Dido and Pa Read online

  With a kind of pecking bow, the servant lifted down a scroll that hung on the crimson-papered wall and laid it on the table in front of his master.

  ‘And the ink, Boletus; and a pen. Aha; there still remains the Archbishop; and the Lord Chief Justice — no, that was Tipstaff; the Home Secretary, Lord Raven; and the valet – what is his name?’

  ‘MacTavish, my lord.’

  ‘He must certainly go. Now, who are these? Battersea, who is Battersea?’

  ‘The duke, my lord; he is Master of the King’s Garlandries; I am informed that he has been at various times in conference with his majesty –’

  ‘Ahem,’ said the Margrave coldly.

  ‘I ask your pardon, sir; I should of course say, with the Pretender.’

  ‘Indeed. Then he must be disposed of. And who is this Dido Twite? The name Twite is faintly familiar –’

  ‘Er – excuse me, your excellency – your lordship’s Chapelmaster, Herr Bredalbane –’

  ‘Ah, so. Who, then, is Dido? A connection?’

  ‘That I do not know. But I understand, my lord, that she is a young person who was – who was in some way involved in halting the St Paul’s plot; furthermore she spent some time with the ki – with the Pretender, and carried his train at the ceremony.’

  ‘Humph! Where is Bredalbane?’

  ‘At hand, my lord.’

  The servant assisted his master in putting on a pair of grey silk stockings and shoes with diamond buckles. The Margrave flicked a crumb from his velvet lapel and strolled to the window.

  Cinnamon Court, built in an L-shape, had one wing at right-angles to the river, and the garden lay in the L. The Margrave could see spires, chimneys, cranes, and masts, appearing like the tips of trees out of the fog. Tideborne barges went silently past; the river was full and ran swiftly; the rattle of a chain could sometimes be heard, the clang of a ship’s bell, the creak of an oar, the long hoot of a wherry. A distant boom came through the fog: St Paul’s clock, striking one.

  There was no sign of the wherry that had sunk.

  Boletus, having left the room for a moment, returned.

  ‘The young person Twite, my lord, set out for Petworth in the county of Sussex the very moment the coronation ceremony was finished. And it seems that the Duke of Battersea, having learned that she had done so, went after her.’

  ‘Ah – and Bredalbane?’

  ‘Is here, your worship.’

  By the time that Simon and Dido had reached Petworth, dark had fallen, but the little town was a blaze of light, with bonfires on the outskirts, lanterns flaring, fireworks snapping and thudding, and dozens of voices raised in song.

  ‘Reckon they’re all a-celebrating,’ said Dido. ‘Well, the new king seems a decent sort o’ cove; likely they’d ’a done a sight worse under that Bonnie Prince Georgie that my dad and his pals were so set on bringing over from Hanover. I say, why not make do with the king you got? Why fetch another in from furrin parts – as probably talks some peg-legged lingo that no one understands?’

  ‘I did hear,’ said Simon, guiding his horses with care through the narrow, sparkling streets of Petworth, where people were reeling about with ale-mugs in their hands, children were dancing ring-a-rosy by torchlight, and hot-cockle-sellers were doing a roaring trade, ‘I did hear from Doctor Furneaux, the head of the Chelsea Art Academy – he’s just back from Pomerania – that Prince George of Hanover was mortally ill of an octagonal fever, and not expected to recover.’

  ‘Oh well, poor devil, if he dies, that’ll tie a knot in my dad’s plots; he and his mates’ll have to settle down and make the best of King Dick. – Where in mussy’s name are you taking us, Simon, we’ve rid clean through the town?’

  ‘I left my horses at a little inn on the outskirts. These are a job team. Mine should be rested by now, I reckon. While I have them put to, we can take a bite; we’ll get served faster here than in the middle of town.’

  Even at this small tavern, the Cow on the Roof, a humble thatched building at the junction of three roads, there were large numbers of festive customers. They had spilled out of doors, and were singing and dancing in the pub garden, and on the green beyond. The joyful sound of pipes and fiddles could be heard indoors and out.

  Simon drove his carriage round to the rear. Trestle-tables had been set up across the inn yard, where an ox was being roasted over a bonfire, and great slices of beef were being carved and served to all comers.

