There was a silence and no-one looked at me.
“It was just chance,” Joey said.
Now I knew he was lying — and presumably his parents, too. Did they know that Barney was the housebreaker who had burgled my mother and me at Melthorpe? Surely they did. But they did not realize that I had discovered this and that therefore I knew that it was stretching coincidence too far not to assume a connexion between him and them. I was almost sure that he was Joey’s uncle, and that made him the brother of one or other of his parents. And I was pretty sure that Sally was their daughter. I would give them the chance to confess.
“What is your connexion with Barney?” I asked, looking from face to face.
All avoided my eye and the parents looked at their son.
“I got mixed up with him,” he said. “That’s the long and the short of it.”
They all studied their wooden platters which they had by now turned over to receive the pudding.
I was sure I was right. Someone — though I could not conceive who it might be — must have paid them to rescue me and gain my confidence. But why, if Barney was working with Sancious to have me trapped by my enemies — the Porteouses and their collaborator, Alabaster — why had Joey and his parents rescued me? Was the rescue a mere charade? If not, then in whose interest was it to make me safe from the Porteouses? Surely it must be the work of the Mompessons!
“How did you come to be in that place, Master Johnnie?” Mrs Digweed asked, after a silence.
I described how, two years ago, my mother and I had gone to Cox’s-square to search for Mrs Digweed and had been told by the old man, Sam’el, the addresses of Isbister and Pulvertaft, and how, although we had gone to the former on that occasion, I had remembered the latter’s address and gone there more recently and been directed by him to Barney.
“Why, that accounts for the whole business!” exclaimed Mrs Digweed. “Old Sam’el told you wrong. He always was a muddle-headed old cove. My George never worked the sack-’em-up line.”
“Then what is your connexion with Isbister?” I asked.
“We was neighbours a good few years back,” Mr Digweed said. “And I hire — I mean borrer — his hoss and cart now and then.”
I considered this. It occurred to me that Sam’el might have confused George with Barney, in which case it was possible that there might be no connexion between the Digweeds and him — for he had, after all, never admitted to the name — so that the only coincidence would lie in the fact that they and he had once been friends or neighbours of old Sam’el. The old man’s mistake, then, had led me to Barney. However, since I knew that Barney had burgled my mother’s house before Joey and his mother had come there, I knew that this explanation was inadequate. Moreover, the Digweeds’ manner was guilty and suspicious.
There was another question I could put to Joey to see if he was lying:
“Why did you lead me to that particular house in Islington?”
“Why, it wasn’t no pertickler crib,” he said sullenly, and did not meet my eye. “I chose it at a ventur’.”
This, of course, was a lie and made it clear that the whole story was a fabrication or at the very least involved huge omissions. But I thought of something else:
“Joey, Barney stole some things from me that night just before I left. Do you know what became of them? They were very precious to me, though of no value to anyone else.”
“You mean that pocket-book and them other papers that he give to … to one of the gals?”
“Yes, it was Sally. Don’t you know her name?”
He reddened and avoided my eye. His parents looked equally conscious.
“Yes, that’s right,” he said. “Sally. Well, she told me arterwards they was prigged of her right arter that.”
It was as if my last link with my mother had been snapped.
“But I haven’t said yet what I done arterwards,” Joey went on. “I felt ashamed at what I’d done. You rec’lleck, Master Johnnie, what I said when you was being carried into the crib and you thanked me so nice?”
“You asked,” I said, “if you could come and see me.”
“I did, for I wanted to know that no harm would befall you. And it was because of what you said to me then. You rec’lleck, you said to ’em, ‘be good to this boy’? Well, arterwards I worrited and worrited about what I’d done. Barney give me five shillin’ and that made it worse. It didn’t seem right to put a down on someone who hadn’t no more tin than what I did. I mean to say, taking it off of them as has got plenty of it and is too green to know how to keep it don’t seem wrong to me.”
