Charles Palliser (87 page)

He and Barney shook hands and when he had seen him out of the street-door.

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Barney came back into the room saying: “Now there’s a real genel’man as you can do business with.”

After all, I knew what respectable society was: it was Mrs Fortisquince and Mr Sancious and Sir Perceval. And when I thought of what they had done, I could not find it in me to condemn the stealing and fraud of the people 1 was among. For they had taken me in and given me shelter and food when those who had some obligation to do that had hounded my mother and myself to destitution. I now began to feel — in an inversion of my earlier view of them — that I was the parasite who was living off them without contributing anything.

Someone suddenly punched my arm, interrupting my reverie.

“Well, you’ll make one with us one day, won’t you, young ’un?” It was Sam who had spoken, and now he was looking at me with a golden smile.

I nodded eagerly: “Yes, I’d like to.”

“Then you can come to the fakement with us at Christmas,” Barney said.

“You’ll see,” Sam said. “There ain’t nothing to match it. It’s like gaming for high stakes but with the odds in your favour.”

“But with all to lose if they go agin you,” Barney added, pulling his neckerchief tight around his neck and jerking it.

“How did you get into it?” I asked Sam.

“Me? I nivver knowed no different, my cully. I was bore and raised to it. I was jugged when I was eight year old and had my fust whipping when I was a thirteener. But I was nothing but a low gonoph then. Until I come to know Barney.”

His friend and captain laughed and said: “That was the time when my ears was quick to the toll of a passing bell.” His blue eyes glittered at me. “You know the lay I mean?” I nodded, though I was determined to say nothing of my connexion with Isbister. “It weren’t agin no law, for the law says there ain’t no property in a corpse.”

The others laughed at the technical term. “You’ll be knocking us down at the Old Bailey at this rate, Barney,” Sam jeered. “Has your ’torney friend offered to ’prentice you yet?”

Ignoring their teazing, Barney, who had been drinking heavily, went on: “Why, this is going back more nor ten year now. A-fore I knowed Sam and Jack, I was working mates with Jerry Isbister and the Cat’s-meat-man and Peg. Well, we was doing good, on’y then we come off at hooks, me and the Cat’s-meat-man agin Isbister and Peg. The Cat’s-meat-man reckoned as Peg ’peached on his brother what was turned off for cracking a crib. Him.”

At this last word he waved his pipe in the air. Seeing that I didn’t understand, he showed me the stopper and explained that it was a memento carved from the shin-bone of the brother of the Cat’s-meat-man. It had been procured at some personal inconvenience after the body had been sent to be publicly dissected. Here there was a discussion of whether this was more or less honourable than the former practice in which the corpse of an executed man was hung at a cross-roads gibbeted in chains with iron bands forged on it to hold together the bones which had been wrapped in tarred calico. I recalled the thing that my mother had shuddered at in the coach on the way from Melthorpe and that, despite my interest in Gallow-tree-hill, I had failed to recognise.

Barney returned to his story: “So me and the Cat’s-meat-man started to work down the Borough and, on account of there was more work than we could handle, we looked out for other culls. And that’s how Sam come in

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with us and a little arter that, Jack, and you was on’y a young boy at the time,” he added, turning to him. “We cracked a few cribs, too, and that was what we was ’peached on for, a year or two later. We had to break up and run for it. Arterwards I found out as how it was the Cat’s-meat-man that done it. God rot his bones for it! I reckon he believed I’d had a hand in nosing on his brother. Well, so then I has to leave London so I goes up north to where my kin comes from.” He shuddered. “Rot the place. All trees and fields.

Well I lays low up there. Though I won’t pretend I didn’t crack a crib or two. But when I thought it was safe agin I come back up to Town. That was a mistake for I was took up a couple of days later. Someone in Dan’el’s pocket must have ’peached on me. I nivver knowed for a long time how Dan’el done it. So then I done my naval training at Gravesend for two year.” The others laughed at this allusion to the prison-hulks. “And when I managed to buy myself out me and Sam and Jack took up the sack-’em-up lay agin, but the Cat’s-meat-man had made himself cock o’ the walk on the other side of the water by then so we decided to give it over and leave him to fight it out with Isbister.

