Jack Maggs (19 page)

43

Silas and Ma Britten [Jack wrote] had a very original ambition: to do a series of clever burglaries without never laying fingers on the goods. And once they got Sophina and me properly
trained-up to the art, it was, so Silas said, like having ferrets,
except that he was excused the bother of carrying the cages.

Looked at from his way, it was a very pretty little dart. First
Yours Truly would climb down the chimney—a journey I now
made as easy as jumping out of bed—and then I would light
my candle and inspect the locks on the dressers and cabinets.
If need be, I would then unlock the kitchen door and whistle
for the lever man, a great half-wit pugilist called Wexall whose
brain had been jolted in its box one time too many. Wexall had
nothing more to do than break the locks and then scarper, a
service for which he was pleased to receive a silver sixpence.
Then Sophina would enter, always carrying a little posy of
flowers—I know not why this was—and wearing her good hat.
It was she who was trusted to select the most valuable pieces of
silver plate, and I, her black-faced companion, who would
pack the treasures in the sack of soot. We went about our work
as happy as eight-year-olds, magging to each other all the
while.

Silas, meanwhile, had arranged for an old dustman by the
name of Mr Figgs to come to pick up the sacks which I placed
outside the door. Silas told me that Mr Figgs thought himself
to be carrying naught but dust and ashes, and was happy to deliver the sacks to his net loft in Wapping for a penny each. This
must have been a lie, but I believed it then.

In the summer of
1801
we did over twenty of these “errands.”
We did so well that before the fireplaces of London were hot
again, we had abandoned the rotten little court by London
Bridge and moved, with Silas and Sophina, to Islington. We
took a whole floor above a tobacconist’s in Upper Street and
from this address Ma Britten kept herself as busy as ever, making her sausages and ministering to her female visitors.
Whereas once she had received her callers in a curtained little
area beside the stove, now she saw them in a small room above
the yard at the back.

No one went to Smithfield any more. Ma Britten would
send me with a note and half a crown to a proper butcher’s
shop where a number of red-faced men, all named Mr Ayres,
would wrap me up some lamb chops or a piece of liver.

Thus my life improved all at once. Tom was rarely there to
twist my wrist or otherwise hurt me. I ate great meals of roast
meat and roast potatoes. And if we were forbidden to play with
the respectable children, Sophina and I had each other for
company. Silas, to give him credit, often took us to the park,
where we played hide and seek, and hoop-a-penny and blind
man in a sack.

Alas, life was not so merry for Tom, who suffered much from
home-sickness. Each Sunday he left his master’s house in darkness, arriving in Islington before the church bells had begun to
ring. I would wake to the sound of his big heavy boots upon the
stairs. Once inside our door he would run to our mother’s
room, climb up into her bed and cry.

Tom did not like Silas or Sophina either. This was to my advantage because he seemed to lose his old dislike of me. Indeed
I was now his ally, and on these Sunday visits he took to walking out with me, sharing confidences about his hopes and
plans.

One September morning, before it had become properly
cold, he took me all the way down into St James’s Park. He
bought me a glass of milk from the stalls where they had the
cows. There were a great many servant girls drinking the milk,
which was said to be good for their complexion, but Tom paid
the girls no mind at all.

It was me he watched. He was always watching me. His
long bony face was alert and slightly angry.

—Does Silas buy you milk?

In fact, he bought us milk on many occasions, but I knew
enough to say he never had.

—The brute has you all tied up in the harness, said Tom.
He is riding on your back. He is taking all the money and
won’t even buy you milk.

I ventured that Silas had taught me a great deal.

—We have no need of strangers sleeping in our house, said
he.

I thought, at first, that he was referring to one of Ma Britten’s female customers who had recently spent the night vomiting and groaning in the small room at the back. I agreed that
I did not like it.

—We should kick him down the stairs, he said, and take his
clever Latin with him.

—Who?

—Silas, you little mutt, who did you think we were talking
of?

