‘Though it is too late with you, sir, I will rely on the gallantry you have already displayed to keep my secret. I took on this extra … profession when times were especially hard and it was that, starve or return to my Methodist mother in Barnstable.’ She shuddered. ‘But though the two trades are thought to be interchangeable, it would not do me much good when contracts at the Garden or the Lane are being discussed, if “whore” was atop my list of recent credits.’
He flinched slightly at the word, the venom with which she said it. She noticed, smiled again. ‘But do not fear me, young sir. This contract at the Assembly Rooms means I can dispense with my second occupation. And I’d asked Harris to remove me from the new edition of his book. He said that it had already gone to press and that he would be by to collect his money soon. That’s why I,’ she gestured to the door, ‘was a little afraid when you appeared at my door. I haven’t been here for a fortnight, see. I only came by tonight to pick up my things.’
Matilda kicked at a leather case that Jack had not noticed as it was wedged in under the bed. ‘I have played this stage for the last time,’ she continued, stepping close again, bending forward again, ‘but since I am here and since you are a friend of Burgoyne, a man who will write many more lovely plays with many more lovely roles in them, perhaps … perhaps …’
She was so close. And Jack had always loved actresses, been around them ever since he’d come to London and his mother, prevented from acting by acquiring the title ‘Lady Absolute’, had started writing her plays and satires. And, after all, he had been on heat all day, torn from Clothilde’s embrace, forced to flee from Fanny’s … In three other rooms in Soho he was quite sure his brethren were facing no such qualms now.
So he bent and kissed the perfect imperfection of that mole and though she sighed and pressed against him and yielded tongue for tongue, yet there was something … studied in the giving, with none of the fearful anticipation of his French love, or the complete hunger of his mistress. As he probed, he warred within himself, but what he’d drunk still fired him and a woman’s body was pressed close. And then the bells of St Anne’s, Soho, sounded. He pulled away.
‘What’s wrong, Jack?’ she whispered, trying to re-engage. So he held her at arm’s length and told her what he’d really come for. She asked him to repeat it. He was scared she might be angry. He knew many women who would be. Instead, she just laughed. ‘Well, I’ve had a lot of strange requests in my time but that …’
Then she stepped away from him and began to roll up her loose dress, taking her time, her eyes on him. He watched the dress rise in circular folds, passing up the stockinged legs that he remembered so admiring earlier that night.
‘Come then, Mr Harris … son,’ she breathed, ‘my gallant, my hero. Come and take your reward.’
Jack reached into his satchel and, when he was quite ready, leaned forward.
Bob Derry’s Cyder House in Maiden Lane, the Mohocks’ rallying point, was misnamed, having neither Cyder nor Maidens – not so far as Jack could see out of the one eye that remained open. It was all Cats and Jig girls, all arrack punch and gin, and though one small part of his battered brain kept reminding him that, for some undoubtedly important reason, he had vowed to stay with brewed liquids, sup nothing fermented or distilled, yet he only ever remembered this when he’d already taken a gulp of whatever was placed before him. With an exclamation, he’d dash the remaining contents to the floor, invert the mug, shout, ‘No more, damn ye, not one drop more!’ But then he’d turn, the pewter would be brimming, he’d take a gulp, swallow, gag, swear, dash, invert … and the whole ghastly sequence would begin again.
His friends were of no use. Marks refused to sit, just loomed and swayed and occasionally crashed his forearms down upon the table when he wanted to contradict some particular point. Their little table in the corner of the main room had space around it despite the crowd for he would not confine his arguments to his own set. His last sober moment had been on his arrival when, quite solemnly, he’d handed Jack a purse.
‘A hundred guineas – for the match against Craster,’ he’d said, winking profoundly. Jack had spent the next ten minutes trying to get him to take the beastly thing back. It was the first of the arguments and the trigger for many more.
Ede made up in recumbence for his friend’s verticality, being stretched full out on a bench and, though prostrate, was going through every nuance of his recent triumph in the Latin play at Westminster.
