But as the evening wore on, the time slipped away and he couldn’t bring himself to go through with it. He felt like a coward. He was a coward. He watched her take off in the carriage, turning to flutter her handkerchief, flicking her wrist delicately at him.
The summer was ending on a depressive note. Everything felt like it was slipping away. He watched the evenings get shorter and the sun set earlier each day. He sat by the river as the tops of the trees cast shadows on the flowing water below. He wished that he were a fly or a fish, something without a brain, with no thoughts or emotions, no worldly pressure on his head. If only he were like Arthur. Wild. Drunk. And second born.
Then the letter arrived, brought in by Mrs Johansson, placed on a silver tray at breakfast, an envelope crisp and clean and neatly scribed to Henry Brabazon Esq.
We are delighted to offer you an apprenticeship at Lewis, Clayton and Thornhills.
He would start the second week of September. He would need to travel to London immediately to make plans. He was going to be a criminal lawyer. Whether his father liked it or not.
* * *
London was very different to Oxford. The sheer size of it overwhelmed him. He missed the atmosphere of the boy’s club that he had in university, the rowing practice twice a week, the smoking room and the taverns they used to visit.
It was vast and grey and filled with planted parks. He spent as much time as he could sitting in them, pretending he was back on the estate, at the river, in the woods, trying to remember what the mulchy air felt like in his nose.
The irony was not lost on him - that he’d longed to leave the estate and come here to make a career for himself and now that he was here making a career for himself, he wished to sail home and sit in the country for the rest of the day.
Lewis, Clayton and Thornhills had put him to work on thousands of pages of documents. The words crossed over before his eyes and his neck and shoulders were tired from hunching over the files. It was not the work he had imagined and he had yet to see the inside of a courtroom. He was at the bottom rung of a very long ladder.
In the evenings, he went drinking with the other apprentices in the practice. There were two he formed a quick kinship with; Malcolm Greene from Hertfordshire, who was short and stocky and quick to laugh, and a spectacled scribe of a man called Cecil Conyngham. It was Malcolm who led the drinking, his stomach an empty alcohol pit and he forced both Henry and Cecil to increase their tolerance within days.
‘Where to tonight, chaps?’ he’d say as they left the office.
‘I can’t tonight,’ Cecil would say.
‘Let’s try that new place, on the Green.’
He was forceful and fun, and the unlikely trio became familiar faces on the gentleman’s scene, drinking, laughing and being merry.
Cecil became the butt of the jokes. He was quiet and shy, and grew red in the face when Malcolm brought up, as he did most nights, his virginal status.
‘Tell him what it’s like, Henry,’ said Malcolm, nodding over, flicking his head up in the air. ‘Go on, describe it.’
‘Describe what?’ said Henry. He hadn’t really been listening. He’d been looking at the whiskey in his glass, wondering if he could stomach another night of drinking and how his head had been feeling so muddled lately. Was it the drink? Or the books?
‘What it’s like. To be with a woman.’
‘Oh, not this again,’ said Henry. ‘Honestly, Malcolm, you’re like the man that doth protest too much. Do you ever stop talking about it?’
‘I like to see my chums happy,’ said Malcolm.
‘I am happy,’ said Cecil.
‘I think you should treat yourself, for Christmas,’ said Malcolm.
Cecil slunk further into his seat, his shoulders drooping, and put the glass to his lips, slugging on the whiskey.
‘You could always offer your services,’ said Henry drily, looking at Malcolm.
‘I have, but he won’t hear of it.’
They laughed, and gathered round the billiards table, ready for another game. Henry knew Malcolm was serious. It wouldn’t be long before all three of them found themselves stood in a knocking shop, egging Cecil on. He hoped Malcolm would at least pick a decent one.
* * *
In December, Henry was beginning to think that the apprenticeship was a big mistake. The study he’d completed in college had not prepared him for the realities of the law practice. He couldn’t concentrate on the work he had been given - his mind drifting off every few minutes, requiring all his will to coax it back to the words on the page.
The law documents held no interest for him. He was lifelessly bored. And always hungover. He had received a letter from Mrs Johansson that said their father had been unwell. He had worried a little and then worried even more when a letter arrived from Arthur in Oxford that said: ‘Do you think we should go home?’
Henry considered sending a telegram home but instead decided, without thinking about it too much, to book a train from London to Oxford to pick Arthur up and travel back to Ireland. He sent a telegram to Arthur telling him he’d meet him in the morning. He immediately felt better. The thoughts of getting out of London raised his spirits and the lifting of the shackles of Lewis, Clayton and Thornhills made him want to celebrate.
‘You are asking me if we should go for drinks later?’ said Malcolm.
‘Yes, I don’t know why but I would murder a gin,’ said Henry.
‘I know just the place,’ said Malcolm. ‘Would you like a swifty?’
Henry watched as Malcolm took out a small, silver flask from under his desk. He threw his head back and necked the liquid, his eyes filling up red.
‘Want some?’
‘No thanks,’ said Henry, shaking his head at Malcolm drinking on the job. ‘Don’t you get enough in the evenings?’
