Belle

by Lesley Pearse

  To Noah that meant there was a girl brought here in January and if they could find the convent, they were on their way.

  Noah couldn’t bring himself to leave Cosette without making her feel better about herself.

  ‘You are a sweet girl,’ he said, taking her face between his two hands and kissing her forehead, cheeks and then her lips. ‘If I was not married …’ He paused, hoping she’d draw the right conclusion to that remark. ‘But my wife made me promise to be good in Paris.’

  She smiled then, and it was as though the sun had come up, for her face actually became pretty. ‘Your wife lucky to have good husband,’ she said.

  ‘You talk more,’ she went on, pulling him back to the bed when he walked towards the door. ‘I speak the Engleesh.’

  Noah felt it was more that she didn’t want him to go downstairs too quickly for fear of losing face with the other girls than because she wanted to practise her English, but it would have been churlish to refuse.

  She said she came from Reims, that she was the eldest of seven daughters, and her father was a farm labourer. She didn’t have to say why she’d come to Paris to become a whore, it was clear it was the only way she could earn enough to send money home for her family. She blushed when she told him she’d learned her English from an English artist who lived in Montmartre. She said she saw him when she had afternoons off. When Noah asked if he would marry her, she laughed lightly and said no, because he was very old. She added that he was kind to her, and it struck Noah that if she smiled more and looked prettier, then more people would be kind to her.

  When Noah went back to the parlour, only Sophia was still there. She said something in French which sounded very surly, and sat down again, turning her back on him.

  Five minutes later James came down the stairs. His face was bright red and he was beaming. As the maid who’d let them in appeared from a doorway at the back of the hall to pass them their hats, the two men said nothing further until they were walking across the square.

  ‘She was wonderful,’ James blurted out. ‘So kind, so giving.’

  ‘But I bet she took the money,’ Noah said archly. He was glad his friend had finally got there, but realized he was now expected to spend the evening being told how marvellous the experience was.

  ‘I don’t think she wanted to,’ James said dreamily. ‘She’s too afraid of Madame Sondheim not to take it.’

  ‘So you did ask her some questions then?’

  ‘She didn’t seem to understand many of them. I asked about young girls and she just said she was better for me than someone very young.’

  Noah couldn’t help but smile. He supposed it was an impossibility to expect his friend to interrogate a woman as lovely as Arielle when he was alone with her in a bedroom.

  ‘Does the word couvent mean convent?’ he asked unexpectedly.

  ‘Yes, why?’ James frowned.

  ‘Because that is where some of the young girls go after that place. Unfortunately I would imagine that looking for an unnamed convent in Paris will be close to the proverbial needle in a haystack.’

  Chapter Twenty

  1911

  The heat woke Belle and as usual she was bathed in perspiration. She thought nostalgically of the cool English weather all the time now for the sticky summer heat of New Orleans was exhausting.

  She remembered how thrilled she’d been back in April of last year when she was given this room. It was at the back of the house, so it was quieter, large and sun-filled, and had a beautiful big brass bed. It hadn’t occurred to her then that it would be like an inferno once the weather grew warmer and that was why none of the other girls wanted it.

  But then, in sixteen months of being at Martha’s, she’d found that she couldn’t actually trust anything or anybody. What seemed good one day could become bad the next.

  It had been a huge mistake to ask Martha for proof of what she’d paid for her, especially so soon after she’d arrived here. The woman had been really frosty with her and Hatty warned Belle she ought to apologize immediately.

  ‘We are all on some kind of a contract, honey,’ she explained. ‘The madam of a whorehouse has to hold the whip hand or the girls take advantage. Even for those of us who weren’t bought like you were, she still gives us board and lodging, she supplied us with dresses, shoes and the like, so of course she takes that back out of our money – she has a living to make. We have to earn her trust too. How would it be if she took on a girl and got up one morning to find she’d hightailed it out of town taking the silver teaspoons and a trunk full of dresses?’

  Put like that, Belle could understand. ‘But all I wanted to know was how long it would be before she’d got all her money back,’ she explained. ‘I can’t see anything wrong in asking that. How else can I plan my life?’

  ‘Martha don’t see it that way, she’d say it was her business,’ Hatty insisted. ‘And us girls are just like flowers, we only stay fresh for a limited period. She’s got to make her pile out of us while she can. If we get pregnant, get the pox, get our face slashed by another girl, or beaten up by one of the men, we aren’t any good to her.’

  That sent a shiver of fear down Belle’s spine. She hadn’t considered that any of those things could happen to her, but perhaps they could. ‘But the man who brought me here said she was a good woman, and she seemed so kind,’ she said in puzzlement. ‘How can she earn so much money from us and then sling us out if something bad happened?’

  Hatty smirked as if unable to believe Belle was that naive. ‘She is a good woman, at least compared with most of the madams in this town. She feeds us well; if we’re sick she takes care of us. She don’t expect us to work when we’ve got our monthlies. Afore you start complainin’, honey, you gotta open your eyes and see how it is for some of the girls in this town. My! Some of ’em ain’t even fed right, they get whipped, they’ve had their babies taken away. I heard tell there was one madam, when her top girl wanted to leave to go home to her folks, she got a tattoo put on the back of the girl’s hand, which said “Whore”. That way she could never go home. If you’ve got a coupla hours, I could tell you stories about mean madams that would make your hair fall out.’

