The Tiger in the Well (7 page)

He*d finished it by the time he got to Dean Street. There was a music hall bill on at the New Royalty Theatre, a tiny place on the left, but Bill ignored it. He ignored, too, the premises of the Society of Benevolence and Concord, where, according to a placard, Mrs. Letitia Mills was giving a lecture on the benefits of temperance, with lantern slides.

Next door to that emporium of plain living and high thinking stood a shabby boardinghouse, its front door open and spilling light and noise onto the street. Bill slipped inside, edging his way past the crowd in the corridor who couldn't get into a socialist meeting in the dining room and had to heckle through the doorway, and climbed the stairs to the third floor. Though it was technically a boardinghouse, the place seemed to be more like a club; one room was filled with books and newspapers, with three or four people reading or writing silently; in another, three games of chess were going on, with spectators arguing in whispers; in another, a vastly bearded man was explaining the advantages of anarchism to a small group of students, none of whom seemed to be inclined to take his word for it.

Bill knocked at a door showing a line of light under it, and a voice shouted, ''JaP Immer hemnP'

Bill went in. The room was hot and smoky, and the lamp on the table shone on a clutter of books, papers, and journals that spread from the table to the floor and stood in piles around the tattered carpet.

Behind the table sat the man he'd come to see, and in front of it sat a man called Kid Mendel. Bill stood still, his eyes wide, and automatically took off his cap, for Kid Mendel was the acknowledged leader of the Jewish gangs in Soho. The Jews and the Irish and the Italians between them held a rough balance of power, and Kid Mendel was a statesman, a king among them. He was a man in his thirties, tall, beautifully dressed, with humorous eyes and a slightly balding forehead. He was known to have killed two men with his own hands and to have organized the Wellington Street bank robbery; even the police knew it. But he was too clever for

the police. He'd made it known that he intended to retire to Brighton in time for the new century, wealthy and respected by everyone, and then look for a seat in Parliament, and as he said that with a straight face, and as he was Kid Mendel, no one expressed any disbelief.

And if this great man was visiting Mr. Goldberg, the man Bill had come to see, it sent that gentleman up in Bill's estimation too.

Mr. Goldberg waved his cigar.

*'My friend Bill Goodwin," he said. "We've nearly finished. Bill."

"How do you do.'"' said Kid Mendel, and Bill came awkwardly forward to shake his hand. "Where do you come from. Bill.?"

"Lambeth, Mr. Mendel," Bill said hoarsely.

"Dan tells me you're a useful fellow. Perhaps we can have a chat sometime. Well, I must be going, my dear chap," he said to Mr. Goldberg, getting up. "Very interesting talk. Something promising there, if I'm not mistaken. Good-bye, Bill."

Bill watched him go, awestruck.

Goldberg laughed, and Bill turned back. The man behin< the table was younger than Kid Mendel, but that was all Bill knew about him. He was mysterious; he was a little devilish. Bill wouldn't have been surprised to see horns and cloven hoofs, and hear the swish of a snaky tail; certainly the fumes of his cigar were sulfurous enough. He'd turned up one day in the police court at Lambeth, where Bill was starring in a program that also featured a blackjack, a broken window, and a quantity of stolen silver. Bill had never seen him before, but he'd found himself so convinced by Mr. Goldberg's evidence that he began to remember quite vividly being with him on the day in question, helping at a Jewish orphans' outing to Hampstead Heath.

"I got it, Mr. Goldberg," he said, and laid the leather bag on the table. "And this."

He dropped the greasy notebook beside it.

"Good," said Mr. Goldberg. "Sit down. Have you counted it?"

"Course not." Bill seemed affronted at the very idea. "I ain't touched it. Apart from giving Liam his cut."

Goldberg cleared a space by sweeping the immediate clutter aside with an arm, and tipped the bag out. A cascade of golden sovereigns, silver, and bundled notes fell out. Goldberg counted it swiftly.

"Three hundred and thirty. Here's twenty for you, and ten to me for expenses, and that leaves three hundred. Now listen. You know the Jewish Shelter in Leman Street?"

"Leman Street—^what, down by the docks?"

*'That's the one. I want you to take this money there and hand it to the superintendent. Tell him it's from a donor who wants to remain anonymous. If he starts making a fuss, just ask him if he wants it or not."

