He continued to stare and I fancied that I might have got this wrong somehow, for he appeared to be entirely confused by what I had said. Truth to tell, Mr Lewis – him as took care of me in those early years and in whose establishment I had lodged for as long as I could recall – had only given me two books to read in my life and they both happened to have their stories set in that distant land. The first concerned a man who had sailed there on a rusty old tub, only to be set a multitude of tasks by the emperor himself before being allowed to marry his daughter. The second was a saucy tale with pictures in it and Mr Lewis would show it to me from time to time and ask me whether it gave me the motions.
‘In fact, sir,’ said I then, stepping towards him and glancing at his pockets to see whether there might be there a stray handkerchief or two springing out, seeking liberation and a new owner. ‘If I may be so bold as to say so, I have a fancy to become a book-writer myself when I’m of age.’
‘A book-writer,’ he said, laughing, and I stopped where I was, my face like granite. Gentlemen like him, that’s how they all behave. They might seem friendly when they talk to you but just you try to express a desire to make something better of yourself, maybe to be a gentleman yourself one day, and they take you for a fool.
‘I apologize,’ he said then, observing the disapproving look on my face. ‘I wasn’t making jest, I assure you. If anything, I applaud your ambition. You took me by surprise, that’s all. A book-writer,’ he repeated now when I said nothing, neither accepting nor rejecting his apology. ‘Well, I wish you well with it, Master—?’
‘Turnstile, sir,’ said I, bowing a little again out of habit – and one that I was trying to break, I might add, for my back didn’t need the exercise any more than gentlemen needed the adulation. ‘John Jacob Turnstile.’
‘Then, I wish you well with it, Master John Jacob Turnstile,’ said he in what I suppose was something approaching a pleasant voice. ‘For the arts are an admirable pursuit for any young man intent on bettering himself. In fact, I devote my own life to their study and support. I don’t mind admitting that I’ve been a bibliophile from the cradle and it has enriched my life and provided my evenings with the most glorious companionship. The world needs good story-tellers and perhaps you will be one if you pursue your aims. You are familiar with your letters?’ he asked me, turning his head to the side a little like a schoolteacher awaiting response.
‘A, B, C,’ said I in as posh a voice as I could muster. ‘Followed by their compatriots D through to Z.’
‘And you write with a fair hand?’
‘Him as looks after me said my lettering recalls his own mother’s and she were a wet-nurse.’
‘Then, I suggest you acquire as much paper and ink as you can afford, young man,’ said the gentleman. ‘And take to it at once, for it is a slow art and requires much concentration and revision. You hope to make your fortune from it, of course?’
‘I do, sir,’ said I . . . and then the strangest thing! I found that in my head I was no longer making a farce of him at all but was thinking what a fine thing that would indeed be. For I had enjoyed the stories I had read of China and I did spend most of my time by the bookstalls in the marketplace when everyone knew that the squirrels ran wilder around the fabric shops and the public houses.
The gentleman looked to be finished with me now and replaced his spectaculars on his nose, but before he turned away I made bold enough to ask him a question.
‘Sir,’ said I, the nerves coming out in my voice now, which I tried to control by deepening it. ‘Sir, if I may?’
‘Yes?’ he asked.
‘If I were to be a book-writer,’ said I, choosing my words carefully because I wanted a sensible answer from him, ‘if I were to try such a thing, and knowing that my letters are learned and my hand is fair, where would I begin exactly?’
The gentleman laughed a little and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, I’ve never had the creative touch myself, I admit it,’ he replied finally. ‘I’m more of a patron than an artist. But if I was to tell a story, I suppose I should try to locate the very first instance, that singular point in my tale, that set the whole business in motion. I would find that moment and begin my narrative from there.’
He nodded then, dismissing me at last, and turned back to his perusals, leaving me to my cogitations.
The very first instance. The moment that set the whole business in motion.
I mention this now and here because the moment that set my business in motion was that very meeting two mornings before Christmas Day with the French gentleman, without which I might never have known either the bright or dark days that were to follow. Indeed, had he not been there that morning in Portsmouth, and had he not allowed his pocket-watch to rest off its fob and peep too temptingly from his greatcoat, then I might never have stepped forward and transferred it from the luxurious warmth of his lining to the cold comfort of my own. And it is unlikely that I would have walked carefully away from him in the manner in which I had been trained, whistling a simple melody to illustrate the casual air of a fellow without a care in the world going about his honest business. And I most certainly would never have made my way to the entrance of the marketplace, satisfied with the knowledge that a morning’s money had already been earned, Mr Lewis would be paid, and a Christmas dinner would surely be mine two days hence.
And had I never done that, I would have absolutely been denied the pleasure of hearing the piercing sound of a blue’s whistle and seeing the sight of a crowd turning towards me with angry eyes and ready limbs, nor felt the grinding of my head as it met the cobbles beneath when some great lummox of a do-gooder jumped atop me and set me off my pins and on to the flat of the ground.
None of this might have happened and I might have never had a story to tell.
But it did. And I do. And here it is.
2
WHISKED AWAY, I WAS! WHISKED like an egg and beaten just as soundly. These are the moments when your life’s not your own, when others grab you and take you and force you to go where you’ve no business going. And I should know, having suffered more than my fair share of such moments in fourteen years. But once that whistle is heard and the crowd around you turn in your direction and focus their nasty eyes on you, ready to accuse, try and judge, why, you might as well get down on your knees and pray to disappear into thin air as hope to escape without a bloodied nose or a blackened eye.
‘Hold off there!’ came a cry from outside the scrum, but little did I know who it was, covered as I was by the weight of four separate traders and a simpleton woman, who’d placed herself atop the rabble and was screeching with laughter and clapping her hands together as if there had been no better sport all year long. ‘Hold off there! Mind, or the boy will be crushed!’
That was a rare thing to hear, a fellow taking the side of a young villain like myself, and I resolved to pass a nod of appreciation to the utterer of the lines if ever I found myself blinking in the daylight again. Knowing what indignities might be on the horizon, however, I was content to pass a few idle moments stretched out on the cobbles, the peel of an orange pressed against my nostrils, the core of a rotten apple settled by my lips, and a bloody great arse making itself friendly with my right ear.