SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. (3 page)

'Then
tell us who might have done, 'oo put you up to it, Joe?'

But now they were
back to the rules of a game which O'Meara knew well. 'I can't say no more, Mr
Samson, nor I won't.' Samson released a long breath.

'All right, Joseph. Let it be.
Any last words for Vicki Hartle, then? 'ere, they reckon Mr Garvey was prodding
her when she took his things! Still, you know what minds them jacks down
"C Division got!'

As
Stunning Joe lunged vainly at his tormentor, the warders threw open the door
and dragged him away. Alone in his cell, he wept with the misery of his plight.

Sergeant Samson
predicted the outcome well. One morning in the following week, Joe O'Meara was
put up in the dock of the Central Criminal Court for trial and sentence. From
his vantage point he looked down into the well of the little court, the wigs of
counsel and clerks below him. Opposite him, the elderly judge, red-faced in
robes and wig looked, for all the world, like a little old lady. Somewhere
above his head was the public gallery, which he detected only by the smell of
orange peel, the rattle of nutshells, and an occasional buzz of conversation.
He doubted that there were any faces there which he knew, though he was in no
position to see.

In any
case, his trial was of little public interest. There was no chance of an
acquittal, no thrill of suspense as to the outcome. Only once was the murmuring
in the gallery stilled, when the judge, with the royal arms of England on red
leather behind him, looked up to pass sentence. Stunning Joe heard the thin
judicial voice deploring the accused's hardened and unrepentant attitude. None
of this concerned O'Meara. He listened only for the final words, when they
came. 'Transportation to a penal colony for a term of fourteen years.'

The
murmuring in the public gallery began again, and the two warders took him down
the steps of the dock. The trial had barely lasted ten minutes.

So
far, Stunning Joe had resisted even the thought of winning favour by betraying
Old Mole and Sealskin Kite. Now it was too late for that. Mr Kite was an astute
old exchange broker with no criminal record. Any attempt to accuse him at this
stage must be dismissed as the last desperate falsehood of a condemned felon.
In a few days more, Joe O'Meara and the other transportees would be taken down
to the prison hulks in Portland harbour. From there a contractor's vessel with
armed guard would convey them to the prison depot at Port Jackson, Australia. A
man might live through fourteen years of privation and brutality, but he knew
it was not likely.

Two
days after the trial, a pair of escort warders opened his cell again.

'O'Meara! Visitors' corridor!'

In his coarse
brown uniform he glanced at them suspiciously. ' 'oo'd want to visit me?'

'Parish priest,' said one of
the officers sharply. 'One visit you're allowed. This is it.'

He
walked between them, not understanding. He had no parish priest. The last Irish
O'Meara had been his grandfather, who had found his way to Southwark thirty
years before. Certainly he had not expected a prison visit from anyone.

The
visitors' corridor was about four feet wide with grilles down either side of
it. Prisoner and visitor faced one another through meshed windows, separated by
the width of the corridor in which the warders stood, listening to each
conversation. Stunning Joe peered across at his visitor, making out First the
cassock and biretta, then the plump pale face. For the only time since his
arrest, he almost laughed. Now he guessed that Mr Kite had not forgotten him.

The figure beyond
the other grille was 'Soapy Samuel', nicknamed after a man whom Joe understood
to be a famous bishop. Soapy Samuel's speciality was that of posing as a
clergyman — generally of the Church of England — and collecting at the doors of
middle-class homes for non-existent overseas missions. Samuel was a past-master
in deception, with solemn owlish face, unctuous voice, the dry-washing of the
hands, in an impressively realistic performance. With episcopal cross and
gaiters, he had effortlessly lightened an archdeacon of twenty-five guineas on
two occasions.

As a
Roman priest, he was less convincing. Stunning Joe, taken aback by the vision
before him, spoke as though the warders could not hear him.

'What
the hell might you be doing here?'

'My
son!' said Samuel, gently reproving. 'While yet of mortal breath, seek to
repent your crime. Such is the message I bring.'

The
tongue licked over the fat lips, the sole indicator of Samuel's nervousness in
the prison confines. Stunning Joe furrowed his brow, knowing that Soapy Samuel
must have come on Kite's errand, seeking some message in the fatuous
platitudes.

'Remember,' said Samuel, 'that
you are now to expiate your offence. You must do so with a glad heart. You will
— at all times — obey implicitly, without question, the orders of those put in
command of you. That is now your first and most important instruction. Do you
understand me?'

'Yes —
father,' said Stunning Joe. If this was the best that Mr Kite could do, he had
better have kept his money in his pocket.

'We are taught,' said Samuel
woefully, 'that man must die to live again. Take that message to your heart, my
son, for it is the good news I bring you from one who cares for us all.'

O'Meara took the message to
heart and glared uncomprehendingly across the space where the warder stood.

'And thus,' droned Samuel,
'shall you be reunited at last with your loved ones, and with those who have
been your friends in the past,'

'You
tell my friends I ain't forgot 'em!' said Stunning Joe sullenly. 'Specially I
ain't forgot my young person!'

Samuel nodded gently.

'Sorrow and
repentance will be hers to share, my son. There is one who watches over such
matters.' O'Meara's eyes brightened,

'Supposing I could have
confession?' he said hopefully. The warder roused himself.

'Confessions to be heard by
Her Majesty's prison chaplains only,' he said. 'No disrespect to your
reverence.'

Soapy Samuel nodded.

'A
very proper arrangement. And now, Joseph O'Meara, I leave you in good hands.
Think of my words, and seek to throw off the bonds of sin.'

