by Jana Petken
Her thoughts had clarity this morning. She had tried the wedding dress on three times already; but on all previous occasions, her grandma had been with her, gushing over her beauty, how expensive the dress must be, and how kind Big Joe was for buying it.
Mercy was now convinced that her grandparents had not cared one little bit about what she thought or what she wanted from life when they callously made the deal with the old grocer. When she turned fourteen, she had been dreaming about grand adventures and travel to other lands. Her grandparents, on the other hand, were signing her life away for profit, and they hadn’t even bothered to tell her what they’d arranged back then. Therefore, their supposed love for her was nothing more than a selfish commitment to material gain.
Today is the first and last day of my life in so many ways, she thought, quickening her stride. She was going to disobey all her grandfather’s rules, and she couldn’t care less. Being disobedient was not in her nature, but she wasn’t bothered about stupid laws and punishments. Not anymore – she didn’t respect her family, and they didn’t respect her.
As she walked, she took a closer look at familiar ugly buildings and realised just how boring her life had been so far. It had not been at all interesting. She had played in the street, gone to school, and then left school at the age of thirteen, expecting and intending to begin her search for employment, like every other girl she knew.
When she reached her fifteenth year, she was still sheltered at home and was met with a resounding no every time she asked if she could at least try to find work, which would help bring in some extra pennies. She did wonder about the sly looks between Grandma Sylvie and Grandpa Tom whenever she asked about what was to become of her. At that time, she’d even thought that there was something wrong with her appearance or that she wasn’t very clever, but as far as she could tell, she was just as clever as other girls her age were.
The girls she’d gone to school with were either in domestic service or, even worse, had been kicked out by their parents and sent into the workhouse. Why her grandparents continued to imprison her at home, teaching her to sew, cook, and clean house every day like that was her job had been a mystery, for it made no sense at all.
Her grandparents, both sets, had always struggled to make ends meet. Grandpa Carver had been laid off work because of bad lungs. He now sat staring out of the window all day, watching everyone else coming and going. Yet food was still put on the table, and Mercy was still being clothed. Grandma Jennings had never worked a day in her life, and her husband, Grandpa Jennings, had long since died of consumption, along with Grandma Carver.
Mercy picked up her pace again as her anger grew. Disgust still lay heavy on her heart, even after all this time. She felt the same rush of fury and despair every time she thought about the day she finally found out why she was excluded from employment, from going out with other girls, from talking to boys her own age, and from having even the smallest of freedoms, like walking to the grocer’s or visiting a relative alone. On that day, she found out why.
Her grandparents had sat her down shortly after her sixteenth birthday. They had made it clear, in unwavering tones and without emotion, that a deal had been struck with Big Joe: it involved her marrying him when she turned eighteen. The pact had been documented and signed by all parties when she’d entered her fourteenth year. They had shown her the papers with pride written all over their faces!
She remembered Grandpa Carver’s exact words: “How the bloody hell do you think we’ve managed to put food on the table these last two years, eh?” He’d raged at her with his gruff voice after all her protestations. “Do you think we’ve just been lucky enough to feed and clothe you with no money coming in?”
Mercy had cried for a week. She had found no consolation in the fact that her grandparents’ only stipulation at that time was that Big Joe would have to wait until Mercy’s eighteenth birthday before putting a ring on her finger. Clever, Mercy thought now, for in the deal was Big Joe’s promise of money every week and cheap food right up until the wedding day. He had agreed to the terms even though he would have to wait four years. He’d taken care of her family, and her family, in return, had sold her into an arranged marriage. Yes, very clever on her grandparents’ part, for they could have married her off much sooner had it not been for the ongoing funds and free food!
Mercy hated Big Joe. He was leery and old, and his saggy pot belly wasn’t hidden well enough under his dirty grey apron that should have been white. He had dirty teeth and thinning hair. His bald patch was sprinkled with freckles, and he had horrible dark moles that she could never bear to look at, never mind touch. He was at least forty-five, and why everyone called him Big Joe, she’d never know, for she towered above him in height.
Since the truth had come out, she’d been forced to go to his shop every day, and she’d been threatened not to be offish with him. Her grandma told her she had to flirt and make him want her. She was also told that the way to a man’s heart was not through his belly, as most women thought. No, Grandma Jennings had added, the way to snare a man was to make him want your legs open every day of the week!
Mercy shivered with revulsion now, on an unusually warm October morning. Joe had the disgusting habit of dribbling at the mouth when he saw her. On her dutiful social outings with him, her grandma in tow, he made sure whispers in her ear with his wet tongue were understood. “I’ll be having my fill of you in no time, Mercy. You just make sure you keep that cunt of yours nice and tight for me. Don’t let another man’s cock in there, cos if you’re not a virgin when I sign those marriage papers, there will be hell to pay.”
She had no one to talk to, nowhere to run to, nobody to escape with. She was Big Joe’s property, and everyone knew it. No boys came near her, no girls wanted to befriend her, and her grandparents refused to talk about it further.
She laughed scornfully. Before she’d found out, she’d always joked about Big Joe with her friends. All the girls had called him a dirty old bastard, including her.
