by Jon Walter
‘I can’t find the key to get you out.’
‘Go back inside, Joshua. Go back inside and pray to the Lord. You ask Him for forgiveness. Do you hear me?’
‘I been praying for hours, Samuel. We all been praying for the Lord to let you out, but I don’t think it’s gonna work so I’m looking for the key, only it ain’t in Father’s jacket pocket like it usually is. Do you know where he might have hidden it?’
‘What you doing going through Father Mosely’s pockets? And how do you know that’s where his keys are? Have you been thieving as well, Joshua? Have you been stealing from a priest?’ I hear his little body slump against the door of the privy and he won’t answer me, so I know it must be true. ‘Go back to the house, Joshua, before you get caught.’
‘Why’d you do it, Samuel?’
I ain’t exactly sure how he means, but he asks me in such a way that it melts the very heart of me. He’s only a little fella, and that’s easy to forget when I get angry with him.
‘I did it cos someone has to pay for what you did wrong. The good Lord holds us to account, Joshua, and someone always has to pay. That’s the way it works. You gotta remember that while I’m gone. You gotta try to be good, cos every time you do something bad there’s someone has to pay the reparations on your soul. Can you remember that? Can you try a little harder to be good?’ He puts a finger through the notch in the door and I touch the tip of it where he still has the scar from that burning coal. ‘It’s gonna be all right, Joshua. Everything’s gonna be all right. Now go on back to the house.’
I got a fistful of dread lodged in my throat at the thought of losing him, and he must know cos he won’t leave me, even though I told him to. ‘I don’t want to be left here on my own.’
‘I know, Joshua. But you gotta be good. You gotta stay out of trouble and you gotta wait for me. Do you understand? Cos I’m coming back for you. Wherever it is I go – I don’t care whether it’s heaven or hell – I’m coming back. Do you hear me?’
I swallow hard, pushing his finger back out through the hole. Joshua puts his lips to the gap. ‘You’re the best brother a boy could have, Samuel. I ain’t gonna forget you and I’ll try to be good, I will, cos you’re the best. Always will be.’
There! He breaks the very heart of me, same as always.
‘Stay away from that Abel Whitley,’ I tell him, as he makes his way back to the house, but my voice cracks and he don’t hear me before he disappears into the dark.
Just then, the chapel door opens and the Father’s footsteps come past. He don’t stop to talk to me. He just goes on into the house.
So it has been decided. Whatever God wants to do with me, there’s no way I can change it. All I can do is wait. I get myself up off the ground and sit in the chair, cos I reckon if I’m sitting straight it’ll make a better impression on whoever it is comes to take me away.
Perhaps God and Father Mosely have made a compromise. Maybe they struck a deal. Yes. That’ll be it. I know they have.
From somewhere high above me, God is laughing gently. I can hear Him. He’s saying it’s all gonna be all right. He’s saying He was never gonna leave me for the Devil. He was only kidding, and He’s gonna come for me himself. He’s gonna have me sitting up in heaven on His right-hand side.
But later, when the night is fully dark, I’m still there waiting.
I need some sleep, so I push the chair of judgement to the edge of the privy and curl up on the floor. I close my eyes. Try to clear my mind and calm my beating heart.
God ain’t gonna hurt me, I can be sure of that, cos I’ve always been a good boy.
But it still ain’t easy to sleep. If I can remember something happy, then that might help. So I think of the trips we make into the village, on the first Saturday of every month, when Father Mosely gives us a nickel each for sweets from the store and we get to see the girls in their pretty dresses. Those Saturdays sure are nice. Those days are lovely and warm.
And I fall asleep with the smell of the marzipan all up inside my nostrils.
Chapter 4
On no account will I speak to this man first.
If it’s the Devil himself kneeling before me, then I have nothing to say to him. And if he is God? Well, there’s more chance of me being Moses than there is of this fella being God. That much is for certain. He don’t have the stature. Not by a long way.
Oh, he looks smart enough. I get a good look at him as he kneels over a tiny silver pot, pouring water from a kettle that he takes from the fire to make tea. He dresses like a gentleman, but his eyes are far too busy in his head. And they’re little. He keeps ’em wide open and they dart about like he can’t decide on any one thing to look at. Makes me think he’s the kind of man who ain’t got full control of his nerves.