In one corner of the vast cellar, two women were raging. Clothes had been torn, bosoms revealed and ripped by flaying nails and teeth, hair jerked out in chunks. They were surrounded by screaming partisans and neutrals placing bets. An equal crowd had gathered around another scrap, this between a man and two women in the main, though others would join in when appropriate, when one side had gained an upper hand. To Jack, the fight, which had been going on for at least fifteen minutes, was turning in the favour of the women, who had pinned the man to the floor and were taking turns raking him with long nails. Yet even as he watched, another man stepped in and hauled one of them away by the hair while the man on the floor bucked the other one off. The crack her head made on the table seemed in no way to daunt her for she was up and on him again and, with seconds out, battle was reengaged.
It was all quite diverting, though there was one worry that drew Jack’s one eye occasionally to the door: Fenby was an hour late at the least and in that part of his brain still functioning, Jack was concerned for his little friend. Then, just as the woman picked up a pewter mug and was narrowly restrained from smashing it on the prone man’s skull, Fenby appeared.
‘Here, here!’ Jack leapt up, pushed past spectators and combatants, seized Fenby’s arm and dragged him back to the table. Marks finally sat down, Ede up, and all regarded, in some horror, the Last of the Mohocks.
He was a sight. Both lenses of his glasses were stoved, pushing in like starburst fireworks, and both eyes were swollen, appeared to be blackening, while one had the added problem of a trail of blood running down from the scalp and pooling in the socket.
‘Damn, man,’ said Ede, ‘what have you been about?’
‘Did some ruffian …’ Marks was rising again, his big hands thrust before him.
‘No, no,’ said Fenby, ‘t’was no villain, I assure you, t’was …’ He reached up to touch his glasses and as soon as he did they crumbled off his face, ending on the table in four pieces. He sighed, produced some wire to attempt repairs. ‘I was trying to f … f … fulfil the Rite, see.’
‘And did you?’ said Jack. They had none of them discussed their success or failure that night for they had agreed all tales must be told together.
‘Well,’ said Fenby, after a long pause, ‘can a m … man not get a drink to wet the whistle?’ Punch was poured and Fenby gagged, spat, took his time drinking again, looked up.
‘So?’ said Marks impatiently, ‘did you hunt the Big Carrot-head?’
‘I did.’
He sipped again. The other three sighed in exasperation. ‘And?’ said Jack.
Fenby put down the mug. ‘What could I do? I have not your g … g … gift of speech, Absolute, nor Ede’s alluring nobility, nor Marks’s courage. I could only use subterfuge. But when I finally made the attempt the result was, well, as you see.’ He indicated his face, his shattered spectacles, wincing and smiling simultaneously.
‘And was this the only result, Fenby?’ said Jack. ‘Tell us now: did you complete the Last Rite of the Mohocks?’
Fenby looked at each of them in turn; then, very slowly, he reached into his coat’s inner pocket. First, he pulled out a piece of scrap paper which he carefully unfolded in the centre of the table. He reached again and produced, this time, a silk sachet. All recognized it, for it had formerly contained the cundum that Marks had handed out at the night’s commencement. However, no engine of love fell out when Fenby shook the sachet over the table. Something else did, drifting down to settle on the page.
‘As you
can see, I did indeed complete all the Rites. For I hunted, I trapped, and finally, I … scalped. And as you can also see, gentlemen … she was indeed a true Redhead.’
The other three leaned over. There, sitting in the centre of the table, tiny but unmistakable, was a tuft of pubic hair. Ginger.
The yell that went up, the cry of ‘Ah-ha-ah-ha-HA-HA-HA!’ was so loud, so triumphant that it caused even the scrappers and their audience to cease for a moment, to turn and stare.
‘A bumper, a bumper for the first Initiate to become a Full Blood Mohock – Fenby, the Hawk!’ Jack turned, seeking a servant. But before anything else, he saw a pink coat just disappearing into the mob.
‘A moment,’ he said, and swayed off in pursuit.
His quarry might have eluded him again had not the fights, paused at the Mohock cries, recommenced with double vigour. One of the women leapt on the back of the single man who twisted and bucked. When these tactics failed to shake her, he began to spin, roaring the while. Just as the pink coat was passing the fray, she was dislodged and landed pretty much square on Jack’s quarry. Jack reached the fellow as he was endeavouring to rise.