  ‘Here, Dido – why don’t you sit at one of those tables and order us some beef,’ said Simon. ‘Wrap my jacket round you – I’ll find you something warmer directly –’ and leaving her he went off to make arrangements about the horses, returning soon with two brimming mugs of ginger-jub in one hand, while over the other arm he had a thick sheepskin jacket with brass buttons.

  ‘There you are, girl; that ought to keep out the cold weather.’

  ‘Why Simon – it’s naffy!’ exclaimed Dido in delight, snuggling into the thick warm garment and fastening its buttons. ‘How the blazes did you come by it so quick?’

  ‘Saw a boy wearing it, offered him a couple of shiners for it,’ replied Simon, beginning to tackle the enormous plateful of beef that Dido had secured for him while he was gone.

  ‘Croopus, Simon, are you as rich as King David now you’re a dook?’

  ‘I’ve enough to get by,’ he replied cheerfully.

  ‘Fancy! I can remember when all you ever had for dinner was a bit o’ bread and a penn’orth of milk from Aunt Tinty.’

  ‘And you used to eat most of that.’

  ‘Things warn’t bad, though, after you came to live in Rose Alley,’ Dido said slowly, remembering. ‘D’you mind how you and Sophie took me to the fair? And how all the Hanoverians used to come to Rose Alley and plot away with Pa, and drink Organ Grinder’s Oil – and after they’d left, Pa used to play tunes downstairs on his hoboy – and you and me, upstairs, used to make up words to ’em?’

  ‘Yes I remember that,’ said Simon, remembering too how queer it had seemed to him that such an out-and-out villain as Mr Twite, who neglected his children, told lies more easily than he breathed, and never stopped plotting to do away with the king, should yet be able to make up such beautiful music and play it with such feeling on his hoboy.

  ‘D’you mind one of his tunes,’ Dido went on, ‘you once put words to it that went:

  Oh, how I’d like to be queen, Pa,

  And ride in my kerridge to Kew,

  Wearing a gold crinoline, Pa,

  And sucking an orange or two –’

  She stopped munching beef for a moment, swallowed a dram of ginger-jub, and then sang out the words in a clear, true little voice, pronouncing them with great and ladylike care, as Simon had taught her long ago.

  Just at that moment there chanced to fall a brief lull in the general uproar, and her voice rang out into the silence; several people turned in surprise to glance at Dido, and one man in the crowd looked at her with particular attention; then he spun on his heel and walked off at a hasty pace into a shadowed corner of the yard.

  ‘Yes, I remember that one,’ said Simon, laughing. ‘Another verse of it went:

  Oh how I’d like to be queen, Pa,

  Watching my troops at review,

  Sucking a ripe tangerine, Pa,

  And sporting a sparkler or two –’

  ‘No, no, you’re clean out, there,’ corrected Dido authoritatively, ‘it didn’t go like that, it went:

  With slippers of crimson shagreen, Pa,

  And all of my underclose new!’

  ‘My word, Dido, how much better you sing that you ever used! I can remember how you used to croak out the words, hoarse as a crow – now you carol away like a young throstle!’

  ‘Guess it was all the whale oil they poured into me,’ said Dido, gruff, pink and shy under his commendation.

  ‘What is all this about whale oil, Dido? And how in the world did that lead on to your carrying the king’s train at his crowning this morning
? How in the name of Habakkuk did you get to know the king?’

  ‘Why – it was this way –’ began Dido, but at that moment an ostler lad tapped Simon on the shoulder.

  ‘Beg pudden, master, but one o’ those greys o’ yours ’pears to be precious lame. D’you want to come and look at him?’

  ‘Plague take it!’ said Simon. ‘I suppose that means I’ll have to leave him here. I’ll not be a moment, Dido; have some more beef, do.’

  And he followed the ostler towards the stable.

  Dido sat peacefully where he had left her, with her elbows on the table. She could not possibly have eaten any more; she felt full of beef, and very snug in her thick sheepskin jacket, and wonderfully happy. Just fancy me being here, she thought, and this afternoon I didn’t think I had a friend in the territory, I can’t hardly believe it; and she looked round at the crowded inn yard, fitfully lit by the bonfire, full of people eating and dancing and shouting ‘Long live King Dick!’ Great yellow chestnut leaves drifted down from above, sailing over people’s heads like birds joining in the rejoicing. Who’d ’a thought it, mused Dido, Simon coming to find me like that, and him being just exactly the same as ever?