He wears a brown suit that would fit a slimmer man, and though he has no waistcoat he wears a plain shirt with an old silk necktie. The lining of his brown bowler hat has come away at the back and hangs a full inch below the rim.
And then there is his smell. He smells of … well … he smells of many things and none of ’em are fresh, ’cept maybe the sweetness of the liquorice stick he has in his mouth. It’s a relief when he straightens up and walks back over to the mule that still stands a few steps to the side of us, giving me the evil eye.
I lower my head, not wanting to appear confrontational to either of ’em.
‘Go on over to the shade of that tree.’
There’s that voice again. High-pitched. Like a girl, only not a girl. Not ladylike in any way. I see an arc of four trees, only littl’uns, hunched up against the wind that must blow through here most times. They’ve got enough leaves to give me some shelter from the sun, but it ain’t easy to stand with my hands tied behind my back, so I scramble across on my knees till I’m sitting at the foot of a trunk. I can see we are somewhere on a plain, in the lee of a low hill. A brook trickles through the ground behind us, so it’s not exactly desert, though it sure ain’t no hospitable place.
He takes a good long look at me. ‘You ain’t the fella I was expecting. I was told you’d be younger.’
‘That’d be my brother.’
The man crouches down. ‘That’s right, that’s right. That’s what the priest said.’
He puts his face up close to mine and sniffs. He takes hold of the lid under my eye and pulls it down so I can feel the air on my eyeball where it shouldn’t be. I’m holding my breath, but he opens my mouth to look at my teeth, and when I breathe in his face he grimaces. He runs a finger along my gums, then stands, leaving me open-mouthed. ‘How old are you, boy?’ He chews on the liquorice stick and it moves from one side of his mouth to the other. When I hesitate, he slaps my face. ‘I asked you a question.’
‘I’m twelve, sir,’ I say quickly. ‘Close to turning thirteen, I think.’
‘Don’t look it.’ He sniffs. ‘Expect you haven’t been fed much. Expect you haven’t been made to work too hard neither.’
He walks back to his teapot and produces a china cup and saucer from a hinged wooden box that he has on the ground. He pours himself a cup, then sits down in the dirt, lifts it to his lips and drinks, his little finger all cock-a-hoop and dainty. He don’t sip quietly.
I watch him, wondering whether he really could be the Devil. I got a bump on the back of my head, all bruised and tender, which tells me that whatever my fate is, it ain’t gonna be good. But maybe there’s still hope. Maybe this place is some sort of purgatory, the sort of place where I might still be able to influence how things turn out and if it is, I gotta have faith.
I start to pray, out loud, speaking the words of the 27th Psalm, which I know by heart. ‘‘‘The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?”’
The man looks up at me but I ignore him.
‘“When evildoers assail me, uttering slanders against me, my adversaries and foes, they shall stumble and fall.”’
He puts his saucer down i
n the dirt and I bow my head so as not to meet his eye, but I carry on paying testament to the Lord in my darkest hour. ‘“One thing I have asked of the Lord, that I shall seek after”’ – I hear them big boots again – ‘“That I may dwell in the House of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”’
A hand yanks my collar hard, pulling me upright to my knees before the sack comes back over my head. He ties it around my neck with a piece of cord and everything is dark and muffled like it was before and I’m on my knees when he kicks me in the stomach, just like the mule did, kicks me hard when I don’t see it coming. And it hurts like hell.
He jerks the sack close to his mouth. ‘I won’t have your kind preaching at me. Do you hear me, boy? Did you hear what I said?’
But I ain’t saying nothing at all. Not any more. I ain’t saying nothing to no one.
*
In the evening when he takes me from the mule, he lays me down in the dirt and lifts the sacking from my head. I don’t take much interest in where we are. It seems much like it was before, though there ain’t no trees for shelter.