‘Need a hand?’ he said, and, reaching down, he grabbed the man by the collar and jerked him to his feet. It was only when he had him upright and was looking up into the face – an unaccustomed angle for Jack – that he recognized it.
It was The Man from the Harrow-Westminster cricket match.
‘You!’ Jack’s grip tightened, despite the fellow’s efforts to dislodge it. ‘I know you.’
‘Indeed, sir? Where from?’
‘Where from?’ The rising, walking, lifting had sent the blood to Jack’s head again and he swayed slightly, using his hand on the fellow’s collar to keep himself erect. ‘Don’t attempt to cozen me, you dog.’ He swayed towards him, swayed back. Jack was not sure which of them was moving. ‘You are a schoolboy impostor and played for Harrow yesterday.’
‘Oh, that!’ The man managed to slip from Jack’s grasp and when Jack leaned forward, placed a hand against his chest.
‘And you’ve been dogging me all night. Melbury’s man.’
The large red face creased. ‘Melbury, sir? Don’t know who you mean. I’ve been drinking around the town, tis true. Thought I sees you once afore. But I bain’t be doggin’ nobody.’
Jack glared, sought a response. At that moment, a voice beside him said, ‘Trouble, Absolute?’ and he looked to see Marks and the other Mohocks clustered behind him.
‘Yes, this fellow’s been following me around all night. Up to no good.’
‘I bain’t, gentlemen, honest.’
‘We know him, don’t we?’ said Ede.
‘We do.’ Jack nodded slowly.
There was a silence. ‘Damn fine bowler,’ Fenby said at last.
‘Not a bad bat,’ added Marks.
‘But you gentlemen is even finer,’ said The Man, hurriedly, ‘for you gained a fair and fine victory. Can I buy yous all a drink?’
‘You can!’ came from three of the four voices and his friends led their rival back to the table. Jack, still muttering his suspicions, followed. But he couldn’t keep his ill temper long, especially since Horace – as The Man was called – proved a splendid fellow, swearing innocence in such a bluff, true way that he reminded Jack of his old Cornish friend, Treve Tregonning. And he insisted on making amends for his imposture the day before – an imposture, he pointed out, that had singularly failed due to their collective skills – by ordering bumpers of arrack punch. Jack had truly sworn off the stuff, despite the several glasses that had slipped inadvertently down, but he could hardly refuse the toast Horace proposed.
‘I take it all back, sir. There be no doubt that you made that last run, that you were “in”. So, gentlemen, I propose Mr Absolute’s last notch. I doubt I’ll live to see a finer.’
The toast was to him so he alone stood. While he tipped the tankard back, the Mohocks thumped the table and ululated their war cry. When he reached the end, he suddenly found that he was sitting down again without any memory of making the descent. Indeed, little thereafter stayed with him. He had an idea that new fights began when the old ended; that one of the combatants, a wickedly attractive young lady, joined them at Horace’s request and seemed immediately and immensely fond of Jack; that his friends’ laughing faces flickered in and out of vision and that later one of them was pressing him to go; that he resisted this disgraceful idea strongly. And that the last thing that impinged was his late sporting rival and newfound friend leaning over him and saying, quite distinctly, ‘You’re Out!’
It was the snoring that roused and, for a few moments, reassured him. He woke to such tunes every morning at Mrs Porten’s, his boarding house fellows supplying an orchestra’s variety of notes, mainly from the brass, a bassoon here, a trumpet there. This from beside him was higher, a piccolo perhaps, but that was no cause for disquiet, for boys from eight to eighteen all shared the same long room. All it meant was that he was safe, that somehow he had made it back. He had no recollection of how, whether by chair, wherry, or Shanks’s Pony. Indeed, no memories of the night before came at all and he did not care. He was safe and, with luck, had yet a few hours to sleep off … whatever he’d done to himself the night before.
He sighed, turned his head … and it was as if someone had taken a mallet and driven a wedge from under his jaw to the top of his scalp. His yelp, which manifested itself as nothing more than a rattle in the desert of his throat, caused a dam of hot, viscous liquid to crack open and surge … In a moment he was upright and leaping towards the bucket kept in the corner of the dormitory.
