by Peter Carey
As I write this now, I see what I did not see then: Tom was not right in his mind. Perhaps he was ever thus. Or perhaps it was the strain of being forbid his mother’s company that finally unhinged him. Certainly that day I could make no sense of him but thought it was my own fault, that perhaps I was as slow and stupid as he said. When I pointed out that he was already in his master’s house and did not need me to come down the chimney, he flew into a rage and did not quiet until I had agreed to come with him to Bristol. This promise, fortunately, he soon forgot.
He came back in the middle of that week. I do not know how he got into the house, only that I woke to find him shaking me. He told me I must get dressed quickly without a sound. His big mouth was close to me again, his breath smelled bad.
I slipped out of the bed which I shared with my play mate, and he led me out into the back yard. And there we stood, in the shadow of a pear tree, with his hard hand shackling my wrist, shivering, saying nothing.
I asked him what it was we were waiting for.
For answer he clipped me round the ears, then put his finger to his lips. After we had stood there a good half-hour, I heard a great loud knocking and much shouting, and then a candle was lit, and soon I saw, at the window, all manner of men with lanterns and candles. It was the police.
—That’ll teach the smarmy clack-box, he said.
We then returned to our rooms, wherein we found Silas gone and Ma Britten pale and quiet. She looked at Tom very thoughtful like, and asked him how it was he was here so early of a morning.
I went in to comfort poor Sophina who was crying most piteously.
—Jack, Jack, she said, Jack, they took my da. Who will take care of me now my da is gone?
44
IT WAS HOT AND CLOSE in the snuggery, and whenever he stretched Jack Maggs released a great manly smell like bed linen in the warmth of early morning. Sometimes Mercy thought she could not bear another moment of it, being confined so close with him.
For his part though, he hardly seemed to notice her, and yet she had felt his keen interest on other days, feeling his stare when he thought her ignorant of his attention.
If she was now unattractive to him, he had heard the gossip in the kitchen. He knew she was a chipped and mended cup in a rich man’s dresser. It was clear to him, clear to anyone who looked into her eyes, that she was stained brown from use.
He was also rather stained and used, but this did not make him the least unattractive to her. Indeed, it was the knowledge of his ill-usage that stirred her heart so painfully. Why then could he not extend the same charity to her?
She had imagined his scars most vividly. She had thought of his back with particular clarity. She would have dressed it with unguents and lotions, but he was busy writing letters to his beloved and did not care for her anyhow.
The bureau had always fitted the master very well, but it was not made for Jack Maggs. She watched how those immense thighs jammed beneath the dainty little desk and, when his feelings ran away with him, how they lifted the desk clear off the floor so that the cedar top tilted like the deck of a ship at sea. Throughout all this turbulence he would keep on writing, back to front like a Chinaman, until Mercy thought she saw a kind of glow, from behind his neck and shoulders, like the light from a furnace door. As he wrote his thick lips moved, and his eyes screwed almost shut.
It was not until the middle of the second long day, as he left to carry Mr Spinks up to his bed, that she had her chance to look:
she read, but then the whole page vanished, and although she peered very close at the paper and held it up to the light, it kept its secrets to itself. So it was with each and every page.
She heard his tread on the stair and immediately sat down upon the ottoman.
He entered without glancing at her, but stared down at his papers for so long that she began to fear that she had somehow marked them. He had been carrying some items in his arms, though she could not make them out until he laid them down: three lemons, some twine and rough brown paper, and a splendid silver mirror.
“How is Mr Spinks?” She tried to sound conversational, but her voice quavered.
He looked at her, severely.
“Ailing.” He held out the mirror for her to take. At first she thought it a gift and her hand trembled when she took it.
“It’s ever so pretty,” she said.
“He was a clever old cove what made it. Dead now.”
He held out his hand and she understood she was to give the mirror back. He began to wrap it in brown paper.
“It’s a gift?” She smiled to hide the sickness in her heart.
He continued folding his brown paper.
“Here, let me do it. She’ll think you’ve bought her a flounder if you wrap it up like that.”
She smoothed out the paper, and carefully wrapped the mirror. She felt him watching her; she imagined his breath upon her neck.
“You want me to wrap the lemons, too?” she said lightly.
Unsmiling, he placed the lemons in front of her.
He was standing next to her very close, and she felt his attention on her while she made a neat little parcel of the lemons. After she had completed this task, she wrapped the letters themselves. Finally, when the three parcels had received their kiss of sealing wax, she placed them, one atop the other, in the centre of the desk. She felt all her hair to be on end. She had to speak, no matter what it made him think of her.
“I don’t mind you lock me,” she began.
There was an odd agitation showing in his eyes.
“I never did tell a soul about you,” she said.
Then he leaned down and kissed her. Upon the forehead, like a bishop or an uncle.
“How did little Buckle nab you? It don’t make sense, the pair of you.”
“It makes sense.”
“Did you lose your papa?”
“What?”
“Did you lose your papa?”
