Jack Maggs

by Peter Carey

  You want me to fetch Tom so he can hold you still?

  Now I am going to tell you something which you may think unlikely—I imagined Sophina being beaten much as I had been.

  You want Tom to come and look at you like this?

  I did not see my beloved until the bright light of day came to the kitchen, and then she appeared, standing at the open door, and I—recently released by Tom and now sitting at the table drinking tea—looked up at her.

  Her face was wan. Her hand was resting on her pinny. When she caught my eyes, she turned away and walked into our room.

  I leaped up but Tom laid his hand on my shoulder.

  —Now leave her be, you dirty little swine.

  Still I would have gone to her, but he took me by the arm and, by virtue of his superior strength, was able to detain me at his pleasure.

  —You come with me, Mr Mutt-sucker, said Tom, and thereupon did take me down through the house, down through the horrid little plain room, out towards the privy and the thistles to the brick wall, then along the little dirt track beside the wall, up and over a collapsing drain, and round the end of the wall. And here the smell was very bad—all kinds of excrement and rottenness.

  Here Tom forced me to stoop and kneel beside the little drain as it pushed its way under the cheese shop. He kept me pinned, jerking my arm back a little now and then to remind me of the pain, and all the while he poked into the filth with a stick.

  —Look here, he said.

  I feared he meant to push me into the cess pit, and so was undefended against the real assault.

  Thus, I looked.

  —See, said Tom, it looks like a toad.

  There lay our son—the poor dead mite was such a tiny thing. I could have held him in my hand. And on his queerly familiar little face, a cruel and dreadful cut.

  Cannot write more at this time.

  P.S. Went to sleep and woke to find Oates with hand familiarly on my knee. Says he, were you dreaming, Jack Maggs?

  I told him, no, I weren’t.

  That were a lie—the Phantom above-mentioned had appeared to me. I saw It sitting opposite me in the coach. Yellow hair, long side whiskers, blue frock coat with gold buttons.

  I said to It, is it you?

  It replied, yes it was. Then It laid its hand upon my head and the hand so cold it burned me. I cried out, and woke to find the coach filled with strangers.

  We gallop through the endless night, eleven miles the hour and candles sputtering.

  66

  IT WAS BARELY SUN-UP when they came to the crown of Burlip Hill, and all of Gloucester could be seen rising above a light low mist in the great dish of the Vale. The coach stopped, and the guard and driver entered into earnest consultation, at the conclusion of which it was suggested that the ladies and gentlemen might like to view the road ahead. If you yourself have viewed Burlip Hill, you will understand why, at half past five of a spring morning, Jack and Tobias and their fellow passengers decided to abandon the comfort of the coach and walk in ankle-deep mud down the road while the True Briton descended with all its locked brakes screaming against the wheels.

  The slippery surface of Burlip Hill muddied the backside of more than one passenger, but Maggs impatiently galloped the slope towards his promised Thief-taker. It was, he observed, as pretty a scene as you would see in all of England—the land divided by hedges into fields and orchards, and the whole picture, with the Cathedral in the middle and the Morvan Hills of Wales in the distance, “was worth the price of twice the mud.”

  Of course, the ruffian was excited. His eyes were bright and everywhere about him. Twice he sneezed, loudly, and blew his nose like a trumpet at the dawn. Even as he loped down the hill he carried his three wrapped parcels—mirror, lemons, paper—as though the Thief-taker were ready to receive him at the bottom of the hill.

  The writer, now contemplating his imminent disgrace, was in a darker mood entirely. He had in truth never met this Thief-taker. He had no address for him, only Dr Eliotson’s assurance that messages left at the Bull would reach him. Eliotson, although perfectly respectable, was also given to both vagueness and naivety. It was a foolish and dangerous position he had placed himself in.

  When the coach arrived in Southgate Street, it was Jack who found out where the Bull Inn was. He set off towards the Cross, carrying his parcels before him. Tobias—known for his brisk and energetic walk—was forced to skip to keep the pace.