He was addressing these words with an air of defiance to his parents who looked at each other gravely.
“I went back to Barney but he was in a sad way arter what happened that night, and we was moving from crib to crib like hunted rats. I begun to think about things and to reckon that mebbe he wasn’t so great as I’d believed. For I’d always thought he was a fine fellow with his adventures and his free-spending ways and his disrespeck for the law. Well, anyways, the long and the short of it is that I decided to cut away from Barney and so one night right arter that I lit out and come back here.”
“Heaven be thanked,” said his mother.
“And I told me mam and dad everything what I’d done.”
“And that’s when we vowed that we would help you,” Mrs Digweed said, “in order to make up for what Joey done, and because of the kindness of your sweet mother that Christmas-time.”
“But if you chose that house you led me to at random,” I asked, “why did you later come to think I was in danger?”
Joey blushed and they all avoided my eye.
At last Joey said: “It was ’cause when I told Barney what I’d done he was very pleased. So I guessed you was in danger.”
This was a feeble evasion of the truth. However, I pretended to believe it and encouraged him to go on.
“So,” Joey began, “me and me dad kept watch on the crib day and night, turn and turn about. Arter around a week or so we heerd you banging and shouting at the back, and the sarvints told us there was this poor mad boy kept there and nobody wasn’t to take no notice of the noise he made. We were very worrited about that but we couldn’t think of no way to get you out. Then one night three or four days back, I was watching in the street when I seen a coach draw up and some men went into the crib and then come out again holding you, and they put you into the coach. So I run behind it all the way to Clapton. Then I come back here and told Ma and me dad where they’d took you.”
“And we guessed what kind of a place it was,” Mrs Digweed continued, “and so we wanted to get you out of there as quick as we could. So I spent a couple of days in the boosing-ken nearest to it in hopes of befriending the sarvints when they come in for their wet.”
“The old lady is precious good at making friends,” her husband put in.
“Well, I had the notion of trying to get laundress-work there for that’s mostly how I’ve kept meself these last few years. But the sarvints told me there weren’t none, ’cause they sent it all out. Well, then” — here she looked grave and lowered her voice — “jist two days ago one of the maids as I’d got to know come into the public and said there’d been a death in the house and could I lay out? In course I said I could, which were nothing less than the truth, for it’s somethin’ I’ve done often and often.”
Her voice quavered slightly and she paused for a moment.
“The gal went back to speak to someone and then come agin and told me that was all right. Only fust there was to be a crowner’s inkwich later that day. It was to be held in an upstairs room of that wery same tap. So I went up and sat at the back. In course, I didn’t know it was your poor dad, but jist thought it was a way of gettin’ inside.”
“How did he die?” I asked.
“He managed to get free during the night,” she said softly, “and break a bottle and …” She hesitated. “One of the keepers was got to tell the crowner that he hadn’
t fastened his chain as tight as he should. The crowner said the keepers shouldn’t be so soft with the inmates from now on. He even said he suspicioned that the keeper had been bribed.”
That fatal sovereign! The coin that had been given me by Daniel! That I had passed to Stillingfleet with the best of intentions, hoping that it should bring relief to the wretched sufferer. Well, in the event it had.
Mrs Digweed had paused but now went on: “And then when you come in last night I recognised you and larned as how the poor genel’man was your dad. I seen the way they was trying to drive you out of your wits by affrighting you. So I put the notion into that doctor’s head to make you stay there all night.”
Mr Digweed laughed and nodded at me as if to draw my attention to his wife’s resourcefulness, and then took up the story: “She come back here arter that (nigh on midnight!) and told me to find a hoss and cart that very minute and get up there with Joey a-fore dawn. She told me what to do and that I was to tell the night-porter that I was from Winterflood and Cronk. So me and Joey went round to Jerry Isbister’s and luckily he didn’t have no need of them that night. But he was mighty curious and I think he must have wondered if I was going into the resurrection line myself.”
