The Bone Flower

Part One

Chapter One

One cold November evening in 188– six men were sitting around a cheerfully blazing fire in a club in the centre of London, a stone’s throw from Piccadilly. The room, its walls lined with portraits of earlier club members, the severity of its hardwood floor softened by the deep and elaborate weave of a Persian carpet, was a shade too warm, and smelt of cigar smoke, a cloud of which had gathered above the heads of the seated men. They were of various ages and professions, or of good enough family to have no profession, and were united less by common interests than by their common standing, of which club membership was a guarantee. They were drinking brandy and talking, in a desultory way, about life after death. The oldest among them, a portly man with an off-white beard that reached the second button of his waistcoat, was making the case for reincarnation. He had a dog, he told them, who was the spit and image of his nurse, a dour woman with a whiskery mole on her cheek in exactly the same place – he repeated this with considerable emphasis, beating his free fist on the arm of his Chesterfield – as a liverish spot on the jowl of the dog. An ill-tempered beast, he added, as further proof. The company was amused, with the exception of a bald man, in his forties and bony as death itself, who was sitting in an armchair as far from the heat of the fire as could be achieved without leaving the circle. His name was Arthur Poynter.

‘There are excellent reasons,’ he said in his quiet, dry way, ‘for believing in the principle of reincarnation.’ He leant forward.

‘The number of souls is finite, according to an early heresy, which, assuming this to be the case, would render reincarnation not only plausible, but of an absolute necessity. Waste not, want not.’

‘Those of the Hebrew persuasion believe in a tree that furnishes souls willy-nilly,’ said another. ‘It is situated in the Garden of Eden.’

‘I have known Congolese bearers with the souls of English gentlewomen,’ said a man whose face was burnt ochre by the sun, dressed in the khaki suit of an explorer.

Arthur Poynter nodded. ‘That only confirms my belief,’ he said. ‘The right to possess a soul should resemble the right to vote before it was so sadly extended. The possession of a soul should be restricted to gentlemen with a decent income.’

This was greeted by grunts of approval and a burst of laughter, abruptly stifled, from the youngest man in the room. His name was Edward Monteith and he was twenty-three years old, recently down from Cambridge and wondering what he might do with his life. His more than decent income made doing nothing an option, and he was tempted by that although he would deny this if asked. He had looked at the explorer several times and tried to imagine himself in a similar outfit, on his feet a pair of highly polished boots that were oddly reminiscent of hooves, his skin like leather fresh from the tannery. The fog had been so dense this evening, and the cold so biting, he had felt a sort of winter in his soul. Yes, there it was, his soul. His soul had craved the company even of these men, as old or older than his father, world-wise, world-weary. He had eaten with them, the usual club fare, and followed them into this room, where every painted face looked down on him, and had taken a stool near the fireplace. A manservant furnished the coal that was required, but Edward had seized control of the poker, and the blaze was his.

‘It’s a well-established fact that working-class women have no soul,’ said a tall man seated next to the bearded fellow with the reincarnated nanny. Edward knew the man by name, which was Frederick Bell, and by reputation, which was bad, but had never spoken to him before this evening. He was some years older than Edward. Born in Scotland, he had qualified as a doctor in Edinburgh but, to Edward’s knowledge, had never practised, having no need. ‘Imagine if that were not the case,’ he added, relighting his cigar. ‘How complicated life would be.’ He looked at Edward and smiled, a complicit smile that both intrigued and unnerved the younger man.

‘But if the number of souls is finite,’ said the other occupant of the Chesterfield, who had appeared to be asleep during the discussion, ‘what on earth will happen on the Day of Judgement? Bodies will resurrect and find their souls already taken. They will be like shells without a snail to reside in them. They will be empty boxes.’

This was met by silence, as though the subject had finally been exhausted. Poynter called the manservant over to replace the empty decanter of brandy and refill their glasses. Edward’s eyes drifted towards Bell and were apprehended by the doctor, who smiled again and gave an almost imperceptible nod, as if of recognition. Edward turned away, discomfited. When all the men had brandy in their glasses, Poynter raised his. ‘To our eternal selves,’ he said. The other men, without exception, lifted their glasses and toasted their eternal selves before falling once again into a companionable silence.

