John Diamond (Vintage Childrens Classics)

by Leon Garfield

  ‘Well,’ said the dwarf. ‘Please could I tell you what?’

  ‘The way to the Horse Boy,’ I said. ‘At the back of Mallerd’s Court.’

  ‘I could,’ said the dwarf. ‘But it won’t do you any good.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked, wondering if, somehow, the dwarf knew all about Mr Diamond’s son, and knew that my errand would be hopeless. Indeed, at that time, anything seemed possible in that house of lawyers and curses all hiding from the light.

  ‘Why not? Why not?’ muttered the dwarf, stumping irritably on his short legs to the front door. ‘The boy asks me why not. That’s why not!’ He opened the door; and I saw beyond it, what appeared to be another, composed of yellowish grey.

  ‘Fog,’ he said. ‘Thick as your head.’

  Foxes Court had vanished; London had vanished, as if in an evil dream. ‘Turn left,’ said he, pointing into the grimy nothingness with a smirk. ‘Keep on to the end. Then right, then left again. Cross over Chick Lane and take the first passage on your right. That’ll bring you to the Horse Boy … or the Tower of London, or the bottom of the River Thames.’

  He shut the door and I noticed that some of the fog had got into the house and rendered the stairs, the walls and even him, indistinct. His smirk broadened, as if he was proud of it all.

  I asked him if the fog was likely to last for long, as I had to meet somebody at the Horse Boy at eight o’clock.

  He told me that he’d known fogs last for three days; but some went away in half an hour. He told me that fogs might be patchy and I could walk for five minutes and come right out, into the clear. But equally, I might walk for five hours, and then bang into the tree in the middle of Foxes Court.

  I might be lucky and not be robbed and murdered as soon as I stepped outside the door; or I might be unlucky and be knocked on the head in the middle of a streetful of people who’d hear me scream and say: ‘What was that?’

  He rubbed his hands together as if he was entirely satisfied with the misery he had produced in me; and that if there was anything further he could do, in the way of blasting my last hope and encouraging me to weep and kill myself, he was only too willing to oblige.

  ‘Seed!’ came a shout. ‘Mr Seed, please! Top floor!’

  He went into his box and I hid in his cupboard, as I feared that it might have been Mr Needleman or Mr K’Nee coming down.

  When he came back, I asked him who it had been?

  ‘Mr Jenkins,’ he said. ‘Old K’Nee’s clerk.’

  I began to cry. I couldn’t help it. My only hope had been to wait in the house until Mr Jenkins came down. Now he was gone, into the filthy, sulphurous fog.

  ‘Never mind,’ said the dwarf, his spirits continuing to rise proportionately to the sinking of mine, rather like the great black weight that balanced his hoist. ‘I’ll take you to the Horse Boy. It’ll cost you a sixpence, mind. But you can afford it, being so much richer than me!’

  At five o’clock, Mr Seed put on his diminutive coat and his very large hat, remarking that the size of his brain required it; and led me out into the fog.

  It should have been dark outside, or nearly so; but somehow the night seemed to be having no better luck in penetrating the air than anything else. It was still of a dirty yellowish grey, very unwholesome for the eyes, nose, and mouth.

  Mr Seed had taken a stick with him—a short, villainous-looking cudgel; and I held one end of it while he voyaged ahead.

  ‘Careful, now! Careful!’ he kept calling out, as various lost lawyers and murderers loomed by. ‘Got me a little boy with me! Careful of the child!’

  This seemed to please him—cutting me down in size, I mean; whenever people made him out, and were naturally startled, they looked behind him for something even smaller, about the size of a dog.

  Although, as he never tired of telling me, he was four times as old as me and forty times as clever, I think he was rather childish, too; as he enjoyed playing tricks in the fog and bewildering people with his size.

  He seemed to have no difficulty in finding his way about, even though everybody else seemed lost. He recognized people when they were nothing, or, at the most, faint stains in the murky air.

  ‘Evening, Mr Charles! What a night, eh?’

  ‘Is that you, Mr Seed?’

  ‘That’s me, Mr Charles! Don’t make a move or you’ll tread on my head!’

  Then he was away, chuckling happily:

  ‘He’ll be there for hours now, wondering where I am!’

