The embarrassment of his riches made Spencer absurdly generous, and wanting to share a little of the day’s joy he emptied his pockets into the man’s upturned hat. The weight of the coins dented the shabby felt; the man raised it level with his eyes, peering as if suspecting a practical joke, then, evidently satisfied, bared a row of superb teeth in a grin. ‘Looks like I can knock off for the day then, don’t it?’ He reached behind his stone perch for a low wooden trolley on four iron wheels, and with a practised movement swung himself into it, and drawing on a pair of leather gauntlets to protect his palms propelled himself deftly towards the pavement. The trolley, Spencer saw, was extremely well-made, with designs of knot-work cut into it: a Celtic warrior felled in battle might have been content with such a vehicle, so that whatever natural pity he might have felt for the man’s infirmity seemed an affront.
‘Fancy a look, then?’ With a lift of his chin the man indicated the gaping ruin of the house behind, conveying the impression that he held authority over its broken walls. ‘Worst of the earthquake, this, and a danger to life and limb if you ask me, which no-one ever does; but there’s such a wrangling in the law courts they can’t settle who’s to foot the bill, and meanwhile there’s barn owls in the dining room.’ Negotiating a pair of fallen marble slabs on which the remains of Roman lettering were gathering moss, the man led Spencer to the threshold of the house. Much of the front wall had sheared away, leaving the rooms and staircases exposed. Nothing was left but what could not be reached or looted: the lower floors were empty, save for immense carpets in which violets had seeded themselves and grew dense as a mattress, concealing coy blue flowers. On the upper levels paintings and trinkets remained: something silver glinted on the windowsill and at the head of the staircase a chandelier’s crystal drops might have been polished that morning for the night’s events.
‘Quite a sight, isn’t it? Look on my works ye mighty and despair, and what have you.’
‘You ought really to sell tickets at the door,’ said Spencer, hoping to spot the barn owl: ‘Surely every passer-by wants a look.’
‘They do, Mr Spencer: but they are not always given it.’ This voice was not a man’s, soft with Essex vowels and coming from below, but was that of a woman, and a London one at that. Spencer would’ve known it anywhere, and when he turned away from the ruin he knew he was blushing, but could not prevent it.
‘Martha. You are here.’
‘And so, I see, are you; and you’ve met my old friend?’ Martha reached down, smiling, and grasped the cripple’s hand. He shook it, and shook also his well-filled hat – ‘Enough here for a leg or two, I reckon!’; then with a gesture of farewell began to wheel himself home.
‘There is no barn owl. He only says it to please the tourists.’
‘Well: it certainly pleased me.’
‘Everything pleases you, Spencer!’ She wore a blue jacket, and over her shoulder hung a leather bag from which protruded several peacock’s feathers. In her left hand she held a white magazine, and on it Spencer saw An Englishwoman’s Review of Social and Industrial Questions printed in elaborate black type. Trying his hand at gallantry, he said, ‘Well: seeing you pleases me, at least,’ but of all women Martha was the last to approve such a ploy. She raised an eyebrow, and rolling up the magazine struck him on the arm.
‘Enough of all that: come and see Cora. She’ll be so glad you came. The Imp is with you, I suppose?’
‘He is reading up on paralysis, and what to do about it, but he’ll join us later.’
‘Good: I want to speak to you about something’ – she shook the magazine – ‘and it is impossible to be serious about anything with that man in the room. How was the journey?’
‘A child cried from Liverpool Street to Chelmsford, and only stopped when Garrett told him he’d lose all the water from his body, shrivel up, and be dead by Manningtree.’
Martha snorted. ‘How either you or Cora can stand his company is a mystery to me. Is this your hotel?’ She surveyed the pale fa?ade of the George, and its hanging-baskets. ‘We’re at the Red Lion, a little further on: I didn’t think we’d stay so long, only Francis has taken a liking to the landlord, and so life has been calm of late. Feathers are the latest fad: you’d think he was trying to make himself a pair of wings, though there’s not much angelic about that boy.’
