by Martina Cole
The big man smiled at her father and Eileen, for some reason she could not fathom, began to feel more frightened.
‘You have a beautiful daughter, Mr Cavanagh. I believe you work for me, don’t you?’
Paddy screwed up his eyes and recognised Mr Dumas, the owner of the blacking factory. Straightening up he tipped his cap to the man.
‘How old is the girl?’
Paddy wasn’t sure how old she was. That was women’s knowledge. Women remembered everything and passed it on to other women. How the Mary Magdalene was he to know something like that?
‘Tell the gentleman your age, Eileen.’
She bit her lip. Her large blue eyes were filling with unshed tears, and Mr Henry Dumas felt a stirring in him.
Patrick cuffed her ear. ‘Answer the man, you eejit. You’ve a tongue in your head long enough to talk the legs off a donkey any other time.’
‘I’m eleven, sir.’
‘Old enough to be working, then. Where do you work, child?’
‘She doesn’t work, sir.’ This was said bitterly. Paddy had wanted them all out working, but Molly had been adamant. Schooling for them all, even if it meant no food on the table.
‘You don’t go to work, a big strapping girl like you?’
Eileen looked down at the shiny ground, afraid to look into the big red face with the large moustaches.
‘I need a strong girl myself, Cavanagh. A strong young girl. I’ll pay you a pound a week for her.’
Patrick’s jaw dropped in shock. ‘A pound a week, sir? What for?’
He looked into Dumas’ face and it was written there, in his eyes and on the fat moist lips, and for a few seconds Paddy felt the bile rise in him.
Seeing the look on Cavanagh’s face, Dumas added: ‘Two pounds a week then.’
Paddy shook his head, not in denial but in wonderment. He looked at Eileen: at her shoeless feet, blue with the cold, at her scrawny legs and lice-ridden hair and suddenly he felt an overpowering sense of futility. Two pounds a week was a lot of money and Mr Dumas was a very wealthy man. He could make sure that Paddy stayed employed, no matter what. As for Eileen, she would be broken soon enough, the boys around about would see to that, and then there would be more mouths to feed. Dumas was offering her warmth and comfort, and she could be the means of helping her family.
Dumas watched the man battling it out with himself. Then opening his leather purse, he took out two sovereigns and laid them in the palm of his hand. The streetlight played over them, the gold glittering in Paddy’s eyes.
‘I’ll take her with me now then.’
‘As you like, sir.’
‘What about the coal, Da? I have to take the coal home to me ma. She’s waiting on it, the baby’s coming...’
‘Now shut your mouth, our Eileen, and go with Mr Dumas. You’re to do whatever he tells you, do you hear me? Anything he tells you at all.’
‘Yes, Da.’
The big man took her hand and pulled her away from her father. Paddy watched her go, his heart wretched. He squeezed his hand over the two sovereigns and felt a tear force its way from his eye. He tried to justify his actions all the way home. But even drunk and befuddled, he couldn’t quite convince himself.
Eileen sat in the cab and listened to the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves as it trotted through a residential area. She gaped at the big town houses in wonderment, her fear of the man gone a little now since he had wrapped her in his cloak. It smelt lovely.
Dumas studied her profile as she watched the houses. She was going to be stunning in a few years, but until then he would have her. He liked them young, very young.
Five minutes later they stopped at a small detached house. Eileen noticed the garden especially. Even in the cold it smelt of lavender. Mr Dumas lifted her from the coach and carried her up the pathway. The door was opened by a girl in her late-teens who ushered them inside. Eileen was placed on the floor in the hallway. It had carpet and she dug her toes into the unfamiliar softness.
‘Get Mrs Horlock, would you, Cissy?’
‘Yes, sir.’ She gave a little bob and walked through a green baize door to the side of her.
‘You’re going to have a nice hot bath soon. Then we can have something to eat.’
Eileen didn’t answer. This man was talking to her as if they had been friends for years. There was something not right here. But the thought of food cheered her.
Then someone came bursting through the green baize door. Eileen jumped with shock. Rushing towards her was a small silver-haired woman. Her teeth had long gone and her mouth seemed to have caved in around the gums. Her face was a mass of wrinkles that all seemed to criss-cross one another. Thick white hair was scraped back off her face into a tight white cap. Bright hazel eyes surveyed Eileen from head to foot.
