Quincunx

  “Too late!” Joey cried out. “There’s a ladder in the top of each vault that goes up to a trap. But we can’t reach it now, the water’s too high.”

  The tops of the vaults were still just visible, but their entrances were now below the water-line.

  “Yes we can,” I said, remembering those summer afternoons when Job had persevered (and Harry had succeeded) in teaching me to overcome my fear of the water and to swim beneath the water-gate of the mill-pond at Twycott. “We might be able to dive and swim through the top of the arch.”

  “I can’t swim!” he cried.

  We stared at each other in horror.

  “We can try it,” I said. “We must. I’ll try it now myself.”

  I removed my boots and great-coat while Joey watched me. It would be hard in the dark to know where to come to the surface and then to find the ladder. And perhaps the trap-door would be locked? However, there was no alternative. And the lanthorn would give me light enough at least to know where to dive. I plunged in and was shocked by the cold. Even to stay in it for more than a few minutes would be dangerous. This water was not a living creature like the river at Twycott, but a dead thing that was yet claiming an intimate familiarity with me. I swam towards the first arch. Then I dived, felt my way down the wall until it gave way, swam through the space and then came up. I had hoped that there would be cracks of light coming from around the sides of the trap-door which should be far above me, but I found myself still in utter darkness. I groped about above my head and to my relief hit my hands against the cold iron of a ladder. Thinking that I had better verify that the trap-door was open — for otherwise I would need to try another vault — I climbed it until I banged my head (fortunately, not too hard) against something. I pushed, and the heavy wooden object lifted a few inches. It suddenly occurred to me that I could escape now rather than risk trying to save Joey at the peril of my own life, but the reflection came to me as an intellectual fact and not something that had any emotional appeal. I could not imagine facing Mrs Digweed or living with myself if I did not at least attempt to rescue him. Though whether he could be saved depended on how far he would trust me.

  I descended the ladder, dived again and rejoined Joey without difficulty. I could see how pleased — and surprised? — he was to see me. I must have seemed a long time away. Now he began to remove his boots and coat.

  Pulling myself onto the slimy steps, I told him what I had found and he managed a grim smile. Then while I slapped my limbs to restore warmth, I gave him directions (just as Job Greenslade had done to me) on how to let himself be drawn under the surface:

  “Whatever you do,” I stressed, “don’t panic and try to cling onto me or you’ll drown us both. Just let yourself go and I’ll hold you.”

  Whitefaced, he nodded and lowered himself into the cold water. Then I held him from behind by the shoulders and kicked with my legs, slowly moving us towards the arch. Now came the hardest part.

  “Keep your eyes shut and trust me completely,” I urged.

  Joey turned his head and nodded.

  I could see his eyes glittering in the lume of the distant lanthorn. Then he closed them. I dived, pushing him down so that our heads went under together and, though I knew that all his instincts were urging him to rise again, he stayed beneath the surface. So down we went, I holding his hand and with my other feeling down the wall until I found the top of the arch. I pulled him under it, swam a few strokes, and then we rose to the surface. Joey was spluttering and sobbing with fright and relief. I pushed him onto the ladder and climbed after him. When we reached the top we had more difficulty than I had anticipated in raising the door, but at last we found ourselves sprawled in the dark on the floor of a cellar amidst the reassuring smell of musty straw and rotting wood.

  I waited for him to say something.

  After a silence he spoke: “I nivver thought you’d come back for me.”

  That was as close as he came to expressing his gratitude. And this episode led to no improvement in my relations with him. In fact, it sometimes seemed to me that it had given him a further cause for resentment.

  We lay for some minutes, too exhausted to move — although in our soaking garments we were both shivering violently.

  “We should get out of here. Some of these cellars get flooded, too,” Joey warned, though this one seemed dry enough.

  Groping in the blackness it took us some time even to find the door, leave alone to open it. But at last we were out in a passage that led to a small door which was merely bolted on the inside, so that in a moment we found ourselves out in the street. And there before us were the wooden market-stalls, the bustling crowds, and the shouting barkers of Fleet-market!

