'I was putting together the right words in my head, Grace, my dear, before my tongue uttered them.' He paused and stared at me long and hard. 'Well, Bob, we know each other pretty well. After all these years, I've come to think of you like a son - and you've always shown an interest in the gardens - and I'm not as young as I was - and - well, I'd like you to consider - whether it wouldn't be half a bad idea - if you were to come into the business - in a small way to start with. Your own cart? And some customers to take care of? Think about it, eh?'
'Something to consider, for the future, Bob,' put in Mrs S.
'Indeed,' said Strong. 'No decisions necessary today, lad.
Give it a thought, that's all. And I will pray on it to the Lord and listen to Him. We'll talk about it again.'
That was a year ago. Now, warm and comfortable back in the kitchen, I noticed Titus Strong's Bible on a little table by his chair, snug up to the fire, where the kettle was rumbling away.
'Bob,' he said, 'you remember that matter I mentioned to you? About you coming into the business? Well, the Lord has put it in my mind again this week.' He patted the Bible. 'He tells me it's time we made some plans.'
Mrs Strong smiled. 'To speak plainly, Bob—'
'Nay, Grace,' said her husband, sharply. 'This is my tale. My moment in the sun.'
'Look sharp, then,' she retorted, good-humouredly. 'Bob hasn't got all the time in the world like some market- gardeners!'
'Well then,' said my friend. 'Bob. We have talked about you coming into the business. We've agreed that you should start with your own bit of trade. Get yourself some regular custom in the city, a regular run to the market, and out to his Lordship in the season.' (This was Lord Bedford, or some such titled gentleman, whose table Titus Strong supplied.) 'I want to take my ease a little more.'
Mrs Strong was listening carefully, that elegant face still and serious.
'So I have decided, Bob, that come the spring, you shall, if you want it, have an interest in this place. Now, you'll need a horse and cart, and I cannot give you that. I have only the one and I still need it myself, for I have my customers and my local trade. But, if you can raise the money and buy a good cart, not wormy and falling asunder, and a horse that will not need the services of the knacker-man within six months, then you and I can sit at this table and, as they say, "agree terms".'
Mrs S shifted in her seat. 'He has talked about it to me, Bob, and I am in agreement.'
She had a beautiful smile, which she turned upon him and, for a moment, I envied my old friend. Grace Strong was perhaps twenty years younger than her husband. Even more. And yet there was such love and affection between them, they might have been a young couple in the honey-days of their marriage. He took her hand and kissed it.
'Now, Bob,' he said, 'will you give my proposal your best attention? And give me an answer the next time you call? And I hope that will be before Christmas?'
I drank tea and ate a slice of Mrs Strong's plum cake, and warmed my toes on the fender. Brutus and Nero, with much sighing and snoring, lay at our feet, stretched out in front of the range, toasting their bellies and only raising their heads to enjoy a scratch, and I thought, this could be my life, one of industry and ease, work and comfort. It had much to recommend it, and with only a little effort on my part, by the new year, it could be within my grasp.
We set out for the Aquarium with a light step and a warm heart.
Fish-lane — Pilgrim and the Other —
Tipney's Gaff
We made good time - I have worked out a route through the back streets which avoids the congestion of the main thoroughfares. Besides, I had a lot to consider. With the extra work at the Pavilion, I could save more, but I would have to work harder at the Aquarium to make up for the hours lost. Mr Abrahams, I was sure, would be accommodating, but I could not be all the time away from my stand, otherwise he would give it to someone else. Or I'd be forced to share it. All of this was ravelling through my head whilst we walked, but I was glad to have something heartening to dwell upon.
