The Linnet Bird: A Novel

by Linda Holeman

  “You’ll get nowt. I got nothing and I’ll pay for nothing,” he said, walking away.

  I sidestepped a puddle of streaky vomit glinting in the light from the street and caught him by the sleeve. “Now, sir,” I told him, my voice never losing its sweetness. “T’wasn’t my fault you weren’t at your best tonight. And you did find a bit of pleasure, I’m sure, judging by your familiarity of me.”

  He stopped, looking down at my hand on the thick wool of his sleeve. “I’ll give you tuppence and not a penny more.” He dug in the pocket of his tight striped waistcoat, taking out a coin. As he handed it to me his eyes rested on the skin just above my bodice. “Could be that yer wrong. It were yer fault I weren’t at me best. That’s horrible, a right mess. Why don’t you cover yerself?”

  I took the coin, holding it tightly in my fist. “And why should I? For weren’t it one very like yourself that caused it?”

  The fishmonger mumbled something unintelligible and turned away, unbuttoning his trousers again and urinating loudly against the wall, steam rising in the cool air. I watched the puddle he created running along the veins between the cobbles.

  I tucked the coin into the slit in the underside of my waistband, then carefully stepped over the filthy, uneven surface of the alley and out onto the nearly deserted street.

  “Hoi! Linny!”

  I peered down the dim street, trying to see through the shadows, then waved, waiting as the other girl hurried toward me.

  “Did you have a good night, then, Linny?” Annabelle asked. She was chewing gingerly on a hard roll stuffed with greasy herring. Her cheekbone shone swollen.

  “It hasn’t been too bad, except for the last one. He couldn’t bring his fine soldier to stand at attention and wouldn’t pay what I asked,” I told her.

  Annabelle nodded. “Bugger the rotten sods and their limp cockstands. You should carry a cutter, as I do. A sturdy blade flashing against their jewels makes ’em cough up soon enough.”

  I nodded, thinking of the folding knife I’d once used to threaten Ram Munt, and had call to bring out a few more times when I’d felt truly fearful. But I’d lost it last July when my untied straw bonnet had been blown off into the street in a sudden dry gust of gritty wind. I’d run to retrieve it before it was flattened by a horse’s hoof. But it had danced and twirled away from me, caught up in the persistent wind, and by the time I’d caught it and brushed off the dust and put it back on, I realized my knife was gone. I retraced my steps over and over, but the bone-handled knife had disappeared, snatched up, most likely, by a street urchin with a magpie’s eye. I hadn’t wanted to spend the money to buy another. Now I realized Annabelle was right. More and more I had to fight—either for my money or to defend myself. The customers were getting rougher and cheaper.

  “Comin’ for a drink?” Annabelle asked.

  “No.” I yawned, blinking as the chapel bells of St. Peter’s chimed five times. “I’m off to get a few hours’ sleep.”

  Annabelle shrugged and went up the street and I made my way back to my old home, the dilapidated room on Jack Street. Now I shared it with Annabelle, Helen, and Dorie.

  What I told Annabelle was true; I was tired. But the other reason I didn’t want to go to the Goat’s Head was that I didn’t want to spend even one extra penny of my money. I’d saved seven pounds. The fare advertised on the posters had risen from five to seven pounds over the last two years and was always dropping or rising a few shillings, depending on the season and the ship itself, but seven pounds was a safe bet. I planned to work one more month, just one—to save a little more so that I wouldn’t be penniless when I arrived in New York.

  I would never be forced onto the street again.

  As I silently let myself into the fetid room on Jack Street I saw two humped, motionless figures on the narrow mattress and was glad Annabelle didn’t come home. Only three of us could crowd onto the narrow flock pallet; Annabelle and I, had we come home together, would have had to pull straws to see who got the bed and who would sleep on the floor. There was a definite nip in the air, and if I’d pulled the short straw, with only my shawl and extra dress to cover me, it would be unpleasant on the cold floorboards without even a strip of drugget to keep away the draft. There was a tiny fireplace so badly clogged that we hated to light it because of the clouds of black smoke we had to endure. The walls, untouched by the whitewash brush in years, were furred a delicate green by the rising damp. Rain made the rotting beams creak monotonously, and the one loose window rattled painfully in even the slightest wind. The glass was so smudged with dirt and soot inside and out that during the day the room seemed to be in a never-ending twilight.

