Nell held her chin in her hand; looked, for a moment, as if she might consider it.
‘Absolutely not.’ I stood, with as much dignity as I could manage, on my wobbly leg. ‘We might be poor, but we have some pride. Good day to you. Come on, Nell.’
I regretted it afterwards. For I didn’t have the pride I’d spoken of. Each day passed with no trace of Ma and ended in begging strangers for food. Nights were torments without sleep. And then the worst thing of all happened.
We were wandering aimlessly, as we did now, knocking on doors and looking for shops to ask about employment. Nell led the way, for she knew the streets better than I did. That particular morning, she took us through a shadowy court I’d never seen before. A great, hulking building rose up to our left. Vicious iron crowned the walls. It gave me a strange, unsettled feeling, like I’d seen it in a dream.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
Nell slowed her pace, followed my gaze. ‘Oh. It’s the debtors’ prison. We won’t find work there.’
My teeth began to chatter. Perhaps it was just the cool morning air, not yet warmed by the sun. I took another few steps, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
Have you ever seen a building that seems to gloat? I can’t say how it did that, exactly. But the barred windows were glinting at me, malicious, and the very bricks seemed to whisper, tempting me to share their dark secrets.
I came to a halt. ‘Can we ask, Nell? About my ma?’
She sighed, looking back over her shoulder. ‘If we don’t find a place to work soon . . .’
‘Please.’
The agony in my voice stopped her. Reluctantly, she nodded. ‘All right. I’m sorry. My ma ran off and left me, you see. I forget how much other people love theirs.’
Nerves gripped me as we approached a thick iron door. My knuckles trembled as I knocked, their raps swallowed by the metal. Of course, it was silly of me to get so nervous. Hadn’t Mrs Metyard promised not to call in Ma’s debt? I’d sold myself so she would never have to come near this chilling place. And yet . . .
A grate opened. A bloodshot eye stared through it. ‘What d’you want?’
‘I – I’d like some information.’ I sounded impossibly young. ‘Can you tell me if there is a Jemima Butterham within?’
‘Might be able to.’
‘Please,’ I begged. ‘It’s important. She’s my mother.’
He stared back, unmoved. ‘It’ll cost you.’
‘What, just to check a name?’ Nell pushed me out of the way and shouted at the man. ‘What if she’s not in there, and we’ve handed over our money? We’d get nothing for it.’
‘You’d know she ain’t here,’ the man behind the door leered.
I glanced at Nell. Uncertainty was nibbling away at my guts. ‘How much?’
‘Sixpence.’
I nearly fell into the door. The amount it cost for both of us to lodge for the night! Turning my face down, I tried not to let Nell see my distress. I couldn’t ask her to give up a night’s shelter.
‘She’s probably not in there anyway,’ I said, sniffing back my emotion. ‘Mrs Metyard said . . .’
But Nell was rummaging in her pocket, then pushing coins across her palm. She fixed anguished eyes upon me. ‘I have sixpence. But . . . that’s it. It’s the last of our money, Ruth.’
My head throbbed. An impossible choice. Give up on searching for my ma, or beggar my only friend? I needed somewhere to sit down. I needed to scream.
‘Haven’t got all day,’ the man barked from his grate.
I took a step away. I couldn’t ask it of Nell. Not after the way she’d obtained that money.
But I didn’t need to ask.
She made the decision for me, thrust her handful of coins at the grate. ‘Tell us,’ she insisted.
* * *
Ma was dead. I guess you knew that already. Mrs Metyard tricked her. They both signed a paper, and Mim witnessed it, but the amount shown on that document wasn’t Ma’s full debt.
That bitch slung my poor mother into debtors’ gaol for the remainder, despite all she’d said, and let her die there like a dog. So my suffering, every minute of it, had been for nothing. I might have left Metyard’s on the first night.
Nell and I sat by the river afterwards, speechless, looking down at the sludge. Gulls shrieked like lost souls. There was no moisture in my eyes. I was too sad to cry.
