Babylon

by Richard Calder

  ‘You’re a proper little pouter pigeon,’ said Cliticia, admiring my reflection. Then she turned around, presenting me with her back and the crisscross of stay laces that ran down her spine. ‘Now it’s my turn,’ she added. ‘Lace me up some more.’

  I complied. To my amazement, I found I was able to reduce her minuscule waist still further.

  ‘That’s seventeen inches!’ she moaned. ‘Ooooo! That’s sixteen!’ She gasped, and then gave a little scream. ‘That’s fifteen! No, no, don’t stop, don’t stop!’

  ‘For God’s sake, I’ll cut you in half if I pull any tighter!’

  She broke free and surveyed herself, turning this way and that before the full-length mirrors.

  Cliticia was no sylph. In fact, she was unusually buxom. But with a fifteen-inch waist the top and bottom halves of her hourglass figure were accentuated to a quite extraordinary degree. Whitechapel matrons would, no doubt, have mocked and deplored such a silhouette. (There was indeed something faintly ridiculous about it.) Modern gentlemen, however, would surely have been glad to account themselves nympholepts, and damned to suffer insanity, sickness, and death, if only for the privilege of bestowing a single caress upon its radical contours. Her bosom heaved, thrust up like a big dollop of black pudding. And her fundament had assumed dimensions that would have supported a wineglass—if, that is, anyone should have wished to use the cruel distension of her coccyx as an impromptu piece of furniture. She was beautiful. And the more beautiful, perhaps, precisely because of that understated quality of absurdity that marked her out as something not of this world.

  ‘You ’ave to do it gradual, like. One inch per month,’ she said, breathlessly. ‘It takes’—she gasped as if she were in extremis— ‘practice.’ If her flesh had been white instead of that gorgeous shade of deep purple she would have seemed as chlorotic as me; for already, after only a few minutes of having my waist crushed in an embrace of whalebone and steel, the blood had completely left my face, the pulse in my temporal arteries had become visible, and my breasts palpitated, shivering within their cruel restraints.

  I gazed down at myself. Despite being a heavily boned garment the corset had really lovely, delicate fanning, with lots of floss and decorative stitchwork around the contrasting light- and dark-blue panels of the stays.

  With half-a-dozen tugs of its laces I’d gone from angel in the house to wasp-waisted demoness, a metamorphosed nymph who owed her new life as an object of desire to the merciful Zeus of contemporary fashion.

  Cliticia put a finger to my cheek. ‘So pale,’ she said. Her finger ran across my throat, my bosom, and then down the inward- curving steel busk that lined the corset’s front panel. ‘Almost like you ’ad the green sickness.’ I trembled. It seemed in anticipation of a question I longed to put, but which I could at that moment only frame in terms of my heaving, somewhat over-expressive bosom. ‘White girls eat arsenic to achieve a complexion like that. So romantic, so... deathly pale.’

  ‘The divine Edgar Allan says female death is “unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.’”

  ‘The divine Edgar? Never bleedin’ ’eard of ’im. But I’m telling you, if you want to keep that lily-white look, then my money’d be on arsenic to do the trick.’ She shrugged. ‘You might content yourself with a daily glass of vinegar, o’ course. But I doubt it. I think you'd be the kind of girl to go all the way.’

  She went to the wardrobe, knelt down, and pulled out a doll from under piles of petticoats, silk drawers, and old-fashioned pantalettes. It was a fashion-plate doll, a scaled-down replica of a particularly curvaceous Shulamite. ‘This is Nixie,’ she continued. ‘Nixie is a creature of extremes, ain’t you, darling? She always goes all the way.’ Cliticia pecked the little bisque-headed doll on the cheek. ‘Someday, I ’ope I'll be like Nixie.’ She looked up at me. ‘Tell me, Maddy. And be honest, will you? Why do you really want to go to Babylon?’ She sat back on her haunches, her thighs pressed jealously together. ‘Is it because of the Men?’

  I felt my throat constrict. ‘You mean the Minotaurs?’ I said.

  ‘Course,’ said Cliticia.

  ‘But why do you ask?’ I said, almost snapping at her.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ she said, arching an eyebrow. ‘I see. So sorry.’

