The Petticoat Men (26 page)
‘So it’s going ahead after all,’ was all I said to Ma.
Billy got hold of a copy of the new indictments against other people in the case. He brought it home, late, we’d eaten without him and left his dinner warming on the stove. I was washing some dishes and pots. Ma gave Billy his dinner, he gave her the paper with the indictment writ on.
‘You read it,’ he said.
Ma had magnifying spectacles. She read it out, sitting at the table with Billy.
Ernest Boulton and Frederick William Park are charged with buggery; also with committing buggery with Arthur Pelham Clinton, commonly called Lord Arthur Pelham Clinton; with conspiring to solicit other persons to commit to the crime and with conspiring with Clinton, Marin Luther Cumming, John Salford Fiske, Louis Clark Hirst and C. H. Thomas to attend places of resort in the disguise of women, thereby outraging public decency and offending against public morals.
‘How did you get this?’ she asked Billy.
Billy looked at her. ‘Inside help,’ he said, sarcastic. ‘Elijah gave it to me in his little private cubby in the Central Lobby to copy. He said “because you are an interested party”. You’d be surprised what’s delivered to Honourable Members in the evenings.’
‘So they’ve decided to arrest Lord Arthur Clinton at last,’ Ma said. ‘That’ll cause bleeding bedlam, mark my words. And in your workplace too, Billy.’
‘Why’s there suddenly all these new people?’ I asked Billy.
He shrugged. ‘They’re people who wrote letters to Ernest mostly. And it all starts again tomorrow.’
‘Right.’ Ma’s voice was suddenly very cold and businesslike. ‘This is the real trial with a judge and jury and all that palaver. You cant go in before you’re called to give evidence, Mattie. Billy, you’re obviously in real danger now of losing your work now that it’s a proper trial, and no doubt our name and address plastered all over the newspapers again. Our home is already called a brothel and we’ve lost some of our regulars. We might find ourselves with hardly any income at all. So I’ll go to the Old Bailey tomorrow to find out the worst.’ She sounded scary, not like our Ma at all.
Billy said, ‘Everyone’s now looking at me out of the corner of their eye, that’s true. But dont worry, Ma. If I do lose my position I’m going to get it back.’
‘How?’
He was silent for a moment. ‘I’ve said over and over: Mr Gladstone wasn’t just shocked in an ordinary way when he heard about Lord Arthur Clinton.’ His face was set like it gets sometimes. ‘There’s something odd, something else. I dont mind what his secrets are, that’s his business, but I’m going to find out about him and Lord Arthur Clinton if I get dismissed and he doesn’t, and I’m going to ask him to help me.’
That was the end of that conversation. Billy ate his dinner, silent, but I saw he ate hardly any. I washed pots. I wondered if I could make more hats by working later at night, earlier in the morning. We heard the clang of the letter flap on the front door and Ma went upstairs.
Billy ate.
I washed pots.
Ma came back with a letter she’d already opened. She put it on the table for us to read without saying anything. It was from Mr Connolly, one of our cotton salesmen, saying he felt it necessary from now on to find other ‘more suitable’ lodgings in London. He was the third of our regulars to decide not to use our rooms any more.
Outside some cats were screaming. When we first came to Wakefield-street I couldn’t tell the difference between cats screaming and people screaming, but I can now.
Billy escorted me at dawn to the Central Criminal Court in his suit and his top hat, hoping I might somehow get inside. Both of us not saying much, well we didn’t need to. This was a dark hour for us, and all for letting a room to Freddie and Ernest.
‘I hope you’ll keep your position, son,’ I said to Billy by the corner of the Old Bailey. Billy is a most undemonstrative person but he gave me a little kiss on the cheek. ‘See you tonight, Ma,’ he said, ‘we’ll be all right somehow, I promise,’ and then my Billy was gone on towards Westminster, to his own troubles at the Parliament.
