Battle Fleet (2007) (13 page)

Strolling through St James’s Park, a young lad walked straight into me. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir,’ he said and hurried off. Richard was behind me and saw the boy whip a hand into my coat and take my purse. The two of us hared down the road after him. But when we turned into the back alley we’d seen him dive down, he was there with three other boys, their knives glinting in the dull light. We ran back to the high street as fast as our legs would carry us.

‘We could have had them, Sam,’ said Richard, who felt a little bashful about running away. ‘They were just urchins.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ I said to him. ‘We’re not in the Navy any more. Would you want to kill a boy for a few pennies, or risk your own life for the cost of a meal and a few pints of ale?’

What sickened me most were the public hangings. They were always well attended. One day, the three of us went to St Paul’s Cathedral. Robert’s uncle was the Dean there and we were allowed to climb to the top to admire the view. On our way home we walked into a large crowd close to Newgate Prison. ‘Is this some sort
of fair?’ wondered Robert.

‘Naaah, there’s a hangin’,’ said a chestnut-seller.

The crowd was dangerously excited. As they waited, a man with a small monkey running up and down his arm offered extraordinary cures for their ailments. ‘MAGNETIC TRACTORS TO PULL OUT DISEASE,’ he shouted into a voice trumpet, ‘SPIRIT OF PEARL FOR MADNESS AND DROPSY.’ People flocked to hand over their money.

There were children there too – awaiting the spectacle with the same ghoulish glee as their parents. Having almost been the victim of the hangman myself, and seen several executions in the Navy, I knew first hand the terror and anguish behind this display of official justice. Or so I thought.

Ordinarily, none of us would have stayed to watch, but as we walked away the hangman’s victim was ushered through the prison gates to the scaffold in front of the square. I looked on him with pity, but as he appeared the crowd gave a massive cheer. Curiosity made us turn back. I wondered if the crowd would surge forward and rescue him, but a phalanx of soldiers, five deep with muskets and bayonets, surrounded the scaffold.

The man was wearing his finest clothes. He looked like a wedding guest and sauntered up the steps of the scaffold without a care in the world. Raising his hands for silence, he began to speak in a clear, confident voice.

‘My old ma always told me I’d die with my boots on.’ The crowd laughed and whistled its support. ‘But I’ve had plenty of fallings out with the old witch and I’ve always delighted in proving her wrong.’ He kicked his boots off and threw them into the crowd. There was a frantic struggle to claim them.

Speech over, he waved and removed his hat, so the hangman could slip the noose around his neck.

‘He’s got enough pluck for ten men,’ said Robert.

The deed was quickly accomplished as his friends tugged at his feet to hasten the work of the rope.

Richard understood what that performance was all about. ‘It’s his way of cocking a snook at the authorities,’ he said. ‘He’s supposed to be terrified. But if he can show them he doesn’t give a fig then he’s won. The crowd came here to cheer him on. They want to raise two fingers to the establishment too.’

The longer we stayed in London, the safer we felt. We’d been in combat and knew we could handle ourselves in a fight. As the weeks went by, Richard and I became careless about the areas we visited. Although we never said as much, we would dare each other to see who would be first to back out of a dangerously seamy riverside pub.

One Tuesday afternoon we were in the North Star close by Southwark dockside. Most of the dinnertime
trade had come and gone. Now there were just a few stragglers – the roughest-looking men in the pub. They looked so villainous and seedy among the dingy furnishings I thought Mr Hogarth would have loved to sketch them as subjects for one of his engravings.

Two of them, on the far side of the room, were engaged in an endless game of vingt-et-un. One had several fingers missing, the other an eyepatch. Each swore like a trooper (which they probably used to be) when they lost to the other, slamming down his cards in a fit of temper. I kept expecting the landlord to come over and stop them gambling in his pub, but instead, when trade died down, he went to join them.

To our right were another couple of brutes. They started off talking in whispers but the more they drank the louder they became. One had recently been released from Newgate Prison. ‘It’s better than the workhouse, I tells yah. If you got money, you can get anything y’like. Brandy, couple o’ doxies, even the keys to the front door.’

