Girl of Shadows

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘And that’s what he did? He beat you?’ Friday asked. But she knew it had been much worse than that. Sarah was a strong girl in both mind and body. She would have endured beatings as stoically as she’d tolerated everything else that had happened to her over the last few years, and then left the memory where it belonged — in the past.

  Her eyes on the table top, Sarah shook her head. She was swallowing and swallowing, as though trying to dislodge something hard and sharp, like a fishbone, from her throat.

  Gently, Friday said, ‘He fucked you, didn’t he?’

  Sarah sat very still, the rapid tapping of her foot beneath the table the only indication that she’d heard. At last, she nodded. ‘In the end, yes.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Just a child. I can’t remember. Eight?’

  ‘And how long did it go on?’

  ‘Until I was fourteen and left Leeds for London.’

  Friday rubbed her hands across her face. She’d heard this story far too many times, but it still made the bile rise up in her throat.

  ‘And you never told your mother?’

  ‘I tried, and she told me not to lie. She said my father would never do anything that wasn’t prescribed by the Bible. And then when she finally caught him, she told me it was my fault. They both did. They told me I was wicked and damned to hell.’ Baring her teeth, Sarah scooped up her glass and hurled it at the wall, where it smashed into a thousand pieces.

  Friday eyed the wet patch on the wallpaper and the shards of glass all over the floorboards. ‘Where do you keep the brush and pan?’

  While she swept, Sarah went on.

  ‘I hated him, Friday, and her.’

  ‘You don’t think she really might have been scared of him?’

  ‘No, I don’t, and I don’t want to hear you say that.’

  Friday shut her mouth.

  ‘And I hated their rotten church and endless praying and his stinking breath and disgusting flabby old body and his filthy prick,’ Sarah spat, ‘but most of all I hated myself.’ She leant forwards, elbows on the table, head in her hands.

  Friday finished cleaning up, took the broken glass outside and dumped it in the cesspit. When she returned, Sarah had poured herself another gin.

  ‘So now you know,’ she said. ‘And I don’t want to say anything more about it, if you don’t mind. And don’t tell Harrie. It’ll only upset her.’

  ‘Fair enough. Can I ask, though, does Adam know?’

  ‘No. He thinks I was a virgin.’

  I bet he doesn’t, Friday thought. With his looks I bet he’s put himself about enough to tell the difference between a maiden and a girl who’s had a few sausage suppers. ‘So will this be regular with you and him, do you think? Are you “walking out”?’

  Sarah went red again. ‘I don’t know about walking out, but I haven’t slept in my own bed since the first time we did it, and that was two weeks ago.’ She licked her finger and rubbed at an invisible mark on her sleeve. ‘Actually, I was going to ask you, I think I might have hurt myself slightly. Every time I pee I feel like it’s on fire.’

  ‘What’s on fire?’

  ‘Down there.’

  ‘Your minge?’

  Sarah nodded, but Friday was already laughing. And relieved; Sarah was embarrassed, but at least that awful look of haunted bitterness had gone from her face and she’d calmed down.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ Sarah complained. ‘It’s bloody sore.’

  ‘I know. It’s from too much rutting. You’ve irritated the bit you pee out of.’ Friday made a circle with her thumb and forefinger. ‘Say this crease here is your pee-hole, and my finger here is him going in and out all night.’

  ‘Not all night.’

  ‘All right, most of the night, then. They rub together and this bit gets irritated, and sometimes you can get an infection as well.’

  ‘Oh, that’ll be nice. What can I do to ease it?’

  ‘Bathe it with warm water and about half an ounce of borax three or four times a day, rub on a bit of laudanum before you pee, and drink a lot to flush everything out. Small beer, obviously, nothing stronger. And lay off the sex for a while. Or at least until it improves.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Couple of days? You don’t have to stop doing everything, though, do you? Just sticking his cock in.’

  ‘You have such a way with words.’

  ‘I know. Er, Sarah, have you been using anything?’

  ‘To avoid falling? Well, my courses are always regular, so for the days in the middle he pulled out, but lately he hasn’t, because you can’t get caught close to when you’re due.’

  Friday gaped at her in astonishment. ‘Who the hell told you that?’

