John Diamond (Vintage Childrens Classics)

by Leon Garfield

  Mr K’Nee and his rotten apples went back to London after breakfast. He took Mr Seed with him; but I wished he could have taken more. I wished he could have taken away everything he’d said about its being more natural for wrong to breed wrong than for right to breed right.

  I knew he’d probably talked like that because he was frightened for his old friend and thought that the reconciliation might not last; but all the same, I wished he hadn’t said it. It made the world seem a dark and gloomy place, with only lawyers to keep it from rotting away.

  Mr Seed would have stayed, but the claims of Hanging Sword Alley were too strong. It was his duty to preside over the Christmas Dinner; and Mrs Branch would be expecting him for soup.

  I asked him to give my best wishes to her and to all the Carwardines, and to thank them for their great kindness. I left out Mrs Baynim on purpose as I felt that nothing I could say would do any good in that quarter.

  ‘If you should be passing,’ said the dwarf, noting down my requests with brisk nods of his head, ‘at any time at all, and have a mind to inspect your property, so to speak, you will be very welcome, Mr Jones. You will be very welcome indeed. We will consider the matter of the eleven shillings and sixpence closed,’ he added magnanimously.

  He was standing by the carriage and Mr K’Nee was urging him to climb aboard.

  ‘Coming, Mr K’Nee. Coming directly!’ And then to me, very solemnly: ‘No more footsteps, eh, young Mr Jones? No more sighs.’

  He shook me carefully, by my bandaged hand; and, although his fingers ended where most people’s began, I never noticed. It was as if I’d shaken hands with those finger thoughts of his.

  Then he climbed up into the coach and it moved off and was soon lost among the trees.

  That evening I went upstairs to see John Diamond. I didn’t really want to, but it seemed to be expected of me. In fact it was old Mr Diamond himself who suggested it.

  I met Mrs Small coming out of his room and she looked at me gauntly and told me not to stay long. I’d hoped she was going to forbid me to go in as I dreaded that I would see the old hatred still burning in his eyes.

  But I needn’t have worried. He kept them shut all the time, and Mrs Small had bandaged him up so thoroughly that I might have been visiting a bolster with arms.

  ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s me. William Jones.’

  ‘Oh. Pardon me if I don’t shake hands with you.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  Silence; and I wondered if I could go.

  ‘My pa says you got burned too, William.’

  ‘It wasn’t much. Only my hands.’

  Silence again; and I wondered how he managed to eat.

  ‘It hurts, don’t it, William!’

  ‘Yes. But yours must be worse.’

  ‘I’ll live!’

  ‘I’m glad of that.’

  ‘Thank you … and—thank you again, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  Another silence; the longest of all.

  ‘Merry Christmas, William Jones.’

  ‘Merry Christmas, John Diamond.’

  22

  IT WAS ON the Friday after Christmas, in the middle of the night. We’d moved into the part of our house that was still standing, even though the bricks were scorched.

  It was very strange, knowing that certain passages ended in nothing, and that, if you’d opened a door, you’d have fallen straight outside into a blackened ruin with the stars shining down through a skeleton roof.

  I was in my Uncle Turner’s room. He’d gone back to St Albans, to shout and bang the table in my grandmother’s house.

  He’d had a terrible quarrel with my mother. Unfortunately I missed most of it so I’m not sure whether it was about my father or me, as, of course, he’d found out about what my father had done in the old days.

  I remember him saying, in that loud, bullying voice of his, that he’d always warned my mother and now it was too late and he hoped she was sorry. My mother shouted back that she wasn’t; and, what was more, was going to send him a bill for his keep.

  My uncle gave a large sneer at this and said he’d expected as much as my mother could do with every penny she could lay her hands on as it was going to cost her a fortune to rebuild the house.

  My mother said that, thank God, David had been a good husband to her and had left her a rich woman and she didn’t want for anything. And that included my uncle.

  My uncle bellowed that she wasn’t rich and never had been and that easy circumstances was the most that could have been said; and that by the time the builders had finished she’d be practically a pauper.