When they ran out of conversation they started playing dice. Looking round at us, one of them said, ‘You look like useful sorts. You boys is sailors, aincha? Come an’ join us. See if y’can beat us.’

Neither Richard or I had ever gambled in our lives. I was about to make an excuse when Richard said, ‘Just need a leak, mate, then we’ll be with you.’

We both went to the urinal on the other side of the building.

‘Is this a good idea?’ I said. We were both a bit drunk, and I was feeling rattled.

Richard sniggered. ‘They look like a right couple of villains. Let’s just sit with them for a bit and see what they’ve got to say for themselves.’

They introduced themselves as John and William and bought us a couple of pints of ale. We began to play a dice game called hazard, where you have to guess the number to be thrown. We had seen enough sailors play to know the rules. John placed a farthing on the table, and I matched it with an identical stake. Drunk though I was, I noticed how low his bid was and immediately began to feel better. This didn’t feel like a swindle and sure enough, we kept playing for similarly low wagers, money crossing to and fro in almost equal amounts.

They weren’t out to cheat us, they were sizing us up. We carried on buying each other drinks and listened to them boast about their adventures with the ‘night plunderers’, as the warehouse robbers called themselves. We carried on drinking, playing along with them, fascinated to discover what they were up to.

‘You boys lookin’ to earn a couple o’ bob?’ said William. ‘There’s a merchantman just come in from the West Indies. Hogsheads of tobacco and sugar. There for the takin’.’

We wobbled our heads side to side, trying to appear noncommittal.

I started to feel uneasy when some of their friends joined us. One told us he made a packet as a body-snatcher, supplying fresh corpses for medical students to dissect. ‘You boys game?’ he said. ‘There’s ten shilling in it for you. I know plenty at the hospitals who’ll take ’em. Got your own spade? There’s two fresh graves at St Anne’s, Limehouse. We’ll have to go tonight, mind, before someone else nabs ’em.’

We kept turning down their offers of ‘work’ and they began to get suspicious. ‘You aint noses are you?’ said John.

It was time to go. I should have been more frightened but I was now so drunk this all felt like it was happening to someone else. They followed us out into the street and we were dragged into an alley. ‘This is it,’ I thought, ‘we’re going to get murdered.’ I expected to see the flash of a knife, but we weren’t worth killing. A punch to the stomach winded me and as I doubled over I could feel my pockets being fleeced. Then they were gone. We both lost a few shillings. I thought we got off lightly.

This was Richard’s cue to leave. Next morning, as we nursed our hangovers, he announced, ‘Fun’s over. Time to go before something nastier happens!’ I supposed it
was time for me to visit my parents in Norfolk too.

Richard’s departure was swift. Almost at once he was taken on to a returning American merchantman. On the night before the ship sailed, we dined with Robert at his club. ‘You must visit Boston, the both of you!’ said Richard. ‘I have no doubt we will see each other again.’

I was sure of it too, otherwise I would have been dejected to see him go. Richard had been my greatest friend. He was like a brother. After we bade farewell to Robert he said, ‘You’d have a brilliant future in Massachusetts. My father would find you work. You’d soon make your fortune.’

We talked long into the night. The next day he walked up the gangplank and shouted, ‘See you in Boston!’ Then he was gone.

In their letters my mother and father were increasingly indignant that I had not yet visited them. I had been in London three months now, so they did have a point.

It was a slow and tedious journey back to Norfolk. The countryside of England was winter weary. My companions in the coach were a corpulent merchant, his mean little wife and their sour-faced daughter. ‘Not long till spring,’ I said with a smile. But my attempts at starting a conversation were haughtily rebuffed.

I had written ahead, and when I reached the coaching inn in Norwich my father was there with my brother Tom, waiting with the horse and cart. I’m embarrassed to admit there were tears when we met.

My father looked in rude health and Tom seemed to have grown up. He was still shy but had developed a certain steeliness – no doubt after one too many farmers had sold him rotten vegetables.

