Mr Corbett's Ghost (10 page)

‘Friends of your'n, sonny?' asked this fellow curiously, but poor Nick never answered a word. His heart was too full, we guessed.

So, ‘Cheer up, Nick!' shouted the last of us. ‘You're real lucky, you know! After all, as the good judge said, you might have been nubbed, old dear! For you wasn't exactly innocent, was you, Nick? Ha-ha!'

It was then that he spoke.

‘Aye,' he said, in that rich voice of his that was always so surprising. ‘I wan't innocent, was I? Not like you, friends.'

‘What d'you mean, Nick?'

‘Just what I say,
friends
.'

The privation in that stinking hold was having its effect on him, all right. It's always said that, put a mouse with rats and it grows sharper teeth and a longer tail. He leaned on
friends
very verminously indeed. We were all sorry to note it.

‘You could have saved me, friends. You needn't have given me up.'

‘Come along, Nick! Would you have us be accessories? We'd have been took along with you! And what would our families have said to that? Besides, I'm sure your feet was poking out of the table. And anyways, it was on account of the watch. Remember? We warned you. It was the watch that did it. And we'd no part in that, my lad!'

‘No,' said Nick, somewhat sourly for him. ‘Your hands were clean. For once.'

A nasty dig, that. But we all made allowances, I think. We didn't want to show bitterness to a friend in distress.
So we smiled and toasted him again and gave the boatman the nod to pull away. No sense in drawing out what had turned so sour . . .

Then, as we began to shift off, he shouted after us, ‘I may be a scapegoat, friends—but there's some sins I'll not carry off for you! There's some sins that'll always come home to roost!'

Here was an unchristian sentiment if ever there was one! In what Scripture, for God's sake, does the scapegoat turn round and snarl? Something devilish there.

None the less, we kept our charity and drank Nick's salvation deep into the night, remembering good times together and ending up quite merry. I speak no less than the truth when I say we all had a warm corner in our hearts for that simpleton, Nicholas Kemp. We forgave his turning on us and put it down to the ugly circumstance of his confinement, rather than to a nature grown unsteady.

Next morning, which was the twenty-first and Wednesday, we rose at ten and went down to the frontage of the sea, warmly meaning to row out once more and let bygones be bygones and give poor Nick a second chance to carry a gentle thought of us all into the hereafter.

But alas! It was not to be. The
Phoenix
had already spread her grubby finery and lumbered out to sea. When she was pointed out to us, she was no bigger than a thumbnail. We waved—and I recall our eyes grew moist with staring.

‘The last of Nick Kemp,' sighed one of us. ‘Let's go drink to his memory. Let's not forget he served us well, and, in his simple way, was faithful. But now he's gone, and I fancy the world's seen the end of him. Poor old Nick!'

‘We'll not forget you, Nick,' I said, in sentimental mood. Never let it be said that your lack of breeding spoiled the goodness of your heart.'

‘Farewell, Nick Kemp,' murmured the last of us, solemnly. ‘Though the sea will most likely gobble up you and the dingy
Phoenix
in a day, I fancy, you'll live on in our hearts. It'll be many a long while before we find another such dear simple soul to take your place. So come, lads! Let's start looking!'

CONTRARY TO THE
confident expectations of the kind friends who'd seen him off, a day had passed and Nicholas Kemp was still alive and the
Phoenix
still afloat; though when the wind blew and the sea heaved, the groaning of the ship and the convicts together was such as to make any man think the end of the world was nigh.

Eighty-two of them slept, rolled, moaned, stank, and swore between the main- and fore-masts, on what had once been the lower gun deck. But the thirty-two pounders were gone, and out of the gun ports now, instead of ball and grapeshot, flew ancient hats, shrieks, old boots, bellows of song, bottles with painful messages, rats, pewter plates, and stinking pots to litter the old sea in a long, dancing line.

