A Place Called Freedom Page 15

  Mack lay awake most of the night, worrying. Some of the coal heavers said Lennox would have forgotten all about it by Monday morning, but Mack doubted that. Lennox did not seem the type of man to swallow defeat; and he could easily get another sixteen strong young men to form his gang.

  It was Mack's fault. The coal heavers were like oxen, strong and stupid and easily led: they would not have rebelled against Lennox if Mack had not encouraged them. Now, he felt, it was up to him to set matters right.

  He got up early on Sunday morning and went into the other room. Dermot and his wife lay on a mattress and the five children slept together in the opposite corner. Mack shook Dermot awake. "We've got to find work for our gang before tomorrow," Mack said.

  Dermot got up. Bridget mumbled from the bed: "Wear something respectable, now, if you want to impress an undertaker." Dermot put on an old red waistcoat, and he loaned Mack the blue silk neckcloth he had bought for his wedding. They called for Charlie Smith on the way. Charlie had been a coal heaver for five years and he knew everyone. He put on his best blue coat and they went together to Wapping.

  The muddy streets of the waterfront neighborhood were almost deserted. The bells of London's hundreds of churches called the devout to their prayers, but most of the sailors and stevedores and warehousemen were enjoying their day of rest, and they stayed at home. The brown river Thames lapped lazily at the deserted wharves, and rats sauntered boldly along the foreshore.

  All the coal heaving undertakers were tavern keepers. The three men went first to the Frying Pan, a few yards from the Sun. They found the landlord boiling a ham in the yard. The smell made Mack's mouth water. "What ho, Harry," Charlie addressed him cheerfully.

  He gave them a sour look. "What do you boys want, if it's not beer?"

  "Work," Charlie replied. "Have you got a ship to uncoal tomorrow?"

  "Yes, and a gang to do it, thanks all the same."

  They left. Dermot said: "What was the matter with him? He looked at us like lepers."

  "Too much gin last night," Charlie speculated.

  Mack feared it might have been something more sinister, but he kept his thoughts to himself for the moment. "Let's go into the King's Head," he said.

  Several coal heavers were drinking beer at the bar and greeted Charlie by name. "Are you busy, my lads?" Charlie said. "We're looking for a ship."

  The landlord overheard. "You men been working for Sidney Lennox at the Sun?"

  "Yes, but he doesn't need us next week," Charlie replied.

  "Nor do I," said the landlord.

  As they went out Charlie said: "We'll try Buck Delaney at the Swan. He runs two or three gangs at a time."

  The Swan was a busy tavern with stables, a coffee room, a coal yard and several bars. They found the Irish landlord in his private room overlooking the courtyard. Delaney had been a coal heaver himself in his youth, though now he wore a wig and a lace cravat to take his breakfast of coffee and cold beef. "Let me give you a tip, me boys," he said. "Every undertaker in London has heard what happened at the Sun last night. There's not one will employ you, Sidney Lennox has made sure of that."

  Mack's heart sank. He had been afraid of something like this.

  "If I were you," Delaney went on, "I'd take ship and get out of town for a year or two. When you come back it will all be forgotten."

  Dermot said angrily: "Are the coal heavers always to be robbed by you undertakers, then?"

  If Delaney was offended he did not show it. "Look around you, me boy," he said mildly, indicating with a vague wave the silver coffee service, the carpeted room, and the bustling business that paid for it all. "I didn't get this by being fair to people."

  Mack said: "What's to stop us going to the captains ourselves, and undertaking to unload ships?"

  "Everything," said Delaney. "Now and again there comes along a coal heaver like you, McAsh, with a bit more gumption than the rest, and he wants to run his own gang, and cut out the undertaker and do away with liquor payments and all, and all. But there's too many people making too much money out of the present arrangement." He shook his head. "You're not the first to protest against the system, McAsh, and you won't be the last."

  Mack was disgusted by Delaney's cynicism, but he felt the man was telling the truth. He could not think of anything else to say or do. Feeling defeated, he went to the door, and Dermot and Charlie followed.

