Grim Expectations Read online

  Grim Expectations

  The George Dower Trilogy, Volume 3

  K. W. Jeter

  Contents

  The Death of All Held Dear

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  Again, the Urbane Mr Dower

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  A Seaside Idyll

  NINE

  TEN

  The Fires of London

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  About the Author

  To my good friends Fred & Allison Sobotka, with many thanks

  Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made men upright; but they have sought out many inventions.

  Ecclesiastes 7:29

  Part I

  The Death of All Held Dear

  ONE

  A Funeral Goes Badly Wrong

  Often have I thought that undertakers are the happiest of men.

  The opportunity to endure one’s life over again is a dire prospect; but were it to happen, I might well choose the mortuarial trade, in preference to that which I inherited. My father animated that which had been inert, cogged brass and ribboned spirals of baser metal; that I might lay the once-alive into their coffins and then to mouldy earth, would complete the Ouroboric circle he and I shared.

  “Mr Dower…” A voice, dark in timbre, spoke close to my ear. “Everything is to your satisfaction, I trust?”

  The man seemed born to follow behind crêpe-decked hearses, skeletal fingers reverently spidered tip-to-tip; the very caricature of his calling – such was the one who, bending forward in the church aisle, peered at me.

  My words knotted in my throat. She is dead, you heartless mummering bastard – unspoken, but cried out in silence. How satisfied was I expected to be?

  “All is quite…” My own hands clenched to fists in my lap, where they had been folded atop my frayed gloves. “Pleasing.” Life-long cowardice overwhelmed the newly minted rage and grief in my heart. “Your concern, and your services, are appreciated.”

  He smiled – thus again my conviction as to the cheer of undertakers. Who else smiles at funerals? That which marches toward us, however we avert our eyes and thoughts, its measured tread inevitable and invincible – to that corvine breed it is equally certain, but heart-lifting as the clatter of coins dropped in a merchant’s cashbox.

  Of course, I hated the man.

  And I might even have demonstrated as much – at last – despite the reserve characteristic of our English breed. The scent of him summoned my gorge into my throat; as this person’s kind was wont to do, an attempt had been made to mask the acrid scent of those embalming fluids which had over time seeped into his greying flesh, with that musty lavender reminiscent of old ladies’ parlours. Better had he not; the combination of chemical and ancient flower was nearly as appalling, or perhaps even more so, than his obsequious manner. If I had brought my whitened knuckles hard upon his invasive nose, the blow might have been launched by not just anger, but the need to draw an unencumbered breath into my lungs.

  The appearance of an angel, bobbing just beyond the other’s hunched shoulders, forestalled such an attack.

  Cherub, technically; I knew that much. The lack of Christian instruction in my long-fled youth was filled instead by acquaintance with the paintings of those old masters viewed in museum galleries. Often have I gazed upon scenes of saints and their Saviour, and noted the depiction about them of fluttering, chubbish creatures much like that which now hovered closer by.

  “Wondrous little thing, is it not?” Pride sounded in the undertaker’s voice, as he glanced behind and above himself, eyes avidly gleaming at that which I had just spotted. “I do hope you find them to your liking, Mr Dower; they are but recently acquired. This occasion – and a very sorry one it is, I assure you – is their, shall we say, inaugural flight.”

  I was not as entranced by the device as he was; if he had set out to prod me toward either murder or suicide, he could not have more efficiently done so.

  “Indeed. It is… distinctive.” Of course, I could scarcely have said that such an apparition was unprecedented in my experience. The curse that had seemingly been laid upon me in the cradle was that in manhood I would encounter a dismayingly numerous assortment of machinery, the clacking gears of which propelled their aping of human form and motion – or angelic, as in this particular case. Glass eyes have peered into mine, as if they could see as well as those of fleshly creatures; steel-hinged jaws have parted and clapped together again, the leathery bellows in the chests below forcing air past throats strung with violin-gut, emitting words which I must admit were often wiser than mine. Thus our contrivances surpass our own, weaker kind; I take some sullen comfort in the awareness that my encounters along these lines were but the forewarning of that general misery which all Mankind might suffer beneath someday.

  The seraphic construction bumped against the side of the undertaker’s head, as though seeking a kiss upon its painted lips. He drew back, the better to regard the softly ticking thing, allowing it to drift closer to me. I brought my hand up, to bat it away–

  “Take care,” spoke another voice. “My understanding is that the dear little thing is somewhat fragile.”

  I turned about in the pew and found myself gazing into a narrow, boyish face. The Anglican collar below confirmed that the village priest had sat down next to me.

  “My pardon–” I made my reply as stiffly as possible. Why clergymen seek to interrupt one’s obvious grieving with their fatuous chatter is a matter beyond my comprehension. “There wouldn’t be some other duty to which you should be attending, would there?”

  He ignored my suggestion, his gaze drifting toward some unseen prospect.

  “There is, one must admit, some cleverness about them.” A larger and altogether plumper specimen of the pinkly glistening cherubim floated into his purview, as a billowing cloud might grace that horizon on which his attention was fastened. “I looked a bit into the enterprise – well, actually, there was an article in the Times about it. Perhaps a few imparted details would divert your thoughts from their present melancholy course.”

