The Blooding of Jack Absolute (16 page)

‘Where from?’ The rising, walking, lifting had sent the blood to Jack’s head again and he swayed slightly, using his hand
on the fellow’s collar to keep himself erect. ‘Don’t attempt to cozen me, you dog.’ He swayed towards him, swayed back. Jack
was not sure which of them was moving. ‘You are a schoolboy impostor and played for Harrow yesterday.’

‘Oh, that!’ The man managed to slip from Jack’s grasp and when Jack leaned forward, placed a hand against his chest.

‘And you’ve been dogging me all night. Melbury’s man.’

The large red face creased. ‘Melbury, sir? Don’t know who you mean. I’ve been drinking around the town, tis true. Thought
I sees you once afore. But I bain’t be doggin’ nobody.’

Jack glared, sought a response. At that moment, a voice beside him said, ‘Trouble, Absolute?’ and he looked to see Marks and
the other Mohocks clustered behind him.

‘Yes, this fellow’s been following me around all night. Up to no good.’

‘I bain’t, gentlemen, honest.’

‘We know him, don’t we?’ said Ede.

‘We do.’ Jack nodded slowly.

There was a silence. ‘Damn fine bowler,’ Fenby said at last.

‘Not a bad bat,’ added Marks.

‘But you gentlemen is even finer,’ said The Man, hurriedly, ‘for you gained a fair and fine victory. Can I buy yous all a
drink?’

‘You can!’ came from three of the four voices and his friends led their rival back to the table. Jack, still muttering his
suspicions, followed. But he couldn’t keep his ill temper long, especially since Horace – as The Man was called – proved a
splendid fellow, swearing innocence in such a bluff, true way that he reminded Jack of his old Cornish friend, Treve Tregonning.
And he insisted on making amends for his imposture the day before – an imposture, he pointed out, that had singularly failed
due to their collective skills – by ordering bumpers of arrack punch. Jack had truly sworn off the stuff, despite the several
glasses that had slipped inadvertently down, but he could hardly refuse the toast Horace proposed.

‘I take it all back, sir. There be no doubt that you made that last run, that you were “in”. So, gentlemen, I propose Mr Absolute’s
last notch. I doubt I’ll live to see a finer.’

The toast was to him so he alone stood. While he tipped the tankard back, the Mohocks thumped the table and ululated their
war cry. When he reached the end, he suddenly found that he was sitting down again without any memory of making the descent.
Indeed, little thereafter stayed with him. He had an idea that new fights began when the old ended; that one of the combatants,
a wickedly attractive young lady, joined them at Horace’s request and seemed immediately and immensely
fond of Jack; that his friends’ laughing faces flickered in and out of vision and that later one of them was pressing him
to go; that he resisted this disgraceful idea strongly. And that the last thing that impinged was his late sporting rival
and newfound friend leaning over him and saying, quite distinctly, ‘You’re Out!’

It was the snoring that roused and, for a few moments, reassured him. He woke to such tunes every morning at Mrs Porten’s,
his boarding house fellows supplying an orchestra’s variety of notes, mainly from the brass, a bassoon here, a trumpet there.
This from beside him was higher, a piccolo perhaps, but that was no cause for disquiet, for boys from eight to eighteen all
shared the same long room. All it meant was that he was safe, that somehow he had made it back. He had no recollection of
how, whether by chair, wherry, or Shanks’s Pony. Indeed, no memories of the night before came at all and he did not care.
He was safe and, with luck, had yet a few hours to sleep off … whatever he’d done to himself the night before.

He sighed, turned his head … and it was as if someone had taken a mallet and driven a wedge from under his jaw to the top
of his scalp. His yelp, which manifested itself as nothing more than a rattle in the desert of his throat, caused a dam of
hot, viscous liquid to crack open and surge … In a moment he was upright and leaping towards the bucket kept in the corner
of the dormitory.

He never made it for three reasons. The first: his foot was caught in a roll of bedclothes that held his lower body fast while
the upper fell. The second: when his shoulder slammed into the floor, what he would give to Porten’s bucket would not be contained
and burst from him in a torrent that hit the junction of wall and planking a good four foot from him. And thirdly: he was
not
at
Porten’s.

This realization was confirmed by the whisper that came from behind him.

‘Awake, sweet’ art?’

