Charles Palliser (84 page)

It was even larger than the first one and I mounted the handsome steps with a feeling of trepidation, as if I expected to be ignominiously repulsed by magnificent footmen. Yet it was clearly unfinished for the naked stone-work of the ground-floor awaited its covering of stucco, and the windows had boards nailed across them — though unlike the other houses they were secured from the inside and more carefully fitted so that no light escaped, and it was this that had suggested that the building was inhabited. The house had no area-railings or bell-pull, but it was the first I had seen that had a proper street-door.

I knocked on it and after a long delay it opened a little way and a young woman peered round it. From what I could see of her she was not dressed like a servant at all, but very finely and inappropriately for that early hour. She was HONOUR AMONG GENTLEMEN

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small and had dark hair worn in ringlets and was rather pretty, though there was a look in her eye that suggested she might have a fierce temper.

“I’m looking for Mr Digweed,” I said.

“There ain’t no-one here of that name,” she said and began to close the door.

“Mr Barney Digweed,” I said, desperately.

She looked at me in surprise. “Is it Barney you want?” she said. “That is, I ain’t saying there’s no-one here called Barney. Jist you wait there.”

She closed the door. Then I saw a piece of the board covering one of the windows being pulled back, and then a man’s face observing me. After a moment the door opened again and the same man stood looking down at me, the girl visible behind him. He was tall and strongly-built with a large head rising steeply to a high forehead, a shock of reddish hair and a big broken nose between two strangely beautiful blue eyes. To my astonishment, he was dressed as a gentleman in a fine blue merino-jacket with a cream waistcoat and white duck trowsers. He was staring at me with hostility.

My first feeling was one of deep disappointment: if this was Mrs Digweed’s husband his appearance suggested that little good would come to me of the connexion from which I had hoped for so much. I also felt an obscure sense that I knew this man from somewhere, yet I was sure I had not seen him since I had been in London.

“Are you Mr Barney Digweed?” I asked nervously.

He looked at me appraisingly and then said slowly: “I am Black Barney if it’s any consarn of yourn. Who are you?”

“Mr Pulvertaft directed me to you,” I said.

I was sure that the name startled him but he kept his countenance impassive as he replied: “I’m not saying as I’ve ever heerd on such an indiwiddle. What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Mrs Digweed.”

“Why?”

“Please tell me if you know her. Is your name ‘Digweed’?”

“Be very careful, boy. Don’t arst questions like that. It’s impartinent, ain’t it, Nan?”

Over his shoulder I saw the girl laughing.

He went on: “But suppose my name was what you jist said, what then?”

“Then I would ask you for help. I am alone and have no money.”

“Why should anyone help you?”

It was not a question so much as a dismissal, and he began to shut the door even as he spoke.

Despairingly I cried out: “Mr Pulvertaft gave me a message for you!”

He looked at me keenly: “Well?”

“ ‘Daniel asks if he can join the fakement at Henrietta-street on Christmas-eve,’ ” I recited.

Instantly Barney seized my upper arm squeezing it so tightly that I cried out, and then, wrenching it mercilessly, pulled me through the door and banged it shut. In the darkness of the wmdowless hall I could see almost nothing and I felt rather than saw that Barney brought his great head down close to mine and hissed:

“Say that agin!”

I repeated it.

“Do you hear that, Nan?”

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“Aye,” she said.

“Get Sam and the others,” he said without looking round and I heard the girl move away.

“How do you know Pulvertaft?” Barney demanded, increasing his grip on my arm as an encouragement to frankness and confidence.

“The old man, Sam’el, in Cox’s-square, sent me to him when I asked him for Mrs Digweed.”

“The devil he did,” he commented.

At that moment a crowd of people — as it seemed to me — hurried up carrying candles and in the flickering light I saw to my surprise the flash of jewels, the glitter of gold watch-chains, and the sheen of rich velvets, and noticed that the faces of some of the women were painted.

“Listen to this,” said Barney and I was made to repeat Pulvcrtaft’s words yet again.

They were received with whistles and exclamations of surprise and dismay.

“Someone has nosed on us,” said Barney.

