by Peter Carey
Toby removed the fire-screen which she and he had bought together, one happy morning on Holborn in the early spring. Toby had always been afraid of fire, as if it would be the thing which would dash in and steal everything from him. How often, she thought, we defend ourselves against the wrong thing.
It was quite hot and close in the room, with the windows closed against the storm, but the two men were tearing up Toby’s manuscripts, as if they planned to begin a fire. Now her brother-in-law knelt before the grate and Lizzie caught, in the cast of his mouth, a glimpse of his great stubbornness, his will. Why he was about to destroy his own creation was beyond her, but how she wished she might have a will like that, and not be sitting here now when she might have gone away on a ship to France.
The rattling of the window pane brought her attention back to the street, and there she presently spied a small bent woman attempting to cross the busy road. She was not an old woman, but clearly destitute. Her clothes were ragged, her legs bowed, and she had the panicky motion of a small creature that knows itself the prey of many larger ones. She was carrying some treasure in her pinafore, and there she was, like a beetle or an ant, determined to cross whatever obstacle chance put in her path. The rain was very heavy but the wagons were no smaller or slower on account of it. Lizzie watched the woman take a step forward, then one back, then forward and then, finally, the poor soul made a fast and desperate foray out into the centre of the road.
Here, with a brewery dray almost on top of her, she slipped and fell.
She had been carrying onions in her apron and now all these treasures went rolling out across the coal-black road. The Clydesdale’s soup-plate hooves scattered the onions. The wheel of the brewer’s dray passed by the woman’s head. She rose hastily and began to gather up her onions.
Lizzie began quietly to cry.
On hearing the striking of a match, she turned. Toby was holding a match to the papers in the grate. She watched the fire catch. She watched the papers burn.
Then she saw that Toby had closed his eyes, and in that moment his face was so forlorn that she could easily see what great damage was being done to him as well. As the flames illuminated his familiar face, Lizzie saw, not stubbornness any longer, but a deathmask, like the one he had always kept in his office.
It was then she understood that her life had always been travelling towards this point. There was always to be this storm. The poor woman was always going to fall. This moment had lain there waiting since the day when Tobias had first come to court her sister at her father’s house at Amersham.
Now the wind rushed down the chimney, blowing smoke into the room. Toby and the convict were arguing. Toby wished the convict to go to his home. The convict said that he would “damned well” stay all night. She did not pay them much attention. She was thinking that she had been a very selfish girl indeed. She had always known the hurt she risked doing to her sister, and of that she had been careless enough, but she had never considered the harm possible to that luminous young man who had appeared before her family’s window one Sunday morning, dressed-up as a sailor, dancing a hornpipe. He had a boy’s face, and sweet needful lips, but he had been, although the world had not yet seen it, a giant amongst men.
And she, Lizzie, had almost ruined him, and she could not bear that that be so. She laid her hand again upon that little mound, that soft roundness of her stomach.
The men’s voices were softer now. It seemed the convict would indeed depart for his own establishment, and return here in the morning. A threat was made, a last match lit. She watched the final sheaf of papers flare, and saw the shrouds of blue and yellow as Toby stirred them with the poker. In the flames she saw ghostly figures, fictions rising amidst the skirts of flame.
When this last blaze had died away, the grate was filled with mourning: all those lines of gorgeous copperplate had become sheets of black crêpe which he now struck at with a poker. Whether they were struck in anger or merely from a desire to make them burn more efficiently, she could not tell; but if the latter, this intention was soon thwarted by the wind, which once again blew fiercely down the chimney and this time carried the black and broken paper out into the room. The men leapt back, coughing and waving their hands. The burnt papers rose, like black moths, as high as the ceiling.
Elizabeth Warriner, Tobias Oates, Jack Maggs—they all stood as the black ash fell around them.
84
“LIKE I SAID, MATE,” said Jack Maggs, opening the door and stepping into Lamb’s Conduit Street, “I’ll be at your door at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“You trust me now, Jack?”
