“You done blowed it now,” he’s singing. “Blowed it now. Lord God Almighty, you done blowed it now.”
♦ O THAT SINKING FEELING ♦
February, 1796. Wordsworth has been in and out of France and Annette Vallon, Bonaparte has put the screws to Babeuf and is vigorously pounding at Joséphine’s gate, Goethe is living in sin with Christiane Vulpius, and Burns is dying. In Edinburgh Walter Scott fights a losing battle for the hand of Williamina Belches, while in Manchester a snot-nosed De Quincey wanders the streets and wonders what a whore is. In Moscow it’s snowing.
In Paris they’re plugging holes with assignats for lack of anything better to do with them. And in Soho, at the Vole’s Head Tavern, they’re sucking and fucking. Onstage.
Ned couldn’t be more pleased. Jutta Jim’s been going strong for better than an hour now (if you discount the two brief intermissions during which he chanted tribal lays and quaffed a pint of chicken’s blood to keep his spirits up). Nan and Sally have enlarged their roles admirably, and the audience has been too preoccupied to wreak mayhem or piss on the carpet. What’s more, Ned’s throat, limbs, liver and lights haven’t been threatened in over an hour (Smirke’s been running round with a hard-on all night, peddling drinks like an oasis owner in Araby, and Mendoza hasn’t said boo since Jim strutted out onstage), and his gross take has far exceeded his rosiest estimate (nearly thirty-six pounds against an outlay of twenty-three and two, which includes a new suit of clothes, tips, and refreshment for himself and his cast). And all of it tucked snugly away in the Bank of the Bulge.
So why all this anxiety? He’s been through a flask and a half of gin already, smoked three pipes and paced the room twenty-two times, and he’s still jittery as a case of rat-bite fever. He can’t understand it. He’s even starting to develop an itch in the missing joint of his pinky. Of course, deep down, he already knows the answer — things are going too well. And that means he’d better dodge, duck and flinch, because when things start going too well that’s when the Powers That Be swoop down on you like a dozen hurricanes and leave you buried under half a ton of flotsam and jetsam.
It reminds him of the time at Bartholomew Fair when he and Billy Boyles just couldn’t lose at the gaming tables, had themselves a couple of tarts for nothing, then fell into the way of a champion fighting cock worth fifty quid easy. And then, as they were skulking off the fairgrounds with their booty, there it was — Zeppo the Eleusinian’s star-spangled cape — just hanging out to dry like a gift from the gods. On the way back Boyles led him down a lampless lane, and sure enough, a pair of dacoits pounced on them. “Stand and deliver!” a voice growled, and Ned found that the barrel of a pistol had been inserted in his ear. “I’ll jest disburden yer of yer loose coin,” the voice rasped, “while me accomplice ‘ere bleeds yer pal.”
The accomplice was a dwarf, no more than three feet high, with a carroty mass of hair flaming round his cheeks and crown like a brush fire. Ned handed over his purse and watched as the dwarf limped from the shadows, ordered Boyles to sit in the road, and began probing his rags with the point of a dagger. “ ‘Ere!” the dwarf exclaimed. “Wot’s this then?” It was the fighting cock, nestled in Boyles’ breast, its legs and beak bound with strips of blue ribbon. The dwarf plucked the bird from its cachette, throttled it with a twist of his knotty hands, and held it up for the gunman to admire.
“A bit of somefin for the pot, then, ‘ey Will?”
“Good show, Ginger,” growled the gunman. “Now strip the beggar raw and see if ‘ee’s got any coin of the realm about ‘im.” Down with the trousers, up with the shirt: Billy Boyles was naked as a jay inside of ten seconds. “Now you, pretty boy,” the gunman said.
Ned appealed to the gunman’s compassion and sense of fair play. “But I already gave you my purse,” he sniveled, “—have a heart, will you?”
“Ha!” the gunman laughed. “Think I doesn’t know river sand when I feels it? Wot yer take me for, a dyspeptic baboon or somefin? Off with yer drawers, sucker!”