Home was exactly as I remembered it. My mother stood waiting by the door and ran up the garden path to embrace me. Enfolded in her arms I felt as if I were nine years old, giving her a hug as I came home from school. It was good to feel that safe again.

‘Let me look at you,’ she said, tears running down her
cheeks. ‘Last time we met … I thought we’d never see you again. It’s like you’ve come back from the dead.’ For an instant I was transported back to the deck of the prison hulk at Portsmouth and remembered the precious ring she’d given me then. I still carried it round my neck and returned it with a proud flourish.

I ran around the house, looking in every room, vaulting up the stairs three at a time, to remind myself of life before I went to sea. The smell of the place – the earthy whiff of vegetables in the shop at the front of the house, my mother’s cooking, the furniture polish, and the roaring fire, all took me back to boyhood.

It had been nearly four years since I last stood in this house. So much had changed in my life, yet everything here remained the same. Even the china figurines of the young lady with her ball gown and parasol and the young buck with his musket and hunting dog were in exactly the same spot.

‘What took you so long to come back and see us, Sam?’ my mother asked after the initial flurry of our greeting.

‘Harriet, don’t chide the boy as soon as he’s home,’ said my father.

I heard a clucking out in the yard and rushed out to see the chickens. ‘William got had by a fox,’ said my father. Mary and Matilda scurried away from me. I was a stranger now.

We ate a succulent beef joint, with thick onion gravy and potatoes and cabbage. My father opened a bottle of wine too – a French claret that must have cost him half a week’s takings. ‘Well you’ve certainly learned how to drink,’ he said with some disapproval, as I guzzled it down. ‘Better make that last, Sam. There’s no more in the house.’

That evening we sat around the fire, and I talked long into the night. There was so much to tell them. Tom grew bored. He wasn’t interested in New South Wales, or Sumatra, or even London.

‘There’s nothing there that would tempt
me
away from Norfolk,’ he said with a weary sigh and went up to bed.

After he’d gone my father said, ‘Funny how two boys can be so different.’

‘Thank heaven,’ said my mother. ‘I couldn’t bear to have both my lads away from me all the time. How long you staying for, Sam?’

‘I’d like to see in the spring, maybe even the summer, if there’s enough for me to do,’ I said. ‘That is, if you won’t mind having me in the house?’

‘Stay as long as you like, Sam,’ said my father with a big smile. ‘You know we want you to stay here in Norfolk. I’m sure a lad like you will find profitable employment.’

I didn’t want to talk about what I might be doing in
the future. I didn’t even know myself. So I finally asked the question I had been dying to raise all evening. ‘And how are the Hookes? Any news of Rosie.’

They exchanged uneasy glances. ‘She cried for months when you were transported,’ said my mother. ‘Mrs Hooke told me she got terribly thin. And there wasn’t much of her in the first place. We haven’t seen her for a couple of years. But six months ago Mr Hooke came by. Tells us she’s doing well. She has a job as a nursery governess for a local family. Very grand they are. One of their footmen’s taken a shine to her. I hear she’s engaged to be wed. Mr Hooke says he’s a good lad. Got prospects. He’ll make a butler by the time he’s thirty.’

I smiled but felt a stab of regret. I still had a tender spot for Rosie. Had I been right to tell her to forget about me when I left for New South Wales? I had honestly believed I would never be coming back.

The next morning I took a long walk around the fields surrounding the village. It was a bright winter’s day and the sunshine had a warmth I had not felt for months. The trees were still bare, but a few daffodils had appeared. I was conscious of being truly alone for the first time in years. Apart from the cows, staring at me in their curious way, there was not another living thing in sight. It was a delicious feeling. After years spent
crowded in a ship with scores or hundreds of other people, such solitude felt luxurious. I thought of the sour stench of the cleansing vinegar and sulphur on the
Orion
as we lolled adrift in the doldrums, trying to slake our thirst on warm sour water. The pump in our backyard provided the sweetest water I had ever tasted.