Soon after that my mother took me to London. She said any place would surely be better than Liverpool, and she had been to London with my father years ago and thought it a fine place. But the room we ended up in didn’t look much different to the one we had left, only now we knew no one and we had no money to go back. My mother took ill soon after. I was alone in the world then. I was of little use to anyone, so my mother used to say, though I had worked hard enough at the washing and helped her as best I could, especially when she was ill.
Our neighbour on Cuttlefish Lane was a woman called Mrs Spendwell. She took me in after my mother died. Her house was always warmer than ours. She used to send some soup in to my mother, but my mother would never take it. She said there was nothing free in this world and that there would be payment expected soon enough, one way or another, especially from one like Mrs Spendwell.
‘You need a long spoon when you sup with the Devil,’ she said.
I said we didn’t have a spoon, long or short, and that we were lucky to have any soup to sup and that Mrs Spendwell was just being kind, for she was always nice to me. And so she was, though it turned out my mother was right after all even if it did take a while before the reckoning.
Once my mother died the past disappeared completely. Mrs Spendwell was like a mother to me, for I was no more than eleven years old when I went to live with her. She kept a lodging house, and she took me in to act as maid to the actresses who lodged there. Well, soon enough I saw what went on at Mrs Spendwell’s, for there were gentlemen visiting all the time. But Mrs Spendwell said I should stick to my chores with the hot water and the bedding and laying the fires. It didn’t seem like bad work, though I was up till late at night, and seemed always to be in the company of the gentlemen, whether I liked it or not.
At first I was just the maid, but I was not an ugly girl, and Mrs Spendwell flattered me and told me how pretty I was. She said the gentlemen liked me ever so much. She made it sound like it was the greatest honour that they approve of my looks and fancy me. She let the gentlemen tug my ringlets, and sometimes she would let me sit up to keep them company while they were waiting to go upstairs. She bought me a new dress for that, though I had to take it off once they were gone. Once they were away she had me washing sheets and blacking the grate, and going up and down the stairs with the coal once more, for they all needed coal and that house seemed to me to be nothing but stairs. I think now that Mrs Spendwell worked me hard so that my virtue might seem less of a prize to me once my hands were blistered and my feet sore.
‘Why,’ she’d say, ‘the girls upstairs ain’t half as pretty as you and all they do is lie on their backs and let the gentlemen have their sport.’ She never asked me if I wanted to do the same, but talked about it as though it were very heaven, so that in the end it was me who asked her. She said it would hurt at first, but that if I wanted I might get one of the nicest and kindest of the gentlemen to do it. After that, she said, I wouldn’t feel it at all.
There were two young men who were always asking about me. Mrs Spendwell said I might go to the highest bidder, as it was a sign of how much they valued me. But one of the men had more money than the other and it was not a fair contest. Of the two men one of them was shy and quiet – acted as if he’d never been with a girl. Mrs Spendwell said he hadn’t which was why he wanted me as he was a gentleman mindful of his health. The other chap was young, and handsome as they come, with curly hair and plump lips, and I liked the look of him well enough so that I was glad when that first gentleman lost the game. He looked cross at that, and said it was more than likely I wasn’t a virgin anyway, and he’d expect to see some evidence of the fact if he was to accept the loss as a fair one.
Mrs Spendwell had said it was best not to look when it was taking place, but that it was no more than what everyone did, even the queen, for we were all animals really, no matter that we stood on two legs and dressed ourselves up in clothes and thought our fine chatter set us above the beasts. I didn’t know what she meant. Not then anyway. Later I did, for the young man who had won me made sure he did me good and proper so there was plenty of blood to show his friend. And blood there was, sir. No one told me about that, and I was not even a woman so had not bled before in any way and when I felt the pain and saw the bed sheets and felt it all slippery on my legs I thought he had killed me.
The young man wiped himself, and me, with his handkerchief and then went downstairs. I followed him down, hoping Mrs Spendwell would take the stick to him for hurting me so badly, but she did nothing of the kind. He tossed his bloody handkerchief in his companion’s face and laughed. Mrs Spendwell laughed too, and then she asked the gentleman’s friend whether he’d like to take his pleasure, for the usual fee this time since I was broken in now. But he said ‘no’. He gave me a cold look and said he hoped I liked the pox as well as I liked my new employment. I didn’t know what he meant, though I’d seen one of the girls crying over her sores and hiding in her room till they had gone away, though she looked well enough now.
