by Peter Carey
“That’s my son,” said Jack Maggs proudly. “Mr Henry Phipps, Esquire.”
This was the first time Toby had any intimation of Jack Maggs’s very personal relationship with the tenant of the house in Great Queen Street. In the midst of his astonishment he was struck by the father’s proud bright eyes as he offered the enamel portrait of his son to Wilfred Partridge.
He is waiting to have the lad admired, thought Toby.
If it was so, Partridge must have disappointed him. He did not look at the portrait at all but, having closely scrutinized the hallmarks on the gorgeous frame, handed the object to his wife.
“They all do leave a little of themselves,” said she. Toby noted that she also looked carefully at the hallmarks. “They brush against it, they leave themselves behind.”
“It is a good likeness.”
“The question is, Sir, did he touch it recently? Was it in his possession?”
“The point is, Mum, I’m looking for my son.”
Mrs Partridge slid the little portrait away from her. “If he hasn’t touched it, it is of no use to Mr Partridge. We don’t wants what he looks like. We wants where he is.”
Tobias saw, or thought he saw, such a profound look of sadness on his companion’s face that he felt compelled to take a lance against his tormentors. “Madam, you are making very little sense.”
For thanks, his own man turned on him. “That’s enough of that,” said Jack Maggs.
“Wait,” said the wife. “I can feel that you have something we can use.” And produced, as if from nowhere, two small locks of children’s hair. “His hair!” declared Mrs Partridge, her face now taking on a reddish sheen.
“Get out of my pocket,” Jack Maggs cried, snatching the hair away from her. “That’s private.”
“That’s the boy’s hair,” insisted the woman. “That’s our man, Wilf. It’s the son’s hair. I won’t be contradicted.”
This was all uttered in a fierce and certain sort of way. Tobias was surprised to see that Maggs was, in some sense, cowed by it. There was a furtive, shame-faced air about him when he spoke again.
“Damn you. It ain’t the one I want.”
Tobias had no time to wonder at this information, for now the clergyman was rising like a warrior in his seat.
“You’ll not damn my wife, Sir,” said he.
The convict hesitated. Then he sighed, and sat slowly down, his head resting in his hands. “The hair don’t belong to Henry Phipps,” he said.
The clergyman now picked up the portrait from the table and carefully appraised it as closely as a jeweller. He passed it to his wife, who then placed the portrait against her ear, as if it were a seashell.
It was obvious to Tobias—indeed, it would have been obvious to a sensible child—that the Partridges were charlatans, but as the blunt-nosed little pick-pocket lowered the portrait from her ear, Jack Maggs waited humbly for her verdict. Tobias was touched, against all his expectation, by the eager way he leaned towards the woman. How sad, Tobias thought, the Somnambulist had become.
When the two Partridges begged that they might be excused to consult further in private, Jack Maggs suggested that he and Tobias Oates leave the room.
68
TOBY DREW HIS companion down into the dark end of the passage where someone had stacked some wooden saddle frames and then left them rotting on the floor.
“So, Master Maggs,” he whispered, “what is your opinion?”
The convict’s face had, on the whole, a rather frozen quality but his eyes were now glistening with excitement.
“They know their onions, that’s for sure. The only thing against us—my Henry never touched his own portrait.”
“Did you note the way they looked at it?”
“It weren’t what they wanted.”
“They each read the hallmarks first. Is the frame valuable?”
“I would not frame his portrait with rubbish, that’s a fact.”
“Jack, we are being swindled.”
“It is not Partridge?”
“It is Partridge, yes.”
“How swindled? No, I don’t believe you. Trust me, mate, I know the game.”
“And trust me, Master Maggs. This is mumbo jumbo. He cannot find anyone by placing a silver frame against his ear.”
“It don’t work?”
“It cannot.”
Jack looked down at Tobias Oates, looked at him very hard. “But this is the same cove you vouched for.”
“Now, Jack, that ain’t quite it. He was vouched for by Dr Eliotson. And I am sure he performed the act my friend attributed to him.”
