‘But what did they mean by that? You are a girl, Pansy.’
She was twisting one of her feet round on the ball of her foot, and her knee was pointing inwards beneath her flimsy skirt. She looked like a little child. She bit her lip, and looked down at the floor. She was flushing.
‘They said I wasn’t. See, mum, I got in trouble there.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘It weren’t my fault, mum, and I won’t be causing trouble for you ’ere. I’m not like that, honest. It weren’t my fault, and it were me first time, an’ if I was strong enough I’d never’ve let ’im near me, mum.’ We both looked down at the same time, to see that Lucinda had come in. She was holding her plate out to Pansy. She had torn her bread in half and dipped it in milk. ‘Is this for me? In’t you kind?’
Lucinda looked at me. ‘Mama hasn’t given you any tea yet, and I thought you looked cold.’
‘I am, dearie, I am. Bless yer ’art. But you eat it. I can get meself summink later.’
My head was telling me she had ‘whore’ written all over her, but Lucinda was forcing me to listen to my heart. Whatever questions I was going to ask – her background, if she’d been in trouble with the police, if she’d ever been thieving or the like – sounded brittle in my ears. My daughter had trusted her straightways, and that was worth more than any reference. I started to lay out Peter’s breakfast things, and added an extra cup for Pansy.
‘So what happened to you?’
‘They made me work the night shift. Them respectable girls never would, but they never believed me when I said no, cos they knew I needed the money, what with me mam dead and ten of us at home. ’E was a backin’-machine op’rator, and ’e made me do it, and got me chavvied up, but I told the foreman, only ’e told me I was a liar, but his auntie knows how to do away with it, if you get my meanin’, an’ he took me to ’er, and I bled for a month and ’ad the doctor’s bills to pay, and I ’aven’t bled since, if you beg my pardon, and they told me I never would again, never ’ave me own babies, which they said I ’ad them to be grateful for, no more mouths to feed. I don’t mean to tell you this all, only so as you know I’m not gahn to be causin’ you trouble. It ain’t nice, people thinking you’re like that, and doctors comin’ and checkin’ you fer disease an’ that, an’ Sally an’ Gracie too, and the women in the tenement upstairs, like bein’ a whore was infectious.’
‘Was that when you left?’
‘No, mum. But they don’t like a blower, do they? They never asked me to do the night shift again, but I needed the money, so I started to do nights at Remy’s. Twelve hours at Lambard’s, eight hours at Remy’s. Until they said they wanted me “replaced”, they said. It was slack time, anyway. Always is, March through July. Now I’m at Remy’s.’
‘What do they pay you?’
‘Eight shillings a week. I’d’ve got twelve if I coulda used one of them machines.’
I poured her a cup of tea, and cut her a slice of cake. As she sat and ate, I took Peter’s tray up to him, then returned, and told her everything: how the workshop ran, about Peter’s illness, and Lucinda, and about Jack, and Din, and the terms of employment. I left nothing out; nothing, except the nature of the work that went through the workshop. I outlined what work I needed her to do, and that she could hand in her notice at Remy & Rangorski today if she chose.
Pansy shrugged, and said with a mouth full of crumbs, ‘If I’m not there by now, me place will have gone anyway.’
There were so many things I could have started Pansy working on immediately, that it was hard for me to choose where she would be best placed. Eventually I decided she needed to begin right where she was: in the kitchen. As the centre of operations for the household and workshop, it was relative squalor, but I wondered how it compared to where Pansy lived. I showed her where the water came in, and told her the hours that it ran, and how the range worked, and where I kept the salts and soaps, and with that, I slipped behind the curtain into the workshop. I was alone for once: Din had taken some gold-dust back to Edwin Nightingale, and Jack was delivering our trade-card up along the Strand.
At least, in amongst the offensive literature, Diprose still sent me the occasional Bible, or prayer-book, or Sir Walter Scott, so today I could occupy myself with those. I selected a Bible, to pretend for a while that I was back in the early days, when I was still the innocent. The binding would be pale blue satin, and I was working it in coloured silks and silver and gold threads. I planned to depict scenes from the Song of Solomon surrounded by an elaborate border of beasts, birds and fruit, and I turned to the right page and read.