Jack Maggs shrugged. The pills Lizzie Warriner had now ingested would soon begin their work. Then Tobias Oates would be so fully occupied, his hands might as well be tied.
“Are you not the least concerned that I might run?”
The other smiled grimly. “You tried that once already.”
“Still, I might betray you.”
“You’re in too deep, mate. You’d get no benefit, no benefit at all.”
For all this, Jack Maggs was by no means complacent. When he once again approached his property in Great Queen Street he in no way resembled the fellow who had got down off the Dover Rocket. Like a rat along the wainscot, he moved very quietly, melting with the shadows. He spied on his own house for a full hour before he crossed the street and unlocked its front door with a set of “ticklers.”
While the storm had long since abated, the windows were heavily curtained and so, although it was only nine o’clock, the house was very dark.
As Jack Maggs closed the door behind him, he felt the presence. There was no unexpected sound, no foreign odour: the ground floor gave off that same satisfying beeswax smell as hitherto. Yet there was someone here, no doubt about it. And now Jack allowed himself to acknowledge that he had hoped it would be thus. Indeed it was this very prospect which had drawn him away from Lamb’s Conduit Street when prudence should have kept him there all night. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.
Cautiously, he stooped for his knife. He felt the rough sure grip of the handle which he himself had made with twine and tar. A convict’s knife, it dated from before the time when he could have afforded the finest steel and ivory for the handle. He crouched now, a powerful shadow in the doorway of his own living room, drawing the blade in wide circles through the night.
Noiseless as a shade, he then moved forward towards the settle. He heard a small sniffle.
“Henry?”
There was a second sniffle.
“Henry, is that you?”
He struck a match, thus revealing a sad and sorry Mercy Larkin, huddled in a tartan cocoon upon the settle.
“Christ, that was a foolish thing to do.” He sat heavily on a gilded chair, well apart from her.
“I’m sorry.”
“I told you, don’t stick your nose where it ain’t wanted.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I told you long ago it were dangerous.”
“You thought I were Mr Phipps.” Mercy sat up and blew her nose. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
“You could not frighten me, girlie. It would take more than you to frighten me.” But he felt sick and sour with disappointment and he did not bother to hide his great displeasure.
“You was expecting your Henry?”
He slid his knife back in his boot. “None of your business.”
“If that’s what’s got you in a snot, I can take you to him now.”
“You?”
“Why do you look at me like that?” She folded up the tartan rug as if her departure were imminent. “Do you think I am such an idiot I couldn’t find my way to Covent Garden?”
85
IN JACK MAGGS’S DARK AND empty house, Mercy Larkin had prayed, Dear God, forgive me for not visiting my mother. Dear God, grant me a position.
Around herself she had assembled those few possessions which were her own: the cushions she had embroidered for he
r room, and the picture her grandma had painted of her poor mama, sitting below a Dutch windmill with a rag doll on her knee.
On and on she prayed, curled up inside Jack Maggs’s tartan rug.
Dear God, please soften the Master’s heart. Have him write me my references. Dear God, if that ain’t possible, let Jack Maggs come back and let me find favour with him. God send him to me.
Then she fell asleep, and when she awoke, she felt the dark air moving across her cheek and heard, “Henry? Henry, is that you?”
A match exploded in the air above her head.
Lo: Jack Maggs.
He was wild and shabby. His eyes were red, his hair lank and greasy, unwashed and sprinkled throughout with ashes. The lining of his coat was torn, and there appeared to be a dark brown stain upon its hem. There was about him that bitter unwashed smell of a man weary from long labour.
“Christ!” he cried. “By Jesus, that was a silly thing to do.”
Dear God, forgive his words.
He sat on a chair against the wall, rubbing at his cheek, gathering its flesh and pushing it up towards his temple. His bright red waistcoat was all speckled with mud. He was ever so cross, glaring at her from his red-rimmed eyes. And she was sorry, and sorry again, and sorry one more time, until she realized it was in her power to bestow on him his wish.