Maggs’s face contorted, a whole ugly spasm that passed from his eye down to his mouth. “You promised me I would find my son,” he said coldly. His brows were down hard on his eyes. “That was our understanding. It was for this, and only this, I wasted all my frigging time? Why would I make myself a fart-catcher? Why would I be a lackey to that ugly little wretch?”
Toby was afraid, but he stood very still and held the convict’s eye.
“I’m sorry, Jack, from the bottom of my heart. I also have a son. It is not hard for me to understand your feelings.”
This did nothing to calm Jack Maggs at all. Indeed it had the opposite effect. He began to drum a foot upon the boards. Toby took a half-step backwards.
“You understand nothing,” cried the other, brushing roughly past him and coming back up into the passage-way. “You can hoodwink me into taking off my shirt, but you don’t know a rat’s fart about me.” A great flood of colour had risen in Jack Maggs’s face. “You steal my Fluid but you can’t imagine who I am, you little fribble. What was that noise?”
“I do believe,” said Toby, whose heart was pounding very hard, “that they’ve locked us out.”
Uttering a curse, the convict literally spun upon his heel. In two strides he was at the door to which he administered such a mighty kick that it was brought screeching off its hinges and thus revealed, like a stage curtain raised through misadventure, the two actors in a state of some embarrassment.
That is, the Partridges had the window open, and Mrs Partridge already had one leg out into the court, and one blue-veined ham-bone showing to the room. Mr Partridge was by her side, his wide-brimmed hat back upon his head, the partially wrapped portrait still in his hand.
Jack’s three parcels were still on the table, but the Partridges’ bound volume was nowhere in sight.
Jack Maggs came across the room, moving with a grace his bulk had hitherto concealed. He moved like an acrobat, or a dancer whose steps, being much practised, appear more natural than they are. To be particular: he crossed the bleak little room crouched queerly low but with his stride undiminished, a contortion demanded by his need to withdraw a knife from inside his boot.
There was then a very loud explosion, and Tobias was confused about its cause until he saw a pistol fall onto the floor and smelled the distinctive odour of gunpowder. But even when the pistol lay revealed, he still did not understand that Wilfred Partridge had fired it at Jack Maggs.
Mr Partridge was sitting on the sill. Then Maggs stepped back from him, and Toby saw the blood on the Thief-taker’s shirt and imagined he had been wounded by this pistol. Then he saw: Wilfred Partridge’s throat was cut. His hand was holding the wound. Bright red blood streamed through his fingers, down his arm, across the face of the miniature portrait which Jack Maggs was now brutally prying from his hand.
Wilfred Partridge fell into the room. His head hit the floor very hard.
The convict turned, the bloody portrait in one hand, a rough black blade in the other. He looked Tobias Oates threateningly in the eye and thus they stood the two of them, the one with the power to take away life, breathing heavily, the other hardly daring to draw breath.
Toby thought: I am a dead man now.
It was then, facing the warrant he imagined in those dark brown eyes, that he spoke the words: “Come, Jack. Quickly. We must run.”
69
> JACK MAGGS HAD BOLTED, she knew not where. He had departed as he had first come in, in mufti. He had not spoken, not even waved. She had looked up from the kitchen window and seen him walk up Great Queen Street with his kit-bag across his shoulder. That night, after midnight, she went across the roof again, but the house was cold and frightening. She knew then: he had gone for good.
If the master knew his whereabouts, he was not saying. Indeed it seemed that Jack Maggs’s departure had allowed all Percy Buckle’s bottled feelings to spill out in a stinking rage. Mercy knew what her offence had been, and yet it could not be spoken of.
The master had seemed, in the shadow of Jack Maggs, a plain little thing, but in the quiet that followed the latter’s departure she saw what a false perception that had been. Mr Buckle was her life, her safety. Her association with Jack Maggs had humiliated him to a degree she had been too intoxicated to see at the time.
Now he would not permit her to so much as pour his tea for him. Thrice she went to him unbidden; thrice he ordered her back to the kitchen.