  And she recalled how kind Simon had been to her during the time when he lived at her parents’ house as a lodger, when she was several years younger, and often miserably ill, since neither her mother nor her older sister Penelope ever spared any pains to look after her.

  Simon used to bring me a hot posset and make a fire in the grate and tell me stories about the wolves in Willoughby Forest, she recalled. And sometimes Pa’s music used to come up from the room below, so beautiful: when Simon wasn’t there, I used to lie in bed and hearken to the music and pretend that Pa was playing it for me. O’ course I knew that he wasn’t; Penny was allus his favourite; now and again he even bought hair ribbons for her, which he never ever did for me. But even for Penny he’d not play on his hoboy. I recollects her begging him: ‘Play “The Blue Bells o’ Battersea”, Pa, do!’ but the more she’d wheedle, the rustier he’d get, and tell her to shab off, or she’d get a clump on the lughole. Once in a blue moon, if summat had put him in a good skin, he’d play for her, but not if she asked. Never if she asked.

  And he never, never once played for me. And oh, his music was so sweet! There was that tune I called ‘Calico Alley’, acos of the words I put to it, ‘As I went dancing down Calico Alley’; and the one that went to ‘Three Herrings for a Ha’penny’; and the one I called ‘Black Cat Coming Down Stairs’, because it sounded so solemn; and the one I thought was about rain, quick and tinkly. But the best of ’em all was ‘Oh, how I’d Like to be queen, Pa’ . . . Funny how that tune keeps a-going round and round in my head; and yet I haven’t given it any mind for dunnamany years . . . I could almost think I hear it now.

  And then it seemed to Dido that she could hear the tune, very faintly and hauntingly played – surely on a hoboy? – and coming from somewhere not too far off, out on the green, perhaps, beyond the inn yard entrance.

  I must be dreaming – mustn’t I? she told herself. But she could not resist standing up and walking a little way towards the gate, to see if the music grew louder as she moved that way. Yes, it did! I’m not dreaming, Dido said to herself. Some cove out there really is a-playing Pa’s own tune.

  Could it be Pa hisself, a-playing his hoboy? It just might be. After all, he was in Petworth not so very long ago. Wouldn’t Pa be fair pussy-struck to hear as how, on this very selfsame day, I carried King Dick’s gold-and-furry train, in his crowning procession, in St Paul’s Church! Wouldn’t Pa just stare to hear that! It’d be a rare joke to tell him about it, thought Dido – after he and his cullies tried so hard to stop the crowning . . .

  Mindful of Simon, Dido turned back at this point, picked a charcoaly twig out of the edge of the bonfire, wiped her plate clean with a handful of grass, and wrote in big black letters on it with the charcoal:

  DERE SIMON BAK IN 1 MINIT, DIDO

  Then she walked out of the yard gate.

  Beyond the entrance, on the shadowy green, people were dancing in circles. Another bonfire had been lit in the middle of the large open space, and carts were parked round the edge; some boys were letting off fireworks, and several different groups of musicians were playing.

  But the hoboy music came from quite close at hand, from the big gnarled chestnut tree that grew on the hither side of the green, its high knuckled roots outlined against the light of the distant bonfire. A thin man was perched astride one of the roots, and was playing on a musical instrument; Dido could not see his face, but the closer she approached him, the more certain she became that he was her father.

  ‘Pa!’ she called softly. ‘Is that you? It’s me – Dido!’

  The musician turned slowly towards her, lowering his instrument.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said. ‘I fear you are labouring under a misapprehension. I am nobody’s pa; (thank heaven for that); my name is Boris Bredalbane, and I am a paid-up member of the National Union of Flintchippers –’

  ‘Oh come off it, Pa, I can see you plain as plain, let alone I’d know your music if I heard it in Pernambuco. You ain’t what’shisname Bredalbane, you’re Abednego Twite –’

  ‘Hush!’ the thin man whispered imperatively, grasping her wrist and glancing warily around. ‘Grass has eyes, bushes have noses and trees have ears, my chickadee! And the name of Twite is just a touch unhealthy since the constables picked up God-wit and Pelmet and Wily and some of my erstwhile colleagues –’

  Indeed Mr Twite, Dido now observed, was wearing a ginger-coloured wig and moustaches, which looked incongruous on top of his tall thinness; and from somewhere he had managed to procure a gaudy Scottish kilt and sporran, in which he did not seem at ease; the kilt’s hem dipped at the front, and the sporran had a tendency to slip round to the back.

