by John Boyne
‘A young thief, is it?’ asks the blue, ignoring whoever had offered the lie.
‘There was a young thief,’ said I, trying to brush myself down and wondering how far I’d get if he was to lose his grip for a moment and I was to make a run for it. ‘Tried to make off with the gentleman’s pocket-watch, he did, and only for I nabbed him and called for the blues he’d have had it too. A hero is what I am, only this bloody great mess leapt on me and shoddy well nearly killed me. The thief,’ I added, pointing in a direction that made everyone turn their heads for a moment before looking back at me, ‘ran yonder.’
I looked around, trying to gauge the reaction of the crowd, knowing full well that they were not stupid enough to be taken in by such a lie. But I was trying to think on my feet and this is what I came up with on the spur of the moment.
‘An Irish fella, he was,’ I added then, for the Irish were hated in Portsmouth on account of their dirty ways and their filthy manners and the habit they had of procreating with their sisters and so were easy to blame for anything that went on outside the straight and legal. ‘Babbling away in a language I didn’t understand, he was, and him with the ginger hair and the big buggy eyes as well.’
‘But if that’s the case,’ said the blue, towering over me, standing up so tall on his toes that I thought he might take flight, ‘what might this be, then?’ He reached into my pocket and extracted the French gentleman’s timepiece and I stared at it, the eyes fairly popping out of my head now in surprise.
‘The scamp,’ I cried, a note of outrage racing into my tone. ‘The vandal and miscreant! Oh, I am done for! He put it there, I swears it, he put it there before he ran. They do it, you see, when they know they can’t escape. Try to blame another. What need have I of a watch anyway? My time’s my own!’
‘Save your lies,’ said the blue, shaking me again for good effect and placing his hands about me in such a way that I swear I was giving him the motions. ‘Let’s just take a look and see what else you have secreted about your rascally person. Been thieving all the morning long, I’d warrant.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ I shouted. ‘I am slandered. Hear me now!’ I appealed to the crowd around me and what do you think happened next, only the simpleton woman came up and stuck her tongue in my ear! I leaped back out of her way, for the Saviour alone knew where that tongue had been and I didn’t want a taste of her clap.
‘Back there now, Nancy,’ said the blue and she stepped away, sticking that same filthy tongue of hers out at me now with an air of defiance. What I wouldn’t have given for a freshly sharpened knife at that moment and I might have had her tongue from her mouth in a trice.
‘Wants hanging,’ shouted one man, a fellow who I knew for a fact spent every penny of his earnings from his fruit stalls on the gin and had no business laying accusations at me.
‘Leave him with us, sir,’ shouted another, a lad who’d known a stretch or two inside himself and should have taken my side on account of it. ‘Leave him with us and we’ll teach him a thing or two about what’s belonging to him and what’s belonging to the rest of us.’
‘Constable, please . . . if I may?’ said a more refined voice, and then who should make his way through the gathered crowd but the French gentleman, him as had every right to condemn my soul to eternal damnation but who I now recognized as the one who had tried to stop my annihilation under the mound of stinking carcasses not five minutes before. The crowd, sensing a gentleman, parted as if he was Moses and they were the Red Sea. Even the blue loosened his grip on me a little and stared. That’s what a smart voice and a fine greatcoat will do for you and I resolved at that moment to be the possessor of both one day.
‘Good morning, sir,’ said the blue now, bringing his voice to a posher place now, the dirty dog, trying to equal the gentleman. ‘And are you the victim of this here miscreant?’
‘Constable, I believe I can vouch for the boy,’ he answered, sounding as if the whole mess was his fault really and not my own. ‘My pocket-watch was inauspiciously placed about my person and in imminent danger of falling to the ground, where no master craftsman would have been able to repair the damage done to it. I believe the boy was merely taking it to hand it back. We had been engaged in a conversation about literature.’
There was a silence for a moment and I have to admit that I almost believed his words myself. Could it be that I was as much a victim of this unhappy circumstance as anyone? Should I be released without further assault on my character and good name and perhaps a letter of commendation from a person in a position of authority? I looked to the blue, who considered it for a moment, but the crowd, sensing an end to their sport and a denial of due course and proper punishment, took up the cudgel in his place.
