by S. I. Martin
William found that he’d been squeezed to the middle of the alley. Standing on tiptoe he could see Henry Prince and Jack the Jamaican taking money at the door and arguing very loudly with just about everybody. William relaxed his muscles, took a deep breath and began to wriggle and ease his way towards the door. At times he was practically crawling over a swarm of loosened wigs and tense shoulders, like a salmon swimming upstream. He received blows. He returned some. He lost his hat. He made it to the door.
‘Some rout, eh?’ said Henry, squinting down at him.
‘Some rout,’ he replied, catching his breath.
‘Georgie’s waiting for you inside.’
Henry Prince turned to one side, unblocking the entrance, and waved him through.
The Bull Inn was large and cavernous. Baleful half-lights cast flickering shadows from high-stepping dancers on the cracked and yellowing plasterwork. A roaring fire blazed in a gigantic hearth in the far wall. It was tended by three old white women, market trugmoldies in straw hats. They turned a goat carcass on a spit and poked idly at a number of camp ovens and digesters slowly blackening in the embers.
The music makers performed on a stage of tables in the centre of the room. Newton, Charles and Hercules were up there playing the French horn, contrabass and janissary drum. Seeing Charles staring at him William waved back, but the musician didn’t respond; he was looking past him, through him, into the music he was wooing.
William gasped for air and loosened his neckerchief. His skeleton had become a sounding-box, throbbing with the deafening drumbeats.
He pressed himself against the nearest wall, taking in the scene, trying to look part of it.
‘Hot in here, isn’t it?’ Georgie George shouted into his ear. He’d popped up at William’s side as if he’d just emerged from the cellar on a dumbwaiter. He held a Turkish water pipe in his hands and was swaying with uncanny fluidity to the music.
‘Seems a grand rout, George. But it’s too hot. Too many people.’
‘That’s the way I like it,’ he laughed. ‘The way it should be. A black man’s hop. Look, look, Willie-boy. See them?’ The King of the Beggars pointed his pipe at a couple who were bobbing and dipping, holding each other’s hips, half-stepping from this side to that every other beat, their eyes half-closed and locked in love.
It was Buckram and Charlotte Tell.
‘Give me that!’ William swiped the pipe from Georgie.
‘She dances well, doesn’t she?’ Georgie held a lighted taper to the pipe while his friend inhaled.
‘For an English girl, I mean, heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh,’ he added sharply.
William was old enough to know how little a woman’s dance had to do with her sexual enthusiasm, but still … looking at Charlotte – along with every male in the room – he just had to shake his head, admit he didn’t know everything and take another mouthful of smoke. She was phenomenally beautiful and Buckram, with reason, looked like the happiest man alive.
Georgie put a hand on William’s shoulder and retrieved his pipe. ‘There’s a room upstairs. A private room. I want you and Buckie to meet me up there at two o’clock.’ He saw William’s face drop.
‘Close your glands, man. It’s nothing to worry about. Just a little proposition. Some business between me and my brothers.’ He jerked his chin at the triplets on the stage. ‘Get yourself some food and drink. Mingle. Enjoy your damn self.’
Before William could reply Georgie was already at the door helping Henry and Jack sift the newcomers.
So this was it, William thought. Here they were again, he and Buckram, entangled anew in Georgie’s machinations. The music continued around him, but he’d lost the urge to dance. This wasn’t an English party, and he knew it would be a long night, full of long rambling tunes like this one which would only end when the players had exhausted themselves.
He went to the hearth and helped himself to a plate of cow-heel stew from a digester. He stood eating and scanning the crowd. The Mayfair crew had made it through the door and were huzzahing and hurrahing with glee as if they were at the races or Hockley-in-the-Hole. This was all new to them, and William shuddered to think of the extravagant reports they’d give their white friends when they returned to wherever they’d come from.
There were whites in the dance, of course, Georgie’s mates, street folk, five or six of them, dancing with clenched fists and fixed smiles; all studiously ignoring their drunken sister up on the tables amongst the musicians, flouncing spasmodically along some unbeaten track of time.
