From Whitechapel

by Clegg, Melanie

  Aunt Minerva clapped her hands together. ‘Then that’s all settled then,’ she said briskly with a nod to me. ‘I think we can dispense with any further chaperonage from me so I will bid you both goodbye now.’ She opened her purple watered silk reticule and felt inside for a slip of paper, a cheque in fact, which she then discreetly slipped into Mrs Lightfoot’s hand and which vanished into that’s lady’s pocket as quickly as it had appeared.

  ‘You are very kind, Lady Coudland,’ she said, smiling. ‘We shall be so pleased to welcome Miss Redmayne back again.’

  ‘I am sure that you will,’ my aunt replied with an ironic glint in her eye and I wondered just how much her cheque had been made out for. ‘Anyway, we must be off. Thank you both for such an instructive introduction to your work.’ She beckoned me to follow her from the hall. ‘Come along, Alice.’

  I smiled at both ladies and pointedly ignored Mr Mercier before hurrying out through the door and onto the front step. ‘I bet that’s the last we’ll see of that particular fancy young lady,’ I heard Mr Mercier say with a laugh as the battered green door closed behind us.

  Ugh. I seethed with annoyance all the way back to Highbury, slumped gracelessly as an adolescent boy in my seat and taking no interest at all in the houses and shops that we passed on our way home. At first Aunt Minerva tried to make some conversation with me but eventually she too fell into silence and turned her head to stare majestically out of the window, a frown settled between her thinly plucked eyebrows.

  When we reached my house, she didn’t accompany me inside only leaned across from her seat to kiss my cheek then took my hands in hers. ‘It is up to you to show that young man that he is wrong about you,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Don’t go in there tomorrow all petulant and full of girlish indignation. Be a woman and show him what you are made of.’

  I grinned at her. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said as Gideon opened the carriage door for me.

  ‘Pish,’ said my aunt fondly, waving me away. ‘Take care, Alice. I still don’t know what you are up to but at least I can be sure that you will be in good hands.’

  I hurried up to my room where Minnie was waiting for me, her gaze expectant and a little anxious. ‘Well, how was it, Miss?’ she asked. She’d been exceedingly relieved that morning when I told her that she wasn’t required to accompany me and was clearly keen to ingratiate herself now.

  I carelessly threw my reticule on to the bed and sat down heavily so that she could remove my dusty boots. ’Exhausting,’ I said. ‘I think I will enjoy it though.’ I leaned back on my hands and stared around me, contrasting my pretty bedroom with the simple rooms the women at the Mission inhabited. Although Mrs Lightfoot lived in her own house in Chelsea and travelled in each day to help, Miss Lawler lived on the premises and had briefly shown us her room at the top of the house with its plain iron bedstead, sprigged white and blue wallpaper and simple rag rugs spread on the wooden floorboards.

  ‘It must have been a shock to see how people live in Whitechapel,’ Minnie said, getting up from the floor with my boots in her hands. ‘My Ma says it’s ever so rough down there.’ She put the boots outside the door then went off to the bathroom to run a bath for me.

  I sighed. ‘It is very rough,’ I said, standing up so that she could help me out of my dress. ‘It feels so strange and wrong that there is so much want and harshness only a few short miles away.’

  Minnie gave a small shrug. ‘That’s London for you, Miss,’ she said smartly, folding up the dress and putting it on the bed before starting to unlace my corset. ‘You look right peaky though. Shall I ring for some tea?’

  I opened my mouth to agree but then closed it again almost immediately. No, a day like this required something far stronger and my eye instinctively fell on the bureau next to the pink marble fireplace. Minnie followed my gaze and gave a smile of understanding. ‘I’ll fetch it,’ she said.

  ‘It’ was a bottle of finest French brandy, a birthday present from Lucasta, which lay hidden beneath a pile of snowy white cotton and lace nightgowns, along with a cut crystal glass pilfered from among my father’s collection in his study downstairs. ‘I’ll have it with my bath,’ I said as Minnie, frowning a little lest she spill a single precious burnt amber drop, carefully poured me out a measure.

  ‘Very good, Miss,’ she said, handing the glass to me before dashing to the bathroom to finish pouring my bath.