His eyes were soft and brown, all their hardness gone, just as they had been last night in the cellar. She looked at him, trying to understand what it was he felt, and then he lifted his poor misshapen hand and stroked her hair.
“Lost your da?” he said roughly. “The poor thing lost the da.”
Then she wept against his musky shirt and she felt how he pitied her. He did not embrace her, but he continued gently to stroke her hair, and she might have stayed there for ever, so she felt, had not the inevitable knock come, so soon, upon the door.
He stepped away from her.
“It is Constable,” he said. “Come to collect the parcels.”
It was not only Constable but also, alas, the master; and this latter person now rushed into the room looking intently at her from under his raised eyebrows. The poor frightened man had strapped his sword around his dressing gown and it clanged against the doorway as he entered.
“Everyone still well?” he asked, staring all the time at Mercy.
Jack Maggs did not seem to notice him. “Now listen here, Eddie, you reckon your mates can find this Henry Phipps.” And so saying he thrust the three parcels into Constable’s arms.
Mercy thought: not love letters.
“Tell them Mr Phipps must squeeze the lemons in a bowl, and then brush the juice across the paper. Then he is to use the mirror. They should tell him it is a good mirror as he will find mentioned in the first letter. They should tell him there is more to the story, but he better come and hear it from my lips, soon, for I cannot stay here in this house a great deal longer. Can you remember all of this?”
Mercy blew her nose.
“Lemons, brush, mirror,” said Constable. “More to tell.”
“They should tell him—to suggest a place where we can meet in private. He can write me a note”—Maggs turned to Mr Buckle— “and then you will be free of me. I will be gone from your life.”
“No, no,” said his host, but Mr Buckle’s earnest little ferret face was obviously relieved and Mercy saw him as she had never seen him b
efore. She wished it were not so, but her saviour had begun to cut a pathetic figure in her eyes.
45
IN FOUL-SMELLING FLORAL STREET, Edward Constable alighted from a hackney cab and carried his three parcels to the door of Mafooz & Son, Importers of Dates and Coffees, this drab business being distinguished by a small lantern which had been left to burn, carelessly it seemed, throughout the night.
It was a little after dawn as he pulled on the bell, but in far less time than might have been expected at such an hour, the peep-hole in the door was opened, and his business was demanded of him.
The answer being satisfactory, he was admitted into a dim, smoke-stained corridor where a faded individual with rouged cheeks and pouchy eyes was pleased to take his hat and gloves.
This was Magnus, as much a landmark for a certain caste of Londoner as the new column in Trafalgar Square. Magnus was the subject of many anecdotes, most of which devolved from the extremely handsome figure he had cut early in the reign of George III, the period from which his present wig most certainly dated.
This club was an institution in Covent Garden at that time. It was certainly well known to the costers that a certain type of gentleman (known in their parlance as Foreman’s Friends) frequented these rooms above Mafooz’s shop. The costers themselves, when they were finished with their brandy at the Dog and Whistle, had been known to beg admittance, and then there would be all sorts of fun and dancing into the small hours, particularly on Saturday night and often continuing well into Sunday morning, sometimes even at the hour when Edward Constable arrived to inquire after Mr Henry Phipps.
Neither by word nor by manner did Magnus allow that Mr Phipps might be presently upon the premises, but he did not deny the possibility either. Rather, he ushered Constable into a small room with its title LORD STRUTWELL blazoned boldly on its door. The room was decorated in most masculine style, with various flags and battle standards, and armchairs upholstered in Moroccan leathers.
Here, Constable sat himself down and waited with his parcels on his lap. He displayed no appetite for the bound engravings which filled the book cases, engravings which, in a happier time, might have produced in him a state of almost damnable desire. He waited half an hour with his back turned to the book case, and when the door behind him opened, he stood.
It was apparent from the moment Henry Phipps entered the room that he was drunk. He sat himself down heavily with his long legs stretched out and the contours of his manhood immodestly displayed beneath his doeskins.
He was a tall, well-made young man of conventionally handsome appearance. He had straight fair hair, long side whiskers, a good straight nose, and clear blue eyes, but it was the mouth which was the most expressive aspect of his physiognomy: being one moment utterly persuasive of its charm, and the next distinguished by its churlishness.
Now he squinted up at Constable. “Are you not that fellow from Great Queen Street?”
“I think you know me well enough, Sir.”
“The racehorse, eh?”
Edward Constable’s mouth tightened.
Henry Phipps was not too drunk to note the expression.
“Oh Christ,” he said as he closed his eyes, “please, don’t play the footman with me.”
“I am a footman, Sir, as you might have reason to recall.”
Henry Phipps opened his eyes sufficiently to consider Constable.
“My name is Edward Constable. It was my friend who died . . .”
Phipps then leaned forward, speaking more quietly than he had hitherto. “As I told you before, I will have no more discussions relating to that affair.” He made as if to rise.
“Stay, Sir. It is some other business.”
Mr Phipps sighed. “Perhaps you wish to blame me for the rain last night. I am, Sir, a tall fellow. Perhaps I caused it.”
“That is not my purpose.”
