A Child of the Jago/Chapter 1
A Child of the Jago
I
It was past the mid of a summer night in the old Jago. The narrow street was all the blacker for the lurid sky; for there was a fire in a further part of Shoreditch, and the welkin was an infernal coppery glare. Below, the hot heavy air lay, a rank oppression, on the contorted forms of those who made for sleep on the pavement: and in it, and through it all, there rose from foul earth and grimed walls a close, mingled stink—the odour of the Jago.
From where, off Shoreditch High Street, a narrow passage, set across with posts, gave menacing entrance on one end of Old Jago Street, to where the other end lost itself in the black beyond Jago Row; from where Jago Row began south at Meakin Street, to where it ended north at Honey Lane; there the Jago, for one hundred years the blackest pit in London, lay and festered; and half way along Old Jago Street a narrow archway gave upon Jago Court, the blackest hole in all that pit.
A square of two hundred and fifty yards or less—that was all there was of the Jago. But in that square the human population swarmed in thousands. Old Jago Street, New Jago Street, Half Jago street lay parallel, east and west; Jago Row at one end and Edge Lane at the other lay parallel also, stretching north and south: foul ways all. What was too vile for Kate Street, Seven Dials, and Ratcliff Highway in its worst day, what was too useless, incapable and corrupt—all that teemed in the Old Jago.
Old Jago Street lay black and close under the quivering red sky; and slinking forms, as of great rats, followed one another quickly between the posts in the gut by the High Street, and scattered over the Jago. For the crowd about the fire was now small, the police was there in force, and every safe pocket had been tried. Soon the incursion ceased, and the sky, flickering and brightening no longer, settled to a sullen flush. On the pavement some writhed wearily, longing for sleep; others, despairing of it, sat and lolled, and a few talked. They were not there for lack of shelter, but because in this weather repose was less unlikely in the street than within doors; and the lodgings of the few who nevertheless abode at home were marked, here and there, by the lights visible from the windows. For in this place none ever slept without a light, because of three sorts of vermin that light in some sort keeps at bay: vermin which added to existence here a terror not to be guessed by the unafflicted, who object to being told of it. For on them that lay writhen and gasping on the pavement; on them that sat among them; on them that rolled and blasphemed in the lighted rooms; on every moving creature in this, the Old Jago, day and night, sleeping and waking, the third plague of Egypt, and more, lay unceasing.
The stifling air took a further oppression from the red sky. By the dark entrance to Jago Court a man arose, flinging out an oath, and sat with his head bowed in his hands.
"Ah-h-h-h-," he said. "I wish I was dead: an' kep' a cawfy shop." He looked aside from his hands to his neighbours, but Kiddo Cook's idea of heaven was no new thing, and the sole answer was a snort from a dozing man a yard away.
Kiddo Cook felt in his pocket and produced a pipe and a screw of paper. "This is a bleed'n' unsocial sort o' evenin' party, this is," he said. "An' 'ere's the on'y real toff in the mob with 'ardly 'arf a pipe-full left, an' no lights. D' y' 'ear, me lord"—leaning toward the dozing neighbour—"got a match?"
"Go t' 'ell!"
"O, wot 'orrid langwidge! It's shockin', blimy. Arter that y' ought to find me a match. Come on."
"Go t' 'ell!"
A lank, elderly man, who sat with his back to the wall, pushed up a battered tall hat from his eyes, and, producing a box of matches, exclaimed "Hell? And how far's that? You're in it!" He flung abroad a bony hand, and glanced upward. Over his forehead a greasy black curl dangled and shook, as he shuddered back against the wall. "My God, there can be no hell after this!"
"Ah," Kiddo Cook remarked, as he lit his pipe in the hollow of his hands, "that's a comfort, Mr. Beveridge, any 'ow." He returned the matches, and the old man, tilting his hat forward, was silent.
A woman, gripping a shawl about her shoulders, came furtively along from the posts, with a man walking in her tracks—a little unsteadily. He was not of the Jago, but a decent young workman, by his dress. The sight took Kiddo Cook's idle eye, and when the couple had passed, he said meditatively: "There's Billy Leary in luck agin; 'is missis do pick 'em up's' 'elp me. I'd carry the cosh meself if I'd got a woman like 'er."
Cosh-carrying was near to being the major industry of the Jago. The cosh was a foot length of iron rod, with a knob at one end and a hook (or a ring) at the other. The craftsman, carrying it in his coat sleeve, waited about dark staircase corners till his wife (married or not) brought in a well-drunken stranger; when, with a sudden blow behind the head, the stranger was happily coshed, and whatever was found on him, as he lay insensible, was the profit on the transaction. In the hands of capable practitioners this industry yielded a comfortable subsistence for no great exertion. Most, of course, depended on the woman: whose duty it was to keep the other artist going in subjects. There were legends of surprising ingatherings achieved by wives of especial diligence: one of a woman who had brought to the cosh some six-and-twenty on a night of public rejoicing. This was, however, a story years old, and may have been no more than an exemplary fiction designed, like a Sunday School book, to convey a counsel of perfection to the dutiful matrons of the Old Jago.
