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When she ended, a woman from an upper berth raised her emaciated arms and began to shriek.
“It was a nark what got me, lady! If I had him ‘ere I’d tear ‘im to pieces, that I would. Boiling in oil is too good for narks. Them’s my feelings.”
The silence was resumed. There was more in that silence than the languor produced by fetid heat, semi-starvation and sickness. Carolan realized that she was living through a strange experience. It was as though the women drew together, forgot beastliness, forgot cruelty, forgot everything but that they were fellow human beings.
“What about her?” said Flash Jane, jerking her head towards Esther.
“How’d she come?”
“Tell them, Esther,” said Carolan.
“Do you think they want to hear?”
“Go on!” growled Flash Jane, and Esther told them.
It was a simple little story, but they believed it. It made them angry and it made them sad. Some of them may have been present when Esther arrived at Newgate; they may have been among those who tore off her clothes. But if they had been, they would have forgotten. Then and now had no co
“Life’s cruel, ain’t it!” said Flash Jane.
“I remember when I come to London. In service I was, where my Ma put me. Service! Not me, I says, and I come to London, and when I got there, there wasn’t nothing for me to do but pick pockets, and I wasn’t good at it. Then I met a girl who took me along to Mother Maybury.”
“Mother Maybury!” cried a shrill voice. It belonged to the woman whose chief amusement seemed to be to strip herself, expose her gross body and fling it about lewdly in grotesque movements meant to be a dance.
“You was at old Maybury’s, was you?”
“Twenty-five years back!” said Flash Jane with a touch of honesty.
“Twenty-five! Why, it must be twenty-eight since I last seen the old lady. How did you leave her, Flash? The old trollop! She ought to have been strung up long afore she met me!”
“Well, believe it or not, she died a rich woman. Died in a feather bed with servants to wait on her, so I heard.” said Flash Jane.
The other woman began to cry suddenly: not in the hysterical way in which Carolan had heard them sob during the last months.
but quietly and regretfully. There was something heart-rending about the shaking of that gross body.
Carolan said: “I’ve told my story: tell us yours.”
The words had an instant effect on the woman. She dried her eyes: she laughed hoarsely and pulled open the ragged garment she wore. Carolan thought she was going to start stripping for her dance, the dance which seemed to drive the others into a frenzy of sensuality, which would set them recounting their adventures in lust. If she did, these moments would be lost; harshness, cruelty, would return. Carolan fought for these moments, fought for a longer glimpse beneath the horrible veil which the cruelty of life had drawn tightly about these people.
She said: “I’m sure it’s interesting.”
The woman’s hands fell to her sides; her fingers plucked at her dress, miserably, not lewdly. She drew the dress tightly round her, and sat down heavily on her berth.
“Fu
“Fu
“We all lived in the country. I loved the country. The trees … they was lovely. Never mind whether it was spring with the buds out and the birds up there -and what a row they used to make! or summer with the leaves all thick and green; in the autumn they was golden brown and we’d sweep up the leaves and burn ‘em. What a smell!” She began to cry softly.
“And in winter, all black with the mist on ‘em. I loved the country. My Gawd! I ain’t been there for nigh on thirty years. Do it still look the same? Trees don’t alter, do they? It’s people that changes, it ain’t trees.
“There was ten of us children! Me father worked in the fields. Me mother helped, but she was always having a fresh baby. I was the oldest. It was all right when we all got working. But Charley he was me little brother he was a cripple. No farmer wanted Charley. Him and me… well… I used to carry him everywhere on me back. But me father, he couldn’t bear Charley, because Charley was doing nothing for his keep; and he wanted Charley out of the way. He’d belt Charley. I was twelve and Charley was ten when we run away to London. We hadn’t never seen anything like London. It was wonderful. We thought there’d be work for us, but there wasn’t work. We slept in alleys and under arches, and we was colder and hungrier than we’d been in the country. But we was happier because there was no father to belt poor Charley. Then Charley stole a loaf of bread. We was together, and it was Charley who took it, and someone got hold of him and they took him, and I run behind, but they wouldn’t take me too. I never see Charley no more.”
Now everyone was listening, and the tears ran out of the woman’s eyes and she did not seem to know they were there.
“Well,” she went on, “I starved. I stole a bit, but no one caught me; and one day I talked to a girl a year older than me and she took me to Mother Maybury.” She began to laugh.
“Mother Maybury! She had a rosy face and a little white cap; spotless it was; And she’d sit by her big fire; and she would pat you on the head, and she would tell you not to be frightened any more you was one of her chicks. It would be “Eat this, ducky. Another helping, chicky? You’re with your old Mother Maybury, now, my poppet!” And you would eat; and you’d wonder if you’d died of cold by the river and gone to Heaven without knowing it. And then, when you had sat by her fire for a day or two with your belly as full as you could pack it, she would begin to explain to you all that you owed to Good Mother Maybury, and just how you would have to pay it back. She showed you how to tell fine ladies and gentlemen from the sort that aped them: she’d show you how to creep up behind them, swift as you like; she showed you how you went to bed with men. And if you didn’t like it, there was always the cold outside and the hunger waiting for you.
“Don’t be soft, my poppet!” Good Mother Maybury would say.
“My chickens have a rare time of it.” So I stayed, and I was with Mother Maybury nigh on three years, and if you looked after Mother Maybury she looked after you. And if you didn’t look after her, she looked after you too! It was queer how many who didn’t give up all their takings found themselves in jail. Good Mother Maybury! Kind Mother Maybury! It, was pease pudding she gave me first: I can taste it now. It smelt that good! I can see the log on her fire; it was all blue and pretty. So I thought I’d died and was in Heaven; but I was only at Good Mother Maybury’s.”
Silence fell, thick as the haze made by their breath. The misshapen girl who shared their berth sat up suddenly, her eyes brilliant.
“Keep still, you!” growled Flash Jane, but her voice held none of its old harshness. Do you want to tell us how you came to be here?” asked Carolan.
“It was the chimleys.” said the girl.
“What?”
The brother done ‘em. We was the eldest, him and me. The baby wasn’t old enough. I was five. Me brother was four; he done the chimleys. Me father made him.”
“What happened to your brother?” asked Carolan.
“He went down a chimley. He got burned to death. Me father came in and told us. He was wild … ‘cause, if me brother was burned to death, who was going to sweep the chimleys?”
There was a stark horror in the halting words which had been lacking in the woman’s more coherent story. Everyone was listening. The misshapen little girl was no longer a butt for their cruelty; she was a child who had suffered horrors such as even they had not experienced.
The child began to scream out: “They dressed me up in his clothes, so’s they’d think I was a boy. I’d got to go, they said. I couldn’t… I was frightened. I knew I’d be burned to death. Me brother was frightened of that, and he’d got burned to death. I knew I’d be burned to death… I couldn’t…!”