Dangerous Women

by Hope Adams

  “They’re not all drunken sots and dirty with it,” a woman called Margaret told me once. “If you catch a gentleman’s fancy,” she said, “why, you could be set up for life in a grand house.” She laughed. “Anyone who’d feed me and clothe me and keep my feet out of the mud in fine shoes could do anything they wanted with me. Anything at all . . .”

  Samuel did do anything he wanted with me. The house he lived in was far from fine, but it was respectable enough and there was food every day and best of all, I didn’t have to deal with my hateful brother. Also I made sure that I was paid in coin for my pains.

  “Why, you little minx,” Samuel said to me the first time I asked him for money. We were together in his bed. “Don’t you realize that I could throw you back into the streets you came from? Don’t I feed you and give you shelter? You have an uncommon impudence to ask payment for something that you might do well to consider part of your duty . . .”

  “But if you throw me out, there’d be no more treats on tap for you,” I told him, as sweetly as you please. “Would there?” That settled it. I’d be paid for my work in his bed.

  Well, women have been paid for such things since money and warm bodies have been in the world, but I learned soon enough that better lies brought better money. The more I praised and flattered Samuel, the more I pretended to be in awe of him and of his money, the more coins I could bury in my purse. So over and over again, I moved in certain ways and cried out loudly, while he was in his paroxysms, and this show I acted out every night gained me more pennies than I could ever have earned if I’d worked in a shop or as a servant.

  I could have gone on like this for years. Twice, when I fell pregnant, he took me in his own carriage to a woman whose name I never learned, who, as he put it to me, “would return me to myself.” The second time was the last, and I was never pregnant again. I think now, because I was so ill for such a long time after my body had rid itself of the small creature growing there, that there must have been something in the potions I’d been given to drink that made me ill forever. Some poison that made me barren and dry inside. I try not to dwell on this, for it’s a sore place in my thoughts.

  When I was well again, I went back to work, as I thought of it. I put up a good show for Samuel, but in time, he wanted more from me.

  “Do this for me, dear Clara,” he whispered, his breath, stinking with the fumes of wine he’d drunk, on my face, in a bed rumpled from what we’d been doing. “Let Mr. Carson have some of your attention. Only Mr. Carson, I promise. If you please him, he’ll pay you handsomely. I’ve made it quite plain that you must be paid. I’m in his debt in several ways and he’s often admired you . . . told me so. Please, dear Clara. I will give you a new dress if you agree . . .”

  That was how it started. I was surprised at how hurt I was when Samuel asked me to do this. I didn’t love him, nor he me, but we’d grown affectionate in some way, I thought, and I was grateful to him for his care of me. I’d thought he valued me, but he didn’t. I was nothing but a doll, after all, to be used for pleasure. Mr. Carson, of the yellowing teeth and the hands that couldn’t keep from hitting me, and the unspeakable things he made me do to his rank body . . . he was only the first. Samuel watched everything I did with other men, and seeing this made him grow hard. He hid behind a silk hanging at the head of the bed, and sometimes he couldn’t contain himself and then he reached his climax with a loud groan and a series of disgusting panting sounds. After Mr. Carson, others appeared as the months went by: Mr. Black, Sir Stephen Flinting, Micah Garder and more. I noted their names and took what they gave me and put it away in my purse. This went on for some years. It wasn’t me, there in my own skin while the sweating (I could hardly call some of them men. I thought of them as a kind of animal you’d never meet in any farmyard, a cross between a bull and a pig with a touch of serpent about them, too. . . .) monsters lying on top of me flapped and gasped and writhed and shouted out and blew blasts of sour horror into my face and spilled quantities of their slimy seed on my sheets, on me, on my skin, in my mouth till I gagged and spat. But I lied and went on lying, because to lie was not just to survive but to thrive.