The man and woman vanished in a doorway near the Jago Row end, where, for some reason, dozers were fewer than about the portal of Jago Court. There conversation flagged, and a broken snore was heard. It was a quiet night, as quietness was counted in the Jago; for it was too hot for most to fight in that stifling air—too hot to do more than turn on the stones and swear. Still, the last hoarse yelps of a combat of women came intermittently from Half Jago Street, in the further confines.
In a little while something large and dark was pushed forth from the door-opening near Jago Row, which Billy Leary's spouse had entered. The thing rolled over and lay tumbled on the pavement, for a time unnoticed. It might have been yet another would-be sleeper, but for its stillness. Just such a thing it seemed, belike, to two that lifted their heads and peered from a few yards off, till they rose on hands and knees and crept to where it lay—Jago rats, both. A man it was; with a thick smear across his face, and about his head the source of the dark trickle that sought the gutter deviously over the broken flags. The drab stuff of his pockets peeped out here and there in a crumpled bunch, and his waistcoat gaped where the watch-guard had been. Clearly, here was an uncommonly remunerative cosh—a cosh so good that the boots had been neglected, and remained on the man's feet. These the kneeling two unlaced deftly, and, rising, prize in hand, vanished in the deeper shadow of Jago Row.
A small boy, whom they met full tilt at the corner, staggered out to the gutter and flung a veteran curse after them. He was a slight child, by whose size you might have judged his age at five. But his face was of serious and troubled age. One who knew the children of the Jago, and could tell, might have held him eight, or from that to nine.
He replaced his hands in his trousers pockets and trudged up the street. As he brushed by the coshed man he glanced again toward Jago Row, and, jerking his thumb that way, "Done 'im for 'is boots," he piped. But nobody marked him till he reached Jago Court, when old Beveridge, pushing back his hat once more, called sweetly and silkily, "Dicky Perrott!" and beckoned with his finger.
The boy approached, and as he did so the man's skeleton hand suddenly shot out and gripped him by the collar. "It-never-does-to-see-too-much!" Beveridge said, in a series of shouts, close to the boy's ear. "Now go home," he added in a more ordinary tone, with a push to make his meaning plain: and straightway relapsed against the wall.
The boy scowled and backed off the pavement. His ragged jacket was coarsely made from one much larger, and he hitched the collar over his shoulder as he slunk toward a doorway some few yards on. Front doors were used merely as firewood in the Old Jago, and most had been burnt there many years ago. If, perchance, one could have been found still on its hinges it stood ever open, and probably would not shut. Thus at night the Jago doorways were a row of black holes, foul and forbidding.
Dicky Perrott entered his hole with caution, for anywhere, in the passage and on the stairs, somebody might be lying drunk, against whom it would be unsafe to stumble. He found nobody, however, and climbed and reckoned his way up the first stair-flight with the necessary regard for the treads that one might step through and the rails that had gone from the side. Then he pushed open the door of the first-floor back and was at home.
A little heap of guttering grease, not long ago a candle end, stood and spread on the mantel-piece, and gave irregular light from its drooping wick. A thin-railed iron bedstead, bent and staggering, stood against a wall, and on its murky coverings a half-dressed woman sat and neglected a baby that lay by her grieving and wheezing. The woman had a long dolorous face, empty of expression and weak of mouth.
"Where 'a' you bin, Dicky?" she asked, rather complaining than asking. "It's sich low hours for a boy."
Dicky glanced about the room. "Got anythink to eat?" he asked.
"I dunno," she answered listlessly. "P'r'aps there's a bit o' bread in the cupboard. I don't want nothin', it's so 'ot. An' father ain't been 'ome since tea-time."
The boy rummaged and found a crust. Gnawing at this he crossed to where the baby lay. "'Ullo, Looey," he said, bending and patting the muddy cheek. "'Ullo!"
The baby turned feebly on its back, and set up a thin wail. Its eyes were large and bright, its tiny face was piteously flea-bitten and strangely old. "Wy, she's 'ungry, mother," said Dicky Perrott, and took the little thing up. He sat on a small box and rocked the baby on his knees, feeding it with morsels of chewed bread. The mother, dolefully inert, looked on and said: "She's that backward I'm quite wore out; more'n ten months old an' don't even crawl yut. It's a never-endin' trouble, is children."
She sighed, and presently stretched herself on the bed. The boy rose, and carrying his little sister with care, for she was dozing, essayed to look through the grimy window. The dull flush still spread overhead, but Jago Court lay darkling below, with scarce a sign of the ruinous back yards that edged it on this and the opposite sides, and nothing but blackness between.
The boy returned to his box, and sat. Then he said, "I don't's'pose father's 'avin' a sleep outside, eh?"
The woman sat up with some show of energy. "Wot?" she said sharply. "Sleep out in the street like them low Ranns an' Learys? I should 'ope not. It's bad enough livin' 'ere at all an' me being used to different things once, an' all. You ain't seen 'im outside, 'a've ye?"
