The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters

by Michelle Lovric

  ‘If he so much as touches the doorbell,’ Darcy shouted, ‘the divil a bone in his body but I’ll powder it and blow it up the chimney!’

  Oona said, ‘Tristan would never let him in.’

  I thought sourly, Tristan has already given him the key to the house.

  ‘Anyway, we’re off to London next week,’ Darcy said. ‘He’ll not follow us past Kingstown.’

  But Millwillis pursued us on our new English tour. He staked out every hotel. He was to be seen strolling backwards and forwards outside our quarters in the early hours. In London, he followed the fake Pertilly on an excursion to Harrods and cornered her in the hat department. She came back to our rooms incoherent with fear.

  Eventually, after Darcy slapped her face, and Oona administered the sal volatile, she stammered, ‘He knows I am no Swiney. He told me my real name. He knows about . . . my little one. He’s going to put it in the newspaper. By way of building an excitement for his book, he said.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ barked Darcy. ‘He has no evidence.’

  ‘He has the records of the lying-in hospital where I . . . He has spoken to a woman called Craughn, your old hairdresser. He showed her photographs. She confirmed that I am not the girl Pertilly whose hair she used to dress.’

  ‘Miss Craughn was with us for all of four weeks. Her head is muddled with sniffing the frizzle tonic. Servants always bear a grudge. No one sensible will believe her.’

  ‘He says you are but poor bastard girls from Harristown, born in abject poverty. Pieces of Irish nothing. All feathers and no hat. Not fit for life outside a swinish sty.’

  ‘He’ll be stopped,’ retorted Darcy.

  ‘He said to tell you that his breath will always be on the back of your swinish necks and that the click of every deathwatch beetle in the night will remind you of the sound of his pen scribbling.’

  ‘Away with him and his deathwatch beetle,’ scoffed Darcy. ‘Grow a spine, girl.’

  But the next morning, the new Pertilly’s bed was empty. Her wardrobe, however, was full. She had left all her stage clothes. We cut short our tour and fled, myself with a secret copy of Millwillis’s biography of Julia Pastrana wrapped in my nightdress. He had mutilated the poor Baboon Lady in death, as the press had in life. He had faithfully recorded every disgusted comment, every accusation of beastliness, every mocking cartoon ever published about her, and added a gloss of sneering and innuendo about her sexual appetites and her feeding habits.

  Back in Dublin, we tried to find a third Pertilly, this time advertising with height and waist measurements to accommodate the costumes already made. We were forced to take on a girl with inadequate hair, which had to be supplemented with hanks of Mr Rainfleury’s so-called silk. I feared she would not last – and she did not. Darcy tried to keep her indoors, but the girl was restless. Soon Millwillis was whispering in her ear in a tea shop, and she too was gone.

  Mr Rainfleury reluctantly agreed to send the Swiney Godivas into temporary reposeful retirement after an exhausting round of superbly successful engagements.

  While we reposefully retired, Tristan experimented with a male product, taking in all the competitors to see if we could create a more pleasing mixture than the ever-popular Pommade Hongroise. For Fixing the Moustache or Beard in any Desired Position. Mr Rainfleury was unhappy with the results, which hardened his own productions to an enamelled texture and caused the precious hairs to fall out. The project faded away.

  Instead Tristan assaulted the press with a round of Swiney Godiva advertising.

  ‘Are we not paying to put money in Millwillis’s pocket, rather?’ I asked. ‘We are giving advance publicity to his book.’

  He waved me aside. ‘Leave the strategy of things to me, Manticory.’

  Tristan set up a Swiney Godiva Marrow and Daffodil Pomade, which was advertised as Perfumed with precious extrait distilled from the choicest flowers and steeped in that excellent transdermal carrier, alcohol. This was followed by a Lotion for Setting Perfect Swiney Curls. To be poured into a saucer and applied with a sponge to the roots of the hair before curling. And a Swiney Godiva Dry Vegetable Shampoo Powder with its own patent sprinkler. Frees the hair from grease and dirt as effectively as wet-wash.

  None of this feverish production assuaged my fears about the ways in which Tristan meant to capitalise on Millwillis’s scandal. I waited tensely for the threatened red costumes, the black lace – but they were not imposed.

