The Walworth Beauty Read online

  He said: there may be something in what you say. I must think about it.

  Trade in female flesh; young bodies weighed out like chunks of sugar, costed, paid for. But also trade meaning job. Meaning skill. Learned over years of apprenticeship. Women apprenticed to learn feminine arts. How to draw men in. A sly bit of flirtation, flattery, when you started out courting, eyeing them up, that was one thing. That was what nice women did. Coquetting. Tarts cold-bloodedly employing those self-same charms to impose on men, get money from them, he recognised that but he didn’t have to approve of it. He’d gone along with it recently, yes, that little Italian, because he was only human, he had very strong needs, he hadn’t been able to resist.

  A stitch suddenly attacked his side; like someone poking him. Whispering. Oh, go on with you! A jab at his ribs again. He bent over, coughing.

  Mrs Dulcimer held the potato in one brown hand, turning it round and round as her blade slipped over it. Long curl of brown peel. Peel her clothes off and she’d be brown all over. A brown bush.

  She remained silent and yet he felt she addressed him. Admit it, Joseph. You long for what they offer. Their succulence. Their taste. The promise of: what? Water rose in his eyes, streamed down his face.

  Mrs Dulcimer said: oh, those onions. They’re very strong, aren’t they?

  He mopped his eyes. Her hands were becoming covered with earth. Fingernails clotted with black. She’d have to wash those potatoes again once she’d finished peeling them.

  She began skinning another potato, shaving off brown-white lengths with rapid flicks of her knife. The peelings shot away, fell onto the table. She held up the potato: top and bottom lopped, sides carved into curves, making a barrel shape. She said: that’s how I learned to do it in France. All food, when it was served, had to look beautiful. Even potatoes!

  She nodded at her handiwork, tossed it into the waiting pot of water. With his wooden spoon Joseph lifted his pieces of meat, turned them, mixed the onions and carrots back towards the beef.

  Prostitutes. Potatoes. Potato-women hawked in markets. Dug up from good Kentish earth, lugged to London, sold to connoisseurs. Now, this one’s nice, no bruises or black eyes, just firm white flesh, very tasty. Earlies, sir. They’re the best.

  My dear brethren. Beware. A vile, debased simulacrum of the sacred marriage act. The preacher’s voice spluttered in his head like a wet potato dropped into hot oil. Mrs Dulcimer swept the peelings into a tin bucket. These are for my chickens. I’ve a cockerel and six hens out the back. Good layers so far.

  She suddenly laughed. I had three cockerels before. Too many. Forcing themselves on the hens non-stop. So I wrung the necks of two of them, and made coq au vin. A nice little feast for the lodgers and me.

  She came to stand next to him at the stove. So close they almost touched. Her spicy carnation scent mixed with that of her sweat, the rich perfume of the meat simmering with herbs. She stirred her little copper saucepan of leeks, sprinkled flour into it, a dollop of cream, a crushed bay leaf, scooted her wooden spoon back and forth. This is a dish I often have at mid-day. You’ll share it with me, I hope. We’ll leave some for Doll, when she returns. Betsy’s feeling poorly, she’s near her time, she’s gone back to bed. And Annie’s fast asleep. I’ll take them up some food later on.

  Joseph skimmed a layer of fat off the top of the stew, spooned it into a basin. Sheen of yellow, the fat congealing as it cooled. He smiled to himself. You could apply the scientific method to everything. Yes, Mayhew. Certainly to cookery. Exact amounts and mixtures. Precise temperatures. He could have run a food shop, yes, he could. He could have conjured up cheese puffs, devilled kidneys; he could have poached fish dumplings, baked glistening hams, poured fresh aspic over sliced hardboiled eggs. He’d bought a cookery book once, on a second-hand stall, pored over it: mouthwatering juicy stuff. Ah. Now there, dear Mayhew, were classification categories that made sense. Service à la Russe. Service à la Française. Entrées. Removes. Luncheon dishes. Supper dishes. Fifty recipes for eggs. Fifty types of sauce. As a boy he’d dreamed of inventing a new sauce, named after himself. If he invented one now he’d make it a variation on sauce brune, flavoured with bay, a drop of Madeira, a pinch of black pepper, a spoonful of cream, name it Sauce Dulcimer.