She was ill. She could not eat. She assisted Miss Mott as she was ordered, working with her back towards the light so the cook might not see the hot tears falling onto the liver she was preparing for dinner.
“Wherever he has gone to, dearie,” said she, “it’s better off for you.”
“I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure.”
“If I was you I’d be running up stairs and taking the master a plate of that toast and cinnamon he is so partial to.”
“He don’t want no truck with me today.”
“You get up there and get back in the master’s good books or God knows what sort of life you’re going to have.”
She knew what sort of life. She knew it exactly. She saw the stinking little room in Fetter Lane. She saw the Haymarket, the vile dress with its gaudy ribbons.
“Go on, git.” Miss Mott took forcible possession of her three-legged stool, and pushed its sniffling occupant aside. She took the knife from the maid’s hand. “That other is a hard man. You can see it in his beak. He’s not the man for you, girl. Go, wash your hands now. Make the master his toast, there’s a good miss.”
Miss Mott then took charge of the liver, lowering her little wire spectacles so she could see the veins the better. “Do what I say, and one day I might have the pleasure of calling you Madam. Fetch me the flour, that’s a girl.”
Mercy walked slowly down into the pantry. Her legs felt weak and wobbly, her bowels loose. She returned with a cup of flour. She watched as Miss Mott spread it across the table and dredged the slices of liver in it.
“Now bring me the loaf, Mercy, and I will cut it thin the way he likes it.”
Thus Mercy called on Mr Buckle a fourth time. She knocked hesitantly on the snuggery door, and entered. He was at his precious bureau, quill in hand, but it was his eyes she noticed first, how naked they were: his hurt was plain to her now.
“A little bit of something,” she offered. It was a way of speaking she was accustomed to use in their more personal moments together, and it was certainly a risk to use it now. But he did not immediately reject her, and she carefully set a small lace doily close by his ink bottle, then lay the toast in front of him.
“Shall I make a nice pot of Orange Pekoe for you, Sir?”
Percy Buckle stared mutely at the toast. The four slices were soaked with butter, sprinkled with ground cinnamon. They were laid one atop the other and sliced into lady-fingers.
“Is he gone for good?” he muttered angrily.
“I do not know, Sir. He did not say so, Sir.”
She watched him nibble cautiously at his toast. Then she gave him her treasure. She had no other currency to offer: it was everything she had.
“If he ain’t gone, Sir, I know how we could make him go. I have discovered where his Henry Phipps is hidden.”
Mr Buckle finished his lady-finger and took a second. His appetite appeared to be returning.
“You did not tell him you had this information?”
“Oh no, Sir. I wouldn’t do that, Sir.”
“But how do you know such a secret, Mercy?”
“Well, it seems that Mr Constable visited Mr Phipps at the gentleman’s club. He discovered that Mr Phipps is no friend to Jack Maggs, and so he did not inform Jack Maggs that Mr Phipps was found, not wishing to make him angry, Sir.”
“Are you sure you did not tell Jack Maggs?”
“Oh no, Sir. Never. I would not want to make him angry either, him being a convict and all. He would be ever so upset to know he was hated by his son.”
“His son!”
“He told Mr Constable that Mr Phipps was his son.”
“But Mr Phipps is a gentleman!”
Mr Buckle’s astonishment was so great that he seemed, for this moment anyway, to forget his umbrage.
“Good Lord,” said he. “And hated by him? I do not wonder. A son, and hated. Hated by his own son. Son? It is beyond belief. The convict owns the house next door? Pretends to be my footman, but owns the freehold? So, Mr Phipps . . . his son. Why, I’d wager his fortune all comes from our Jack Maggs. It’s convict gold, that’s what it is.”
“I couldn’t say, Sir.”
“And now this Mr Phipps, he doesn’t like Jack Maggs?”
“No, Sir. He hides from him.”
