A Very Unusual Pursuit Read Free

over the walls, the ceiling, the dustsheets, the fireplace . . . and Alfred, too.
    Birdie escaped the deluge by ducking into the hall.
    ‘What was that?’ squealed Ellen. She stood by the front door, an iron poker in her trembling hand. ‘Was that the bogle?’
    Birdie didn’t reply. She had already darted back into the dining room, which now smelled rancid – like a tannery full of rotten fish. Slime was dripping from Alfred’s staff, and from his beaky nose, and from his bristling chin. Slime streaked his grubby green coat and dribbled off his thick, greying hair.
    At his feet, entrapped by a circle of salt, lay something that looked like a huge, burst pimple. Birdie saw that its edges were beginning to shrink and dry.
    ‘That was quick,’ she said at last.
    ‘Aye,’ Alfred agreed. ‘It didn’t keep us waiting.’
    ‘It must have been hungry.’
    ‘Like enough.’
    ‘Or very stupid.’
    ‘That too.’
    ‘It made a sad mess . . .’ Birdie muttered, as Alfred sprinkled the contents of a small glass bottle onto the putrid remains. He was just returning the bottle to his sack when Ellen stuck her head around the door and screamed.
    ‘Oh! Oh, no !’
    Birdie hastened to assure her that the stains would fade quickly – that they were already fading – and that the stench wouldn’t linger. Then, seeing that Ellen was weak at the knees and in no condition to open the nearest window, Birdie did it herself.
    Alfred, meanwhile, was wiping his staff with a red flannel rag. Only after his weapon had been thoroughly cleaned, and bundled back into his sack, did he ask the drooping housemaid, ‘Would a drop o’ brandy restore you?’
    ‘Not from this house,’ Ellen croaked. ‘Mrs Plumeridge marks the bottle.’
    In response, Alfred pulled a small flask from his sack. But the housemaid shook her head.
    ‘Ma don’t hold with the grog,’ she told him, ‘for it were the ruin of her own father.’
    Alfred shrugged and drank a few mouthfuls. Birdie, by this time, had fetched Ellen’s broom from the hall. She began to sweep up the scattered salt, some of which was now brown and yellow. The bad smell was already fading, and the bogle’s remains had become brittle and crusty.
    As Birdie plied her broom, the puffs of air that she stirred up caused some of these dry flakes to crumble, until they were just yellow flecks like grains of sand.
    ‘Ain’t never much to a bogle,’ she announced cheerfully. ‘You could bury a round dozen in a bread-tin.’
    ‘You’ve a pretty voice,’ Ellen mumbled, from her post by the door. ‘The prettiest I ever heard.’
    Birdie grinned. ‘Which is how I got me name,’ she said. ‘For I’m Bridie McAdam, or would be, save that Mr Bunce thought Bridie a foolish name for a girl as wouldn’t be wed for many a year.’ Leaning on her broom, Birdie added, ‘When he first heard me singing, down by the canal at Limehouse, he thought I sounded like a little bird in a gutter. So he called me Birdie just as soon as he took me in. Ain’t that so, Mr Bunce?’
    Alfred ignored her. ‘Bogles is solitary creatures,’ he gruffly informed the housemaid. ‘Weren’t never but one to a lair. So I’ll trouble you for them six shillings, Miss Meggs, and a penny for the salt.’
    ‘But is it dead?’ she asked him. ‘Dead and gone?’
    ‘It’ll not trouble you further,’ Alfred replied.
    ‘But where did it come from? And why was it here?’ Ellen demanded.
    Alfred shrugged. He had no real, abiding interest in bogles, even though they were his livelihood. To him they were just vermin, plain and simple. He didn’t worry about the whys and the wherefores.
    ‘It’ll not trouble you further,’ he repeated.
    And he put out his hand for Ellen’s six shillings, plus a penny for the salt.

3
    AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
    Alfred and Birdie lived in Bethnal Green. Their room was small and dark, with no view to speak of. But it was close to the Black Dog, where Alfred often drank, and to the Anchor