  ‘But I need the money to get back to England,’ Belle argued, though what Hatty had said frightened her. ‘I’m scared I’ll be here for years and years.’

  Hatty laughed at that. ‘Honey chile, none of us, not even the real pretty ones of us, will be here for years and years, not up this end of the town anyway,’ she said, condescendingly patting Belle on the head. ‘Best thing you can do is make it up with Martha, prove yourself here, then bide your time and look out for a rich man who might take you for his mistress, or even marry you. That’s the only way I’ve seen girls get out of it, and it’s what I’m gonna do.’

  Belle thought about everything Hatty had said for a couple of days. The part which shook her most was the statement about flowers not staying fresh; it hadn’t occurred to her that there was some kind of time limit to this work. On top of this she remembered how Etienne had said that girls should always keep the madam sweet. Her mother used to complain about certain girls, and now she came to think about it, those girls always left. Probably not by their own free will either.

  There was no doubt in her mind that Martha was very annoyed with her. She turned away when Belle came in the room, and hadn’t once spoken directly to her.

  What with everything Hatty had told her, Belle realized she had no choice but to apologize and make everything smooth again; if not, she just might find herself sold on to someone else. Everyone in America was very eager to point out that slavery was a thing of the past, but while the slave markets for field hands and servants might be gone, here in New Orleans they still existed for whores, whether white, negro or mulatto.

  Everyone accepted this arrangement; Martha’s girls talked about it all the time. At the high end of the market there was even a kind of kudos for a girl who had changed hands for a great deal of money. That girl could rel
y on being treated with kid gloves as long as men flocked to pay a king’s ransom for her. But further down the line the girls had no rights; no one cared how they were treated, least of all the police. And Belle was fairly certain that if a girl was to speak out about it, she’d probably end up silenced for good.

  So Belle told herself that she must be glad she was in a good sporting house, and that she was considered a valuable commodity because she was young, pretty and English. She must take to the work, show real enthusiasm for it, and that way she could keep herself safe until she found a way out of it.

  So she went to Martha and apologized.

  Belle found she barely remembered incidents that had happened just a week ago, yet she could recall everything about that day sixteen months ago when she went down to see Martha in her parlour.

  She dressed for the occasion in the pale blue frilly dress she’d been given in France because it made her look innocent. She left her hair down on her shoulders, and she put just a touch of rouge under her eyes to look as if she’d been crying.

  It was almost noon and Martha was sitting on her couch wearing her apricot-coloured loose tea dress, her hair covered in a matching turban.

  ‘What is it, Belle?’ she asked in a chilly tone.

  ‘I came to ask your forgiveness,’ Belle said, keeping her head down and wringing her hands. ‘I know you are cross with me for asking about the money, I realize I must have sounded very ungrateful when you’d been so kind to me.’

  ‘I do not like being questioned by my girls,’ Martha replied. ‘This is my house and it runs by my rules.’

  ‘I was very wrong to question you,’ Belle said. ‘But I didn’t understand how it all worked, I’m so new to it. I wasn’t thinking about the lovely dresses and underwear and shoes you’d got for me, or how much it must have cost to bring me here. But I have thought it all through now and I realize I am very, very lucky to be in your house. Please can I make amends for upsetting you?’

  ‘You, honey, are very fortunate I didn’t sell you on to another house immediately,’ Martha said sharply. ‘The only reason I didn’t was because you are so young, and unaccustomed to this business. I have taken time and trouble with you; no one else in this town would do that.’

  ‘I know, ma’am,’ Belle said contritely. ‘You’ve been like a mother to me. I am so sorry.’

  ‘Do I have your word then that there will be no further unpleasant outbursts from you?’ Martha asked.

  ‘Oh yes, I promise that I will do my best to make it up to you,’ Belle said, and managed to squeeze out a tear or two, even though she would have preferred to tell the woman what she really thought about slavery. ‘I truly want to put this behind me and start afresh.’

  ‘Come here, honey.’ Martha patted the seat beside her for Belle to join her. ‘I am glad you came down to me today. It tells me you are at heart the sweet thing I took you for. Now, I am going to overlook your mistake this time, I think perhaps it went to your head a little that my gentlemen were so taken with you. But should you question me again I won’t be so lenient a second time. You’ll be out that front door before you can even say Mississippi. Have I made myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Belle said, hanging her head and forcing out a few more tears. ‘I promise I will never show you any disrespect again.’

  ‘Run along now, honey,’ Martha said, patting Belle’s knee as if she were a child. ‘And do take off that dress, it looks like something a school marm would wear.’

  Belle remembered how she left Martha’s parlour that day and ran back to her room so she could seethe in private at the indignity of having to grovel just to keep a roof over her head. But she made a promise to herself that she would play the game for only as long as it suited her, and then she’d be off.