Dear God, I thank you.
“Why do you look at me like that?” she said, placing the folded tartan rug neatly on top of her embroidered cushions. “Do you think I am such an idiot I couldn’t find my way to Covent Garden?”
“Henry Phipps is in Covent Garden?”
“He is.”
His belligerence then washed away, and left in its place a kind of soft confusion. She felt a powerful urge to take his wild and knotted head and wash it in warm water.
“How came you by this information, Mercy?”
Mercy could not admit how long she had known this secret, but neither did she wish to begin to tell untruths again.
“Constable told me Mr Phipps was your son.”
“It’s true,” he sighed. “But I ain’t seen him since he was a nipper.”
“Then he carries a picture in his heart of the last day he saw you.”
“He was but four years of age.”
“I too can remember when I lost my da, Jack Maggs. I remember the very day, and were he to come back to me, why I know my heart would burst. Sometimes I still dream he is alive. And in those few precious moments when I wake, I am happy beyond anything you could imagine. Surely it is going to be the same with him when he looks up . . . and there you will be.”
Even as she drew this happy picture, she had that unclean feeling that always accompanies deception. She knew that she was sending Jack Maggs to break his heart, and yet she could not help herself, when she saw how benevolently he began to look upon her. It was what she had craved, dear God forgive her.
Jack Maggs lit the candles and gazed rather forlornly at a place above his mantelpiece. Mercy followed his gaze and found, inside that elaborate circle of gilt which framed a massive mirror, the prodigal father’s soiled and care-worn image.
“You cannot go calling in those clothes,” she said. “Here, give them to me. You don’t want to frighten the boy.”
He gave a long sigh, then divested himself as she indicated: first surrendering the long great-coat, then the four-button jacket beneath it, then the red waistcoat. Finally, he stood before her, his white shirt stained with sweat, wet on the back.
“You rest yourself now,” she said.
Jack Maggs lay down as commanded, curling up his legs on the settle. At that moment she truly did love him.
There were shutters on the kitchen windows, and these Mercy closed. She lit the fire and stoked it high. She put on the kettle. She also set two flat irons on the hottest part, near the fire box. When the kettle was boiling she steamed the mud spots on the waistcoat. These ran in a fine spray, like the tail of a peacock across the breast, but by dint of careful sponging and judicious use of soap jelly, she soon had this first garment restored to its best crimson.
Her cheeks were flushed from the hot steam. She pressed the waistcoat, then hung it on the door knob. Miss Mott would not have recognized her diligence. Without so much as a teaspoon of sugar to refresh herself, Mercy laid out the oil-skin coat across the kitchen table and ministered to it with a stout scrubbing brush. It had been a handsome coat, with three wide capes on its shoulder, and she was pleased to make it seem so once again. One pocket had been ripped clean away, and although this damage was not obvious on the surface of the coat, there was some dark brown sticky substance below the pocket flap. This she sponged away. The other pocket was undamaged and housed the selfsame locks of hair she had found on an earlier occasion.
With these two mysteries in her hands again, she sat on a three-legged stool before the fire box and carefully interrogated them. She sniffed, but there was no smell to them. She picked at the woollen yarn with her nail, but could judge nothing from it.
“Mercy, what are you up to?”
She jumped. He held out his hand and she returned the locks of hair to him.
“I didn’t mean nothing by it,” she said. “I was just helping you.”
“Is it not too dangerous for you to help me?”
“You refer to the Master? He has dispensed with me.”
“Dispensed, Mercy?”
“I have been dismissed, Sir.”
She was surprised to find how easily she could say it, and then she saw his brow erupt in a frown of such concern that it brought a sudden well of tears into her eyes.
“I don’t mind,” she reassured him. “I don’t mind at all.”
“What was your crime?”
