The Petticoat Men

by Barbara Ewing

  Mattie neatly folded the newspaper. ‘And Freddie and Ernest will now be freed on bail.’

  ‘So it is reported.’

  ‘And that must be what Freddie’s father knew.’ Mattie was still folding and refolding the Reynolds News into smaller and smaller squares. ‘Well. That’s it then. I don’t suppose they will visit us ever again. Like you said to me, Billy, when we went to Newgate, we’re the “criminal element” at 13 Wakefield-street, not to be mixed with. The End.’

  ‘And I suppose I’ll work at the funeral parlour at half my erstwhile salary until I am a very old man,’ said Billy. ‘And all because we rented rooms to Ernest and Freddie.’ He looked at his mother. ‘They always win in the end.’

  Both women saw his somehow resigned face and it hurt their hearts for they had never in all their lives seen Billy resigned.

  Neither Mattie Stacey nor Mrs Stacey said anything more.

  However, that Sunday both women – each quite independently, and without consulting the other – decided, for Billy’s sake, to act further.

  33

  I MADE A Plan.

  Our life with Freddie and Ernest was over for ever but I made one of my Plans, for Billy, because it wasn’t fair. Everyone else to live happily ever after more or less but Billy without his work that he loved, my brother Billy deserved better than this. It was a bit hard to arrange because I had to wait till Ma and Billy had gone to bed, or be sure Billy was still out with death duties.

  I started going down the Strand late at night. I didn’t want to wait in the Strand itself exactly, the other girls might have gone after me for walking in their streets but there’s a pump at the top of Whitehall just before it joins to the Strand and I waited there, good for leaning on. Night people walked past about their business, carriages still rolling along Whitehall, even a few ladies and gentlemen walking past, but nobody took any notice of me, good.

  Billy had always said they often worked late in the Parliament, they were often there in the House of Commons, he said, till midnight or after, and I’d seen him and knew what he looked like, so I used to get there before midnight, walking the busier, bigger streets from Wakefield-street to be safer, didn’t take that long, and always making sure I had my sharp rock and some hatpins.

  I was lucky the first night, I didn’t talk to him but, well at least I knew this was the way he came like Billy said, it was nearly one o’clock and I was thinking of going home, is this what it’s going to be like waiting, boring and tiring? – but then there he was, walking and talking with another man, they were in serious conversation – loud booming voices too! he didn’t seem to think he had to be quieter in the street so I supposed it couldn’t have been very private, I could hear them clear, they were talking about Canada, I suppose Canada’s not private, anyway I couldn’t stop him with the other man there, but I could have a proper look at him, Prime Minister of England, very tall, funny high collar he had and walked very upright, booming along.

  Billy had told me he wanted to talk to Mr Gladstone. Well if he couldn’t, I would.

  The second night he didn’t come at all, damn. I waited till half past one in the morning, funny people going past, servants, and gentlemen in top hats and a policeman but he was drunk and oblivious, lucky for me. I felt a bit dejected going home, sneaking in the door and up the creaky stairs, lucky Ma’s deaf. Maybe this wasn’t going to work.

  The third night he was by himself. I’d thought and thought how I would do it, what I might say to introduce myself. I sort of stepped forward and looked at him wondering how to start but all he did was – very courteous – move out of my way and walk on, well that was a lot of bleeding use, I had to be more blooming urgent than that to stop him. It was tiring this pump-waiting, next night I was so weary I didn’t go at all, went to bed at eight o’clock!

  ‘You all right, Mattie?’ said Ma.

  ‘Course. I was sitting up too late sewing that’s all.’

  I didn’t go back for a couple of nights and then I saw Billy’s face one afternoon as he was called out to walk behind the hearse to Highgate. That night I went again.

  When he came past I just stepped forward very firm and said, ‘Mr Gladstone, sir!’ He looked like he didn’t like being accosted (maybe he did the accosting) but anyway I couldn’t stop now.

  ‘Could I speak to you, Mr Gladstone? I so very much require your assistance.’

