The Apprentices

by Leon Garfield

  “’Ow did you come by it?”

  “It was my father’s, dear.”

  “Oh, yes. Your father’s.” Coot grinned knowingly.

  “My father’s!” repeated the woman, with a touch of anger.

  “Where are you from?” pursued Coot. “Got to ask on account of the law.”

  “Kent.”

  “That’s a long way off.”

  “T’other side o’ the moon!”

  “Far enough, eh?” said Coot, meaningly.

  The woman nodded. “Far enough, dear.”

  “’Ow much was you expectin’ on this garment?”

  “Two silver pounds, dear.”

  “And the rest! D’you think I’m off me ’ead? Two pound to a thievin’ old thing like you? You’re ’avin’ me on! Two pound for a bit of furry rubbish like this? Take a look at it . . . take a good look! Moth in the collar like nobody’s business! And what about this stitchin’? Won’t last out a week! And—and look ’ere! Dirty great stain that won’t come out in a month of Sundays!” (There was indeed a rusty brown stain on the violet lining, though it was not a large one.) “And the ’ole garment whiffs something awful. Never get that smell off it! If I was to let you ’ave five shillin’s on this, I’d be doin’ you a favour and meself an injury.”

  “Only five shillings, dear? I was hoping, I was counting on more than that. I got my little one to care for.”

  “Like I said, my good woman, you should ’ave thought on that before. Five shillin’s is the ’ouse’s best.”

  “A pound, dear. Make it a silver pound!”

  “Why don’t you shove off? Try Mr. Long’s in ’Enrietta Street. Maybe my colleague, Mr. Jeremiah Snipe, might up me a penny or two. On the other ’and, ’e might down me a sixpence. Go on. Shove off!”

  “Ten shillings! Give me ten silver shillings!”

  “Five. What would my master say if I was to give you over the odds? ’E’d ’ave me out quicker’n a dose of rhubarb! You want to do me down, you do! Five shillin’s—or I send for the constable!”

  This was Coot’s master stroke. The woman’s eyes widened and she began to tremble. He’d got her!

  “All right, then—all right!” she muttered. “Give me the five silver shillings and a receipt.”

  “Receipt? What do you want that for?”

  “To—to redeem my cloak. I—I’m coming back for it . . . soon.”

  “Redeem?” said Coot. “You don’t know the meanin’ of the word!”

  But the gipsy insisted with all the obstinate ignorance of her tribe; so Coot chuckled and wrote out a receipt.

  “That’ll cost you another threepence,” he said, giving her the money and packing her off out of the shop.

  When she was safely out of sight, he bolted the door and examined the cloak again. He tried it on, but it was far too big for him, and covered him like a shroud. He tried lifting a corner and flinging it over his shoulder, in the manner of an ancient Roman, but it really wasn’t his style. Regretfully he took it off, noticing that the rusty stain was on the left-hand side and would, had he been of a height, have covered his heart; as it was, it rested over his sweetbread.

  Thoughtfully he stroked the fur collar and looked again at the embroidery round the inside of the neck. He pursed his lips; then he grinned broadly. The embroidery was not, as he’d first supposed, a pattern; it was instead a line of Gothic letters making up a text.

  “I know that my redeemer liveth,” said the pawned cloak.

  “That’s what they all say!” chuckled the pawnbroker’s apprentice. “But they don’t know the meanin’ of the word!”

  By half past seven in the evening, the brave New Year was torn to tatters. No more snow had fallen, and clean white streets were crossed and double-crossed by the black passing of men and women going about their daily affairs.

  Freed from toil, the pawnbroker’s apprentice chose to walk where the snow had been well trodden down. He was wearing his best shoes and did not want to spoil them; also, perhaps, at the back of his watchful mind was the thought that it was best to leave no footprints, as his journey would not bear the closest examination.

  He walked with a springy step, quite like a young lamb; it was as if all his hours of grimly patient dealing had compressed him like a spring, so that now he leaped forth with a youthful twang. He was done up to the nines, wearing a dazzling waistcoat, a ginger wig, and silken breeches of egg-yolk yellow. He was a butterfly; he was a youth transformed.