  It was only gradually that I began to understand that the truth was that Tristan had lost the run of himself. He – and Mr Rainfleury too – far from being sanguine, were now in a white-knuckle panic about Millwillis. Both had longed for the newspaper inches of publicity; neither had feared for the polluting of the Swiney Godivas’ reputations. But, in observing the newsman’s greed for detail, and his guile, they had finally realised that Tristan’s less than gallant behaviour towards Oona might be exposed alongside Mr Rainfleury’s failings as a faithful husband. The rash of new products was to milk the Swiney hair for all its gold as quickly as possible: the source might yet be dried up by Millwillis’s book. Tristan was too exercised to think clearly about the havoc to our funds and the damage we were doing to the original essence and scalp food. The new products entered a market that was already too crowded. Their very number and variety smacked of desperation, it seemed to me, of overselling.

  Then Millwillis published his first article.

  Oona came trembling to breakfast, with a bastinade of newsprint in her fist. ‘Here is the paper; and ’tisn’t much good for us you’ll find in it. And you’ll never guess who’s big with Millwillis now.’

  The headline across the centre pages read:

  SWINEY GODIVA HAIR SHOCKER – LICE! WORMS! MADNESS! LIES! COMPULSIVE GAMBLING! HEAD-SHAVING!

  THE SEVEN SISTERS’ SECRETS REVEALED

  A sensational discovery by St John Millwillis

  ‘Compulsive gambling?’ I asked.

  ‘Any lie will do!’ said Darcy.

  We craned over the paper, flinching, groaning, exclaiming and eventually falling silent.

  The worst of it was that most of his story was based on frank information gained by colloguing with the Eileen O’Reilly. Who’d have thought it ever back in our Harristown days that the butcher’s runt would have been sent to a finishing school in Switzerland at a rich butchering uncle’s bequest when he retired on the sale of his abattoirs in Howth. But I knew that was true – Mrs Godlin from the dispensary had written to tell us. And we’d heard from Mrs Godlin too that the newly finished Eileen O’Reilly had been employed in the uncle’s salami and olive import business.

  A reliable informant, a close companion of their schoolyard days, reports that far from being the possessors of preternaturally fertile and healthy scalps, the poor Swiney sisters were riddled with vermin, and often half bald with the ringworm.

  ‘No one,’ added Eileen O’Reilly, a young lady of business, ‘wanted to sit next to a Swiney Nitster in the classroom. Not only were their lice bigger and more plentiful than anyone had ever seen, so they were, but the creatures were also great acrobats and could propel themselves halfway across the classroom, even into the hair of respectable girls like myself. It was something shocking, so it was. It was not their fault, the creatures. The oldest sister, Darcy, was too mean to spend on treatments in case it cost her the price of another frightful new hat for herself. And then of course everyone in Harristown knew that Darcy Swiney was mad as a bull with the staggers and twice as like to go at you. It is the wonder of the world to me that Darcy Swiney’s not yet finished in an asylum or a prison. And then we all know the Swineys are descended from a mad king who was condemned to wander Ireland insane and naked till he was put an end to.’

  READ MORE ABOUT THOSE FAKING BIGWIGS THE SWINEY GODIVAS AND THEIR PENCHANT FOR MENDACITY IN THE NEXT ISSUE!

  [Promised a banner in red.]

  IT’S NOT EVEN THEIR OWN HAIR!

  And learn more about their lust for power and money, their
scandalous birth! Seven sisters with seven different fathers, den of vice in the depths of the Irish countryside. And a fake sister in their midst!

  The red-haired temptress Manticory Swiney says, ‘Men are just our accessories.’

  Chapter 36

  ‘I’m going to mutilate him into a female,’ sputtered Darcy.

  ‘Nobody will want us now,’ mourned Berenice. ‘And when Augustus and Tristan read what Millwillis wrote, we’ll have no one to manage us or make our bookings, or prepare our accommodation or sell the tickets. They’ll find other sisters, other hair.’

  Oona said, ‘They would never abandon us. They are brothers to us.’

  But her voice broke on the word ‘brothers’.