"Right, Mr. Goldberg. What's the notebook for? I tried to read it, but I couldn't make anything out. Must be his handwriting."

"Must be. Bill. Now look—the melame{f% here. Mr. Kipnis. He's waiting for you next door. Take your book—there you are—on the chair by the window."

Bill took the little cloth book Goldberg pointed out, thanked him, and left the room. Goldberg relit the cigar and settled back, feet on the table, to study the notebook.

A melamed was a teacher of Hebrew: not a learned man like a rabbi, but a poor drudge who spent his days drilling the elements of the language into the heads of naughty boys. In the case of Bill, it wasn't Hebrew he was teaching but the art of reading English, for Bill was illiterate, and as a Jew he felt that to be shameful.

He hadn't always known he was a Jew. He wasn't entirely sure who he was, or where he came from. He'd grown up among the Irish families in Lambeth and had avoided the Board Schools, running wild and learning nothing but violence and cunning. At thirteen his life had lurched in an-

other direction: he had taken to helping out in the household of Reuben Levy, a poor tailor in Walnut Tree Walk, and had fallen in love with Rebecca, the tailor's daughter—or not so much with her as with the richness and warmth and beauty of her family life, with its networks of ritual and remembrance. It was glamour. He wanted it. He wanted to belong.

There was no reason to suppose he wasn't Jewish. He certainly looked more Jewish than Irish. He'd heard there was a ceremony of some sort you had to go through to be a full Jew; but before it came to that, he must learn to read and write. One thing that he'd noticed about all the Jews he knew was that they were learned. Old Reuben Levy—at the drop of a hat he'd put down his work and start arguing and giving learned opinions about politics, about religion, about literature, about the law, about anything else at all; and his fellow Jews would join in—ordinary, poor workingmen talking like Solomon. A man like Kid Mendel, thought Bill, was bound to study deeply; bound to be able to read. That's what made him the man he was.

He kept this desire to himself until he met Mr. Goldberg. Mr. Goldberg had found the broken-down old melamed, Mr. Kipnis, whose nerves had gone for teaching small boys, and brought the two of them together; and now Bill toiled obsessively, learning A and B and C and scratching them on a slate while Mr. Kipnis refreshed himself with furtive sips from a flask.

And in the room next-door Dan Goldberg dropped the greasy notebook into a drawer, poured himself a glass of brandy, and took out his notes on this other extraordinary affair of Mr. Parrish's: this lawsuit involving a woman called Lockhart.

Target Practice

Next morning Sally had three clients to see and a number of letters to write, and it wasn't until the afternoon that she managed to find time to visit the lawyer.

He seemed surprised to see her.

"There is very little new to report," he said. "The case is due to come to court, as you know, on the fourteenth of next month—surprisingly soon, but that might be, perhaps, a good thing.?"

"How can it be good, Mr. Adcock.? It hardly gives us time to do anything!"

"What is there to do.?"

He spread his hands. She could hardly contain her impatience.

"You don't mean to tell me there's nothing to be done.? For goodness' sake, what on earth—"

"We claim that he is mistaken on the marriage point," said Mr. Adcock. "That is what we do. I have been drafting replies to all the particulars, and if you wish we can discuss them again, point by point, though I must say that I have another client to see at three—"

"Mr. Adcock, I've been to look at the marriage register in Portsmouth, and it's been forged."

"I beg your pardon.?"

He listened attentively as she told him what she'd found out. Then he frowned, pursing his lips, and tapped the table thoughtfully.

"The register was intact? It had not been tampered with— a page inserted or replaced—anything of that sort?"

"That was particularly what I was looking for. No, there was nothing like that. It was intact. It says that I married that man on January third, eighteen seventy-nine—but I didn't, I swear I didn't. And we've got to find Mr. Beech, the rector who filled it in, d'you see? If we can find him, and he can confirm that it never happened, then the case is over. We've won."

He smiled indulgently.

"I regret to remind you," he said, "but it really isn't that simple. By all means look for this Reverend Mr. Beech, if you think it worthwhile. I shall engage an inquiry agent if you wish, though that will of course be an extra expense. But he may confirm the other side's story and not yours. And I must remind you that that is only one element in the petition. There remain all the other charges: desertion, being incapable through drink, mistreating servants, the misappropriation of funds, the unfitness to have charge of a child, the living in close association with persons of doubtful moral-ity. . . ."

