The Newgate Jig (16 page)

'He
goes to see the Princess!' said Barney with a smile. 'I thought she lived with
the Queen, but Pa said she had an out- of-town residence. He called her our
Fairy Princess, who saved our skins and put bread upon our table.' He rubbed
his eye. 'She gave Pa some money to buy a photographic concern going cheap. She
bought machines and plates and a stock of pictures. My Pa said, "This
could be the making of us, Barney!" He said, "By Christmas, we shall
be as rich as the Queen herself, and twice as happy!'"

Silence dropped like a stone. The boy rubbed his eye
hard with the heel of his hand, and Will looked away and gave Nero's ears a
good scratch. Then, half-glancing at the boy, cleared his throat.

'I'm
guessing that as soon as your Pa's photographic business started making money,
someone else wanted a share. Or perhaps your Pa found that he owed someone else
some money.'

Barney nodded his head.

'The Nasty Man. And an uncle.'

'Perhaps
the Nasty Man offered your Pa a chance? Do this for me, he said, and I will ask
my principal to look again at your debt. Your Pa had no choice. He went along
with it, though he didn't like it much. But he had a boy and not enough chink,
and London is a wicked place.'

It
was quiet in the Aquarium, just the sounds of the animals in the menagerie, the
rattle of feet below in the waxwork room, and a murmur of voices.

'My
Pa wasn't a thief,' said Barney, suddenly. 'And he wasn't a murderer, like the
judge said.'

'I
believe you,' said Will. 'But he offended someone, Barney, for they fitted him
up most thoroughly.' He frowned. 'What did the Nasty Man want? A packet? Like
the one you gave to Bob and I gave it to Trim? Good Lord, that wasn't full of
notes, was it? Or coin?'

Barney shook his head.

'It
was just the packet your pal dropped when he tripped over me. Nothing in it but
paper, so I brought it back.' He gave me a faint smile. 'I seen you with Mr
Trimmer, coming out of the theatre. And the Cheshire Cheese. And I seen you
talking to Mr Lovegrove, so I figured you were all pals together.'

Will patted Nero affectionately and raised his
eyebrows at me.

'Remind me how Mr Trimmer came to trip over you,
Barney.'

'I was in haste, wasn't I? From the Nasty Man. It
was the morning when my Pa had been - well, you know. And he came up to me and
said he wanted the pictures and if I didn't hand them over, he said he would -
well, what he would do to me.' Barney bit his lip. 'He said I could keep the
money what my Pa had stole. He just wanted the pictures. But my Pa never stole
anything.'

'Of course he didn't. But these pictures? You're
sure you don't know where they are?'

Barney
shrugged his shoulders.

'I
never saw anything.'

'Perhaps
he left them with a friend?'

Barney scowled. 'A friend! Don't think much of his
friend. He was supposed to send a letter to the Queen about my Pa so she would
set him free, but he never.'

Will smiled. 'Sometimes friends are not all they're
made out to be, are they?' He looked thoughtful. 'Perhaps your Pa gave this
friend the pictures, or the money. Or whatever it is the Nasty Man wants.'

Barney
shrugged.

'Perhaps he kept the pictures in his photographic
shop? Where was that?

'It's
a emporium and I dunno where it is.'

'Certain?'

Barney frowned and looked irritated. 'Why do
you
want to know? You're as bad as the Nasty Man, you are, with your questions
about my Pa. I'll serve him out, you mark me!' he muttered. 'I promised my Pa I
would,' and looked mutinously at us both.

'Quite
right,' said Will, solemnly. 'Too many questions. My mother always said I was a
regular Boy Jones, and too nosy for my own good or anyone else's. But one last
poser. Is your Pa's photographic business still there? Where he left it?'

'No
more questions!' cried the boy, and he screwed his fists into his eyes and
ground his teeth. 'I don't know! I don't know!'

Will
put a strong arm around his shoulders and Brutus, of course, pushed his head
under Barney's arm. I busied myself with the tea and soon had the pot filled,
but then discovered I had no milk. (I am a devotee of tea with milk and cannot
now abide it in its raw state.) It was but a step, with my little can, out of
the Aquarium to the dairy shop, four doors away.

I went for milk, but did not return so soon.

Rough-making

I am not a
violent man and, indeed, hate violence of any kind. I avoid it. Have sometimes
been called a coward. But I cannot help my nature. I once contemplated joining
the Society of Friends when I learned that they embraced mildness and shun
aggression, and I think they would have suited me. Perhaps in such gentle
company, I might have put behind me the brutality which marked out my childhood
in pain and fear and which, even now, stalks my dreams.

When I am
asleep, I see my father. A small man with rough hands and arms covered in
scars. His profession was to mind furnaces and kilns. Especially brick-kilns.
Any brick-kiln, he was not partial. My mother and I trailed the country with
him, living in cheap rooms when he had work, and in sheds and under arches when
he was out of a shop. He was a brute, both in word and deed, and my memories of
him (for he died when I was six years old) are of his fist, hard and cracked
like old wood, the snarling twist of his mouth and his boots.