  A few moments later, I lay back with a sigh in rose and lily scented water and took a much needed swig from my glass of brandy, savouring the rich burn of the liquid against my tongue and then the pleasant and very relaxing warmth that spread through my limbs as it hit my stomach. I gave a sigh, closed my eyes and slipped further beneath the steamy water.

  ‘Would you like me to wash you, Miss?’ Minnie whispered, obviously unwilling to disturb me.

  I shook my head then opened my eyes, took another reviving sip of brandy then picked up a fresh bar of rose scented Marseilles soap that rested in a little marble dish on the side of the bath. I thought again of the unfortunate women at the Whitechapel Women’s Mission and felt a smart of shame that I should be surrounded by so many luxuries when they had barely anything to call their own. I lifted the soap to my nostrils and inhaled its almost spicy sweetness, thinking how sad it was that even a simple luxury like this was unheard of in Whitechapel. ‘I can do something about that though,’ I said aloud, suddenly struck by inspiration. ‘After all, what’s the use of money if you can’t do anything good with it every now and again?’

  Minnie stuck her head around the door. ‘Did you say something, Miss?’ she asked with a concerned look.

  ‘No, nothing,’ I said, gleefully waving her away and grinning happily to myself as I imagined Mr Mercier’s expression when I turned up the next day with boxes full of several dozen bars of the very finest rose scented French soap for the ladies of the Mission.

  Chapter Eight, Emma, 1888

  I woke up sore headed and feeling like shit. That’s what a night in the Brick Lane Night Shelter did for you. I wasn’t about to complain though - it was hard work getting a place on their wards and however uncomfortable, noisy and cold it might be, you knew you were a damn sight better off than the poor wretches who had nowhere else to go and had to spend the night walking the streets and sleeping in doorways or barns.

  I wearily sat up in my bed, which was more of a wooden box really. The beds at the night shelter looked like open coffins, all lined up in rows either side of the room with a pillow at the head, a thin sheet covering the straw filled mattress and a very itchy blanket with STOLEN printed all over it to pull over yourself. I didn’t know why they bothered with the whole ’STOLEN’ business, there wasn’t a soul in Whitechapel, except the babes in arms obviously, who hadn’t nicked something one time or another and we all knew it wasn’t our business to tattle on anyone who did.

  ‘Sleep well, Em?’ the woman in the coffin next to me said with a grin, scratching at her thin ribs beneath her dull grey dress that might once have been green, it was hard to tell any more. She pulled a barely serviceable old comb out from a pocket and started to run it through her dirty blonde hair. She wasn’t much older than me, maybe nineteen at the most but looked nearer thirty, all thin and battered about the edges, much like we all did I suppose. ‘I reckon we’d have got a better night’s sleep on the streets.’

  I laughed. ‘I dunno about that, Liz,’ I said, checking that my few belongings were still where I had left them, tucked underneath my pillow. ‘Didn’t you hear the rain last night? It sounded like the world was about to end. I pity any poor soul who got caught out in that.’ I rubbed at my eyes, which were grimy with exhaustion then tenderly felt the bruise high on my cheek. I didn’t need to look in a mirror to know that it was a proper shiner.

  Liz winked at me. ‘Got on the wrong side of some swell, did you?’ she said with much sympathy.

  I shook my head, pulling my hair over the bruise to hide it a little. ‘I don’t work on my back
no more,’ I said. ‘Or at least, I try not to. I had a falling out with a door, that’s all.’ I was lying and she knew it. The fact of the matter is that a girl has to earn a living somehow and I’d taken to picking pockets to get money for my keep. This had gone fairly well until I was detected in the act by a very angry looking gentlemen on Middlesex Street, who had taken all my earnings and smacked me about the face for my trouble. Which was why I was spending the night in the shelter rather than in my usual fourpenny lodging house on Thrawl Street.

  ‘I wish someone would paint over that,’ Liz said, pointing with her chin to the end wall where ARE YOU READY TO DIE was painted in big red letters. ‘It gives me the horrors lying here in my bloody coffin and seeing that written up there like, I dunno, the word of God or something.’