  ‘Do you know what it will cost, Rose? A fortune! And where will you find it? Growing on trees?’

  Then my mother told him to keep his voice down or did he want all the neighbourhood to hear? She had seen me.

  But that didn’t stop him and he went on to say that the neighbourhood would know soon enough when my mother didn’t have a crust of bread to bless herself with.

  ‘Will you be quiet!’ yelled my mother. ‘Can’t you see the boy’s there?’

  ‘Ah!’ said my uncle triumphantly. ‘If only you’d let me have him for six months—’

  ‘Thank God I didn’t!’ said my mother. ‘Because then he’d have turned out like you!’

  That was the last straw. Soon after my uncle left us. He went away in a state of purple indignation and a hired coach. I remember thinking as he went, quite unrepentant, that there really must be a Day of Judgment waiting at the end of the world for people like my Uncle Turner to wake up and see for themselves what pigs they were.

  That was on the Friday after Christmas. Christmas itself was an odd, loose-leaf sort of day; by which I mean that it didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the week, and seemed as if it was always going to come fluttering out on its own.

  Chiefly it was because of Mrs Small being at the inn where we had our dinner. She didn’t say much—above a whisper, that is—but she certainly exerted an influence.

  Even my mother was awed by her. I think this was because Mrs Small had been widowed three times to my mother’s once, and rather looked down on her as being a mere beginner.

  She was always going up and down stairs with a jug of gravy. I never found out what she did with it, just as I never found out why she disliked leaves. She was a woman of many secrets.

  Curiously enough she never saw the point of observing secrecy in a game of cards; and when Mr Diamond and his son tried to play, and she held the cards for John as he couldn’t manage them for himself, she always told Mr Diamond exactly what cards she was holding, in a slow, earnest voice, and so spoiled the game. But it didn’t really matter as there weren’t any stakes. Old Mr Diamond and his son played for love.

  On the day after Christmas there was an unexpected visitor to the inn. It was Mr K’Nee’s clerk, Mr Jenkins. Mr K’Nee had sent him down to Woodbury with some money for Mr Diamond.

  He went upstairs to see his old associate, but I don’t know what passed between them. With me, however, he was a much milder Mr Jenkins than I’d remembered. I don’t say that he fawned, but he’d certainly developed a habit of ducking his head whenever anybody looked at him, as if that article had been clouted hard and often in the recent past.

  Afterwards Mr Diamond told me that, although Mr K’Nee had threatened Mr Jenkins with a hanging, he’d relented and continued to employ him on account of Mr Jenkins having a widowed mother.

  Mr Jenkins himself said nothing about the letter he’d sent me and when I mentioned it he looked at me searchingly and asked if it had been signed.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Ah,’ said he. ‘Then it ain’t a legal document, young feller-me-lad! Burn it!’

  Before he left, he beckoned me to one side.

  ‘That ten thousand pound,’ he murmured. ‘Did you ever find it?’

  ‘There wasn’t any money.’

  ‘Tell me anoth
er!’ said he, tapping the side of his nose very sagaciously. ‘There’s money all right. And it’s somewhere!’

  There was no shaking him in this, and when he went back to his owner in London, he left me thinking yet again of Mr K’Nee’s words that boys and fools are always dreaming of treasure. Well, I still dreamed a little, but I was a boy; but Mr Jenkins wasn’t, so there was no choice but to think of him as a fool.

  So Christmas was over and there weren’t even any presents as they’d all gone up in the fire; and it was Friday night and another year before it would be Christmas again.

  The dwarf had told me that there wouldn’t be any sighs or footsteps again. Well, he was wrong. There were sighs in my room; and they were mine. And there were footsteps, too; and they were mine. My father’s ghost was at rest; but mine was wide awake.

  Just as in teeming London there had been quiet courts enclosing fond remembrances of the country, so inside of me there was a court, only it enclosed a remembrance of the town. It beat and glittered and winked and shone, and not all the trees and fields and leafy lanes could put it out.

