Fair Fight (41 page)

‘And so you’ve found me.’

‘I do not like you disappearing so, Dora. You must behave like a wife, though you have never been one.’

‘You’ve never been a husband, but you’ve the taste for ordering me.’

‘Don’t be foolish. One of these coves will guess we are a sham and then where will we be?’

She laughed. ‘Do any of you boys believe this gent my husband?’ she called.

There came quiet laughter from the darkness across the deck. I had not realised we were in company and now it was I who felt a fool; I had slapped her before I knew what I was about. My hand flashed out like a white fish in black water and even above the roar of the waves the sound was sharp and loud. I should never have struck her, had I not felt humiliated.

‘There!’ I said. ‘You shall learn to keep by me, or I shall chain you up in the hold like a negro.’

She said nothing, only put her hand to her face.

Now I saw dark shapes come toward us as the sailors crossed the deck. They moved all at once, as though called by my slap.

‘It is not I who will be chained,’ Dora said, very low.

‘What’s this?’ I said.

‘All good parties come to an end sometime,’ the captain said, behind me. ‘It’s time for you to be going.’

‘Going? We are at sea, man!’

‘I’ve called you a carriage,’ he said. And here he laughed.

Dora reached out for me and I pushed her away roughly. Immediately I felt strong hands grasp my arms, holding me still.

‘Leave off me!’ I cried.

Dora’s hands slid into my waistcoat and though I bucked like a fury I could not stop her from taking the plantation deed. It barely had the sea air upon it, so quick did she take it and push it down into her bosom.

‘Thief!’ I cried.

‘You know your own name, then,’ she said. She stepped toward me again and I felt her lips brush my ear. ‘If ever they come after me I’ll see you swing as a thief. Be sure I’ll see you roped beside me.’

Her hand squeezed me through my breeches and she laughed again.

‘Reduced, ain’t you?’ she said.

I did the only thing I could, then. I threw myself forward within my constraints and struck her with my head. She fell back with a sharp cry. I did not see how much or how little she had felt it because a solid thing – a fist, I suppose – struck me in the stomach and all the breath was driven out of me. Held as I was my body could not fold itself up and I jerked and coughed, fitting about on my arms like a puppet on its strings.

Now the rough hands began to drag me forward, toward the ship’s rail. Fear slid its gloved hands about my heart.

‘You devils,’ I cried. ‘You mean to drown me!’

‘Now Mr Bowden,’ the captain said, ‘do you accuse me of murder? We mean to rob you only,’ and now they all laughed. There seemed a great many of them; the whole crew was up on deck. I could hear Dora’s shrill cackle behind them.

‘Damn you all!’ I screamed, as a hundred pairs of hands clasped my arms, my shoulders. My coat was ripped. I stumbled over my own feet and was hoisted up again. Relentlessly, I was propelled to the ship’s edge, to the rail and the black water, so far below.

I screamed as we went.

‘Don’t drown me,’ I cried, ‘I beg you! Oh, God! Curses upon you all! Rot you, rot you!’

We reached the rail, and my belly pressed against it. Any moment I thought, they would topple me over it.

‘Hush all that yammer,’ the captain said. ‘I told you I called you a carriage. Can’t you see it, there below?’

At first I was too wild to see anything but the rolling pitch of the dark waves, but there, a life-boat, rolling alongside the ship. A tiny wooden thing, and hanging from the rail, a rope-ladder, swinging and slapping against the hull.

‘Drown yourself, once you climb down,’ Dora said, from somewhere. I could not see her. ‘Drown yourself, and welcome.’

‘You witch!’ I cried, and had my head cuffed by some unseen hand.

‘It’s only for the sweet lady’s sake that we don’t see you drowned. Now – climb down,’ the captain said, ‘or the boys’ll heave you down.’

I believe I began to cry, my tears like ice in the wind. It did me no good at all.

My memory here grows hazy. I recall being at sea, terribly cold and very frightened. I was fixated on the idea of my bag of gold – a good amount had been left even after I had paid the price of our passage – which I had seen put into the captain’s locker ‘for safety’. The bitterness of this thought was the hook that kept me from sinking into despair, the axle upon which my rage turned. I planned a million deaths for the captain and a million more for that thieving whore. I spent hours embroidering their torture in my mind. My fears were so numerous that they seemed like a wave that would any moment sweep me away. I was almost as afraid of meeting a ship as I was of starvation or drowning at the first; I could not stop thinking of the captain’s tales of slavers going to disease-ridden islands, where they would as like leave me as not, or pirates, or navy ships one would be press-ganged onto. From all I had heard I thought it very unlikely that I should meet any ship that would not sell me, or kill me, or force me to work. At first this predicament seemed terrible indeed, though only a short time was to pass before I should have wept with joy and called out a halloo to even the most murderous-looking vessel rather than spend one more moment without water.

