by S. I. Martin
The only hindrance to their new life was Pastor Neville. Georgie had taken an instant dislike to him and the feeling was mutual. Neville refused to partake in any illegalities and on the one occasion that he visited the Charioteer he was forcibly evicted after insisting on reading aloud to the clientele from the Book of Leviticus. He was a good bud nonetheless, Buckram and William couldn’t bring themselves to abandon him. The three of them had endured so much together and besides, he was the only good cook amongst them.
Gang life suited Buckram. The noisy, carefree atmosphere of the Charioteer was the ideal place for him to practise his gift of tomfoolery. It became his second home; in a matter of weeks he had gained enough status to merit the honour of a personal chair from which to conduct his business. He genuinely enjoyed Georgie’s company – indeed everyone did – and took to accompanying the King of the Beggars as often as possible on his trips out to out-of-the-way villages like Tottenham and Camberwell.
One blisteringly hot afternoon Georgie turned up at Ivy Street. Buckram was alone waiting to interview an apprentice fellatrice from Hull. The room was unusually neat, the mattresses had been piled up, one on top of the other. The bare floorboards were swept clean and the pots and pans had been left in the keeping of the Igbo men downstairs.
Georgie was carrying a small tea-chest. He dropped it on the floor and exhaled loudly. ‘Aieee! Heavy load, Buckie. Heavy load!’
Buckram stared nervously at the crate, appraising its weight.
‘What’ve you got in there?’ he asked hesitantly.
From inside the box came scratches and squeaks.
‘A little investment.’ Georgie ground his teeth as he surveyed the room’s dimensions. ‘Security against future losses.’
‘What’s in the box, Georgie?’
Georgie flapped his frock coat then whipped out a handkerchief to mop his face. ‘Got any water, Buckie? I’ve a cruel thirst.’
Dissimilar types of sharp claws poked out from opposite sides of the tea-chest where tiny breathing holes had been punched out. The box rocked and wobbled.
‘This is a rookery. Water’s in the yard. Georgie, what is that? I mean, what sort of animal have you brought to my house?’
‘Animalsss! A dog and a bird. Open it up. Have a look.’
‘Listen, I’m busy, I’m expecting company.’
‘Ah-hah! Hullside Harriet!’ Georgie groaned appreciatively.
‘Georgie, is this important?’
‘As important as your life. You’re looking at fifty pounds there.’
‘Fifty pounds of what?’
‘Our money.’
‘Our …?!’ Buckram gestured at the tea-chest as if willing it to talk.
‘It’ll be three to two.’ Georgie tapped the box. ‘Twenty pounds is yours if you take care of our little friends here just till the weekend. Come on, open up the box. Have a look.’
‘No. You open it!’
Georgie shook his head and muttered, ‘My God, black people, tsk-tsk-tsk.’ He worked a penknife under the lid and levered it off.
‘This,’ he pulled out a torn, tightly tied sack – a beast wriggled within, ‘this is a guard dog from Imperial China.’ The animal shrieked.
‘She dances too,’ Georgie added. ‘And this,’ a second ripped sack was extracted. ‘This is a prize-fighter. Cock of the walk. No finer bird in the Court End. Want to see them?’ Georgie began to loosen the draw-strings.
‘No, no, I don’t want to see them. What am I supposed to do with them, anyway?’
The cock clucked and flapped.
‘Look after them for a few days. Feed them. Let them run around some.’
‘Run round? You mad? This is Ivy Street. You can’t keep a chicken here. It’ll end up in some African’s pot.’
‘Look, just keep them here for me. You’re good with animals. You’ll know what to do. It’s twenty pounds, remember.’
‘I don’t know, George. I don’t know. Where they from, anyway?’
‘Pete Fortune. Some of his buckos visited the Red Lion last night and, errm, took charge of the beasties in lieu of payment for a debt. Landlord’s got till the weekend to come up with the money.’
‘You mean the ransom?’
‘Whatever. Just help out, eh? Be a bud.’
‘Dunno. For two days maybe.’
‘Three days,’ prompted Georgie, starting to smile.
