Convenient Women Collection

by Delphine Woods

  ‘From who?’

  ‘That is not your concern.’

  She would have pointed out that it was her concern if it was going to get her sacked, but she held her tongue.

  ‘We are a family business, Miss Davies, with family values. We employ only good, Christian people here.’ He glanced at her, staring down his nose. ‘You are no longer one of those, it seems.’

  She was torn between anger and despair. The cheek of it! The hypocrisy!

  Who had ratted on her? How would anyone know she was a whore if they hadn’t used her services? She wracked her memory, trying to imagine the faces of the men she had been with the last few weeks. One of them must work at Bronson’s, that was the only explanation. Or, perhaps, one had been a husband, a son, a brother of one of the women?

  Her argument was on her lips. She would beg if she had to. Bronson’s was her last connection to decency, to her old life, to her mother.

  ‘Please, Mr Criton. It is all lies.’

  He sucked at his teeth, returned his attention to the shop floor. ‘Our decision is final.’ He opened the door and stepped back for her to leave.

  ‘Please, sir!’ She hoped the tears would help her case, but Criton was a peculiar man, undeterred and unstirred by any female emotion. She would only humiliate herself further if she continued to plead with him.

  She bit her teeth together and forced herself to be calm. She would not let those hateful women see her cry. She fixed her cap on her head, took a breath, and walked.

  Criton sprang before her and blocked her way. Fear gripped her; he was unpredictable. His slit of a mouth came by her ear, and she held still, afraid he would bite.

  ‘Your mother would be ashamed of you.’

  Her purse trembled in her hand. She had not removed her coat, nor her shoes, nor her cap. She sat close to the fire which she had lit – John didn’t like to burn it now unless it was absolutely necessary. Well, today it was necessary; she was chilled all the way through, stiff and shaking with it.

  She remained in her seat as the daylight faded. Her saliva swam in her mouth, and she choked it down. She told herself she need not be so worried; it was her body, she would do with it what she liked. But she imagined the disappointment on John's face, and she did not know whether she would be able to hold her ground.

  Hours passed. Her backside grew numb. Her bladder was full, almost to bursting, and she crossed her legs together tight. If she ventured to the privy, she would not be able to return; she would lose her nerve and run back to her own room. So, she waited until she heard him coming up the stairs … the key in the lock … the twisting of the door handle …

  He slunk inside, pulling his cap off his head.

  ‘John.’

  She startled him. He laughed at his fright, then saw the fire. He frowned at it, about to remonstrate her for wasting fuel, but she held out her purse to him before he could speak.

  He took it from her suspiciously and eyed the contents.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘I won’t do it anymore, John.’

  He smiled slightly, doubting her, as he poured himself a drink.

  ‘I could do it, by the cut, when it wasn’t … you know, the whole thing. But I can’t have them in my room anymore, John. I can’t be a–’

  He slumped onto his chair and faced her squarely. He swirled the beer around his mouth, then gulped. ‘I thought you’d prefer it like that. Inside. No funny business. Straight.’

  She shook her head, trying to rattle out the images of all those men who had been inside her. ‘I won’t be a whore, John.’

  He laughed, and she scowled at him.

  ‘There should be enough money for your family now, with that added to what we’ve already got.’

  He chucked the purse on the table. ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Because we’ve been doing this for months! Where has it all gone?’

  ‘We have to live, don’t we? Nothing in this town is free, Cat, including you.’

  ‘Then I’ll stop renting that room. I’ll move in here, and we can save more.’

  ‘Won’t be enough.’

  She scratched her scalp. She was getting too hot now; she was prickling all over. ‘Then I’ll find another job, an honest job, and you can have all my wages, every single penny.’

  ‘That’ll take too long.’

  ‘Jesus!’ She slammed her hand on the table. She knew what he was doing; nothing she said would change his mind, nothing she offered, other than blind obedience.

  ‘Keep doing what you’re doing, and you won’t have to do it for much longer.’

