The Edge of the Crowd. Ross Gilfillan

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ I don’t. Pardon me, guv’nor, but if anything sounds like wasting tin, it’s this. Properties cost money – and I suppose there would be costumes, and all?’

      ‘I thought, John, that as you are so handy at sewing, we might save …’

      ‘Oh, your needle-woman as well, am I? And then we’re to frame these pictures and give ’em away to folk who will pop ’em to uncle the first chance they has, I suppose?’

      ‘They will not be pawned, they will be treasured, John. My Accurate Scenes from the Bible – I think I shall call them that – will have threefold advantages. Firstly, they will be morally efficacious. Secondly, the use of property and costume will be excellent preparation for the grander projects I have in mind. And thirdly – and most importantly from your point of view, it seems – they will make us money.’

      ‘I don’t believe it, guv’nor.’

      ‘Mr Rutter assures me it will be so.’

      ‘What’s Holy Harry to do with this? That villain ain’t settled his account yet and after I was half a day getting a picture of hisself as he liked. And ’is good Lord knows how many prints we did for his congregation.’

      ‘Mr Rutter was admiring the study I did of Mrs Langham, the actress. He remarked how like Jezebel she appeared to him. It was the inspiration for the improving photographs we shall produce. Mr Rutter will provide the themes and the market. If we must continually talk of money, you might see this as a sound investment, John. Safer than reg’lar investments such as the 3d Consols.’

      ‘And what’s Mr Rutter want ’em for?’

      ‘He may display them in his meeting house for the edification of his congregation. Or they might be employed as aids to his teaching. There is no saying with a non-conformist. But he has all but promised to buy whatever I can produce. That is the difference. These pictures are already sold. They will not drain our resources which, I regret, would very much be the case if I allowed you to pursue your own plans.’

      ‘Allowed me? To do what I want in my own time, using only as much paper and chemicals as wouldn’t be missed?’

      ‘It isn’t the sort of thing that the firm of Touchfarthing, Photographer, should be involved with. Not if it’s to be Touchfarthing and Partner.’

      ‘And that’s flat, is it?’

      ‘That is as it must be, John. It will be best if you learn to accept my guidance in these matters.’

      ‘I may very well have to review the nature of our relationship, Mr Touchfarthing,’ said John Rankin, picking up the tray of tea things. ‘And you can warm the bed as best you can tonight, for I’m going to sleep in the shop. I bid you a very good night.’

      Rankin picked up and dusted off the costume worn by Touchfarthing that day. In the back of the house, he wrapped it in a parcel of brown paper which he tied up with string. When Touchfarthing was heard to mount the stairs, he returned to the studio and carried away the tray of tea things, which he washed up at the scullery sink. He lifted a great grey cat from a chair and deposited it beyond the back door, where he stood, allowing the cool evening air to calm his mood. He took his pipe from the deep recess of his coat pocket and stuffed the bowl with a little coarse tobacco. The sun had set but a thin grey light persisted. Nearby, hooves clattered and wheels squeaked as broughams and cabs ran up by the house in order to avoid the congestion of Oxford Street. Hard by the back wall, footsteps and laughter were abruptly stilled by the closing of a door. Further off, from the direction of St Giles, a child or a woman screamed and a man shouted a drunken oath. Rankin smoked his pipe, and listened.

      When he had finished, he knocked the bowl against the heel of his shoe, muttered, ‘Blow you, Mr T.,’ and went back inside. He bolted the back door top and bottom and lit the candle that was kept upon the greasy dresser before making his way to the front of the house. From the room above came the creaking of bedsprings as Cornelius Touchfarthing prepared himself for sleep. He checked the lock of the front door and peered over the half-curtain at the arrangement of framed photographs in the shop window. The door, warped in its frame, required a sharp shove to open and it was not unusual for this sudden vibration to topple the lines of matrons and children and clerks and ministers like so many tin soldiers. This evening his regiment was all stood to attention and Rankin was turning towards his makeshift bed behind the counter, a frequent place of resort after a difference with his partner, when his attention was taken by a person beyond the glass, on the far side of the street. The person in question had stopped, retraced his steps and turned to look directly at the shop. He might have been staring directly at Rankin himself had the photographer’s assistant not known that he was as shrouded in shadows as the man’s eyes were hidden by tinted spectacles. For a moment Rankin was perplexed. He thought he might know the man, though from quite where he couldn’t say. Then he snapped his fingers.

      ‘’Ullo, old chap. I recall you now, I do,’ he murmured. ‘And just what is it that you might be arter, I wonder?’

       4 An Imperfect Image

       The Times, London. August 10th, 1851. Last evening, the bridge at Vauxhall being made an impassable beargarden by a collision between a brick-maker’s wagon and that of a corn factor, and this mishap causing a knife-board bus to overturn and spill its passengers, revellers were obliged to look about for some other means of traversing the River. Not only was the bridge blocked to wheeled traffic: the overturned bus, a dying horse and returning Exhibition hordes tramping over a carpet of fresh grain had stopped access from the Surrey shore for everyone, not excepting some medical men called to attend to the injured passengers.

      Great millstones of cloud had been rolling across the heavens since late afternoon, presaging the rain that now fell in glass shards and making the scene by the Thames more akin to a November’s night than a late summer’s eve. The deep gloom was relieved only by a luminescence emanating from the environs of the Crystal Palace, which reflected faintly upon the river and also on the darkened spectacles of Henry Hilditch.

      The day had not been used well. Had he visited Vauxhall Gardens only yesterday instead, he might have arrived at the river in better humour. From a journalist’s point of view the expedition should have been a successful one. It should have been no less so from a scientist’s: the information that Henry turned into spirited prose for the Morning Messenger he prepared in more objective form for his ambitious work-in-progress, an entomological study of the working classes. At Vauxhall there had been sufficient data to satisfy the needs of either case.

      Here at noon he had found the army of waiters and workmen who nightly serviced the raffish crowds in their supper boxes or brought watered negus to those who danced. Hard-worked and poorly paid, the views of these men would make compelling fare for a readership whose letters to the editor already betrayed its fear of the volatile mob. But as Henry had sauntered the length of the South Walk beneath unlit lanterns hung from trees, in the wake of a young couple who walked arm in arm, he could not help thinking of the vacancy in his own heart. Once again he had the impression that, for a little while not so long ago, he had been a different man.

      He spoke to no one and made no notes. The afternoon had been wasted and, annoyed at his laxity, he wished only to return to his lodgings with all speed. Vexed at the sudden obstruction of his route and ill-prepared for the sudden change in the weather, Hilditch hailed a ferryman whose craft he had spied tethered beneath the iron supports of the bridge.

      This СКАЧАТЬ