Mrs Spendwell said I should wash my cunny with her special mixture, so I did as she said. I always did, and I never got the pox nor the clap. Not as far as I know.
Well, that was my beginnings into the profession of a whore, sir, and being known as one of Mrs Spendwell’s girls. And she was right: after that first time, I never felt anything again.
But times was hard for Mrs Spendwell, as much as they were for everyone, and after a year or two we went to a place on Cat’s Hole. It was only sailors then. Some of them couldn’t speak English, though they didn’t come to us for conversation so it hardly mattered. Mrs Spendwell didn’t care whether we used her special mixture any more, but I used to go up to the Seaman’s Dispensary – up near the Blood. It’s where I met Miss Proudlove, sir. She used to help her brother who worked in the dispensary. We all knew him for there was no other doctor who came amongst us, not on those streets anyway. But Dr Proudlove did – and his sister. He attended any number of girls at Mrs Spendwell’s. But he’d not get rid of a baby. We knew better than to ask him to, for we knew him to be a good man.
It was Mrs Spendwell who did that. I helped her once – only once, though she had done it more times than I could count. She used a knitting needle. I’ll never forget it. The white knees of that poor girl as she lay on Mrs Spendwell’s kitchen table, her thighs and her petticoat stained bright red. She’d been with us for only three months. Started like me, hardly more than a child. I’d tried to look after her but there wasn’t much looking after that any of us could do. And now she was on the table, Mrs Spendwell standing between her legs with the needle in her hand. There was blood on the table and on the floor in a great red pool, pouring out of her without stopping. The baby was no more than a nub of flesh, a little curled thing, lying there in a great clot of the stuff while she bled and bled until she had no more left inside.
That’s what landed me in prison. Mrs Spendwell said the girl had miscarried, that she was trying to help. Dr Proudlove spoke up for us all, said that he believed we had tried to help as best we could. I’m sure he knew what had really happened but he didn’t judge us for it, and those who sat at the bench and condemned us for whores and murderers were the same men who visited girls just like us in better streets and finer houses.
I didn’t see Mrs Spendwell again after that, for she was hanged, despite what Dr Proudlove said in her defence, and I wasn’t sorry to see an end to her. I was sent to the Bridewell, and while I was there I got to thinking about my life. I didn’t want to go back to my old life but I didn’t know what else to do. I read your pamphlet, sir. I’d heard of Siren House and knew it for a place that meant well, and where girls might try again, and so here I am.
Note on Jane Stalker on leaving Siren House
Jane Stalker is twenty years old – she thinks – and has been living in various houses of bad character from the age of eleven, after the death of her mother left her in a precarious position. She is an attractive girl with a quiet unassum
ing manner. She shows no evidence of the pox – remarkable for one who has led such a life as she. There is evidence of pregnancy, though what happened to the child she does not say. She is hard working, and so far shows herself to be able, and helpful about the House. She has, on one notable occasion, left Siren House, but was retrieved from the place she had gone and offered suitable employment. Given her former role as assistant to an abortionist, the notorious Mrs Spendwell of Cat’s Hole, and the caring ways she has shown towards the other girls, she is to be recommended for a position as nurse on board the Blood. There is a lack of good nurses and Stalker might find the challenge preferable to the usual domestic work, or to her former life.
Chapter Sixteen
I woke up in my own bed at Fishbait Lane. I was already due at the Blood for the morning ward rounds, but they were going to have to wait a little that day. My head felt thick and heavy, my brain pounding as though it were bouncing against the inside of my skull with every movement I made. I remembered vomiting lavishly the previous night, Will and I helping each other as we retched and spewed the vile mixture of beer, spirits, oysters, beef, potatoes that we had consumed over the course of the preceding six hours. We both blamed the oysters – neither of us had been that drunk. Of course, it would have made much more sense to have gone back to the ship the night before, but Will had refused to countenance waking up in the company of Minimus and Maximus and the tank of rats, and I had taken little persuading to spend the night at home.
