A Place Called Freedom Page 20

  Mack could see that behind Gordonson's cool analysis lay real fear. "Do they need an excuse?"

  "Oh, yes. That's because of John Wilkes. He's a real thorn in their flesh. He accuses the government of being despotic. And as soon as troops are used against citizens, then thousands of people of the middling sort will say: 'There, Wilkes was right, this government is a tyranny.' And all those shopkeepers and silversmiths and bakers have votes."

  "So what kind of excuse does the government need?"

  "They want you to scare those middling people by violence and rioting. That will get people worrying about the need to maintain order, and stop them thinking about freedom of speech. Then, when the army marches in, there will be a collective sigh of relief instead of a roar of outrage."

  Mack was fascinated and unnerved. He had never thought about politics this way. He had discussed high-flown theories out of books, and he had been the helpless victim of unjust laws, but this was halfway between the two. This was the zone where contending forces struggled and swayed, and tactics could alter the result. This, he felt, was the real thing--and it was dangerous.

  The enchantment was lost on Gordonson: he just looked worried. "I got you into this, Mack, and if you get killed it will be on my conscience."

  His fear began to infect Mack. Four months ago I was just a coal miner, he thought; now I'm an enemy of the government, someone they want to kill. Did I ask for this? But he was under a powerful obligation. Just as Gordonson felt responsible for him, he was responsible for the coal heavers. He could not run away and hide. It would be shameful and cowardly. He had led the men into trouble and now he had to lead them out of it.

  "What do you think we should do?" he asked Gordonson.

  "If the men agree to strike, your job will be to keep them under control. You'll have to stop them setting fire to ships and murdering strikebreakers and laying siege to undertakers' taverns. These men aren't parsons, as you well know--they're young and strong and angry, and if they run riot they'll burn London."

  "I think I might be able to do that," Mack said. "They listen to me. They seem to respect me."

  "They worship you," Gordonson said. "And that puts you in even greater danger. You're a ringleader, and the government may break the strike by hanging you. From the moment the men say yes, you'll be in terrible danger."

  Mack was beginning to wish he had never mentioned the word "strike." He said: "What should I do?"

  "Leave the place where you're lodging and move somewhere else. Keep your address secret from all but a few trusted people."

  Cora said: "Come and live with me."

  Mack managed a smile. That part would not be difficult.

  Gordonson went on: "Don't show yourself on the streets in daylight. Appear at meetings, then vanish. Become a ghost."

  It was faintly ridiculous, Mack felt, but his fear made him accept it. "All right."

  Cora got up to leave. To Mack's surprise, Peg put her arms around his waist and hugged him. "Be careful, Scotch Jock," she said. "Don't get knifed."

  Mack was surprised and touched by how much they all cared for him. Three months ago he had never met Peg, Cora or Gordonson.

  Cora kissed him on the lips and then sauntered out, already swaying her hips seductively. Peg followed.

  A few moments later Mack and Gordonson left for the Jolly Sailor. It was dark, but Wapping High Street was busy, and candlelight gleamed from tavern doorways, house windows and handheld lanterns. The tide was out, and a strong smell of rottenness wafted up from the foreshore.

  Mack was surprised to see the tavern's courtyard packed with men. There were about eight hundred coal heavers in London, and at least half of them were here. Someone had hastily erected a crude platform and placed four blazing torches around it for illumination. Mack pushed through the crowd. Every man recognized him and spoke a word or clapped him on the back. The news of his arrival spread quickly and they started to cheer. By the time he reached the platform they were roaring. He stepped up and gazed at them. Hundreds of coal-smeared faces looked back at him in the torchlight. He fought back tears of gratitude for their trust in him. He could not speak: they were shouting too loudly. He held up his hands for quiet, but it did no good. Some cried his name, others yelled "Wilkes and liberty!" and other slogans. Gradually one chant emerged and came to dominate the rest, until they were all bellowing the same:

  "Strike! Strike! Strike!"

  Mack stood and stared at them, thinking: What have I done?

  21

  JAY JAMISSON RECEIVED A NOTE FROM HIS FATHER AT breakfast time. It was characteristically curt.