  I took off my boots and pulled off my dress so I could unhook the front stays of my corset, then, shivering, put my dress back on and wrapped my shawl around me and crowded onto the edge of the flattened stained pallet that filled the width of the closet that passed as a room. I had to shove Dorie with my hip, who in turn pressed closer to Helen, forcing her against the wall. Dorie moaned and grumbled sleepily, flinging her arm across my temple. But still, I was almost asleep by the time I turned onto my other side, facing into the dark room. With my eyes closed, I fingered the reassuring thickness of my waistband—my pendant and coins—all stuffed into the slit I made in the wide band that held my skirt to the bodice of my dress.

  There was an identical opening in the waistband of my other dress, and nobody knew about my savings, not even the other girls in the room. I’d surreptitiously transfer the money and the pendant when I changed my dress each week. I’d try to wait until the other girls were gone, or, if that proved impossible, I would turn away, facing into the corner as I pulled off one dress and slipped the other over my head. I let whoever was in the room think it was because I was ashamed of my scarred torso.

  The fruitwood box and the coins and books it had contained had been stolen over a year ago. The only reason my pendant had been spared was because Helen, without asking, had taken it and worn it that night. I’d been furious with her when I’d seen it around her neck when I ran into her on the street, and had demanded it back. But later, when I’d returned to Jack Street and found the room turned upside down, my box gone and even floorboards torn up, the thief finding all the money the girls and I hid under separate boards, the only thing I’d been grateful for was that Helen had decided to choose that night to borrow the pendant.

  After that I’d kept it and my money with me at all times.

  With sleep coming sweetly over me, I recited the rote prayer to try to keep away the nightmare, the overpowering crush of blood and hair and cold water and the plunging shears. When I was awakened by it, as was usual every third or fourth night, I’d sit up, bathed in sweat, my mouth stretched wide as I took deep, gulping gasps. The truth of that nightmare—the knowledge that I had killed a man, even though it had been to protect myself from the same fate—was like a slinking dark animal, something with sharp teeth and yellow eyes. It was always following me, sometimes close on my heels, at other times sitting some distance away, watching. Under bright gaslights or a candle’s soft glow the dark animal stayed low, pushed away by the warmth and the light. But it came back with a vengeance when I was in the dark. In the growing cold of this autumn it had grown even larger. There were times, now, that I felt it so close I’d whirl around in the darkness of the street, thinking I heard it breathing. And then I knew the nightmare would come that night.

  Now it had come three nights in succession, without any days of grace in between, and I’d only managed a few hours of restless sleep each night. My body ached with exhaustion and I willed myself to dream ordinary thoughts this night. I felt my eyelids easing, knew the line between my brows was erasing. Just before I let myself go, I put one hand up in the old position over my ruined breast. It comforted me to protect it, although I don’t know why. And lately, I’d been moving my other hand from its usual spot, guarding my waistband. I moved it further down now, to my belly, cradling the child furled tightly there
.

  I KNEW IT WAS A GIRL and that I would call her Frances. I don’t know exactly when or how she was conceived; I’d always been careful with my prevention—using the bit of sponge, washed out every morning and then soaked in alum and sulphate of zinc and put in place before my first customer, and then, after my last, taking out the sponge and using my syringe wrapped in a rag dripping with the same witch’s brew, no matter how weary I was. It had been Blue who had taught me what to do, and I’d used the sponge and syringe faithfully as soon as my first bleeding began, only three months after I’d left Back Phoebe Anne Street for good. But of course all the girls get caught at one time or other. It had happened to me before, just at the end of my first year with Blue, only I hadn’t even been aware of it until it was almost over. It was Helen, come back to Jack Street for her cloak when a cold rain had started up, who had told me what was happening. She’d found me on the bed when I should have been out working, doubled in two with pain, my face waxen and wet with sweat, and after a few questions she slipped out and brought back two pints of ale. Helen had sat beside me, forcing me to drink both pints, telling me it would be over soon, and to be glad of it. This way, she told me, I wouldn’t have to pay to get rid of it.