I recall dreadful, undignified things from this time, on which I should not dwell. I recall the salt, stinging my eyes and cracking my lips. I recall trying to fashion a fishing line from my stockings – a miserable endeavour. I trailed them hopefully through the water as a kind of net, catching nothing, of course, until a large wave slapped over the side of the boat and startled me, whereupon I dropped them. I recall wondering, as I added my fluids to the ocean, over the small boat’s hull, whether I should be trying to drink them. I recall weeping, strange dry sobs, and wondering if I were too shrivelled inside even for tears. These memories are not lucid or continuous, but more like scenes from a picture book, with the crumpled pages torn out and put back in the wrong order.

This state of affairs must not have gone on long, for I survived it. I am told that I washed up on a dreary English beach, still in my boat, and was hauled ashore by a band of women gathering
cockles there. We could not have been so very far out to sea when they put me over, so quickly did that whore and whoreson rob me.

I am told that I was taken away to be nursed by one of those women, and upon regaining consciousness, attacked her most ungallantly. I suppose I must have thought her Dora.

My cell was so small that I could have touched all four walls simultaneously, if I were to stretch out. A meaner, filthier place I had rarely seen, and certainly never been confined in.

I had arrived at the prison as weak as an infant, and was half dragged, half carried in. The doorways were so low that if I had not lost my hat at sea I should have lost it then. All the while, beneath the nausea of near starvation and the foul unwashed odour of the prison, I felt the panic waiting. I have never liked small spaces. Now I was confined in one and not a window anywhere. I thought,
If I do not concentrate now, I shall go mad
.
It seemed at that moment that to give in to fear would mean my death.

My body seemed to roil and wave constantly. I lay upon that straw pallet nearly delirious. Perhaps I was; it seems I accused my jailor of poisoning me, though I do not know if this is true. He said something later that made me conclude that I had been raving.

I do not know how soon I thought to look about me and wonder where I was. Oh, I knew I was imprisoned, I was not so weak as that. I mean that I gathered sufficient wits to wonder what city or town it was that held me, and how I had come to be there.

The little story of my rescue by the cockle-gatherers I did not learn until much later. In my cell I could only ascertain from my rough gaoler that I was held on a charge most heinous, and that I was at Plymouth. I learnt later that the cockle-woman had not been much hurt and that my charge consisted of nothing but vagrancy.

I should have been released, as like as not, and told to move on somewhere far away from cockle-women, had not the prison magistrates, in the course of their deciding what should be done with me, turned up a description of someone very like myself, wanted in Bristol for most serious debts. Perry had not reported me a thief, only an absconding debtor. He saved my life, though he may not have meant to do it, for if he had named me a thief I should have hung quicker than gasping.

The journey from Plymouth to Bristol was perhaps the closest I have ever come to hell. I was carried in an open cart, facing backwards upon a wooden bench, so narrow that I could scarce keep upon it and certainly could not find any comfort. My wrists and ankles were shackled to an iron ring set into the floor at my feet. Every time the cart jolted – and it jolted often – I was jerked about and could not steady myself; my bottom slid out from underneath me more times than I could count, striking my spine against the bench as I fell and almost wrenching my arms from the sockets. We did not stop, except to change the horses. There were three guards, and they took turns driving. Facing backwards as I was, I could only hear them, laughing and calling to each other to pass the bottle. I could smell the smoke from their pipes. We went on this way, on the bumpiest roads they could find to travel, for perhaps three or four days. I could not be sure exactly how much time had passed; I was half in a daze of fear. When we stopped to change horses one of the oafs would come behind and open the back of the cart. I was unshackled then, just long enough to drink a tin cup of thin beer and eat some dry and greyish bread and do my business by the side of the road, leered over constantly. I learnt to sleep sitting up. When it rained, the guards drew on leather cloaks, while I grew damp. I was bitten about the face and hands by the wind; I was cold to my bones. I would feel my cheeks grow wet and find that I was weeping, without realising that I had begun.