  His voice in answer wasn’t unfriendly but it wasn’t friendly either, I saw him looking at me. I remembered Billy saying he only talked to young, pretty girls so I hoped I was pretty enough. I was young anyway.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  I didn’t want to walk with him really, he would see my leg. But I s’pose we could hardly discuss Billy’s future over a street pump. So I took a deep breath. ‘Could I walk with you for a few moments, sir? That’s all.’

  ‘Very well.’

  He straightway saw me limping, he frowned and I thought, oh my God limping makes me not pretty enough but he seemed to be thinking something, or puzzling about something.

  ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Have you damaged your leg?’

  ‘I was born this way, sir. But as you see I do not have to walk slowly, I can walk just as fast as you.’ But he slowed a little bit, I thought that was kind. We turned into the Strand and in the darkness the gas lamps caught his face, one by one, his face was bright and then dark as we walked, mine too I suppose.

  And then I plunged in. ‘My brother has lost his position. We can manage, he has found other work but he is not happy, he so loved the work he used to do and he was so good at it and he misses it so dreadfully. Now he works in a funeral parlour and me and my mother cannot bear to see the spirit knocked from him. It’s as if his soul is a little bit dead itself, because of the unfairness that happened to him.’

  He looked a bit surprised – that I could speak in sentences I suppose! He seemed to have forgotten the rotten limp anyway. ‘How did your brother lose the work he was so fond of?’

  Having got to speak to him at last I couldn’t stop myself, out came the words. ‘It was so unfair! He is such a good person, and such a clever worker and no action of his was responsible. I am not asking anything for myself, Mr Gladstone. I am not a street-girl, I have just waited there some nights in the hope that you might hear my story. I knew I would never get near to you if I came to the Parliament.’

  Again he looked at me very carefully, then he nodded very slightly, and then he did a gentle thing, he might have been the Prime Minister of England but he gave me his arm in a courteous manner as we walked along the Strand. Night people still passed on their night business, I bet not many saw it was the Prime Minister of England walking with a cripple.

  ‘What is your name, my dear?’ he said.

  ‘My name is Martha, sir. People call me Mattie.’ (Me, Mattie Stacey along the Strand on the arm of Mr Gladstone.)

  ‘What is the work that you do yourself?’

  ‘I am a milliner, sir. Actually, I make ladies’ hats.’

  He smiled. ‘You are a hard worker I am sure. I see your determination.’

  ‘I am a hard worker.’ I didn’t say yet about us running a boarding house. ‘I am sure you are a hard worker also, but, Mr Gladstone – can I ask you something, can a Prime Minister do anything he wants in the whole world?’ My hand rested lightly on the sleeve of his jacket, I didn’t lean on him of course but I felt a deep sigh from somewhere inside him. He was silent for a few moments as we walked.

  ‘Not, alas, my dear, everything. Although I often wish that it was so.’ And I tell you what, I heard something in his voice, some – regret. Something. As if his answer held more than he was saying. ‘Not everything he wants, alas,’ he said again, and it was almost to himself as if I wasn’t there. ‘The world cannot be like that.’

  ‘No, I s’pose some things none of us can do,’ I said, ‘even if we are hard workers.’ I didn’t mean to say the next words, I didn
’t know I was going to say them in the darkness, I dont know how they got there. ‘I was married. My husband was killed by a drunk cart driver who was going too fast. I could not do anything about that.’

  For a brief second he put his hand on mine; I could feel the old, dry skin. And I saw a clear half-moon in the sky and thought, like a heart-stab, of Jamey.

  For a few moments then we walked in silence.

  But I had to say what I came for.

  ‘Could I speak of my brother? I am so grateful for your time, Mr Gladstone, when you are such a busy man, but I must help him if I can.’

  ‘I do not know if I can help him. What was his work?’

  The words rushed out at last. ‘He was a clerk in the Parliament, he sometimes worked even in your office because he was so clever, his name was William Stacey.’ At once, I could tell, Mr Gladstone knew what I was talking about, that Billy was the clerk involved with the Men in Petticoats.