  He took me into an alehouse—a favourite place of his. It wasn’t the Horse Boy, but, as he explained, there was plenty of time for that, and the fog made him thirsty and I could, if I liked, buy him a pint of ale.

  The fog was in the alehouse, too, and made a phantom of the aproned waiter, with his graveyard cough and reddened eyes.

  ‘First of all, Mr Walker, I want you to meet me friend. He’s a hundred and four if he’s a day.’

  The waiter smiled.

  ‘Straight up, Mr Walker! Look at him! He’s a taller dwarf than me!’

  The waiter sniggered.

  ‘You will have your little joke, Mr Seed; meaning, of course, no reflection on your size!’

  ‘A pint, Mr Walker, and a piece of your best pie for me friend; for I think he’s going to faint if he don’t get more inside him than the fog.’

  When the waiter had gone, the dwarf asked me my name. I told him.

  ‘Jones?’ he repeated. ‘Are you sure it’s not Smith, or Robinson, like the rest of our customers in Foxes Court?’

  He was, it seemed, so used to concealment, that he took it as a matter of course and I had the greatest difficulty in persuading him that Jones was my real name and not just a plain wrapper for the Duke of Clerkenwell or something like that.

  ‘Seed,’ he said at length. ‘My name’s Hampstead Seed. Hampstead because that’s where I was born; and Seed because I might have grown if I’d fallen on better soil.’

  He stretched out his stubby legs, his stubby arms and his stubby fingers and gazed at them with every appearance of satisfaction.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to hide,’ he said abruptly; and, I thought, meaning to have a slight dig at me. ‘All me deformity’s out in the open and on public show. So why should I hide the best?’

  If, by the best, he meant his disagreeable habit of making people feel uncomfortable, then I felt that there was every reason for him to hide it; but I think he meant his feelings and his sometimes very clever thoughts.

  We stayed in the alehouse for about an hour and a half, during which time I felt more and more that I would like to confide everything in Mr Seed; but I kept remembering Mr K’Nee’s advice, to keep something in reserve, to hold something back. So I kept everything back, except that the person I was to meet in the Horse Boy was Mr Jenkins, the clerk.

  ‘Mr Jenkins?’ said the dwarf, rather dryly, I thought. ‘So it’s Mr Jenkins, is it!’

  I said: ‘Yes. He’s promised to—’ I stopped, remembering Mr K’Nee again.

  ‘To what? Promised to introduce you at Court? Promised to make you Lord Mayor?’

  My feelings of wanting to confide in Mr Seed vanished, as he turned malicious again.

  ‘He’s promised to help me,’ I said, as coolly as I could.

  ‘So he’s promised to help you … just like that! Out of the blue! And behind his master’s back, I fancy.’

  ‘And why shouldn’t he?’ I demanded, feeling angry that the dwarf was trying to undermine my only hope.

  ‘Oh nothing, nothing! Mr Jenkins is a fine, upstanding young fellow. At least eight feet tall!’

  I could guess why he didn’t like Mr Jenkins. Although he’d said that he didn’t care about his queer deformity, I think that he really did. I think he was angry that somebody else was going to help me; and particularly a tall smart person like Mr K’Nee’s clerk. Mr Seed, no matter how much he grinned and joked, was eaten up with envy inside.

  I thought that this was a very bad quality in him; and I fe
lt awkward and embarrassed that I’d found it out.

  He guided me to the Horse Boy without another word. We got there at half-past seven and Mr Jenkins hadn’t yet arrived.

  ‘Where are you going to sleep tonight, Jones?’

  I felt suddenly alarmed. I hadn’t thought of that at all.

  I began to say that I supposed I could find a room somewhere; when Mr Seed asked curtly:

  ‘How much money have you got, Jones?’

  I had six pounds and twelve shillings and was about to say so; when once again I remembered the need to keep something back.

  ‘About three pounds,’ I said.

  The dwarf smiled contemptuously.

  ‘Not very clever at counting, are we! I saw six gold guineas in your purse.’

  I felt myself going very red and tried to think of an excuse.

  ‘Never mind, never mind!’ said Mr Seed. ‘Just give me the sixpence you owe me.’

  He began to move away. We were outside the door of the Horse Boy and, for some reason, he wouldn’t go inside.

