by Alex Reeve
Two gentlemen were coming the other way, dressed up for Sunday, coats brushed and shoes shined. I stood aside for them to pass.
‘I have to get my train.’
‘Damn it, Leo!’
I heard her call my name again as I walked away, but she didn’t follow.
The train was blessed blankness, a barrage of sound that blocked out my thoughts.
There was no more chloral at the pharmacy, but still I was wracked by fearful dreams. Mrs Heppelthwaite, as kind a woman as you could hope to meet, was singing high C while I warbled in response, and my father, red-faced, his veins standing out like wormcasts on his forehead, was yelling himself hoarse at me for not even trying. My sister and brother are both in the choir, why can’t I be more like them?
Because I’m not like them, I keep saying. I’m not. Don’t you understand? The rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to me.
My body was an error, as if I’d received the wrong parcel in the post. I had hidden my form, faked its sex, lowered my voice and starved my hips, and in all that time I never considered that it might betray me at the first opportunity, and assert beyond doubt it was female. I never imagined there might be one rule that did apply to me.
In the morning, I left the house.
26
When Madame Moreau opened her door I was shocked at how she looked. She seemed to have aged a decade. Her face was pale and haggard, and her hair had been hacked short, pinned close to her scalp, pulling back the skin on her forehead. She wasn’t wearing a bonnet to cover it up – she was defiant.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, stepping aside for me to enter.
I didn’t want to go in, but I had to. If I didn’t do it now, I feared I never would.
The mess the police had left behind had been tidied up, and the things they’d broken were swept into a pile in the corner. In the back room there were two other people sitting at the table: a squat woman with a square chin and a skinny girl, perhaps fifteen years old, but it was hard to tell. She might’ve been younger. She had almost transparent skin and an absent expression, and was draping herself over her larger companion.
Madame Moreau nodded in their direction. ‘This here’s Berthe, my neighbour, and a customer. Not herself, I mean, she runs the doxie place up the road. And this is Myrtle, one of her girls. Do you want some tea? And a slice of cake? Berthe made it, bless her heart.’ Her neighbour seemed none too thrilled to be sharing it with me, but Madame Moreau didn’t seem to care. ‘No need to worry, Berthe, he’s a lady.’
‘What?’ she said.
‘I know he don’t look it, but underneath them clothes he’s a lady. Truly.’
‘Sweet Jesus on a carthorse.’
‘No need for that language.’
‘Please be more discreet,’ I said sharply.
Madame Moreau touched her shorn hair, brushing it back behind her ear as if it was still as it had been. ‘We’re all friends here.’
Myrtle appeared to be half-asleep, but Berthe was examining me as if I was a specimen in a museum. ‘How do you piss? Do you have a quim?’
‘Stop it, Berthe,’ said Madame Moreau. ‘Leave us alone now, will you?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of staying. You should be ashamed allowing that into your house.’
‘You owe me sixpence,’ said Madame Moreau, indicating Myrtle, but Berthe just muttered something about her tab and left through the back door, the girl following her out like a dinghy caught up in the wake of a ship.
Madame Moreau smiled thinly. ‘My apologies. I’ve known her a long time, but she can be a bit harsh. She just came round for Myrtle.’
‘Why is the girl like that? Did you give her something?’
‘Not me. Berthe gives her girls opium to keep them in line. Docile, you might say.’
‘She’s certainly docile.’
Madame Moreau folded her arms. ‘Myrtle works six days a week, and they use every part of her, you know, every part. It’s all I can do to keep her alive, the way they treat her, and she’s just a little thing, not built for it. One day she won’t come back, and it’ll almost be a blessing. Such a tiny life, wouldn’t you say? But I’m forgetting my manners. Have a slice of cake. Berthe brought it round to celebrate my coming home. I suppose I’ve you to thank for that, have I?’
‘No, it was the police detective who let you go.’
‘Oh. Have they found out who did for poor Maria then?’