“Which you was, in a manner of speaking,” his wife put in.
“Aye, I reckon I was,” Mr Digweed said reflectively. Then he concluded: “And you knows the rest, Master Johnnie.”
“I believe you have saved my life,” I said, for whatever their motives might be, I was sure of this.
But what were their motives? Money, presumably. It was obvious from the appearance of the room and the nature of our meal that they were very poor, so someone had paid for the hire of Isbister’s horse and cart.
“Well, and if it comes to that, Master Johnnie, I don’t reckon as you are altogether safe even now,” said Mrs Digweed. “Them people at the madhouse, they’ll want to ketch you agin, won’t they? And they seen George, and there ain’t many in Lunnon as looks like him.”
The same thought had already occurred to me, but I was struck by how sincere her concern appeared to be.
“And, besides, he seen the name on the cart,” said Joey.
“But Jerry will jist say it was borrered without his leave,” said Mr Digweed.
They were right. I was still hardly out of danger. Although it was only late afternoon I found myself to be extremely tired again, and seeing this Mrs Digweed suggested that I retire for the night with a hot posset of rum. I was making myself comfortable on the settle again when I learned that Mr Digweed and Joey were making preparations to go to work. It struck me as a very late hour to be doing so, but I did not long concern myself with this for I was soon fast asleep.
CHAPTER 84
Although I had fallen so rapidly into a slumber, I slept badly and awoke tired and feverish at a very early hour. I felt too weak to get up, and seeing my pale face Mrs Digweed, who was alone in the house and making ready to go out to her laundress-work, insisted that I remain there. Despite my protests she sent a neighbour to make her excuses at the house to which she had been engaged, and remained at home to nurse me. She must have realized then — for she had had experience enough of sickness — that I was very ill, and my last clear memory is of her bustling about the room preparing hot cloths and basons.
After that I remember nothing except being very hot and yet, strangely, at the same time icily cold; being haunted by fevered dreams and parched by a raging thirst. And I recall the presence always when I awoke of Mrs Digweed who nursed me with great kindness and skill. It was as if, without my realizing it, my strength had been at the limit of its endurance during the privations I had endured over the previous weeks, and now that I was safe it took the opportunity to collapse. (As I learned only later, they sent for a surgeon from the London Dispensary nearby, who prescribed medicines which I was sure they could not afford, and my conviction that they were receiving money from someone was strengthened.) For the first few days I remained in the lower room because it was the warmer, but when on the third day the fever broke and the crisis was past, Mr Digweed carried me upstairs and laid me on a straw mattress in the other chamber; and from now on this was where I slept while Joey made his bed on another mattress on the floor nearby. During the weeks that followed I stayed in bed and slept most of the day while my strength returned.
When I was better I was carried downstairs during the day and sat in a chair by the kitchen fire. Now that I was able to take notice of what was going on around me, I was struck by the amount of noise coming from the houses nearby: dogs barking and drunken shouts and fierce arguments all day and all night. It seemed to me that the neighbourhood was worse even than Orchard-street — and later I came to know that, indeed, it was perhaps the worst part of London and jocularly called Jack Ketch’s Kitchen. Flower-and-Dean-street was its most notorious thoroughfare, consisting of big old houses, now decaying, which had been “made-down” and were dens of thieves — and worse than thieves. Because the Digweeds’ cottage was up a “slumber” at Deal’s-court, which had been thrown up in the back-gardens of the big houses, it was somewhat secluded from the goings-on in the street. And I soon noticed that the Digweeds seemed deliberately to keep themselves apart from their neighbourhood, although of course Mrs Digweed’s gossips came in to borrow cups of sugar and pass the time of day, and boys came looking for Joey. (My hosts’ visiters stared at me curiously but were given no explanation of my identity.) Also, Mr Digweed went to the pub every day and Mrs Digweed often accompanied him, and I’m afraid I could not help noticing that they frequently came home the worse for drink.