  Maggs’s unbuttoned oil-skin, that garment he referred to as his Great Joseph, floated behind him like a cape as he strode the streets of Gloucester, past Mercer’s Entry, and down into Bull Lane where they found a very decent-looking little inn with a sign proclaiming ENTERTAINMENT FOR HORSE AND MAN. It being so early in the morning, the tap room was empty, and there were chairs on tables, and the smell of soap fighting with the stale odours of the pipe and brandy bottle. The sound of pouring liquid, however, gave away the whereabouts of the landlord who was down behind the bar, seated on a three-legged stool, filling a line of bottles from a cask.

  He was a narrow man of less than middle age, with a long hard face and a little slit of a mouth that was not hidden by his beard. He had the poached-egg eyes of a man who enjoyed the stuff he sold, and these eyes, blood-shot and a little yellow in the whites, considered Jack Maggs with some considerable astonishment.

  “Jod’s blood,” said he.

  “Now ain’t this a treat!” said Maggs in a tone that seemed very jovial.

  “I don’t owe you nothing, Jack.”

  “I never said you did, George Conklin.”

  George Conklin looked sharply and briefly at Tobias, and returned his attention to Jack Maggs. “I’m Herbert Holt.” He hesitated. “We are settled on that business. I don’t owe you nothing.”

  “Aye, we’re square, mate,” said Maggs who now turned to survey the tap room: and a very neat and prosperous tap room it was, decorated with all manner of brass gew-gaws, and Toby jugs. It was the sort of house, Tobias felt, in which one would see solicitors and merchants gather to discuss their affairs, where you might expect to see a judge, still gowned and wigged, come to sit by the fire with his cheese and claret.

  “If we’re square, why’re you looking for me?”

  “I ain’t.”

  The landlord, having accepted this with obvious scepticism, now transferred his attention to Jack’s three parcels. “If you been talking to the silver again, I retired. I’m sorry, Jack. Don’t take it personal. I sell nothing here but what is up and up.”

  “We’re both gentlemen then, George.”

  “Herbert,” he corrected.

  There was then a longish period of silence while the landlord frankly appraised his visitor’s attire. “I wouldn’t wear a red waistcoat, Jack,” he said at last. “Not in your position. A red waistcoat is going to catch the eye. It is like a rule of nature, that it is the poisonous things that got the stripe of red upon them.”

  “Bullshit, George.”

  “Herbert.”

  “Herbert, do you know a cove named Partridge?”

  The long-faced man’s mouth contracted. Silence.

  “You know him?”

  “Aye. Wilf Partridge. He who found the missing Duke. I knew him when he were a hedge creeper in Kent.”

  “They say he can find any cove in England once he sets his mind to it.”

  “They?” The landlord shrugged. “They say also he is a witch, or at least is married one.”

  “But you know him?” asked Tobias. “He is nearby?”

  Herbert Holt glanced at Tobias Oates and then looked away. He bent and collected half a dozen bottles of spirits and silently stoppered them. “I’ll get you the Private Room, Jack,” he said at last. “But you’ll not be staying in the house, and you’ll use the back door when you leave. No, no need to pay me.”

  “Very generous, Herbert.”

  “Now you and your mate, listen to me,” said Herbert. “This Private Room was given for a meeting of the Wanderers’ Soci
ety, and that won’t matter for the morning, but if you’re still there at noon time they’ll be none too happy. They wouldn’t be happy to know I gave their room to a fellow in a red waistcoat. So it’s best you lock the door from the inside, and don’t let them in. If Partridge comes, I’ll give him a key.”

  “No one’s going to recognize me, Herbert.”

  “I recognized you, Jack. Very nice too, very nice to see you, but that’s enough. You stay in there and don’t come out for nothing. I’ll send the boy to put the word around for Partridge, and you can pray he ain’t in Bristol again, for if he’s not here by evening, you shan’t stay here, Jack, and no knife is going to help you. It isn’t personal.”

  “Where there’s no cheating, Herbert, there’s no knife.”

  “I’ve got mates here, in the lane.”

  “You wouldn’t shop me, George?”

  “I couldn’t be that civilized, Jack, if you take my meaning. I couldn’t risk the association, like.”

