A Child of the Jago/Chapter 5
V
Sleep in the Jago was at best a thing of intermission, for reasons—reasons of multitude—already denoted; nevertheless, Dicky slept well enough to be unconscious of his father's home-coming. In the morning, however, there lay Josh Perrott, snoring thunderously on the floor, pie-bald with road-dust. This was not a morning whereon father would want breakfast, it was plain; he would wake thirsty and savage. So Dicky made sure of a crust from the cupboard and betook himself in search of Tommy Rann. As to washing, he was never especially fond of it, and in any case there were fifty excellent excuses for neglect. The only water was that from the little tap in the back yard. The little tap was usually out of order or had been stolen bodily by a tenant, and if it were not, there was no basin there, nor any soap, nor towel; and anything savouring of moderate cleanliness was resented in the Jago as an assumption of superiority.
Fighting began early, fast and furious. The Ranns got together soon, and hunted the Learys up and down, and attacked them in their houses, the Learys' chances only coming when straggling Ranns were cut off from the main body. The weapons in use, as was customary, rose in effectiveness by a swiftly ascending scale. The Learys, assailed with sticks, replied with sticks, torn from old packing-cases, with protruding nails. The two sides bethought them of coshes simultaneously, and such as had no coshes—very few—had pokers and iron railings. Ginger Stagg, at bay in his passage, laid open Pud Palmer's cheek with a chisel; and knives thus happily legitimised, with the least possible preliminary form, everybody was free to lay hold of whatever came handy.
In Old Jago Street, half-way between Jago Court and Edge Lane, stood the Feathers, the grimiest and vilest of the four public-houses in the Jago. Into the Feathers some dozen Learys were driven, and for a while they held the inner bar and the tap-room against the Ranns, who swarmed after them, chairs, bottles and pewter pots flying thick, while Mother Gapp, the landlady, hung hysterical on the beer pulls in the bar, supplicating and blubbering aloud. Then a partition came down with a crash, bringing shelves and many glasses with it, and the Ranns rushed over the ruin, beating the Learys down, jumping on them, heaving them through the back windows. Having thus cleared the house of the intruding enemy, the Ranns demanded recompense of liquor, and took it, dragging handles off beer engines, seizing bottles, breaking into the cellar and driving in bungs. Nobody better than Mother Gapp could quell an ordinary bar riot, even to knocking a man down with a pot, but she knew better than to attempt interference now. Nothing could have made her swoon but she sat limp and helpless, weeping and blaspheming.
The Ranns cleared off, every man with a bottle or so, and scattered, and this for awhile was their undoing. For the Learys rallied and hunted the Ranns in their turn; a crowd of eighty or a hundred sweeping the Jago from Honey Lane to Meakin Street. Then they swung back through Edge Lane to Old Jago Street and made for Jerry Gullen's—a house full of Ranns. Jerry Gullen, Bill Rann and the rest took refuge in the upper floors and barricaded the stairs. Below, the Learys broke windows and ravaged the rooms, smashing whatsoever of furniture was to be found. Above, Pip Walsh, who affected horticulture on his window-sill, hurled down flower pots. On the stairs, Billy Leary, scaling the barricade, was flung from top to bottom, and had to be carried home. And then Pip Walsh's missis scattered the besiegers on the pavement below with a kettle-full of boiling water.
There was a sudden sortie of Ranns from Jago Court, but it profited nothing: for the party was small, and, its advent being unexpected, there was a lack of prompt co-operation from the house. The Learys held the field.
Down the middle of Old Jago Street came Sally Green: red-faced, stripped to the waist, dancing, hoarse and triumphant. Nail-scores wide as the finger striped her back, her face, and her throat, and she had a black eye; but in one great hand she dangled a long bunch of clotted hair, as she whooped defiance to the Jago. It was a trophy newly rent from the scalp of Norah Walsh, champion of the Rann womankind, who had crawled away to hide her blighted head, and be restored with gin. None answered Sally's challenge, and, staying but to fling a brickbat at Pip Walsh's window, she carried her dance and her trophy into Edge Lane.