  Fortunately, when we got home we found that Mrs Digweed had set off for her work without waiting for us, so that no explanations of our bedraggled appearance were required. We changed our dress and then sat watching over Mr Digweed who was sleeping restlessly.

  For a long time neither of us spoke. Then at last:

  “Well, that’s the toshing finished,” Joey said.

  Apart from any other consideration, we had lost everything: rakes, lanthorns, boots, and great-coats.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “But what can we do instead?”

  “There’s lots of other things,” he said.

  I looked at him suspiciously.

  However, before I had a chance to ask what he meant, Mrs Digweed came in and I could she that she was excited about something. As she removed her bonnet she went across to her husband, took his hand, and studied his sleeping face for a few moments.

  Then she turned back to us: “You’ll never guess where I’ve been!”

  “Tell us quick, Ma,” Joey said shortly.

  “Why, what would you say to Brook-street?”

  Joey stared at her. By an unspoken agreement we had never mentioned the events of that ill-fated night.

  “I reckoned it was safe by now, so a week or two back when I started doing some work up that end of Town, I went to the tavern nearest the house a few times, hoping to meet that gal I got to know before, Nellie. Well, she come in today so that’s why I’m late now.”

  “Did you ask her about the crack?” Joey asked.

  “In course not. I ain’t sich a downey. Jist like a-fore, I was careful never to ask no questions but on’y to listen and hold my peace.”

  I managed to stifle a smile at the thought of Mrs Digweed holding her peace.

  “And sure enough, arter a bit, why, naterally, she told me everything I wanted to know. She said when they gived the alarm the men-sarvints couldn’t wake the watchman for he was boosed so deep. Nor they couldn’t find where he had hid the key of the street-door. So they had to get out through the back of the house and go round by the mews.”

  “That’s what saved us,” I exclaimed.

  “She said it was the tutor, Mr Vamplew, what fired the gun.”

  I recalled the sallow, sinister face I had seen.

  “He got a good look at the man and the boy with him, so she said. And she told me the cracksmen didn’t manage to take nothing.”

  “Well, so what have we larned that we didn’t know already?” Joey jeered. “You didn’t ought to have done it, Ma.”

  “I disagree,” I said. “We might have learned something important.”

  “Oh, but I did,” Mrs Digweed said mysteriously. “I wanted to pick up something useful and I did.”

  “Useful?” I asked in bewilderment.

  “For getting the will back, in course!” she exclaimed.

  I was stunned by this and seeing my surprise she said: “You didn’t think I’d gived up, did you?” she asked. “Why, I’m more bent upon it than ever.”

  Though I had not consciously thought about it, I now realized that I had never abandoned the idea. But that she should have gone on thinking about it!

  “Then what did you learn?” I asked.

  “A deal of things. That girl is a fee-rocious rattle. She told me about one
of the footmen, Bob. (For it seems he’s sweet on her.) Well, he has a boy to work to him — Dick — but she said Dick was a-goin’ back to his dad in Lime’us to be put to the caulking-trade, and so Bob is looking for another hall-boy.”

  “A plant!” I cried. “But can you be sure of getting him the place?”

  Her face expressed bafflement.

  “Don’t you mean Joey?” I asked.

  She looked conscious and said after a moment’s hesitation: “Why, Master Johnnie, to tell the truth, I thought you’d take it.”

  I was stunned and a thousand ideas rushed into my head. To become the humblest of menials! To exchange the independence of the gulley-hunter for the servitude of a domestic! In that house! I saw Joey watching me curiously and wondered how much he suspected of what I was thinking. Then I saw the appeal of the idea of entering that arrogant house in such a disguise in order to work its destruction.

  However, an obstacle presented itself to me: “What about the tutor, Mr Vamplew? He might recognise me.”

  “Nellie said he’s gone abroad with his young gentleman and they’re goin’ to be there until Christmas.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m ready to take it on. But would Bob give me it?”