‘This is to take the edge off. It’s what keeps me going. How else could you stay awake through this?’ Malcolm pointed at the document he was reading and collapsed his head on top of it making a snoring sound.
Henry laughed and then quietened. ‘I have to go home.’
‘Home?’ asked Malcolm.
‘My father’s not well. And it’s coming up to Christmas. If Messrs Lewis, Clayton and Thornhill have an issue, they’ll have to deal with me in the New Year.’
‘They won’t like it,’ said Malcolm.
‘No,’ said Henry, ‘That’s why I have a craving for gin.’
‘Gin it is then,’ said Malcolm, holding the flask high up in the air and feeling the last of the liquid trickle down his gullet.
Chapter Twelve
MOLLY
Every night I excused myself early and went upstairs to bed to cry. I pulled the thin blanket that smelled musty over my head and I let great sobs come out, all down my face and into the pillow. I cried till there was nothing left, no water and no salt and then I lay awake and then half asleep, drifting in and out till Martha came into the room and there was no chance to cry anymore.
I used to take pride in being a girl that didn’t cry. I used to say that it was hard to make the water come out of my eyes. This baby was already changing me; how I felt, my emotions, my person.
I was going to start showing soon and they wouldn’t have it. I didn’t have enough money to rent somewhere on my own. And who could I tell? Martha would be sympathetic at first but then she wouldn’t want to know me, in case it was catching.
One evening I felt as though the walls were toppling in on me. I couldn’t stand going to bed early to cry again so I left, out the service door, for a walk along the cobbled streets. The cold had come in now, swirling round my ankles, light gusts of leaves hovering over the path.
I prayed as I walked, not because I thought it might help, but because I didn’t know what else to do. I prayed that God would show me a sign, that he would send something my way that would help me. And in way he did - in a way he didn’t.
‘Alright, love?’
It was a woman with yellowed hair, parted
in the middle, black showing at the roots.
‘You look like you’ve the weight of the world on your shoulders,’ she says.
‘I do,’ I say. And I wasn’t lying. She hugged herself with the cold, thin leather gloves wrapped around her fingers.
‘Where you from then?’ she says.
‘Dublin,’ I lie.
‘By it’s a cold one, innit?’
She had an Irish accent but it was all muddled, like some of the words had been replaced with English accented ones. She was standing in front of a lamppost, in and out of the shadows.
‘I’m Clara,’ she says. And I stand, looking at her, not even saying my name.
‘Anything I can help you with, love?’ she says and my eyes came back from the glaze they’d gone into. Clara was looking at me, waiting for an answer. I realise this woman could probably help more than most. This was a problem she might just have the answer to. Clara was the woman in the coloured clothes that Martha had pointed out to me on our walk. Clara was a prostitute.
‘It’s very delicate,’ I say. ‘It’s not something I can say out loud. On the street.’
‘Oh,’ says she, looking me up and down. I have my coat on over my dress but I wonder if my stomach is showing and if she can see it.
She looks behind her, looking for someone and then she walks off and I see she’s speaking to a man who’s on the other side of the road and then she’s back and she’s says, ‘Come with me.’
I follow her and we’re walking side by side and I can’t help but notice she has lovely slip-on shoes with gold buckles on them. They look new, not like the boots with the nails hammered through them that I wear.
While we’re walking she asks me my name and where I’m working and tells me she’s originally from Kerry but she left a long time ago and I think that’s why her accent is funny. We stop at a cafe, one that opens late and we go inside and it’s cosy but there’s an atmosphere in the air too, as though a fight could break out at any time.
‘Sit yourself down, love,’ she says. ‘Tea?’
I say yes, and I’m relieved to be away from the house and its closing-in walls and with this woman who looks like she wants to help me, probably sent by God himself after all. She comes back with hot sausages, bread and dripping. I make up the sandwich and start eating it because my appetite has been soaring these past few weeks.
‘So ...’ she says, leaning in close, her voice quiet and her eyes looking straight at me, daring me to tell the truth. ‘What’s been bothering you, my love. You can tell me.’
I’m chewing my sausage and bread, but she’s so keen that I do a big swallow and I hold my stomach and lean into her.
‘I’m ....’ I say. And then I realise I can’t say the words out loud. I just can’t believe it about myself.
I lean back and then there’s tears in my eyes, brimming over, threatening to come out and fall right down on to the bloody sandwich.
I hold my stomach and point to it and she says the words for me.
‘In the family way?’
I nod and now the tears are flowing and not only that but there’s sobbing noises coming out of my mouth and I have to cover my face. Clara leans in real close and pulls a hanky out of her pocket. I take it and rub my face. It smells of lavender.
‘How long?’ she says. I tell her five, nearly six months.
‘You’re sure?’ she says.
‘It only happened once,’ I tell her. ‘It was force.’
She looks sad and understanding all at once, like she knows about force.
She’s patting my arm and telling me it’ll be alright. And I feel better already, just talking to her and someone else knowing my secret, someone who’s not in the house that would tell anyone I know.