  I glanced at the words and gave a disdainful shrug. ‘Bollocks to it,’ I said. ‘Don’t let it scare you, Liz. It’s just something the God botherers have thought up to try and set us all on the straight and narrow.’ I stuck my tongue out at it. ‘Sod them. I’m not read to die and nor are you, neither.’

  More of the women in the room were starting to wake up now, sitting up with coughs and sighs of discomfort and rubbing their sore heads and limbs. There wasn’t much room to move in the coffin beds so you either had to get comfortable on your side and stay put or lie flat on your back like a corpse until morning. Some of the women started crying again when they woke and saw that they were still there while others just sat in a silent daze, starting into nothing almost as if they didn’t know where they were at all. Someone started to tunelessly sing The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery, a popular music hall song, but she was quickly shushed and shouted into silence.

  ‘Did you hear the rain last night?’ a girl close to me said to another. ‘Scared the life out of me, it did. I’ve never been so frightened.’

  Liz grinned and leaned close to me. ‘Someone’s had a sheltered life,’ she whispered, jerking her head towards the other girl. ‘She’ll soon learn.’

  I laughed mirthlessly. We were scared all the time on the streets of Whitechapel, from the second we woke up glad to have survived another night to the moment we fell asleep again, relieved to have made it through another hungry, miserable day, we were frightened. It was the only sensible way to be, the only way to survive. ‘A piddling thunder storm’s nothing compared to some of the sights I’ve seen,’ I said in a low voice, thinking about that night in Calais a year before when everything had changed. I shook myself and gave a shrug. ‘I hope Poll found somewhere to stay,’ I said to Liz, thinking about one of my friends from the lodging house on Thrawl Street, who hadn’t had enough money to pay for her bed either but hadn’t managed to get a place in a shelter. The last time I saw her, she was prancing about outside the Frying Pan pub on Brick Lane, so drunk that she could barely stand upright and telling anyone who’d stop to listen that she was sure to earn plenty of money now that she had a nice new black bonnet to entice the men down alleyways with her.

  ‘Typical bloody Poll,’ I said now with a fond smile, shaking my head as I remembered her excitement. ‘No money to pay for somewhere to kip for the night but still manages to find the pennies for a fancy new hat.’

  ‘At least she’d have been able to keep her hair dry,’ Liz said with a wink and we both laughed. ‘No, seriously, she’ll be alright. Poll’s not that bad looking really so I’m sure she’ll have earned her fourpence to pay for a bed for the night, with some to spare.’

  I wasn’t so sure though, remembering the rain in Calais and how it had chased all the men away. What sort of man was desperate enough to brave last night’s tempest in search for a bit of skirt? I shrugged. ‘Ah well, good luck to her,’ I said. ‘I’m sure I’ll see her later on, nursing a sore head and swearing never to touch a drop of drink ever again.’

  Liz grinned. ‘We’ve all been there,’ she said, stretching her arms up above her head and yawning. ‘Bleeding hell, I’m knackered.’

  A nun, one of the Sisters of Mercy who ran the night shelter, appeared and rang a bell at the end of the room as a signal that we should all heave our miserable cramped carcasses out of our coffins, arrange ourselves as decently as possible and file into the eating hall for breakfast. ‘What do you fancy this morning, Em?’ Liz said, putting on a swanky voice and giving herself some airs as we hid our things beneath our clothes and brushed ourselves down. ‘I was thinking maybe some kedgeree followed by kidneys on toast, all washed down with a pint of brandy. How about you?’

  I grinned. ‘I’ll just have the brandy if it’s all the same to you, milady,’ I said, sniffing the air appreciatively as if it smelt of a delicious breakfast rather than last night’s accumulation of stale breath, rotten flatulence and sweaty underarms. ‘Mm, I do declare that I can discern a waft of gruel.’

  Liz laughed and clutched her hands to her breast as if in raptures of delight. ‘Ooh, gruel,’ she said in a high wavering voice, mincing like a lady down the aisle between the coffins as the other women laughed at her. ‘Delicious. One’s butler swears by it.’

  We were still laughing when we sat down on the scarred and dirty wooden table in the dining hall where, as usual, we were served with a slop of thin gruel, a slice of hard dark bread and a chipped enamel mug of lukewarm and very stewed tea. I’d heard rumours that they served hot chocolate on some mornings but had never actually seen any evidence of this. After that it was off to the yard for a hold your nose and hope for the best visit to the cold, stinking privies, a quick wash in the troughs of water and then out on to the street again.