And that was a sharp move, for last year he finished old Jerry.”

I knew that he was referring to the attack in the Southwark graveyard that I had witnessed.

“But about then,” he went on, “I made the ’q’aintance of a fly ’torney. (And it’s on account o’ him that we’re in this crib now, though that’s a long story that’ll keep for another day.) And it was he what got me into the bill-passing lay.” Then he looked at me appraisingly and said with a sly smile: “But that ain’t the best o’ what I’ve done.”

Carrotty Poll said jeeringly: “Why, you’re always a-boasting of something you done, aren’t you, Barney?”

“Did you make a man easy?” I asked.

He smiled and touched the side of his nose.

I felt a thrill of excitement run through me. I was sure I had guessed correctly.

“When? Who was it?”

“A nob. A long time back,” he said. “What years are you?”

I told him.

“Why, then it was the year a-fore you was even bore.”

He would say no more but I had enough to think about. There was nothing in his story that explained why Jack was with Pulvertaft the night I had seen them at Southwark and I therefore assumed that he had no idea of this. Surely then Jack was Pulvertaft’s intelligencer among the company? I realized now that by using me to send that message, Pulvertaft was warning Barney and the others that he knew what they were planning — for 1 now understood that the “fakement” was in fact a criminal undertaking.

Presumably he was requiring them to share the spoils with him.

About a week later came the day of Peg’s trial at the Old Bailey before the Court of King’s Bench. Jack, Sally and Meg went and when they came back they described it:

“Didn’t old Peg look took aback,” Jack exclaimed to the laughter of the others (except Meg, who was in tears), “when he seen the persecutor a-standing there!”

And so, because Pulvertaft had indeed failed to buy off the prosecution, Peg was found guilty and taken back to Newgate.

Now he had to wait for a few days since sentencing was passed on prisoners in batches only at the end of the Sessions. Though some had had to wait six 402

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weeks, he was lucky since he was one of the last to be tried. I was told by the others that at the Old Bailey the “old fellow” customarily passed sentence of death on nearly all capital convicts, but I understood that this would not be the end of the matter. As expected, Peg was indeed cast for death and was moved to the “salt box” (the condemned cell) in the Press-yard to be near the New Drop. He now had to wait for the Recorder’s report in the hope of being respited. But two weeks later his sentence was confirmed.

Now the convicted murderers were executed immediately but all those sentenced to die for offences short of murder were referred to the King in Council. This was the last chance for beyond this lay only an appeal to the Secretary of State and that required more money and influence than Peg’s friends — even had they been trying — could be supposed to have.

On the night of the 15th. of December a number of the company went to Newgate to wait for the news of Peg’s fate, for the Recorder came directly to the prison to report on the decisions of the King, arriving from Windsor late at night. The rest of us passed the time in eager anticipation while I imagined the scene that had been described to me: the anxious crowd of relatives and well-wishers gathered at the grim gatehouse, the approach of the carriage with its out-riders, the Governor going to meet Black Jack (the Recorder) accompanied by the Ordinary (the chaplain), and then the long wait while the latter went from cell to cell giving each of the condemned the decision for life or death. And then finally the Warden went to the gatehouse and read out the list of respited prisoners to the crowd of relatives and friends.

At about two in the morning Sally, Jack, Meg (weeping hysterically) and the rest burst in to say that Peg had not been among the fortunate ones. His execution was six days hence.

As soon as the hubbub that greeted this had died down, Barney, Jack, and Sam clapped their hands and Barney shouted: “Listen to this. Our little Christmas party in Henrietta-street. It’s to be brung for’ard by a few days.”

Amid the shouts of surprise and protest that arose at this, Barney and the other two smiled at each other.

“What day?” asked Billingsgate.

“Nivver you mind,” Barney replied.

“Why the change?” cried out Will.

“On account of the Cat’s-meat-man,” Barney replied. “For he thinks it’s going to be on Christmas-eve, so this way we can ketch him out.”

“No we can’t,” Will objected. “Not if one of us is spying for him.”

Barney, Sam and Jack were smirking at each other with self-satisfaction.