Song of Solomon:
I am black but comely,
O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.
Look not upon me because I am black,
because the sun hath gazed upon me.
I was interrupted by a stern rapping at the outside door. I opened it to find Bennett Pizzy standing outside, looking remarkably well recovered from the previous day’s troubles and exertions. A large, bruised man loomed on either side of him, neither of whom I recognised from the razzia. They pushed past me, although I was gratified to watch them all check at the smell of the workshop.
‘Her name?’
‘A pleasure to see you too, Mr Pizzy, so soon after our last delightful meeting.’
‘Her name?’
‘Pansy, Mr Pizzy.’
‘Pansy what?’
‘Pansy I don’t know yet.’
‘From?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Family?’
‘Don’t know. Mother dead, ten siblings, I think she said.’
‘Father?’
‘Don’t know. You really should . . .’
‘Age?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Previous employment?’
Here I paused. ‘Don’t know,’ I finally said.
‘Don’t you ask questions before you hire someone?’ he asked scathingly. ‘Don’t you have any sense of responsibility? If not for yourself, for Mr Diprose, for Sir Jocelyn Knightley? Have you quite taken leave of your senses? Have you not even asked if she can read?’
‘Course she can’t,’ I snorted. I stared Mr Pizzy defiantly in the eye. ‘Ask her yourself,’ I said quietly, and pulled the curtain aside.
With less resolution, as if he were not quite prepared for this, Pizzy walked through into the kitchen, followed by his thickset friends. Pansy was on her hands and knees in the fireplace, with black smeared on her face and neck. She sat back on her haunches as they came in, and looked at me for reassurance.
‘You are Pansy, correct?’ Pizzy asked. She nodded, her hazel eyes wide and bright in the hearth like a frightened cat on a dust heap.
‘Mr Pizzy, beg pardon, but may I – may I tell her who you are first?’
He nodded.
‘Pansy, love, these gentlemen are clients of the workshop. They’re not from Remy’s or Lambard’s or anywhere like that. They just want to ask you a few questions about yourself, so as they’ll know who’s helping where they get their books done up.’
‘Your surname?’
‘Smith.’
‘Address?’
‘Six Granby-street, top floor.’
‘With?’
‘There are thirteen of us.’
‘They are?’
‘Me auntie Grace and uncle Raymond, their lodger Dougie, then let’s see, Baz, Sally, and Alfie, and Hettie, Pearl, Willie, Frank, Ellie, and Sukie.’
‘Brothers and sisters,’ I interjected to Pizzy.
‘Nah, not all of ‘em,’ Pansy explained. ‘Sally’s married to me brother Baz, and Alfie’s their baby.’
‘And you all live together? Separate tenements in one house?’
‘Nah, one tenement, three rooms. There’s twelve on the floor below us.’
‘Where did you work before?’
‘Remy’s.’
‘Why did you leave?’
/>
‘Saw the notice in the winder.’
‘The notice?’ Pizzy looked at me. ‘What did it say?’
‘It asked for a girl, to do sewing and folding and nursing an invalid and – and – domestic chores.’ Pizzy was still staring straight at me. I held his gaze, but I could not keep the horror from my face.
‘Thank you, Miss Smith. Good day.’ And with great charm, and a raise of his hat, Pizzy marched back into the workshop, and without so much as a click of his fingers, his two henchmen picked me up by the arms, and dragged me behind him, and threw me on the floor, and one of them yanked my arms behind my back, and I saw Pizzy out of the corner of my eye unravel a piece of rope from the pocket of his coat, and then he crouched down, and ripped off my cap, and pulled my hair upwards so hard my head came off the floor.
‘You told me she couldn’t read,’ he hissed into my ear. One of his men took the rope and tied it tight around my wrist. ‘You told me, you little bitch, that she couldn’t read. What else have you lied about, hmmm?’
I tried to shake my head, but it was impossible, and my throat was so stretched that I could scarce get a word out, only tiny, high-pitched squeaks. Pizzy stood up, and with the point of his flashy leather boots started to kick me, in the ribs, then in the stomach, then in the hips, and I cried out from each as if they were the stab of a knife. Then he pulled my head up higher by the hair, and my chest and back hurt from the angle and the tension, and I knew he was waiting until I could bear it no more and only then would he slam my head down into the sawdust and floorboards.