‘It’s probably too late to get rid of it,’ she says. ‘But I know someone who might help, might take you in. I can arrange a meeting. If that’s what you want?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That’s what I want.’
She tells me to meet her at the lamppost at the same time tomorrow evening.
The tension that’s been pulling at my back and my neck lifts away and I notice a smile on my face that I wasn’t expecting. We get up to leave, and just as I’m reaching for my coat, I feel a kick on my insides, a big boot, like I used to give my brothers when they were annoying me.
* * *
She’s a strange looking woman. I can’t work out if she’s lovely or not. At first glance, you might think she’s the most glamorous woman you’ve ever seen. But now that I’m sat here, at the desk in front of her, I can’t help but notice her nose is a strange shape, almost too big for her face. But she has a nice chin, no jowls at all, tight like a young girl’s.
She’s being nice to me. Pleasant. She says she keeps out of the way of coppers and constables, but they know what’s going on and they let her at it. Because she’s clean, she says. No trouble. She’s very good at her job, she tells me.
All the girls call her Madame Camille but I know that’s not her real name, not with the Liverpudlian accent she has. She lays it on the table for me. My options.
‘The house where you’re working won’t have you for long,’ she says. ‘A girl in your position, unmarried, a big baby belly on her. It hardly represents a respectable house well, now does it?’
‘’No, it doesn’t,’ I reply.
‘They’ll throw you on to the street and that’ll be that,’ she says. ‘There won’t be any mercy, not in your position.’
I think of the face on Martha when she finds out. How she’ll remember the sickness. How she’ll look at my belly, how they’ll all look at my belly, every time I go past, whispering and skulking about behind my back.
We’re sitting in Madame Camille’s room, it’s cosy with white walls and small pictures of the countryside dotted around, hung up with string. In one of the pictures, there’s a man in a red jacket on a horse, hunting hounds spilling all around him, some of them mid-jump over a ditch. The room was once a bedroom, its high ceilings punctured by two black windows looking out into the night.
‘You could go to a mother and babies home,’ she says. ‘Actually, there’s one just a few streets away from where you are now, you know the big yellow building on the corner?’
I think of it now, looming behind a set of poplar trees. I never knew that’s what it was. London was so full of big buildings, carved out of different bricks and stone. How was I to know what was behind all those walls?
‘Have you ever walked past there and seen a soul?’ says Madame Camille, leaning towards me a little.
I shrug my shoulders. ‘No,’ I say.
‘That’s because when you go in there, you don’t come out,’ she says. ‘It’s a prison. A workhouse. They keep the women to do the laundry and sew and mend and iron and the babies are given away to rich people who can’t have children of their own. You’d be a slave. And you’d be a slave, with no baby. You do want to keep the baby?’
I nod. I want to keep the baby. I told Clara this last night. It was an overwhelming feeling I had. That he was mine.
‘If you come to work for me, I can help you,’ she says. ‘During your condition and your confinement, it’ll be light work. Cleaning over the rooms and making over the place. Some cooking maybe. You can keep the baby.’ She waves her hand in the air as she says this, as if it’s a notion I have.
‘A few of the girls have children. There’s lodgings and there’s a shift rota and the girls take turns in minding each other’s babies,’ she says. ‘Then, after that, when the baby is born, you’ll be working for me proper, till you’ve paid off your debt.’
Outside Madame Camille’s room, there’s men passing by, girls dressed in stockings and chemises leading them up and down corridors to their rooms. They wear lipstick, the necks of their garments open so the men can look right down at their bosoms.
‘Will I be able for it?’ I ask, thinking about after my confinement when she really wants to put me to work, like the girls outside.
I look at the porcelain cup and saucer on her desk, settled on a ledger book and papers. It has a pink rose on the outside and I remember the day myself and Mam had tea in porcelain cups in the White Horse Hotel in town.
‘Alright,’ I say. ‘I’ll hand in my notice at the house this week.’
‘Good,’ she says. ‘Now what can we call you? Molly is so very common.’
* * *
In all this horrible business, the one thing I’m glad of is being spared the embarrassment of revealing my condition to Mrs Harrington and to Martha. I tell them I need to go back home, that I have an aunt who is unwell.
‘I thought you said you’d no family,’ says Martha, looking at me all suspicious.
‘I don’t,’ I say, snapping at her. ‘Except my aunt.’
Mrs Harrington is disappointed and says she’s sorry to see me go and that she’d thought I’d stay longer. I want to tell her that I did too.
I leave on a cold morning, making my way to the address Madame Camille scribbled out for me, passing by the yellow mother and baby home, making myself have a good look in. I wonder if I could go through the gates, past the poplar trees and up to the giant door and knock on it. Would they take me in? Would they protect me from what I was about to do?
But my legs walk past and I arrive at the small terraced house down a backstreet in Islington. The small step up to the front door is dirty and the windows have a fine film of grime on them, blacker than the dusty dirt I used to wash off at the grey house. Madame Camille has lots of kip houses in this part of London and she moves them on regular. She keeps some for boarding and some for working. This one is for boarding and there’s a few girls here with babies.
December Girl Page 9
