Honey Harlot

by Christianna Brand

  Back home in Massachusetts! Could they but have known! Poor, vague, silly helpless little Sarah, caged between a lion and a tigress, each raging, helpless, in cages of their own—my husband in the grip of those twin passions of desire and shame, of terror at the pass he had been brought to, of the day of discovery to come, to which, however, he must drive his ship ever faster and more smoothly on; she in her close confinement, idle and bored, plotting what mischief she might that wouldn’t break her promise to ‘behave’. I think they should not have sold me into slavery at my husband’s hands, that family of mine. Looking back I absolve my father of all but a too hasty relief at finding for his difficult child a respectable and an older man, but I think that my mother knew better—I think that my mother, though she might not understand my weaknesses, was too well aware of them to be guiltless in offering up so frail a victim to the mercies of such a beast of prey as Benjamin Briggs. Can it be possible that she didn’t ask herself why he should choose me, from that quiverful of excellent daughters, useful, capable: only not beautiful. But—she could get rid of a nuisance, my father of a responsibility. That I should within a few brief weeks be forced by my married loyalty to a half-sadistic monomaniac, to go down on my knees to a waterfront harlot, could hardly, I suppose have occurred to either of them. I sometimes wondered how my smug, clever sisters would have acted in my place.

  For all went by no means so smoothly as that word ‘routine’ might suggest. Caged she might be and submit to it, but the tigress still used her polished claws. Someone must take her her food. On the first evening, my husband stood by while the cookboy and steward, Edward Head, opened the door just enough to introduce the tray. She took the tray with her left hand but with her right pushed the door wide. ‘Are you there, my honey?’ she said to my husband, ‘—standing back in the shadows under the swinging lamp where you think I shan’t find you out. But I see you: come forward, come closer, we were close enough once, when you flung me to the floor and rolled with me there, and I naked in those strong arms of your; not even waiting to come to the bed!’ He strode forward and slammed shut the door but from behind the partition her triumphant laughter rang out like a chime of bells. I quickly closed the slit of my own cabin door and was back, sitting at my melodeon when he came into my cabin. He sat down heavily at the table, his face in his hands. Pretending ignorance of anything newly untoward, I rose and went to the little window. I said: ‘The air’s very strange. Does it mean a storm brewing?’

  And appropriately enough! I thought—after the storm enclosed by time and space, that had raged that day. It had grown dark early, no stars in the sky, the sea in the evening gloom only a restless threshing of unseen waters with glimpses of white spray. The air was very heavy, cold and yet sultry if such a thing could be. I thought to myself that such a phrase well expressed my husband’s habitual humour: cold and yet sultry. Until now…

  He made no direct answer. He lifted his head at last and said: ‘You heard?’

  ‘The partitions are thin.’

  ‘The woman is a devil,’ he said. ‘What can be done?’

  It was the first time he had spoken directly to me since she had confronted him; if indeed he spoke to me now and not mostly to himself. I answered, however. ‘She’s teasing you. She’ll do you no real harm.’

  ‘No harm? What do you think she’s doing to me now?’

  ‘None heard but the steward, and he’d only half believe, a poor, thick-headed boy like that. No one will attend to him.’

  He raised his head, staring at me as though he noticed me now for the first time. ‘You seem very confident,’ he said. ‘What do you know of all this?’

  Not a word of remorse for those vile accusations, since proved totally untrue, for having struck me across the face. I said coldly, ‘You may treat me as a fool, but that doesn’t make me one.’

  ‘You were in that cabin with her—with her and Richardson. What were you doing there?’

  ‘Richardson had that moment come there—to warn me that you’d left the wheel. I’d been there alone with her.’

  ‘Alone with her! You’d been alone in the company of a woman like that?’

  I said almost savagely, I couldn’t control myself: ‘You’ve been alone with her also, in your time.’

