It seems preposterous to me that any woman should dress as a man, outside of the ‘breeches roles’ you see on stage, but then Mrs Metyard was manifestly not a healthy individual. And the work of the alienists leads me to believe there are more diseases of the brain than we have hitherto discovered. Once, we had an inmate who went by two names. You could not tell which alias she would choose, but her voice, her posture, her entire deportment altered dependent on her selection. I wished to measure her crania in both guises, to see if the organs shifted between the two, but alas she was removed to Bedlam before I had the opportunity.
Could Mrs Metyard be such another? Either these terrible events really happened, exactly as Ruth said, in which case I pity her from my very soul – or they are a deliberate falsehood. This sickening tale has come from her own imagination, for her own amusement, and what sort of a person makes up a story like that?
The answer is of more consequence than ever, now that I have received a request from Matron. With all the infirmary bed linen lost in the fire, she requires twice as many prisoners to work in the sewing room. So far, Matron has held off sending Ruth – neither of us like to absolutely force a prisoner into a task that upsets them. Yet now there is the need, and Ruth can turn a stitch.
I must be honest: there is a fear in me. However silly, however outrageous Ruth’s claims about needles are, I hesitate to let her hold one. Could she really cause hurt?
There, see, I am talking nonsense! I have let her dupe me, I have let her make me believe such dross!
I will not be lied to any longer. It is time to take a firmer stand. Ruth shall go to the sewing room. We will ‘call her bluff’, as they say.
I shall write to Matron now, before I change my mind.
* * *
Where do you think I have been today? I have taken myself off to debtors’ gaol!
What with the riot, and my little upset over Ruth’s skull, I found myself disinclined to return to New Oakgate Prison. Yet I must be occupying myself, so when Fanny Awning mentioned she was paying a visit to the captive debtors, I felt compelled to accompany her.
I wish that I had not.
The first sign of warning was the basket that Fanny packed shortly before we departed. She squeezed in some tinder, a bottle of wine, cheese, bread: all the usual provisions for the poor. Then she placed a sort of board over the top, and began afresh with several smaller bundles.
‘Whatever is that?’ I asked her.
‘Why, it is a false bottom for the basket.’
‘Fanny!’ I cried. ‘You are not smuggling into the prison?’
She gave me a wry smile and simply replied, ‘You will see.’
Like most of Oakgate’s institutions, the debtors’ gaol is modelled on its larger London counterpart – although the Marshalsea Prison in the capital had the advantage of being pulled down and rebuilt about thirty years ago. No such arrangement has been made for our poor. A more sunless and chill place you never did see: everything studded with iron, more like a castle keep than anything else. As we walked across the broken cobbles, the shadow of a tall, iron-spiked wall fell over us, and with it came a smell so sweet, so musky, that I thought I should be ill.
‘Remember your handkerchief,’ said Fanny.
Obediently, I raised it to cover my nose and mouth. She had bid me soak it in bergamot before coming – how grateful I was that she did!
A dirty fellow stood beside the great iron door; or portcullis, I should say. He leered at poor Fanny. However, she seemed to know his tricks, for she addressed him immediately. ‘Here I am again, you see, Collins.’
‘And what have you got for me?’ He peered into the basket that hung from her arm.
‘Why, this is for the debtors, Collins. I will give you your usual sixpence.’
‘You’ll give me sixpence and that bottle,’ he ordered. ‘Or you ain’t coming in.’
Fanny made the exchange cheerfully, having put a cheap bottle of gin on the top of her basket. For myself, I thought it a disastrous bargain. Sixpence, to be admitted into a prison yard little better than a cesspit, with rats running about like dogs!
The yard was a square space, overlooked by a quadrangle of dull-brick buildings. Smudged faces appeared through the windows, miserable and gaunt.
We passed a wagon in the centre of the yard, waiting for its load. A boy of about ten years of age teased the horse.
‘Does that filthy conveyance bring the food and drink supplies in?’ I asked Fanny, aghast.