  “There’s a good chance,” she said. “I told the gal my husband had a sort of nevy, begging your pardon and may God forgive me for the lie. I said you’d jist come up from the country — I’d told her last time that my George’s dad come from down in the North, so that was as well — for she said Bob wanted a country-boy as bein’ healthier and not so artful as a Town-bred younker. So she took me straightaway to Bob in the Tap. ‘Send the lad along,’ Bob said to me. ‘Send the lad along and I’ll take a look at him and see if he’ll sarve.’ So you’re to go along fust thing tomorrer morning. And if he wants you, you’ll start straightaway.”

  “And what wages would he pay me?”

  She made a face: “You won’t make your fortun’. You’ll get your board, a set of clothes and two aprings a year, and washing found. As for wages, I didn’t think to ask. Maybe ten shillin’ a quarter, I suppose. Out of that you’ve only to find yourself in tay and sugar and soap.”

  “That’s not much.”

  “Hardly worse than we’ve been doing,” said Joey with a grim smile. “And as for me, why I’ll find something.”

  “What?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Come, Master Johnnie,” said Mrs Digweed. “We’ve work to do. You must larn your name and history, for you’ll have to take each word out of your mouth and look at it a-fore you use it.”

  We chose for my place of origin a district near the Scottish borders, and Mrs Digweed took great pleasure in inventing a complex set of circumstances to explain how her husband’s aunt down in the North country had met and married a grazier from even further north.

  “May the Lord forgive me,” she broke off once. “I suppose we ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong?”

  “Surely,” I said, “it’s no more wrong than making up a story in a book?”

  She frowned over this and seemed unconvinced.

  “What is my name?” I asked.

  “I said you were called Johnnie,” she said. “I doubt if he’ll ask you for any other.”

  “But if he does, I’ll say it’s Winterflood,” I said laughing.

  Mrs Digweed looked surprised for a moment but when she remembered where the name came from, she laughed with me.

  Later that night I lay awake beside Joey wondering what lay ahead of me. To enter my enemies’ house in this manner was indeed to grasp at the rose in disregard of the thorns. But the shame worried me more than the danger, and I felt a bitter-sweet excitement at the prospect of coming so close to Henrietta in such a role. Close? Surely it was unlikely that I would even glimpse her! But however that might be, the will was the main thing.

  CHAPTER 94

  In accordance with Mrs Digweed’s instructions, I reached the mews at the back of Brook-street at about half-past seven o’clock the next morning. Since No. 48 was next on from the one on the corner, it was easy enough to find the right set of buildings in the mews behind it. The main gate of the coach-house stood open and two men were cleaning a carriage which I recognised as the one in which Mr Steplight had come to Mrs Fortisquince’s house those many years before.

  “Who are you?” the elder of the men said to me when I made to enter.

  “I’ve come to see about the hall-boy’s place,” I replied.

  “Very well, look alive then,” he said, jerking his head to indicate that I should pass through the coach-house.

  I did so and found myself in the back-yard where I saw three laundry-maids at work carrying baskets of linen from the laundry-house to a big rinsing-trough. One of them glanced at me in a friendly way and I crossed to her.

  “Are you Johnnie?” she asked, with a smile.

  When I confirmed this she said: “I’m Nellie. I’ll take you to him.” She turned to a stout woman nearby: “Can I take the boy inside, Mrs Babister? He’s come to see Mr Bob about a place.”

  “Very well, but be quick about it,” the woman answered ungraciously. “And none of your nonsense.”

  The girl led me into the house by the door which I remembered from that ill-fated night. Then we went down the stairs, along a gloomy passage and into a dark little room without windows and lit only by a tallow-dip, where we found a tall man a little over thirty, wearing a shirt and breeches with a long green baize apron reaching almost to the ground.

