Jack Maggs (27 page)

63

IN MAIDENHEAD, THE
True Briton
filled up with a family of Harris, all of whom were set on going to the fair in Abingdon. There were five in total, the most senior of them being a grand old fellow with a white beard and a silver fob watch, which instrument the children got much amusement from finding and consulting. There was also a very comely Mrs Harris who sat with straight back and square shoulders, and sang hymns and ballads with her eldest girl. Lastly there was her husband Mr Harris, whose beard was more than equal to his father’s, its fine growth covering the greater part of his broad chest.

From time to time, Mr Harris would amuse his children by undoing his broad leather belt and strapping the beard down upon his stomach. For some reason, mysterious to Tobias, this was regarded by all of the Harrises as a great joke, and the pater was entreated to repeat it constantly.

The effect of this family on Jack Maggs was not clear, for he had got himself in hard upon the window and, with his back to all the company, was either sleeping or looking at the passing scenery. But for Tobias, who had a tendency to exaggerate the goodness of people he did not know, the Harrises were a living reproach to his own miserable cupidity. He felt himself judged by their very Christian ordinariness.

What would they think of him to know how he had so shamed his own family?

In his misery, he also turned to the window as the coach, straining up a long slow hill, came through a grove of ancient lime trees. Behind the trees he spied a mossy Norman church, a vicarage, a garden, and the parson himself standing in the middle of his field of wheat. There was a breeze, enough to bend the wheat, enough to make the crab-apple blossom fall from the trees on the vicarage lawn.

He opened his chap book. He crossed out his entire first chapter. He wrote:

Many of M—’s companions could not stand the torture of banishment, and went mad on the voyage out. Sinners they may have been, but English sinners in their hearts. Whether plucked from village or the festering heart of the great Wen, they could not bear the prospect of never more seeing their beloved Motherland.

M— would not go mad, but only because he carried with him the strong conviction that he would, no matter what Judge Denman read to him, walk once more in England’s green and pleasant land.

He was by now convinced that this was the last novel he would ever publish. He wrote full-steam, brazenly, daring Jack Maggs to turn around and snatch his book again.

At the crossroads at Wallingford he wrote the famous line with which, thirty years later,
The Death of Maggs
would finally begin:

As certain birds do declare themselves unto their intended, so the Murderer returned to court his beloved England, bold as cock robin in his bright red waistcoat.

He then began to describe a storm at sea which he imagined as the heart of Chapter Two. On the edge of his own disgrace, he wrote about his belligerent subject with a sympathy he would never find again. In the dark face of the waves, in the cold foul air of the convicts’ hold, he made a place beyond the reach of God Himself. There M— was pinned to the deck, his left wrist broken. Beside him lay a man named Harris with a sodden grey beard upon his cold and lifeless chest.

The coach stopped in Abingdon, which pleasant town he barely saw. It was not until the Harrises had departed the coach, when the shadows were lengthening and the
True Briton
was already labouring up the hills towards Faringdon, that he looked up from his own toils and saw himself again the focus of Jack Maggs’s malevolent attention. Reluctantly he locked his book away, and engaged the fellow in conversation.

“Penny for your thoughts, Jack Maggs.”

“Well, you already got my thoughts, mate,” the other whispered in return, glancing at the other passenger: a straw-haired young gentleman who smelt strongly of both the tap room and the stables. Ascertaining that his neighbour was sound asleep, Maggs raised his voice to normal—normal, that is, with regard to volume, although not to tone, which was less respectful than before.

“Penny for my thoughts,” said he. “That’s awful rich, mate.”

Then, with no explanation, he grabbed Toby’s head and held it hard. He began slowly to pull the writer’s face towards his own as if he meant to kiss him.

“How am I to get those thoughts back out?”

It is difficult to converse normally while having one’s head pulled like a melon from the vine. Toby edged a little forward on his seat to ease the pressure. “I did not know you cared so much for them, Jack Maggs. You never took the time to read the minutes of our meetings. But when we return to London I’ll give you the tin box and all my notes. And we will burn them together. Now kindly release me. You are hurting my ear.”

Jack Maggs held him grimly. “Your notes are lies, mate. Your notes say nothing about me taking off my shirt. The truth is: you have had me reveal secret information in my sleep.”