‘It does,’ she said sadly. ‘And it takes the bodies out.’
They are not divided into male and female in this prison: they converse in groups, with poor tattered children hanging about their legs. Of course the women are allocated separate sleeping quarters, but these are above – of all places – a taproom.
The stairs we climbed to reach them were sticky and reeked of beer. No matter how close I pressed my handkerchief, it did not cover the smell. To think that we have murderers awaiting trial, fraudsters and thieves all kept cleanly in New Oakgate Prison, when these people live like animals simply for the crime of being poor! It embarrassed me that I had not been aware of the fact beforehand. No wonder Ruth’s mother so feared this place.
The ‘room’, when we gained entry to it, was a dank, coffin-shaped space hardly big enough for a bed. Yet there was a chipped, worm-eaten bedstead in the centre of the floor, fusty with the sweat of no fewer than three sleepers. All of them were elderly women. I marvelled they had managed to survive so long.
Fanny was greeted as an old friend.
‘She’s a treasure, she is,’ I was told by a scrawny, malnourished woman. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without her.’
She gave way to a hacking cough, which continued for so long that it frightened me.
As we began to unload the basket, I ventured to ask how the turnkey had dared to demand money and alcohol beside.
‘They charges for everything!’ the emaciated woman cried. ‘For food, for coal. We pays rent, and for this bed, which Martha brought here herself!’
‘And if they find out we get a gift, like this,’ put in her room-mate, ‘they take a cut of it too!’
‘This is madness,’ I whispered to Fanny. ‘They are put in here because they cannot pay back their debts. How are they ever to do it, if they are granted no opportunity to make or save money?’
‘They do not do it,’ Fanny said shortly. ‘Many only get out in that wagon you saw.’
A short enquiry informed me that the prices charged for necessities such as candles and coal were in fact double the price of those I could purchase outside the prison. It is nothing but extortion.
We helped the women tidy and air the room as best we could. The bedclothes were infested with lice. Imagine spending the winter of your life in such discomfort, without even liberty to cheer you. The poor on the street are pitiful, but at least they may wander where they please.
‘You can see why the fellows get drunk,’ Fanny said, aside to me. ‘But they become disorderly, and more than one woman has been attacked.’
The old lady named Martha showed me a scar along her neck, where another prisoner had launched themselves at her.
Money – all this evil because of money! I smelt its coppery tang mixed with the urine and sweat, I heard its chink in the footsteps running outside. Even Martha’s wrinkled eyes appeared, to me, like two dirty pennies.
David tells me money does not matter but – oh! – it does, it does.
25
Ruth
So that was Mrs Metyard’s secret. Not just cruelty but all-out madness. Overnight the misery I’d suffered at Naomi’s birth and Pa’s death became raindrops in an ocean. My flashes were barbed, now. They were more than just blood.
I don’t want to talk about that. But what I will say is that, after my experience, I began to understand the place a bit
better. I realised why everyone was so heartless and strange. The captain wouldn’t rest.
That was why Ivy staged her spiteful ‘accidents’. That was why Nell kept her head down and her mouth shut. He was always hungering, prowling for a victim: every girl had to make sure that it wouldn’t be her.
Three days later I was still sunk deep within myself: my body patched with bruises, my mind full of sand. I felt nothing, not even a flicker, when Kate’s voice came up the speaking pipe and ordered me downstairs.
I hadn’t been near the showroom since that first day when I stood on the threshold, peeking in. Leaving my shoes outside, I opened the door and entered in my stockinged feet. Everything was just as I remembered: the duck-egg blue; the chandeliers; a warm, powdery aroma of satin. Great sheets of light fell through the bow windows and set the glass counters sparkling. Beautiful.
It made me want to cry.
‘There she is!’ Billy Rooker leant against the wall, beside the rolls of material, an incongruous figure amidst all that femininity. He’d taken his hat off, revealing a tumble of ungreased hair. The sight of his smile was the only thing in the world that could make me feel a fraction better.
