Jack Maggs (31 page)

“
Help
,” he cried in a weak, affected voice. Then he righted himself and came back once more to sit himself beside Tobias.

“
Help
,” he whispered in the writer’s ear, but not so unkindly, and soon Tobias began to laugh too, if rather cautiously.

“Do you take it as an insult that I was afraid of you?”

“Oh no, Tobias, I take it as very sensible indeed.”

Tobias could feel the rough unshaven face lean towards him in the dark.

“I am with you, Jack.”

There was a long pause during which there was no noise but the jangle of the cow bell in the dark.

“We are together till I find my boy.”

So saying, the big man laughed and put his arm around the writer, and squashed him affectionately against his chest.

72

THREE WEEKS EARLIER, Henry Phipps had been safe in his own dear house, breakfasting on salmon, and when he had opened the letter with the Dover postmark he had, naturally, not the faintest inkling that the rather common little envelope with its formal script would be such a harbinger of destruction.

Now his house was abandoned, his spring flowers uncared for, his most cherished valuables stored in a dank cellar on Blackfriars Road.

He stood at the window of his rooms in the club. He looked out at the bedraggled pigeons huddling on his window ledge, and beyond that at the dirty green roof of Covent Garden, and beyond that at what appeared to be a hawk circling slowly in the poisonous yellow sky.

He was, he thought, like a rabbit hiding in its hole.

As holes went, it was quite adequate, but he would never have suspected that the club to which he had been hitherto so attached, where he had enjoyed so many adventures and amusements, could be such a very depressing place to live.

There was nothing
wrong
with the rooms exactly, but in the morning light the green carpet was thread-bare and spotted, and the dark burgundy wallpaper was peeling at the joins, and the oval mirror was split on its frame. As he had, once again, made the mistake of breakfasting in, he had to endure that awful curry smell which seemed to affect everything that was cooked here.

In Great Queen Street, he had employed a splendid cook, an austere and handsome Cornish woman whom he had, of course, sent away. He had sent all the servants on leave, just on the quarter day— so he had paid them up until the end of June; and this meant overlooking several pressing debts, and required a meeting with the bank to discuss the account which was then overdrawn a hundred guineas. Whether this account would ever be “topped up” again was by no means certain. Today was the fifth, the day “topping up” would normally occur, but he was reluctant to call on his bankers for fear of discovering the procedure had been abandoned by his benefactor.

And thus he was sitting by his gloomy little window, with its forlorn prospect of the roofs of Covent Garden, when a knock came on the door. It was Magnus announcing that there was a gentleman to see him. As he was, to all intents and purposes, in hiding, this news produced a very queasy feeling in his stomach.

“What gentleman, Magnus?”

“I really could not say,” said Magnus, exhibiting the closed and shiny countenance of a freshly tipped servant.

“Did he state his name, his business?” asked Henry Phipps, who had, after three weeks of close acquaintance, grown weary of Magnus.

“Yes, I would say it was definitely business,” said Magnus. And waited, his eyebrows raised, as if he were a witty subject in charades.

“Inasmuch, Magnus?”

“Inasmuch as it could not be
pleasure
, Sir.”

“What are you telling me?” asked Henry Phipps impatiently. “Is he rough?”

“Oh no, Sir.”

“Is he a large man?”

“Oh no, Sir.”

Henry Phipps placed his tea cup heavily upon the dresser.

“He’s a wee chap,” Magnus obliged quickly. “He would not worry you, Sir, if that’s your meaning. He’s just a wee wee chap, with his wee little legs and his wee little hands.”

“Very well then,” said Henry. “Thank you, Magnus.”

“You never asked me his name, Sir?”

Henry sighed. A great surge of temper pressed up into his sinuses, and he bent his head, his hands pressing down beside his long straight nose.

“Very well then. What is his name?” he asked at last.

“His name is Buckle, Sir.”

“Thank you, Magnus. I will be down directly.”

Now Percy Buckle and Henry Phipps had been neighbours a good year, and on one or two occasions they had acknowledged each other whilst dismounting from their carriages, but that was all of the contact they had so far had. When Henry heard his neighbour’s name today, it meant nothing in particular to him, and when he had brushed his hair one more time and buttoned his fourth button, he descended the narrow little staircase to the Lord Strutwell, hoping that the volumes of engravings had been locked away in their glass case. Indeed, when he entered the room, his eye went first to that case. It was safely locked.