  When Samuel died, he left his property and possessions to his children, but he’d marked out a sum of money for me. I was described in his will as his housekeeper. Together with my own private earnings, the bequest was enough for me to buy my own small house at 57 Wellington Road, south of the river, near Putney, a house with two white lilac trees growing, one on either side of the small wooden gate. What has become of it now? Would Nora, my maid, be living there? She’d known of my imprisonment, and I saw her crying in court when I was sentenced, but I know nothing more after that. What would she be thinking of my disappearance? Would she ask after me? She wouldn’t dare to do that, I think, for fear of being turned out of the house. I don’t think about her, because there is nothing I can do to help or harm her. I must forget her, as I’ve tried to forget everything.

  Night sailing. The Rajah sets a course through small, white-flecked waves, her prow breaking the water, sending ripples in diagonal lines to each side of her hull. Lantern light from small windows is faint, and the pinpricks of light are swallowed by the surrounding darkness.

  18

  THEN

  Cotton patch: mauve background, scattered with white flowers in an intricate, lace-like pattern

  April 1841

  HATTIE

  “Pigs’ trotters. In a lovely thick jelly,” said Ann. “Oh, Lord, grant us the nourishment that comes from your bounty.” Her dark hair was pulled back from her brow to reveal a plain face. She didn’t often join in the conversation. The others poked at their squares of fabric with needles trailing cotton, and chatted, but today their breakfast porridge was horribly burned, food was much on everyone’s mind, and work slowed as the women, even Ann, spoke of what they were missing. Rajah food was tasteless for the most part and endured rather than enjoyed.

  “Plum pudding,” said Elsie, joining in the litany of delicious things. Her companions knew she was a little slow, but she was a good worker. Her understanding was mostly in her fingers, with little enough finding its way to her brain. “I love that . . . with custard. Yellow, like the sun.”

  The others sighed. “I miss Christmas altogether,” said Ruth. “I could do with Christmas dinner every night. With brandy on the pudding, mind.”

  “And set alight . . . bit of holly stuck on top! Berries and all,” Beth said. “And a coin for the bairns to find—fat chance of finding anything in hardtack and ship’s biscuits.”

  “There’s rum, though,” said Ann. Every ordinary utterance from her surprised her companions. They didn’t trust her, for she was the first to tell Miss Hayter of something another had done of which she disapproved. A telltale, she’d have been called, if she was a child.

  Phyllis said I borrowed her scissors and I didn’t. It was Louisa and I told her so but she didn’t believe me . . .

  Dora took two of my squares for herself, just because she likes blue . . .

  What Susan said about Ruth wasn’t true. Ruth never ate her rations. It was Elsie. She’s the greedy one . . .

  “I’d give my teeth,” said Tabitha, “for sugared almonds.”

  “You’ve done that, madam,” said Phyllis, red with delight at her own wit. “Lost a good few already, I’d say.”

  Tabitha could be seen considering whether to rise to this bait or let it go. She looked around at the other women in the group, but they were giggling and clutching their sides, so she thought better of it. Not worth bothering with them, she decided. Their teeth were nothing to shout about, nothing to be proud of as far as she could see. Crooked and dirty, most of them, just like hers. Probably just as full of holes. Sugared almonds, though. Pale blue and white and pink and mauve . . . She’d happily give another tooth or two to be sucking one now.

  “What about you, Marion?” Dora asked.

  Ma
rion looked up from her work. She was making tiny stitches along the edge of a mostly green square and seemed far away from them in contemplation of it. Miss Hayter had taught her how to lose herself in the colors of the fabrics, to keep tormenting thoughts far from her mind. She blinked. Her skin was pale, almost greenish, and she was trembling a little as she spoke. “I don’t feel very hungry today,” she said at last.

  “You sickening for something?” Joan asked.

  Marion shook her head. “An apple. A russet apple. I could eat a slice from one of those, I think.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Sobbing woke Hattie, who hadn’t even realized she was asleep. The unusual motion of the ship, rocking and pitching on the water, was hard to get used to. At first it was a pastime for her and Bertie, practicing how to move on the decks, bending to keep their balance, but in the end, Hattie tired of it.

  “I wish it would keep still, I do really,” she said to her son, as they made ready for the night. They’d eaten a meager supper of tea, dried meat and some biscuits that were like breakable flat stones, and now it was time to lie down. The movement Hattie had felt through the soles of her feet while she was upright was now spreading through the wooden berth and the thin mattress, rocking her as if, she told herself, I was a baby in a cradle.

