Excerpt: Chapter One
"Phoenix" artwork (c)2001 C.D. Steele
cover design Dale Walkey
www.dalzdezignz.com
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London, 1882
Steven turned anxious brown eyes upon his twin, and said in an edgy voice, “He's comin' back t'day.”
Jack Rourke neither answered nor acknowledged his brother's spoken fear. He had no time to worry whether the old man was returning. He was too busy searching for an easy-to-pick pocket in the crowd boarding the Margate steamer.
Jack's shaggy blond hair hung down over his forehead and into the hard dark eyes of a man beset by devils, though he was barely thirteen. Beyond and around the two boys, families and their baggage streamed toward the huffing steamer boats waiting to take them out of London on holiday. Directly in front of Jack, a man's coat pocket gaped invitingly as he bent to pick up a caterwauling child. Jack expertly removed the man's purse and handed it to his motionless brother. Then Jack deliberately bumped the man and ran.
The man jerked upright, checked his pocket, and shouted after the fleeing boy, “Thief! Thief! Stop him! Stop him! Thief!”
A dozen men gave chase, but the fleet footed Jack ducked into alleys, jumped fences, ran through a dirty tavern, and easily left them behind. Steven passed unnoticed through the holiday crowd, the purse inside his shirt, heavy against his thin body. When he reached their hideaway, an abandoned bottle shop, Jack was already there.
Steven handed him the purse and sat down on one of the rickety upturned crates. Jack opened the purse, pleased with what was in it, and glanced at the smaller, frailer version of himself. Steven was pale and shivering. “What's wrong?” he asked.
“I thought I saw him.”
“Well, you was wrong. The old bastard wouldn't've been down there. He ain't supposed t'come back for another week.”
“I know. But he's comin' t'day, Jack. I know he is.”
Jack knew too, though he'd rather eat a rat than admit it. He knew the same way Steven did. Whenever Mum got a letter saying he was coming home things got bad. She drank more gin, hit them with both her voice and her hands, and paced the floor. A dozen times a day she stepped outside to peer down the narrow, filthy cobbled street.
Bugger the old man, thought Jack, and shut him out of his mind. A cracked brown jar that hidden beneath a warped floor board, contained every shilling they'd found, earned, or that Jack had stolen. When today's swag was added and the jar hidden again, Jack sat down beside Steven.
“We'll have enough money to leave here real soon, Stevie. We ain't never gonna have to see that old sod again. God, I hate him!”
Steven's forehead wrinkled. “You oughtn't say that, Jack. The Methody missionary man says we must forgive and turn the other cheek to our enemies.”
“He likely says we oughtn't steal too, so what d'you think he'd say if he saw you nip off with the money today, hey?” Seeing the hurt in his brother's eyes, Jack mumbled, “I didn't mean it.”
“Jack, I don't like stealing,” Steven said, not for the first time. “Can't we stop?”
“Not till we got all we need.”
Maybe…maybe things'll be better this time when he's home.”
“Maybe I'll fly.” Jack rubbed the crooked little finger on his right hand. The last time the old man was home he'd bent it backward until it broke with the sound of a stick cracking. It ached most all the time. There'd be new aches, and new bloody welts from the strap before the old sod left again.
Jack got up and rumpled the dirty blond hair that matched his own. “Are you rested? Let's race.” It was an unequal contest. He was laughing and panting upon the sagging step of the sooty crumbling tenement that leaned against its neighbor when Steven ran up and flopped down beside him.
“Someday I'll be bigger and faster than you,” said Steven, without much hope.
Jack grinned. “I'm twenty minutes older. You'll never catch up.” Jack waved lazily to his two friends, Toad and Spitter. Toad was swinging something as he walked. “Whatcha got?” Jack asked.
“Dead cat. What's left of it. Gonna pitch it at the first copper I see.” Toad chortled and held the sunken-eyed, maggoty object at arm's length. Jack laughed. Steven cringed. Suddenly Toad said, “There's your old man. I ain't stickin' around.” He and Spitter disappeared into an alley.