Yes, when I
dream, I see him, and hear the roar of his voice and feel the thud of his fist
and boots.

Much as I do
now, as four roughs deal with me. They have dragged me into the narrow
passageway at the side of
Climmber's chandlery and,
business-like, have set about me with their stampers and fives. My little milk
can, about which I am very anxious, skitters away down the passage, bumping
against the sides and performing somersaults. I watch with concern as it comes
to rest upside down against an old ship's figurehead, like a begging bowl.

The roughs are thorough
in their work and take pains to leave no part of my body unattended to. Indeed,
they go over it twice. To be certain. And only when I am curled in a ball and a
pool of blood has begun to gather beneath me, do they stop and survey their
handiwork. One turns me over, and another inspects the job with a practised
eye.

'He's had a fine
gruelling,' says the last. 'A neat piece of work. Enough.'

'Indeed,' says
another, rubbing his fist, 'and only one blue knuckle to show.'

Finally, the
first crouches down and puts his mouth to my ear: he has the foul breath of
long-eaten meat and onions.

'Now then, small
beer. Unless you want your dogs poisoned and their legs broke as well, you
will give up them properties what are not yourn when next applied to.'

He nudges me
with his boot and a shaft of pain tears through my chest. Then it goes dark and
quiet.

Mr Climmber came
out of his shop only once (to fetch a bag of chains or something that rattled).
He stepped over me very carefully. I was glad of that for when I didn't move,
the pain was not too great, and I could doze and wake, and spend what seemed
like hours examining the mossy ranges of the cobbles with one eye, the other
having closed up. How long I lay there, I don't know. Hours or days, it was all
the same. Sometimes I slipped into childhood again, and dreamed that

I was in my
mother's arms. But the smell of the cobbles, as powerful as sal volatile, awoke
me to those nights when I hid from my drunken father, when, as my poor mother,
rubbing her bruised face, would say, he was 'on a certain rampage'. Then I
listened for his heavy step and the tirade of words and fists with which he
battered every face and door, and squeezed myself into the smallest crack and
held my breath. But, no matter how quiet and careful I was, he always found me.
Then came that hard hand to prise me out and those wicked boots kicked at my
refuge, and I retreated, like a mouse into a hole, until I was squeezed so
tight, my knees pressed hard into my chest, that I couldn't breathe. He waited,
I think, until I was overcome with panic. Only then would I allow myself to be
dragged out, and his boots were the last things I saw before the rain of blows
and the pain.

When I saw boots
before me once again, I started, but I knew these were not my father's. They
were dusty and shifted this way and that, and they were followed, not by blows
and curses, but a murmur and a gentle hand upon my shoulder - I prayed that the
hand would not move me so much as a hair's breadth, for moving my shoulder
produced a bolt of pain which shot through my neck and coursed around my skull
and left me gasping for air. But whoever it was left and I was pleased, for I
could sink back into the oozy darkness which had enveloped me. Then came a
clatter on the cobbles, like an army marching past my ear, and all light was
suddenly blotted out, and I believe I panicked and thrashed about before I
heard Will's voice, coming from a long way away.

'By the Lord
Harry, Bob old fellow, what have you been up to? Look at you. Dear God, what
has the poor devil suffered? Now then, I've told you before to leave those
rowdy bob-tails to me, you naughty fellow! See, your two fine friends have come
to look you over

And indeed, here
were Brutus and Nero, nuzzling my aching hands, and knowing, somehow, to be
gentle. But though I was more glad to see them than the sun in the morning, I
was also fearful for their safety, given what the roughs had threatened, and as
Will raised me carefully to my feet, I made certain that they were at my side.
To be sure, they never left me, and Brutus, with a gentleness that was so
affecting it brought tears to my eyes, by turn licked my hand and breathed upon
it as if to reassure me that he was my protector.

Though Mr
Climmber remained within his dark shop, with the door shut, at the passage end
a little crowd had assembled, and I was greeted by oohs and aahs and kind
words, as well as jests.

Take
more water with it, mate!' cried a barrow-man.

'Not Aldgate
water!' cried another. 'He'll be dead before morning!' and other less
charitable jibes.

Most were
sympathetic, though, and bemoaned the violence of the streets and how 'an
honest man couldn't fetch a can of milk these days without being robbed'.

Mr Abrahams
called a cab to take me to my lodgings and in the same breath summoned
constables to look for the bashers who had attacked a valuable employee. Will
had to lift me into the cab and insisted on coming along.

It is strange
how impressions run in moments of pain and distress. As I clung to the window
sash, trying to shut out the agony caused by the cab's shuddering wheels on the
cobbles, the scene in the street seemed to play before me at half speed: Mr
Abrahams on the kerb, frowning and shaking his head, Pikemartin in the doorway
of the Aquarium still and blank as a statue, the boy, Barney, on the steps
rubbing his eye. And Mrs Gifford, in widow's black, scurrying around the corner
and, seeing my face at the cab window, stopping dead.