An Unseen Attraction Read online

  The front door rattled, and opened, and Mr. Power came in, giving Clem a broad, relieved smile. “Ah, thank you, Mr. Talleyfer, and I’m sorry I’m late. You’re a gentleman, sir. There’s not many in your shoes wouldn’t have left me on the doorstep at this hour.”

  “It can’t become a habit,” Clem warned him. He’d had to ask a persistently late lodger to leave once already, and it had not been pleasant, but it was part of his duty to the house to keep it safe at night. They were a great deal too close to the pestilential, crooked thieves’ warren of Golden Lane to be casual about security; Clem’s lodgers paid him well to keep those threats firmly outside. “Doors are locked on the half hour, sharp.”

  “I hear you, Mr. Talleyfer, and I surely won’t take advantage of your kindness.” Mr. Power winked. Clem hoped that was meant to convey understanding.

  “How’s Miss Blanchard?”

  “Pretty as a linnet, and a great deal livelier than those next door.” Mr. Power jerked a thumb toward Mr. Green’s premises. “Good night, then.”

  Clem said his goodnights and finished closing up the house, starting the list from the beginning again to be sure. Better to take a little longer and be sure than to fail in his duties. Fires out, Cat out, doors locked and shutters secured, floors swept, anything that might attract vermin put away, done. The house was ready for Elsie and Polly to start their work in the morning; the little hedgehog who lived under the dresser was already snuffling round the kitchen for beetles; and Clem had absolutely not let himself be distracted by the prospect of touring Mr. Green’s shop in the morning.

  —

  Mornings were always a busy time in the lodging house. Elsie, who slept in the attic, was up at five to do the fires in the kitchen and parlour; Polly, who lived out, arrived at six to make breakfast, the only meal that was included. All the lodgers breakfasted early, except Mr. Lugtrout, who usually rose too late for the meal, and showed no signs of coming down now. He’d be wearing his head large after the previous night’s imbibing; Clem hoped he wouldn’t be too ill-tempered when he did emerge.

  Miss Sweeting, who did fine work for a jeweller, and Mr. Hirsch, who graded semiprecious stones, sat next to each other again. Mr. Rillington grumbled about the kippers. He always grumbled about the kippers except, as Mr. Green had observed, if there were no kippers, in which case he grumbled about their absence. Mr. Power was last down, not until Polly was starting to clear away, and earned a sharp look. He gave her a charming smile, which Clem could have told him not to bother with. Polly shared a room with her friend Alice from the milliner’s and went out with her, dressed up, on their free evenings and days off; neither was interested in gentlemen friends, and Mr. Power should be keeping his charming smiles for Millie Blanchard anyway.

  Mr. Green was always in the middle, never first or last. Today he came down after the jewellers but before Mr. Rillington, and smiled at Clem as he sat.

  Clem’s main task after breakfast was the accounts, which he did daily because he hated it too much to let it accumulate. He was pleased with his new pen, though. Its chunky barrel suited his fingers; even better, it was one of the modern fountain types, which meant he didn’t need to dip the thing and spray ink everywhere. The ink reservoir had to be filled with an eyedropper, which was an impossibly finicky business, but he’d bowed to necessity and allotted the task to Elsie with her small and nimble hands. Gentlemen with servants didn’t fill their own pens, after all; there was no particular reason Clem should.

  Gentlemen had better handwriting. Clem’s was not good, despite his schooling, but he had his new pen, and his trusty wooden ruler to help him keep to the lines, and mostly he had time and quiet. Those things plus solid, dogged effort meant that he could close the books with a sense of a job well done before the clocks had even chimed ten. He had plenty of time to run a comb through his thick hair and prod unavailingly at his neckcloth before heading into Wilderness Row, to stand opposite ROWLEY GREEN—PRESERVER.

  Mr. Green’s shop window was a fascinating thing and never lacked for gawpers; Clem had rarely passed it without pausing for a look himself. There were a few people outside it now, despite the damp chill. It was going to be a foggy winter: the smoke from factories and firesides formed a thick, stinking haze in the air, and once the cold weather closed in and the mist rolled off the river, the atmosphere would curdle. He wasn’t looking forward to that. Londoners took a perverse pride in the “particulars” of yellow, blinding fog; Clem had been raised in the countryside, where you could breathe.