  But now someone was shaking her shoulder. I must be asleep was her first thought and her second, Is it Bertie? Hattie sprang up and looked about her. Someone was beside her bunk, babbling so fast that Hattie could hardly take it in.

  “Come, you must come. She’s poorly. She’s really poorly, Hattie. It’s Marion . . . She’s over there.”

  The speaker was Beth. She’d told Hattie she’d been at Newgate, but Hattie hadn’t known her there. She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. From the sewing sessions, Hattie knew that Beth was given to drama and exaggeration and there wasn’t a situation that she didn’t interpret as either a disaster or a miracle. “Hurry,” Beth said now. “You must help her. She’s bleeding really bad.”

  As they moved to one of the furthest corners of the living quarters, Hattie whispered, “Why me, Beth? What d’you think I can do if someone’s bleeding? I’m not a doctor. Why d’you not go and find the surgeon? Or Miss Hayter.”

  “I daren’t, Hattie,” Beth said. She thinks I do dare, Hattie told herself, and she’s right. The thought pleased her. “There she is, Hattie. She won’t die, will she?”

  Hattie knelt down next to Marion, who was biting on a rolled-up piece of cloth and twisting her body from side to side. There wasn’t much light but she could see dark stains of blood on the blanket and mattress.

  “Oh, Lord, Lord, what’s to become of me?” Marion cried out.

  “Shut yer mouth,” said someone lying nearby. “Some folk trying to sleep, much good it’ll do them.”

  “Shut yer own face, bitch,” said Beth. “She’s sick, can’t you see? She’s bleeding. What’re you going to say if she dies?”

  Hattie hushed Beth. “Stop your noise! D’you want Marion to hear that? How’d you think she’d feel if she heard such things?” She leaned closer to Marion. “Is it your monthlies, Marion?” She had no idea what to do. How could she stem the bleeding? No water anywhere. No cloths.

  “What’s happenin’?” A pale, straw-headed woman, who’d been snoring nearby, woke suddenly and sat bolt upright. Hattie recognized Annie Cooper, who was a kindhearted, not very intelligent woman of about thirty.

  Beth, seizing on her new audience, whispered so loudly in her ear that Hattie could easily hear words like “blood,” “agony” and “dying.” Her fury at Beth was even stronger than her fears for Marion. “Shut your damned mouth. Just shut it. You’re helping no one.”

  “But—”

  “Shut it, I said.” It was the voice Hattie used when she was scaring children out of their pretty clothes. She turned to Marion again as Beth subsided in a mess of gulped-back sobs.

  “Is it your monthlies, Marion?” Hattie asked again.

  Marion shook her head. “Not had them last three months,” she said.

  Hattie understood then. She took a corner of her nightgown and stroked Marion’s brow, which was streaming with sweat. “Don’t you know what that means? No monthlies?”

  “Well, I was sick. I thought I was sickening with something or other. Could be sick from anything, couldn’t you?”

  “But, Marion, did you . . . have you . . . have you been with a man?”

  Marion shook her head. “Can’t remember the last time. Maybe in January. I don’t remember rightly. Oh, it hurts so bad.” She clutched Hattie’s hand. “Help me, Hattie.”

  Hattie reckoned the time in her head. January was three months ago. Marion was pregnant, had been pregnant, but the baby would be no size at all, hardly even deserving to be called a baby just yet. She stood up. “I’m going to fetch Miss Hayter and Mr. Donovan. You’re losing a baby, Marion. That’s what’s happening. Annie, see if you can find some water. Or some more cloths to soak up the blood. Beth, if you want to be more use than a straw barrow, hold Marion’s hand and sing to her. Keep her as warm as you can.”

  She left before she could hear Marion’s response. Other women sleeping nearby were waking, disturbed by the commotion. Some people were relieved when their bodies rid them of a child but others were sorely wounded. Hattie had no idea how Marion would be, but if the bleeding didn’t stop, she’d die. Hattie knew this was possible in spite of what she’d told Beth. A picture of Marion’s skinny body slipping over the Rajah’s rail into the endless dark water came into her mind. She pushed it away and climbed to the upper deck.

