He looked surprised. ‘I dont think he sees people, miss. Have you got some sort of appointment?’
‘No.’
‘Well I dont think it’s possible, miss.’
I’d planned everything of course.
‘I have a note for him that you should deliver. Please very specifically advise him it is about his son. I will wait.’
They knew of course, they all knew about Freddie, there was a certain rustling along the desk where other men were working but listening.
Poor Mr Park, I suddenly thought, everyone reading Reynolds News and terrible things about his son. Poor Mr Park.
I handed the man a sealed note and sat down in a leather chair in the hall that was obviously for judges and large gentlemen, my feet hardly touched the ground. I didn’t look at anybody. Out of my basket I took Oliver Twist by Mr Dickens, the one my dear Pa had read to us when we were children and I opened it at the beginning and I began to read: Chapter One: which treats of the place where Oliver Twist was born, and of the circumstances attending his birth. There was no air in the big building but I didn’t care, in fact if I fainted all the better.
I read and read and read and I was kept waiting for hours and hours and hours. After a long time I heard my stomach making funny rumbles even though I had eaten some bread before I came. But I just kept on sitting in the leather chair that was too big for me and reading about Oliver Twist asking for more, I decided if anybody tried to move me I would just scream and scream and call for Mr Park. There were high-up windows and beams of hot grey sunlight started coming through them as the sun moved round London, the sunbeams only showed up all the dust swirling around in the stuffy air.
I was hungry. Men kept passing, you could tell the clerks from the proper law men, their suits were different and I thought about Billy’s suit, maybe it shows him to be a clerk too and I thought me and Ma should talk about this, Billy being so clever and sometimes seeing Mr Gladstone himself, maybe we should get him to have a very good suit made by a men’s tailor.
Finally after about a hundred years a man came and said, ‘Miss Martha Stacey,’ and I thought, he’s read my letter, he knows my name, and I said, ‘Yes,’ and I looked up. A young man about Freddie’s age.
‘Come this way.’
He walked off and I had to somehow wriggle off the big chair and hurry after him, ungainly, I know, I know. He took me to a small room near by with one small high window and when I went in he closed and locked the door behind him which I found a bit peculiar, locking himself in with a young lady but I always carry hatpins and a sharp stone. But I suppose it was to be private. It was even hotter, even he ran a finger round his neck as if to loose his cravat. But he wasn’t Mr Park and I wasn’t going to talk to him.
‘Now look here,’ he said. ‘Is it money you want?’
He must’ve seen surprise on my face – I hadn’t even thought they would think that – because he said: ‘What are you writing to the Master for?’
‘I have nothing to say to you, Mr Whatever-your-name-is, because you haven’t even had the courtesy to introduce yourself. What I have to say regarding Mr Frederick Park is only to be said to his father.’
The clerk cleared his throat. ‘George Pearce at your service, miss. It would be quite impossible for you to speak to the Master.’
‘Then it will be quite impossible for me to leave this building, Mr George Pearce. Did he read my note?’
‘That I cannot say.’
‘Then I cannot say anything either so I will leave you if you will kindly unlock the door which is by the way no action of a gentleman with a young lady like myself and I may faint from lack of food and air. If the Senior Master of the Court of Common Pleas does not want to hear something which I think would be advantageous regarding his son, he is a bad father and you may tell him so, and so I will bid you good-day and I will wait until the Master shows himself and no, I do not want, or need, money.’
He didn’t unlock the door.
‘If you keep me locked in here I will scream very loudly, at which I am extremely talented.’
He did unlock it then, rather hurriedly. ‘Wait here and I will talk to the Master,’ he said but I could see he was angry. ‘Do not scream.’
And then the rotten man locked the door again, from the outside! All this seemed very illegal to me in what was supposed to be premises of legality. I considered my options including screaming the fact that I was locked in and starving. But at last I sat down under the small high window and began Chapter XX: wherein Oliver is delivered over to Mr William Sykes. I knew perfectly well what happens next but I love this book.