He never made it for three reasons. The first: his foot was caught in a roll of bedclothes that held his lower body fast while the upper fell. The second: when his shoulder slammed into the floor, what he would give to Porten’s bucket would not be contained and burst from him in a torrent that hit the junction of wall and planking a good four foot from him. And thirdly: he was not at Porten’s.
This realization was confirmed by the whisper that came from behind him.
‘Awake, sweet’ art?’
Something terrible rose from where Jack had just been lying. It was loosely covered in a shift that, even in the palest of light that was seeping under the shutters into the room, Jack could tell was filthy. He yelped, again tried to struggle away from the terrifying vision. But his foot was still caught and the more he struggled the tighter it seemed to be bound. As the figure continued to rise over him, even reach out a hand, his struggles became increasingly desperate. Finally, he placed his foot against the bed frame and kicked hard; there was a tearing and he shot back across the slick floor on what he now realized was his bare arse.
He collided with the wall, shot up. The agony the sudden elevation caused was intense, his head filled with mist and he would have fallen had not the voice from the bed kept him upright in terror.
‘Come, lovey. You wasn’t so shy last night.’
Whatever was facing him, he had to know it. With another sickening leap he was at the shutters, wrenching them open. Daylight, sudden and vicious, streamed in.
The vision on the bed gave a cry, held up a hand across her face. ‘Eh, you fuck, what you doin’ that for? Shut it! Shut it I say!’
Jack half closed them, letting in enough light still to see. The room was dingy, with peeling walls and dirt-encrusted floor, the only furniture a bed and a washstand with a basin and towel as filthy as the bedding. A half-empty bottle of gin stood beside it. It was not a habitation, it was a place of business and with that recognition Jack turned his attention back to the proprietor. The voice had told him it was a woman and he saw now that her face was so heavily painted, and that paint smeared, that it was impossible in the half-light to tell her age. She could have been sixteen or sixty. Something in that voice though told Jack that she was probably closer to the latter.
‘Who … who are you, madam?’
The woman sniggered. ‘Ooh, such a polite young gent –
’ceptin’ ’ee don’t remember Little Angie. And you wouldn’t leave off sayin’ the name last night. Rhymin’ it with all sorts of things.’
She sniggered again and Jack’s eyes, getting used to the light and the sensation of wakefulness, got more acute. He looked, looked again, verified. The woman only had one eyebrow; though that one compensated for the absence of a mate by being extensive and bushy. Of its twin there was no sign. But there was an abundance of hair above, though this was slewed at an unnatural angle across the forehead and of a reddish colour not found on Nature’s pallet.
She noted his study. ‘Lawks,’ she said, and reached up to adjust. ‘Tha’s your fault, that is. Pawed me about so I’m all askew.’
Jack felt his stomach heave once more into his throat. With an effort he quelled it, tried to keep his voice level. ‘Are you saying … Angie … that we … that you and I …’
‘Don’t’cha ’member, lovey? Can ’e not ’member your sweet girl who rhymes with ever so many things?’
For the life of him, Jack couldn’t think of any rhymes for Angie, except ‘mangy’, which seemed ungallant but horribly true.
‘So … we … we …’ He gestured to the bed.
‘Ashully, to be ’onest,’ she said, ‘you wash that far gone that …’ She seemed suddenly to be having difficulty speaking, circling her jaw in a strange manner. ‘ ’alf a mo’, dearie.’ A grubby finger was inserted in the mouth, rooted for a moment, then there was a distinct click. ‘Dere,’ she said, pulling out a set of teeth, ‘dat’s betta.’ She looked up at Jack and began bending some wires. ‘Now, where wash we? Oh yesh, you wash that far gone, I ’ash to work hard. Very hard. Lor, I earned my money.’ She smiled up at him gummily. ‘You seemed to enjoy yesshelf even if there wash no true wakin’ of the dead. Still, it’sh early.’ She set her feet down on the floor, reached a hand out towards him. ‘Your friend paid, said it was for an ’hole night. So ’ow’s about ’avin’ the rest of it now?’