The Petticoat Men (36 page)

I stopped at last. I saw his shadowed face – he was completely stunned and shocked, he seemed as if he literally couldn’t move or speak. So – I dunno – I was the one who turned away in the end, and I left the Prime Minister of England there, on the Strand.

I was so exhausted on my way home I was careless, didn’t notice three drunk men on one corner of a side street near the rougher part of Gray’s Inn Road, and they come round me, pushed me against a wall, I could feel the bricks in my back. ‘Come on, pretty lady, we’ll give you tuppence if you suck us all,’ and they started tearing at my clothes and their own clothes and I gave them such a bloody swearing and screaming that they were surprised just for a second and in that second I got the sharp stone from the pocket in my cloak that was now all torn and I scratched it really violent down the face of the nearest man who screamed and stumbled and up above a window opened and another woman screamed as well and poured the contents of a chamber pot on all our heads, turds and all, some of it got on me as well as them but it meant I could get away in all the row and I went home just as fast as I bleeding could to our famous house.

I was shaking and shaking.

No one was awake. I soaked part of my gown that had turds on in one of the big buckets, I washed my face and my hair in a bowl even though the water from the tap outside was so cold. The stove had gone out but there was some warmth still and I slept beside it, till dawn.

34

Billy says they always win in the end. Well to hell with them all, I thought, we’ll get on with our lives. And I decided maybe Billy wouldn’t feel so low and so lonely for his old life if he could talk to Elijah, who got dismissed as well.

So I found Elijah Fortune and Dodo.

I put on my best hat, made by Mattie of course, and went again to see my friend Louisa Peck, the wife of the Managing Clerk of the Sacred Harmonic Society.

‘Isabella Stacey! The Madam of the Bordello!’ she said at the door, despite her respectable curls and cap, and she ushered me in and we both laughed but rueful too, and she moved the kettle so that it was right over her big stove fire.

‘Didn’t you get words written all over your walls, Louisa? Did any of your tenants leave like they’ve left Wakefield-street?’

‘Nah. I let rooms to people of class, that’s different! Dead and all now, poor sod. I’m full, are you full?’ I shook my head. ‘It’ll blow over, Isabella,’ she said.

She knew I was deaf, talked loudly. She bustled about with cups and biscuits. ‘Silly little cow, she is, that Maria Duffin, only here for a month and puffing up her evidence. And now the trial’s called off, eh? I see them gentlemen in charge of England all the time, going to their gentlemen’s clubs with their top hats or their clerical collars, so pleased with theirselves and ruling the world and calling off trials.’

Already the kettle hissed and steamed.

‘One of my nieces works in the kitchen of one of them gentlemen’s clubs and she says it sounds like horses neighing all over the big dining room when they’re all laughing and drinking and stuffing their faces.’

Which made me and Louisa laugh too, and I dunno what
we
sounded like, cows laughing maybe, but anyway a visit to Louisa always cheered me up.

‘I’m trying to find Elijah and Dodo, Louisa. Did you know my Billy and Elijah both lost their positions at the Parliament over this blessed business?’

‘I heard of course. Bastards. Well I tell you what, poor old Freda will know where they are maybe. She’s Dodo’s cousin, got a couple of rooms at the Elephant, Peacock-street. You know what I heard last night at the Sacred Harmonic Society? They say Lord Arthur Clinton committed suicide, right in the middle of the most respectable hotel in Christchurch, dressed as a woman in stays and corsets, and feathers in his hair! Dancing! And then dying! What do you think of that!’

Somehow I didn’t say anything about Billy and Mattie seeing Lord Arthur.

I followed round the streets behind the Elephant till I came to Peacock-street, bloody awful run-down place, I knocked at the number Louisa had given me. All I could hear was children crying and yelling and I thought I must be at the wrong place. I knocked again very loud and at last the door opened and I saw a poor, vexed-looking woman about my own age with a baby in one arm and a small child held firmly by the hand, and yelling coming from somewhere inside.

‘Yes?’

‘I might be at the wrong place. I’m looking for Freda.’

‘I’m Freda.’

‘Louisa Peck at the Sacred Harmonic Society gave me your address because I’m looking for Elijah and Dodo Fortune and she thought you might know where they are.’

She opened the door a bit wider. She was neither welcoming or unwelcoming, just harassed and the place stank but I could also smell a cake baking at the same time which made a strange-smelling combination indeed. And then I saw another child, a small boy, tied with a rope to the leg of a big table in the main room, kicking and yelling.

Above that noise the woman called Freda yelled also. ‘DODO! VISITOR!’ then she disappeared down a dark corridor with the two younger children and I was left with the tied-up one who stopped kicking for a moment to look at me.

‘I knew a man who could make the sky move,’ I said.

He kept staring but said nothing.

‘He could make clouds go fast or slow.’

‘Was he God?’

‘No, he was a carpenter.’

‘Was he Jesus?’

I was taken aback. ‘Do you go to a school?’ He shook his head. ‘How did you know Jesus was a carpenter?’

‘I learnt it from the Bible lady.’

‘What?’

He shouted, ‘I learnt it from the Bible lady, you silly old cow.’

‘Can you read?’

‘Nah, course not, she reads it to me. But my Uncle Elijah says he’s going to teach me to read, he’s going to get me a book for me own.’

‘Where’s your ma and your pa?’

‘Dunno, you silly old cow.’

Dodo Fortune rescued both the boy and me from this interesting conversation. She stood in the doorway like a bent crab, holding a plate of little cakes and looking at me. It was still her face. But even though I knew about the arthritis I was shocked beyond belief at how crumpled and crippled she was. Dodo Fortune, once one of the most popular dancers of them all.