I got all the way to Chapter XXXII: of the happy life Oliver begins to lead with his kind friends. That’s how long they made me wait that day. The sun had quite gone, it was a little bit cooler, not much, the dim light was hurting my eyes now and I knew Ma would be worried and probably Billy would be almost home by now, I must have been in the building all day. And I was so hungry.
Then I heard the door being unlocked. I was so mad I just sat there reading (well pretending to read). There was a pompous loud Ahem! if you can imagine that sound being done pompous. I looked up. Course it was Freddie’s pa, I nearly dropped the book because I could see some of Freddie in him and he was in a very good gentleman’s suit and collar. He closed the door but didn’t lock it. I closed the book and didn’t stand (I didn’t want him to see me ungainly).
He looked at me and I looked at him. His face was like Freddie’s only – different. At first I only saw he was angry at me and I thought I wouldn’t like him to be in charge of my Common Plea (whatever that actually was).
‘What’s this?’ He waved my note.
‘What does it say?’
‘Do not speak like that to me, girl, I know what it says! I want to know why you have come here with it, bothering me.’
Just as well I loved Freddie so much, in fact I loved him even more when I saw the angry face of his father and Freddie so gentle and kind, and sad sometimes. I sat with my hands clasped on Oliver Twist.
‘The note says, Mr Park, that Freddie held me in my bed and it is signed Yours sincerely, Martha Stacey. I should think you would be pleased to receive a note of that nature, in the circumstances.’
‘How dare you! How dare a – a—’ (he was trying to find the right word to say to me) ‘a chit of a girl from the lower orders speak to me like that! How dare you call my son Frederick Freddie!’ His face was red as anything.
‘Mr Park, Freddie calls himself Freddie and as he appears at my house quite often, so do I call him Freddie. It is more useful at this point, surely, than calling him Fanny.’
I thought he might actually hit me then; I saw him restraining himself and his face was even more red and I quickly went on while he was so speechless.
‘I have sat, Mr Park, in these inhospitable premises for almost the whole of this day and I hope your clerk advised you that I do not come for money. I do not need money, Mr Park. I know Freddie intimately’ – I let that word hang there a bit, ha – ‘because my mother and I are the landladies of 13 Wakefield-street where if you have been following your son’s trial you will know he and Ernest Boulton lodged sometimes, and two more pleasant lodgers we have never known. If you visit your imprisoned son, Mr Park – as long as you show him my note first – you may discuss me if you wish. I make no claims on him, upon you, or upon any of your family and I reiterate once more I do not want money. But I believe my intervention in this matter could help your son’s – reputation – in a way, and at a time, that he may most need it.’ (Oh, it was good I’d been reading Mr Dickens all day, I had the swirl of the words, just like him!)
‘Good-day to you, Mr Park.’ And then I did stand up, too bad if he saw.
‘Wait.’ His face was calculating things, I could see. ‘I—’ He cleared his throat in that pompous loud manner again. ‘There has been a gross misunderstanding of my son’s behaviour of course.’
‘Of course.’
/> And it was then that I at last looked at him more carefully. And then I saw how strained he was, he had that same tic under his eye that I’d seen on Freddie’s face. Of course I didn’t know everything then, but I did feel suddenly sorry, because I understood his face.
‘There are – many lawyers working on his case at this very moment.’
‘I am glad, Mr Park.’
The next words burst out, I dont believe he meant to say them to me.
‘This case will never be brought to a trial at the Criminal Court.’
‘Really?’ I sort of gasped in surprise. ‘I’m so glad, Mr Park, to hear you say that.’
He tried to collect himself. But he suddenly looked so frail that I moved the chair I had been sitting on near to him and he did sit down. ‘No, no, by that I mean – there are ways – it will not…’ and then I could see that he recollected that he was talking to a chit of a girl from the lower classes. ‘Thank you, Miss Stacey,’ he forced himself to say, ‘but your “intervention” will not be needed,’ and he stood up again.
