Master Georgie Read Free

be an epithelioma of the upper lip. I noticed such things because Master Georgie let me read his medical books, though, as yet, I didn’t understand them perfectly.
    At that instant William Rimmer came out of the hotel. I waited until I saw Master Georgie emerge, then sped down the steps, across the square and into the doorway of the Union Warehouse. Master Georgie got irritated if I hung about too closely. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but from the agitated manner in which William Rimmer walked off a few paces, then returned, I gathered they were arguing rather than talking. Mostly, they discussed cadavers and blood vessels and the like, so I reckoned it was a medical rift. All the same, Master Georgie looked hang- dog, which was out of character, and I felt a sudden flutter of distress. Gauging they were too locked to notice, I stole nearer and hid behind the roses. It was still raining and water sprayed from Master Georgie’s hat.
    William Rimmer said, ‘I won’t listen to your excuses.’
    Master Georgie said, ‘I have nothing to excuse.’ He spoke calmly, which was his way. He held that if a man wanted his judgement to be accepted, it should be expressed coolly and without passion.
    ‘You can’t deny it was underhand,’ said William Rimmer. ‘Damn it, George, you knew my feelings.’
     ‘In the circumstances, I don’t see I was at fault. You heard what Mrs Prescott said...What was I to do?...Was I supposed to refuse so that you could step in?’
    ‘In your place I would have done - ‘
    ‘Would you indeed? And risk appearing boorish?’
    ‘It wasn’t the action of a friend,’ William Rimmer stormed, and with that he walked off again, only this time he kept straight on and didn’t look back.
    Master Georgie hesitated and then made as if to follow. After no more than a few yards he changed his mind and almost ran across the square. He didn’t turn to see if I was at his heels.
    I couldn’t think what the quarrel was about. Mrs Prescott was a wealthy woman who lived in grand style beyond Strawberry Fields. She had three daughters, two of whom were rumoured to be plain and the third handsome. I’d heard Mr Hardy remark on her looks, and he was a great man for knowing what constituted a good- looking woman. Mrs Prescott had given a dance the week before to which Master Georgie had been invited. By the sound of it, so had William Rimmer. Beyond that, it was a mystery what Mrs Prescott had said and what Master Georgie had done that William Rimmer considered underhand.
    My mind wouldn’t let the matter rest, the argumentative words tumbling over and over in my head as I trailed Master Georgie the length of Bold Street. It was monstrous of William Rimmer to upbraid him. Why, when he’d caught an infection of the finger from slicing livers in the dissecting room, and lain at death’s door for two days, groaning under the fever, Master Georgie had spent a whole night sitting up with him. On his return, recounting to Mrs Hardy the torment his friend was enduring, tears swelled up in his eyes. It hurt my heart to have his devotion so easily forgotten.
    Master Georgie should have turned left when we reached St John’s Church; instead he swerved right, up the cobbled rise towards St James’ Mount. I reckon he was lost in thought, either that or putting time between himself and home. It had stopped raining and a watery sun floated above the chimney stacks. Mrs O’Gorman didn’t like setting foot in this part of the town. Poverty, she confided, sent her skittering, due to her having nudged too close to it on account of Ireland and the potatoes.
    Years past, when Mr Hardy’s father was alive, merchants lived in the streets nearest to their manufacturing businesses beside the river. It was expansion, Master Georgie said, and the inrush of humanity, that sent them scuttling upwards to build their mansions in the hills. The once pampered houses now stood in mouldering disarray, balconies rusted,