‘Whittling,’ said Kate. ‘You haven’t forgotten, Ruth?’
‘No.’
‘Grand,’ said Billy. ‘I’ve brought everything with me. Wait until you see these knives.’
Kate flinched. She disguised it quickly, brushing down her dress in a no-nonsense manner. ‘Go on, then. Follow Billy.’
Awkwardly, I went behind the counter and trailed Billy to a recess on the left-hand side of the showroom, covered by an aubergine curtain with gold tassels. Pushing the thick, piled velvet aside, we entered a small chamber.
‘Bang-up job, isn’t it, Ruth?’
True enough, it was a pleasant room, papered in white and gold. A mirror hung on the wall and more cream carpet covered the floor, only it had been overlaid with a sheet of black oilskin. One of the showroom’s round tables sat upon it, spread with gleaming knives and a pile of yellow-white bones. There were two chairs.
I sat down heavily, too weary to stand.
Billy was much slower to take his seat. His brows were not arched and expressive now, but bunched together, straight, like two stitches on a seam. ‘What ails you?’
His voice was low and soft. I wanted to tell him. I wanted him to make it better, but I didn’t have the words to describe my ordeal. ‘Mrs Metyard . . .’ I whimpered.
He just nodded.
We sat in silence for a time. Not an uncomfortable silence. It had a nap to it, like a fine coat. Gentle. As if I could feel the texture of Billy’s sympathy through his lack of words.
I was reminded of another time and place. I saw myself sitting in the comfy chair at my old home in Ford Street, hiding my injuries under a cloak. How Ma had fussed around, bleating out cheerful, meaningless reassurance. Billy didn’t do that, and it was better. Better to sit and just be, letting the despair gust around me until it ran out of breath.
‘Have you heard from your mother at all?’ he asked at last.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to her. She couldn’t even see properly. What if . . .’ I trailed off. Could Ma’s circumstances be any worse than mine were?
Billy didn’t look at me but kept his blue eyes focused on the knives upon the table. ‘I doubt you’ll ever know, Ruth. And that’s hard on you. But you have to keep thinking she didn’t just abandon you. She gave you up for what she hoped was a better life. Not her fault that it wasn’t.’
It surprised me he’d thought so much about my ma. A feeling began to trickle through my sorrow; something warm and sweet. ‘Of course it’s not her fault. But that makes it worse. It means all her sacrifice was for nothing.’
Billy’s jaw set. ‘That’s why you owe it to her. To survive.’ There was a beat, and then the cloud seemed to pass from his face. He sat straighter in his chair, crossed one leg over the other. ‘Come on, let’s teach you how to do some whittling. I think you’ll like this, Ruth.’
He was right. The tips of the knives sparkled. They had sturdy, thick handles and the thought of gripping one steadied me, as the thought of Pa’s gun had done a thousand lifetimes ago. As for the whalebone, it was enchanting: translucent plates, strips like horn. Something natural and raw that I could shape.
‘Mrs Metyard has already taken the measurements we’ll need for this one,’ he said, drawing out a scrap of paper. ‘But Kate will show you how to do them yourself.’ He grinned. ‘Not really something it would be proper for me to demonstrate.’
I swallowed and felt my cheeks warm. Unbidden came the image of Billy measuring under my bust, passing his cloth tape around my waist. ‘But . . . how is it you know how to do this? A draper doesn’t usually make corsets.’
His right eyebrow lifted as he reached for a piece of bone. ‘Well, I wasn’t always a draper, was I?’
‘Weren’t you? I thought . . . Doesn’t your father own the business?’
‘Aye. But Mr Rooker wasn’t always my father.’
What could he mean? Was it his mother’s second marriage? But no, it would be unusual for a child not to keep their real father’s surname, especially a boy.
He saw my puzzled face. ‘Can you guess?’
‘You were . . . adopted?’
‘That’s it. Eventually. I was a foundling at first, just like the others.’
Suddenly I understood: the way he spoke of my ma, the look on Nell’s face as she called him a lucky bastard. He had been lost, like me. We shared a connection.