Jack stiffened at the sight of a brawny man, well over six feet tall, trudging toward them with a sailor's rolling gait, a seaman's bag over one shoulder, brass buttons glinting. Jack wasn't surprised when his friends ran away. Even grown men stayed out of Tom Rourke's way. And nobody ever interfered when he beat his wife and sons.
Jack scrambled to his feet. “I'm going away for a little while.”
“Don't go, Jack,” Steven begged, clutching his sleeve. “I don't want to be the only one here.”
“Oh, you know he's always nice t'start with.”
“Then why go?”
“Because I don't want to have to look at him.” He bent over and looked intently into his brother's eyes. “Let's run away, Stevie. Right this minute.”
“We can't leave Mum alone with him.”
She'd leave us quick enough if she had anywhere to go. Jack bit his lip to keep from saying it out loud. Just yesterday he'd heard her say to her friend Lucy, “If I knew for sure who bred those brats on me, I'd leave Tom and go live with him.” Then in answer to her friend's question, she said, “Take the boys? What'd I do with them, I'd like t'know. They can look out for themselves.”
He hoped it was true about them not being Rourke's boys. He'd rather be the git of that blood-spittin' chimney sweep on the corner.
“I'll be back before he misses me,” Jack said. “He don't never remember which of us is which anyways.” He patted his brother's shoulder and left.
Jack's quick and purposeful path wound through several neighborhoods of dingy shanties, tenements, gin shops, pubs and little shops with flyblown windows. He was going to the wonderful place he had found one night last year when he was running away from the old man's fists…
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Gasping, hurting, he ducked through an open doorway that offered a hiding place. He stopped in confusion, holding his hand against his dripping nose and mouth.
People in strange clothes moved about on a platform; they spoke funny and waved their arms around. There was a peculiar smell in the room, a nice smell. There was a lot of benches, like a church he'd once stole from. He backed away, hoping to escape unseen, but one of the women left the platform and caught his arm.
“You poor baby,” she said. “What happened to you? You're bleeding all over yourself.”
He stared at her. He'd never seen anyone like her. She was soft and clean and pretty and she talked funny. She smelled sweet. A large man bellowed that he had interrupted something called a dress rehearsal. The woman holding his arm said sharply, “Leave him alone. He's welcome to stay and I won't hear any more about it.”
Lizbet Porter soon became his best friend second only to Steven. She was the owner of the small theatre, as well as its ingénue. She hired Jack to carry water and run errands and shine shoes and brush costumes. To Jack Rourke the Royal Lion, a run-down old alehouse that had been turned into a theatre, was a place of magic. He discovered that in the theatre you could become someone else altogether.
Jack loved everything about the theatre, from the actors like Lizbet and the juvenile lead, Roger, to the smells of makeup and old costumes and dust. One day he showed Lizbet a spider crawling on his hand. “It ain't really a spider,” he said. “It's a mouse in costume and makeup.”
When she discovered he had never been to school and did not even know his alphabet, she said in a no-argument voice, “You've got a good brain. I can't let you waste it.”
“I ain't goin' to no school,” he said.
“I didn't say you'd go to school. I'll teach you myself.”
“Don't wanta.”
“I don't care. You'll do it anyway.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
His reading primer was whatever script happened to be lying around at the time. The lessons came at rehearsals, between scenes, and at other odd times when he showed up. She forced him to put the h's on his words and refused to listen to anything he said that was not said properly. She taught him to say “Please” and “Thank you,” “Yes, sir” and “Madam.”
Starved for learning Jack devoured everything she taught him. She bragged about his quickness with as much delight as if he were her son. She trimmed his hair and found clothes to fit his rapidly growing body. She introduced him to soap and cleanliness. He liked the way it felt to be clean.
Toad and Spitter called him a nob. He beat Toad up and they didn't say it again. He yearned to tell Stevie about Lizbet and the theatre and his new friends, but Stevie might let it slip to Mum and then the old man would find out.
