by Jan Needle
The stage and stairs were bustling, the approaches to the bridge a throng of vehicles and foot passengers. Samuel, as he mocked, pulled William away from the waterside, on to the roadsmeet. There were hackneys to be hailed, nags for hire, costers and small children selling food, sweetmeats, and anything.
“The fact is,” Samuel went on, “that you have to make a choice. We have skipped the ship, we have spent good money on the wherryman, and you’ve got duller and more gloomy by the minute. So you haven’t done the deed, that is established. So now the question is — do you want to? And if not, what in hell’s name do you aim to do instead?”
William watched the myriads pouring on and off the bridge. Sam had picked the northern shore to land, and had done so for a reason, beyond a doubt. The questions were just cant, the main decision made already. Unless he argued strongly to the contrary.
“Yes,” he said, “you have the right of it, I am a countryman. But in country matters I hold my hands up, perhaps the maids round Petersfield march to a different drum than yours. The females that I know are too demure, they go to church on Sundays. In any case, our milkmaids pull too hard for comfort, I should say!”
He did not know, he truly did not, what he desired from the night. London, to be quite frank, he found exciting, the dark swirling masses, the cries, the shouts, the animals, the smell. Part of him drew in upon itself, but part reached out to try the wild unknown that was configured all around him. Even the doors of houses on the streets seemed beckoning, most of them open, with dark corridors just behind, as if anyone could go in anywhere, for any reason. He was moving upward, with Samuel, they were moving north and westward from the bridge, without him really knowing where or why.
“The best thing,” Samuel said, “would be to come and look. All right, I hold my hands up, also, I was disgraceful in these matters, I was taught too young and got the taste for it, it has cost me. But for one with scruples such as yours, there are many other pleasures not so gross. There are gaming rooms, there are eating rooms, there are viewing rooms, there are the tableaux. Good heavens, come to think of it, it is an all-round education. There is a woman there, a Mrs Putnam, who will even discourse to you about your morals. And another, Mrs Lewis, who will give you correction if you stray.”
They were closing on a city gate, and they were walking to a purpose. The vile smell of the Fleet was with them intermittently, although some fresher, grassy air blew through the dark, cramped streets.
“Most, I think, I would relish a strong drink,” he said. “I may be scrupulous, but I notice you do not mention liquor in your breakdown of delights. I take it Dr Marigold does run to ale and wine and spirits? I take it it is Dr Marigold’s you have in mind for us?”
“Oh yes, Dr Marigold’s indeed,” Sam replied. “Where else is there so fine in this metropolis, or all the world? Will, I promise you, you will love the place, your worries will all fade away the moment you set eyes on it. I promise you — for virgin or for rake — it is the alpha and the omega, the very top! Look, see up there. Where that white horse has just come out. That is the spot. I promise you — you will not be disappointed, whatever you decide to taste.”
From the outside, Dr Marigold’s was not unusual, or conspicuous. It was in a fairly wide road, for those parts, with an enclosed yard reached through an arch of stone. On either side the front walls rose high, with many windows, all dark or shuttered, and at the end of the front elevation, a lower, older building stretched away around the corner of an alleyway or street. Overall there was the smell of smoking coals, and dung, but nothing very horrible. From the yard, Will could hear horses, and the ringing of a blacksmith’s hammer, despite the hour. Sam, however, ignored the yard and knocked at a low black door. As William waited nervously, he smiled.
“We all must start somewhere,” he said. “You won’t regret it, I — Ah, here we are.”
Inside, the doctor’s house was like a labyrinth. The door opened suddenly, and they were drawn into a dark and smoky corridor by a figure William could not fix. Along the passage there were glims, but it was darker than the orlop of a man-of-war. It was hot and aromatic, a heady mix of coals, tobacco, roasting meat and perfume, and there was a wall of jumbled sound, not loud but solid, of talk and laughter, and rhythmic thumping which could have denoted dancing feet and music, a hint of song. Within seconds both of them had gone from cold to hot, within seconds more to sweating. Sam’s face beamed at Will, and Will, suddenly, was beaming back. This was all new to him, and — well, he felt it would be wonderful.
