“Drop that, you nit,w roars Whilky, and the little girl reluctantly complies. The long white ferret, seeing his chance, pounces on the frog Pink dropped and bites it in half.
“Da! Look!”
“Shut up, the both of you!”
As if a man don’t have enough on his mind without the dual plagues of vermin and stupidity. He doesn’t know what to do with Pink. She is too daft to be sent out to work, yet she is too fanciful for him to bear having at home. He’d hoped setting her to tend the baby would settle her down, but it’s only made her more intent on playing the ferret. Just look at her: down on her hands and knees, sniffing the air alongside Mike. He stretches out his arm to his prize pet and Mike scampers up on tiny feet, curling himself around Whilky’s neck. Pink, watching jealously, pretends to lick her fur.
Whilky Robinson, perched on his stool before the fire, resplendent in luxurious weasel collar, laced tight with watch fobs and jangling with hocked medals, surveys with royal displeasure his little kingdom here on Mill Street. Our ruler is not so fair of face as the Plantagenets, nor does he turn so fine a calf as the Stuarts, no, sitting with his left gouty leg thrust out before him, brooding upon his subjects (Pink, his daughter; Eye, his faithful retainer); listening to his thirty lords and ladies shuffle about upstairs preparing for their day’s employment, he resembles no one more closely than a burdened, pensive Henry the Eighth. He scratches his expansive belly, over which is stretched a bottle green coat giving at the armseyes. He rests his elbow on the leg of his soiled tan knee breeches that trail off into once-white stockings that terminate in scuffed oxblood leather shoes. His carroty red hair, growing behind his cars and down the back of his neck without troubling itself about the rest of his head, curls into sweaty little question marks at the nape. His brow is knit, his countenance stormy. What is to be done about this infestation?
That it’s come to this, thinks he. Even Eye, methodically brushing Gustine’s bit of blue frippery, has frogs worrying her thick ankles. She pays them no mind, intent as she is on her work, but our ruler is a sensitive man, and frets over the welfare of those entrusted to his care. He wants only the best for his boarders. Why, just 1 ook how he recently handled the windows. Whilky knew the view from his second story overlooking the slaughterhouse was troubling to some of his tenderhearted tenants, so without a word to anyone, he took it upon himself personally to board up all the offending windows. But then he got to thinkinghow unfair it would be for him, who spends most of his day on the first floor, to have fresh air when his tenants had none. That might cause bad blood on Mill Street, and if nothing else, his is a harmonious household. To keep the peace, Whilky unselfishly boarded up the windows on the first floor as well, and if, in the process, he managed to save the window tax this bloodthirsty government has leveled on each and every goddamned pane of glass in Britain, well, so be it. His tenants come first.
So what that from the outside 9 Mill Street sags a bit along the roof, crumbles a bit along the foundation, and like a tenemental Oedipus, is blinded with cheap nails driven into mouldering shutters? So what that it appears from the outside a thoroughly condemned back alley rookery? We all know it is the inside that counts. Inside Whilky keeps a tip-top house. Mike the ferret is a championship ratter, and 9 Mill Street is one of the few boardinghouses in the East End completely (or as near to complete as an industrious ferret can make it) rat-free. It is, after its master’s taste, cheerfully and tastefully decorated. The main room sports a majestic gilt-framed Wearmouth Bridge (East View) over the long table against the right-hand wall. A pastoral likeness of Dick Turpin, cutpurse, hangs to the left of it; Sunderland’s own Jack Crawford, hero of Camperdown, hangs to the right. The fireplace takes up most of the back wall, where, lined up on its mantel in order of height, sit tasteful mementos of Mike’s exploits in the ratting ring, trophies for besting some of the most ferocious terriers in Sunderland, and a few more W’earmouth Bridges. Whilky has a second East View transferred onto a spittoon and a Wearmouth West View 2^-Year Commemorative stamped onto a milk pitcher. Beneath the mantel, he makes sure, the fire always roars. Our landlord is not cheap with his coal and, with no windows to open, the house is snug sometimes to the point of tropicality. The steaming laundry of his thirty tenants completes the interior decoration; stockings and soiled underwear dangle from pins and Mike the ferret enjoys nothing more when rat-killing is slow than to vault up a lodger’s plaid shawl and pad along the clothesline.
But what gains such careful decoration if only to be spoiled by the strewn carcasses of frogs? Whilky has been sweeping up three dozen a day; mangled by Mike, stomped upon by Eye, gummed by his zealous daughter Pink. It is to drive us mad, thinks our landlord, leaning forward so as not to scorch his august back. Another facet in the Grand Plot that began with this summer’s “census,” during which the frog eggs were insinuated, and which will culminate in this so-called cholera morbus they’ve imported to eliminate us all. Did they honestly think we wouldn’t catch on?
