The Newgate Jig (22 page)

Nero
joins him, sniffing excitedly at the hole.

'Hold
up! Your dog's got a nose on him. And another half.'

He
is right. Nero is anxiously digging at the rotten floor and the scraps of
frowsy carpet as if they were rabbit holes, and then sniffing long and hard.

'I reckon there
is something, Mr Chapman, don't you? Perhaps it's chink. My Pa's fortune!'

He lies beside
Nero, and puts his scruffy head against Nero's dark fur.

'Yes, there is.
I'll come back with a lantern and a forcer and take up the floorboards. Then
we'll see. Your dog's a good 'un, ain't he? He knows what's what.'

He rubs Nero's ears,
and pats him hard, but even then Nero is reluctant to give up and I have to
drag him away, and hold him back while Barney covers over the hole carefully
with carpet, and then, brushing the dirt from his short trousers, as if they
were quality, he looks about him.

'Yes, I'll serve
the Nasty Man out, Mr Chapman. You still willing?'

He takes me by
surprise. I wonder what on earth he thinks he can do, what either of us can do.

There is a noise
outside and Barney pricks up his ears, almost as quickly as my two friends.
Nero sets up a growl, a warning, and Barney puts his eye to a hole in the wall
and steps back smartly.

'Look out!
Someone's coming out of the gaff. Might be just one of the mummers, but I don't
know. We don't want to be in here if
he's
coming. We
should go. Come on.'

Outside, the
cold of the winter afternoon is starting to drop, and the lights in the gaff
are lit. Barney takes my arm.

'We can't go
through the gaff. I'm not clowned up, and he knows you and your dogs. If
he's
there - or his bullies - they'll catch us. If you want, there's another way
out. Only - are your dogs good at climbing?'

We clamber over
the rotting book mountain and squeeze ourselves behind Pilgrim's stable. Barney
deliberately moves the fence-palings away, one after the other, slotting them
behind the shed, until a gap is revealed, large enough for us all to squirm
through. We are perched, it seems to me, on the edge of a precipice. Below us
is a cliff-side of dirt and stones, of tufted grass and scrubby bushes, all lightly
sprinkled with frost, plunging down thirty feet. This chasm alone is terrifying,
but even more so for me, as in the near distance, is the mouth of a great
tunnel, looming round as a cry, and black to its depths. I cannot help but
recoil and begin to post myself back through the fence. But Barney grabs my
sleeve. 'Look, I know a way down. It's safe. Come on.'

We scramble
along the top. The frost, which has never really disappeared, has made the
narrow ledge slippery, so where Barney walks and Brutus and Nero trot, I crawl
on my hands and knees, trying not to look below, as the tunnel mouth opens
wider and closer. I try and distract myself by thinking and calculating. I
reckon that we must have covered the length of Fish-lane, perhaps further. That
the building beyond the fence is the abattoir, that I cannot support much more
of this anxiety. We are now almost on top of the tunnel, looking sideways down
upon it. It is half complete, still shored up by a skeleton of planks and
wooden pillars, and slotted through with temporary platforms where the
bricklayers stand to work. There is a rough, steep path cut into the side of
the gorge, and while Barney scuttles across the tunnel's half- covered roof and
waits for me, my two dogs scamper down the path and stand, panting, at the
bottom, sniffing out rabbits.

I
don't know what I'm running from, but panic is contagious and I follow the boy
anyway. His head has already disappeared from view and he is clambering down
the ladders and along the platforms, and calling for me to do the same. Though
he is fleeing from the Nasty Man, I think he's probably enjoying the adventure.
I follow him blindly. The ladders are rough and flimsy, with rungs missing, and
slimy with the damp. The platforms are the same, boards unsecured and liable to
move underfoot and, with a layer of mud and grease upon them, every step
becomes treacherous. But it is the descent into that thick darkness which
terrifies me. The dense, dank gloom of the tunnel swallows me up, but I dare
not look back, for the sight of the grey sky disappearing far above will, I
know, send me into a panic and I will dash up the ladder and run into the arms
of the Nasty Man rather than plunge any further down. Just as that blue funk
begins to rise out of control, though, my foot finds the ground, and the wet
noses of Brutus and Nero find my hands.

'Come on,'
Barney says anxiously, and takes my sleeve again. 'It's all right. I know this
tunnel like my way home. Keep close to this wall. The other side isn't properly
finished, and there's another one dug below us, so don't stray or you could
fall in and I wouldn't be able to find you. No one would, 'cept the rats.'

Once we are in
the tunnel and there is no prospect of going back, I give myself up to it. I
stumble along, scraping my knuckles along the brick wall and trying not to
fall. And I think perhaps Barney is right, for I do hear someone behind us. But
it is not the sound of a chase, not the footsteps of someone trying to catch up
with us. For when we stop, it is often perfectly silent except for the steady
panting of my dogs and Barney's occasional whispered caution to 'Watch it!

There's a dip
hereabouts!' and 'Hold up, don't fall over this heap of muck!' Only every now
and again do I think I hear someone. The crunch of stones, a cough. But I hope
it's because I'm horribly nervous. I am like a blind man, clinging to the wall
or the scruff of Brutus's neck, unable to call out and almost paralyzed with
fear. More than once, Brutus and Nero disappear for a long time - to chase a rat,
I suppose - and I think I've lost them, until they push their soft heads and
wet noses into my hand and I hear them panting and sniffing. Then I breathe
again, but it is a long and frightening expedition in the darkness that seems
never-ending.