‘No. I know some of it, so …’
But she wasn’t listening. She seemed entirely detached, neatly cutting the cake and pottering around with the strainer and kettle. I felt like a child, sitting on the kitchen stool while Bridget prepared afternoon tea for my parents and gossiped with the gardener on his break, using winks and whispers to keep the really good stuff from my juvenile ears. It was years before I realised that her description of our neighbour’s maid as a very friendly girl wasn’t meant as a compliment.
‘I must look a sight,’ said Madame Moreau, and touched her hair again.
‘Not at all.’
I excused myself to visit the privy, and when I returned she had spun her chair around to face the piano and was playing a surprisingly rambunctious tune. I wasn’t familiar with it, but found my fingers drumming along, and my foot tapping, and before long I was lost in the music. One of the keys was faulty and made a thunk every time she pressed it, but she didn’t seem to notice as she never skipped it, and I was certain she heard the tune perfectly in her head. Watching her sway from side to side, her hands rippling up and down the keyboard, I almost forgot why I was there.
I wasn’t hungry in the slightest. In fact, I was feeling sick, and the embers of the fire were making me drowsy. But out of politeness I bit into the cake, and it was delicious, crumbly and rich with butter and strawberry jam, at least the equal of the ones in the tea shop I’d visited with Constance. Ingrid’s, was it? I could scarcely remember being there. It seemed like a hundred years ago. Celine’s?
When she’d finished playing, I clapped and she gave an apologetic little bow. ‘I’m not very good. I only know what I know, a few ditties from over the years. But I’ve been playing more these last couple of days. Roselin hates it.’ She pointed to the finch, which had survived her absence, flapping and hopping in its cage. ‘But it helps me to not think about things.’ Her face took on an odd expression, or perhaps, more accurately, no expression at all. ‘What did you do to yourself, Mr Androgyne? Been in a fight, have you?’
‘Stanhope,’ I corrected her, with little optimism. ‘And it’s just a bruise. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Why not?’ She looked at me suspiciously.
‘Because …’ My voice wouldn’t stay constant. I took a breath. ‘Did you know James Bentinck is dead?’
‘I heard. They say old Hugo Cooper did it, out of his mind. Nancy Gainsford’s taken charge.’ She took a sip of tea and studied me over the rim. ‘Is that why you’re here?’
I shook my head. The words wouldn’t come. I couldn’t say them, even to her, whose job it was to help women. Because I wasn’t a woman. Only physically.
She spoke gently. ‘Why are you here, Mr Androgyne?’
‘I was with Bentinck before he died. At his house.’ I looked down and realised I was twisting my cap in my hands. The stitching was straining and coming apart.
‘Oh. I see.’ She put down her cup. ‘Did he find out what you was? Not one to take no for an answer, was he? I’ve seen it a hundred times. A thousand. Half the servant girls in London have been through here after some young master decided he wanted his sheets turned down. Or it’s the landlord or her uncle or her mother’s latest hankering.’ She took my hand in hers. ‘When did this happen? A few days ago, was it?’
I nodded slowly.
‘Too soon, I’m afraid. What’s done is done. You’ll have to wait if you want to be certain.’
I could only mouth the word: ‘Please.’
She sighed deeply, and beckoned me to follow her. ‘All
right, we can try. No guarantees, though.’
In the front room, the sun was streaming through the net curtains, casting a trapezium of light across the table. I climbed on to it and she guided my head back with her hand. It was disorientating, being so close to her, inhaling the sourness of her patchouli oil and sweat. I tried to keep my eyes fixed on the cracks in the ceiling plaster, but kept noticing the implements hanging on the rack and arrayed on the shelves: wooden spoons, hinged forceps, a collection of hooks and a mechanical contraption whose brutal purpose was all too obvious.
‘It won’t take a minute,’ she said, putting a cushion under my head.
‘Will you give me something for the pain?’
‘A douche don’t hurt, mostly. A bit of a twinge is all it’ll be, honestly.’
‘But you do have something?’