  He let himself into the shop, carefully shutting the door behind him, though it was scarcely warmer inside than out, and looked around, giving himself a moment to take it in. It was intensely full of things, though their order made it unfair to say cluttered. There were some tall display cases, and shelves affixed to every wall, reaching as close to the ceiling as possible, and in them and over them and standing free on the floor were, were…

  Dead animals. There was nothing else you could call them. There was a sort of big cat on the floor with very pointed ears standing with an intent look to its glass eyes, one paw lifted as if about to hunt. Otters, weasels, snakes mounted on stands or enclosed in glass. And birds. So many birds. Large ones alone, in glass domes or cases, great seagulls or birds of prey. A large flat firescreen with little red and yellow birds standing bright against a fan of black foliage. And—Clem walked up, staring—a case of tiny birds that seemed to be a whirl of wings, impossibly suspended as if caught in a frozen second of flight, and so many of them that if you tilted your head you’d believe they were truly moving. He shifted sideways, fascinated, so absorbed in what he saw that he didn’t even notice Mr. Green had approached until he stepped sideways and bumped into him.

  “I’m so sorry!”

  “Not at all.” Mr. Green didn’t seem annoyed. He looked, in fact, delighted. “That piece is meant to be looked at from different angles. I’m sorry I got in your way. Would you like to keep looking? I’ll wait.”

  That was the sort of thing people said and then it turned out they hadn’t meant that at all. Clem knew he didn’t recognise sarcasm because he had been told so, repeatedly. Even so, he was very nearly positive that Mr. Green meant every word.

  “I’d love to look at it longer, but maybe later,” he said, in case. “What did you mean about different angles?”

  “Oh, to give a sense of the flutter.” Mr. Green was looking through the glass at the linnets and greenfinches and sparrows and blue tits rising in frozen flight. Clem watched his face. It was easier to concentrate on his words that way, and also, it meant he was watching Mr. Green’s face. That was not a hardship. “Birds are all movement, and a cloud of birds rising is one of the loveliest sights I know. I thought perhaps, with a piece like this, I could achieve something of that.”

  “But they’re dead.” Which Mr. Green knew. Idiot. “That is, how can you make something still and dead look moving and alive?”

  “I can’t.” Mr. Green gave him a rueful smile. “As is clear if you look around. There are no degrees with life. You are or you’re not, and once it’s gone it doesn’t return. But I wanted to capture something of what I love about birds, and this is how I do it.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  “Bird-sellers, pet shops, importers of exotic creatures. All trades with a lot of wastage. Hardly surprising, when they’re crowded into cages and brought into this foul air. When I was making this piece I let the local pet-shop keepers and bird-sellers know I’d take their fresh discards, and paid a penny for five. For them it’s a return on losses when they’d otherwise be throwing the dead onto the dustheaps, and for me…well, it hasn’t paid off yet, since nobody’s bought this, but it’s a good piece. I’m pleased with it. I learned a lot.”

  “You don’t have them killed to order?”

  “No need. There are more dead things than there are stuffers to stuff them. And it would be expensive. No, I tell people what I want, and wait to see what comes.” Mr. Gree
n indicated a display case. Two magpies perched on a twisted branch, one bowing to the other, a glittering ring in its beak. “I finished that piece last week. I’d waited four months for a second magpie in good condition, but one came in the end.”

  Clem looked around. “Did you do all of these?”

  “About two-thirds. There are some styles of work that are popular but not to my taste, so I buy them and resell. And for exotics I buy in cabinet skins, which is to say ready-prepared empty skins, made overseas. But about half the regular work is people bringing jobs to me. Hunting trophies, not that you get any of those here, animals from the Zoological Gardens, pets.”

  Clem grimaced. He knew people had their pets stuffed sometimes, as memorials. The idea had never appealed. When he thought of Cat it was of the sinuous stretches that seemed to double his length, or the way he curled warm on Clem’s lap and tipped his head back to have his chin stroked, the sudden pounces and the flicks of his tail. He couldn’t imagine wanting a straw-stuffed travesty of Cat.

  Mr. Green was watching him. “Not your cup of tea? Well, a lot of preservers prefer not to do pets. I only do certain ones.”