  ‘Please, John, I don’t want to.’

  ‘This your conscience getting to you?’ He swilled his mouth with beer again. ‘You don’t worry about that sort of thing when you’re starving to death, when you’re freezing out on the streets in winter. You’d do anything for a penny. You said you’d do anything for me.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Your promises are flimsy things, aren’t they?’

  She stood. She would not be insulted, after everything she had already given up for him. She raised her hand, strong, defiant, and pulled off her cap.

  She was unused to the lightness of her head. She waited for the sensation of her hair falling over her back, but now the clipped ends only spiked against her neck. For once, John could not find anything to say.

  ‘I sold it for you. I sold everything in my room. Everything I have, you see it on me now. I sold it all for you, John, for your family, so that I may once again be able to sleep soundly.’

  His fingers had turned white as he gripped his cup of beer. Cat wanted to run from him; he was dangerous like this, silent and brooding, but she stayed firm.

  ‘Please, John. I have done it for both of us. It is better this way. I cannot … I will not have them in my room again. I will not have them inside me again. I will have no one but you.’

  She saw him swallow.

  ‘Get out.’

  Her nose stung as she began to cry. ‘Please understand, John. I would do anything for you but that. It makes me sick. I would go back to the cut if that is what you want?’

  ‘Get out!’

  He pounced out of his chair, teeth bared at her, fists raised. She raced for the landing and crashed into the bannister as he slammed the door and locked her out.

  Chapter 23

  September 1854. Wallingham Hall.

  There was a promise he had not kept – many promises he had not kept. They plagued him that night, found him in his dreams, and taunted him. It was a restless sleep, waking in the dark, eyes wide; the thought of a child in the house, something else to fear for and protect, was too much to bear.

  He pressed his face into the pillow and willed the dawn to break.

  He was in his Brougham as the sun spilt onto Wallingham Hall and shouting to Barclay to make haste. He did not glance at Catherine’s window; he did not need to see her to know she was watching him.

  His stomach was too sick to feel the need for food, but he wished he’d got a brandy. He felt cold, inside and on the skin, the same sense of dread as all those years ago when he’d been too sick – too scared – to go to Ireland. Something was coming, something that would shatter him.

  He heard the town before he saw it. The place of industry – the heartland of pretty things made for the world in a place as ugly as the devil. He felt the pounding and throbbing of machinery and people and vermin radiate through him as the buildings engulfed him. He drew the carriage curtain so he would not have to look, would not have to realise that anyone who came from these putrid streets would have seen things, done things, that he could never comprehend.

  The carriage stopped. Able Street. He jumped down the steps and marched between the slum houses, determined not to look from side to side, focused only on his aim. The door to the house was open, and he did not wait for permission to enter. He ran up the stairs, dodging new holes in the floor which had not been there when he had
last visited.

  He strode into Ruby’s room and found her naked on all fours, a man thrusting at the back of her. Ruby screamed as the man shouted at Osborne to get out, but Osborne did not move. The pair of them scrabbled to find their clothes, the man packaging himself away inside his trousers furiously.

  ‘What in Christ’s name are you playing at?’ Ruby said, glaring at Osborne as she dragged her slip over herself.

  The man grumbled at her, said he wouldn’t pay and wouldn’t be back, and they exchanged unpleasantries like cats fighting in a street until she kicked his backside and pushed him out of the room. He stumbled down the first few steps as she threw his jacket at his head.

  ‘Piss off, then!’ She returned to her room, slammed the door behind her, and grabbed a gin bottle. ‘I told you – after midday.’ She chewed off the stopper and spat it on the floor near Osborne’s feet. ‘And that was fucking weeks ago.’

  ‘Yes.’ Now, on his own in this stinking room, he felt his confidence waver. ‘Yes, I know. I wasn’t going to come–’

  ‘But!’ Ruby cackled. ‘Thought it wouldn’t bother you?’ She put the bottle on the floor and dragged her leg into her lap. The soul of her foot was dirty and red as she scratched it. ‘Thought you’d forget about it?’