‘It’s a sham, Constable,’ shouted one, spitting the words out so hard that I had to duck to swerve away from his nasty gob. ‘I saw him with my own eyes putting the watch in that there pocket of his.’
‘Saw him, did you?’
‘And it’s not the first time either,’ roared another. ‘He had five apples off me not four days ago and I didn’t see a penny for them.’
‘I wouldn’t eat your apples,’ I shouted back at him, for it was a terrible lie. I’d only taken four apples and a pomegranate on the side for a pudding. ‘They’ve weevils in them, every one.’
‘Oh, don’t let him say it!’ shouted the woman beside him, his old hag of a wife, and her with a face on her that would send you cross-eyed. ‘Ours is a going concern,’ she added, appealing to the gathered masses with arms outstretched. ‘A going concern!’
‘That boy’s a bad ’un,’ called another now and they sensed blood, that was all. You don’t want to get a crowd against you at a moment like that. As it happened I was almost glad the blue was there for had he not been, they might have torn me limb from limb, French gentleman or no French gentleman.
‘Constable, please,’ said the very same now, stepping closer and taking the watch back, I noticed, as that blue would surely have pocketed it himself in a heartbeat. ‘I’m sure the boy could be released on his own recognizance. Do you regret your actions, child?’ he asked me and this time I didn’t bother to correct his use of the word.
‘Do I regret them?’ I asked. ‘As God is my witness, I regret them all. I don’t know what came over me in fact. The devil, no doubt. But I repent in honour of Christmas Day. I repent of all my sins and swear that I will go forth from this place and sin no more. What God has joined together, let no man tear asunder,’ I added, remembering what few of the Good Words I had ever heard and joining them together to put my devotion on display to all.
‘He repents, Constable,’ pleaded the French gentleman, opening his hands wide now in a gesture of magnanimity.
‘But he admitted the theft!’ roared a man whose stomach was so big that a cat could have rested on it and got a good sleep. ‘Take him away! Lock him up! Whip him soundly! He has confessed the crime!’
The blue shook his head and looked at me. Between his two front teeth were the remains of what I believed to be a stew dinner; just looking at it gave me the revulsions. ‘You are apprehended,’ he informed me then in a serious tone. ‘And you must pay recompense for your abominable crime.’
The crowd cheered in support of their freshly crowned hero and turned as one when the sound of a carriage was heard pulling in behind the French gentleman’s own fleet and, what was it, only the blue’s brougham. My heart sank when I saw another blue at the reins of it and in a trice he was down from his spot and on his feet, unlocking the back doors.
‘Come along, now,’ said the first one in a booming voice for all to hear. ‘And your judge will be waiting for you at the end of our journey, so you may start to tremble in anticipation of his magnificence.’ I swear he should have been a sham-actor on the stage.
The jig was up and I knew it then but I dug my heels in firmly to the gaps between the cobbles nevertheless. For the first time I did sincerely regret my actions but not on the grounds that I had c
ommitted an error in my personal morality, such as it was. Rather, because I had committed one too many of the same in the past, and even though this particular blue didn’t know me, there were others as would where I was going and I was only too aware that the punishment might not entirely fit the crime. I had but one recourse left to me.
‘Sir,’ I shouted, turning to the Frenchman, even as the blue started pulling me in the direction of my hearse. ‘Sir, help me, please. Take pity. It was an accident, I swears it. I had too much sugar for my breakfast, that was all, and it gave me ideas.’
He looked at me and I could see that he was thinking about it. On the one hand, he must have been recalling the pleasant conversation we had been engaged in not ten minutes before and my abundant knowledge of the land of China, not to mention my ambitions towards book-writing, of which he was wholly in approval. On the other hand, he had been robbed, plain and simple, and what’s wrong is wrong.
‘Constable, I decline to press the charge,’ he shouted finally and I gave an almighty cheer, such as a Christian might have offered when Caligula, the dirty savage, gave him the thumbs-up in the Coliseum and let him live to fight once more.
