The fop stifles a snort. I decide to affect bumbling ignorance. ‘I beg your pardon, miss?’ I say in a querying tone.
She falters. ‘Edie?’ she whispers. ‘How funny you sound. Is this a game?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t – I mean …’ I fluster, inclining my body in the half-bow I’ve observed in men of her class.
She leans forward. ‘Come now, Edie,’ she murmurs. ‘What’s afoot?’ Her cheeks are bright, as if intoxicated.
‘Miss?’ I say, and tip my cap. ‘I don’t believe we are acquainted.’
‘Oh!’ she declares, abashed. ‘You are not Edie. I would have sworn …’
Mr Heywood pats his hands together. ‘I wondered how long it would take you!’ he tweets. ‘This is too precious. He took you in as surely as he did me! Isn’t he the spit?’ I glare at the pasty-faced bugger. ‘Not half so pleasant as the original, of course,’ he adds sarcastically.
I must be careful if I’m to squeeze anything out of them. I take a deep breath, fiddle with my cuffs and plaster on a shy expression. ‘I am Edie’s brother.’
I needn’t have worried. They lap it up.
‘My goodness!’ declares Miss Hargreaves. ‘She has mentioned you.’
‘Edie’s famous brother!’ squeals Mr Heywood. ‘I have been in an agony to meet you. Perhaps I should say infamous, hmm?’
The pansy winks at me. Winks!
I shrug. ‘I’m afraid she rather disapproves of me.’
‘How delightful,’ he coos.
‘Guy. Comport yourself. You will scare him away.’
‘Fiddlesticks, Abbie.’ He pouts. ‘Don’t be such a stuffed shirt.’
I resist the urge to heave the puffball down the stairs. It’s possible he gets wind of my desires, for he prances off burbling about drinkies. I gaze at the charming Miss Hargreaves with wide eyes.
‘I say,’ I quaver. ‘I don’t think you could ever be a stuffed shirt, Miss …’
‘Hargreaves,’ she says, withholding her first name. It is early days. I counsel calmness.
‘Gosh,’ I say, adoringly.
She is a rose amongst thorns if there ever was one, blooming in this cesspit and wasting her fragrance on the desert air. I can’t begin to imagine why she coops herself up here. She’s sorely in need of a knight on a white charger and I know the very fellow to fit the bill and more besides. I take her hand and press my lips to her kid-glove knuckles.
‘Miss Hargreaves,’ I purr. ‘Mr Latchford at your service.’
‘I finally meet the dark horse,’ she says. ‘You are rumoured to be something of a troublemaker.’
‘Indeed?’ I say with admirable deference. ‘Folk aren’t always as black as they’re painted. I can’t imagine a lady as charming as you would let herself be swayed by rumour.’
There is a pause as I wait for her to blush and giggle, which she does not.
‘Your sister will be most diverted to hear of this meeting.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ I mutter.
‘I beg your pardon?’
I wonder how to get out of the hole I’ve dug myself when I get a brainwave. ‘I entreat you,’ I plead. ‘Do not tell Edie.’
‘Why ever not?’
I writhe with feigned embarrassment. ‘She is – ashamed of me.’
Her face betrays curiosity. ‘Why do you think that may be so?’
I heave a wounded sigh. ‘I’m sure she’s told some awful tales.’
She nods with sage comprehension. ‘I see very little untoward in your behaviour, Mr Latchford. I have a notion you are not as bad as you’ve been painted.’
‘Dear Edie,’ I say, shaking my head with fraternal tolerance. So, my sister has been blackening my name. But not sufficiently to make Miss Hargreaves run out of the room caterwauling lawks! Murder! ‘You’re a suffragette, aren’t you?’ I continue, knowing the answer full well. I wonder if she’ll deny it. I would.
‘A suffragist,’ she replies, with emphasis.
What, there’s a difference? The words quiver on the tip of my tongue. Some preserving angel lays a finger across my lips and the witticism dies before it is born.
‘Marches, rallies, that sort of thing?’ I say politely.
‘Quite.’
I wrestle my features into respectful fascination. ‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘I’d love to know. Edie doesn’t …’ I tail off and bite my lower lip dramatically. ‘She says that I couldn’t possibly understand, being as how I’m a man and all that.’ I rack my brains for the title of the pamphlet. ‘What Women Want, for example. It sounds absorbing. She won’t let me read it.’
