Babylon (7 page)

 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.

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 feel 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... ’

T
hrowing a
C
hild
out
of a
W
indow

‘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... ’

T
he
G
irls'
H
ome
S
candal
a
T D
eptford

‘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 turn 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.’

I eased past her and began to ascend the stairs. After a few steps, I halted, and looked over my shoulder. ‘What’s wrong with Shulamites, anyway?’

‘Nothing’s
wrong
with them,’ she said, still looking towards the front door, as if she half expected my troublesome friend to make a reappearance. And then she turned and gazed up at me. ‘Is she from Spitalfields?’ I nodded. ‘Is she fast?’ I said nothing. ‘I don’t want you to go there. Not to Spitalfields, Madeleine. I don’t want you going
anywhere
after dark. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said, as complaisantly as I could. ‘Of course.’ I resumed my ascent. Behind me, mother gave a long, weary sigh.