I pictured a blue-eyed baby, lying swaddled on the steps of Oakgate Foundling Hospital. God above, what woman could bear to give him up?
With a small knife, he began to peel slithers from a strip of bone. ‘It was here in this shop that Mr Rooker first saw me, spreading lengths for the customers. He used to watch me do it. One day I was cutting a particular bolt – champagne brocade it was, I’ll never forget – and he says, “Always so neat with his cuts. That’s a likely lad, that’s the sort of lad I could use around my place.” The next thing I know, there’s Mrs Rooker coming in to take a look at me. God bless her, I loved her from the moment I set eyes upon her. And after a few months, and all that toing and froing and haggling with Mrs Metyard, they did it. They took me away.’
‘What?’ The word flew from my mouth with such force that I nearly slipped off my chair. I hadn’t heard right, I couldn’t have done. Billy, the shining, cheerful Billy – here? ‘No. You couldn’t have . . .’
‘Couldn’t I?’
‘You really worked here?’
‘Aye.’
‘But then how can you . . . ?’ I stopped, afraid of saying too much. After all, Kate was in the showroom. But then the bell tinkled and I heard customers, voices beyond the curtain. I glanced at it.
Billy dropped his voice. He looked a bit graver now. ‘Ah, I see. You’re wondering how I can marry into the family, after . . .’
Our eyes snagged. Something passed between us, some unspoken understanding that made his irises burn fiercely blue.
Kate’s nasal tones drifted towards us, recommending a midnight satin.
‘Kate never beat me,’ he said, very gently. ‘Skinny little whip she was, even then. We were all of us about the same age, and we were friends for a time: Kate, Nell and me.’
‘Nell?’ I couldn’t comprehend what I was hearing. This was all too much to take in.
‘Aye, we both came from the Foundling together. The twins and Miriam are a fair bit younger than me. I was long gone by the time they arrived here.’
My greatest wonder was that Nell could stand the sight of him, after all that had passed. By rights she should be eaten alive with jealousy. Fancy being friends with a boy – and a boy like Billy, for that matter – only to see him lifted to a better life, away from you. And then, to
engage himself to your tormentor! She must be kinder and more forgiving than I had given her credit for. Lucky bastard was a mild term for her to use.
Selecting a knife and a plate of bone, I began to copy Billy’s actions. The movement came naturally to my hands. Gently, gently. Little white spirals fell from the bone. Curls of butter.
‘That’s good. But that one’s going to be for the shoulder blade so – come here. Let me help. Like this.’
The warmth of his hand guiding mine. His touch was tender and skilled, so why did it hurt to have it upon me?
‘I still can’t believe you worked here making corsets,’ I said wonderingly. ‘If I managed to get out of Metyard’s, I’d never come back.’
He continued scraping the bone, our fingers a fraction of an inch apart. ‘Goodness will triumph, little Ruth. I believe that. I was treated badly here, I won’t pretend otherwise, but it all came right. You see . . . if I’d given up, if I’d been sullen and resentful, Mr Rooker would never have taken to me. Kate would have been my enemy. But I won against them all.’
‘You haven’t won,’ I protested. ‘You still earn your money from Mrs Metyard, you still have to see her.’
‘But who will inherit her property? All she’s worked for?’
‘Kate, I suppose.’
‘And who will own Kate’s possessions?’
‘You,’ I admitted.
‘And who does Mrs Metyard love more than anyone else in the world?’
‘Kate?’ It was a guess. I couldn’t say I’d witnessed a great deal of affection between mother and daughter.
‘But who will have all of Kate’s love?’
My hand twitched away from his. ‘Her husband.’
‘So Mrs Metyard might think herself better than me, but she’s not. I’ll walk away with the love of her only child and, one day, her shop. I’ll beat her, Ruth, I’ll have my revenge. And I won’t even need to raise a fist.’
That wasn’t the kind of revenge I wanted. I wanted to crucify Mrs Metyard.
The Poison Thread Page 18