LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter Eight

      A Burden Indeed

      It is not unusual in the great city of London to find, in a respectable family, one offspring who has somehow ignored the blessings of a good upbringing. This certainly was the case between Mr. Richard Grimsby, undertaker, and his youngest child — his only son — Geoffrey. In many particulars, father and son mirrored each other. The father had black hair (still), a large nose, high cheekbones and pinched eyes; likewise the son, with the exception that his younger eyes were pinched out of spite rather than age and experience. Mr. Richard Grimsby was proud of his accomplishments; Master Geoffrey was simply proud.

      In their greater differences, chief among them lay in movement and appearance. Old Grimsby, as he was often called by his neighbours, skipped when he walked, his calves strong and well-exercised from years of morning walks. At sixty-three, his face brimmed with colour, his skin remained smooth from daily scrubbing, his chin, in particular, held firm against any fashionable addition of hair. Young Grimsby, on the other hand, sauntered; although only twenty-seven years old, his gait was hampered by a weak ankle obtained from a fall down the stairs of a gin house. Indeed, he limped. Most mornings, and lately most afternoons as well, his cheeks and forehead took on the colour of soured milk; and not two months ago, in defiance of his father’s wishes, young Geoffrey permitted his chin to sport a bushy beard, often left untrimmed.

      And, of course, there was the younger Grimsby’s scar.

      “An accident,” explained Old Grimsby when anyone enquired. “A boy’s game at school — a rapier, I believe — Geoffrey’s lack of attention to the sport at the moment of his playing.”

      “A broken branch catching the face out riding” were the words young Geoffrey used. The scar drew great attention because of its length. It looked very much as if the sharpened point of a Toledo blade had cut across the right cheek, run over the nose and halted just under the left eye. Some women of Geoffrey’s age — much to his delight — claimed they found the scar attractive. Frequently, they asked to run their fingers over it, their eyes bright with delighted horror at its shape and colour. Curiously enough, young Geoffrey Grimsby was well known in Marylebone for his scar, if not for much else. And without doubt he told its story to gain female sympathy and free glasses of gin.

      Now on this damp March morning in Marylebone, one street west of Bedford Square, the older Grimsby sat at his dining room table. He blew on his tea in a saucer while Mrs. Grimsby, his wife and opponent for thirty-five years, clashed the hearth irons, mumbling to herself as to where the younger Grimsby had disappeared on this most busy, upcoming day.

      “All the night and now all the morning,” Mrs. Grimsby repeated. “Gone, flown away like last January’s snow. What shall we do, Mr. Grimsby? Two funerals, at half three, then at half four, and no bill set out, and our mute boy ill and absent from duty. We are too old to manage all of this ourselves, too old, too much in need of a thoughtful child to lift our burden.”

      “Lift, my good wife? I fear that occasion will never come to pass.”

      Below the dining parlour, in the entrance hall, there was sudden noise. A banging, a bumping. A door slamming, a voice snarling a profanity. Mrs. Grimsby went to the head of the stairs. The undertaker and his family lived above the shop, where coffins were made to order, shrouds sewn, and funerals orchestrated. Four black geldings were housed in the inner courtyard stable next to an ebony hearse.

      “That you?” Mrs. Grimbsy hollered down the stairwell.

      “No, Missus. ‘Tis the ‘Lord of Flies’ himself.”

      “Where have you been, son? Your poor father and I have —”

      “Father is not poor, Mammy. Not a farthing gets past his tight fist.”

      “Come up for your tea, son. There is much to do.”