The Petticoat Men

by Barbara Ewing

  ‘Well he should have sent it by now! I cant wait longer!’ Lord Arthur picked at the old blanket with the hand that wasn’t holding the sovereigns, and sweated, and our three shadows mixed together on the sloping walls as the lamp flickered.

  Billy waited for a moment. And then he said, very politely: ‘Lord Arthur. What is the Prime Minister to you?’

  Lord Arthur wasn’t expecting such a question it was clear; he stopped picking at the blanket. ‘Where are all my friends?’ he said plaintively. ‘Why are you people here at all if you haven’t brought money?’ He was clutching our mother’s sovereigns while he spoke. ‘Why am I by myself?’

  Silence in the small, stuffy, shadowy room. Breathing. My breathing. Billy’s breathing. Lord Arthur’s strange nervous breathing. Scuffling sounds in corners.

  Finally: ‘What did Stella say?’

  ‘I have seen them both,’ said Billy. ‘I went to Clerkenwell, to the House of Detention. Before they were sent for trial at the Old Bailey. They were sent to Newgate Prison at the end.’

  Lord Arthur seemed to literally flinch, as if he heard clanging gates. ‘I am not going to prison! I would rather die. I have the means!’

  ‘We do not want any of you to be in prison,’ said Billy patiently. ‘Not you, not Freddie and not Ernest.’

  ‘What did Stella say?’

  The trouble with Billy is he’s hopeless at lying, even when it is useful. Billy really tried, bless him. ‘He – we were wondering where you were, how you were. But – he and Freddie are – in a very distressful position.’

  Tears came in Lord Arthur’s eyes and then they fell down his cheeks, poor thing, and I remembered Ma and me saying about him how he was ‘berserk with love’. I felt in my cloak for a handkerchief, I wanted to throw off my cloak in the stuffy sweating room, open a window, anything.

  ‘Stella broke my heart,’ he said.

  I leaned towards him, gave him the handkerchief, my strange shadow leaned with me across the sloping ceiling. I have to open the window. I moved towards it.

  ‘Why didn’t Mr Gladstone stop the trial?’ Lord Arthur cried out very loudly, stopping me, now he was clutching the handkerchief that our Ma had embroidered, as well as her sovereigns. ‘He is the Prime Minister of England, why didn’t he stop it for my sake!’ He sounded insane.

  I watched Billy’s face. He didn’t show anything. ‘I do not think even the Prime Minister of England has that sort of power, Lord Arthur,’ he said, very still.

  ‘Well he never helped me anyway, and my father and my grandfather helped him and he wasn’t even the nobility. His family were just business people, owners of slave plantations in the West Indies, not nobility, like us. Yet my family gave him his first seat in Parliament because he was my father’s best friend, my grandfather owned the seat. Thanks to us he became Prime Minister of England but when I wrote to him and asked him to help me get a position at Court – that would have solved all my problems and none of this would have happened – he didn’t assist me in any way whatsoever!’

  By now Lord Arthur’s voice was harsh and crying but Billy’s was so quiet, calm and gentle, like a little brook going quietly along under trees.

  ‘Was it because he was grateful to your family that he should have helped you?’

  Lord Arthur’s voice went higher. ‘What’s a guardian for if he doesn’t guard you?’

  ‘What?’ Yet even in such surprise Billy somehow kept his voice low.

  Lord Arthur was silent but only for a moment. ‘Well why shouldn’t everybody know! He was made one of our guardians, years ago. One of the times our mother ran off. He was legally made one of our guardians, me and my sister and my brothers, my father insisted, in case my mother’s family tried to – claim us.’

  Silence. Perspiration pouring down Lord Arthur’s pale face, Billy’s face, my face, and of course I couldn’t open the window for his wild shouting words. Moths already in the room were banging against the lamp on the little table now, wanting the light, hurling themselves at death. He picked again at the old blanket.

  ‘Mrs Gladstone was kind. She used to take us to the zoo.’

  Silence.

  ‘And he’s a trustee for the Newcastle Estate, my family’s estate. He’s not even the nobility – and all he does is withhold our birthright. He never lets any money out, not for anything, and I need money! Look at me here! Me: Lord Arthur Clinton, my brother Duke of Newcastle, my old guardian the Prime Minister of England in charge of our noble estate – and yet me in this room in this place with no money, not a penny, and charged with buggery!’ The word shocked out.

