Jack Maggs (36 page)

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 her 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 beneath 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.”

“Put your arm around my shoulder and I will slip the bottom sheet from under you.”

“No.”

“It will make you more comfortable.”

“No, damn you!”

“Lizzie!”

Lizzie grasped her older sister by the wrist. “Listen to me, Mary.” She stared so fiercely and frankly that Mary was ashamed. “Promise me,” Lizzie demanded.

“Yes, dear. What shall I promise you?”

Lizzie’s dark hair had long ago become unpinned, and now it formed a great tangled frame around her damp white face. “You must swear.”

“Dear Lizzie, tell me and I will swear it to you.”

“When I am gone . . .”

“Don’t! You must not say such things.”

“When I am gone, you will roll up my sheets. You will not look at them. You will burn them on the fire.”

Mary looked at the vast amount of blood which was soaking into the mattress on which her younger sister lay, and was suddenly afraid.

“I will call the doctor.”

“No,” said the girl, lying back on her pillows. “It is too late for doctors.”

“Tobias will fetch Dr Grieves now,” said Mary. She would surely go to prison once the doctor discovered the sorry deed that had been accomplished that night. Soon all of England would know how she had put poison in her sister’s tea.

“Promise me, Mary.”

Mary called urgently for her husband. “Tobias!”

There was no answer. She flung open the door and found the landing empty. She ran downstairs but he was nowhere to be seen. Back in the sick room, Lizzie was writhing convulsively upon the bed. Mary held the basin ready for her sister to release the green fluid from her stomach. What was spilled into the bowl was laced around with red. When the spasm was done, Mary placed the beaded cloth on the top of the bowl, and wiped her sister’s brow.

87

MERCY WOULD HAVE preferred to cut his hair in the kitchen, but no, His Majesty must sit in his grand room on his throne, dressed up once more in his cock robin waistcoat and his nice sponged jacket. You could see him as the Lord of his Manor, dogs at his feet, a fire blazing in the grate.

She tucked a sheet around his newly shaven chin and began to snip at his wet hair while he sat upright, formal in his living room. She had, cross her heart, no plan to be in the least bold with him. She would cut his hair and make him look nice for his visit. As God was her witness, she had no other plan, unless it was to be granted a position in his household.

“Keep still.”

“I’m thinking.” He blew out his cheeks. “I’ve got such bloody marvellous thoughts inside my head.”

“What would you be thinking?”

“Could I ask you to run a message for me early?”

She put her hands upon the top of his head to hold it firm. “Well, I ain’t employed by no one else.”

“You could be employed by me?”

He caught her eye in the mirror. Once, in the cellar, he had looked at her like that. That time she had misunderstood him. She would not misunderstand him so readily again. She held his gaze a moment before returning to her work.

“Yes, Sir. It would be a great relief.”

“I have certain papers that I want my son . . .” and at this word he glanced up to the mirror and smiled shyly at her. “I want my son to study these papers before we meet.”

Never having observed this sweetness on his countenance before, she pitied him the cruel disappointment that awaited him on the morrow. She knew, God forgive her, what had happened when Constable had visited Mr Phipps. All Jack Maggs’s great passions were to be dashed upon the cobbles of Covent Garden.

“I’d be happy to take your papers to Mr Phipps.”

“Is he in the habit of rising early?”

“I know nothing of the gentleman.”

She avoided his glance and applied the scissors to his hair. It was dense and strong like the hair of an animal; alien, yet somehow intimate. She pondered the question of whether she need confess her moment of indiscretion with Mr Buckle. She had told him Henry Phipps’s whereabouts at a time when she imagined Jack Maggs had gone for ever. He was staring at her again. She felt her deception guessed at, and could not bear it.

“Is your wife a tall woman?”

He withdrew his gaze. Combing the hair down round his ears Mercy discovered that the top of the left ear was missing. It was not a clean cut, such as might be made with a knife, but a rougher, crueller kind of tear.

“You would not say
wife
if you knew the truth. You don’t know nothing about what it was to be in that place. You would not be judging me. You would shoot a man you saw treat a dog as we were treated. You might blow his brains out and not think yourself a bad ’un for having done the business. As for me, Miss, I had no more wife than a dog has a wife. A girl like you cannot imagine what it was, to live in such darkness.”

“You have no wife anymore?”

“You’re a right little terrier, ain’t you?”

She did not reply, but as the scissors flashed around him, he answered her.

“No, I ain’t.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Ain’t got a wife.”

She knew she would do well to leave this subject alone, and yet she could not. It was not the wife particularly concerned her: it was those little children.

“Are your children with their mother now?”

“Oh ain’t you ever the Miss Quizzical! There is two boys and two mothers. The boys are lodged with a mate of mine, a carpenter, and his wife, a good honest woman named Penny Sanders. It is a home they have known all their life.”

“You left them alone?”

“No, not alone.”

“But you were their
da
,” she insisted. “You were their da, but you had an aim to find a better class of son.”

“Jesus save me.”

She snipped and cut. God make me calm, she prayed. God, stop this dreadful temper.

“Yes,” said he. “I do hope I have found a better class of son. Yes, I most sincerely do. For his education, which is one thousand times as much as ever went into my brain box, cost me fifty pounds each year. I don’t know why you look so angry, Miss. It is what every father wants—his son to be the better man.”

“I ain’t angry. What have I got to be angry about?”

She came now to the short coarse wet hair around his neck. His collar was loose, and as she snipped the hair close to the bare skin, the long, cruel fingers of the lash were visible. It was a shocking thing, to see those scars glistening like torture in the candlelight.

“I am not a hard man, Missy.”

“Who lashed you, Mr Maggs?”

“He were a cockney named Rudder. A soldier of the King.”

“Then it were the King who lashed you,” she insisted.

“We were beyond the King’s sight. Not even God Himself could see into that pit.”

She cut the hair, staring down into the deep shadow inside his shirt.

“If I were your da, I would not leave you, Mercy.”

“You ain’t me da, though.”

“No, I ain’t.”

“What are their names?”

“None of your business.” He paused. “Richard,” he said.

“Richard?”

“I call him Dick.”

“How old is Dick?”

“John is six. Dick is ten.”

“And while these little boys wait for you to come home, you prance round England trying to find someone who does not love you at all.”

“You cannot know that, girl.”

“I can,” she confessed. “And I do.”