Quincunx

  He cuffed me under the chin and said: “All right, young feller?”

  “Barney,” I asked, “Sally calls you Uncle. Does that mean you are really of the same family?”

  “That’s right. In fact, we’re all one big fambly. Sam here’s my little brother and Nan’s my cousing and Will’s my nevy and so on.”

  Sam grinned at me and nodded.

  Not sure whether to believe this I went on: “And why do you live here? In this lonely place?”

  “Why this is our new house what we’ve bought and paid for and we’re waiting for it to be decorated,” Sam said. “It’s wonderful not to have no neighbours nearby, for one doesn’t want to bother ’em with one’s noise.”

  That sounded more plausible. “And what do you all do?”

  The two grinned at each other.

  “Why, do I dare trust you?” Barney asked with a smile.

  I nodded and he went on: “Well, you might say we perform a public benefaction. You see, there’s a deal of paper credit circulating on the money-market. Now, do you know what that is?” I shook my head. “Well, say Sam here needs money, so he borrers it and signs a bill and gets cash for promising to repay the full amount at six months. Now that bill is a kind of money and it’s bought and sold and its vally depends on whether the file what buys it thinks Sam will be able to pay it. There’s many people as makes it their business to know these things and if Sam comes into a fortin of an old aunt, why then the vally of his bill goes up.”

  “But if he doesn’t pay it when it falls due?” I asked, remembering my mother’s experience.

  “Why, then I get someone to take another bill of me,” Sam said, “and use that money to pay the first. And if nobody won’t, why then I try to get a friend to back it.”

  “But if you can’t do that,” I asked Sam, “what will become of you?”

  “Then arst for me at the Fleet or the Marshalsea,” he answered with a laugh.

  I remembered my poor old friend, Mr Pentecost.

  “But the p’int is,” Barney said, “what happens to that bill when nobody don’t believe no more that Sam can pay it so it’s discounted and discounted until at last it’s nigh on worthless. Now someone buys it for next to nothing and he passes it on to me.”

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “Nivver you mind,” Barney said quickly. Then more affably he went on: “Well, what I does is I restore the bill’s credit. This is how I does it. Now say you’re a tradesman and own a big shop selling joolery or carpets or clothes. One day I turns up with my wife in a fine carriage with sarvints and orders jewels and pays for ’em in ready cash. Then a few weeks later I comes back and does the same. Now you’re getting very glad to see me, aren’t you? Then one day I finds myself a little short on cash so I pays with a discounted bill — not a big ’un — and you’re a bit doubtful, but you don’t want to lose my custom by offending me. So you takes it and it’s all right for your banker finds it’s a good ’un. Then a little arter that I offers you a discounted bill for a lot more and you take it. Now you find its credit ain’t as good as you thought it was. And you don’t nivver see me agin.” He and Sam laughed and he went on: “But have I robbed or cheated you? No, for it’s down to the person what drawed that bill to pay you. It’s them what’s robbed you.”

  Though I was relieved to know that Barney and his relatives were not involved in anything that was actually illegal, yet I was disturbed by the dishonourableness of what they were doing.

  Still chuckling, Sam went out of the room. Barney stared at me and said: “Now that I’ve been so frank, tell us the rest of your story.”

  I managed to give him a great deal of circumstantial detail but to avoid mentioning any names. The part he was most interested in was the most recent, for he seemed anxious to know about my mother’s death. It was hard for me to speak of this. To my surprise, he appeared to be particularly concerned to know where she was buried and under what name. Eventually I told him that the parish was St. Leonard’s and that she had been buried under the name of “Offland”.

  After learning this he seemed satisfied and shortly afterwards he left me.

  A day or two later — I have no idea whether it was the day or night — I was dozing on my shake-down when I was awoken by whispering voices in the room below. Whoever was there clearly did not know that my rooms were above that one. Then, to my surprise, I realized that the two speakers were Barney and, of all people, Jack.

  “Are you sartin?” I heard Barney say.

  “I am. In course I didn’t hardly believe it meself, but, like I say, Sal told me without knowing what it meant. If you don’t believe me, Barney, you arst her yourself.”