  Mrs Dulcimer lent across, prodded the stew with her spoon, bent over it, sniffed it. Yes, that will do. She clapped a lid onto the pot, put it into the oven. She set a pan of water to heat.

  She said: prostitutes provide a service. To men. If there were no demand for their services, there would be no prostitutes.

  Ah, lady, in a perfect world, perhaps. He licked the juice off the wooden spoon, tapped it on the tabletop. Once, twice. He agreed with her and also he didn’t.

  He took up the vegetable knife and ran his fingers along the blade, clearing it of earth. Mrs Dulcimer fetched two eggs, cracked them into cups, tipped them one after the other into the boiling pan wreathed in steam.

  Joseph said: I called you a philanthropist, before. Now I think you’re an impossible idealist.

  The pot’s water shuddered, frills of white frothing up inside it. He said: you should have put some vinegar in that.

  Mrs Dulcimer said: and I forgot the salt, too. She laid her hand, wrapped in a cloth, on the handle of the saucepan. She shook it gently to and fro, tipping in vinegar, a pinch of salt, then released it.

  She said: love between men and women should be free. No monetary transaction involved. Human beings should not be bought and sold.

  She did not utter the word slaves, but he heard it. She toasted and buttered two large slices of bread, spread them with leek puree, slipped a poached egg on top of each one. Joseph ate in silence. Mrs Dulcimer sat opposite, similarly quiet.

  You had to like someone to be able to eat in their company. Some people filled you with disgust as you heard them chew and swallow. Watched them! The Hoof, eating and talking at the same time, long loud breaths sucked in whistling through his teeth, before he spat out words, bits of gristle and bone.

  Joseph licked the last vestiges of egg yolk off his fork. Clotted yellow on the tines, sweet on his tongue. He said: you understand these girls, don’t you? You understand their lives.

  Mrs Dulcimer said: I’ll tell you about my own life, if that will help. If you want to listen!

  She fetched a dish of greengages from the pantry. Mine is a common tale. One that you must have heard several times already, in the course of your research.

  She plucked a greengage stone from between her lips, dropped it onto her plate. She licked her fingertips. Little pink tongue neat and swift as a cat’s. She put her elbows on the table, cupped her face in her hands. Making space for herself; keeping him at a distance; her elbows as barricades.

  She said: all young people want to find a sweetheart, to get together, to mate. You meet someone you fancy, you want to touch them, you court them. So I fell in love with a handsome young fellow. A porter in the docks. But we couldn’t marry. His family was dead set against it. I was broken-hearted, him too, but what good did that do us? So he went off, and I got away too, I moved to the City, I found work washing floors in a hotel. I met my husband there. He worked as a cook, as I told you before. He had some money put by, and so we took a gamble, we moved to France. And there we were able to make a life.

  She moved her elbows, sat up straight, began to brush crumbs into her palm. And what about you? What about your life? Are you going to tell me something about it?

  He said: I’ve little to tell. I had a wife I loved, and she died. Now I’m married again, to a good, kind woman. I’ve got four children. A house, a job. I’m very fortunate.

  Mrs Dulcimer sat quietly. He said: please. Go on with your story.

  She leaned forward, making a little pile of the crusts of her toast. Her grey and green sleeve fluttered at her wrist. She said: I was one of the lucky ones.

  She pushed away her plate, dabbed her mouth with her napkin, crumpled it between her hands. I got my child into the Foundling H
ospital. They draw lots because there are too many babies to take in. It’s like betting. Win or lose, you have to submit.

  She smoothed the napkin, rolled it up, tied it in a knot. She touched her bare earlobe. I left an earring with the baby, as a token of who I was, who she was. We were allowed to do that. My idea was that I’d come back and claim her one day, and that way, the earrings matching up, I’d be sure. They wrote down my name when they took her in, but not hers. I was going to fetch her back one day, you know.

  Joseph said: but it didn’t happen?

  Mrs Dulcimer said: no, it didn’t happen.

  She put the knotted napkin into her palm and balanced it there. Tilted it back and forth. She rocked the tiny white bundle in her hand. She addressed the tablecloth. Just before I got married, I told my husband, that’s to say my husband-to-be, that I had a child.

  Joseph corrected her: that you’d had a child.

