Gibbous House 4

Sustenance was necessary, though my appetite had vanished - leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. I shook out my topcoat and laid it out to dry on the floor by the draughty sash-window. The letters, and the blank sheets of vellum, I placed in a pocket of my frock coat. Picking up my hat from the bed, I looked at my ageing attire in the cracked cheval and repaired to the public bar.

Thackeray’s confederates were nowhere to be seen and glad I was of it, at that time. The man himself was behind the counter dispensing a pint of porter to a broker who seemed altogether too young for his impressive whiskers. This observation could not have been made at any time in the recent past concerning mine host. A man - as we were wont to say then - in the prime of life: his whiskers put one in mind of an extravagant feat of topiary of the kind whose passing Loudon’s Philosophy of the Gardenesque so mourned. Less aesthetically pleasing was his shirt: long having abandoned any pretension to a state of whiteness, it was heroically stained, and no doubt scented, by the fruits of his labour. This garment, a commodious one for the majority of humanity, strained to hold his paunch behind its cloth. It was not blessed with a collar and by dint of a nod to the custom of wearing a cravat, was topped off by a filthy looking rag fastened at the limit of its capacity around his ruddy and bullish neck.

He addressed me in his usual servile fashion, which, though no trace of insincerity showed in his mien, aroused in me a sense of being ridiculed.
‘Mister Moffat, ‘ow may I be of service? Porter, claret, Gin for the…gentleman?’
‘I’ll have a plate of chops, Thackeray, and some honest beer.’

It were ever so. Thackeray had no reason to think of me as anything less than a gentleman. However, he lost no opportunity to slight me by pause or intonation. My own circumstances did not allow me to make protest or restitution, though I sorely wished they did.

I seated myself at the table furthest from the door. The landlord himself brought me a pewter tankard which he filled from a pitcher of beer. From past experience I knew my comestibles could arrive post haste, but more likely at Mrs Thackeray’s convenience, which was to say - none too soon. Eurydice Thackeray filled the role of cook in the Chaste Maid and never was a cook more inconvenienced by the prospect of culinary duties. Regarding her euphonious name, Mrs Thackeray was more oak than nymph and for certain sure minded no-one, least of all Thackeray himself, of a sweet maiden.

Through the Inn’s grubby window, I caught sight of one of the brutes whose earlier presence had discomfited me. He peered through the square of glass, fixed me with a malevolent eye and gave me, I swear it, a savage nod and a wink such as Jack Ketch might give Mr Punch. I should like to say the reverie with which I filled the wait for Mrs Thackeray’s inconveniences concerned plans to spend my new found wealth; or fond memories of the wife who had brought such unexpected fortune. It behoves me to confess I spent the time, and I know not how long it was, ransacking my past for the faintest trace of a mysterious Cadwallader.