One day as he sat on the floor under a window, struggling to read, he felt someone watching him. It was Lizbet; he smiled at her. “Jack,” she said softly, “do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”
He shrugged, embarrassed. “Me and my brother look just the same,” he said. He didn't realize that to the rest of the world Steven was frailer, smaller, clumsy, not as handsome. The only difference he'd ever seen was that Stevie needed protecting.
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After leaving Steven on this night, Jack arrived at the theatre to find Lizbet and Roger deep in conversation. He picked up the script he was trying to read when he heard his name mentioned. He stopped to listen.
“-wish we could use Jack as Young Christopher,” Lizbet was saying.
“I wish we could use anyone else for Young Christopher,” groaned Roger. “Harry is terrible. He has ten lines and he gets half of them wrong. Not to mention he's grown too tall for the part.” He saw Jack and paused. “Jack, be a good lad and run down to Frenchie's, fetch me a pint of the best.”
Jack stifled the impulse to blurt out, “Why don't you just tell the director to put me on in place of Harry?” But he knew why: Harry was the Director's wife's nephew and they were stuck with him until the end of the run. He tugged at the bill of his soft cap and darted off. As his feet churned toward Frenchie's Pub, he thought about the too-tall Harry.
Harry Augustus: fifteen, and a head taller. They'd hated each other on sight. Jack knew that sooner or later he would have to fight Harry. Jack was a good fighter, a dirty fighter, but Harry was at least two stone heavier. As Jack hurried back from Frenchie's with the pint, he hatched a plan for getting rid of Harry without getting torn limb-from-limb.
Harry was behind the theatre, smoking a thick black cigar. Jack took a deep breath, swaggered up to him and snatched the cigar out of his mouth.
“Gimme that back,” Harry said. “Pretty Girly-Boy.”
“At least I ain't got a face what makes people puke.”
“Oh, yeah?” Harry grabbed for the cigar and missed.
“Yeah.” Jack opened his fingers; the cigar plummeted to the mud. He stepped on it.
For an instant Harry stared at him, open-mouthed. Then he clenched his fists. “I'm gonna pound the bloody snot out of you.”
“You're gonna quit the play,” said Jack.
“Sure I am.” Harry had his fists up ready to pound.
“Let's bet. Winner goes on tonight. Loser gets lost.”
Harry's fists lowered slightly. “Bet on what?”
“Winner'll be whoever stays in the yard with Wittenmeyer's bulldog for five minutes.”
“That dog's a killer!”
“Scared?”
“No, I ain't.”
“If you wasn't you'd do it.”
“Okay, Girly-Boy, come on. I'll show you.” Harry led the way to the pen where the night watchman's dog was kept inside a stout, locked shed. They could hear the big dog hurling itself against the door. People said the dog was mad, but since he had been the same for a long time Jack doubted it. He was just mean. Like Harry.
Jack went over his plan again. If his timing was off or if the dog did something unexpected, he would be chewed to ribbons while Harry laughed his head off. The boys went inside the pen. Jack, last in, left the gate ajar as Harry lifted the bar on the shed door.
The dog hit the door and burst to freedom as Jack threw open the gate. While Harry was staring at him, Jack shoved him into the shed and slammed the bar down.
From inside Harry pounded on the door and yelled, “Let me out! Let me out! You-”
The string of filthy names made Jack whistle and say with a grin, “Now ain't that fine talk for a gent'man!” Still whistling, Jack went back to the theatre. With less than an hour before curtain, no one would be going near the shed. While the cast members got into costume and makeup, declaimed their lines, complained, cursed, worked themselves into the right state of mind for the performance, Jack was kept busy running here and there on errands.
When will they ask me? They can't wait much longer. His stomach cramped with nervousness.
The stage manager hurried past asking for the dozenth time, “Where's Harry? Anyone seen the little bugger?”
Jack said loudly, “Mr. Keyes-”
“Not now, not now.” He rushed away only to return with the director in tow. “That bloody nephew of yours…”
“My wife's nephew, if you please. I don't claim the little devil.”
“Sir,” Jack said to the director and stage manager. “I know all of Harry's lines.”
