The Newgate Jig

by Ann Featherstone

  A cup of tea behind the screen. A moment or two to consider - the magistrate or the police station?

  I try to picture my workplace, its warm calm, as I walk briskly to it. In my head, I count down the boxes and their contents - the eggs, the balls, Brutus's lantern, the kettle, the teapot, cups, the tea box, the tray on which they stand, my coat, my hat. I hold the image of my stand before me, and put aside everything else. I put my mind and my thoughts in this quiet, safe place.

  I hurry down street after street, Brutus and Nero trotting at my heels. Walking helps, the rhythm is a comfort, but I am sweating with exertion and shaking and must dig my hands into my pockets to keep madness from breaking out. Dodging through the crowds, I slip on the cobbles and the pain has me hugging my ribs and gasping for breath. But I don't stop, not for a moment. Through the afternoon streets, where clerks are hurrying back to their desks and early-morning carters are propped in a doorway catching ten minutes' sleep. A baby squalls on its mother's hip, a drunk clutches at a lamp-post. I take it all in, but I do not see it.

  Around a corner, and there it is, the Aquarium, with the familiar banners flapping upon the walls and a gang of sharp- faced boys crouched around the door. Every day they call to my dogs and I wait whilst they pat and stroke them and call them 'reg'lar spankers', just as their fathers would. Not today, though.

  Ignoring their cries of 'What's the row, Sam?', I hurry inside. The hall is cool and dark and quiet. Conn is manning Pikemartin's box, is rocking to and fro, and I hurry past him. But he sees me and calls and I stop at the bottom of the stairs, but don't turn around.

  'Bob, Bob, she's done for me,' he wails, and arches his spine with a grimace. 'My back is breaking out again. The wounds are opening up. Blood everywhere.'

  I take the stairs three at a time. He calls after me. 'Bob! For the sake of the Holy Child, show some pity to a broken man!'

  I hurry to the salon but, putting my head around the door, I see it is crowded with people. Some are in front of my stand, waiting, looking at the clock, gazing about them. A man peers behind the screen and shakes his head and says something which makes everyone laugh. He resumes his place and waits.

  All I want is a moment's silence. Just to think. To consider what I should do. To force the child's cries out of my head.

  I close the door quietly and go up to the menagerie, passing a gaggle of young women on their way down who nudge each other and say 'aah!' when they see Brutus and Nero and whisper behind their hands when they see me. The door is half open and I step inside, leaving my boys on the threshold. There is a pleasant animal smell of straw and warm bodies.

  Bella comes to the front of the cage, and the cubs mew. She bares her teeth. The room is crowded, but I go in anyway and walk about like a customer, stopping in front of the birds and squirrels, the badger, the snakes coiled in their glass box, trying to feel calm, like the average man.

  But, no. The everyday world continues out of my grasp. I am looking through a window at it, can see it, but cannot be a part of it. For I have heard a child killed and I don't know what to do about it.

  I start down the stairs again, and meet Mr Abrahams, coming from his little office at the back of the third-floor landing. He is surprised and doesn't realize it's me at first, and then calls out. 'Bob Chapman! My dear friend! How are you! When will our customers see you again? And your fine animals?'

  I don't ignore him, but I am already at the first floor, where the board stands showing times of performances. It is a large slate upon an easel, and on it Mr Abrahams announces the special exhibitions and their times:

  11.00 Moses Dann, the Skeleton Man. Before the grave consumes, Dann will amuse. Bones visible. Skin like paper.

  12.00 The Prussian Giant, Herr Swann, will speak on various subjects and sing songs from his native region of Warmia.

  1.00 Princess Tiny, the Smallest Woman in the World, will sing and entertain. (Entrance 3d)

  1.30 Moses Dann performs again.

  2.00 The Prussian Giant - songs of Warmia.

  2.30 Princess Tiny. The Aquarium's resident fairy.

  And so on, until the exhibitions end at half past ten in the evening. At the bottom of the board, in pink chalk, is the legend:

  The East London Aquarium is sorry to announce that

  Mr Bob Chapman and his Clever Dogs, Brutus and

  Nero, are indisposed for the duration.

  Indisposed.

