by David Ashton
Hughie had liked it strong. He liked everything strong. Gripped her so hard on their wedding night, he near cracked her ribs.
These thoughts had kept the shock at bay. Now, she found she was trembling. How long had she been standing here?
And the boy? She turned away from the gory mess on the bed and pulled the curtains across. He must have seen it.
‘I was hungry,’ he piped up. His face was blank. Like a mask. The stone-grey eyes looked at her, but they were seeing something else. For God’s sake, the child was only seven, how could his mother do such a thing in her own home? Could she not stab her throat in the chapel, let the priest mop it up?
Jean swallowed her anger. How can you ever know what people may do, or why they do so? God help the woman. She must have been desperate.
If you believed scripture, she was a damned soul. The devil had his claws in her and was dragging her into the pit of hell. Never to return. A damned soul.
She realised she’d been standing there muttering in front of the poor wee lamb, his eyes still fixed upon her.
This wouldnae do. Don’t want him thinking there were two madwomen in the hoose. What was it, he said? Hungry. Aye. She could fix that.
‘We’ll go next door. Tae Auntie Jean’s, eh? I have a penny loaf. I’ll cut ye a slab with cheese. And pickle. Do you like pickle, James?’
Whether it was the thought of a knife cutting through the white bread or the kindness in her voice, the dam broke in his heart. He let out a cry of loss and bewilderment and hurtled across the room to bury his face into her broad belly.
‘It was my blame,’ he howled, his voice piercing into her flesh like a dagger.
‘What was your blame, son?’
‘At Easter. She would wait. Every time. He never knocked the door.’
Jean wasn’t sure she’d heard the words correctly, his face buried so deep.
‘Who never knocked, son?’
‘The Angel. The Angel of the Lord.’
‘Well,’ said Jean, trying her best. ‘Angels are busy folk.’
The boy lifted back his head and looked at her.
‘It was my blame,’ he said.
She had never seen such agony in a face and clutched him in close as if to shield him from all the horrors of this world. Her own eyes filled up with tears.
Then she sniffed hard. This would not do. Whatever madness had possessed the woman, whatever angel knocked or did not knock upon the door, whatever rived the heart of that wee boy so that he took the cares of the world upon his shoulders, she knew one thing.
Tears got ye nowhere.
She took a long slow breath to calm herself. What was to become of the boy?
The McLevy woman had no kin, she was sure of that, no relatives ever visited, not a friend in off the street; he would end up in a home.
As if he sensed her thought, the boy buried his face back into her body as if he could hide himself inside.
Aye, and there was room so. She’d never had a child. Nae wee pap-bairn at her breast. Hughie was vigorous and regular enough but the seed didnae take.
It was the Lord’s will she had told herself as the years passed, so maybe this was his doing as well.
Everything was his doing, was it not?
She could use the company right enough. She’d been thinking of a dog but it would chew lumps out of her best furniture.
This thought put a fierce smile on her face. Still holding the boy, she picked up a corner of her apron and scrubbed hard at her damp eyes. Here she was with a dead woman soaked in her own blood, a lost wee soul sticking his nose into her belly-button and all she could think about was furniture.
Still. Hughie always said she had a practical nature. That was her. Now, how to quiet this wee soldier? He was silent this moment, but inside there would be a storm raging.
Anger and grief. Two terrible thieves that can steal your life away, as she knew to her cost.
Thomas Imrie, the cobbler. He was a drinking pal of Hughie’s and a terrible Jacobite, but he could carry a tune. Full many a time she listened with her arms folded as Hughie banged the spoons to accompany, not that he gave a damn about the Bonny Prince, but the cobbler did.
With a passion. And she was charmed by passion. In spite of herself.
What was his favourite now? She began a tune, a melody of sorts, her voice a bit trembling at first but gathering strength. And the boy, listening, quieted down inside his bruised and broken heart.
‘Charlie is my darling, my darling,
My darling. Charlie is my darling,
The young chevalier.’
32
How pleasant it is, at the end of the day,
No follies to have to repent;
But reflect on the past, and be able to say,
That my time has been properly spent.
ANN AND JANE TAYLOR, Rhymes for the Nursery
The Just Land was in full swing. Nothing beats a bawdy-hoose at midnight.
Jean Brash looked on with finely honed tolerance as her girls plied the clients with champagne. One of the Dalrymple twins poured the precious liquid in a stream from her dainty slipper into an election agent’s eager mouth.
It was nice to see that mouth used for something else besides telling people a load of lies.
She sincerely hoped that Margaret (or was it Mary, you could never tell unless they were both naked, one of them with a mole just above her temple of delight) had washed her feet. Jean was a stickler for that sort of thing.
Standards are everything.
She smiled at the thought and looked around the huge reception room which occupied the entire ground floor of the house.
Worth every penny, the red velvet curtains, the exotic ottomans and plush divans. The leather armchairs were another nice touch, big enough for two, especially one atop the other. A piano tinkled in the corner where some revellers gathered round to exercise their tonsils. Big Annie Drummond whose liking for cream buns had rendered her, save for the odd Italian, too gargantuan for normal service, laid her plump but delicate fingers on the keys. She played by ear and rarely hit a false note. A musical colossus.
