Tommo & Hawk (46 page)

'Oh, of course, I begs your pardon, Mr Sparrow.' I dig in me breeches for coin.

'No 'arm done, Mr Ace O' Spades, it's not yours to know the local form. Tell yer what? I can see you want to be on yer own, so we'll spread the flats once each. You win and there's no need to shout me and Fat Fred and we'll leave you well alone. Can't be fairer than that now, can I?'

Mr Sparrow says he'll shuffle and then select five cards what he'll show. Then I'm to do the same, and if mine beats his, I win. Well, Tommo don't like to say no to such an offer. So Mr Sparrow picks up the cards and examines them most careful. I ain't shaved them none and they be in most excellent condition. He shuffles the deck a few times to get the feel and I'm interested to see how he does the relocation. He's very good, as I knew he'd be, and there's a pretty blur of the broads as he spreads them in a straight line across the bar counter. Then he picks five cards and turns up each in turn. Three queens and a pair of tens, a full house - the perfect poker hand.

'Nice.' I keep me voice steady. In fact it be most skilled and I can't understand why he's done it. A cardsharp as good as him don't play boastful with a stranger. I can see he thinks I'm a whaleman paid off in Sydney - a slip of a lad with a pocket full o' brass what a few games o' poker will soon empty. But why the big trick? That would do nothing but scare away a patsy-mark. It don't make no sense whatsoever.

Mr Sparrow takes a cigar from the inside pocket of his coat, bites the end off and sets about lighting it. He looks even more the weasel with his sharp little teeth bared, some missing to either side, and gold in three of 'em. I wait 'til he's got it going and the air about is filled with the rich smell o' tobacco smoke. Then I takes up the cards and shuffles, laying them down in a perfect circle with one card placed in the dead centre the way Ikey taught us. It's a trick, no more, and not to be used in any card game. But it takes hundreds of hours of practice to get it right, and few can do it well.

'Hmm!' says Mr Sparrow, chewing at his cigar. 'Card tricks, eh?'

I selects a card from the very top o' the circle and the next from the very bottom, leaving two gaps exactly opposite each other. I does the same to the left and the right so that the circle, but for the four matching gaps facing each other, remains perfect. Now I has four cards placed face down in front o' me on the bar. In a manner most casual, I turns them face up. King, then another king, then a third, then a ten. I reach out and take the card from the centre o' the circle and places it face up to show another ten. Three Kings and two tens. My full house beats his!

'I'll be damned!' says Mr Sparrow. 'If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I'd not have believed it!'

'I'd be much obliged if you'd let me be now, Mr Sparrow,' I says, upping me glass and drinking down what's left of my brandy. I do this so he can't see the big smile on me gob!

But Mr Sparrow's still staring at the five cards I've laid out on the bar. 'Ace O' Spades, there be only one man in the world what I've known can do that, and he's long dead.'

‘Ikey Solomon?' I says. The cigar drops from Mr Sparrow's lips onto the floor. I lean down and pick it up. Then I put it carefully on the counter with the lighted part over the edge. 'You'd be Sparrer Fart, then, I presume?' I say, cool as you like.

'How the devil -' he exclaims. 'Who are you, then?'

'Tommo X Solomon, at ya service!' I says, sticking out me paw. 'Ikey said I couldn't never beat ya, but I bloody well just did!'

Mr Sparrow, alias the one and only Sparrer Fart, is too astonished to take offence.

'Yer Ikey's boy! Ikey Solomon! Prince o' London's Fences, sent to Van Diemen's Land?'

'One and the same,' says I. 'And you be Sparrer Fart, what Ikey considered the best pickpocket of all the lads he ever trained and a master o' the flats when you was ten years old.'

'I was, too!' Mr Sparrow muses. 'Thought I still was, until a few moments ago!' He looks me all over like he's looking at me for the first time. 'Glory be! Ikey's lad, eh? This is a most momentous occasion!'

I sighs. Me and my big mouth. I just never learns to keep me cleverness to meself. There's no hope of getting rid of Mr Sparrow now he knows who I am.

Mr Sparrow is banging the bell and the lovely Doreen appears once more. 'Ere, same again,' he calls to her.

I raise my hand to object. 'Mr Sparrow, please, we made a deal. I won, now I wish to drink me fill on me own!'

Mr Sparrow stops and gazes at me a long time. A tear escapes from one of his little red weasel eyes and runs down his cheek and across his small, sharp face.