  He was so shocked that – he couldn’t help himself he just stopped abruptly in the Strand, I could feel he was trying not to be rude, trying to control himself, when he quickly took his arm away from me, but I couldn’t help it, I staggered a bit because he moved so quick from me, as if I would poison him. But still I saw how he still controlled himself – he didn’t turn away at once. ‘I am afraid I do not have anything to do with the employing and dismissing of clerical staff in the Houses of Parliament, Miss Stacey. And if you approach me again I will inform the constabulary. Good evening to you.’

  He didn’t even get a chance to turn away properly because my words stopped him. ‘My brother and I went to see Lord Arthur Clinton in Mudeford, Mr Gladstone, a few days before he died, now surely you of all people would want to know that?’ And of course he couldn’t go: he turned back to me completely. ‘He was so alone, Lord Arthur – no friends or family came, he had no money, my Ma gave him some money, my brother who has now lost his position was one of the last people to talk to him and told him things might get better, and that friends might still help him, and Lord Arthur who you knew when he was a little boy, cried. My brother is not one of those kinds of men, Mr Gladstone, in case that is occurring to you, but he is an honourable person and there is something wrong in this world when an honourable person is kind, and loses his work, while people in high positions shelter each other from scandal.’

  It was as if I was possessed, I couldn’t stop – and it was as if he was mesmerised, he could not turn away either.

  ‘Are you sure he died of scarlet fever, Mr Gladstone? In that case you better watch out because maybe you have caught it from me breathing beside you, because I wiped Lord Arthur’s face when he was crying, and nobody else in Mudeford died of scarlet fever, Mr Gladstone. In Mudeford they wonder how he died too. He sent you a message by the way, that if you didn’t help him he would haunt you. All my family ever did to even be part of this story – and my brother had nothing at all to do with it – was rent them a room sometimes, Freddie and Ernest, who told us they used to do acting parts as women sometimes, and they were pleasant tenants and no trouble to us or other tenants. We were not running a bawdy house or a criminal headquarters for sodomites whatever the papers say, we were just a boarding house like hundreds of boarding houses all over London. And this is not some blackmail attempt like in books just because Lord Arthur told us you were once named his guardian though you can call the constabulary if you want to. And I wont be hanging around the pump in the middle of the night and looking for you again so you dont have to be fearful. But Billy should not have lost his position in the Parliament to save other people’s reputations. You should be grateful that Billy was kind to Lord Arthur before he died, not take his work from him – and Billy is not the only one!’

  I stopped at last. I saw his shadowed face – he was completely stunned and shocked, he seemed as if he literally couldn’t move or speak. So – I dunno – I was the one who turned away in the end, and I left the Prime Minister of England there, on the Strand.

  I was so exhausted on my way home I was careless, didn’t notice three drunk men on one corner of a side street near the rougher part of Gray’s Inn Road, and they come round me, pushed me against a wall, I could feel the bricks in my back. ‘Come on, pretty lady, we’ll give you tuppence if you suck us all,’ and they started tearing at my clothes and their own clothes and I gave them such a bloody swearing and screaming that they were surprised just for a second and in that second I got the sharp stone from the pocket in my cloak that was now all torn and I scratched it really violent down the face of the nearest man who screamed and stumbled and up above a window opened and another woman screamed as well and poured the contents of a chamber pot on all our heads, turds and all, some of it got on me as well as them but it meant I could get away in all the row and I went home just as fast as I bleeding could to our famous house.

  I was shaking and shaking.

  No one was awake. I soaked part of my gown that had turds on in one of the big buckets, I washed my face and my hair in a bowl even though the water from the tap outside was so cold. The stove had gone out but there was some warmth still and I slept beside it, till dawn.

  34

  Billy says they always win in the end. Well to hell with them all, I thought, we’ll get on with our lives. And I decided maybe Billy wouldn’t feel so low and so lonely for his old life if he could talk to Elijah, who got dismissed as well.

  So I found Elijah Fortune and Dodo.

  I put on my best hat, made by Mattie of course, and went again to see my friend Louisa Peck, the wife of the Managing Clerk of the Sacred Harmonic Society.