Something terrible rose from where Jack had just been lying. It was loosely covered in a shift that, even in the palest of
light that was seeping under the shutters into the room, Jack could tell was filthy. He yelped, again tried to struggle away
from the terrifying vision. But his foot was still caught and the more he struggled the tighter it seemed to be bound. As
the figure continued to rise over him, even reach out a hand, his struggles became increasingly desperate. Finally, he placed
his foot against the bed frame and kicked hard; there was a tearing and he shot back across the slick floor on what he now
realized was his bare arse.

He collided with the wall, shot up. The agony the sudden elevation caused was intense, his head filled with mist and he would
have fallen had not the voice from the bed kept him upright in terror.

‘Come, lovey. You wasn’t so shy last night.’

Whatever was facing him, he had to know it. With another sickening leap he was at the shutters, wrenching them open. Daylight,
sudden and vicious, streamed in.

The vision on the bed gave a cry, held up a hand across her face. ‘Eh, you fuck, what you doin’ that for? Shut it! Shut it
I say!’

Jack half closed them, letting in enough light still to see. The room was dingy, with peeling walls and dirt-encrusted floor,
the only furniture a bed and a washstand with a basin and towel as filthy as the bedding. A half-empty bottle of gin stood
beside it. It was not a habitation, it was a place of business and with that recognition Jack turned his attention back to
the proprietor. The voice had told him it was a woman and he saw now that her face was so heavily painted, and that paint
smeared, that it was impossible in the half-light to tell her age. She could have been sixteen or sixty. Something in that
voice though told Jack that she was probably closer to the latter.

‘Who … who are you, madam?’

The woman sniggered. ‘Ooh, such a polite young gent – ’ceptin’ ’ee don’t remember Little Angie. And you wouldn’t leave off
sayin’ the name last night. Rhymin’ it with all sorts of things.’

She sniggered again and Jack’s eyes, getting used to the light and the sensation of wakefulness, got more acute. He looked,
looked again, verified. The woman only had one eyebrow; though that one compensated for the absence of a mate by being extensive
and bushy. Of its twin there was no sign. But there was an abundance of hair above, though this was slewed at an unnatural
angle across the forehead and of a reddish colour not found on Nature’s pallet.

She noted his study. ‘Lawks,’ she said, and reached up to adjust. ‘Tha’s your fault, that is. Pawed me about so I’m all askew.’

Jack felt his stomach heave once more into his throat. With an effort he quelled it, tried to keep his voice level. ‘Are you
saying … Angie … that we … that you and I …’

‘Don’t’cha ’member, lovey? Can ’e not ’member your sweet girl who rhymes with ever so many things?’

For the life of him, Jack couldn’t think of any rhymes for Angie, except ‘mangy’, which seemed ungallant but horribly true.

‘So … we … we …’ He gestured to the bed.

‘Ashully, to be ’onest,’ she said, ‘you wash that far gone that …’ She seemed suddenly to be having difficulty speaking, circling
her jaw in a strange manner. ‘ ’alf a mo’, dearie.’ A grubby finger was inserted in the mouth, rooted for a moment, then there
was a distinct click. ‘Dere,’ she said, pulling out a set of teeth, ‘dat’s betta.’ She looked up at Jack and began bending
some wires. ‘Now, where wash we? Oh yesh, you wash that far gone, I ’ash to work hard. Very hard. Lor, I earned my money.’
She smiled up at him gummily. ‘You seemed to enjoy yesshelf even if there wash no true wakin’ of the dead. Still, it’sh early.’
She set her feet down on the floor, reached a hand out towards him. ‘Your friend paid, said it was for an ’hole night. So
’ow’s about ’avin’ the rest of it now?’

Jack looked into the abyss. There were two teeth in there that were her own. He spun to the window, threw back the shutters
and vomited again. It seemed to go on for ever, retching when there was nothing left to expel save the foulest bitterness.
As he leaned there, a bell nearby tolled. By the tenth and final stroke he still had not recognized its note. He wiped his
mouth, turned back, was greeted by another click.

‘Where,’ he said, trying not to look again at the mouth that now gleamed at him, ‘am I?’

‘Vinegar Yard. That’s St Mary’s in the Strand you just ’eard.’

The Bell. Ten in the morning. There was something nagging at his much abused brain. Something he must do.

‘Friend?’ he suddenly said.

