by Peter Carey
He halted.
The convict gave a small blackbird whistle from the water’s edge.
There was now a considerable distance between the two men, thirty steps. Jack Maggs came to the bottom of the wall and squinted anxiously up, as if seeing, for the first time, just how easily he now might be betrayed. To judge from the pinched look upon his worn-out face, he might have been staring at the gallows themselves, but Tobias had moved past betrayal, beyond the point where a small and sorry-looking punt could make him hesitate for long, and he was soon running down the mossy steps to the landing. Here he undid the rope, and stepped aboard.
“Now sit on the mid-thwart,” said Jack Maggs.
The mist closed mercifully around them. The river sucked them slowly, inexorably, down towards the sea.
71
AT FIRST THE JOURNEY was sluggish and malodorous. The mist stank of the tannery but it was also a good opaque yellow and hid their escape. In any case, they had not been travelling ten minutes before it became obvious that their pace was quickening, and soon the little punt was rushing forward through the waters at a speed its builder would never have anticipated. The broad square-nosed craft handled well enough, and Jack soon laid his pole down and allowed himself to squat near the aft-thwart and give his fellow traveller a wink. This period of rest lasted all of a minute, then the big fellow was on his feet again and squinting down-stream into the mist.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Is there a ship?”
“Listen.”
Toby slowly became aware of a distant roaring.
“There may be factories along the shore.”
“That ain’t no factory.” Maggs leaned forward, took his kit-bag and set it firm between his knees.
“There are tanneries. That’s what the smell is.”
“Get aft. Jod’s blood, move your arse, man.”
Toby reluctantly did as he was ordered. He sat on the aft-thwart beside Jack Maggs. The noise of rushing water—for such was clearly what it was—now filled his ears. Following Maggs’s example he placed his yellow attaché between his legs and gripped it with his heels.
“Dear Lord—is this the Severn Bore?”
“Hang on, mate.”
It was not the Severn Bore but it was the weir, and they were on the lip of it before the danger was apparent. Then the convict did something which later, in recollection, would touch Tobias’s heart: that is, he put one strong arm around the writer’s narrow shoulders and held him tight.
The punt was catapulted out into the air.
Maggs cried: “God save us!”
To hear such a cry, from one such as he, was enough to convince Tobias that his end was near.
He too cried out: “God save us!”
The drop was nearly three feet at that hour, and when the little punt smacked down, its nose bit into the foaming river and the waters engulfed the craft completely.
“Swim!” cried Toby.
But the older man held him tight until the punt emerged, still afloat, but with less than three inches of gunnel showing above the water.
“We’re sinking.”
“Bail! Give that to me!” Jack Maggs grabbed for the yellow case. “It’s all we have to bail with.”
The river was still turbulent and fast, and the square nose, being so low, seemed to invite the incursion of more water every passing second. Tobias therefore opened his lovely case, removed his soggy notebook and, having sadly consigned his quill and ink bottle to the river, offered the case to Maggs.
“You wish me to do the bailing?” Tobias was shocked to see the temper burning in his eyes. “I ain’t your fart-catcher now, mate.”
Tobias silently slid his wet notebook into his jacket pocket, and got busy with the bailing.
Thus they proceeded down-stream: Maggs standing guard with his pole and keeping the punt away from the shoals and banks, Tobias ruining his expensive attaché case with river water.
The mist stayed low but their noses soon told them that they had left the region of water meadows and that they were passing between new-mown fields. Tobias—having, by dint of much labour, reduced the water to ankle level—trailed his cramped hand in the silky cold water.
Maggs set down his pole and watched with satisfaction as the punt sat itself mid-stream and drifted. He observed the craft’s progress for a moment, and when he was satisfied that it could find its own way a while, he took from his coat the enamel miniature which had cost the Thief-taker his life. This gore-stained object he laid on the aft-thwart of the boat while he carefully removed his great-coat, and then turned its bloodied pocket inside out. Drawing his dagger, he then cut out the pocket, and dropped it into the Severn like so much offal. Having carefully washed the dagger’s dark blade, he dipped the portrait over the side and washed it also.