Then, turning his attention to the visitor, he beheld this most peculiar little gent with his short legs and his expensive spats and his tailored coat and his thinning hair. Henry Phipps did not like ugliness. Did not like it in any form, in any thing. Now, as he looked at Percy Buckle, some small signs in his handsome face betrayed his feelings.

“I’m much obliged,” said Percy Buckle, extending his hand.

Henry Phipps heard his accent and thought:
debt collector.

“I don’t think you recognize me,” said Percy Buckle.

“No,” said Henry Phipps, releasing the clammy hand. “Have we met?”

“We have a brick wall in common,” joked Percy Buckle, then added, “and also an interest in a fellow named Jack Maggs.”

Henry Phipps felt his breath stop.

“You are his friend?” he asked at last. He sat himself carefully in the leather armchair. “He sends you here?” His heart was beating very hard and all the old uncertainties of his troubled life came bubbling to the fore. His pulse was racing as it had raced the day he had been delivered at the door of Mrs Gummerson’s orphanage.

“Oh no,” said Percy Buckle, also sitting—or rather perching, for his legs were so short he thought it best to stay well forward—on the very edge of the armchair. “No, I fancy he would be very angry to see me here. As”—he paused delicately while his cheeks betrayed his anxiety with a most distinctive patch of colour—“as I believe
you
would be displeased to see Mr Maggs sitting where I sit.”

Henry Phipps had so absorbed the notion that Mr Buckle was Jack Maggs’s messenger, that it took him some time to understand that he was not: that, although his visitor knew Jack Maggs, he did not come to further Jack Maggs’s interest in the matter. By the time he had reached this conclusion, Henry Phipps’s shirt was soaked with perspiration, and he had more than once brushed at his fair hair with his hands, and more than once wiped his hands with his handkerchief. He now attempted to wrest some order from the chaos of his feelings.

“Let me ask you a question.”

“No,” said Percy Buckle, “let me ask you a question.”

Henry Phipps blinked. “Very well,” he said, surprised by the hardness in the other’s tone. “If you wish.”

“What have you done to protect your assets?”

“Sir!” Henry Phipps stood up. “That’s damned impertinent.” And he began to pace around the room. He did not know what was happening.

“Sit down,” said Percy Buckle, “and quit the prancing.”

Henry Phipps could not obey such a creature completely, but he did stand still.

“Your house is not your own,” insisted Percy Buckle. “It is the property of Jack Maggs. I have seen the title again this morning, and as far as I can tell it is still in his name.”

Henry Phipps had never inquired about this title, but once he heard this information, his worst fears were realized. Now this too would be taken from him.

“And if Mr Maggs is to get himself arrested, do you know what will happen to that title?”

“No,” admitted Henry Phipps, and sat down in the chair.

“Why, it would be subsumed
nullus contredris
,” said Mr Buckle, mumbling to obscure the fraudulence of his Latin. “It would be taken from him, as a felon, and auctioned by His Majesty—or Her Majesty as soon it will be. Were you not aware of this?”

“You are sure?”

“You were not aware,” said Mr Buckle. “But now that you are, I assume you would do anything in your power to prevent him being arrested.”

“Has he been arrested?”

“No, nor do you wish it. Nor do I, for reasons you need not know of. But, on the other hand, Sir, I see that you do not wish to play the part that he has written for you. You do not wish to sit around his fire eating cakes and drinking brown ale.”

An involuntary shudder passed over Henry Phipps.

“You know he is attached to you?”

Henry Phipps slumped in his chair. He knew, in this instant, that his leisured life would soon be over. He had known this time would come ever since the day sixteen years ago when Victor Littlehales, his beloved tutor, had rescued him from the orphanage. Now this privileged tenure was ended and he must leave his house, his silver, his rugs, his paintings. He must be a soldier.

“I would imagine,” continued the hateful little creature, “that there is a Last Will and Testament . . .”

“I understand I am his heir, yes.”