He doesn’t speak to me but crouches close and stares, pleased that I’m miserable, like he’s satisfied if he don’t see the life in my eyes. He gives me water from a tin can. Unscrews the lid and tips it up so that I have to move my mouth to the side to stop the steady stream from falling and being wasted in the dirt. It tastes dirty, like he’s got it from a stream and not from a well. I notice he drinks from a different can to me.
I watch him eat his supper. Mostly I try not to look, but I think he wants me to, cos he makes noises when he eats and if I lift my head he’s always watching me, waiting for me, like he knows what I’m thinking.
‘Expect you’re hungry,’ he says eventually. He comes across and crouches down, lifting the last chunk of bread to my mouth, feeding me as though I’m a horse and he’s scared I’ll nip his fingers. I have to hold the bread in my teeth and chew it at the same time, knowing if I drop it he won’t pick it up.
He stays crouching close. The sun is setting and behind his head the light is fading fast, all tinged at the edges with blues and reds. ‘Where’d you learn your scriptures? Is that from the priest back there?’ I nod. ‘You know a lot of that stuff?’ I nod again. ‘Well, I suggest you forget it. Where you’re going, if you want to pray, you better do it in your head.’
He smiles coldly. ‘You learn to read?’ I nod. ‘Bet you can write too.’ He’s smiling like he knows everything about me. ‘Well, you better forget that too. When we get to town tomorrow, if I hear a word out of you about knowing how to read, I’ll whip you till you’re dead and then I’ll get back on my mule and have Father Mosely give me your brother by way of a refund.’
He walks to the mule and returns with a length of rope and a blanket, ties my feet together and then fastens the loose end of the rope around his own ankle so the two of us are twinned, one to the other. ‘That’s so you don’t get any ideas about running away.’ He unfolds the blanket, lies down upon the ground and pulls it across him, keeping his hat on to sleep.
If he means for me to sleep as well then he’s mistaken, cos I want to kill him for what he just said about Joshua. I want to find a rock and smash his skull in. I want to hold a gun to his head till he cries like a baby, and I never had such wicked thoughts before.
I’m so angry I start slinging questions like they’re stones. ‘Who are you anyway?’ I don’t even care when he lifts his head. ‘Are you meant to be some sort of devil? Is that it? Well, are you?’
Oh, how he laughs at me. That man damn near splits his sides, rolling onto his back and kicking his legs so the rope that joins us tugs at my ankles. ‘Oh my Lord! You as well! I thought you were too clever to believe it, but it seems like I was wrong.’ He sits up in the dust. ‘That other one, the last boy I took, do you know, he thought I was going to eat him for breakfast? He really did.’ He puts a finger to the rim of his bowler. ‘He actually asked if I had horns under this here hat. Can you believe that? Hah!’ He shakes his head in disbelief.
‘Do you mean Billy Fielding? Did you take Billy Fielding, same as you took me?’
He lowers his voice as though the place is full of listening ears. ‘Now it don’t do to name names. That would be unprofessional.’ He points a finger at my eyes to threaten me, but then he smiles sweet as you like. ‘I’m no devil, Samuel. You can rest assured of that. I’m an honest-to-God businessman, a man of some means, and you …’ He takes off his bowler, placing it on the ground beside him, and I spot a folded ten-dollar bill tucked up inside the lining. He slaps a hand across the top of his head to smooth his hair. Finally he points a finger at me. ‘You’re gonna be my payday.’
He lies back down and gathers the blanket across his shoulders, but then he sits up again and leans towards me. ‘I nearly forgot to tell you. Tomorrow is Friday. Now you better remember that day real good, cos from now on that’s gonna be your name.’ He smiles, expecting me to be pleased. ‘Friday. I like the sound of that.’ Then he calls out to me, like we’re standing across from one another in a busy street. ‘I say there, what’s your name, boy?’
I won’t say it. I won’t even open my mouth.
‘I said, what’s your name, boy?’ He cocks his head to one side, waiting to hear me speak. ‘If I have to untie this rope and come to you, you will be sorely sorry. Now, you tell me your name.’
It don’t do to pick fights you can’t win. I learned that at the orphanage. So I lower my eyes and say it. ‘Friday.’