I washed myself quickly, pulled on a clean shirt and bundled up my dirty clothes. Downstairs, Jenny was already up. Gabriel had made a bed for her in the herb drying room, and she slept beside sacks of hops and beneath bunches of lavender and feverfew. She was still wearing Gabriel’s old clothes – two sizes too big for her, though the boots fitted well enough. I told her that her dress would be going to the washer woman’s along with everything else that day; would she not be glad to wear it again? She shook her head. She had found one of my old hats, a black stovepipe, not unlike the one Will favoured, though not quite so tall, and she had taken to wearing it over her shorn head. The hat was too big, but she had stuffed the band inside with newspaper to make a better fit. She was standing at the shop window in the pose of a sea captain on the poop deck – hands clasped behind her, back straight, legs slightly akimbo. Her hat was crooked on her head, her face serious, guarded, as she looked out at the awakening bustle of Fishbait Lane.
Will was still in bed, Gabriel asleep on his truckle bed beneath the apothecary table. Usually I liked to have the place to myself for a while in the mornings, but I did not mind Jenny. She had already kindled the stove and prepared a pot of coffee. I sent her out to the bakery. When she came back, I bade her come and sit with me before the stove. The bread was warm, and we ate it with some cheese that was left over from their supper the night before.
‘Well, Jenny,’ I said, sitting back. I felt much better, though my head still ached abominably, and the thought of spending my morning below decks on board the Blood made my stomach squirm. ‘Did Mr Aberlady teach you to read and write?’
She pointed to the prescription ledger on the table, and the pharmacopoeia that was on the reading stand.
‘Only medicines?’ I said.
She nodded.
‘So you cannot write down what happened to Mr Aberlady that night? The night you came here? The night he—?’ I stopped. Her face had grown pale, the bread and cheese she had been eating forgotten in her hand. ‘You’re safe here,’ I said. ‘No one knows where you are. No one from the Blood. I’ve told no one – not even when they asked. And when it’s all over, when we know why Mr Aberlady is dead, and why those girls—’ I sighed. Perhaps Jenny didn’t know about the dead girls, though as she too had spent time at Siren House there was every chance that she had known at least one of them. But that was a conversation for another time. ‘When it’s all over you can stay here with us. Always. I mean you can live here.’ I wondered what Gabriel would say. And Will. And Mrs Speedicut. ‘But you must dress as a girl,’ I said. ‘There is no shame in it, and we can’t always be hiding who we are whenever we want to achieve anything. You can sit your apothecary’s examination in a few years too. I’ll take you on as an apprentice. It’s about time they saw what women can do.’
We looked at one another. Her silence seemed to encourage the divulging of secrets, though I knew I had spoken recklessly. I hoped she hadn’t noticed.
‘In the meantime,’ I said, ‘you can have this.’ I handed her a pewter fob watch, the one my father had given me when he took me on as his apprentice. I had no use for it, for he had given me a gold one when I had passed my licentiate examinations and joined him as apothecary at St Saviour’s. ‘Be sure to look after it,’ I said. ‘It is engraved with the name of Flockhart – which can be your name, if you would like it. You are one of us now.’
She stared at me. I saw disbelief in her eyes. And wariness. But also hope. She didn’t know whether to cry, or to run.
‘I mean it,’ I said standing up. ‘And now, I would like you to do something for me.’
She looked alarmed, and shifted slightly so that she was now sitting on the edge of her chair. I sensed that she would fling down the watch and bolt into the street if I said the wrong thing, and I wondered what other types of proposition she had received, what bribes and trinkets she had been given that had led her to Siren House. No wonder she was enjoying the comparative safety of her boy’s apparel.
‘Jenny.’ I rooted in my satchel for my notebook. ‘Come and sit here.’ I pulled out a stool at the apothecary table and dipped a pen into the ink pot. ‘Can you draw what it was that was on Mr Aberlady’s arm? You know, the picture on his skin that he asked you to burn off with the poker. That was what he asked you to do, wasn’t it?’
She nodded. Her hands were balled into fists, her body tense.