Buckram and his belle were still dancing, and William couldn’t help glancing at them from time to time. Their evident passion for each other induced echoes of the old loneliness he’d taken such pains to suppress. It was two years since he’d held Mary and his children and even though, in her strange way, she disapproved of dancing and carousing (‘wicked meetings with fiddlers!’), he wished her here with him now. He still nursed the hope that she could grow to love London. Phillip and Nehemiah, he knew, would love it to death. And who knew? Over here, they could grow up to be posturing fops, accepted and adored by those they mimicked. But more likely, they would end up shuffling about Ivy Street the rest of their days, cadging pennies and sleeping on kitchen floors and outhouse roofs, like most black families he knew. He still had a letter to write.
He took solace in another helping of stew. The digester had cooked the bones perfectly, they melted in his mouth like cheese. He munched away, watching the dancers twirl and skip to increasingly wild patterns.
Slews of glamorous, hard-faced ladies of the night passed him by without a glance, but he was used to this, the disinterest was mutual. Enshrouded once more in his arrogant solitude, he waited and waited for the music to end.
He was still dreaming of his family when Buckram and Charlotte approached. Their faces glistened with sweat and damp patches had spread through their clothes; they looked like mischievous youngsters caught playing in a pond.
The two men shook hands and exchanged artless, manly nods.
‘Charlotte, my love, this is my very good friend, Mr William Supple, another old soldier.’
She half-curtsied, mockingly, beautifully. ‘William Supple, the actor?’ Her eyes shone with astonishment.
‘You know of him?’ asked Buckram.
‘Why, yes …’ She turned her back on her consort.
‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr Supple. I once saw you in the role of Oroonoko at the Theatre Royal. You were splendid. A great improvement on the performance of Roger de Villiers.’
‘Indeed, it was, if I say so myself. I believe it was the black paint on his skin that made his playing the poorer.’
Buckram laughed along with them, nervous and uncomprehending.
‘And have you graced the stage since, Mr Supple?’
‘I have not, ma’am. The performance you witnessed was my first and last in this city, and that on account of Mr de Villiers’s over-inebriation.’
Buckram tapped Charlotte’s arm. ‘My dear, you’re being summoned.’
One of the chic, quality black girls was blowing kisses and waving frantically at Charlotte from the bar across the room. Long-limbed and goose-necked, she towered over her companions. She wore false eyebrows made from mouseskin.
‘Lizzie!’ Charlotte squealed. She careered through the party to join the elegant ladies and their gentlemen and disappeared under a storm of profuse and messy kisses. She seemed perfectly at home beside them.
They were her people.
‘Friends of yours?’ William inquired softly.
‘Friends of Charlotte’s,’ said Buckram, apologetically.
‘Strange folk. Where do they hail from?’
‘They’re mostly from the Gold Coast. Sent over here to study. Some of them are in business with their parents. They all come from wealthy families. Y’know, merchants.’
‘Oh. That’s merchants as in traders, yes?’
‘Who knows,’ Buckram fluffed. ‘They’re just bus
iness people.’
‘Dealing in gold, pepper, ivory, fishing rights … black people. Hmmm?’
Buckram raised his hands and sighed defeatedly. He shot a fresh glance at Charlotte’s glitzy, young gang: readers and writers all, travellers and raconteurs, smooth world dwellers and Anglicized voyeurs, cousins twice-removed from the pain that ate him daily: lettered blacks, bystanders, simply bourgeois.
William had nothing more to say on the subject.
‘Sorry to hear about your place, Willie.’
William shrugged. ‘Just a fire. It happens.’
‘So, where are you living now?’
‘Brydges Street, the Charioteer. Thanks to Georgie.’
‘Oh God, so you’re back running with him, then?’
‘No, no, nothing like that. How about you?’
‘I pasted up posters for the rout. Nothing more. Not now.’
‘I take it he’s spoken to you about the meeting upstairs?’