‘I’ll have to ask the others.’
‘Done.’ Georgie rubbed his hands and wiped his face anew.
‘Aren’t you going to have a look at your new lodgers?’
‘Later, after Harriet has passed through. There are fleas aplenty in this place as it is.’
‘Yesss,’ agreed Georgie absently. ‘In abundance.’ He stepped up to the window. The pane, where it was broken, was stuffed with material torn from an old pair of breeches. He ran a forefinger along the sill and examined the thick layers of dust. ‘This is a shit-hole,’ he stated. ‘You’re Blackbirds now. You should set an example.’
Buckram almost laughed. ‘If you say so, George.’
The beggar king looked out of the window. A ball game was in progress in the courtyard; four scruffy men, one Lascar, one white and two blacks were slapping a ball against a wall.
He frowned. ‘Oh, oh, here comes company.’
Buckram joined him at the window and watched as the ball players stopped their game and separated to allow a couple access to the building. It was Harriet and Neville.
She was a fat, pretty woman with badly dyed blonde hair. Even without her high heels she would have stood at six feet and one inch.
‘Big girl!’ whooped Georgie.
‘See me running?’ countered Buckram.
‘What’s the preacher doing with her? Showing her the straight and narrow?’
‘God knows. He’s the last person I need to see right now.’ Buckram ran his fingers through his hair and went to hunt for his wig.
‘Well,’ Georgie clapped his hands. ‘I’ll be on my way. I’ll call by this evening with some seed and butcher’s scraps. And whatever you do, don’t go shouting about this.’ He flicked a nod at the two jumping sacks. ‘You have a good time, yes?’
Buckram walked him to the door. He hung over the landing and followed Georgie’s neat, bushy head as the beggar king negotiated the decrepit steps in semi-darkness. He heard him yell a single word of greeting to Harriet and cough a curt bark at Neville.
Silence fell about the house as Neville and Harriet moved up the stairs. Solemn, massed male breathing sighed throughout the stairwell.
Buckram pulled Harriet through the door with one hand while holding Neville at the threshold with the other.
‘I found this woman lost in Phoenix Street,’ the preacher explained. ‘She claimed knowledge of you, so I brought her here.’ He leaned forward and whispered, ‘She’s a bawd, you know. I can tell.’
‘Neville, I thank you for your help and your observations, but the young lady and I need to be alone.’ Buckram started to close the door.
The dog howled and Neville started.
‘What was that?’ he asked, peeking over Buckram’s shoulder.
‘Nothing. It’s nothing. Nothing to worry about.’
Pastor Neville scowled and shook his head. ‘Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God …’
‘GOODBYE, NEVILLE!’
‘I think not,’ said Neville and brushed past his friend to join Harriet in the room. She was kneeling in the corner, poking at the sacks with a parasol.
‘Awhhh, it’s a little doggie,’ remarked Harriet. ‘Let’s have a look.’
‘No!’ Buckram shouted.
The cock began to crow.
‘Release them,’ ordered Neville. ‘Why are the beasts so bound?’
Buckram grabbed Neville by the lapels and dragged him back out onto the landing. ‘My friend, this is business. I’ll not have it ruined by your folly. Go now!’
‘I
will not,’ protested Neville. ‘For every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be …’
Buckram shoved the preacher down the stairs. He raced back to the room and locked the door.
Harriet was scampering merrily around the mattresses in pursuit of the dog who was chasing the chicken.
‘What are you doing?!?’ he screamed.
‘They’re playing. Awhhh, look at ’em. They’re playing.’
It took them twenty minutes to separate the animals, re-sack them and fling them in the cupboard. They howled and crowed and knocked and whined behind the flimsy doors. They kept up the fuss throughout Buckram and Harriet’s hour-long ‘interview’.
Buckram saw his new worker down to the street and left her with instructions for her first shift. She would do well, he thought, tugging at his waistband. He could see that he’d have to review her progress on a regular basis. He dawdled in the courtyard, basking in the envy of his sex-starved neighbours.