After a little time they drifted close by the bank, where they were confronted by the sight of a young woman and her old mother fishing for eels. When Tobias saw how they stared into the mist towards the silent punt, he raised a hand, and called, “Good evening.” The girl waved back, but then the woman said something and the daughter’s hand abruptly dropped.
Soon they were alone again in the mist, and Maggs, dipping his precious portrait in the Severn one last time, handed it across to Toby.
“Were it my purse he would have been welcome to it, but not my boy.”
The frame was slippery from the river water, and it was difficult for the writer not to think of the blood that had so recently washed over it. The light was now rather poor, and yet when Tobias held the enamel up very close to him he saw what he had not noticed when examining it in the Bull Inn. The likeness had seemed familiar, he realized now, because it was George IV dressed as a commoner. The Order of the Garter was absent. He wore a plain blue jacket, not the uniform of the Prince of Wales Light Dragoons, but this little miniature was, to all intents and purposes, a copy of Richard Cosway’s portrait which Tobias had viewed, only last year, at the Royal Academy.
“Were he to have stolen my gold watch, he would not have suffered so,” said Jack Maggs, standing and picking up the pole which he then drove vigorously into the water. “But he were a foolish man to steal my son.”
As the punt came forward he began to wield the pole regularly, bending his strong body effortlessly to the purpose.
“You have not seen your son in a goodly while?” Tobias asked carefully.
“To answer your question,” said Maggs, jutting his chin, and gazing at Tobias a moment, “he ain’t my son by way of having lain with his ma, but he is my son in every other way.”
The little craft drifted around a rather sharp bend by a cottage, and for a moment Maggs was busy navigating with his pole, but even when he had piloted the craft into the next long stretch, he did not pick up the conversation and Toby, curious as he was, thought it wisest to remain silent. In any case, he judged it kindest to let the fraud remain.
“It were a rainy autumn day,” Maggs said at last. “A cold miserable sort of day, with a bitter wind blowing low and hard across the marshes, and the off-side lead horse of my coach threw its shoe.
“That is how I met Henry. He were sitting in the smithy’s forge, looking for that place by the vice where he could feel a little of the warmth and not suffer any of the rain. When our coach drew up, there he were. He were all of four years old.”
It was almost dark now, although Tobias could still make out the outline of the smallish elms. If there was anyone on the banks with an interest in the fugitives, they were careful to keep their presence concealed.
“It were an honest everyday coach, with honest everyday citizens inside, but outside two wretches were held hard in chains. The first wretch was a poor mad forger from Hull who was trying to hurt himself by ripping at his arms with his bare teeth. The second wretch was me. We were, this mad man and I, in the care of two soldiers who took it in turns to be outside with us. They had spent all their food allowance on ale, and had no means to feed ei
ther us or themselves no more.
“My Henry had a pig’s trotter. That was how I noticed him. And, oh, how I wanted that pig’s trotter, Toby. I wanted it every bit as bad as you want your Lizzie. And I stared at him, doubtless, most fierce and wild. And what did he do? Why, first he ran away. But then, two shakes later, his little head appeared up amongst the baggage on the coach and he held out the very thing I might have stolen from him. When he saw my chains would not allow me to eat it without assistance, he did the holding for me, so I could gnaw each morsel off that bone.”
“Very kind,” said Toby.
“I’m much of your opinion,” agreed the convict, “and brave. For all the time he fed me, the poor mad cove from Hull did gnash and moan enough to make a soldier nervous. Henry watched him, wary like, but he did not flinch from feeding me.
“When I had done eating, I asked the little chap where his daddy was, for I wished to pay him a compliment. Then Henry pointed over across the road where there was a small church yard and gave me to understand that his ma and pa both resided at that place.”