Big Joe had two shops. His wife had died years ago. He was, however, very well off and respected in the community. He led the local council and had a house bought and paid for. Marrying him was an honour, as her family had told her every day for the past two years.
Mercy understood her grandparents’ need for money. She was well aware they couldn’t provide for her anymore. She wondered if she was being selfish. If this was to be her lot in life, she shouldn’t really complain, should she? After all, she might have ended up in the workhouse if not for Big Joe and his free food.
She walked on. She would try on the wedding dress for the final time, and then she’d forget about him and her wedding. Today was not a day to think about a bleak future in his bed or behind a counter, measuring flour and getting tins off a shelf for girls her age who would pity her and laugh at her behind her back. No. Today was her day.
Mercy had thought often about what her life would have been like had she grown up with a mother and father. She had never mourned them, never known them, and never missed them. The only thing she could honestly say she missed was the actual experience of having parents, instead of grandfathers who had been overly tough with her and grandmothers who were too weak to argue with their husbands. She was not allowed to cry or to moan, not even when she’d fallen down and cut her knee or her elbow. Tears were forbidden and would lead to a good thrashing.
She now lived in an almshouse with her grandma because Sylvie Jennings was a widow. Grandpa Carver lived with them as an unemployable invalid. Big Joe had made sure they’d gotten to the top of the housing list. She hated the house and her lumpy mattress that stood in the pantry by day and lay on the kitchen floor at night. But as much as she hated that mattress and floor, the thought of living in Big Joe’s house was even more abhorrent to her.
In 1848, Parliament had established the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers. It ordered the commission to survey the antiquated sewage systems and clear the cesspits. As far as Mercy was
concerned, they’d made the air even smellier instead of better.
She had grown up with the smell of shit and pee. One of her greatest ambitions was to walk in the countryside, miles from London and its suburbs. To smell clean air and lie in a field of newly cut grass would be a wonderful thing, she’d often thought.
Mercy wiped her brow with her hankie, complaining to herself as she did so. Heat was beginning to settle in the air, and that made the stinking open sewers even more unbearable than usual.
Last year, London’s summer had been even hotter and had lasted just as long as this year, which added to Londoners’ many years of ongoing misery. The stink of overflowing sewage in the River Thames and many of its urban tributaries was something they had learned to live with. Mercy and her grandma never went out without large handkerchiefs in their pockets or bags to cover their mouths and noses when they had a good distance to walk. The warmth in the summer air encouraged bacteria to thrive. In the previous year, many people had become ill. Even work in the great House of Commons had been affected – so she’d heard from just about everyone who’d been to the other side of the river.
“This is why you shouldn’t disobey your grandpa and me by going across London Bridge. The centre of London is the best place to be if you want to make yourself sick,” Grandma Jennings often told her.
As she passed St Mary’s Church, Mercy thought about the life she had dreamed of. She had known from a very young age exactly what she wanted to do when she was grown up. She was going to be an explorer, perhaps an archaeologist, and she would write about her travels and about all the treasures she found along the way.
Walking and looking at buildings, graveyards, parks, and shops was her favourite pastime, but she had done that so often in this small area that the sight of them no longer gave her any satisfaction. Nothing seemed to change. The streets and the houses were always the same, day after day, year after year. The park and its trees changed colour in the seasons, but it was still the same park and the same trees. The people she saw had the same faces she saw every day, and her small world was suffocating her.
As she walked along the street towards the more elegant part of Southwark, she began to dream about all the possibilities and opportunities that Central London could bring her, were she free to choose. She could, for instance, live in the attic of a grand house and work in the kitchen or, if she was lucky and did well at her job, serve tea upstairs. She could clean rooms in one of the larger hotels, where she would meet new people. She would have a half day off every week and would walk down unknown streets, through new parks. She would visit museums and have tea in quaint little tea rooms, and her curiosity would be appeased. She would write about her experiences in a journal, learn about the world and unusual people in it, and save money in order to travel even farther. But her loyalty to the grandparents, who had brought her up without question, convinced her that they were much more important than her own selfish ambitions. Fate had therefore dictated that she, Mercy Carver, would never have what she wanted out of life, apart from today.
Chapter Two
Mercy looked into a shop through its window and saw her own image staring back. She pushed her nose against the glass and cupped a hand at the side of each eye, thus blocking out the sun’s reflection. She was at the local pawnshop, which specialised in clocks and pocket watches. She had to know what time it was. Timing and a great deal of dramatics were going to be her keys to success today.
Mercy had told a fib this morning. Her grandma was beside herself, knowing that the wedding dress had to be picked up and that she just wasn’t well enough to go with Mercy to get it. Mercy calmed her down by saying that she’d get Mrs McCallum to go with her. Mrs McCallum lived just around the corner, and she would be quite happy to have a walk with her and see the dress.
