Charles Palliser (120 page)

Suddenly he and Sam brings out their pistols and holds everyone up. Barney and the rest on us let on that we were as frightened as everyone else, and we encouraged all the others to part with all the money they had with them. It
was
funny to see Barney playing his part. He was stunnin’. So when they’d got every piece of money and joolery in the house, Sam and Jack took off.”

Sally and Joey were grinning at the memory. But I remembered how upset she had looked that evening when Jack described how he had shot Sam, and so I said:

“And all the time Sam was intending to cheat the rest of you and shoot Jack stone dead.”

Sally flinched and said: “You know about that, then?”

“I was looking down through the ceiling when Jack got back.” Then I added carefully:

“But it wasn’t true what he said, was it?”

She flushed. “What do you mean?” she stammered.

Joey looked from one of us to the other in bewilderment.

“It was really Jack who cheated the rest of you, wasn’t it?”

She bit her lip and said nothing.

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“You see,” I said, “I know something about Jack already. About him and the Cat’s-meat-man.”

She looked startled at this and exclaimed: “He told you?”

“So you do know,” I said.

“I don’t know nothing!” she cried.

“Then I’ll tell you,” I said. “It goes back a long way but I think I’ve puzzled it out.”

I reminded her of the account of the past that I heard Barney giving to the others the night after the raid when he had explained how Pulvertaft’s spy was Sam all the time, and had described how he and Jack had pretended to believe it was Nan in order to lull Sam’s fears that he had been detected. Everything that Barney had said, I now suggested, had been correct with one crucial exception:

“For you see, it wasn’t Sam who put the mark on Barney that summer in ’17 when he had to cut from Town and go north. It was Jack, wasn’t it?”

“I dunno,” she said nervously.

“And when Barney got back to London later that summer someone put a down on him and had him taken up. That was Jack again, wasn’t it?”

“How do you know?” she demanded.

“Then Jack and Blueskin, whom you knew as Peg, worked with Pulvertaft —

unbeknownst to Barney — to destroy Isbister,” I went on relentlessly as she stared at me in amazement. “It was exactly four years ago that Blueskin lured him into a trap at a graveyard in Southwark and Jem was killed. I know Jack was involved in that.”

“How can you say that?” she cried.

I answered calmly: “Because I saw him there.”

She gasped and turned pale.

“Blueskin joined Pulvertaft,” I went on, “and after that they had the market pretty much to themselves and could fix their own price for … for what they were selling. I assume Jack took his share of that. And I’ll wager that he played a big part in the combination against Blueskin when Pulvertaft ’peached on him and got him knocked down.”

Joey had been staring at us open-mouthed: “Tell him it ain’t true, Sal!” he cried. “Jack ain’t no scrub.”

“And the worst thing of all,” I went on, “was how he killed Sam to put the blame on him.”

She was very frightened: “Jack and Barney are still working mates (in Thrawl-street now) and if Barney knowed what you jist said, he’d bellows him. I sometimes wish he would. On’y Jack would bellows me fust. He told me once (when he was scratched or he wouldn’t have) that he set up the whole fakement with Pulvertaft. Arter that I seen him looking at me in a way I didn’t like. He’s been looking at me like that more and more often. That’s why I’ve left him. I don’t want to have to go back. See, I knowed he was lying about Sam from the fust, for he made me promise to tell Barney as I’d seen Sam talking to a bald cove with a wooden leg. I nivver thought no harm to it at the time. But Jack used that to make Barney b’lieve as how Sam had blowed on us to Blueskin and Pulvertaft. I on’y knowed what he was up to when Jack come back that night and said he’d bellowsed Sam.”

“I believe you,” I said. “For I was watching you through the ceiling and I saw how upset you were.”

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She looked at me curiously for a moment, then cleared her throat and said: “That reminds me: I’ve brung something for you.”

“For me?” I said in surprise. What in my references to that night could have reminded her of anything to do with me?

At that moment we heard the sound of footsteps approaching.

“I said you should’ve gone,” said Joey reproachfully.

Sally looked bold but not alarmed, I thought, and I wondered if she had always intended to be found by her parents.

When they came in they froze in surprise at the sight of the strange lady. The four members of the family stared at each other for several moments.