It was
evident that Samuel had no clear idea of the proper pastoral procedure for a
Roman priest in this situation. He began to make a sign in the air, thought
better of it, stood up and turned away. The warders led Stunning Joe back to
his cell.

For
two more days he lay on the wooden bunk and thought of Soapy Samuel's words.
Obeying those in authority. It needed no visit to remind him of that. Dying to
be born again was an easy cant term which meant nothing to him. He had every
intention of being reunited with his friends but, he thought, they had better
be quick about it. The one certain comfort was that Sealskin Kite knew of his
betrayal by a young bitch called Vicki Hartle. And Mr Kite was a hard man in
such business.

At
last the iron tiers of the cell echoed to the warders' shouts of' ‘Lags away!'
and the time had come for the transportees to leave. Stunning Joe's wrists were
handcuffed before him and a pair of steel manacles was locked on his ankles.
The steel was much lighter than he had imagined it would be, enabling him to
move at a shuffling walk. The line of men, like a file of sinister monks in
their brown uniforms and caps with eye-holes, moved slowly across the yard. The
prison van which was to take them to the train at Waterloo was like a black
hearse.

As the van lurched
and jolted over the paved roads, Joe O'Meara waited for the sudden halt and the
thunder of wooden staves on the doors, which would signal his rescue. But at
Waterloo the doors opened and the prisoners, now linked in pairs by chains
between their fetters, moved slowly towards the carriage which had been
attached to the waiting train. They occupied every compartment of it, with two
warders to each felon. Many hours later the long journey ended under a
barn-like structure covering both railway tracks and the platforms on either
side. It was the new station at Weymouth.

Another
van carried them out along the narrow Portland isthmus, the great sweep of
Chesil Bank curving away to the north-west. Stunning Joe caught a glimpse of
blue water glittering in the summer evening. For the first time he realised
the change of seasons which had passed during his months of confinement in the
unvarying gloom of Newgate.

The
long-boats were waiting at Portland quay. A file of warders armed with rifles
marked the way. In the semicircle of the great harbour lay the rotting fleet
of hulks. These were the old wooden warships of Nelson's navy. With their
rigging cut away, their hulls anchored by rusty mooring chains, they lay like
grim and diseased symbols of retribution.

In
groups of six the new prisoners were helped down into the long-boats, the oars
manned by good-conduct prisoners under the guns of the warders. Two weeks more
and the new arrivals would be transferred to the hired transports, with not
even a glimpse of the great limestone rock of Portland to remind them of their
country.

There was a shout of 'Oars
away!' and the blades cut the harbour swell with smart precision. Stunning Joe
listened to the ripple of the water and the rhythmic creak of the wooden locks.
Ahead of him, dripping with weed and encrusted by shells, the hulk of the old
74-gun
Indomitable
rose like black doom, blotting out the evening sky. He
saw now that Soapy Samuel had been used to keep him sweet. Surely, Sealskin
Kite had forgotten him after all.

A
TAME JACK

3

In the
hot July morning there was a stillness over the narrow pavements and the dingy
shops of Trafalgar Street. The road ran upward like a canyon between high
rendered walls to the dark tunnel of the iron bridge which carried Queens Road
overhead from the railway station towards the sea. Beyond the glass-roofed
splendour of the platforms with their cast-iron pillars, a dozen engines were
coaled-up in the yard, high above the level of the little street. In a few
hours more, they would return to London with the excursion trains which offered
'Brighton and back for three shillings and sixpence'.

The
noon silence which hung like a cloud over the cheap summer lodgings and homes
above the shops was shrilly broken. First there was a burst of song from the
caged birds on the wall outside one of the shops. Black painted letters on the
stonework promised: 'Foreign and British Song Birds. Parrots. Canaries.
Nightingales.'

The cause of the disturbance
was a pair of ragged boys in torn coats and shabby caps pulled down almost to
their eyes. One of them was bouncing an india-rubber ball as they ran out of a
side street and up towards the dark iron tunnel of the station bridge. Just before
the archway of the bridge a more imposing shop with a painted board announced
that Mr Suitor's Emporium 'respectfully solicits an inspection of spring and
summer modes'.

Silks
and taffeta with wide sleeves and gold buckles shone in the darker interior beyond
the glass. On the pavement outside a row of wax dummies was paraded in the
latest male fashions. Some had the faces of young gentlemen, gloved fingers
stuck out like bunches of radishes, the wax limbs draped in long Oxonian coats,
baggy Sydenham trousers, Talma capes and fancy vests. Beyond these figures of
fashion were several stouter effigies of countrymen, whose suits were matched
by red plush waistcoats and wide-awake hats. At the far end were the figures of
young women in servants' costume or the new 'riding trousers'.

The
two ragged boys drew level with the open doorway of Mr Suitor's Emporium. The
one who was bouncing the rubber ball gave it a vigorous slanting pat. With a
long bound, the ball disappeared through the opening among the contents of the
shop itself. Their caps well down, the youngsters ran after it. In a moment
more the shopman and his assistant were intent on finding the ball themselves
and preventing the boys from rifling the contents of the shop during their
search.

With hardly a sound another
pair of boys, ragged as the first two, ran out from the opposite turning. They
moved with their heads kept down, as if below the line of vision of the
occupants in the shop. They began at one end of the row of dummies, their quick
fingers unbuttoning and stripping off the clothes. Two of the Talma capes came
away, then one of the Oxonian coats. Because of their lightness it was easy
enough to turn the dummies up and strip off the trousers too. Even if the
shopmen had seen them, Mr Suitor's dilemma was pitiful. Either he could remain
to guard the valuable silks or go out to prevent the stripping of the dummies.
It was impossible that he and his assistant could do both.