The Newgate Jig (29 page)

'Look where
you're going,' Pikemartin cried, pushing me hard. 'Have you no eyes in yer head
to go with yer ignorance, ye dummy!'

The
shock of his anger - and his insult - was like a blow.

'Keep out of my
way or, by God, I'll knock your face into the wall. And that young gallows-bait
with you!'

He was
pale-faced and white-lipped and stank of drink and ill-use. There was a trace
of vomit on his coat, and his hands were cut and dirty. I had often seen him
maudlin and miserable, tetchy even, but never in such a state as this. Even
so, I was not about to retaliate. I laid my hand upon his arm and smiled in
friendship, for he had been good to me recently, giving me a place in his box
and occasionally sharing his bottle. But now he behaved as if all that had
never happened. He lunged out, striking my hand away with a limp fist, and then
he turned upon Barney. The boy dodged behind me, frightened, but Pikemartin
came for us both again, swinging wide with arms and fists and roaring curses.
They were a drunkard's swipes, easy to avoid, but his curses were a different
matter.

'You don't know
what I have to do, damnation take the both of you!' he cried. 'What I'm made to
do! You and your father's filthy business!'

Barney
retaliated; he would never hear a word said against his Pa. 'You don't know
anything about my Pa! He was fitted up, everyone knows that!'

Pikemartin
wiped his hand across his mouth and swayed.

'Aye, but does
everyone know about his pictures! Eh? What was done to them little girls? Eh?
What I have to see every time I'm summoned to that place! It's your father what
started it! Curse you, George Kevill! I hope you're roasting in hell!'

Alf Pikemartin's
face was pale, his eyes red. Spittle flecked the corners of his mouth and,
struggling against drink and despair, he staggered, which was when our eyes met
and everything slowed down in that cold street. If he had come and hit me then,
a good sharp cut on the jaw, I would not have felt it more keenly than that
moment's understanding. And if he had told me, in simple words, clearly, over
and over, until I understood, I would have been just as wise as I was in that
instant. For I knew then that he was the man in the stable. The one who made
the pictures. The one who wrapped the dead child in a rug and put it under the
floor, and then took it to the tunnel where the cazzelties found it. He
inherited the job from George Kevill and it was driving him mad.

He
swayed and wiped his mouth again.

'Ay, mash that,
Bob Chapman! You think it's the world's end because he's taken your dogs? Look
at me! He has my soul! He wants my daughter!'

That was how the
Nasty Man worked! He threatened George Kevill with - what? Corrupting his son?
Murdering him? If he didn't make the pictures and get rid of the children.
And, because George tried to fight back, wrote a letter or told someone, he was
strung up, dancing the Newgate jig. And now there were pictures - lost? destroyed?
- and the Nasty Man would use any means to recover them. Even wrecking a man's
life, beating him, taking his livelihood, stealing his dogs. Terrifying young
Barney. And now Pikemartin was damned in the same way. Threats, blackmail, who
knows what he suffered to protect himself and Em.

We might have
stood in that street until the city fell about our ears if Mrs Gifford had not
come hurrying around the corner. Busy as ever, rushing between this place and
that, on this errand and that, she all but fell into us, and stopped herself
just in time. We had gathered quite a little crowd about us by now, for
Pikemartin looked set to hit someone and London folk are always up to watch a
fight. But Mrs Gifford would have none of that and, against all advice, took
Pikemartin by the elbow.

He was beyond
reason. He pushed Gifford roughly out of the way, staggered backwards half a
dozen paces and then, setting his eye upon Barney and me once again, lurched
towards us with a terrible roar, and he would, I am sure, have felled us both
if a burly lumper had not strode across, begged our pardon and caught
Pikemartin a blow upon the jaw that sent him crashing to the ground.

'This is no
sight for ladies, or young 'uns. He's the box-man at the Aquarium, isn't he?'

He threw the
unconscious man over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and set off down the
road.

Mrs Gifford, her
mouth straight as a puritan's eye, followed in his wake, but anyone could see
that she was ruffled, and when Barney and I arrived at the Aquarium ourselves,
he was nowhere to be seen and
she
was in his box - a thing never
before seen in my time! - taking money and handing out tickets. But she called
me over, and with an authority to which she had no right but which she assumed
anyway, she instructed me to 'look after the box and make sure you're not
short-changed' and directed Barney to the menagerie.

I took over his
box sometimes whilst he was out on errands, or taking objects here and there in
the Aquarium, and though it was a cramped and airless place and the smell of
him lingered long after he had shuffled out of the door, even so, I envied Alf
Pikemartin. For not only did he see his beautiful daughter, Em, night and
morning, but he had a portrait photograph of her in his box to look at during
the day. It was propped up against the wall on the bench and I admired it long
and long during the weary hours I sat there. It was Em to the life, and if she
looked over my shoulder as people in portraits do, I could still persuade
myself that she might be thinking about me. And I developed a fancy that if I
could only gaze directly into her face, her eyes would look directly into mine.
I longed to have the photograph in my hand to test this out, but it seemed a
liberty to remove it from where Pikemartin had placed it, and so Em continued
to stare serenely at the wall behind me. So I contemplated her gentle features
and thought how dreadful the hours must have been for him in this place,
waiting for the summons to Fish-lane, and then, once there, knowing that he
must come here and betray nothing of what he had seen. No one must know what he
did. The image of Em was a constant reminder of that.