  “I will.”

  Then they moved away and I heard no more. What could it mean for the two rivals to be talking in secret? And what were they discussing? I thought I learned the answer to this only a few hours later, when, with most of the others, I was in the drawing-room when Barney suddenly burst in with Sam behind him.

  Barney was shouting: “Where’s Nan?” She came forward and he cried: “You’ve been prigging, haven’t you?”

  “No I never!” she exclaimed.

  Barney brought a piece of jewellery from his pocket: “We jist found this in your gear!”

  “I ain’t nivver seen it a-fore!” Nan screamed.

  “I seen you prig it in Bond-street yesterday,” Sally cried.

  “You’re lying! It’s a plant!”

  “You know the rule,” Barney said. “No private business.”

  So my suspicions about the honesty of my new friends were unfounded: Nan had stolen something and was being expelled for it!

  The others murmured their assent.

  “She planted it!” Nan cried pointing at Sally.

  “I never did!”

  “Yes you did and I know why. On account of how Jack likes me.” There were some cries of “That’s right!” and, fortified by this, Nan went on: “You’re jealous so you’ve made this up.”

  The majority, however, were not sympathetic and remained silent.

  “You’ll have to leave the partnership,” Barney said, and glanced at Sam and then Jack. These two both nodded gravely.

  “You’ll have to go, Nan,” said Jack gently. “We have to be able to trust each other.”

  Will, Nan’s usual fancy-man, put up a stout defence of her innocence and threatened to leave with her, but when his bluff was called he withdrew. Nan protested, wept, then turned to shouting abuse and threats, but the opinion of almost all was against her and eventually she conceded defeat and, still protesting her innocence, left the house.

  As Christmas came closer I heard many references to the party that was to come off at Henrietta-street on Christmas-eve. It seemed strange to me that they were so excited at the prospect for many of them went out nearly every night in a big group led by Barney, returning only towards dawn. They dressed very carefully for it, so that the women looked like ladies and the men almost like gentlemen. Meanwhile, those who stayed behind amused themselves with a kind of continuous party: drinking, dicing, eating and quarrelling.

  By now I was familiar with their way of life and since they were guarding their tongues much less in my presence, I became clearer about how they earned their living, though several mysteries remained. Members of the company came and went at all hours, but very rarely brought others there — and these had to be vouched for and were watched carefully. When they weren’t sleeping they were amusing themselves in the ways I have described. Nobody except Jack and Sally ever read, and they had only two interests: either the fashionable papers and the Court Guide (for the “family” took a keen interest in the comings and goings of fashionable Society) or the Hue-and-Cry (which is a publication of the police which lists crimes and names the individuals sought by the authorities).

  One evening Meg and another of the women came back from making a visit to Peg at Newgate and as we all gathered around them in the drawing-room, they described how they had spo
ken to him through a hatch in the wall of his ward. They reported that his trial was on the calendar for that Sessions and that he was confident that Pulvertaft would buy off his prosecutor, who was the house-holder at Old Ford whose house he had been caught breaking into.

  Barney, who was sitting a little apart from the rest of us in conference with a stranger, laughed ironically at this and said: “Aye, just as he done for me in ’17.”

  The man with him, who had one of the most villainous faces I had ever seen and that reminded me of Mr Pentecost’s Punch, laughed and said: “I rec’lleck that, Barney. You got knocked down for a seven, didn’t you? It was Limping Jem what blowed on you, and he got a pony of the Cat’s-meat-man for that.”

  The conversation turned to the question of which of the beaks were honourable and could be trusted to keep their word. The stranger, whom the others addressed as Mr Lavender, told a story about an “old feller” who had taken a bribe and then gone back on his undertaking by “marinating” the man concerned, and everyone vied to express their outrage at this conduct.

  “How’s the lay you’re on now?” Mr Lavender asked the company conversationally.

  Some of them glanced down as if embarrassed but Barney said: “Why, you can speak freely a-fore him.”

  There was a discussion of the business that Barney had described to me.