  Mr Twite finished the contents of a large pewter mug which sat beside him on the root – it smelt like Organ Grinder’s Oil. Then, grasping Dido’s wrist even more tightly, he stooped to pick up a set of bagpipes with his other hand.

  ‘Gracious snakes, Pa, you taken to snake-charming, then?’ she inquired, observing the bagpipes.

  ‘Protect – hic - tive colouring, my jonquil,’ he whispered, and began to draw Dido farther away from the tavern, towards a high hedge that bordered the green.

  ‘Not that I amn’t overjoyed to see you again, my sarsaparilla,’ he went on in a low tone as they drew farther off into the shade. ‘Welcome as jewels to jackdaws, you be! In fact – to tell the truth – I was hoping for a sight of ye –’

  ‘Hoping for a sight of me? Why, Pa?’ Though naturally pleased, Dido could not help being surprised and suspicious. When had her father ever wanted to see her? And she remembered him well enough to know that, when he spoke about truth, it was time to watch out for the biggest lie of all.

  ‘Why, my duckling, for the sake of your poor suffering sister – Penelope.’

  ‘Penny-lop?’ gasped Dido, now really startled. ‘Why, what in the world’s amiss with Penny? And – if she does want me – which I can’t hardly believe – it’s the first time since Blue Moon Sunday. –’Sides, I thought she run off with a buttonhook salesman?’

  ‘Ah me, ah me!’ Shaking his head, Mr Twite continued to draw his daughter farther into the shadows. ‘These buttonhook salesmen – heartless scoundrels, to a man – naught but a nest of adders! She should have known better than to listen to his wiles. And now your poor sibling lies at the point of dissolution – gasping in mortal agony – only struggling to keep alive in hopes of a sight of her sweet sis – and there’s not a hand else in the wide world to tend her –’

  ‘Hey, hold hard, Pa – Penny never tended me, that I recollect . . .’

  ‘Calling out for her little Dido with every rattling breath,’ continued Mr Twite – he was beginning to put considerable dramatic fervour into his account – ‘with never a soul to give the poor wretch a sip through a straw, or to change her bandages –’ />
  ‘Bandages?’

  ‘Or to pick up her – hic – crutches if she drops ’em. “Only fetch me Dido, fetch Dido,” she whispers, “if it’s the last thing you do, fetch me Dido!” and I responded, “My angel, I will fetch your dear sister if it means dragging her between serried ranks of sabre-toothed tigers.” Which is hardly more than the case, I’m that bothered and beset by ill-wishers and enemies –’

  ‘But where is Penny, Pa?’ demanded Dido, for Mr Twite had by now reached a closed carriage, quite a grand one, with a coat-of-arms on its door, which waited, with horses ready harnessed, in the shade of the hedge.

  ‘Why, not too far from here, my dove; if we travel at the best speed our horses can command, I daresay you may just arrive before she breathes her pitiful last –’ and Mr Twite opened the carriage door. In the light of a silvery rocket which just then ascended, Dido saw that the coat-of-arms depicted an iron fist, holding a hammer, on a gold background.

  Dido stood still, tugging back against her father’s insistent arm, and said, ‘Here, wait a mo, Pa, I ain’t said yet that I’m a-coming with you – for one thing, my pal Simon’s back there at the pub, and he’ll be wondering where the blazes I’ve spooked off to –’

  ‘Simon? Simon?’ said Mr Twite vaguely. ‘Ah, yes, your young painter acquaintance; a fine, upstanding lad. – A sight too upstanding by half, as I recall,’ Mr Twite muttered to himself under his drooping ginger moustaches.

  ‘– Never trouble about your friend Simon, my larkspur; time presses too much for such considerations. I will instruct Ned here to give Simon your kindest regards and explain that you were called away on an errand of life and death – you’ll see to that, Ned – hic – will you not?’ he continued, addressing a villainous-looking lad who stood at the horses’ heads. ‘Make very sure that you find the correct person: a handsome stripling named Simon, who used to lodge with me in my house at Rose Alley in Southwark. Be sure to give him the message, as well as my own very kindest regards.’