‘Can you draw it? You must have seen it, and I know you have a good memory.’ She sat on the stool as I had asked, but still she hesitated. I saw her pulse beating rapidly in her neck, her eyes darting and feral. Beneath the table where he slept, Gabriel let out a great fart. Jenny and I looked at one another, and grinned. ‘Men are the most disgusting creatures,’ I said. ‘And yet, we must put up with them somehow.’ She looked at me strangely. And then she took the pen and bent over the paper.
It meant nothing to me, the picture Pestle Jenny drew that day, the two of us sitting side by side as the wan October morning dawned. I was glad that the apothecary was warm and golden, the lamplight bright as it glistened off the bottles, the air sweet with lavender and hyssop, with the earthy, woody scent of clary-sage and the sharp tang of citrus, so that when she drew that horrible image, when I forced her to revisit those memories, she was in a place where she might feel safe. When she had finished I took the drawing from her, folded it up and put it in my pocket, so that she might never have to look at it again.
Will was still asleep when I went up to the Blood. I took a cup of coffee in to him for when he awoke, and a glass of water, and opened the window for his room stank like a flop-house. I left him a note telling him to meet me at the Blood at his convenience.
I went out into the street. The wind was sharp. All my senses felt heightened – my ears pained by the noisiness of the streets, my nose revolted by the smells, my eyes seared by the brightness of the morning. There was a dampness in the air too, so that I was sure the fog would be in eventually. I looked up at the sky, at the morning sun peeping through the buildings. It had a liverish look to it. I rubbed my eyes. The day would be a long one. I felt tired already, and I had only been up for an hour. I was now very late for the morning rounds, too. The thought of those dark close wards made my heart thump and my stomach clench within me. I felt my skin grow cold and slick with sweat and I feared I was about to vomit again. I drew a deep breath, and hoped the walk would do me good.
On board, Dr Cole and Dr Antrobus were nowhere to be seen. Dr Sackville was absent too, though that was only to be exp
ected as he was rarely there two days in a row. I could see Dr Proudlove on shore, walking towards the Seaman’s Dispensary. Mrs Speedicut was smoking a pipe on deck. The stink of her Virginian shag made me feel sick. She saw the pale clamminess of my skin and she gave a smirk. I bade her help me with the prescriptions, and she followed me into the apothecary, moaning as she always did about the laziness of the nurses and how hard she worked, and the pains in her back and her feet. Her voice grated in my ears. Downstairs, under the low ceilings and amongst the mounded beds, she seemed louder than ever. I saw Dr Rennie skulking in the shadows in the lower ward. I was anxious to get out of that dark and stuffy space, and yet I wanted to talk to him too. I started over to him, but he vanished, slinking down the hatch into the bowels of the ship like a ghost. I could not bring myself to follow him.
Out on deck, the air rang with all the usual clamour of the riverside. Ships drifted by, high in the water now that they had unloaded their cargo, and anxious to catch the morning tide. A man was brought on board with a broken foot, crushed by a falling crate at St Catherine’s Docks. An old seaman suffering from exhaustion – lack of food, rough sleeping, and gin – was carried aboard by his friends, a band of equally drunk and exhausted-looking individuals in ancient sailors’ coats and caps. I made Mrs Speedicut give them all a plate of slop from the cookhouse, for it was almost lunchtime.
A sailor was brought aboard via the larboard steps – those that gave out onto the Thames itself – discharged from a passing merchantman as they came upriver to unload their cargo. His legs and feet were grotesquely swollen. I knew it was elephantiasis, though how it might be treated I had no idea. I put him in the top ward, and wished Aberlady was there, or at least Dr Sackville, who claimed he had ‘seen everything’ and would surely know what treatment there might be for the man. Might the fluid be drained from his legs somehow? I called for Dr Rennie but he could not be found anywhere. I saw Miss Proudlove coming out of the snakes’ room, a small tin in her hand. No doubt she had been feeding weevils and earwigs to the frogs. Perhaps she had tossed Maximus and Minimus a live rat or two. I was glad I had not seen it, for I felt bilious enough already. Should I show her the image Jenny had drawn and ask her whether she knew its meaning? And yet I could not bring myself to approach her, no matter how much I wanted to. I stood there in a doltish silence, watching as she vanished down into the top ward.
The Blood: What secrets lie aboard? (Jem Flockhart Book 3) Page 21