It smelt of ordure and iron, this landscape of mud. Compared to the reek of debtors’ prison, it was a bouquet of flowers.
I didn’t want to imagine the horrors poor Ma had suffered in that loathsome gaol, but I kept doing it, tormenting myself.
Miss Jemima Trussell. No one would dream that such a fine young lady could meet her end in gaol. She should be in some country church, resting in a family vault. But she wasn’t. The turnkey at the prison said they burnt the bodies if no one claimed them, to stop the spread of disease.
My lovely ma was just ashes and bone. Discarded on the dust mounds.
I wondered what had happened to Ma’s old handkerchief, the one with the loose threads. I wanted to hold it between my fingers and think of her. I wanted to use it to smother Kate.
Before God, I swore I’d kill her. Not only for what she’d done, but for her mother’s deeds too. I would kill her if it was the last thing I ever did.
Billy wanted me to work as her maid, did he? Mend her gowns? Gladly. I’d create agonies for her in red silk, livid horrors in mauve cotton.
I turned to Nell. Gnats hovered in a haze around her. Poverty had taken its toll. Her beautiful hair was dull, her skin pale beneath the patches of dirt. I’d be damned if I let her die too.
‘We must do it.’ My voice came hard, determined. ‘Let’s go to work for Billy and Kate. There’s no other choice.’
She bowed her head. ‘I can’t believe it’s come to this. If I had a penny left, I’d scorn them, but . . . God, I’m famished, Ruth.’
‘I know.’
She took my hand in hers. The gulls kept up their lament. ‘I can get through it. It won’t be so bad for me in the kitchen. But being her personal maid . . . Are you sure? Are you really sure you can do it?’
I pictured the corset I’d made: the bone channels, the gussets reinforced with hate. Squeezing, pressing. Kate’s lips, dusted with peacock blue.
‘Oh yes.’ My mouth twisted. ‘I can do it. I think I was born for this.’
* * *
Dusk had thickened over the river by the time we stood and made our sorry way to Water Mews. Lamps flickered on the boats, casting halos on the oil-black surface of the water. It wasn’t hard to find Billy’s house again; we recognised the green door. Stared at it, as the temperature dropped.
It’s a fearful thing, knowing you must perform an action that your whole soul revolts from. I knew I’d have to pass through that door into her house, as surely as we all must pass into death. For a moment, the second option seemed preferable. Even Nell was eyeing the green paint strangely, as if it hid the portal to some secret hell.
‘Best go round the back and knock on the kitchen door,’ I suggested. ‘She’s less likely to answer that, don’t you think?’
Wordlessly, she nodded.
It would be a strange reverse, I thought, of all the times I’d let Billy into Metyard’s through the trade entrance.
I was wrong.
When the door swung open, it revealed a fire blazing beneath an assortment of small pots. A woman stood before us with a spoon held aloft. Smuts streaked the apron that covered her gown.
It was Kate.
The sight of her was like a physical blow. Tearing pain in my chest and in my throat. I’d thought I could put everything aside and concentrate on punishing her, but that had been a vain hope. To see her face, smiling at me, so soon after learning of my mother’s death! She was lucky I didn’t have
enough strength to throttle her there and then.
‘Come in, girls.’ She stood back from the door, her smile wavering under our stony gazes. Curls had stuck to the sweat on her forehead. She pushed them back with her free hand. ‘Come in. Shut the door quickly. Don’t let any more flies inside, they’ll be drawn to the light.’
We shuffled across the threshold. Heat from the fire kissed our chilled faces. I didn’t know what she was cooking, but it smelled glorious.
Kate stirred her pots and lifted one from the flames. ‘You’re filthy,’ she observed.
‘Just as well we came in the back, then,’ Nell retorted. ‘Wouldn’t want to be ruining your fine house, Mrs Rooker.’
Kate turned back to the fire. ‘No indeed. You know my ways, Nelly. If you’ve come here to take the work, you’ll be having a bath before you leave the kitchen.’