  I gazed over her head. Light continued to stream through the window even though the sky seemed to have grown impenetrably sullen. Feeling sullen myself, I focused on Christ Church and the oeil-de-boeuf windows that lined its upper gallery.

  ‘Be careful when the Duenna talks to you about Minotaurs,’ said Cliticia. She put her index finger to her temple and rotated it, clockwise, then anti-clockwise, as if she were attempting to bore a hole into her head with the long, red drill bit of her fingernail. ‘They weed out the ones who’re, like, a bit wonky.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not like that.’

  ‘Oh, yes you a-re,’ she chanted, ‘oh, yes you a-re.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘Madeleine Fell’s crazy. That’s why they call her Madeleine.’ She exploded into laughter, infinitely pleased at having discovered in herself a hitherto neglected talent for word play.

  ‘I’m not crazy like some girls are,’ I said, as her laughter abated. We both grew quiet. Cliticia fiddled with her doll, and I continued to stare out at those circular windows that dotted the upper portion of Christ Church, so like the portholes of some ocean liner bound for the shores of oblivion, they seemed, and I a would-be passenger somewhat too eager, perhaps, to play the role of a stowaway. ‘Aren’t you frightened of... what might happen?’ I said at last.

  ‘I think about it a lot,’ she said, softly. ‘You can’t ’elp but think about it, can you?’

  The silence closed in. Christ Church loomed above us, as it did over all Spitalfields, a great temple consecrated to some dark mystery of the blood. Its weight seemed ready to press me through the floor and basement, deep, deep into the earth. It seemed ready to cover me, as a great bull might a heifer.

  ‘I think about it a lot, too,’ I said, running a hand over the silky, moiré surface of my corset. I sat down next to Cliticia, took the doll from her hands and looked deep into its lifeless eyes. ‘I think about it all the time.’

  That afternoon we had lessons in hygiene, housework, cookery, and singing. At five o’clock the monitors collected the inkwells and prayers were said. Then we were dismissed. With tomorrow’s holiday, there would be no more school till Monday.

  I walked home with Lizzie and tried to make amends. Tuesday and Wednesday had been silent days. We had taken pains to comprehensively ignore each other. But now she began to laugh, and for a while I thought that she would forget my recent coolness and that our friendship might be restored. Then came the awkward questions. Why did you volunteer? What did your Mum and Dad say? Why have you been avoiding me? When she suggested that she call for me tomorrow I had to make my excuses.

  Tomorrow, Cliticia had promised to visit me.

  Chapter Four

  The crisp weather was fast disappearing. It was November, and the cold was beginning to bite. I sat in my bedroom, watching fog swirl about the chimneys and rooftops.

  Cliticia had let me keep the corset. I wore it beneath yet another one of my dull, linsey frocks, waiting for her to call. For the last hour I had passed the time by turning the leaves of a little book called The Corset Defended by one Madame de la Santé. According to La Santé ‘A waist may vary in circumference from seventeen to twenty-three inches.’ Perhaps she had never met a Shulamite. Certainly not a Shulamite like Cliticia. Not that a fifteen-inch waist could in any way be accounted the ne plus ultra of tight-lacing. In an edition of The Family Doctor—one of my Mum’s periodicals—I’d learnt of the existence of certain ‘martyrs’, one of whom, the fifteen-year-old ‘child martyr’ Bertha G, had possessed a waist of only eleven inches.

  I placed the book face down on my desk. Closing my eyes, I pictured the fog-shrouded cemetery where my little sister lay beneath her headstone. I began to f
eel breathless, as if a pair of strong, invisible hands had caressed my neck, only then to start to asphyxiate me. I remembered how my sister had looked just before she had died, and indeed how beautiful she had looked in death itself when she had been posed as a subject for post-mortem photography. The corset changed not just my body, but also my mind. Or rather, it seemed to bring to term something that had been gestating for many years—something almost too fearful to acknowledge.

  There was a knock on my bedroom door. It opened. ‘Your little friend has arrived,’ said Mum, rather tartly. ‘Shall I—’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I interrupted. ‘Show her up.’

  Mum clucked her tongue. ‘Show her up ? Madam would seem in want of a maidservant.’ I heard her walk down the stairs and tell my visitor to proceed.