There was commotion in the street. Five white men, deep in heated conversation, stepped up to the courtyard. Two of them were Charlies, one looked like a man of substance, the other two were clearly nothing but thugs.
‘This the place?’ asked one Charlie.
‘It is, in very deed,’ replied the rich man.
‘You there!’ The Charlie singled out Buckram. ‘D’you live here?’
Buckram shrugged his shoulders. ‘No speak English,’ he said. He snuck back into the house while the others on the street were being questioned in sign language – the Charlie made dog-and-chicken noises.
Buckram had to get rid of the animals. He scurried into his room and opened the cupboard. The cock had scratched its way out of its sack. The cock had scratched its way through the dog’s sack, and the cock was now blinking innocently over a mess of bloodied fur, eyeballs and blue silk ribbon.
‘Ogod!’
The bird preened, flapped its wings, puffed up its chest and sang, ‘COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO! COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!’
The Charlies were breaking down his door by the time he’d kicked the chicken to death.
Buckram was beaten and dragged to Bow Street for the first night of seven hundred and thirty that he would spend behind bars.
London, 30 May 1786
William counted the stairs as he climbed up through the darkness with a tankard full of porter … fifteen … sixteen … seventeen. Stepping carefully over the two missing steps he stood on the tiny landing and felt for the padlocks.
His room was a garret above the Coopers’ Arms. In the basement the last few customers were leaving the cockpit and filing up to the ground-floor bar.
He opened the door, put the tankard on the floor and collapsed onto a large, brass double bed. As he relaxed, the pain in his right side re-awakened. He lay staring up at bubbling blood-orange patterns washing across his ceiling from the lamps across the alley at the Lemon Tree.
As he rolled onto his stomach, the pain re-doubled. He reached for the new bottle of opium and liquorice cordial from his bedside table. He swallowed seven-eighths of it and rolled onto his back again.
Drinkers from the Lemon Tree were coming out into the alley, singing lewd limericks in its double echo. The light dance on the ceiling seemed to move in time to their voices. Listening to the lyrics, William felt the narcotic bleeding warmly through his stomach walls and being sucked up in his blood, turning his spine to crystal fire.
There was a new maid from Drury
The toast of all London Jewry
For one day she surmised
That the circumcised
Made more healthy, more wealthy
One-twoery
He tracked the drug’s thousand fingers searching for his discomfort, locating it, closing in, closing it down.
When he felt sufficiently healed he stepped across the green Axminster carpet and opened his wardrobe. He took out a fresh white shirt and threw his blood-stained one on a pile of dirty clothes in the corner. He washed his upper body over a porcelain bowl with the same greasy water he’d brought up from the bar last night. He smudged dust off his hat and waistcoat with a wet rag.
He lit a lanthorn and looked in the mirror. Bruised, sunken eyes, sparsely haired head, mostly grey curls. His oyster-coloured teeth matched his oyster-coloured gums. His face showed an age of one hundred and seventeen and he looked older than Samuel, or Gullah as his surrogate father back in Carolina on Blackstock’s Plantation preferred to be called.
When he’d finished changing he went to a bookshelf and took out a copy of Ignatius Sancho’s Letters. He opened it at page twenty-three and slipped out ten pounds for himself and one for Georgie. After angling the lanthorn away from the freshly painted wall, he blew out the flame and walked backwards to the door.
He’d lived alone in Rose Street for almost one and a half years now, and he loved the peace in his home; so he’d felt a weight off his mind when he heard that Buckram had decided to stay with Neville.
Seeing him again had been a disaster. Buckram was in a critical state of disconnection; he had become a lightweight lunatic with eyes like mud-baths. William then thought about his children back in Charlestown, or who knows where, or who knows whose. They’d called him ‘Uncle Buckram’. How’d they like to see their uncle now?
Of all the old fighters who’d made it to England, Buckram had been the one least likely to go under. His constitution had always been incredible and his sense of humour was legendary. During the spring campaign of 1781, when all the frontline troops were going down with St Anthony’s fire, smallpox and venereal disease, Buckram was afflicted with only a mild head cold and ‘rising of the lights’. He could always be relied on to cancel out melancholy and side-step seriousness. Even on the approach to battle, marching forward to replace fallen comrades, he’d be quick-lipping and oafing it up.
