Each meal was taken precisely on the hour, each different; a mutton pie large enough to feed a hungry family, a plump chicken and a raisin tart, a turkey leg and a pound of white breast meat, a large cold sausage and apple pie, a slab of cold roast beef and several boiled potatoes. A large pork and leek pie was the last but final means of satisfying the giant woman's voracious appetite.
Ikey, thoroughly miserable, watched as a cold blue dawn appeared over the gently rolling countryside, the tops of the low rounded hills blanketed with snow. He was desperate for sleep and his small belly, so seldom demanding of food and having observed so much of it during the night, now rumbled with the need for sustenance, though even now food was not his greatest need and he would willingly have remained hungry for another day in exchange for two hours of uninterrupted sleep. He envied Tweedle who seemed not to have stirred on the seat beside him.
With no further food to consume, the widow settled down to finish off the demijohn of gin. She seemed unaware of the sleeping shape of Tweedle, whose face lay only inches from her plump white knees, but fixed Ikey with a stern and disapproving eye, or rather, she fixed her disapproval on the dark, silent upright bundle in the corner. Holding the neck of the demijohn in her fat fist, she brought it to her lips, and with a tolerable level of sucking and lip smacking and occasional bilious burps the widow proceeded to get very drunk. Ikey, at last, was able to fall into an exhausted sleep.
He was awakened three hours later by the sound of giggling accompanied by several sharp prods in the region of his chest and stomach. 'Wake up! We be in (hic!) Brummagen soon.' The widow was jabbing at him with the stick and giggling, her fat head wobbly with her mirth and she drooled like a well-fed infant. 'Wakey-wakey!'
Ikey sat up quickly, dazed from insufficient sleep. It was by no means the first time in his life that he'd been prodded awake with the point of a stick, and he immediately imagined himself to be in a prison cell, for the smell was much the same and the ride had become unaccountably smooth, so much so that, to his blunted senses, the coach appeared not to be moving at all.
In fact, the coach was completing the last mile into the centre of Birmingham by way of the new road composed of a material known as macadam. This was a tar-like substance as used for caulking vessels. It was heated until it was treacle-like and ran easily, whereupon it was poured upon a bed of small stones (the men who mixed it might use no stone larger than one they could roll on their tongue and still repeat: 'God save the King!'). The substance was soaked into the stony surface and while steaming was compressed with a large steamroller and allowed to dry smooth and hard. The result was a surface impervious to the most inclement weather and upon which any manner of wagon or coach wheel could travel. All was made without the need for skilled labour and at a fraction of the cost of the quarrying, shaping and laying of cobblestones.
Ikey's mind was not tuned to dullness and he was soon aware of his surroundings. The widow, satisfied that she'd done her Christian duty and wakened him, did the same for Tweedle. He sat up groaning and holding his head in both hands, eyes bloodshot and his hair standing up in untidy tufts. 'Oh my Gawd!' he moaned.
Ikey stared out of the coach window at the houses, some with chimneys already smoking in the early light, growing more and more numerous and close-built as they approached the city centre and the coach terminus. Staging posts, particularly at the terminus from one great metropolis to another, were much inhabited by the watchful eyes of the law as well as those of informers hoping to earn a few shillings for spotting a known villain. Ikey's fondest hope was that he would be allowed to skulk unnoticed from the scene into the nearest darkened lane, and thereafter to a nearby rookery where he would be free from the ever curious attentions of any members of the law or the underworld.
He now became concerned with the presence of Tweedle. His earlier anxiety returned and Ikey imagined him to be a law man who would elicit the aid of a waiting law officer from the Birmingham constabulary to arrest him, his task while on the coach simply being to keep a watchful eye on him lest he take his departure before reaching the city.
Ikey was tired and his senses somewhat blunted. He told himself one moment that he was imagining the danger, and the next that he should have reasoned it out long before this and left the coach when they'd stopped to change horses at a village during the night. Caution, with its partner suspicion, being his more natural instinct, Ikey decided he would make a dash for it the moment the coach drew to a complete standstill.
Ikey carried no personal baggage. In fact, Ikey's taking a chance that a highwayman might waylay the coach during the night journey was not as courageous as it might have outwardly seemed. Highwaymen seldom shoot their victims and Ikey had no fear of robbery, for he'd carried in his purse coin sufficient only to purchase the coach ticket and to eat frugally and pay for his accommodation for a day or two upon his arrival, with a little left over for miscellaneous expenses. A secret pocket under the armpit of his coat contained fifty pounds, though a highwayman would need to remove the coat and most carefully dissect its lining to find this. To be robbed of what he superficially possessed would have been no serious matter. He carried only a cheap watch and chain and a small cut-throat razor and the deeds to the house in Bell Alley, a paper which would make no sense to a common robber. Also resting in a pocket was the key to his home in Whitechapel.
It being so close to Christmas, this absence of serious cash on Ikey would have been somewhat surprising. Anyone who knew him was aware that he would often carry a thousand pounds on his person, for the season's pickings would be exceedingly good and ready cash was what was needed to make the most of the many opportunities certain to come his way. But, this time in Birmingham, Ikey was playing for much bigger stakes than the fencing of a few bright baubles taken in the Christmas crowds.
The coach drew at last to a standstill, the coachman laying aside his horn and shouting, 'Whooa! Whooa!' to the wild-eyed beasts in the time-honoured way. The horses thus brought to a stop shook their heads in a jingle of brasses, champed at the bit and stamped their feet on the hard surface of the road. Their coats were lathered with sweat from their final gallop and their nostrils snorted smoky air.
The coach official opened the door on the widow's side. 'Oh me Gawd!' he exclaimed fanning his nose. He immediately turned to the waiting crowd. 'Anyone come for a show freak?' he yelled. 'If 'e is, she be blind, 'opeless drunk! Need ter fetch cart and oxen, or special sprung carriage. She'll not be walkin', I can tell 'e that for sure and absolute certain!'
The widow reached out and took the unfortunate official by the collar of his coat and pulled the top half of him backwards into the coach so that his head lay upon her lap.'
'Ullo, dearie, fancy a kiss?' she said, then burped loudly into the man's astonished face.
Ikey glanced quickly at Tweedle, who sat frozen upright looking directly out of the window, trying to ignore the bizarre antics of the drunken woman and the wildly struggling and whimpering official.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Ikey quietly unlatched the coach door on his side, leaving it ajar. Then he rose and lifted the still surprisingly heavy hamper and placed it down upon an astonished Tweedle's lap, quite preventing him from rising in pursuit should he take it in his mind to do so, whereupon he pushed the door open and stepped through it. But alas, his coat caught on the sharp corner of the small door and pulled him back. Ikey pulled desperately at the coat and a six-inch tear appeared in the thick wool as he wrenched it free, and then dashed into the dark shadow cast by the terminus building. In a few moments he had escaped up a narrow alleyway which ran between the stage coach terminal and the building beside it.