I reminded Tom that it was Silas who had orchestrated our
good fortune, that if not for him we would still be living in that
room by Pepper Alley Stairs.

—We was happy there, said Tom. Before he came and stuck
his big red nose in. You and me and Ma, we had good days. We
didn’t have no porker snoring in the night.

—Still and all, Tom . . .

—Still and all, we must get rid of him.

—Sophina is my friend.

—I never said nothing about her, said Tom. You want my
opinion, she’s a giddy goat, but I ain’t got no quarrel with her.
It’s him we must get rid of.

—How would we do that, Tom?

—I ain’t talking of hows just at the moment. All I’m talking
of is the fact of the matter and all I am telling you is—and here
he pushed his raw face close to mine—Silas is a cheat and a
liar and he is not a part of our family.

Tom frightened me that day. As we walked back up Haymarket I thought I had liked him better when we were enemies.

He walked so close. He was forever bumping into me, and
as he walked, he talked, his mouth pushed close over towards
my ear. He told me that we could get a great deal of money and
run away to Bristol. He told me that his master had a steel
closet with gold bars in it, and that I should come with him
and climb down the chimney and unlock the door.

As I write this now, I see what I did not see then: Tom was
not right in his mind. Perhaps he was ever thus. Or perhaps it
was the strain of being forbid his mother’s company that finally
unhinged him. Certainly that day I could make no sense of
him but thought it was my own fault, that perhaps I was as
slow and stupid as he said. When I pointed out that he was already in his master’s house and did not need me to come down
the chimney, he flew into a rage and did not quiet until I had
agreed to come with him to Bristol. This promise, fortunately,
he soon forgot.

He came back in the middle of that week. I do not know
how he got into the house, only that I woke to find him shaking me. He told me I must get dressed quickly without a sound.
His big mouth was close to me again, his breath smelled bad.

I slipped out of the bed which I shared with my play mate,
and he led me out into the back yard. And there we stood, in
the shadow of a pear tree, with his hard hand shackling my
wrist, shivering, saying nothing.

I asked him what it was we were waiting for.

For answer he clipped me round the ears, then put his finger to his lips. After we had stood there a good half-hour, I
heard a great loud knocking and much shouting, and then a
candle was lit, and soon I saw, at the window, all manner of
men with lanterns and candles. It was the police.

—That’ll teach the smarmy clack-box, he said.

We then returned to our rooms, wherein we found Silas
gone and Ma Britten pale and quiet. She looked at Tom very
thoughtful like, and asked him how it was he was here so early
of a morning.

I went in to comfort poor Sophina who was crying most
piteously.

—Jack, Jack, she said, Jack, they took my da. Who will take
care of me now my da is gone?

44

IT WAS HOT AND CLOSE in the snuggery, and whenever he stretched Jack Maggs released a great manly smell like bed linen in the warmth of early morning. Sometimes Mercy thought she could not bear another moment of it, being confined so close with him.

For his part though, he hardly seemed to notice her, and yet she had felt his keen interest on other days, feeling his stare when he thought her ignorant of his attention.

If she was now unattractive to him, he had heard the gossip in the kitchen. He knew she was a chipped and mended cup in a rich man’s dresser. It was clear to him, clear to anyone who looked into her eyes, that she was stained brown from use.

He was also rather stained and used, but this did not make him the least unattractive to her. Indeed, it was the knowledge of his ill-usage that stirred her heart so painfully. Why then could he not extend the same charity to her?

She had imagined his scars most vividly. She had thought of his back with particular clarity. She would have dressed it with unguents and lotions, but he was busy writing letters to his beloved and did not care for her anyhow.

The bureau had always fitted the master very well, but it was not made for Jack Maggs. She watched how those immense thighs jammed beneath the dainty little desk and, when his feelings ran away with him, how they lifted the desk clear off the floor so that the cedar top tilted like the deck of a ship at sea. Throughout all this turbulence he would keep on writing, back to front like a Chinaman, until Mercy thought she saw a kind of glow, from behind his neck and shoulders, like the light from a furnace door. As he wrote his thick lips moved, and his eyes screwed almost shut.