Culture was omnipresent. The carpets were Persian or very near the thing, fine paintings on the wall, goddesses and the like, mostly unclothed in amorous pursuits with cherubs and satyrs. Jean had enjoyed her fill of both, in years gone by. She retained the appetite but had shifted focus. Her last lover had been a surgeon, a lithotomist who relieved the agony of stones in the bladder by cutting without killing by surgical shock.
He was in the habit of tracing his finger across the flat plain of her naked stomach as if mapping out an operation. It had got on her nerves after a while.
Jean’s eye was caught by another work which had pride of place in her art gallery. A masterpiece. The Woman with the Octopus. She had humphed that painting from brothel to brothel. It was her lucky charm.
She was proud of her establishment. It had class. She often thought with the curtains, armchairs and suchlike, if you squinted slightly, ye might mistake the place for a gentlemen’s club.
Except for the girls. They made a difference.
A sweet disorder in the dress but nothing too overt, a bare shoulder for a man’s lips to brush, a décolletage to encourage further investigation, a ripple of the loins behind a gossamer covering, but, for Jean’s money, nothing could match a saucy glance and a quick tongue.
The quicker the better.
She had trained her girls well. They were a merry bunch and could trade a bawdy ribald wit with the best of them, provoking an appetite they were well capable of satisfying.
So, have at ye.
The place was heaving. Both Liberal and Tory electioneering operators, at each other’s throats these past months, now united in a common cause, debauchery, enmity forgotten, the Sabbath tomorrow, on Monday the vote is cast, it’s too late now. The battle is over.
Jean had a dozen kitties working the room and half as many upstairs on the bones. When that shi
ft was over this lot would be well primed; and down in the cellar, flexing her muscles, lurked the French mistress, Francine.
She and her assistant, Lily, taught le vice anglais to their willing pupils. Jean had put down a lot of money for Francine, but the girl was a specialist. She could lay on more stripes than a tiger.
The group at the piano burst into song,
‘Champagne Charlie is my name,
Champagne Charlie is my name,
Good for any game at night, my boys,
Good for any game.’
One of them, a wee sniggery fat sausage of a man who, as a Liberal agent, anticipated he had more reason to celebrate than the opposite party, began to prance around the room.
His name was George Ballard, a Birmingham cove, and despite his unprepossessing appearance, a key member of the caucus which had out-organised the Tories, spreading out from the Midlands like a rash all over the country.
His real leader was the ex-cobbler, screw-maker and hard radical, Joseph Chamberlain, who was looking to the future. He was the coming man and the National Liberal Federation, his power base, had done more to win this election than any other. Chamberlain’s time would come.
George had suffered the condescension of the slimy toffee-nosed Horace Prescott and the rest of his cronies from the Rosebery camp, and had been forced to bite his tongue.
Now it was over, and he was off the leash.
He caught sight of himself in one of the gilded mirrors which hung in profusion round the walls, reflecting the starry gleam of the shining candelabra.
There he was, sweaty, red-faced, teeth like a ferret and twice as deadly.
He kicked his legs up, ‘Good for any game, my boys, Good for any game!’ he bawled.
The dance grew wilder to the extent that he was about to crash into something when he was suddenly grasped by the shirt front and sobered up rapidly as the music came to an abrupt halt.
The giant figure of Angus Dalrymple towered over him, his huge hands holding George as if he was a rag doll.
‘Ye’ll do yourself a harm, sir,’ he said solemnly.
George blinked, bobbed his head, then nipped back smartly to the piano.
The big ex-blacksmith turned, nodded politely to his two daughters and padded softly away.
Jean smiled to herself. Ye were never short of entertainment in a bawdy-hoose, no wonder she was so fond of the profession.
‘Drink up, gentlemen,’ she called softly. ‘The night is young, the girls are keen as mustard, who knows what the future may bring?’
The company, which had been rendered a trifle subdued at this laying on of hands, perked up again and the gathering resumed its rush towards a hectic gratification.
A side door which led down to the cellar opened and Lily Baxter, Francine’s wee rub-a-dub lovergirl, who enjoyed her ancillary infliction of pain with a vengeance, poked her curly head in and signalled urgently at Jean.
What was it now? Jean had spent a fortune on that cellar, the high point of which had been the purchase of the Berkley Horse. The apparatus had been shipped from London and arrived shrouded in thick white canvas like a piece of sculpture.
To go with such, the cellar walls were hung with an extravaganza of flogging implements – thongs, straps, an array of canes which ranged from thin and pliant to thick and thunderous – to say nothing of the prickly vegetation inside the Chinese vases. She made her money back right enough, especially when the General Synod was in session, but the maintenance cost was excruciating.
Francine demanded the very best to dole out the very worst and was forever plaguing Jean with fresh demands.
The Frenchwoman regarded herself as a martyr to flagellation. She considered that had it not been for her God-given ability to stripe with such precision, she would have pursued an artistic bent.
