The Blooding of Jack Absolute (18 page)

‘Gennelmen, that’s one game apiece, and the third to be decided on time.’ The umpire held up a half-hourglass. ‘Winner is
the player ahead when the sand runs out. But I’ll have no shiftin’, you understan’. Be brisk in your strokes or I’ll pull
you off the green.’

The Mohocks were clustered close. Through his fingers, Jack said in a low tone, ‘Have you finalized the plan?’

Fenby blinked. ‘We think so, J … J … Jack. The rest of the lads are ready.’ He indicated the other Westminsters engaged in
returning the jibes of the Harrow men opposite. ‘First we’ll—’

‘Don’t tell me, Fenby,’ snapped Jack. ‘Just do it.’

‘Mr Absolute,’ said the umpire, coin in hand, ‘your call, I believe, sir.’

The silver shilling spun up. ‘Tails,’ Jack called.

‘Tails it is. Will you begin, sir?’

He didn’t feel like standing just yet. ‘Oh, why not let my honourable opponent?’

‘Delighted.’ Craster strode to the table, the confidence of the last game still carrying him. He placed the ball in the ‘D’
and, as he bent and the umpire inverted the half-hourglass, he turned to Jack, winked, turned back, struck. Hard. It was the
same shot that Jack had attempted in the previous game, one to leave his balls behind the line and Jack having to play forward.
But where Jack had failed, Craster succeeded.

A whoop went up from Harrow, a groan from Westminster. Jack felt his stomach shift and not just from the agonies of the night
before. He rose, went to the table. He had to rebound off the top cushion and strike one of the balls. Strike and try not
to leave his opponent well positioned. But the throbbing in his head had redoubled and the geometry of the angles kept shifting.
He chose a line, struck …

‘A miss. Two points to Harrow.’

His ball had finished near the red. Craster saw the opportunity, took it. Kept playing his ball onto the other two, the umpire
marking each double-click. ‘Cannon: two. Cannon: two.’

He took his time to reach thirty, warned twice by the umpire to speed up. At least half the sand had run out before he made
an error, sending Jack’s white close but not sinking it. Nevertheless it had settled around the knuckle of the pocket, flush
to its curve. No target ball was thus directly in Jack’s line. He either had to play up the table for a rebound, a repeat
of the first shot he’d already missed or …

As Jack stood to contemplate his options, Craster whispered, ‘That’s it, you cur. I’ll be on the table next shot and I’ll
never leave it. Time’ll run out, we’ll take a look inside the bag and find you are no gentleman.’ He smiled. ‘So play your
finest shot. And prepare to lose your name.’

Jack looked into his cousin’s pocked face, saw again the shades there of Duncan Absolute in the fleshy lips, the porcine eyes,
the heavy jowl. Heard again his uncle’s nasal whine, almost felt the hand on his shirt, the other raised with some instrument
of pain. There were no words that could sum up
what he felt, none that would answer the triumph in his cousin’s eyes. There was only this piece of wood he gripped and a
way of using it.

So he moved to his ball, looked at the geometry. There was a simple shot to play … one that would gain him a little. Not enough.
The phrase came again into his head:
Simple knows best.

Bugger that, he thought.

Raising the cue almost vertical to the table, butt end pointed to ceiling, he struck sharply down on the ball’s right side.
It spun out around the knuckle of the pocket, straightened to meet the red. When they kissed, the red responded by moving
away, sinking into the end pocket with the groan Jack so loved to hear.

‘Pot-red, three points,’ called the umpire, re-spotting it.

The room hummed, voices raised in shock, delight, anger. Craster did not move, cue gripped tight in his hand, so Jack had
to sidestep him every time he moved around the table. It was just one of the things he shut out, along with the voices, the
sunlight, his body’s jabs and gurgles, the corona expanded around each ball like the edge of an eclipse, the two bags at the
table’s end, one of tokens, one of gold. And the final thing he had to shut out was the sand slipping noiselessly down the
glass, the only goad he needed to push him ever faster around the table. He had almost no time to calculate the angles, had
to see them on the instant, make his shot, see the next one as he made it, make that. And as his score mounted, even the dronelike
quality of the umpire’s calling disappeared, the tally coming sharper to the rhythm of the balls.

Cannons, pots, in-offs, they were all interspersed and if he made a slight error on one shot, he somehow corrected it on the
next. His target was thirty-one, a single point more than Craster’s total.