  Seconds later, Cliticia opened the door and swanned in like a true cockney princess.

  ‘Well, I must say,’ she announced, ‘you got yourself a real palace ’ere, darling.’ She swung her parasol to and fro, as if marking time, and then let it come to rest over her right shoulder, like a devastatingly pretty soldier on parade. ‘Your ol’ man must be a right dodger. What’s ’is lurk?’ she added, laughing.

  She sat down in a chair next to mine.

  However pretty she looked, I could understand why Mum, on opening the front door to her, might have disapproved. Mum was a supporter of the Rational Dress movement and Cliticia’s attire was a complete affront to simplicity and health. If the chintz, emerald-green skirt was tight, the bodice was even tighter. It made a spectacle of her cruelly inflated bust. It emphasized the ferocity of her lacing. And her bustle (it was the first time I’d seen her wear one) consolidated her silhouette, transforming her pelvis into a horizontal ledge upon which one could, if one should so wish, not only balance a wineglass, but doubtless a complete tea service, too.

  For a while, we chatted inconsequentially. But then, resting her chin on the back of a white-gloved hand, she frowned, bit her lip, and looked deeply into my eyes.

  ‘How do you know you’re a Shulamite?’ she said, her words so measured and carefully chosen that, for once, it was difficult to fault her elocution. I stared back at her. Her eyes were murky pools. Beneath their surfaces flitted strange, wriggly things, a mess of thoughts and dreams I seemed to recognize as breeding, multiplying, and seeking sustenance beneath the scum-encrusted surface of my own mind. They frightened me, nevertheless. ‘I mean ’ow do you really know?’ I stared into my lap, my stomach doing flip-flops, as if I’d just lost my footing on a staircase. My cheeks began to burn.

  ‘I’ve told you before, I’ve always known,’ I whispered.

  ‘But there’s more, ain’t there?’ She placed her hand on my knee. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I understand. There’s no need to be upset.’ I felt a sob contract my chest. ‘Cliticia’s ’ere,’ she added, her voice as quiet as mine, talking to me as I used to talk to Dulcie when I’d find her alone, crying in the dark. ‘I’m your friend. Remember? A postulant, like you.’

  ‘Are you really my friend?’

  She took my hand and squeezed it. ‘There, now. Hush, hush, hush.’

  ‘I think about what they do. The killing. I’ve, I’ve—’

  I got up and went to my chiffonnier. I opened the bottom drawer, withdrew my commonplace book, and brought it back to the desk. Re-seating myself, I set the book down and fanned it out.

  ‘They’re all obituaries,’ said Cliticia, numbly, as she stared at the press clippings I had mounted with glue.

  ‘Not all of them,’ I said, quickly thumbing through the pages till I came upon a selection of reports from The Illustrated Police News.

  Sunday School Kissing Games

  ‘According to our contemporary, Sunday schools and temperance societies are developing the practice of “kissing games” in an astonishing and alarming degree. These modern Saturnalia, we are asked to believe, prove especially attractive to teachers and senior scholars, and amongst the advanced youth of both sexes osculation in its most objectionable form proceeds for hours together... ’

  Throwing a Childoutof a Window

  ‘On Wednesday, last week, Dr Diplock concluded an adjourned inquiry at the Talbot, Clarendon Road, Notting Hill, as to the death of Henry John Base, aged nine months. The mother, Esther Base, is now under remand at the Hammersmith Police Court on a charge of causing the death of the child by throwing it out of a window at 37, Talbot Grove, on Sunday morning... ’

  THROWING A MAN INTO A COPPER OF BOILING WATER

  ‘On Friday last at the Lambeth Police Court, Richard Lister, twenty-seven, proprietor of a German sausage manufactory, in James Street, Hatcham, was charged with violently assaulting James Smith and throwing him into a copper of boiling water... ’

  A GIRL OF SIXTEEN CARRYING HER DEAD CHILD IN THE STREETS

  ‘Mr Humphreys held an inquest on Thursday at Mile End, touching the death of the newly-born male child of Elizabeth Brewer, who was seen on Sunday carrying the body in a parcel about the streets, and was taken into custody by a police constable... ’

