“Please—” she said, struggling stubbornly to keep her voice from shaking “—I think that I should rather stay here. I’m very tired, and—”
His hand was clamped about her wrist After her first, reflexive jerk away she stood quite still, watching him as steadily as she could manage, knowing that to struggle would be as pointless as it would be undignified.
“Where’s yer manners, girl?” Johnny asked softly. “I’m askin’ you out to meet some of me friends. Toffs they are, too, some of ’em. Now you wouldn’t want to disappoint them, would you? Or me neither, for that matter? Well?” he twisted her wrist sharply and she gasped.
Maggie turned her back on them, making a great and noisy show of searching in her box of worthless baubles.
Johnny’s hand tightened further. For her life Molly could not prevent herself from crying out with the pain of it.
“Now, Irish, what’s it to be? A good time or a beatin’? One good turn deserves another – didn’t you know that? Don’t tell me you thought I was actin’ out o’ the goodness of me ’eart?”
Molly, from past experience, was nothing if not a realist. “All right. I’ll come,” she said softly, hating him.
He grinned, his boyish good looks returning with his temper. “That’s better. Now,” he reached for the blue and cream dress and threw it at her, “get this on, an’ quick. Don’t bother with the other gear. It ain’t right for you.” He poked a finger beneath her chin and forced her face up, looked into the blazing, silvered eyes. “You ain’t bad lookin’ under all that tat, girl. You’ll go far, shouldn’t wonder, with yer Uncle Johnny. Might even give you a try meself one day. But no trouble, understand? Or no one’s ever goin’ ter be able to look at that pretty little face of yours without shudderin’. An’ don’t think I don’t mean it.”
She stood, trembling and rubbing her wrist until the door closed behind him. In the quiet his going left, Maggie shrugged wearily. “Don’t say I didn’t warn yer. Stupid little cat. ’E’ll be in one ’ell of a mood tonight now. Come on, fer Christ’s sake. Get ready.”
She watched as, still shaking, Molly struggled into the blue bombazine. It fitted as if it had been made for her, nipping in her slender waist and flaring softly over her hips. To her astonishment it was demure to the point of girlishness, with a square, lace-trimmed neck and small puffed sleeves – and though the bodice was uncomfortably tight, at least, Molly thought, looking at Maggie’s almost bared breasts, it was decent. Surely with flamboyantly beautiful Maggie beside her no one would even notice her? She began to feel a little better. She slipped her feet into a pair of worn and soiled velvet slippers, and in the dim, fly-specked mirror looked with astonishment at the effect. She saw reflected a tiny, graceful figure whose wide, shining eyes and oval face, still flushed with anger and humiliation, were strikingly framed by the wild, dark curling hair above the demure cream lace of the dress. She looked like a beautiful and disturbingly unchildlike child.
Maggie shook her head. “I told yer that yer should’ve worn the green. George is goin’ ter love yer. Rather you than me. Come on.”
* * *
The low-ceilinged, velvet-draped room was airless and overcrowded, uncomfortably hot from the warmth of too many bodies, scented with the sickly smell of hair oil and perfume. In a hidden corner a piano played, almost indistinguishable background to a babble of slurred and lifted voices, the clink of glass, much laughter. In an anteroom, through a wide arch and behind a half-drawn beaded curtain, gaming tables had been set up; young men with intent and feverish eyes watched the dice and the cards, the bright, bobbing ball as if their next living breath depended upon them, while at their shoulders, mostly ignored, girls with bright, avid faces urged them on. Strewn casually upon the green tables was more money than Molly had ever seen in her life before. She was sitting amidst a noisy crowd of men and women around a table set in a candlelit, heavily draped alcove that opened off the main room. During the uncomfortably silent journey in the cab she had formed her strategy: play along with them – not that in the circumstances there was much else to be done anyway – get through this evening; tomorrow she would leave. Nothing this side of heaven would prevent her. To have attempted openly to defy Johnny would have been lunacy; remembering his brutal grip, the light in his eyes, she had no doubts on that score. She must appear docile, lull him into believing that she had given up, was perhaps even enjoying herself…
So now she sat, submissive, trying to ignore the clammy hand that her companion rested possessively on her arm, and trying equally hard to still the wild and surprising dizziness in her head. Lemonade she had asked for, and her partner, tittering, had said delightedly, “Lemonade! Of course, my dear, of course. How splendid! Lemonade!” Molly had looked at his pink and vapid face with absolute dislike and said nothing. When they had joined the group at this table, true to her plan she had smiled and quietly acknowledged the introductions, not attempting to move away from the portly bald-headed man who had with exclamations of delight caught her with damp, soft hands and pulled her down to the seat beside him.