And then a groan – Fenby’s – forced him to look away from the green.

The top of the hourglass was nearly empty. And because he
looked, he looked back and shot too fast, missed pot, in-off and cannon. Let his enemy back on the table, with ten points
still ungained.

‘No delay, please, sir. Toe the line.’ In his excitement, the umpire had borrowed the phraseology of pugilism and indeed it
had become a fight, both men reeling, blow after blow. Even Craster felt it, stepped up, did not hesitate. For Jack’s last
shot had left Craster’s white and the red in a line with the centre pocket, about a foot and a half away.

Three points for a pot-red and Craster would have it, his tally beyond anything Jack could achieve before the last grain fell.

He bent, sighted, his cue ran smooth, the balls kissed and parted, the red moving slowly, sapping the sand, towards the centre
pocket. If not perfectly straight, it was straight enough to hit the knuckle. From there it could have drifted in or out.

It settled before the pocket.

‘No points,’ said the umpire, a trace of sadness in the voice. Not, Jack knew, because the ball had not disappeared but because
Jack still had ten points to make and perhaps ten grains of sand to make them in. His white was level and six inches from
Craster’s, almost on the baulk line, and the red was on the centre pocket. There was only one shot.

He drove hard, Craster’s white crashing straight into the top end pocket. ‘Two points,’ yelled the umpire, all calm gone,
as he followed, like everyone there, the progress of Jack’s ball up the table, off the side cushion, off the end cushion,
towards that red hovering by the knuckle of the centre pocket. It travelled fast and struck the red edge hard and shot it
in dead centre.

‘Cannon: two; pot-red: three,’ the umpire shouted, needing to shout now over the cries from all around. The clack had taken
the sting from Jack’s white and now it drifted slower, rolling on towards the other top end pocket.

‘Time,’ screamed Craster as the last grain dropped.

‘Ball in play,’ croaked the umpire. Thus Time paused once
again in Jack’s life while all watched the white ball move slowly to hit one knuckle, bounce off, hit the second, roll away
to hover and, finally, drop with a groan beyond Jack’s most fantastic imaginings, into the pocket.

‘In-off, three points and that’s match Westminster,’ came the words, though they were barely heard under the rising cry that
seemed to come from one voice, though from a hundred throats. Craster was stationary, still held by Time’s cessation, as was
Jack, the only people not moving, until the Mohocks jostled around him, began pushing him towards the open window and Fenby,
who stood on the ledge in a wall of sunlight.

‘Now!’ he yelled, and Jack, emerging from the daze of his last shot, looked to Marks and Ede, who stood at the table where
the two bags, one of tokens, one of gold, had awaited a victor to claim them. Both bags now rested in his friends’ hands.

‘Promptus?’
shouted Marks, his deep voice piercing the hubbub.

‘Iace!’

Harrow’s gold was duly hurled over heads to the window where Fenby took the bag straight to his midriff, dropping it out the
open window, turning to receive the tatty maid’s cap that held Westminster’s secret.

‘Stop them!’ Craster’s scream was directed at Horace, who stood halfway between window and table, where he’d stood the entire
game, holding Craster’s spare cue. As Ede lobbed towards the crouching Fenby, The Man who’d nearly defeated Westminster two
days before due to his skill with a willow bat, proved he was just as adept with an ash billiards cue. Raising it swiftly
above his head, Horace brought it sharply down into the centre of the flying bag. The thin cloth split instantly under the
impact and the tokens of the Old Hummum fell like metal hailstones onto the crowd below.

Jack, like many there, was hit; unlike them, he had no need to catch and verify what he already knew. He also did not need
Craster’s cry of, ‘Damn cheats! They’ve culled us, by God!’ to accelerate him towards the window. Despite being in the press
of the enemy crowd, no one tried to halt him. They didn’t have the time.

He mounted the window ledge beside Fenby, turned back. Marks and Ede, empty-handed now, were running for the door, along with
the dozen other of their schoolfellows. Their rivals, still held in the shock of it, only now seemed to be reacting to Craster’s
yells, to the falling tokens. Looking at the angry faces raised towards them, Jack shouted, ‘Where now?’ and in answer Fenby
just stepped backwards and tumbled from the window.