Our route took us along Fish-lane, a strange, crowded street of dark, little shops selling stale cakes and flat ginger beer alongside candles and coal, and a few establishments which considered themselves a cut above the rest. Freeth's, a theatrical bonnet-maker's, was the first one we came to. And a little further along, Hadzinger who dealt in boots. And Miss Bailey, a mantle-maker and hair-dresser. Then a wine shop and a barber's and a tiny tailor's shop - all without a name, wanting to keep themselves quiet, as it were. Then Pilgrim's bookshop, which was thin and tall, with a bulging window. The glass was thick, like bullseyes, so that trying to see the books and engravings behind it was like looking through a bottle bottom, where everything was out of shape and woolly about the edges. Outside, flapping in the wind, were art journals and old serials pegged on sticks, and little trays of books on a table covered with sacking to keep out the damp. Pilgrim was an old friend (we met long ago in a place we never speak of) and he told me that he inherited the shop from a distant cousin and, though he was not at all bookish, resolved to keep the business because of family 'obligations'. It was wedged between a rusty-looking hardware shop on one side and the blank windows of a shop which changed owners as often as dogs barked in this neighbourhood. Long ago, this neighbouring shop had been a dairy, with a single miserable-looking cow stalled in the rear. Then it became an undertaker's, a fruiterer's and last, and most recently, a haberdasher's. Even that had failed, and now it was closed, though never unoccupied, for the yard was always crowded, and these days it was impossible to leave anything out, for whether it was the crown jewels or a feather duster, it would be stolen in a blink. Pilgrim had been concerned about this empty place for some weeks and not just because of the rats, which had increased fifty-fold. The neighbourhood was losing its character by the week, he said darkly.
He was peering from his doorway as we hurried down Fish-lane, a curious sight in his tasselled smoking hat, embroidered with fabulous birds, and a knitted comforter complementing his fir-green working coat and fingerless gloves. And, of course, there was no creeping past for, as if he had been expecting us, he nodded us into the shop, bolted the door and drew the blind.
'Now then, Bob. Nero. Brutus.'
Now then indeed, I thought, stepping around the piles of books and papers, the teetering towers of three-deckers and two-parters, and charting a course through the shop in Pilgrim's wake. He had already disappeared into the gloom, where the flame of a solitary candle was the only beacon for us lone sailors. Shelves and stacks lined the walls, tables were buried under volumes which had not been opened let alone read for many a year, and in the darkest depths of the shop, a veritable cavern of books which, had they been piled by Sir Christopher Wren himself and cemented by his own dust and cobwebs, could not have been better built. Pilgrim's bower was a masterly example of books laid in good English bond, and it fitted around him like his own skin. He was already in there pouring tea into two cups (I was glad I couldn't see their condition, for my friend was a stranger to the scullery) and nodded me to a fifteen-volume history of the Macedonians (arranged vertically), on which I perched.
Pilgrim's oddness didn't present itself simply in his curious shop and odd appearance. The towers of books and mouldering pamphlets, those oddments of velvet and chinoiserie, the hats, the regal Benjamins and sub-species britches, were only for display. When he spoke, you would realize that there was more to Pilgrim than just an eccentric dresser. You would realize that he was, in fact, two men in one body, and that these two men were sometimes opposites. One mild, the other wild. One reasonable, the other argumentative. One careful in speech, the other given to cursing. Today they lived quite amicably together, taking it in turns to speak, but tomorrow they might erupt and disagree.
'Now then, Bob,' said gentle Pilgrim, 'here is a thing. Them creatures next door.'
('Ah, they. Who are they?' said wild Pilgrim.)
'Bob Chapman knows them.'
('Does he? How is that?
')
'Same trade. They are Irish, Scotchmen, a Frenchy, a Polick. Men and women. Young 'uns too.'
('How should Bob Chapman know them?')
'Strollers, you fool. Have you no brain? Mummers. Theatricals. Grubbers.'
('Grubbers?')
'The lowest. Gaff-actors.'
('Ah, there you have it, Bob Chapman. A nest of gaff-actors and all the kindling-thieves this side of Newgate pouring in of an evening.')
We drank our tea in silence, and I wondered what was coming and how I might make an exit, for I was thinking of the time and being at my place when Pikemartin opened the Aquarium doors. And, for once, I was not thinking of the Nasty Man or the boy or any of that business.
The candle perched on a book in Pilgrim's bower was only a tuppenny one and threatened all the time to plunge us into darkness or burn through and keel over, when we would all go up like a fireship, part and parcel. I shifted on the history of Macedonia and my two boys, squeezed as tight as three shillings in a Jew's purse underneath a table of stacked music, started to peel themselves out. Pilgrim cocked an ear.
