Authors: Richard Calder
Babylon (3 page)
I turned down the lamp, lay on my bed, and gave myself up to the embrace of the dark. Outside, across the hallway, Mum was playing the piano. After a while, I heard her lift up her voice:
Caro mio ben
,
Credimi almen
,
Senza di te
Languisce il cor.
Il tuo fedel
Sospira ognor.
Cessa crudel
Tanto rigour!
Mum taught music. Sometimes, when I had been younger, and aunts and uncles believed I wouldn’t understand, I had overheard whispered comments: that she had married beneath her, that she could have sung before kings and queens rather than at the University Settlement of Toynbee Hall. But Mum did good work. She was helping Canon Barnett uplift Whitechapel’s unfortunates, both spiritually and culturally. She was creating a moral aristocracy amongst the poor. Besides, the Hall’s musical concerts sometimes featured Lady Colin Campbell and Madam Clara Butt. And as well as teaching music, she had only last week lectured on Carlyle.
I stared at the ceiling, listening to Mum sing of her dear, cruel love, of how her heart grew faint, and how she so longed for her cold, cold life to meet its end in fire.
Next morning I left early. The sky was clear and Wilmot Street was suffused in crisp, wintery light. But I was under a cloud. I didn’t have my letter. And as I walked along, passing under the Great Eastern Railway Bridge and into Tap Street, the light had begun to seem increasingly brittle, worrying at my eyes like grit. I knew now that I would never have my letter. However forthright I might be at school, I had lacked the courage to speak to my poor, unsuspecting parents.
The sun had not long risen, and apart from a few market porters, dock labourers, and cabbies returning home from the Aldgate cab rank, the streets were empty.
As I crossed a quadrangle formed by tall, overarching tenements I gazed up towards Lizzie’s rooms.
Lizzie and I had always walked to school together. But for the last few months I had begun to bristle at her possessiveness. It certainly wouldn’t do to call on her today. I needed some time to myself. I had to think of how to explain myself to Miss Nelson.
My nape prickled. I half believed that Lizzie might be peeping down at me through a gap in the drapes. I averted my eyes and hastily turned right into Brady Street, and then, as I walked towards Whitechapel Road, right again, past The Roebuck public house, and into the narrow, cobbled thoroughfare known as Buck’s Row.
I kept close to the warehouses of Essex Wharf on the north side of the street. On the other side were two-storey terraces occupied by some of the district’s better-class tradesmen. Holding my breath, and barely daring to look, I crossed the road and scurried past the stables and big wooden gate where they’d discovered Polly Nichols in the early hours of August 31. I remembered that night well. There had been a violent storm, and flashes of lightning had shone through my bedroom window. And later, a red glow had filled the sky. The docks had caught fire, and great tongues of flame writhed above the rooftops of the South Quay.
As if woken from a trance, I found myself outside my school: a square pile of municipal brick and mortar that rose above the surrounding streets like a child’s building block that had once belonged to a Brobdingnagian nursery.
I dawdled, uncertain of what I should do, or what, later, say. I held my arms by my sides, clenching and unclenching my fists. I was a Shulamite, I told myself. I had known that I was destined for the sisterhood ever since I had been a little girl. Besides, I had taken the first and most important step yesterday, when I had revealed the existence of another Madeleine Fell. She was stronger than me. And she refused to go back into the shadows.
Come
, I thought, as I passed through the entrance marked GIRLS,
come
,
take my hand.
And I felt something ghostly, something demoni acal, slip its fingers between my own.
Together, we would prevail.
‘And they were at the hospital all night?’ asked Miss Nelson.
‘They went as soon as they discovered my Nan was sick,’ I said. ‘And they only got back this morning, just as I was leaving for school.’ I had spent the last hour in the outside lavatory, fret ting over a suitable excuse. I knew nobody liked to talk about the
London Hospital. Those admitted rarely left. And it was a
favourite
haunt of vivisectionists.
‘But you’re sure they’ll have the letter ready by tomorrow?’