The scrimmage on Jerry Gullen's stairs was thundering anew, and parties of Learys were making for other houses in the street, when there came a volley of yells from Jago Row, heralding a scudding mob of Ranns. The defeated sortie-party from Jago Court, driven back, had gained New Jago Street by way of the house passages behind the court and set to gathering the scattered faction. Now the Ranns came, drunk, semi-drunk and otherwise, and the Learys, leaving Jerry Gullen's, rushed to meet them. There was a great shock, hats flew, sticks and heads made a wooden rattle, and instantly the two mobs were broken into an uproarious confusion of tangled groups, howling and grappling. Here a man crawled into a passage to nurse a broken head; there a knot gathered to kick a sprawling foe. So the fight thinned out and spread, resolving into many independent combats with concerted rushes of less and less frequency, till once again all through the Jago each fought for his own hand. Kiddo Cook, joker always, ran hilariously through the streets, brandishing a long roll of twisted paper, wherewith he smacked the heads of Learys all and sundry, who realised too late that the paper was twisted round a lodging-house poker.
Now, of the few neutral Jagos, most lay low. Josh Perrott, however, hard as nails and respected for it, feared neither Rann nor Leary, and leaving a little money with his missis, carried his morning mouth in search of beer. Pigeony Poll, harlot and outcast, despised for that she neither fought nor kept a cosh-carrier, like a respectable married woman, slunk and trembled in corners and yards and wept at the sight of bleeding heads. As for old Beveridge, the affair so grossly excited him that he neglected business (he cadged and wrote begging screeves) and stayed in the Jago; where he strode wildly about the streets, lank and rusty, stabbing the air with a carving knife, and incoherently defying "all the lot" to come near him. Nobody did.
Dicky Perrott and Tommy Rann found a snug fastness in Jago Row. For there was a fence with a loose board, which, pushed aside, revealed a hole where-through a very small boy might squeeze; and within were stored many barrows and shallows, mostly broken, and of these one, tilted forward and bottom up, made a hut or den, screened about with fence and barrows. Here they hid while the Learys swept the Jago, and hence they issued from time to time to pound such youngsters of the ether side as might come in sight. The bits of iron railing made imposing weapons, but were a trifle too big and heavy for rapid use in their puny hands. Still, Dicky managed to double up little Billy Leary with a timely lunge in the stomach, and Tommy Rann made Bobby Harnwell's nose bleed very satisfactorily. On the other hand, the bump on Tommy Rann's forehead was widened by the visitation of a stick, and Dicky Perrott sustained a very hopeful punch in the eye, which he cherished enthusiastically, with a view to an honourable blackness. In the snuggery intervals they explained their prowess one to another, and Dicky alluded to his intention, when he was a man, to buy a very long sword wherewith to cut off the Leary's heads; Tommy Rann inclining, however, to a gun, with which one might also shoot birds.
The battle flagged a little toward midday, but waxed lively again as the afternoon began. It was then that Dicky Perott, venturing some way from the retreat, found himself in a scrimmage, and a man snatched away his piece of iron and floored a Leary with it. Gratifying as was the distinction of aiding in the exploit, Dicky mourned the loss of the weapon, almost unto tears; and Tommy Rann would not go turn about with the other, but kept it wholly for himself: so Dicky was fain sorrowfully to hunt for a mere stick. Even a disengaged stick was not easy to find just then. So Dicky, emerging from the Jago, tried Meakin Street, where there were shops, but unsuccessfully; and so came round by Luck Row, a narrow way from Meakin Street, by Walker's cook-shop, up through the Jago.
Dicky's mother, left with the baby, fastened the door as well as she might, and trembled. Indeed she had reason. The time of Josh Perrott's return was a matter of doubt, but when he did come he would want something to eat; it was for that he had left the money. But Dicky was out and there was nothing in the cupboard. From the windows she saw divers fights in Jago Court; and a man lay for near two hours on the stones with a cut on his temple. As for herself, she was no favorite in the neighbourhood at any time. For one thing, her husband did not carry the cosh. Then she was an alien who had never entirely fallen into Jago ways; she had soon grown sluttish and dirty, but she was never drunk, she never quarrelled, she did not gossip freely. Also her husband beat her but rarely, and then not with a chair or a poker. Justly irritated by such superiorities as these, the women of the Jago were ill disposed to brook another; which was that Hannah Perrott had been married in church. For these reasons she was timid at the most peaceful of times, but now, with Ranns and Learys on the war-path, and herself obnoxious to both, she trembled. She wished Dicky would come and do her errand. But there was no sign of him, and mid-day wore into afternoon. It was late for Josh as it was, and he would be sure to come home irritable—it was his way when a bad head from overnight struggled with morning beer. If he found nothing to eat there would be trouble.
