by Peter Carey
Constable combed the white sticky mess backwards with a comb, and then, like a baker icing a birthday cake, scraped off the edges with a wooden spatula.
“Just look at you,” he said. “It’s enough to make a cat speak.”
7
SOME TIME AFTER midnight Jack Maggs would begin to record the events of his first evening as a servant.
By six o’clock that evening, he had been transformed into a footman good and proper. He ate his tea sitting at a long deal table in the company of the other servants. At half past seven he was ready to make his first entry to the dining room, and he picked up a scalding hot tureen of eel soup and prepared himself for the steep ascent to the ground floor.
His shoes pinched him. The plaster-hard white hair felt like a steel clamp on his brow.
In the upstairs hallway mirror he saw his private anger showing plainly in his eyes, but by the time he entered the dining room his manner was more that of a publican than a footman, and he came amongst the gentlemen smiling in a very jolly way, until, that is, the powdered Constable hissed instruction in his ear.
“No smile.”
Edward Constable then ushered the novice towards the table, forcing him, with the subtle insistence of his shoulder, to walk around the table towards the chair where the person known as Tobias Oates was already seated at his place as guest of honour.
Constable removed the lid from the tureen.
“Stay,” he whispered. He took the lid and placed it on the sideboard. Jack Maggs watched the guests. He saw that the visitor was no more than twenty-five years of age. He was short—they all were short—but Oates was also slight and his face, were it not for his lopsided smile, might have been described as cherubic.
“Up,” hissed Constable.
“Up?”
“Soup up. Hold up.”
Jack Maggs held up the tureen. There was something very queer about this gathering: old fellows with bald heads, red beards streaked with grey, men whose noses showed too much attachment to the brandy bottle, the host with his poor man’s teeth and hair combed thinly over his white pate, every one of them giving his full attention to Mr Oates, a young gent decidedly undistinguished in manner.
Tobias Oates did not seem, to Jack’s mind, to warrant any of the excitement his name had stirred in Mercy Larkin’s imagination. He was sharp, like a jockey. He wore a waistcoat like a common busker, or a book-maker, bright green and shot through with lines of blue and yellow. He was edgy, almost pugnacious, with eyes and hands everywhere about him as if he were constantly confirming his position in the world, a navigator measuring his distance from the chair, the wall, the table.
So unsettling was this character to Jack Maggs that he later devoted almost one hundred words to describing him:
Oates watched close as his eel soup was ladled into his plate. Straightened his silver. Stared at me. Stared at me again. Then told a strange tale of a “Thief-taker” by name of Partridge who he claimed could find any man in England. In the case in point he did track a house-breaker from Gloucester all the way to the Borough, at which pt he made a citizen’s arrest in v. touchy circumstances.
Jack Maggs circled the table with Constable, holding the tureen while Constable ladled. He watched everything, but he watched Tobias Oates most of all. When the writer was assured of the table’s complete attention, his jerky limbs stilled, and he bestowed upon his audience a singular stroking kind of charm, relating his unlikely tale with the air of a man who is accustomed to not being interrupted.
Three times Mr Buckle put his spoon down and opened his mouth to speak. Three times he seemed to lose his courage. When he did finally talk his guests immediately turned their heads in his direction.
“The fact is”—Mr Buckle paused to acknowledge his guests’ interest with a small nod of the head—“the fact you have left out—am I right, Mr Oates?—is how this Thief-taker got this intelligence which evaded the police. That is the point of your tale, or am I wrong?”
“It is I who am wrong,” replied Tobias Oates. “I began the story and then realized I could not politely tell it in the company of Mr Hawthorne here.”
The bald-headed, black-bearded man named Henry Hawthorne was, as Jack Maggs knew from Mercy Larkin, the chief actor in Mr Buckle’s Lyceum Theatre. It was through his good graces (and doubtless for his personal advantage) that all these strangers had been brought to sit at Mr Buckle’s table. He was a barrel-chested gentleman with a deep, resonant voice.
