Jack looked into the abyss. There were two teeth in there that were her own. He spun to the window, threw back the shutters and vomited again. It seemed to go on for ever, retching when there was nothing left to expel save the foulest bitterness. As he leaned there, a bell nearby tolled. By the tenth and final stroke he still had not recognized its note. He wiped his mouth, turned back, was greeted by another click.
‘Where,’ he said, trying not to look again at the mouth that now gleamed at him, ‘am I?’
‘Vinegar Yard. That’s St Mary’s in the Strand you just ’eard.’
The Bell. Ten in the morning. There was something nagging at his much abused brain. Something he must do.
‘Friend?’ he suddenly said.
‘Wha’?’
‘You said my friend paid.’
‘Yus. Said to give you the best time.’
No Mohock would have done this. ‘What did he look like?’
The one eyebrow moved centrally, indicating concentration. ‘Nah, can’t ’member. But I ’ad been in Derry’s since eight so …’ She cackled. ‘But ’e ’ad a lovely pink coat.’
The Man. Horace. An impostor for Harrow. Harrow versus Westminster. Harrow …
‘Craster!’ He had two hours – less – to pull himself together. Less than two hours before he faced an almost certainly well-rested Craster Absolute across the baize. Despite the pain it caused him, he began scrabbling for his clothes. These were all soiled, soaked, patterned with things he could not contemplate. Then, hopping into his breeches, he remembered something else, something far more important. He stood with one leg in his breeches, one out.
‘Where’s my damn money?’ he gasped.
‘Money?’
‘My gold. Damn, where are my guineas?’
His voice had risen to a roar, startling her. ‘You didn’t ’ave none. Pink gent paid.’
‘No!’ he bellowed. ‘Please God, no!’ and spent a desperate minute ranging round the room, shouting as he scrabbled at floorboards and pushed into the rotten plaster around the beams. But there was nowhere to hide anything and Angie’s fear at his sudden rage was genuine, she was too frightened to lie. She’d been well rewarded for a night, a guinea piece Jack would swear.
Pink Gent had paid with Westminster gold.
– NINE –
Duel on a Green Field
There was no question of going home. The walk to Mayfair and back – for the Angel, venue for the contest, was a porter’s chuck from the Garden – would have consumed Jack’s little store of time; and that had to be spent in repairing the irreparable: his clothes and body.
He went where he could get credit – the Old Hummum Hotel, where the previous evening’s Initiation had begun. Mendoza, the proprietor, was as surly as ever, rendered more so by the demand for help. This was the time of day when the Cats who entertained there till near dawn were curled up at the top of the house and the lower floors of the Hummum were cleansed in preparation for the night to come. But one of the small bagnios, the last to be vacated, was still rich in heat and the first of the day’s water was on the stoves. Grumbling, he let Jack in, assigned a servant to him, conspicuously marked his slate. He even arranged for another servant to take Jack’s clothes and attempt some salvage, though the pronouncement on them was not good.
Jack then began a regime of purge, plunge and cleanse. Firstly, he drank some milk still warm from the cow, the first mug of which stayed down no longer that it had taken to come out. He persevered, put down the rebellion in his guts to master a second, then ordered a quart of ox-cheek broth from the stall in the Great Piazza. While he awaited it, he went to the heat, evil-smelling sweat coursing from every pore, the pounding between his temples redoubling till he could bear it no more and he plunged into a bath of cold water, forcing himself to remain till his fevered red had turned to blue. The arrival of the broth, fortified with a slug of sherry, revived him a little. A further alternation of heat and cold and he could at least open his eyes without squinting, somewhat necessary for what lay ahead.
A small vat of coffee and a stale Chelsea bun was the limit of the treatment. He had now moved from crippled to merely prostrate and lay propped up on a divan while the servant brought him cool cloths that muffled his head yet were not thick enough to exclude the sound of St Paul’s bell tolling noon.
‘Christ!’ said Jack, shooting up, the suddenness of the movement nearly undoing all his good work. ‘My clothes, dammit!’