  ‘The girl who lived next door to us. Her mother told her.’

  ‘And how many brothers and sisters did this girl have?’

  Sarah counted on her fingers. ‘Eleven.’

  ‘For God’s sake, you can fall any time, whether the cove pulls out or not.’

  Sarah paled visibly. ‘Oh no! What if I’m …?’

  ‘Christ, Sarah, for a smart girl you can be a proper idiot. But don’t worry.’ Friday patted her arm reassuringly. ‘There’s plenty of things we can do if we have to. But you’re not to let him near you until we’ve been to the chemist. We need to get you sorted.’ She hesitated. ‘Unless you want a baby?’

  ‘No, I do not want a baby,’ Sarah shot back. ‘What a stupid thing to suggest. And you’ve got the cheek to call me an idiot!’

  ‘Would Adam not marry you?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about it. And now that I just have, if he asked me I’d say no.’

  ‘Why?’ Friday said, though she was very relieved to hear Sarah say so.

  ‘Because he’s already married, you fool.’

  ‘Oh. That’s right. I’d forgotten about her.’

  ‘And he’d have to know where she is, to divorce her. So that isn’t going to happen, is it?’

  ‘Would you want it to happen?’ Friday asked.

  ‘No. I like things the way they are.’

  Good, Friday thought. Bloody good.

  Friday paused impatiently on the footway while a horse and cart loaded with barrels and wooden pallets exited from an alleyway, then hurried on down George Street. She wasn’t happy. She should be, but she wasn’t. A dog trotted past, a small one, its mangy head low and its prominent eyes darting in all directions like rolling brown marbles, and she felt like giving it a good kick.

  Sarah had said she liked things the way they were with her and Adam, but Friday didn’t believe her. If Adam could actually marry her, and he asked her, Friday had a bloody good idea Sarah would say yes. It was written all over her face every time she looked at him. And if that happened, that would be the end of the closeness between her and Sarah. And Harrie. Adam would come between them all, whether he meant to or not, so even though Friday thought he was a decent cove, he made her just about septic with jealousy and she hated it.

  But Sarah and Adam getting together meant the end of the three of them anyway. Friday could feel it in her bones. Everything they’d been through, all they’d done to try and keep Rachel safe and then care for her and Charlotte — that bond would surely be fractured now. And it wasn’t really Sarah’s fault because she deserved a bit of happiness, but Friday was angry all the same. It might have been different if Harrie had taken up with James, because James in a way had been with them almost from the beginning, and he’d done what he could to help them in his own stuffy manner, but so far Harrie hadn’t taken up with James, so it didn’t matter.

  She felt as though everything was slipping beyond her grasp. She didn’t know what to do about Bella and her blackmail demands, she was frightened by what might be happening to Harrie’s mind, she hated the thought of losing Sarah to Adam, and every day she worked for Elizabeth Hislop she grew more tired of servicing stupid, piggish men. And she thought she might have a dose of the clap, which meant a visit to tha
t do-gooder, Chandler. It seemed the only release she got these days was when she was drunk or on the end of Leo Dundas’s needles. And she still had a twelve-and-a-half-year prison term to serve in this uncivilised, flyblown, lonely bloody colony at the end of the bloody earth.

  She picked up her skirts and crossed the street, running the last few yards to avoid some arrogant swell trotting past on a big, black horse. She raised her fist at him but was ignored. A second later she spotted Adam, dithering in front of a stall selling cut flowers, quite likely deciding which bunch to buy for Sarah. She bit her lip to stop herself from calling out, Freesias! She likes freesias! But he probably knew that already.

  She watched him for a minute. There was no doubt he was a handsome man with his dark hair and eyes and those good lines to his face. Nice arse and legs, too. If he was her cup of tea she might even make a play for him herself. She didn’t blame Sarah, actually. They really were a good match — a pair of dark little rats sneaking around town robbing things.

  But she was going to do it anyway.

  ‘Hello, Adam,’ she said.

  ‘Friday. Good morning. I’m just buying Sarah some flowers.’

  ‘I can see that. Dahlias are her favourite.’

  ‘Are they? Yes, those are a pretty colour, but I think I prefer the scent of the freesias. Don’t you?’