  ‘There was a legal person spoke for you,’ I said, trying to be calm like Billy now, ‘at the end of the first trial. I was at the trial, I think his name was Mr Roberts. Maybe Mr Gladstone arranged that.’

  Again Lord Arthur was silent for a few moments before he spoke.

  ‘Not Mr Gladstone. There’s a lawyer for the Newcastle Estate, Mr Ouvry. Linky – my ridiculous, useless, selfish brother who’s now the Duke – is always trying to get him fired because he was our father’s lawyer and holds on to the money too and wont give us extra, he says it is to run the estate, and Linky’s a gambler and always in debt and says, “Bugger the estate”, but – he’s – Ouvry’s all right. Ouvry would have arranged for Roberts to speak for me. Roberts helped me before, when I was made – when I had some little difficulty. He used to be one of my father’s private secretaries in the Parliament years ago – so he knows all the family secrets.’ He wiped his face with his spare hand. ‘Anyway I’m sure if my actual family were involved at all – which I doubt – they only arranged a solicitor to speak for them. To protect them, not to help me. I know that. He was there to protect them, not me!’

  ‘What do you mean, them?’ said Billy.

  ‘The Family. The Duke my brother. The Newcastle Estate.’ He shrugged in his little bed. ‘The Family. Everybody.’

  I thought of our little everybody: me and Ma and Billy.

  Silence in the hot room again.

  ‘Why did you come to Mudeford?’ asked Billy finally.

  ‘Royalty used to come to Mudeford,’ said Lord Arthur. ‘And the nobility, like us. There’s a castle along the shore and beautiful houses. That’s where I should be.’

  Our breathing in the small, unbearable, un-noble room. The mad moths, banging.

  ‘I thought I might get to France. My mother lives in France. There is no such crime as buggery in France.’

  ‘Shall you go?’ I asked him.

  ‘How can I go?’ he burst out. ‘No one will help me! You haven’t brought enough money and I haven’t got the money to pay someone to take me! The King’s Arms wouldn’t give me more credit so I end up in this rat-hole! I cant go back to London! I wish I was dead!’

  Tears fell down his face again and this time I couldn’t help it, I took the handkerchief, the mad way he was clutching at it, and wiped his face, I wished there was some water to make it cooler for him.

  ‘Lord Arthur,’ I said, as I wiped at his tears and his perspiration, ‘I dont of course have any personal interest in the case – except that Freddie and Ernest kept their clothes at our house and stayed there sometimes, as you know. But I was thinking – and one of the lawyers said this also. The case is about Ernest – about Stella really, isn’t it? Not Freddie.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Freddie is – different.’

  ‘Different?’ Lord Arthur started to laugh but it was a very hysterical kind of laugh. ‘Fanny is less beautiful, that is all! Fanny is on the town looking for chances every night of every week, Stella or not! Everyone in London knows his arse is as big as the Thames Tunnel, and most of them have been through it!’

  I stepped back from the bed as if he had punched me in the stomach. Moths banged at last to their death against the lamp and fell downwards.

  ‘I am going to see Mr Gladstone, Lord Arthur,’ said Billy. ‘What would you like me to say to him?’

  ‘
Tell him he has to help me! Tell him to send money absolutely immediately so that I can go to my mother in France. He loved my mother, she told me so. We laughed about it. His best friend’s wife, he used to write her love poetry and then talk to her about God, for God’s sake! “He is a hypocrite,” she told me, “like all the rest. It’s his fault I had to leave your father,” she told me.’

  ‘Have you been attended by a doctor, Lord Arthur?’ Billy asked him.

  ‘Whatever for? Because I am telling the truth about the man of the people, Mr Gladstone? You needn’t think I am delirious! I know of what I speak! You would be ill if you were me! Shut up in this shit-heap with no air! Scared of every footstep! Wondering if I’m going to be thrown into prison as a debtor or a bugger! That would make anybody ill. If you hadn’t mentioned Stella and Elijah you would never have found me because I am in hiding – and you have brought me nothing!’

  (But he was holding very tightly to Ma’s sovereigns as he struggled up in the bed again.)