  It was snowing outside; and I wondered if it was snowing in London, and if all the chimney pots were wearing white hats and looking as if they were going to be confirmed.

  I turned away from the window and thought about what my uncle had said—about our being paupered when the builders had done; and I wondered if I could go on the snick-an-lurk to restore our fallen fortunes.

  It must have been long after midnight when I looked out again. The snow had stopped and there was a thick white carpet all over the ground.

  I remember I stared at it for some time before I noticed a very strange thing. There were footprints in the snow. And they’d only just been made.

  They came from the gate in a wavering zigzag line. They missed the drive and went round the tree in the middle. Then they made a great loop and marched right across the front of the house.

  My first idea was that it was Liverguts coming to murder me with his terrible hook. Even as I thought it, it seemed to be confirmed.

  There was the most awful scream from right inside the house! It was Rebecca! A second later Cissy screamed; and then my mother who’d been sleeping in the room next to theirs! Shriek! Shriek! Shriek!

  Then Mrs Alice and the kitchen-maid! They went off like fire-works: shriek—shriek—shriek!

  They were being murdered, not exactly in their beds, but out in the passage! They were all out there in their nightgowns. The kitchen-maid had a candle and she was shaking so much that the shadows were going mad, and Mrs Alice had a broom.

  My mother and my sisters were yelling their heads off and the only man in the house was me, as the gardener was living in the village on account of the stables having been burned. Feeling the importance of my situation, I advanced.

  ‘Keep away, William! Keep away! I’ve got him!’

  I saw there was something fearful crouching against the wall under the shadow of the broom. It was like a large hedgehog, with a strong suggestion of spikes and fleas.

  ‘Ar!’ said the hedgehog, making a sudden movement that caused the kitchen-maid to yelp and stagger so that all the shadows fled pell-mell up the wall. ‘There y’are, Willum! It’s me!’

  ‘Who is it? For God’s sake, who is it?’ moaned my mother, terrified and appalled that my name should have come out of the grisly object that seemed to have no face. ‘Who is it, William?’

  ‘It’s my friend,’ I said. ‘It’s my friend, Shot-in-the-Head.’

  So they hadn’t killed him after all! He’d got a terrible cut down the side of his neck from Liverguts’s hook, and it looked as if it was going rotten. He’d got half of Hertfordshire in his hair, and the other half over his hands and face. His feet were coming out of his boots and he was coming out of everywhere else; and he stank of Whitefriars and Blackfriars and Shoreditch and the great Fleet Ditch. But he wasn’t dead!

  He stood up. He peered at my mother and sisters and then at Mrs Alice and her broom. I thought he was going to screech and spit.

  Instead he fished and fumbled deep inside himself and then, with a grunt of satisfaction, brought something out.

  ‘’Ere y’are,’ he said. ‘Real moccy leather, ain’t it? Got it back orf Liverguts for yer.’

  It was my purse. It was the purse I’d thrown away in the Sun in Splendour. Shot-in-the-Head had remembered how I’d boasted about it and he’d got it back for me because I’d saved his life.

  It was when I’d shouted ‘Boarders!’ and brought all Whitefriars out that he’d got clean away. Or nearly clean, there being the little matter of the rent in his neck.

  After that he’d found another doss and picked up his crumbs, as he put it, until he was strong enough to go once more on the snick-an-lurk.

  Then, remembering all I’d told him about where I’d lived, he’d tramped all the way to come and pay me back. He’d have come a day sooner, but he’d taken a hundred wrong turnings among country lanes, which were worse than all the town put together; and even when he’d found the house, he’d gone into one wrong door after another and been greeted with shrieks. But it had come out all right in the end.

  I wished Mr K’Nee had been there. I really did. There hadn’t been twelve good men and true who’d said that Shot-in-the-Head owed me anything; and there hadn’t been a gentleman in a full-bottomed wig who’d sentenced him to pay me back. There’d been nobody but Shot-in-the-Head himself

  When he told us about his journey, I was pleased to see that Rebecca was crying; and even Cissy’s eyes caught the candlelight like dew.

