SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. (29 page)

By prigs
and whores she is well known,

And she
lives in Pisspot Alley. . .

This
particular song had been going the rounds of such 'select parties' for many
years, even when Joe's father was young. All the same, with a sense of
indignation, he placed his hands gently over Jane Midge's ears, as much to
protect the frightened young dancing-girl from the roaring of the crowd as to
shield her from the lewdness.of the song. He kissed the crown of her head
lightly.

''s all right,' he
said, quiet and reassuring as he could be, ''s all right.'

Her father
he was lagged for life,

An
out-and-out highwayman,

Her mother
she's a lushington

And stone
blind drunk all day man.

But blow me
if I care a damn. . .

Another
roar from the bar-rooms drowned his words. Clamped in his fist Joe held the
eight coppers which represented Jane's earnings for the day and night, indeed
all that remained of the money they had acquired. Presently the comic singer
stormed off in an exchange of good-natured insults with his friends in the
crowd. The master of ceremonies was speaking, begging attention for Pretty
Jane, the dancing-girl.

The crowd fell silent, in
expectation of seeing the youngster. Jane walked demurely on to the stage in
her harem diadem of gilded card, her silk breast-halter and the green silk
fleshings from waist to knee. Like a cheap glass gee-gaw, the Shah Jehan clasp
was pinned to the front of her pants at the waist, so that it rose against the
flat satin texture of her bare belly. With her chin tilted pertly, her upper
teeth touching her lower lip in brazen teasing of her admirers, she began her
dance.

In the
hot smoky rooms the silence grew deeper. Each member of the audience sat alone
in contemplation of the bare young arms and midriff, the agile knees and firm
calves. She moved sinuously, and it seemed that the swaying of Jane's hips and
bottom was performed for every man, individually, in the room. They stared intently,
imprisoning the youngster in the harem of their own fantasies. The irony was
never lost on Joe. Before them glowed the dark riches of the famous clasp. Yet
not one of them spared it a glance. It was worth nothing to them beside the
real treasures on display: the firm young face; the slight swell of breasts in
the silk halter; the light-sinewed belly; the taut elasticity of Jane's hind
cheeks; the unflawed smoothness of her young thighs and legs. Men would kill
one another for the clasp, he thought. An entire heathen kingdom had bowed down
before it. But a pretty child like Jane could starve in the streets for all
that the world cared. Stunning Joe had never before thought much about beauty
and its value. Now it seemed to him that he had the leisure to learn.

The
dance came to its end. Jane had to go down among the tables to collect the
coppers from those who held them up. Their patting and stroking was the price
which these benefactors demanded. Then she turned and ran back across the floor
of the room where she had danced, pressing the coins into Joe's hand, unpinning
the clasp and slipping that to him as well.

Jane
Midge had hardly disappeared up the stairs to the dusty little room in which
she changed, when two men appeared at the far end of the bar. The old man who
hobbled on a wooden leg was a complete stranger to Joe, but Sergeant Verity
was not. Joe told himself that there was nothing to fear. The law itself had
pronounced him dead. If they seized him now, he had only to give another name.
So far as they were concerned, he was dead and buried with a coroner's
certificate. They might prove him to be anyone else in the Queen's dominions,
but he could never be Joe O'Meara.

All the same, he stepped back
a little into the shadows of a passageway behind him where the overflow of men
from the bar lounged against the walls with their pots of ale. Verity and
Stringfellow came on, but Joe knew he was safe. Then he saw that they were
making for the stairs and he guessed that they must be looking for Jane. Like a
cold swelling in his breast he remembered that though he had the clasp, Jane
Midge had his affidavit, as he called it. The roughly scrawled testimony of all
that had happened to him since the night at Wannock Hundred was set down on that
document. He had intended it to be seen in the event of his death or disappearance
on the orders of Sealskin Kite. If it were seen now, the result might be his
death in real earnest.

Joe
slipped out of the passageway and moved after them, silent as a shadow up the
stairs, keeping just out of sight of the two men. He heard their feet on the
worn linoleum of the landing, the boards creaking under their tread as they
moved towards the door of the shabby little room. There was a pause and then
one of the men hammered with his fist.

'Open this door, if you
please, miss. I'm a police officer. There's no harm intended to you, I'm here
for your own safety.'

Joe
heard no reply and no movement. He edged another step or two up the stairway.

'At once, miss!'
said the voice. 'Else it'll be broke open!'

Still
there was no sound. Then one of the men muttered to the other, something which
Joe was unable to make out. There was the thud of a boot against a flimsy panel
of wood. From experience Joe knew that a jack would never break the door down.
It was enough to kick out one of its panels, reach through and undo the
fastening.

They were in the room now, and
still Jane had not uttered a sound. Then Joe heard the policeman's voice.

'Got through the
window. Down over the outhouse roof.'

'Still,'
said the other man, 'she never had time to put on her outdoor things, they'm
still here! She done a bunk in her dancing clothes! Won't get far like that!'

They were coming back now,
Verity in the lead. Joe slipped downstairs into the crowded passageway where
the mass of bodies and the shadows of the oil-light concealed him. He pushed
his way through until he came out into the clear air of the pavement doorway.
His first instinct was to run, one way or another, in search of Jane. But there
was no way of deciding where she might have gone. With every step he might be
running away from her. Her only skirt and blouse were here. She knew that he
was here. Surely her first instinct would be to return as soon as she safely
could. Cautiously, Joe drew back into the shadows of the street and watched
the noisy, brightly-lit building.