‘Oh I am so glad, Mr Park, to know that you feel all will be well,’ and he gave me a funny sharp look to see if I was being rude but of course he could see I wasn’t, I was glad, so glad, if he thought there was to be no big trial, wait till I told Ma and Billy. He still stood there, poor old thing, and he looked a little bit more like Freddie. I limped to the door, him looking at me, I know.
He stopped me. ‘In fact, Miss Stacey, I would prefer that you did not say any more to anybody about our conversation today. Or about my son, ever, unless you have to,’ and it couldn’t help sounding as if it was because I was a limping lower-class chit of a girl but I didn’t care.
‘I am so so glad you think there can – be a solution! And Freddie will tell you that I am a very trustworthy person, Mr Park,’ and I smiled and smiled at him, I think he must’ve known I meant it. ‘Perhaps I should go home now,’ I said, ‘as my mother and my brother will wonder if you have locked me up permanently seeing as I’ve been here nearly all of the day and I am awfully hungry!’ but I think he saw I was teasing him just a little for he gave a very, very small smile.
He opened the door of the funny stuffy hot little room then, and I went out without looking back, of course he could see clearly how I walked and would wonder what a gentleman like Freddie was doing holding a cripple in her room but I didn’t care. It was nearly dark and I was so hungry and so keen to tell Ma and Billy what had happened that I even caught an omnibus towards Wakefield-street even though it’s so hard to get up and down from the steps, specially when they’re crowded.
And all the way home I thought about Mr Park working in the courts and his son arrested for what they said was filthy and I thought how hard it must be for him but he had shared something with me, even if he hadn’t quite meant to: he must have lots of influential friends of course. It sounded so important: the Senior Master of the Court of Common Pleas, if he was a clerk like Freddie said he must be a very very big clerk.
‘I dont think there’s going to be a big trial!’ I had called on the stairs, before I even got to the downstairs kitchen. Billy was home, Ma was a bit frantic that I was so late as if I was a child and not a life-experienced person and she and Billy were looking deadly serious. ‘Freddie’s father told me! Well, sort of told me.’
‘Freddie’s father?’
‘I went to see him. I told him Freddie was my boy. I thought it might be useful.’
Ma and Billy stared at me. I poured myself water from a jug, I needed that, Ma had made a beef stew and it smelled so lovely I thought I would swoon but they had that look as if they had been talking very serious and me not there.
‘What did he say?’ said Ma quietly.
I faced her so she could hear clearly. ‘He said there are lots of lawyers working on the case, and he said he believed there wouldn’t be a trial in the Old Bailey! Could we eat, please, Ma? I haven’t eaten since this morning and I’m really hungry.’
We sat down then and Ma served out the stew and it was raptureful to me and I ate and ate but I could see Ma and Billy were uneasy and a bit quiet and I noticed I ate more than them. ‘But aren’t you pleased?’ I said at last, still eating.
Ma looked at me. ‘Is that exactly what he said? He wouldn’t say something like that to you, Mattie.’
‘He didn’t mean to. But – I think it is what he believed.’
‘Jesus!’ said Ma. ‘If that’s true,’ she said to Billy, ‘surely your position will be safe.’
‘What?’ I put down my knife and fork then.
‘It’s all right,’ said Billy, calmly. ‘I will not let them take away my position. And Mattie, I meant to tell you, Freddie asked me to thank you for giving the evidence so well.’
‘You’ve seen him to properly talk to?’ Now I knocked my fork and it clattered on the floor. ‘You went and saw them and talked to them?’
‘I thought they might help me to find Lord Arthur but they had no idea where he was.’
‘Oh. Oh. I would give anything in the world to see Freddie by himself and make him know that no matter what evidence is said – I – I care for him and I am his friend.’
‘I think he knows that, Mattie,’ said Ma in her dry voice.
