51
Letter from Reverend Jacob Sutton, superintendent of Liverpool Street Nursery, to the board of governors, Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land, 4th September, 1844
Dear Sirs,
I am writing regarding the care of a two-month-old baby we have at Liverpool Street nursery. The baby, a girl, was born early and as such is quite weak and in need of intense care. It is the sort of care we feel ill-equipped to provide her with at Liverpool Street and we all fear the possible consequences if she should stay. Considering the high mortality rate of infants we experienced in the autumn of 1842, I am sure you share with us the desire to ensure that every baby in the state’s care survives, if at all possible.
I am therefore recommending that this child be adopted as soon as possible. I believe she will thrive and grow much better if she is receiving the constant, close care of a parent, rather than only the shared care we can provide her with here.
Please add this child to your list of convict babies ready for adoption, and inform us if there are any parents wishing to visit, as they would be most welcome at any time.
Yours,
Rev. Jacob Sutton
52
In the morning after I got there, I met the other girls what lived at Ma Dwyer’s. There was three of em – Belle, Joanna and Louisa. Ma give us our own living room to share, where there was chairs and also a sideboard we kept bread and gin and such in. We could talk to each other there, if there wasn’t no customers waiting.
‘Ma Dwyer’s a strict madam, but she’s fair,’ said Belle. ‘If you work hard for her, she’ll look after you.’ Belle was a pretty girl, or at least, I reckoned she’d be pretty if she took off some of the paint she wore on her face, but she said paint was a necessary thing. ‘So the men won’t recognize you if you ever change your mind about being a hooker, and want to start again with a different life.’ She’d got no plans to do such a thing, she added, but it was important to have options.
One of the other girls – Joanna – looked at me hard, and said, ‘Ain’t you the girl who had John Sutton’s baby?’
‘Why’d you think that?’ I said.
‘Everyone knows John Sutton got the nursery maid pregnant. Besides that, I saw you in Cascades before they let me out. They put you in solitary to keep you from the likes of me.’ And she laughed, then did what I wasn’t expecting at all and pulled off her hair – what of course was a wig.
She shook out the wig a bit, like maybe it’d got dust or lice in it. ‘Ma gave me this. She’ll give you one, too, I expect. Men aren’t usually going to pay a woman who hasn’t got hair on her head.’
‘But they’ll pay her if she hasn’t got hair on her …’
‘That’s enough, Louisa. Don’t frighten the new girl.’
‘I ain’t frightened,’ I said. I didn’t want em thinking I was a girl of the weak sort, what could get bullied. Joanna might already see me as that sort, because of the bad time I’d had of it in Cascades.
‘Where’s the baby now?’ Belle said.
‘In the nursery.’
‘Why aren’t you there with it?’
‘They wouldn’t let me stay. I didn’t have no milk, and they wasn’t gonna keep me there, feeding me, when I wasn’t no use to no one. So Ma Dwyer come and got me, to save me …’ And then I realized I’d probably gotta stop talking. I didn’t want none of these other girls telling tales on me.
‘Well, you’ll see plenty of old Holy Willie in here,’ Joanna said.
I got a feeling of panic in me at that, because it wouldn’t do to have the Reverend Sutton as my first customer, or my second, or any customer at all, come to that. ‘He ain’t coming near me,’ I said.
‘She won’t be expected to serve the reverend. Not with everything that’s gone on. Ma Dwyer won’t make her.’
‘No, but she’ll still see him,’ said Joanna, and looked at me with a cold smile on her lips. ‘He’s our best customer. Three times a week, he’s here. No one knows where he gets the money, but rumour has it he’s fiddling the books, or selling babies.’
‘Now, Jo. You don’t know that,’ Belle said.
Then Louisa said, ‘Did you have a boy or a girl?’
She was striking me as a fair and sensible sorta girl, and not the kind what’d go accusing a man without no proof.
‘A girl.’
All three of em made a noise then like a baby girl was about the best thing in world.
‘Do you want her back?’ Joanna asked.
I didn’t say nothing, because I wasn’t sure about that.