There were Navy men there — but only officers — and there were men in regimentals, too. The bulk though were in civil dress, not many of them young. William, blinking sweat as Samuel led him to a parlour with a servery, decided that money was their character, the thing that named them for a group. Not country rich — or country trying, as they said in Petersfield — but merchants, men of the world of ships and goods, men of the world of cargo shares and profit, of money that accrued invisibly. They were quite old, in the majority, quite fat, and rather drunk. There appeared in the servery a young woman with a thinnish face, almost severe, and creamy, enormous breasts, unfettered by a handkerchief, even the brown nipples open to his gaze. And William felt his stomach lurch, and his mouth go dry.
They drank ale at first, to regulate their temperatures, then they drank hot spicy wine to “set them going” when they were acclimatised. They sat at tables for a while, eating the hot meat newly off the spit, that more young women scattered liberally from trenchers, and they held a conversation, though only of a sort, because William had become fascinated by the maids who made so free with parts he’d never seen before, so close. Samuel seemed amused by him — his mockery was very mild — and promised better sights to come. The maids, though, were indifferent to his smiles. Within an hour, maybe less, he felt rather drunk.
Sam took him everywhere, to all the rooms, and introduced him to several people. Two lieutenants of the Press, who used the Lamb as rendezvous as did the Biter; so he said, three midshipmen, an officer or two or three or four of the seaborne soldiery, rather low and very, very drunk. There were higher forms of life in evidence, post captains and a lord, but naturally enough Sam Holt did not go near to them. And in all the rooms, except the dark and sombre ones where men sat hard at cards and dedicated drinking, there were maids. Out in the yard, where they’d wandered for a breather, Samuel brought them up.
“Well,” he said. “What say you, William? You’ve got a glow on, you’ve seen the sights but haven’t touched, you’re like a boar held off the swill-pail. On that side yonder, there are the quiet rooms. I aim to spend a little in the dear old way. Will you?”
William did have a glow on. He was almost steaming. Away where Sam had nodded, far side of the courtyard, was a lowish building, but extensive, like living quarters. The windows were mostly dark and shuttered, but some few were open to the air, with lights glimmering inside. A sailor on shore, thought Will. God, this is what the seaman did, that he had once despised. But truth to tell, he was afraid. Drunk though he felt, he could not be sure of reacting in “the dear old way.” His tongue clove drily to his palate.
“Money,” he said. “How much have we spent, Sam? How do we pay? The meat and drink aren’t given free. Is there a reckoning?” “Aye,” Sam laughed. “A slate. Pay by the week, the month, the year for all I know; Marigold don’t care. Look — tonight so far is all on mine, it’s little enough in any case; the meat is free, ditto the salt they douse it in to make you thirsty. But if you want to have a maid, it will not cost you much, depending on what you want to do, and who to do it with. But decide, man, soon. I am getting… hungry.”
Inside the house, Will met Mrs Putnam — “Mistress Margery, to my friends” — and instead of acting like a cavalier, became a poltroon, entirely. Samuel, having introduced him, hung at his side out of loyalty for some while, although his impatience mounted by the second. Margery, a comfy dame of fifty at the least, flapped him away f
rom the table where she sat at last.
“Oh dear,” she said, to William. “You are not a master in this field yet, are you? You do not have to try your luck, you know. There is no hard and fast rule for a whore — though come to that, that’s not a bad one in itself! I do a lovely cup of chocolate, if you prefer.”
She was a mistress in her field, and that was parting gallants from their money, and training up the young when necessary. She could see that she might lose him if she went too strong, so made it clear the chocolate was a joke (he was far too much a man for that, any old fool could work it out!) — unless of course he really fancied… but no, of course he didn’t. She fussed about him like a mother all the while, putting up possibilities as if she were discussing with him whether he should try serge or fustian for his latest coat. And yet the things she said were scandalous, unmentionable, in the normal way of things: the merits and demerits of thin scraggy girls over fat juicy ones, the need for gentlemen to maintain a proper rectitude however wanton the demands put on to them by saucy hussies, the guarantee of complete discretion that made Dr Marigold’s a toast throughout the land.
