The Street Philosopher - By Matthew Plampin Page 0,129

it’s dark as hell in here,’ the senior correspondent grumbled. ‘Where’s my matches?’

There was a second’s pause. Styles could hear breathing. A match was struck, and warm light filled the space outside his alcove. There was a thick canvas curtain between him and this light; but a half-inch gap at the curtain’s side became a bright line through which he could clearly observe what was happening beyond.

Cracknell and Mrs Boyce stood by a desk, both wrapped up tightly in their winter clothing, their breath forming clouds in front of them. The senior correspondent threw a small sack of biscuit and a yellow slab of Dutch cheese on to the desk. As soon as his hands were free, Mrs Boyce was on him, kissing him all over his grimy face, pressing herself hard against him. Cracknell pushed her back firmly.

‘Both were injured, you say?’ he demanded.

She nodded, reluctantly delaying her attentions. ‘Yes, both. We–we took them to the harbour. Mr Kitson is quite badly hurt, I think.’

‘Good Lord,’ Cracknell murmured in mild amazement, ‘I must have been standing within a hundred yards of the poor devils. Ah well, Balaclava is an easy place indeed in which to miss people, especially if you’re not looking for them. They’ll be sent home now, at least. Neither one of them was cut out for war correspondence.’

Mrs Boyce began to cry. ‘I was so frightened, Richard, that you might have been with them–might have been lying dead…’

He wrapped her up in the arms of his fur coat. ‘Come now, Maddy,’ he said, his manner softening, ‘I was perfectly safe. I was here, in fact, asleep in my tent, whilst those young fools were out playing soldiers. You should not run off from Miss Wade, though. You could have been in a serious pickle if that dragoon hadn’t found you and escorted you back up to the camps.’

She looked up at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. ‘You–you saw us?’

Cracknell chuckled condescendingly. ‘I did, on the outskirts of town. I was heading in the other way. I would’ve said something, Maddy, but I know the fellow. He’d have been over to tell your husband in a flash.’ He paused. ‘Besides, I had something to attend to.’

‘How could you see me, Richard, and not even—’

‘Madeleine, we must exercise a bit of care. Your husband is merely waiting for an excuse to strike at me. You know this. And I am here now, am I not? We have this tent quite to ourselves.’

She was easily won round. They kissed for a long time. Styles heard their lips gently sucking together. Before long, he could see that the fronts of both their coats were open, the sides overlapping, their bodies meeting in the space in between, their hands pulling at the clothes beneath. Their breathing became yet heavier. Mrs Boyce giggled, and said something about the cold; a moment later, Cracknell ducked away, igniting a small charcoal stove on the floor. He went back to her immediately, and Styles noticed the edge of her skirts rise up under the bottom of her coat. They then moved towards another alcove, close to the desk, and sunk into it.

The illustrator, staying silent in the shadows, found that he could watch all of this without any sense of consternation, jealousy or anger. He felt strangely removed, as if he were not a thinking, feeling person but merely an object, an inanimate witness. Reaching into the pocket of his coat, he took out his sketch-book and pencil.

‘Richard,’ she asked, from deep inside the alcove, ‘what do I mean to you?’

There was a short pause as Cracknell fiddled with an obscure fastening. ‘You mean more to me, my tender little Frenchie, than all the brandy in the world. Than all the cigars in the world.’

‘What of the other women–of the other women you have known?’

‘You are the finest by far. The most beautiful, the most exquisite–a rare treasure so precious that naught can equal it.’ There was a faint, almost indiscernible note of weariness in Cracknell’s voice as he said this. ‘You would be my choice of all the women in creation.’

Styles could now see Mrs Boyce, half-naked, reclined on Cracknell’s cot. Her shoulder, breast and thigh formed a rhythmic, curving pattern, which his pencil quickly traced out in the strip of candlelight that fell across the page of his sketch-book. Drawing her, even in this extraordinary, unseen state, seemed immediately familiar to him. It was as if his hand remembered the dozens of depictions