Lawless and the Flowers of Sin

by William Sutton

  “Where is it?” Bede looked puzzled. “Felix himself had writ a bit about his old life, then he added the extra bits, which the Pixie wrote down. I do like a love story.”

  The fire was still smouldering. I knelt at the grate with an involuntary shudder as the last flames shot up the flue. Sure enough, a remnant of foolscap glowed in the embers. I pulled at the edges and drew out a scrap, written in the Pixie’s hand:

  I must mention two stretches of particular turmoil.

  They had burnt it all, all but these cinders. The few words that remained I could imagine in Felix’s clipped accent, more English than the English. The outer envelope had not taken. On it I read the legend, in Felix’s flowing holograph: Memoirs of Music and Rapture. Inside, nothing. All Bede’s efforts, and the Pixie’s final labours, these idiots had destroyed.

  Simpson sat back heavily by the bedside; there was no more he could do.

  I stumbled to Bede and clasped his poor, withered shoulders. Molly laid one hand on Bede’s forehead, the other upon my shoulder. Together, we gazed over at Felix and Effie, laid side by side like a mediaeval knight and his lady, staring up into eternity, with nothing remaining of their outrageous lives except this moment and the memory of love.

  Bede shrugged. “No matter,” he said. The poor boy was beyond fear. He turned his bright eyes upon me, eyes that had seen too much for any young man. “I can remember it mostly.”

  “Like our chess game?”

  “That’s not fair, Watchman. When it’s important, I remember it.”

  “Go ahead,” I stammered. Could he possibly mean it?

  He told me sternly to sit myself down with a pencil, and he would recite. “I won’t just do the gist. You’d rather every word, wouldn’t you? I’ll start with his bit he’d writ beforehand, then what we wormed out of him fresh.”

  “Don’t tell me you have it by heart?”

  “I used to think everyone remembered like that. It was the Pixie told me I was odd.” Bede said he could remember an epic poem, when he paid attention. “Mr Groggins had me listen to the odd confessional session, so as I could fill in blanks in his shorthand. I should prefer if you’d write this down, though, as you know I’m unable.”

  I shook my head in wonder and stroked the hair from his face. “You wee genius.”

  “Lucky, ain’t it?” He smiled. “I just seem to remember these things.”

  PART VII

  ON A BED SO WILD

  EFFIE, 1848–1864

  Causes to account for lax morality of female operatives:

  Low wages inadequate to sustenance.

  Natural levity and the example around them.

  Love of dress and display, coupled with the desire for a sweetheart.

  Sedentary employment, and want of proper exercise.

  Low and cheap literature of an immoral tendency.

  Absence of parental care and the inculcation of proper precepts. In short, bad bringing up.

  Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

  A POOR LIFETIME (EVELINE’S CONFESSIONS)

  I was the twelfth, and named Effie, or mayhap the fourteenth; depends which of my sisters you believe or how many that died do you count. My mother was sick of childbearing and my father sick of children, so as there wasn’t much care taken of the little ones, except by the others. And if chores were undone, or food scarce, which it often was, the little ones got it bad. My first memory is cowering under the stair, in terror, not that Father would beat me, but that Susan would beat my brother, William, for passing me buttered bread under the table, like a dog.

  The smallest did the housework, my mother being exhausted of life. The elder ones went out to work at the farms where Father did odd jobs. Though what the girls did, I could never get out of them. Cooking or cleaning or making beds, I imagined, for I learned these as soon as I could walk; but Sookie hinted at other things young women might work at. I was fascinated for her to tell me. Every time she came home, I would harangue her to tell us how she had earned those gleaming pennies off the squire, until she got the habit of slapping me, and I desisted.

  Not to say my upbringing was harsh; more that it was careless. Father had work; Mother was ill and oft abed. So we had to care for each other, looking out for ways to survive. Once Sookie had been noticed down the Coach House, she started bringing home gifts and luxuries: dried fruit, cocoa and, once, a book. We became known. A different sort of gentlemen took to visiting. Sookie upped and vanished. Then Sarah. Wouldn’t be so strange, except that they were never, ever spoken of. Not until a big man came, from down south, with news of the girls and how they were thriving. You may imagine, the whole family was up to high doh about his dropping in, except for Father, who knew nothing about it, or cared nothing, perhaps.