Perhaps, I kept thinking, the roads unwinding behind us were my last view of the world. I would never be set free, for I could never hope to repay my debts. I could not pretend I would. My spirits were so low that sometimes it was all I could do to pull myself back onto the bench when I fell. Where was Perry, now? How would he fare without me? I knew then, if I had never known it before, that you cannot break a promise made in blood. I had sworn to die rather than forsake him and God meant to make me keep my word. I would die in a prison cell, a death as slow as Perry’s own by the bottle was sure to be. I felt it in every jolt of the road beneath the wheels.

PART TEN

Ruth

23

W
hat a sorry pair we were, coming home defeated and Tom with only one eye. He’d been mending well in London but now he was beset by low spirits and he’d not talk much, nor look about him at the city streets. Mr Dryer had sent us a cull driving a cart filled with hay, and there were a couple of blankets to cover us. It was better than I’d hoped for, from that cold-hearted piss-licker. I made Tom as comfortable as I could and gave him my spare cloak rolled up for his pillow, though it was devilish cold.

‘Can’t he drive smooth? Every jolt’s like a poke in the eye,’ Tom said, and after that I helped him to the laudanum and put him to sleep.

All the journey he slept, dosed high, twitching and moaning with his dreams. I sat watch over him in the back of the cart, to keep him well wrapped in the blankets and spoon him the medicine whenever he seemed to wake.

The big cull that Mr Dryer found to drive us knew enough to keep silent – I was sure he pitied us, ragged and low as we were. When night fell he stopped at an inn and looked over his shoulder at me, where I sat sunk in my thoughts. I’d propped my back against the side of the cart and had my knees bunched up about my ears, to give Tom the space to stretch out. He was sleeping so deep that it would’ve been murder to move him and the sky was clear, though chill. Mr Dryer had given me a very little money for the journey but I thought to keep it if I could, and so I begged the cull fetch bread, cheese and ale from the inn and slept the night in the back of his cart. It was cold enough, I won’t say it wasn’t; my feet were numb the night through. I wrapped myself around Tom’s slumbering form, tight as I could, tucked in the blankets and covered us with the hay. The cull helped me with that, he was obliging enough. Then he went off to find a bed with Mr Dryer’s coin and I dosed myself along with Tom, so that sleep would find us both. On coming back to us next morning, the cully was gent enough to bring us a couple of pasties and wouldn’t take a penny for them. He said then he’d been wondering all night if he’d find us froze to death.

Tom was awake, though bleary as a new-born calf. I’d let him wake to eat. He couldn’t do much but he cracked his lips open and drank off all the ale. I’d not the heart to ask him to keep some back for me; he likely didn’t realise we were meant to share. He drank it down and belched aloud.

‘There’s medicine,’ he said, and lay back again.

The driver broke into a smile at seeing this.

‘Why, you ain’t as far gone as I’d thought you,’ he said.

‘I’m near enough mended,’ Tom said, though his voice was so weak as to make it out a sham.

I’d a lot of time to think on that journey, while Tom slept beside me. The country road unrolled behind us and I was devilish glad to see it go. I hated the countryside with every inch of my heart. If it’d been a man I’d have knocked his teeth down his neck. Someday, when Tom was strong again, I’d tell him what it’d been like, alone in that cottage.

Even low as we were coming home, home was where we were going. I was half desperate to arrive and half in dread of it. How sweet it’d be to stroll into The Hatchet, but how bitter it was that we came back beaten. The news would’ve travelled; how would they greet us, with pity or jeers? What should we do now? I couldn’t imagine Mr Dryer would help us. And he’d be coming to see Dora, of course he’d come. How would it be to see his face? Could I clap eyes on the cull without spitting?

By the time we came into Bristol I was so weary that I could only look upon everything with a kind of dull relief; I’d been afraid for so long I’d never see it again. When we entered the city proper the rattling of the cart over the cobbles caused Tom to stir. I woke him gently.

‘Look, Tom. Look where we are. We’re almost at the Horse Fair.’

Tom sat up and looked about him with a dazed air. I’d no idea if he was glad to be home. I fell silent as we passed St James’ churchyard.

‘Where we began,’ Tom said in a croak.

I didn’t know if he meant Bristol or St James’, where I’d been beat near as bad as he was now. I took his hand as gentle as I could and held it.