  "Take my advice, McAsh," Delaney said. "Be like me. Get yourself a little tavern and sell liquor to coal heavers. Stop trying to help them and start helping yourself. You could do well. You've got it in you, I can tell."

  "Be like you?" Mack said. "You've made yourself rich by cheating your fellow men. By Christ, I wouldn't be like you for a kingdom."

  As he went out he was gratified to see Delaney's face darken in anger at last.

  But his satisfaction lasted no longer than it took to close the door. He had won an argument and lost everything else. If only he had swallowed his pride and accepted the undertakers' system, he would at least have work to do tomorrow morning. Now he had nothing--and he had put fifteen other men, and their families, in the same hopeless position. The prospect of bringing Esther to London was farther away than ever. He had handled everything wrong. He was a damn fool.

  The three men sat in one of the bars and ordered beer and bread for their breakfast. Mack reflected that he had been arrogant to look down on the coal heavers for accepting their lot dumbly. In his mind he had called them oxen, but he was the ox.

  He thought of Caspar Gordonson, the radical lawyer who had started all this by telling Mack his legal rights. If I could get hold of Gordonson, Mack thought, I'd let him know what legal rights are worth.

  The law was useful only to those who had the power to enforce it, it seemed. Coal miners and coal heavers had no advocate at court. They were fools to talk of their rights. The smart people ignored right and wrong and took care of themselves, like Cora and Peg and Buck Delaney.

  He picked up his tankard then froze with it halfway to his mouth. Caspar Gordonson lived in London, of course. Mack could get hold of him. He could let him know what legal rights were worth--but perhaps he could do better than that. Perhaps Gordonson would be the coal heavers' advocate. He was a lawyer, and he wrote constantly about English liberty: he ought to help.

  It was worth a try.

  The fatal letter Mack received from Caspar Gordonson had come from an address in Fleet Street. The Fleet was a filthy stream running into the Thames at the foot of the hill upon which St. Paul's Cathedral stood. Gordonson lived in a three-story brick row house next to a large tavern.

  "He must be a bachelor," said Dermot

  "How do you know?" Charlie Smith asked.

  "Dirty windows, doorstep not polished--there's no lady in this house."

  A manservant let them in, showing no surprise when they asked for Mr. Gordonson. As they entered, two well-dressed men were leaving, continuing as they went a heated discussion that involved William Pitt, the Lord Privy Seal, and Viscount Weymouth, a secretary of State. They did not pause in their argument but one nodded to Mack with absentminded politeness, which surprised him greatiy, since gentlemen normally ignored low-class people.

  Mack had imagined a lawyer's house to be a place of dusty documents and whispered secrets, in which the loudest noise was the slow scratching of pens. Gordonson's home was more like a printer's shop. Pamphlets and journals in string-tied bundles were stacked in the hall, the air smelled of cut paper and printing ink, and the sound of machinery from below stairs suggested that a press was being operated in the basement.

  The servant stepped into a room off the hall. Mack wondered if he was wasting his time. People who wrote clever articles in journals probably did not dirty their hands by getting involved with workingmen. Gordonson's interest in liberty might be strictly theoretical. But Mack had to try everything. He had led his coal heaving gang into rebellion, and now they were all without work: he had to do something.

  A loud and shr
ill voice came from within. "McAsh? Never heard of him! Who is he? You don't know? Then ask! Never mind--"

  A moment later a balding man with no wig appeared in the doorway and peered at the three coal heavers through spectacles. "I don't think I know any of you," he said. "What do you want with me?"

  It was a discouraging introduction, but Mack was not easily disheartened, and he said spiritedly: "You gave me some very bad advice recently but, despite that, I've come back for more."

  There was a pause, and Mack thought he had given offense; then Gordonson laughed heartily. In a friendly voice he said: "Who are you, anyway?"

  "Malachi McAsh, known as Mack. I was a coal miner at Heugh, near Edinburgh, until you wrote and told me I was a free man."

  Understanding lit up Gordonson's expression. "You're the liberty-loving miner! Shake hands, man."

  Mack introduced Dermot and Charlie.

  "Come in, all of you. Have a glass of wine?"