  I want to laugh but, turning the corner of the stairs, I am caught in the ribs by the elbow of a stout lumper, sending a raft of pain through my side and down my arm. He looks at me curiously and enters the salon, still eying me over his shoulder. Mrs Gifford pushes past me with a smartly dressed gentleman at her elbow. She is nodding and talking to him, but I know she has seen me. The stairs are crowded, and the jostling is a trial. It's mid-afternoon and early workers, who have already finished their day's labours and bought their ticket, chatter in the hall and look at the coloured floor-plan on the wall and wonder what they shall see first. In every room, on every landing, there is something remarkable - swords and helmets, phials of fairy-tears and elven-breath, cabinets of wax anatomy - hands and noses and ears - drums from African and shrunken heads from the South American Amazon. I have not seen half of it, Mr Abrahams once assured me. It rivalled the British Museum for its antiquities and curiosities.

  It will not do.

  None of this humbug, these gew-gaws.

  Someone shouts.

  'Hoi! Hoi! Bob Chapman!'

  It's Trim.

  'I wondered if you might be here,' he says breathlessly, coming after me. 'How are you? I've just sold a marching song to your friend the Giant for five shillings! And what do you think it's called?' He threw his head back and laughed! '"The Dutchman's leetle dog." It's a comic song. Your Giant's not a Dutchman, of course, but that don't signify!' He roars again, and even slaps his thigh with delight. 'What an excellent fellow he is! And what do you think of your old friend Trimmer turned librettist now? It's talent, Bob, nothing more or less. How are you?' he says again. 'Not working, I see from the board. Not going home, though? Out for a walk? Taking the air? It's good for you.'

  He is bright-eyed and agitated, excited. He can hardly keep still.

  'Not going home?' he asks again, and before I can respond, 'I have an urgent appointment in - you'll never guess, Bob! - Albemarle-street! Yes, Mr Murray! Well, perhaps not Mr Murray himself - but, then, you never know!'

  He is so happy, so animated and full of optimism! I should have been able to shake him by the hand and clap him on the shoulder. Instead, it is Trim who takes my hand and pumps it hard and lifts his hat to Conn, who still hands out tickets, and hurries across the hall and out of the door.

  The world has turned upon itself.

  I am pushed about again, this time by Mrs Gifford, who shoulders past me a second time and cannot resist a jibe, 'If you're not well enough to work, Mr Chapman, you're not well enough to be loafing about here, watching them as must.'

  She adjusts her hat and pulls on her gloves and makes a show of the little reticule on her wrist. She wants the world to see her and take notice of her. Brutus and Nero have placed themselves, like bookends, on either side of me, and they regard her with unfriendly eyes. But she's done with me; I'm beneath her notice.

  'Is Pikemartin not here yet?' She addresses Conn. 'What's keeping him? If anyone asks for me—' She looks about her, 'I am gone upon an errand. That's all. Do you hear me?'

  'I hear you, ma'am,' says Conn, with a curl of his lip, and curses her beneath his breath.

  She leaves behind her a trail of stale sweat and indignation.

  Everyone is busy. The Aquarium is bursting with people and noise, not at all the still and quiet place I hoped it might be this afternoon.

  Conn beckons me over. He has taken a mouthful from a bottle in his pocket and his breath is thick with gin.

  'If you see Alf, give him a nudge, won't you? She's on his tail. Tattling to the Boss about him. She'll
lose him his job. And this job's his life, Bob. His very life. Like it is mine. Though Bella would have my blood first.'

  I cannot bear to hear him talk so, and I escape into the street and turn my face to Fish-lane once again. For I have resolved. I must make sure.

  I walk swiftly and with a purpose, and I'm at the gaff within half an hour, have paid my penny and been nodded through. I ignore the exhibition where the languid youth is still describing Mrs Vowles and her sorry end, have pushed through the boys trying to go round twice, and I'm fetched up in the yard again. A handful of tumblers and mummers stand around a smouldering fire, smoking pipes and passing a stone jug from hand to hand. They glance at me but make no move, which is fortunate for I haven't considered what I shall do if anyone challenges me.

  I have only one thought, and it has plagued me since I ran away: that I must see inside the place with my own eyes.