  He did not deny it. He put his head again in his hands. ‘The serpent beguiled me,’ he said, ‘and I did eat.’ It was not very often that he quoted from the Bible though I believe that he knew it almost by heart; since he had taught himself to think that he was as good as God, he believed, I suppose, that his words could match the words of the Bible. But now he said it simply—far more simply than in his own words he would ever have expressed it. ‘The serpent beguiled me

  ‘It is a sin as old as Adam’s,’ he said. ‘It is the first sin.’

  I did not remind him that it was Eve who had spoken those words. I said only: ‘Is it not simply nature?’

  He turned upon me again his dark face, heavy with despair. ‘The world will have other names for it, when the world knows that Captain Benjamin Briggs has been guilty of it.’

  ‘That was the reason I went to her. To plead with her not to tell of it.’

  He said disgustedly: ‘You lowered yourself to plead with such a woman as that?’

  The day had been very long and terrifying, I was worn out with anxiety and fear, with the anxiety and fear I had felt for him; with the shock of his foul accusations as to my conduct with the crew, with the shock to us both of Mary’s appearance; with those last brief moments of appeal to her on his behalf. My head ached, my heart was sick within me, I felt that I had been through the storm which was in fact shortly to come… I lost my temper. ‘I lowered myself! You lowered yourself even further, I understand. To the floor, she said. You couldn’t even wait to take her to a bed, but rolled with her like two animals on the floor. Naked, she said.’ He was silent with a terrible silence. ‘I went to her to beg her not to make these ugly revelations. She agreed at last. But for your vile accusations of me—which she must reveal herself, to disprove—you need never have known she was aboard, the men need never have known of your downfall, for she’d told nobody and Captain Morehouse had agreed with her to say nothing. She meant to taunt you and tease you, to exert a little blackmail perhaps, for trinkets or clothes, no more, there’s no ugliness in her and no greed. But she had no wish to destroy you, that would have been all of it, the end.’ And I went and fetched the little mirror from the wall and held it close up under the swinging lamp and peered into it. ‘I have the stain still, Captain Briggs, where you hit me across my face. I wish it might stay there always, disfiguring though it may be, to remind me every time I look in the glass of what you really are; to remind you, when ever you may look at me, of what you really are.’ I flung down the mirror on the table beside him. ‘I promised to love, honour and obey you. Well, I absolve myself of those promises.’ He stared up at me, bereft of words, but J was not bereft, I went viciously on. ‘As to love—you’ll hardly now expect that of me?—nor honour either, I suppose? And as to obedience—that presupposed you to be a decent man. Well, you’re not a decent man, you’re a man not fit to have a dog at his command let alone a human creature, let alone a young woman defenceless. Or as you thought, defenceless. But I’m not. Stupid I may be, God knows I’ve been told so often enough. Well, I’ll play the stupid now, I’m too stupid to understand your commands any more—or your demands either; too stupid to cower, creep-mouse, and let you hurl your filthy epithets at me and let them lie, when you’re proved wrong, never unsay a word, let the filth lie—as the stain lies still across my face, of your stinging hand… But not so stupid that I’ll stay in this cabin one moment more with you, in this foetid air made more vile by the emanations of your foetid mind.’ Where I got such fine expressions, I don’t know; but I felt clean, purged of the dirt he had flung at me, like ordure flung at a creature caught in the stocks; and I caught up my shawl and swept out of the cabin and into the saloon, and unloosed the door of the ma
te’s cabin. ‘Mary,’ I said, loud enough for my husband to hear, ‘come with me. We’ll go up to the deck.’

  For once she lost her cool acceptance, she said: ‘But I can’t, I’ve given my word.’ Richardson had been right to trust to the illogical integrities of a woman of the streets.

  ‘You can come back. I’ll be your gaoler; and you can’t run very far! You’ve promised to make no more trouble

  ‘Hardly that,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘Well, you’ll make none for me, Mary, I know. So bring your shawl and we’ll breathe in some clean fresh air.’

  She wrapped her bright shawl about her and took my hand; and, I leading, we went up the companion and to the deck rail and looked out over the sea. My husband made no move to prevent our going.

