John Diamond (Vintage Childrens Classics)

by Leon Garfield

  I tried to explain what had happened.

  ‘Spoilin’ for a fight, were you, young feller-me-lad?’ said Mr Jenkins.

  ‘I didn’t start it.’

  ‘That’s what they all say!’

  ‘We’d better go and see if John Diamond has turned up yet,’ said Mr Robinson.

  ‘He wasn’t there!’ I said quickly.

  ‘How do you know? You’ve never clapped eyes on him.’

  ‘I—I didn’t see anybody waiting,’ I said.

  I was very unwilling to go back along Coalman’s Alley. Although the murderous boys had vanished, I felt very strongly that they had merely lifted, like the London fog, and were hovering, waiting to come back. Every shadow seemed to hold them; and every breath of foul air seemed to whisper: ‘We’ll get you! Just you wait and see!’

  ‘You were a fool, young Jones,’ said Mr Robinson. ‘I went to a lot of trouble to find John Diamond for you. For your sake, I hope he wasn’t there; because at the first sign of trouble, he’d have gone for good.’

  We went back into the Sun in Splendour. Mr Robinson looked quickly round the parlour.

  ‘Well, he’s not here now.’

  ‘Shall we wait?’ suggested Mr Jenkins.

  Mr Robinson went over to a table next to where the boys had been sitting. There was a piece of white pasteboard on the floor. He picked it up and brought it back. He showed it to Mr Jenkins and then to me. It was a trade card. It said:

  “John Diamond. General Agent and Guide. Discretion Guaranteed.’

  He had been in the parlour. And he had gone.

  12

  THIS WAS A great blow. I stared at the trade card, biting my lip and, I’ve no doubt, pushing back my hair as if to let a little air into my brain.

  John Diamond had been sitting there all the time, and I’d missed him! I felt angry and guilty and humiliated and very provincial over the whole affair. If only I hadn’t been so sure that John Diamond was a boy, because I was a boy, and jumped to the conclusion that he was Shot-in-the-Head, then I might have looked round at the grown men and not got into that fight.

  I say, I might; but I couldn’t get rid of a feeling that, somehow, I’d been tricked and that the boys had deliberately prevented me from meeting John Diamond.

  My fury against them, and myself, rose considerably, and wasn’t in the least helped by Mr Jenkins remarking that I should have kept my eyes open and not indulged myself in the boyish pleasure of fighting with other boys like a pack of dogs.

  By the way he said it, it was plain that he thought I was nothing more than a stupid country oaf who hadn’t been able to take a little teasing from a few poor London boys without flying into a rage.

  I’m sure he thought that everybody in the country, when they weren’t chewing straw, went about sticking pitchforks into each other and setting fire to hayricks.

  I informed him, as calmly as I could, exactly what I thought of London and its boys, and the filthy place I’d been brought to, which, as a country person, I wouldn’t even have kept pigs in.

  Here the landlord came up rather threateningly and said I was a troublemaker and he knew my sort and I’d better get out if I knew what was good for me.

  Hastily Mr Robinson and Mr Jenkins bundled me up the steps and outside, as if they were frightened that I would commit some fresh act of country outrage and they’d have to pay.

  For a moment, I thought they were going to wash their hands of me, and leave me in Coalman’s Alley. I thought of the poor London boys, waiting in dark corners, to come out and tease me … with knives and that great iron hook.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, looking hopefully at Mr Robinson. ‘I’m truly sorry to—to have caused you any inconvenience, sir.’

  Mr Robinson leaned back against the wall and stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets. He sighed.

  ‘Ah well! We were all young once!’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Mr Jenkins solemnly. ‘I was never young! Born with a quill be’ind me ear, like a little goslin’, I was!’

  At once this had the effect of lightening everybody’s mood; and I couldn’t help laughing at Mr Jenkins’s mournful face as he lamented his premature entry into manhood.

  ‘Ah youth!’ he sighed. ‘I got an action for damages against the loss of it; with costs awarded in favour of my ’eart.’

  ‘Ah youth!’ echoed Mr Robinson. ‘The season of hope and delight!’

  ‘Ah youth!’ I said, feeling that a contribution was expected of me; but got no further as I couldn’t think of anything that made it a peculiarly desirable state to be in.