Once a military tribunal found him guilty of ‘skylarking’ and awarded him fifty lashes. Later, when he retold the story – as he often did – his eyes would swell with touching pride at his crime. Buckram: skylarker. It was official.
The day when Buckram finally shipped out of New York, leaving William and Mary to fend for their children in the beleaguered port, had been the second worst day of William’s life. He knew he’d lost his guardian angel.
Almost a year later and alone in London, he stumbled upon his friend in Henrietta Street. Buckram was slumped on a building site, sharing a bottle of rot-gut and carousing with a rag-shod bunch of African sailors.
William had just moved into Ivy Street and he insisted that Buckram and Neville should leave Ratcliffe immediately – too close to the docks, too convenient for slave-snatchers and press-gangs – and come over to the more metropolitan squalor of St Giles.
Good times soon came round again for the three old cronies. Buckram was a skilful thief and footpad and Neville was a resourceful cook. Having them around seemed to boost William’s luck and his gambling career took off with some measure of success.
They began to frequent the Charioteer, and eventually came to be accepted amongst the better-heeled galaxy of black villains that made up the merry, malevolent London of Georgie George.
Buckram vanished soon after that, in the course of some madcap spree with the King of the Beggars. The whole parish knew that Georgie was implicated in his disappearance but, as usual, nothing could be proved.
William resolved there and then to lead a single life. And this he had done to his satisfaction until twelve hours ago, when Buckram had resurfaced, changed beyond all recognition.
If this city could break a soul like Buckram’s, how more easily could it annihilate his own?
William settled himself beside Georgie on a wall bench at the Golden Cross Inn in Charing Cross and ordered a jar of Rhenish wine.
The Cross was the stopping-off place for coaches arriving from the south coast and the West Country. It was always full of European tourists and wide-eyed shire folk in the capital for the first time. And Georgie was a friend of the landlord,
of course.
It was a white man’s pub where they knew they could relax, being more seasoned Londoners than most of the clientele. Few of them had ever seen black humans before, and it amused the two ex-slaves to pass the odd evening in this tavern, telling lies and sponging drinks.
They had been toasted as Princes of Araby, Lords of Ethiopia, Malian potentates and ambassadors from Benin. Masquerading as traditional healers, they had sold fishing flies and dried herbs as cures for gonorrhoea and scurvy. And on quite a few occasions Georgie had walked out of the door with a woman on his arm.
After two years in London it still amazed William how Georgie could do that. With a white woman. In a white man’s country. And live.
‘You’re still looking rough, Billy-boy. What’s got you?’
William unbuttoned his shirt and showed George his bandages. ‘I took a drubbing last night. While you were out gallivanting with that South London crew.’
Georgie tut-tutted. ‘You should choose your friends more carefully, William. A man is judged by the company he keeps. Now, since you started prancing round the Court End, dancing attendance on gentry and calling yourself an actor, people take to you differently.’ He wagged a finger under William’s nose. ‘No one in this town likes to see a fancy black man. Especially a poor white man with seven children and one shirt. You’ve forgotten that. Hmmm?’
William uncrossed then re-crossed his arms as Georgie poured wine for them both.
‘Y’see,’ Georgie continued, ‘you’d never find yourself in like trouble when you used to run with St Giles’s Blackbirds. You’d have been in there, like the rest of us, clapping heads and taking a rightful cut of the booty.’
‘Georgie, that was a riot last night. There was no plan to what happened. They were attacking everyone.’
Georgie just gave him one look and shook his head. ‘What sort of mushrooms are you eating? You’re sounding like those fools down the road.’ He flicked his head towards the Palace of Westminster.
‘I’m not like you, Georgie. I could never live in a gaol. I’d crack the walls; I’d see the other side in there. Like Buckram.’
Georgie spun a crown on the table. It twirled straighter and faster than a child’s top until it stopped, standing still.