The Book of Fires

18
Mr. Blacklock does not dine with us at noon today, but remains in the workshop for a reason that he does not choose to share. He has been in a grim mood all morning. Mary Spurren is boiling pickle at the hob.
Returning to my bench, I pull up short outside the closed door, my hand frozen at the latch.
“Bastards!” he is shouting. “Damn those bastards! Damn their . . .” and then his voice drops to an ominous murmur and I cannot catch what he is saying. I shrink from the door in shock. I can hear his footsteps crunching on broken glass. After some moments, my concern becomes anxiety that he may find me standing here, eavesdropping on his solitary rage.
I inch back to the kitchen and close the door again. The smell of vinegar is choking. Mary Spurren is wiping the rims of filled pickle pots with a rag.
She cannot think what might have caused his outburst, she says, when I tell her, her big head tilted loftily. “And yet, I knows his patterns. I knows he feels things more than a man should, and that this creates in him a confined storminess that must get out.” She shrugs. “Daresay it will pass.”
She begins stretching leather over the pots.
It is only later that I remember that Mr. Blacklock was not alone. Joe Thomazin was sitting there beside the stove at the back of the room, as he almost always is. Joe Thomazin must understand John Blacklock more than any other being does. He must know his moods, his habits, his breaking points, his wishes. He is like his shadow or familiar, always beside him, always silent, taking things in. If he could speak, how much he could say!
I do not know John Blacklock, not at all.


“It does not do,” Mrs. Blight says, shaking her head so that her chin wobbles, “to talk unguarded in the company of your employer.” She takes a handful of herrings left over on a plate and gobbles them down. “I’ve been hearing all sorts.”
“Why should that be? ” I ask, uneasily. I think of the time that I asked Mr. Blacklock about his wife, and I am sure he did not mind. “You have heard what sort of things? ”
Mrs. Blight shakes her head and laughs, her open mouth filled with fish. “She who treats her words with a certain economy must also possess a mark of efficiency in household matters. Doesn’t chatter: therefore doesn’t waste soap nor candles. ’Tis logic.” She stops chewing to push out a fishbone between her teeth.
“Don’t overstep no marks nor boundaries. That’s the rules. Right, Mary?” Mary Spurren looks over slyly then, and Mrs. Blight licks herring from the corner of her lips. “Though there are some who might find it of benefit to speak out a little more at table.” I do not reply to this, though I know she finds my silence an irritation to her.
“A funny setup it is here,” she goes on. “All together at noon like we were a family. It’s not right. I gets uneasy over it.” She lowers her voice and bares her discolored teeth.
“John Blacklock is eccentric,” she hisses. “Only yesterday I was speaking out with Mrs. Spicer in the shop and she told me how she sees his lights just going on burning for most of every night.” She taps her head significantly. “And what can he be doing! She sees it, she says, when she gets up to use the pot or fetch a compress for Mr. Spicer, who has his ailment still.”
“What is it to do with her?” I ask hotly. “His business is his own, whatever time of night it is.”
Mary Spurren looks up.
“Must be them chemicals,” Mrs. Blight goes on. “Since I got here I’ve always said you should watch out with them, they was not healthy. Only have to look at the ends of his fingers to know that. And God knows what they does to his insides; just hear him coughing of a morning.” She glances at my fingers suddenly. “Mind you, Agnes has got yellow skin, too, now. Look at that!” She grabs at my hand with her wet fingers and holds it up. “Devil’s toys, those squibs and rockets! Not natural. Though I see you take to them well enough.”
Mary Spurren slams the door when she goes out to the pump in Mallow Square, though I cannot see why. Without thinking, I press at my stomach in discomfort.
“Indigestion again, is it, Agnes?” Mrs. Blight says, but I don’t reply.
“By the by, I brought ’em in for you,” she adds, nodding at a stack of pamphlets on the high dresser.
“Thank you,” I say. I doubt that I will read them.