James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

I suppose I did pass as Mr. Belcher hoped I might. There were several late lingerers at the bar, and I was served with my pint of brown brandy without exciting any particular notice.

“How far d’ ye call it from here to Romford, mister?” asked a customer, as I for a moment paused between the bar and the door to adjust the cork of my bottle.

“Not a great way,” answered the landlord; “three miles—p’r’aps three and a half.”

“Is it straight ahead, mister?”

“Straight as you can go.” And as he spoke the landlord inclined his head in the direction he meant. That direction was the one that the brown horse faced; so that it seemed we were going to Romford.

The bottle held just a pint, so that the two men had primed themselves pretty well—especially considering the extra good quality of the liquor. I got into the cart, and was about to make myself comfortable in my old corner, when Mr. Belcher remarked—

“Stop a minute, young feller; s’pose we turn about a bit. You lay under the seat, you’ll be quite dry enough; and hand me up that tarpaulin to put over my shoulders.”

I dutifully did as requested.

“I wish we’d ha’ brought another sack,” growled Mr. Perks, “I’m pretty well satterated.”

“Well, there is another sack, ain’t there, Ned?”

“On’y the long ’un.”

“Well, won’t that keep the wet out as well as a short un?”

“It’ll keep the wet out, but”—

“But what? Are you afeared that the party what it’s for’ll ketch cold?” remarked Mr. Belcher, with a laugh.

“No fear of that,” replied Ned Perks, and laughed too. “Give us up that ’ere sack, Jim.” And putting it across his shoulders, we set off again at the same rattling pace as before.

Whether it was that the brandy had loosened the tongue of Mr. Belcher and his man so that they talked louder and with less caution than during the previous portion of the journey, or that lying as I now was, close to them, and with my ears uncovered, I was better able to listen, is more than I can say. I only know that previous to our arrival at the horse-trough, I had not noticed them talking together at all, and that now I could hear them engaged in a conversation of a spirited nature; not plainly, because of the noise of the cart-wheels, and the hoofs of the high-trotting brown horse, but now and then when we came to a soft bit of road it was easy enough to make out what they said, though, owing to the excessively slangy shape the talk took, by no means easy to understand it. The brandy had whetted my yearning to learn all I could respecting the secret, and so I did not scruple to place my ear as high up as possible.

“He won’t get it for no less,” remarked Mr. Belcher, “thunner me! if a squeaker’s worth five quid, a full-grown ’un’s worth a tenner; why, it ain’t orspital price. So I told him. ‘Jes you consider the size and weight on it,’ ses I, ‘and the orkardness on it; ’tain’t like a kid,’ ses I, ‘as you can carry in a pocket hankercher a’-most.’”

“Werry good! what did he say to that?”

What “he” said to that I couldn’t catch, for at that moment we got on to some stones, and Mr. Belcher’s voice was lost in the noise. When the stones were past, Mr. Belcher was in the middle of a sentence.

“‘——’tain’t in my line,’ ses I, ‘it’s all werry well you a pintin’ out the difference betwixt quick and quiet, but a head is a head, and a neck is a neck, and I ain’t ashamed to say I ain’t got the nerve on me to do it.’ ‘Humbug,’ ses he, ‘I’d as soon do it as cut a slice of bread; or a leg or a arm either; I s’pose you don’t set up as bein’ a cove of refinder feelins as wot I am?’ ses he. So when it come to that I cut it short, and ses I, ‘I don’t want to argy; a subjik is a subjik, and a head ain’t a subjik. Cutten orf heads ain’t in my line, and subjiks is, and as such I am at your sarvice, but not at t’other. Warn’t I right, Ned?”

“In a bisness pint of view ’corse you was right, not as I’d mind a mag if I had a tool what was sharp enough,” answered Mr. Perks, “and if they’d act square and honest with a feller, in course it’s easy to see the trouble wot it ’ud save. But s’pose we humoured ’em—what ’ud be the consekents? Why the trade ’ud be spiled; it ’ud be as easy to get the head or the pertikler jint wot they wanted, as though it was butcher’s meat”—

“My sentiminks to a air, Ned,” interrupted Mr. Belcher, emphatically.

“And what would be wuss,” continued Mr. Perks, “they’d be warntin to deal with us coves just as though we was common butchers and kept shops with weights and scales.”

“But he alwis was a stingy feller, don’t yer know,” observed Mr. Belcher; “don’t you recollect just when we first jined in the purfession, when he warnted that carrawan giant down at Bexley for a subjik, what a doose of a job we had with him benden him over at the knees and”——

More stones.

“——wouldn’t hold it, bein’ short in the length morn’n a foot. I’ve heered my uncle tell the story a hundred times,” (Mr. Perks was speaking now) “so what did they do but they sticks it up agin the side of the cart, and puts a old hat on its head and a short pipe in the mouth, and just as they got through Brentford pike up comes”——

More stones.

“‘——better give him a lift out,’ ses the pleceman, ‘and let me take him to the station, he looks werry bad,’ ses he, ‘he looks as much like a dyin’ man as ever I see.’ ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Spifler Wilkins, ‘he ain’t a good colour laterally, and when he get’s a drop it’s sure to fly to his kumplixshon.’ Well, he’d ardly got the words out of his mouth, when the beggarin’ cartwheel—they was a walkin’ the mare, don’t you see, all the time, and the bobby was a follerin’ at the tailboard with the light of his bull’s-eye throwed into the cart—he’d hardly got the words out of his mouth when bump goes the wheel into a ruck, and the dead ’un pitched forward on its face, and”——

Not stones this time, but a man with sheep, and a brute of a sheep-dog yelp, yelping after them, so that Mr. Perks’s voice once more became quite inaudible.

“——rash thing for Spifler to do, wasn’t it?”

(This remark by Mr. Belcher.)

“Well, Spifler Wilkins had the name for bein’ rash, yer know, he never could go to work till he was half mad with rum. It was a werry lucky thing for the pleceman that it was the butt-end of the auger instead of the pint of it that Spifler bit him with. As it was, it laid him in the road flat as a flounder.”

“And Spifler made the best of his time, as a matter in course, and bolted?” observed Mr. Belcher.

“What, and leave the dead ’un as had rolled out laying in the road? Not he. ‘What’s the use of fightin’ if you comes away without yer winnins?’ ses he, and he makes his pal get down and help him left the dead ’un in agin. Best of the lark was, Mr. Bobby, findin’ the ugly customers he had to deal with, warn’t so much hurt as he was playing possum, and when Spifler had got his dead ’un packed away all comforble, he goes and has a look at the pleceman; ‘Tell you what, Soapy,’ ses he to his pal, ‘jiggered if I don’t think that crock on the head croaked him; ’spose we lift him in as well, it’ll save his friends the expense of berryin’ him; ’ but he’d no sooner said it than the pleceman gives a holler, and rollin’ away from Spifler, got up and cut away as though the old gen’lman was arter him.”

There was something in this story of Ned’s, the scraps of which, as overheard by me, are above recorded, that tickled Mr. Belcher very much, and for full a minute afterwards he did nothing but laugh at it, in fits and starts, as he recalled the raciest bits to mind. I, however, saw nothing in it to laugh at. The picture of the policeman shamming dead, and wriggling to his feet and running away, was funny enough in an abstract sense, but what was the story about in its entirety? What was it about the “dead ’un”? Was the “dead ’un” a dead man? It would seem so from the circumstance of their putting a hat on his head and a pipe in his mouth. How came he there then? How came he in Mr. Spifler’s cart?