“They were dead?”
“Passed away.”
“Oh dear,” said Toby. “Poor little mite.”
“ ‘I am an orphing, Sir,’ said he. That is how he spoke it: orphing. ‘And I am tomorrow bound to live outside of Harrismith with the other orphings there.’
“I was in a emotional condition, Toby. I had, the month before, been betrayed by my brother Tom. I had seen my childhood sweetheart sentenced to be hanged. I had heard her cries and seen her struggle and kick as the turnkeys carried her away. I also was to be cast out of my dear England, not in a year or two as was the custom, but on the very next tide. I was feeling very bitter about my lot.
“Then I see this little boy just starting out on the journey of his life, a very kind boy, with all his God-given goodness still undamaged. And I thought, so must you have been, Jack, before you were trained to be a varmint. I was much affected by this, Toby. It made a great impression. So when I finished my meal, I made this solemn promise to the little boy. I knew exactly what I said. I spoke it out loud: and promised anyone who would listen that I would come back from my exile and take him from his orphanage, that I would spin him a cocoon of gold and jewels, that I would weave him a nest so strong that no one would ever hurt his goodness. I would clad him in a scholar’s robe and learn him his numbers and his letters, not only English, but Greek and Latin too, and I went on so long with my speech that soon even the mad man stopped his twirling and wrenching and sat still beside me.
“‘There’s mad,’ he said to me. ‘There’s mad as anyone can find in a butcher’s shop.’
“He never lived to see me get my pardon for he was stabbed with a bone knife that very night aboard the Enterprise, and all the clothes and leather shoes stolen from his body before his last breath was gone.
“But this boy”—Maggs retrieved the framed portrait from the writer’s hand—“this boy has kept me alive these last twenty-four years, and I will not have him taken from me. Nor will I permit him to be placed in harm’s way. I am his da. He is my son. I will not abandon him.”
Tobias Oates leaned back in the craft and looked upwards. He realized only then that the mist had cleared: the sky was black and bright with stars, and he inhaled the acrid sweet perfume of hawthorn blossom. The little punt slid through the velvet water towards Newnham. The writer sat hunched over, staring into the blackness, remembering the horrid sound of the blood bubbling from Wilfred Partridge’s throat, wondering about those two locks of human hair that must be, even now, inside the murderer’s pocket.
It had been Jack Maggs’s plan that they should continue down the Severn until they arrived at Bristol, and there was an unspoken understanding, or so Tobias imagined, that they would find a ship in that great port. But there are many sand shoals in the Severn below Gloucester and at around ten o’clock, still not having passed Newnham, they came into a stretch of water where the mist lay very dense and thick. Here they got themselves so badly stranded by the sands that Maggs announced he was frigged if he would go any further. As there was still a good two inches of water in the bottom of the craft, and neither of them had any wish to lie there, they tried to sleep leaning forward on their haunches.
It was very damp and cold. Tobias could hear water rats nearby, and it gave him no peace to imagine those wet grey furry bodies climbing aboard the punt and sniffing around his sleeping head. Somewhere nearby was a cow with a bell. He listened to it come close, then recede. He slept, only to be immediately awoken.
“Toby?”
“Yes.”
“Are you awake, Toby?”
“Yes, Jack.”
The boat tipped, and remained listing on the sand. Toby felt something on his knee. Imagining a rat, he struck out against it and barked his knuckles on something hard and cold.
“Careful,” said Maggs. “That’s good brandy I’m giving you, mate.”
“Good man, Jack.”
“Something to make the Phantom doze.”
Tobias allowed his hand to be taken and fitted around a cool silver flask.
“Paint me a picture of him who tortures me, Toby?”
“I wrote down what you told me in your sleep, Jack. One day you will read every word of it. Every dream and memory in your head, I’ll give them to you, I promise. You have had a hard life, my friend, and more than your fair share of woe. I would never make light of your misfortune.”
“Yes, yes, very Christian of you, Toby. But what is his appearance?”