  And it is as if I had made an appointment. The lean mummer comes out of the gaff and rounds up his troupe to do battle with the tragedy of King Richard once more. The stone jar is left on the wall. The door to the gaff is banged shut. The yard is quiet.

  It is greasy and paved with mossy stones. Remnants of scenery - a badly painted woodland scene, a withered tree- stump with a hole bashed into it - and heaps of bricks and timber clutter it from end to end. I pick my way through the debris and skirt the stable once again. I can see the trampled brambles and dead grass where, only hours ago, Nero and I stood, listening to a child being raped and murdered.

  I put my ear to the stable door and, when I am certain there is no one inside (it is a risk I don't consider for long), I pull it open a little way to peer in: it is empty. If it hadn't been, and the Nasty Man or some other had been silently waiting for me to betray myself, I don't know what I would have done. Except that I felt a different man since this morning, and that the rules about everything I ever knew had changed. Brutus and Nero stand behind me, sniffing the air. I think they might have protected me. But I don't know.

  I step inside.

  It is a small, mean place in which to die. Rotten from roof to floor, underfoot the wormy timbers sink and, though at some time it has been patched, the drapery pinned to the walls does little to stem the thin draughts of cold wind. There is a grey light from the half-open roof shutters falling on a few rough pieces of carpet, a three-legged table, but the chaise I had spied through the gap in the wall is not there, and though I go about lifting the curtains and peering behind them, I only disturb colonies of spiders and rattle a nest of mice. It might have been simply another wretched building, falling down through damp, neglect and the undermining of the diggings nearby. There is nothing here to show that a child had died.

  I wonder why I bothered to come here. I wonder what I thought I would find.

  My dogs sniff about curiously, and while Brutus (who quickly loses interest) lays down upon one of the carpets to take a nap, Nero has his nose pressed to the floor and is scratching, then sniffing, then scratching again. Lifting the carpet, I see that it covers a hole where the floorboards have rotted through and that underneath is a void and probably rats' nests. Nero is very excited, though, and will not come away, and I have some difficulty in holding him back from scrabbling the rotten wood. He is determined to discover the source of the scent he's picked up, I suppose, and he would, I am sure, have investigated further if there hadn't been steps on the yard and the door suddenly tugged open. I hurriedly throw the carpet back and drag Nero away, ready to run or defend myself, for it is certain there is nowhere to hide.

  Barney Kevill must be surprised to see me and my dogs in this place, but he is not about to let me know. A startled look is enough.

  'You back again, Mr Chapman? You after me?' and then, without waiting for an answer, 'By rights, this should be my gaff. Kevill's Photographic Studio and Emporium. I thought my Pa might have left something for me,' he says. 'Hid it. But I've looked top and bottom and there's no chink.'

  He frowns.

  He produces some cabinet cards from his pocket and thrusts them at me.

  'Found these behind the wall. They've got my Pa's name and everything printed on them.'

  They are regular cabinet photographs and some trade calling cards. The sitters are decent tradesmen photographed with the emblems of their trade: an undertaker posed with a shiny coffin, a haberdasher with some bales of cloth surmounted by cards of buttons and lace, a butcher with a leg of lamb on a plate. As calling cards, they were unusual, a novelty. George Kevill could have made a good living from them, but perhaps he chose another route.

  'Nasty Man's had a clear-out,' Barney says matter-of-factly, poking the curtain again. 'There was an old chaise in here, but I saw someone burning it out in the yard. 'Spect it was full of mice. And a nice bit o' carpet too. That's gone.'

  Barney casts about again, and kicks up the carpets.

  'Holes in the floor. Look where they've been pulled up and put back. There's a regular cavern down there. I'm going to get a lantern and have a proper look, see if my Pa left any coin underneath. And will I let the Nasty Man have it? Not I.'

  He lay on the filthy floor and peered into the hole.

  'There might be something down here, you know,' he says, shoving his hand through one of the gaps. 'If I could just pull up the boards. Yes. I can feel something. Like a roll of carpet.' He shuffled and stretched, turning on his side to get the better reach. 'Ner, can't get it. Have to come back.'

  Nero joins him, sniffing excitedly at the hole.

  'Hold up! Your dog's got a nose on him. And another half.'

