by Benita Brown
Gerald grabbed her shoulders. ‘Didn’t you hear me? I want you gone from here.’
He began hauling her up. She tried to bend her knees and push upwards but her feet slipped on the greasy surface of the yard and her limbs were not strong enough to support her.
‘Can’t you help yourself? For God’s sake, don’t fall down again!’
His anger shocked her into obedience and she found herself standing at the foot of the steps in the area yard. The street above was still enveloped in fog. The streetlamp did little to disperse the shadows.
‘No!’ She shied backwards when she felt the touch of Gerald’s hands. He was kneeling and fumbling at her skirt.
‘I’m only pulling your clothes down, you stupid slut. Making you respectable. Can’t have you wandering the streets showing everyone what a little whore you are, can we?’
‘No!’ Her voice cracked. Memories started flooding back. She had been semiconscious, dazed with fright and half-suffocated, but she would never forget the shock when he had entered her, never forget the pain.
With the memory, the hurt renewed itself. She felt a stinging soreness between her legs. She looked at Gerald with loathing but he was bending down, picking something up from the ground near by.
‘Here’s your box.’ He thrust it into her hands and then grabbed her arm and began to push her up the stone steps ahead of him. Her abused limbs shrieked in agony and she began to cry. She couldn’t help herself.
‘Stop that! You enjoyed every minute of it. In fact, I’ve done you a favour; I’ve given you something to remember. I guarantee the little shopkeeper won’t be able to match me!’
They had reached street level and Gerald let go of her arm so suddenly that she fell back against the railings, clutching her box with both arms against her body like a shield. She was shivering with distress.
He glared down at her. ‘Don’t pretend you’re injured. Don’t go running to anyone telling them that I’ve hurt you - that I forced you. You asked for everything you got.’
‘No ...’ she groaned, and shook her head despairingly.
Gerald grabbed her chin roughly with one hand and forced her to look at him. ‘Oh yes, you did. My mother will vouch for the fact that you were acting provocatively - leading me on. She saw the way you looked at me. That’s why she had to throw you out of the house. Do you think anyone would believe a little nobody like you rather than a respectable woman like my mother?’
It’s true, Constance thought. No one would believe me if I told them what had really happened. And in any case who could I tell? Not John, dear Lord, not John ...
Gerald caught the momentary flash of fear in her eyes and he went on more reasonably, ‘You know it’s in your own interests to keep quiet, don’t you?’
‘My interests?’
‘Of course. Your bridegroom won’t want shop-soiled goods, will he?’ He laughed at his own feeble joke. ‘No, you’d better keep quiet or you’ll end up with nothing. No wedding and no job. My mother won’t have you back and you’ve no hope of a reference. It would be back to the workhouse - or worse. It could mean the streets for you. I’m sure you know what that means.’
Constance raised her head and met his eyes. She had never felt such hatred in her life; it was all the stronger because she was powerless. Frustration benumbed her. Gerald mistook her stillness for passivity.
‘There, I can see you’re all right, so you’d best be on your way. I’ll walk with you as far as the West Road. Where are you going?’ He reached for her arm. ‘Here ...’ Constance shrank away from him. ‘Oh, very well.’ Gerald shrugged and started walking up the hill.
She pressed herself back against the railings and waited. She held her breath, letting it out in a long, ragged sigh when the mist began to swallow him. Then, she took hold of the string handle of her box and, carrying it with one hand, began to walk slowly in the same direction. She had to go that way; the way downhill led only to the huddled houses of Scotswood and, eventually, the river.
The fog was not constant: it thinned and swirled, sometimes revealing the way ahead and sometimes appearing like an impenetrable grey veil. Each time it cleared a little Constance glimpsed Gerald’s broad-shouldered figure ahead of her and she slowed down.
After a while he stopped and cocked his head on one side as if listening for her footsteps. When Constance stopped too, he laughed and started off again. And so he made a pantomime of their progress until he reached the wide road that swept down at right angles to the city.
Now she could hear other footsteps, voices, the jingle of a harness, then horses’ hoofs on the cobbled road. Gerald raised his arm and she heard him shout, ‘Halloa!’ Coach lights pierced the murky air and a cab loomed out of the mist and drew up beside him.
He turned back to look at her and raised his arm again. For a moment she thought he was gesturing towards her, offering to take her in the cab, and she shook her head and backed away. But his arm moved downwards and something hit the pavement at her feet.
‘Your purse,’ he called. ‘I almost forgot. It fell out of your pocket when ... before ...’
Gerald climbed into the cab. She heard him order, ‘The Haymarket - Alvini’s.’ The coachman cracked his whip and the cab lumbered downhill towards the city centre.
