‘Chief sculleryman,’ he replied. ‘You know the Barrel of Beef, I suppose?’
‘Course I do. That’s a fine place indeed, sir. A very fine place.’
He straightened his beaten back and tipped his head in pride. ‘It is, it is. I knows Mr Cream as well, the owner. You know him? I knows all of them as run things down there. He give me, last Christmas this was, he give me a bottle of brandy. Just comes up to me as I was leaving and says, “Ernest, that’s for all what you’ve done for me this year”, and gives it to me. To me especially. A bottle of brandy. That’s Mr Cream, you know him?’
‘He owns the place, I know as much as that.’
‘A very fine bottle of brandy that was. Finest you can get. Tasted like gold, or silk or something like that.’ He supped his gin and winced, shaking his head. His eyes were yellow and weepy, the few teeth left in his mouth crooked and brown. ‘I been there ten years, more or less. He ain’t never had one reason to complain about my work all that time. Oh, no. Mr Cream treats me right. I can eat anything as is left at the end of the night, long as I don’t take nothing home with me. Anything they ain’t keeping. Steak, kidneys, oysters, mutton soup. Don’t hardly spend any money on my food at all. Keep my money for the pleasures of life, I do.’
He finished his gin and began to cough. I bought him another. Behind us a tired-looking streetwalker was bickering with two men in brown aprons. One tried to take her arm; she shook him off. Ernest looked at her with an air of senile longing, then turned back to me.
‘Not the others,’ he continued. ‘Only me, on account of being there longest. Rib of beef. Bit of cod. Tripe, if I must. I eat like a lord, mister. It’s a good set-up. I got a room over the road here. You know the baker’s? Penarven the baker’s? I got a room above there.’
‘I know a fellow who works down there, as it happens,’ I said. ‘French lad name of Thierry. Brother of a ladyfriend of mine. You probably know him.’
‘Terry, is that him? Pastryman? He don’t work with us no more. Not since last week or so. Left or given the push. Don’t ask me which.’
He lit a pipe and began to cough again.
‘Only, I’m trying to get hold of him,’ I continued when he’d finished. ‘You wouldn’t have a notion where I can find him?’
‘Ask his sister, shouldn’t you?’
‘It’s her who’s looking for him.’ I lowered my voice. ‘Truth is it might do me a bit of good if I help her out, like. Know what I mean?’
He chuckled. I slapped him on the back; he didn’t like it, and a suspicious look came over him.
‘Bit of a coincidence, ain’t it? You happening to talk to me like that?’
‘I followed you.’
It took him a minute to work out what I was saying.
‘That’s the way it is, is it?’ he croaked.
‘That’s the way it is. You know where I can find him?’
He scratched the stubble on his neck and finished his gin.
‘The oysters is good here,’ he said.
I called the barmaid over and ordered him a bowl.
‘All I can say is he was very friendly with a barmaid name of Martha, least it seemed that way to anybody with their eyes open,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they left together. You ask her. Curly red hair – you can’t miss her. A little beauty, if you don’t mind Catholics.’
‘Was he in any trouble?’
He drained his glass and swayed suddenly, gripping the counter to steady himself.
‘I keep my nose out of everything what happens there. You can find yourself in trouble very quick with some of the things as goes on in that building.’
The oysters arrived. He looked at them with a frown.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘It’s only as they go down better with a little drain of plane, sir,’ he replied with a sniff.
I ordered him another gin. When he’d just about finished off the oysters, I asked him again if Thierry was in trouble.
‘All I know is he left the day after the American was there. Big American fellow. I only know ’cos I heard him shouting at Mr Cream, and there ain’t nobody who shouts at the boss. Nobody. After that, Terry never come back.’
‘Why was he shouting?’
‘Couldn’t hear,’ he said, dropping the last oyster shell on the floor. He held onto the counter and stared at it as if he wasn’t sure he could get down there without falling over.
‘D’you know who he was?’
‘Never seen him before.’
‘You must have heard something?’ I said.
‘I don’t talk to nobody and nobody talks to me. I just do my work and go home. That’s the best way. That’s the advice I’ll give my children if ever I have any.’
He laughed and called over to the barmaid.
‘Oi, Jeannie. Did you hear? I said that’s the advice I’ll give my children if ever I have any!’
‘Yeah, very funny Ernest,’ she replied. ‘Shame your pecker’s dropped off.’
His face fell. The barman and a cab driver at the end of the counter laughed loudly.
‘I could give you a few names to swear as my pecker’s attached and working very well, thank you,’ he croaked back.
But the barmaid wasn’t listening any more; she was talking to the cab driver. The old man stared hard at them for a few moments, then finished his drink and patted his coat pockets. His skin sagged from his bristling chin; his wrists seemed thin as broomsticks under the sleeves of his thick overcoat.
‘That’s it for me.’
‘Could you find out where he is, Ernest?’ I asked as we stepped onto the street. ‘I’d pay you well.’
‘Find another fool, mister,’ he replied, his words slurring in the chill air. ‘I don’t want to end up in the river with a lungful of mud. Not me.’
He glanced bitterly through the window where the barmaid was laughing with the cabman, then turned and stomped off down the road.
The guvnor’s room was transformed. The floor had been swept free of crumbs, the bottles and plates had vanished, the blankets and cushions straightened. Only the towers of newspapers against the walls remained. He was in his chair with his hair brushed and a clean shirt on. In his hand was the book that had occupied him over the last few months: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by the infamous Mr Darwin. Some years before, Mrs Barnett had become quite enraged by this fellow on account of him seeming to suggest, or so she said at least, that she and her sisters were the daughters of a big ape rather than the generous creation of the good Lord above. She’d never read his books, of course, but there were people at her church very against the idea that the good Lord hadn’t made a woman from a rib-bone and a man from a speck of dust. The guvnor, who hadn’t come to a decision on this matter as far as I knew, had been reading this book very carefully and slowly, and letting everyone know that he was reading it along the way. He seemed to think it held secrets which would help him see past the deceptions that were the everyday part of our work. I couldn’t help but notice, too, that another of Watson’s stories lay open on the side-table next to him.
‘I’ve been waiting