  ‘Tell you what, Jones,’ he said, coming back. ‘I’ll look in at half-past nine … just in case that fine, upstanding young fellow Jenkins hasn’t fixed you up. Or you haven’t been knocked on the head,’ he added; and, with a harsh little laugh, vanished into the fog.

  I stared after him with great misgivings. I suspected he didn’t like me and I thought he’d been altogether too sharp about counting my money.

  I hoped that Mr Jenkins would fix me up; as the dwarf’s laugh had sounded decidedly malevolent and I didn’t like to think of him creeping back in the dark.

  7

  THE HORSE BOY himself was a painted wooden figure, about the height of Mr Seed, dressed in blue and white striped trousers, and a short blue jacket with enormous yellow buttons. He stood just inside the door, holding out a tray on which were several folded pieces of paper and cards.

  I found out after, that these were messages that customers left each other, to the effect that Mr So-and-So would be back in half an hour, or on Tuesday next at nine.

  This steady employment, and, I suppose, the thought that he was of use to the world, seemed to make the Horse Boy very happy, as he wore the largest and the shiniest grin I have ever seen.

  Everybody patted him affectionately when they came in and stopped to finger through the contents of the tray; consequently he was rather smooth and worn on top, as if, young as he was, he was going as bald as an egg.

  The waiter, who had eyed me very doubtfully at first, as soon as he learned that I was to meet Mr Jenkins, gave a grin that was the brother of the Horse Boy’s, and conducted me to Mr Jenkins’s private seat which was in a cubby-hole beside the fire.

  After that, he drifted about the parlour and, whenever he caught my eye, he grinned again.

  There must have been about twenty people in the parlour, mostly rather well-dressed young men; and all of them, one way or another, seemed to have been affected by the Horse Boy’s grin.

  At first, I felt miserably uncomfortable and thought they were all laughing at me, because they could see I was straight from the country and knew nothing about the town; but then I began to feel that it was something else altogether and was being produced by the warmly glowing parlour itself, as if the architect, when he thought of it, had been laughing all the time.

  Perhaps even the Horse Boy himself had once been crying his eyes out, and had only begun to grin when he arrived.

  After some minutes of staring at him, and at the door beyond, I, too, found myself smiling; though God alone knew that I had little enough cause. Having pinned all my hopes on Mr Diamond’s son being able to take his dead father’s place, I now began to think that a boy, perhaps not much older than myself, was not likely to be much use at all. Perhaps, I thought gloomily, he knew nothing of the old business; perhaps he’d never heard of David Jones.

  I took out my watch—the author of my misery—and wound it up. It was ten minutes to eight and I feared that Mr Jenkins wouldn’t come. At five minutes to eight, I was sure of it; and at eight o’clock I abandoned all hope.

  He came at five past—an angel in a blue coat that came up to his ears.

  He’d brought a friend with him, and my heart thumped excitedly as I thought that this must be Mr Diamond’s son.

  Mr Jenkins saw me and waved; then, as if to put me in further suspense, he and his friend patted the Horse Boy and read through all the messages with the greatest of care.

  The friend was rather taller than Mr Jenkins; and, when he slipped off his coat, more expensively dressed. There was quite a glitter about him; and when he smiled, it made you think of gold teeth. He whistled and hummed all the time, that old song, ‘The Miller of Dee.’ He looked as if he was a year or two older than Mr Jenkins, which I found surprising, having been prepared for a boy.

  At last they came towards me and—I jumped up to greet them.

  ‘’Ere ’e is. This is David Jones’s son,’ said Mr Jenkins to his friend; and then to me: ‘This is Mr Robinson, young feller-me-lad. Mr Robinson, meet David Jones’s son! And vice versa, of course.’

  ‘Pleased to have the honour!’ said Mr Robinson, and shook my hand which had gone quite limp with disappointment.

  Mr Robinson’s grip was firm, and a heavy ring he was wearing dug into my palm rather painfully. He went on whistling: ‘I care for nobody, no, not I …’

  ‘Cheer up, young feller-me-lad!’ said Mr Jenkins, seeing my dejection. ‘It’s Mr Robinson what knows old Diamond’s son. Ain’t that so, old man?’