“For the sky does love me, eh, and then the rain does fall, and poetry being poetry, why”—he lay back heavily in his arm chair—“then I am to blame.”
“Mr Phipps, it is not that business, it is another . . .”
“Not involving my supposed obligation to you?”
“No, Sir, to another.”
“Oh Lord, this is very boring.”
“I am here on a message from Mr Jack Maggs.”
“The Devil you are!”
“I am, Sir.”
Henry Phipps’s manner now changed completely. He removed himself to the arm of the club chair, folding his large hands upon his lap, and regarded Constable with earnest attention.
“And how is he? How is Jack Maggs?”
“I would say that he was pining for you, Sir.”
“Pining for me, you say? How odd. But sit down, Edward. Tell me, what is he like? A ruffian, I warrant.”
“He is very comely, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh he is, is he? A racehorse?”
“A little grim at times, but the ladies are most taken with him.”
“The ladies?”
“There is a certain aspect to his manner which does betray his past, and yet you would not know the tortures he has passed through if you did not witness the scars.”
“He has scars?”
“He has been flogged, Sir. Yet for a man so abused, I think you will find him of a very decent disposition.”
“The thing is this, Eddie, old chap, I really do not think I will have an opportunity to ‘find’ him at all. I am called away.”
“You were ‘called away’ once already, were you not, Sir? Mr Maggs believes it was his imminent arrival that was the cause of your departure.”
“Now I am called away, let us say, further.”
“Abroad?”
“Further than it is your damned business to inquire.”
“In any case, Sir, he has asked me to deliver these little packages to you.”
And here Constable offered the three parcels to Henry Phipps.
The gentleman did not immediately reach for the gifts but rather peered at them.
“What’s this?”
“I believe one of the objects to be a mirror.”
“A mirror? Is he sarcastic then? What in the deuce does he mean by giving me a mirror?”
“And this one on the top contains three lemons.”
“Lemons?”
“And the largest of the three, so I understand, is a certain document which Mr Maggs would have you read.”
Constable then held out all three parcels.
“A legal document?” asked Henry Phipps, unable to hide his growing excitement.
“No, I think not.”
“Not the title to a house, for instance?”
“I imagine it is a sort of letter.”
“A letter?” cried Henry Phipps, suddenly angry. “Do you think I could correspond with such a one as he? And do you not consider the doubtful position you place yourself in? You are breaking the law to know his whereabouts without disclosing it. He is a dangerous man, Mr Racehorse, a man condemned to banishment, for ever. If you wish to reveal my presence to him, I swear I will make you wish that you were never born.”
“Sir, my information is that he sits up half the night writing in order to explain himself to you.”
“He said this?”
“Please, Sir, he thinks only of you. If ever he did you harm, I am very sure that he is sorry.”
For the third time, Constable attempted to deliver Jack Maggs’s gifts.
“He says it is necessary to squeeze a little lemon juice upon the pages. And then to read them through the mirror image.” There was a pause. “He is very fond of you.”
“But I am not fond of him. Tell him that I find the very notion of him vile.”
“Can I give him no comfort?”
“Yes: you may tell him that I am well aware of the obligation he has placed me under, and that he can therefore rely upon my silence for the moment.”
And with that the interview ended, and Henry Phipps strode from the room.
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46
CONSTABLE, SEARCHING THE house high and low, found Jack Maggs in Mr Spinks’s bedroom, at which doorway he remained unannounced.
The Australian sat aside the butler’s sick-bed. His back was to the door, and he was offering a spoon of broth to the old man.
“You should never look a pooka in the eye. The eye is the strong point of all these dark magicians.”
He moved the spoon closer. The butler turned his head aside. The spoon withdrew a little.
“Every creature has its strong point,” continued the big man. “With a pooka it is in the eyes entirely. Were it not for the eyes they would be helpless as a new-hatched chicken.”
Mr Spinks knocked the spoon aside, and some liquid fell upon his counterpane.
Jack Maggs patiently set the soup bowl and spoon upon the side table. The feverish butler withdrew as far as he was able, until he was sitting up straight and hard against the bed-head, far too preoccupied to notice the footman standing in the doorway.
“Don’t look at me like that, old chap,” said Jack Maggs. “I’m not the pooka who put the spell on you.”
Mr Spinks folded his arms across his chest.
“His name is Oates.”
“Pooka!” croaked Mr Spinks sarcastically.
“So you can open your gob when you want.”
He offered another spoon of broth, but the butler’s mouth stayed firmly closed.
“Very well then.” Maggs took the old man’s unshaven chin and dug his thumb and second finger in at the hinge, between the gums. “This is how I drench my sheep in New South Wales.”
“Mmmph,” cried Spinks.
As he struggled to avoid the broth, the butler’s rheumy eyes alighted on Constable. The footman smiled encouragingly. Spinks began to speak, but as his mouth opened, so the soup slid in and Maggs clamped his horny hand over the old chap’s mouth and nose. There was no choice but to swallow.
“Fight fluid with fluid.”