“Go home to your babies,” she said.
It was not what she had intended to say.
He blinked at her.
But it was obvious to her now. She saw it. Perhaps she had always known. “You have babies in the place where you have come from.”
His mouth tightened in denial.
“My son is an Englishman.”
“I meant your real children.”
“I am not of that race.”
“What race?”
“The Australian race,” he said. “The race of Australians.”
“But what of your babes?”
“Damn you, don’t look at me like that. I am an Englishman.”
“You are their da, Jack. They walk along the street, they think they see your face in the clouds.”
“I made my promise to Henry before they were born.”
“He looks at no clouds for you.”
“He what?”
“He don’t see your face.”
At this, he shook her till her teeth rattled in her head.
“What do you know?” he roared, his face turning a dark russet red. “What . . . do . . . you . . . know?”
At which Mercy burst into tears and threw her head upon his broad chest. “I know what it is to lose a da.”
He stood still and hard as a post a moment, but then he put his arms around her waist. The kettle began to boil. The pair of them swayed to and fro like a couple in a dance.
86
THE SPASM HAD PASSED, and Lizzie Warriner, now exhausted and putty-skinned, curled herself up amongst the discoloured sheets of the bed wherein she had suffered these last five hours.
Mary sought to push back the damp hair from her sister’s brow, although this brought the sufferer no peace. Lizzie thrust the hand away, then pulled irritably at the tangled rope of sheet between her knees.
“I have been poisoned.”
In response, Mary tucked her plump chin into her neck and looked sternly at her sister. Then she picked up and folded a yellow shawl that had fallen to the floor. She placed the shawl on the dresser beside a chipped brown basin which had been fetched with such urgency from the nursery. Now she covered the basin with a beaded cloth and placed it beneath the bed. “Come, come.” She put her arm ben
eath the girl’s slender back. “We will change the sheets again.”
“No, Mary. You will only ruin your best linen.”
At this Mary’s face crumpled, and she fell upon her sister’s neck. “Oh Lizzie, Lizzie, I do love you.”
“Ssh, Mary. Please save your tears for someone better.”
“There is no one in the world better. It is I who should be better. For it is I who have caused you such suffering.”
“Rest easy in your mind, poor dear girl. The blame is hardly yours.”
“I did not do it maliciously, I swear. But I have guessed your secret these last two weeks.”
This revelation produced a most noticeable silence, broken only when the next spasm shook the girl on the bed and produced a loud high cry of pain. When the convulsion had passed, she tugged at her sister’s sleeve.
“You knew of my condition?” she whispered. “How could you know? Who could tell you such a thing?”
“You will be well again soon. When the medicine has finished its work.”
“What medicine do you mean?”
“Tablets, dearest. You remember the tea you complained of. You said it was so bitter . . .”
“Oh Mary, Mary,” cried Lizzie despairingly.
“It is for the best, you will see,” said Mary, beginning to fuss once more with her sister’s hair. “Your secret will trouble you no more, my darling.”
In answer Lizzie thrust her hand angrily away and looked out into the lamp light with the wild and angry eyes of an animal that her sister did not recognize. “You really should have told me what it was you planned.”
In her mind’s eye Mary Oates suddenly saw the horrid rouged face of Mrs Britten. She saw the drooping eyes, the great pitted nose, the manly hand with the name SILAS tattooed on its wrist.
This vision was disturbed by her husband, inquiring anxiously from outside the locked door. She opened it a crack to tell him there was nothing new to report. Although she barely recognized the fact yet, she had begun to hate Tobias. Later the roots of this emotion would penetrate the deepest reaches of her soul and make her into the slow and famously dim-witted creature who was commonly thought not to understand half of what her famous husband said, but for now the hate was only a small sharp seed, a pin prick in the corner of her heart, and she was far too worried to concern herself with it. Meanwhile Tobias paced outside the bedroom door, a model of “brotherly concern” and “propriety.”