“Tall and fair-complexioned. He has long side-whiskers.”
There was a long silence on the aft-thwart.
“But you have never seen this Phantom yourself, Toby?”
“Of course not. He lives within you.”
“Then here’s a strange thing. I never heard of this Phantom until I met you. I never saw him, asleep or waking.”
“You lived with the pain the Phantom caused.”
“What would you say if I said you planted him inside me?”
“How could I do such a thing?”
“I’m damned if I know. But he was not there before.”
“Your Phantom is as real to your eighth sense as Silas and Sophina, and I did not put her there.” Toby smiled. “I can vouch for that.”
A moment later he was crushed. His head was banged. His breath pushed out of him. He lay pinned, half-winded, with the great weight of the convict’s body on his chest, the deck and thwart pressing painfully against his spine.
“Don’t never say that name again.”
As Jack Maggs’s heavy body shifted painfully upon his own, Toby felt the heat of his breath.
“You say her name, I’ll . . . You must not do it.”
Maggs’s hand moved in the direction of his boot. Imagining himself about to be stabbed, Toby twisted his shoulders and bucked his hips.
“Help!” he cried. “Help!”
Jack Maggs then began to laugh. Indeed, he laughed so raucously that he not only released his captive but fell back rather heavily into the bow.
“Help,” he cried in a weak, affected voice. Then he righted himself and came back once more to sit himself beside Tobias.
“Help,” he whispered in the writer’s ear, but not so unkindly, and soon Tobias began to laugh too, if rather cautiously.
“Do you take it as an insult that I was afraid of you?”
“Oh no, Tobias, I take it as very sensible indeed.”
Tobias could feel the rough unshaven face lean towards him in the dark.
“I am with you, Jack.”
There was a long pause during which there was no noise but the jangle of the cow bell in the dark.
“We are together till I find my boy.”
So saying, the big man laughed and put his arm around the writer, and squashed him affectionately against his chest.
72
THREE WEEKS EARLIER, Henry Phipps had been safe in his own dear house, breakfasting on s
almon, and when he had opened the letter with the Dover postmark he had, naturally, not the faintest inkling that the rather common little envelope with its formal script would be such a harbinger of destruction.
Now his house was abandoned, his spring flowers uncared for, his most cherished valuables stored in a dank cellar on Blackfriars Road.
He stood at the window of his rooms in the club. He looked out at the bedraggled pigeons huddling on his window ledge, and beyond that at the dirty green roof of Covent Garden, and beyond that at what appeared to be a hawk circling slowly in the poisonous yellow sky.
He was, he thought, like a rabbit hiding in its hole.
As holes went, it was quite adequate, but he would never have suspected that the club to which he had been hitherto so attached, where he had enjoyed so many adventures and amusements, could be such a very depressing place to live.
There was nothing wrong with the rooms exactly, but in the morning light the green carpet was thread-bare and spotted, and the dark burgundy wallpaper was peeling at the joins, and the oval mirror was split on its frame. As he had, once again, made the mistake of breakfasting in, he had to endure that awful curry smell which seemed to affect everything that was cooked here.
In Great Queen Street, he had employed a splendid cook, an austere and handsome Cornish woman whom he had, of course, sent away. He had sent all the servants on leave, just on the quarter day— so he had paid them up until the end of June; and this meant overlooking several pressing debts, and required a meeting with the bank to discuss the account which was then overdrawn a hundred guineas. Whether this account would ever be “topped up” again was by no means certain. Today was the fifth, the day “topping up” would normally occur, but he was reluctant to call on his bankers for fear of discovering the procedure had been abandoned by his benefactor.
And thus he was sitting by his gloomy little window, with its forlorn prospect of the roofs of Covent Garden, when a knock came on the door. It was Magnus announcing that there was a gentleman to see him. As he was, to all intents and purposes, in hiding, this news produced a very queasy feeling in his stomach.
