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On the way up the Gambia to Pisania, Ned Rise leans back against a crate of trade goods, lights a cigarette and gazes out on the brown wash of the river, the flights of birds, the great grasping claws of the cypresses that line the banks like decapitated sphinxes. He is feeling better, on the mend from his bout with dysentery, exhilarated by his good luck and the prospect of returning to England within the year. The explorer is all right, he thinks. A little pompous and straightlaced maybe, but a man you can work around. . yes, a man you can definitely work around. Ned closes his eyes and pictures the Thames, a clean riveting blue under the sun, the explorer beside him at the helm of the Crescent, the docks packed with grateful cheering mobs and loose women, the future secure. Ned, the explorer says, turning to him, you’ve been invaluable to me on this expedition, invaluable. I couldn’t have done it without you. He takes Ned’s hand, a soft saintly nimbus trembling round them both. Name your reward, old boy— name it and it’s yours.
He wakes gently, some uncertain space of time slipped by — a minute? an hour? — the natter of river martins and hoopoes wafting across from the near bank, and from somewhere the crazed laughter of Boyles and Bird, drunk as loons. He rubs his eyes, looks out at the line of treetops slipping serenely across the rail, and begins to sense, in a vague and incremental way, that all is not as it should be. Case in point: the shadow that looms over him, bulky, stationary, unmistakably human. Ned squints up, momentarily blinded, unable to make out the face in silhouette.
“Jonas?” he tries. “Billy?”
There is no answer. The stranger merely stands there gazing down at him, while Ned shades his eyes and tries to blink away the sunspots and shadow images. What he sees is not at all reassuring: a flexed jaw and dull porcine eyes, clumps of matted doggy hair randomly interspersed with swaths of naked scalp, the rutted face and thick ears of a born clod — and all of it set atop a tensed mass of bone, sinew and rib-cracking muscle. The composite somehow dredges up unpleasant associations — painful associations — and Ned is on the verge of making an intuitive leap to the dim worrisome past when the stranger breaks the silence.
“Well dammee, if it isn’t Ned Rise.”
In that instant, inexplicable, impossible, three thousand miles and seven long years away, Ned knows that it is Smirke standing before him. And instinctively covers himself. “The name’s Rose, friend, Edward Hilary Rose.”
The innkeeper goes down on one knee, his bristling sweaty face as struck with wonderment as a child’s. “Why — it can’t be. The divil take yer fingers if I didn’t see ye strung up for a murderer. .”
Ned gathers his feet under him and very gradually cocks his arm, wary of any sudden movement.
“But it’s you, it is — look, there’s the mark o’ the ‘angman on ye,” Smirke rasps, breathing beer and onions in Ned’s face and pointing a thick finger at the drooping neck of his shirt.
“No, friend,” says Ned, inching off in a crabwalk, “you’ve got the wrong man. I’m a soldier, career man. Born and raised in Cornwall, never been to London in my life—”
“Lunnon? ‘Oo said anything about Lunnon?” And suddenly Smirke’s hand is at his throat, the big rippled forearm jerking him to his feet as easily as if he were a bundle of rags. The innkeeper holds him suspended there for a long nasty moment — his eyes reduced to slits, the rawboned face twisted with rage and hatred — before flinging him against a wall of packing crates. “And wot about them nubbins, then—’ey, Neddy?”
Ned thrusts his hand deep in his pocket, but Smirke, powerful and reeking, takes hold of his wrist and forces the hand up against a crate of lorgnettes, where he splays the fingers across the rough pine slats. Mute and incontrovertible, the ravaged fingers tell their tale.
Smirke says nothing, his breathing deep-chested and satisfied, almost a succession of snorts. He looks Ned in the eye, so close their noses are touching, his breath coming quicker now, as if he were approaching some sort of climax. “Ye’ve been the ruin of me, Ned Rise,” he rasps, his voice as toneless as a defective’s, “and now ‘ear why.”
Ned stands there, pinned against the crates, clutching Smirke so close they could be lovers, while the big man spits curses in his face and narrates a deranged and obsessive tale of loss and woe. “You shit,” he breathes, so soft it could be a term of endearment. “You scum-suckin’ prick. You stinkin’, motherfuckin’, faggot turd. I useter to be a respectable man,” shouting now, “the proprietor of a respectable establishment — and now look at me.” Ned is looking — no choice in the matter — and thinking only of how he can escape the madman’s clutches, lure him over the rail and sink him in the festering ooze. But no such luck. Smirke tightens his hold and goes on.
He’d lost the Vole’s Head nearly six years earlier — lost it — after it had been in the family for three generations. And all because of the humilation and loss of confidence he’d suffered over the Reamer Room incident. Trade fell off. The higher class of patron began to eat and drink elsewhere and Smirke was forced to auction some of the trappings to pay his bills. Inevitably he had to close down, and within the year he was wandering the streets, a broken man. It was about that time that he ran into Mendoza. Need a quid or two, old friend? Mendoza asked, plucking a note from a fat bankroll. As usual the ex-pugilist was dressed in style, looking as prosperous as a prince, though he hadn’t had a fight in years. Down on yer luck, eh Smirke? he said with a grin. Come round and see me: I’ll fix you up. Two nights later Smirke was climbing in the second story window of Lady Tuppenham’s house, while Mendoza kept an eye out below. When Smirke backed down the ladder twenty minutes later, his arms laden and a sack of silver slung over his shoulder, the night watchman was steadying the ladder for him. Within the hour Smirke was in Newgate, and from there it was the hulks at Portsmouth. When the explorer came around looking for carpenters, Smirke, who’d done a bit of remodeling and whatnot at the Vole’s Head, stepped forward and offered his services. And so here he is. In this pesthole. “And all because of ye, Ned Rise!” he shrieks suddenly. “When I seen ye danglin’ there at the end of the ‘angman’s rope I says to myself it wasn’t near bad enough for ye, not near. I wanted to kick that black-‘ooded pansy aside and do it myself, twist the rope double tight, choke ye till ye wisht ye’d never seen the light of day!”
Desperate, the madman’s breath in his face and hands at his throat, Ned opts for the elbow in the ribs, followed by a swift knee to the crotch. One, two: uff-uff. It has no effect. Smirke is leaning over him, breaking his back, wringing his neck as methodically as a butcher throttling a Christmas goose. Ned tries to cry out but his windpipe is choked off, there’s nothing there, and he has to settle for a blind hopeless flailing while the life rushes out of him like water down a drain.
It is Lieutenant Martyn who saves him.
“Here!” the Lieutenant shouts. “You men!” And then the baton comes down across the back of the innkeeper’s skull with a sound reminiscent of chestnuts popping on the open fire.
As Smirke goes limp in his arms, the great wet bulk of the man weighing on him like leviathan and forcing him to the deck while Martyn shouts commands and blasts on his whistle and footsteps come thundering up the planks, Ned Rise begins to reconsider his position, thinking with a certain regret of his pallet back at Goree, thinking that perhaps he’s made a mistake, thinking that maybe, in the final analysis, this isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
♦ DISAPPOINTMENT AT PISANIA ♦