  They followed him into an untidy room furnished with a writing table and walls of bookcases. More publications were piled on the floor, and printers' proofs were scattered across the table. A fat old dog lay on a stained rug in front of the fire. There was a ripe smell that must have come from the rug or the dog, or both. Mack lifted an open law book from a chair and sat down. "I won't take any wine, thank you," he said. He wanted his wits about him.

  "A cup of coffee, perhaps? Wine sends you to sleep but coffee wakes you up." Without waiting for a reply he said to the servant: "Coffee for everyone." He turned back to Mack. "Now, McAsh, why was my advice to you so wrong?"

  Mack told him the story of how he had left Heugh. Dermot and Charlie listened intently: they had never heard this. Gordonson lit a pipe and blew clouds of tobacco smoke, shaking his head in disgust from time to time. The coffee came as Mack was finishing.

  "I know the Jamissons of old--they're greedy, heartless, brutal people," Gordonson said with feeling. "What did you do when you got to London?"

  "I became a coal heaver." Mack related what had happened in the Sun tavern last night.

  Gordonson said: "The liquor payments to coal heavers are a long-standing scandal."

  Mack nodded. "I've been told I'm not the first to protest."

  "Indeed not. Parliament actually passed a law against the practice ten years ago."

  Mack was astonished. "Then how does it continue?"

  "The law has never been enforced."

  "Why not?"

  "The government is afraid of disrupting the supply of coal. London runs on coal--nothing happens here without it: no bread is made, no beer brewed, no glass blown, no iron smelted, no horses shod, no nails manufactured--"

  "I understand," Mack interrupted impatiently. "I ought not to be surprised that the law does nothing for men such as us."

  "Now, you're wrong about that," Gordonson said in a pedantic tone. "The law makes no decisions. It has no will of its own. It's like a weapon, or a tool: it works for those who pick it up and use it."

  "The rich."

  "Usually," Gordonson conceded. "But it might work for you."

  "How?" Mack said eagerly.

  "Suppose you devised an alternative ganging system for unloading coal ships."

  This was what Mack had been hoping for. "It wouldn't be difficult," he said. "The men could choose one of their number to be undertaker and deal with the captains. The money would be shared out as soon as it's received."

  "I presume the coal heavers would prefer to work under the new system, and be free to spend their wages as they pleased."

  "Yes," Mack said, suppressing his mounting excitement. "They could pay for their beer as they drink it, the way anyone does." But would Gordonson weigh in on the side of the coal heavers? If that happened everything could change.

  Charlie Smith said lugubriously: "It's been tried before. It doesn't work."

  Charlie had been a coal heaver for many years, Mack recalled. He asked: "Why doesn't it work?"

  "What happens is, the undertakers bribe the ships' captains not to use the new gangs. Then there's trouble and fighting between the gangs. And it's the new gangs that get punished for the fights, because the magistrates are undertakers themselves, or friends of undertakers ... and in the end all the coal heavers go back to the old ways."

  "Damn fools," Mack said.

  Charlie looked offended. "I suppose if they were clever they wouldn't be coal heavers."

  Mack realized he had been supercilious, but it angered him when men were their own worst enemies. "They only need a little determination and solidarity," he said.

  Gordonson put in: "There's more to it than that. It's a question of politics. I remember the last coal heavers' dispute. They were defeated because they had no champion. The undertakers were against them and no one was for them."

  "Why should it be different this time?" said Mack.

  "Because of John Wilkes."

  Wilkes was the defender of liberty, but he was in exile. "He can't do much for us in Paris."

  "He's not in Paris. He's back."

  That was a surprise. "What's he going to do?"

  "Stand for Parliament."

  Mack could imagine how that would stir up trouble in London's political circles. "But I still don't see how it helps us."

  "Mikes will take the coal heavers' part, and the government will side with the undertakers. Such a dispute, with workingmen plainly in the right, and having the law on their side too, would do Wilkes nothing but good."

  "How do you know what Wilkes will do?"

  Gordonson smiled. "I'm his electoral agent."