The drinks had arrived. “Lemonade,” chuckled her elderly mentor. “Drink up, my dear, there’s a good girl, drink up.” In the heat of the room the clear, sparkling liquid had seemed like nectar; she had drunk two glasses before she realized that her “lemonade” was coming out of the same bottle as Maggie’s champagne; but by that time there was already an odd, almost comforting unreality about the room and its occupants. The fat, pink, sweat-sheened face of the man beside her receded a little and blurred. She could not hear what he was saying. Did it matter? She nodded and smiled, and he looked pleased. His pudgy fingers walked up her arm, slid under the puffed sleeve of her dress. She pulled away, and was aware of a punitive gleam in Johnny’s eyes from where he sat across the table. But far from being offended her admirer laughed happily and took his hand away.
“Oh, there’s a nice little Miss—” His small, pale eyes glittered in folds of flesh. “What a good little girl she is—”
“You’ve certainly found one for George,” said a young man with a cultured voice, hardly any chin and a diamond as large as a pea on his finger. “Quite taken he is from the looks of it. I hope she’s tougher than she looks.”
“Shut your face, Toby,” Johnny said pleasantly, “and mind yer own.”
Molly furrowed her brow, trying to concentrate. George had moved closer, crushing her into the corner with his soft bulk.
“Here we are, little one. More lemonade.” He held a brimming glass to her.
She shook her head. “No. No, thank you.”
He pouted. “Oh, come now. Mustn’t be a naughty girl. Do as Daddy says,” he smiled, his eyelids drooping almost sleepily over fierce and maleficent eyes, “or Daddy will have to punish you—” His fingers moved up on her leg, found the soft flesh of her inner thigh and pinched mercilessly. Her gasp of pain opened the small eyes wide and sweat stood on his forehead.
With a head suddenly miraculously cleared Molly reached with shaking hands for the glass.
“There’s a good girl. That’s better.” He watched her as she sipped it, then was distracted by a commotion on the other side of the table, where the young man called Toby had tipped a glass of champagne down the plunging front of a girl’s dress and was attempting now to lick it dry while the girl, with no great conviction and much loud laughter, struggled and squealed and almost slipped beneath the table. Maggie and the young man who had claimed her when she first arrived, Molly noticed with naive surprise, had disappeared. Molly took the opportunity to try to slide a little further around the corner of the upholstered seat, away from George, but at her first movement his hand gripped her arm painfully and he hauled her back. She sat rigid. No one at the table took any notice of them, all eyes but Johnny’s were on Toby’s efforts with the champagne. George’s fat hand moved from her arm to her breast, swathed tight beneath the smooth material of the too-small bodice. His eyes held hers as he probed and rubbed and pinched, hard
and feverish. Johnny watched, smiling, daring her to protest. She trembled and tried not to resist the awful, pudgy hands. Beneath their handling she could not prevent the hardening of her breast, the rising of her nipple.