  “Why not?”

  “Bad investment,” Mr. Green said succinctly. “For one thing they want the animal as it was in life, but it’s probably got fat and grey and I can’t mend that. For another, they want it to have its character, and that’s a rare task to capture even if you knew an animal, let alone if you didn’t. And also, often enough, by the time you’ve got the skin prepared and dried and stuffed, they’ve got a new puppy, and two pounds for a memorial of old Fido stops seeming worth it. So they don’t come back and you’re left with a mount nobody wants. I don’t do pets without a deposit, and I never do them for people who come in wailing and weeping over poor doggy. That always goes wrong.”

  “That’s a bit disheartening.”

  Mr. Green shrugged. “Life moves on. But it’s not impossible to respect an old friend. Just a moment, let me show you something.” He went behind the wooden counter into a back room and came out carrying a dog in a basket. “Here.”

  Clem stared, fascinated. “Is that dead?” It didn’t look dead. It was a little spaniel, silky-eared, curled nose to tail, and it looked so peaceful he could almost swear its sides were moving in the gentle exhalations of sleep. He touched the coat, very carefully. It was cold.

  “So many owners ask for their pets in the poses of life,” Mr. Green said. “It doesn’t work. Almost alive isn’t alive. But the lady who owned this old fellow said she wanted to have him there, asleep in the corner of the room. I’m happy with this.”

  Clem stroked the little dog’s ear. He’d thought it might feel harsh, somehow, hardened by whatever processes it had gone through, but it was quite pleasant to the touch. “I see.”

  “Would you like to look around?”

  They moved slowly through the shop. It was quite small; evidently most of the space was allotted to the room behind the counter. That was the workshop where he dealt with raw materials, Mr. Green explained, and didn’t suggest Clem look in there. He thought he might wait for that.

  It was dark in here, as shops were. The small panes of the front window only let in so much of the winter morning light, and the dark wood of the crowded shelves and yellow distemper of any visible wall made it dingy. It smelled peculiar too, of paint, turpentine, and sharp volatile odours Clem couldn’t place, as well as dust. It didn’t smell of decaying flesh at all.

  Mr. Green waited as Clem looked around, silent unless asked something, letting Clem look at his own pace, and as he took it in he began to understand. It was a shop of dead things, undeniably, but of life too, in all its variety, preserved with respect, presented for admiration or for consideration.

  At least it was on the ground floor. The first floor, a larger showroom, was a different matter.

  Clem looked at the display in front of him, which showed five kittens around a table playing cards. A white kitten was sneaking an ace from up its sleeve while a tabby was distracted by a brindle like Cat, sprawled under the table with a tiny bottle of gin clasped in its paw.

  “Did you make this?” Clem asked.

  “No. No, that’s not one of mine.”

  Clem looked away from the card-playing kittens and found himself faced with a badger. It was on its feet in a pose that mimicked running, and wore a white tunic and a Grecian helmet with what were clearly real, small white wings attached. It clutched a rolled parchment scroll in one clawed paw.

  “Each man to his own taste,” Mr. Green observed. “But, speaking for myself, I’d call that an abomination.”

  “It’s disgusting,” Clem said fervently, awash with relief that his friend hadn’t been responsible for this. “What is it?”

  “A badger presented as the messenger god Hermes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Presumably someone ate toasted cheese before bed.”

  That sounded about right: it looked like a bad dream to Clem. “Why would anyone want to buy such a ghastly thing?”

  “So far, nobody does. It’s been gathering dust on the shop floor since I moved in. I acquired it as part of a job lot at auction when I was filling the shop, but I’d be as happy to burn it as keep it.”

  “I bet you would. It’s so rude.”

  “Rude?”

  “Well, that probably isn’t the word…” Mr. Green didn’t comment, just waited, his expression interested and curious, and Clem tried to marshal his meaning to his tongue, and convey everything that had been tumbling through his mind in the last half hour. “What I meant to say, well, your work downstairs, it makes me want to see the animals alive. It makes me think of how they’re beautiful, and what they do, and how they’d look moving, and what it means that they’re dead. And it’s interesting in the way anatomists’ pictures are, too. To see them in detail as you can’t do when they’re alive. It’s about…showing what things really look like.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Green said, a single, intense syllable.