  There was a gent, so we were told, coming to view us. My mother kept to her room. My father was at work; he was always at work these times. As Susan was presenting, I was to bring in the tea.

  Straightaway, the grand London fellow caught my eye. He was a Mr Broody, or Moody, or perhaps Bridie; I was never sure. Anywise, he took a fancy to me. His coat was different to any I’d ever seen—not the fur or the material; I know now it was the cut of it, modern and tailored.

  Of course, it was me he bought. I didn’t know at the time I’d been bought; only now I look back at it and remember Susan squirrelling the money away, and my mother, agreeing I must go, full of shame.

  The others were dismissed, grumbling. I had to stand there in my milkmaid’s pinny and pirouette for him while Susan answered his questions. Could I read? Write? Sew? Cook? All tolerably, but I was quick to learn, if he should like to return in a sixmonth. He said he would return on the morrow, with a bag of gold.

  That night, I endured such a scrubbing as I never had before. All was hushed tones, and instructing me in flirtation, so as to raise the price. Father couldn’t be told what was to become of me, because he was right upset whenever Susan sold one of us. How could I have told? I hadn’t the faintest. He couldn’t stop her doing it, you see, because he didn’t send enough to feed us, so Susan would lambast him for his weakness and dole him out a few pennies, keeping the lion’s share for us and herself.

  Next day, sure as eggs is eggs, the man came again, on his return from Whitby. Susan asked should he like to be alone with me.

  He laughed. To test the goods? No, thank you very much. I would be kept fresh for others’ eyes—and hands. Effie, he said, and my name sounded exotic in his accent. That’ll have to change; what do you make of Eveline?

  I liked it tolerably enough.

  Henceforth, you are Eveline—at least, until we find you a station in life. Can you learn? Can you make believe? Can you please?

  I can, sir, I replied. I was always eager to please; it was the way to avoid a beating in my family.

  And so I flew the nest.

  It seemed to me a tremendous lark. Third-class compartment with his valet, while our Mr Broody travelled in first. I knew not where I was going. The city, with its vast, unwieldy fogs. Every inch of the way, my head filling with excitement and conceit, for which I’m justly punished now. I would learn, I would read and write and draw; I would acquire the accomplishments of a lady. I was pretty, after all, everyone said, and I had been chosen above my sisters for—I knew not what.

  So much did they teach us. If you think I speak strange now, you should’ve heard me back then, when I were a child and spake pure Yorkshire, and should have been laughed straight back up Ermine Street. Now I’ve got my education, learnt off old Grogbags, of how the quality speak and how I ought to speak; but I am ever so tired of it. And this story I’m telling, I wouldn’t have had words to tell then, so that I am grateful for all they gave me. I’m a Frankenstein’s monster, my voice created by studying from books and listening in doorways. Yes, this is a voice quite changed from the one you would have heard then.

  I never think of my family now. I suppose as Susan did something with the money. And Father will have missed m
e, if nobody else.

  A DEMON NATION (EVELINE’S CONFESSIONS)

  I was took past all the sights of London in his very own carriage—I heard the valet tutting—Euston Arch, British Museum, filthy Thames as has took girls less wickeder than I. I was all a-flutter. Then I was deposited all alone I’m sure I don’t know where. The nursery, the girls called it: nursery because you were grown into flowers there. No, sir, Flowers as with a capital F, if you’re taking dictation. The Flowers of Sin. Don’t you know about it? I suppose you don’t, for it was a secret sworn and guarded as well as any in London.

  When I arrived, a starchy matron bustled me inside, looked at me askance, told me to sign something, or put my mark on it at least, and take off my clothes.

  Don’t be prim, little miss, she said. You’ll have clothes enough if you behave.