“Da? Coffee?”
Whilky nods abstractedly to Pink as she wrestles the heavy coffeepot onto the fireplace trivet. The price of a cup is included in the night’s rent, but if the establishment occasionally forgets to put it on before the first lodgers are tramping downstairs, is it the establishment’s fault they don’t have time to drink it? The tin clock on the wall is striking four-thirty. It is Monday morning, most have to be at work by five, but spoiled by Sunday’s lolling, they barely leave themselves time to get there.
Eye has heated a pan of water in the fireplace, and with careful sponging is making Gustine’s dress fit for tonight. She looks up from her work as the lodgers tramp down; the bottle workers first, for they have the longest to walk, then the keelmen. A bleary-eyed mother leads her two boys off to the quay to buy fish for their baskets. They’ll hawk it to the poor Irish down along Woodbine Street who haven’t the gumption to walk the half a mile themselves. With each guest’s descent, Whilky, not stirring from his stool by the fire, holds out a broad palm for the week’s rent, payable in advance. Woe betide the keelman or glass blower who blew his salary on Saturday night. Whilky shows no mercy. He makes them march upstairs, gather their meager possessions (the trip is usually unnecessary, as they wear upon their backs all that they own), and quit the house immediately. The others have left by the time Gustine makes her way down the rickety stairs, her face buried in a small woolen bundle. She always waits for her coffee, out of principle, even if it means she has to run the whole way to the pottery.
What a difference a Monday morning makes in the appearance of our bold Gustine. Her hair, no longer apolloed and ringletted, loiters atop her head in a loose bun. Her daytime outfit, a fawn-colored shift threadbare almost to transparency from too much scrubbing, hangs loosely from her shoulders. She looks her age in these clothes, without ribbons and lace to take focus from her sharp little face. She looks like a sleepy young girl in desperate need of some coffee.
“Pink,” says she. “How much longer?”
“Eeek. Eeek,” replies Pink.
“In English please.”
Pink hangs her head and shuffles over to the table.
“Five minutes more, perhaps.”
“I’ll have mine with sugar then.”
Pink pulls back the blanket Gustine carried downstairs and sniffs the tiny creature inside. That’s her baby, her res-pon-sibility for which Gustine pays Da an extra two shillings a week on top of her three shillings rent. Da says Gustine spoils that baby mercilessly, that she should save her money for it won’t be alive much longer to appreciate the thought. Gustine says shut up and Pink, you know to hold this baby very, very carefully. Pink knows Don’t carry it with your teeth.
Gustine rains kisses on the baby’s forehead and it smiles up at her toothlessly. Baby, baby, baby, says Gustine. Baby, baby. She pulls from her pocket a bit of plum cake she bought yesterday and shoves it crumb by crumb into the baby’s mouth. First thing every morning, even before Gustine’s eyes are open, she puts her ear to the baby’s chest. Still beating. First tiling when she comes home from the pottery but before she puts on the dress, she lays her ear on the baby’s chest. Still beating. Whilky says why bother it’s only a matter of time. But Gustine says I’m taking care of that, and Pink, where’s my coffee?
Pink retrieves the coffeepot from the fire with a set of arm-length tongs and staggers with it back to the table. She pours a cup for all three grown-ups, one for herself, and one for Mike.
“Brother John mentioned you’ve been hanging about the Labour in Vain recently,” says Whilky blandly. “And yet not upstairs.”
“What of it?” answers Gustine, sipping her scalding coffee.
“M’not paying you to socialize.”
“You’re barely paying me at all.”
Mike the ferret leaps from Whilky’s shoulder to lap the cup of coffee Pink has placed on the floor for him. She puts hers down beside his and laps away as well.
“How d’you expect to afford all those extras for the babby?” asks Whilky. “Woolen blankets and such like? Booties and wee junipers? You were barely earning enough at the pottery to keep yourself together.”
“I give you money, don’t I?” asks Gustine, turning the baby over to burp it. She doesn’t lay it over her shoulder like most mothers, but holds it away from her body and pats its back gently.
“I’d like to know how yer gettin’ it. And if yer holding out.”