“That’s for sure,” cried one of the men.

“And the Cat’s-meat-man has sent this boy to tell us he wants to be cut in or he’ll blow us up,” Barney said.

The Cat’s-meat-man! The man that Isbister and his companions had talked about as the one who was spoiling their trade! It was Pulvertaft! (I recalled how he had used that expression.) In my dazed state it seemed entirely right that everything should connect in this way.

“What’ll we do, Barney?” said the young woman who had opened the door to me, her voice rising above the babble of noise provoked by my message.

“We’ll tell him to go to the deuce, that’s what,” Barney said.

There were murmurs of approval at this sentiment, but one of the men said: “Not to speak out o’ turn, that ain’t for you to say, Barney. We’ll have to decide it all together.”

He was short, about the same age as Barney, and had a thick black beard, a large, high nose, deep brown eyes and a most lively and engaging countenance. He wore his hair in a pigtail like a sailor and was clad in a blue pea-jacket.

“Aye, Sam’s right, Uncle,” another young woman said, like the first very handsome —

but much taller and fair-haired — and just as beautifully dressed. “And we’ll have to wait till Jack gets back.”

Barney glowered at the others.

“When will that be, Sal?” asked Sam.

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “He’s out on that job over by Hackney and it all depends on …

“Never mind about that,” Barney cut in, and glanced from her to me warningly. Then, smiling at me unpleasantly, he added: “As for this young shaver, we’ll cut him up and send him back like a parcel o’ butcher’s meat to show our feelings.”

For a moment I believed him, but by the way the others laughed I realized that this was a pleasantry.

“No, my fine cull,” he said to me, seeing my alarm. “You ain’t worth the trouble of carving you up.”

He opened the street-door again, pushed me through it and then propelled me down the steps so hard that I stumbled and fell the last few steps. He laughed and began to shut the door. I was torn between relief at escaping HONOUR AMONG GENTLEMEN

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and dismay that my last chance of finding Mrs Digweed was about to be lost.

The latter predominated and I said quickly, my voice rising to a shout: “At least tell me if you know Mrs Digweed!”

“Still harping on that?” he sneered. “Whyever should you think anyone would help you?”

“Because my mother and I helped Mrs Digweed once,” I cried. “Three years ago this Christmas. If you know her, please help me for her sake.”

The door was closing.

“She’ll remember,” I cried. “It was in Melthorpe.”

The door was suddenly thrown open and Barney stared down at me for a long time with an expression which I found unfathomable.

Then he said in a rough voice which belied the sentiments he was expressing: “You look fair knocked up. Come in and take something to warm you. I’m sorry I spoke a mite rough.”

I hesitated, wondering at this sudden turn-around. Had I touched his conscience or his heart after all? It seemed so by his eagerness now, but I thought there was a calculating look in his eye that I did not trust. However, faced with an offer of food and warmth I had no choice but to accept rather than resign myself again to the hunger and cold of the friendless streets, and so I ascended the steps. I would be on my guard, I told myself, and would trust no-one — least of all this man. As I reached the door I staggered and he reached out his hand and seized me by the shoulder, this time gently though firmly, and led me back into the house.

“Then you are Mr Digweed?” I said, as we re-entered the hall which was now deserted.

He brought his great head down close to mine and whispered hoarsely: “I don’t want you never to say that name agin, not to me nor to nobody else. Obey me and I’ll see you right. Cross me and I’ll tear off your arm and beat you to death with it! Is that understood?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Tell nobody here nothing about yourself. ’Cept me. All right?”

Again I gasped my acknowledgement of this condition.

Still holding me he escorted me the length of the great dark hall and then pushed me ahead of him through a door-way to the right — which had no door — into the strangest room I had ever seen.

It was a large, lofty drawing-room which would, under altered circumstances, have been very handsome. A number of people were in it, most of them drinking and playing cards and smoking while others, although it was early in the forenoon and despite the noise and thick smoke, were fast asleep and sprawled, men and women together, on carpets and cushions that lay scattered about. As I had half-glimpsed in the hall, many of those present — both sexes — were gorgeously dressed in the height of fashion like the girl who had opened the door to me, while others were clad in clothes that were almost rags.