And then, when she was sure that he had gone, Constance began to tremble. At first the movement was barely perceptible but soon her limbs were shaking violently. Sobs racked her body and she tried to stifle them, but she could not stop the tears streaming down her face.
‘Are you all right, hinny?’
Constance stared round wildly at the question. An old woman had appeared beside her. Her body was bent over, her head tilted sideways and upwards as she stared at her. Constance stared back, half wondering if the woman was real or just another part of her nightmare.
‘Can’t you speak? Wha’s the marrer? Are you ill?’
The apparition thrust her wrinkled face closer; droplets of moisture beaded her grimy features, the sour-sweet smell of poverty rose from her clothes. Constance recoiled instinctively. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look fine. You look fair done in.’ The woman peered at her through straggled wisps of hair. She sucked her breath in. ‘What’s happened here? Do you want the pollis?’
‘No, don’t call the police. Nothing has happened. I’m just resting. I’ll be going soon.’
‘I seen him go.’
‘What? Who did you see?’
‘The gen’leman. I seen him get in the cab - but he spoke to you afore he went. What did he give you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. No gentleman has given me anything.’
The mist was thinning now, writhing in smoky ribbons around the shrivelled form of her inquisitor.
‘What’s that then?’ The old woman pointed to the ground near her feet. ‘He threw something. I heard it land ... heavy ... looks like a purse.’
‘My purse ... I dropped it when ... he was returning it.’
‘Divven’t you want it, then?’ The old woman stooped and snatched it up.
‘Yes ... my wages ... It’s all I have. Give it to me.’
‘Wages! You must hev a good position. There’s a half-sovereign here!’ She had opened the purse and tipped the contents on to one filthy palm. Her fingers curled upwards like a claw.
Constance frowned. ‘There can’t be.’
‘I know a half-sovereign when I see one.’ She thrust her hand up towards Constance’s face. There, amongst the small change that was made up from her most recent wages and all the rest she had managed to save from her monthly salary of ten shillings, lay a bright coin that had not been there before.
‘Whatever it was that you say didn’t happen, he must hev enjoyed hisself !’ she cackled. ‘And I divven’t know why you’re looking so miserable - I know many a lass who’d be glad to drop her drawers for half a croon!’
‘You’re disgusting! I didn’t do anything. I don’t want his money!’
‘Divven’t shout, you’ll have the pollis on us!’ The woman glanced over her shoulder, then moved closer and grasped Constance’s arm. ‘Now lissen, you shouldn’t be out on yer own; you don’t know how to look after yourself. Why divven’t you gan yem?’
‘Home!’
The woman was disconcerted. She stepped back. ‘Hev you got some place to gan?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not too far?’ She edged away.
‘No, not too far.’
‘I’ll be off, then.’
It was a moment before Constance realized that the woman had taken not only Gerald’s half-sovereign but the purse as well, and all the rest of the money that it contained.
She began to laugh - thin high laughter that was more like crying. The Bible was right: from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath ... How wise Mrs Sowerby had been to prepare her servants for the vicissitudes of life - especially when it was her own beloved son who had caused them!
‘Who’s that?’
A door had opened a little way along the street and in the rectangle of light Constance saw the stocky figure of a man peering towards her. She forced herself to be silent and, before he could enquire further, she had darted across the road and vanished into the shadows.
Gerald slumped back in the cab as it rattled down Westgate Road to the city centre a bare mile away. The sexual release he had just experienced had been overwhelming, almost agonizing. At its peak there had been very little difference between pain and pleasure. For a while afterwards, all his senses had been intensified, but now that feeling of heightened awareness was beginning to dissipate.
He began to think of the meeting with his friends that lay ahead, and frowned. They would all be at the usual place, Alvini’s, the fashionable restaurant next door to the Palace Theatre in the Haymarket, and he was very late.
He knew what they would say: ‘Wouldn’t they let you out again, Gerald?’ ‘Did Gerald’s mama want to tuck him up in bed, then?’ ‘Did the pater insist he applied himself to his studies before he allowed him out to play?’
Once, when they had been playing cards and drinking for some hours, and Gerald was beginning to worry about his reception when he returned to the house on Rye Hill, he had let slip how difficult his father and mother could be. The others were drunkenly sympathetic at the time but they had never let him forget it. Tonight they would assume that he had had the usual opposition from his parents and they would mock him for it. The banter wasn’t always friendly. Sometimes Gerald imagined that the others, from much wealthier families than his own, were pleased to have an excuse to make fun of him.
But what if they knew the real reason why he was so late? He closed his eyes and tried to recapture the pleasure he had felt when he had had Constance so completely in his power. Could he tell them about this conquest of the little skivvy? No ... Gerald sighed. That would hardly impress them. If his friends’ stories were to be believed, deflowering servant girls was a rite of passage. No, they would hardly admire him for allowing something so banal to delay him.