  Mrs Dulcimer corrected him back: she was still my child. Even though I’d given her away and couldn’t see her.

  She tipped the napkin from hand to hand. She gave it away, she took it back, she gave it away. She said: being a moral person, a churchgoer, my husband-to-be was very unhappy at my news. He made me go down on my knees and pray. He prayed with me, oh, yes. As a Christian, he ended up forgiving me, but he decided that if we were to marry we should leave the child where she was. I’d made a fresh start, and she should be allowed to continue with hers.

  Mrs Dulcimer closed her hand over her knotted napkin. A white tail poked up out of her fist. Like one of those shapes his mother used to make to amuse him, twiddling her fingers in front of the candle-flame. Shadow-animals projected onto the wall: rabbits, dogs, crocodiles. Ghosts of creatures. Ghosts of babies. Mrs Dulcimer said: I chose my husband over my child. How else would I have survived? I couldn’t find work. Nobody would employ a black girl with a bastard child in tow. My family was poor. They all worked long hours down in the docks. I believed they couldn’t help me. I suppose I was too ashamed to ask them. Perhaps after all they would have taken me back in. The thought torments me so you can’t conceive.

  Mrs Dulcimer opened her fingers, let the squashed napkin drop. She said: my husband was a good man, in his way. He had small experience of the world, and so it was easy for him to be clear about right and wrong. It was brought home to me that I had made a grave mistake.

  She spat out the words as though they tasted bitter. She was trying to hide her suffering. Joseph wanted to put his arms round her, comfort her. He said: I am beginning to understand how easy it is for women to make mistakes. Men do not always help them.

  Mrs Dulcimer grimaced. She spoke in a grating voice. You don’t understand at all. The mistake I refer to was getting married.

  She stood up. I’ll bid you goodbye. I’ve work waiting.

  He walked slowly, wanting to kill time. Three o’clock. Such a dead time of day. He drifted north towards Blackfriars, crossed the river, wandered towards Holborn. He too had work on hand, a report to draft, but where could he settle to do it? Too early to go home, cope with his wife and children bouncing about calling to each other, clattering the fire irons, banging the door, interrupting him with offers of tea, shouting to one another to hush, Papa’s writing. Intolerable, today, even to contemplate going to Mayhew’s office, using that corner desk, sitting under the old man’s beady eye.

  He dropped into the Purple Empress in Red Lion Street. Just one glass of brandy. Make it last as long as he needed.

  The simpers and flapped eyelashes of the two gaudily dressed women hovering at the bar, leaned in on by half-tipsy men, seemed banal; much too obvious. One gay creature wore a cape of emerald lace and carried, under her arm, a pug dog, which she was extravagantly kissing and caressing. Her sister tart wore a bonnet topped with a heap of fake cherries, and made a great show of tapping the clustering men with her frilled maroon-and-white-striped parasol as she laughed.

  He shifted his chair, to avoid seeing the pug-woman’s wide red mouth snapping open and shut like a purse. He took out his notebooks, but could find no words to put down. Mrs Dulcimer’s had crowded his out. Yet he had to persevere. He absolutely had to make a go of this job.

  Therefore write for Mayhew what Mayhew wanted. Joseph began sketching a plan for the revised report. Paragraphs numbered one, two, three. He drew a margin down the left-hand side of the page. He wrote the date. He sucked his pencil end and sighed.

  A slender girl, brown-haired and pale, wrapped in a brown mantle with a reddish velvet trim, tripped by, pretending not to notice his glance at her neat little canvas boots finished with blue bows. She paused, turned back. Afternoon, sir. Mind if I sit here?

  Not at all, Joseph said, closing his notebook: charmed.

  He was, too. Bright brown eyes, dark lashes. A lady fox, chestnut fur nicely groomed, plumy brush curled out of sight. She wore a plain, close bonnet covered in dark pink silk, with white ruching inside, adorned with a single knot of pink ribbon. A cast-off from an employer, perhaps.

  She plumped down next to him, gave him a faint smile. She was simply one of the poor, neither virtuous nor vicious. Yes, Mrs Dulcimer, all right, I’m listening to you. Perhaps she’d been a lady’s maid at one time. The band of delicately frilled muslin at her throat was of good quality, as were her boots. In her mittened hands she held a bobbin, strung with a bunch of bright beads on white threads. She worked at her lace while darting glances at him, her fingers flying to and fro. Don’t mind me, darling! You make your mind up what you want, and I’ll get on.