  In the course of it I heard an allusion to “slang bills” and I asked indignantly: “But Barney, you told me that you were passing real bills and so you weren’t doing anything dishonest.”

  There was general laughter in which Mr Lavender joined as heartily as the others.

  Then Barney, who had by now drunk a lot, said: “Why, you are green. Slang bills is even cheaper to buy than real ones.”

  I was in confusion now. So, after all, they were criminals!

  “But then why was Nan sent away for prigging?” I exclaimed.

  “Why, don’t be such a flatt!” Barney cried amid jeers from the others. “That was for prigging on her own account when she could have blowed us all up. We’re a swell-mob, see, and that means we has to pass for swells.”

  As I was thinking about the implications of this, Barney’s guest took his leave. At first I was horrified to realize the kind of people I was among. Or rather I believed I was horrified. Certainly I knew I should be. But I could not think of these people and what they were doing as evil. What did it mean to be evil? Certainly, there was something I did not at all like in Barney at times, and in one or two of the others at all times — Will above all. But I could not see that the others were anything worse than irresponsible and selfish. I remembered Mr Pentecost’s idea that the law is an arbitrary construct designed to protect the wealthy, and now it seemed to me that he was right. How had I ever been so foolish as to accept Mr Silverlight’s view that there is a higher morality which we must obey whether or not it coincides with the law? On the contrary, each of us chooses to obey or break the law simply on the calculus of self-interest. And if these people chose to take the risk of breaking it with all the dangers they knew so well, that seemed rather fine and brave.

  “So that’s all right for Henrietta-street at Christmas,” said Mr Lavender at the door of the drawing-room. “Our fellows’ll keep far away that night.”

  He and Barney shook hands and when he had seen him out of the street-door, Barney came back into the room saying: “Now there’s a real genel’man as you can do business with.”

  After all, I knew what respectable society was: it was Mrs Fortisquince and Mr Sancious and Sir Perceval. And when I thought of what they had done, I could not find it in me to condemn the stealing and fraud of the people I was among. For they had taken me in and given me shelter and food when those who had some obligation to do that had hounded my mother and myself to destitution. I now began to feel — in an inversion of my earlier view of them — that I was the parasite who was living off them without contributing anything.

  Someone suddenly punched my arm, interrupting my reverie.

  “Well, you’ll make one with us one day, won’t you, young ’un?” It was Sam who had spoken, and now he was looking at me with a golden smile.

  I nodded eagerly: “Yes, I’d like to.”

  “Then you can come to the fakement with us at Christmas,” Barney said.

  “You’ll see,” Sam said. “There ain’t nothing to match it. It’s like gaming for high stakes but with the odds in your favour.”

  “But with all to lose if they go agin you,” Barney added, pulling his neckerchief tight around his neck and jerking it.

  “How did you get into it?” I asked Sam.

  “Me? I nivver knowed no different, my cully. I was bore and raised to it. I was jugged when I was eight year old and had my fust whipping when I was a thirteener. But I was nothing but a low gonoph then. Until I come to know Barney.”

  His friend and captain laughed and said: “That was the time when my ears was quick to the toll of a passing bell.” His blue eyes glittered at me. “You know the lay I mean?” I nodded, though I was determined to say nothing of my connexion with Isbister. “It weren’t agin no law, for the law says there ain’t no property in a corpse.”

  The others laughed at the technical term. “You’ll be knocking us down at the Old Bailey at this rate, Barney,” Sam jeered. “Has your ’torney friend offered to ’prentice you yet?”

  Ignoring their teazing, Barney, who had been drinking heavily, went on: “Why, this is going back more nor ten year now. A-fore I knowed Sam and Jack, I was working mates with Jerry Isbister and the Cat’s-meat-man and Peg. Well, we was doing good, on’y then we come off at hooks, me and the Cat’s-meat-man agin Isbister and Peg. The Cat’s-meat-man reckoned as Peg ’peached on his brother what was turned off for cracking a crib. Him.”

