Jack Maggs (33 page)

76

IF TOBIAS HAD NOT JUMPED into a rocky hole, his leg would not have twisted, and if his leg had not been twisted he might conceivably have made it to Newnham village before the convict caught him.

But his leg
was
injured, and thus he
was
easily felled, pinned down with his face pressed amongst the bluebells. And there he lay: winded, bruised, crushed beneath the convict’s weight, as a wagon-load of hay rolled down the road, passing not six feet from where they lay.

Two young men in bright red smocks walked beside the load. One carried a long stave or quarter-staff across his shoulders. The other was unarmed, but he walked with such an easy yeoman gait that Toby never doubted he would fight in the defence of an honest stranger. Still, Jack Maggs’s dagger kept him quiet and, like the hero of
Michael Adams
, he watched his liberators pass him by while all the time berating himself for his own cowardice:
He was crippled by that
vision of the cut throat, the horrid mortal gurgling of the windpipe, the
knowledge that his very Life could be drained as easily as from the bung
hole of a keg.

When the wagon had passed, Maggs squatted beside him, the black blade ready in his hand.

“Turn turtle,” said the convict grimly.

Toby rolled onto his back and watched from the corner of his apprehensive eye as his captor cut a length of cord from his kit-bag.

“What are you doing, Jack?”

“Hands on your head.”

“All I wished was to hail the coach.”

Maggs brought the blade up to his bare neck, and Toby pressed his head hard back into the bluebells.

“Put your blasted hands on your head.”

Toby did as he was bid.

But when he felt the other’s fingers at his trouser belt, he brought his hands down to protect his privates.

“Please, Jack . . . No.”

For answer he received a sharp sting on his thumb. He cried out with pain. Tears flooded his eyes. He felt the Australian undo his waist button.

Then the horrid hands were on the buttons of his flies. Numb with horror, he stared through his tears at the sky, the over-hanging trees. He felt the murder weapon slicing at his trousers.

“Now, put your hands into your pockets.”

Toby imagined the cruellest consequences, but when he spoke his voice was level.

“You want your son,” he said. “You would be wise to recognize that I am your only chance.”

“Put your hands in your pockets, Toby.”

This Tobias did, very slowly. He found the bottoms of his pockets cut away.

“Don’t you move,” said Maggs, dragging the right hand through the pocket and trussing it rapidly with cord. A moment later he had trussed the left.

“Don’t pull on them,” Maggs said.

Tobias did pull on them, and found his wrists to be manacled.

“Don’t pull on them, if you don’t want to get green rot.”

And then, with the blade once again gripped between his teeth, he did up the buttons of the writer’s trousers and helped him to his feet.

Toby looked at the brigand’s face and saw that he was grinning around his blade. This obstacle to his mirth he very soon removed and laughed at Toby freely.

“Look at you. You thought I was going to cut off your gooseberries.”

Tobias stood with his trussed hands deep in his pockets and was aware of being a very sad and sorry figure.

“See now,” said Maggs, “you count your change, Toby. Make sure you’ve got your penny and two farthings.” With that he hugged him, wrapping his arm tight around his shoulders and pulling Toby’s face into his breast, thus forcing him to inhale what would always thereafter be
the prisoner’s smell
—the odour of cold sour sweat.

“Come, Your Lordship,” said Jack Maggs, “you can count your treasure all the way to London.”

The two men then walked through the wildflowers to the road. The big man was still laughing, the smaller man was rather red-faced and grim-looking. He walked with his hands deep into his pockets, hobbling back towards everything he had hoped to escape from.

77

AS HER MANACLED HUSBAND was being helped aboard a coach in Gloucestershire, Mary Oates came down into the drawing room and was unpleasantly surprised to discover Lizzie, who usually liked to lie in bed till breakfast time, sitting at the window like a sea captain’s wife, her placid hands atop her stomach.

“That little boy from Jones’s shop will get himself run over,” said Lizzie.