“You better be telling the truth,” said the stage manager as he shoved Jack into the arms of the wardrobe mistress. “Fix him up as Christopher. Harry's back in two minutes or Lizbet's pet goes on.”
Jack's heart raced; his mouth became a desert. His first role! The wardrobe mistress, with large, loose stitches hastily took in the Harry's costume and stuffed rags into the shoes. With a dab of makeup and a lick with a hairbrush, she pronounced him ready. He waited in the wings, jiggling with excitement, repeating the lines over and over to himself.
His cue came and he rushed on stage. “Mrs. Waring's coming and she's got-” He sto
He stopped, stricken, no further words coming. He was suddenly terrified of the huge men beyond the gas footlights.
“Blood in her eye,” whispered the prompter.
Jack did not hear him. He knew he had to say something and do it quick. “-and she's got steam out her ears!” he said.
The audience burst into howls of laughter. Jack was transfixed. It was supposed to be a funny scene but this was the first time anyone had ever laughed. The rest of his lines came flawlessly.
Afterward, when makeup and costumes were being taken off in two small, adjoining rooms, men in one and women in the other, the cast talked back and forth through the partly open door.
“Did anyone ever see Harry?” asked Lizbet.
“Not me, luv,” said one of the men. “Wherever the little fart is I hope he stays there.”
Jack was stripping off Harry's costume and shoes, biting his lip at the pain of the large blisters on his heels.
“Hey, kid, what are you doing in here?” asked the actor who played the vicar, removing the clerical collar. “Women and children in the other room.”
Jack glared at him. “I ain't a child. I'm an actor now.”
Everyone laughed. The man drawled, “Well, listen to Mr. Irving.”
Roger chuckled and rumpled Jack's hair. “That's right, Jack, You're an actor. Ignore him.”
“You did a bang-up job for a newcomer,” put in another actor. “Saved that misbegotten scene.”
Jack glowed. He wanted to run home and share it all with Stevie. But he couldn't, not while the old man was there. His jaw squared. B'god he was going to tell Stevie and the old sod be damned. He'd been on the stage. He would be on the stage again and again and again until he was an old, old man. `Listen to Mr. Irving' was supposed to be a joke. Jack meant it to come true. He had never seen Mr. Irving, but he'd heard much about him. And b'god he would be better than Mr. Irving, than all of the Mr. Irvings in the whole world. Kings and queens and dukes would come see Jack Rourke! Mr. Irving could then go hang!
It was well past midnight when he arrived home. As he reached for the door handle he heard Rourke's loud, gruff laugh from inside, and his mother's giggle. He didn't have to see them. He knew that they'd be guzzling gin from an open bottle and that her clothes would be half off and her hair all a-tumble while the old goat slobbered and pawed at her.
“Jack…” Steven emerged from the shadows. He held a small box that shone in the moonlight. “I didn't think you'd be away so long.”
“Stevie, I got something t'tell you. It's important.”
As if he either did not hear or did not care, Steven held out the small box. “Look, Jack.” The box was enameled and contained candy. “It come all the way from America.”
“You have it, Stevie. All of it. I don't want nothing he brung.”
Steven shrugged and bit into a piece of dark chocolate. “Where've you been?” he asked with his mouth full. “What's so important?”
“Keep a secret?”
Steven spit in his hand and crossed his heart. Jack told him everything, his words falling over each other, his eyes shining. Steven listened with growing fear. “What if he finds out?” he asked when Jack paused for a breath.
“What if he does? I'll do it anyway.”
“You'll get beat, Jack. You know you will.”
“He'll beat me anyways so I might's well get beat for something important.” His defiant words masked quivering fear. He knew his brother was right. He changed the subject. “Anything to eat?”
Steven's hand disappeared into his coat pocket, and surfaced with a wedge of cheese and a thick slice of bread wrapped together in a dirty rag. “I saved 'em for you.”
Jack wolfed the food taken from Steven's grimy hands, then the brothers perched on the warped stoop and talked quietly. Jack leaped to his feet as the door flew open. Tom Rourke filled the doorway.