“Oh Lor,” said Henry Hawthorne, buttering his bread, shaking his head, generally affecting to be much put out. “Are you not weary of your Hob-bee Hor-ss?”
“Sideboard,” whispered Constable. “Put tureen.”
Maggs placed the tureen on the sideboard, and took the claret bottle which Constable placed in his hand.
“No drips.”
“It is Animal Magnetism,” the author was explaining to the gentlemen, who all leaned most earnestly towards him, “which my friend is calling the Hobby Horse.”
“Get thee to a knackery,” cried Henry Hawthorne, pushing out his wine glass so Maggs might more easily find it.
“The Thief-taker,” said Tobias Oates, “is not some rogue like Jonathan Wild but an educated, modern man who obtained his information by making mesmeric passes”—here he waved his hands mechanically up and down in front of Hawthorne’s unblinking eyes—“by making mesmeric passes over the four witnesses the police had already interviewed, he put each into a condition of Magnetic Somnambulism. This Thief-taker, whose name is Wilfred Partridge, obtained by this method a full description of the suspect from those who imagined they had not seen him clearly.”
“Yes,” said the host. He spoke, this time, very quietly, as if to himself.
“The Cerebrum,” said Tobias Oates, looking from one to the other of his listeners, “is a vessel that never leaks. It holds everything, remembers everything. And if Mr Hawthorne likes to think of Animal Magnetism as a scurrilous parlour game, it is only because he has not read his Villiers or Puysegur.”
“Did you read about the Russian gentlemen in the Morning Chronicle?” Hawthorne asked. “Come all the way from Sebastopol to learn Magnetism in London? You read it? No? Write for it, but don’t read it. Pity. They plan to use your noble art to seduce young ladies.”
“Sideboard,” whispered Constable. “Bookends.”
Jack Maggs stood at one end of the sideboard, his hands behind his back. Constable stood to the other.
“It is pretty clear by now,” said Oates, “that no mesmeric act on earth will have anyone perform an act against their moral temper.”
“The report of King Philippe,” cried Mr Buckle suddenly, “well, I have to say—it was of a different opinion.”
“You are a student of the Royal Commission?”
“My word yes,” said Percy Buckle.
Mr Buckle looked down at his own place, a red spot showing on each pale cheek.
“I must caution our host,” said Henry Hawthorne, showing a glimmer of a smile beneath his large moustache. “My friend Oates has become such a secret Magnetist that I heard him—I heard you, Oates—try to persuade a King’s Counsel that he should be magnetizing criminals in the dock.”
“But Hawthorne, my old fellow, you have not taken my point.”
“You have more points than a fork, Oates,” said Henry Hawthorne, and turned back to his bread and butter.
“The Criminal Mind is as susceptible to Magnetism as any other,” said Oates, his pale blue eyes now showing bright little flecks of brown.
The new footman listened to this most intently.
“Now come, Oates,” said the fellow with the quivering chin. “No hard-hearted villain is going to give his secrets up in a court of law.”
“Even the lowest type of renegade,” said Tobias Oates, “has an inner need to give up the truth. Look at those gallows confessions they are still selling on Holborn. It is what our fathers called ‘conscience.’ We all have it. For the criminal, it is
like a passion to throw himself off a high place.”
The footman’s down-turned mouth betrayed his opinion of the matter, and so obvious was the expression on his face that it would soon have been observed, had his passions not stimulated the grizzling little palsy in his cheek to its fullest fury.
As usual, he had no warning of the attack.
The pain slapped his face like a clawed cat. It flooded like spilled lemon juice behind his eyes. It hit so hard that he could not help himself but cry out, and the bottle of claret which he had been in the process of bringing to the table fell from his hand and lay spewing its contents onto the oriental rug.
Typically, it was Tobias Oates who was first to help the fallen man. While the other guests held back, he kneeled beside Jack Maggs’s contorted face and gently, firmly, pried his large, hard hand away from his cheek.
“I see it.” With the cool handle of the spoon he touched the victim’s contorted face. As the spoon touched the flesh a tic, fast as a pulse, darted beneath the surface of the skin.