  The Girls'Home ScandalaT Deptford

  ‘At the Central Criminal court on Wednesday, before Baron Pollock, Laura Julia Addiscott, spinster, was placed at the bar to take her trial for the manslaughter of four children placed under her charge in an institution called “The Home for Friendless Girls”, at Deptford. The prisoner pleaded “Not Guilty” to all the charges. She was put upon her trial for the manslaughter of a child named Kate Smith. Mr Besley opened the case for the prosecution... ’

  DEATH THROUGH TIGHT-LACING

  ‘It would be impossible to form anything like an accurate estimate of the thousands of persons who have fallen victims to the odious fashion of tight-lacing. A melancholy instance of this baneful practice occurred in New Town on Saturday night. Dorothea, the eldest daughter of Vincent Postlethwaite, Esq (a highly respectable and wealthy merchant of New Town), died suddenly at a ball given in her father’s house. While dancing with a young gentleman to whom she was engaged, she was observed by her partner to turn pale and to gasp spasmodically for breath; she tottered for a few brief seconds, and then fell. The general impression was that she had fainted; restoratives were applied without producing the desired effect. A doctor was sent for, who, upon examining the patient, pronounced the ill-fated young woman to be dead.

  The consternation of the family and guests may be readily imagined, which was not a little enhanced by the medical gentleman declaring that Miss Postlethwaite had died from no other cause than tight-lacing... ’

  ‘What a way to go,’ said Cliticia.

  ‘But look at these,' I said, turning the page and pointing to a series of reports that focused on the off-world atrocities of last year. I let my finger rest upon an artist’s impression of a derailed train. Bodies lay sprawled across the lines and along the embankment. ‘Now there’s a Minotaur loose in Whitechapel, they say.’ I closed the book and set it to one side next to The Corset Defended. ‘All these murders. . .’

  ‘I told you before,’ she said, her dark eyes flashing, ‘a Minotaur would never do such fings.’ She sat back in her chair, visibly making an effort to calm herself. ‘They don’t really want to kill us. They want to enslave us. They want to domesticate us. They want to make us their pets.’ She stood up. The bustle was a ‘Langtry’ and worked on a pivot. It could be raised when sitting down and sprang back into shape whenever its wearer got to her feet. It was the height of fashion. ‘I ask you,’ she continued, unable to further moderate her passion, ‘why should they want to kill us ? They ’ave their wants and appetites just like we do. Why should we ’ave to deny it?’ She looked down at me, her lovely doll-like face set in an unbecoming grimace. ‘Why should any of us ’ave to deny it?’ And then her eyes opened wide, and then a little wider still, in naked fear. ‘You better not talk about any of this. I’m warning you, Maddy Fell!’

  ‘I won’t say anything,’ I said, surprised, wondering how it had so swiftly become her t
urn to get upset.

  ‘If you do—’ She sat down again, the bustle collapsing beneath her with an audible creak of its hinges. Then, biting moodily on her underlip, she ran her hands down her skirts, smoothing them and picking at the creases, like a child with a comfort blanket. ‘You don’t know what the Duennas are like. Jealous, they are. A bunch of suspicious ol’ cows. Give ’em an excuse, and they’d keep me ’ere on Earth, just for the spite of it. Believe me, they’d keep us both ’ere.’ She leant forward and, inclining her head slightly, gazed at me from beneath the brim of her gaily-adorned bonnet. ‘You must never let on, all right? On Monday the tests begin.’

  Later that morning, shortly after I’d walked Cliticia to the front door and bid her goodbye, I turned about to discover my mother standing at the bottom of the stairs. She rounded on me.

  ‘Was that girl a Shulamite?’

  I laughed. ‘You wouldn’t think so, would you?’

  She folded her arms across her chest. ‘Don’t cheek me, my girl.’ I raised my eyes and inspected the blistered plaster that covered the ceiling. ‘She has trouble with her lessons. She’s only in the top standard because of the Shulamite quota system, and last inspection day she did really poorly. Miss Nelson asked me to give her a little private tuition, that’s all.’

  Mum softened, her big heart always roomy enough for the despised and humiliated of this Earth. ‘Well, that’s generous of you, Madeleine. Perhaps you really will become a pupil teacher.’