  ‘I made a promise to you that I would return.’

  ‘And since when has a gentleman cared for the promises he once made to a whore? Don’t try to flatter me, nor yourself. You came back because it’s been on your mind, wriggling away in there.’ She wiggled her finger at his face. ‘I can read you all like books, if only I could read!’

  ‘Will you tell me or not?’

  She stared at his pocket, considering. ‘How much?’

  He fished out a shilling.

  ‘I can make thrice that in the time it will take me to explain.’

  She was playing him, he knew it. He held out a pound note, smirking as she gawped at it. She grabbed for it, but he pulled it away from her.

  ‘Tell me first.’

  Ruby climbed up the bed and propped her back against the stacked pillows. ‘Will you have a seat?’

  The bed was filthy and stained, and there was no chair to sit on. Osborne rolled on the balls of his feet, then decided it was best if he held his ground. This was not a sociable visit.

  ‘Fine. She’d have men up here, in her rooms.’

  ‘What kind of men?’

  ‘All sorts. Nice, though, nicer than any I’ve ever had. But then, she’d got a prettier face. And she’d got John.’

  ‘What do you know of him?’

  ‘I know his name was John.’ She laughed. ‘Irish, from what I heard of him. Could sell a shoe to a peg leg, he could. I’d listen to him bringing them up to her, and even I’d want to fuck her by the time he’d finished describing her. Small, he was, and sneaky.’

  ‘What happened, when … well, with the men?’

  She rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘What do you think happened? Don’t play the fool, sir.’

  ‘She was happy doing it?’

  ‘Christ, no, though she bloody well should have been with the amount she was getting. I’d hear her crying sometimes when there was no one in there with her. Crying and praying.’

  ‘Crying because …?’

  ‘Because she was a whore! Because she was just like the rest of us. Because she loved John so much.’ Ruby gulped some gin. ‘Never seen a girl so stupid for a bloke. She was like a dog, pining for its master, going back after a beating.’

  ‘John used to beat her?’

  ‘Not in the way you think of it. At least, not what I saw. No – in here,’ she tapped her head. ‘I could hear her coming, you know, for all the rattling. Now, I like a drink, keeps off the cold, if you understand? But the amount she’d get through! Gin and laudanum. Enough to stop a horse.’

  ‘Is this supposed to make me hate her?’

  ‘It ain’t supposed to make you do anything.’

  Ruby jumped off the bed and picked up the piss pot. She sauntered to the window so that Osborne could see the fullness of the bowl, the stagnant yellow of old urine. She trickled the contents down the outside wall, and the foul breeze from the window caught his hot face. She brought the pot inside again, set it beside the bed, then lifted her slip and squatted. Osborne marched for the door; he would not be humiliated.

  ‘Came back with all her hair gone one day,’ she called, and Osborne halted in the doorway. ‘Wouldn’t tell me why. And no sign of John for days, so I was listening when he did come back.’

  He heard the last trickle of Ruby’s piss and the rush of her slip over her thighs. He peeked over his shoulder to find her lying on the bed once more, grinning at him.

  ‘Shut the door, won’t you? There’s an awful draught.’

  He stepped back inside and gently pushed the door closed, keeping one hand on the knob. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He’d bought her a wig. I saw it once when she thought she was being sneaky. Brown, it was, not like her own hair used to be. Didn’t suit her.’

  ‘Why would he buy her a wig?’

  ‘Why, indeed?’ Her eyebrows rose, she shrugged. ‘Fuck-money weren’t good enough? He struck me as the type where nothing was ever good enough. And why such an awful wig?’

  He felt her dangling something in front of him, testing to see if he was quick enough to work it out. He shook his head.

  ‘She’d got beautiful hair. Down to her waist and as gold as your fancy pocket watch, there. Not many folks have hair like that, do they? It’s recognisable.’