“Well,” said Mr Buckle, “then the news is not all bad.” He took Henry Phipps’s cup of tea, though it must have been luke-warm by now, sugared it enthusiastically and drank it with gusto. “Not all bad by any means.”

Henry Phipps looked into the fellow’s excited eyes and was made to feel most uncomfortable

“May I ask, Mr Buckle, what is your interest in Mr Maggs?”

“It is a matter of the heart, Sir.”

“Jack Maggs is your
rival
?” asked the other incredulously.

“He is.”

“You would not mourn him, Mr Buckle?”

“He has betrayed my trust, which was very foolish of him.” The little man looked him straight in the eye, and Henry Phipps was surprised to find himself pinned by the gaze. “There are people like Jack Maggs who see me, Sir, and they pity me, or make mock of me— well, I don’t mind that, you know, I can see that point of view—but it is just a skip from pity to abuse, so I have found. And I will not be abused, Sir, not by anyone. And if I am to be humiliated in my own home, well then, that person will be punished.”

“My, my!” Henry Phipps raised his eyebrows.

“You be careful, Sir. Do you hear me?”

This was a very different creature from the one whom the young man had first cast eyes upon. “Yes,” he said. “I hear you.”

“Jack Maggs has gone up to Gloucester, without informing me, but I found out. Yes, he has gone to Gloucester, trying to find you. I have not the foggiest where he sleeps in Gloucester. But I know, Sir, I have learned, the secret place he lays his head in London. And that’s the point for you.”

“And what would you have me do with that information?”

“Why,” cried Mr Buckle, rising from his chair in a very energetic style, “I leave that to you, Sir. It is none of my business, but I do believe it is yours, for the house he sleeps in might easily be your own.”

And with that he took his tall beaverskin hat, and carefully brushed it with the back of his hand.

Henry Phipps shook his hand once more, and when Mr Buckle had departed the club, he sat down in the chair alone, feeling rather cold and shivery.

73

Having heard Sophina’s name on Tobias Oates’s lips, having finally begun to understand the extent to which his secrets had been burgled, Jack Maggs became, by degrees, severely agitated.

He could not sleep, and as his mind tried to understand what had been done to him, a familiar dread slowly took possession of his being. As the punt lifted slowly off the sand, as the intensity of this feeling grew, he took his son’s framed portrait from his coat and pressed it to his stomach with both his hands. And there he stayed, hunched over on the mid-thwart, hugging the image as he had on many nights before. Now he could feel the Phantom pulling with his strings inside his face, long lines of cat-gut knotted to his flesh. He felt the demon stirring in his belly and everywhere about him. He imagined that horrid half-smile upon his patrician face.

He did not know what was done to him, or how it was achieved. He rocked back and forth, stubbornly alone, waiting for the light.

When, at last, the yellowish light of dawn penetrated the mist, he found they were bumping around the shore of a “pill,” or cove. His companion was still asleep, sitting sideways on the aft-thwart, his forehead resting on his drawn-up knees. Maggs leaned towards him. At first it seemed that he intended to shake him awake, but instead he executed the plan he had carried with him through the dark. Half-rising in his seat, he twisted his body and—with a thin, hard smile upon his face—inserted his three-fingered hand into the writer’s jacket pocket; then, very slowly, he withdrew the note book. Once it was well clear of its owner, he sat down again and set the sodden treasure ever so gently upon his knee. There he sought that which was his.

The pages were very wet, and the ink in some places washed away, but he began his search from the beginning of the note book and very soon, on page three, he was rewarded:
M— would not go mad.

His brows came down upon his eyes.

M— would not go mad, but only because he carried with him the strong conviction that he would, no matter what Judge Denman read to him, walk once more in England’s green and pleasant land.

The hairs on his neck stood on end.

He had had that feeling in his gut before, that cold terror associated with the triangle. He knew his life and death were not his own. His forehead creased in a grid of criss-crossed frown marks. He turned the page.

Jack Maggs is a criminal who presumes to come home from Banishment, who, having accrued great wealth, buys the great mansion in which he will finally be burned alive.

He turned the page and found: CHAPTER ONE. Before the title, and afterwards: the sign of the Cross. All the following pages were vigorously crossed out.