  Grosvenor Square

  8 o'clock a.m.

  Meet me at my place of business at noon.

  --G.J.

  His first guilty thought was that Father had found out about the deal he had made with Lennox.

  It had gone off perfectly. The shippers had boycotted the new coal heaving gangs, as Lennox had wanted; and Lennox had returned Jay's IOUs, as agreed. But now the coal heavers were on strike and no coal had been landed in London for a week. Had Father discovered that all that might not have happened but for Jay's gambling debts? The thought was dreadful.

  He went to the Hyde Park encampment as usual and got permission from Colonel Cranbrough to be absent in the middle of the day. He spent the morning worrying. His bad temper made his men surly and his horses skittish.

  The church bells were striking twelve as he entered the Jamissons' riverside warehouse. The dusty air was laden with spicy smells--coffee and cinnamon, rum and port, pepper and oranges. It always made Jay think of his childhood, when the barrels and tea-chests had seemed so much bigger. Now he felt as he had as a boy, when he had done something naughty and was about to be carpeted. He crossed the floor, acknowledging the deferential greetings of the men, and climbed a rickety wooden staircase to the counting-house. After passing through a lobby occupied by clerks he went into his father's office, a corner room full of maps and bills and pictures of ships.

  "Good morning, Father," he said. "Where's Robert?" His brother was almost always at Father's side.

  "He had to go to Rochester. But this concerns you more than him. Sir Philip Armstrong wants to see me."

  Armstrong was the right-hand man of Secretary of State Viscount Weymouth. Jay felt even more nervous. Was he in trouble with the government as well as with his father? "What does Armstrong want?"

  "He wants this coal strike brought to an end and he knows we started it."

  This did not seem to have anything to do with gambling debts, Jay inferred. But he was still anxious.

  "He'll be here any moment now," Father added.

  "Why is he coming here?" Such an important personage would normally summon people to his office in Whitehall.

  "Secrecy, I imagine."

  Before he could ask any more questions the door opened and Armstrong came in. Both Jay and Sir George stood up. Armstrong was a middle-aged man formally dressed with wig and sword. He walked with his nose a little high, as if to show that he did not usually descend into the mire of commercial activity. Sir George did not like him--Jay could tell by his father's expression as he shook hands and asked Armstrong to sit down.

  Armstrong refused a glass of wine. "This strike has to end," he said. "The coal heavers have closed down half of London's industry."

  Sir George said: "We tried to get the sailors to uncoal the ships. It worked for a day or two."

  "What went wrong?"

  "They were persuaded, or intimidated, or both, and now they are on strike too."

  "And the watermen," Armstrong said with exasperation. "And even before the coal dispute started, there was trouble with tailors, silk weavers, hatters, sawyers.... This cannot go on."

  "But why have you come to me, Sir Philip?"

  "Because I understand you were influential in starting the shippers' boycott which provoked the coal heavers."

  "It's true."

  "May I ask why?"

  Sir Georg
e looked at Jay, who swallowed nervously and said: "I was approached by the undertakers who organized the coal heaving gangs. My father and I did not want the established order on the waterfront to be disturbed."

  "Quite right, I'm sure," Armstrong said, and Jay thought: Get to the point. "Do you know who the ringleaders are?"

  "I certainly do," Jay said. "The most important is a man called Malachi McAsh, known as Mack. As it happens, he used to be a coal hewer in my father's mines."

  "I'd like to see McAsh arrested and charged with a capital offense under the Riot Act. But it would have to be plausible: no trumped-up charges or bribed witnesses. There would have to be a real riot, unmistakably led by striking workmen, with firearms used against officers of the Crown, and numerous people killed and injured."

  Jay was confused. Was Armstrong telling the Jamissons to organize such a riot?

  His father showed no sign of puzzlement. "You make yourself very clear, Sir Philip." He looked at Jay. "Do you know where McAsh can be found?"

  "No," he said. Then, seeing the expression of scorn on his father's face, he added hastily: "But I'm sure I can find out."