  Suddenly Mr Robinson jumped into activity.

  ‘Come along!’ he said. ‘Let’s go and find John Diamond! He’s sure to be at the Cock and Fountain!’

  We linked arms—me in the middle—and set off down Coalman’s Alley: three of the cheerfullest people in the world. I think we sang; I’m sure we whistled, as we marched through the night in pursuit of John Diamond.

  Always linked together, we never parted once. Never apart, lifting our arms over posts, twisting sideways down narrow alleys and butting our way round St Paul’s churchyard. Never apart, running up steps and down steps, and tramping through courts and round grave squares. Never apart, no matter what inconvenience we caused.

  ‘Beg pardon, ma’am, but we’ve got a country lad here and can’t let him go!’

  ‘Beg pardon, sir, but this boy’s been took sick!’

  ‘Excuse us! Excuse us, but we’ve got one of the princes in the Tower!’

  ‘Out of the way! Out of the way! Mad boy! Mad boy! Beware!’

  Mr Jenkins, the lawyer, kept calling me his little Habeas Corpus, and his rosy-faced Assumpsit. Mr Robinson said that Mr Jenkins was a low fellow to use such language in the street. Mr Jenkins appealed to me that Mr Robinson was jeering at him for having a mother in ‘’Oundsditch.’ Mr Robinson said I should ignore a person who dropped his aitches.

  ‘My haitches may be in default,’ said Mr Jenkins solemnly. ‘But my ’eart is in the right place.’ And he thumped himself on the chest.

  It was a wonderful night; or at least, that part of it was. There was a fine rain falling, that made the stones shine and doubled the houses and street-lamps; and sent everyone hurrying deep in their coats, with watery noses and eyes.

  We searched for John Diamond high, we searched for him low; and we searched in those middle places where people played at cards and looked at you when you came in, as if it was your turn to deal.

  John Diamond wasn’t in the Cock and Fountain; and he’d just left the Magpie and Stump. He’d been in the Goose and Gridiron half an hour earlier; and in and out of the Swan and Cap like a dose of salts. His chair in the Elephant and Castle was still warm; and we saw the place where he’d just been standing, inside the door of the Harrow and Lamb.

  I wondered if John Diamond knew that we were after him, and was purposely leading us such a dance, through a night of a thousand gaudy painted animals, groaning and squealing on rusty hinges, high in the dark running air. I don’t know how many Red Lions, and Black Lions, and White Lions we saw, banging and snapping as if, at that very moment, they had gobbled up John Diamond whole, and left only an empty chair behind.

  Empty chairs, empty places and once, an empty glass. What a shadowy, ghostly figure he was. Did he exist, even? Was there a John Diamond? There was nothing to prove it but a trade card, and places where he’d been. What did he look like? Was he tall? Was he dark or fair? I asked.

  ‘Ordinary enough. You wouldn’t look twice if you didn’t know.’

  ‘Didn’t know what?’

  ‘Why, that he was John Diamond, of course! Let’s try the Eagle and Child!’

  A crying baby in the talons of the worst bird I ever saw. As I looked up at the sign, I thought that the baby must have been a country child, as the eagle was a real Londoner, from its corkscrew tail to the tip of its iron hooked beak.

  Again the empty chair. How long ago! Mr Robinson held up his
fingers. Five minutes. His grey gloves were streaked and darkened from the rain, and there was a large bump to show where his seal ring was. His hand looked like a spider with a frightfully injured leg.

  We stood outside, leaning against the wall. The rain was still coming down and making little silver hedgehogs in the puddles between the stones.

  ‘I’m done!’ said Mr Jenkins. ‘I’ve ’ad enough. It’s past midnight and me ma will be worryin’.’

  ‘She knows you’re in good company,’ said Mr Robinson, examining both sides of his spider hand.

  Mr Jenkins shook his head and turned to me.

  ‘Listen, young feller-me-lad. We’ve turned the town over for you. Now there’s no hard feelin’s. No ’ard feelin’s, is there, Robinson, old man?’

  ‘No hard feelings, Jenkins.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’ asked Mr Jenkins, with a sudden twinge of anxiety.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘All right, then. Now you tell me, young feller-me-lad, just what it is you want with John Diamond. Come on! Out with it!’