  I thought it a lark. How do I know it was Mr Broody that night? I didn’t. But later we’d spy on him, in the evenings, coming by when there was a new girl.

  Protecting his investment, said my friend Helen. Proper businessman. A poor country girl like me couldn’t fathom what business there was in a house full of tender lasses, or rather of foul-mouthed wenches being reformed into the elegant young women as made it worth their efforts.

  That first night was the only night we slept alone before joining the dormitory. Helen said they slipped something in our tea, before the gentleman came to view us. After the matron took our clothes off, he would come when we were sleeping—and maybe there was something in that nightcap the night I arrived.

  View us? Dirty Gertie laughed. Is that what you call it? It was ever impossible to have a private chat among the Flowers.

  Don’t be potty-mouthed, said Helen. This one is innocent as a daisy.

  I am not. And to try and impress them, I told them Sookie’s adventure in the upstairs room at the Coach House on the road to Whitby, but something in how I told it made them laugh, I suppose because I yet knew nothing of the ways of love.

  I did my service. I saw that some vanished quick and some stayed forever; some got regular beatings, and some were never noticed. Looks is a lot, but they aren’t everything. More is to be smart and biddable. Show you can learn. So I am biddable. I am invisible. That way, I avoid the worst. Some are ruined quick and tossed away. You see them going downhill, and there’s nothing can save them once the rot sets in. And there they go, Lansdowne Gardening.

  Thus we blossomed. The Flowers of Sin. How far from the drudgery of my childhood.

  I knew they would pick me out. Sure enough, as soon as they came to choose the next bunch, I was promoted from the seedlings into training for the Flowers. Which is an honour, being as how the Flowers service the finest gents in the country: poets and admirals and politicians. So we are trained up, nicer than ladies, finer than princesses: etiquette and elocution, dancing, singing, writing, French, German and a smattering of Aye-tie. I took a liking for the fiddle and learned gypsy waltzes.

  They brought former pupils to give talks—a discourse, they called it—to inspire and improve us. My heroine was Miss Skittles, who didn’t take no tripe. How to Keep Your Man and Enjoy Doing It, was her topic. She could marry any day she liked. She enjoyed the respect of all society, with the freedoms of the gay life.

  I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be her. If they demanded what she would not give, she didn’t give it, and—this is the best of it—they wanted her all the more for it. All those lessons in etiquette, the tutoring from Groggins and schooling of my lips, tongue and teeth, not to mention organs unmentionable, but this, this was the best lesson I ever learnt. Men want us, and if we too readily give what they desire, they won’t want us long, but if we tarry and dally, and dither and delay, they will want us forever. Heavens, they will marry us.

  Now and again, a girl was thrown out. Gertie hadn’t come up to scratch in her pronunciation. Her table manners were uncouth, and her toilet manners; then she was dallying in a side street talking of our training, secrets we know must never be whispered. She was sent to Lansdowne Gardens and never seen again.

  Helen said that Gertie died on the street within a few weeks.

  * * *

  I see now what an investment it was. They had people sewing for us, cooking, teaching us to walk, to talk, to please a man, no less. Our Mr Broody was a wily one. To find a real lady and make her whore for you is a tricky game, but to raise up twenty guttersnipes and make them seem like ladies is safe—a charitable action—and altogether cheaper.

  Seek them far off, beyond the rule of law, in backwaters such as Poland and Portsmouth, Yorkshire and Ypres. Life is cheap in the provinces. Pick up a bargain with a bit of potential, toss her to the trainers (kept discreet through threats), and within a year—six months, if she’s quick—you have a debutante, a society wife or—in my case—a long-lost daughter.

  Have you rumbled the plot? Fulfilling impossible desires is a lucrative business. A confession here, a jotted note, a peccadillo admitted. Collecting such secrets was Broody’s vocation and Groggins’ joy.

  WASH AWAY OUR STAINS (EVELINE’S CONFESSIONS)

  I was to go to the opera. I was told where to promenade. I must be poised and beautiful. If it came off, everything would change.

