‘The Portsmouth magistrate’s away for the week,’ came the reply and this time he sounded friendly enough and I thought that maybe they were just driving me out of the town and were going to deposit me head-first in a ditch somewhere and encourage me to ply my trade somewhere far from their patch, a proposition I was not opposed to in principle. ‘Up in London, if you can believe it. Being given an honour by the king. For services rendered to the laws of the land.’
‘Mad Jack?’ I asked, for I was only too familiar with that old scut of a magistrate from one or two dealings with him in the past. ‘What’s the king gone and done that for? Ain’t there no one around who’s earned a gong?’
‘You hold your tongue back there,’ said the blue, snapping at me. ‘Or there’ll be an extra charge on the list.’
I sat back then and decided to keep my own counsel for the time being. Considering the road we were taking, I imagined we were headed for Spithead; on my last-but-one apprehension a year earlier (on another charge of larceny, I’m ashamed to admit), I was taken to Spithead to pay my penance. On that occasion, I’d stood before an evil creature by the name of Mr Henderson, who had a mole in the middle of his forehead and a mouth full of rotten teeth, and he’d made remarks to me about the character of boys my age as if I was a representative for the whole shoddy lot of them. He’d sentenced me to a birching for my troubles and my arse had stung like a field of nettles for a week afterwards and I’d prayed that I would never come before him again. But looking out of the carriage I was sure that this was the very direction in which we were headed, and when it settled in my mind I took fright within and I was glad I’d allowed myself to go bumpity-bumpity-bump over the cobbles and been thrown around this carriage too as there was more than a middling chance my arse would be so numb by the time I reached the courthouse that I wouldn’t feel a thing when they pulled my britches down and whipped me raw.
‘Here,’ I shouted, moving to the other side of the carriage now and calling out to the first blue, since we had established a relationship of sorts during the apprehension. ‘Here, blue,’ said I. ‘We’re not going to Spithead, are we? Tell me we’re not.’
‘How can I tell you we’re not when the fact is that we are?’ he asked with a bark of a laugh, as if he’d make a fine joke.
‘We never are!’ said I, in a quieter voice this time as I mulled over the consequences of this, but he heard me nonetheless.
‘We certainly are, my young rascal, and you will be dealt with there in a manner befitting young thieves such as yourself. Are you aware that there are certain countries in the world where he who takes the possessions of another without permission has his hand lacerated at the wrist? Is this a punishment you find yourself deserving of?’
‘Not here, though,’ I shouted defiantly. ‘Not here! Scare me, will you? That kind of thing doesn’t happen here. This is a civilized country and we treat our decent, honest thieves with respect.’
‘Where, then?’
‘Abroad,’ said I, sitting back in the carriage, deciding to have no further conversation with either one of them, the ignorant pups. ‘China, for one.’
Little more was said after that, but for the rest of the journey I could hear those two halfwits cackling away like a pair of old hens on a door stoop and I’m sure I heard the sound of a vessel of beer being passed between their grubby paws, which would also account for the fact that we slowed down halfway to Spithead and one of the blues – the driver – stopped the carriage and stepped off to empty his bladder by the side of the road. No shame had he either, for he turned right in my direction in the middle of it and tried to aim his emissions through the bars at me, which made the other blue almost fall off the carriage in a hysteric. I wished he would as he might have cracked his skull into the bargain and that would have been a pretty picture.
‘Get away, you filthy scut,’ I shouted at him, retreating further back into the carriage, out of his line of fire, but he just laughed and finished his business before putting his whistle away and dribbling the remains down the front of his pants, so little respect did he have for himself or his uniform. Blues are a force unto themselves, everyone knows that, but they’re a rum lot too. I never met one I didn’t want to kick.
We got to Spithead within the hour and didn’t they both take great pleasure in opening the carriage doors and wrenching me out by the arms, as if I was a baby who didn’t want to take leave of his mother at birth-time. I swear the bones nearly popped out of their sockets and I don’t want to think what might have happened to me then.
‘Come on, lad,’ said the first blue, the one who took me in the first place, ignoring my protests at their dirty violence. ‘Enough of your lip now. In we go.’
The courthouse at Spithead was nowhere near as grand as the one in Portsmouth and the magistrates who worked there were a bitter lot. Every one of them wanted to come to the county capital to try the cases, as every fool knows that you get a much better class of criminal in a capital than you do in a town. In Spithead there was never much to listen to except a few cases of drunkenness or a bit of petty larceny. A year before there’d been a lot of noise about a man who’d taken a girl against her will, but the magistrate had let him go on account of him having twenty hectares and her only being from common stock. She should have been grateful for the privilege of his familiarity, the magistrate had told her, and this hadn’t gone down well with her people at all and a week later, what happened, only the magistrate himself turned up dead in a ditch with a hole the size of a brick in his head (and the brick itself settled peacefully by the roadside). Everyone knew who’d done it but nothing was said and him as had the twenty hectares moved immediately to London before the same could be done to him and he sold the land to a gypsy family who could read the cards and grow potatoes in the shape of livestock.
The blue dragged me down a long corridor, one that I remembered only too well from my previous visitation, and we charged along at such a pace that I thought on several occasions I might take a fall and that would be the end of me, as the floor below was solid granite and wouldn’t stand for a soft head like mine thumping against it. My feet were fairly dancing along the floor behind me as he hauled me along.
‘Slow the pace,’ I cried out. ‘We’re in no hurry, are we?’
‘Slow the pace, he said,’ muttered the blue, laughing and talking to himself, I supposed. ‘Slow the pace! Did you ever hear the like?’
Abruptly he took a right turn and opened a door and so taken by surprise was I at the sudden change in direction that I finally lost my footing on the ground beneath and toppled over, tripping arse over teakettle as I spilled into the courtroom, disgracing myself in the process. And before I could right myself, the whole place fell to a hush and every head and wig in the place turned to stare in my direction.
‘Make quiet that boy!’ roared the magistrate on the bench – and who was it, only old Mr Henderson again, that grizzly creature, but who was so ancient, with forty or forty-five years on him, if he had a day, that he was sure to have the influenza of the mind and wouldn’t remember me from the time before. I’d only been there once after all. They could hardly take me for a career criminal.