'Hear that?'
('I do. What of it?')
'Banging day and night. They are setting up.'
('Call in the peelers.')
'Not on your life! What? And have my throat cut in my bed and all my assets, inherited with obligations, cleared out and sold on a barrow? What kind of a fool do you take me for?'
('Bob Chapman is silent on the matter.')
I was brushing the cobwebs from my good trousers and trying not to cause an avalanche of books. But perhaps I didn't need to be so careful, for the thunderous activity from the empty shop next door was already creating little tremors in the mountainous regions of print and paper, and ominous clouds of dust were gathering in the dark and lofty canopy above.
'Bob Chapman has his own business to attend to,' Pilgrim replied to himself and followed us to the door, and then onto the street, where he cast a suspicious eye at his neighbours.
There was activity next door, that could not be denied, and a deal of it, though whether it was demolition or destruction was difficult to say. Half the boarding of the front windows had been taken down to let in light, and I could see the black hump of the old shop counter, half-buried under rubble and timber. One of the toilers, a burly individual with a broken conk and a hostile disposition, appeared.
'Clear off!' growled he, and he brandished half a brick and a lump hammer to add weight to his point. 'Private property. No, 'awkers, beggars or religious!'
'We are none of those,' piped up Pilgrim, 'but occupy next door.'
('Until we are forced otherwise.')
'Clear off back there then,' he growled, closing one eye, 'and mind that business, not this one.'
'You see the problem, Bob Chapman?'
Well, I saw boxes and barrels among the bricks and rubble, and a pack of dogs, muzzled and tied up, with red eyes and scarred noses, and some shifty-looking coves, trying not to be seen out the back. I saw also that it was time for us to depart, since the church bell was chiming and, more to the point, the Growler was still meditating upon whether to clock us with the hammer or the half brick.
'Come back and see whether we are still in our skins, Bob Chapman, or if the savages have turned us into purses!'
('He will. He is a good friend, is Bob Chapman. And his handsome associates.')
The Growler looked at me, and then at my boys, and curled a lip to go with the one eye.
'Yourn? Handsome! Do they scrap?'
We hurried away with the laughter of the Growler and the assurances of Pilgrim rattling our ears, and with some relief reached the quiet and stillness of the Aquarium.
It was not time yet to fling open its great doors. The hallway was dark; noises from upstairs signalled that Alf Pikemartin was opening up the shutters in the salons and sweeping the floors, so we hiked up the grand staircase, past the execution chamber and the display of hangman Calcraft's rope and bag, and the Happy Family - cats, mice and birds, all stuffed and nicely mounted in their box - to the second floor. My canine friends, of course, required no bidding, and went ahead of me to their work. Each morning we follow the same order, Brutus and Nero going up to our salon - a name which dignifies what is really a small space, partitioned off, in a much larger room - where Brutus will open the large door (one of his tricks) and Nero will lead the way down the central aisle to our platform, which has been closed off by a screen for the evening and which I remove to the back wall every morning. We retire behind this screen between exhibitions and keep our few 'properties' there, and a little stove. In front of it there is a small platform, approached by four steps, which sets us up just high enough for the spectators at the back to see our show. It is a simple affair.
After our early start and the business with Pilgrim, I was looking forward to dropping anchor behind the screen and enjoying a hot, sweet brew (in a clean cup) and perhaps forty winks, but - here was a strange thing - climbing the last few steps, I found Brutus and Nero not disappeared into our salon, but waiting on the landing, where the cabinet of waxen eyes was displayed. (Every morning I wished that Mr Abrahams would put them somewhere else, for it was unnerving to have them staring out so naturally from that dim corner.) The door to our salon was open, and Nero was growling his low warning grumble, while Brutus stood quite still, sniffing the air. It was quiet on the landing, only a fly buzzed in the dusty window, but it was as clear to me as it was to my dogs that something was amiss. If it had been dark or getting towards evening, I would have fetched Pikemartin and together we would have investigated. (Once before, we were obliged to seek out an intruder, an escaped convict, who we discovered hiding behind a sarcophagus and who, in his struggle to retain his liberty, gave Pikemartin a sore head with a blow from an ancient cooking pot.) But it was scarcely eleven o'clock in the morning, the public were not admitted, and I could not believe that footpads and desperate criminals were abroad so early. So I followed Nero into the large room, with Brutus at my side and an assegai in my hand for protection.