‘She won’t?’ she declares in disbelief.
Maybe I’ve gone too far. I spread my hands helplessly. ‘I am a bit of an oaf. I’m sure you could make it all come to life.’
She proceeds to rabbit on about the movement, which sounds so much like a complaint of the bowels that I am forced to twist a giggle into an interested smile. All this repressing of jolly banter is giving me a glory of a bellyache. For a nice girl she talks a blue streak and it doesn’t become her. I can’t get a word in edgeways. However, Rome wasn’t built in a day. I hem and haw at regular intervals and it is not long before a way in presents itself.
‘I notice you are on your own, Miss Hargreaves. No brother accompanying you this evening?’
She arches her eyebrow. ‘I hardly need to be taken care of, Mr Latchford.’
I laugh, such a tinkling sound you could mistake me for a bell. ‘I’m sure you don’t need a gentleman to assure your safety. Yet I see no suitors doffing their caps and spreading their cloaks beneath your toes.’
‘No, you do not,’ she replies, mouth twitching. I am winning. ‘How droll you are, Mr Latchford.’
I incline my head to acknowledge the compliment. ‘It seems a strange turn of affairs. To my mind, you should be besieged by an army of ardent lovers, each one willing to barter his soul for one glance from those lustrous eyes.’
‘That sounds fearsomely inconvenient. This room is small enough as it is. I doubt an army could squeeze in.’
‘In that case, seeing as I have no rival, I beg a smile.’
She complies, very prettily indeed. I’m about to press my advantage when the ninny returns with a hefty female in tow.
‘A thousand apologies,’ he gushes in a tone suggesting the opposite. ‘Mabel and I simply must tear you dear folk asunder.’ He cocks an eyebrow at Miss Hargreaves. ‘My angel, I pray the parting will not prove too dispiriting? No tears, I prithee. I am quite useless with tears.’
‘Behave yourself, Guy,’ says Miss Hargreaves.
‘Fat chance!’ blares his fat companion. She has a face on her like a well-slapped arse. ‘Good behaviour? Bally waste of time.’
They waddle off, whisking Miss Hargreaves with them. The dandy looks over his shoulder and blows me a kiss. I should like to knock his block off. I console myself with the pleasurable sight of Miss Hargreaves’ backside waggling in a flirtation of up and down and left to right as she goes.
I’ve fallen on my feet and that’s the truth. They say luck comes in threes: I’ve tracked down Edie’s secret rendezvous, Mr Heywood and Miss Hargreaves in one fell swoop. My first plan was to break up a friendship and dance on the broken pieces, but Miss Hargreaves is a perfect peach. Squiring her away from Edie will be more fun than I thought possible.
I feast my eyes upon the delectable swell of her buttocks, bulging beneath her skirt. She could fasten a piece of sacking about her middle for all I care. Clothes are pie-crust covering a pie. It is the tasty filling beneath the pastry that is of interest. Ah, the first slice of the knife into the hot centre, the steam rising from the gash.
Why shouldn’t I be the prince to scale her castle walls? I picture her bedroom: there she stands, leaning on the windowsill like Rapunzel and beckoning me within. Inside, she says. Inside. I wonder what it would be like to lift those petticoats and stroke those thighs; see her face shed its businesslike expression and soften into pl
easure.
These imaginings get me into a right lather. A fool might think I’m smitten with this biddy. The very idea is laughable. In fact, I laugh to prove it. I am laying my snares, that’s all. If I have a man’s thoughts while I’m about it, there’s no blame in that. Right now, what I need is a pie and a pint and I know where to get both.
I pound down the stairs and stalk down Oldham Street towards Piccadilly Gardens. If I’m rattled, it’s because Edie has found such easy friends. I hate their carefree happiness. Not one of them understands the loneliness that springs from imprisonment in a body that is mine by rights but has been usurped from the word go. I ought to be mobbed by folk eager to clap me on the shoulder and call me pal. It’s always bloody Edie who gets first look-in. Bile pools out of my tongue and I spit it on to the flagstones.