“Be assured, sir,” she told him, “that nothing said or done within a maiden’s bedroom walls in here — or thighs for that matter! — will ever see the light of day outside. They are the acme of discretion, so they are, the very zenith and the soul. They are respectable! Lord, and now you’re laughing. Well, very good.”
He was laughing, relaxed enough to be almost open with his fears.
“Respectable for whores,” he said, agreeing. “But that’s the problem, is it not? They’re whores, and we have countless warnings against the breed. On my last ship, women came on board in bumboats, and our surgeon held a muster every week, a pr — ” He broke off, embarrassed. Margery was not.
“A prick parade, aye, aye.” She was a shade abrupt, as if he had offended her somehow. He had, or that at least is what she made him think. She said severely, “Our maidens are not whores, sir, not in that way. They are chosen, hand-picked by Dr Marigold himself, perhaps with aid from me or Mrs Lewis, Mistress Pam. If you wish the rough end of the trade you are not in the proper house; sure, Master Samuel would not have brought you here. Our maids go on to great things, some of them; some of them have married out of here, or got protectors of great power. All of them, sir, have mothers, we do insist upon that point. Whores they may be, in a word, but they are not common whores, nor do they spread distemper to men’s parts. Why, we have the tableaux, and Greek dancing, some of our girls have taken parts upon the stage, much admired by the public.”
In the end, coddled but unsure, Will settled for a type of peepshow, where he could look, and ponder (and anything else he wished to do alone, by implication) without the slightest interference or embarrassment. It was an exhibition set up by Dr Marigold for just such a case as him, for “suchlike shy young persons of artistic bent, for the contemplation of the female form and beauty.” Here Mistress Margery nodded very earnestly. The young maiden he could contemplate — in silence, in the dark — was of the very highest loveliness, most extraordinary, she avowed. And a whore? Nay — she was as virginal as the driven snow, as virginal (said roguishly) as the young gentleman himself. Her face was always covered, and her modesty entirely intact. Dr Marigold looked after her, and her parts were not for sale. She was destined, said Mrs Putnam, for infinitely higher things. Before she led him to the peeping point, she gave him a clean napkin, and a glass of port.
It was a room, a small, dark room, and to William’s surprise and slight discomfiture, there were already two men in it, one in a wicker chair that creaked noisily as he moved. It was too dark to see them properly, and they were very quiet, so he allowed the firm clasp of Mrs Putnam, as she led him, to be a comforter. She took him round an angle in the facing wall, so that he could barely see them anyway, and patted a straight-back chair with a good stuffed seat. Beside it was a little table, and before it, in the wall, an eyehole, nearly square, three inches wide or thereabout, two deep. It had a flap on it of polished wood, already open.
“There,” said Mrs Putnam. “You’ll be private here, sir. Do keep quiet, though, no speaking is the rule, most particularly no speaking to the maiden. Remember, sir, this is a privilege you enjoy. This is artistic contemplation.”
After she had gone, Will waited several seconds before he used the peephole. First he accustomed himself to the feeling of the place, its heavy, perfumed smell, overlaid with tobacco, though neither of the men was smoking at the moment, then to the vague movement sounds, the creaking of the basket-chair, the rather stertorous breathing of one of the watchers, who must presumably be fat. He glanced about him, but the lighting was discreet, just one small lantern, or a candle, behind a thick horn shade. If he craned, he could make out the curved back of a man, but that was all; why should he crane, in any way? But he was reassured. To all intents, he would gaze on this fair form alone.
And, oh God, it was fair. William moved his head at last, and applied his eyes, and had no idea at all why he was doing it, or what sort of sight he’d see. He knew now — he’d faced it in himself in talks with Samuel, even — that the female form, the very thought of it, could make him ache, but in no wise was he prepared for the reality. He put his face up close, he looked through the wood-framed hole, and he was struck in the belly, it was a blow of concrete physicality, that which he saw quite simply robbed him of his breath.