“So,” said George suddenly, pouting and pinching harder, “not such a good girl after all, eh? Wicked to let a man touch you so. Wicked. Do you know what they do to wicked little girls, eh? Oh, yes, you know. Whipped, they are, whipped soundly. A good birching does wonders for a naughty girl like you—”
Across the room a curtain was drawn aside and Maggie and her young man re-entered the room. Maggie’s hair was down and tangled to a bird’s nest, the bodice of her dress was torn and stained with wine. She was laughing open-mouthed, her head thrown back, an invitation. As they came into the room her companion pulled her to him and kissed her savagely, his fingers gesturing obscenely behind her back. Comments, cheers and encouragement flew, the most explicit, so far as Molly could hear, seeming to come from the women. Maggie, barely capable of standing without support, lifted her arms and began to wriggle out of her dress. Then the sight of her was blocked from Molly’s eyes by George’s bloated, soft-skinned face as he leaned close to her, whispering. Nausea took her; she turned her head from him, pressing her hands to her ears. He caught her wrists and dragged the shielding hands down, whispering, whispering – telling of what he would do to her, of how he would punish such a naughty little girl, of how he would make her take her clothes off, bit by bit, and fold them neatly, as a good girl should before he—
The red rage that rose suddenly within her was irresistible and overwhelming. For the first time in her life, Molly, had she thought about it, might have understood what sent her brother Patrick flying into a fray with no thought of injury or consequence. Her outraged, furious lunge took the man completely by surprise, sent him back with a painful thump into the table, which rocked perilously, scattering glasses and bottles. With fingers crooked and hardly knowing what she did, she went for his face, scratching and tearing. Beyond the blind haze of fury she heard shouts, and some laughter. George tried to roll away from her, his arms across his face to protect his eyes. He was screaming, the sound high and womanish. The girl on the other side of him scrambled out of the way and George fell after her onto the floor. Molly was off the seat and past the prostrate figure, heading for the door, before Johnny’s huge hand landed on her shoulder and with overpowering strength spun her round to face him. His other hand caught her a stunning, head-rocking slap across her mouth before she could raise her arms to protect herself. She staggered, was prevented from falling by his massive grip. He raised his band again, but before the blow could fall other hands caught them both and pulled them apart.
“All right, Johnny, that’ll do.” A well-dressed man with a florid, clean-shaven face and wrestler’s shoulders lifted a single, menacing finger. “No trouble. Not inside. You want to kill her, you do it when you get her home. Not here. You know the rules.”
Johnny tensed for a moment against the restraining hands, then relaxed, and the two men who held him let him go, watching him warily. Maggie, clutching the remnants of her scarlet satin to her, had struggled through the crowds and now appeared at Johnny’s side, her eyes uncertain and frightened. Molly, dwarfed by her own captors, who still held her, stood breathing heavily, her eyes on Johnny, her small face entirely expressionless, her heart pounding with terror.
George, ignored by all, staggered feebly to a chair nursing his bleeding face. “Bitch!” he moaned, “little bitch! Get me a doctor, someone – a doctor.”
“Shut yer face,” someone said unfeelingly. “It’s no more than you deserve.”
“Get me a cab,” Johnny spat out. “Maggie, get your things. You—” he stabbed a threatening finger at Molly, his eyes barbarous with rage, “you’ll never forget the day you made a fool of Johnny Cribben.”
With the last of her desperate courage ebbing and leaving behind it only the appalled and icy weight of fear, Molly did not for a moment doubt his words.
The journey back to Whitechapel was a nightmare as contemplation of what she had done and its likely consequences churned in her stomach and filled her mind with terror. At Ma Randolph’s, however, there was a momentary reprieve. At one of the tables in the empty, darkened dining room sat a young man with a cheery grin and villainous eyes. Before him was spread a gleaming treasure-house of gems and jewellery.
“Thought you’d never get ’ere, Johnny boy. Worked like a charm, your plan. Share-out time. Come an’ get it!”
Maggie, her fright forgotten, perched on the arm of his chair, her face avid, her long fingers stirring the glittering stones.
Johnny hesitated for just one moment. “Give me a sec to get this under lock and key,” he said then, his hand firm on Molly’s upper arm. The other man’s eyebrows lifted sardonically, but Johnny turned away, pushing Molly hard in front of him. “Upstairs, you.”
Almost dragged from her feet by his violence, Molly stumbled down the dark passage and up the stairs to the attic where, with another savage push, Johnny sent her flying through the door to sprawl on the floor.
“I won’t be long, Irish,” he promised softly. “Think on this while I’m gone: I’m goin’ ter make you wish you’d never been born.”
