Jack Maggs (13 page)

I soon deduced that it was not poetry, but a peculiar collection of odd signs, with handwritten annotations attached to almost every one. Thus:

There were many pages of this type of thing, row after row of
little punched shapes: squares, escutcheons, trefoils, bifoils,
and inside these shapes were lions and chalices and crowns
and the likeness of a man I took to be a King. I gazed long at
these mysteries, trying to establish what they might mean, and
when I heard Silas’s foot upon the stair, I imagined myself on
the brink of being admitted to an important fellowship.

Yet when Silas returned, he seemed to have lost all interest
in my education. Indeed, rather than explain the marks to me,
he took the book from me and returned it to its place in the
floor. Whatever it was he had gone to fetch, he did not tell me,
although I could smell fried fish and see a bulge in his jacket
where he had a little parcel hidden.

If he intended to share his fish, it was not with me. Instead
he produced a handsome little silver spoon from his pocket and
said I was to give it to my mother. —Tell her I am coming tomorrow so she can cook my sausage in her pan.

I was too afraid to ask him to tell me the way home, and so
I set out, running along the dark rough streets, trying as best I
could to follow the route that had brought us here. Walking
along the crooked lanes, trying to keep the evil-smelling river
to my right, I was often lost and always frightened. Once I was
chased by a drunken man who promised to cut off my ear and
eat it, but I was also befriended by a man I took to be a sailor
who walked me all the way to London Bridge and gave me a
penny to go home with.

And how pleased I was to be home. Mary Britten, who was,
for all her excitements and passions, normally a distant sort of
mother, came rushing up and hugged me to her, soot and all.
When I produced the penny and the silver spoon, her green
eyes lit up and she took me by the hand and led me to the table,
and placed a great bowl of soup beside me, while Tom sat on
the bed whittling a wooden fish hook with his clasp knife.

—He stinks, he said.

Ma Britten turned that spoon over in her hands.

—He’s been
use-ful,
said she, and to my nose it’s a
use-ful
sort of smell.

I ate the soup hungrily. She had dished me a good-sized
bowl and put the ladle deeper into the pot than was usually her
wont, so the broth was thick with meat and barley, a fact not
lost on Tom when he came to the table to watch me eat.

—He looks like a nigger.

—Aye, black as a nigger but carrying the King’s silver.

She had the silver teaspoon sitting on the table, and she
turned it over and over with her finger in a way that made me
think of a cat playing with old knucklebones.

—Did he show you his book? asked she.

She peered down at the spoon with her handsome head
cocked to one side.

I said he had.

—Did he learn you the marks?

—No, Ma’am.

—He will learn you the marks. She turned the spoon
through another ninety degrees. Said she—You will be able to
read a tea pot better than a vicar reads a Bible. And you will
do very nicely on account of it.

It was then Tom leaned over to take the spoon, but as he got
his hand to it, Mary saw him. She tried to snatch it back with
the result that the precious object was knocked flying across
the room and landed with a clatter beside the bed.

Ma Britten rose screeching to her feet.

—He did not mean it, I cried. Tom was already cowering
with his raw hands around his ears.

Mary said he did not have to mean it, and kicked him in the
backside. He did it, said she, and that’s as good as meaning.

By now she had the poor fellow by his ear and was dragging
him towards the bed—Where is it? Where is it?

—It’s there, it’s there.

Mary Britten saw the spoon and picked it up. She began to
polish it upon her apron.

—Why can’t I learn the marks too? Tom cried. I want to do
nicely. I should do nicely. I’m not the mud rat. I’m the son.

His long pale face was now an unusual shade of red and I
realized with a shock that he was crying. I think it surprised his
mother too, for she softened in a way I rarely saw her do, and
she clasped the bawling boy to her breast and stroked his hair.

—You are the man, said she. You are the man that gets the
meat.

This stopped the tears and I soon found Tom staring at me
from the comfort of his mother’s stomach.

—I hate him, said he.

I looked at his eyes and somehow understood not only that
he was jealous, which was a surprise to me, but that he was also
frightened. When his mother tried to disentangle herself from
his grasp he did not want her to let go.

—I’ll kill him, said Tom. I’ll drown him.

Mary Britten did not attempt to contradict her son’s passion. She was now standing on tip-toe on a chair, hiding the
stolen teaspoon up above a rafter.

—He does hate you, she said to me. It is true, and natural
enough in its way, just as it is natural that you be feared of him,
but I must tell you both, you are each lost without the other.

Then she turned to Tom and said—You may kill him, but
you may as well cut off your arm, for it is this sooty fellow who
is going to take you out of this pit. It was what he was raised to
be. It was what you carried home his meat for.

It is only now I write this down for you, I allow myself to feel
what I must have known all those many years ago. At the time
I felt a buzz or hurt, but I was tired, and full of soup, and once
I saw I was not to be murdered, I wanted nothing more than
sleep.

It is only now I feel the fury in my furnace: that the bitch
would make this speech before a little nipper, letting him know
that he had been raised for a base purpose like a hog or a hen.

28

THE CLOCK AT ST GILES had long ago struck midnight, and still Jack Maggs remained at his desk, his heavy lids lowered so his eyes might better see the little whitewashed room in Pepper Alley Stairs as it had been so long ago. So deep was he in this reverie that when he heard the footsteps above his head, he imagined them—for the merest moment—to belong to Ma Britten.

But when he heard the fast patter on the last landing, he knew that it was the mad woman’s daughter once again.

He frowned and laid the quill down.

