The Newgate Jig (30 page)

Mrs Gifford
scurried past me on an errand. Pikemartin did not reappear all day, and when
Conn came down to fetch the other bottle of Old Tom, I knew where he had taken
refuge. So it was left to me to turn down the lights of that eerie place,
starting at the top, and try not to listen to the sound of Pikemartin crying or
to see shadows where there were none. I had just reached the waxwork room when
there was a sudden loud knock upon the front door, followed by a battery of
thuds that made my heart, as they say, leap into my throat.

Will and Trim
stood upon the step like a pair of bookends, beaming and breathing hard.

'Get your coat,
Chapman!' cried Trim. 'Quickly! Brutus and Nero are found!'

Will took my arm
and propelled me along the street, talking all the time.

'Don't get his
hopes up, Trim, but Bob, we've heard a rumour that there are some dogs fitting
your fine fellows' description in a low place not far from here.'

'If it's a case
of professional dog-napping,' put in Trim, 'I think you'll be able to press
charges. Talk to my lawyer, Carpenter. He'll take the case for you.'

They were so excited,
one good friend on either arm, propelling me this way and that along the dark,
wintry streets, talking nineteen to the dozen about their discovery and how
delighted they were that those good creatures were found, that I caught their
infection immediately and allowed them to lift my spirits until I was almost
delirious.

'There,' cried
Will, 'he smiles for the first time in weeks, Trim!'

Yes, if I could
have shouted and sung with joy I would have risked arrest and shinned up a
lamp-post and made a complete fool of myself! And I was so utterly taken with
the delight of my two friends' news and my own lightheadedness, that I hardly
noticed the direction we had taken until we began to tramp through the mud and
around the fencing of a railway cutting on which, when Trim took my arm and
pointed, I saw a bill for the Royal Crown Theatre.

'Here you are,
Bob! Your name and, what's more important, that of your talented dogs, taken
in vain! Someone has stolen your dogs, your name
and
your show!'

'I've heard of
such things happening,' agreed Will. 'Some terror masqueraded once as me in a
gaff - called himself Bill Lovegrope or something like! The audacity!'

My heart sank
and I could have wept, there and then, in the street. My friends couldn't
understand why I pointed to my name on the flapping bill and those of Brutus
and Nero, and shook my head. They were old bills, from weeks ago, and not
showing a date (they never did - another showman's trick). How could my friends
have known?

But Trim was
unwilling to give up the possibility. 'Yes, I know it seems a coincidence,' he
urged, propelling me down the street, 'but believe me, I write coincidences
every day, and they
do
happen. We will go to this gaff and catch them in the middle
of their act, you'll see.'

How the bills
had survived being torn down or pasted over, I had no idea, but here they were
still on the wall where I had last seen them. The massy letters shouted me loud
to all-comers, though I had never seen a sign of my namesake or his dogs in the
flesh, as it were, at the gaff. But even though my spirits had been dashed to
pieces, I felt a sudden stab of optimism. Perhaps the bills had been left on
purpose. Perhaps Chapman (the counterfeit) was simply engaged for a future date
and at this very moment Brutus and Nero were performing their tricks on that
wretched gaff stage for some tuppenny-halfpenny impostor. It could be! We
turned the corner into Fish-lane.

Apart from the
drunk on the steps of the Wretched Fly begging 'a penny for a glass', it was
dark. No pie man calling, no cries of 'potatoes hot', only the distant sounds
of a row and perhaps fisticuffs, a baby crying, a woman shouting. There was no
harmonium on the pavement, no showman's drum, no gaudily dressed youths
pressing passers-by to 'Step inside!' The gaff was silent and still.

I had not been
there since the night Brutus and Nero 'seized' the Nasty Man and, although I
had read that the magistrate had arrested the company and closed the show
down, I was still surprised that its doors and windows were shut, and not only
shut, but boarded. Usually these gaffs spring open again within days of being
closed down, with a new proprietor and a new name, but really nothing changed,
including the company. Which is what I had been expecting.

'Where's the
theatre, Chapman?' said Trim looking about him. 'I thought it would have been
bursting at the seams.'

The gaudy giant
posters had been taken down (to be used again elsewhere), but there were
remnants of other handbills pasted to the blind windows and plastered all over
the door, announcing the Royal Crown Theatre and Chapman's Canines, as well as
the waxwork exhibition and all its bloody horrors.