“Tic douloureux,” said Toby Oates, offering his ink-stained hand and pulling the heavy footman upwards. With Henry Hawthorne’s help, he got Jack Maggs into a dining chair. “Have you heard that name before? Tic douloureux?”
But the new footman was barely aware of anything except the pain and the horror that always accompanied these crises. It was not a horror of anything, or about anything, but a horror so profound that a certain time elapsed during which he hardly knew where on earth he stood.
“Look at me,” said Tobias Oates insistently. “Look into my eyes— I can take away this pain.”
Maggs peered at Oates as if through a heavy veil. The little gent began to wave his hands. He passed them down, up, down.
“Watch me,” said Tobias Oates, and Jack Maggs, for once, did exactly as he was told.
8
JACK MAGGS WOKE TO FIND himself still seated in the doorway on a straight-backed chair. Opposite him Tobias Oates was also seated, so close that Maggs could smell the eel soup upon his breath and feel his neat little knees brushing lightly against his own silk stockings.
“So,” said the young man, “where is your pain gone, Mr Maggs?” In his manner he was solicitous and kindly, and about as trustworthy as a Newgate Bird.
“Come, Jack.” He reached his finger out and touched Jack Maggs softly upon the knee. He smiled. He had long lashes and soft speckled eyes.
Jack Maggs moved his knee away.
“Come, Jack, you really are obliged to speak to me.”
Someone sighed, and the footman’s shoulders rose an inch.
“One moment the fellow is making speeches,” said a man behind his back, “and now he is silent as the grave.”
“Eh, Jack,” the writer-cove said softly. “What say you now, Jack?”
“Excuse me, Sir, what speeches have I made?”
Tobias Oates grinned broadly, and looked away and over Maggs’s shoulder. Maggs followed the direction of the other’s gaze, and found himself, like someone waking from a dream, in a familiar place he could not quite explain. The dinner was now abandoned. The unsmiling guests crowded behind him, peering down at him as though he were a prisoner in the dock.
“You have been asleep,” Tobias Oates explained. “I asked you questions and you answered them.”
“Did I answer loudly, then?”
“Well, very clearly,” smiled the young man. “But come, Jack, is your pain gone or no? That is what the gentlemen are waiting to hear you say.”
But Jack Maggs had more serious things than pain to concern him. “I was asleep?” He stood. “I said my name was Jack?”
Tobias Oates stayed seated, his legs crossed, smiling that queer lopsided smile.
“Asleep but not asleep.”
“I was talking in my sleep then, is it?”
“Mr Oates cured you,” said the duck-legged master, now placing himself between the Mesmerist and the subject. “And now it is time for you to help cure my guests of hunger.”
The footman did not even look at him.
“Please,” continued Percy Buckle, who was, as usual, uncomfortable about giving clear orders to a servant. “I must ask you to at least temporarily be a footman.”
In saying “temporarily” he meant only to soften his directive, to suggest that the man must labour for the present, but that shortly he might have his rest.
Jack Maggs heard temporarily. He thought he was soon to be dismissed, or worse. When the master put a hand upon his arm, he felt himself in danger.
“Speed,” hissed Constable, the master’s dog, who now came to shepherd him away. “Out. Down.”
The two footmen walked shoulder by shoulder out into the hall and down the narrow stairs.
“For Jesus’ sake. What did I say?”
“You were a great turn, Mr Maggs. You were a great thrill for the gentlemen, but by God neither the rug nor the flounder will forgive you for it.”
“What did I say? Tell me, cod’s-head.”
“Oh, go back to Borough, why don’t you.”
Maggs’s face darkened dangerously. “I spoke of Borough? What else?”
“Here he is,” cried Constable gaily to the kitchen. “The right height, and no question about it.”
The little cook looked up at Maggs and clicked her tongue. Then she shook her head and looked away. “Mercy, take the skin off the sauce and then warm it. We will sauce the fish in the kitchen.”
“Miss Mott!” protested Constable.