There was light enough to see the cases of insects, the display of shields and swords from a Welsh castle, the grand termites' nest and part of the trunk of a giant tree discovered in the New World and brought back by a relative of Mr Darwin. I touched Nero's back and he went about his business, and with his nose to the floor, sniffed and snuffled in every corner and then stopped and looked back at me with a puzzled expression. It was as if he was saying, 'I don't understand, Bob. I could have sworn someone was here.'
Certainly there was no one about, for we peered behind every cabinet and inspected every jar and pot, and threw open the shutters wide, the better to inspect the darker corners. But no, there were only spiders and dust and that feeling, hanging in the air, that someone had been there who was not long gone. If we had straightaway gone out onto the back landing, I think we might have spied someone on the stairs, and certainly we heard footsteps upstairs in the menagerie, but there are always strange noises coming from up there.
I have my own ways and like everything ship-shape. I like order and to be able to lay my hands upon something, knowing exactly where it is, so my refuge behind the screen, though it is small, is also very neat. I have hooks for my coat and costume; a shelf for my tea box and pot, and for my boys' water dish and their biscuit-tin; another shelf of books, for I enjoy reading in the brief lulls between performances; and there are boxes containing properties for our show. One for balls, one for eggs (property eggs, not real), another for ribbons and ropes, and one for the letters that Brutus takes out and opens. All carefully arranged, with their lids tight on. Except that this morning, they weren't, and I didn't discover it until I was almost ready to begin the first exhibition. I went to the box which contained the balls and discovered that someone had been here, had opened the lid and not replaced it properly. The boxes were disordered also. Those which contained the lantern and the cannon ball were always at the bottom, but now were on the top. My little tea
box had been emptied and roughly refilled, for there were tea leaves strewn upon the table, and even the rug on which Brutus and Nero lie had been taken up and shaken about. Someone had been there and gone quickly through my few belongings, looking for - well, I could not imagine - and made a hasty attempt to disguise it. I was more upset than I could explain, and though my few things were easily restored and there was nothing of any value among them, I felt out of sorts and hardly inclined to continue.
But a sizeable crowd had assembled, and were even now gathered around the platform and chattering, as they do, about the 'remarkable dogs' and their cleverness and bravery. So I took off my outdoor coat and put on my costume and set about my business. My dogs, knowing their business, were already in position, wagging their tails to show their keenness, and so we gave the story of Mungo Park, in which Nero assists in the liberation of the African (myself) by slipping off my chains and his own, and unbarring a wicket gate (stage scenery, of course, but still accurate in every respect). Then a comfortable-looking woman on the front row piped up, 'Give us the one about the dog with the poorly foot!' and there were approving murmurs of' Yes, that's a clever trick!' And then a clerkish gent put his hand into his pocket crying, 'A shilling for you, Chapman, if your dog howls on cue and with feeling!' How could I refuse! A shilling towards the cart and horse and balmy days in Strong's Gardens! So we gave, with all our skill, The Lion of the Desert, in which Brutus imitated the story ofAndrocles and the lion, and limped as though he had a thorn in his foot, howled as though it pained him, and then growled when he first offered it to me to examine. Then he licked my hand in gratitude as I removed the thorn, which appeared to have been deep in his paw but which was, in fact, secreted in my hand. Our sponsor was very pleased, and roared, 'Bravo, Brutus! Bravo, Chapman!' and tossed a shilling into the plate. Finally, we gave a selection of tricks: Brutus opened a box and removed a letter, carried a lantern, with a candle in it, and placed it on the ground without tipping it over or causing the light to go out. Then Nero took an egg out of a pail of water without breaking it, rang a bell by pulling on a rope, and both dogs nosed a light cannon ball across the platform and stopped it with their paws.
The Newgate Jig Page 6
