New Zealand poet John Gallas will be serialising his short, rumbustious, rollicking, steam-punk-Dickens novelette, ‘The Short Afters of Noah Claypole’ on his website, beginning November 1st.
Start reading at www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk
The tale follows the ‘orrible Noah Claypole from the ‘orrible end of ‘Oliver Twist’ to his own (‘orrible end, that is), via a generous selection of Victorian crimes requiring the least possible exertion. Follow the fate of our fat friend, a chapter per fortnight. Minor rudeness warning.
Chapter One
1 Court
The sun turned to dust, and the light to lacklustre: first by the City, at its rattlingest business, then by the Precincts, in their dim complications, and last by the Court windows, tall, gilded, stained and many, but greasy and darkened with the breath of Righteousness . Here, within, the rumble of Pandemonium knocked at the walls, but was not permitted to enter.
Judge Booby raised his small, round skull; and with it, a tremendous, dismal wig that resembled an ancient sheep expired on a stone. He had just partaken of an unsatisfactory nap, and was in an unfriendly temper.
‘You, sir,’ he cried, quite suddenly, and peering around at the general, dim air, ‘are a willain, sir!’
The tremendous and dismal wig bristled, casting a dull, dead powder around the Court, while Judge Booby took his bearings amidst the echoes of his own voice. A small cough, accompanied by the small signal of a small, white shirt cuff to his Left, directed him to the Witness Box.
His Worship leaned forward at It, and its contents, with killing gravity.
‘Ha !’ – this very triumphant – ‘And England shall soon be wid of you.’
Mr Pluck the Clerk, whose small cough and small shirt cuff it was, knowing by the Legal Materials in his possession and his small head that Banishment was somewhat Large for the occasion, coughed again in His Worship’s direction,
Hem hem.
The dismal sprinkling of spectators, several obscured in the gloom, rustled like damp parchment.
Judge Booby peered about the shadows, and rallied.
‘Mr Bolter!’ he cried, at a gamble. It was the last name he remembered being awake at, and he turned on it with renewed Righteousness. It was a happy lunge.
‘Yuss what,’ said Mr Bolter.
The Court rustled more generally at this sauce. Judge Booby, confident now that he had driven correctly onto the clear road to the gallows, gathered himself beneath his wig, which fired off several warning shots of yellowish dust.
‘You are an impudent, gweasy Youth,’ he snarled, his nethers rising from their bench. ‘Ha! I have listened to your every lie; to each wile evasion; to all your sophistwy and subwersification.’
Mr Pluck raised his right cuff with more vigour, in the manner of a semaphore flag.
Hem. A-HEM.
Judge Booby, who was now running merrily along the Highway, reached out his eager talons for the Black Cap, which was unaccountably not to hand.
‘It is the sentence of this Court,’ he cried, anyway,’ that you –‘
‘Hem hem hem,’ said Mr Pluck the Clerk quite loudly, leaning nearer, and then nearer still, on the Judge’s left hand, with a fixed smile and a very large signal of cuff.
‘A Free Pardon, I believe,’ said Mr Pluck.
‘Ha,’ said Judge Booby, rather brought up on the road.
The Court held its breath. The gas pendants sighed. Light crawled in its dimness. The City made little butting shivers and shadows at the tall windows.
This was, to tell the truth, a disappointment. Judge Booby and his wig regrouped themselves, and then loured furiously down at the Box.
‘You sir –,’ he began, at Mr Bolter.
‘For Queen’s Evidence,’ said Mr Pluck more softly now. ‘Against the Jew.’
Mr Pluck the Clerk allowed himself a small bow from the Legal Materials.
Judge Booby brightened. His small, round skull bobbed beneath its swaddle. Ah, the Jew! Happily Condemned to Death. Ha, he remembered that. The wig released some damp wisps.
Greasy sunlight crept towards the bench. Judge Booby turned back to the revolting youth before him
with renewed distaste.
‘Mr Morris Bolter,’ whispered Mr Pluck the Clerk, quite softly now, and with practised occasion, bobbing up, and then retiring with well-oiled complaisance to his seat behind the sunbeam, and fading smilingly, like the Cheshire Cat.
‘Alternatively like,’ he added, as he faded, ‘young Mr Noah Claypole.’
‘Aha,’ said Lord Booby, with a kind of scrutinising splendour.
Two names was Never Good.
Mr Morris Bolter, alternatively like Mr Noah Claypole, leaned swaggeringly back on the railing of the box. Ugly and greasy and a Youth indeed he was: thin, verminous hair brushed to the vertical above his fat face ; dull black eyes, like raisins pressed into a pudding ; a plump nose resembling a strawberry, and rather the worse for over-blowing ; and unusually extended legs, which gave Mr Bolter, or young Mr Noah Claypole, the look of a knock-kneed Wading Bird. He was dressed, for the occasion, in a strained, grey waistcoat with one desperate button remaining, a red neckerchief, a short, bulging smock-frock upon leathers, bright yellow trousers, and a pair of crumbled boots.
