by John Creasey
‘No doubt he meant those who work for him,’ Timothy said dryly. ‘What was the result of this Enquiry?’
‘In some ways, good. Hogarth, long a friend of Henry Fielding’s executed his famous engraving Gin Lane, and that helped to bring about the new Act compelling all who sell gin to do so through alehouses, under licence. But the law has to be strictly enforced and Fielding needs helpers without being able to pay for them.’
‘James,’ Timothy said after a pause, ‘you know, don’t you, that thief-takers are held very low in public esteem, despite Fielding’s defence of some.’
‘Yes,’ James answered, ‘I do.’
Neither of the young men spoke until Timothy asked abruptly, ‘Will you come with me tonight?’
‘Where to?’ asked James in surprise.
‘For some feminine company and frolics. You need to free your mind of the horrors you have seen and the weighty problems you are considering. This place to which I would take you is not a brothel or a grogshop, it is a house, well run and—’
‘I would prefer to go and see some of my old friends,’ James replied, not letting Timothy finish. ‘You go to your ladies, Tim. Call me a prude if you like but certainly I am not in the mood for frolics.’
‘That I can see.’ Smiling, Tim asked in the gentlest of voices, ‘Have you ever slept with a woman, James?’
James flushed a dusky red. ‘No,’ he replied shortly.
‘I will tell you this,’ said Tim earnestly, ‘before I would be happy at your marrying a sister of mine I would want proof that you had taken lessons in how to treat a lady!’ Laughter as well as seriousness showed in his eyes as he went on. ‘But I must admit there is evidence to suggest that some men are born celibate. Are you ready to leave?’
‘Yes, at once.’
‘I will walk with you as far as Long Acre,’ Timothy said as he placed a coin on the table and then led the way out. ‘And I will show you this haunt of vice where I shall pleasure myself. Why’ - he glanced around him - ‘it is nearly dark. Are you not afraid of footpads, Jamey?’
‘I must confess thought of them causes me some uneasiness,’ James Marshall admitted. ‘But nothing to the uneasiness I should feel were I to accompany you this evening.’
‘Are you sure you won’t come with me?’ Timothy asked again.
‘I am going to see the Reverend Sebastian Smith,’ replied James. ‘Are you sure you won’t come with me?’
James walked alone along Long Acre and past the site where St. Hilary’s had once been. Already the walls of another building, not a church, were going up and great piles of bricks and wooden scaffolding were piled where the pulpit had stood. Buildings on the other side of the street had been demolished and there were great gaps which showed the now starlit sky. Every so often a horse whinnied but there was little traffic, all was in darkness. Shadows at corners and in doorways seemed to move and sounds that he thought were muffled footsteps were not far behind him. At some doorways flares gave a meagre light but most of the time the only break in the darkness was from lighted windows. He approached the spot where he had once worked and stood stock-still - astounded.
The old building was not there!
In its place was a taller one, four storeys high at least, with six shops on either side of a high arched passage. Over this archway, protected by an iron grille, was the largest flare James had seen that night, its flames illuminating an announcement on the huge board fastened to the wall above it similar to that one he had already seen on the horse cart:
Ebenezer Morgan & Sons
Always the Highest Class in Groceries
. . . and on the bottom line that almost unbelievable statement:
103/109 Long Acre, and 9 Establishments Elsewhere in London
James listened, and there was now no doubt at all that he heard footsteps approaching stealthily on the other side of the road. When he judged the moment right, he quieted his thumping heart and spun around, calling out sharply, ‘Who is that? Who follows me?’
To his relief he saw only one person, dark against the shadows, who stopped the instant he turned and called. On the same instant, footsteps sounded from the archway and a guard came running, tall pole in hand. The man behind turned and ran for his life, while the watchman slackened his pace and approached James.
‘What manner of fool are you to walk alone at night?’ he demanded in a gruff voice.