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and some of the men had on velvet coats and satin waistcoats, others wore the usual fustians and drabs of the poorest class. This was perplexing enough, but perhaps the strangest incongruity was that between, on the one hand, the luxury of the clothes and furniture and, on the other, the incompleteness of the edifice.

The windows, as I had seen from the street, were boarded over so that even though it was day, the room had to be lit by numerous oil-lamps. The walls were of bare brick without plaister or pannelling, though one was only aware of this where they were visible, for most of their area was concealed by rich hangings of the most exquisite woven stuffs. And the floors were covered by expensive carpets and rugs which lay about in careless profusion, over-lapping each other or folded double to form makeshift beds.

Of course I did not by any means perceive the splendours and squalors of the chamber all at once. In fact, as I entered I staggered at the smell of the lamps and the heavy perfumes and when Barney pushed me towards a sopha, I sank onto it. A young woman — not the one who had answered the door, but the tall, fair-haired one who had spoken in the hall about Jack and who was equally finely dressed — was sitting at the other end and arguing fiercely with some of her companions. She was wearing evening dress that left her shoulders and upper arms bare except for her jewels — which looked real enough to me. She and her companions broke off their argument when they saw Barney and myself.

“Do something for him, Sally,” said Barney, nodding to me.

She frowned and held to my lips the glass she had been drinking from: “This will do you no harm. It’s wine.”

I sipped and felt a warmth spreading inside me. Then she turned away and began to speak to one of the men. Her handsome features suggested to me a languid apathy and boredom that seemed to be waiting to be moulded and made use of. As I looked round some of the sleepers around us began to wake up, and they and a few of the others whom I had seen in the hall came over.

“Why ’ave you brung the boy, Barney?” asked one of the men.

“Send him to rightabouts,” called out Sam, the bearded man with the pigtail.

Disconcertingly he accompanied this suggestion with the friendliest smile at me in which he showed several gold teeth.

“Don’t we have enough to worrit about already?” said a man with a mean, ugly face who was somewhat incongruously wearing a beautiful satin coat and carrying many rings and seals at his fob. “What with the Cat’s-meat-man being onto us.”

“You’re right, Will,” said Sam. “The boy will be no more use to us nor a horse with a wooden leg.”

“He might make a snakesman,” suggested a masculine-looking female wearing a man’s hat and a sailor’s jacket glazed with oil and pitch, whose face was deeply pitted with the smallpox and whose teeth were absolutely black. Beneath the hat I saw that her hair was a vivid red.

“No, he’s too big, Poll,” Will objected.

“Is he flash?” asked the girl who had answered the door.

“The boy stays, Sam,” Barney announced. Turning to the girl who had opened the door to me he said: “And no, he ain’t flash, Nan.”

“What, have you turned soft, then?” she jeered.

“You’re mad,” said the man with the jewels. “He’ll get in the way of trade.” He glared at me with eyes that were like two swelling bruises, and HONOUR AMONG GENTLEMEN

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then suddenly struck me a stinging blow in the face: “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Lay off him,” Nan cried.

Barney glared at him: “If you don’t like it, Will, you can sling your hook.”

“Well, we’ll see what Jack says about it, that’s all,” Will muttered rebelliously.

“What Jack says don’t matter,” Barney said angrily. “I’m cap’n, not him, though some on you seems ready to forget it. I say the boy stays.”

This was received in silence, with only a few mutterings from Will and one or two of the others. But then Barney went on: “And I say we go ahead even if someone’s split on us to the Cat’s-meat-man.”

At this there was an outburst of angry protests until Sam raised his voice above the hubbub and there was silence: “We can’t settle nothin’ till Jack’s back.”

Barney flushed with rage as this was greeted with cheers, and when Sally smiled triumphantly at him, he shouted: “I told you to look arter the boy!”

She pouted angrily: “I ain’t no nussmaid.”

“Nan, you see to him,” Barney said.

“What’s a fakement?” I asked Nan in an undertone. “The one on Christmas-eve,” I added since she looked puzzled.