‘Cissy, take the cloak and leave it in the outhouse until we can disinfect it, then come down to the scullery and help me scrub this one.’ She jerked her head at Eileen as she spoke and then pulled the cloak from her. Cissy grabbed at it and disappeared once more through the door.
Mrs Horlock sucked her gums and then felt Eileen’s limbs, finally grabbing at her tiny breasts.
‘Sturdy, Mr Dumas, sir. Not a bad choice, if I might say so. Got good teeth. A few good meals and she’ll put some flesh on her bones.’
‘My sentiments entirely, Mrs Horlock. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll be in the morning room enjoying a brandy. Send Cissy along with her when she’s ready.’
He smiled at Eileen as he spoke and she felt terror grip her heart.
Paddy Cavanagh stood in the centre of the foetid basement room and stared around him. Rosalee awakened and began to cry. Briony immediately began to rock her gently, soothing her back to sleep. Molly stared dull-eyed from the bed, Bernadette and Kerry dozing beside her.
‘The child’s well on then, Moll?’
She nodded, then frowned as she saw him making up the fire. ‘Where’s our Eileen, Pat? I sent her out to get the coal a couple of hours since.’
He stared into the fire. Briony’s eyes seemed to be boring into his.
‘I met her on me way home. I’d got her a job and she went there tonight.’
Molly sat up in the bed.
‘You what?’ Her voice was low.
Paddy turned to face his wife, working himself up into a temper.
‘You heard me, woman! I got her a job. Jesus himself knows we need the bloody money! She’ll be well looked after, she’ll get decent clothes and food ...’
‘Where’s this job, Pat? Come on, tell me, where is this job?’
He could hear the doubt in his wife’s voice and felt a wave of anger. She did not trust him at all. Not with anything to do with the girls.
‘It’s working for Mr Dumas, the man who owns the blacking factory. She’ll be working in the house, Moll.’
‘Go and get her this minute, Paddy Cavanagh. I don’t want her working sixteen hours a day, running round like a blue-arsed fly for a few pennies a week.’
Paddy stormed to the bed and slapped his wife across the face. ‘I’ve said what she’s going to do, and now it’s done. I want to hear no more about it.’
Kerry and Bernadette both inhaled loudly at the slap their father gave to their mother. Kerry’s mouth was open in a large ‘O’ and Paddy raised his hand to her before the shriek came out.
She snapped her mouth shut immediately.
‘I’ll scalp the bloody face of the first one to whinge in this house tonight. I mean it.’
As he turned to the fireplace, the two sovereigns slipped from his hand and landed with a gentle chink on the dirt floor.
Molly pulled herself up on the bed and stared at them in amazement. Then, as her eyes flew up to meet her husband’s, realisation dawned.
‘You filthy bastard, you sold her to him, didn’t you? You sold my lovely Eileen to that man ...’ She put her hands to her head and began to cry, a low deep moaning that wrenched Paddy Cavanagh’s heart from his body.
He tried to take her in his arms.
‘Molly, Moll ... Listen to me, she’ll be living like a queen up there. Look, we’ll get two pounds every week ...’
Molly pushed him from her in disgust. ‘So it’s come to this? You’d pimp out your own child, you dirty blackguard!
‘We had to eat, woman, can’t you see that?’
‘Why couldn’t we eat with your wages then? Because they all went in The Bull, didn’t they? Didn’t they? By Christ, I hope the priest’s waiting when you go to Confession. I hope he chokes the bloody life out of you. As soon as this child’s born I’m going to get Eileen, and if she’s busted, Paddy Cavanagh, I’ll have the Salvation Army after you, I swear it. I’ll scream what you’ve done from the bloody rooftops!’
Molly looked like a mad woman. Her hair was tangled and in disarray, her huge swollen breasts heaving with the effort of making herself heard. Suddenly she saw her life with stunning clarity. She saw the dirt floor, strewn with debris. Saw the only chair in the room with its broken back, the small amount of tea wrapped up carefully on the mantelpiece to keep the rats and roaches from it. The smell of the sewers was in her nose continually. They ran alongside the basement, and when it rained human excrement was forced through the iron grid in the wall. It was as if something burst inside her head.