  Presently he reached Henrietta Street and gave a smart double knock on the door of Mr. Long’s (Loans Arranged on Modest Security), and while he waited, winked up knowingly at the three brass balls. Jeremiah Snipe opened the door.

  “A ’Appy Noo Year, Jerry!”

  “Same to you, Cooty. And with three brass knobs on!”

  Jeremiah, who was renowned for his wit, smirked as he stepped aside to admit his colleague and friend. He was a month younger than Coot and of a round-faced, angelic appearance that tended to make his customers feel ashamed of bargaining with him. But there lurked under that soft exterior a spirit every bit as stern as Coot’s. Well, perhaps not quite so stern, as he’d been in the trade four weeks less than his friend, but he was catching up fast.

  “You’ve got something, haven’t you, Cooty?”

  Coot beamed.

  “Thought so,” said Jeremiah shrewdly. “That’s why you’re done up like the cat’s dinner.”

  “Take a squint at this,” said Coot, ignoring his colleague’s wit. “Gipsy brought it.”

  He produced the cloak. Jeremiah whistled, then crawled under his counter so that he might examine the article from his usual situation. Coot made to follow him when he saw Jeremiah’s boot defensively poised, so he stayed the wrong side of the counter, reflecting that, whenever positions were reversed, he defended his own territory in the same way.

  “Five pounds,” said Jeremiah when he had finished studying the garment.

  “Don’t you come the skinflint with me, Jerry,” said Coot affably. “Make it six.”

  Jeremiah smiled like an angel in a stained-glass window—a very stained-glass window—and nodded. “Six it is, then.”

  Agreement having been thus reached, the two industrious apprentices settled down to complete the necessary business of their interesting arrangement. As was required by law, Jeremiah noted down the transaction in Mr. Long’s ledger, while Coot did the same in his own ledger, which had nothing to do with the law. Then Jeremiah handed over six pounds of Mr. Long’s money, less the cost of warehousing, receipting, and two months’ interest in advance, as was permitted by law. This done, Coot handed back to Jeremiah half of the proceeds, as was demanded by the terms of their partnership and the liability of their friendship.

  “It’s not as if we was thieves,” Coot had said to Jeremiah when the idea had first come to him and Jeremiah had cast doubts on its honesty. “We’re just businessmen. We ain’t reely breakin’ the law. You might say we ain’t even goin’ close enough to touch it! Look at it this way, Jerry,” he’d gone on, feeling that his colleague remained unconvinced. “Think of bankers.”

  “Well?”

  “They’re lawful, ain’t they?”

  “According to their lights.”

  “Well, then—you put your money in a bank—”

  “I don’t. I keep it in my shoe.”

  “I was just supposin’. You put your money in a bank, and then the bank goes and does all sorts of things with it. Lends it out, invests it, buys things with it . . . and generally treats it like the money was its own. And that’s what we’ll be doin’. Folk pawn articles with us, and we pawn ’em again to each other. We’re only borrerin’ and lendin’ out at interest. We ain’t stealin’, we’re just reinvestin’. And as long as nobody catches on, we’ll end up in pocket. Bound to.”

  “But what if they do catch on?” asked Jeremiah, filled with something of the foreboding of the ancient prophet whose name he bore.

  “It won’t ’
appen,” Coot had said firmly. “Never in a month of Sundays. It’d need more rotten luck than we got a right to expect. Listen, Jerry: in business, you got to take some chances. I’m more experienced than you. Just let me do the worryin’ and be ’appy to take the money. That’s all I ask.”

  So Jeremiah, borne down by Coot’s arguments, and borne up by the prospect of income, agreed. All this had taken place a year ago, since when the two industrious apprentices had prospered exceedingly, being careful to transact their private business when their masters were out of town. It was for such opportunities that Coot and Jeremiah obeyed their masters more fully than they suspected, by watching out.

  “Where shall we go tonight, Coot?” asked Jeremiah when he had ticketed and stowed away the cloak in his master’s warehouse room.

  “Ay raither fancy the Hopera,” said Coot, with extreme cultivation. “So get your rags on . . . and don’t forget your claret pot.”