I pass a gang of factory lasses tramping home from the late shift in Ancoats, swinging dinner pails off their arms. I hurl a few lewd comments and they give me good measure. You’d think they’d be glad of the attention after the unearthly racket of the machines, but they’re not, the ungrateful sauce-pots. It will not put me off. These are my streets. If these females choose to stray into my path, that’s their lookout.
‘You ugly cows!’ I shout at their retreating backs. ‘I wouldn’t fuck you if you paid me!’
They swagger down the street, honking like geese. I watch until they turn the corner on to Tib Street. Not one of them glances over her shoulder to glare at the chap who put them in their place. I am tired of this sport. I shuffle along, scuffing pebbles. Glowing beneath the street lamps dotted along Thomas Street are women with loud voices and louder hair. In the deep pond of shadow between two gaslights a voice I recognise growls, ‘Business?’
‘Jessie?’
She blinks in a manner that is half hopeful, half fearful. ‘Oh, it’s my little Gnome!’ she declares, brightening. In answer to the question I haven’t asked, she adds, ‘Business isn’t what it was.’ She tips her chin at the squawking gaggle. ‘Just because they’ve got a few years on me, think they know everything.’
‘You look as fine as fivepence.’
I think I may have laid it on a bit thick, but she roars with merriment.
‘That’s brag and you know it.’ She plasters on a flirtatious expression. ‘Nothing that a proper drink wouldn’t put a shine on, my pet.’
I have such a sense of relief at seeing her it quite unsettles me. I shove down the pleasure and let myself be herded to a hole in the wall where I shell out for a half-pint of gin and a string of questionable-looking sausages. Wittering about fresh lodgings and the travails of younger tarts stealing trade from under her nose, she leads me down alleyways that are narrower and grubbier by turn. Her new room is smaller yet has as much rubbish stuffed into it. I could try swinging a cat, but it’d create mayhem.
She pours gin: small for me and gargantuan for her. I toss it back in one gulp and manage not to cough. She plonks herself on the bed, stretches across the slippery quilt and admires herself in the mirror looming overhead. I slouch around the room, picking up gewgaws and laying them down. There is a distinct whiff of mould.
‘This place is full of knick-knacks,’ I say, toying with a china dog caked in dust. ‘How do you put up with them all?’
‘For the love of Mike,’ she trills. ‘Sit down, will you? If you keep picking things up you’ll wear the shine off them.’
‘Everything is filthy. Could do with a polish.’
She pours another gin and glugs it down without asking if I want one. ‘Who d’you think you are, telling me what to do?’
‘You’re slovenly,’ I say without malice.
She throws a cushion at me and misses. It strikes the wall, leaking feathers. I flip the lid of a box set with mother-of-pearl. It tinkles idiotically. I snap it shut and it is silent. I open and close it a few times.
‘Stop fiddling!’ she yells. ‘You’ll drive me to distraction.’ I slam the lid and a splinter falls off, giving it a toothless air. She slaps the sagging mattress. ‘Come now, Gnome. Give us a smile. Make an ugly old tart happy.’
‘You’re not ugly,’ I say, dropping on to the bed. It elicits a smile of surprising girlishness. For a moment she looks half her age, whatever that is. ‘You’re not old, either,’ I add earnestly.
‘Not where it matters,’ she says, squeezing a tit. She sees me looking and rocks back, hooting.
‘Don’t laugh at me.’
‘Aren’t you the life and soul of the party this evening. What’s put my favourite boy so out of sorts?’ she asks.
‘I’m not a boy. I’m a man,’ I growl, shoving my voice down into my boots.
‘No you’re not,’ she chaffs, pinching my cheek. ‘You’re my little Gnome and always will be.’
‘Bloody aren’t.’
She claps her arms around me and squeezes me to her large and low-swung breasts. I am seized with the desire to bite them, hard. I’m still stirred up by Miss Hargreaves.
‘How about a nice chocolate?’ Jessie says, flapping her eyelashes. They are clogged with some black substance, like she’s been face down in a tar-puddle. ‘That’ll cheer you up.’
‘I doubt it,’ I grunt.
She leans across the mattress and starts digging around under the rickety bed. Her rump sticks up, scant inches from my face. I think of the flesh wobbling beneath the skirts. My cock stiffens. I tear my gaze away and concentrate on my hands. They are trembling.
‘What are you doing down there?’ I say gruffly.