  Belle hadn’t reckoned on the seductive charm of New Orleans, however. Nor had she realized that the easy, luxurious life at Martha’s would suck her in and make her as indolent as the other girls.

  Martha reverted to being the warm, friendly woman she’d been before their little upset. Belle had made friends with the other girls and during the afternoons they went out together to Jackson Square or for a walk along the levee by the Mississippi. They always had plenty to laugh and chat about, for their work was such that often very funny things happened, and no one took it very seriously. Belle had her two dollars a night, and she saved as much every week as she could.

  Mostly Belle felt really happy with the girls, as though they were the older sisters she’d never had. She learned from them about America, about fashion and beauty tips, and about men of course, for they were always a main topic of conversation.

  Belle had her big new bedroom too, which although too hot in summer, was pretty, with deep pink roses on the wallpaper. She could eat what she liked, and she had developed a taste for spicy jambalaya and the other traditional Creole dishes. She could sleep most of the day if she wished to or laze on cushions in the shady back yard reading a book. She never had to scrub floors, wash clothes or do anything other than make herself look pretty.

  But now and again anger and resentment would rise up inside her.

  She could deal with the work; if she was completely truthful, mostly she quite enjoyed it. She preferred the older men to the younger ones. Sometimes they told her they were widowers or that their wife wouldn’t sleep with them any longer. Though she knew it was quite likely that they were lying and all they wanted was young flesh and uncomplicated thrills, whether they spoke the truth or not, they were invariably polite, gentle and grateful. She was often moved by their appreciation – a few tears, a warm hug before they left, flowers or chocolates left for her later made her feel special and even loved.

  Some of the younger men, on the other hand, could make her feel dirty. They could be rough, uncouth and very insensitive to her feelings. They often acted like they thought she should be grateful they’d picked her, and occasionally she’d get one who would claim she wasn’t worth the money. Martha said a proportion of men always did that as they felt diminished by having to pay for sex, and she shouldn’t take it personally. But it was hard not to.

  In much less than two years, she’d gone from barely understanding what sex meant to knowing more than she wanted to. She knew now that no two penises were the same; she’d seen huge ones, tiny ones, bent ones and diseased ones, and every other kind in between. She’d learned the tricks of tightening her internal muscles to increase men’s pleasure and make them climax quicker. She could even take them in her mouth and look as if she was loving it when she really felt like vomiting.

  Some men wanted real lovemaking, others just quick release. Some wanted to believe she was really a lady, while others wanted her to act like a wanton hussy. She had developed the ability to sense which they wanted just by the way they looked at her down in the parlour. She slid from lady to hussy so often that mostly she no longer knew which was closest to her real character.

  Belle knew she wasn’t the same girl who had come out from England. She didn’t have romantic daydreams any longer, instead she took all she was told with a pinch of salt. She had developed a certain cynicism and she could be hard too, especially to men who came close to seeing the girl she used to be.

  England and all those she loved there seemed a distant blur now, like looking back on a dream. Her seventeenth birthday had come and gone, and she still hadn’t written a letter home because she knew there was nothing she could say that would make her mother and Mog feel better about her disappearance. She thought it was best that they believed she was still in New York as she had been when she’d sent a card, and that she was having a far better life than she could have had with them.

  Yet she couldn’t help but scour the newspaper for English news. Unfortunately the American papers only wrote up an English story when it was something really newsworthy and important, like when King Edward died last May. That had been covered well, with pictures of his funeral, and Belle cried when she saw one with Westminster Abbey
and the Houses of Parliament in the background and remembered when Jimmy took her there.

  Mog would have been there in the crowd somewhere to watch. Even though she didn’t like crowds, nothing would stop her seeing a procession, and she’d thought King Edward was a good sort. Sometimes there would be a few lines about the suffragettes too, the force-feeding of them in prison or the latest thing they’d done to push their cause. That was enough to make Belle cry as well, for Mog had always said she wished she had the guts to join them.

  Yet it was the coronation of George V back in June of this year which really made her homesick. That was the kind of story from England Americans liked, and every paper and magazine was full of it. She could remember when Edward VII had been crowned, the excitement, the bunting and flags going up. Mog took her to watch the procession in Whitehall and she’d never forget the gilded coach and everyone cheering. They’d had a street party that day, someone wheeled a piano out, and the dancing and drinking went on most of the night.

  When these feelings of homesickness came upon her, Belle tried to tell herself that her life here was far better than in England, but the debt to Martha was always there in the back of her mind. Common sense and a love of figures said the money had been repaid months ago and that Martha was a greedy, conniving witch who was taking her for a fool.

  Belle had enough money saved to leave town, though it wasn’t enough to get back to England, but it was said that Martha had spies everywhere and word would get back to her the moment one of her girls bought a train ticket, whereupon she would immediately send someone to the railway station to stop them boarding.

  Belle told herself that was just a story put about to frighten the girls, but all the same she was too afraid to chance it, for she knew if she was caught, Martha would take her revenge. She’d sell her on before the day was out, and it wouldn’t be to another house up on Basin Street, but several blocks back where she might be expected to service forty or fifty men during the course of one day. And the people who owned those places watched their girls closely and beat them if they stepped out of line.