‘And Cora – is she well?’
‘I’ve never known her happier, though sometimes she remembers she ought not to be, and puts on her black dress, and sits in the window looking like an artist’s idea of grief.’ They passed a flower-seller closing her stall for the night, and selling daffodils by the armful for a penny. Retrieving the last coin or two from his pockets, Spencer relieved her of her stock, and clasping a dozen bunches of the yellow blooms said: ‘Let’s take spring to Cora. We’ll fill up her rooms and she’ll forget she was ever sad about anything.’ He glanced quickly at his companion, afraid he’d spoken out of turn: perhaps it was best to keep up the pretence of a decent woman decently mourning.
But Martha said, smiling, ‘She’ll thank you for it, too; all month she’s been going out walking looking for signs of spring, and coming home muddy and bad-tempered; then one day there it was, on the stroke of noon, as if someone had summoned it.’
‘And has Essex yielded any fossils? I saw in the papers some new species was unearthed up on the Norfolk coast after a winter storm: sometimes I think we must be walking on shoals of bodies without realising it and all the earth’s a graveyard.’ Spencer, who rarely voiced his flights of whimsy, flushed a little and prepared for one of Martha’s parries, but none came.
‘A toadstone or two, she says, but nothing more. But she has high hopes for the Essex Serpent – look: here we are.’ A little distance on, Spencer saw a timber-framed inn from which hung an iron sign emblazoned with a red lion rampant.
‘The Essex Serpent?’ said Spencer, glancing down as if expecting to see an adder on the pavement.
‘It’s all she talks about these days – didn’t she write to the Imp, and tell him? Some legend kept going by village idiots, about a winged snake seen coming out of the estuary and menacing villages on the coast. She’s got it into her head it’s one of these dinosaurs they say might’ve survived extinction – did you ever hear the like?’ They’d reached the threshold of the inn, and saw through its thick mottled panes of glass a fire in the hearth. There was a strong scent of spilled beer, and a joint roasting somewhere out of sight. ‘What can you expect, of poor country folk who can’t read or write?’ Her Londoner’s contempt was magnificent, taking in the spire of St Nicholas, and the paltriness of the earthquake, and the Red Lion, and everyone in it. ‘But Cora has a hive of bees in her bonnet: she says it’s likely a living fossil – she will tell you the names for them: I can never remember – and she’s determined to seek it out.’
‘Garrett always says she’ll not rest easy until her name’s on the wall in the British Museum,’ said Spencer. ‘I can believe it might happen, too.’
At the doctor’s name Martha snorted, and pushed open the door. ‘Come up to our rooms, and see Francis: he’ll remember you, and won’t mind your coming.’
Luke, arriving late having attempted to replicate a human vertebra in papier-maché, found his friends seated on a thinning rug, their clothes studded all over with feathers. In a window-seat Martha turned the pages of a magazine, and watched Francis silently threading feathers from gulls and crows through the weave of Spencer’s coat until he looked like an angel dismayed by its fall. Cora had come off relatively lightly, with a peacock plume sticking up from the back of her dress and the contents of a pillow dusting her shoulders. No-one noticed the Imp arrive, so that he turned and re-entered noisily – ‘What is going on? Have I come to the insane asylum? Where are my wings then, or must I be earth-bound – Cora, I have brought you books. Spencer, get me something to drink – you have something on your coat.’
Cora, giving a little yell of delight, leaped up and kissed the newcomer on each cheek, holding him at arm’s length: ‘You’ve come! Have you grown? Half an inch at – no that was cruel, I’m sorry, only you’re late, you know. Frankie, say hello (Francis has a new hobby as you see, and we’re all being very patient about it). You remember Luke?’ The boy did not look up, but sensing a change of air to which he had not agreed began silently to retrieve each fallen feather from the carpet, counting in reverse.
‘Three hundred and seventy-six – three hundred and seventy-five – three hundred and seventy-four …’