  Once she was up there, she peered around in the half-light till she saw one of the men on watch. “Sir! Please, sir, help me.”

  “Sir, is it?” said the man, hurrying to where she stood clutching the rail. “Not been called that before. What’s the matter with you, pretty maid?”

  Oh, God, not here. Not now.

  “Nothing’s the matter with me, but you must tell me where Miss Hayter’s cabin is. There’s someone very sick below . . . one of the convicts.”

  “Right you are, then,” said the man. “But while you wake the matron, I’m off to fetch Mr. Donovan. If there’s someone sick, he’s your man.”

  “Good,” Hattie said. “Thank you.”

  “Follow me,” said the sailor. He strode off along the deck, and Hattie almost ran along behind him.

  He jerked a thumb at something that looked like a small hut built on the deck. “She’s in there, the matron. I’ll fetch Mr. Donovan down to the lower deck. Daresay we’ll be there before you.”

  He disappeared and Hattie stepped over a low wooden barrier and found two doors facing one another. Which opened into Miss Hayter’s room? The other might belong to an officer, or perhaps even the captain . . . No, he had his own quarters. Hattie knew that much. No good dithering, she told herself, and knocked firmly on one of the doors. No answer. She knocked again, harder this time. She also called, “Miss Hayter? Please, Miss Hayter, wake up!”

  The door opened quite suddenly, just as Hattie was about to knock for the third time.

  “Hattie!” cried Miss Hayter. “What’s the matter? Is it Bertie? Are you ill?”

  “No, Miss, not Bertie or me. It’s Marion. She’s—she’s bleeding badly. I think she’s losing a baby . . . I’m so sorry to wake you, Miss, really, only I didn’t know what to do.”

  “We must fetch Mr. Donovan,” said Miss Hayter.

  “A sailor’s gone to find him.”

  “Good. That was well done, Hattie. Wait here for one moment. I’ll dress myself and come with you.”

  Miss Hayter looked different in her nightgown. With her hair down and a dainty pink knitted shawl round her shoulders, she seemed quite pretty. Hattie, standing by the door, could see a slice of Miss Hayter’s cabin. A chest of drawers with a basin set into it
, and a jug standing next to the basin. A lantern and matches. A small window. It was a grand thing to be able to look out, even if you saw nothing but sea and more sea. Before she was confined in the Rajah, Hattie had never realized how much she loved windows, how much she missed them. The ones on the lower deck were small and inadequate. She could see an embroidery frame leaning against a chair, with a canvas already in it, ready to be worked. A tapestry bag beside the frame had a few threads of silk poking out of it.

  When Miss Hayter was ready, they hurried back to the convict quarters. Miss Hayter went first, with her lantern. Mr. Donovan was already there, with a lantern of his own.

  “Good evening to you, Miss Hayter,” he said, all good humor as if being woken from his sleep in the middle of the night wasn’t the least bit of trouble to him. He’d been kneeling beside Marion’s bunk and rose to his feet when he saw them approaching. “Or, rather, good morning, for I fear we’re not far off the dawn, dark as it may seem to us.” He chuckled. “That’s what they say, don’t they? That the darkest hour is before dawn.”

  “Is she . . . is the bleeding . . . ?” Miss Hayter’s lips were pressed together and she was frowning but she spoke calmly to Mr. Donovan.

  “I think I’ve managed to staunch the bleeding enough to move her to the hospital. I’ll keep her there till she’s more recovered. I’ll give her something for the pain and to make her sleep. There’s much to be cleared up here. I’ll send a man down to fetch the bedding. The clothes can be washed, of course, but the mattress will have to go.”

  “I’ll come with her,” Miss Hayter said, and turned to Hattie. “She’ll need help to walk.” She knelt next to Mr. Donovan on the filthy floor and together they raised Marion to her feet. “Can you look to the cleaning, Hattie?”

  Hattie would much rather have gone with Miss Hayter and Marion to the hospital than clear up bloodied sheets and tidy a place that she could not imagine being anything other than horrible. Many women were awake now, and coming closer to see what had happened.