‘Isabella Stacey!’ she said and she still had that smiling voice she had when she was young. She gave the boy a cake, smiling at him. He sat awkward with one leg tied and devoured the cake, pushing it into his mouth fast and getting it all over his face.

There was a chair. I put the chair by her and took the plate of cakes from her. She bent to sit in it, but awkwardly, smiling and smiling, and a sound of pain came out even as she smiled.

‘I met your lad,’ she said. ‘He looked just like Joe.’ I nodded. She looked terrible but cheerful.

‘Are you and Elijah staying here, Dodo, or are you perhaps just visiting?’

‘We haven’t had time to properly organise ourselves and Freda has so kindly let us stay here just till we do. I am so useless of course and Elijah must find another position urgently, but they wouldn’t give him a reference paper which makes it more difficult, especially a man of his age. I was so sorry that your lad lost his work as well.’

I nodded again. ‘Where’s all your lovely red cushions and curtains? Billy told me you still had them all in the Parliament. And your clothes and that red table you always had? Where’s all your things?’ I was still stood there, holding the cakes.

‘There wasn’t time. A big new doorkeeper fellow – already in a uniform – came down early one morning, I was hardly out of bed, Elijah just about ready to go upstairs. But this man – in a Head Doorkeeper’s uniform, only Elijah was the Head Doorkeeper! – was carrying some cases and bags and told us to go, and that he was the new Head Doorkeeper, and was moving into our home. He had some other new men with him and we had about five minutes.’

Her smiling voice told their sad story.

‘Elijah rushed about of course, looking for people to stop this nonsense, he knows so many Members, course he does. But the House doesn’t sit in the morning and any doorkeepers who were still there, well obviously they was terrified of losing their jobs too, like Elijah and your Billy. He knew at once it was because he’d tried to get some money together for Lord Arthur. Do you know, some of the clerks and porters were calling out “ponce” and such words. “Sodomite.” So many years he’s been in that place. It’s damaged his spirit terribly, Isabella. I’ve never seen him so sad.’ She suddenly looked very distressed, but then she smiled again, Dodo always smiled. ‘But Freda has been very kind. We managed to bring some of our blankets with us and we put them on the floor for sleeping.’

I saw the blankets neatly folded in a corner. I tried to imagine Dodo getting down on the filthy, greasy wooden floor.

‘That’s a lovely hat you’re wearing, Isabella.’

‘Mattie my daughter made it. Do you remember her when you two used to come back to the theatre to see me and Joe?’

‘Course I do. She ran about Drury Lane, that pretty little child, as if there was almost nothing wrong with her leg at all.’

‘That’s Mattie. She shall make you a lovely new red hat, Dodo, I promise.’

‘CAKE!’ the boy shouted and I gave him another so that we could go on talking and Dodo said something but I could not hear.

‘I’m deaf now, Dodo,’ I said. ‘We’ve all grown old. Though I can hear quite a lot all the same,’ and it was true, I was sure I could hear that tied-up boy eating, stuffing cake so noisily into his mouth and giving little grunts of pleasure.

‘Elijah, he will find another position very soon,’ Dodo said, louder. ‘He knows lots of people. It is only that this – this petticoat business seems to have put a curse on people.’

‘On the wrong people,’ I said firmly. ‘Of course he’ll get another position, Elijah knows everybody! In the meantime, I’ve got a big room free on the ground floor in my house in Wakefield-street, near Kings Cross. What about you and Elijah come and stay there for a while, Dodo? You know about that house from the newspapers now I’m sure, but you know about it too, from long ago, and how I got that house.’

And Dodo nodded, of course she knew about Mr Rowbottom, but she knew the reason also, because she had known Joe.

‘Me and Billy and Mattie will come tomorrow night and carry what you do have. Would that be suitable? See what Elijah says.’

She looked at me. ‘We have some money—’

‘I dont want money at the moment, Dodo,’ I said. ‘Billy’s found another job, Mattie makes hats, we’ve got enough in the meantime. You’d be doing me a real favour frankly, Billy is so downhearted just like Elijah and maybe they’ll cheer each other up. Till everyone’s settled again. We’ll come tomorrow evening before it gets dark. And if Elijah is against it because of it being’ – I had to say it – ‘13 Wakefield-street and Mr Rowbottom and you decide not to come, then at least he and Billy can say hello.’

Dodo looked quite shocked. ‘Me and Elijah never, ever judged you, Isabella, you should have known that!’

Then Dodo looked at the room and the boy and the blankets and the dirt. ‘Thank you for inviting us,’ she said. And then she said, ‘O Isabella Stacey! Of course we’ll come!’

I heard the boy yelling, ‘CAKE!’ as I left.

Next day me and Mattie got up very early and made red velvet flouncy curtains, and a soft bedcover from material with red and pink flowers I had in my big store cupboard. We got everything as nice as we could in the downstairs room that once held that bad Ronald Duggan, and then Mr Amos Gibbings’ glories. And now was hard-pressed to find a cotton salesman, ha. I told Mattie about smiling cheery Dodo remembering her, about her singing and dancing in some of the early music halls when Joe and me and Elijah were working at Drury Lane, and how ever since she was young, Dodo had loved red, she said it made her feel warm and happy.

‘I’ll make her a red hat,’ said Mattie.

We all went back to Peacock-street the next night. I hadn’t seen Elijah for years, but I thought he looked terrible, not the way Billy had described him at all. And I suddenly saw him so clearly: standing outside the stage door at Drury Lane, tall and young and whistling. Still, anyone could’ve seen how pleased Billy and Elijah were to see each other, and Mattie and Dodo were greatly taken with each other at once. In the room the younger children were asleep in a big drawer and Freda in a world of her own didn’t seem to mind or notice whether Elijah and Dodo came or went.