  At daybreak Mack woke Cora and made love to her. She had come to bed in the small hours, smelling of tobacco smoke, and he had kissed her and gone back to sleep. Now he was wide awake and she was the sleepy one. Her body was warm and relaxed, her skin soft, her red hair tangled. She wrapped her arms around him loosely and moaned quietly, and at the end she gave a small cry of delight. Then she went back to sleep.

  He watched her for a while. Her face was perfect, small and pink and regular. But her way of life troubled him more and more. It seemed hard-hearted to use a child as her accomplice. If he talked to her about it, she got angry and told him that he was guilty too, for he was living here rent free and eating the food she bought with her ill-gotten gains.

  He sighed and got up.

  Cora's home was the upstairs floor of a tumbledown building in a coal yard. The yard owner had once lived here, but when he prospered he had moved. Now he used the ground floor as an office and rented the upper floor to Cora.

  There were two rooms, a big bed in one and a table and chairs in the other. The bedroom was full of what Cora spent all her money on: clothes. Both Esther and Annie had owned two dresses, one for work and one for Sundays, but Cora had eight or ten different outfits, all in striking colors: yellow, red, bright green and rich brown. She had shoes to match each one, and as many stockings and gloves and handkerchiefs as a fine lady.

  He washed his face, dressed quickly and left. A few minutes later he was at Dermot's house. The family were eating their breakfast porridge. Mack smiled at the children. Every time he used Cora's "cundum" he wondered if he would have children of his own someday. At times he thought he would like Cora to have his baby; then he remembered how she lived and changed his mind.

  Mack refused a bowl of porridge, for he knew they could not spare it Dermot, like Mack, was living off a woman: his wife washed pots in a coffeehouse in the evenings while he took care of the children.

  "You've got a letter," Dermot said, and handed Mack a sealed note.

  Mack recognized the handwriting. It was almost identical with his own. The letter was from Esther. He felt a stab of guilt. He was supposed to be saving money for her, but he was on strike and penniless.

  "Where's it to be today?" Dermot said. Every day Mack met his lieutenants at a different location.

  "The back bar of the Queen's Head tavern," Mack replied.

  "I'll spread the word." Dermot put his hat on and went out.

  Mack opened his letter and began to read.

  It was filli of news. Annie was pregnant, and if the child turned out to be a boy they would call him Mack. For some reason that brought tears to Mack's eyes. The Jamissons were sinking a new coal pit in High Glen, on the Hallim estate: they had dug fast and Esther would be working there as a bearer within a few days. That news was surprising: Mack had heard Lizzie say she would never allow coal mining in High Glen. The Reverend Mr. York's wife had taken a fever and died: no shock there, she had always been sickly. And Esther was still determined to leave Heugh as soon as Mack could save the money.

  He folded the letter and pocketed it. He must not let anything undermine his determination. He would win the strike, then he would be able to save.

  He kissed Dermot's children and went along to the Queen's Head.

  His men were already arriving, and he got down to business right away.

  One-Eye Wilson, a coal heaver who had been sent to check on new ships anchoring in the river, reported two coal carriers arrived on the morning tide. "From Sunderland, both of them," he said. "I spoke to a sailor who came ashore for bread."

  Mack turned to Charlie Smith. "Go on board the ships and talk to the captains, Charlie. Explain why we're on strike and ask them to wait patiently. Say we hope the shippers will soon give in and allow the new gangs to uncoal the ships."

  One-Eye interjected: "Why send a nigger? They might listen better to an Englishman."

  "I am an Englishman," Charlie said indignantly.

  Mack said: "Most of these captains were born in the northeast coal field, and Charlie speaks with their accent. Anyway, he's done this sort of thing before and he's proved himself a good ambassador."

  "No offense, Charlie," said One-Eye.

  Charlie shrugged and left to do his assigned task. A woman rushed in, pushing past him, and approached Mack's table, breathless and flustered. Mack recognized Sairey, the wife of a bellicose coal heaver called Buster McBride. "Mack, they've caught a sailor bringing a sack of coal ashore and I'm afraid Buster will kill him."

  "Where are they?"

