by William King
“Are you enjoying that tater, sir?” asked the seller. Business was slow, and he wanted a little of that conversation which is the main source of entertainment for the street huckster. People take their amusement however they can find it. “Is it good?”
“It is,” I said quite truthfully. He'd put enough butter on to make it tasty. It slid down my throat easily and warmed the pit of my stomach. “How's business?”
“Could be better, sir. There's not a lot of money round these days. Less trade in the Port o' London, less money in everybody's pockets, even less money around for the cracksmen to steal or so they say, not that I would know, not having much to do with that sort, sir.”
He had that apologetic look about him and I could tell that he suspected what I was. He was trying at once to be ingratiating and put some distance between himself and any suspicion of wrongdoing. People in Seven Dials have a very well developed ability to detect policemen.
“I'm sorry to hear it,” I said. “For your potatoes deserve more customers.”
“Very kind of you to say that, sir.”
“In fact, I think I'll have another.”
“You're a gentleman with a hearty appetite; I can see that, sir. I don't suppose you got to be that size without one.”
While he prepared another potato, I resumed my study of the street. I had that strange feeling you sometimes get when someone's eyes are upon you and I glanced around determined to find out if I was being watched. It took me some time, and I was halfway through my second potato, when I noticed a figure loitering in a doorway had his gaze upon me. He was in shadow and I could not make out his features but there was something vaguely familiar about him. There was an intensity about his stare that I did not like, and I suspected that perhaps he had me marked down as a potential victim which suggested to me that he was either drunk or full of that unreasoning anger so close to madness that drives certain men to violence. Certainly, he could find much easier victims than a man my size in that street at that time.
He noticed me noticing him, and pulled his hat down to cover his face, and then walked off down a side alley without so much as a glance back over his shoulder. I nodded in his general direction and pointed a finger and asked the baked potato man whether he knew who that was.
“No idea, sir. I've seen him around these parts a few times but he never stops to buy a tater or anything else as far as I can tell. He has the look of the right dangerous man though and I wouldn't want to cross him.”
I wondered perhaps if it was Billy Tucker, or maybe a friend of his. Given what people had been telling me, it was the first suspicion that sprang to mind. It was a worrying thought because it would not do to encounter somebody with a grudge in those dark alleys at night. I’d found far too many bodies in similar situations in my time to want my own to be come across that way.
I finished my potato, exchanged a few more pleasantries with the seller and was on my way. There was a penny gaff not too far away that was in favour with the likes of Ginger Jim Matthews and it seemed as good a place to start as any. The one I was looking for was called Fat Bob's Place. It was situated in an abandoned shop that had been converted into a small, crowded imitation of a playhouse.
Outside the doorway a crowd milled in the street and alley and hucksters shouted about what was going on within. If you believed them you would see wonders -- everything from a right bloody murder to a score of the most scandalously clad beauties. Whoever Fat Bob was, he had his finger on the pulse of the public’s tastes, for there were crowds ten deep around the front of the gaff waiting for the show to come out and the next one to start.
I studied the crowd to see if anyone recognisable as Ginger Jim was amongst it. There was just the usual bunch of chattering cheaply dressed girls with dowdy feathers in their crushed bonnets. Ragged boys re-enacted the duels and fights they had seen within. Here and there a few sang the lewd songs, erupting particularly loudly when they reached the scandalous chorus. The average age of the crowd could not have been more than fifteen and there were only a few folk present older than three and thirty which made me look positively ancient.
Ginger Jim was not there so I moved on, seeking him in the low theatres, gin palaces and backstreets. If he'd been warned that I was looking for him he could not have eluded me better. I sometimes had a sense that someone was following me, and occasionally when I looked back it seemed like a shadow was there. Once or twice I hung back in doorways or at the mouth of alleys just to see if I could get a glimpse of him, but whoever he was, he was wise to such tricks and good enough to keep out of my sight.
I walked into the bar of the Black Bull where a bunch of well-dressed rascals cheated each other at cribbage. They looked at me very coolly as I came in and kept laying and playing their cards. There was a fair old crowd there and it wasn't just the card players who were betting; most of people drinking and smoking their pipes were doing it to, and probably laying down ten times as much cash. I walked over to the landlord and asked him if he'd seen Ginger Jim, and he shook his head, and said, “Jim's not been around these parts for a fair old time, Mr Brodie.”
“Well, if you see him, let him know that I was looking for him and there might be something in it for him if he gets in touch with me. He'll know what I'm talking about so be sure and pass on the message.”
“I'll be sure and do that if I see him.” I decided that the time had come for a drink, and took a beer and discussed old times with the landlord. He recalled a few famous names, true patriots, who had gone overseas for the good of the country as he put it. He looked up and his eyes went wide and I turned around to see what he was staring at.