  The pot referred to was Jeremiah’s silver christening mug, which occupied, in his affections, a place similar to the great silver timepiece in Coot’s.

  At a quarter past eight o’clock the two apprentices left Henrietta Street for their night on the town. They marched in step, as if an invisible band were playing—just for them. They were smart, they were elegant, they were dapper. They gladdened the heart and imparted a youthful gaiety to the precincts of Bow Street. Their eyes sparkled, their shoe buckles twinkled, so there was brightness at both ends, and money in the middle.

  To begin with, they took in—as Coot put it—the second act of the opera. They went up into the gallery, where, with footmen, students, and other lively apprentices, they whistled and hooted and clapped, cheered on the lady performers and threw oranges down on bare heads in the pit till they were requested to leave or take the consequences. Then they went to a respectable inn and got mildly drunk on claret and port, after which Jeremiah was sick on the pavement and Coot fell into the snow. Partly recovered, they found a cockfight in Feathers Court and lost ten shillings each on a bird that lay down before it was so much as tickled. Then they joined up with half a dozen weavers’ apprentices and had a tremendous time trying to steal door knockers and pelting a pursuing constable with stones disguised as snowballs.

  They parted with the weavers’ apprentices—who’d run out of money—and took up with a couple of likely lasses who’d caught their roving eyes in the Strand. They told the girls they were soldiers on leave and that they’d been wounded in the foreign wars. They limped a bit to prove it . . . then kissed and cuddled and bought the girls supper in Maiden Lane, lording it over the waiter till the wretched man felt like pouring hot soup over the apprentices’ heads.

  But he did no such thing, and Coot tipped him well to impress the girls with his careless generosity.

  Coot and Jeremiah were firm believers in keeping business and pleasure apart. Though Coot would have fought with a cringing customer to the last breath in his body to beat him down by a shilling, he thought nothing at all of casting such a shilling (and two others like it) into the waiter’s greasy palm. And Jeremiah, who, with crocodile tears, would have denied a customer an extra penny, happily filled and refilled his silver tankard with wine, spilling it on the table and in his lap, at threepence a throw.

  At last the two bright apprentices tottered back towards Drury Lane, quite worn out from their night on the town. They’d broken windows, tipped an old watchman into a horse trough, and unscrewed a lamp from a standing coach. They’d lost their lasses somewhere round the back of Covent Garden, and they’d not a penny left to bless themselves with, but they were happy and singing, and they kicked on front doors as they passed, with night-piercing screeches of “’Appy Noo Year!”

  “Look!” hiccupped Jeremiah, staring boozily down Drury Lane. “You got a customer, Cooty!”

  Coot blinked and stared. Several figures seemed to be outside Mr. Thompson’s, and they were on fire; flames were coming up all round them. Coot wiped his eyes and the figures reduced themselves to two: a tall man and a linkboy who had, presumably, guided him there. The linkboy’s torch leaped and danced and illuminated the three brass balls in a manner that was quite uncanny; the masks of Tragedy fairly glowered down.

  Dazedly, Coot gazed upon the scene, then shouted out, “Shove off! We ain’t open till eight o’clock!”

  The customer saluted him but did not move, so Coot pursued a winding, uncertain path to confront him and make his meaning clearer. The linkboy, seeing the angry apprentice, bolted and left the street to the feeble memory of his light.

  “I told you,” said Coot, squaring up to the customer in the manner of a weaving prizefighter, “we’re shut. Closed. No business, see? All gone bye-bye. Shove off and come back in the mornin’.”

  The stranger, who was a good twelve inches taller than the pawnbroker’s apprentice, looked down sombrely. There was something nasty about the man; he had a hooked nose like a vulture and eyes that seemed to keep shifting about all over his face. Coot took a step back and bumped into Jeremiah, who had been sheltering behind him.

  Suddenly the stranger reached into his pocket, and Coot, who was expecting a knife or a pistol, endeavoured to get behind his colleague. But the stranger only produced a slip of paper.

  “Wassat?”

  “Don’t you recognize it?” inquired the stranger harshly.