  Their eyes met for quite a long moment; Friday annoyed herself by looking away first. Adam pointed to the bunch of freesias he wanted and paid the flowerseller.

  Friday decided to come straight out with it. ‘I’ve just been to see Sarah. You and her seem to be getting along very well.’

  ‘Yes, we are,’ Adam replied, setting off back up George Street in the direction from which Friday had just come, the freesias dripping water down his trousers.

  Friday hadn’t intended to go back that way, but she would have to if she wanted to talk to him.

  ‘I’ve known her for quite some time, Adam, and, well, I probably know her a lot better than you do.’

  ‘Go on,’ he said, pinching a slightly bruised petal off a bone-white bloom and discarding it.

  ‘Well, what I’m going to say is for Sarah’s sake as well as yours.’ Adam’s brows went up slightly but he remained silent and kept walking.

  ‘She has quite a murky past, Adam. She ran with a pretty rough crew in London and got used to pleasing herself. And because of that, I know for a fact she isn’t prepared to settle down, and especially not with just one man. Ever, probably.’ Behind her back, Friday crossed her fingers to nullify her lies.

  Adam stopped and turned to face her. ‘Isn’t she?’

  ‘Nope. Sorry. At best you’re wasting your time and at worst you could really regret it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Friday sighed. ‘’Fraid so.’

  ‘Yet she’s willing to share my bed?’

  ‘For now. But, I’m sorry to say, you can’t assume it’s just your bed she’s sharing,’ Friday added, feeling like the biggest shite that ever lived.

  Adam was silent for some time. Then he said, ‘You’re very fond of Sarah, aren’t you?’

  The question startled Friday. She didn’t know what to say, so she resorted to her usual uncouth and bellicose tactic. ‘Yes, I am. And if you tell her what I’ve just told you — even a single word — I’ll know and I’ll bash the daylights out of you, all right?’ Though she wasn’t sure she could. He wasn’t a big man but he was fairly handy-looking.

  Adam nodded thoughtfully. ‘You know, I do understand, Friday.’

  She didn’t know how to respond to this, either. So she turned on her heel and marched away without looking back.

  If she had, she might have seen the flicker of uneasiness cross Adam’s face before he, too, walked off up the street.

  Sarah was not pregnant, though somewhat alarmingly her courses arrived over a week late. By then Friday had taken her to the chemist and advised her on the best sea sponges to buy, and later shown her how to boil them with a pinch of borax powder, then soak them in lemon juice and quinine before use. She’d also recommended Sarah purchase a small stock of dried tansy, plus some oil of kill-bastard — though the chemist would probably refer to it as juniper — to have on hand in case the sponges failed.

  Sarah felt content despite everything that was going on around her — there was now more than enough money for Adam to pay the rent on the shop and house, and for her to contribute to the Charlotte fund again as he was paying her a very fair wage. And so he should — she was doing half the work. She’d told him about Charlotte, and Janie and Rosie. It had come out one night when she’d at last explained why she had systematically stolen from him for so long. She certainly, however, had not said a word about Gabriel Keegan or Bella Jackson’s extortion.

  And having a man in her life was new and, she had to admit, very exciting. Intoxicating, in fact. It was lovely to be with Adam at night as well as during the day. He made her feel safe after she’d spent so much of her life knowing she wasn’t, and having to tolerate the consequences. But Harrie, Friday and Rachel had made her feel safe, too. Friday and Harrie still did.

  But it was a fragile sort of contentment. She didn’t trust it and knew it could be shattered by any number of things: her and Adam getting caught thieving; Bella Jackson’s next strike; Harrie’s precarious state of mind. In the pit of her belly was an endlessly stirring worm of unease reminding her that nothing nice lasted forever — that sometimes it didn’t last very long at all.

  She was putting some things away in the top drawer of the dressing table in Esther’s old bedroom — now hers and Adam’s as it was the largest and nicest in the house — when she noticed the open door of the clothes press. Adam had jammed something into one of the drawers and now it wouldn’t close properly, and therefore neither would the cupboard door, and that sort of thing always irritated her.