‘You brought me this low, Paddy Cavanagh, and I allowed it. I tried to stand by you, with your drinking and your whoring. Never a full meal for any of the children. But this last act has finished you with me. My lovely Eileen sold to an old man! You sicken me. Sicken me to my stomach.’
Paddy picked up one of the sovereigns and walked from the room. As he opened the door a gust of icy wind blew in.
Eileen was lying in a big copper bath and Mrs Horlock was combing the lice from her hair. The smell of paraffin, sickly sweet, hung over them.
‘You’ve got lovely hair, child. Nice and thick. Once you get some meat inside you, it’ll shine. Like a raven’s wing, it is.’
She smiled a toothless smile and Eileen smiled tremulously back.
Mrs Horlock stood up. ‘You lie there now and Cissy will bring you in some more water to rinse yourself off. The scum in the bath is as thick as me four fingers.’
She walked from the room and went to the kitchen where she prepared a meal for the girl. She shook her head. Poor little mite. Still, Mr Dumas was a rich man, and in fairness not really a nasty one. Providing the girl did as she was told, everything would be fine, and she didn’t look like a fighter. Not like the last one. A red-headed bitch with a tongue that could cut glass, and a scream to match. It had taken a few good hidings from her father and a stern talking to from her mother to bring that one round, and by then Mr Dumas was fed up. The mother had finally taken her to Nellie Deakins and if she, Maria Horlock, knew anything about it, the little madam would soon wish she was back here. At least Mr Dumas would only bother her once a day. At Nellie Deakins’ she was guaranteed six or seven fellows, and not all as clean and kind as Mr Dumas. Once Nellie had got the big money for the actual breaking in, the girl was worthless to her. Unless she was very young, when Nellie would use the piece of linen and the chicken blood trick a few times.
Mrs Horlock shook her head at the skulduggery of Nellie Deakins. Well, at least that little red-headed bitch would get her comeuppance there. This one though, this Eileen, seemed an amenable little thing. When she had scrubbed the child’s body she had checked for tell-tale hairs around her privates but there was nothing, not even any raised follicles, so she wouldn’t get anything in that department for a while yet. And a few leading questions had ascertained she hadn’t started her periods just yet. Oh, Mr Dumas was going to get his money’s worth with this one. The tiny budding breasts were like little plump cherries. Hard little nodules, just the way he liked them. She’d fill out though, this one, be all breasts and hips in a few years. But by that time she should have learnt enough to keep her in good stead for the rest of her life. Plus Mr Dumas always gave the girls a decent leaving present. One young lass had walked out of here with fifty pounds in her pocket!
Eileen allowed Cissy to pour the water over her body, ridding it of the residue from the bath water. Then Cissy wrapped her in a large white towel and dried off her hair. Pulling a comb through it gently, she began chattering to Eileen.
‘Mr Dumas will insist you bathe every day. Me, I only have to once a week. You’ll have the run of the house, but you can’t go out without Mrs Horlock or one of the stable boys with you. That’s not ’cos you’re a prisoner or nothing, it’s in case you get robbed of your togs.’
‘What work will I be doing, Cissy?’
She bit her lip before answering. This one was greener than the grass in Barking Park.
‘Don’t you know, ducks?’
Eileen stared into the troubled brown eyes before her and opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
‘You’re living here now, Miss Eileen, with Mr Dumas.’
Cissy threw in the ‘Miss Eileen’ bit because they usually liked that. It made them more amenable to their situation.
‘You mean, I’m living with Mr Dumas. What as? A kind of daughter?’ Eileen had heard of rich people buying children, but they were usually babies.
Cissy frowned. This one was definitely green. ‘Look, supposing you was to get married, right?’
Eileen nodded, unsure where this conversation was taking her.
‘Well, you’d have to sleep with your husband, wouldn’t you?’
Eileen nodded again. This time a feeling of panic was welling up inside her ribcage.
‘Well then, just pretend Mr Dumas is your husband, see. It’s simple really, and you’ll get used to it. They always do.’
Eileen began to shake her head.
‘No ... you’re telling me lies. My father wouldn’t do that to me.’