‘One of the ladies who used to be here got her baby back. She saved up some money, then went to the orphanage and took her away, just like that. No one’s heard of them since, so I don’t know if they made it. Her plan was to steal a boat and row to New South Wales, then run to the bush and live where no one would find them.’
I didn’t have much energy for even thinking about such stuff, though I felt a stirring inside me when I thought about living alone in the trees, just the two of us, me and my baby, like when it was me and Evelyn on our own together.
‘Try not to worry,’ said Belle. ‘You’re here. There’s a roof over your head and you’ll get looked after. Of course, it’s filthy work, but we can give you advice on how to get through it, can’t we, girls?’
‘Just imagine him dead,’ Joanna said. ‘Imagine you’ll be stabbing him through the heart as soon as you’ve had him enough times to make your fortune.’
‘There’s a lot of girls out there who wouldn’t mind stabbing Holy Willie through the heart,’ said Louisa.
‘And you need to make sure you don’t get yourself another baby, Miriam,’ said Belle. ‘You need to make quite sure of it. Ma won’t keep babies here, and I can’t see it being any good for you to have another one, not after what you’ve just been through.’
I nodded. ‘Well, I did my best last time, not to have one, but Ma’s salt water potions didn’t do the job.’
‘There’s only two ways to make sure of no baby,’ said Joanna. ‘One’s with your mouth, the other’s with your arse.’
And though I didn’t much like the thought of them things, I was grateful for the education I’d got.
Ma give me two weeks’ rest, like she said she would. I did a lot of sleeping in them weeks and a lot of dreaming and thinking, too. For all I hadn’t much wanted that baby of John Sutton’s, and for all how having it’d got me into trouble, I found I was thinking about it pretty well all the time. It come as a surprise to me, but a girl can’t help what her head does.
Them Jezebels what lived in the Black Horse with me must of give me ideas, because I’d got a dream what I dreamed that second night there, and went on dreaming afterwards.
Each night I dreamed I crept into the nursery and picked up my baby again and then took it off, and lived wild in the forests and the mountains with it. Me and the baby had a life like what I’d had with Evelyn in the days before them Newcastle slums, when we was Gypsy girls, cooking rabbit stews on a fire. And then I’d wake up, sorry my dream wasn’t real and I wasn’t nothing more than a jade in Ma Dwyer’s bawdy house.
53
No one knew for certain where Miriam had gone. But we knew she’d disappeared after Ma Dwyer’s visit, so it was assumed she must be living at the Black Horse.
‘Do you think she’s working there, too?’ I asked John one evening.
He shrugged. ‘Ma Dwyer doesn’t seem the type to keep anyone for nothing.’
‘So your father was right about her all along,’ I said.
‘It would seem so, Rose,’ he said sadly. ‘I was very fond of Miriam. I’d had hopes of better things for her than this. I feel …’
I interrupted quickly. ‘You mustn’t feel guilty, John, or blame yourself in any way. We all had hopes for Miriam, but she is what she is and there is no changing a person’s nature.’
He cast a long glance towards the dormitory where Emma was sleeping in her cot.
‘You mustn’t be anxi
ous about the child. She is being cared for by good people now. She has,’ I said, clearing my throat, feeling a little awkward, ‘she has your blood in her, too, John. Good, Christian blood. She isn’t entirely made up of filth, and I am certain that with the right care, she will do well.’
‘I hope you’re right, Rose,’ he said, and walked heavily away.
I returned to my work in the kitchen. There was a new nursery maid now, who had taken on the jobs that used to be Miriam’s, but the governors were insistent that I must help with the cooking and cleaning when I could – experience had shown us all that it was too big a task for one girl to tackle by herself. Certainly, it wasn’t enjoyable work, but it was easy enough, and when finished I could devote myself to looking after the babies, though I spent as much time as I could with Emma. She was small and weak, and needed devotion. Miriam herself had cared nothing at all for her.
My plans for one day taking over the nursery were growing more defined. I thought how I could keep Emma and, when my yellow ticket was issued, Arabella could join us too. The three of us would live as a family until I were granted leave to return to England, where we could be reunited with my other two children. It felt like the safer option – safer, in any case, than running away and being caught, then sent back to Cascades for years.