“All your secrets will be returned to you. Please let me go.”

“Shut your gob.”

Tobias suddenly understood how easily his life could be snuffed out.

“When I read you making fun of that Canary Woman,” said Jack Maggs, with a quietness that in no way contradicted the violence of his dark eyes, “why, then it was clear as gin—you’d do the same with me. You’d tell my frigging secrets to the world.”

Toby could not think how he should answer.

“How much will they pay you for a bit of fun like you have with that poor old biddy? One quid? Two? How much does it take to put her secrets in the gutter?”

“I told none of her secrets, Jack.”

This Maggs answered by tightening his massive grip. “This is where my secrets are,” he whispered. “Inside
this
box. The brain box. This is what we must break into.”

Who knows what might have happened next, had not the guard sounded his bugle and the sleeping gentleman begun to stir. Then they were entering the yard of a village inn and the burly hostlers were shouting up at the coachman. Jack Maggs sat back in his corner like a wrestler between rounds, his arms folded across his bright red vest.

As they stepped down into the yard, Toby’s heart was beating fast. He began to walk out into the High Street, but found Jack Maggs strolling close at his side. When he turned one way, Jack turned with him; and when he turned the other, he was beside him there also. At the end of five minutes of this perambulation, he had no choice but to return to the coach and hope there might be another honest citizen inside. It was not to be: the snoring gentleman had departed. No one had taken his place.

The coach returned to the turnpike. Maggs put his hands pacifically on his knees but continued to stare at his companion. This went on for some miles until Tobias could bear it no more.

“Well damn it, I am very sorry I have your blasted secret, Jack Maggs. I have no use for it. I wish I had never got it from you.”

“If you had a very bad secret of your own,” said Maggs, “it would take you out of danger.”

“So now you threaten me.”

“I do.”

“Do you really think that wise?”

“I am not a wise man. I am a varmint.”

“I have no ‘bad’ secrets, Jack Maggs.”

“Well, that’s a shame for you.”

“You imagine I would give you the power to blackmail me?”

“That’s the one I want,” said Jack, in a much lighter tone. “By Jove, if you have a one like that, you can sleep like a babe all the way to Gloucester and know no harm will come to you.”

Tobias wondered how he could be in danger when he was about to introduce Jack Maggs to his Thief-taker. And yet he was by no means certain of his companion’s rationality. In Magnetic Sleep he had witnessed his torments and his rages, and it was not difficult to imagine Jack Maggs strangling him and throwing him from the coach. Indeed, as the darkness approached, he began to imagine himself stabbed, cudgelled, suffocated. He saw his broken, bloodied body in a ditch. He saw his work book torn, left to moulder beside the road. These visions remained in his mind’s eye as vivid prophecies.

The road went over a stone bridge and entered a dark wood.

“You think me such a proper citizen, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know nothing about you, mate. I never formed an opinion.”

“Then let me tell you, Jack Maggs, I have a secret twenty times as bad as yours.” And then, as his heart thundered inside his chest, he found himself unburdening himself to his companion.

It was, in truth, a huge relief to do so.

64

“LIZZIE,” SAID MARY OATES, “could you help me a moment with this little jacket?”

Lizzie Warriner looked up from
Castle Rackrent
and saw her sister struggling to dress her child. Mary, she decided, had no natural sense for how to clothe a body, even her own. It was not merely that her sense of colour had always been a little awry. Of that shortcoming she was, at least, aware, and had developed a palette of grey and white and black in order to avoid the worst embarrassments, but poor Mary, no matter how she laboured, could not present herself to the world without a ruck or a rumple, and she could do no better with her child. She had laid little John out on the sofa and now, as she sat awkwardly beside him, was attempting to clothe him in a very beautiful embroidered jacket while holding his head clumsily with one hand. It was hard, so very hard, for Lizzie to look at this and not feel irritated. This was “Good Mary” and “Sweet Mary” whom everybody loved?

“Don’t you think it still too big for him?” she asked at length.

“It is Aunt Bet’s gift,” said her sister simply.

“But what will Aunt Bet feel to see the arms rucked up so and the collar out around the poor chap’s shoulders?”