Oh, we knew her ways all right. I was too angry to reply, but Nell spoke for me.
‘It’ll take a good scrub to get the dirt out. Especially the smell of the debtors’ gaol.’
Kate’s face blanched above the pots. Before she could muster a response, the door to the hallway opened and Billy appeared.
‘I thought I heard Nell’s voice!’ He beamed at us. ‘How grand it is to see you both. Have you come to be our maids at last?’
‘They’ve finally swallowed their pride,’ Kate affirmed.
From the way both our throats were working, I wouldn’t say we’d swallowed our pride. We were gagging on it.
‘Let’s get them fed and watered, Kate; there’s barely anything left of them.’
Kate passed him the spoon, brushed her hands on her apron. ‘In a moment. I’ve got something of yours, Ruth. I found it when . . . I found it after the wedding.’
After her mother had horsewhipped me and strung me up, she meant.
She opened a cupboard and rummaged within. What she produced made me shiver, like when you rub the pile of velvet the wrong way.
A garment of brown jean and peach sateen. Fraying where I had cut squares out from the bottom. On top of it, tangled in the laces, were the remains of Mim’s bone fish.
I thought they’d been lost, along with my little toe. I didn’t like to see Kate’s hands upon my precious things. Snatching them from her, I hugged them to my chest.
‘I found those in the road,’ she explained, without meeting my eye.
Perhaps she expected me to thank her. I didn’t. Couldn’t. The silence spun out between us.
‘Only right you should have your corset back,’ Billy chirped up from by the fire. ‘After that wonderful one you made Kate.’
I wondered what Billy saw, on those nights he visited her bed. If he caught a glimpse of my work, and admired it.
‘It’s the best piece you have done,’ Kate agreed, still awkward. ‘You’ve a real talent, Ruth. I’m looking forward to having you as my maid.’
If only she knew.
44
Ruth
It was an odd existence, working as a maid in the Rooker house that summer and autumn. The room I shared with Nell was small, tucked under a gable. We had an iron bedstead and a washstand. Compared to our previous quarters, at the lodging house and at Metyard’s, it was luxury. There were no lice. We had plenty of food to eat, which Nell cooked with skill. But still there was an undercurrent. A force exhaling misery and unease. Only Billy seemed immune to it, but he was hardly ever there.
Most days Kate sat in her parlour, playing the lady, complaining of boredom. She was desperate for the Rookers to let her work in their shop. Yet that seemed to be her only vexation: my corset wasn’t bringing her to her knees. I couldn’t understand why it was so slow. Every day, I encouraged her to wear it. And every night, the hooks and laces gave way easily to my touch. It disappointed me. I’d hoped it would stick to her, like mine had done: squeezing, crushing, making her cry out with its percussive crack. But it bided its time.
One evening, shortly after we’d arrived, I let myself into her room. Part of her lingered: lily of the valley, insinuating itself into every fold of fabric; the pots of cold cream on her dressing table; a brush snagged with her dark hair. Outside, I heard a lamplighter going about his trade. I closed the door behind me.
There must be something I could do. An item in the shadowy press looming beside the window that needed re-stitching. Maybe I’d take her dresses in an inch around the waist and see if she’d really lost weight. The more items with my loathing worked in, the quicker my curse would take effect.
Cautiously, I creaked the door of the press open. Rosemary welled in my nostrils. All of the dresses looked black and grey in the twilight, a spectral parade of mourning. She never asked me to dress her in weeds for Mrs Metyard. Perhaps she didn’t dare to.
This must be her wedding gown. The palest, webbed with lace. Bone buttons at the cuffs. Did Billy unfasten them, that night?
I pushed the other dresses aside for a better look. The wedding gown appeared wrong hanging there, a bodiless bride. Lonesome too. There’d been no bridesmaids, no one to give Kate away.
I opened a drawer. Folded stockings, row upon row. It must be nice to put them on each day and not feel a gap where your little toe should be. I ran my hand over the bundles. Heard a rustling sound.