Three men had just come in, and none of them were pleasant to look at. The leader, the one in the middle, was a tall young man, very sunburned. He was well-dressed in a flash sort of way, with chequered trousers and a tall hat and a gaudy red silk cravat. Behind him loomed a burly bruiser whose face looked as if it was carved out of stone and whose eyes resembled chips of quartz. He was dressed very soberly all in black, and he held a heavy cane of some polished dark wood. Folk called him Tiny on account of his size. The third man I recognised as the one who'd been watching me while I ate my baked potato. Now that I could see his face I knew it was Dainty Dave Smedley.
Judging by the landlord's reaction, these three men were men well worth being frightened of, for the Black Bull was as rough as a dog’s bark and it took a lot to worry any man who stood behind the counter there. I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew exactly who the third man was and what he was doing there.
“I told you he went in here, Billy,” said Dainty Dave. For such a rough looking character there was a peculiar whine in his voice and he sounded quite desperate for the approval of the man he was talking to. “Didn't I, Billy, didn't I?”
“That you did, Dave,” said Billy, in an oddly accented voice. It had something of London in it, and something a bit more alien. It was the voice of what they called a Government Man in our furthest colonies.
The place went suddenly quiet as they walked up to me and surrounded me at the bar in a way that certain of the rougher pickpocket gangs surround their victims at a race meeting.
The leader got in close, thrusting his face very close to mine. I could feel his breath on my cheeks.
“Hello, Billy,” I said. I could see that it really was him now even though the last time I'd seen him he'd been little more than a lad. There were still traces of the boy’s features in the man's although they were deeply buried. Billy's face had grown longer and leaner and much darker so that his teeth gleamed dazzlingly against his skin when he smiled. There was no humour in that smile just a wicked glee. His unblinking eyes were very blue and they had a strange porcelain quality to them and were not sane as you and I would judge sanity.
“Hello, Mr Brodie,” he said. He interlinked his fingers and cracked them. He still had to look up at me but not by much now. He had grown almost as tall as I was and very broad. His hands had a
calloused look and he had the thick arms and bulging shoulders of a man who'd done a lot of very hard physical labour. “It's been a long time.”
“I hear you've been looking for me, Billy.”
“That's right, Mr Brodie.” His voice was level and calm and yet somehow it carried a greater freight of menace than I'd ever heard in any man's voice before. He spoke low and without any great emphasis and it was the very calmness that made it so frightening.
“Well now you've found me. What do you want?”
“There's lots of things that you and I need to talk about, Mr Brodie, but now is not the time or the place.”
“I can't think of any better.”
“I'm sure you can't but I can. When we have our little chat I want it to be in a private place, where nobody can interrupt us.”
“Just you and me and your two friends there, eh Billy?”
“I won't need any help from Tiny or Dave, if that's what you mean, Mr Brodie. I think you'll find that I've grown up a little since the time you got me sent to New South Wales.”
“Why not here and now if you’re so grown up?” Perhaps provoking him was not the wisest thing to do under the circumstances but it seemed to me that if we were going to get into a fight, it would be best if it happened in front of witnesses and where someone might think of calling the police. The last thing I wanted was to get into a struggle with Billy and his two friends in some back alley.
“Because I want you to have some time to think about what's going to happen to you, Mr Brodie. I want to give you some time to repent your sins. You made sure I had plenty of time to repent mine and I want to return the favour.”
“And what sins of mine are we talking about exactly, Billy?”
“Well, there's what happened to my brother Bobby, for one thing.”
“That was an accident, Billy.”
“Some accident, Mr Brodie--you beat a man half to death and then throw him from a roof and you call that an accident? Maybe if you are a Runner and have friends in high places, you can call it that, but if me, or any other bloke from Seven Dials did it, they'd call it murder.”
“Your brother fell, Billy. He was trying to escape over the roofs and we got to fighting and he fell. I tried to hold him but the slates gave way and I had let go or fall myself.”
“So you say, Mr Brodie, and your friend the Magistrate certainly agreed with you at the inquiry. But everybody knows you had it in for Bobby after he gave you that scar on your cheek. No, you can't fool me. I know you threw him off that roof.”
“I don't see any point in trying to convince you otherwise, Billy, but you're wrong. You weren't there. I was.”
“There's others saw what happened, Brodie, and they told me the truth.”
“Who were they, Billy, and why didn't they come forward at the inquiry?”
“You know who they were, because you and your friends put the fear of God into them and told them that if they came forward they could expect to take a dive off a roof themselves.”
“I must have been very busy, between all my police work and throwing people off roofs and intimidating witnesses. Strange, how I don't remember any of it.”
“Well it's a good job that you have me here to remember it for you then, isn't it?”
“How did you get back from Australia, Billy, swim?”
“No. I came back on a ship, legally, passage paid with my own money.”
“I didn't know they paid indentured labour that sort of money.”
“I wasn't indentured the whole time, Mr Brodie. I got my ticket of leave and I worked and scrimped and saved. Because I had the memory of what you did to Bobby to make me work. There were some hard years there, but I got through them because I knew there was something I had to do with my life and I've come back to do it.”
“What is it you've come back to do, Billy?”