‘It’s under here somewhere,’ she mumbles. With much puffing and panting, she straightens up. Her topknot is awry and I realise most of the stuff piled on her head didn’t grow there. ‘See what I’ve got for my special boy,’ she says, shoving the wig back into place.
She prises open the box. More than half its contents are missing.
‘Don’t want chocolate.’
‘You’ve changed your tune. Give me some chocolate, Jessie,’ she whines. ‘I’ll starve if you don’t. Please, please!’
‘Will you ever shut up!’ I roar. I stick my hand into the box, grab a pawful and shove the whole lot into my gob. ‘There,’ I say through the gooey mess. ‘I’ve had some chocolate. Happy now?’
‘You and your cheek,’ she says mildly. She waves a sweet in front of my nose. I swipe it away. ‘Come on, Gnome, it’s your favourite.’
She laughs: that affectionate laugh she keeps for my ears alone. I ought to treasure it. I can’t. I itch to slap the motherly expression off the side of her face. I don’t want it any more – as if I ever did. I want her to treat me like a man. I want her to do it without me having to ask. If I have to ask, that’ll ruin it. She should know. It’s her job.
‘I’m bored of this game, Jessie. I want a different one.’ I clutch her breast and squeeze.
‘Gnome, don’t,’ she says, voice suddenly serious. ‘We talked about this.’
‘So what? That was years ago. Things are different now.’
I swing my leg across hers. I know what I am opening the door to. It’s worth it, to wipe that Mama’s-little-boy look off her face. She gives me an appraising glance, like you would a jar of dried peas at a fair when you have to guess how many.
‘Why do you lads have to grow up?’ she says. ‘There’s no way back.’
‘Who said anything about wanting to go back? Forwards is the only way.’
I grind my knee into the space between her thighs. I should be careful what I wish for. But I don’t have the sense I was born with. That’s been drummed into me from the cradle and I may as well carry it to the grave. I can’t help it. It’s how I am.
‘I thought you were …’ she says softly. Her expression bends, breaks. A brightness snuffs out and only as it does so do I realise I shan’t see it again. ‘Sod it,’ she snaps. ‘It’s all you lot ever want. Let’s be getting on with it.’
She swishes across the quilt, props her chin on my shoulder and blows into my ear.
‘Good enough to eat,�
�� she coos in a voice I haven’t heard before. She walks her fingers up my thigh. ‘One step, two step,’ she sings, and cups my privates. ‘Well! What do we have here?’
‘You know very well what,’ I say, wishing my voice was steady. I sound like a boy whose balls haven’t finished dropping. Mine are aching fit to burst. She starts to unbutton my fly. I slap her hand away. I must do this myself. ‘Stop it, Jessie.’
‘Never had a man say that before,’ she says with marked emphasis on the word ‘man’. ‘My, how you’ve grown,’ she continues, still in that catlike voice.
She unbuttons her blouse, exposing the stretched and gleaming skin of her titties. She spreads her legs wide and winches up her petticoat, inch by inch, smirking at me the whole while. It’s a smile that says she knows everything and I less than nothing. I’ll show her. If she thinks I’m a blushing boy to be taken in hand and helped over the hurdle into manhood she’s got another think coming. I have lead in my pencil, all the way to the tip. I want this. I need this.
‘No time,’ I growl.
I give her a shove and her heels fly into the air. Her skirt rides up, revealing thighs fish-netted with crimson veins. I wrap my fist around my stalk, poke around but can’t find where I’m supposed to put it. One of her hands reaches around, grabs hold and guides me in. She’s scraping hot. I’m on fire.
‘How my lamb is grown into a ram!’ she warbles. ‘Harder!’
She’s sweltering and syrupy and I’m falling in and falling out; in and out, in and out, my balls slapping her arse.
‘Come on!’ she chirps. ‘Show Jessie what you’ve got!’
I wish she’d put a sock in it. I hook her knees over my shoulders, bundle her skirt over her head so I don’t have to look at her face, but can still hear muffled shouts of that’s it, lover! You stir my sugar hot and sweet! It’s enough to put a chap off his stroke. Now, if it was that suffragette with her legs spread and begging me to stick it to her – and there’s my answer. Miss Tasty Hargreaves. It’s her I’m pounding; it’s her moaning my name. That’s the ticket.
The Night Brother Page 26