Peering closer, I saw patterns at the bottom of the drawer. Scraps of something. Piling all the stockings into one corner, I uncovered a lining of newspaper clippings.
The light was low. I picked up the scraps and took them over to the window, to see by the streetlamp. The taste of copper spread over my tongue.
GRISLY MURDER OF SEAMSTRESS
BODY FOUND IN CELLAR
METYARD SENTENCED TO DEATH
I hadn’t read of the trial. What was there to know? I’d seen Mim’s body, inhaled its putrefaction. But Kate had kept every article.
Below the headlines, the print was too small and smudged to read. Water, perhaps tears, had dripped on it. But the illustrations loomed out at me: the trapdoor to the coal hole, Mrs Metyard in the dock. My life turned into a penny dreadful.
A click.
‘Ruth?’
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Soft light glowed from the doorway and, behind it, Kate’s face sculpted with shadows.
‘I . . .’ My skin flushed hot and cold by turns. ‘I was just looking for . . .’
She came in and closed the door behind her.
All my courage unspooled. The old fear of her returned. I remembered her with the poker that night, her eyes sparkling like jewels.
‘You found them,’ she announced stiffly.
‘They’ll rub print on your stockings.’
‘I know. I shouldn’t keep them.’ The tip of a shadow grazed her throat. It looked like a dagger against her neck.
‘Shall I throw them out? Madam?’
She hesitated. ‘No, I . . . no.’ Walking briskly over to me, she snatched the articles from my hand. The candle cast dark patches into her eye sockets. ‘You won’t mention this to Billy.’
Not a request.
‘Very good, madam.’
Downstairs, a door slammed. Billy called out a greeting. He was home from the shop.
I went to make my escape. But before I’d taken three steps, Kate’s words arrested me.
‘I . . . I . . . miss her.’
A pause. My chest heaved.
I couldn’t contain myself. ‘Is it the beating of the workers you’ll be missing, madam? Or the starving people to death?’
That’s me done for, I thought. Now I’ll see if she’s her mother’s daughter. I darted for the door.
‘She was my mother.’ The tears in Kate’s voice surprised me so much that I turned and stared at her. Her candle juddered beneath her breath. She did look thin, standing there, devoured by sorrow. ‘She’s my first memory. And no matter how . . . despicable .
. . she became . . . I can’t undo that.’
‘Your mother,’ I said, leaning on the word, ‘killed mine. She threw a blind woman into debtors’ gaol and let her rot.’
She hung her head. ‘I know.’
‘Then you should take my advice and put that lot in the fire. Burn it, like she’s burning in hell now.’
‘How dare—’
A footstep on the stairs. Someone cleared their throat.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ said Nell, all innocence. A tray sat in her hands. Steam arose from a cup, so sweet that it was almost foul. ‘I’ve brought you up your cocoa.’
* * *
Come October, it was working.
When I went in to tidy the bed, Kate was already sitting in her shift on the stool before the dressing table. Reflected in the glass were triumphant collarbones, emerging beneath her skin. Her shoulder blades, like stunted wings, made themselves known through the cotton. My curse was slimming her down to skin and bone.
Billy, fully dressed, made ready to leave for the day.
‘When shall I go to the shop with you, Billy?’
‘A little while yet, love. Get some rest.’ He placed his hand gently upon her head. Her hair looked thin.
I straightened the sheets, keeping my eyes down and taking care to appear absorbed by my chore. The bedclothes retained Billy’s scent of cooked oats. There was another smell, sweaty and animal, but I chose not to focus on that.
‘All I do is rest! I’ll go mad with it.’
‘I don’t think Mammy’s working today. Why not go round and sit with her?’
I folded Kate’s nightgown. Dark strands of hair coiled inside her nightcap. There was hair on the pillow too.
Kate gave one of her grunts. ‘I can’t. The way she looks at me . . .’
‘How?’
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