They were fetched, the servant charged with their renewal protesting that he had not had the required time. They were indeed a deranging sight – stained, slashed and sopping. The cleansing that had partially corrected one problem, created another: they were soaked. Yet he was already late, as always. Despite a chill April wind that had reappeared to cut through London’s streets, he had no choice. Shivering already, he slid into dankness and as he did, begged one last favour from the landlord who grumbled, but eventually complied. Metal tokens were used in the Hummum, handed over for any ‘services’, tallied in chalk on a slate to be collected at night’s end, for clients with no clothes stored their money behind a stout grille on the first floor. A bagful of these metal disks was collected now and given to Jack in a maid’s cap.
‘I will bring these back when I return to pay you later, Mendoza,’ Jack said, as he scurried out the door.
‘You had better,’ the Maltese called after him, shaking the slate which was chalked to an outrageous nine shillings, ‘or your reputation is lost.’
My reputation, thought Jack, is already buggered.
There was only one way to redeem it. To make the Angel before St Clement’s struck half past and he forfeited the match. And then, of course, to win. For if he did not …
The metal tokens clinked in the maid’s cap as Jack shrugged into the bitter wind.
St Clement’s tolled the half-hour as he walked through the Angel’s door. Though the room was crowded he saw Craster immediately, for he was silhouetted against a pink jacket. Horace was standing behind his employer, arms folded, while Jack’s cousin harangued an elderly gentleman in a dark-blue coat and grey waistcoat.
The room was crowded, a feat considering its size for it occupied the entire first floor of the large tavern. A sea of mainly dark wool was broken by islands of green – the baize of half a dozen billiards tables. Five were in use while the sixth at the centre of the room was surrounded by the arguing men. Jack, unnoticed at the door, began to push through.
He arrived in time to hear Craster declare, ‘I say again, rules cannot be gainsaid. Straight up noon was the time agreed but the half has tolled and the challenged is not here. Westminster must forfeit.’
Cheers outweighed the boos; the Angel was Harrow’s tavern in Town and barely a dozen Westminsters had forced their way in. Three of them were Mohocks though and Marks especially had a carrying voice and the mind of an aspirant lawyer.
‘Mr Absolute displays his ignorance with his every utterance. The noble game of billiards has no “rules”. It has laws!’ The Westminsters jeered and cheered. ‘Show me what law has been broken here. Give me chapter and verse or, by God, I say we give my friend till one.’
‘There’s precedent, sir,’ whined a Harrovian, one of the hulks Craster had brought to the Five Chimneys two nights before. ‘And English law is precedent.’
‘Precedent, my arse. Name ’em, every whore’s son of ’em,’ thundered Marks.
‘Gennelmen, some restraint, pray,’ the elderly gent, obviously the umpire of the match and, from his accent, a professional of the baize, interposed. ‘There’s unnerstandins in our sport, wivin and wivout the laws. Now, it’s true to say, that if the Challenged has not shown by now—’
‘But he has.’
Jack’s voice, quiet enough, still pierced the hum. ‘Jack,’ Fenby cried. ‘You are here. You are alive.’
‘Yes to both.’ He turned to the umpire. ‘I am sorry, sir, to have delayed you. Business. Unavoidable.’ He looked at Pink Gent Horace
, who stood agape, then shifted his gaze to Craster. ‘A temporary inconvenience, I assure you.’
Craster’s large mouth was opening and closing like a trout jerked suddenly to the bank. Finally he spluttered. ‘And the stake?’
Jack scratched his chin. ‘The stake? Hmm. The stake. Now where …’ Then reaching inside to the sodden inner pocket of his coat, he pulled out the maid’s cap, shaking it till it clinked. ‘Sorry about the receptacle …’
The umpire smiled. ‘Was that your business, sir?’ On Jack’s shrug the whole company laughed, save for Craster and his shadows. He’d turned to Horace, who shook his head quite definitely.
Craster turned back. ‘I think we need to count it.’
This drew a hiss, and not only from the Westminsters. ‘Do you question the gennelman’s honour?’ the umpire asked Craster. Turning to Jack, he said, ‘You are a gennelman, ain’t you?’