Jane
was running already. The road was dark beyond the tavern, only the glimmering
oil-lamps of carriages shining at intervals along it. She crossed to the far
side, looking for the first place of concealment, and saw the tombs and tall
grass of St Peter's churchyard. Clambering over the railings, the girl dropped
down and felt the dew soak her feet. She crouched there and listened as the
frantic beating of her heart subsided. In one hand she clutched the sheets of
paper with Joe's writing on them. For safety's sake she pushed them into the
tight silk of the halter, safe against her bare breasts. Then she waited. Joe
would save her, she thought. It was the only truth that she any longer had the
courage to maintain.

Time passed in the darkness as
she crouched with her back to the tombs, her eyes watching the road through the
railings. Jane had no idea how long she had been there, but the lights in the
houses were going out and hardly a carriage wheel rattled on the road which ran
into Brighton from Lewes. The wind stirred lightly among the grass. When she
heard the voice it was so faint and gentle that it might almost have been the
stirring of the long heads upon their stalks.

'Jane!
Jane Midge! 's all right! 's me! Stunning Joe! Jane! Jane Midge! Where yer
gone?'

The man who thundered at the
door, the man who said he was a policeman! No, she thought, it could not be
him. How would he know enough to call himself Stunning Joe? She rose without
speaking, her pale shoulders and belly ghostly in the darkness. There was a
sound just behind her and she turned straight into the arms of a giant. It was
her sudden fright at his size which made her draw breath to cry out. The
towering figure must have heard the intake of air. His hand slashed down,
knocking her almost senseless on the ground and cutting short the cry even
before she could utter its first gasp.

Then
Jack Strap stooped down, slung the limp body of the young dancing-girl over his
shoulder, and moved stealthily towards the dark closed carriage which stood in
the shadows of the church tower.

Wrists
and ankles strapped, a gag in her mouth and a blindfold over her eyes, Jane
Midge might have been anywhere in the world. There was a moment on the way when
an odd-smelling bottle was held to her nostrils and she drifted into a strange
trance. Once, it seemed, she was in the open air, being led like a cripple with
sympathetic voices all about her. Then she came to her senses in an attic room
with bare boards and two iron beds. She struggled to sit upright and saw that
there was a cold steel cuff round one ankle. A continuous loop of iron chain
ran through the cuff and round a waterpipe on the far wall. The effect was that
she could reach the bed and the little closet, but the door and the window
were beyond the range allowed her.

The fat pallor of Jack Strap's
pouched face loomed above her. He looked at her dispassionately, his eye
noticing the paper through the thin green silk of her breast-halter. He
extended his fingers and the girl instinctively crossed her arms over her
chest. Strap drew his hand back, raising it and turning his body slightly to
put more force into the blow. He spoke as if it were a matter of supreme
indifference to him.

'Fancy a hiding already, do you?'

Forlornly,
Jane Midge uncrossed her arms and the bully lowered his hand. Strap thrust his
fingers under the silk and drew out the folded sheets of paper. He glanced at
them and sneered.

'So he would,
would he? The dirty little squeak!'

He
turned out the oil-lamp, picked up his own lantern and made for the door. A
heavy key turned in the lock. Jane Midge, in her fear and stupor, had hardly
realised that she was not alone. The springs of the other bed moved. A second chain
stirred on the boards.

'Don't cry!' said a voice in
the darkness. 'You gotta be a good brave girl and not cry.'

‘I’m not crying,'
said Jane dully.

'What's your
name?' said the voice.

'Jane Midge.'

'I'm Bella. Bella Verity.
Before you and me has finished with them bullies, they're the ones as'll have
something to cry about!'

18

In the marine
sunlight and morning breeze the flags streamed out above the buildings of the
town for the first day of the races. The streets were almost blocked by
carriages and drays, the din from the taverns overlaid by the sound of an Irish
fiddle being played in a taproom. The hucksters who followed the meetings of
the flat season had descended on Brighton in their hundreds. There were vendors
of 'hokey-pokey', the Neapolitan ice sold for a penny in silver paper;
purveyors of sherbet and lemonade, wheeling about a huge block of ice
surrounded by lemons; the man with his basket of lobsters crying, 'Champions a
bob!'

On the downland high above the
sea and the town, where the stand and the enclosure were set, the gypsy
encampment of racecourse and fairground prepared for the afternoon's
entertainment. Stakes were being driven into the ground and tents erected by
barefoot men and women. Tired children were cradled on straw under the wheels
of the stationary carts, shaded from the hot sun. Donkeys and thin horses had
been turned loose to graze hungrily upon the turf. Everywhere there was a
litter of pots and kettles. Candles which had lighted the workers through the
night now lay wasted and cold.

To add
to the traffic in the streets of the town, processions of horsemen in tawdry
tinsel set off down the Race Hill to advertise their entertainments. There were
medieval knights and squires, Circassians and Tartars in armour, coarse-looking
women parading as the damsels of legend. The cavalcade was preceded by the din
of a small brass band, huddled in a gilt cart and drawn by two piebald horses.
On a painted cart behind, advertising Newsome's Equestrian Novelties, stood the
fifteen-year-old figure of Elaine. Tossing her fair hair, she looked
contemptuously round at the spectators. In order to lure the dupes she wore a
short pleated ballet-skirt which left bare the greater part of her sturdy young
thighs. From time to time the breeze lifted its hem, revealing to the expectant
followers only the tight webbed cotton of the pants which covered Elaine's
broad hips.

During
the morning the appearance of the racecourse changed as the first of a long
line of carriages rolled softly on to the turf. Men with spyglasses, ladies
with parasols, and servants carrying wicker baskets began the long ceremony of
luncheon. There were silk waistcoats and chains, Tom and Jerry hats from the
prize-ring, white top hats, fawn waistcoats and trousers, crimson roses in the
buttonholes of frock-coats with silk lapels.