  “’Ow can I recko’nize it when you keeps wavin’ it about?”

  “It’s a receipt.”

  “Really? You don’t say.”

  “It’s a receipt for a cloak. You gave it to a gipsy woman this morning. She pawned the cloak with you for five shillings.”

  “Well, what of it?” said Coot valiantly. Events were moving a little too quickly for him quite to grasp their significance.

  “It wasn’t hers.”

  “Nicked? What an ’orrible thing. I’m sorry to ’ear it. Them gipsies! Night-night!”

  “It was mine. I gave it out for cleaning. I can prove it was mine. There was a text inside the collar. I know that my redeemer liveth. I am that redeemer, my friend. I want my cloak back. Either that, or I fetch a magistrate to search your premises and examine your books. That’s the law, my friend. So bring out the cloak.”

  Coot felt Jeremiah beside him begin to shake and tremble like a straw in a tempest. Although he couldn’t see him, he knew his face had gone dead white and that he was crying; he always did.

  But he, Coot, was made of sterner stuff; four weeks sterner. Delay, that was it. Put off the evil hour and it might never come to pass. There was no sense in meeting trouble half way. Far better to step aside and let it go rampaging past.

  He informed the stranger that, at that precise moment, the cloak in question was in the firm’s warehouse, which, unfortunately, was some distance away. It couldn’t be helped, and he, Coot, sympathised with the gent’s annoyance. But that was how things were, and nothing was to be gained by crying over spilt milk. He would do his very best to obtain the garment in the course of a day or two. He couldn’t speak fairer than that.

  Just what was in Coot’s complicated mind was hard to say. Perhaps he thought the stranger was a bad dream from which he would awaken if only given the time.

  “I want my cloak now,” said the stranger, refusing to behave like a dream. “Either that, or pay me the value of the garment. Ten pounds. The cloak, ten pounds—or the law.”

  At this point, Jeremiah spoke up. His voice fell upon the night like the wail of his namesake, the prophet, deploring the loss of Jerusalem.

  “Give him the ten pound, Cooty! For God’s sake, give him the ten pounds!”

  The worst had happened, like he’d always known it would. The rotten luck that was more than they’d any right to expect had befallen them. They were done for.

  “And where am I goin’ to get the ten pound?” snarled Coot, turning on his friend, who retreated several paces, weeping bitterly.

  “I don’t know—I don’t know!”

  “Pardon me,” said Coot to
the stranger, who appeared to be relishing the friends’ predicament. “Ay wish to consult with may colleague on business.”

  He joined Jeremiah.

  “Keep your voice down!”

  “Give him the ten pounds then!”

  “Can’t. You give ’im the cloak.”

  “But I lent six pounds on it! How am I going to account for that? Old Long comes back the day after tomorrow!”

  “So does old Thompson! And six pound is easier to find than ten.”

  “But I’ll have to find it! You’ll just be dropping me in it, won’t you, Cooty?”

  Coot laid a hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder, as much to steady himself as to reassure his colleague.

  “We’re in it together, Jerry. We’ll find a way. You just see if we don’t. It’d take more rotten luck than we got a right to expect if we didn’t manage some’ow. For Gawd’s sake, Jerry, give ’im back the cloak!”

  “You’ll help, then?”

  “I swear it. On me mother’s grave,” muttered Coot, forgetful of the fact that his mother was not yet in it. He returned to the stranger.

  “We are sorry to ’ave hinconvenienced you,” he said coldly, “but the garment was taken in good faith. We—I ’ad no idea the garment was nicked. ’Owever, hunder the circs., we are prepared to return your property at no hextra charge. My colleague and I will—”

  “At once!” interrupted the stranger, “or I go for the magistrate!”

  “If you was a smaller man,” said Coot venomously, “I’d punch you right in the nose!”

  “Six pound!” wept Jeremiah. “How are we going to find it?” The cloak had been given up, and the friends were still in Mr. Long’s shop.

  “Don’t you worry, Jerry,” said Coot. “I’ll come up with somethin’. I’ve never let you down yet.”

  “You’ve never had the chance!”

  “Now that weren’t friendly, Jerry. But I’ll look after you.”