  Up here on deck, the air was heavy as lead and yet a wind blew, lashing up the waves in the darkness, tossing the ship so that we must cling tight to the rail, lurching as we lifted our hands for a moment to raise our shawls and wrap them over our heads, one hand holding them close at the throat, the other back, grasping the bulwarks—if bulwarks is the term; the words come back to me but I have long forgotten what little I ever learned in the few brief weeks of my life that were spent at sea. All about us, the restless dark: no horizon now, sea met sky in a bowl of black, flecked only with the white flashes of the wave-tops. Against the ship’s pale hull, the dark water lifted and thundered, splashing back in a flurry of white foam that threw up a sprinkle of salt water. We started back, startled, but leaned forward again, thrusting out our faces to the clean, fresh sting of it; our hair broke loose from the tight-wrapped shawls and whipped about our cheeks; as the gale heightened our heavy skirts swirled about our legs, we let go of the rail to hold them close and without the steadying clutch, reeled and staggered, laughing, supporting one another. All about the ship now, men ran, calling; in the glow of a lantern we could see the mate’s face, shadowed, as he clung two-fisted to the wheel, turning her, hand following hand on the heavy spokes, to port, hand after hand to starboard, again. My husband came hurrying up the companion-way, all but his ship forgotten; stood gazing up into the rigging, his heavy serge trousers flattened against his legs, shouting to the men who hung like monkeys, with spread feet and gripping hands, reefing in the sails. In the oaken buckets along the edge of the poop deck, the water sloshed to and fro, spilling over, forming little runnels that wavered like small rivers, run this way and that by the movement of the ship. There was a sort of low, moaning sound as the wind got up, like the music of a violin wailing against the drum-rattle of the sails flap-flapping, the beating of rope against wood, the creak of the timbers as the little ship ploughed on, the waves lashing up white against her hull. Past orders meant no more to me now, I took Mary’s hand and, leaning into the wind we fought our way up to the bows… Into the bows of the ship, into the forepeak, leaning forward to stare out across the unseen waters… Mary said, ‘It’s like being a figurehead, under the bowsprit, thrusting out into the sea

  I am a figurehead—chin thrust forward into the gale, streamlined by the wind whipping back my streaming hair, my shawl wrapped close by the wind streaming out behind me, my gown wrapped about my body by the wind, streaming out behind me like the wings of the Winged Victory. I am a figurehead, leaning into the wind with the salt water dashing up against my pale face, washing away the stains of my husband’s hand. I am a figurehead not a wooden thing now but of flesh and blood with a will and a strength—with a heart of my own…

  Now I might have taken the food to her cabin myself, but she would have none of that. ‘No, no, my honey, you do me out of all the little amusement I may get.’ So he must send one or other of the men; and she would force aside the door and standing there in the opening, her wicked eyes alight with mischief call out across the saloon: ‘Are you there, my honey-love, are you watching me? Where is he, does the tiger not hear the belling of his tigress in her lair?’ And so at last, ashamed that others should hear her—even though they would never believe it to be true—not of the famous Captain Briggs—he must take the food to her himself, bringing me to stand beside him, jamming the door so that it opened only far enough to hand in the plates. But she ignored me, snaked out a golden arm, caught him by the hair. ‘Is it you at last, have you come to me at last, my Samson?—have you come at last to love me, as you loved me through the long hours till our strength was gone?—you who had had the strength of Samson to resist, till Delilah got her fingers into this rough, dark hair…’ He interrupted her furiously, raising his voice in curses I had never heard before, but she outshrilled him; and when at last he slammed the door across her laughing face, called out to him still until I opened the door and said, ‘Be silent now, Mary. He’s not here, he’s gone.’

  She relapsed back on the bunk, drumming the scarlet heels of her boots—she wore the red dress again today—against the mate’s wooden sea-chest, stowed away under it. ‘So he runs scuttling off,’ she said, ‘and leaves it to you to quiet the great cat in its cage. What a gutless coward and poltroon the creature is!’