  Pretend she’s not soliciting. Don’t shout at her to be off, don’t get her into trouble. Taking a long, considering look, he put her down, finally, as a former dressmaker’s assistant, fallen on hard times, augmenting her meagre savings as best she could, in the only way she knew, all right, Mrs Dulcimer, I’ll grant you that. Don’t go on at me! I’ve taken your point!

  The minx dropped her heap of needles, bobbins, white tracery. She shook her wrists, rubbed her fingers: ah, they ache. So stop here with me for a while, Joseph suggested: rest your hands. Talk to me.

  She shrugged: buy me a drink and sure, I’ll talk to you. But I’ve little to tell. I’ll have a gin-and-water, with some sugar, if you’ll be so kind.

  Since he was not on the Surrey side, this wasn’t a work interview. He’d just keep the girl company for a while, see what the conversation brought.

  He spoke gently. Will you tell me about yourself, about your life? Can you read, for example? Can you write?

  She answered readily. She described going to school as a child, learning her letters, learning the Creed, a couple of prayers. Taught lacemaking by a neighbour. Taken out of school at eleven, set to work minding the neighbours’ babies, then employed as a seamstress in a big establishment over at Whitechapel.

  Eighteen last birthday. She had a child of three, by one father, and one of one and a half, by another. Her mother cared for both. Mother’s crippled and can’t go out, but she does what she can. There’s a boy in the street brings her bundles of waste paper, to make spills with, which he takes away and sells. Or she’ll mind children for the neighbours, when there’s need. She ties them to the bedstead with string, and that way they can toddle about but not fall down the stairs and hurt themselves.

  She put both hands round her glass and stared at its wet rim while Joseph remained still, not wanting to halt her flow. Her mother lived this side of Whitechapel, in one rented room, paid for by the daughter. One bed for the mother and the two children. Nowhere to cook, so the neighbour boy carried meals in when he brought the waste paper. Easily portable food like buns, bruised fruit sold off cheap, a cone of fried fish now and again. Privy out the back in the yard, shared with twenty other people. No father? Joseph ventured. No father, assented the girl. She downed more gin-and-water. He died after an accident on a building site. We got no compensation, though we tried.

  Joseph asked: and your children’s fathers?

  Ah, the girl said: the first one died
of consumption, poor fellow, and the second cleared off a while back. Work on a ship, he said, but I’ve not heard from him since. He may be dead and drowned, poor boy, who knows? He was my sweetie all right, but off he had to go.

  She stopped, and looked at Joseph with hot eyes. She dropped her end of the tidily patterned talk they wove between them like cat’s cradle. She grabbed her scissors and slashed it. Cries, anguished words, flying up out, seized by her and smashed back down. And then I couldn’t keep my job as a seamstress, not with the children. You have to sew all night if there’s a big order on, and the baby wasn’t weaned, and then some tittle-tattler told them I wasn’t married. That was that. Out!

  She shut herself up with a swig of gin. She set the glass down, passed her hand across her face, resumed her calm expression. She relaxed, settled in her seat. Well, the pub was warm, wasn’t it, and she was soothing herself with the drink in front of her. Perhaps, in fact, both he and she felt similarly. Wary. Not yet defeated. Their two pairs of elbows on the table; not far apart. Their faces turned towards one another. Their eyes meeting. Like two thrushes searching for food. Checking the territory. Assessing any possible danger.

  You’re a long way from home, here, Joseph suggested: wouldn’t there be employment for you nearer Whitechapel? So that you could live with your mother and see your children?

  The girl’s voice hardened and sharpened. If I can’t be seen I can’t be talked about. Mother and I decided that was best. So that if ever I’m able to leave off this work I can go back and no one’ll be any the wiser. I’ll be able to start over.

  The girl’s face, as well as her voice, dared him to pity her. Come on, then. You’ve had an hour of my time. That’s worth more than one single bloody glass of gin.

  He gave her a handful of coins, which she counted. There’s enough here to pay for an hour and a half. Want the extra, do you? Come on, then. I lodge just next door, above the coffee-house.