Then Mr Digweed stepped forward, lifting his hand to his forehead: “Why, miss, we didn’t …”

“Dad, it’s me, Sally.”

Mr Digweed stopped in amazement. Then he seemed about to move forward.

“George!” his wife cried, and he halted.

The parents looked at each other for a few moments, and then Mrs Digweed said eagerly: “Have you gave it up?” Then she stepped back: “But I only need to look at you.

And to smell you. Faugh! You stink like an alley-cat.”

“How can I give it up?” Sally broke in impatiently. “What could I do?”

“I could find you work, decent honourable work.”

“Doing what?”

“Why, as a laundress, working with me.”

Sally grimaced in distaste. “What, up before dawn, working all the hours of daylight, ruining my hands, and working alongside servant-girls and dolly-mops. Ketch me at that!”

“Then go now, Sally,” her mother said. “And don’t come here again. Not nivver.”

“Why are you like this, mam? Why can’t you forgive me?”

“Forgive!” she exclaimed. Then she said more calmly: “And that’s twice you got Joey mixed up in all that.”

“What else could I do?” Sally cried. “You was starving and you wouldn’t take money from me. Would you rather he’d died?”

“No, in course not!” Mrs Digweed said with a troubled expression. “Oh Sally, I don’t understand it. I only know that what you’re doing is wrong and shameful.” Her voice broke as she went on: “Why have you come? And how did you find us?”

Joey said: “I brung her. We’ve been meeting now and agin.”

Mrs Digweed looked at him reproachfully: “That was wrong of you.” Then a new thought struck her and she cried: “So Barney knows where we are!”

So I was right! She knew all about Barney! Surely my suspicions of her were justified!

“Steady on, old gal,” her husband murmured with a glance at me.

But his wife turned to me and said: “No, it’s time we should tell you everything, Master Johnnie. Most likely it was wrong of us not to say it a-fore, on’y we thought it was for the best. You see, Barney is George’s brother.”

“He is, I’m mightily sorry to say,” said Mr Digweed. “He is a regular right-down bad

’un and allus was from a boy.”

“But there’s more than that,” Mrs Digweed went on. “It was him what broke into your mam’s house.”

At last she had told me! And she and her husband seemed so ashamed and GRANDFATHERS

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guilty that I didn’t know what to think now. Had I been mistaken in my suspicions of them?

“There ain’t no danger of Barney finding us,” Joey said. “Whenever I met Sal I was allus very careful not to let nobody dodge me back here.”

“Well,” said his mother, “but this time you’ve brung her.”

“I won’t tell him,” Sally said.

“But he might have follered you here.”

“Why should he do that?” Sally asked with a smile.

Involuntarily Mrs Digweed glanced towards me.

“Oh,” Sally said, “I know Barney wants to find Master Johnnie. And I know why, too.”

The rest of us looked at each other at a nonplus.

“That reminds me what I come for,” Sally went on. “I’ve brung something for him.

Look what I’ve risked for your sake, mam, because I knowed you’d want him to have these back.”

She reached into her handsome reticule and then, to my delight, held up my mother’s pocket-book. I almost snatched it from her and tore it open. To my relief, it was intact and I found the copy of the codicil I had made and the letter — or whatever it was —

written by my grandfather which I had been about to read just before Barney had stolen it. Even the pages of the map which I had long ago given to my mother were still there.

The letter, I reflected, would be a great deal more significant to me now after what I had heard from Mr Nolloth.

“Barney gived them to me to read for him,” she explained to me, “that night when he took them of you. But I didn’t want to give ’em back, so I told him I’d had ’em prigged.

He hit me for it.” She laughed and looked at her mother: “He wanted me to read ’em so that he could know how much to ask for ’em when he come to sell ’em. And I know who he meant to sell ’em to. It’s that split-cause, that lawyer, what he got onto years back when I read him that fust letter what he’d stole. I brung these to show you I don’t go along with everything Barney tells me to do. I want to make peace with you. I’ve left Barney.”

So I had been right! It was Sancious who was the link between the Digweeds, on the one hand, and my mother and myself, on the other. And the link with Sancious was through Barney.