‘What did you say? I couldn’t hear you. I said, “What did you say?”’
A little piece of me dies right then. I can feel it leave me as I raise my voice. ‘Friday. That’s my name.’
There, I said it for him, clear as day – and I ain’t never felt so ashamed.
*
In the morning the man gives me different clothes. He says, ‘Here’s your Woolseys, put ’em on now.’
The trousers and shirt are loose fitting, neither of ’em new except to me. They’re made from a cream-coloured cloth that is rougher than I’m used to.
He hitches my rope to the saddle and lets me walk behind the mule, my hands tied out in front of me. People pass us on the road in wagons and the drivers take a look at us as the town comes into view. I don’t know what it’s called and I don’t ask. It wouldn’t mean much to me anyway. But this town’s bigger than any I’ve been in, and it’s busy. I can feel the life and soul of it as we reach the main thoroughfare where the shopkeepers sweep out the front of their shops and pull awnings over their windows with a rattle of the ironwork.
There are groups of ladies wearing hooped skirts, who stand and chat on the sidewalk with clutch bags on their arms and fancy hats pinned to their heads. I catch snatches of their talk as we walk past, but they don’t notice me at all. They don’t even see me.
We walk on along the main street. A marching band strikes up a tune and processes out from a side road to fall in behind us. We go past a building that has a banner up saying: ‘Enlist Here Today’. My man pulls the donkey to the side of the road to let the band pass, and I go where the donkey goes, I ain’t got a choice, and we stand by the sidewalk, watching the spectacle.
The parade has old men in uniform, blowing on trombones. They’ve got boys on tin drums with grey caps on their heads, some with muskets pushed into their belts, and all the boys have wooden toy rifles slung from their shoulders.
In the next few moments it seems like the whole town empties out onto the sidewalk to watch. People come out of the buildings and stand in the doorways or they open up their windows and lean across the sill to get a better look at what is going on. Some of ’em know the tune the band are playing and they sing along and clap their hands, shouting out the words about a bonnie blue flag with a single star. I don’t know that tune. Anyway, this ain’t got nothing to do with me. I’m only standing here watching it cos I have to.
The band is followed by a regiment of soldiers, about thirty or so, marching in
ranks of three, and they’re young men, proper soldiers, I’d guess, though they sure look untidy with their uniforms all different. They each got a rifle though. And there’s a cannon that they pull on ropes. The metal rims of the wheels make a scrunching sound as they roll across the dirt, and everyone seems mighty proud of that cannon and I think they must’ve polished it up.
A posse of women with bright blue sashes runs right past us, shouting at the men who are watching from the sidewalk, telling ’em to join up, saying all the ladies love a man in uniform. They’re giving out leaflets to anyone who’ll take one and they’re shouting to the fine-looking women on the sidewalk, telling ’em to come and join ’em, saying there’s a cartload of shabby just been delivered that needs stitching into uniforms.
The whole parade goes on up the street and after they’ve passed, the man moves the mule forward and we walk out into the empty road, him in front of us, the mule in the middle and me trailing along behind as before. We turn into a quieter street, away from the main drag, where the sides of the buildings don’t have too many windows. About halfway down we stop at a wooden door and he knocks loudly, giving it two raps with his knuckle. The door opens quickly.
‘Tell Mr Wickham that Gloucester is here. Go on, boy. Go get him. Tell him it’s a matter of some urgency.’
The door closes and a bolt slides back into place. So now I know. My devil has a name and he calls himself Gloucester.
Gloucester turns me around by the wrists and begins to pull and tease the rope, then, once I’m loose, he takes hold of the collar of my shirt in a clenched fist, walks me a few steps to the door and tells me not to move.
By and by a man comes to the door – a gentleman of forty years or so and dressed very smart, his top hat in his hand. He steps outside and takes a good look at both of us, but his eyes stay longer on me.
‘Mr Wickham!’ I can tell from Gloucester’s voice that he doesn’t consider himself the equal of this man. He sounds like he’d be happier on his knees. ‘Good day to you, Mr Wickham. I have someone here for your catalogue, an unexpected arrival on my books. Now, I know that it’s late …’