He wasn't stupid enough or drunk enough this time to claim he was going to commit murder in front of an audience that might, for all he knew, contain an informer. “I've come back to collect a debt, Mr Brodie, that's owed to me and my brother and, don't you worry, I'll get the score paid off before I'm through.”
“You should have stayed in Australia, Billy. It might have been healthier for you there.”
“Things have changed, Mr Brodie. You've come down in the world and I've risen. You'll find that out soon enough. I won’t be diving off any roof.”
He paused for a moment, his face pensive and said, “I have a knife just like Bobby’s, you know, just like the one that gave you that scar. It will see some use soon.”
He stood aside so I could leave and as he did so, he said, “Nice talking to you, we'll do it again sometime.”
Half expecting a blow to the back of the head, I walked through, while he and his friends watched me with cold eyes and the whole bar silently stared.
Once outside, I checked the streets around me and walked swiftly away, feeling as if I'd had a very narrow escape indeed. As I trudged homewards it took a great deal of effort to wrestle my thoughts back to the burglary at Brighton House. Billy had brought back many unwelcome memories. I’ve always felt guilty over what had happened to his brother, and somehow his mad certainty had brought that guilt back. In a way, I had killed Bobby Tucker. Maybe I could have pulled him back from that five storey drop. He had still been alive for a while after he hit the ground, flopping bonelessly on the ground, back broken, bones jelly, blood seeping from mouth and ear and skull. I heard later that Billy saw that. It must have made a terrible impression on a boy little older than my Donald.
It was quiet when I got home and I put that down to the lateness of the hour but as I entered I heard Mrs Marshall’s heavy step and she said, “Mr Brodie, thank the Lord you're here. Rachel has been taken sick.”
“What is it,” I asked. “What's wrong?”
“She's been taken poorly again, Mr Brodie,” said Mrs Marshall. “She had trouble with her breathing and came over all faint. I sent for Dr Davies, and he came and he gave her Oil of Eucalyptus to open her tubes and some tincture of opium to make her sleep.”
“Is she all right?”
“She's asleep now and she looks a little better.”
I pushed past Mrs Marshall into the children's bedroom. Rachel lay there, looking very pale and breathing very shallowly and I thought that things must have been bad earlier if she looked better now. I walked over to her and laid my hand on her brow. It felt clammy. Fear settled in the pit of my stomach. Memories of what had happened to her mother and of the deaths of our other children brought it back.
She stirred feebly at my touch and moaned a little in her sleep.
“The doctor said it was better not to waken her,” said Donald in a whisper. He was lying there in his bed, covered in his blanket, looking very frightened. I nodded but just sat there, unwilling to move. It felt like all life and strength was seeping out of me. I felt suddenly very old and very tired and very,very afraid.
“She's not going to die, is she father?” His voice trembled and I could see that he been crying. Judging from the wetness of his face he had been doing so until I came in and had only stopped then. I got up and wiped his face with my handkerchief.
“Hush, boy,” I said. “Nobody is going to die.”
He reached up and took my hand, the one holding the handkerchief, in his own small fist, seeking reassurance in the touch. I sat there for a while with him, as much to reassure myself as to reassure him, while I looked at the small, still form of his sister.
“I'm sorry I called her silly,” he said softly, and he really did sound sorry now, as we all do when we realise that it might be too late to say the things that really matter to the people we really care about.
“Hush, let her sleep.” I lay down there on the floor, with my back propped against his bed and looked at Rachel and prayed. I do not know how long I sat there but I know that Donald fell asleep behind me and I was left alone with my thoughts.
I thought all the things you usually
think at such times; of how small she'd been when she was born, and how pink and fragile looking. I remembered how tired and pleased and proud her mother had been when the midwife had placed the baby in her arms. I thought of her first steps and her first doll. I thought of the way she smiled when she saw me coming in the door and ran to me and embraced me. I thought of lots of things and made lots of bargains with God and eventually I slept.
Friday, April 9th,1841
Rachel was still asleep when I woke. Sunlight crept stealthily through a gap in the curtains. I rose and stretched and tried to work the kinks out of my back. It was painful and I felt stiff. As quietly as I could I made my way from the room. Mrs Marshall was up too, cleaning the grate, putting the ashes of last night's fire into the bucket and setting a new one for the day. She looked as if she had not slept at all and perhaps had been crying, although she tried to look stern as usual.
“Is there anything I can get or do?” I asked.
“The doctor left a prescription for more drugs and a bottle that should help with her cough.”
“I'll see to it, and I'll see to the doctor too.” I took some of the money that Soames had given me from my pocket and left two pounds on the table top and told Mrs Marshall that it was to pay for anything that was needed. I sat for a while and made some notes in my diary but my heart wasn't really in it and all I did was make a few scratches with my pen.
I got up and went out. It was a gloomy overcast morning which suited my mood. There were milkmaids abroad with pails balanced on yokes across their shoulders, and watercress sellers up and abroad already hoping to catch the mechanics before they went to work and sell them something for their breakfast.