“But there ain’t nobody nosing for him,” Jack said.

A hail of questions flew at the three: “What do you mean? You said a-fore that there’s a spy amongst us?”

“There was,” Barney said. “But there ain’t no more.”

“Do you mean it was Nan?” asked Will indignantly.

“That’s right,” said Sam. “Me and Barney and Jack found out it was her. Arter that time all on us talked about it when the boy here brung the message from the Cat’s-meat-man, the three on us talked it over and agreed that it wouldn’t do jist to find out who Dan’el’s nose was and make ’em quiet because then he’d know he had to try another way to steal a march on us. We settled that we’d have to do it so as he wouldn’t smoke that we’d found out Nan was his nose. That way he’d stick to his design. So Nan will have

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told him she was drove out of the company on account of Sal put the mark on her.”

Jack broke in: “See, we agreed that I would tell Sally we knowed Nan was the Cat’s-meat-man’s nose and get her to let on as how she was jealous of her and me.”

There were good-natured roars and whistles at this. Jack glanced at Sally with a smile and she stared around with a bold grin in her pleasure at her own ingenuity.

“And Sally come up trumps,” said Barney. “So Nan thinks that Sally planted that jewellery on her out of pure spite, and that it don’t have nothing to do with her being Pulvertaft’s nose.”

As he was speaking Sally accepted gracefully the tributes that were offered to her play-acting abilities.

Only Will was not smiling. “I don’t believe Nan was no spy,” he said.

“Oh don’t you, Will?” jeered Barney. “Well Jack and me dodged her one night and she went straight to Dan’el’s crib down the Old Mint.”

Will flushed with annoyance at being so conclusively defeated. I remembered the occasion when I had overheard Barney and Jack immediately before Nan’s trial.

Presumably this was at last the full explanation of their conversation, though I was still a little puzzled when I tried to make it fit.

“Now we haven’t said what the new day for the fakement is to be,” Barney went on.

“And we ain’t going to until the very last moment. And so that nobody won’t tell the Cat’s-meat-man even by mistake, nobody ain’t ’lowed to go out alone from now until it’s done.”

“What?” jeered Will. “Not even you?”

“In course
I
can,” said Barney. “But nobody else. Not even Jack nor Sam. When we go out to work together, everybody will watch everyone else to see-that nobody don’t meet nobody or pass on no message. And we’ll be guarding the door here to make sure nobody don’t try to sneak out.”

This was not well received but the necessity for it was acknowledged, so it was accepted with an ill grace.

So from that moment someone guarded the street-door — the only way of getting out of the house — day and night.

The next day — or, rather, after the next period of sleep — Sally met me in the hall and suddenly said: “Come on and get ready. We’re going up West.”

“What for?” I asked, believing it was late at night.

“ ’Cause Barney says so,” she answered. “Now hurry up.”

“I’m ready now,” I said.

She looked at me in distaste: “Is them the best togs you’ve got?” (She was in a blue silk gown and a cachemire shawl.)

“They’re the
only
ones I’ve got.”

“Then no wonder you need some more,” she said enigmatically. “Come on, Sam,” she called and when he had appeared from the Red Room we were let out by Will who was keeping the door.

I was surprised to discover that it was daylight. But even so, I almost felt frightened to leave the house after spending all that time there. It seemed that Sam was to accompany us, but as we walked through the half-built city in the direction of Vauxhall-bridge-road, I could get no answer to the questions I

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put, for Sam and Sally were too busily engaged in a flirtatious conversation to notice me.

We picked up a coach at the first stand and although the driver stared at my ragged appearance, his doubts must have been laid to rest by the magnificence of my companions, for Sam was also finely-dressed. Sam ordered him to take us to Shepherds-market and then wait there to take us on to Bond-street where, as he rather impressively expressed it, we had further business.

“What are we doing at Shepherds-market?” I asked.

“You can’t go into a respectable shop like that,” Sally remarked as we boarded the vehicle, without bestowing any illumination upon me.

They sat together opposite me and as the coach moved off Sam started trying to put his arm round her. At first she giggled coquettishly and urged him in the most provoking way not to be so silly, but after a time she grew irritated.