After my conversation with John, I was preparing for the next morning’s breakfast when Reverend Sutton suddenly walked in. ‘Hello, sir,’ I said politely enough, though I had no desire to encourage him to stay. Being alone with him made me fearful.
He looked keenly at me. ‘How are you, Mrs Winter?’
‘Well, thank you.’
‘My son tells me you will be making an application to take over the nursery.’
‘Does he say that?’ I asked, then continued pouring flour, as though I cared nothing for his conversation.
‘He does indeed. Is this your plan?’
‘I have no clear plans, sir, apart from returning to England one day. But that day is far off.’
‘I’m sure the governors will be keen to appoint you should you apply.’
I said nothing in response.
‘But tell me,’ he said, moving close enough to make me wince, ‘if they were to research your history, would they still be keen to let you look after babies?’
‘I don’t know what you mean, sir.’
He pulled some sheets of paper out of his pocket and unfolded them. ‘This,’ he said.
I felt myself growing cold. I knew exactly what it was and, though I’d never read it myself, I was certain of what it said.
The reverend continued. ‘This is a written report by your last employer to the judge in your case. Everything is in here. I had my suspicions about you and found it all out, Rose. All of it. Theft, my eye! You’re nothing more than a …’
I covered my ears.
He stood in front of me and held me so I couldn’t move. He kept his voice low. ‘If you want a nursery of your own, Rose, you’d better hope the governors don’t get hold of this report.’ As he spoke, he lifted my skirt with his other hand.
‘Please, sir,’ I said.
He snarled at me. ‘Oh, no. There’s to be no begging, my dear. None at all. You got away last time, but if you want to protect yourself now, I suggest you oblige me.’
54
In them first two weeks at Ma Dwyer’s, I tried on a lot of the dresses what was hanging in my wardrobe. I painted up my face, too, and strutted in front of the wardrobe mirror with a feather boa draped round my neck. I wondered what John Sutton’d think if he saw me dressed like this.
In the afternoons, I used to meet the other girls and we’d share a pot of tea. They give me plenty of tips on how to survive my work. Mostly, this meant pretending I wasn’t really there no more, so I’d be watching myself at work, instead of getting involved in it. That was pretty well what I’d done them first few times with John Sutton, so I knew it was easy enough, and there wasn’t much of a knack to it, or nothing hard to learn.
‘Think of the money,’ Belle said.
And I s’posed that was just what I would do, when the time come, what of course it did.
As soon as my two weeks was up, and not a day later, Ma Dwyer come to see me in my room. ‘Are you ready to do a bit of work for me now?’ she asked. ‘We can ease you in gently. Start tonight, and I’ll only ask you to do three hours. I might send you three punters, or you might just get one. If you get three, it’s an hour with each. If you only get one, he’ll probably give you some decent time to rest – sleeping or listening to his problems, which will mainly be about his wife, or his lack of a wife. Just listen and nod and give him a bit of sympathy here and there. You’ll have done your job well enough.’
She told me how much of the men’s money’d go to her for board and lodgings, and how much was her cut of my profits. Of course, without her, I wouldn’t get no money at all. She said how much’d come to me, and seeing as I was getting more than what she was – though not a lot – I thought it best not to complain. I’d got all my food and my dresses bought for me, so there wasn’t a lot I needed to get for myself. I reckoned I could get by well enough on them pounds she said was coming my way. Eventually, I’d maybe have enough to run away with. More and more that was coming to be my plan.
That night, Ma sent a man up to me. There was a knock on my door round nine. I got up from the bed where I’d been sitting in my long red dress and ivory-coloured boa, and went and stood at the window.
‘Come in, please,’ I said, in a slow and husky sorta way, like the girls’d taught me, like I was proper looking forward to meeting this man and giving him all what he needed. I can’t say my feelings matched the sound of my voice. My feelings was saying bugger off, very clear and certain, but that wasn’t no way to get money out of a man or a roof over your head.