‘Yes, Madam,’ I said, horribly aware that my lips had begun to tremble. I had always been good at hiding the truth, but I had
never
been a particularly competent liar.
Miss
Nelson sighed. ‘Very well, I think we can wait another
day.
Tomorrow is Wednesday. The recruiting officer will be here
on
Thursday. And of course Friday is a holiday. So that letter really
must
be on my desk by tomorrow morning. I trust you will ensure it is.’
‘Thank you, Madam.’ I walked to my desk and sat down, congratulating myself that, in something under twenty-four
hours, I
had progressed from goose girl, to prima donna, to duplicitous tart.
Lizzie ignored me.
For the next hour we did fractions and algebra. It took little effort. I did the computations mechanically while my gaze flitted about the classroom, taking in abacus, blackboard, specimen cabinet, and wall charts. My mind had been freed. It drifted above the rooftops
—
no longer
in
the city of Gog and Magog, no longer in dear old London Town, but translated into the faraway land delineated by the Mercator projection that hung behind Miss Nelson’s desk: Modern Babylon. The names of its provinces curled about me like wisps of smoking incense: Zermagad, Sheba, Uruk, Sheol, Engedi, Gehenna, and Tirzah. I breathed deep, filling my soul with their wondrous scent.
By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth
:
I
sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth
.
..
Ding-a-ling-a-ling. Ding-a-ling-a-ling. Outside, in the corridor, the monitors were ringing their handbells, signalling morning recess. I put away my slate, rose from my seat, and turned to confront Lizzie (I was about to attempt a reconciliation); but at that moment Cliticia Lipski began to walk down the aisle, her long fingernails tapping at each dark, varnished desktop. Alerted by that staccato overture, Lizzie looked over her shoulder, met the gaze of her rival, and wrinkled her nose in distaste.
Cliticia drew to a halt. She was so close we were almost toe-to-toe. Placing her hands on her hips, she gazed up at me. ‘We want to talk to you,’ she said, narrowing her eyes. ‘We want to talk to you
now
.’
‘Well, excuse
me
,’ said Lizzie, sidling past us and flouncing out of the classroom.
Cliticia held up a hand and crooked her finger. I followed her into the corridor and then out into the girls’ playground. The wind had changed direction; it was growing cold. We would, it seemed, have another hard winter. I would be all right. The top standard had a stove. But for many pupils
—
particularly those who came to school crying of hunger
—
it would, I knew, often be too cold to learn.
She led me into the lavatory. Inside, her Shulamite friends were waiting. They formed a line in front of the five stalls. My nose twitched, irritated by the gamy odour of cheap perfume, oestro gen, and carbolic.
I heard the door slam behind me. I spun around to find that
Séverine and Omphale barred my exit.
‘What’s going on?’ I said, turning to Cliticia.
‘You tell us, matey,’ she said, standing akimbo.
Faye Witkowski walked up to Cliticia’s side.
‘Yeh,’ said Faye. ‘You’re not a Shulamite.’
‘Neither is your Mum,’ said Cliticia. ‘Or your Nan. I
know
you, Madeleine Fell.’
‘You’re just
weird,’
said
Séverine, from behind.
‘I know lots about Babylon. More than you do,’ I said, horribly conscious of my childishness. ‘Always have done.’ I’d seen these
girls
fight; I knew I would never have stood a chance against them; but I was determined to show I wasn’t scared.
‘Read lots of
books
you mean.’
‘Why you at this school anyway?’
I
couldn’t tell them, of course. Couldn’t say that my Dad had
t
hought it incumbent upon himself as a Radical to send his only child to a board school so that she might rub shoulders with girls
fit
only to be dressmakers, scullery-maids, laundresses, match-
girls,
and Shulamites. Not if I wanted to avoid a black eye.
‘My
family’s not that well off,’ I said. ‘My Dad’s a shipwright.’
‘How
bleedin’ appropriate,’ said Faye.
‘Yeh.
You’re always up the Admiral’s arse,’ said Vanity
Horowitz.
‘A real
Lady ’amilton
you
are, dear,’ added Omphale.