She was lying, this young woman, on a bank of pure lawn, or it might in fact have been a silken shroud. She was lying on a white bank, a roundish sofa covered in a field of white, and she was facing him almost directly, which is to say one leg was stretched towards him, with the other crooked out at an angle so that the knee was to his right hand, pointing to the wall, and the inside of her thigh, round, cream-white and elastic, led from the bended knee to the fulcrum where her body cleft. It was not the cleft itself, though, that held his gaze, took his gaze and tortured him, it was the thicket of black hair, a gleaming lustrous triangle in the light of the many candles ranged around her bed, of such a thickness, such soft density, that he knew it was the origin of the world, he gasped at the deepness of desire that it hollowed out in him.
A shroud. The cloth she lay on was spread beneath her, its starkness setting off the browner whiteness of her skin, the devastating blackness of the curled and tangled hair. But above the thighs and softly bulging belly, just above the breasts, her neck and shoulders and her head were all cut off by it, it was draped over the upper part of her, and her arms were hidden in it as if in sleeves. It could have been a shroud, or a prioress’s habit with the front pulled up to reveal her nakedness, then piled softly on her face, the arms laid down beside her, encased. She faced him with her soles, the angles of her spread limbs drew his eyes to the forest and the dark joining of her just below it, and her breasts lay placid on her ribs, the right one pointing directly upward, the left, weight eased by the slight twist of her attitude, pointing to the left, its nipple soft and almost pink. She faced him with a total surrender, masked and oblivious, and William could hardly bear to look, nor could he take his eyes away. She was lovely. Oh God, oh God, dear God. He found her loveliness itself.
He must have sat there twenty minutes, maybe more, unmoving, still — as, fascinatingly, so was the maid. Flames of the candles moved, a breath of air from time to time blew over them, and patterns on her still flesh danced beneath dark lines of twisting smoke, but she lay as if asleep or dead. He knew she was not dead — William had never, ever, in his years on earth before seen anything so full of life — and he found her stasis extraordinary. After his first shock was past, he examined her, inch by inch, inch by loving inch, like a surveyor charting a newfound land. When the spell was broken, by one of the other men, he was shocked anew, quite horrifyingly.
The man approached him — not the breather, and not with heavy tread — while William was utterly absorbed in the soft curving glory of the round dome of the belly, crested by a tiny curl o
f hair around the umbilical dip. He spoke quietly, with his mouth not three inches from Will’s ear, which made him jump so hard he nearly slipped from off his seat. His eyes jerked up and his hand, involuntarily, shut the peephole cover with a woody snap. The man’s voice was thick with drink and scorn.
“You would think she’d move, though, wouldn’t you?” he said. “All that to shake at us, and she just lies there. Christ, I’ve been watching you ten minutes past, like a moonstruck booby. You ain’t seen her face, then? Now that’d be a sight to look at, and a half!”
William was on his feet, crouched forward, shaken. The man’s breath, meaty and rich with wine, washed over him. He was a short, fattish person, in a sober coat and breeches, fairly gone in liquor. He stood facing him, a friend, a confidant, swaying comfortably, uncomfortably close. And smiling.
“She’s beautiful, the maid, eh? Well, from the neck down she is, she is indeed. But you can’t have her, see, because she’s new in from the north! She come in here two days ago or so, and they cover up her physog because she’s sold her teeth! So beautiful, so soft, so lusty — and so fangless! She’s only been a day or two, but there’s a list for kissing two mile long already, when she’s healed!”
William’s untouched glass of port went over as he got away. For the second time this maid had kicked him in the stomach, so it felt.
He was sick with horror, with pity and revulsion. He did not know or care how, but it must be Cecily he had been staring at, ogling, falling half in love with on the craziest of grounds. The room in front of him was empty, the other ogler must have gone unnoticed, and behind him the meaty one was laughing, liquid in his throat.
“Aye, she’ll be a lovely kisser won’t she, if you’ve got a shilling and you like it like the French! No fangs, but tongue and gum aplenty! Hey! Do not forget to button up, young man! You meet some devils in a place like this!”