It was a blooming circus outside the Old Bailey even at that hour, crowds and crowds of people even though it was only just getting properly light, all pushing and waiting for this big proper trial with Judges and Juries and more excitement. There was a man with a placard:
THOU SHALT NOT LIE WITH MANKIND
AS WITH WOMANKIND
IT IS AN ABOMINATION.
L
EVITICUS
18:26
and all the usual clerks, and street-girls offering “just a quick one, before the trial” and men in top hats and women carrying babies, pie-sellers of course, footmen holding places for their Masters.
But the ones in charge were having none of it, not this time – nobody allowed into the Old Bailey without permission – they actually shoved people away with their police sticks! Those noisy press reporters were pushing and waving passes, but there were strict rules, only the people with the right to be there were let in. I understood I would not likely be one of them and I just stood there for a few moments, in the middle of all the people, just thinking of many things and the twists and turns of our lives till now, and then a tap on the shoulder, bloody hell, one of the policemen – was I going to be blooming shoved about too? – but it was Algie Thornton of all people, his pa done building work at Drury Lane so course Algie knew me.
‘Auntie Ma!’ he said, there outside the court, as if he was a small boy still, and we both laughed. ‘Heard you and Mattie was involved,’ he said. He gave me a wink, escorted me away from the crowds and took me to a side door to wait, and when the court doors finally slowly opened Algie actually escorted me in, one of the first! He was always a good boy, I looked after him sometimes, years ago, when his mother was having another, and he heard Billy and Mattie call me Ma, so he called me Auntie Ma.
I sat as near to the front as I could and hoped I’d hear it mostly. Although I was scared in a way, I
made
myself think positive. We still had some of our other regular salesmen from the North, cotton people, they still came to us all this last month, they knew Freddie and Ernest in a casual way, knew about the case, didn’t seem to care tuppence. Just so long as they all didn’t stop coming like Mr Connolly and some of the others… I told myself we’d manage somehow. But if Billy lost his job… I couldn’t help it, there was a strange, tight, pressing feeling round my heart, God, I’m not having a bleeding heart attack in here! I said to myself. Then I got a tap on the arm: Emma Goodrich, she was an actress I knew from the Haymarket, sitting nearby and wearing a fine gown and cloak, very elegant. She moved to sit beside me, whispered to me very loudly several times, told me she had a “barrister gentleman friend” who’d got her in, she was a pretty Celia in
As You Like It
but years ago now. So here we sat, me and Emma and noble ladies in big hats and gentlemen with their hats removed and ministers in their church collars. There seemed to be a large amount of lawyers with their wigs on, from nearby courts I s’pose – all wanting a look at Ernest and Freddie no doubt.
Then they swore in the jury, seemed very quick to me, all swearing by Almighty God with righteous enthusiasm, ha! one was Beetle Turner, his nose as red as ever, publican at the Lord Russell down by the river. He was a bit of a rogue, dealt in stolen watches and jewellery, bet he was a bit blooming uncomfortable finding himself called to the Old Bailey! And then at last there was someone crying,
Silence in court,
and they said we all had to rise for the Judge in his long black gown and his long white wig, escorted in a slow procession of Sheriffs or Aldermen or whatever they were, and the bigwig legal men following – the Attorney-General, the Solicitor-General, the big barristers – all the Stars eh! and a great hump of lawyers behind them, that nasty little prosecutor Mr Poland, Freddie’s lawyers, Ernest’s lawyers, all taking their places on the Stage. Well it
was
like the Stage it seemed to me, I half-expected a blooming theatrical fanfare any minute, like in a Royal scene from Shakespeare!