Jack replied quietly, keeping his eyes on his cousin. ‘I am.’
‘Then a gennelman’s word shall not be questioned. Not while I preside.’ He glared at Craster who flinched. ‘Your stakes, if you please.’
Two bags were handed over and if Jack’s weighed lighter than Harrow’s guineas the umpire did not indicate it. The Westminsters then pulled Jack to one of the settles that paralleled the long sides of the table, while the Harrovians did the same with his cousin.
As Jack sank with a groan, his friends crowded around. ‘What happened to you, Jack?’ said Fenby.
‘What happened to you? You deserted me.’
‘Not fair, Jack. Marks was snoring, Ede had disappeared with some … woman,’ both fellows had the decency to look ashamed, ‘while you seemed much enamoured of our new friend over there. You matched him, b … b … bumper for bumper. Then he whispered something and you said, “Lead me to ’em,” and when I tried to dissuade you, you d … d … damn’d me for a half-blind, one-handed stoker and left. I tried to follow but you were out of my b … broken sight in a moment.’ Fenby pushed his second pair of glasses, old and much entwined with thread, up his nose.
Jack rubbed his forehead, sighed. ‘I’m sorry, lads. The Devil got inside me. That Devil,’ he said, looking across to where Craster was muttering to Horace. ‘The foulest of tricks was played upon me,’ he shuddered at the memory of his awakening, ‘and worse.’
‘Worse? What could be worse?’ queried Ede.
Through his fingers, in a low tone, Jack said, ‘Our bag of guineas? It’s not.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Marks, alarmed.
Jack shook his head, first in exasperation, then in pain. ‘What do you think I mean? Those who stole our night, stole our gold.’
The gasps were sensibly muted but distinct. ‘Then, if you lose, we’re b … bug …’ stuttered Fenby.
‘Quite,’ said Ede. ‘So …’
‘So I must win,’ said Jack. ‘Yet even if I do, my cousin knows no guineas lie within that cap. Win or lose, he’ll somehow force a look.’ He shushed the alarm. ‘So at match end, be ready to make a bold brush of it.’ His head indicated the door. ‘We’ll need to leave with both bags and fast.’
‘Gennelmen, your positions, please,’ the white-haired umpire called.
Jack rose with a sigh, his head throbbing again. He leaned toward the rack, pulled out cue after cue, sighting along them, rolling them on the baize until satisfied, then turned back. ‘Fetch me water, boys, a bucket of it.’ Something bubbled up from his stomach and releasing it, he added, ‘Make that two buckets. One empty.’
He walked carefully to the centre-side of the table. The umpire began to lay down the conditions of this match. Best of three games: two to one hundred points, the third, if required, to the man ahead at a half-hourglass. While he explained other limits and variations – for billiards’ laws could vary according to the house – Craster spoke from the side of his mouth.
‘You’re a cheating dog. Shall I tell the company I know your cap’s as vacant as a Jew’s heart?’
‘And shall I tell them how you know? That you got yon man to dog me all night, put a tot in every one of my pints, drown me with arrack punch, leave me with a whore?’
‘You’ve no proof. Whereas I will have when you open that purse.’
‘And that I’ll never do.’
‘You’ll be forced to when you lose.’
The age of this conflict suddenly caused Jack to speak from an older tongue. ‘Ess, boy, but I bain’t goin’ t’ lose, see.’
The umpire stepped to them, coin in hand. ‘Your call, sir,’ he said to Craster.
‘Heads.’
The coin spinning through the light made Jack’s head hurt.
‘Tails! Your choice, sir.’
Jack shook his head gently, regretting even that much movement. His vision was adding a slight corona to every object he regarded. He looked at the three balls on the table, trying to bring double images into one. At the far end, the single red ball was on its dot, while before him the two white balls were behind the inked line that marked off the top third of the table, both balls within the ‘D’ at the centre of that line.
Leaning forward, he picked up the white ball that had a black spot and dropped it into his pocket. ‘After you,’ he said. Making Craster commence was only partly to put pressure on his opponent; he wanted to remind himself how the game worked, such knowledge seemingly driven from his head by the excesses of the night.
