All the houses were right on the street with no front gardens, like many of the Victorian terraces back home, but these houses weren’t all the same: there were colourful Creole-style cottages with shuttered windows right next to houses of the Spanish style with dainty wrought-iron balconies on their upper floors, often with a profusion of plants and flowers growing there. Belle had glimpses of pretty little courtyards, there were squares with a central garden, and she saw many exotic-looking flowers and tall palm trees.
Etienne had gone on to explain that until 1897, New Orleans was a terrifying, lawless place, with prostitutes plying their wares or posing nearly naked in doorways all over town. With it being such a busy port, sailors of every nationality poured into town nightly to gamble, drink, find a woman and usually end up in a fight too. The death toll from stabbings and gunshot wounds was high, and countless others were found unconscious in back alleys having been beaten up and robbed. Ordinary, respectable people trying to bring up their children had this going on all around them and they demanded that something must be done about it.
Alderman Sidney Story came up with a plan to take the area of thirty-eight blocks on the far side of the railway track, behind the French Quarter, and make prostitution legal there. This would mean that all the city’s ills were housed in one place, making it easier for it to be policed. Ordinary law-abiding people were happy to vote for a bill that would mean an end to whores and rowdy, drunken sailors around their homes. Gambling and opium dens would be out of sight, and they would no longer have to fear the violence of vice-related crime.
Sidney Story sponsored the bill and got it passed, and so the area was given the name of ‘Storyville’. But most people just called it the District.
Belle had been somewhat amused as Etienne explained how it had been before the bill was passed. It sounded so much like Seven Dials! She told him about that and said that although she’d been surrounded by all kinds of criminal activity and vice, she hadn’t really been aware of it, nor touched by it, not until Millie was murdered.
‘It amuses me that the very people who complain about the vice are mostly the ones who benefit most from it,’ Etienne said with a wry smile. ‘Shops, hotels, saloons, laundries, cab drivers, dressmakers and milliners couldn’t survive without all the visitors the District brings to New Orleans. Even the local council, the hospitals and schools benefit from the taxes that come from it. But everyone likes their dirty income to be hidden.’
Belle got out of her bed to go over to the window and see this place the good people of New Orleans wanted hidden away.
Her room was on the fourth floor, just a small, sparsely furnished room intended for a maid, very different from the opulent rooms the girls had downstairs. The window looked out on to the railway tracks which separated Basin Street from the French Quarter. As she understood it, Basin Street was the first in the District, and the one with the most prestigious sporting houses, the most beautiful girls, the best food, drink and entertainment. The establishments in the streets running behind Basin Street, be it saloons, restaurants or sporting houses, became cheaper and rougher as they got to the end of the District. By the last block and Robertson Street, the bars were hovels and the working girls down there turned tricks for just a few cents. Some couldn’t even afford to rent one of the cheap cribs.
Betty had told her about the cribs. They were a series of tiny rooms with no space for anything more than a bed. Men stood in line outside, and as one came out the next went in. Betty said they could service as many as fifty men a night. But these girls were controlled by pimps, who took most of what they earned and were often beaten if they didn’t earn as much as their pimp wanted. For these girls there were no such luxuries as a bath or indoor lavatory. Their lives were unspeakably hard, and most took refuge in drink or opium. Betty said that the men who used them were the very roughest kind, and the girls had no hope of anything improving for them, and most saw death as a happy release.
To Belle’s disappointment she couldn’t see anything more than the railway tracks opposite, even when she craned her neck out of her small window. For now she would have to be satisfied with what she’d seen fleetingly as she arrived on the previous day – big, solidly built houses, not a single one dilapidated the way they’d been around Seven Dials. She’d been told by Hatty that they mostly had electric lighting in every room, and steam heat.
Even though it was only April, the sun was warm on Belle’s bare arms and face, just like a summer’s day back home. She thought of how grey, cold and windy it was in Seven Dials at this time of year, and she surprised herself by being more glad than sad that she was here.
She wished she could go out now, walk around and see the District for herself. But she had a feeling Martha might not approve of her going without first asking permission.
Opening her door and going out on to the narrow staircase which led to the next floor, she listened for signs of anyone else being up. But there wasn’t a sound aside from gentle snoring which seemed to be coming from Hatty’s room.
She could smell the cigars from the previous night and there was a blue satin garter lying on the red and gold carpet on the landing below her. She wondered which of the girls it belonged to, and why it had been dropped there. A window on the landing had a pretty white lace blind over it, and as the bathroom door was slightly ajar she could see the black and white floor, and part of the claw-footed bath.
It all looked so clean, bright and pretty, and she smiled to herself, thinking back to how she had thought of nothing but escape when she was in Paris. She could leave here right this minute, get dressed, walk down the stairs and out the front door. But she realized she really didn’t want to.
And it wasn’t just because all she had in the world was the two dollars and fifty cents in tips she got last night. She actually liked it here.