The convicts were a quarrelsome lot, having come from four stone prisons into this wooden one. And each of these prisons, which were Newgate, Marshalsea, the Fleet, and Lewes, had printed a fierce and rank comradeship on its own platoon. Thus the Newgate gentry jeered at the Marshalsea, who spat on the Fleet, who in their turn, did what they could to make life more wretched than it need have been for the six from Lewes Gaol.

Yet this last sturdy little band stood up remarkably well and gave as good as it took, or, rather, took somewhat more than was taken from it: thieving being as common as breathing and Sussex thieves being the busiest of all.

None the less, small as it was, even this band carried its passenger; one who was among them, so to speak, but not of them. One whose heart had fallen further than his boots and was languishing over a large part of Southern England,
carved into trees, scratched on to doors, marked up in ale on tavern windows and, once, painted in blood (thinly—from a scratch) on an alderman's coach. Nicholas Kemp crouched lost in his tender past. While round about him the profoundest activities went on, he mooned away in his private night, where the stars were bright, bright eyes.

Yet there must have been something about him that touched even the hardest heart. No one kicked him; no one trod on him; no one clouted him round the head. Instead, to his great surprise, he found himself in the midst of a kind of plenty. Tattered blankets and stolen dinners were passed stealthily on with a: ‘Take it son. It's going begging.'

These gifts from a darker heaven, so to speak, began to fall soon after the ramshackle commotion on deck declared the
Phoenix
to be under way and the wind set fair for Virginia.

First a neckerchief and then a pair of mittens were dropped in his lap.

‘Put 'em on, sonny, afore you catch your death of cold.'

Later came a smelly waistcoat.

‘Roll it up, sonny. 'Twill serve as a pillow.'

Most gratefully (gratitude being another of his weaknesses) Nick looked up, and a pair of beady eyes looked briefly—almost contemptuously—down. Nicholas Kemp, amiable soul that he was, seemed to have brought out the father in a squat fierce embezzler called Bartleman.

He was much moved by this strange circumstance, and it served to calm his confused and agitated thoughts concerning the three kind friends whose miserable cowardice and stinking treachery had put him where he was. Anger against himself for having been taken in and against them for having done the taking, had contended almost equally in his troubled mind.

He confided as much to Bartleman during the first pitchy night out of Deal, and felt easier in his mind for it.

‘How'd you like to slit their throats, son?' came the embezzler's harsh voice. Then, before Nicholas could reply one way or the other, came a laugh that had a very fatal ring to it.

Disquieting as was this laugh, the next day brought a blanket and a pipe and enough ‘son's' and ‘sonny's' to furnish a madman's sky.

On this second day, which turned out to be brisk and blowy and laid half the convicts low, Bartleman's example inspired another of the Lewes company to pass on to Nicholas a quarter bottle of gin. Bartleman was formidably angry. He snatched up the bottle and bade the giver leave the lad to him. On which Nicholas felt uneasily that Bartleman had bought him, lock, stock, and barrel as a receptacle for his own charity.

Later that day came an incident even more striking. It had to do with the pipe. Though not much of a smoker (he preferred snuff when he could get it), Nicholas found there was some comfort to be had from sucking at the pipe while he squatted and contemplated the rusting iron of his fetters. The flavour of the tobacco brought back memories of inns and taverns. The memory of a tavern brought back the memory of a pair of cherry lips and hair like a fold of the night: his last heart-break. Though she'd helped to betray him, he forgave her with a sigh . . .

‘Bleeding thief,' came a voice, thick with reproach. He looked up. Before him stood a bony, hideous ruffian from the Marshalsea company. He'd shuffled up unheard; there was such a grinding and clinking and clawing of leg-irons that all motions turned out stealthy—their sounds being swallowed up in the general uproar.

‘Thief?' said Nicholas, reddening awkwardly. His accuser's fists were large, and roughened from easy use.