'Son,' he chokes, 'I've waited thirty years for this moment. Ikey Solomon were the closest thing to a pater I ever 'ad. He give me a family - all the likely lads from the Academy o' Light Fingers. Ikey was our beloved kinsman. He found me when I were nothing but a starvin' guttersnipe. He taught me the most noble art o' tooling until I were the best pickpocket in London. He give me book-learnin' and writin' and taught me cribbage so that handlin' the flats became me second nature.

'Ikey Solomon gave me everything I am become, son. When Mr Dickens picked me character for the Artful Dodger in that book of his, Oliver Twist, I were the very finest example of the genius of Ikey Solomon.' Sparrer Fart pauses. 'Now I meets you, Tommo Solomon, alias Mr Ace O' Spades, Ikey's lad!' Another tear escapes. 'And you tells me t' piss orf? I'm 'urt, 'umiliated to the uttermost!'

Fat Fred lets loose a gentle snore.

From the way he's talking, it's like Sparrer Fart's once more the little ragamuffin what Ikey found starving in Rosemary Lane. I don't know what rightly to say to his outburst. I know I'm being had, but also that some o' his declaration is genuine enough.

Ikey would always tell us, 'A good scam be from the heart as well as the head, my dears. Always find yourself something what you can say with a sense o' conviction, what makes you sad or happy or angry, then work it in like butter and flour. The result be most soulful and is as effective on your patsy-mark as mother love.'

Now Mr Sparrow has gave me a proper lesson in doin' this right. For a moment, I thinks I must cry for the memory of Ikey, which be most funny, for as far as I know ain't nobody much ever cried over the memory of Ikey Solomon. Mary might have shed a few tears what quickly dried, and so might me soft brother, but nobody else. It all goes to show the skill o' Sparrer Fart.

'You're right, Mr Sparrow, I've been most hard-hearted,' I says, even half-meaning it.

'No, no, lad!' He takes me by the arm. 'Tell you what? We'll 'ave a couple o' nobblers. My stand. Me and Fat Fred will nurse our drinks on our own, and leave yer free to take up the slack on your grief or celebration or bit o' both. Then afterwards, I want you to accompany us on a proper adventure. Put money in your pocket too. What do you say, eh, lad?'

'Adventure? What sort of adventure? Can't be better than getting shickered after four years!'

'Much better, a thousand times better, I promise. It'll fix whatever ails yer.' He bangs the bell and orders two nobblers each for us. I hasn't even touched the last one Doreen brought.

'But I ain't said yes, Mr Sparrow,' I protest.

He ignores me and retires to the corner as promised. He gives Fat Fred a shake and they talk quietly between themselves while I stand at the bar and tackle the three Cape brandies in front o' me. By the time I've finished the second, me head is spinning. It ain't sore any more but the saloon bar looks as wavy as if I were still aboard the Black Dog. I drink the third, spillin' some of the precious liquid on the front of me jacket. Then I take up the fourth.

All I remember after that is Mr Sparrow's voice murmuring. 'Steady now, take it easy, Tommo, there's a good lad.' Then he's talking to someone, what could be Fat Fred. 'We'll take him upstairs,' I hear him say. Then I don't remember nothing.

*

I wake up in a dark room and I'm lying on a proper bed with a blanket covering me. Me head hurts, but not too bad. I has a strange recollection of being waked from time to time and made to drink gallons of water, or so it seemed in me dreams. Now I'm busting for a piss. I lie a moment, listening for sounds, and see a thin strip of light coming in from the drapes. It's daylight and I can hear street sounds, but they is some distance below me.

I gets up and sees that me boots has been took off, along with me trousers and jacket. All I'm wearing is Farmer Moo-cow's woollen blouse. I walk softly over to the door and tries the knob, but it's locked. Then I goes to the window and pulls the drapes open. I'm looking down into a narrow lane, more a cutting between buildings than a passageway, barely wide enough to walk through. Two stray dogs are sniffing each other's arses, turning 'round and 'round, and bumping into the walls on either side. There's no sign of anyone else. I try to open the window, thinking I might piss out of it into the lane below, but it won't budge. What am I to do? Then I see a small washstand with a basin atop. I ain't tall enough to piss straight into it, so I put it on the floor and passes water for maybe ten minutes or more o' blessed relief.

I'm a new man when I lift the basin back up onto the washstand. Then I starts thinking about me predicament. Has I been kidnapped? How did I get here? Slowly, my memories of the pub comes back to me. Four brandies! Once I could've took ten and walked home. Hell, what time is it? Is it morning? Afternoon, I thinks, from the look of the lane. Is it today still or tomorrow? Where's Hawk? He'll be goin' spare!