  ‘Listen! I will kill myself rather than go to prison – and I have the means to do it – tell them that! Tell them all! Tell Stella! Tell Elijah! And make sure you tell the Prime Minister I will blame him as my mother blames him, and my ghost will haunt him, tell him that!’

  His face was now so red and terrible I felt quite frightened for him, I couldn’t think what to do, all I really wanted to do was get out of that room, but I tried to calm him, to smooth his arm but he pushed me away violently and clutched the sovereigns to him.

  ‘How dare you touch me!’ he said. ‘Just because Fanny and Stella kept their gowns in your cheap and nasty little establishment it does not make them your friends – and it certainly does not make us intimates!’ but his poor face looked really terrible and he sounded delirious.

  ‘We will send a doctor,’ said Billy. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘Get out! Get out of here!’

  ‘Only a doctor that Johnny Hewlettson suggests. No one else. I promise.’

  It seemed most terrible to leave him but in truth I went quick as I could manage down the narrow stairs, I couldn’t wait to get out of that awful, unforgettable boiling room and the awful, unforgettable words, I left the handkerchief that Ma had once embroidered so beautifully. But Billy went back up the stairs for a moment with a cup of water he got from the little girl, who was still waiting downstairs with another small lamp. I wondered if she’d understood all that mad shouting upstairs. But I couldn’t speak. I wanted to get out of the cottage but that seemed even ruder.

  Lord Arthur’s words about Freddie went round my head: Fanny is on the town looking for chances every night of every week. Everyone in London knows his arse is as big as the Thames Tunnel, and most of them have been through it.

  Now I know what speech-less means.

  Billy came back down the stairs. ‘Is Johnny Hewlettson your pa?’ he asked the little girl.

  ‘Might be. Might not be.’

  ‘We need to speak to him.’

  She shrugged. ‘He’s out.’

  ‘Is this your house?’

  She gave a funny sharp laugh. ‘No.’

  He squatted down to her level. ‘Where’s your pa, little girl?’ he said gently. ‘We really do need to speak to him to help the poor man upstairs.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘My name’s Billy,’ said Billy. ‘What’s your name, little girl?’

  ‘Marigold.’

  ‘That’s a pretty name.’ She stared at him a moment longer.

  ‘Follow behind me.’

  Oh the relief of air! In the darkness we followed her and her lamp towards the quay and then down to the water and along the stony shore, I stumbled and Billy took my arm. Around us, odd houses were outlined in the night, there were lamps at windows and the strange smell and sound, of the sea.

  ‘Wait,’ said Marigold and she walked away; finally her lamp went inside one of the houses.

  I couldn’t stop shaking as I stood near Billy in the warm night. He must have felt me, he put his arm round me. We looked at the dark water, a little breeze came while we stood there, my hair blew across my eyes, we could hear waves. Lights flickered back along the quay, moving and then disappearing.

  ‘Perhaps that’s the smugglers,’ said Billy. ‘Maybe that old fisherman Mackie is there, smuggling away.’

  ‘Do you think it’s true? What Lord Arthur said about Freddie?’

  Billy didn’t answer for a few moments. Then he said, ‘Lord Arthur is frightened and he seems – hysterical.’ That didn’t help the words in my head. ‘It’s a different world from ours, Mattie.’

  Just then we heard a door, then the light of a pipe came towards us, we could smell the tobacco on the air.

  ‘Give me a sovereign, Mattie.’

  I gave it to him, quickly feeling for the money in my cloak pocket.

  The outline of Johnny Hewlettson moved towards us in the dark.

  ‘Well,’ he said.

  ‘He’s very frightened,’ said Billy. ‘We dont – know him very well but he seems in such a state he could do anything. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a doctor, just in case.’

  ‘He’s a nuisance,’ said Johnny Hewlettson. ‘He owes money all over the county as well as all over London. He hasn’t got money for a doctor – and what can a doctor do for someone who’s scared?’

  Billy handed the sovereign to Johnny Hewlettson with another half-sovereign.

  ‘For a doctor you trust maybe? And some food maybe?’

  The sea shushed on the gravelly sand and my thoughts mixed with the sound: most of Ma’s precious sovereigns left in Mudeford, to help Lord Arthur Clinton. I wondered what she’d think of that. How odd it all was.