“Where you been, boy?” Rourke demanded.
Jack suddenly realized he now came up to the old man's broad shoulders. The last time Rourke had been home Jack had stood only as high as his massive chest. Just wait, you old bastard. Soon you'll hit me and Stevie and Mum once too often and I can give it back to you.
“I said where you been, boy? You go deaf while I was gone?”
Jack drew out the coins Lizbet had given him for the night's performance. “Working,” he said. The coins disappeared into Rourke's pocket.
That night Jack lay awake on the old mattress he shared with Steven, who was peacefully asleep. On the other side of the blanket that divided the room, Mum and the old man were having at it. He heard the bed bounce and he clenched his fists as his mother cried from time to time, “Tom- Tom- you're hurtin' me- Tom, that hurts- Don't, Tom-” The old man never answered except to gasp, “Shut up,” and the noise continued. Then her protests changed to grunts and groans to match his. In a few minutes everything was quiet and Jack could hear her cooing to the old man. The old man laughed low and called her his baby. Soon he was snoring.
Jack lay awake, staring into the darkness over the bed. Though his parents' bed was silent now, the sounds had aroused him. A secretive smile touched his lips as he remembered what he'd done last week.
For a shilling, he'd been hired at a Turkish bath, to pick up wet towels and run errands for the customers. In the afternoon, the owner had called him aside and said, “Boy! How would you like to earn five shillings extra?” Five shillings-a fortune! “All you have to do is accommodate one of my regular customers. A real gentleman. Took a fancy to you, he did.” He was sent to a private room, where a nondescript man in a towel waited. The man smiled nervously and said, “He told me your name is Jack. Well, Jack, I want you to do something for me. But only if you want to.”
Jack shrugged. He didn't have to ask what; he knew girls who got paid money for doing it. He could get Stevie away from the old man five shillings sooner. He nodded and the man almost bashfully opened the towel around his waist. What he had to do for the gentleman took only a few minutes, and the money made a nice jingling noise when he dropped it into the jar that night.
As Jack relived those few minutes in the private room, he shuddered in release. Within moments he was deeply asleep, one arm over Steven, his lips against Steven's hair, just as they had slept since infancy.
Within two days Tom Rourke was cursing and beating his sons. Every time Jack saw the terror in Steven's eyes he hated the old sod even more. One night when Rourke raised his fist to strike Steven, Jack roared, “Leave him alone you old bucket of shit!” and dove headfirst at him, butting him in the belly.
Rourke staggered back. He recovered his balance, knocked Jack to the floor, and seized the long, cracked leather strap. The doubled-over strap rained a torrent of pain on the boy as he curled up and shielded his face with his arms. As if from far away, over his own howls of anguish, he could hear Steven beg the old man to stop, could hear their mother say, “Tom, come on, Tom, don't lay on so hard-.” He heard the old man shout, “Stay out of it, woman!” He heard no more from his mother.
Jack lay all the next day in too much pain to move. He gritted his teeth and thought of the old gun Toad had shown him a few days earlier. “Ain't it a beauty?” Toad had said, waving it around. “And layin' right there in the pawn shop, just waitin' t'be pinched.” Before he could get the gun from Toad and put a bullet between the old man's eyes, Rourke went to sea.
The old man haunted Jack's dreams. Big body, hands like clubs, brass buttons gleaming on his dark coat, thick black beard barely hiding the yellow teeth. There was often blood in the dreams. Sometimes it was his; sometimes it was the old man's. When awake he fantasized about sharks eating the old man, or of pirates running him through, or of seeing him dancing at the end of a rope, brass buttons and all.
When Jack returned to the theatre following the old man's departure, Lizbet's heart ached at the sight of his bruises, but she did not pry. Instead, she scolded him with a laugh for locking Harry in the shed. Then she asked, “How would you like to play Young Christopher again, Jack? For the final two performances?”
“Would I! But.... well, what about Harry? He's stupid but I don't think he'd let me get rid of him again and I'd get the worst of it this time.”
