Did the police win in the end? I asked.
They always do. They had him up for speaking to girls on the front, and a lot was said in court that wasnt apropos. I was young and angry and uncomprehending, and I wouldnt help him any more. No wonder he abandoned me and went to look for Hannibal. No one can stand not being forgiven. Thats Gods privilege.
We left the Cricketers and my aunt took a turning this way and a turning that until we came to a shuttered hall and a sign which read: TEXT FOR THE WEEK. If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, Then how canst thou contend with horses? Jeremiah, 12, I cant say that I understood the meaning very well, unless it was a warning against Brighton races, but perhaps the ambiguity was the attraction. The sect, I noticed, was called The Children of Jeremiah.
This was where we held our services, Aunt Augusta said. Sometimes you could hardly hear the words for the barking. Its their form of prayer, Curran would say, let each pray after his own fashion, and sometimes they lay there quite peacefully licking their parts. Cleansing themselves for the House of the Lord, Curran would say. It makes me a little sad to see strangers here now. And I never much cared for the prophet Jeremiah.
I know little about Jeremiah.
They sank him in the mud, Aunt Augusta said. I studied the Bible very carefully in those days, but there was little that was favourable to dogs in the Old Testament. Tobias took his dog with him on his journey with the angel, but it played no part in the story at all, not even when a fish tried to eat Tobias. A dog was an unclean beast, of course, in those times. He only came into his own with Christianity. It was the Christians who began to carve dogs in stone in the cathedrals, and even while they were still doubtful about womens souls they were beginning to think that maybe a dog had one, though they couldnt get the Pope to pronounce one way or the other, nor even the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was left to Curran.
A big responsibility, I said. I couldnt make out whether she was serious about Curran or not.
It was Curran who set me reading theology, Aunt Augusta said. He wanted references to dogs. It wasnt easy to find any even in Saint Francis de Sales. I found lots about fleas and butterflies and stags and elephants and spiders and crocodiles in Saint Francis but a strange neglect of dogs. Once I had a terrible shock. I said to Curran, Its no good. We cant go on. Look what Ive just found in the Apocalypse. Jesus is saying who can enter the city of God. Just listen to this Without are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters, and whosoever loveth or maketh a lie. You see the company dogs are supposed to keep?
It proves our point, Curran said. Whoremongers and murderers and the rest they all have souls, dont they? They only have to repent, and its the same with dogs. The dogs who come to our church have repented. They dont consort any more with whoremongers and sorcerers. They live with respectable people in Brunswick Square or Royal Crescent. Do you know that Curran was so little put off by the Apocalypse he actually preached a sermon on that very text, telling people that it was their responsibility to see that their dogs didnt backslide? Loose the lead and spoil the dog[56], he said. There are only too many murderers in Brighton and whoremongers at the Metropole all ready to pick up what you loose. And us for sorcerers Luckily Hatty, who was with us by that time, had not yet become a fortune-teller. It would have spoilt the image.
He was a good preacher?
It was music to hear him, she said with happy regret, and we began to walk back towards the front; we could hear the shingle turning over from a long way away. He was not exclusive, my aunt said. For him dogs were like the House of Israel, but he was an apostle also to the Gentiles and the Gentiles, to Curran, included sparrows and parrots and white mice not cats, cats he always regarded as Pharisees. Of course no cat dared come into the church with all those dogs around, but there was one who used to sit in the window of a house opposite and sneer when the congregation came out. Curran excluded fish too it would be too shocking to eat something with a soul, he said. Elephants he had a very great feeling for, which was generous of him considering Hannibal had trodden on his toe. Lets sit down here, Henry. I always find Guinness a little tiring.
We sat down in a shelter. The lights ran out to sea along the Palace Pier and the edge of the water was white with phosphorescence. The waves were continually pulled up along the beach and pulled back as though someone were making a bed and couldnt get the sheet to lie properly. A bit of pop music came from the dance hall standing there like a blockade ship a hundred yards out. This trip was quite an adventure, I thought to myself, little knowing how small a one it would seem in retrospect.
I found a lovely piece about elephants once in Saint Francis de Sales, Aunt Augusta said, and Curran used it in his last sermon after all that business with the girls had upset me. I really think what he wanted was to tell me it was me he loved, but I was a hard young woman in those days and I wouldnt listen. Ive always kept the piece though in my purse and, when I read it, its not the elephant that I see now, its Curran. He was a fine big fellow not as big as Wordsworth but a good deal more sensitive.