'This very much
looks as if we've raised your hopes, only to dash them utterly,' said Will,
trying the door. 'I'm so sorry, old friend.'

But I could not
turn and walk away, and against the easy tears rose a desperate hope that, in
spite of all appearances, my friends were still right and Brutus and Nero were
here, in the gaff or the yard. Not to act in a play, but perhaps brought to
fight, for hadn't the Growler asked me if they were fighting dogs? I put my
shoulder to the door and, with Will's help, it gave, was probably not even
locked, and we staggered into the dark hallway and then, feeling our way along
the passage, to the exhibition room.

It was open to
the roof and that roof had more tiles missing than in place, so that the wintry
moon lit up the room like a stage. When I was last here it had been full of
waxworks and curiosities, and now it was a shell, utterly stripped bare. There
were great holes in the floor, where the boards had been ripped up, and from
which a foul smell rose. The walls had been reduced to bare bricks and above,
where the upstairs front bedroom had been, the ceiling and floor had been taken
up. Will looked about him in wonder.

'What's happened
here then, Bob? Have they stripped out everything they could sell, do you
think?'

I nodded yes.
Every foot of lead, every scrap of timber, everything that might have a value
was taken: one man's rubbish was another man's meal.

'I think we
should leave,' Trim said, anxiously. This is not a place I want to be found in,
alive or dead, and it seems to me very likely that the latter might present
itself. What is that dreadful stink?'

There's not a
soul here, Trim. Not in the building. We'll leave as soon as we've made sure
that Brutus and Nero are not imprisoned outside,' said Will. 'We can't have
Chapman wondering whether his dogs were within twenty paces of him and he
didn't look for them.'

My hopes rose
again. Yes, they could be tied up in the yard, or in the outbuildings next door
or - and I balked at the thought - in the stable. We edged out into the
passage, and then into the yard where the stable stood, lit by the moon, and
beyond it, the cavernous regions of the cutting and the tunnel. Even knowing
they were so close turned my mouth dry. But Will and Trim had no such knowledge
and no qualms and, tiptoeing about the yard, soon established that there was no
one here. And no dogs either.

Will rattled the
gate into Pilgrim's yard and opened it easily. I wanted to tell them, 'Nothing
here, just a mad man, unless he's run away,' but my friends had already gone
in. They poked about the yard and disturbed the nesting rats, and Will
whispered that he would just peep through the window 'to see if Bluebeard's at
home'. But he had no need, for Pilgrim's back door stood open, the very door
that he always locked and barred so carefully. And this struck me as so very
strange that I held Will's arm to stop him.

'What's
up?' he whispered. 'Do you know this place?'

I nodded. Oh
yes. If only I had a voice, what tales I could tell!

'And
the man who lives here? Are we in trouble?'

I didn't think
so, but all the same it was odd to find the door standing ajar. The familiar stink
of must and damp seeped out as I went first, groping into the little scullery
and then into the passage where it was pitch dark. I ran my hands along the
wainscoting and through spiders' webs, disturbing the other creatures that
lived in the old place, behind the decades of paper, the years of books.
Underfoot was wet and boggy, a lumpy, uneven skin of worn druggets, piled one
upon the other, and warping floorboards. I tripped, my foot caught beneath the
rotten matting, and stumbled into the shop. It was very cold, and Will slapped
his shoulders and sides and stamped his feet; the book towers shuddered and
swayed.

'Does a man
live
here? Ye gods!
How
could a man live here? It's hell-fire cold, Bob, and smells
as if there's a sewer running through it!'

'Who is he?'
said Trim, who had opened a blind at the front and was scrabbling around trying
to light a candle or two. 'Shall we call him?'