Only then, we heard a quiet voice above us, saying, ‘Actually, sir, she’s right. I can’t read.’ From the corner of my eye I saw Pansy, who flinched as she finished speaking as if waiting for the blow to fall on her next. ‘I got me brother Baz to come and read it for me,’ she said quickly, still cowed. ‘I knew the word “wanted”, but only cos I’d seen it on a poster about me dad.’ Pizzy lowered me gently to the floor. ‘An’ we lived round the corner, so it wasn’t far fer Baz to come read it fer me. You can go an’ ask ’im if you like. ’E’s on the market, selling ches’nuts. Tall fella, scar on his face, inked-up arms, by the Vic.’
Pizzy was standing straighter than a hat-pin, and his hands were curled by his side. I almost pitied him; men don’t like being caught doing wrong, especially to a woman, and by a woman. And blow me if I didn’t even find myself wondering how I could make it easier for him; we women have received an impeccable training in accommodation from our own mothers. We also know the wrath of a man who has been shown up to be wrong, and it is often nastier than simple anger, so it was not surprising that I feared what he might do next.
One of the men undid the rope, and I put my hands underneath me and pushed myself to standing; the pains in my side stung sore.
‘Would you like a cup of tea, gentlemen?’ I asked, as calmly as I could. The other man picked up my cap and gave it to me; I raised my arms to fasten it on to my head, but my sides wrenched at the movement, and my head went black at the pain.
‘No, tea will not be necessary,’ Pizzy finally said in a weak voice. Then, a bit stronger, he said, ‘Bill, Patrick, go, wait outside. Pansy, you may leave too.’ She dared not look at me, but turned straightways and went back to the kitchen, ensuring the curtain was fully across behind her.
Pizzy couldn’t look at me either, which was some small satisfaction.
‘I trust I did not hurt you too much, Mrs Damage,’ he said to the bench, not to me. ‘Although let me tell you, it was not without due caution. In a business like ours, one cannot be too careful, and this must serve as a warning to you.’
‘I have had sufficient already, Mr Pizzy,’ I said.
‘Where is the nigger?’
‘He’s on an errand.’
‘He and Pansy are under your jurisdiction, along with whosoever else the fancy takes you to employ. If any of them reveal anything to anyone about the trade at Damage’s, we will hold you personally responsible. I have been instructed to tell you, yet again, that if you are not able to find a meaningful way to ensure the nigger’s loyalty to you, you must dismiss him without further ado. Have you?’
I shook my head miserably. ‘Perhaps you could suggest to me how I should go about it.’
‘It is not that difficult, Mrs Damage,’ Pizzy said, exasperated. ‘You have women’s wiles. You must find a weak spot, a secret, something you can use to blackmail him with. Use your charms. And if he is immune to those, you must use whatever means you have. A little espionage, a little subterfuge.’ He walked out into the street, where Bill and Patrick flanked the carriage. He ascended, buttoning up his coat as he climbed, then turned and said casually, ‘And Dora. Do something about that curtain. It doesn’t do to be overheard by servant girls.’
I would not move from the door until I could be sure he and his men had left Ivy-street. I wanted to get to Lucinda and hug her, and be sure she was safe, but only once I had ensured the carriage had departed.
But it stopped a little further up the cobbled street, and one of the two men – the one who had handed me my cap – got out, and knocked on Mrs Eeles’s door, and when she came out he pressed something into her hands. Then he ruffled the hair of young Billy, reached into his pocket, and gave him something else.
And then I realised, in an instant, that the old jade had been spying on me all this time. She had been their lookout, and that miserable boy Billy must have been the messenger, reporting back to Holywell-street on the comings and goings at Damage’s. No wonder they knew all about us, of Pansy’s arrival, of goodness knows what else. All of it, no doubt. And Billy – who would have thought? Oh, I didn’t resent him his role, only her: at least I had been giving him, unwittingly, a chance to get out of her house. I consoled myself with the thought of the motherless little boy with a twisted face and broken glasses, running away from the House of Death, and the ghost, no doubt, of his mother, at full pelt. I was, in some small way, glad to be of assistance.