  Mr Robinson nodded and he and Mr Jenkins squeezed down beside me. They both smelled of the fog. Mr Robinson stopped whistling and began to hum.

  ‘So you’re old Jones’s son?’ he said when he came to the end of the verse, gazing at me with a warm interest. ‘Spitting image, eh, old man?’ he said to Mr Jenkins; and went on humming.

  They each seemed to talk of everybody as old, as if they themselves were the youngest and brightest things in creation.

  ‘Did you know my father, sir?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘Know him? Know old Jones? What do you take me for! Methuselah? It must be all of twenty years since old David Jones was in these parts!’

  ‘It’s just ’is joke,’ said Mr Jenkins, noticing that I’d gone red. ‘’E’s all right when you get to know ’im! Come on, Robinson! This young feller-me-lad ’as just lost ’is pa and run away from—from—Where was it you said you came from?’

  ‘From—from the country,’ I said, uncomfortably remembering Mr K’Nee. I was determined to keep as much as possible to myself until I found Mr Diamond’s son; although the strain was beginning to tell.

  ‘That’s right. From the country,’ said Mr Jenkins, beaming at Mr Robinson. ‘Let’s ’ave a drink on it!’

  He snapped his fingers with a noise like a gun going off, and asked the waiter to bring two pints and a half of the Horse Boy’s best. While the waiter was gone, Mr Robinson hummed and whistled that he cared for nobody and nobody cared for him. He looked quite pleased about it. The Horse Boy’s best arrived and turned out to be sherry.

  We drank and I asked Mr Robinson what Mr Diamond’s son was like, and when could I expect to see him? Mr Robinson promised that it would be in two, or possibly three shakes of a lamb’s tail; the only trouble was, that John Diamond wasn’t that easy to find. He came and went, so to speak, like the fog. He wasn’t exactly mysterious; but he was inclined to drift.

  ‘Is he very poor?’ I asked, thinking of some ragged waif who would shine like a star when I told him who I was and that I wanted to restore to him everything his father had lost.

  I imagined taking him back to Woodbury, and my mother adopting him and bringing him up as an extra Jones. I thought of going to school with him …

  ‘Poor? Depends what you mean by poor,’ said Mr Robinson, leaning forward and examining my watch and purse which were both on the table.

  I had, by the way, paid for the sherry as I wanted to give a good im
pression; and I couldn’t get the purse back in my pocket without digging my elbows into my two companions.

  ‘He’s not as rich as you. No gold watch, no gold guineas. No good coat; no strong, country shoes. He’s not as well fed as you. He’s not as well provided for as you. But poor? I wouldn’t call him poor. Just needy. Was it in your mind to help him with anything?’

  ‘Of course it was!’ said Mr Jenkins. ‘Told you so, Robinson! It’s all about that ten thousand pounds my owner was on about!’

  Mr Jenkins had a habit of referring to his employer as his owner, as if Mr K’Nee kept a racing stable and Mr Jenkins was his fleetest horse.

  ‘I don’t know anything about that money!’ I cried. ‘Really I don’t!’

  ‘He don’t know!’ said Mr Jenkins cheerfully. ‘He came all the way from—from. Where did you say?’

  ‘From the country.’

  ‘All the way from the country to see me owner in Foxes Court to find old Diamond, and ’e don’t know a thing!’

  ‘I don’t! I don’t!’

  ‘Then what is it you want with old Diamond’s son … with John?’

  ‘I—I just wanted to—to tell him my father’s died! His father was a—a friend! My father told me … just—just before he died!’

  This seemed to amuse Mr Jenkins even more. He began to laugh rather squeakily, and even Mr Robinson began to chuckle and I found myself being pumped and squeezed between them until I felt sick. I could see the Horse Boy grinning wider than ever; and suddenly there was the waiter with more sherry and I was paying and he was enjoying the joke, too.

  I wondered what it was; I wondered what I could have said that was so extraordinarily funny that I didn’t understand.

  ‘Told him before he died!’ spluttered Jenkins. ‘Before he kicked the bucket! Oh my! That’s rich! Before ’e went into liquidation! Bankrupt! Carey Street!’

  This last idea seemed too much for Mr Jenkins altogether and he was compelled to bury his face in his tankard and leave his shaking shoulders to express his high amusement.