  Darcy snapped, ‘Your tiny brains are running away with themselves. We must simply keep out of sight until we can make this go away. If we go on the stage again, there will be advertising and newspaper stories and Millwillis will find us in a goat’s leap.’

  Ida said, ‘Everyone will want to come see the evil Swineys. I am surprised that Tristan and Mr Rainfleury did not think of that. So if we earn a great heap of money, we could give some to Millwillis, to make him go away and stop writing any more.’

  ‘You mean offer to be blackmailed?’ Darcy scowled. ‘We can’t afford him. He’ll never stop coming after us if he sees that blackmail works. No, he has stolen our earnings for a while. We must hide. We shall retrench somewhat, cut our firewood expenses, that kind of thing. One less maid. You girls can manage without your pocket money for a while. Pudel can cover for the second maid.’

  Berenice said, ‘But at least we can have Pertilly back now – she doesn’t need to hide any more. Everyone knows what happened to her.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Pudel. ‘I am happy as I am.’

  I thought, Yes, she is. And there is dignity in her labour, compared with the degradation of public Swineyness.

  Darcy allowed, ‘We can call her Pertilly again, so long as she continues with her chores.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Why don’t I just write that book then?’

  ‘You mean the story of us?’ asked Oona. ‘The real story?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I told you why not,’ fumed Darcy. ‘Is it that you are all a bit more stupid than you were last week?’

  ‘If we cannot perform and I may not write the book,’ I said stubbornly, ‘then why don’t we go to Venice?’

  ‘Not Venice again,’ drawled Darcy disparagingly. ‘Always on about Venice, Manticory. You’re like a stray cat when it comes to that place. As if you once had a good dinner there.’

  I suspected that she alluded to Alexander – I could never be sure that Darcy had not detected or sensed what was between us, as Ida had. Still I managed to bring off a great feat of pretended incomprehension, answering, ‘I don’t know about dinners. But we do have a home in Venice, all paid for, that will not need a lump of coal burned till October. Thanks to Mr Rainfleury’s sharp advice, no one knows about it, not even Mr Millwillis, it seems. The article hasn’t mentioned it. We might as well go hide in the Catacombs, it is so secret. And Signor Bon’s postcards are still selling so we have funds there too, waiting to be spent.’

  ‘We could remove ourselves very quietly there,’ said Oona thoughtfully. ‘And maybe Tristan would want to come too, to keep out of the limelight a while.’

  ‘Better still, let’s print handbills for a tour of Russia!’ said I. ‘And say that we are going there. And then travel secretly to Venice.’

  Everyone looked to Darcy.

  ‘I suppose Manticory makes a point.’ She held up another smudged letter. ‘And it would remove us from the charlatan mariner who seems very much inspired by Mr Millwillis’s outpourings. Three more of these today.’

  She tossed a bundle of letters in the fire, unopened. ‘I expect he wants to blackmail us too, the species of thing that he is.’

  Ida, sucking on her hair, suddenly convulsed and rushed out of the room.

  ‘We must deal with Ida first. She’s not fit to travel,’ said Pertilly tenderly. ‘And the cold is drawing in, ever so fast now.’

  ‘There are doctors in Venice,’ answered Darcy. ‘Less costly than Dublin ones too.’

  Millwillis published another article the next morning: this time he had Mr Rainfleury in his sights. It did not name Mr Rainfleury: but what other Dublin manufacturer had married into a large family and had made himself a fortune that could not quite be fully accounted for in doll receipts? The real source of ‘Mr R’s’ wealth, it emerged in the press, was not the dolls, who were but his pretty pastime.

  No, the article revealed, ‘Mr R’ was deeply and profitably involved with the ill-esteemed hair trade – the obtaining, cutting, selling, bagging, transporting, refashioning and selling of real human hair, a commodity worth five times as much per ounce as real silver.

  Until this day, thundered Millwillis, only the do-gooders and the anti-vivisectionists have gone deeply into where the coveted hairpieces are sourced. Now the free press shall have its say.

  In sweatshops in Dublin, ‘Mr R’s’ workers toil with sacks of hair, each containing the glories of six hundred poor women who have sacrificed it out of hunger, sickness or for vice.

