More than a few times I’d had to resort to kicking and biting to escape overzealous customers who attempted to use force to contort my body into ways it simply was not made to go. On another occasion, I grabbed a heavy silver paperweight and knocked it into the temple of a crippled gentleman bent on cutting the palm of my hand so he could taste my blood while receiving pleasure from me. The most frightening incident involved a customer who wore a hooded cloak and smelled overpoweringly of horse liniment. When he showed me the tools he carried in a leather satchel and I understood the depravity he expected of me, I tried to leave in spite of the grip he had on my arm. As his grip tightened, so did my resolve not to be subjected to the humiliation he had in store for me. I was able to grab the poker from the fireplace and stab him in the belly. Although I had been forced to use my left hand and knew I wasn’t able to stab hard enough to puncture his skin through the thick cloak, it was enough for him to momentarily lose his hold on my arm, and I escaped.
The beatings I took from Ram when I came away empty-handed were, to me, slight in comparison to what I’d saved myself from.
But in spite of an unnerving evening here and there, the majority of the men were simple and unimaginative, wanting the most basic of releases from what they saw as their tortured state, and, like their desires, my actions were uncomplicated and often so repetitive they became mindless.
What I actually did to relieve the boredom and unpleasantness of most of these evening visits was to steal any small thing I could find that wouldn’t be immediately missed—a silver buttonhook, a tiny brass compass, or a teacup or small jug or miniature trinket tray in Liverpool’s favorite Fazackerley colors of gaudy red, together with blue, yellow, and green in designs of Chinese lattice fences and overdone flowers. It seemed an easy thing to slip the bit into a fold of my shawl or boot top, or even under my bonnet when the customer was busy with his clothing or any ablutions he might undertake before or after my performance. I always sold the objects at the crowded market on Great Charlotte Street on my way home from the bookbindery the next day. With a few of the coins I bought boiled sweets and cakes, which I ate before I got home so Ram wouldn’t find me out. I didn’t want him to know I was stealing from customers for two reasons—the immediate one being that I knew he would take the money from the sale of the items, with a wink and pat on the head. The second was less obvious but more meaningful: for him to have known of it would have robbed me of that small potency. Stealing from the men who took from me made me feel powerful in an adult way; not only was I deceiving the customers, but also Ram Munt. The objects themselves were of no importance to me. It was this new power that was the real treasure.
After buying my sweets I went straight to Armbruster’s Used Goods. The place itself seemed a graveyard—all these things that had once belonged to sailors and grandparents and mothers and fathers and their children. There was a nautical section of wood and brass compasses and quadrants and spyglasses and ships’ bowls of blue-and-white china, each painted with its ship’s picture. There were dusty shelves of iron coffee mills and discolored brass warming pans, bellows, stacks of printed tiles carefully prised from around fireplaces, and one chipped crude Delftware bowl, with “Success to ye Prussian Hero, 1769” in poorly executed black letters. There were stale-smelling blankets and stained Welsh flannel, wrinkled striped and corded black silk handkerchiefs, scraps of faded drugget and carpets with a worn track down the center, fringes torn and hanging askew.
And the glass! Row after row of black glass bottles, emptied of their whiskey or medicine, waited alongside rummers on their short thick stems and decanters of lead crystal with their bluish hue. There was no end of them, each piece more unusual than the next, created from the leftover glass. I pictured the boys from the glassworks with their weeping raw eyes permanently damaged by the fumes from the alkali mixing with lime and sand; here were some of their efforts, the efforts that sometimes blinded them, being sold for pennies in this low-ceilinged, damp shop with its black film partway up the walls. The place and all its belongings carried the odor of mold and despair.
I passed all these sad remains of other lives and went straight to the book section. On bowed shelves were hodgepodge stacks of books with damp-warped, foxed pages, their hinges cracked, spines leaning and darkened, and covers soiled and bubbled. But they sold for only a penny or two each, sometimes an entire collection by one author marked 5d. I bought book after book, hiding them in my bed, and when I had done reading them either resold or traded them for others. Unlike the sweets, which were simply a treat, the books were a necessity.