  “Whereas this badger, or the kittens playing cards, that’s an insult to the animal. It’s turning them into a joke and taking away their, their dignity by making them look like people. Cat doesn’t have to be like a person, he’s Cat. It’s meant to be comical, and I don’t think it’s funny. And I don’t think it says much about people that we find it funny.”

  “I knew you’d see it,” Mr. Green said softly, almost to himself. “I knew it. I couldn’t agree more, Mr. Talleyfer. And it’s so far from what I want to do, what I want to convey.”

  “What is that?”

  “My artistic ambitions?” Mr. Green paused a moment, taking time to think. Clem loved those pauses. I’m making sure I get it right, and I expect you to wait, they said, without apology. “What I want…Tell me, have you seen the flying starlings?”

  “You mean, flocks of them? Plenty of times.”

  “I didn’t mean that, in fact, although a flock of starlings wheeling is one of the most glorious sights in the world.” Mr. Green gave him a little, conspiratorial grin, just for the two of them, as though they were the only people ever to see starlings. “I meant the trapeze artists currently appearing at the Grand Cirque.”

  “Oh. No. I don’t go.”

  “You don’t go to the music hall?”

  “It’s the crowds.” Clem shifted, a little reluctant to admit this, but Mr. Green was so understanding. “All the people talking and all the things to look at. I find it a bit too much. I have gone a few times, but…” The glare of gaslight; the smells of sweat and tobacco and perfume and oranges; the shouting, jostling people packed into tiny spaces; the awful awareness of how much space he took up and how in everyone’s way he was. “I don’t like crowds. I’d love to see trapeze artists, and I’ve heard the Flying Starlings are astonishing, but it’s all very…much,” he finished inadequately.

  “I see. Is it crowds in general, or being pushed and bothered?”

  “Oh, the pu
shing and touching, and the noise too. I can’t hear what anyone’s saying when everyone’s talking. The comedians aren’t terribly easy to follow, either. It’s all double meanings, isn’t it, and I’m never very good on those.” And there were few things so lonely as being the only man in a crowd of laughing people who didn’t get the joke.

  “While that’s true, I’d say the problem with the comedians isn’t so much double meaning as no meaning at all,” Mr. Green observed. “It doesn’t matter; it was only an illustration.”

  The church clock outside chimed, jolting Clem unpleasantly out of the conversation. “Good heavens, it is eleven? How did that happen?” He had arranged for a carpenter to get a window repaired, curse it, and the man would be waiting now. “Blast. I have to go.”

  “Then I shall see you later,” Mr. Green said. “Thank you for coming today, and for listening. Many people find my line of work macabre, or trivial. It’s rather a pleasant change to have someone understand.”

  He held his hand out. Clem took it, and felt Mr. Green’s fingers close around his own, firm and warm. “Thank you for showing me, Mr. Green.”

  “Rowley,” Mr. Green said. “If you’d like, that is.” Did his fingers tighten a little?

  “Clem. Or Clement, but most people call me Clem.”

  “I’d be proud to be one of those.” Rowley gave his swift smile. “A cup of tea tonight, Clem?”

  Clem found he was grinning back. “That would be lovely.”

  Maybe he’d ask a bit of advice at the Jack.

  Chapter 2

  “How was your day?” Rowley asked that evening, once Clem had got through the tea-making process without incident. He’d learned early on that Clem was very much a one-thing-at-a-time sort of man.

  They were settled in their usual chairs by Clem’s fireside, with the brindled cat on Rowley’s lap, purring like a steam engine. Rowley had thought at first the beast had no name; it had taken him a while to understand that it had a perfectly good, descriptive name to which it was as likely to answer as any other, and that name was Cat. There was something terribly Clem about that. There was something terribly Clem about everything in this little room. The way it was always piled with papers and things to be put away and things knocked onto the floor and forgotten; the sturdy broad-handled tea things and heavy furniture he seemed to like when the fashion was for spindly and delicate; most of all, Cat, the most malevolent-looking specimen of the feline race Rowley had ever seen. Cat had a torn ear, a milky eye, and a coat so bristly it felt like badly preserved cowhide. He was an astonishingly ugly brute, which made it all the odder that he fitted his host so well.