  At this last word he waved his pipe in the air. Seeing that I didn’t understand, he showed me the stopper and explained that it was a memento carved from the shin-bone of the brother of the Cat’s-meat-man. It had been procured at some personal inconvenience after the body had been sent to be publicly dissected. Here there was a discussion of whether this was more or less honourable than the former practice in which the corpse of an executed man was hung at a cross-roads gibbeted in chains with iron bands forged on it to hold together the bones which had been wrapped in tarred calico. I recalled the thing that my mother had shuddered at in the coach on the way from Melthorpe and that, despite my interest in Gallow-tree-hill, I had failed to recognise.

  Barney returned to his story: “So me and the Cat’s-meat-man started to work down the Borough and, on account of there was more work than we could handle, we looked out for other culls. And that’s how Sam come in with us and a little arter that, Jack, and you was on’y a young boy at the time,” he added, turning to him. “We cracked a few cribs, too, and that was what we was ’peached on for, a year or two later. We had to break up and run for it. Arterwards I found out as how it was the Cat’s-meat-man that done it. God rot his bones for it! I reckon he believed I’d had a hand in nosing on his brother. Well, so then I has to leave London so I goes up north to where my kin comes from.” He shuddered. “Rot the place. All trees and fields. Well I lays low up there. Though I won’t pretend I didn’t crack a crib or two. But when I thought it was safe agin I come back up to Town. That was a mistake for I was took up a couple of days later. Someone in Dan’el’s pocket must have ’peached on me. I nivver knowed for a long time how Dan’el done it. So then I done my naval training at Gravesend for two year.” The others laughed at this allusion to the prison-hulks. “And when I managed to buy myself out me and Sam and Jack took up the sack-’em-up lay agin, but the Cat’s-meat-man had made himself cock o’ the walk on the other side of the water by then so we decided to give it over and leave him to fight it out with Isbister. And that was a sharp move, for last year he finished old Jerry.”

  I knew that he was referring to the attack in the Southwark graveyard that I had witnessed.

  “But about then,” he went
on, “I made the ’q’aintance of a fly ’torney. (And it’s on account o’ him that we’re in this crib now, though that’s a long story that’ll keep for another day.) And it was he what got me into the bill-passing lay.” Then he looked at me appraisingly and said with a sly smile: “But that ain’t the best o’ what I’ve done.”

  Carrotty Poll said jeeringly: “Why, you’re always a-boasting of something you done, aren’t you, Barney?”

  “Did you make a man easy?” I asked.

  He smiled and touched the side of his nose.

  I felt a thrill of excitement run through me. I was sure I had guessed correctly. “When? Who was it?”

  “A nob. A long time back,” he said. “What years are you?”

  I told him.

  “Why, then it was the year a-fore you was even bore.”

  He would say no more but I had enough to think about. There was nothing in his story that explained why Jack was with Pulvertaft the night I had seen them at Southwark and I therefore assumed that he had no idea of this. Surely then Jack was Pulvertaft’s intelligencer among the company? I realized now that by using me to send that message, Pulvertaft was warning Barney and the others that he knew what they were planning — for I now understood that the “fakement” was in fact a criminal undertaking. Presumably he was requiring them to share the spoils with him.

  About a week later came the day of Peg’s trial at the Old Bailey before the Court of King’s Bench. Jack, Sally and Meg went and when they came back they described it:

  “Didn’t old Peg look took aback,” Jack exclaimed to the laughter of the others (except Meg, who was in tears), “when he seen the persecutor a-standing there!”

  And so, because Pulvertaft had indeed failed to buy off the prosecution, Peg was found guilty and taken back to Newgate.

  Now he had to wait for a few days since sentencing was passed on prisoners in batches only at the end of the Sessions. Though some had had to wait six weeks, he was lucky since he was one of the last to be tried. I was told by the others that at the Old Bailey the “old fellow” customarily passed sentence of death on nearly all capital convicts, but I understood that this would not be the end of the matter. As expected, Peg was indeed cast for death and was moved to the “salt box” (the condemned cell) in the Press-yard to be near the New Drop. He now had to wait for the Recorder’s report in the hope of being respited. But two weeks later his sentence was confirmed.