When I see the
prick of light, so small at first that I think my eyes are playing tricks on
me, I try not to look at it, for it fills me again with inexplicable horror.
But then we race towards it and it becomes larger and the air colder, and then
the great round O of the tunnel casts us into a strange landscape of brick
heaps and piles of sleepers and rails. The air is dense with frost and, the
cazzelties having finished their labours for the day, it is silent here also.
But where we are I have no idea, that is until I look up and, seeing the
hoardings and that familiar smear of red and blue bills, and realize, to my
surprise, that we are in the wasteland. Barney is ahead of me, scrambling along
the trackside and disappearing around a bend, and I run to catch him up, not
wanting to let him out of my sight with the tunnel so close behind me. He is
already clambering up the bank, where the sides of the cutting are at their
gentlest and where a track has been roughly hewed out and laid with steps made
of stones, bricks, planks of wood. The route, of course, that the cazzelties
take, every day, to their grim work.

We
stand, panting, at the top of the gorge and the wind whips across the wet
ground. Barney rubs his eyes and then his nose, and squints at me.

'I
sometimes come this way 'cos I like the adventure of the tunnel. You know what
I mean?'

I
nod. He is only a boy after all.

'Only,
don't let anyone know about it, will you? 'Cos I shall need it to get away when
I serve him out.'

He
gives Brutus and Nero a final pat and salutes me.

I
watch until his figure is lost among the heaps of mud and soil and remember how
once, a lifetime ago, he burst in upon my settled life in this very place.

The Seize

I
am all to pieces and want my bed.

My
dogs are foot-sore and hungry.

After
such a day, I shall lock the door.

I will count up
my coin and buy a cart and horse in the morning, whether they are broken-backed
or no. Or I will just leave.

Above
all, I will try and forget what I have seen.

But
that cannot be.

No. Apparently,
tonight is just the night for a mutton pie and a round of acrobatics and
melodrama at the Fish-lane gaff. Such is the message delivered by the lanky
youth, who introduced himself with a shake of the hand as Half-pint. He came
out of the shadows like a shadow himself and plucked at my elbow. Said that
young Barney urgently requested my presence, as agreed, and that if we made
haste directly to Fish-lane, we should still be in time.

For his own
part, he said he didn't usually carry messages from 'lads', but he felt sorry
for him, knowing that his father had been stretched at Newgate only recently.
And he gave him sixpence too. But, as we turned our faces into the biting wind
and flurries of snow, he reminded me that he was only the messenger and wasn't
party to any of the business, but he thought that if I considered myself any
kind of a friend of Barney's, I should advise him against what he was planning
to do.

'But then,' he
said, not looking at me, 'you might have put him up to it. Perhaps you want a
piece of the chink yourself.'

Fish-lane was
still open for business. The Wretched Fly was still buzzing, Mimm's Pie Shop
still baking, even the street-sellers were still calling up their 'Potatoes
'ot!' and 'Peas, all green!' But the Royal Crown Theatre and Waxworks was the
loudest and brightest of them all. Not only was a harmonium out on the street,
which Half-pint quickly appropriated, but an assortment of skinny youths and
heavy men, all dressed in left-over costumes and second-hand boots (mostly with
their toes hanging out), were pacing upon the pavement under the naphtha lamps,
shouting in passers- by with that old-fashioned showman's promise of 'Just
about to begin!' and 'You'll regret it if you miss it!' and 'Never to be
repeated wonders!'

Another penny
got me into the exhibition (how many had I spent these last few days!), and
nothing much had changed except that, in the interval between my last visit
only hours before, the scenes showing the Deptford murderer, Mr Vowles, now
included his terrible execution ('only this morning'), and 'the actual
hangman's rope what was used, still warm'! I shuffled through and paid another
penny to go into the theatre, where the show had begun. Barney and his two
young companions were already on the stage, giving their flip- flaps and
preparing for the pyramid. A few minutes and the pianist played them off, the
mummer striding on to announce, as before, the drama. I edged out of the door,
into the dim passage and then the dark yard, where Barney was waiting,
breathless, and grabbed my arm.

'I've got it
worked, so don't get exercised. He's here.' He nodded to the shed. 'I'll serve
him out easy as an old shoe. All you have to do is get your dogs to fetch him
down. Snap!'

He
gave me no time to think about it.

'Half-pint's
slipped some liver in the Nasty Man's pocket. Only a button's-worth. But I
recollect Mr Lovegrove telling me that your dogs are so good at the seize that
they don't hardly need any meat at all. Just your say so.'

He was right. Brutus
and Nero learned that staple of the theatrical dog's repertoire, the 'seize',
when they were very young, and quickly too, because they were so adaptable and
wise. A piece of meat, liver usually, is hidden at the actor's throat - or hand
or leg, tucked into a scarf or a sock or a sleeve – and, because they are
trained to take the meat and not injure the actor, the dog will leap and knock
him to the floor and appear to have the man by the throat – or the arm or leg –
when he is merely taking the bait. Brutus and Nero are past masters of the
'seize'. Indeed, as Barney rightly said, they hardly needed the lure of meat
and would go and knock a man down and appear to have him by the throat just at
my command. It is a trick which looks very well upon a stage. But that is all.
It
is
just a trick. And although it might shake the Nasty Man and
take him by surprise - and who wouldn't be surprised to be felled by two
snarling dogs! - he would suffer no harm. It was poor punishment for the
injuries and suffering he had inflicted, but Barney was only a child, I
thought, and to him it might seem enough.