‘He has.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘It’s the big one. The two-thousand-pound question. I can feel it coming. He wants to tie us in with him. He never gives up, the swine. You interested?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe, it depends. I’ve no money and nowhere to live. I owe the George favours aplenty, and two thousand is a lot of money. I could send for Mary and the boys. Buy a house. Some land. It would solve a lot of problems, y’know.’
Buckram nodded gravely. ‘Well, you were always the lucky one. Who knows, you could be lucky again. I’ll go hear what he has to say, though. He’s no bore, old Georgie, I’ll give him that. But me, I’m not up for any more of the bastard’s games. I’ve heard that big key turn too many times. And we both know who’ll be on the other side. The man is a king bilker, second to none.’ Buckram shook his head and exhaled heavily. ‘Truth to tell, Willie, I’m just too old. Must have turned at least thirty years. I’ve got my own life to live now. I’m having to settle down.’
William looked through the crowd to where Charlotte stood, entertaining her friends with a hand dance and a balancing trick with a bottle of port. He wondered what she and Buckram found to talk about. Then again, remembering her moves on the floor, maybe they didn’t talk too much.
The triplets had been replaced on the stage by the lipless runaway boy who begged by the Nag’s Head. He was playing a weirdly syncopated version of ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ on a borrowed guitar.
‘He’s playing my tune,’ said William.
The crowd tolerated the act for a while until they realized that he was reading the music from a sheet of paper between his feet and he was forced to leave the platform under a hail of boos and kitchenware.
‘Shame,’ said William. ‘I was enjoying that. Ah well, drinks time. I’ll get them.’
William leaned against a pillar at the far end of the bar and waited to be served. It was going to take some time. There were fewer people in this part of the room. It was almost quiet enough for conversation. Charlotte’s friend Lizzie was in deep gossip on the other side of the pillar with the nervous skinny woman that everyone called Mrs Brookes – no one had ever seen her husband. William pressed closer to the pillar, keen to monitor the small talk of Charlotte’s friends.
‘… but, Lizzie, what are you telling me?’
‘It’s true, she told me this morning.’
‘Well, is she sure?’
‘As sure as you can ever be. It’s been almost a month now and she saw Dr Burke yesterday.’
‘That old angel-maker! I wouldn’t trust him to slice my kedgeree.’
‘The poor girl’s at her wits’ end. Doesn’t know how to break the news.’
‘The sooner the better, I should say. Not the sort of secret you can keep for too long. She’ll have to tell him.’
‘She can’t. She’s too scared.’
‘Scared of what?’
‘She thinks he’ll leave her.’
‘Is that such a bad thing? They’re hardly the ideal couple. If I was in her place I’d …’
A loud burp erupted at William’s ear. It was the white villain known as Pete Fortune. He was a chubby man with pissed-off pigeon looks and ways.
‘Got a long face, Bill. What yer thinkin’ on?’
‘Oh, women. How much they talk, y’know.’
Pete Fortune vomited a laugh. ‘Well, it’s just another way of screaming, you might say. Only that way it lasts longer and you can share it. Sort o’ makes sense when you think about it, like.’
William stroked his chin.
‘Nice to see you round the old boys, again. We had some times, eh? Down Drury-side, fleecing those frocks.’
‘Yes, we did,’ said William. ‘Have a drink.’
‘Thought you’d never ask. Fill o’ Stepney if you don’t mind, bruv’.’
William returned from the bar with a drink for Buckram. He asked his friend how he was feeling.
‘Never better, Willie-boy. Never better.’
‘Buckie, go visit Neville some time. Some time soon. He’s in a bad way.’
And Buckram said yes.
Just before the clock struck two, William and Buckram, much fortified by several jugs of Stick-Back ale, joined the three Grenadier Guardsmen and trooped upstairs to meet up with Georgie George.
The beggar king ushered them into a musty, dilapidated room with boarded-up windows. On the floorboards were two thin mattresses, both covered with crumpled, greying sheets, caked with various bodily fluids. Georgie squatted, hunched up in a corner like a fallen gargoyle, and watched them arrange themselves as best they could on the sad furniture.