After some minutes had passed, the silence was broken by the explorer, whose name was Rickman. ‘I must say though,’ he said, ‘I have seen certain manifestations that make me, how shall I put this, a little apprehensive about the possibility of life after death.’

‘On your travels, I imagine?’ said Bell. ‘In Africa.’

Rickman assented to this with a nod.

‘Perhaps you would like to enlighten us?’

‘I’m not sure that enlighten is quite the word,’ Rickman said. ‘I fear that my story will induce more gloom than light.’ He shifted in his chair until his face could be seen by the other men. His eyes were sapphire blue in the tanned skin. He drew on his cigar and examined the burning tip for a moment before continuing. ‘I had been there for some months,’ he said, ‘with the same small group of men, who had become as friends to me, comrades one might say, despite their origins. We were equals, gentlemen, as we are equals here. We had crossed deserts and hacked our way through jungles. Waterfalls that would dwarf St Paul’s twice over had marked our path, animals whose paw prints would fill that tray’ – he indicated the tray on which the brandy decanter stood – ‘had crossed it, and left us whole. We had a language in common that we had fought to achieve and part of its vocabulary was fear. Make no mistake, gentlemen, the continent of Africa is grand and terrible, more grand and terrible than you can imagine.’

‘And the manifestations of which you spoke?’ said Poynter, with the slightest trace of impatience.

‘Forgive me,’ said Rickman. ‘I was told this by my closest companion, a young man I called Joshua, his own name being unpronounceable to me. Joshua was my guide and friend, and he would amuse me as we walked by telling me tales from his childhood. One of these has remained with me, for reasons that will, I hope, become clear as I speak. His grandfather had a house at the edge of their village. He lived alone, his own wife having died some years before and his children having constructed their own houses in other parts of the village. I use the word house to describe the simplest of structures, a central pole, a weaving of local grasses, fragile and easily moved. One night, he was woken by a presence in his house, a shaking, a trembling, Joshua said, caused by no earthly wind. The spirit of an ancestor, known in that part of the world as obambo, had come to visit and the purpose of his visit was that Joshua’s grandfather should build him a house for his return. Normally, such a desire would have been met and would have provided an occasion for celebration in the tribe. But the old man knew this ancestor as someone evil, as someone who had brought the tribe and his own people into disrepute, and refused. The obambo began to dance and wail, beating his fists against the pole until the whole house shook and neighbours arrived, including Joshua and his father. Joshua was no more than a child at the time but he has never forgotten what he saw.’

Rickman paused.

‘Which was?’ said Poynter.

‘A spectral being, more bones than flesh, the skin stretched over the bones but ripped and incomplete so that tangled plants could be seen inside the ribcage, the head a skull but with sharpened teeth that could rip the arm off a man, the white hair tangled with sticks and vines. Its eyes were bright as stars, he told me, and when the obambo looked his way he began to cry, which made the creature cackle and dance with even greater fervour. But the worst thing was the stench of decaying matter, of leaves and roots and human flesh, so strong the people in the house began to fall to their knees and retch. And the obambo laughed even more and shook the central pole until the whole house collapsed in a rain of dust and rat droppings and dried grass onto their heads.’

Rickman paused once more.

‘And you believe this?’ Bell said, with a slightly mocking laugh. ‘You believe your young friend Joshua?’

‘I would not have believed it,’ Rickman said slowly, ‘if I had not seen an obambo with my own eyes.’

Bell laughed again.

‘It was in our last camp, no more than a month ago. The first sign of its presence was the stench, which seemed to come from all around, rising from the very earth. The men began to look at one another, terrified, because they knew, as I did not. At first I thought we had pitched camp on some kind of malodorous sinkhole, if such a thing can exist, emanating its rottenness from the centre of the earth. But then I saw Joshua blench. Obambo, he said. He was facing me but his eyes were fixed on someone, on something, behind me. I turned and saw it. It was crouched and gibbering, a tangle of bones and putrefaction, but with a mouth and teeth, as Joshua had described them to me, and eyes.’ Rickman shuddered. ‘Such eyes,’ he said. ‘I shall never forget those eyes.’ He sighed and raised a hand. ‘It lifted a fleshless finger,’ he said, and mimed the action, ‘and pointed to a spot between our huts. I knew what he wanted without being told.’