Before my mother died I read from my Pinnock’s at night for the pleasure of learning. But since Mr. Jacobs and the beginning of that life, no matter how exhausted my body was when I fell into my own bed afterward, my mind felt as if it were racing too quickly. Ugliness crammed my brain to the point, some nights, that I thought the top of my head might burst open in a painful, muffled explosion. I could envision all those images and sounds, all the evil smells and tastes I’d had to endure, flooding from my opened head over my pillow in a rush of foul liquid. Reading was like a quiet balm spread by a soft hand on the inside of my skull, and I depended on it to help me come back to myself long enough to fall asleep. I had to wait until the huffing snoring from across the room assured me I wouldn’t be found out and then I would light a tiny rushlight and read until I could feel my mind ready to drift. I read all manner of books—from Defoe and Swift to Ann Radcliffe and Elizabeth Hamilton, from adventures to polite romance to memoir.
So all of it—the thefts and the extras they allowed me, the delicious plans of torture and murder, and my charades at putting on a patrician voice and at playing a young lady in the luxurious bedrooms and lavish dining rooms—were devised, and served, to make life bearable.
I thought, every day, of my mother and her dreams for me. I thought of what she would think of me if she could see me now—whore, liar, thief. And I swore to her every Sunday, my hand on her listing cross at Our Lady and St. Nicholas, that I would be more than this. That I would be more than the Linny Munt I was now. That I would be even more than the simpering young women I saw emerging from carriages outside the theaters, wrapped in their furs and feathers or fussing under their parasols. I would be Linny Gow and make her proud. I swore.
Chapter Four
THE LAST JOB I DID FOR RAM MUNT WAS SIX MONTHS AFTER MY thirteenth birthday. It was a cold, wet February evening when he came home grinning, a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string tucked under his arm.
“It’s a top-paying job I’ve found for you, my girl,” he said, tossing the package onto an empty chair and motioning with his head toward the cauldron hanging over the fire. I silently filled his bowl with the turnip and carrot soup I’d made after coming home from work. I had carefully stirred in a palmful of mouse droppings I’d gathered from behind the settle. It pleased me to add a special ingredient into Ram’s food each night, after I’d eaten my own share. Some nights it was a tip from the chamber pot before I emptied it into the trickling gutter that ran down the middle of our court, sometimes it was a smear of pigeon mess I’d scraped off the window ledge, sometimes it was crushed cockroaches or other scurrying beetles that ran along the hallway of our house. In a pinch I spit into the cauldron.
I was more weary than usual this night. One of the little gatherers had fainted and I had had to do her job for the hour before she recovered, running up and down the stairs with armloads of stacks, still expected to have finished all my folding by shutting time. All I wanted to do was lie on my pallet, read for ten minutes, and then close my eyes, not thinking about the next day and what it would bring.
The idea of the evening’s work was overwhelming. I knew there was no point in telling Ram I was too tired. He would never hit me in the face, as a purple eye and swollen lip were not what my customers wanted to see. Instead, he would hurt me in other ways, small, sly ways—his knuckles grinding a deep bruise into the small of my back
or holding a match against the underside of my arm long enough to cause a blister—nothing that would cost me a customer, just enough to make me miserable.
“We’re moving up in the world, yes, moving up,” he said, ignoring the spoon I set on the table and picking up the full bowl. “You’ll be working with some of Liverpool’s finest ladies.” His damp greatcoat steamed by the fire, sending off the smell of wet dog.
I stood across from him. “Ladies?” My voice held the faintest note of contempt.
