Jem knew this. Yet instead of watching these feats in awe, with the wide eyes and open mouth and cries of surprise of the people around him-his parents and sister included-he was bored precisely because the acts weren’t like life. They were so far removed from his experience of the world that they had little impact on him. Perhaps if the horseman stood on the back of one horse and simply rode, or the jugglers threw balls instead of burning torches, then he too might have stared and called out.
Nor did the dramas interest him, with their oriental dancers, reenactments of battles, haunted houses, and warbling lovers-apart from the scenery changes, where screens of mountains and animals or rippling oceans or battle scenes full of soldiers and horses were suddenly whisked away to reveal starry night skies or castle ruins or London itself. Jem couldn’t understand why people would want to see a replica of the London skyline when they could go outside, stand on Westminster Bridge, and see the real thing.
Jem only brightened when, an hour into the show, he noticed Maggie’s face up in the gallery, poking out between two soldiers. If she saw him, her face showed no sign of it-she was enrapt by the spectacle in the ring, laughing at a clown who rode a horse backward while a monkey on another horse chased him. He liked watching her when she didn’t know it, so happy and absorbed, the hard, shrewd veneer she cultivated dropped for once, the pulse of anxiety that drove her replaced by innocence, even if only temporarily.
“I’m just going out to the jakes,” Jem whispered to Maisie. She nodded, her eyes fixed on the monkey, who had jumped from its horse to the horse carrying the clown. As Jem began to push through the dense crowd, his sister was laughing and clapping her hands.
Outside he found the entrance to the gallery around the corner, separating the rougher crowd from the more genteel audience in the pit. Two men stood in front of the staircase leading up. “Sixpence to see the rest of the show,” one of them said to Jem.
“But I just been in the pit,” Jem explained. “I’m going up to see a friend.”
“You in the pit?” the man repeated. “Show me your ticket, then.”
“My ma has it.” Anne Kellaway had tucked the ticket stubs back into her stays, to be kept and admired.
“That’ll be sixpence to see the rest of the show, then.”
“But I don’t have any money.”
“Go away with you, then.” The man turned away.
“But-”
“Get out or we’ll kick you all the way to Newgate,” the other man said, and both laughed.
Jem went back to the main entrance, but he wasn’t allowed in there either without a ticket stub. He stood still for a moment, listening to the laughter inside. Then he turned and went out to stand on the front steps between the enormous pillars framing the entrance. Lining the street in front of the amphitheatre, near where he and his family had waited in Mr. Smart’s cart the day they arrived in London, were two dozen carriages, waiting to take members of the audience home after the show, or down to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens a mile south to continue their evening’s entertainment. The coach drivers slept in their seats or gathered together to smoke and talk and flirt with the women who had wandered over to them.
Otherwise it was quiet, except for the occasional roar of the audience. Though the street outside the amphitheatre was well lit with torches and lamps, the roads led away into darkness. Westminster Bridge itself was a shadowy hump over which two rows of lamplights marched. Beyond them London hung like a heavy black coat.
Jem found himself drawn back to the bridge and the river. He walked up it, following the lamps from pool to pool of light. At the apex of the bridge he stopped and leaned over the balustrade. It was too high to see directly below, and so dark that he could make out little anyway. Even so, he sensed that the Thames was a different river from what the Kellaways had seen earlier. It was full now; Jem could hear it slopping and slurping and sucking at the stone piers that held up the bridge. It reminded him of a herd of cows in the dark, breathing heavily and squelching their hooves in the mud. He took a deep breath-like cows, the river smelled of a combination of fresh grass and excrement, of what came in and what went out of this city.
Another scent enveloped him suddenly-like the orange peel from his fingers, but far stronger and sweeter. Too sweet-Jem’s throat tightened at the same time as a hand gripped his arm and another reached into his pocket. “Hallo, darling, looking for your destiny down there? Well, you’ve found her.”
Jem tried to pull away from the woman but her hands were strong. She wasn’t much taller than him, though her face was old under its paint. Her hair was bright yellow, even in the dim light, her dress dirty blue and cut low. She pushed her chest into his shoulder. “Only a shilling for you, darling.”
Jem stared down into her exposed, creased bosom; a surge of desire and disgust coursed through him.
“Leave off him!” called a voice out of the dark. Maggie darted to them and in a quick movement peeled off the hand clamped on his arm. “He don’t want you! ’Sides, you’re too old and rank, you poxy cow-and you charged him too much!”
“Little bitch!” the whore shouted and struck out at Maggie, who easily dodged the blow and threw her off balance. As she staggered, Jem recognized the smell of gin mingled with the rancid orange. She reeled about, and he reached a hand out to try to help her regain her balance. Maggie stopped him. “Don’t-she’ll just latch on to you again! Rob you blind too. Probably already has. D’you have anything on you?”
Jem shook his head.
“Just as well-you’d never get it off her now. She’d have hidden it by her snatch.” Maggie looked around. “There’ll be more of ’em when the show lets out. That’s their best time for business-when everybody’s happy from the show.”
Jem watched the woman totter into the dark along the bridge. In the next pool of light she grabbed on to another man, who threw her off without a glance. Jem shuddered and turned back to the river. “Tha’ be what I hate about London.”
Maggie leaned against the balustrade. “But you’ve got whores down in Piddle-dee-dee, don’t you?”
“In Dorchester, yes. But they an’t like that.”
They stood still, looking out over the water. “Why’d you leave the show?” Maggie asked.
Jem hesitated. “I were poorly and come out for air. It were stuffy in there.”
Her expression told him that Maggie didn’t believe him, but she said nothing, only picked up a stone at her feet and let it drop over the side of the bridge. They both listened for the plop, but a carriage passed at that moment and its clatter obliterated the sound.
“Why’d you leave?” Jem asked when the carriage was gone.
Maggie made a face. “There’s just the Tailor of Brentford left, and then the finale. I seen the Tailor too many times already. Fi-nale’s better from outside, anyway, what with the fireworks on the river.”
From the amphitheatre they heard a roar of laughter. “That’ll be them laughin’ at the Tailor now,” she said.