Jean had seen some of her drawings. They were mostly of Lily’s unclothed body, itself a delicious tribute to unbridled tribadism, and had a certain charm, but they were nothing compared to Francine’s talent for scourging the toughest hides.
The Frenchwoman was also an expert on the dark skill of hook and pulley, calculating bodyweight as precisely as the hangman.
Lily signalled again and Jean, muttering under her breath, crossed the room.
She spoke slowly and deliberately. Lily was a deaf mute. Nothing wrong with the length of her tongue, it just did not produce words. But she understood them well enough if you took the time.
‘What is it – you want – what is the matter with that bloody woman now?’
Lily grinned, then made a face to indicate a problem of some kind and beckoned Jean to follow her downstairs.
The cellar consisted of two large low-ceilinged rooms, one where the champagne was stored and the other for a wee touch of torture.
No question which venue Jean preferred though she felt her customary lowering of spirits as she trailed Lily below. It was dark and a bit damp, you could catch your death of cold in the place.
When she entered the chamber, Francine was leaning against the studded wall, arms folded, her self-made leather apparel skin-tight around her slim, sinewy frame.
She had based the design on a portrait of the Egyptian goddess Isis that she saw one time in a Paris museum. When the goddess’s brother and lover Osiris had been cut into fourteen pieces and scattered far and wide by her other brother Set, who tended to be a bit on the violent side, Isis had painstakingly reassembled the whole of her lover, save for the phallus which had been eaten by a crab of the Nile.
For some reason this story appealed to Francine and so she recreated the dress of the goddess in black leather.
It left her arms and most of the bosom exposed while tightly sheathing the rest of her body, save for the one slash up the side that gave a necessary freedom of movement and through which a beautifully formed white leg emerged.
She had also toyed with the idea of a headdress, but found it somewhat impractical with the low ceiling.
Lily wore a simple white robe. Like a priestess.
Jean looked at them. They made a fine pair. So, what was wrong on this occasion?
Francine’s dark tempestuous face was set in its usual dramatic lines but there was also an element of puzzled and genuine outrage.
Without uttering a word, she pointed contemptuously at the naked body of a man who lay strapped face down on the Berkley Horse.
Since he obviously could not turn over, Jean moved to be within his field of vision.
‘Are you the whore-mistress?’ he asked, apparently unperturbed by his somewhat immodest situation.
He had made an entrance with the rest of the election clamjamfry. She hadn’t fancied the look of him then and liked it even less now.
‘I own this establishment,’ was her polite reply. ‘I am responsible for the welfare of my girls, and for the measure of satisfaction provided to my clientele.’
‘Good,’ he responded, making no attempt to hide the sneer in his voice. ‘Then you can tell the French bitch to do as I command.’
Jean stiffened at the words and tone.
‘You’re scarcely in a position to command anything,’ she observed.
‘I am a customer of your bawdy house. I pay my money. I demand my pleasure.’
Francine threw her hands up in a Gallic gesture of despair as Jean looked at her questioningly.
‘He wants me to draw blood. It is against my skill of principle. I do everything but that. Look to see.’
The man’s back, which was white and hairless, was indeed covered in a welter of stripes and weals, the flesh livid and ridged.
It was Francine’s professional pride at stake here. She took her clients on many a painful journey to the Castle of Masochism, but the idea of blood horrified her.
‘Blood is for amateurs. It crosses the fine line between pleasure and pain. For me, it is an insult!’ she announced, hot with indignation.
Lily watched intently. She adored to see Francine in a bate, the aftermath was such swee
t passion.
‘I want it running down my back.’ The man looked up at Jean. ‘I want to feel it. Like a river. You are the chief procuress. You pimp. You pander. Arrange it.’
There was a cold contempt in his eyes. Of course he might be just trying to provoke her. If so, he had, only too well, succeeded.
Jean Brash had performed many strange acts in the course of her profession; one memorable time she and a colleague had stripped down to the bare scud and, while doing so, had wrung half a dozen pigeons’ necks in front of a young man who expressed his gratitude most copiously.
She had felt sorry for the pigeons but business was business.
That and many other episodes possessed a curious innocence, however, compared with the feeling she now had as she looked into those pale-blue eyes and wondered what twisted thoughts fuelled these perverse desires.
Be that as it may, business was business. She turned abruptly away from the man and addressed Francine.
‘The client’s desires are paramount. Give him what he wants. Here – I’ll make a start for ye.’
So saying, she took a thin birch rod from where it had been soaking in water to keep it green and pliant, then brought it down with considerable force on the man’s buttocks. There was an indrawn breath in response, and a thin smear of blood showed where the blow had landed.
She handed the rod to Francine who thought to protest then, catching the hard, stony glint in Jean’s eyes, thought otherwise. The Frenchwoman shrugged, made a moue of sorts with her full red lips, then got on with it.
As Francine stepped up, Lily darted to be under the man where her manual dexterity might be called into play.
Because of the ingenuity of the structure of the horse, his private parade dangled within easy reach.
Just like milking a cow, Jean thought. And left them to it.
Outside the door, she took a deep, damp breath and glanced up to see Hannah Semple at the top of the stairs.