Suddenly I could see, all around me, the disintegration of my place in the community. I had tried to ignore the details: that Lucinda no longer went to play in the streets with the other children; that people had stopped knocking on my door with a loaf of bread or a basket of eggs; that neither did I make a large stew and take it to someone else’s door like I used to; that people had even started to turn away from me in the street. I wondered what they had heard from Mrs Eeles, or Agatha Marrow, or others, and what they knew of my running the workshop, and even whether they knew of the books that I bound.
Then I saw myself as if from a distance, and wondered what I would think of myself, a young woman with a crippled husband, who received a regular train of different, well-dressed male visitors, and her resultant new-found wealth. I did not flaunt it – I had never worn those fine scarves, kid boots, the parasol and the fan – but Lucinda’s lovely blue coat can’t have escaped their notice. And if what had happened to Pansy were true, in the spirit of self-preservation, no decent woman could have afforded to know me any more.
I closed the door and found Pansy peeping into the workshop from behind the curtain. When she saw I was alone, she pulled the curtain right back and swung herself inside. She was holding a warm bread-and-water poultice in a damp flannel.
‘Y’all right? Let me have a look at ya.’ I lifted my smock, and she put the pack on the worst of my bruises. ‘Maybe we should get the doctor in to put some leeches on ya. Could do with half a dozen. Look at the state of ya.’
She wiped my nose with a handkerchief, and I saw that it was bleeding.
‘No doctors, Pansy.’
‘Nah? Don’t blame ya.’ She rubbed some pure extract of lead on each of the larger injuries, and set about covering the worst of them with bandages. She had a big grin on her face. ‘I knew you was all right, mum, straight from when I saw the parsley in your pots.’
‘Parsley, Pansy? I didn’t know I had any.’
‘ ’Swot me mam always said. “Where the missus is the mas
ter, the parsley grows the faster.” ’
She had nearly finished when Jack returned, having finished delivering our cards.
‘Crikey, Mrs D, what happened to you?’
When I told him, he hung his head wretchedly. ‘I shoulda been ’ere, Mrs D. I shoulda. You need me to pertect you, in this line o’ work. You mustn’t be alone without a man again, Mrs D.’ The tattooed skull on his arm grimaced up at me, and seemed to nod in agreement as Jack hammered his fist on the table. For all his gentleness, there was strength and meanness in his skinny arms.
‘No, Jack,’ I protested. ‘It won’t happen again. And Jack, this is Pansy. She’s working with us now. She’ll help me in the house too. She’s fresh from Remy’s.’
‘How d’y do?’
‘How d’y do?’
They could have been brother and sister, I thought, as I watched them bob up and down nervously at each other. Both had brittle, bony exteriors, but there were wounded birds inside those cages that needed more careful handling than either of them had been used to.
The other wounded fellow, by which I mean Din, did not return that day, or the next, which troubled me somewhat. Could Diprose have meant what he said about capturing him and sending him back? Had he been killed by some nigger-hater, or a gang of youths, in a back-street in the Borough? Had he been ravished to death by Lady Knightley and her lustful ladies? Given that she would be nearly eight months’ pregnant by now I doubted it, but the thought at least brought a sorry chuckle to my throat.
At least I had Pansy now, I thought, if Din never returned to sew and fold for me.
Pansy’s worth, however, was so immediately apparent in the house over her first week with us that I started to doubt she would ever get close to the workshop. She found for me a pail of cheap enamel paint and set about banishing the staleness and soot from the dingy kitchen. She wrapped brown paper around a hot coal, and applied it to the candle-wax; then she made up a mixture of fuller’s earth and turpentine, and rubbed them over the remaining candle-grease stains, and where the oil-lamps had spilt. She cleaned the oven and the flue, polished the steel with bathbrick and paraffin, and black-leaded the iron. And she waged war on the bugs by scrubbing the floors with carbolic, and filling up all the holes in the mortar and cracks in the floor with cement. (She got the cement from the road-diggers laying new sewers outside; I watched her with fear as she strutted over to them, but the way those men obeyed her, no one would have thought she was so recently the victim of unsupervised lust.)
The Journal of Dora Damage Page 25