When the door opened and the man come in, I was glad to see he wasn’t a body I recognized. He was a shy-looking man, and awkward; and maybe he wasn’t used to carrying on with whores. ‘Would you like a brandy first, my love?’ I asked. Ma Dwyer’d taught me to offer the shy ones a drink, to get em feeling relaxed.
‘Yes, please,’ he said, what I thought was polite of him.
So I poured him a drink and he sat down in the easy chair. For a while neither of us spoke, but the girls had taught me well. ‘You don’t look comfy, sir,’ I said. ‘Why don’t I loosen your buttons for you?’
He smiled at that, so I kneeled down on the floor in front of him and undid the top buttons of his shirt. He sat back and sipped his brandy and sighed in a happy sorta way. I s’posed that meant I’d gotta just carry on where I’d started.
I can’t say I felt that kushti in my spirit when it was all over, but a drink of water helped matters, and so did knowing the first time was done and dusted because everyone said the first was the worst of it.
What with one thing and another, I come to quite like living at Ma Dwyer’s, or if I didn’t so much as like it, then certain I appreciated having a roof over my head, sleeping in a big bed, getting decent money of my own. There was the other girls to talk to, and though I wouldn’t never go so far as to say I considered em my friends, they was kushti enough folk to drink a cup of tea with in the afternoons.
Most of the punters I had was all right. They come in, paid their money, said what they wanted you to do, and let you get on and do it. Then they got dressed again, and off they went with a smile on their face, and you knew you could probably expect em back in a few nights, or maybe a couple of weeks if they wasn’t rich men. Sometimes they wasn’t so nice, though, and they’d come in drunk and angry because of something what’d happened to them in the day. Even though it was usually their own wives they was angry with, they come and took it out on the Jezebels. They reckoned that was what we was there for, as well as the other things.
One night, just as I was starting to get used to this sorta work, and thinking it wasn’t so dreadful as long as you give yourself a brandy at the start of each new session, a ma
n of the bad sort come in. Normally, Ma was pretty good at knowing the bad sorts when they come to the bar. She’d tell em all her girls was booked up for the night, and he’d have to go some other place, or maybe come back in a week. And that normally saw him off.
But this time, Ma didn’t notice. Maybe he was a kushti-acting man, or maybe Ma was feeling distracted by other goings-on, but whatever it was, he ended up coming up them stairs and into Louisa’s room. We was quiet that night. I’d got myself an hour free and I was wandering my way to the kitchen for a drink, half sorry to be losing an hour’s money, and half pleased this man was getting sent to Louisa. It was nice sometimes, to have some time off between dicks.
I’d got myself a glass of water and a slice of bread and butter when, all of a sudden, I heard a man’s angry voice, a thwacking noise, and then crying from Louisa.
As soon as Louisa cried out, the door from downstairs shot open and Ma Dwyer come running up with the broom she always used to beat and sweep the bad folk away. A broom might not sound like much of a weapon, but it was as good as a dagger in Ma Dwyer’s hands.
‘Out!’ she was yelling, before she’d even got to the top of the stairs. ‘Get out, this minute.’ And she went running down the landing, waving her broom, what she banged on Louisa’s door till it opened.
Louisa appeared first, crying, and with her hand over her face so I couldn’t see her mouth or nose, but there was a lot of blood getting dripped over the carpet, so I thought it’d be a good thing to fetch some rags from the kitchen drawer where they was kept, and soak em in cold water and take em to her.
While I was doing that, I could hear Ma shouting at the man, pushing him back down the landing with her broom. ‘I don’t ever want to see that face of yours, or any other part of you, in here again, do you hear me, sir? Never.’
When I stepped out onto the landing so as to take the soothing rags to Louisa, I saw him running off down the stairs, wearing only his shirt and underpants and looking like he couldn’t get away quick enough. I laughed a bit to myself at this, and felt grateful the Black Horse was a place the girls got looked after. I reckoned it was worth losing a bit extra of my wages, to have Ma Dwyer on my side and stop me getting beat too much.
The Night Flower Page 26