Ram slurped noisily, then hooked a chunk of carrot out of the bowl with his fingers. “It’s a party, put on for some gentlemen visiting from away. I heard, down at the Flyhouse, that they was looking for a number of the best Liverpool had to offer, none of the sailor’s slags from down at the docks or even them from over at Paradise. So I had my say. Oh, I says, I have exactly what you’re looking for, I tells ’em. Just a girl and clean as a whistle, hair like silk. She has to be yellow-haired, the fellow says, only one with the palest of hair will do for the special job I have in mind. Well, you can’t get much fairer than my girl, I tells him. And she’ll do anything you please. She’s a good girl, is my own Linny, I tell the young gentlemen what appears to be in charge. I told him that, Linny, that you’d do anything, and that’s what he’s expecting. So don’t disappoint me, now. With what you’ll make tonight we might start thinking about moving out of here into better lodgings.” He glanced around the spotless room, then shook the piece of carrot at me. “If you do well, you’ll be asked for again. This could be the beginning of a new life for us.” He winked then, popping the carrot into his mouth. “Only the beginning,” he repeated, chewing, a piece of brilliant orange caught up between his two browning front teeth.
THE PACKAGE CONTAINED a green dress of Spitalfields silk with an ecru-colored frill. It was used, bought at the clothes market on Fox Street, and smelled faintly of cold sweat. Before I put it on I inspected the seams for fleas. It was last year’s style; I had seen that none of the fashionable ladies on Lord Street wore this design any longer. But it clung softly, the fabric smooth against my skin. After I’d changed into it and stood before Ram, he nodded appreciatively. I had never before worn a dress with a low-cut bodice and when I looked down and saw the slight new swell of my breasts, I had to fight to stop from putting up my hands to cover myself.
“Brush out your hair. No plaits tonight. You have to look your best. Yes, tonight will be very special.”
I did as I was told, then, studying myself in the ormolu mirror from the fruitwood box. I took out the pendant and fastened the clasp around my neck. I admired how the gold shone against my skin, how the green stones complemented the green silk of the dress. But when I reached for my gray shawl, telling Ram I was ready, he took another look, then shook his head.
“Take off that cheap trinket,” he said, his eyes skittering from the pendant to my face and back to the pendant. “It spoils the look.” He licked his lips and turned away.
I closed my hand around the pendant. I knew it looked quite fine, but I also realized that seeing it would have brought the memory of my mother to Ram. Could he actually feel guilty about what he’s forced me to become? I returned the pendant to the fruitwood box, realizing, with a sudden sharp stab of what I knew to be my own guilt, that I should never have considered wearing it. What a disgrace, after all, to my mother’s memory, considering what I’d be doing within the hour.
I’ll only wear it when I can feel proud of who I am, I told myself, and closed the lid of the fruitwood box with a firm click.
RAM HAD HIRED A CART and we jerked along the streets, rising higher above Liverpool’s maze of lanes and alleys and courts that led up from the waterfront. Eventually I saw St. Andrew’s, the Scotch kirk, and knew we were in Mount Pleasant. And then there we were, on the grand street where I had spent so many Sunday afternoons. Rodney Street. We stopped in front of one of the brightly lit Georgian houses with a door wide enough to admit our whole cart and Ram walked me to it, tucking my hand into his arm as if he were a proud father walking his daughter down the aisle. I knew the exteriors of these houses well from my Sunday visits but had never expected to step inside one.
The door was opened by a butler, a middle-age man in velvet breeches whose closed face didn’t ask any questions. With no flicker of emotion he simply stepped aside, and as I pulled my arm from Ram’s and hesitantly crossed the threshold, the butler abruptly closed the door in Ram’s face. But Ram pushed it open before the latch could catch.
“I’m to be paid before I leave,” he said. “Payment upon delivery. That was the deal struck between me and the gentleman.”
I lowered my head and studied the tips of my shoes. Brown and scuffed, they were incongruous with the airiness of the green dress. I looked up to see the butler also staring at the embarrassing fact of my boots, a giveaway that no fine dress could disguise.
“One moment,” he said, his voice not bothering to disguise his distaste, although his face remained impassive. He attempted to close the door again, but this time Ram pushed it harder, stepping into the foyer beside me.
“I’ll be waiting right here,” he said.
The butler turned, his back stiff, and went up the stairs, disappearing around a bend in the hall. We stood silently under a chandelier dancing with the light of at least thirty candles. A parlormaid walked past the entrance hall, carrying a large urn of dying flowers—they were tall and red, spiky, with similar sharp-looking greenery. I knew they must be something exotic, brought up from London, as I’d never seen the likes of them before.