But Mercy had no intention of going to Mrs McCallum’s or anyone else’s house. It was her first big lie, the first she’d ever told. If she was to spend her whole life in the Elephant and Castle, be married off to Big Joe, have children, and grow old before her time without having truly lived, she deserved this day, and the lie she had told was nothing to be ashamed of. Her conscience was clear. She felt no guilt gnawing at her, nor would she feel remorse when the day was over.
She had left her grandma’s house earlier than she was supposed to in order to buy some time for her well-guarded secret adventure: she, Mercy Carver, was going to walk across London Bridge for the very first time in her life. She would do it on her own and savour every sight she saw on the way. She would look down into the murky water instead of staring at it from a distance. She would see the great ships and boats at close quarters and have her first cup of tea in Central London.
Ten thirty, the grandmother clock inside the pawnshop said. Perfect, Mercy thought. The dress shop was only two streets away now, and the women were expecting her anytime this morning.
The dressmaker would dress her and show her how to lace up the newest fashionable accessory, the corset. She would try on the bone-ringed petticoat for the very first time, and she would put on stays, which would lift her womanly breasts. When the dressmaker had finished with her, a stylist would transform her childish braided hair into ringlets, which would tumble down her back beneath the veil she had already chosen. She would walk into the shop a girl and walk out a woman, at least as far as her hair was concerned.
Her wedding attire of corset, stays, stockings, veil, petticoat, and gown would be placed in a large, cumbersome box, and she, as ordered, would walk all the way back home with it – but not straight away. That wasn’t the plan …
Chapter Three
Mercy straightened and studied herself in a mirror that stood six feet tall. She couldn’t quite believe what she saw. The woman staring back at her was a stranger to her. The beautifully cut off-the-shoulder white silk dress was trimmed with pale pink ribbon. Her corset had given her a tiny waist that had been measured at a respectable twenty-one inches. The gown’s skirt ballooned outwards and right down to the floor, giving her a body shape that was completely new to her. Her breasts were lifted, full and rather revealing, she thought, feeling slightly shy and uncomfortable at the sight of them. She also looked tall, so much taller than before, but the little pointed shoes with curved heels had a lot do with that.
Under her veil, soft curls cascaded down her back to just above her waist. Her small oval face – with pointed chin, perfect cheekbones, and huge emerald-green twinkling eyes – was further enhanced by perfect pink bow lips.
Mercy had not been able to see herself as others did. She did not see, nor could she imagine, the beauty that was evident to all but her. However, she now saw a woman staring back at her. She saw a shining light emanating from her eyes – not because of the gown, the marriage, or the wedding, but because she was just about to put her plan into motion.
“I should have cut your hair,” said Agnes, the stylist, interrupting Mercy’s thoughts. “It’s far too long. Long is not in fashion this year, especially with this gown.”
“Nonsense,” said Doreen, the dressmaker. “When hair is like silk and hangs naturally curly like that, it should be left just as it is. It may not be fashionable, but I would sell my soul for that texture and colour. It is, after all, a woman’s crowning glory.”
Doreen stood slightly behind Mercy and studied her in the mirror. She said, “You’re a lucky girl, Mercy. Big Joe was very kind to pay for all of this. He might be well off, but the veil in itself cost him a small fortune, let me tell you. He’s the best match in the area, so be thankful that you’ll be well looked after. He’s got no children from that sickly wife he used to have. Blimey, she could scarce stand up straight most of the time, never mind bear him a child. He’ll leave everything to you; don’t forget that either. If you give him what he wants every night, you’ll tire him out in no time. He’ll be dead soon enough with his big fat belly and all the nightly jumping and humping about the bed with you. You take it from me: if you constantly fuck him, he’ll not
be long for this world.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Agnes scolded Doreen whilst trying to look serious.
“I’m just saying how it is, Agnes.”
“Fucking indeed. At least say pleasuring him. I hate that word fucking.” Agnes began clearing the tools of her trade away, still smiling behind her indignant demeanour.
Doreen played with the veil, spreading it out and measuring its long train. She ignored Agnes and said, “You mark my words, Mercy. You’ll be a rich widow in no time. I’ll tell you right now, if I didn’t know who you were or where you came from, I’d think you were a bloody duchess – or a real lady. You’re beautiful, but you also have grace and posture, just like your mother had. It’s a natural gift, and not every woman has it, especially round your neck of the woods. You’ve got all the attributes men want, and they’ll be your weapons, so use them well, and they’ll take you a long way.”
Mercy sighed. “What I want is to get employment and not have to marry an old man. What’s the point of having looks if all they’ve gotten me is a horrible old fat balding man for my trouble? I hate him!” she sobbed loudly. “I’m dreading it. I feel I’m about to go to prison without having committed a single crime.”
The two women looked at each other. Mercy was aware of the pity in their eyes, and that was exactly what she wanted to see. It was time to perform.
“If only I could have one day, just one day, to taste freedom in a gown like this. If I could just do one thing with my life today, it would see me through all the horrible years to come with that filthy old git who sticks his slobbering tongue in my ear every time I’m with him. He makes me want to puke! I swear I’ll end up killing myself. I’ll be just like my dad, without hope.”
Mercy’s tears and wretched sobs stopped the two women in their tracks.