‘You got my pipe, ain't you? You prigged it yesterday and left me in a very pitiable state, mister. I been through a horrible night on your account. I twitched and groaned and me poor mouth felt like old leather. And now I sees you, rosy as the bleeding dawn and a-smoking of my pipe like it was your very own. You done wrong, mister, and I'm a-going to beat you into pulp for it.'

‘I—I found it,' attempted Nicholas, never having been remarkable for his quickness in inventing excuses. He smiled hopefully, then feebly, then not at all as he saw he'd had no luck.

So he began to shrink backward, praying that he was somehow in the grip of a nightmare from which he'd shortly awaken and find himself a thousand miles away.

But no such awakening came. The nightmare went on apace. Though well made and tolerably sturdy, he lacked a fierce nature. Violence dismayed him. The Marshalsea ruffian frightened the wits out of him.

Abruptly, he found himself hard against a bulkhead. He must have travelled six yards on his shaking bottom, with the monster coming on. Fifteen or twenty bleary faces regarded him with interest. None with compassion.

‘Oh God,' whispered Nicholas, thinking he ought to be putting his affairs in order, for the Marshalsea man had hold of a short length of timber, studded with nails.

‘God help me . . . God help me . . .' he went on, being no richer in prayer than he was in excuses. ‘God help—'

‘The lad said he found it, friend.'

Irritably, the Marshalsea man turned aside. Bartleman was there. Bartleman was grinning. Horrible sight. He had sharp, rat-like teeth.

‘The lad said he found it, friend,' repeated Bartleman. ‘And if you don't take his word, I'll cut your throat out. So help me, I will.'

Bartleman continued to grin. He had a knife, and it was plain he'd be happy to use it.

Much surprised, the Marshalsea man peered at Bartleman, and then to his one-time supporters. They looked absorbed . . . as if they'd never seen a throat cut before.

He licked his lips with a venomous rapidity and began to shuffle sideways, seeking to make a circle about the squat embezzler. But his leg-irons dragged on him, giving his motions the air of a tipsy country dance.

Amiably, Bartleman watched him: even seemed sympathetic.

‘Them bracelets is cruel when you're over-size, friend. Which you should have thought on afore you came accusing sonny here.'

‘I got no quarrel with you, mister,' said the Marshalsea man, not pausing in his circling.

Nicholas stared at his champion with gloomy uncertainty. Bartleman was the smaller. Bartleman hadn't the reach. And Bartleman had been asked, most politely,
to mind his own business. If he, Nicholas Kemp, had been Bartleman, he'd have been well content to sheer off and leave the Marshalsea monster to his lawful prey—N. Kemp.

But Bartleman owned a different soul, and altogether outside of Nicholas's dreaming. He continued to watch the Marshalsea man round and round, while the convicts pushed and clanked for a better view.

The Marshalsea man's eyes were glittering sharply. Of a sudden, Nicholas divined there was fear in them. He felt weirdly sorry for him—even though he himself was the alarmed object of the man's rage. He understood his plight. Unluckily, he must have set himself up among his own company as something of a leader, a hero even, a man of iron, a man not to be trifled with. He could not afford to be as discreet with Bartleman as, maybe, he'd have liked. He must needs be formidable. He had no choice, now.

‘I said I got no quarrel with you, mister,' he repeated fiercely. ‘My quarrel's with that thieving runt yonder.'

There being no mistaking who was meant, Nicholas groaned and made to stand up—not, as the saying goes, meaning to sell his life dearly, but wondering how best he might haggle to keep it. After all, he'd not stolen the pipe—Bartleman had prigged it. Bartleman had—

‘Sit down, son. No call to stand when I'm standing for you.'

Bartleman's wide back was towards him. His coat had a dim shine. The seam had done good service, but was plainly ready for retirement. Over his shoulder, peering for Nicholas, stretched the shaggy, uneasy head of the Marshalsea man.

Then, of a disagreeable sudden, Bartleman seemed to weary of defending the wretched Nicholas. He bowed aside with: ‘Here, son, gentleman wants a word with you. I should be quick about it if I was you!'