“Harry isn't with us any more. And neither are the proceeds of the ticket box from last night, unfortunately. So, will you?”
“Yes, ma'am!”
“Our next play is The Bridge Crossing. You've read some of it. Do you think you could play Cedric, the crippled boy?” At his vigorous nod, she smiled. “I think so too. I think you would have the audience swimming in tears.”
“I could, I know I could.”
“But you'll have to work much harder on your reading.”
He knew the story: Poor Crippled Cedric saves his home from the Villainous Banker, rescues his mother, the Virtuous Widow, from the clutches of the Dastardly Riverboat Captain, then takes a fever and dies in his mother's arms. But hark! A Heavenly Angel appears and says, `Because you have been virtuous and brave, I say to you: Arise, Cedric, live and walk.' Whereupon Cedric not only arises and walks, but dances a hornpipe as well.
The hornpipe did not exist until opening night. Jack was seized with the notion of doing it and did it without permission of the director. It brought down the house. “I can't work with such a boy!” the director bellowed. “I must have someone who follows directions.”
“The audience loved it,” said Lizbet. “It stays. There was only one thing wrong with it: it wants music.” So it was that the actor portraying the Poor But Honest Shoemaker who loves the Virtuous Widow from afar found himself playing a mouth organ in the last act.
His success in the play gave Jack an idea. “Stevie!” he said a day or so later, “We'll work together, you and me. We'll make lots of money.” The next day, for a penny Jack bought a tattered coat from the rag picker. Then he and Steven begged a ride from a river man who was sweet on Mum.
“Where we goin', Jack?” Steven asked.
“You'll see. You just do what I say and we'll be rich in no time.”
By early afternoon they found themselves in a part of town where the streets were straight and the shop windows clean. The children they saw wore no rags, and they looked scrubbed to the point of pain. Men with hats, long coats, and side whiskers strode past absorbed in their own affairs. Ladies in bustles and fancy hats moved more leisurely, often in pairs, chattering and laughing softly.
Jack and Stevie stood outside a toyshop where some toys bobbed or spun as if they were alive. Steven loved a mechanical clownish figure in tights and bells and a funny hat with points. The boys watched, noses against the shining glass, until a man burst from the door and grabbed their collars. “On your way, you two! It's bad for my business to have the likes of you hanging about.”
Jack squirmed free of the man and the fellow let Stevie go. With a final, “Run along!” the man made a show of wiping his glass free of the marks from their fingers and noses, then stood with arms akimbo and watched as they left.
“We'll show him,” said Jack. He led the way to a slightly less high-toned part of the street, reasoning that the constables didn't watch them places as much. He draped the coat over Steven's shoulders, arms inside, and buttoned it, leaving the sleeves dangling. “Now, all you have to do is sit there and look unhappy. I'll do the rest.”
Steven huddled at Jack's feet, his face averted.
Jack called up the Cockney accent he was working so hard to discard. “Please,” he said, holding out his cap to passing women, his eyes filled with tears, his lips trembling. “Me brother ain't got no arms and he can't talk neither. And our Papa died of fever and Mum and the new babe just was called to Heaven and we ain't got no home no more. Help us, won't yer? God'll reward yer, mum…”
Nearly always, the ladies would look first into Jack's face and then at Steven and back at Jack. Jack gave forth a brave, quivering smile that called up the deep dimple in his left cheek. The power of that dimple was a mystery to him, but he knew it worked on women. Whenever Jack spied a copper strolling his beat, he and Steven melted into the crowd or a nearby alley, the ragged coat rolled up and tucked beneath Jack's arm.
At the end of the day they had enough money to go back to the toy store. Jack slapped down the money, and left with the mechanical clown. They had enough left for a shared kidney-pie and ale, with two shillings left to add to the treasure in the hidden jar.
Steven, cradling the toy in his arms, worshipped his brother with his shining eyes. “You're a wonder, Jack,” he said.
Jack's face turned red and he punched Steven's arm. “Ain't I?” he said.
End Chapter One
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