Albert Dyson had been eleven years old when the uncle after whom he was named was marched off to Maidstone Assizes, charged with sheep-stealing, and finally hanged. Albert's father had discovered that his brother was caught only because he had been almost blind drunk as he hurried a dozen stolen ewes over a narrow bridge across one of the Marsh dykes - indeed, it seemed more likely he followed rather than guided them. A pony and trap rattling towards him from the other direction had scattered the startled sheep, and an enraged Uncle Albert had whacked the pony across the rump as it passed and hurled a shower of abuse at the farmer driving it before realizing that the man was the rightful owner of the sheep and a magistrate driving to Romney to sit at the brewster sessions.
All that could have been put down to bad luck, but the Dysons had never been able to live down what followed: the farmer had eventually managed to quieten the horse after a mile's wild gallop, turned the trap on the narrow Marsh lane, and went back to the bridge to find Uncle Albert sitting on its low wall tippling from a bottle of contraband brandy and by then oblivious of what had just happened. The wrathful farmer was met with a splendidly vacant grin and an invitation to share the brandy, to which he had responded by shoving Uncle Albert over the wall and into the dyke and nearly drowning him.
Thus Uncle Albert had brought shame to the Dysons. His brother was so angry and disillusioned at having named his eldest son after such a man (and virtually apprenticed the boy to him) that young Albert was then unofficially apprenticed to a highwayman who worked the road from Ashford to Folkestone. Albert, who acted as lookout, had been present but managed to escape, when his wrong identification led to the highwayman holding up a carriage containing five Army officers instead of the carriage transporting the Bishop of Dover. Expecting to find a cringing prelate with proffered purse, the highwayman was cut down by a fusillade of pistol shots, the Bishop's carriage arriving in time for him to mutter a perfunctory prayer as the highwayman departed this life and young Albert, watching horrified from behind the hedge down the road, departed hurriedly for home.
By now young Albert was twelve, and he spent the next few years picking pockets, starting off by sampling the visitors to Ashford market on Tuesdays, Canterbury market on Wednesdays and Maidstone on Fridays. That produced next to nothing, since the farmers and their wives were not given to carrying much money, so he started working the fairs, where the visitors were more bent on pleasure than business, but the travelling and the need to watch the calendar proved too much. After all these years he could remember the dates.
The year began with Maidstone on the 13th January and Faversham on the 25th, then came a long wait for Great Chart on the 25th March and Biddenden on 1st April (better than Deal and Lamberhurst, which fell on the same day). Another long wait for Charing on 1st May (with the choice of Wittersham and Wingham the same day), Hamstreet or Winchelsea on the 14th, Benenden the next day, Ashford two days after that, and then nothing until Cranbrook on the 30th. And so it went on throughout the year. The life was feast or famine: either so many fairs on the same day or so close he could not visit them all even by riding half the night, or weeks with nothing except weekly markets which yielded very little,
But, Dyson recalled without bitterness, it was growing up that had done him in as a 'dip.' He had been small and skinny for his age and no one noticed him at work in a crowd, and he was agile enough to dip his hand into a pocket or pouch without much risk. A night ride from one fair to another, or sleeping under a hayrick or in a barn, did not matter until he was old enough to shave. Then, and he was the first to admit it, a couple of days' growth of beard on his face made him look just what he was, and if he was also a bit red eyed from drinking and wenching and lack of sleep - well, the sight of him made wise men keep their hands on their guineas and mothers call their children and clutch their purses . . .
His last year had been a disaster when his father worked out the tally. It was the year the damned spavined horse broke a fetlock and had to be shot, miles away from anywhere so he could not even sell the flesh and had to walk eleven miles with the saddle over his shoulders, and he had 'lifted' under twenty guineas from seventeen fixed fairs. Then Dad, who had long since given up trying to keep a calendar on the moveable fairs, swearing one needed to be a parson to do it properly, got in with Mr Simpson up at Studfall, and young Albert had become a fisherman. Not a fisherman who caught fish, but a fisherman who went out in a boat with nets and lines and hooks and bait, in case a Revenue cutter became nosey, and who came back long after dark . . . Bottle fishing, some folk called it, even though the haul was in casks.
For a few years the Dyson family flourished, thanks to Albert. Everyone was proud of Young Albert — until one rainy night he and five others in the boat stepped ashore at Camber to land some casks and the pile of rocks at the back of th beach turned out to be Customs men crouching down, waiting for them. Five years in gaol, the judge had said, or they could walk out of court, with a Navy press gang waiting in the road.
After a month in a receiving ship, a hulk at Sheerness, and six months in a ship of the line, Albert had decided that the galley was the safest and warmest place in any ship, and got himself rated cook's mate. Everyone sneered at the job, which meant keeping the galley fire stoked or clear of ashes, and cleaning and polishing the big copper kettles, but there was money in it. When the great chunks of salt pork or salt beef were boiled in the kettles, gobs of fat (known as slush) floated to the surface, and the cook's mate skimmed it off and put it to one side. Later he sold it illicitly to the seamen, who spread it on the biscuit which passed for bread. The slush not only softened it, if it had grown hard, or bound it together if it had begun to crumble, and suffocated the weevils, but it gave Slushy Dyson his nickname and put money in his pocket.
Slushy Dyson knew better than most men that all good things come to an end, whether because of the drunken carelessness of an Uncle Albert, the thoughtless dating of fixed fairs, the sprouting of the whiskers of adolescence or the mischance of the ship of the line in which he was serving being paid off, resulting in the transfer of Albert Dyson, cook's mate, to the Triton brig where he had less than sixty customers for his slush, instead of five hundred or so. It hit a man cruel hard, that sort of luck; indeed there were times when Slushy almost gave up hope. In the end he had realized that this run of bad luck, extending over several years, was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Just before Mr Ramage came on board to take command and sail for the West Indies, the whole of the Fleet at Portsmouth had mutinied. Albert Dyson had been caught organizing a mutiny on board the first night out of Portsmouth. The three seamen now sitting round the table had captured him but he had got away with a couple of dozen lashes, been transferred to an inward bound ship, and had later been able to desert.
Three years at sea in the King's ships had taught him a lot. When he had called on Mr Simpson at Studfall and told him the tale, he had been welcomed back into the Trade. Within a couple of months a clerk at the Navy Office had passed the word to Mr Simpson that the Two-monthly Book from Dyson's last ship - which was a copy of the Muster Books - had been received, and one letter against the name of Albert Dyson had been carefully erased and two others written in. The changes were simple: originally the letter 'R', for 'Run', the Navy's word for deserting, and the date, had been written in the appropriate column. The clerk had carefully changed 'R' to 'D.D.', which was the only legal way of leaving the King's service apart from being so badly wounded or permanently sick as to be no use on board a ship. The record therefore showed that Albert Dyson, cook's mate, had died on the date shown, and been 'Discharged Dead.'