  "They've put him in the outhouse at the Swan and locked him in, but Buster's drinking and he wants to hang him upside-down from the clock tower, and some of the others are egging him on."

  This kind of thing happened constantly. The coal heavers were always on the edge of violence. So far Mack had been able to rein them in. He picked a big, affable boy called Pigskin Pollard. "Go along there and calm the boys down, Pigskin. The last thing we want is a murder."

  "I'm on my way," he said.

  Caspar Gordonson arrived with egg yolk on his shirt and a note in his hand. "There's a barge train bringing coal to London along the river Lea. It should arrive at Enfield Lock this afternoon."

  "Enfield," Mack said. "How far away is that?"

  "Twelve miles," Gordonson replied. "We can get there by midday, even if we walk."

  "Good. We must get control of the lock and prevent the barges passing. I'd like to go myself. I'll take twelve steady men."

  Another coal heaver came in. "Fat Sam Barrows, the landlord of the Green Man, is trying to recruit a gang to uncoal the Spirit of Jarrow," he said.

  "He'd be lucky," Mack commented. "Nobody likes Fat Sam: he's never paid honest wages in his life. Still, we'd better keep an eye on the tavern, just in case. Will Trimble, go along there and snoop about. Let me know if there's any danger of Sam getting sixteen men."

  "He's gone to ground," said Sidney Lennox. "He's left his lodgings and no one knows where he went"

  Jay felt awful. He had told his father, in front of Sir Philip Armstrong, that he could locate McAsh. He wished he had said nothing. If he failed to deliver on his promise, his father's scorn would be blistering.

  He had been counting on Lennox to know where to find McAsh. "But if he's in hiding, how does he run the strike?" he said.

  "He appears every morning at a different coffeehouse. Somehow his henchmen know where to go. He gives his orders and vanishes until the next day."

  "Someone must know where he lays his head," Jay said plaintively. "If we can find him, we can smash this strike."

  Lennox nodded. He more than anyone wanted to see the coal heavers defeated. "Well, Caspar Gordonson must know."

  Jay shook his head. "That's no use to us. Does McAsh have a woman?"

  "Yes--Cora. But she's as tough as a boot. She won't tell."r />
  "There must be someone else."

  "There's the kid," Lennox said thoughtfully.

  "Kid?"

  "Quick Peg. She goes robbing with Cora. I wonder ..."

  At midnight Lord Archer's coffeehouse was packed with officers, gentlemen and whores. The air was full of tobacco smoke and the smell of spilled wine. A fiddler was playing in a corner but he could hardly be heard over the roar of a hundred shouted conversations.

  Several card games were in progress, but Jay was not playing. He was drinking. The idea was for him to pretend to be drunk, and at first he had tipped most of his brandy down the front of his waistcoat; but as the evening wore on he drank more, and now he did not have to make much effort to appear unsteady on his feet. Chip Marlborough had been drinking seriously from the start of the evening, but he never seemed to get drunk.

  Jay was too worried to enjoy himself. His father would never listen to excuses. Jay had to produce an address for McAsh. He had toyed with the idea of making one up, then claiming McAsh must have moved again; but he felt his father would know he was lying.

  So he was drinking in Archer's and hoping to meet Cora. During the course of the evening numerous girls had approached him, but none fitted the description of Cora: pretty face, flaming red hair, age about nineteen or twenty. Each time, he and Chip would flirt for a while, until the girl realized they were not serious and moved on. Sidney Lennox was a watchful presence on the far side of the room, smoking a pipe and playing faro for low stakes.

  Jay was beginning to think they would be unlucky tonight. There were a hundred girls like Cora in Covent Garden. He might have to repeat this performance tomorrow, and even the day after, before running into her. And he had a wife waiting at home who did not understand why he needed to spend the evening in a place where respectable ladies were not seen.

  Just as he was thinking wistfully of climbing into a warm bed and finding Lizzie there, eager and waiting, Cora came in.

  Jay was sure it was she. She was easily the prettiest girl in the room, and her hair really was the color of the flames in the fireplace. She was dressed like a whore in a red silk dress with a low neckline and red shoes with bows, and she scanned the room with a professional gaze.