It had been four days since her first passage across the slippery roof, and by now he was familiar with her habit of staring at him when she thought him unaware of her. He had thought her pretty on first sighting, but now he was concerned only with the dangerous consequences of her spying. She was a chatterbox, a gossip. She and Miss Molly Constable were for ever whispering and raising eyebrows at each other.

Now she entered his drawing room, as urgently as any heroine onto a stage. She wore no shoes, no cap. Her dark curls spilled down her shoulders.

“Mr Maggs,” she said, “your secret is known.”

This gave him a fearful jolt, though he did not show it. He dipped his quill once more in the ink and began another sentence. His visitor, in no way discouraged by his coldness, came to stand beside his shoulder, and he quickly realized that she was trying to read what he had written. He caught her at it, but like a cat snaffling scraps from off the table, her appetite was greater than her shame. She read until the last lines of the letter faded from lilac to white.

“Very clever,” she said.

Jack Maggs then spoke in that quiet voice he used when most severely agitated. “I’m pleased it meets with your approval, Madam.”

“But if it is intended to hide a secret, it is no longer worth such trouble.”

“Someone has been talking to Mr Phipps. Where did they see him?”

“Now whoever made you imagine such a thing?” She spoke in cadences more suitable for addressing a small child. “Whatever did I say to make you think of Mr Phipps? What I said was,
your secret is
known
.”

What the girl meant, Jack Maggs did not know, but he stood and tidied his papers. He rolled his letter up and tucked it inside his coat. In short, he prepared himself for flight.

“You are a plucky girl,” he said severely. “And you are a pretty one, as well you know, and I dare say the young drakes is very forgiving when you tease them, but I am past these games, comprenay voo? It is bad manners for you to come talking to your footman like this.”

“Bad manners!” she exclaimed angrily. “I took a great risk to bring you this news.”

“Then give it.”

“My master, Mr Oates, his wife, they know your secret.”

“That I am here in this house?”

“Not that.”

He reached for her arm and she, misunderstanding him, gave him her hand. This he held with a pressure so firm as to be almost cruel.

“You heard them say that my soul is full of ghosts and goblins?”

“Yes.”

He snorted and released her. “They are my guests in their curiosity for six more days.”

“They say,” she murmured, pulling her shawl around herself, “that you are a convict from New South Wales.”

“Damned if they did!”

“They say you told them so.”

“When?”

“I did hear it this very hour, although when
he
heard it I cannot say.”

“Him?”

“The master. He reads to me. He would be reading to me now but I said I was ill and must go back to my bed. I’m for it if he finds me gone.”

Jack Maggs fetched his boots which he had left standing by the hearth. They were not the dead man’s shoes, but his own comfortable hessians, which had been made by an old hunch-backed cobbler in Paramatta.

“Are you going to bolt?”

She was a nosy little mite. He tied the green-hide laces tight and double-knotted them. Then he turned so he might privately slip his dagger into its nesting place beside his right ankle.

“Don’t bolt,” she said. “You are safer here with us.”

Jack Maggs took the little creature by her wagging chin. He held her hard, his thumb and forefinger clamping her around her jaw bone. “They sent you here to delay me while they fetched the peelers.”

Now she saw what sort of man he was. He had her in his clamp, and her eyes were urgent in their plea.

“Think clearly, Sir. Why would I delay you when I knew you would delay yourself, when I knew you would sit up here all night dreaming in this very chair?”

He let her go, but not happily. He stoppered his ink bottle and dropped it in his pocket. He picked up the quill then threw it down. He was in no way certain about how he should proceed.

“Mr Buckle had a sister,” she said, “who he loved most dearly. This sister was transported to Botany Bay.”

On hearing this, the quality of his attention changed. She seemed to see this. “He wept to see your injuries. And he wept again when he told me. He could not read me another word of his
Ivanhoe
. He was so upset by what you had suffered.”

Jack Maggs then sat down behind his desk. Mercy Larkin sat simultaneously, in a gilt chair whose seat was embroidered with a hunting scene.

“We wept together,” she said.

“Did you, girlie?”

“Your secret is safe,” she insisted.

“Being known only,” he said bitterly, “to the master and the household staff?”

“I am not the household staff. They call me a maid, but that is not my true position in the household. I have known Mr Buckle since I was a child. He has read to me for ever so long a time.”

“You are shivering.”

“It isn’t right that you frighten me.”

“I ain’t going to hurt you.” He offered her a blanket—the grey one under which he sometimes slept. “But you must tell me the truth. What is it that the gentlemen have said about me?”

“Mr Oates used the Magnetism,” she said. “He has little magnets the size of pennies.”

“That much I know.”

“The magnets are attached to your soul. They are like a poultice . . .”

“This I know.”

“And with the magnets he dragged your soul to the other side of the world and persuaded you that it was summer and so you took off your shirt in the presence of a lady and cried out to see a fellow who was to be flogged. You described a foreign bird. You were often angry and cursed God. You gave yourself away and now they know you are a convict escaped from New South Wales.”

“The bastard.”

“You are wrong. He is as decent a master as you could ever find.”

“Not him, the other. The smarmy bastard hid this from me.”

“They dared not tell you,” cried Mercy. “They thought they would be murdered in their beds. Mr Oates has a wife and a child, and now it seems that if you have escaped they also have broke the law for arboring you.”

“Harbouring.”

“Yes. It is a very dark secret. Mr Buckle himself could be sent to Newgate.”

He did not know what he should do with her. She seemed aware of this, for when she spoke again she leaned out and touched his sleeve.

“You can depend your life on us,” she said. “We are your friends.”

He was sick at heart but he let her go without damage or threat. He escorted her up the stairs, and locked the dormer window closed behind her.