Mary did not comment. She settled herself in the low chair in which she liked to feed her baby, and in a moment she and little John had reached their usual accommodation.

“He is running his hoop across the street under the very hooves of the horses.”

“Lizzie, are you waiting for Toby to return?”

The light was behind her sister, rendering her face in shadow, but there was no mistaking the false note in her voice. “Oh, is it today he comes, Mary?”

Mary did not deign to answer.

“It is today, Mary?”

This disingenuousness was so repugnant to her that Mary could pretend no longer. “You know as much as I do, Lizzie.”

“Oh, I think you know much more, Mary. Look at how you have dressed.”

Mary had already noted how her sister was dressed that morning—in her bright blue poplin, with her best lace shawl around her shoulders.

“I think that you have had word from him,” Lizzie continued heedlessly. “Because you are wearing your velvet.”

The notion that she should have to wear her best dress to win her husband’s good opinion was so insulting to Mary that it was a moment before she could answer calmly.

“Perhaps
you
have heard from my husband, Lizzie.”

“Oh Mary, you say the queerest things.”

“Not near as queer as you,” said Mary darkly.

She laid a white napkin on her lap and then laid the infant on it and gently paddled his back before setting him on the other breast.

“Mary, are you angry with me?”

“No, dear.”

“What queer things were you referring to? Have I been babbling again? I know I do babble. I think perhaps I really should give up my novels. They give me very peculiar dreams.”

“I was referring to no particular thing,” said Mary, but those extraordinary conversations about adoption still burned bright in her memory. Had Lizzie not come back to this theme so repeatedly, Mary might never have noticed the way her sister sat with her hands resting complacently on her belly, or the way her bosom lately pressed against the bodice of her gown. These two symptoms had gnawed at her daily while every aspect of her sister’s behaviour gave further indication of the true nature of her disease.

It was as if someone had died, but there was no death, just a horrible agitation she could reveal to no one. If she felt rage, it showed only on the itchy rash across her back. If she had tears, they were contained within the water blisters which had risen in the middle of these red weals.

She was a blunt woman, in many ways, but what she now knew, she would not name. What she was about to do, she would not look at.

She had carried the little newspaper advertisement for nearly a week, but even as she cut it out with her sewing scissors she did not admit to herself where it might lead her. This morning she had put on her best dress so that whoever she must now encounter would know she was, in spite of the circumstances, a respectable woman. She finished feeding little John, and buttoned her bodice. She carried her child towards the door.

“Will you come back and sit with me, Mary?”

“No, dear. I have an errand to run.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll stay and read.”

“Yes, dear.”

She took little John to Mrs Jones and, with no proper explanation of the formality of her attire or the nature of her errand, she walked out of the house.

She might have taken a hackney cab—her husband would never have hesitated to do so—and yet Mary Oates, ever mindful of the economic stress under which Tobias suffered, walked.

Mary Oates was from Amersham, in Buckinghamshire, and had lived in London only since her marriage a year before. On her husband’s arm she had travelled to places as various as Limehouse and the Guildhall, but unless thus escorted, had been content to stay pretty much within the confines of her rooms. Thus to find her way to Cecil Street was no small expedition for her, and she had not got so far as Holborn without inquiring the direction of three different shop-keepers.

The day was clear and fine, although it was perhaps too hot for such a heavy velvet dress, or too warm to wear such a dress and walk so fast. In any case, the plump young woman finally arrived in the Haymarket very red in the face and out of breath, and allowed herself to be charged a penny for a glass of water by the owner of the coffee stand.

From the coffee stand to Cecil Street is no more than two hundred yards, yet Mary stopped twice more for directions before she came to that corner where the convict had stood on his first night back in London. From this point onwards their paths were so close that she must, from time to time, have brought her stout little heel down on the same spot of pavement where Jack Maggs’s hessian boot had trod. As for attaining her destination, she was more successful than her precursor, for she not only got through the gate of 4 Cecil Street but to the brass knocker on its door.

Her knock was answered almost immediately, and Mary was confused to discover that the person who stood before her appeared to be both respectable and friendly.