  ‘See you here later then?’ Liz said to me as I pulled my shawl close about my shoulders and stood uncertainly on the pavement, wondering where to go first.

  I grinned. ‘I bloody hope not,’ I said before waving and heading to Dorset Street. It was a lovely morning and even though it was early, the streets already heaved and hummed with life and activity as shop keepers opened their shutters for the day ahead and housewives strolled down the road together with their baskets to buy the day’s supply of bread and milk, assiduously avoiding eye contact with the more floridly dressed and still obviously intoxicated men and women who were clearly making the walk of shame back home from wherever they’d landed up the night before.

  ‘Alright, Em,’ one woman hailed me and I smiled back, raising my hand in greeting. ‘Didn’t see you out last night.’

  ‘I went to the shelter, Cathy,’ I said with a shrug. Unlike the village where I grew up, there was no shame here in saying that you spent the night in the homeless shelter. We’d all been there.

  Cathy pulled a face. Her coarse reddish hair was coming down from its bun and her make up was smeared all over her face and around her eyes. She also stank of gin and had a trail of livid love bites all down her neck and one on her breast. Whatever she’d been up to the night before, she’d clearly had fun. ‘Ooh, bad luck, old cock,’ she said. ‘You missed a right old night down the Frying Pan. There was some nice looking soldiers there. You could have taken your pick of them if you’d had a fancy to it.’

  I shook my head. ‘Did you see Poll at all?’ I asked, still worried about my friend. ‘She didn’t have enough for the lodging house either and I hate to think of her out in the rain all night.’

  Cathy considered this for a moment then shook her head. ‘Nah, not after about midnight when she upped and left to get some more pennies for her drink. I offered to buy her a jar of beer but she was in one of her proud moods and wouldn’t let me, you know how she gets.’

  ‘I know,’ I sighed. Oh Poll. ‘Ah well, see you later on then.’ We smiled at each other and continued on our separate ways, me down Church Street and Cathy staggering on to her lodging house on Fashion Street, trailing her blue shawl on the road behind her and waving merrily to the shopkeepers, most of whom she owed money to.

  It took just a few moments to walk down once elegant Church Street, which ran alongside the massive white edifice of Christ Church then cross the road by the Ten Bells pub, weav
ing quickly in and around the traffic, covered wagons taking goods to Spitalfields market and a few horse drawn omnibuses mostly, that moved in a continual noisy, dirty stream up Commercial Street. I then whisked down Dorset Street, sauntering past the huge three storey Britannia pub on the corner, which everyone locally called the Ringers on account of its fearsome landlady, Mrs Ringer.

  However, Mrs Ringer’s terrifying reputation was nothing compared to that enjoyed by the street, known as ‘the worst street in London’, upon which her pub resided. It wasn’t actually that bad, not during the day anyway and not for a local like me who was on nodding terms with most of the tarts and bully boys who sat out on the doorsteps of their lodging houses, enjoying a companionable cup of tea in the rare sunshine as their barefoot, grubby faced children played in the middle of the road. At night, it was a different matter though when the pubs along the street were full to heaving and vicious fights between both men and women spilled out on the vomit, blood and excrement splattered pavement and the tarts didn’t even bother taking men up alleyways but just did them then and there in the street, not caring who was looking.

  I walked about half way down the street then turned down Miller’s Court, a dingy little alleyway next to McCarthy’s grocer’s shop, which was just wide enough for one person to pass down. ‘Alright, Stephen,’ I said to the mad old soldier who usually sat on the corner of the alley. ‘How’s things?’

  He grimaced up at me and pushed his dirty cap back on his greasy grey hair. ‘Could be better, Miss,’ he said gloomily. ‘You watch yourself now. Dark times are coming. Oh yes, they’re a coming alright.’

  I laughed at this and carried on down the alleyway, coming out into a small overlooked courtyard with a water pump and some nasty looking privies at the far end and knocked on the first door on the right. ‘Marie,’ I whispered when there was no reply straight away, ‘are you in there?’