The Rich Are with You Always (76 page)

  Young John kissed his father good night and scampered off with Nicholas to their bed, along the corridor.

  "I believe the last thought of the night should always be a solemn one," Arabella said to John. "Will you come and tuck him in?"

  "I think I'll go straight below," John said.

  "Mama," Nicholas asked, when she had tucked them in, "why do we pray for God not to withhold His grace?"

  "Nicholas! You know very well. It's as the prayer says—so that we shall not be eternally damned."

  "But if God did withhold His grace and then later damned us, that would be very cruel."

  "God is never cruel, dear, only seemingly so. Remember Job."

  "But if we withheld the servants' wages until they were driven to steal from us, and then we gave them over to the police…"

  Arabella laughed. "Bless you, child; it's not the same thing at all. Servants are bound to masters by law, but we are bound to God by love—as well as by His law. That is the great thing about our religion. You could spend all your life breaking the Ten Commandments and at judgement day your fate would still be in doubt, because of God's love. If there were only the law, you would know at once that you were damned. But because God is Love too, you may turn from your wickedness, even after a whole lifetime of sin, and not be damned."

Nicholas nodded, disappointed. Young John watched the exchange wide-eyed.

"Are all Jews damned, Mama?" Nicholas asked.

  Arabella realized she had to tread very carefully here. The vicar had preached a most uncharitable sermon last Sunday on the mission to convert the Jews. She had agreed with very little of it. To her mind (though, of course, she would never say it aloud) the Jews had a perfect right to worship God—the same God, after all—in their own way. But she must not contradict the vicar to Nicholas.

  "Only God can answer that, child," she said. "It certainly seems wicked to know about Jesus and not to believe in him. As the vicar said, they have not the same excuse as poor ignorant heathens. We must hope God's love really is infinite, or they will live in everlasting torment."

  When she had drawn the curtains, it seemed momentarily dark, but soon the twilight crept back.

  "You do ask her questions," Young John said after she had gone.

  "You can always make her talk if it's about salvation."

  "What are Jews? I thought they were only in olden days. I thought they were extinct."

  "Arnold Jacobs is a Jew and I shall tell him he's going to rot in everlasting torment. Listen, d'you know what spunk is?"

  "No."

  "Well, it's time you did. It's what the mammy gives to the daddy to make the babby grow."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Johnny Potter, the stable lad at the Montague, told me that."

  "Did he tell you what it means?"

  "He showed me how to get spunk. I've nearly got some. Shall I show you? It's ever so ticklish."

  "No, thank you."

  "I'll give you one of those black liquorice straps if you let me."

  "All right."

  But it tickled too much and they had to stop.

Even without Sarah's warning, John could hardly have failed to notice the tension in Arabella.

  "Well?" Walter asked when they were on their way to the Philosophical Institute in Park Street, where they were to meet Alderman Proctor.

"One can hear the fuse burning," John said.

"Oh dear. The complications!"

"I would have thought you'd be proud."

  "There's no use beating around the bush, Stevenson. I've never flaunted my private life in front of you. But I've never made a great secret of it either. I do, from time to time—as most men, I suppose, do…a great many anyway…"

  John laughed, a kindly laugh. "I have observed."

  "Then I'll tell you: I shall not be coming directly home tonight after this meeting."

  "Don't let me hinder you. But what shall you do about Mrs. Thornton?"

  "Every time I think of her and that damned Refuge—full of the scrapings off
my
plate…!"

  John suppressed a chuckle.

  "You can laugh," Walter said. "My real point, my real objection, is not selfish. I think these religious people, and I include Mrs. Cornelius and all the Female Rescue Society people, have got the whole thing arsy-versy. I blame the vicar as much as anyone. He has a sheep's head—all jaw. He understands nothing."

  "That may well be. What point do you think they miss?"

  "Well, they do call it 'the oldest profession,' don't they. It certainly exists in every civilization. And I say that the established order always has a function. Nothing survives as long as that without a profound purpose."

  "I wonder what it is?"

  "I only know it's folly to meddle with the established order. If I and thousands of men like me have the need and the money, and all these girls are surplus, there's a pattern there, plain enough for all to see. And a pattern means a design. And a design shows a purpose."

  The cab reached the foot of Montague Hill and turned right toward Maudlin Lane and the centre of Bristol. The smell from the open sewer was very strong at that corner.

  "I believe it's a way of distributing wealth, d'ye see. And a lot better than income tax in that it goes straight from rich to poor. Think how much money—hard cash, heh heh!—must pass each year. It must be hundreds of thousands of pounds."

  "Hah!" John gave a single scornful laugh. "I'll never offer you the job of quantity estimator."

  "Why? It must be at least that."

  "Heavens, man! The number of girls alone must be in the hundreds of

thousands. D'you think they earn but a pound a year each? The actual sum that passes must be at least ten million pounds."

  "Ye gods!" Walter's voice was faint.

  "I'll tell you your real problem, Thornton. It could also be your best hope: What are Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Cornelius going to do when they find that virtually all of those hundred thousand girls rescue themselves—and very nicely too? These Female Rescue people, led by Lady Bear, who is a blind and selfopinionated virago, have the delusion that the harlot's progress is as Hogarth drew it. Now neither your wife nor Mrs. Cornelius is blind. Before very long, they are going to twig that the only prostitute that really needs rescue is a battered, blowsy, verminous, alcoholic wreck who couldn't even roll a drunken sailor after six months at sea."

  "Eh? How will that help me?"