The game was up. Ned dropped his trousers and there it was, glowing in the moonlight like a luminescent diaper — the strip of muslin stuffed with the day’s winnings. The dwarf tore it from his abdomen and coins rained to the ground. “Hoo-hoo!” he sang. “We’ve ‘it the buggerin’ jackpot this time, ‘asn’t we. Will?”
Just as the dwarf was scooping up the last of the coins, a coach-and-four rumbled round the corner and the muggers vanished. Boyles crouched against the wall in puris naturalibus, while Ned wrapped the magician’s cape around his bare legs and flagged down the coach. “Ho!” bellowed the driver. The coach came to a stop with a rattle and screech. “We’ve been robbed!” Ned shouted. The door shot back. Inside was Sir Euston Filigree, magistrate and gamecock fancier. Beside him sat an officer of the law with a cocked pistol. “What a coincidence,” said Sir Euston. “I’ve been robbed too.”
“Get in,” said the officer.
“Three months at hard labor,” said the judge.
It never fails. Whenever things start to look up, whenever fantasy begins to jell into possibility, the Hand of Fate intercedes to slap you back to your senses. Frightening. Enough to make you paranoid. Ned takes another pull at the bung and glances round him like a lamb at a convocation of wolves. Up onstage Jim, Sally and Nan are approaching the climactic finale — an impossible, multi-limbed, sinew-straining, tour de force feat of sexual acrobatics — heads, tongues and hips undulating in a quickening tempo, allegro di molto, the audience spilling from chairs, upsetting tables, panting like a dogshow in mid-July. The moment suspends here, ticking along at the edge of release, sublimely attuned to the functions of the body and the sway of the planet — when suddenly the door flies back and the voice of authority booms through the chamber: “CEASE AND DESIST IN THE NAME OF GOD ALMIGHTY AND ALL YE HOLD DECENT!”
The gilded youth is the first to react. “Holy shit! It’s the constabulary!”
“It’s a raid!” someone shouts, and the room erupts in confusion.
Regimental commanders trip over their swords, baronets and shopkeepers collide, clergymen hit the floor, while rogues, rakes, noodles, beaux, bucks and bloods make for the rear exit, Ned Rise leading them by a length. Up onstage Jim vacates Sally and Sally strips herself from Nan who in turn releases Jim and reaches for her gin and water. “SEIZE THE PROPRIETOR!” bellows an officer, and Ned, already at the door, looks back to see poor Smirke in the grip of two burly Charlies. “‘Ee’s the one!” roars Smirke, pointing a thick finger at the entrepreneur as he squeezes through the door. “The clown in the cape!”
“AFTER HIM LADS!” booms the coordinating officer.
Ned is in the alley already, off like a fox at the first woof of the hounds, passing bucks and bloods as if they were standing still, the gin coming up in him, feet flying, the cape beating round his shoulders like the wings of the Furies. Unable to flee in their high-heeled pumps, the bucks and bloods fall easy prey to the pursuing officers — the dread Bow Street Runners — and shout curses at Ned’s retreating back. “You slimy weevil, Rise — you’ll pay for this!”
“Gallowsbait!”
“Clystermonger!”
Ned pays them no mind. He is caught up in the pure frenzied ecstasy of flight, in the astonishing coordination of heart, lungs, joints and feet, in this fearsome momentum fueled by alcohol and driven by panic. Down the street to his left, over the cobbles — just a blur — and into the dark close on the far side. The shouts and curses receding now, almost safe. But what’s this? Footsteps at his back, regular as a drumbeat. He turns to look over his shoulder and an icy dagger punches at his ribs: two grim and athletic Runners pad along the alley, barely winded, confidently working into the easy loping stride of marathon men. Good God, he doesn’t stand a chance. These Bow Street Runners are relentless, tireless. Word has it they’ve even run down men on horseback.