‘If I’m using the hook, I give the ladies a little chloroform or some chloral, yes, to ease their worries. All over before they know it’s happened.’ She turned and frowned at me, while tying her apron strings behind her back. ‘But you ain’t going to need it.’
‘But if I want some chloral? I’ve never done this before.’
‘It ain’t nice stuff. Look what it did to Hugo Cooper.’
‘Just a little?’
She blinked several times. ‘Well, all right then, if you must.’
I was so tired. To sink beneath the black water, even here, would give me peace for a short while. I was sure of it.
She drew the curtains and fiddled with a spoon, eventually pouring a miserly drop into my mouth as if I was two years old. It tasted different; still foul, but with more of a taint of liquorice than the chloral from the pharmacy. I lay back and closed my eyes.
She stood over me as if I was a feast she was about to set upon. I felt her undo my trousers and pull them down, pausing to inspect the rolled cloth I’d re-sewn into them: the weight, the bulge, the fakery. She took down my drawers as well, below my knees. I covered myself with my hands.
‘No need,’ she said. ‘It’ll be over in no time.’
She collected a thin wooden stick, a horseshoe-shaped metal implement and a little hand pump with a tin reservoir of liquid that smelled like lamp oil. She settled down to her work. It should have been a violation, and yet she was so matter-of-fact. And anyway, it was just the parts. Like Maria’s remains being put into the ground, it was just the parts.
I felt a peculiar pressure between my legs and a sudden pain that made me clutch the sides of the table. Then I heard her squeezing the little hand pump, and felt a cool wetness around my thighs. She fetched a cloth and wiped me thoroughly. When she straightened up, the cloth was pink.
‘All done. You can get dressed now.’ She had brought her teacup through and was sipping from it, watching me. ‘You owe me three shillings by the way.’
‘Myrtle was only sixpence.’
‘And I didn’t even get that, did I?’ She shrugged. ‘You can afford it. And think yourself lucky, it would’ve been four with the chloral.’
‘What do you mean?’ I realised I was feeling unstable, foggy, but no more. A dark suspicion grew. ‘What did you give me?’
‘Absinthe. It ain’t nice either, but it’ll settle your nerves and at least you won’t get so attached. Chloral’s all right if you need it, but it ain’t soothing to the soul. Makes you see all sorts of devilish things.’
I had an impulse to leap up and demand what she had promised, or tear the place apart to find it for myself. She was weakened and wouldn’t be able to stop me. But I remembered her raising a hand to that thug, Micky, and the feeling passed.
‘Damn you.’
‘I’m already damned, aren’t I, and so are you. We’re just the little people. We try to get by, but the world was made for them, not us. The good book tells us we’ll inherit it afterwards, but what use will it be after they’ve finished with it, eh? Answer me that.’
She wandered into the back room, and I was left to do up my braces and follow her. I supposed the woman had to be paid, but I was desperate to leave.
She was sitting very still at one end of the table, and I realised again how old she’d become, old and weary, with her glorious black and white hair cut short. And for what? She was guilty of nothing but curing women of the conditions men had forced upon them, and I knew exactly how that felt.
‘How long since you last bled?’ she asked, with a plainness I found startling. I hadn’t discussed the monthly curse with anyone since Jane first gleefully explained it to me while I sat on my bed, hugging my knees, certain she must be lying and terrified she wasn’t.
I found it hard to say the words. ‘Two weeks ago, or thereabouts.’
Madame Moreau pushed a paper bag towards me. ‘Widow Welch’s pills then, just in case. You should take ’em in a few days. No extra charge.’
I gave her three shiny shillings. She put them in the pocket of her apron and poured two more cups of tea without asking.
‘You loved her, didn’t you?’
I nodded, feeling light-headed and hot, as if my skin was too tight on my bones. ‘I don’t know if she loved me back, or even if she had the ability any more, doing what she did.’