“Aunt Bet has raised ten children on a clerk’s income. I’m sure she will be pleased to see how much more use we will have from her thoughtfulness.”

“I’m sure Aunt Bet can wait until little John is three months older. It will be a very handsome jacket then.”

“Lizzie,” said Mary, crossly. “Do you have other business to attend to?”

Lizzie put her book down and went to her sister’s side. She put her arm around her shoulders. “Mary, dear good Mary, I am sorry. I know not the first thing about babies or their clothing. Besides, I am a horrid little beast as everyone has always known.”

“You are not a horrid beast at all, dear Lizzie, but I do think you have been very sad all day.”

Mary fussed further with the embroidered jacket and then lifted her son up for Lizzie to admire. “There darling, see, you like Aunt Lizzie. You will make Aunt Lizzie happy. There is nothing like a little one to make you happy in your heart, Lizzie. So often I am out of sorts or worried about one thing or another, and then I pick up little John and hold him to me and really, I swear . . . well, it is the best thing in all the world.”

Lizzie took the baby from her sister and put her nose against the babe’s soft downy little neck and breathed his milky soapy smell.

Mary sat on the sofa with her hands folded simply in her wide lap. “Why are you so sad, dear Lizzie?”

“Sad?” Lizzie brushed her eyes against the little fellow’s short fair hair. “I am not sad, Mary.”

“Yes,” persisted her sister. “I think you are very sad. At first I thought it was because the doctor took your necklace, but then I thought it was because you fought with Toby. Did he speak to you of money? You know his father has been writing cheques again?”

“Where has he gone, Mary? I heard him leave the house very early.”

“You should not be upset by what he says. He went to Gloucester with the convict.”

“He has left
London
with him?” said Lizzie, very much astonished.

“You know how he loves to rush about.”

“But how long is he gone?”

“Only two days.”

“Two days!”

“Lizzie, you make it sound a life-time.”

“Well it may be so,” said Lizzie darkly.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“He is your husband, Mary.”

“And whatever does
that
mean?”

“If he were the father of my child I would not permit him to travel so recklessly with a murderer. Why, poor little John, if something should happen . . .”

“Lizzie, nothing will happen. He is brewing up a story so he may sell it. We should not be too angry with him. Lizzie, you are crying.”

“I am crying to think of poor little John,” said Lizzie. “I am crying that anyone could be so careless of his happiness.”

Mary was quiet then for a moment, and Lizzie saw the good slow soul was thinking.

“You are not thinking of our own papa, Lizzie?”

No, Lizzie had not been thinking of their papa. Their papa had never cared for her. It was Mary whom their papa had loved so.

“No,” she said, walking up and down before the window with little John sucking on her neck. “No, I am thinking of Toby.” She was so very angry. She stood at the window looking out at the beautiful spring day and the urchins from the stables playing cricket in the middle of the street.

“It would be a dreadful thing for anyone to lose their papa,” said Mary. “Or their husband, for that matter.”

Lizzie turned to look at Mary’s sentimental little eyes.

“I am sad, Mary, I confess it. I really do think I should adopt a child. I think it would be very good for me. I’m sure it may be very hard to do in London, but why might I not go away? I could sell my necklace, Mary.”

“Is it something in your novel that is making you talk of this? Do you remember when Mama forbade you to read any more on account of all the notions you were getting from your novels? You will have your own husband in good time.”

“Can you see my future, Mary?” said Lizzie.

“Oh yes,” said Mary blithely. “You will have ever so many children and you will have your own handsome husband and a splendid house and live next door and our children will all be friends and we will have Christmases together around a great oval table and Toby will perform his magic tricks.”

“And my husband?”

“Perhaps he will perform tricks too. We don’t know who he is as yet.”

“I don’t like him,” said Lizzie. “I really do not see why I should not adopt a child.”

Mary frowned. “Dear Lizzie.” She patted the sofa. “Come, bring John and we will all sit together, and you can tell me the story of your book.”

And so, indeed, Lizzie did, and spent a very strange, and oddly exhilarating, hour as she invented a variation on
Castle Rackrent
.

But when the hour was finished, her condition was not altered and there was no one who could tell her what it was that she should do.