Still, his spirits began to rally as the cab pulled up outside Alvini’s. Perhaps he could embroider the truth a little - rather than a simple business transaction for which he’d paid her well, too well, he could hint that it had been some sort of assignation ...
And then he had it. By the time he paid the cabby he was grinning. He needn’t mention Constance’s social position, but he could say that he had had a rendezvous with a beautiful girl on the very eve of her wedding. A girl who had made her attraction to him so plain that it was obvious that she was asking for it. What could Gerald have done but oblige her? Consequently, she would be going to her bridegroom tomorrow in a far from virginal state.
That would amuse them. It might even ensure that he wouldn’t have to buy a single drink for himself all evening.
Constance hurried through the terraced streets, thankful that the fog was not so dense now that she was further away from the river. Her body was sticky with sweat and her legs were hurting but she could not allow herself to rest.
The houses at this side of the West Road were not so grand as those of Rye Hill but they were still respectable. She knew the area well; she had walked this way to the park many a time on her afternoons off. With nowhere to go and time to kill, she had enjoyed looking at the houses, the scrubbed front doorsteps whitened with soapstone, the shining brass, the immaculate net curtains, the neat flowerbeds in the tiny gardens. Lazy cats sunning themselves on windowsills, children playing tag or hopscotch until their mothers called them in for tea.
She had often wondered about the lives that were lived behind the neat redbrick façades. The children were nowhere near as privileged as she had once been. They had no wardrobes full of pretty clothes, no nurseries full of more toys than they could ever play with.
But when her happy childhood had ended so abruptly, Constance would have given anything to join in the simple street games, pick up the skipping ropes and the hoops and run in with them to one of those spruce little houses, sit at the table with its simple fare and stay there, safe, cherished and secure.
At this time of night all those children would be fast asleep, save one - she could hear the thin cry of a new baby and a shadow moved across the flimsy curtains in an upper window, but most of the houses were dark and still. Here and there, a passage light glowed dimly behind a frosted fanlight. A church clock began to strike the hour. It was midnight.
She had reached the park. There was no gate, and the gas lantern hanging from the centre of the wrought-iron entrance arch illuminated a path that cut straight through to the other entrance on Moorside Drive. There were other archways with lanterns at spaced intervals and she could see well into the distance. Her way appeared to be clear. And yet, she hesitated.
The kind of people who came here at night would hardly seek the light. Suddenly a muffled argument came from the shadowed pavilion, followed by a stifled scream and a curse. Constance stopped and listened.
‘Gan on, hinny!’
‘She’s nivver said no before!’
Other voices called encouragement and then there was laughter. Constance held her breath. She was reluctant to go through the park but the only other way to reach the Elliots’ house in its exclusive location on the edge of the Town Moor would be to walk round the perimeter. That would take very much longer and it was already past midnight. She had no choice.
Clutching her box to her body with one hand, she picked up her skirts with the other and, keeping to the very centre of the broad pathway, she ran as fast as she could.
As the last chimes of midnight faded Nella turned restlessly in her narrow bed. She had lain awake worrying about Constance out in the streets on her own and grieving for her own future without the only friend she had ever had.
She was cold. She had opened the window about an hour ago when she thought she had heard someone cry out. She leaned out as far as she could and peered down into the mist but could see nothing. The ensuing silence convinced her that she had imagined it and she moved her chilled head and shoulders back into the room.
But by the time she closed the window again, the damp air had seeped into every corner of the attic. Even the bedclothes felt clammy; Nella pulled her shawl around herself more tightly before burrowing down under the threadbare sheets and the rough blankets. Her skinny limbs squirmed around trying to find a more comfortable place on the lumpy horsehair mattress. She couldn’t settle, her body was weary, but her mind was too active to allow her to sleep.
She must be there by now, Nella thought. She’ll be tucked up in a warm bed in John’s friend’s house in Fenham. It wouldn’t have taken Constance long to walk that distance.
During the years they had been working together in the Sowerby household, it had sometimes happened that Constance and Nella had the same afternoon off and Constance would allow her friend to go with her on her long walks about Newcastle. Nella had lived for those moments when sh
e’d had Constance to herself, away from Mrs Mortimer’s beck and call, and they’d been able to forget, for a while, the never-ending drudgery of their lives.
Nella loved the town, the busy streets and the throng of people. She couldn’t understand why the parlourmaid, Isabelle, went on about the countryside and the farm near Allendale where she had been born.
Nella couldn’t imagine walking for miles without seeing another house, and the idea of streams and trees and moorland being beautiful was baffling to her. What on earth would you do with your time off if you lived in the country? There were no cafés, no bandstands, no theatres. She had always been intrigued by the gaudy posters and the playbills posted on billboards and the gable ends of buildings.