  Suddenly, all the good humour had gone from his face. It was as keen and sharp as the eagle’s, over his head.

  In an instant, the night had changed; not the weather, but the feeling of it. It was quiet, tense and, I thought, dangerous. On one side of me was Mr Robinson, still examining his glove. On the other was Mr Jenkins, who wore no gloves and had bitten fingernails.

  I’d always thought that Mr Robinson had been the superior one, and that Mr Jenkins had been the weaker character, only doing what he’d been told. But now it was Mr Jenkins who had his hand on my shoulder and gripping hard.

  ‘It’s something about that ten thousand pound, ain’t it! That’s what it is!’

  He shook me.

  ‘Come on! Tell us!’

  ‘Let me go!’ I muttered.

  I was not very frightened of Mr Jenkins. He was rather thin and unhealthy-looking; and I could see that Mr Robinson was not taking his part.

  ‘It’s in Seed’s house, ain’t it!’ he went on, still shaking.

  ‘Why—why should it be there?’

  ‘Ah! So you do know about it! Old Seed’s sittin’ on it!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t you know? That’s where your pa and John Diamond’s late lamented first set up in business. It’s under a floorboard, ain’t it! And you know which one!’

  ‘I don’t know—I don’t know!’

  ‘Come on, or I’ll—’

  ‘That’s enough, Jenkins,’ said Mr Robinson, at last taking an interest. ‘If young Jones says he doesn’t know, he doesn’t. He’s a truthful lad. That’s something you lawyers don’t understand. All he wants is John Diamond. He don’t want you; he don’t want me. It’s all to be for old John.’

  He pushed Mr Jenkins’s hand off my shoulder and put his arm around it, quite affectionately.

  ‘Now do you see what you’ve done!’ he said, in mock reproach. ‘You’ve sent poor old Jenkins off his head. That ten thousand pounds he’s so mad about, was all dead and buried before you came along. It was old history; twenty years old. But as soon as you appeared, it all came back to life. Ain’t you ashamed to have woken it up?’

  ‘And that ain’t the only thing,’ said Mr Jenkins darkly.

  I don’t know what Mr Jenkins meant by that; but it was something that made Mr Robinson very angry. He looked at him sharply; and Mr Jenkins looked away.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Where to?’ said Mr Jenkins.

  ‘To see John Diamond.’

  ‘Where this time? The Goat and Compasses?’

  ‘No. You know where.’

  ‘I’m not goin’.’

  Until that moment, I’d given up all hope of there being such a person as John Diamond; but suddenly I knew that he existed, and that I was going to meet him.

  Mr Jenkins went off, complaining bitterly, and Mr Robinson took my arm. We began to walk; and, although the streets were quite empty, I had a feeling that we were being followed. I wondered if it could be that John Diamond, Agent, Guide, Discretion Guaranteed, was now pursuing us?

  We walked down a steepish hill at the bottom of which I could see a thick grey blanket of mist. It was threadbare in patches and showed glints of black water. It was the river.

  Presently the road began to mount again. It grew broader and there were parapets on either side.

  ‘This is London Bridge,’ said Mr Robinson, in an oddly practised sort of way. ‘There used to be houses on it; but they took them down as they weren’t safe. It’s a very old bridge and they reckon that fifty watermen a year are drowned trying to shoot the arches. If you listen, you can hear the water rushing through.’

  I listened; and the water, although I couldn’t see it because of the mist, made a fearsome noise, like a thousand snakes.

  ‘Down that way,’ went on Mr Robinson, pointing to the left, ‘lies Greenwich and Deptford. If you strain your eyes, you can see the masts of ships.’

  I looked and saw a sprinkling of thin spires and poles sticking up out of the mist like a giant’s pincushion. Below, unseen lanterns made cloudy yellow eyes.

  ‘Is—is he on a ship?’

  ‘They say,’ said Mr Robinson, crossing the street and walking on the right-hand side of the bridge, ‘that the bridge is haunted. They say it’s haunted by the spirits of children. They buried children, you know, in the foundations. They buried them alive. For luck.’

  He stopped and leaned over the parapet.

  ‘Where is he, Mr Robinson? Where is John Diamond?’

  ‘On the bridge.’