Most of all, I remarked that Mr Digweed and Joey were out for much of the time but at hours that varied strangely. Sometimes they set off during the morning, sometimes in the afternoon or evening, and occasionally Joey woke me when he rose in the middle of the night and went downstairs. Once or twice I watched from the little window that over-looked the yard in front and saw him and his father leave the house, each wearing worsted stockings up to the waist, greased knee-boots, a loose blue shirt, long oil-skins which were not like the loose-hanging garments that sailors wear but fitted closely around them, and a fan-tailed leather hat. Between them they bore a bag worn on a strap over the shoulder, a large sieve, and a long-handled implement like a kind of hoe or rake. And each had a short knife, a stick, and a trowel worn at the belt, and carried a closed lanthorn even when they went out and returned during day-light hours.
I could make little of this or their hours: they were never away longer than about six hours, the only times they never ventured out were when it was wet (for they went out on Saturdays and Sundays), and they always came home exhausted and filthy. Now I recalled that when Mrs Digweed had come to our house in Melthorpe she had mentioned that her husband was “working the shores”, and my mother and I had guessed that this meant scavenging along the river. This would explain the hours since they could only do so during a low tide, though it did not account entirely for their dress and the equipment they carried.
Since the little house was kept scrupulously clean by virtue of a great deal of hard work by Mrs Digweed — with a little assistance from her husband and son — it was some time before I realized how extremely malodorous the male Digweeds’ work was. Once I was well enough to spend most of my time downstairs I perceived that at whatever hour Mr Digweed and Joey returned they always entered the house by the back way, and eventually I grasped that the point of this was that they removed their oil-skins and boots in the little back-yard and washed their hands and faces under the common cistern-pump. Their things were then cleaned — usually by Mrs Digweed — before being brought into the house, and it was for this reason that I took so long to realize how foul their original state was and to wonder how this could have come about. After performing their ablutions and in a state of absolute exhaustion, Mr Digweed and Joey made a light breakfast and then lay down and slept soundly for several hours.
When they volunteered no explanation and m
y hesitant questions were turned aside in evident embarrassment, I began to become suspicious, and the more so when I noticed that they quite often came back with injuries — particularly Joey. These were usually nothing more than slight cuts or bruises, but once every couple of weeks or so one of them — usually Joey — had a wound that incapacitated him for a day or two. (Was this the way Mr Digweed had received his injuries?) There were other things: they purchased newspapers and Joey — since Mr Digweed could not read — pored over them. I could not help remembering how Sally and Jack had done the same.
Whatever it was, they appeared to be making very little money for the signs of poverty were everywhere. Their clothes were patched and threadbare, they mashed tea two or three times from the used leaves which were boiled with milk, and they ate little but herring, the rough bread of the poor, and occasional faggots or blood-puddings. Yet the rent was paid every week when the deputy came round for it, and they were able to keep themselves in coals, clothes and candles. I was certain that they were being paid by whoever it was who was taking an interest in me, and that this was why they were providing my keep without any prospect of recompense from myself.
Mrs Digweed, moreover, was working as a laundress, which necessitated rising and going out very early in the morning to help some establishment — often an hour’s walk away — with their weekly wash. Despite this, I could see that their situation was precarious for they had no savings to rely on and, which was much more to be looked for, no valuables to pawn in the case of illness or accident.
One night at the beginning of April when I had been there the best part of two months, I awoke in the early hours and, hearing voices, I crept down the ladder. Mr Digweed and Joey were sitting at the little table before the fire at the other end of the room while their wife and mother slept on the settle. They were counting coins into piles and I believed I saw the glint of silver and perhaps even of gold. I watched for perhaps a minute and then, fearful of being seen, crept back to my bed. What were they up to? Was that the money that they were being paid by someone to take care of me? I determined that I would ask some direct questions the next day.