"No, I ain't seen 'im; I jist looked in the court." Then after a pause, "I 'ope 'e's done a click," the boy said.
His mother winced. "I dunno wot you mean, Dicky," she said, but falteringly. "You—you're gittin' that low an'—"
"Wy, copped somethink, o' course. Nicked somethink. You know."
"If you say sich things as that I'll tell 'im wot you say, an' 'e'll pay you. We ain't that sort o' people, Dicky, you ought to know. I was alwis kep' respectable an' straight all my life, I'm sure, an'—"
"I know. You said so before, to father—I 'eard: wen 'e brought 'ome that there yuller prop—the necktie pin. Wy, where did 'e git that? 'E ain't 'ad a job for munse an' munse; where's the yannups come from wot's bin for to pay the rent, an' git the toke, an' milk for Looey? Think I dunno? I ain't a kid; I know."
"Dicky, Dicky! you mustn't say sich things!" was all the mother could find to say, with tears in her slack eyes. "It 's wicked an'—an' low. An' you must alwis be respectable an' straight, Dicky, an' you'll get on then."
"Straight people 's fools, I reckon. Kiddo Cook says that, an' 'e 's as wide as Broad Street. Wen I grow up I'm goin' to git toff's close an' be in the 'igh mob. They does big clicks."
"They git put in a dark prison for years an' years, Dicky,—an'—an' if you 're sich a wicked low boy, father 'll give you the strap—'ard," the mother returned, with what earnestness she might. "Gimme the baby an' you go to bed; go on, 'fore father comes."
Dicky handed over the baby, whose wizen face was now relaxed in sleep, and slowly disencumbered himself of the ungainly jacket, staring at the wall in a brown study. "It 's the mugs wot git took," he said, absently. "An' quoddin ain't so bad." Then, after a pause, he turned and added suddenly: "S'pose father 'll be smugged some day, eh, mother?"
His mother made no reply, but bent languidly over the baby with an indefinite pretence of settling it in a place on the bed. Soon Dicky himself, in the short and ragged shirt he had worn under the jacket, burrowed head first among the dingy coverings at the foot, and protruding his head at the further side took his accustomed place crosswise at the extreme end.
The filthy ceiling lit and darkened by fits as the candle-wick fell and guttered to its end. He heard his mother rise and find another fragment of candle to light by its expiring flame, but he lay still wakeful. After a time he asked: "Mother, why don't you come to bed?"
"Waiting for father. Go to sleep."
He was silent for a little. But brain and eyes were wide awake, and soon he spoke again. "Them noo 'uns in the front room," he said. "Ain't the man give 'is wife a 'idin 'ut?"
"No."
"Nor yut the boy—'umpty-backed un?"
"No."
"Seems they're mighty pertickler. Fancy theirselves too good for their neighbours; I 'eard Pigeony Poll say that; on'y Poll said—"
"You mustn't never listen to Pigeony Poll, Dicky. Ain't you 'eard me say so? Go to sleep. 'Ere comes father."
There was, indeed, a step on the stairs, but it passed the landing and went on to the top floor. Dicky lay awake, but silent, gazing upward and back through the dirty window just over his head. It was very hot, and he fidgeted uncomfortably, fearing to turn or toss lest the baby should wake and cry. There came a change in the hue of the sky, and he watched the patch within his view, until the red seemed to gather in spots and fade a spot at a time. Then at last there was a tread on the stairs that stayed at the door, and father had come home. Dicky lay still, and listened.
"Lor, Josh, where ye bin?" Dicky heard his mother say. "I'm almost wore out a-waitin'."
"Awright, awright"—this in a hoarse grunt, little above a whisper—"Got any water up 'ere? Wash this 'ere stick."
There was a pause, wherein Dicky knew his mother looked about her in vacant doubt as to whether or not water was in the room. Then a quick, undertoned scream, and the stick rattled heavily on the floor. "It's sticky!" his mother said. "O, my Gawd, Josh, look at that—an' bits o' 'air, too!" The great shadow of an open hand shot up across the ceiling, and fell again. "O, Josh! O, my Gawd! You ain't, 'ave ye? Not—not—not that?"
"Not wot? Gawblimy, not wot? Shutcher mouth. If a man fights you're got to fight back, ain'cher? Anyone 'ud think it was a murder, to look at ye. I ain't sich a damn fool as that. 'Ere, pull up that board."
Dicky knew the loose floor-board that was lifted with a slight groaning jar. It was to the right of the hearth, and he had shammed sleep when it had been lifted once before. His mother whimpered and cried quietly. "You'll git in trouble, Josh," she said. "I wish you'd git a reg'lar job, Josh, like wot you used—I do—I do."
The board was shut down again. Dicky Perrott, through one opened eye, saw the sky, a pale grey above, and hoped the click had been a good one; hoped also that it might bring bullock's liver for dinner.
Out in the Jago the pale dawn brought a cooler air and a chance of sleep. From the paving of Old Jago street sad grey faces, open-mouthed, looked upward as from the Valley of Dry Bones. Down by Jago Row the coshed subject, with the blood dry on his face, felt the colder air and moved a leg.