‘Perhaps I am weird,’ I countered. ‘But I
am
a Shulamite.’ I paused for dramatic effect. ‘I’ve
always
been a Shulamite.’
‘Stroll on, darling,’ said Vanity.
Cliticia shrugged and then pouted, her embouchure quivering
as
if she were about to expel a single note of mocking laughter through her lips. ‘S’right—’oo does the little Madam think she is?’ They eyed me scornfully.
Who
did
I think I was? I stood before them in a silly pina fore and bonnet. But they were tight-laced. They exuded the sumptuary presumption of the
demi-mondaine
. Dressed like birds of paradise—albeit slightly tattered ones whose plumage owed less to Burlington Arcade than Petticoat Lane—they were
as
smart as paint, and I felt myself beginning to moult in their presence.
‘You’ll need more than book-learning at your interview. They do
tests,
you know,’ said Cliticia. She gave another shrug. ‘Maybe you’re not so well off. But it ain’t like you need to join the sister hood to feed your family or to pay for their doss. Truth is, we can’t figure you out, Maddy Fell. Ain’t nobody told you Babylon’s
dangerous
?’
‘But... I want to be like you!’ I blurted out, then held my face in my hands as the tears that had been dammed up for days, weeks, months, years even, came pouring out.
‘But how
can
you be like us,’ said Cliticia, marvelling at my idiocy.
I continued to hold my tear-scalded face. And then I heard footsteps. My interrogators, it seemed, were leaving me to stew in my own misery.
‘Crazy white girl,’ said someone as I heard the door open and bang shut.
Then, just as I thought I’d been left alone, I felt someone stroke my hair. I looked through my fingers. Everything was blurred. But I saw enough to know that I was indeed alone—except for Cliticia. ‘Like spun gold,’ she said as she toyed with my barley-sugar curls.
And then she too turned on her heels and departed.
That night, after I had left the dinner table and retired to my room, I set to work. One of the privileges of being in the top standard was having access to a supply of paper. Seated at my desk, I dipped the hard, steel nib of my pen in the inkwell and scratched away, concocting a series of ingenious lies.
After I had blotted and sealed with wax, I put the letter inside my reticule, got up from the desk, and walked over to the window.
Our rooms occupied the top floor of the tenement. The prospect below was of Teale Street and its rows of smoking chimneys. Beyond were the burial grounds, the workhouse, and the overcrowded warrens of Whitechapel and Spitalfields. And in the far distance, bisecting the horizon, was the magisterial steeple of Christ Church. Its masonry glowed. The sky glowed, too, and with the same peculiar shade of naphtha-green. I looked up, seeking out the constellation of Taurus and found Aldebaran, its brightest star. Home, they said, of the Men.
In the next room Nan gave a sharp, painful cough.
I turned and scanned the rows of books on the rickety shelf above my bed: Byron, the Brontes, Louisa May Alcott, Poe, and Emily Dickinson. I reached up, took down the Dickinson, and leafed through its pages.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
I frowned, closed the book, and replaced it on the shelf. Sandwiched between Dickinson and Poe was a slim pamphlet. It was a compendium of W.T. Stead’s
Pall Mall Gazette
articles. I had purchased it shortly after the rally in Hyde Park. Removing the dog-eared, sweat-stained little tome from its confines, I held it before me, hardly daring to open it. The first time I had done so, it had filled me with such delicious terror that I had hid it in a drawer beneath a sheaf of postcards and pressed flowers. The drawer had remained unopened for three years. Then, some months ago, temptation had triumphed and I had taken the pamphlet from its hiding place. Soon, it became my daily reading, as familiar to me as the Song of Solomon, or Numbers 25 and 31.
I stared at the title: The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’. And then, with trembling hand, I turned to the first page and, as I had done on so many other occasions, slowly read the opening passage, savouring its promise of moonlit streets and eternal night:
‘In ancient times, if we may believe the myths of Hellas, Athens, after a disastrous campaign, was compelled by her conqueror to send once every nine years a tribute to Crete of
seven youths and seven maidens. The doomed fourteen, who were selected by lot amid the lamentations of the citizens, returned no more. The vessel that bore them to Crete unfurled black sails as the symbol of despair, and on arrival her passengers were flung into the famous Labyrinth of Daedalus, there to wander about blindly until they were devoured by the Minotaur, a frightful monster, half man, half bull, the foul product of unnatural lust.