There was no bully on the step; straight off I felt queer. The door was unlocked and even before we stepped foot inside I knew there was no one about the place. The hall was filled with dust and hush. Tom and I looked at each other. I could see him struggling to think through the laudanum fog about his mind. I’d made a racket dragging the trunk inside, but now I opened the door to the parlour as soft as if I thought someone might be sleeping there. There was no one inside, sleeping or otherwise. The lamps and the pictures had been whipped off by some sharper, but the settee and the occasional table stood there still. The stool was gone, and I thought perhaps there’d been a chair; there wasn’t now.

‘What’s this?’ I said, quiet.

Tom shook his head.

We went to the kitchen and found it just as empty and cold as the rest of the house. It seemed the colder, for always having been warm before. There was no food at all in the larder. There was a broken dish upon the table and some spillage upon the floor that had been mostly scraped up but no other sign of a fight, or of anybody being about. A few pans and plates were left, but the heavy copper kettle had been fleeced.

Now I called out, ‘Hi! Who’s about?’

Tom lifted a hand to shush me, and then thought better of it and called out too.

Above us, I thought I heard a creaking. I waved Tom quiet. It came again. I could see Tom had the same thought I did; who’d try to stay silent, if he’d not ill intentions? I took up the poker from the hearth.

We began up the stairs, as soft as I knew how, though every piece of that house creaked and Tom was a heavy cull. I went first and Tom followed and it was a measure of how out-at-heels he was that he let me lead. Just those few stairs and he was breathing as hard as an old man, clinging to the banister. Up we went, creak, creak. Above us I could hear the floorboards make their own creak, as if answering the ones we trod. Was the cully up there hiding, or coming for us?

Then came a sound I’d not expected; an infant’s cry. It was in Ma’s garret, I could tell that clear as anything.

I couldn’t still my heart. We went up past Dora’s room, up the narrow stairs. The door of Ma’s room was shut. Through the wood came the steady rise and fall of a new baby’s wails and the soft sounds of shushing. I put my hand upon the knob and turned to look at Tom behind me. He looked as jumpy as I felt. I opened up the door.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. It was the same as it’d ever been – stronger if anything – and there was Ma upon the bed. For one moment I thought her sleeping but then I saw how grey she was, the strange angle of her neck, and I knew her dead. The next thing I saw was Jacky, thin as a bird, tear-streaks on his dirty face, jogging a blanketed babe up and down. He was looking at us like he thought we’d come to murder him. I was still holding the poker.

We sat and watched Jacky picking every piece of flesh from the eel’s bones. Tom and I’d been near as hungry as he was and I thanked God then that I’d kept Mr Dryer’s inn-money. I’d run out into the street and found the first eel-man I could, and got us a pie and some goat’s milk for the babber. I sat it on my knee and dipped my fingers into the milk, for it to suck them dry. Tom sat in Ma’s old chair, looking weary enough to drop. I’d tried to wrap him up in a blanket but he’d not have it. I let him be – I was glad to see him eating.

‘When did that bitch flit?’ I asked.

Jacky kept his head to his plate but he cutty-eyed up at me. He put a needle-thin bone to his lips and sucked at it, though it was clean.

‘Jacky, when did Dora go? You needn’t look so. It’s an easy enough question, ain’t it?’ I said.

Tom looked at me and frowned. ‘What does it signify, if he don’t like to say? She’s gone. She can rot.’

‘She can. She should, curse her. You keep your peace then, Jack. I’ll not ask again.’

Jacky had been looking from one of us to the other with his queer, sideways glance.

‘She didn’t leave me nothing,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where she went.’

Dora had left her two sons to starve together next to our own dead ma. I was filled, then, with the rage of it.

‘Damn her stinking cunny-hole.’ I pushed myself up from the table with one hand, the other arm holding the babe.

Jacky cringed.

‘Oh, stop,’ I told him. ‘No one will harm you now.’

Now we’d to fathom what to do next, just when I’d thought all would be simple and clear. The only thing to do was to begin at the beginning, and have Ma put to rest.

Tom came over all weak and finally he let me send him to bed. I found clean sheets and made him take Dora’s bed. He lay down with the most grateful look upon his mug, even while he swore home that he’d be up in a minute to help me. The bandage over his eye had grown damp with something brownish that wasn’t quite blood. I thought,
We’ll have to see to that as soon as ever we can
.

Dora and the girls had fleeced the place of most of the good stuff. I bundled up what bits I could find quickly, some bed linen, a dressing glass, the lamps from Ma’s room, and took them down to the bow-wow shop. I was so tired that just going into that close shop with its scent of musty things made my head swim, but I haggled as hard as I could and came out with ten shillings. I bought Ma enough of a burial to keep her from shame and what money I could keep over I gave to a woman down the street, to nurse Dora’s infant every day – soft-hearted fool that I was.