Cissy was losing patience now.
‘Listen, miss, if Mrs Horlock gets wind of what I’ve told you she’ll slap the pair of us from here to Timbuktu. Take my advice. Just keep your head down, open your legs and think of England. The last one we had who caused trouble was carted off to Nellie Deakins’ brothel, and believe me, you don’t want to end up there! The master’s paid for you fair and square, your dad’s already got the money and it’ll come in regular every week. If you’ve any brothers and sisters, then they’ll eat well. Look on it from that point of view and just remember what Cissy told you. Smile at the master and you’ll have everything you want. Cause trouble and you’ll regret it to the end of your days.’
Eileen allowed Cissy to dress her in a nightdress of white lawn and followed her meekly up the stairs and through the green baize door into the morning room. Mr Dumas stood up as she entered and smiled at her.
‘Come over here to the fire, my dear. That will be all, Cissy. Tell Mrs Horlock to bring up the food.’
Cissy bobbed a curtsy and, winking at Eileen, left the room.
Mr Dumas took Eileen’s hand and led her over to a large chair by the fire. She sat in it gingerly. The unaccustomed softness of the nightdress made her frightened in case she tore it. Mr Dumas took a small foot into his hand and knelt in front of her, kneading its coldness. Eileen watched him fearfully.
‘Your poor little feet are frozen, my dear. First thing in the morning Mrs Horlock is going to rig you out from head to toe. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
Eileen stared at the big man kneeling in front of her. His hands were now on her shins and she suppressed an urge to scream. Cissy’s threats of Nellie Deakins had had their desired effect, though. Everyone knew about Nellie Deakins’ house. Eileen wasn’t sure until tonight what actually went on in there, but she knew that once girls passed through the doors they were never seen again.
The man’s hands were now lifting up the nightdress and caressing her thighs. She had no drawers on and tried to squeeze her skinny legs together, but the man was parting them, gently but firmly, with his fingers. Eileen closed her eyes as his moustache began tickling her legs, it
s wetness roaming up her shins and along her thighs. He was lifting her off the chair now and on to the rug by the fire. She closed her eyes tightly as he began to undo the little bows on the front of the nightdress. As his cold hand enveloped one of her breasts she bit down on her lip, drawing blood.
Mrs Horlock walked into the room with a tray. Taking in the scene before her, she hastily left again, leaving the tray on the table in the hall. She smiled to herself. This one was more amenable than the last, praise God.
She was humming as she passed through the green baize door into the kitchen.
Eileen lay in a dream. Every bone in her body was aching, a fire raging between her legs. As the man pulled away from her she expelled her breath in a long sigh. She closed her eyes as he lay beside her and caressed her open body. She felt numbness invade her mind.
‘There, there, my beauty, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Now you’re busted, it’ll be easier for you in the future. I’m starving. Shall I get us something to eat?’
Eileen kept her eyes closed until he called in Mrs Horlock. The housekeeper said it had been a long day for the child and she needed her rest after all the excitement. Eileen walked from the room with the woman, feeling semen and blood running down her legs. She was tucked up into a nice soft bed, a compress of rags dipped in icewater between her legs.
Mrs Horlock spoke to her softly and kissed her sweating forehead.
Eileen didn’t sleep for three days. She never said a whole sentence to anyone for six months.
Her reign with Mr Dumas lasted one year.
Chapter Two
‘Briony!’ Molly’s voice was harsh.
Briony, who had been sitting on the steps outside the door rushed into the room.
‘What’s wrong, Ma?’
‘Go and fetch the money from Mr Dumas.’ This was said through clenched teeth. Briony nodded and pulled on her boots. Molly watched her as she rushed from the room, a coldness settling on her heart. She would have to watch Briony.
She put the kettle on for a cup of tea and sighed. It was a year since Eileen had gone and the room looked a different place altogether. It now had two proper beds, with good feather mattresses. Two brightly coloured mats on the floor, and a table and chairs somehow squeezed in. The fire was always alight, there was plenty of food in the house - and all of it stuck in Molly’s throat like gall. She had saved enough to move them to a small house in Oxlow Lane, which would be a step up after this place, and still she wasn’t happy about it.