♦ INBREEDING ♦
“Soho Square,” says Ned.
The chairman eyes the bonnet, skirts, flounces. He is a tall and singularly ugly fellow, his head close-cropped and disproportionately small. There are tufts of hair growing out of his ears. “Oy’m sowwy, Madame, but this conweyance is spoken for,” he says.
“You stupid ass,” growls Ned. “Can’t you see it’s me?”
The man takes hold of Ned’s arm, preventing him from stepping into the compartment. “Me ‘oo?”
“Me. The gentleman what owns them fish eggs on the seat there.”
The chairman looks hard at Ned’s bustline, the frilly ribbon tied under his chin, the curls trailing down his back. Then he glances at the basket of fish eggs and back again. He looks confused. “ ‘Ey Bob,” he calls, and his co-worker peeks out from behind the rear of the conveyance. “Was it a gennelman we ‘auled over ‘ere from St. James’s, or am Oy in fear of me sanity?”
Bob is short and moonfaced, with high-set ears and a fringe of orange hair that gives him the look of a neutered cat. “That’s royt,” he says. “An elderly gent, somewhat lame. ‘Ee was all decked out in a three-corner ‘at and wig and such — like they useter wear in me granddad’s day.”
“Ye see?” says the crophead. “It’s like Oy told ye, Madame — the conweyance is otherwise occupied.”
A carriage rattles up the street and splashes the side of the compartment with dung. Two blocks down a baby falls from a window.
“But that’s what I’m trying to tell you!” shouts Ned. “That gentleman is me.”
Bob looks suspicious, crophead puzzled.
“I’ve changed my clothes in the shop, don’t you see?”
No response.
“Look: think of it this way. A man is invited to a costume ball. He hires a sedan chair—”
“Aye,” says crophead, nodding vigorously.
“—in St. James’s Square, and takes it over to Monmouth Street — Rose’s Old Clothes, to be exact — gives the chairman half a crown to mind his basket, then enters the shop, purchases a lady’s outfit, changes into it, and hops back in the sedan chair ready to shoot off to the costume ball — disguised as a lady.”
“Gawn!” scoffs Bob.
“Yeah,” adds crophead. “ ‘Oo’d do a thing like that?”
“All right: fuck you both, then,” Ned snarls, lashing out with his parasol and springing into the compartment.
“But Mistress,” pleads the crophead, “Oy appeals to yer sense o’ fair play. A gennelman give us arf a crown to ‘old the chair for ‘im and to mind ‘is basket o’ fish eggs. Now wot are we going to tell that gennelman should ‘ee come out o’ the shop and see that ye’ve ‘propriated ‘is eggs and ‘is conweyance both?”
Ned motions the man closer, takes hold of his elbow and whispers in his ear. “I’ll level with you,” he says “ — this is a very delicate situation here. You see, I’m the lady friend of the gentleman in the shop, and we don’t want to be seen together for fear his wife should hear of it. Now: he’s left these fish eggs as a special present for me and he’s slipped on out the back way to meet me at his flat for what the French call an assignation.”
The man scratches his head.
“We call it ‘dipping the wick.’ “
The man breaks out in a grin. “Woy didn’t ye say so?. ‘Ey Bob — she says she’s ‘is konkabine then.”
Bob’s voice is distant and faint, emanating from somewhere on the far side of the chair. “Well, I guess it’s all royt then.”
“Aye,” says crophead. “Guess it’s all royt.”
“Soho Square,” says Ned.
♦ THE HEART OF DARKNESS ♦
The woods. Dark and deep. Two figures squat over an anemic flame, roasting meat. Lions roar, and lightning plays over the horizon like the flicker of ideas.
“So tell me, Mr. Park, if I ain’t gettin’ too personal, just what it is you see in this explorin’ business anyhow? I mean you been starved and abused, sick with the ague and the fever, your clothes is in rags, half your goods is gone and your horse is layin’ over there in the bushes like it ain’t never goin’ to get up again.”