‘The fact that the Athenians should have taken so bitterly to heart the paltry maiden tribute that once in nine years they had to pay to the Minotaur seems incredible, almost inconceivable. This very night in London, and every night, year in and year out, not seven maidens only, but many times seven, selected almost as much by chance as those who in the Athenian marketplace drew lots as to which should be flung into the Cretan labyrinth, will be offered up as the Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. Maidens they were this morning dawned, but tonight their ruin will be accomplished, and tomorrow they will find themselves within the portals of the maze of London brotheldom. Within that labyrinth wander, like lost souls, the vast host of London prostitutes, whose numbers no man can compute, but who are probably not much below 50,000 strong. Many, no doubt, who venture but a little way within the maze make their escape. But multitudes are swept irresistibly on and on to be destroyed in due season, to give place to others, who will also share their doom. The maw of the London Minotaur is insatiable, and none that go into the secret recesses of his lair return again. After some years’ dolorous wandering in this palace of despair most of the ensnared tonight will perish, some of them in horrible torture. Yet, so far from this great city being convulsed with woe, London cares for none of these things. Nevertheless, I have not yet lost faith in the heart and conscience of the English folk, the
sturdy innate chivalry and right thinking of our common people; and although I am no vain dreamer of Utopias peopled solely by Sir Galahads and vestal virgins, I am not without hope that there may be some check placed upon this vast tribute of maidens, unwitting or unwilling, which is nightly levied in London by the vices of the rich upon the necessities of the poor... ’
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again. They smarted, as if stung by acrid smoke, and I blinked once or twice, screwed my eyelids into knots, then drew the back of my hand across my face as a few tears escaped and trickled down my hot cheeks. The ‘Maiden Tribute’ was, ostensibly, a moral work, but it was also, of course, a Gothic fairy tale. And the girl volunteers whom Stead had talked to—girls such as I was fated to become—were its heroines: little brazen-faced harlots who seemed to relish unnerving their interlocutor with tales of death, disgrace, and desire. The ‘Maiden Tribute’ was, without doubt, the most beautiful book I had ever read.
Snuffling a little, I slipped the pamphlet back between its attendant guardians of Dickinson and Poe where it might remain hidden from my mother. (I did not need to hide it from Dad. For him, like so many other men, childhood innocence and what was romantically desirable possessed the same attributes
—
and that was something he could never acknowledge. But Mum understood—and understood too well—that a child can be a harlot, and a harlot a child, and that young ladies who paid the wrong kind of attention to tracts penned by Mr Stead were no better than Daughters of Onan.)
I re-crossed the room and stood before the pier glass.
I was a bluestocking
—
a bluestocking who longed to wear silk stockings. White silk stockings with seams, fancy stitchwork, and garters embroidered with tiny pink flowers. I turned down the lamp, then eased my nightgown off my shoulders and let it fall to the floor. Naked, I crossed my wrists behind my back, inclined my head to one side, and studied myself somewhat overcritically in the mirror.
Nearby, on top of my chiffonnier, was a framed ambrotype of Dulcie, my little sister. Dead six years, tucked up in her lead-lined petticoats in the East London Cemetery in Stepney, she stared out at me from the aether, the secrets of the grave locked forever behind her eyes and frozen lips.
I picked up the brass frame. Consumption, they said, was often caused by passion or the repression of excessive desire. How was it possible for a disease like that to kill an innocent child? I stared the more intently, scrying the photograph’s occult properties. It had been taken after she had died. And she had been posed, much as I had been posing, in anticipation of a better world.
I set the frame back in its place, pulled my nightgown over my shoulders, extinguished the lamp, and got into bed. I lay awake for hours, my thoughts filled with the same peculiar greenness that poured through the window and into the room.