  "If I were you, Thornton, I'd encourage them all you can. Help them set up the Refuge. Help them find the girls. Pick them yourself." Walter gasped. "Indeed," John insisted. "Grasp the nettle, man! Pick the proud and pretty ones. The bright ones. The ones you know are only in it for the quick money—who are going to come out of it with enough to buy a small shop and a husband. I guarantee, within a fortnight such girls will tire of soap and sermons and hair shifts and being made to feel like vermin. And they'll go back to the streets, which offer them the only real hope they have of advancement in life."

  "And then?"

  "You just continue—fresh crop after fresh crop, all the same kind of girl. It's bound to discourage the rescuers before long. Kill it with your own enthusiasm. That's what I'd do."

  "By jove, Stevenson! I believe you've hit it!" He began to giggle excitedly.

  "Only one thing," John added.

  "What's that?"

  "Make sure the house they pick as their Refuge will convert easily into a suitable residence for a rich young widow!"

  Walter's laughter shook the cab. They had reached Griffin Lane, where the driver would normally have turned right to go up to Park Street. But Walter leaned out and told him to make a detour via St. Augustine's Place. "I'll make my arrangements for later," he told John.

  "Aren't you afraid of being clapped?" John asked. "A terrible thing to take home."

  "I go for the youngsters," Walter said. "They're generally free of it. I look for the new ones."

  They were soon at St. Augustine's, where Walter made the cab pull up. "There's two," he said eagerly, and, throwing down the window, called. "Hey, sweetmeats!"

  John could not believe it; the two girls who came over, dressed in trumpery cast-offs that hung about them, were hardly yet pubescent. "Hello, Charley!" the taller one said with a cheeky little grin. "Are you kind?" She had a bright eye and a strong, pleasant face.

  "What are your names, my dears?" Walter asked.

  "Becky, sir. And yur's Annie."

  "And how old are you, Becky?" Walter was like a kindly uncle.

  "Thirteen, sir. And Annie's twelve." Her Bristol accent made her sound a little adenoidal.

  "Are you sisters?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Does your mother know you're out, Annie?"

  Annie, who had not once looked at Walter—indeed, did not once take her eyes off her sister's face—made a snotty, giggly, gurgling sound. Her mouth never closed and her lips never ceased to smile.

  "She ain't got no speech, sir. She'm simple," Becky said with a grin.

  Walter suddenly leaped from the cab and began running his hands over simple little Annie. "But well made!" he said admiringly. "By harry! A simple little Venus!" He might have forgotten John's presence.

  "She do please. All they men do say it," Becky confirmed.

  "What about under? Lift your skirts, Annie." He bent down to her and spoke in gentle encouragement. "Skirts. Lift. Goo' gel! Got any hair yet?"

  John watched spellbound as Walter, stooping as farmers stoop to feel cows' udders in the auction ring, reached his hand under her lifted skirt. All the while her simple, giggling eyes never left her sister's face, and the simple drooling gurgle poured happily from her lips.

  "She ain't got none. An' 'tis a tanner for a feel. I got more'n what she 'ave," Becky was saying.

  "My word!" Walter said admiringly. "She's as big as Marble Arch though."

  John leaned out of the carriage then. "Just going to stroll around to the quay, Thornton," he said. "Pick me up on Under the Bank."

  Walter, not even turning, held up a hand in acknowledgement. "Shan't be a minute. Only making the arrangement now," he said.

  The last words he heard from Thornton, as he turned the corner, were to the effect that Becky had "a sweet little mossy bank."

  He breathed with relief as he came out of the Place; what an astonishing thing was Thornton's obsession. He did not believe all he had told Walter in the cab on their way down. He had much more faith in Arabella's robustness of spirit and persistence; and he wanted to see what she would make of this chance.

  Right at the corner, a girl stepped out fearlessly into the full glare of the gas lamp—and he felt his heart quite literally turn over in his chest.

  Alice!

  It was Alice beyond any doubt. Alice to a T. The same Alice whom he had married over the anvil when he was a navvy. Alice with whom he had shared one delirious year out at Irlam's-o-th'Ights, on the Eccles road out of Manchester. Sixteen—seventeen years ago?

  "Are ye kind, Charley?" she asked. Very West Country accent.

  But Alice would have been—thirty-eight; and this girl, this Alice looked barely eighteen.

  "What's your name?" he asked.

  "Charity," she said.

  "Your full name?"

  "Dunno. C'mon then. Fire be warm an' do need a poke!"

  It was Alice's voice too—except for the West Country accent, that almost American burring of the r's.
Warrrm,
she said. It made his scalp tingle.

  "Listen!" he said, turning her back into the light so that he could see her face again and drink it in. "I don't want—what you're offering. But I'll give you a guinea. Look"—he fished it from his change purse—"a golden guinea. I'll give that to you if you'll just answer me some questions. Right?"

  The girl nodded, made solemn at the thought of so much for so little.

  "Why do you not know your name?"

  "I only do know what they did give I when I was a orpheling."

  "Where?"

  "Orpheling Girls' Asylum, Ashley Hill. But they give I that name in the other place, in the work'ouse."

  "Where was that?"

  "Egghouse, they did say."

  "Egghouse? Could it be Eccles?"

  "I s'pose so. Eccles? Could be. I was there wi' my mam."

  "What was her name?"

"I think 'twas Alice?"

  Something in the girl's face—a hint of cunning—made him doubt this. Had he said the name aloud when the girl had first startled him? He was sure he hadn't; at least, he had been sure until this moment. Now he would never know. He cursed himself. He ought to have gone away and worked out his questions very carefully.