  All I’d felt, then, was relief when the cramping and clotted bleeding at last stopped. Nothing else.

  But this second time had been different. For one thing, I’d realized, fairly early, that a baby had started. And I also knew it was the sign I’d been waiting for.

  The trip to New York would take six weeks, longer if the weather proved poor. But that meant that if I left at the end of the month, I would arrive before the baby was due. She would be born there, in the great New World, and she would be an American. I would find a respectable job, for weren’t there all sorts of jobs to be had in America, especially in the place called New York? Nobody would know me and I would create a new life for my daughter. The little girl would never know about my life—this life—in Liverpool.

  For the last few months, while I waited for each customer to finish, mindlessly murmuring rote praises and moaning as if delirious with pleasure to bring them on faster, I made up the stories I would tell little Frances about the fine gentleman who had been her father and what had happened to him and how I had come to the United States of America.

  And then, early one morning as I had walked back to Jack Street, the rain falling in torrents and the inky sky occasionally bleached by the sheet lightning that flashed from far out over the Mersey, illuminating the weeping rooftops, I realized, with a sudden sharp pang, that maybe my mother had done the same thing.

  For the first time, I wondered if perhaps I didn’t carry noble blood at all. My hand sought out the birthmark under my wet cuff, fingering the raised shape of the fish thoughtfully.

  “WHEN ARE YOU getting rid of it?”

  I shook my hands over the washbasin and wiped my face with a clean rag, looking down at Dorie. Helen had gone off to buy herself a hot pie, and Annabelle hadn’t returned at all after the night’s work, but Dorie was stretched on the bed, enjoying the space to herself before she headed out onto the street that afternoon.

  I put my hands on my abdomen, wishing I’d pulled my stays tighter. “Can you tell?”

  “I can. But most others wouldn’t see it; you’re that small. How far gone are you, then?”

  “I don’t know.” For my own reasons I didn’t want to tell Dorie that I knew it to be almost six months. “But it’s been quickening a while now,” I added, trying not to smile, thinking of the tiny fluttering that kept me company, cheering me when there seemed little else that could.

  Dorie made a sound of disgust. “It’s a right fool you are, then. Once it’s quickening it’s harder to get rid of. Means you must be four months along. Why didn’t you do something sooner? But it’s not too late, although it’ll be hard on you, I grant you that. A lot more painful and messy, but it can be done if you find the right person and are willing to pay.” She stuck a finger into her mouth and dug at a back molar, her face contorting, the heavy folds of her eyelids almost hiding her small eyes.

  “Toothache?”

  She sat up, nodding. “I’m planning to have it yanked at the barber later today. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll set you up, as long as you’ve got the money. There’s someone the barber knows; I’ve used him.”

  Tying a dark blue ribbon in my hair, I shook my head and picked up my shawl.

  “What do you do with all your money, Linny? You don’t buy yourself any finery, or even a frock from the pawnshop. And you hardly never come to a tavern or chophouse with us no more, and Lord knows you eat next to nothing. No fancy cakes, no fruit pies. Just the slop from the stalls, jacket potatoes and oxcheeks, from what I always seen.”

  “I’m saving it.”

  “Not for a rainy day, I hope,” Dorie said, laughing, her eyes disappearing again, and then she grimaced, slapping her palm to her cheek. “Ow. You’d have it all spent in one November if you was saving it for that.” Her tongue probed the back of her mouth now. “You’ll come with me, then?”

  But I just shook my head again, leaving Dorie worrying her throbbing tooth.

  I KNEW SOME OF the girls who had been forced to carry a baby to birth because it couldn’t be got rid of. Most left their newborns on the steps of the workhouse or a church. Only one girl that I knew, Elsie, had tried to keep hers and still stay in the game. She left it with a toothless hag during the night when she was at work, and the little thing—a well-formed boy—had appeared to be thriving for the first four or five months. But one night he wouldn’t stop crying, and the old hag, trying to quiet the teething infant so the others in the packed straw-filled room wouldn’t throw her out, had first cut open his gums to let the new tooth come through, and when that only intensified his screams, had, in desperation, overdosed him with Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup. The baby fell into a deep, deadly, laudanum-laced sleep that he never awoke from. After that Elsie slipped away from Paradise and word filtered down to us she’d hanged herself in a flooded cellar off Lime Kiln Lane.