Will hallooed
loudly, but there was no reply, no sound at all. My friend wasn't here, I was
sure, and neither was anyone else. In Pilgrim's bower, the wall of books laid
in good English bond was beginning to show signs of wear. The alcove which had
fitted so snugly about his head and shoulders had collapsed, and the neat
piles of Histories and Treatises which had formed his seat were covered in the
fallen volumes. Nevertheless, I cleared a path and, with Trim's assistance, lit
some of the stubs of candles which sat in their own puddles of grease around
the bower, and for the first time surveyed the landscape of Pilgrim's shop. The
room was much smaller from that low seat, but the flickering candles made the
upper reaches even darker and blacker. Pilgrim's cup sat on its shelf - the
book, much stained by rings and spills, was
Camellia sinensis: the tea-plant,
its history and cultivation
- and I realized that this, which I
called his bower because I could think of nothing more suitable, was also his
workplace. From his seat, Pilgrim could reach his cup, his candle and matches,
his spare shoes, ledger and pen, inkpot and so on, all perched on promontories
and crevasses fashioned from the stacked volumes. A larger book, two even, held
his slippers; on a single, fat tome (a dictionary) was his milk can, and in the
spaces left by removing a volume here and there, were inserted his envelopes,
embossed paper, string, and bundles of quills, stamps and penwipers. I smiled
at the ingeniousness of my odd friend, and brought down the book on which a
flat candle stub floated -
The Life-cycle of the Lampyridae
- to
examine the arrangement more closely. I pulled out large- size calling-cards
(showing a picture of a much younger Pilgrim frowning seriously at a book),
letters shrouded in dust and skeins of spiders' webs, writing paper so damp
that it was flowered with mildew, seals which crumbled in my fingers, and a dry
ink pot. Nothing here had been used for some time.

Then something
caught my eye, just at my shoulder. Something moving. I raised the candle and
there, pressing its black body between two upright volumes, was a huge spider.
It was grossly fat and its long legs, covered in thick hair, pedalled against
the spines of the books in an effort to squeeze into the thin crevice. In the
stillness of the shop, I could hear the faint rasp of its feet on the leather as
it tried to gain purchase on the rough binding. The way it scrabbled and
turned itself about, pushing and flailing its legs, was so repulsive that I
grabbed the nearest book to throw at the awful creature. I missed by a furlong,
but it was startled and lost its grip and fell with a soft plop' somewhere near
my feet. The thought of that gross black body and wriggling legs clutching at
my bootlaces and clinging to my trouser-bottoms sent me into a panic and I
leaped up, and caught my elbow in the turret of books. A wobble and a little
shower of leather and dust fell upon me, which I quickly threw in all
directions, lest that fat, black creature had a colony of companions.

The candles
flickered in the draught and one tumbled to the floor, but was not extinguished,
and as I quickly picked it up, being very careful not to grasp the spider by
accident, I saw, lying amongst the volumes, a fat packet, carefully tied with
string, and sealed. It fell open in my hand.

Inside were
photographic likenesses, dozens of them, as real as if the figures were
standing before me. They were what showmen once called 'Frenchies', supposedly
because the French produce the dirtiest images of naked women that can be
bought on the fairground or street-corner. And though I have seen 'Frenchies' -
what man hasn't who has been to Barnet Fair? - I have never seen ones quite as
vile as these. They were not the usual pictures of a woman undressing whilst a
grinning constable watches her through an open window. Nor of a naked, sleeping
nymph ogled by a passing swain.

No.
These were of quite a different order.

Here were men in
the robes and uniforms of judges and bishops and admirals. The judges wore
their wigs, the bishop his holy hat, lords in their ermine cloaks and garter
robes, a musician, I guessed, in his pique wig, a military man in a dark
uniform and cocked hat. Neither were they play-actors, No, I could put a name
to this lord and this reverend gentleman, to that temperance man and minor
royal, all using young women and children in the crudest and most violent
manner. Here was my Lord X, who only last week had been seen with the Queen on
his arm, as he bent to his task of flogging the bare arse of a fair-faced young
woman. And here His Grace the Bishop of Y, dandling upon his knee a naked
little girl. The very same bishop who had recently christened a royal babe and
opened a foundling hospital. And a much- decorated general, not long back from
the wars, enjoying a curly-haired boy. Here was the Duke of Z belabouring a
maid whilst another encouraged him with a whip across his back. Picture after
picture showed do-gooder and banker, knight of the realm and clergyman, in
their ceremonial and garb, and the poor objects of their lust captured in
images so sharp and real that to look upon them was like parting the curtains
and peering through a window. My hands shook and I dropped one which hit my
foot and turned over. It showed a booted and buttoned general in the act of
violating a child, whose look of fear and pain was in awful contrast to the
grim intensity of her abuser. They were arranged upon an elegant chaise (I
recognized its twisty legs!), and there was drapery in the background, torn and
creased, and the bare wood of a wall.