He was nearly as broad as he was tall, massive enough to fill the archway, and James knew at once that he was Tom Harris. Tom, one of the finest constables John Furnival had ever had, working as a night guard for Morgan!
‘Well, speak up, or how shall I know you haven’t come to steal?’ Harris growled.
‘And if I do speak up, Tom, how will you judge whether I am telling the truth?’ James asked.
‘You know me better than I know you,’ Harris said suspiciously.
‘I doubt that, Thomas Harris,’ James replied, much warmth in his voice. ‘You will know me well once you have looked back to the days when I was a young boy always at your side.’
‘James Marshall!’ Tom Harris cried in sudden recognition. ‘By all the gold in the Bank of England, ‘tis Jamey!’
They met in the middle of the road and clasped each other firmly before Harris back away and looked searchingly at the younger man. Then questions poured from his lips. How was James’s mother? How were Beth and Henrietta? How was the old justice himself? As his excitement quieted Tom showed how much he had aged, how lines were carved in the broad face, how far the hair had receded from his forehead.
At last he said with great reluctance, ‘I must go on my rounds, Jamey, and that will take an hour at least, but I can come back here for a while afterward. Will you have time to wait?’
‘I would rather use the time by seeing the Reverend Smith.’
‘You’ll find him in the same house; he is allowed to live there until the place is knocked down as the church has been,’ Tom answered flatly. ‘Will you try to come back in an hour, say?’
‘I will come back,’ James promised.
As he walked along the road he was puzzled. First, why was Tom doing this and not working for the Fieldings? Second, why had his tone been so flat and troubled at talk of the Reverend Smith? And third, why hadn’t he inquired after John Furnival the Fourth, now ten years old? It must have been an oversight; what else could it have been?
The rectory of St. Hilary’s was at the back of the church site, in a narrow lane which had once had fields all about it but now was surrounded by houses. Outside the front gate a torch flickered unsteadily. James opened the gate, having to push hard and making it squeak on the gravel of the path before he could get through. Another dim light showed on the stained-glass fanlight above the doorway. He rang the pull-type bell and heard it clang but no one came. He pulled again, surprised at the chill which had crept into the night air.
Suddenly he heard Sebastian Smith’s voice booming in the hallway. ‘That will be another of them. Can we get no rest?’ His footsteps sounded and he opened the door abruptly, speaking before he could see who was on the doorstep. ‘I can’t help you, I wish I could, but I’ve nothing in the church poor box, and the constable keeps the parish box. You’ll find him at Bow Street.’
There was a note of exasperation, perhaps of helplessness, in the clergyman’s voice, and he kept a tight hold on the door, as if ready to slam it in the caller’s face at the slightest provocation. Shadows moved in his study behind him. It was not Sebastian’s wife there, as James’s mother had written in a letter that she had died of smallpox two years ago.
James was aware of the intense gaze from the little man when suddenly Smith cried out in a very different tone, ‘’Tis James Marshall, in the name of goodness. Jamey! Come in, lad, come in! You’ve grown so much I didn’t recognise you. Come in, come in!’ He clasped James’s arm, drew him inside and slammed the door. ‘’Tis not often I have a welcome visitor by night, ’tis always the poor come to beg, and how thei
r ranks grow thicker. We poor clergymen are always their target. We are supposed to be able to make manna fall from heaven, and if we fail them we get cursed for trying!’ He ushered James into the old, familiar room, with its Queen Anne desk, religious samplers on the walls, the row of churchwardens, the huge jar of tobacco. ‘Mary, who do you think has come to see us? Jamey Marshall of all the people on earth and in heaven!’
A young woman rose from a chair. She held a needle and thread in her right hand and in her other hand was one of her father’s surplices. High on the wall above, two candles burned to give her the light she needed for mending, and at the same time showed her face vividly; it had changed from that of the awkward girl he remembered, full of life but with nothing extraordinary to commend her. Now, she was beautiful; and for a measurable time all he could do was stand and stare at her.
