FORTY-SEVEN
The cottage was as cluttered as ever. Not only with newspapers of every stripe, dating back ten years or more (he would get around to preparing and filing cuttings one day, he promised himself) but also the apparatus and materials for chemical experiments long forgotten or abandoned. There were also boxes of proprietary medicines, a complete set of the Illustrated London News and other periodicals stretching back forty years or more, four pipe racks, with an assortment of occupants, not one but two violin cases – although only one actually contained an instrument – and the evidence of recent meals, in the form of uncleared trays.
Still, the girl was due in the next day. At least the crumbs and half-eaten chops would be disposed of, even if the rest was beyond her. As it was him. This was, he thought, truly the end of days. The flashes of inspiration at the Zeppelin had been welcome, but an anomaly. All too often his waking hours were spent existing in a fog of half-remembered intentions.
He knew his faculties were dimmed. Had known it from the moment when his intellect had first failed him. No, failed was too strong a word. There had been blanks in his thought process, infinitesimal little moments where his brain had thought of . . . nothing. He doubted anyone would notice even now. But he knew they were there. It was like a conductor homing in on a horn player who was a fraction of a second behind the metre or a mechanic hearing the tiniest misfire of an engine. Most people wouldn’t be able to detect anything wrong, but a specialist could. And his brain had always been his special instrument.
Pride had stopped him telling even Watson that this was the real reason for his retirement. He had not wanted to see out his days with diminishing powers. Better to pretend the bees were the sole attraction.
He was sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in a woollen shawl, contemplating tea, when there came a knock at the door. He was always careful to leave a path through the accumulations of his bachelorhood, but the ease that the fire gave his joints was terribly difficult to abandon. Still, a second persistent knock sealed matters and he creaked to his feet.
‘One moment!’ he tried to shout, his voice, about as forceful as a rustle from the dried leaves that lay on his lawn, letting him down again. He cleared his throat and filled his chest with air on the third strike of the knocker. ‘Have some patience! I am coming.’
The latch resisted his first groping efforts, and when it broke free, the door flew open in his hand. The startled telegraph boy took a step back when he saw the sallow, unshaven face, the white hair that needed a good trim and the yellowing teeth that populated the smile. He confirmed that the old man was the intended recipient, presented the telegram and, once it had been removed from his grip, he turned to go.
‘Just a moment, young Hargreaves,’ the old man said.
The lad froze before spinning to face the doorway once more. ‘Sir?’
‘Your mother is a fine seamstress,’ he said. It wasn’t a question.
‘Yes, sir. She is.’
He pointed to the boy’s name, elaborately stitched above the pocket of his red jacket. Both it and the trousers had been well tailored for the lad, but the stitching was the real clue to the mother’s proficiency with a needle. ‘That’s Bulgarian embroidery. Haven’t seen that in an age. Hold on.’ From the fluff and debris in his waistcoat pocket he fetched a sixpence and handed it to the boy. ‘Here. At least it’s not bad news,’ he said, holding up the telegram.
‘Yes, sir.’ Young Hargreaves, too, could tell from the bulk of the message that it wasn’t one of those terse bringers of terrible grief that were often his lot to deliver. It had taken some getting used to, how his mere appearance in a lane could cause a ripple of fear through the households. A red-coated harbinger of misery, one of them had called him. Young as he was, he sometimes felt like death itself, stalking the land, a stealer of innocent young souls. ‘Lot of bad news about.’
‘A lot,’ the old man agreed with a sage nod, as if he understood his burden. ‘Off you go, Hargreaves.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
He watched the boy remount his red bicycle and pedal off back to the post office where, no doubt, there were more grim tidings waiting to be distributed.
The old man went back inside, slamming the door behind him and taking his place back at the fireside. Even the brief exposure to the outside had numbed his fingers. He had noticed it when he had been preparing the hives for overwintering. His circulation simply wasn’t what it had been. He rubbed his hands together before opening the envelope of the telegram.
He read it carefully. As he did so, he felt like an engine starting up. He read it again, and now the pistons were pumping, the valves nicely oiled. His cranium hummed with power. A warmth other than that from the coals and seasoned wood in his grate spread through him. He stroked his chin. My goodness, he needed a shave. And perhaps a haircut. Simpson & Son in the High Street would fit him in. Not quite Truefitt, but highly serviceable.
A third read of the staccato message, and now a plan formed. What he would wear, where he would go, what approach to take when he got there. Well done, Watson, for cracking the code. Although it was schoolboy-simple. Still, it had been easier for his pride for him to dress it up like that, eking out the apology for his boorish behaviour one letter at a time, than put the whole thing down in one solid mea culpa. And how had Watson rewarded him for his deviance?
Why, perfectly.
He stood with a speed that made his head swim. He steadied himself and bounded over the piles of newspapers to stand before the bowing shelves of the bookcase where, for the first time in many a month, he reached for his Bradshaw. His fingers had almost touched it when he felt a snapping sensation in his back. What felt like a jet of liquid pain shot down his thigh and he felt his right leg wobble and collapse completely, sending a fragile old man sprawling across the stone-flagged floor.