‘What did you do?’ said Edward, who had listened to Rickman’s account enthralled.

‘What could we do?’ said Rickman. ‘We built the obambo his house.’

Bell burst out laughing, slapping his thigh repeatedly. But he found himself alone in his mirth. The other men looked at one another with a mixture of expressions that ranged from curious to distressed. As if to ward off an unexpected chill in the air, Edward beckoned the manservant over to add some coal to the fire.

‘To each his own,’ said Poynter, when no else had spoken for some moments. ‘This would seem to apply to the spirits of the dead as it does to everything else. Our home-grown variety of spectre is, I would hope, a little more refined.’

‘We could always find out,’ said a voice that had not previously been heard that evening, a voice with an American accent that belonged to a man in his thirties, of vigorous build, sitting some distance from the fire. He nodded to the other men, as though he had just arrived, and introduced himself as Daniel Giles. ‘I’m new in town,’ he said, ‘and a guest of our friend here.’ He nodded towards Poynter, in acknowledgement. ‘I arrived from Boston three days ago. My best wishes to you all.’ He raised his glass.

‘We could find out?’ said Rickman.

‘A compatriot of mine, although from the opposite coast, is performing in one of your music halls next week. He’s well known at home for his abilities.’

‘Which are?’ said Poynter.

‘He speaks to the dead,’ said Daniel Giles. ‘And the dead speak back.’

Outside the club a small group formed as cabs were summoned. The fog was thick and the waiting men blew into their gloved hands. Rickman, unsuitably dressed for a London November, had already left. Cabs arrived and soon only Daniel Giles, Frederick Bell and Arthur Poynter remained, along with Edward, who preferred to walk, to clear his head of the brandy and overheated air of the club. His house was half an hour away in Holborn. He would pass through Covent Garden, already at work for the following day, and Lincoln’s Inn, where a light might still be burning at this late hour.

‘An informative evening,’ said Poynter.

‘Informative?’ said Bell. ‘Rickman has been dining out on that story since he left his young African catamite and returned to London.’

‘Isn’t that rather harsh?’

‘Believe me, I have nothing against catamites, African or otherwise. But I don’t like being made a fool of.’

Giles wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck. ‘You won’t be joining us then?’

‘Did I say that? On the contrary, why should I not take advantage of an opportunity to have my scepticism confirmed? Besides, young Monteith will be in our company, I believe.’ He smiled at Edward, who flushed and nodded. ‘Excellent. Because a serious man such as myself needs a challenge and I have every intention of corrupting him. The kind of innocence he still possesses, against all odds in this infernal city, is an affront to any pleasure-loving man. You see my point, Poynter?’

Poynter gave an assessing glance at Edward, who felt himself blush. ‘Seeing a point and sharing it are very different things, Bell,’ said Poynter as his cab approached.

‘So we have a date?’ said Giles.

‘We do indeed.’

Chapter Two

Edward Monteith wondered if Bell was right about his innocence. He had a rather tenuous wisp of blond moustache, but the mouth and chin beneath it were strong and his eyes, though grey, were deep. He suspected that he was attractive, and wished he knew what to do with that suspicion. He had had opportunities at Cambridge but a sense of his own discomfort, and of his worth, had drawn him back from a brink his friends had been prepared to pass beyond. His mother had died when he was a child, and his father was distant but proud of him, or professed to be, although Edward saw that pride as the product of absence; he had simply done nothing of which his father might need to be ashamed, and that made it seem a rather wretched achievement, and the pride that his father claimed to feel seem both false and demeaning. He had listened to Rickman talk about Africa and, despite Bell’s scorn and insinuations, imagined himself in the explorer’s place, surrounded by wildness, his emotions reduced to their essence, tested by a continent in its entirety. He wondered if that was what he was here for – to find new worlds. His first nanny had taught him to be obedient, but also to question, and she had responded to his curiosity with a willingness that had led to her dismissal. He had never quite forgiven his parents for that. He still remembered her name, which was Miss Josephine, and the smell of her hands, of carbolic soap and violets.