I sent Jacky to fetch a doctor, a cull who’d been to see the misses often enough that I thought he’d not refuse to come. He was in a hurry to leave from the moment he stepped foot in the house, and he’d not enter Ma’s room. He stood in the doorway, his eyes squinting against the foulness, and pronounced her dead from long illness. Then he wrote out a paper ordering a salve for Tom’s eye. I’d no money for his fee – I couldn’t give him the burial money – but there was a carved wooden pipe left in the cabinet beside Dora’s bed, some visitor’s, perhaps Mr Dryer’s – and he took that gladly enough and left as though the hell-hounds were at his heels.

We none of us went to see Ma buried. I meant to, but when we saw the black cart arrive Jacky came over all queer, turned from his place at the window and hoofed it upstairs. When Tom and I led up the culls who’d come to carry her out, we found he’d shut himself in with her.

‘Jacky.’ I pushed at the door. Something had been shoved up against it. ‘Jacky, don’t be a goose.’

No reply. The beefy culls made a face at Tom – not at me, mind – to say, shall we break down the door? Tom only shook his head.

‘Jacky,’ he called, quietly, ‘we’ve to bury her, or she’ll not be at peace. Do this last thing for Ma. Hasn’t she been longing to be out of this room, and free? Don’t keep her trussed up now.’

Again, no reply. Tom sighed, and turned to me.

‘All of us together?’ he said, meaning, to push the door.

‘Hold,’ I said, for I’d heard a scraping, scrabbling sound from within. I tried the door again. It wouldn’t move.

‘I can’t shift it,’ came Jacky’s voice.

‘What can’t you shift?’ I said.

A pause. ‘I pushed it, but I can’t pull it.’

‘Right,’ Tom said. ‘You pull all you can, and we’ll push.’

‘Not you, Tommy,’ I said. ‘We’ll all the rest of us push.’

‘Don’t fuss, Ruthie.’ Tom put his hand to his bandaged peeper, as though to hide it.

One of the bull-beef boys said, ‘Now, don’t take offence lad, but your missus ain’t wrong. You look all in.’

Tom stepped aside and I was glad to see it, though I knew that his pride had been beaten along with his body, in London. I’d let him be the hero when once he was healed.

The door wouldn’t budge. Jacky had managed to jam the bed right up against it, with Ma still in it. Lord knows how he did it. We had to take the door off at the hinges at the last, and didn’t the cullies from the funeral shop look sour, when they smelled the full force of their load.

They wrapped her in a sheet and carried her down to the plain coffin waiting in the hall. Jacky hovered about them as though he thought to catch her if she fell.

When they laid her in the coffin and went to close the lid Jacky went into a fit. He tore at their hands and knees, he screamed and wailed. He lost all his words and began to babble like a lunatic. It took all my strength to stop him following them out and climbing onto the cart, what with the babber in my other arm. I made to give Tom the babe but instead of taking it, he only wrapped his arms around all three of us. We stood all hugged together, both brats screaming fit to bring down the sky, as they drove Ma away. It was a good enough display of grief for her.

We began the business of settling in. Tom took to watching over the babber, when it wasn’t getting its milk. I didn’t feel easy looking after it – it ain’t in my nature to mother things, which can hardly be surprising, given the examples I had about me as a child. Tom took care of it and Jacky and I set about putting the house in order – I tried sending him off, but if he wasn’t helping Tom then he must be helping me. It was easier to give him a brush and pan than to feel him standing behind me, waiting. Once the lad had a task he’d set himself at it and I could get on with my own work. And after all, it was company of a sort. I remembered how much I’d missed quarrelling with Dora when she was set to earn and I was left to be the maid to all the house. I remembered my desperate scrubbing of the cottage; keeping house is dull enough with company, but alone it’s terrible. We took the broken crockery from the kitchen, we scrubbed the floors. We beat the mollies’ mattresses to take the stink of years from them. We left the garret alone – I’d not quite the stomach for it, yet.

One evening, as I laid out a supper of bread and dripping and Tom put the babber down upstairs, there came a knocking at the door. It was an ill-tempered, full-fisted knock, and it went on and on, as though the knocker would never tire. Well, anyone who’s lived a low kind of life will tell you, you don’t walk easy to answer a knock like that. I froze with a plate in my hand. Jacky looked cringing all over again, which he’d lately stopped doing so much.