I walk to the door and bang upon it with me fist. 'Anyone there?' I shouts. It don't take a moment before I hear the rattle of a key and the door is opened. Two lads, no more than ten or eleven years old, stand looking in at me.

'Afternoon, squire,' says one of 'em, cheeky-like.

'Where am I? What's the time?' I demand.

'It be just after noon, the post office clock just gorn not more 'n ten minute since, squire.'

'Don't call me squire! Who brung me here?' I ask.

'You was shickered, guv. Mr Sparrow said we should mind yiz. Been 'ere all bleedin' day, we 'as.' He jerks his thumb at the second boy. 'Him an' me, we's had no sleep and nothin' to eat all day, neither.'

'Where is he - Mr Sparrow? Can ya fetch him?'

'If you'll let us lock you back in? Strict instructions, we's got.'

'Where's me togs?' I ask.

'Dunno. Fat Fred took 'em this mornin'.'

They close the door and I hear the key turn in the lock.

Before long there are voices outside and soon enough in comes Mr Sparrow, carrying a brown paper parcel tied with twine.

'How are we feeling, Tommo? How's your poor noggin?' He smiles, then reaches into the pocket of his breeches and hands me a small flask. 'Hair of the dog, lad. One sip only, mind. We got business t'night.'

'I've got to find me brother now, Mr Sparrow.' But I reach for the flask and take a long swig.

'Now, now! Steady on, we've got a long afternoon and night ahead, lad.'

I hand Mr Sparrow back the flask. 'Where's me clothes? I've got to go and find me brother.'

'The nigger?' he says straight away.

'Aye, Hawk Solomon, me twin. He'll be out lookin' for me.'

'Twin? Him? You and he be twins? T'ain't possible - he's pitch-black, a giant!' Mr Sparrow grins his weasel grin. 'Ikey knock up a black gin then, did he? Dirty old bugger!' Then he looks puzzled. 'But then that don't explain you, does it?'

'I'll tell you how it come about some other time,' I says, impatient. 'You've made Hawk's acquaintance then, has ya?'

'I ain't, but I heard he's been downstairs asking for yer.'

'Didn't that bloomin' Doreen tell him she'd seen me?'

'Doreen only sees what she's told to see. She's blind as a bat when she needs to be.' Mr Sparrow smiles. 'But don't you fuss none, Tommo, we've had 'arf a dozen of my lads following your brother. I daresay it ain't too easy to lose a seven-foot nigger. How's your head, then?' He grins again. 'We gave you plenty o' water on the hour.'

'Me head's fine, where's me clothes?'

'Be here soon, a new set for you.'

'What's you mean?' I cries. 'Where's me own clobber? Ya took me flamin' clothes!'

'Not took, replaced. You can't be seen to be the country bumpkin where we're going tonight, Mr' Ace O' Spades. I even took yer shoe size when you were asleep. Yer precisely the same size as me.' Mr Sparrow hands me the parcel under his arm. 'They be my third best set o' crabshells.'

I'm still holding this parcel when a lad comes to the door with another large paper package, his head and cabbage-tree hat barely peeking out above it. 'From Hordern's Drapery, Mr Sparrow,' he announces.

It seems Sparrer Fart is King of the Sydney lads. Apart from the two what were guarding the door, there's three more on the landing, and now this one's appeared. Not to mention the half dozen what's following Hawk.

'Help yourself, Tommo,' Mr Sparrow says proudly, putting the parcel on the bed. 'Best there is, short o' tailor-made!' Inside the parcel is a good worsted suit of clothes, three new blouses, a waistcoat and a fancy neckerchief of the kind toffs wear. There's even a hat of a sort I've never seen before.

Mr Sparrow picks it up, removes his own headgear and places the new one on his head at a rakish angle. 'Latest fashion, all the rage in London, most suitable and becoming for a young man about town like yerself.'

'Look, Mr Sparrow, I don't know what you're doing, but I don't want no part of it 'til you explains everything. What the hell's goin' on? All I wants is me own gear back so's I can get out of here and find me brother!'

'Steady on, lad,' Mr Sparrow soothes. 'You get dressed and I'll tell yer all about the grand adventure I've got planned for us tonight.'

'Oh, an adventure this very night, is it? No doubt a thousand times better than getting pissed, is it? I told ya already, I'm off!' I picks up a blouse and starts to undo the buttons when two young lads bring in a jug of hot water, steam coming out the top.

'Pour it in the basin,' Mr Sparrow instructs.

'What's that for?' I asks, suspicious. The lad hesitates and looks at Mr Sparrow.