The parlormaid glanced at us; her face, like the butler’s, showed no interest or curiosity. From somewhere in the house there was a steady rhythmic beat.
Within moments the butler reappeared. He descended the stairs at a studied pace.
Ram couldn’t wait for the feel of the coins in his hand. He hurried over to the butler, meeting him at the bottom step. The butler handed him something; from my position behind him I couldn’t see what it was. Ram momentarily studied what had been handed to him and then he was brushing past me, his eyes bright and a tight smile turning up his lips. Without even a good-bye he left, leaving the door open in his excitement.
I closed it and turned to face the butler.
He looked at me—from my unpinned hair to my hated boots—and as he held out his hand for my wrap I saw something shift, almost imperceptibly, some softening that disturbed me more than his imperious manner had. He took my shawl, holding it gingerly between his thumb and first finger as if it were lousy. The parlormaid appeared and took it from him, her nose tilted in a way that indicated just how far beneath her I was.
The butler started up the stairs, and I followed. I’d never been in so magnificent a house. I put my hand on the smooth polished wood of the banister, enjoying the feel of it.
By the time we reached the top of the curved stairway, the muffled, rhythmic sound I had heard from the foyer was louder and more distinct. I could also hear an underlying sound, like someone singing. The beat stopped and the voice called out, then laughed. The laughter verged on hysteria. The butler stopped in front of a set of double doors painted a gleaming vermilion. A brass handle in the shape of intertwined snakes graced each door. He nodded once at the doors and then left.
Unsure of what was expected, I knocked. I knocked again and then, realizing it was pointless, put my hand on one of the snake handles. It was warm to the touch, as if responding to the pulse on the other side of the door. Before I had a chance to turn it, the door was opened from the other side. Hot air, scented with perfume and smoke—smoke that was dark and sweet—rushed out at me. I stepped back.
“Oh, look,” cried the boy who had opened the door. “Look, Pompey. It’s a baby girl. And I believe she’s the one.” I took him to be a few years older than me, although it was difficult to be sure.
He had brightly painted lips and spots of rouge on his cheeks, and on his head was a tiara of glass beads with a drooping ostrich feather, di
scolored and ratty. A gown of flowered, diaphanous material floated around him. He put his hands on my shoulders and drew me into the room. “Do you see, Pompey?”
The gaslights on the walls were set low, creating flickering shadows. Large pieces of furniture filled every corner of the room; dressers and wardrobes and sofas and chairs sat like hulking dark animals. Out of one corner came a very large man. As my eyes adjusted I saw that his skin was very black and he wore only the smallest of loincloths and a white lamé turban. He held a small drum under one arm; as he walked in my direction, he beat it with his palm, a dull, solemn beat.
I looked at the boy.
“Don’t be frightened, baby girl,” he said, recognizing what must have been on my face. His pupils were huge. He waved one hand at the black man, who immediately lowered the drum in front of him so that it covered his groin.
The boy laughed, and I recognized the note of hysteria I had heard moments earlier, assuming it, at the time, to be the voice of a woman.
The unfamiliar, slightly nutty odor filled my nostrils, so strong now that, combined with the wavering shadows in the room, I was suddenly giddy. There was something wrong here, something unknown that frightened me.
“I’m Clancy,” the boy said. “Now, come with me. We’ve been waiting.” He picked up my hand.
“I don’t think—” I started, trying to pull my hand from his grasp, but Clancy, so willowy and slight, tightened his grip with surprising strength, squeezing my fingers until they ached.
“But of course you mustn’t think. Thinking is such a bore,” he said then. “You must only feel.” And then he gave a fierce tug, and I was jerked along. Following, I saw that he had nothing on under the gown. He led me along the periphery of the room; as we walked, stepping around ottomans and low tables, I was thinking of how I could escape. It would seem that I could turn and run but for Clancy’s iron grip on my hand. And for the fact that the black man—who must be Pompey—had started his sonorous drumming once more and was now close on my heels.
The Linnet Bird: A Novel Page 4