‘I am saved!’ I roared, pulling myself loose from the blue for a moment, but he took me back in hand again quick enough.
‘Not a bit of it,’ he said. ‘You were witnessed in the act and must pay or you’ll be left here to rob again.’
‘But, Constable,’ cried the French gentleman, ‘I absolve him of his crime!’
‘And who are you, the Lord Jesus Christ?’ asked the blue, which made the crowd erupt in laughter, and he turned in surprise at their commendation but his eyes lit up, thrilled with himself that they thought him a fine fellow and an entertainer to boot. ‘He’ll be taken to the magistrate and from there to the gaol, I dare say, to pay for the gruesome act, the little deviant.’
‘It’s monstrous—’ came the retort, but the blue was having none of it.
‘If you’ve something to say, then you can say it to the magistrate,’ he offered as a parting shot, walking towards the carriage now and dragging me behind him.
I fell to the ground to make things more difficult for him, but he continued to haul me along the sodden street and I can picture the scene in my own head still, my arse going bumpity-bumpity-bump over the cobbles as I was wrenched in the direction of the carriage doors. It hurt; I didn’t know why in hell I was doing it but I knew that I wouldn’t stand up and make his job any easier. I’d rather have eaten a beetle.
‘Help me, sir,’ I cried as I was thrown inside the carriage and the doors were slammed in my face, so close that they nearly took my nose off. I gripped the bars in front of me and made the most pleading face that I could muster, a picture of innocence disbelieved. ‘Help me and I’ll do whatever it is you ask of me. I’ll wax your boots every day for a month! I’ll polish your buttons till they shine!’
‘Take him off!’ shouted the crowd and some of them even dared to throw rotten vegetables in my direction, the scuts. The horses lifted their hoofs and off we went on our merry way, me in the back wondering what fate awaited me when I met the magistrate, who knew me only too well from past acquaintanceship to show any compassion.
The last thing I saw as we turned the corner was a picture of the French gentleman, stroking his chin as if thinking what to do for the best now that I was in the hands of the law. He lifted his pocket-watch to check the time . . . and what do you think happened next? It only slipped from his grip and fell to the ground below. Easy to see that the glass would smash from the force of it too. I threw up my hands in disgust and settled down to see whether I could find a bit of comfort at the very least on the journey, but there was little to be had in the back of one of those contraptions.
They’re not designed for consolation.
3
SWEET JESUS AND HIS BLESSED mother, if life isn’t difficult enough, the blues made sure to ride the horses over every hole in the ground on the way to the magistrate’s court and the carriage was up and down like a bride’s nightdress from the moment we left Portsmouth. It was all right for them; they had a soft flush of cushion beneath their arses, but what did I have? Nothing but the hard metal that served as a seat for those who have been taken against their will. (And what of the falsely accused? I wondered. Made to suffer such indignities!) I buried myself deeply in the corner of the transport and tried to maintain a grip of the bars in the hope that they might hold me still, for the alternative was to be unable to sit down for the week that followed, but it was no use. They did it to taunt me, I swear they did, the scuts. And finally, when we reached the centre of Portsmouth and I thought this ordeal might be drawing to an end at last, bugger me if the carriage didn’t drive on, directly past the closed doors of justice, and forward on to the lumpy road ahead.
‘Here,’ I cried, banging like good-oh on the ceiling of the carriage. ‘Here, you up top!’
‘Quiet in there or there’ll be a thrashing in it for you,’ shouted the second blue, the one who held the reins, not the one who seized me from my honest bit of thievery that morning.
‘But you’ve driven too far,’ I shouted back at him. ‘You’ve gone right past the courts.’
‘That familiar with them, then, are you?’ he called back, laughing. ‘I might have known you’d have seen the inside of the courthouse on many a past afternoon.’