‘Yuss what,’ said Mr Morris Bolter, alternatively like Mr Noah Claypole.
The several and rustling audience tittered here and there in their dim tiers. Mr Morris Bolter, gratified at the effect of his witticism, twisted himself into several eel-like postures, and hurrahed with the muffin-cap that he held in his two fat hands.
‘Tol de rol lol lol right fol lairy,’ he added.
There was now a palpable giggle in the half-light. The small crowd pattered with feeble expectation. Even the gas pendants rubbed their hands.
They were soon disappointed.
The Majesty of the Law now rounded on the naughty Mr Bolter, also Claypole, with tremendous and singular Direction.
‘You, sir,’ it cried, ‘are an impertinent scoundwill. You sir,’ It continued to cry, being now well awake, Its wig bristling vigorously, Its small, round skull clacking, ‘are a low, jibbewous guttersnipe. You, sir, are an inwidious knave.’ The voice of the Law rose to a small shriek. ‘If I were not unhappily constwained by Mercy and Kindness, sir, you, sir, would be wowing your iwwevocable passage to Austwaley In a confederwation of felons and mice within the pwesent hour,’ – this, a
squeal – ‘shackled at every limb to a – ‘
Here, Mr Pluck the Clerk arose once more into his dirty sunbeam, and smilingly waved a small roll of paper to the general view at the end of his cuff. My Lord Booby drew up, his little jaw clicked open.
‘The Jew will hang,’ said Mr Pluck softly, towards his right, and with a smile. ‘And presently.’
Ha.
It was a gratifying intervention. My Lord was brought to a halt, without accident. The small crowd whispered and squeezed. The gas pendants rose to a whistle.
Mr Pluck the Clerk inclined his very large, white collar, at once employing it as a kind of discrete fan before his mouth.
‘Upon our Mr Bolter’s word,’ he whispered.
‘Ha,’ said Judge Booby.
He peered down upon his ugly Informant. Ha. Judgement wagged its nest, which discarded some light materials.
‘And may the Lord Have Mercy on His Soul,’ he said, with a snarl.
At this, the Witness paled awfully. Mr Bolter, also like Mr Claypole, became frightfully upright. His canary trousers appeared to tremble. Judge Booby was gratified. A small smile drew itself on his small, round mouth.
‘Queen’s Evidence,’ said Mr Pluck the Clerk softly, though a little more urgently, and faded once more to his seat behind the sunbeam.
‘Queen’s Evidence.’
Judge Booby sat back and assembled his gowns for a moment. It pleased him to draw out the moment, uncomfortable as it was for this greasy young squeal.
However, there was Ham for lunch.
‘Mr Bolter,sir,’ he said, with tremendous mercy and kindness, though a little more quickly, and wagging his wigsby. ‘If you should come Before Me again, sir, you shall find me less Merciful, and less Kind.’
It was nicely put, and My Lord Booby smiled like an angelic brazil nut.
Mr Bolter, also Claypole, restored to his natural complexion and swagger, now that his soul was saved, and the Jew’s was not, leaned back once more upon the box, and cracked open his face in a grin that featured a cemetery of mis-angled teeth.
The sunbeam forced its way slowly along the sooty ceiling.
‘And may that be a warning to ye all!’ cried Judge Booby, leaning suddenly, and perilously forward from his high, gilded Seat of Justice at the world in general. The world shrank. The wig cast an explosion of powder like a warning shot about its dim masses.
Mr Pluck, fearing another sermon, or something more indecorous, smiled benevolently all around, erected his collar and cuffs, and made several sounds pertinent to Wrapping Up, by shutting a volume of Blackstone with a clap, and putting away his spectacles with a snap.
His Lordship rose with some acceleration, and gathered his gowns into his claws.
‘Ha !’ he cried. ‘Laborare pugnare party sinus.’
It was his parting shot.
‘Tol de rolly rol rol right fairy down,’ was Mr Bolter’s, at which he coiled his legs like amorous eels, and hurrahed with his muffin-cap.
Tee-hee, went the small crowd. Judge Booby clattered away at top speed towards his small, golden, private Exit, and his imminent refreshment.
‘You may go,’ said Mr Pluck the Clerk, softly smiling at the Witness.
Morris Bolter, also like Mr Noah Claypole, pushed himself up the small angle required for the vertical, pulled the knot in his neckerchief significantly a little looser, put his fat hands in his waistcoat, and made a face signifying Victory and Ease to the softly scattering public shades. He then strutted heavily from the Box, and the windows, and the Court, like a giant canary-bird, and proceeded into the poisonous sunshine of the City, towards Ludgate Hill, whistling and rubbing his stomach the while, and grinning like a basket of chips.
A glittering decanter: ruby liquid, which winked behind its glass on a small gilded whatnot : a wet and warm ham joint, in a faint cloud of steam, pierced by the silver prongs of an ivory-handled carving fork, upon a thick, white sweating dish.
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