“You could have brung them papers back two years ago,” her mother said; “and saved Master Johnnie a mort o’ grief.” Then she scrutinised her daughter’s face: “What’s really happened? What are you keeping from us?”

“Nothing! I’ve told you the truth.”

“You’ve fell out with your fancy-man, haven’t you?”

Sally flushed.

“I want to come back,” she said. “That’s all.”

“Why?”

She glanced at Joey and me. “I’m ill,” she said very softly.

Her mother stared at her. “No I won’t help you, Sally,” she said sadly. “Not if you won’t promise never to go back to Barney but to work honest.”

“Don’t arst it, mam,” Sally said. “I won’t.”

“What will become of you? You know what happens to gals like you when they gets too old.”

“Oh that’s a long way off. Time to think of that when it happens — if I live that long.

Until then I’ve got plenty of tin.”

She removed a purse from her reticule and showed that it was full of gold.

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“And I can be useful, too, and warn you what Barney’s got it in mind to do about Master Johnnie.” She held the purse towards her parents: “Here, take some.”

Before I could ask her what she meant in reference to myself, Mrs Digweed said angrily: “How dare you! Git out of this house a-fore your dad throws you out.”

Mr Digweed muttered something that might or might not have been confirmation of his wife’s threat, but at this outburst Sally herself turned red, rose and stamped her foot.

“Very well, I’ll go. And maybe I won’t nivver see any on you agin. And you’ll be sorry if Barney has his way with your precious Master Johnnie. Why, Barney was right about you. You really are a pair o’ gudgeons! No wonder he took you in over that building spec!”

“What do you mean?” her mother asked.

She laughed: “That split-cause arst him to find flatts.”

“You mean Barney knowed from the start that it was a take-in?” Mr Digweed asked.

“In course,” she jeered. “You see, that big builder was in it with the split-cause and the coves what owned the land, and they only put up a few carcases as call-birds to draw flatts like you into doing the work on the rest. It was planned from the start that they would screw you all up to selling out for far below the value of the work what you’d put in. And, like I say, that lawyer is up to other things. I was going to tell you but I shan’t now.”

She flounced out banging the door behind her.

There was a silence. Mr Digweed shook his head and said: “My own brother. I can’t hardly credit it.”

So much was becoming plain to me. The Digweeds had been victims of the same fraud that my mother had been ruined by. And the common factor was again Sancious and behind him, I suspected, Silas Clothier. More and more — and especially now that Mr and Mrs Digweed had been so frank with me — I was wondering if I had been correct in assuming that they were being paid by an agent of the Mompessons.

Mrs Digweed said: “You didn’t ought to have met her, Joey.”

“She’s my sister, ain’t she? Why are you down on her so hard? Dad,
you’d
let her come and see us now and then, wouldn’t you?”

Mr Digweed looked extremely discomfited at this.

“Well,” he said at last, “if it’s ‘no’ what your mam says, then I reckon she’s right.”

“You don’t really think that,” Joey cried. “Why can’t you forgive her?”

“Forgive her!” his mother exclaimed. “Have you forgotten what she done? How she left Polly and the little boy in Cox’s-square when they had the fever, and went to Barney and … ?”

Near to tears she broke off. Sally had left her brother and sister that time when the rest of the family were up North! Left them, in the event, to die! So that was the explanation of the family’s reticence about that period. I blushed with shame at the memory of the motives I had attributed to them. Now that I saw them unguardedly in conflict with one another, I realized that I had grievously misjudged them.

“Another thing,” said Mrs Digweed. “Master Johnnie ain’t safe here from GRANDFATHERS

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Barney no more now. Even if nobody didn’t foller Sally here, I don’t trust her not to tell him where we are jist out of spite.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” said Joey.

“Oh no?” Mrs Digweed said darkly. “I think I know my gal better than you do, young man. So it’s right away from here we’ll have to go. And that means I’ll have to build up a new connexion in the launderin’ line and your dad will have to give over the S’iety. You see what you’ve cost us, Joey?”

“It’s your fault, not mine,” he cried. “You should make up with her.”

He made towards the door.

“Where are you goin’?” cried his mother. “You’re nivver goin’ arter her, are you? You ain’t going back to Barney?”