“I am not holding out,” says Gustine pointedly. From the corner, gray old Eye looks up. She is elbow-deep in the blue dress, sponging off the mud from where Gustine fell down the Wear embankment. I dare you to say something, thinks Gustine at the old woman. Gustine is to give Eye whatever she makes and Eye punctiliously reckons up with Whilky. Out of the money she earns, Whilky takes her expenses and those of the baby’s, then of the eight she usually brings home a night, pays her four shillings over a week. Until now, Gustine has never been bold enough to cheat the Eye.
“Let’s see that you don’t waste time. We don’t want our dress lodger evicted from her digs? Eh, Eyeball?” Wlulky wheezes. The old woman narrows her single eye at the landlord, then goes back to work.
Next to Mike’s unrivaled record, nothing swells Whilky’s chest more than the knowledge that he alone was responsible for the importation of dress lodging into Sunderland. Obvious in its simplicity, yet strangely unknown outside of London, dress lodging works on this basic principle: a cheap whore is given a fancy dress to pass as a higher class of prostitute. The higher the class of prostitute, the higher the station of the clientele; the higher the station, the higher the price. In return, the girl is given a roof over her head and a few hours of make-believe. Everyone is happy. Like any pioneer, Whilky had his share of unforeseen setbacks. His first girl got greedy and made off with her dress, though whether she sold it for drink or pawned it to maintain a preferred childlessness, he never discovered. Her shadow was a washed-out old bawd who lay facedown in a bar the night First Girl absconded with the dress. He went through another set, with the same result. Not until two years ago, with diligent Gustine and incorruptible Eye, did he hit upon the perfect remunerative combination. The last thing he wants is for Gustine to ruin it.
“Pink!” Gustine drains her coffee and stands up to leave. “Come take the baby,”
Pink jumps up from her cup and scampers to the table. It’s time for her to be a Good Girl.
“You remember how to hold it?” Gustine asks the same question everyday, laying the baby carefully in the little girl’s thin arms. Support the head, cradle the bum. Whatever you do, don’t evernever, never everput the baby down on its chest. Or set anything, even a folded blanket, there. Or kiss it too hard in that spot. Or jokingly poke it. Are you a good girl? “Yes,” answers Pink. “And you will remember these things?”
“Yes,” answers Pink, thinking, Don’t carry it with your teeth. “And don’t let her touch it,” says Gustine,, casting a dark look at the Eye. It is daytime now and she owes the relentless shadow nothing. “Don’t let her near this precious baby.” “Right,” says Pink.
Gustine gives the smiling infant one last kiss and draws her shawl off the clothesline. She won’t be home from the pottery before seven o’clock and then Eye will have the dress waiting the moment she steps in the door. She has such a short time to love and protect this poor child. But she will see it survives. No matter what it takes.
Gustine pauses in the doorway to make sure Pink and the baby are as far away from Eye as the tight room allows. She doesn’t know why she is so superstitious about the shadow and her baby, but she swears, if she ever catches the old woman laying a finger on her child, she’ll gut her like a fish.
“And someone should check on Fos,” Gustine calls over her shoulder, referring to one of her fellow lodgers, our friend the matchstick painter. “She didn’t get out of bed this morning.”
“Whoops,” says Pink and the baby starts screaming. She picked up only the corner of its blanket with her teeth, but wriggly baby, it slipped right out.
It is noon and the blue sky has accommodated itself to the yellow sulfur clouds, providing a lovely green day for charity visiting. The temperature last night dropped precipitously and there is a crispness behind the smog that, had we only the conveyance to get twenty miles out of town, we might very much enjoy. The men and women of charity go on about their work, drawing their shawls more tightly about them or stuffing their hands into pockets. No one is concerned about the weather, except maybe the apothecaries. Their leeches, about two hours ago, started creeping up the sides of jars, a sure sign an electrical storm is brewing.
Since the cholera scare, the dogs of charity have been unleashed upon Sunderland’s East End. The Methodist Ladies are distributing tickets for to soup at the value of one penny “equal in quality as what is given to the military.” The Friends of the Sunderland Dispensary are passing out tincture of chamomile along with their own printed tickets returning thanks to the Almighty God which must be redeemed by the grateful poor at church the following Sunday. The Indigent Sick Society has its blankets and stockings, the Board of Health its wagonloads of free lime for whitewash. They are rolling up Mill Street when Whilky Robinson steps out of his house to buy the newspaper. They are coming with their curled white papers and buckets of flour paste, slapping their lies over honest posters for Barklay’s Asthmatic Candy and Sunderland Reform meetings, making Whilky so mad he could spit. The whole East End has been gummed and slathered, calci-mined and blanchified with these damn white papers, a new one every other day. They figure if they scream it loud enough, we’ll begin to believe, thinks he. It’s just another facet of the Grand Plot.