  But of course no one ever knew for sure.

  Chapter Nine

  I WAS MORE TIRED THAN I EVER REMEMBER FEELING. IT DIDN’T matter how many hours I slept; I was still weary when I awoke late afternoon to prepare for the night. I knew it was the baby, taking what she needed to grow. My feet hurt more than ever; I saw, each dawn as I unlaced my boots, that my ankles were swollen, the skin marked with angry red creases where the leather bit into them.

  This particular evening—November Fifth, Bonfire Night—I considered not going out at all. Perhaps I would celebrate Guy Fawkes by buying myself something hot to eat and then spending the night on Jack Street, listening to the fireworks. Maybe I would even treat myself to a yellow-backed penny novel and attempt to concentrate enough to read.

  But even as I cleared a spot in the soot-covered window and looked down at the teeming alley below, dreaming of reading by candlelight, and of sailing away, and of playing with my pretty baby in a sunlit patch of grass in a place far from here, I knew I was only fooling myself. I would have to go out. I still had to turn over a minimum amount to Blue each night, even if I didn’t pull any customers. And I wouldn’t dip into my savings—I was so close that I could hear the ripple of sails in the wind.

  I’d been pulling fewer and fewer tricks this last while. I worried, foremost, that little Frances would come to harm by some of my rougher customers. As well, my body was unfamiliar, heavier and unwieldy, my dresses uncomfortably tight even after letting out all the seams. I found it difficult to muster the enthusiasm necessary to elicit a favorable response, and many men, perhaps reading the unconscious unwillingness in my face and posture, would glance over me and then move on to one of the other girls.

  As I laced up my boots, wincing, I realized just how badly I needed to leave it all—the damp room on Jack Street and the cold, wet streets that fanned out from Paradise in an endless maze of dark alleys filled with drunken,
smelly customers. And the streets were becoming ever more dangerous. In the last three weeks three prostitutes had turned up dead, strangled and deposited down by the docks. I knew one of them; she was a pallid young thing with her two front teeth knocked out in a brawl with another whore over a customer a few months earlier. There were rumors of even more girls gone missing since the summer, but if a body never materialized, she was never declared dead.

  THAT EVENING I PICKED OUT a spot on the corner of Paradise and Cable Street where I’d often had good luck. Ten bells had chimed, a cacophony from all the churches nearby—St. George’s, St. Peter’s, St. Thomas’s—but the evening was slow so far, only three customers. I knew it often took until after eleven for business to pick up, when gentlemen on their own flooded out of the musicals and dance halls and theaters. But as it was Bonfire Night, perhaps many men, their faces ruddy with the night air and rum, would choose to go home and spend the rest of the evening watching the public fireworks with their children. It was cold; the sky, that afternoon, had been leaden and carried the smell of snow. Now a thick fog descended. On the next corner I could make out the orange glow of a burning tar barrel, lit by the drunks with nowhere to doss. The streetlamps were little more than misty orbs.

  A few minutes after the echo of the last bell had died, I heard the clatter of horses’ hooves behind me. I turned, momentarily blinded by the lanterns swinging on either side of a carriage. It was a fine brougham with a pair of dancing gray horses. I’d seen it before, although never its passenger. The brougham had started appearing on the streets a week ago, and one of the girls—Little Eve—had been inside.

  She whispered to me, only a few evenings ago, that it was best not to get into it. “Take it from me, I was sorry. A mean sort he is,” she told me. “He likes to give it down the throat or up the arse and he’s brutal with his hands; he’s knocked about more than me, I’ve heard. Look what he did.” Little Eve had pulled back her bonnet to show me a red, swollen ear with an oozing scab where the lobe joined the jaw. “Pretty near tore the ear off my head. He pays well, but you’d do well to avoid him. A bit of a villain. And you never know, Linny. Who’s to say he’s not the very one what’s killed those girls?”