  And with that the stringy landlord shepherded his unwanted guests through the tap room, down a half-set of stairs and along a corridor to a room which was, in spite of the gold-leaf letters on the door, a charmless hole. The windows were small and uncurtained; it had bare distempered walls, and furnishings consisting of nothing more than a long table and two mucky benches that appeared to have just been brought in from some barn where they had long been banished.

  Tobias loathed the room, but he sat at the wobbling bench and slowly picked the dried mud from his boots and trousers. Jack Maggs stayed at the window, peering out into the dismal yard where, presumably, the horses found their entertainment.

  Time passed slowly. It began to rain. The writer opened up his attaché case but his fingers were unpleasantly dry with the mud of Burlip Hill, and he could not bring himself to unscrew the ink bottle. Out of the window he saw an old man chop the head off a rooster, and the old man and a hostler stood and laughed while the headless bird ran flapping round the yard. The convict noticed the same event and his broad and powerful figure soon occupied the embrasure of the window, thus blocking out the light. The symbolism of this was not lost on Tobias. How deep had he sunk into the slough. One sin had led him to the next. Each danger spawned a bigger danger and now he was cast down into a room with a man whom he had cheated. He closed his attaché case and locked it. He had come a long way from his God.

  At noon there was a rattling on the door knob, and both men looked up expectantly.

  “Oh drat.” They heard a woman’s voice. “This is very very poor, you know. Very poor indeed.”

  Thus, in the space of an hour, the two men suffered the raising and dashing of their hopes by ten different visitors. The door was tried, rattled, but no one came in, not even a servant with the vittles Jack was convinced his “previous acquaintance” would send to them. They sat with their stomachs rumbling loudly, and when the key finally entered the lock it was hard to say what Tobias wished for more: the Thief-taker or his luncheon.

  In either case he was disappointed. The door opened to reveal a clergyman, a black-clad fellow, with bushy brows sitting low upon his eyes.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Tobias, rising. “The room is taken.”

  Yet so confident was the visitor of his rights that he shut the door behind him. He carried a big calico parcel tied under one arm and a black and knobbly walking stick under the other.

  “Wrong room,” said Jack, hurrying forward so violently that Tobias was reminded it was a fight about a private room that had his father in jail for murder. He put his hand on Jack’s shoulder to restrain him.

  “This room is ours,” cried Jack. He flung Toby’s hand away and took the intruder by the elbow.

  To this assault, the clergyman raised an eyebrow.

  “Mr Maggs?”

  “Who says so?” demanded Jack.

  “You say so, Sir,” said the clergyman, and shook himself free. “If you were not Mr Maggs, you would say, ‘I am not Mr Maggs,’ and that would be that. If you say, ‘Who wants to know?’ you have admitted it. Q.E.D.”

  Toby saw the tic quiver on the convict’s cheek.

  “Are you perchance a Wanderer, Sir?” Tobias asked.

  He was answered by one more invader, a woman, who promptly took a seat at the table.

  “Not us,” said she.

  67

  “YOU ARE JACK MAGGS,” said the clergyman in a voice which evidenced a rougher calling than his collar indicated. “And I am he whose acquaintance you were so eager to make.”

  “You are the Thief-taker?” asked Tobias, much relieved.

  “If you wish him to remain in your company, Sir,” said the woman, “don’t never call him that.” She was very plain and stocky with straight grey hair cut in a brutal fringe. Now, in her chagrin, she was giving off a strong odour of a cellar: earth, onions, something worse. “It were a term used in ignorance.”

  Toby was not pleased to be talked to in this style by one so low-bred. “Indeed, Madam?” He looked to her husband but found—to his considerable astonishment—that Wilfred Partridge expected an apology for being called a Thief-taker.

  It was then, so early in the transaction, that Tobias knew the Partridges for tyrants. God help me if I ever fell under their power. Why, they would have me eating sawdust and picking locks for breakfast.

  But Jack Maggs seemed oblivious of Partridge’s character.

  “We apologize,” he said. Toby was shocked to see how that pugnacious old body did bend itself so easily. “We had no wish to offend your Lordship.” He reached urgently into his gunny sack and brought forth the wrapped papers, the mirror, the lemons, stacking them one atop the other.