From where she lay on the floor, Molly heard the door shut, heard the emphatic click of the lock that she knew was too strong for her to break, heard his quiet footsteps fade down the creaking stairs. She did not for a moment make any move to rise, but laid her head wearily on her crooked arm, fighting rising tears, unable to control the violent trembling of her body. For some minutes she lay so before she dragged herself to her feet and went to the washstand. There was water in the bottom of the jug, and she splashed her face with it, wincing as it mixed with the blood from her cut lip. When she was finished she turned and leaned against the stand, her arms crossed tightly over her breast, panic stopping the breath in her throat as she looked around the prisoning attic.
She had to get away. She had to. She had no doubt that Johnny would kill or maim her. Her eyes moved to the tiny dormer window. It was high up on the sloping wall and she could see out of it only by standing on her toes. She dragged Maggie’s bed across the floor, flinching at the noise, and climbed up onto it. Beyond the window was darkness: an infinity of wet roofs stretching past the small light of the flickering candle she held to the dirty glass. It was impossible. Even supposing that she could squeeze through, the danger out there on the slippery, decaying roofs with their loose tiles and rotten timbers would be almost as great as the danger she faced from Johnny.
Almost as great.
Anything, surely, would be better than doing nothing, than simply sitting here, waiting—?
She flew to the corner where her bundle and her discarded clothes lay. It would be lunacy to scramble around out there in the tight-fitting bombazine. Anyway – she threw the thing from her in a spasm of disgust – it had brought her quite enough trouble for one day. Dressed in her old homespun she tied the laces of Danny’s heavy boots together and slung them around her neck. She’d be more surefooted without them. Then she checked that the knot of her bundle was secure and slipped it over her arm. Running to Maggie’s bed she climbed onto it and forced the window open. The opening looked alarmingly small. With only a fraction of a second’s hesitation she pushed the bundle through. It fell onto the slates a foot or so below the window, slid into the gully beyond. From somewhere below a gas lamp threw a faint, yellow light that glinted upon wet slate and cast shadows so deep they might have been bottomless holes. About to follow the bundle, she stopped suddenly, drew her head back in and stood for a moment in desperate thought, battling a conscience that under the circumstances was ridiculously tender. But then she bent and, slipping her hand beneath the mattress, drew out the bag that contained Maggie’s ill-acquired ‘savings’. Feverishly she knotted the long cord into a loop and slipped it around her neck, tucking the bag firmly into her bodice before turning back to the window.
There was one dreadful moment when she thought that she would never make it: head and shoulders through, the heavy material of her skirt bunched around her hips and jammed her firmly in the narrow opening. She struggled fiercely, succeeding only in making matters worse, and then subsided, panting and sweating in the chill air. The roof below the window was smooth and unbroken; there was nothing she could catch hold of. Her feet off the bed, she hung for a helpless moment like a carcass on a butcher’s hook. She inched forward, willing herself not to struggle. Balancing with one hand on the roof, she reached the other to her jammed skirt and eased it through. The window frame scraped her skin, but she hardly felt it; her whole being was intent upon her agonizing, inch-by-inch progress. The pressure about her hips lessened, and she wriggled out a little further. The skirt caught; she pulled frantically, heard the material rip and then, unbelievably, she was through, falling awkwardly upon the slates, banging her shins and bruising her elbows. But she was free!
She stood up carefully and reached for her bundle. Although the wet slates were cold and razor-sharp on her bare feet she knew instinctively that to put her boots on would halve her chances of survival – the worn soles would be too likely to slip, their very weight might go straight through the weakened fabric of the ancient and dilapidated roofs. So, still barefoot, and with pounding heart, she crept out along the shadowed gully that ran away from the window and into the unyielding darkness.
That hazardous journey across the roofs of Whitechapel, short as it was, was a terror beyond almost anything else that had happened to her. Sick with fear, her ears singing with the expectation of the shout that would mean her flight had been discovered, she slipped and scrambled from one steeply sloping roof to another, clinging to chimney stacks that were often no more firmly based than she was herself, hunting desperately for a skylight or a window, breaking into a cold sweat whenever she came close to a precipitous edge. The wet, cobbled streets and alleys below, occasionally lit by a pool of lamplight, but more often in darkness, beckoned with a dizzy magnetism that almost paralyzed her. Life and limb depended upon small, sweat-slick fingers, trembling legs and an overwhelming determination.
Molly Page 4