  Gordonson was more powerful than Mack had realized. This was a piece of luck.

  Charlie Smith, still skeptical, said: "So you're planning to use the coal heavers to advance your own political purposes."

  "Fair point," Gordonson said mildly. He put down his pipe. "But why do I support Wilkes? Let me explain. You came to me today complaining of injustice. This kind of thing happens all too often: ordinary men and women cruelly abused for the benefit of some greedy brute, a George Jamisson or a Sidney Lennox. It harms trade, because the bad enterprises undermine the good. And even if it were good for trade it would be wicked. I love my country and I hate the brutes who would destroy its people and ruin its prosperity. So I spend my life fighting for justice." He smiled and put his pipe back in his mouth. "I hope that doesn't sound too pompous."

  "Not at all," said Mack. "I'm glad you're on our side."

  16

  JAY JAMISSON'S WEDDING DAY WAS COLD AND DAMP. From his bedroom in Grosvenor Square he could see Hyde Park, where his regiment was bivouacked. A low mist covered the ground, and the soldiers' tents looked like ships' sails on a swirling gray sea. Dull fires smoked here and there, adding to the fug. The men would be miserable, but soldiers were always miserable.

  He turned from the window. Chip Marlborough, his brideman, was holding Jay's new coat. Jay shrugged into it with a grunt of thanks. Chip was a captain in the Third Foot Guards, like Jay. His father was Lord Arebury, who had business dealings with Jay's father. Jay was flattered that such an aristocratic scion had agreed to stand beside him on his wedding day.

  "Have you seen to the horses?" Jay asked anxiously.

  "Of course," said Chip.

  Although the Third Foot was an infantry regiment, officers always went mounted, and Jay's responsibility was to supervise the men who looked after the horses. He was good with horses: he understood them instinctively. He had two days' leave for his wedding but he still worried whether the beasts were being looked after properly.

  His leave was so short because the regiment was on active service. There was no war: the last war the British army had fought was the Seven Years' War, against the French in America, and that had ended while Jay and Chip were schoolboys. But the people of London were so restless and turbulent that the troops were standing by to suppress riots. Every few days some group of angry craftsmen went on strike or marched on Parliament or ran through the streets breakin
g windows. Only this week silk weavers, outraged by a reduction in their rate of pay, had destroyed three of the new engine looms in Spitalfields.

  "I hope the regiment isn't called out while I'm on leave," Jay said. "It would be just my luck to miss the action."

  "Stop worrying!" Chip poured brandy from a decanter into two glasses. He was a great brandy drinker. "To love!" he said.

  "To love," Jay repeated.

  He did not know much about love, he reflected. He had lost his virginity five years ago with Arabella, one of his father's housemaids. He thought at the time that he was seducing her but, looking back, he could see that it had been the other way around. After he had shared her bed three times she said she was pregnant. He had paid her thirty pounds--which he had borrowed from a moneylender--to disappear. He now suspected she had never been pregnant and the whole thing was a deliberate swindle.

  Since then he had flirted with dozens of girls, kissed many of them, and bedded a few. He found it easy to charm a girl: it was mainly a matter of pretending to be interested in everything she said, although good looks and good manners helped. He bowled them over without much effort. But now for the first time he had suffered the same treatment. When he was with Lizzie he always felt slightly breathless, and he knew that he stared at her as if she were the only person in the room, the way a girl stared at him when he was being fascinating. Was that love? He thought it must be.

  His father had mellowed toward the marriage because of the possibility of getting at Lizzie's coal. That was why he was having Lizzie and her mother staying in the guest house, and paying the rent on the Chapel Street house where Jay and Lizzie would live after the wedding. They had not made any firm promises to Father, but neither had they told him that Lizzie was dead set against mining in High Glen. Jay just hoped it would work out all right in the end.

  The door opened and a footman said: "Will you see a Mr. Lennox, sir?"

  Jay's heart sank. He owed Sidney Lennox money: gambling losses. He would have sent the man away--he was only a tavern keeper--but then Lennox might turn nasty about the debt. "You'd better show him in," Jay said. "I'm sorry about this," he said to Chip.