‘And am I not to see it today?’ I asked and I wasn’t too proud to admit that I started to feel a little nervous when I realized that we were leaving the town entirely. I’d heard stories about boys who had been taken off by the blues and were never seen again; all sorts happened to them. Unspeakable things. But I wasn’t that bad a boy, I thought. I’d done nothing to deserve such a fate. Added to this was my knowledge that Mr Lewis would be expecting me back soon enough with the morning’s spoils, and if I didn’t come there’d be hell to pay.
‘The Portsmouth magistrate’s away for the week,’ came the reply and this time he sounded friendly enough and I thought that maybe they were just driving me out of the town and were going to deposit me head-first in a ditch somewhere and encourage me to ply my trade somewhere far from their patch, a proposition I was not opposed to in principle. ‘Up in London, if you can believe it. Being given an honour by the king. For services rendered to the laws of the land.’
‘Mad Jack?’ I asked, for I was only too familiar with that old scut of a magistrate from one or two dealings with him in the past. ‘What’s the king gone and done that for? Ain’t there no one around who’s earned a gong?’
‘You hold your tongue back there,’ said the blue, snapping at me. ‘Or there’ll be an extra charge on the list.’
I sat back then and decided to keep my own counsel for the time being. Considering the road we were taking, I imagined we were headed for Spithead; on my last-but-one apprehension a year earlier (on another charge of larceny, I’m ashamed to admit), I was taken to Spithead to pay my penance. On that occasion, I’d stood before an evil creature by the name of Mr Henderson, who had a mole in the middle of his forehead and a mouth full of rotten teeth, and he’d made remarks to me about the character of boys my age as if I was a representative for the whole shoddy lot of them. He’d sentenced me to a birching for my troubles and my arse had stung like a field of nettles for a week afterwards and I’d prayed that I would never come before him again. But looking out of the carriage I was sure that this was the very direction in which we were headed, and when it settled in my mind I took fright within and I was glad I’d allowed myself to go bumpity-bumpity-bump over the cobbles and been thrown around this carriage too as there was more than a middling chance my arse would be so numb by the time I reached the courthouse that I wouldn’t feel a thing when they pulled my britches down and whipped me raw.
‘Here,’ I shouted, moving to the other side of the carriage now and calling out to the first blue, since we had established a relationship of sorts during the apprehension. ‘Here, blue,’ said I. ‘We’re no
t going to Spithead, are we? Tell me we’re not.’
‘How can I tell you we’re not when the fact is that we are?’ he asked with a bark of a laugh, as if he’d make a fine joke.
‘We never are!’ said I, in a quieter voice this time as I mulled over the consequences of this, but he heard me nonetheless.
‘We certainly are, my young rascal, and you will be dealt with there in a manner befitting young thieves such as yourself. Are you aware that there are certain countries in the world where he who takes the possessions of another without permission has his hand lacerated at the wrist? Is this a punishment you find yourself deserving of?’
‘Not here, though,’ I shouted defiantly. ‘Not here! Scare me, will you? That kind of thing doesn’t happen here. This is a civilized country and we treat our decent, honest thieves with respect.’
‘Where, then?’
‘Abroad,’ said I, sitting back in the carriage, deciding to have no further conversation with either one of them, the ignorant pups. ‘China, for one.’
Little more was said after that, but for the rest of the journey I could hear those two halfwits cackling away like a pair of old hens on a door stoop and I’m sure I heard the sound of a vessel of beer being passed between their grubby paws, which would also account for the fact that we slowed down halfway to Spithead and one of the blues – the driver – stopped the carriage and stepped off to empty his bladder by the side of the road. No shame had he either, for he turned right in my direction in the middle of it and tried to aim his emissions through the bars at me, which made the other blue almost fall off the carriage in a hysteric. I wished he would as he might have cracked his skull into the bargain and that would have been a pretty picture.
‘Get away, you filthy scut,’ I shouted at him, retreating further back into the carriage, out of his line of fire, but he just laughed and finished his business before putting his whistle away and dribbling the remains down the front of his pants, so little respect did he have for himself or his uniform. Blues are a force unto themselves, everyone knows that, but they’re a rum lot too. I never met one I didn’t want to kick.