Now, alone in his house in John Street, apart from his valet, George, and housekeeper, Mrs Rokes, idling his days away in rereading the classics he had been obliged to read at Emmanuel, he was wondering if he should consider a profession, despite his father’s resolve that he live the life of a leisured gentleman, as his father had not been able to do, disfigured as he was by the stain of commercial activity in his earlier years that he had not been able to erase. Burmese oil sticks to the skin, he once told Edward, with a sad laugh. You can never quite get rid of it. These days, Edward woke from troubled sleep long after the light had entered his room, he wore the clothes that had been laid out for him by George, drank coffee prepared by Mrs Rokes and walked around the gardens of Gray’s Inn, half envying the profitable lives of those within. He lunched with old friends from college in various eating houses around the City although their friendship seemed to rely on a routine he no longer had, ate little, drank too much though not enough to lose control. He had always had a great fear of losing control. Abandoning his books, he would play a few sets of lawn tennis when the weather was fine and he could find an opponent, rugby football but without commitment, billiards at his club, where he spent more time with each month that passed. He went there most evenings, at first because his father insisted and then because he felt lonely and because the cooking was reasonable. His role as post-dinner tender of the fire had become habitual. The poker was his, the height and depth of the flame his only apparent concern. He listened rather than spoke, observed but was not observed. Or so he had thought, until Frederick Bell had decided that he was innocent and needed to be corrupted. The notion intrigued, amused and frightened him in equal measure. Bell had a reputation he would rather not find attached to himself, but a little of its surface gleam might rub off and maybe Edward would not find that so distressing; maybe a scattering of libertine glitter would provide him with the excitement his life sorely needed. But he thought of Rickman and wished he had been noticed, not by Bell, whose adventures rarely took him beyond Canning Town, but by the other explorer, noticed as someone whose life cried out to be resolved into something larger and more complex than it was. He wanted to be useful, and brave, and at risk, but had no idea how that might be done nor who to ask. He dreamed of Africa, of its dark heart.

The music hall was in a side road off the Strand. Edward arrived first, walking there as was his custom, as much to kill time as to take exercise. A crowd had already gathered outside in a loose queue, with a certain amount of jostling, good-hearted and otherwise. Some young women, unaccompanied, stood at a little distance from the crowd, alert to every gaze. One of them caught Edward’s eye, lifted her skirt an inch or so from her ankle and gave him a broad wink. Startled, he stepped back and the young woman laughed and murmured something to her colleagues. He turned away, abashed. Some feet away from them, a stocky man in a tattered top hat and with a ragged scarf around his neck stood behind a small brazier roasting chestnuts. Walking across, Edward warmed his hands and was about to buy a half-dozen when a dark-skinned man in a voluminous cloak edged up to him, raised one corner of his cloak and displayed three puppies, bull terriers. ‘Good fighting dogs,’ he said to Edward, a leer on his face. ‘You look like a sporting gentleman.’ Edward shook his head and moved off, leaving the chestnut seller to angrily defend his pitch as a chorus of yaps broke out and was stifled by the weight of the cloak. He looked around and saw a solitary girl some distance away at the far end of the queue, selling nosegays of flowers from a tray, and he wished he had a companion to whom such a small thing might give pleasure. She caught his eye as the other young woman had done and returned his gaze without shame, but this time there was no wink, no lifted skirt. She looked back at him, unblinking, her face impassive but for an air of evaluation. He might have said that she was trying to stare him down, but that would have been wrong. There was no antagonism in her gaze, and only the slightest suggestion of challenge. She had made him catch his breath, that was all. He was about to walk over to her when a hand fell on his shoulder and he turned. Frederick Bell was standing behind him.

‘The early bird, I see,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Edward.

Bell nodded towards the flower seller. ‘You appear to have attracted the young lady’s attention.’

‘I imagine she is trying to sell her wares,’ said Edward.

‘Indeed,’ said Bell. He looked at Edward appraisingly. ‘You’re a rather pleasing young man, you know. But of course you do. I’m sure I can’t be the first person to tell you. Box, do you?’

Edward, embarrassed, shook his head. ‘I used to,’ he said. ‘Before I came down.’

‘Oxford?’

‘Cambridge.’

‘Trinity?’

‘Emmanuel.’

Bell nodded. ‘Harvard’s alma mater. So I find myself up against the good old Puritan tradition. Now I understand that I will have my work cut out