Suddenly, the
front door opened and a flurry of milliners blew in and they, knowing no
better, I suppose, let it slam, sending a veritable hurricane through the hall
and up the stairs, rattling the windows and blowing about the tapestries. They
giggled and shrieked (and never an apology to be had), and bought their tickets
with winks and kisses (not real). But when I returned to Pikemartin's box, I
realized that Em's photograph was not in its usual place. It must have fallen
to the floor in the blast and I scrabbled around, under the bench, pulling out
the bucket and the spidery pots and trays to find it, but to no avail. The only
other place it could be was behind Pikemartin's cupboard, a rough, knee-high
thing which stood on the floor and in which he locked his bottle of Old Tom,
his tobacco and anything he found whilst he was sweeping up. (He told me that
he found a diamond brooch once, and a ruby bracelet, and that if I found
anything I should show him, since I was doing his job and he should claim a
share. But I have only ever found a ticket for the Haymarket Theatre and a
glass eye and kept those myself.)

I dragged the
cupboard out far enough to push my hand behind it, and I found Em's photograph
immediately. It had suffered no ill-effects, or none that a quick dusting off
with my sleeve could not put right, and I swiftly replaced it and shoved the
cupboard back. But I pushed it too far back. A dusty line revealed where I had
been exploring, so I tried to set it to rights, shoving and pushing it about,
too far and then not far enough. There was something underneath that kept
catching on the bottom, and it was when I tipped the cupboard back that I saw
the key.

There were
probably two bottles of Old Tom in the cupboard, for I heard them clink
together and I suddenly felt a keen thirst for a glass. Pikemartin would count
me as a friend when he was sober, I thought, and anyway would not notice, so I
unlocked the cupboard and found the bottles and a cup, as well as an old briar
pipe and a little tin of tobacco. I had a small taster, and then another as the
warmth started to chase about my arms and legs. But I am not a drinking man and
it was only like medicine to me, so I made myself comfortable on the floor and
looked about me, and noticed inside the cupboard three packets, carefully
wrapped in thick brown paper, tied up with string. When I took them out, I saw
that each one was labelled To Collect', and then 'Farringdon', 'York',
'Purdoe', in a shaky hand. Inky spiders spreading across the brown paper. I
opened one.

I
wished my boys were with me, Brutus and Nero sitting by my side as I squatted
on the floor. They would have been company and reassurance, would have sniffed
the packets and inspected the contents and licked my face when I covered my
eyes. They would not have flinched when I pushed the vile images from me, and
Brutus would have sat close, and put his golden head upon my knee until I
stopped shaking.

And Nero would
have let me know that Alf Pikemartin was standing in the doorway.

Pikemartin Again — Pilgrim's Shop in the Dark

In
one of Trim's stirring Pavilion dramas, Pikemartin would have threatened
me/broken my jaw/turned the air blue and black. Or, at least, demanded to know
why I was sitting in his box with his cupboard open and his bottle of Old Tom
half drained and his own property strewn across the floor. And the audience of
the Pavilion Theatre would have jumped to their feet and roared, whilst he, the
villain of the piece - often played by Mr Penrose, especially engaged for the
part - would roar and shake his fist in reply.

At
least they knew who the villain was.

Whereas I,
unable to roar and very unsteady upon my pins (on account of the three cups of
Old Tom), could only sit on the floor of Pikemartin's box. When he, after some
moments, snatched up the packets and, saying nothing, sat wearily upon the bottom
step of the great staircase, I was as calm as a dog in the sun.

He turned them
over, and pushed his hand through his wild hair. He was still very drunk, but
some of the madness had left him.

These are for
collection. Or for
her
to deliver to the . . . gentlemen.'

He
spat out the words.

I wanted to ask
him if he meant Mrs Gifford. I wanted to know if she found the children outside
the Pavilion Theatre where I had seen her and took them to the gaff. I wanted
to know who these gentlemen were. I wanted to know where he made the pictures,
actually
made
them. I wanted to know if it was just the Nasty Man, or
whether there was some other involved.

But
I already knew. And now it didn't matter.

'I'm sorry about
your animals, Chapman. No one should lose what's so precious to them.'

I saw his eyes
flicker to the picture of Em and his lips tighten. He folded the thick paper
around the little bundle of pictures and re-tied the string.

'Have
you
got the pictures what George Kevill left?'

I
shook my head.

'And
the letter what he wrote?'

No.

'He hid them
somewhere, when he knew the Nasty Man was onto him. Couldn't be trusted, you
see. George said that he would write it all down - for he was something of a
scholar - and made sure that the Queen and parliament knew what was going on. I
know he kept back some pictures. To show what they were up to. Bishops and
dukes and do-gooders and—'

He
coughed hard and spat into his hand.

We might have
been frozen there like living waxworks if Mr Abrahams had not come down the
stairs and found us. It was the first time I have ever heard him speak angrily.

'Alfred,' he
cried, 'what are you about, man? Nothing at all! You
stumer!
Off with
you now! Work! And you, Bob Chapman, sprawled upon the floor? Do I pay you to
greet our visitors like a suck-pot?'

Pikemartin
disappeared into the waxwork room, and I heard his heavy footsteps clattering
up the back stairs. Mr Abrahams turned upon me again. He was disappointed, he
said, though he understood how a man might succumb to drink if his nerves were
sorely tried as mine had been. But it was not the answer to my difficulties,
and he was sorry to see me in such a state within the walls of this place, the
Aquarium, where I was held in such esteem. I was embarrassed and, whilst he
watched me with a sorrowful face, I clumsily swept the hall and then fetched
the mop and bucket also. I had penance to perform.