  What a Bluebeard ‘Mr R’ was painted by the article! And what a purveyor of sordidness, employing small boys with fine-toothed rakes to hook clots and tangles of pauper hair from gutters and sewers.

  To swell ‘Mr R’s’ coffers, rich women now wear poor women, incorporating them, swelling their natural attractions just as cannibals eat up the substance of weaker beings and fatten on them.

  And this is not to mention the switches, plaits, curls and severed chignons ‘Mr R’ has – knowingly – provided to all the male hair fetishists of Europe; those men, who by a complex conjuring, project their sickening lusts onto dead hair, animate it with their desire and worship it.

  Mr Rainfleury disappeared on an urgent trip to Ulster. But we acquired a new protector. A man signing himself PS threatened the hack with retribution for his slandering of those blameless Irish roses, the Swiney Godivas. PS’s letter, published in full beneath the next article, asserted in picturesque terms that Millwillis deserved a dark destiny for murdering seven reputations, and that PS himself was more than ready to serve justice personally.

  Every drop of poison ink that he spills is one more danger in his path. He can watch out for himself!

  ‘I like the style of the fellow,’ said Darcy.

  PS. My thoughts were inevitably pulled to the grave with the crossed spoons in Harristown. Of course our father would have wanted to defend us, were he alive. And the same conundrum defeated my speculations: if it was not our father lying in that clover-scented grave, who lay there?

  ‘Did you notice,’ I asked Darcy, ‘that his initials are the same as Phelan Swiney’s?’

  ‘Did you notice,’ she replied, ‘that there are a thousand other names you can get out of those letters? If you wanted to waste your time that way.’

  Millwillis deployed the letter for his own glory. The newsboys ran along our street shouting, ‘Anonymous death threat to journalist!’

  ‘How frightened is Millwillis by this PS? What do you think?’ Enda asked Tristan.

  For once, the master of publicity was silent, and would not meet our eyes.

  To no one’s surprise but Oona’s, Tristan regretfully declined our invitation to join us in Venice.

  ‘I shall just have to bear it here,’ he sighed. ‘Without you.’

  By letter, Mr Rainfleury pronounced his presence indispens­able in Ulster ‘during this crucial period’.

  He said, ‘Mr Sardou has agreed to see to you.’

  Alexander met us at the élysée Palace in Paris – though he did not room there – and escorted us all the way back to Venice. Over coffee in the train’s dining car, he told me, ‘I am sorry to get you this way, but it is better than not at all. Is it a frightful thing to say? Is that what makes your lips set themselves so?’ He touc
hed my mouth. ‘This smile of yours would be hard to paint.’

  ‘It’s not a smile. I am distressed that it has come to this, hunted across the Continent. And I am sad that you should find it amusing.’

  ‘You should be angry. You should be furious. I am only sorry that you make me the object of your scorn. We both know it should be Darcy. And perhaps you should look to yourself as well, for allowing her to sell you, to run you and your sisters like dogs at a race, and for keeping all the money to herself. It should be Darcy who sees this outraged dignity, who hears your anger.’

  ‘Money! You too! So if I had my money, could we be together? Is this what you mean?’

  The air seemed to bristle around my tight eyes.

  Alexander said, ‘Don’t waste your hate on me! Or is it that you can show anger to me because I am less frightening than Darcy? It is not my venality that is in question. Manticory, can you not see the clear path for yourself ? You must free yourself. Whether you come to me—’

  Clear path, I thought. Well, the contract Darcy had signed could not be unsigned. But was that really any obstruction in my path to Alexander’s love?

  In fact, I decided, I shall be with him. He need not know about the contract. It is not relevant. There is no mention of love in that contract. Darcy sold the use of my body. My love is still mine to bestow as I wish.

  ‘So,’ I said boldly, ‘come and tell me that again after midnight. In my sleeping car. Oona is taking care of Ida tonight.’

  ‘And you shall be alone?’

  ‘I hope not,’ I smiled, one corner of my mouth flittering.

  Part Four

  Venice

  Chapter 37

  It was as if the train did it.

  It was the train, shuddering and screaming through the night, that jolted my naked body against his.

  The anger that had driven me to the act still fuelled it until the moment I lifted my coverlet to welcome Alexander in and he lay down in my arms, having shed his clothes in the dark.