  I looked. The bridge gleamed and vanished, like a broad smile, among dark houses on the other side. There was nobody on it.

  ‘I—I can’t see him.’

  ‘He’s leaning over the parapet.’

  ‘He’s—’

  ‘My card, William Jones. My card, sir.’

  Mr Robinson fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and handed me a piece of pasteboard. It read:

  ‘John Diamond. General Agent and Guide. Discretion Guaranteed.’

  ‘Like it says,’ murmured John Diamond, looking intently down into the mists. ‘Discretion guaranteed.’

  13

  DISCRETION GUARANTEED. I never was in a more discreet place in all my life.

  A wind came in gusts, driving the fine rain straight across the bridge and leaving it swept cold, gleaming and empty. There was a moon, of sorts, rolling through the muddy air like an old drowned eye.

  John Diamond remained staring down into the river so that I could only make out the edge of his face, which was whitened by the moon. I think he must have had eyes in the back of his head, for he said:

  ‘Didn’t they teach you any manners, William? Didn’t they tell you it’s rude to stand and stare, with your mouth open, like a fish? Weren’t you taught to say, “Pleased to meet you” when you’re introduced? Your father would have known that. My father always said that David Jones was the best-mannered man he’d ever met.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I muttered obediently; and tried to get over my astonishment and to understand why he had hidden himself in Mr Robinson, why he had been running all over the town in pursuit of himself, and why he’d brought me to this grim, deserted place.

  A clock began to chime the half hour; then another, and another, further and further away, as if they were all lost in the dark and were crying: ‘Where—are—you? Where—are—you? I’m—here … I’m—here …’

  ‘There are,’ said John Diamond, ‘one hundred and five churches with peals of bells, many of which were recast from the bells that were melted down in The Great Fire. If you look back, you can see the Monument, put up by Sir Christopher Wren to mark where the fire began, in Pudding Lane.’

  If he’d stood on his head, he couldn’t have bewildered me more.

  ‘You ought to be paying me for all this, William,’ he said mildly. ‘It’s how I get my living, you know. I show strangers round the town and point out
interesting items. Jenkins puts them on to me. Well-to-do young men from the country, like yourself. I show them the high life, I show them the low life; and I show them where they can play cards. Then I show them where they can borrow money to pay their debts, and where they can buy pistols to blow their brains out when they’re ruined.’

  Although he didn’t say any of this bitterly, it was plain he thought his work was degrading. Stupidly, I said:

  ‘I’m sorry.’ And of course he took it in the wrong way.

  ‘Who for? The young gentlemen?’

  ‘No—no! I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Oh! I see! You’re sorry for me. You think how terrible it must be for the son of your father’s old partner to have sunk so low. Well, you shouldn’t think that. I haven’t sunk at all. In fact, you might say that I’ve climbed. I never knew any better, you see. My late lamented—as Jenkins would call him—lost everything, so to speak, before I had a chance to get used to it. I only heard stories of wealth; I never actually knew it.’

  By the way he’d said, ‘lost everything,’ and hunched his shoulders at the same time, I guessed that he knew everything about how my father had cheated his. But it didn’t seem to worry him; indeed, by his unchanging attitude of leaning over the parapet towards where the water rushed underneath, that it was all, all water under the bridge.

  Perhaps I ought to have remembered that fifty watermen a year were drowned as that water went under the bridge; but I didn’t. All I could think about was that the thin, negligent figure before me was John Diamond and that maybe the ghost of his father and the ghost of mine were also standing on the bridge, and watching this meeting of their sons.

  ‘What was it you wanted to see me about, William? Be quick, or we’ll both catch our deaths of cold!’

  Perhaps I should have noted the emphasis on ‘both,’ as if ‘one’ would merely have been unfortunate and not a disaster.

  ‘Was it about that ten thousand pounds, William?’

  How I wished it had have been! How I wished I could have brought something for John Diamond! I felt so deeply sad and sorry for him, standing there and being proud and dignified over his father’s ruin. I wanted to do everything for him; but I could do nothing. I wanted to promise him that I would make up everything to him, just as soon as I came into my money. In short, my heart was very full, at that moment, of the best feelings I’d ever had; and it was with real misery that I told him that I knew nothing at all about the ten thousand pounds.