  As we came in he was polishing a pair of boots, but when he saw us he dropped them, removed the apron and playfully made to seize the girl who dived away from him, but not so quickly or so far that he could not catch her briefly and plant a kiss on her lips.

  She pulled herself away and said: “Why, Mr Bob! I nivver did! I’ve only come to bring the boy what his aunt spoke to you yesterday.”

  “Come here, you fascinating creatur’,” Bob said, and made to catch her again.

  However, she ran out with a giggle and the man turned to me, muttering something I didn’t catch. He was above middle height and quite handsome, though his features bore a somewhat spoiled and petulant cast and he had an air about him of feeling rather hard done by and owing the world a grudge in consequence. He now stared at me hard with cold blue eyes, and yet it seemed to me he was looking at me in an oddly evasive manner as if gazing at a point a yard in front of me.

  “What have you done a-fore now?” he said, looking me up and down sceptically.

  “I’m used to hard work, Mr Bob,” I replied. “I started by tenting crows when I was five and went on to helping my father with the cattle and the feed, singling turnips and swedes, winnowing corn, stone-picking, and all that manner of thing. I was nearly doing a man’s work when he died and my mother gave up the lease.”

  Clearly this battery of rural terms conveyed nothing to him, but he grasped the main point: “Farm-work, eh? Well, you should be strong and hardy, though you don’t look too strong to me, for all you’re bigger than the last boy. He was a tiger, but you’re too tall and wouldn’t fit the livery. You won’t be found in livery, so don’t go whining arter one. I’ll give you new togs twice a year. Not new, you know, but good enough. And if you don’t take proper care on ’em, you’ll feel the weight of my hand.”

  I noticed with mingled feelings that these threats were couched in the future, rather than the conditional, tense.

  “Now you works to me, is that clear? If ’Arry or Roger or anyone else tells you to do somethin’, you tells ’em it ain’t their business to give you orders. Is that understood.”

  I nodded, and he went on: “But if Mr Thackaberry or Mr Assinder tells you to do anything, you do it jist the same as if I told you.”

  I nodded again.

  Then I asked: “What will my wages be?”

  He looked at me in surprise and then laughed without humour: “I say, you are a flatt. You don’t get no wages for skinking. If you settle to the collar and work hard I’ll
give you somethin’ now and then. Arter a bit, maybe I’ll start to give you a share of my vails. Anyways, we’ll see. That’s all.”

  He suddenly flung a piece of rag at me that was foully black.

  “Make a start on them and we’ll see how you do.”

  He indicated a pile of boots and shoes and a pot of blacking and so I stood at the sideboard and began to polish as hard as I could.

  Bob hung the apron on a nail on the back of the door, donned a jacket, seated himself on a low chair beside me, and put his feet up comfortably on the board by my elbow.

  “Now listen careful,” he began. “The fust time you do somethin’ wrong or don’t do somethin’ what I tells you to do, you get a thump on the ear. The next time you get a thrashing. If you do it again, you’re out, and I promise you’ll leave here singing the Black Psalm on account of a few bruises to remember your uncle Bob by.”

  He pulled a short pipe and a tobacco-pouch out of a capacious pocket in the jacket and began to stuff the bowl meditatively.

  “Now I’m ‘Mr Bob’. Not ‘Bob’. And when you’re talking to the other sarvints I’m still ‘Mr Bob’.

  One of his feet suddenly moved sideways and hit me hard in the ribs.

  “Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Mr Bob,” I gasped.

  “Jist so’s we knows where we stands from the start. Now you haven’t been in sarvice a-fore, but that don’t matter because you won’t need to do nothin’ but what I tells you. Now this here’s below stairs and you don’t nivver go above without I say so. The only times you ever goes above stairs is with me when I cleans the rooms and when I does my lamps and candles last thing at night. If you’re ketched above stairs on your own when you haven’t no business to be there — and I wery much doubt if you ever will have the right to be there when I ain’t — then you’re goin’ to be in Chancery. That’s all.”

  “What are the other rules?”

  He started up from his chair: “What did you say”?