Then I had George send it off by post and I went out to buy a bottle of good brandy and a puppy.

THE NEXT AFTERNOON I carried the brandy, a copy of this week’s All the Year Round, and the unnamed puppy with me as I took the train to Rochester and hired a carriage to take me to the cathedral.

I left the puppy in the carriage but took the brandy and paper as I walked through the graveyard to the back of the high, hulking cathedral. Rochester had always been a coastal city of narrow streets and redbrick buildings, which made this colossus of an ancient grey stone cathedral seem all the more impressive and oppressive.

This was the very landscape of Charles Dickens’s childhood. It was the presence of this very cathedral that had caused him to say to me years ago that Rochester reflected, for him, “universal gravity, mystery, decay, and silence.”

There was silence enough this hot, humid July day. And I could smell the stench of decay from the nearby tidal flats. Even with what Dickens had once called “the splash and flop of the tide” geographically nearby, there was no splashing audible this day, precious little flop, and absolutely no breeze. The full weight of the sun lay on the baking old headstones and browning grass like an incongruous gold blanket.

Even the shade of the cathedral tower gave little relief. I leaned back and stared up at that grey tower and remembered Dickens’s comment about how it had affected him when he was a tiny boy—“… what a brief little practical joke I seemed to be, my dear Wilkie, in comparison with its solidity, stature, strength, and length of life.”

Well, Dear Reader, if I had my way—and I fully intended to—the cathedral might go on for centuries or millennia more, but the length of life for that little-boy-turned-old-man-writer was all but at its end.

At the far end of the graveyard, beyond the headstones, with only the slightest path leading to it, I found the quick-lime pit still open, still full, and as foul as ever. My eyes watered as I walked back through the graveyard, passing by the very stones and wall and flat headstone-table where Dickens, Ellen Ternan, Ellen’s mother, and I had shared that macabre luncheon so long ago.

I followed the soft TIP-TAP-TIP-TAP around the cathedral, past the rectory, and into a courtyard on the far side. Between the stone wall and a low hovel of stones and thatch, Mr Dradles and an idiot-looking young assistant were working on a headstone taller than either of them. Only the name and the dates—GILES BRENDLE GYMBY, 1789–1866—had been chiselled out of the marble.

When Mr Dradles turned to me, I saw that his face, under a layer of stone dust rivuleted with tracks of his perspiration, was red to the point of bursting. He mopped his forehead as I came closer.

“You probably do not remember me, Mr Dradles,” I began. “But I came here some time ago in the company of…”

“Dradles remembers ’ee, Mr Billy Wilkie Collins, named after a Sirred house painter or some’at,” rasped the red-faced figure. “You was here with Mr Charles D., of all them books an’ such, who was interested in the ol’ ’uns in their dark beds.”

“Exactly,” I said. “But I felt that you and I got off on the wrong foot.”

Dradles looked down at his worn, holed boots, which, I noted, were not “differentiated.” That is, there was no left or right to them, as had been the custom decades ago. “Dradles’s feet are the only ’uns Dradles has,” he said. “The can’t be no wrong ’un.”

I smiled. “True, true. But I felt that I may have left the wrong impression. I brought you this…” I handed him the bottle of fine brandy.

Dradles looked at it, mopped his face and neck again, uncorked the bottle, sniffed it, swigged it, squinted at me, and said, “This ’ere is better drink ’an Dradles is used to at the Thatched an’ Twopenny or anywheres else.” He drank again. His assistant, whose face was as red from the heat and labour as Dradles’s, stared stupidly but did not ask for a drink.

“Speaking of the Thatched and Twopenny,” I said conversationally, “I do not see your rock-hurling young devil around. What did you call him? Deputy? Is it too early in the day for him to be pelting you homeward?”

“That d— ned boy is dead,” said Dradles. He saw my expression and chuckled. “Oh, Dradles di’n’t kill ’im, though Dradles thought to more ’an a time. No, the pox killed ’im and the pox be welcome to ’im.” He took another deep drink and squinted at me. “No gen’lman, not even Mr D., come up from London to bring Dradles ’spensive drink for no reason, Mr Billy Wilkie Collins. Mr D. wanted me to open doors for ’im with me many keys and tap-tap out the where’bouts of the ol’ ’uns in their hollers. What is that Mr Billy W. C. wants from old Dradles this hot day?”

“You may remember that I am an author also,” I said. I handed the stonemason and crypt-cathedral caretaker the copy of All the Year Round. “This, as you see, was last Friday’s number carrying the concluding chapters of my novel The Moonstone.” I opened the periodical to the proper page.

Dradles stared at the mass of type but only grunted. I had no idea whether the man could read. My guess was that he could not.

“It has come to pass,” I said, “that I also am doing some literary research involving a great cathedral such as this. A great cathedral and its attendant crypts.”

“’E wants the keys, Dradles thinks,” said Dradles. “’E wants the keys to the old ’uns’ dark places.” It would have seemed that he was addressing his idiot lop-eared assistant with the haircut that seemed to have been applied with sheep shears, but the boy appeared to be deaf and dumb.

“Not at all,” I said with an easy laugh. “The keys are your responsibility and must remain such. I would merely like to visit from time to time and perhaps avail myself of your expertise in tapping out the hollow places. I certainly would never come empty-handed.”

Dradles took another swig. The bottle was already more than half empty and the filthy mason’s face, even under the Marley-was-dead coating of dust, was redder than ever (if such a thing was possible).

“Dradles does an ’onest day’s work for ’is occasional tipple,” he said thickly.

“As do I,” I said with an easy laugh.

He nodded then and turned back to his carving—or, rather, to supervising the idiot boy in his carving. Evidently the interview was over and the contract had been consummated.

Mopping my own face from the heat, I walked slowly back to the carriage. The puppy—an ungainly but enthusiastic thing with long legs, a short tail, and spots—was leaping with joy on the cushioned seat at the sight of me.

“It will be just another minute, driver,” I said. The old man, half-dozing, grunted and let his chin fall back to his liveried chest.

I carried the puppy back through the graveyard, past our picnic site. Remembering how Dickens had made us all laugh when he put a towel over his arm and perfectly mimicked the behaviour of an efficient but officious waiter, carrying our dishes from the wall to the table-headstone, expertly pouring wine for us all, I walked on with a smile. The puppy had settled in the crook of my arm, its tail still trying to wag from time to time, and its large eyes looking up adoringly at me. Caroline, Carrie, and I had owned several dogs in the past decade and more. Our last beloved pet had died only months earlier.

A gnarled old tree near the rear boundary of the cathedral yard had dropped a branch about four feet long. Still carrying the puppy in my left arm, rubbing the back of its head and neck absently with my thumb as I held it, I picked up the branch, kicked away its small protuberances, and used it as a sort of walking stick.

In the weeds beyond the cemetery, I paused and looked around. The carriage and road were out of sight. Nothing and no one moved in the churchyard proper. From far beyond the cathedral came the TIP-TAP-TIP-TAP of Dradles’s—or, rather, Dradles’s apprentice’s—hot and careful work. The only other sound was the buzz and chitter of insects here in the weeds and high grass that led east to the tidal flats. Even the sea and its attending river were silent in this glare of sunlight.