At length she resolved to go herself. There was a lull in the outer din, and what there was seemed to come from the further parts of Honey Lane and Jago Row. She would slip across by Luck Row to Meakin Street, and be back in five minutes. She took up little Looey, went.
As Dicky, stickless, turned into Luck Row, there arose a loud shriek and then another, and then, in a changed voice a succession of long screams, with a regular breath-pause. Sally Green again! He ran, turned into Old Jago Street, and saw.
Sprawled on her face in the vile roadway lay a writhing woman and screamed, while squeezed under her arm was a baby with mud in its eyes and a cut cheek, crying weakly; and spread over all, clutching her prey by hair and wrist, Sally Green hung on the nape like a terrier, jaws clenched, head shaking.
Thus Dicky saw it in a flash, and in an instant he had flung himself on Sally Green, kicking, striking, biting and crying, for he had seen his mother and Looey. The kicks wasted themselves among the woman's petticoats and the blows were feeble, but the sharp teeth were meeting in the shoulder-flesh when help came.
Norah Walsh, vanquished champion, now somewhat recovered, looked from a window, saw her enemy vulnerable, and ran out, armed with a bottle. She stopped at the kerb to knock the bottom off the bottle, and then with an exultant shout seized Sally Green by the hair and stabbed her about the face with the jagged points. Blinded with blood, Sally released her hold on Mrs. Perrott and rolled on her back, struggling fiercely; but to no end, for Norah Walsh, kneeling on her breast, stabbed and stabbed again, till pieces of the bottle broke away. Sally's yells and plunges ceased, and a man pulled Norah off. On him she turned, and he was fain to run, while certain Learys found a truck which might carry Sally to the hospital.
Hannah Perrott was gone indoors, hysterical and helpless. She had scarce crossed the street on her errand when she had met Sally Green, in quest of female Ranns. Mrs. Perrott was not a Rann, but she was not a Leary, so it came to the same thing. Moreover, there was her general obnoxiousness. She had tried to run, but that was useless; and now, sobbing and bleeding, she was merely conscious of being gently led—almost carried—indoors and upstairs. She was laid back on the bed, and somebody loosened her hair and wiped her face and neck, giving her hoarse, comforting words. Then she saw the face—scared though coarse and pitted, and red about the eyes—that bent over her. It was Pigeony Poll's.
Dicky had followed her in, no longer the hero of the Jago Row retreat, but his face tearful and distorted, carrying the baby in his arms and wiping the mud from her eyes. Now he sat on the little box and continued his ministrations, with fear in his looks, as he glanced at his mother on the bed.
Without, the fight rallied once more. The Learys ran to avenge Sally Green, and the Ranns to meet them with a will. Down by the bag of Nails a party of Ranns were driven between the posts and through the gut into Shoreditch High Street, where a stand was made until Fag Dawson dropped with a shoemaker's knife sticking under his armpit. Then the Ranns left, with most of the Learys after them, and Fag Dawson was carried to a chemist's by the police, never to floor a Rann again. For he was chived in the left lung.
Thus the fight ended. For a faction fight in the Jago, with a few broken heads and ribs and an odd knife wound here and there—even with a death in the hospital from kicks or what not—was all very well; but when it came to homicide in the open High Street the police drew the line and entered the Jago in force. Ordinarily, a peep between the "Posties" was all the supervision the Jago had, although three policemen had been seen to walk the length of Old Jago Street together; and there were raids in force for special captures. There was a raid in force now, and the turmoil ceased. Nothing would have pleased both Ranns and Learys better than to knock over two or three policemen, for kicking practice; but there were too many for the sport, and for hours they patrolled the Jago's closest passages. Of course nobody knew who chived Fag Dawson. No enquiring policeman ever found anybody in the Old Jago who knew anything, even to the harm of his bitterest foe. It was the sole commandment that ran there: "Thou shalt not nark."
That night it was known that there would be a fight between Josh Perrott and Billy Leary, once the latter grew well. For Josh Perrott came home, saw his wife, and turned Rann on the spot. But for the police in the Jago that night, there would have been many a sore head, if no worse, among the Learys by visitation of Josh Perrott. Sally Green's husband had fled years ago, and Billy Leary, her brother, was the obvious mark for Josh's vengeance. He was near as eminent a fighter among the men as his sister among the women, and a charming scrap was anticipated. It would come off, of course, in Jago Court one Sunday morning, as all fights of distinction did, and perhaps somebody in the High Mob would put up stakes.