  Without abandoning his injured stance, Mr Partridge now contributed his own package to the table. It was a large oblong parcel about the size of The Times, but three or four inches thick.

  “I am not a Lord,” he corrected Maggs.

  “If you truly can find any man in England,” said Jack, “I will call you Duke or Baron.”

  “Plain Mister will serve me very well.” Wilfred Partridge untied a knot and wound the string around his liver-spotted hand. Then he tied the twine with a loop and placed it on the bench. Next he peeled back several layers of wrapping: the first one calico, the next two coarse brown paper, the remainder, a yellow tissue like that often used by milliners. Finally, having tormented Jack Maggs considerably with his delay, he revealed a very learned-looking leather volume with a great deal of gold filigree on the cover and, on the spine, an artfully tooled crest. The scholarly appearance of this book reminded Toby of the company in which he had learned of Wilfred Partridge’s name; this now softened him towards the fellow.

  “I do believe,” he offered, “we have a mutual acquaintance.”

  Wilfred Partridge considered Tobias Oates without interest.

  “My friend, Dr Eliotson.”

  “There are many men of science,” said Mrs Partridge, coldly, “who have studied my husband’s powers.”

  “Mr Partridge is a student of Animal Magnetism. You studied with M. Labatte,” Tobias addressed the husband. “Dr Eliotson wrote a paper on your Magnetic techniques. He was particularly impressed with the case of . . . who was it? You interviewed the witnesses Magnetically and then made the arrest yourself”

  “Eliotson?” the other responded moodily. “I don’t recall.”

  “It is published in The Zoist.”

  “I am published everywhere,” said Wilfred Partridge, opening his book to reveal, on the first page, a yellow newspaper clipping glued to the middle of a large white sheet.

  “Did I not,” Partridge brooded angrily beneath his heavy brows, “did I not find Emily Tudball who was taken from her mother’s arms?”

  “He did,” cried his wife, pointing at a long glue-stained column of yellow newspaper:

  EMILY TUDBALL IS FOUND.

  “Did I not find the body of Lord Thompson when everyone said he was touring in the Pyrenees?”

  “He did,” a
nnounced his wife, and placed a close-bitten finger nail against the item:

  LORD THOMPSON IS DEAD.

  They had a long litany to complete between them and it took a good five minutes, and in all that Mrs Partridge did not vary her response by so much as a word.

  “And how is it, Sir, that you work your art?” asked Toby once the case histories had all been recited. “Where do you stand on the issue of Magnetic Fluid?”

  “No Magnetizer can doubt the Fluid,” said Wilfred Partridge, indicating the leather-bound reports of his success, “but the Fluid stays in its puddle without the good faith of the subject.”

  “Faith?” cried Maggs. “By Jesus. We come from London. Ain’t that faith enough to get the Fluids gushing?”

  “Mr Partridge,” said his wife, “requires a personal sign.”

  “I’m here. What more personal than that?”

  Mr Partridge closed the book. “By personal,” he said, “my missus is referring to two most personal matters.”

  “Money,” said she.

  “How much money?” asked Tobias.

  “Fifteen on the table.”

  “Shillings?”

  “Pounds.”

  Toby drew in his breath loudly, but the Partridges both kept their eyes on Jack Maggs, whose manner remained uncharacteristically amicable. “What was the second matter?”

  “The second matter,” said Wilfred Partridge, beginning to re-wrap his parcel, “would be an item, any item at all, however small, that is personal to the object of our quest.”

  “How personal?” asked Jack.

  “Something that the party has laid his hand upon, Mr Maggs. Something that the surface of his skin has brushed across. A toy, a hairbrush.”

  Jack Maggs put his hand deep inside his Great Joseph, and brought into the light an extravagantly framed enamel miniature which he had kept hidden, mostly, in his trouser pocket. Now he revealed to the company an exceedingly well-bred young man in a blue coat, a white cravat. The character thus portrayed was most familiar to Toby, although he could not immediately place him. The young man seemed at once proud and companionable; although his light blue eyes were averted, his countenance was animated. The oval frame was silver and decorated, exotically, with stars.