  He slept that night with me; and next morning my mother asked me if he had anywhere else to go. She asked quite gently but it was plain that she hoped he’d turn out to have dear friends somewhere else. I shook my head.

  ‘He is the one who saved you, William? It’s really him?’

  I nodded; and my mother sighed and looked faintly reproachful, as if it was just like me to have picked on someone like Shot-in-the-Head to be saved by, instead of a wholesome, respectable boy you could take anywhere.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I suggested helpfully, ‘we could send him to my Uncle Turner for six months. Then we wouldn’t know him when he came back.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, William!’ snapped my mother, who was still rather sensitive about that awful pig.

  So there it is. It’s April now and the Diamonds have long since gone back to Club Cottage with great plans and small smiles. The leaves are all out and the builders are in and I’ve told everybody that we’re going to be paupers, which my mother says is nonsense and she doesn’t want to hear me mention that again.

  My friend is still with us, and I think he’s going to stay. Of course he’s been washed and looks rather unfamiliar. But it’s Shot-in-the-Head all right, and his hair is the brightest of red.

  Rebecca, plain, virtuous Rebecca of all people, has taken quite a liking to him, and, I’ve noticed, has begun to pick up some of his expressions; but she doesn’t know what they mean.

  For instance, he gave her a gold and ruby brooch that he’d brought away with him. Naturally, Cissy and my mother told her outright that she couldn’t keep it as it was almost certainly stolen.

  ‘It’s not! It’s not!’ shouted Rebecca furiously. ‘He told me on his honour that he got it on the snick-an-lurk!’

  I haven’t told her what that means, yet. I’m saving it up for a rainy day.

  My mother wants to call him Seth, as she says that Shot-in-the-Head isn’t a name at all. Seth Jones, she says, has quite a ring to it. I don’t like it and I don’t think my friend does, either. I wouldn’t mind calling him John, as I’d once thought that he was John—John Diamond, I mean—and had actually dreamed of his coming back to my home, just as he’d done.

  But those were all old dreams; and there are new ones now. He still sleeps in my room and every night we talk and talk. We talk about treasure.

  We’ve drawn a map of where his great treasure is still hidden, in
the pockets of his roof house in Whitefriars. We think it’s still there, unless the woman with the baby has found it and turned herself into a duchess.

  We’ve marked the river and we’ve marked St Paul’s with a cross; and I’ve written over the parts where the murderers live. Whenever I look at it, I think that it looks like a dream map of pirates’ gold.

  But it’s real. Boys and fools, Mr K’Nee had said, always dream of treasure. Well, there really is one. I promise you that; and I know where it is.

  The Backstory

  Learn to speak cockney rhyming slang!

  Who’s Who in John Diamond

  William Jones: the young hero of our story, on a quest to uncover the mysteries left behind by his father.

  David Jones: William’s father, who made his fortune through buying and selling coffee, and swindling his good friend Alfred Diamond.

  Alfred Diamond: David Jones’s old business partner.

  Uncle Turner: William’s unkind, red-faced uncle.

  Mr K’Nee: David Jones’s lawyer, who William goes to seek in London.

  Mr Jenkins: a kind-hearted clerk at Mr K’Nee’s office.

  Hampstead Seed: a dwarf who works for Mr K’Nee. He takes William under his wing.

  The Horse Boy: a statue in The Horse Boy pub, where messages can be left.

  Mr Robinson: a good friend of John Diamond and Mr Jenkins.

  John Diamond: Alfred Diamond’s son.

  Shot-in-the Head: a street urchin with a kind heart.

  Liverguts: another street urchin, with a not-so-kind-heart.

  Mrs Carwardine: Landlady for Mr Seed’s lodgings in Hanging Sword Alley.

  Butter and Cress Carwardine: Mrs Carwardine’s daughters. They argue a lot.

  Test your knowledge of John Diamond

  (See here for answers. No cheating!)

  1) How many times do you turn David Jones’s watch to wind it?

  2) What is the name of the place in London that William is first trying to find?

  3) What is the name of the card that Mr K’Nee tells William to remember?