And then just before Ernest and Freddie was brought in, me and Emma – at exactly the same time – observed a gentleman come in and sit at the back of the barristers benches – we turned to each other, sort of surprised at who we’d seen and Emma started giggling – we
knew
him, it was Sir Alexander Cockburn, the Lord Chief Justice, he was in charge of
everything
to do with the Law, everyone knew that. But he must be off duty, he wasn’t even wearing his wig, just sitting quietly at the back, I never saw him quiet before! He was at the theatre often, that Sir Alexander Cockburn, knew lots of the actors – he was always coming backstage – I remembered he was sweet on young Ellen Terry at the Haymarket, before she became so famous. He was a very elegant, sociable fellow, always bringing bottles of champagne!
Then Freddie and Ernest were brought in.
Ah God, those poor boys.
It had felt we was at the theatre, but of course now suddenly it didn’t, it was alarming and serious and the court was suddenly still and silent and hot. Just the prisoners’ footsteps and the guards’ footsteps as they were escorted to the dock, even I could hear them. I was glad Mattie wasn’t there, they looked blooming terrible. It was Freddie I was most worried for, they was both deathly pale but Freddie looked to me as if he might faint right here in court. His face was so white and puffy, he kept holding the bar of the dock and then trying to make his collar loose. While Ernest was still. As if, in the end, Ernest was the strong one after all. Who looked like a girl in a man’s suit, standing there. Blank face. They stood as far apart from each other as they could, as if they didn’t know each other and I saw them in my mind, laughing in their gowns down the stairs at Wakefield-street with perfume and powder and excitement and gin and their shadows dancing on the walls.
The charges Billy had showed us the night before was read out loud, in public, with the new names of people to be arrested and as soon as Lord Arthur Clinton’s name was said about four of the pressmen jumped up and made for the door. A Nobleman arrested for buggery.
Then there was a strange silence.
And then a barrister suddenly stood and said to the Judge: ‘My lord, I would request, with the new charges and new indictments to be studied – which have only just come to us, and new evidence including new medical evidence, to be presented – I would therefore request a postponement of this case.’
And –
at
once
– I thought of Freddie’s father. And what Mattie had said. Maybe it was
this
he knew was going to happen? But even if it was, it hadn’t gone as the poor man had hoped, the trial wasn’t cancelled, only postponed maybe, with a warrant out to arrest Lord Arthur, which would mean more publicity than ever before. Freddie was staring and staring at his lawyer. The Judge made Freddie and Ernest answer the charges before he gave any decision. All them things read out again, felony, buggery, misdemeanour, blah blah; after every one Freddie said, ‘Not guilty,’ in a shaky voice. Ernest said, ‘Not guilty,’ like a girl, they were both even paler now than when they came in.
The Judge then sat cogitating for a minute and then he turned to the Attorney-General and politely asked his opinion. The Attorney-General said something like if all parties agreed the prosecution would not demur about a postponement, for he too had more preparation to make. I looked at them all, all the Sirs and Lords, all the ones with the real power. And I suddenly thought, clear as can be:
they’ve planned this.
Because me, I’ve worked in theatres all my life and I know a rehearsed piece when I see one.
And watching it all, in the background, the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Alexander Cockburn and I know this was fanciful but to me he looked like a theatre director, watching the actors from the back of the stalls.
And then the Judge leaned forward and said: ‘If all parties agree, of course there can therefore be no objection to a postponement till the next sessions’ (as if they hadn’t all breakfasted together earlier in some gentlemen’s club, ha! well that’s only my opinion but that’s what I thought).
I looked at Freddie. There was colour back in his cheeks, he was staring at his lawyer still. The jury was dismissed and that Beetle Turner looked as if he was making straight for his public house on the Strand, as if he couldn’t get there fast enough. The pressmen were furious – Lord Arthur Clinton mentioned and the whole thing postponed at once! one threw his hat on the floor in disgust, probably from
Reynolds News
! Freddie and Ernest were led away once again and us all pushing to get out, talking and muttering. Emma disappeared – then I saw her having a word with her “gentleman barrister friend”. Outside Ernest gave a few little waves to people but Freddie saw no one I think, just stared ahead. But they both looked as if going back to Newgate Prison in the police van was preferable to going on with the case.