  His fingers twitched as he recalled the softness of Catherine’s hair, the beauty of it. ‘Tell me straight what you mean.’

  ‘I was listening at the door, you see, that time he came back after all her hair was gone. I thought they must have had a row for him to have been gone for so long. I was waiting for the shouting, but he was gentle with her. He told her everything was well, that he’d got a plan for them. She said that she wouldn’t do it, that she’d told him, and she wouldn’t tell him again. It was the first time I’d heard her say anything against him and I thought, here it is, here comes the blow, but it didn’t. He told her he’d thought of a better way.’ Ruby studied Osborne. ‘Laudanum.’

  He didn’t understand. His cheeks burned.

  ‘She was nothing but the bait, in the end.’

  ‘Catherine would never … I don’t believe you.’

  Ruby shrugged and drank more gin. ‘Don’t need to. But there were never any more punters up here with her, and she was gone in a week.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  Another shrug. ‘But you don’t have a regular room and rob people, do you? You move around. And someone did start robbing. And how do I know that? Because I was busier than ever. People knew me. I’ve been here for years, you see, they trust me. Miss Catherine did me a favour, really.’

  ‘It could have been anyone.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ruby sighed and smiled at him. ‘It could have been, you’re right. This town is full of pick-pockets and poisoners. You should watch yourself, sir, in these streets.’

  ‘I do.’

  She chuckled. ‘Cat could have gone anywhere, done anything, for all I know she could have married John and had an honest life. I could have misunderstood the whole thing.’ She crawled to the foot of the bed where Osborne stood. ‘But I don’t think you’d be here if that were the case.’

  He stepped away from her.

  She held out her hand. ‘That’s all I have to tell you, sir.’

  ‘You hated her.’

  ‘Not hate. Didn’t have enough cause to hate.’

  ‘Then why have you told me so much?’

  She snatched the note from his hands, held it up to the light, and smiled.

  ‘Everyone has their reasons for everything, don’t they? Everyone has secrets. We never really know the truth until it’s too late.’

  Chapter 24

  September 1854. Wallingham Hall.

  ‘Here now, drink this.
’ Ruth set the cup into Cat’s trembling hands. Cat sipped it and tasted the piercing sweetness of too much sugar. ‘You’re worrying yourself over nothing, my dear, I’m sure.’

  ‘Am I? He didn’t say where he was going. He doesn’t tell me anything at all.’

  ‘It’s just his way. He’s been on his own a long time.’

  The fire was burning in the parlour grate. Outside, though the sun shone, the wind was cold; October was tapping to be let in.

  ‘He doesn’t look at me like he used to.’

  ‘Men change when they become husbands.’

  ‘We have been married only a few months!’

  Ruth sighed and stroked the side of her china cup. ‘It’s that time of year.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She breathed in deep. Don’t upset the ally, she reminded herself, and drank her tea. Ruth filled her cup again and offered the sugar, but Cat declined. She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

  ‘I … I told him he is to be a father.’

  A gasp of breath, then Ruth was before her, congratulating her, kissing her cheeks.

  ‘But he was not pleased, you see. It was like I had told him the worst possible news.’

  Ruth tossed a lump of coal on the fire and wiped her hand on her dark dress; there was no need for pretence and false airs in Cat’s company.

  ‘I fear he is in one of his dark moods, by what you have said. Always at this time of the year, he is worse, but the news of a child! He should be overjoyed.’

  ‘He has used my past against me,’ she whispered, glancing towards the door as if there might be listening ears on the other side of it.

  ‘You have been forgiven, Catherine. By God and by him. He should remember his promises. He knew how you lived …’ Ruth shook her head and couldn’t bring herself to finish.

  ‘He never sees me. He is forever in that damned study! Forgive me.’

  Ruth smiled and squeezed Cat’s hand. ‘I understand your frustration. We must learn to have only half of our husbands and lose the other half to their work.’