he gets enough book-learning at school. They get too much of that already. We’re breeding a race of damned milksops.”
    â€œYour views on the rearing of the young, sir,” Frant observed, “always merit the most profound consideration.”
    Mr Carswall rested one hand on the newel post, looked back at the rest of us and broke wind. It was curious that this old, infirm man had the power to make one feel a little less substantial than one usually was. Even Henry Frant was diminished by his presence. The old man grunted and, swaying like a tree in a gale, mounted the stairs. Frant nodded at me and strolled across the hall and into another room. I buttoned up my coat, took my hat and gloves and went out into the raw November air.
    Albemarle-street was a quiet, sombre place, lying under the shadow of death. The acrid smell of sea coal filled my nostrils. I crossed the road and glanced back at the house. For an instant, I glimpsed the white blur of a face at one of the drawing-room windows on the first floor. Someone had been standing there – staring idly into the street? or watching me? – and had retreated into the room.
    I walked rapidly down towards the lights and the bustle. Charlie had said he wanted to watch the coaches, and I knew where he would have gone. During my long convalescence, when I was staying with my aunt, I would sometimes walk to Piccadilly and watch the fast coaches leaving and arriving from the White Horse Cellar. Half the small boys in London, of all conditions, of all ages, laboured under the same compulsion.
    I stepped briskly into Piccadilly, dodged across the road, and made my way along the crowded pavement towards a tobacconist’s. The shop was full of customers, and it was a quarter of an hour before I emerged with a paper of cigars in my pocket.
    A few paces ahead of me walked a couple, arm in arm and muffled against the cold. The man raised his stick and hailed a passing hackney. He helped the lady in, and I think his hand must have brushed against her bosom, though whether on purpose or by accident I could not tell. She turned, half in, half out of the hackney, and tapped him playfully on the cheek in mock reproof. The woman was Mrs Kerridge, and the cheek she tapped had a familiar dusky hue.
    â€œBrewer-street,” said Salutation Harmwell, and followed Mrs Kerridge into the coach.
    There was nothing suspicious about that, of course, or not then. It was not unusual to see a white-skinned woman arm in arm with a well-set-up blackamoor. Dusky gentlemen were rumoured to have certain advantages when it came to pleasing ladies, advantages denied to the men of other races. But I own I was shocked and a little surprised. Mrs Kerridge had seemed so sober, so prim, so old. Why, I thought to myself, she must be forty if she’s a day. Yet when she looked down at Harmwell, her face had been as bright as a girl’s at her first ball.
    I stared after the hackney, wondering what the pair of them were going to do in