‘Willie-boy, Buckie-lad,’ he opened. ‘You’re probably wondering why I’ve brought you here.’
‘No,’ they chorused.
‘Aaah, you know me too well.’ He laughed darkly. ‘All the same, let me just say that once again we are gathered, we three from old Amerikee, this time in the company of our African bretheren, to discuss our mutual futures. I ask you now, gentlemen, to cast aside all the reservations you hold about my character. All the rumours, half-truths and hearsay. This is no occasion for idle suspicion. We have no time for rancour or distrust. Let us convene as brothers of one flesh as I invoke the spirit of our native generosity and ask that you harbour no doubts as to my intentions.’
He stood up, warming to his theme, entranced by his own eloquence. He began to pace, walking the space between the beds, his left hand on his hip, his right hand poised to embellish his delivery. Crazed laughter resounded in the stairwell from the party below. Eager, grainy, white male voices were leading the crowd through a round of English country songs.
‘Hear that,’ said Georgie. ‘Two peoples, one tune. Believe me, we’ll never know just how happy that white boy is right now. Listen to him. He’s singing his heart out like one redeemed.’
The tune changed to ‘Lillibullero’. Handclaps and the janissary drum threw in fresh punctuation, rendering the soulless chant exotic.
‘Tell me, Buckie, when was the first time you heard that?’
‘During the war. It was a Tory marching song.’
‘That’s right, and now they’ve got us dancing to it. That’s the way they like things: their blood, our hearbeat, their heartbeat, our blood, it’s all the same to them.’
‘Georgie,’ said Buckram, ‘we don’t give a turd for your words. Just tell us what you want us to do. What’s your plan this time?’
‘Hear me out, my friends, hear me out. We all know that our lives are worth nothing in this country. No matter how bad you think things have been before, I promise you it will be as paradise compared to what they are planning for us now.
‘Every day we see our brothers dragged away and incarcerated. You’ve all seen the public notices. I tell you, the Sierra Leone Scheme is no longer a laughing matter. They intend to sweep us from the streets. They wish us evil. Within a year there will be no more black faces in London, save a few slaves and doxies.’
William guffawed.
‘You laugh, Mr Supple, but d’you really believe they’ll stop at shipping out just the beggars and sadblacks? No, I have it on the best authority that comprehensive clearance is afoot. So, William, Buckram, unless you both wish to stay and fight for the right to remain where you’re unwanted, I suggest you join forces with me and our African friends here and work with us to chart our own destinies.’
‘Mr George,’ said Buckram, ‘the hour is late. I beg you, say your piece and be done.’
‘My piece, as you put it, is simple. Hercules, Newton and Charles are already aware of my plan and have pledged themselves to it. I invite you to do the same. I invite you, for the sum of two thousand pounds, to live out your dreams, but for one day with me. Just one day is all I ask. The rest of your lives will be yours to do with as you please.’
The men watched Georgie through their encroaching hangovers. He drew a letter from his frock-coat pocket and the room fell quiet. The beggar king had their complete attention.
‘I doubt whether any of you are familiar with the American States Minister to the Court of St James, a certain Mr John Adams.’ He paused and looked from face to face.
‘Some months ago, it came to my notice that his residence in Grosvenor Square is regularly visited by a number of Virginia planters and their agents. Since the end of the war, the rebels have been seeking cheaper, non-British sources for their slaves. Their embassies in Paris and London are used as bases for this commerce. Hitherto, they’ve agreed new contracts with Dutch and Portuguese traders.
‘But being Americans, they continue to seek newer and less costly markets. I have here a letter from Mr Hayden Irving, who will be a guest of Minister Adams next month. He has consented to meet with an African delegation headed by a Chief Birempon Kwaku, Mansa of Obomi in an attempt to secure trading rights in human cargoes from an area of the Niger Delta. Due to the nature of his business, Mr Hayden will be travelling with a sum of approximately twelve thousand pounds in notes and gold coin. Needless to say, there is no such land as Obomi and no Chief Kwaku. So far, our imposture has been successful, confined as it is to mere correspondence.