  Johnny Hewlettson looked down at the money in the darkness. ‘We’re not exactly savages down here, boy. My wife made him food last night and twice today. He wouldn’t eat it.’ He turned towards the houses, holding Ma’s money in his hand, and then he stopped and turned back to us. ‘I see you mean well, lad, and the only people who’ve come anywhere near him.’ Tobacco drifted across to us. ‘We dont have any doctors in Mudeford. I’ll get a good doctor in Bournemouth that’s known to us, not any of those elegant-refined Christchurch ones. I’ll get Robbie Thompson with your money. We dont want him cutting his own throat or dying of fright on us just because nobody else will take him in. But tell his family he needs proper help,’ and then he left us, there on the shore. He threw the last words back over his shoulder, ‘Not to leave him with strangers like a rat in a corner.’

  We walked back to the road, along to the inn. Billy took my arm in his again and, unusual for him, put his hand over mine just for a moment.

  ‘You got the information you needed, Billy, didn’t you?’ I said.

  ‘I think I did.’

  ‘But – Lord Arthur’s too old to have a guardian.’

  ‘He is now,’ said Billy. ‘But he wasn’t once. I dont expect people like us are supposed to know that story. I think it would be – bad for Mr Gladstone if they said in the trial of the Men in Petticoats that he was Lord Arthur’s guardian and a trustee of his family’s estate. It makes him like a – much too close a connection to the trial.’

  ‘Are you going to – blackmail him, Billy?’

  Billy laughed. ‘That’s in novels, Mattie! I dont think Mr Gladstone could be blackmailed by anyone, he’s the sort who would call a constable if he had to because he thinks he is in the right and to hell with what the world thinks. That’s different from just keeping his connection very quiet. But – I just feel he’s an honourable man and – that I could explain to him.’ And he sighed in the night. ‘We need my job, Mattie. And I love working there. I’m glad I know the truth now. I hope I can just see him and say to him that I was caught up just like he was, only I lost my position and he didn’t.’

  He still held my arm and I sort of squeezed it, so he’d know I understood. We walked in silence for a while, you could hear our footsteps and the sea further away, that’s all, it was a
ll so quiet and not like London.

  ‘Do you think Lord Arthur is sick, Billy? Or just frightened?’

  ‘I dont know,’ said Billy. ‘Frightened I think. Hysterical and wild and frightened.’

  ‘Will that man get a doctor?’

  ‘I believe he will. They wont want the risk of him ill in Mudeford and police snooping about.’ And I saw that Billy shook his head in the dark. ‘Looks like a smuggler has to take charge if nobody else will.’

  ‘But – Lord Arthur wouldn’t really kill himself, would he?’

  ‘I dont know,’ said Billy.

  Again we walked in silence.

  ‘I know I’ve been very foolish,’ I said at last. ‘It was because Freddie was so kind. Other people must make up dreams besides me.’

  And now Billy gave a small nudge to my arm hooked in his, just like I had, as if to say, I understand.

  After that we didn’t speak again. And we didn’t pass a single person, just me and my brother, walking along the dark Mudeford Road. We could see lights, warm and welcoming as we approached the inn. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, not even Billy who wanted an ale. I said goodnight to him and went to our room. Someone had left a lamp on, turned low, as if someone was waiting for me to give me a hug. But not really of course.

  26

  Before dawn next morning two figures walked along the Mudeford Road towards Christchurch. The young woman walked with a limp, the man kept her pace and carried their bag.

  This day was a Thursday.

  At first only the sound of their footsteps on the hard dirt road. Then the first notes of morning birds, singing as they sensed the first light before the walkers did. The grey light in the sky grew brighter. They heard horse’s hooves far behind them, pounding nearer and then slowing. It was Mackie the fisherman, travelling towards Christchurch in the growing light with a large number of mysterious bundles attached to his horse. They could smell fish.

  ‘Room for you, Miss Mattie,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop you at the Old George and you can wait for your brother there.’

  The girl got up behind the rider with the help of her brother, and took the bag. The brother waved to them as they trotted off into the light. The girl looked back several times and saw the stoic figure getting smaller and smaller.