14: MARY
It seemed to James Marshall that, as their gaze crossed, some message passed between them, or some spark of understanding, perhaps a sense of shock. As he was amazed at the change the years had wrought in her, so might she be at the change in him. The moments could only have been few. Sebastian Smith hardly seemed to have stopped moving and talking; perhaps he had not, perhaps James had been blinded to all else but Mary.
‘Get some coffee, Mary - you’ll partake of coffee, Jamey? And sit down, my boy. My! You’ve turned into a man in a few short years - hasn’t he, Mary? And the very image of his father, the spitting image! Mary! Some coffee, my dear!’
‘Hullo, Mary,’ James said, and his voice sounded strange in his own ears.
‘Good evening, James.’
‘I’m very glad to see you again.’
‘It is a pleasure to see you.’
‘Coffee, Mary!’ Smith almost spluttered in eager insistence. ‘Do you want our guest to stand up all the time he’s here? Will you sup with us, Jamey?’
‘No thank you. But coffee will be very welcome.’
‘Then bring him one of your pasties, daughter. Show him that some Londoners can cook; not all the good food stays in the country where ’tis grown. Sit down, lad, sit down!’
Mary looked straight ahead as she went out, as if not wanting to see him as she passed. She was tall now for a woman, and the top of her head must come at least up to his eyes. Her father cleared a leather slung-seated chair of a mass of papers, turned his own chair from the crowded desk, and stretched up for a churchwarden which was hanging nearby. He groped about at the bottom of the huge tobacco jar and began to fill the blackened bowl; and he talked all the time, asking questions but giving James no chance to answer.
The only other sound was the clatter of a horseman, riding fast, and Sebastian Smith said, ‘That will be one of Fielding’s men, be sure of that, going to head some villain off. There is a short cut through to Covent Garden piazza from here now that the old houses are down, did you know that? How long is it since you were here, Jamey? Don’t tell me, don’t tell me! It must be all of four years! How old are ye now, lad? Don’t tell me, don’t tell me!’
He paused and consulted the heavy beams of the ceiling, as if he were praying. But the answer came not from him but from Mary as she entered the room carrying a tray.
‘He is twenty-two, Father. And it is three years since he was here, but four since I have seen him.’
‘Be sure if she says so, she is right,’ declared Smith. ‘I never knew such a girl for remembering. In fact, she is my memory these days; my own is failing fast.’
He put the unlit pipe down while James watched Mary place the tray on a table within reach of all three of them; steam rose from the coffee and from a pitcher of milk, and there were three pasties as golden-brown and appetizing as any his mother had ever cooked.
As he drank and ate, he answered all their questions about his family, his life in Germany and at Oxford, but was vague as to his hopes. He had wanted to ask things of them both, but was now reluctant to do so, for clearly there had been changes in this household. At least two fine pieces of furniture had disappeared since his last visit. Was the nearly empty tobacco jar also symptomatic of a change in Smith’s fortunes? And the clothes he was wearing were patched, whilst Mary was mending a garment which had the faint brown shade which years so often gave to black cloth. She sat in the corner sewing while the two men finished coffee.
Out of the blue, her father said, ‘You aren’t a blind man, James; you must see that all is not as well with us as it should be. Don’t say you’d noticed nothing; there’s no need to study my feelings, lad. Since I threw in my lot with John Wesley much has gone wrong for me. The Bishop frowned upon my association from the beginning, and the more successful Wesley became the more bitter the opposition from within the Church. St. Hilary’s was full of beetle and dry rot, ’tis true, but any other church would have been saved. Instead, they built a new one a mile away. And most of my people lived in the houses here which are now pulled down, and many are old and cannot come back to me.’
‘But surely the living—’ began James.
‘’Twas always a very poor living here, James, supplemented by one or two steadfast believers, of whom one was Ebenezer Morgan. Ebenezer has endowed the new church on one condition: that a new parson is given the living. I’ll have none then.’
‘But what will you do?’ James found it hard to utter the question.