‘Well, I can’t say as I know if she loved you, and maybe she didn’t know neither, but as for the question, can they love, well of course they can. Just because a barmaid serves you a glass of ale don’t mean she’s never thirsty herself. We all need love, don’t we? Even girls like Maria. Course, it changes them, what they do. I see ’em when they’re young and fresh with all sorts of ideas, but it don’t last long. A couple of gentlemen with hasty fists or hands around their necks, and there ain’t a lot of sweetness left. But they can still love all right. Often as not they love each other. I thought you of all people would understand that, being a lady underneath.’
‘I’m a man.’
She smiled knowingly. ‘What man would come here and talk about love, eh? No man I know of. These girls are with men all the time and are treated like filth. After that, I daresay you need someone soft to warm the bed on a cold night, someone who knows what your life is all about, who’s doing the same as you. Someone who won’t lay you out for weeping, or for not weeping enough.’
I hadn’t considered it before. I’d only thought about men as my rivals for her affection, but perhaps it wasn’t a man I should have been looking for; not James Bentinck or Jack Flowers or Jacob Kleiner or Augustus bloody Thorpe. Perhaps I should have been looking for a woman.
I remembered Maria touching me there. I wouldn’t let her put her fingers inside, but still it felt nice, what she did, and she seemed to like it too.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I have to go.’
‘All right, but you should watch out. That feeling I get sometimes when something bad’s about to happen, an ache in my bones? I’m getting it now, about you. It ain’t good. You should go home and stay there.’
As I left her, I heard the piano start up again. Cheerful tunes seemed to be all she knew.
27
By the time I reached the brothel on Half Moon Street, the cold wind and a brief hailstorm had made me feel oddly better, as though I was finally waking up after a long fever.
I peeked in through the front window at the parlour where Mrs Brafton normally disposed herself to greet her customers. There were workmen inside. Two of them were dismantling the table, and another was removing the mirror from over the mantelpiece.
I tapped on the window and one of them looked up and called to someone. I retreated down the steps, just in case, but there was no need. It was little Audrey who opened the door. ‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Stanhope. We’re closed, I’m afraid. But I suppose I could accommodate you, as you’re a regular.’ She raised her eyebrows fetchingly, but nothing could have been further from my mind.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Suit yourself.’
I waited to one side while a labourer passed with a paintbrush in his hand and another manoeuvred a metal bedstead around the corner of t
he stairs. I could hear the sound of wood being sawed in the kitchen.
‘What’s going on?’
‘You must’ve heard. Poor Mr Bentinck was murdered in his own house. They say it was Hugo, but I don’t believe it. He worshipped Mr Bentinck. Esther thinks he was attacked by a bear, but that can’t be true, can it?’
‘It seems unlikely.’
‘Poor Mrs Brafton went white as a sheet when she heard, and started screaming the place down. There was a proper carry-on. All the gentlemen were running about with no trousers on. Never seen anything like it. What do you want, anyway?’
‘It’s about Maria.’
Audrey sighed, and a sour look crossed her face. ‘Everything always is, isn’t it?’ She shook herself and forced a smile. ‘Sorry, I know you was fond of her. It’s just, everyone always made such a fuss, even when she was alive.’
I was shocked. I had thought they were friends.
‘Things came easier for her, is that what you mean?’
‘Golden girl, wasn’t she?’ She examined the palms of her hands. ‘It ain’t easy, doing what I do. Too gentle and they complain, too rough and they go home bleeding. Still, I suppose it’s what got me here, into these fine clothes. I must sound ungrateful.’
‘You’ve survived, even if Maria hasn’t.’
I had meant it kindly, but she threw me a piercing glance. ‘I’m only saying what all the girls thought. Maria was a bit high and mighty is the truth, always chattering away to Mr Bentinck and that.’
‘Was she especially close to any of the other girls?’
‘Like I say, she kept herself to herself.’
A fellow carrying a pot of paint in each hand picked his way down the stairs, which were covered in items from the upstairs rooms: towels, jugs and coat-hangers, even an auburn wig. The pictures were hanging crookedly; somehow that was the most distressing thing.