He spread his hands. As he listed the charges in his precise, melodious voice, they felt like blows to her heart: she hadn't looked at the document for a day or so, and she'd forgotten the effect it had. Someone must hate her, to attack her like that. The sensation of being hated by someone you know for a reason you can understand is bad enough; the knowledge that you're hated by someone you don't know for a reason you can't imagine is far worse. It came to Sally again in a rush and weakened her, so that she couldn't argue with the lawyer. Instead she nodded unhappily, her eyes on the floor.

"Yes," she said finally. "I see. Well, I'd like you to engage that inquiry agent to try and find Mr. Beech. The only clue is that he left under some kind of a cloud, that he might have stolen some of the church's silver, and that he might be in prison. But, of course, that's just rumor."

He looked alarmed.

**My dear Miss Lockhart, may I counsel you—may I beg you not to repeat those things? The law of slander, I need hardly remind you, exists precisely to prevent statements of that kind, and the last thing I want is for you to fall foul of that as well."

"Yes. Very well. But you will tell the inquiry agent.^"'

"I shall give him every possible clue. We might also sanction some inquiry into Mr. Parrish himself, if you are agreeable. His affairs, his background, hmm.'' It might be useful."

Sally, encouraged to hear him actually suggesting something positive, agreed. Then she said, "Mr. Adcock, if worst came to worst, what would happen.^"

"Oh, I don't think you need think of that. Let's cross one bridge at a time."

"But I want to know. Can they take Harriet—my child— can they take her away from mcf"'

"7/" the court's decision was for the petitioner, then you would be ordered to give up the child to the custody of her fa—of Mr. Parrish. But let's not—"

"And if I refused.?"

"Well, you'd be in contempt of court and liable to arrest and imprisonment."

"And would they take Harriet away from me by force.'*"

"Miss Lockhart, it really isn't profitable to pursue this line of thinking—"

"Would they.? By force.?"

"Well, in the end, if all else failed, yes, that would be the outcome. But there is no point in looking to extremes. The law is for man, not man for the law. There is the spirit of compromise. With discussion and reason, all things can be resolved. . . ."

"How can I compromise when someone I've never heard of wants to take my child away.? How can you talk of compromise.? What is there to compromise about.? I don't understand, Mr. Adcock." She held up her hand to stop him, and then stood up to leave. "All right. I'm sorry, you were only

answering my question. Til go now. Hire this inquiry agent, by all means; it's a very good idea. Shall I come again soon?*'

"We have just over a fortnight. Yes, we ought to meet again before the case comes up. ... In about a week.?"

Sally felt that they ought to meet every day, that he ought to spend his time on nothing else, but she nodded.

"And the barrister, Mr. Coleman.'* When will I meet him.'*"

"Oh, he's a very busy man. I'm not sure that he'd want to take up time like that."

Sally, amazed, sat down again. "Do you mean that he'd come to the court to defend me without even listening to what I had to say.?"

"I am your solicitor, Miss Lockhart. I listen to what you say, and I instruct him. He will have all the papers, believe me. I can ask for a meeting if you wish, but I can assure you that Mr. Coleman, Q.C., is a most eminent and able counsel. You could not be in better hands."

"I'm glad of that. But I would certainly like to meet him, papers or no papers. Could you arrange that.?"

"I shall do my best. Though, as I say, he is extremely busy."

Sally left the office, heavy-hearted. She stopped to say goodbye to Mr. Bywater, the old clerk, and he beckoned her close.

"Got something for you," he said.

He took a slip of paper from his waistcoat pocket.

"I had a word with a feller I know, used to be clerk to these solicitors your man's with. Asked my pal to sniff around. Well, of course, he can't be privy to the day-to-day business of the firm anymore, out of the question, but he did recall the name of Parrish. Seems that three or four years ago, there was a case brought against a man in Blackmoor Street—"

"That's where Parrish's office is!"

"Wait," he said severely. "I'm coming to that. The defendant, Belcovitch, was accused of some kind of malpractice, some complicated commercial business—look it up if you like, it's all there somewhere. Point is, he lost, and lost again on appeal. That's the surface point. The real point is, he hadn't