  She slid the drawer all the way out, removed socks, gloves and a couple of rumpled cravats she’d never seen Adam wear, and that’s when she found it, right at the back hidden under a hideous emerald-checked woollen scarf Esther must have bought for him: a sheet of paper folded in half.

  Because it was tucked away she knew it was private, but that had never stopped her before. The date on it was two weeks earlier and it had been signed by the secretary of His Excellency the Governor. Her jaw dropped as she read that the marriage application of Adam Eli Nathaniel Green, holder of a conditional pardon, and Sarah Carys Morgan, bonded convict late of the ship Isla, had been approved, and that permission had been given to publish the banns.

  What marriage application?

  Blood pounded in her head and she felt horribly dizzy. She sat on the bed, read the document again and felt her breath catch painfully in her chest as she realised that Adam would have had to forge her signature to lodge a marriage application. He’d just gone ahead and done it, without even asking!

  She was out of the bedroom and halfway down the stairs before she was even aware of it. The shop was closed for the day but Adam was still in the workshop. She stormed in, marched across to the bench and flung the paper at him.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’

  He tried to catch it and missed, but Sarah could see from the distinctly uncomfortable look on his face that he knew what it was.

  He removed his spectacles. ‘You found it, then,’ he said, polishing the lenses on a cloth, not meeting her eye. The paper lay on the floor.

  ‘Yes, I bloody did.’

  ‘Hidden at the back of my drawer.’

  ‘You forged my signature,’ Sarah accused. ‘You scrivening bloody bigamist!’

  ‘Just a minute, Sar —’

  ‘What do you think I am, Adam? A chattel?’ Sarah knew her face was bright red and she didn’t care. ‘It’s not on the papers from the Factory, you know! You don’t get to marry me as of right! You didn’t even bloody well ask!’

  ‘Sarah, let me explain.’ He half stood but gave up and sat again as she loomed over him.

&nb
sp; ‘No! There’s nothing to explain. You’re the same as … all the rest of them! You’re just a selfish little shite!’ She inadvertently spat on him, and didn’t care about that, either. ‘What on earth made you think I’d be happy with this?’ She snatched up the paper and threw it at him a second time. ‘The next Mrs Green while there’s still a first Mrs Green? Fuck off!’

  ‘Sarah, please!’

  ‘No! I’m going back to the Factory. I’ll tell them you’re an unfit master.’ She was very close to tears now, but refused to let Adam see her cry. She marched across the room, the heels of her boots ringing on the floorboards. ‘I’ll tell them you wouldn’t leave me alone! I’ll tell them you’re a lech! I’ve got rights, you know!’ And she went out, slamming the door behind her.

  Adam sat on his stool, staring despondently between his knees at the floor. He sighed, then slowly spun around and plonked his elbows on the bench, his forehead resting on the heels of his palms. Bernard had told him it would be a mistake to forge Sarah’s signature on the marriage application, but he hadn’t been able to think of any other way around it.

  As a bonded convict, she was under the authority of the state, and because of that they were both required to apply to the governor for consent to marry, which was demeaning and humiliating, but those were the rules, unless they were happy to cohabit without a marriage certificate, and he wasn’t. He wanted Sarah as his wife. Providing permission was granted the banns would be read in church on three consecutive Sundays, then he and Sarah could marry. The wedding, however, would have to take place in the registry office, as he couldn’t see Sarah converting to Judaism just to suit him. He wasn’t an overt practitioner of his religion, and had never attended the divine worship he knew was held in the privacy of a number of the seventy-odd Jewish homes in Sydney Town, but neither could he bring himself to completely abandon his own faith. Perhaps he would, though, if that was the only way to marry Sarah.

  He’d lodged the application only three days after Esther had gone, he’d made up his mind that quickly. Bernard had been delighted with the idea, but had been sworn to secrecy until he, Adam, had had a chance to talk to Sarah about it. He’d mulled the matter over and over in his mind, and had almost asked her to be his wife, but his nerve had failed. What if she turned him down? She was so independent. Worse, what if she turned him down and laughed at him? He didn’t think he could bear that. Then Friday had bailed him up in the street with her speech about Sarah’s dark past and what have you and, though he hadn’t entirely believed her, it had unsettled him.