It was not until the middle of the second long day, as he left to carry Mr Spinks up to his bed, that she had her chance to look:

she read, but then the whole page vanished, and although she peered very close at the paper and held it up to the light, it kept its secrets to itself. So it was with each and every page.

She heard his tread on the stair and immediately sat down upon the ottoman.

He entered without glancing at her, but stared down at his papers for so long that she began to fear that she had somehow marked them. He had been carrying some items in his arms, though she could not make them out until he laid them down: three lemons, some twine and rough brown paper, and a splendid silver mirror.

“How is Mr Spinks?” She tried to sound conversational, but her voice quavered.

He looked at her, severely.

“Ailing.” He held out the mirror for her to take. At first she thought it a gift and her hand trembled when she took it.

“It’s ever so pretty,” she said.

“He was a clever old cove what made it. Dead now.”

He held out his hand and she understood she was to give the mirror back. He began to wrap it in brown paper.

“It’s a gift?” She smiled to hide the sickness in her heart.

He continued folding his brown paper.

“Here, let me do it. She’ll think you’ve bought her a flounder if you wrap it up like that.”

She smoothed out the paper, and carefully wrapped the mirror. She felt him watching her; she imagined his breath upon her neck.

“You want me to wrap the lemons, too?” she said lightly.

Unsmiling, he placed the lemons in front of her.

He was standing next to her very close, and she felt his attention on her while she made a neat little parcel of the lemons. After she had completed this task, she wrapped the letters themselves. Finally, when the three parcels had received their kiss of sealing wax, she placed them, one atop the other, in the centre of the desk. She felt all her hair to be on end. She had to speak, no matter what it made him think of her.

“I don’t mind you lock me,” she began.

There was an odd agitation showing in his eyes.

“I never did tell a soul about you,” she said.

Then he leaned down and kissed her. Upon the forehead, like a bishop or an uncle.

“How did little Buckle nab you? It don’t make sense, the pair of you.”

“It makes sense.”

“Did you lose your papa?”

“What?”

“Did you lose your papa?”

His eyes were soft and brown, all their hardness gone, just as they had been last night in the cellar. She looked at him, trying to understand what it was he felt, and then he lifted his poor misshapen hand and stroked her hair.

“Lost your da?” he said roughly. “The poor thing lost the da.”

Then she wept against his musky shirt and she felt how he pitied her. He did not embrace her, but he continued gently to stroke her hair, and she might have stayed there for ever, so she felt, had not the inevitable knock come, so soon, upon the door.

He stepped away from her.

“It is Constable,” he said. “Come to collect the parcels.”

It was not only Constable but also, alas, the master; and this latter person now rushed into the room looking intently at her from under his raised eyebrows. The poor frightened man had strapped his sword around his dressing gown and it clanged against the doorway as he entered.

“Everyone still well?” he asked, staring all the time at Mercy.

Jack Maggs did not seem to notice him. “Now listen here, Eddie, you reckon your mates can find this Henry Phipps.” And so saying he thrust the three parcels into Constable’s arms.

Mercy thought:
not love letters
.

“Tell them Mr Phipps must squeeze the lemons in a bowl, and then brush the juice across the paper. Then he is to use the mirror. They should tell him it is a good mirror as he will find mentioned in the first letter. They should tell him there is more to the story, but he better come and hear it from my lips, soon, for I cannot stay here in this house a great deal longer. Can you remember all of this?”

Mercy blew her nose.

“Lemons, brush, mirror,” said Constable. “More to tell.”

“They should tell him—to suggest a place where we can meet in private. He can write me a note”—Maggs turned to Mr Buckle— “and then you will be free of me. I will be gone from your life.”

“No, no,” said his host, but Mr Buckle’s earnest little ferret face was obviously relieved and Mercy saw him as she had never seen him before. She wished it were not so, but her saviour had begun to cut a pathetic figure in her eyes.