  “Those thoughts, I assure you, are exactly where I wish them to be.” That my interlocutor was not, I attempted to convey by an awkward shifting about of my body, as though the confines of the hard-slabbed pew were pressing cruelly against its occupant’s bones. “If you would be so kind…”

  “We live in an astonishing age–” The Reverend Weebsome – for that was his name; proximity summoned it from the recesses of memory – pressed on. “I am sure you would agree about that.”

  “To be astonished about this age, I would first need to care about it.” One of the cherubs, with its simpering smile, floated closer to my face; I swatted it away with the back of my hand. “Such is not the case.”

  This sour comment prompted a glance from my unwanted companion, away from me and toward the coffin supported on rude wooden trestles between the pews and the church’s altar. The unadorned wood planks of that box, containing the silent deceased, was a reflection of not just the meagre state of my pocketbook, but as well my disdain for pointless show – even if I might have been able to withstand the expense of a grander and more ornate casket, I would likely have foregone its purchase. The village undertaker might have been hopeful of such, but in this he was fated to disappointment. Having despaired of profitable conversation with a grieving widower such as myself, he had retreated to a vestibule at the farther side of the rustic chapel, from which point he busied himself setting aloft more of the pre-pubescent mechanical angels. The effect perceived was very much similar t
o that afforded by one of those itinerant carnivals, which advertise their presence in the rural countryside by releasing colourful paper balloons to the sky, their elevation made possible from the heat of an ignited ball of pitch dangling beneath, and only occasionally setting afire a hayrick or thatched-roof cottage when descending at last to the ground.

  “Of course…” The reverend scarcely allowed my grumbling to interfere with his continued reflections. “These devices do seem to appeal to a regrettably common taste, which is a bit less seemly than what the Church of England might wish to encourage among the parishioners. But then, a mawkish sentimentality has always been a characteristic of the lower classes…” He directed a thin, conspiratorial smile toward me. “I’m sure you have observed as much, Mr Dower.”

  Before I could reply, Weebsome lifted his hand and prodded a fingertip against the pinkly rounded belly of one of the devices drifting just above his head.

  “But then,” he mused, “why would God have made such ingenious creatures of us, if He did not intend for us to make use of those gifts?”

  “This deity of whom you speak…” Against my own will, I rose to the bait of this discourse. “If it indeed exists, also made us remarkably skilled at assassination and general mendacity. You might as well say that we were designed to be lying, thieving bastards, and we have done a fine job of proving ourselves as such.”

  My blasphemy seemed to disturb the man as little as did my general gloomy irritability. Perhaps he was starved for conversation – he possessed some obvious refinement and education, ill-suited for his clerical posting upon the bleak Cornish coast. I had overheard a few of the natives remark, with either derision or superstitious dread, upon his habit of wandering about with his sharp-pointed nose stuck in – of all things! – a book.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Weebsome continued, “if I tell you a little of how they came to be?” By now, the space confined by the church’s buckling ceiling was thronged with an airy flotilla of the infantile angels, propelled in wandering course by the flutter of the mainspring-driven wings mounted on their naked backs. “You especially might find it of interest.”

  “This is the second time you have indicated a desire to impart such information. Short of physical violence, I see no way of dissuading you.”

  “An Irish cleric once achieved a small measure of scandal with a proposal for alleviating the immemorial poverty in that dankly miserable land.” Reverend Weebsome launched into his exposition. “Perhaps you might even have stumbled upon it, in those journals of which you are most fond.”

  “I read little for pleasure,” was my comment, “and even less for enlightenment.”

  “Not altogether a foolish course to pursue, Mr Dower – the author was by all accounts a scurrilous and mocking fellow. He advanced the proposal – the satirical intent of which was not so obvious, that everyone was able to perceive it – that the surfeit of the Irish population, and their consequent general destitution, could be mitigated by regarding their infants rather more as comestibles than as children.”

  “Indeed. I have heard something of this sort before. The supposed humour escapes me.”

  “As for many, I assure you. This fellow accomplished little but to make himself even less esteemed than before – but that was perhaps what he had desired all along. Humanity has among its numbers more than a few who strive for their fellow man’s disdain.”

  “How they must envy me, then.” Not for the first time did I make this observation. “I have managed to achieve a great deal along those lines, with hardly any effort expended at all.”

  “You flatter yourself, Mr Dower, if you fancy this Irish dean was less reviled than yourself. Much of this particular writing I mention was given over to the supposed succulence of Irish infants, and recommendations as to the most appetizing ways to prepare the dishes containing them. I fear this is where the bounds of good taste were exceeded; whatever propensity for cannibalism there is among the educated English public, it would likely be, as with so many of our other vices, one that is enjoyed discreetly.”

  “No doubt,” I said. “Our aristocracy has had centuries to cultivate the loathsomeness of its eccentricities. But I fail to see the subject’s relevance to our present situation.”