“There is no choice,” cried the little red-nosed Mott. “The poor dear flounder is all dried. There is nothing else to do. We will serve it by the plate and you will carry the plates up to the gentlemen already sauced. Please, Mr Constable, would you be so good as to fetch the Trafalgar Doulton. We will have to warm them with water from the kettle.”
In another place, Jack Maggs’s presence would have brought a hush of respect, but here, in this steamy little room, they rushed about him, ignorant of who he was. Indeed, Maggs himself moved to one side as Constable rushed past and Mercy stirred a light pink sauce.
“What did I say?” he repeated when Constable finally returned with the plates.
“How on earth would I know?” cried Constable carelessly. “I was cleaning the blessed rug.”
“Then how did you learn of my connection with Borough?”
“Oh Larry,” cried Constable. “Where else would you be from? Edinburgh?”
Maggs did not even have the space to be angered by these people. It was the man upstairs who was the focus of his animus. He was burgled, plundered, and he would not tolerate it.
9
AS THE TWO FOOTMEN carried the remnants of the puddings down the staircase to the kitchen, Jack Maggs asked if Mr Oates was in the habit of calling on Mr Buckle, but what with the clatter of their heels and the rattle of the china, the question seemed to go unheard. It was not until his fellow footman had rested his burden upon the kitchen table that Jack Maggs saw the snob had heard his question very well.
“Mr Maggs was just inquiring,” declared the Knight of the Rainbow, “does Mr Oates come calling regularly?”
This produced a great squeal of laughter from the scullery.
“Regular?” cried Mercy Larkin, poking her white-capped head around the curtain. “Oh no. We usually have the King on Tuesdays.”
Jack Maggs stood in the middle of the kitchen, red-faced, glowering. “For Jesus’ sake,” said he. “You don’t know what you’re mucking with.”
“Language!” cried Miss Mott, but even her pinched little face was smiling at his question.
“Beg pardon, Ma’am.” The big man spoke very quietly. “All I am endeavouring to get clear is . . . will the writing cove likely call again?”
“Oh, we are a most fashionable household,” said Constable, splashing a little of his master’s brandy into a tea cup. “There is not a coster or a crossing sweeper who is not laying plots to dine with our Mr Buckle. As for authors, why they are forever
knocking down our door.”
“You’ll mind your manners,” said Maggs in that whispering little voice which had always, in rougher places, had such chilling effect.
“Mr Maggs is such a theatrical type of gent,” said Constable blithely. “I can’t decide if he should play a footman,” and here he patted the newcomer upon his plastered head, “or a footpad.”
There were at least two men still living in London who had reason to remember that Jack Maggs did not like his head touched, and Edward Constable might then have learned a similar lesson—but the bell from upstairs began ringing for Jack Maggs’s services.
He limped up the breakneck stairs to discover that all the gentlemen (Tobias Oates amongst them) were standing at the open doorway exclaiming over the rain which had just begun to fall.
“Topcoats,” hissed Constable as he passed out into the rain to call the coachman from his room in the mews.
Maggs did make some effort to do this duty as it were normally done, but he was preoccupied with Tobias Oates whom he feared would escape at any moment. When each guest had been roughly reunited with his garment, Maggs positioned himself by the open door, and here he remained with the rain blowing in his frowning face.
Oates stood out of the weather, vigorously shaking Percy Buckle’s hand.
“It has been an honour, Sir,” said Percy Buckle, his cheeks showing their red-hot spots once again. “Quite inconceivable to me, unimaginable. A year before last Christmas, I would not have dreamed that I would ever shake so illustrious a hand.”
Oates looked very pleased to be so dubbed. “I smell a mystery.”
“Oh, you are being polite, Sir. You know my good friend Mr Hawthorne and so it follows that my life can be no mystery to you. You know I had my little shop in Clerkenwell, right on Coppice Row. A most humble business, Sir, as I’m sure you’ve heard. I made it no secret from your friend. All the actors are aware of my beginnings.”
“A wonderful story,” agreed Oates, smiling. “A scholar and a grocer.”