As Craster placed his unmarked white ball within the ‘D’, sighted, shot, Jack’s eyes closed. Thus it was not the vision of white on red, nor the balls’ subsequent trajectories around the table, that brought to his mind a sudden clarity. It was the sound. The ‘clack’, the sweetness of ivory on ivory, brought several instances to mind, from the moment his father first introduced him to the game, through every subsequent hour which, if added together, would total months of his young life. That sound! How he had sought it out in houses both private and public, in St James’s clubs and taverns much like this one; more often in these, for in these murkier waters the sharks swam and once they had realized his enthusiasm and his limited means, they would usually play him for the price of the table and a stake that would still buy them a port and pie.
Other sounds came, the shot was either fortunate or a sign of high skill, and each half of the partisan crowd reacted accordingly.
‘Three points for the pot-red hazard,’ the umpire declared, fishing the red from its pocket and resetting it on its spot. Craster must have mistaken Jack’s closed eyes for apprehension, for when they opened he raised his eyebrows before settling for his next shot. This was easier, a straight pot and he missed it, leaving both balls a foot apart and away from the top cushion.
‘Your innings, sir,’ said Craster, through a tight mouth.
Jack placed his ball, stood back, thought as he chalked his cue. His opponent had opened brilliantly with a difficult shot and failed dismally with an easy one. Craster had shown he was perhaps over-excited and not a little surprised at having to compete at all.
Jack had no doubt he could match him in flashiness. But, as he bent to the table to do just that, the sudden change of elevation reminded him in surging blood that his head was precariously positioned on his neck and brought the words of a sharper who’d been teaching him tricks one afternoon: ‘Tricks is easy, once you know ’em, and every fool can play ’em. But it’s a simple game at bottom, young sir. And simple knows best.’
So he played the simplest shot in the game. The more tricky shot would be to hit both balls, the ‘cannon hazard’, striking both the red and his opponent’s white ball with his own, then continue to play them, racking up a score. But it was a difficult initial shot. So he went for the red instead, taking it on a thick edge so as to bounce it only a little off the top cushion and send his own ball off it into the top pocket.
‘In-off red,’ said the umpire, digging out his ball, rolling it back down the table to him. ‘Three points.’
All there knew that Jack had chosen safety over adventu
re.
‘He’s feart,’ said Pink Gent Horace, his Somerset accent strong. ‘You’ll take ’un fast, zirr.’
Jack smiled, bent carefully to his next shot. Since they were playing for totals and not against the clock in this game, he could, within reason, take all the time he desired and, with the simplest shots, keep Craster off the table.
A combination of simple hazards – in-off his opponent’s white; in-off red; pot-red – meant that Jack chalked up a score of forty-five before a little error off the cushion left him a tricky shot that he missed. Fortunately, he did not have long to dwell on his malaise for Craster only made a break of ten before an attempted cannon failed and left Jack in a fine position, with all three balls bunched up in the corner. To play them all was now the simplest shot available.
‘Fill your boots, Absolute,’ Marks called out.
‘You know,’ said Jack, ‘I rather think I shall.’
He nudged all three balls around the corner of the table, spurning any opportunities to pot, striking each ball on each shot. It was dull stuff, the voice of the umpire reflecting that with his metronomic, ‘Two. Two. Two.’ But it delighted Jack and his friends to see their opponents’ shoulders slump ever lower.
At ninety-seven, he doubled the red into the top pocket. ‘That’s three points for the pot-red hazard and game to Westminster,’ called the umpire. Jack laid his cue gently on the baize before he was engulfed by enthusiastic back slaps of the Westminsters. The treatment was not salutary, and Jack lowered himself into the settle as swiftly as he was able. Once again, away from the baize and its challenges, he was immediately reminded of his condition in jabs and lurches.
‘Water,’ he gasped.
‘All right, Jack?’ Fenby looked at him anxiously as he passed the bucket.
Jack’s mouth was so rank he could not form words. He drank deep. Usually he avoided water but this seemed sweet enough. ‘Have you a plan for a sudden exeunt?’ he whispered hoarsely.