‘I shall become one of Wesley’s preachers. Blessed be to God their number is increasing. And I can have all London as my parish. I shall live with friends while I am in a particular part of London helping to establish a congregation, and I shall no doubt be comfortable. It will be strange but my heart dictates this course.’
James thought in alarm: Then what of Mary? He glanced towards her, but her eyes were cast down at her sewing.
Sebastian Smith was saying, ‘The truth is that absolutely everything has changed and there are times when I am very bitter. Have you ever known me to turn away the poor? These days I have to, and I put a hard face on it until I grow hard of heart. I never knew your stepfather refuse to help, lad, but Henry Fielding, good though his heart is, hasn’t the money.’ He paused a moment, while James looked at him in silence, then banged a clenched fist on the table. ‘What happens, James? The law leaves its handling to parish officers and vestrymen who hoard as much as they can to stuff themselves and their cronies with a great feast at Christmas and at Easter. Why, ’tis wickedness itself. In John Furnival’s day ‘twas not so noticeable about here but it was terrible in other parts of London and the nearer towns. How is he, d’you say? Is there any hope of his coming back?’
James had a swift mental picture of the huge figure in his special chair that he could propel for short distances himself by means of cogwheels, but always he had to be helped in and out of the chair for the closet or the bedroom.
James shook his head slowly.
Footsteps sounded in the alley and as Sebastian Smith rose resignedly, as if knowing that they would be those of yet more destitute people coming for help, James rose with him. ‘Stay, lad, ‘tis none of your affair,’ Smith said.
‘At least let me give you this to help them.’ James had two half guineas and some pennies in his purse and he shook them onto the palm of his hand.
With great care Smith took all but two of the pennies but did not touch the gold pieces. As he left the room James moved closer to Mary and he raised his voice a little over a banging door to ask, ‘Mary, what are you going to do?’
‘I propose to secure for myself a post as housekeeper,’ Mary replied promptly.
‘Is it all settled?’ he demanded.
‘Yes, I think so. My father has yet to give his final approval but there is little choice. The family is a respectable one and there are five young children. No doubt the work will be hard, but’ - she smiled - ‘I am used to hard work.’
Voices sounded from along the hall; then the door closed and Sebastian Smith’s footsteps drew near again. He called, ‘I’ll be back very soon. Don’t run away, Jamey!’ There was a hin
t of the old spirit in his voice as he hurried towards the rear of the house.
‘Do I know the family you are to serve?’ James asked.
‘I think it most unlikely,’ Mary replied. ‘They are by name Weygalls, Paul and Mathilda Weygalls. Mr. Weygalls is a merchant in Covent Garden. At one time he worked for Ebenezer Morgan but he was affluent enough to begin a business of his own. He is not only a grocer but an apothecary, and he also supplies surgical instruments to doctors.’ She stretched out her left hand, and when James gripped it she said, ‘Don’t look so forlorn, Jamey. I shall be well cared for and content.’
‘I feel as if I’ve found a jewel only to lose it,’ James told her. He felt deeply distressed.
‘You are very gallant, sir!’
‘I feel as gallant as a clodhopper! Mary, can you delay a while?’
‘Not more than a day or two,’ she replied, ‘and although my father makes a great fuss of giving or withholding his approval, he must, in fact, give it. One week from today this house will be demolished - yes, as soon as that! Father can live with his friends although it will be hard for him not to have a home of his own. I cannot inflict myself on others, there being none on whom I would even wish to! And such posts as the Weygalls offer are few and far between. I might go half a year without finding another, and’ - her eyes glowed with merriment - ‘you would not have me resort to the streets, would you?’
James remembered playing with her and her brothers and sisters as a child. Now Mary looked at and accepted the world as it was, had weighed up all the alternatives and made her choice. Why did she not marry? It was on the tip of his tongue to ask but a door banged: Sebastian Smith was coming back.
James moved farther away from her and then said urgently, ‘Delay the decision, Mary. I beg you to.’