‘Better start behaving like the other girls then,’ she murmured to herself, turning to go back into her room and into bed.
A week later, about three in the morning, Belle was alone in the drawing room collecting up glasses and ashtrays, when she heard screaming coming from out in the street.
It had been a quiet night at Martha’s. The last gentleman had left half an hour earlier, and the girls had gone up to bed as there clearly weren’t going to be any more callers. Martha had gone to her room on the first floor, and Cissie was in the kitchen making a cup of tea.
Belle put the tray of glasses down and went over to the window to look out. She could see a small crowd gathered some twenty yards away, further down the street by Tom Anderson’s, for they were standing in a pool of bright light from his place.
Belle had been astounded when she first saw Tom Anderson’s by night for it was lit with so many electric lamps it almost hurt her eyes. Anderson ran everything here – he settled disputes, punished those who needed it, and owned more than his fair share of the town. His dazzling, half-block-long saloon was all ornate carved cherry wood, mirrors and gilt, and was run by twelve bar tenders round the clock.
Basin Street was never completely silent. There might be a lull after five in the morning until nine or ten but the rest of the time music blasted out of dozens of bars, clubs and sporting houses, there were buskers in the streets and on top of that all the carousing and shouting which went hand in hand with a red light district. Sometimes Belle would look out to see gangs of sailors lurching drunkenly down the street towards the Few Clothes Cabaret. The other girls said they’d probably had a drink in most of the bars they’d passed since leaving their ship. They would be making for the cribs in Iberville Street where the whores cost a dollar, but by the time they got there they’d probably be unable to perform and their money would be gone.
Men who came into New Orleans by train were better placed to get to the women before they were too drunk, for the trains stopped right there at the start of the District and the passengers would have seen girls in some of the sporting houses posing seductively in windows for their benefit.
She had seen the big woman with dyed red hair the previous day, for she’d been shouting out in the street. Hatty had said she expected it had something to do with the woman’s pimp, who’d been seen with another woman or something similar. If that was the case and the slightly smaller woman with bleached hair was the one who’d stolen the red-headed woman’s lover and protector, she was in danger of being killed.
They rolled together on the ground, got up and leapt at each other again. The blonde fought like a woman, scratching the other’s face with her nails, but the big red-head fought like a prizefighter, using her fists, and each time one connected with the blonde’s face or body the crowd cheered.
All at once they were locked together, and Belle moved out along the sidewalk to get a better look. A sudden wail of pain and outrage from the blonde made everyone move closer still, and the red-head spat something out of her mouth on to the pavement.
She had bitten three fingers off the other girl’s hand.
Belle was transfixed to the spot in horror. The three bloody fingers were there on the sidewalk about ten yards in front of her.
‘That’ll do!’ a man in the crowd roared out. ‘C’mon, Mary, yer can’t bite lumps off folk.’
‘I’ll bite the ear or the nose off anyone who tries to stop me killing the bitch,’ the red-head screamed out, blood dripping from her mouth.
Four or five men leapt forward and restrained the woman, while others took care of the injured one.
Belle backed off and went indoors, feeling queasy at what she’d seen.
‘What was all that commotion?’ Martha asked, coming down the stairs just as Belle locked the front door.
Belle told her, and retched as she explained.
‘That’ll be Dirty Mary,’ Martha said, and taking Belle’s arm drew her into the drawing room and poured her some brandy. ‘She took an axe to another woman a few years ago, sliced her arm right off below the elbow. She got acquitted too. She’s got the luck of the devil himself.’
‘Why would she do something as bad as that to anyone?’ Belle asked, feeling very shaky and wishing she hadn’t gone outside.
‘She’s got syphilis, that’s why they call her Dirty Mary. It can affect the brain, you see.’
‘But won’t she infect people?’ Belle asked in horror.
‘Oh, she don’t fuck no more,’ Martha said as calmly as if she were discussing what they would have for breakfast. ‘She only does French now.’
‘What’s that?’ Belle asked, though guessing she’d rather not know.
‘She takes it in her mouth.’ Martha wrinkled her nose with distaste. ‘A lot of the girls do that, no danger of getting pregnant and you can’t catch nothin’ either. You’ll have heard the girls speak of the French House further down the road – that’s what they do there.’
Belle winced.
‘Now, don’t you go looking that way,’ Martha said with a smile. ‘It’s quick, don’t make no mess, nor need no bed. There’s a whole lot of advantages to it.’
Belle had heard more than enough about ‘French’, but she did want to know what was going to happen to Mary and the blonde with the missing fingers.
‘Mary will go to court; she probably won’t get no more than a fine though. The other girl will go to hospital.’
‘But without fingers how will the blonde girl manage?’ Belle asked.
Martha smiled and patted Belle on the shoulder. ‘You stop worrying about other people and go to bed. Tomorrow I want to talk to you about your future.’