“I’m glad you asked me that, Johnson. You see — my lord that smells good. What did you say it was?”
“Paw pads of the jackal. Only thing the vultures won’t touch.”
“Hmp. Learn something new every day. . Anyway, I’m the eighth of thirteen. Know what that means?”
Johnson looks up from the skewered bits of meat. “You’re consumed with a almost demonic obsession to prove yourself?”
“Exactly.”
“And all the regular avenues is closed — you bein’ a Scotsman and your father only a crofter. So you can’t enter politics or take a commission in the army or hobnob with the elite in their drawin’ rooms and clubs—”
“Uh-huh.”
“So what else is there? You rely on your courage and stamina and you go off to fathom the unknown and then come back a hero. Right?”
“Yes — but there’s more to it than that. I want to know the unknowable, see the unseen, scale mountains and look behind the stars. I want to fill in the maps, lecture the geographers, hold up a torch for the academicians.
The Niger. . think of it, Johnson. No white man has ever laid eyes upon it. I’ll have seen what none of them have — not the Laird of Dumfries, nor Charles Fox, nor the King himself.”
“All well and good,” shouts Johnson over the protestations of a nearby lion. “But you got to get to it first, and then you got to backtrack all this long way we come already — with all your notes and faculties intact, not to mention your lights and limbs. .”
But wait: what’s all this noise in the bushes? They’ve been so engrossed in their discussion they haven’t paid it any mind — but yes, come to mention it, bushes have been swaying and leaves rattling — steadily — for the past few minutes now. The realization grips them like a seizure: words choke in their throats, their limbs go heavy, ears leap. A twig snaps, the leaves rush, and suddenly explorer and guide are on their feet, the one clenching a thorny cudgel, and the other brandishing an engraved dueling pistol. There’s a moment of silence, and then the movement begins again — unmistakable — coming right for them. Leopard, lion, wolf, they think. Or worse: Dassoud! “Come on out of there!” Mungo shouts. “Be you man or hyena!”
Lightning breaks the sky, thunder rolls in the hills. Johnson swallows hard and tries to steady the pistol. And then, with a sudden dramatic swish, the bushes part — to reveal the stooped and wizened old soothsayer from Jarra. The dead guinea hen still hangs from his neck, half plucked, limp and stinking. ‘‘Wamba reebo jekenek,’’ he says, his bags and wrinkles attempting a sort of grin. ‘‘Bobo keemboo.’“
A moment later the old man is squatting between explorer and guide, bony knees and cracked feet, snuffing the skewer and jabbering like an ape come down from the trees. “What a night! Lions trying to chase the moon. Hear that one? Close by, eh? Hee-hee. Hm, meat smells good. I know how to cook meat, bet your life. Used to, anyway. Now I’m alone and friendless, terrible calamity. Did you know? Going my way by any chance?”
“What calamity?” Johnson asks, and the old man, waiting his opening, launches a windy narrative embellished by the geriatric gesture and punctuated by the creak of rusted joints. His name, it seems, is Abah Eboe — or Ebah Aboe — the explorer can’t decide which. He had been separated from the other refugees during a skirmish with Mansong’s army. On hearing that the fugitive Jarrans had crossed into Bambarra seeking asylum, Mansong had apparently decided that the time was ripe for collecting a little tribute — a squatter’s fee. He appeared around a bend in the road, enormous, mounted on a baby elephant and surrounded by eighty or a hundred potbellied warriors in leopard skins and ostrich plumes. A jilli kea, or singing man, preceded him, howling out his demands. The long queue of refugees came to a halt. Yambo, the Jarran chieftain, made his way to the front and protested that his people had been loyal to Mansong during the war with Tiggitty Sego and that the loss of their village and all their goods was calamity enough. They threw themselves on the mercy of the wise and charitable potentate of Bambarra.