I suddenly felt fear at the bottom of my legs. ‘Is your position unsafe in the Parliament because of our name and address being in the newspapers about Freddie and Ernest? Oh Billy, is that what has happened? but Billy, listen, didn’t you hear me? you wont have to worry any more, I’ve told you, I think – I think it’s going to be all right, I think there isn’t going to be a big trial, course you wont lose your position, Freddie’s pa didn’t even mean to say it to me, I could tell, but he did, so he must know something we dont. You mustn’t worry, Billy.’
Billy looked at me as if I was a babbling nincompoop. And then he suddenly grinned and his face creased just like our Pa when he smiled or laughed. I love Billy.
‘We’re just getting a little bit too famous, Mattie!’ he said.
20
NOTHING MORE HAPPENED about Billy’s job, he still went to work every day and on the next Friday I said to Ma, quite cheerful: ‘We have to go back to the court, even though we think it might be all right in the end – and if it’s all right in the end then Billy wont lose his position. But we do have to go back to the court because otherwise Freddie and Ernest will think we are not their friends any more, that we’ve been shocked.’
‘Have you been shocked?’ asked Ma and I just looked at her.
‘I’m not stupid, Ma.’
‘I know you’re not stupid, Mattie,’ said Ma, gravely somehow. ‘That wasn’t what I was asking you. And we are not certain that it will “be all right” altogether.’
‘Mr Park told me.’
‘All right, Mattie.’
‘As long as we dont have to hear any more about – about their – private parts,’ I said, but still trying to be cheerful.
Soon as we got in I stared around for the Senior Master of the Court of Common Pleas now that I knew what he looked like. But he didn’t seem to be there. I wondered if they gave him a secret place at the back.
When they brought Freddie and Ernest in I could see that Freddie’s whiskers had grown more, even Ernest had a few.
But. They both looked – different in another way somehow, more despondent, and – I dont know what the right word is – puffed up in their pale faces, as if they were sick. As if they didn’t know anything about anything good at all. And I felt a big jumping feeling somewhere in my heart, had I misunderstood? his father would certainly have told Freddie if he thought there would be no trial, and Freddie simply looked ill.
‘Ma, they look terrible. Do you think – do you think I might have misunderstood Mr Park?’
‘I think perhaps you might have,’ she said back, she was looking at Freddie too.
Then, a gentleman was called from the Royal College of Surgeons and my heart jumped again. He was so much more respectable-looking th
an that police surgeon with the greasy hair who said those disgusting things. Mr Flowers treated this medical person with great respect and you could tell he was a gentleman. But – oh well – well the surgeon still had to say things it must have been hard for Freddie and Ernest to listen to, if someone spoke publicly on and on about my private parts I cannot imagine how I would bear it because private parts are called private, and here were theirs being discussed again all over London.
‘I am a friend of the father of Ernest Boulton and I went to the House of Detention at his request,’ he said, ‘where I found the young men despondent and, I thought, almost unwell for the worry of this case. I examined Park’s private parts and his anus. I did not discover anything to indicate the presence of disease or the probability of anything having existed within two or three months past.’
I looked at poor, poor Freddie. Of course this was evidence for him, unlike the police surgeon. Freddie stared at the floor, unmoving and I thought, this man held me tight when I needed him, I would hold him now if I could in front of all these people I would hold him and protect him and let them say what they liked.
‘I also examined Mr Boulton. I could not discover anything to suggest a suspicion that he had been guilty of an unnatural act.’
Ernest looked at Mr Flowers from under his eyelashes, that look of his, but Mr Flowers remained impassive as always.
‘I did not perceive that the anus was dilated. The muscle was intact and it had the natural function of retaining control of the bowel. Of course I speak theoretically rather than practically as my experience of such cases has been extremely limited. I only apply my general knowledge to this case.
‘However, I wish to make a particular and important point: I do not believe, as the police surgeon in his overzealous – so it seems to me – examination of the two defendants obviously does, that sodomy can be identified by physical examination.’
And this time the audience’s applause was respectful and loud. There was no shouting or laughing.
The Petticoat Men Page 16