  Sure enough, I caught Felix’s eye. No one told me what to do, or who to look for; but I knew my business. I shan’t forget the astonishment in his eyes when he spotted me. Then I was gone, on the arm of a young swell. Ooh, I had studied all about it, learnt which operas to compliment and which to deride, but nothing prepared me for the glamour of the West End.

  We had him. My training redoubled.

  I was to style myself a Milanese lady exile. We knew only so much of her. The girl went missing in 1849, at the age of three, in some revolution or other. She would be seventeen, nearly eighteen now.

  I was younger, but tall and slender. She was fair, but my dark curls would have to serve, for the Flowers distrust dyed hair. I do not like my bulging moon face, but others find it pretty enough, and that should do. Dark eyes, big nose, near enough. For the birthmark, a burn from a hot coal, soothed with calamine lotion.

  Italian was her language; she’ll have heard German, too. I know only English, and even that dubious with my brogue. Where I hail from in the moors, all is utterance; words are abbreviated and lengthened at will. There is no theatre or poetry or music, beyond the banshee wails at the Coach House on the northern turnpike, where Mr Broody first spotted Sookie.

  I learned some lingua franca to serve for Aye-tie, a few words of German thieves’ cant, and a smattering of Frenchy argot. Too little, too late. Talking posh would serve, which I didn’t mind, as it makes me feel like quality, the same as the silk drawers they gave me.

  My training as a Milanese lady was done, my fiddle-playing to be kept a secret for the moment. They had us nicely prepared. They taught that if we were overwhelmed by our lovers and by London, that’s as it should be. We Flowers had more right to decent treatment than any whore, than any wife. Oh, we were privileged. Groggins taught us to be mercurial, and capricious came easy to me. I was imaginary, you see, come back from the past. Back, even, from the dead.

  * * *

  Dear Felix. Thought he’d seen a ghost. After that first tantalising view, they fed him a line about me: that I recalled nothing of my early life, I was an orphan learning a trade, found in a milliner’s shop. To make sure, he would have to pick me out in Cremorne Gardens, on the promenade.

  I held my breath as I walked past. I’d been told to say nothing, but I couldn’t help practising in my head. How do you do, sir? Why, how do you do? My petticoats were comfortable, but it was always the silk underneath that gave me shivers.

  The other girls smirked, said I was too young, too gauche, apart from Helen, who loved me. She told me I would succeed; she told me other things too, about my body, and how he would want me, and she showed me, and read me stories about men and women that she kept in the drawer of her dresser, which were adventures she’d had with her gentle
men and persuaded them to write down, and a few she’d told to Groggins, shameless of the secrets. Telling it back made it worth all the more, she said, because then the gents would enjoy us over and over again. Years from now, they would still remember our youthful skin, when they were old and couldn’t get it up any more, and we were dead and gone. Perhaps I would be luckier. I was to be given to one man who would love me and keep me all to himself, whereas Helen was shared far and wide among her gents and their friends.

  Felix picked me out at once, to my everlasting delight. We’d framed it just right. He was transfigured. He believed. It was ridiculous and should have been shaming. But I didn’t mind that. I would play my role and bask in his attentions. How he loved me. Filled me up from my boots to my bodice to my bows. One day, he would see through me, I knew it. Northern Effie was bugger all like his darkling Angelina, and someone must surely tell him so. I think his friends did, early in the madness; but he cut them off and withdrew into the solitude of our indulgences.

  How he loved me. Such merriment. Oh, to be someone else, anyone other than useless Effie McGarrigan, with her countless siblings and barren upbringing. To be someone. I liked being high class, I’ll admit, but most of all, I liked being loved. Have you ever been adored? I loved being adored. He wanted ever so much to look after me, I felt guilty, almost.

  He kept me hid at first, as they’d instructed, fearing to be found out, fearing to transgress their rules. As the months passed and his amazement gave way, he shared with me his pleasures in life. We feigned I was a long-lost niece for a while. He forbade me to dress too fine and hated my make-up; he’d hide me on his arm and sneak me up to his box after the shows started. I didn’t care. It was a luxurious life, and I revelled in it.