‘Wha’?’

‘You said my friend paid.’

‘Yus. Said to give you the best time.’

No Mohock would have done this. ‘What did he look like?’

The one eyebrow moved centrally, indicating concentration. ‘Nah, can’t ’member. But I ’ad been in Derry’s since eight so …’
She cackled. ‘But ’e ’ad a lovely pink coat.’

The Man. Horace. An impostor for Harrow. Harrow versus Westminster. Harrow …

‘Craster!’ He had two hours – less – to pull himself together. Less than two hours before he faced an almost certainly well-rested
Craster Absolute across the baize. Despite the pain it caused him, he began scrabbling for his clothes. These were all soiled,
soaked, patterned with things he could not contemplate. Then, hopping into his breeches, he remembered something else, something
far more important. He stood with one leg in his breeches, one out.

‘Where’s my damn money?’ he gasped.

‘Money?’

‘My gold. Damn, where are my guineas?’

His voice had risen to a roar, startling her. ‘You didn’t ’ave none. Pink gent paid.’

‘No!’ he bellowed. ‘Please God, no!’ and spent a desperate
minute ranging round the room, shouting as he scrabbled at floorboards and pushed into the rotten plaster around the beams.
But there was nowhere to hide anything and Angie’s fear at his sudden rage was genuine, she was too frightened to lie. She’d
been well rewarded for a night, a guinea piece Jack would swear.

Pink Gent had paid with Westminster gold.

There was no question of going home. The walk to Mayfair and back – for the Angel, venue for the contest, was a porter’s chuck
from the Garden – would have consumed Jack’s little store of time; and that had to be spent in repairing the irreparable:
his clothes and body.

He went where he could get credit – the Old Hummum Hotel, where the previous evening’s Initiation had begun. Mendoza, the
proprietor, was as surly as ever, rendered more so by the demand for help. This was the time of day when the Cats who entertained
there till near dawn were curled up at the top of the house and the lower floors of the Hummum were cleansed in preparation
for the night to come. But one of the small bagnios, the last to be vacated, was still rich in heat and the first of the day’s
water was on the stoves. Grumbling, he let Jack in, assigned a servant to him, conspicuously marked his slate. He even arranged
for another servant to take Jack’s clothes and attempt some salvage, though the pronouncement on them was not good.

Jack then began a regime of purge, plunge and cleanse. Firstly, he drank some milk still warm from the cow, the first mug
of which stayed down no longer that it had taken to come out. He persevered, put down the rebellion in his guts to master
a second, then ordered a quart of ox-cheek broth from
the stall in the Great Piazza. While he awaited it, he went to the heat, evil-smelling sweat coursing from every pore, the
pounding between his temples redoubling till he could bear it no more and he plunged into a bath of cold water, forcing himself
to remain till his fevered red had turned to blue. The arrival of the broth, fortified with a slug of sherry, revived him
a little. A further alternation of heat and cold and he could at least open his eyes without squinting, somewhat necessary
for what lay ahead.

A small vat of coffee and a stale Chelsea bun was the limit of the treatment. He had now moved from crippled to merely prostrate
and lay propped up on a divan while the servant brought him cool cloths that muffled his head yet were not thick enough to
exclude the sound of St Paul’s bell tolling noon.

‘Christ!’ said Jack, shooting up, the suddenness of the movement nearly undoing all his good work. ‘My clothes, dammit!’

They were fetched, the servant charged with their renewal protesting that he had not had the required time. They were indeed
a deranging sight – stained, slashed and sopping. The cleansing that had partially corrected one problem, created another:
they were soaked. Yet he was already late, as always. Despite a chill April wind that had reappeared to cut through London’s
streets, he had no choice. Shivering already, he slid into dankness and as he did, begged one last favour from the landlord
who grumbled, but eventually complied. Metal tokens were used in the Hummum, handed over for any ‘services’, tallied in chalk
on a slate to be collected at night’s end, for clients with no clothes stored their money behind a stout grille on the first
floor. A bagful of these metal disks was collected now and given to Jack in a maid’s cap.

‘I will bring these back when I return to pay you later, Mendoza,’ Jack said, as he scurried out the door.

‘You had better,’ the Maltese called after him, shaking the slate which was chalked to an outrageous nine shillings, ‘or your
reputation is lost.’