  He is right. Nero is anxiously digging at the rotten floor and the scraps of frowsy carpet as if they were rabbit holes, and then sniffing long and hard.

  'I reckon there is something, Mr Chapman, don't you? Perhaps it's chink. My Pa's fortune!'

  He lies beside Nero, and puts his scruffy head against Nero's dark fur.

  'Yes, there is. I'll come back with a lantern and a forcer and take up the floorboards. Then we'll see. Your dog's a good 'un, ain't he? He knows what's what.'

  He rubs Nero's ears, and pats him hard, but even then Nero is reluctant to give up and I have to drag him away, and hold him back while Barney covers over the hole carefully with carpet, and then, brushing the dirt from his short trousers, as if they were quality, he looks about him.

  'Yes, I'll serve the Nasty Man out, Mr Chapman. You still willing?'

  He takes me by surprise. I wonder what on earth he thinks he can do, what either of us can do.

  There is a noise outside and Barney pricks up his ears, almost as quickly as my two friends. Nero sets up a growl, a warning, and Barney puts his eye to a hole in the wall and steps back smartly.

  'Look out! Someone's coming out of the gaff. Might be just one of the mummers, but I don't know. We don't want to be in here if he's coming. We should go. Come on.'

  Outside, the cold of the winter afternoon is starting to drop, and the lights in the gaff are lit. Barney takes my arm.

  'We can't go through the gaff. I'm not clowned up, and he knows you and your dogs. If he's there - or his bullies - they'll catch us. If you want, there's another way out. Only - are your dogs good at climbing?'

  We clamber over the rotting book mountain and squeeze ourselves behind Pilgrim's stable. Barney deliberately moves the fence-palings away, one after the other, slotting them behind the shed, until a gap is revealed, large enough for us all to squirm through. We are perched, it seems to me, on the edge of a precipice. Below us is a cliff-side of dirt and stones, of tufted grass and scrubby bushes, all lightly sprinkled with frost, plunging down thirty feet. This chasm alone is terrifying, but even more so for me, as in the near distance, is the mouth of a great tunnel, looming round as a cry, and black to its depths. I cannot help but recoil and begin to post myself back through the fence. But Barney grabs my sleeve. 'Look, I know a way down. It's safe. Come on.'

  We scramble along the top. The frost, which has never really disappeared, has made the narrow ledge
slippery, so where Barney walks and Brutus and Nero trot, I crawl on my hands and knees, trying not to look below, as the tunnel mouth opens wider and closer. I try and distract myself by thinking and calculating. I reckon that we must have covered the length of Fish-lane, perhaps further. That the building beyond the fence is the abattoir, that I cannot support much more of this anxiety. We are now almost on top of the tunnel, looking sideways down upon it. It is half complete, still shored up by a skeleton of planks and wooden pillars, and slotted through with temporary platforms where the bricklayers stand to work. There is a rough, steep path cut into the side of the gorge, and while Barney scuttles across the tunnel's half- covered roof and waits for me, my two dogs scamper down the path and stand, panting, at the bottom, sniffing out rabbits.

  I don't know what I'm running from, but panic is contagious and I follow the boy anyway. His head has already disappeared from view and he is clambering down the ladders and along the platforms, and calling for me to do the same. Though he is fleeing from the Nasty Man, I think he's probably enjoying the adventure. I follow him blindly. The ladders are rough and flimsy, with rungs missing, and slimy with the damp. The platforms are the same, boards unsecured and liable to move underfoot and, with a layer of mud and grease upon them, every step becomes treacherous. But it is the descent into that thick darkness which terrifies me. The dense, dank gloom of the tunnel swallows me up, but I dare not look back, for the sight of the grey sky disappearing far above will, I know, send me into a panic and I will dash up the ladder and run into the arms of the Nasty Man rather than plunge any further down. Just as that blue funk begins to rise out of control, though, my foot finds the ground, and the wet noses of Brutus and Nero find my hands.

  'Come on,' Barney says anxiously, and takes my sleeve again. 'It's all right. I know this tunnel like my way home. Keep close to this wall. The other side isn't properly finished, and there's another one dug below us, so don't stray or you could fall in and I wouldn't be able to find you. No one would, 'cept the rats.'