  ‘Isabella Stacey! The Madam of the Bordello!’ she said at the door, despite her respectable curls and cap, and she ushered me in and we both laughed but rueful too, and she moved the kettle so that it was right over her big stove fire.

  ‘Didn’t you get words written all over your walls, Louisa? Did any of your tenants leave like they’ve left Wakefield-street?’

  ‘Nah. I let rooms to people of class, that’s different! Dead and all now, poor sod. I’m full, are you full?’ I shook my head. ‘It’ll blow over, Isabella,’ she said.

  She knew I was deaf, talked loudly. She bustled about with cups and biscuits. ‘Silly little cow, she is, that Maria Duffin, only here for a month and puffing up her evidence. And now the trial’s called off, eh? I see them gentlemen in charge of England all the time, going to their gentlemen’s clubs with their top hats or their clerical collars, so pleased with theirselves and ruling the world and calling off trials.’

  Already the kettle hissed and steamed.

  ‘One of my nieces works in the kitchen of one of them gentlemen’s clubs and she says it sounds like horses neighing all over the big dining room when they’re all laughing and drinking and stuffing their faces.’

  Which made me and Louisa laugh too, and I dunno what we sounded like, cows laughing maybe, but anyway a visit to Louisa always cheered me up.

  ‘I’m trying to find Elijah and Dodo, Louisa. Did you know my Billy and Elijah both lost their positions at the Parliament over this blessed business?’

  ‘I heard of course. Bastards. Well I tell you what, poor old Freda will know where they are maybe. She’s Dodo’s cousin, got a couple of rooms at the Elephant, Peacock-street. You know what I heard last night at the Sacred Harmonic Society? They say Lord Arthur Clinton committed suicide, right in the middle of the most respectable hotel in Christchurch, dressed as a woman in stays and corsets, and feathers in his hair! Dancing! And then dying! What do you think of that!’

  Somehow I didn’t say anything about Billy and Mattie seeing Lord Arthur.

  I followed round the streets behind the Elephant till I came to Peacock-street, bloody awful run-down place, I knocked at the number Louisa had given me. All I could hear was children crying and yelling and I thought I must be at the wrong place. I knocked again very loud and at last the door opened and I saw a poor, vexed-looking woman about my own age with a baby in one arm and a small c
hild held firmly by the hand, and yelling coming from somewhere inside.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I might be at the wrong place. I’m looking for Freda.’

  ‘I’m Freda.’

  ‘Louisa Peck at the Sacred Harmonic Society gave me your address because I’m looking for Elijah and Dodo Fortune and she thought you might know where they are.’

  She opened the door a bit wider. She was neither welcoming or unwelcoming, just harassed and the place stank but I could also smell a cake baking at the same time which made a strange-smelling combination indeed. And then I saw another child, a small boy, tied with a rope to the leg of a big table in the main room, kicking and yelling.

  Above that noise the woman called Freda yelled also. ‘DODO! VISITOR!’ then she disappeared down a dark corridor with the two younger children and I was left with the tied-up one who stopped kicking for a moment to look at me.

  ‘I knew a man who could make the sky move,’ I said.

  He kept staring but said nothing.

  ‘He could make clouds go fast or slow.’

  ‘Was he God?’

  ‘No, he was a carpenter.’

  ‘Was he Jesus?’

  I was taken aback. ‘Do you go to a school?’ He shook his head. ‘How did you know Jesus was a carpenter?’

  ‘I learnt it from the Bible lady.’

  ‘What?’

  He shouted, ‘I learnt it from the Bible lady, you silly old cow.’

  ‘Can you read?’

  ‘Nah, course not, she reads it to me. But my Uncle Elijah says he’s going to teach me to read, he’s going to get me a book for me own.’

  ‘Where’s your ma and your pa?’

  ‘Dunno, you silly old cow.’

  Dodo Fortune rescued both the boy and me from this interesting conversation. She stood in the doorway like a bent crab, holding a plate of little cakes and looking at me. It was still her face. But even though I knew about the arthritis I was shocked beyond belief at how crumpled and crippled she was. Dodo Fortune, once one of the most popular dancers of them all.