Chapter Sixteen
‘You just stay there and watch what Betty does,’ Martha said firmly. She indicated the low chair behind the screen and the small hole in the screen’s fabric which Belle could look through from a sitting position. ‘Mind you take it all in! How she checks he’s got no pox, washing him and all. You stay quiet there and learn!’
Belle had been given prior warning that this was how Martha prepared new girls, so it wasn’t a total shock to her. And Betty had been astoundingly open when she spoke of how she viewed her work.
Belle liked the saucy girl from Atlanta. She was funny, warm-hearted and always keen to chat.
‘We all make out we’re having a good time,’ Betty said with a wicked grin. ‘I mean, that’s the job. But I think naughty thoughts when I’m doing it, and guide them to pleasure me, and you know, honey, sometimes it’s real good.’
While Betty was unusual in being eager to discuss such things, Belle could sense that none of the girls actually hated their work or were unhappy about their life. They all laughed a lot, and they took a great interest in everything and everyone around them. All of them had come from poor families, yet while each of them had mentioned that, poverty didn’t appear to be the only reason they’d ended up as whores. Belle felt it was a combination of a craving for adventure, enjoying being lusted after, greed and laziness too, because they knew respectable work was hard.
Belle was grateful that Martha had given her almost two weeks’ reprieve before throwing her to the lions, for in that time the languid, sensual atmosphere in the house had got to her. Over and over she’d found herself daydreaming of how she had felt when Etienne held her and kissed her, she looked at men appraisingly, and wanted them to want her too. She longed to wear a beautiful silk gown like the other girls, to have Cissie help her dress her hair, and to earn more money too.
It might have been that the atmosphere in the house had soothed the traumas of the past, and indeed made her actually look forward to the day she would become what Martha called ‘a courtesan’. Yet it was taking walks around New Orleans that had made her see she had choices. She didn’t have to think of herself as trapped for ever in a place and an occupation she loathed.
At first all she saw was the colour, music and decadence of New Orleans: one huge party that went on round the clock, seven days a week. It was only when she looked a little closer that she saw it was all about making money. Right from the rich men who owned the ritzy gambling saloons where thousands of dollars changed hands nightly, the madams running exclusive sporting houses, down to the cab drivers who charged just a few cents for a ride, and the musicians in every bar or busking right on the street, money was the hub the whole District revolved on.
But unlike London and New York where it was mainly men who ran the show, here women could have starring roles. They came from all over America and beyond. Many were madams of course, but still more had shops or other businesses – they owned hotels, bars and restaurants. Belle had been told that a big proportion of them had arrived in town flat broke, and used prostitution as a way of getting started, but that impressed her all the more because it proved that with drive and determination anyone could make good.
Belle felt she could do it too. She had the cachet of being English to start with, which was a curiosity here. Without being boastful she could see she was also prettier than most other girls, and she had youth on her side too. But above everything else she was intelligent. She hadn’t really been aware of this back home because she had no one much to compare herself with. Here, she saw daily that she was streets ahead of the other girls in the brains department. As Etienne had said, most were dumb, lazy and greedy.
Both Mog and Annie were keen readers, and they had directed Belle towards books and the better-quality newspapers, but she hadn’t realized that was unusual for a girl of her background. She remembered in the house in Paris that the maids had seemed surprised she read the books left in the room. Etienne had been equally surprised to find her reading. Reading had given her knowledge about so much – history, geography, and different kinds of lives to her own.
None of Martha’s girls read, in
fact Belle sensed that they couldn’t, for they would flick through magazines just looking at the pictures. They had very little knowledge or interest in anything beyond the latest fashions and the District gossip. Betty had believed that England was by New York. Anna-Maria thought that Mexico was just beyond the Mississippi. The only thing they all aspired to was love and marriage. They all wanted a husband who would give them a pretty house and children, and though Belle thought that was understandable, she wondered how they thought they were going to achieve it. Surely they knew that few men would want to marry a working whore?
Belle had no ambition to be kept like some little pet. She wanted to be equal to any man. She didn’t know yet how she was going to achieve it, but for now she was going to study men very closely and learn all about them.
It was some ten minutes before Betty came into the room leading her gentleman by the hand. Betty was a short, curvy red-head, with pale, creamy skin and wide blue eyes that held an innocence her ribald conversation belied.
Her apple-green silk dress barely covered her ample breasts, and as she shut the door she pulled down the bodice to expose them, and took the man’s hands and placed them on her. ‘You like them, honey?’ she asked, looking up at him with the sauciest of expressions.
‘Love them,’ he said, his dark eyes feasting on her breasts, his voice thick with lust. ‘I sure can’t wait to see what else you’ve got for me.’
He was no more than twenty-four, slender and dark-haired, with a moustache and suntanned skin. He was not perhaps really handsome, but he had a nice face.
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