“These are Mrs Britten’s rooms?” Mary inquired.

“Indeed they are, Mum,” said the maid politely. “You come on in. You come on in and rest your feet, Mum.”

The young woman ushered her into a small room, decorated rather excessively with lace and flounces, and an almost violent looking wallpaper. There was a single window, large and arched, which was covered with two layers of white muslin. There was very little light from that source, but there were various lamps burning, and several ornate mirrors, and it was, as a result, a bright and determinedly happy little room. Three women were already seated here, though none looked up when Mary Oates entered. This collective expression of shame went hard against the intention of the decorations, emphasizing the dishonour the latter were presumably intended to disguise.

Mary Oates sat in the chair she was offered and accepted a cup of tea. It was very good tea and Mary sipped it carefully. When she looked up her glance was not towards the other women but in the direction of the handsome marble fireplace and, above it, a rather troubling engraving which depicted Napoleon’s army in grotesque and bloody disarray.

No more than ten minutes later, she was escorted along a hallway into a small plain room containing little more than a high leather couch and a straight-backed wooden chair. Here she was met by a tall, rather severe old woman in a starched white dress. The woman had a strong nose and chin, and piercing, angry eyes. She wore an extravagant tall white head-dress that reminded Mary of a painting she had once seen of a Dutch nun.

“And how may I assist you, dearie?” she inquired, raising her hands in a peculiar little greeting which might, in a church, have been taken for a blessing.

Mary felt very hot and itchy across her blistered back. She hesitated.

“What do you want of Mrs Britten, dearie?”

For an answer, Mary Oates held out the frayed little advertisement. Mrs Britten took it from her, and Mary, seeing how the fierce old lady held it between thumb and forefinger, was reminded of the way in which her grandfather had squashed caterpillars in his garden.

“These pills,” said Mrs Britten, indicating the illustration in her puff, “are from a recipe given me by a Swedish doctor. Very good pills they are.” She had a decidedly rougher voice than her initial appearance suggested, and although her features were handsome there was something of the fish wife about her hands, which were large and swollen at the knuckles.

“Very good pills,” she continued seriously. “Except for just one wee shortcoming.”

And here she winked, much to Mary Oates’s distress.

“And the shortcoming is as follows: should you be so unfortunate as to take them when you was with child, then, oh dear . . .” She dropped the crumpled advertisement into the waste-paper basket. “Know what I mean?”

“I think so, yes.”

“We are married women. We can be plain between us: you would lose the baby. You understand the shortcoming now?”

“I do.”

A long silence followed while the old woman stared at her so hard, Mary could only look away.

“How far along are you?”

“I beg your pardon,” protested Mary.

Before Mary could say anything further, the old woman had reached out and felt her stomach. It was a fast invasion, over before it had begun. Mary said nothing. What could a lady possibly say? She stood there like a goose, itching unbearably, blushing to the very roots of her hair.

“You come here for another lady?” Mrs Britten produced a yellow printed sheet. “Never mind. I have writ it all down, but the long and short of it is she must never, never, take these pills of mine if she is gestational.”

From her pocket she produced a small porcelain jar which she placed in Mary’s gloved hand. “Of course, she’d need to be taking one every morning and night for that to happen. Unless she did that, there’d be no danger.”

“Every morning and every night?”

“Every morning and every night.”

Mary felt another urge to scratch her back.

“As to payment . . .”

“Five guineas.”

Mary looked up and found the old eyes staring at her implacably.

“The advertisement said three.”

Mrs Britten shrugged. “Five is the price. Take it or leave it. Makes no diff to me.”

“I’ve got no more than four,” Mary fretted. “The advertisement said three guineas.”

“Four will do.” Mary Britten held out a weathered hand, thus revealing the name SILAS tattooed into the underside of her broad wrist.

Two minutes later Mary Oates was standing outside again. She set off back down Cecil Street holding the jar of pills tightly in her gloved hand. She arrived home without recalling the direction she had come.