Jack, looking down, saw what his friend already knew; a throwster’s cart was directly below, full of spun silk bolts. Jack
was not fond of heights but the growling rising behind him left him little choice. As his friend rolled off, he too dropped,
sank into the softness, tumbled off the cart, sprawled on the cobbles. Fenby, grasping his collar, jerked him up.

‘Vedeamus?’
he said.

‘Yes,’ replied Jack, ‘and fucking quick too.’

Marks and Ede burst out of the front door of the Angel. Snatching up the gold, the Mohocks sprinted, laughing, down the street.

In the sanctuary of his room, Jack had to resist the near-overpowering urge to go to sleep. His bed’s siren-sheets lured him,
could not have tempted more had Fanny, Matilda and Clothilde rested between them, each willing to share him. To lay down alone,
to see off the remaining bodily effects of the night before, to sleep till nightfall and then finally to descend to the kitchen
for one of Nance’s famous soups … it was a vision of paradise … and it could not be his. Not when Craster and his cohorts
would be close behind. Not when men waited at both front and rear doors, men he’d just managed to elude by a complicated route
over a neighbour’s roof. And especially not since he’d read what had been within the envelope placed upon his pillow. One
of those men outside had no doubt delivered it.

Jack picked up the black-bordered card again. The name and title of the sender was printed in gold above three words in black
ink, the identical words mouthed at him last night at the Assembly Rooms under the name of the man who’d mouthed them:

LORD THOMAS MELBURY
YOU. ARE. DEAD.

Jack dropped the card back onto the pillow, rubbed his fingers as if to remove some taint, then continued dressing. This was
swift, no agonizing over colour or fabric. He put on the simple attire he wore for school, everything black and woollen, stockings,
waistcoat, jacket. He was alarmed to find he had to make five attempts to tie the stock, so violently were his hands shaking,
and though he tried to steady them with a shot from the brandy flask he kept hidden in his armoire, it did nothing but scorch
his throat and empty stomach. Spluttering, he went to the mirror, tried again. In the end the knot he resorted to was of the
simplest, most impoverished kind.

He regarded himself in the mirror for a moment. He had another sanctuary to find, somewhere, anywhere, to see out the day,
to allow the chase – chases! – to pass him by. Only then could he creep back to Westminster. There, the Election for Trinity
commenced on the morrow and the ushers were rigid in barring all strangers from the grounds. Rarely before had Jack had reason
to bless their over-watchfulness but if they would keep the pursuit away from him till the passion of it died down – as he
was sure it ultimately would – then, by God, like many a Westminster before him, he would leave them a generous bequest in
his will!

This sudden morbid thought had him scrambling again. His shoes were swiftly buckled on, his cloak grabbed from its hook. He
was halfway to the door when it burst open. ‘Aaah,’ he cried, reeling back, leaping the bed, putting it between himself and
the thick-set figure that rushed in, bellowing.

‘You wastrel cur! Where have you been?’

Jack, from between his raised hands, let out a yelp of relief. ‘Father! Thank God, dear Father! What … what joy it is to see
you!’

Sir James stood four-square and glowering, taken aback by the enthusiasm of his son’s greeting. ‘What … what’s the matter
with you, sir?’

‘I am just so … so delighted that it’s you, Papa.’

Sir James had come to renew hostilities. But Jack’s genuine
happiness at the reunion was obviously not what his father expected. It confused him – enough almost to bring him near an
apology. ‘I knocked, of course,’ he said, indicating the door, ‘but there was no … heard a noise, so I—’

‘That’s quite all right, Father, I—’

‘I should think it is quite all right.’ Sir James Absolute was never nonplussed for long. ‘My house, go where I like. Especially
since you use it merely as some sort of dressing room.’ He toed the pile of discarded clothes on the floor. ‘What’s this?
And this?’ He indicated Jack’s school apparel. ‘Dump your shite and run, do you, sir?’

‘Not at all, sir, I …’ Jack was glancing around the room, looking for an inspiration. Instead he saw Lord Melbury’s card where
he had dropped it back on the bed. Hurling his cloak over it, he said, ‘I was about to take this washing down to Nancy, sir,
and—’

He was bending to scoop up the clothes, but his father was quicker, his knees cracking like pistol shots. ‘When I said “dump
your shite”, ye dog, I didn’t mean literally.’ His large face wrinkled in distaste as he hoisted the ripped and brown-stained
breeches. ‘What the Devil have you been about?’