She fumbled in her bag and found her purse. You read it to me, dear, I cant see properly in this light.
I held the rather yellowed creased paper at an angle to catch one of the lights of the front. It wasnt easy to read, though my aunts handwriting was young and bold, because of the creases. The elephant, I read, is only a huge animal, but he is the most worthy of beasts that lives on the earth, and the most intelligent. I will give you an example of his excellence; he The writing ran along a crease and I couldnt read it, but my aunt chimed gently in. He never changes his mate and he tenderly loves the one of his choice. Go on, dear.
With whom, I read, nevertheless he mates but every third year, and then for five days only and so secretly that he has never been seen to do so.
He was trying to explain, my aunt said, I am sure of it now, that if he had been a little slack in his attentions[57], it was only because of the girls he didnt love me less.
But he is to be seen again on the sixth day, on which day, before doing anything else, he goes straight to some river wherein he bathes his whole body, for he has no desire to return to the herd until he has purified himself.
Curran was always a clean man, my aunt said. Thank you, dear, you read it very well.
It doesnt seem very applicable to dogs, I said.
He turned it so beautifully that no one noticed, and it was really directed at me. I remember he had a special dogs shampoo which had been blessed at the altar on sale outside the church door that Sunday.
What became of Curran?
Ive no idea, Aunt Augusta said. He must have left his church, for he couldnt have carried on without me. Hatty hadnt the right touch for a deaconess. I dream of him sometimes but he would be ninety years old now, and I find it hard to picture him as an old man. Well, Henry, I think it is time for us both to sleep.
What became of Curran?
Ive no idea, Aunt Augusta said. He must have left his church, for he couldnt have carried on without me. Hatty hadnt the right touch for a deaconess. I dream of him sometimes but he would be ninety years old now, and I find it hard to picture him as an old man. Well, Henry, I think it is time for us both to sleep.
All the same, I found sleep difficult to attain, even in my comfortable bed at the Royal Albion. The lights of the Palace Pier sparkled on the ceiling, and round and round in my head went the figures of Wordsworth and Curran, the elephant and the dogs of Hove, the mystery of my birth, the ashes of my mother who was not my mother, and my father asleep in the bath. This was not the simple life which I had known at the bank, where I could judge a clients character by his credits and debits. I had a sense of fear and exhilaration too, as the music pounded from the Pier and the phosphorescence rolled up the beach.
Chapter 7
The affair of my mothers ashes was not settled so easily as I had anticipated (I call her my mother still, because at this period I had no real evidence that my aunt was telling me the truth). No urn was awaiting me in the house when I returned from Brighton, and so I rang up Scotland Yard and asked for Detective-Sergeant Sparrow. I was put on without delay to a voice which was distinctly not Sparrows. It sounded very similar to that of a rear-admiral whom I had once had as a client. (I was very glad when he changed his account to the National Provincial Bank, for he treated my clerks like ordinary seamen and myself like a sub-lieutenant who had been court-marchialled for keeping the mess books improperly.)
Can I speak to Detective-Sergeant Sparrow? I asked.
On what business? whoever it was rapped back.
I have not yet received my mothers ashes, I said.
This is Scotland Yard, Assistant Commissioners Office, and not a crematorium, the voice replied and rang off.
It took me a long while (because of engaged lines) to get the same gritty voice on the line again.
I want Detective-Sergeant Sparrow, I said.
On what business?
I was ready this time and prepared to be ruder than the voice could be.
Police business of course, I said. What other business do you deal in? It was almost as though my aunt were speaking through me.
Detective-Sergeant Sparrow is out. You had better leave a message.
Ask him to ring Mr. Pulling, Mr. Henry Pulling.
What address? What telephone number? he snapped as though he suspected me to be some unsavoury police informer.
He knows them both. I am not going to repeat them unnecessarily. Tell him I am disappointed at his failure to keep a solemn promise. I rang off before the other had time for a word in reply. Going out to the dahlias, I gave myself the rare award of a satisfied smile. I had never spoken to the rear-admiral like that.
My new cactus dahlias were doing well, and after my trip to Brighton their names gave me some of the pleasure of travel: Rotterdam, a deeper red than a pillar-box, and Dentelle de Venise, with spikes sparkling like hoar-frost. I thought that next year I would plant some Pride of Berlin to make a trio of cities. The telephone disturbed my happy ruminations. It was Sparrow.