“Well, who can blame the gentleman? Dirty money. Thievery. Murder. Of course he would hide. He don’t want Jack Maggs trampling through his life. But what if the rascal cuts off all his funds? Disinheritance: it may be on the cards, Mercy. It must be on the cards, by gosh.”
“It’s true that Henry Phipps hoped that Mr Constable was bringing him the title of a property.”
“Then there you are,” said Mr Buckle. “Then there you are exactly. That’s his worry. That’s a very big worry for a gentleman to have. Disinheritance. He fears he will lose his house, poor devil.”
Mr Buckle then set upon his toast most hungrily.
“This Mr Phipps,” he said, “could turn out to be a very dangerous person for our Master Maggs.”
And with that he smiled at Mercy. She was back. She was safe. She would never be so foolish ever again.
70
TOBIAS COULD NEVER have seriously imagined himself running away with Wilfred Partridge’s murderer. Yet once the two men had passed a policeman in Bull Lane, no further moment presented itself when he could easily extricate himself, and so he continued to accompany Jack Maggs in the direction indicated by the other’s elbow. No word passed between them.
Tobias did not look at his companion. However, he was almost neurasthenically aware of his force, his heat, his potential for further violence.
As they came down to the place where Westgate Street runs into the quay, they found themselves amongst a mob of foreign sailors who, crowding urgently around a seated officer, made a dense and rum-sour knot upon the cobblestones. Here was Tobias’s chance, and he took it, slipping back amongst the sailors, pushing through them towards the peelers.
Yet at the very moment the bobbies came into view, he saw this was no freedom at all. It was in his interests to keep Jack Maggs out of the dock. If Jack were guilty of murder, Toby was guilty of being his accessory; if Jack were a bolter, it was Toby who had knowingly, criminally, harboured him. Of course he was a man of letters but he had been a Fleet Street hack himself and knew that, once he was in the dock, the Press would feast no less greedily on one of their own. He did not need to consider the explosive secrets Jack Maggs might add to this conflagration.
And so he turned his back on Robert Peel’s men and quickly found Jack Maggs again. Reunited, they walked calmly down towards the Severn. There they leaned casually over an iron rail and peered down into the mist-shrouded river.
“Tide,” said his fellow conspirator, very casual in his manner. “Ebbing,” he said, pointing down at a willow branch drifting slowly to the south.
Tobias watched those light green leaves drag in the current, and felt an unexpect
ed sensation, like cool water, running along his neck. He looked at Jack Maggs, who winked at him. Tobias watched the willow branch and, as it was swallowed by the mist, thought that he too might have his freedom, and a larger freedom than anything he had imagined when he had fretted at his pennies and his pounds on London Bridge.
He would flee!
He would flee wherever Jack Maggs fled. It was not his fault he had to flee. He had no choice but flee. He would flee anywhere he damn well chose. He might invent himself again, as Simon Winchester in Jamaica, or Cecil Gunnerson in Cape Town, or Phineas O’Brien in Boston.
Once he had glimpsed this possibility, a wild, conscienceless beast rose in his breast and turned his cheeks pink and his lips an extraordinary red. “We can take ship here, in Gloucester? If you buy my ticket now, I’ll make the money later. You have my word—I can make the money.”
The convict looked narrowly at the excited young man. Then, without further response, he hoisted his kit-bag onto his shoulder and walked slowly towards the end of the quay where a lock-keeper’s cottage was perched between the basin and the river. Here, without explanation, he climbed its garden fence.
Maggs’s hessian boots trampled lettuces, broke carrot stalks. Tobias took the same course. He put one hand in his pocket and jiggled his change while he strolled though a wicket labelled Private, and then along a pretty cobbled path (which was, on this fifth day of May, bordered with primroses) and thence to a steep set of steps leading down to the river.
From that giddy precipice, Tobias looked down on the sorry-looking little punt which was tied up at the landing. This was not the sort of ship he had had in mind. He looked across the silky surface of the Severn, and remembered that it was a famously difficult river with fierce tides and the dreadful Severn Bore which came rushing up from the sea on a crest six feet high.