  ‘If he’s a coward,’ I said, ‘it’s out of shame.’

  ‘Then he’s a coward to be ashamed. Low, crawling thing!—afraid to face the world of men for doing what any man does and struts like a cockerel afterwards for pride, not mealy-mouthed, preaching, pretending innocence

  ‘He makes no pretence,’ I said, defending him. ‘He tells no lies. And I don’t think he’ll preach any more.’

  ‘He’d have preached and pretended,’ she said, ‘if he hadn’t been found out. He’s preached and pretended all his life. Why doesn’t he admit to being like other men?’

  ‘He thinks other men do wrong,’ I said, ‘in giving way to their worse natures.’

  She reached up her lovely arms, so creamy white, ran her fingers through the heavy curls that fell about her shoulders, lifted her hair up and away from her neck, let it fall again. I see the movement now in its unconscious grace and I knew that if I had been a man, I could never have resisted her. ‘He believes it wrong,’ I said, ‘and so of course it is wrong, for him; and so he falls from his own high self-esteem. But… The serpent beguiled him ‘Trust Adam,’ she said, ‘to shift the blame to Eve!’

  My husband and I made each a grave mistake—two terrible mistakes which were to have unimaginable consequences. Brave in my new-found strength, I refused him all bodily contact with me. Craven in his dread of her taunting, he kept her close shut in her trap. But the tiger had tasted red meat and now knew the hunger for more; and the tigress had fed all her life upon men and could not for too long be denied. In a night of dead calm, she broke out of her cage: and they two ravenous creatures came face to face.

  CHAPTER X

  THE DAYS PASSED AND, as I’ve said, fell into a sort of routine. When the dinner hour was over, we would go up on deck, Honey Mary and I, harlot and innocent, and there gossip and laugh like two ordinary young women, taking our exercise round and round the narrow decks, sitting in my hammock corner amidships, out of the way; or curl up on the bunk in Richardson’s cabin and there amuse ourselves as best we might with the few diversions at our disposal. My husband had forbidden me novels but we played a sort of game of alternative storytelling, each taking up where the other left off; and the men had devised us a draughts board. But Mary beat me every time. Nor was it very easy to play for we had come into real Atlantic weather, very rough with a heavy swell and the ship rolled and tilted till the draughtsmen ran sliding into her territory or mine and made a nonsense of the whole thing. So mostly we conversed and it’s wonderful to think what we could find to talk about over those weeks together, cut off from other company—for true to her undertaking, she spoke to no one else during our times up on deck and now she accepted my bringing the food to her cabin and made no more trouble over that. For the rest, I told her of my quiet country home and, dull though it all seemed to me, to her it was of intense interest to learn of a life that she had never given thought to—a life where a young woman might n
ot lift her skirts above her ankles; where best clothes were reserved for Sunday going to church, and replaced only when new apparel for church became necessary, so that even the young girls went always soberly attired; where the events of the year were the festivals attached to the chapel, with no balls or parties, for dancing was a sin; where the heights of excitement were the picnic parties, in our home town and in those close enough by, to ride to or drive—where the mothers of eligible young men and indeed the young men themselves looked not so much to a girl’s pretty looks or charming ways, but to the hampers they produced and the excellence of the pies and cakes they handed round. ‘But surely the mothers just did the cooking themselves,’ said Mary, ‘and pretended the daughters did it?’ That church-going people would not cheat and deceive never entered that head of hers. I remembered my mother’s helpless shame as I produced my poor offerings. No wonder she had been thankful when Captain Briggs came along and, careless of such shortcomings, took one look, as I now knew, at a something in me that stirred his physical senses and out of them all, chose me. After all, he was mostly at sea with a cook in the galley; and no doubt he recognised that such a fool as I must be grateful and therefore docile and uncomplaining; that I came from a family who would never listen to, let alone accept, for that matter would never comprehend, any complaints I might make—but would never dare to make—of his treatment of his wife. Indeed, how my parents ever came to contrive half a dozen children between them, I wonder still.