  Which had become perceptibly more dire, even as we had conversed. The undertaker had taken his responsibilities to what seemed a maniacal level – from the narrow alcove in which he had stationed himself, increasing aerial phalanxes of those damnable clockwork cherubs had taken flight. The sombrely dressed figure had another brass-bound chest behind him, adorned with bills of lading from a London commercial shipping firm, which I had failed to discern before. With its lid flung back, he rummaged through the fibrous wood wool, extracting ever more of the winged figures; possessed of some innate buoyancy, they seemed to almost leap upward from their confinement, so that all he needed to do was wind the machinery at their backs, then turn about and release them, as a pigeon fancier might with his homing flock.

  The result hung ominously close above our heads. It is one thing to see a few, or even a dozen or so, artificial cherubim fluttering around – but altogether quite a more dismaying phenomenon to witness the closely massed ranks roiling above us now. An observer of a more credulous and spiritual disposition might well have supposed that war had commenced in the nursery division of Heaven, its inhabitants butting each other head to naked bum, fixedly smiling and simpering as they squabbled for primacy against the ceiling.

  I was not their only observer – in the church’s doorway were clustered a number of the local villagers, who had come here not out of any respect for myself or the deceased, but in the expectation of those alcoholic spirits which were by tradition dispensed at christenings and funerals. They scarcely seemed in need of such infusion; the gaping mouths and blinking confusion in their upturned faces, as they goggled at the minuscule angels, signalled that they credited this apparition more to their own drunkenness than to divine intervention in their affairs. At their back stood two sturdier individuals, shovels in hand and clothes daubed with damp clay and muck, having freshly returned from digging the appropriate hole in the graveyard next the church. A bit more sober, having spent their time labouring rather than drinking, they observed all that was happening with some degree of skeptical disdain, complete with whispered comments in each other’s ear, and subsequent guffawing laughter.

  “There is admittedly a slight connection,” riposted the Reverend Weebsome, “but a true one, nevertheless. The Irish cleric might well have been jesting when he wrote of stewing and fricasseeing the children of the wretched poor – but they exist in fact, do they not?”

  “Ever so,” I allowed. “But it is my own wretched poverty that has been the greatest concern throughout my life. And as such, it has left little time to reflect upon others’ hardships.”

  “As it has been wisely written, Mr Dower, The poor are always with us. The corollary being that their deceased infants are as well – so if one wishes to search out dead babies, one needn’t travel as far as Ireland; we have enough of them close at hand.”

  “I little doubt it. Your reminding me of that dismal fact, at a moment when others might well have left me to my private mourning, gives rise to some concern about the propriety of your interest in these matters.”

  “Be that as it may.” The Reverend Weebsome indicated little response to my chiding comment; settling back into the pew, he increased his comfort and lessened my own, as he continued in the mode of a Sunday afternoon lecturer at some posh London gallery. “Often before, it had been noted by persons of a certain – shall we say? – necrophiliac curiosity, that unembalmed corpses delayed from burial, either by neglect or intent, would take on grossly distended proportions due to the gaseous vapours produced in their decomposition.” The individual sitting beside me took an unseemly relish in expanding upon these details. “Stories of ghastly explosions were commonly bruited about, the abdomens of the deceased splitting asunder and releasing a na
useating stench. If a candle had been left flickering nearby, even worse might be the case, with the fumes igniting in a ball of flame sufficient to throw bystanders upon their backs, denuded of eyebrows and any other facial hair.”

  “Good God, man.” Even more appalled than before, I shrank back from him. “At a time such as this, do you really think–”

  I had scarce enough time to voice that much objection, before the reverend pressed on with his obsessions. While he had been speaking, a greater number of the rustic onlookers had entered into the church, the better to gape open-mouthed at the throng of tiny mechanical angels above their heads. So little happens in these remote parts of the British Isles, each day being but a soggy reminder of those gone before, that any novelty at all evokes a stupefying fascination in its observers – and certainly these cherubim with ticking, fluttering wings were more than sufficient in that regard.

  “A merciful Providence,” continued Weebsome, “had always before ensured that the sour emissions of the dead were not sufficiently buoyant to lift them bodily into the air, while still pent within their frames; any such mounting toward the heavens would still await the end times promised to the faithful. That changed, as so much does, with the unforeseen import upon our island’s shores of novel creatures from foreign lands, as the black plague is thought by learned doctors to have been introduced to Europe by rats swarming down the hawsers that tethered merchant vessels in those northern harbours, holds filled with silks and tea from sultry Asian latitudes. The fleas in the vermin’s fur held the pestilence in their minute forms, scarcely bigger than black poppy-seeds; how great a consequence from such tiny specks!”

  I was distracted by the jostling bodies surrounding us. There seemed so many of them, all possessed of an excitement increased in no small degree by the liquors which they had already consumed, that I was concerned that in their agitation they might topple over the trestle-mounted coffin of which I had lost sight. As I rose from the pew, to ascertain if such were the case, the Reverend Weebsome was bold enough to seize me by the arm and drag me back down next to him.