The Petticoat Men Read online

The man had bowed over her hand – and from his dark oily hair she was almost overpowered by the emanation of strong-smelling pomade of roses, something the lower classes were apt to wear. (The idea of such a man bending over ladies filled her with distaste: she ever after felt sorry for any of the Prince’s women medically attended by Dr Clayton.)

  Lady Susan Vane-Tempest knew many of the secrets of the Prince of Wales.

  Now, this Sunday, she suddenly stubbed out her long thin cigarette and laughed. ‘My dear Sir! You know my brother perfectly well!’ She leaned towards him and put her hand to his cheek. ‘Arty will surely have flown away if there is the likelihood of danger to himself of any kind!’

  He looked at her, so beautiful there before him, her familiar, knowing face; he took her hand in his for a moment. ‘Arthur never has the funds to fly away, dear Susan, and he is bankrupt still! Have you had contact with him lately?’

  ‘Your Royal Highness knows very well I hardly ever have contact with him. I have not seen him for months. Perhaps he is in Paris with our mother.’ (She never told the Prince she did sometimes meet Arthur; she gave him money: whatever her brother’s predilections, she had brought him up, and she loved him.)

  ‘Have you ever seen these particular female-dressing gentlemen?’

  ‘Of course not!’ she answered immediately (remembering the pretty, pretty boy, who sang).

  ‘I have seen them,’ he said. For a moment he leaned back in her comfortable armchair and smiled slightly. ‘Across a crowded theatre only, I need hardly say! One of them was most attractive, hardly seemed a man at all!’ But then he shook his head and sat upright again. ‘Arthur is of course, as we know, unreliable and unpredictable, as he has been since he was a child, and his choice of friends is not always what one would wish. You know I do not want to lose you – I absolutely do not – but I would have no option but to do so if scandal threatened. You must obey me in this matter while all is uncertain. You will attend the court soirées as usual for I will not be deprived of the sight of you. But that will be our only contact.’

  Immediate tears formed in her eyes. I cannot not lose him now. The Prince of Wales might have had no real power while his mother lived on, but in his own Marlborough House circle his authority was absolute.

  ‘I must insist on this,’ he said. ‘For a short time at least. But I will speak to Mr Gladstone. He will, of course, be disturbed by this news.’

  She pulled herself together with an effort. ‘Arty was always Mrs Gladstone’s favourite when he was a small boy. And she was so good to me also.’

  ‘I will talk to the Prime Minister, my dear Susan. Something must be done.’

  And she smiled at him. ‘Your Royal Highness is always so very, very kind.’ Her voice was demure but her eyes offered something entirely different. ‘Kind, although often very naughty…’

  She looked so lovely, and so – willing, and just a little wild, as she had always been. He took his watch from his waistcoat. ‘However, since I am here…’

  Lady Susan smiled at the Prince of Wales in a certain way that promised much.

  And knelt before him.

  To – among certain other things that pleased him – undo his boots.

  6

  I LAY WIDE awake after I first started writing all that stuff, about Ma and me and Billy – our life. That was all I cared to write. Some things are just our business.

  But – oh… well…—

  Well, I missed out some things. But I knew I would have to write at least one more bit down. Because of Freddie. I dont really want to write this next bit, it’s my private story.

  But also it’s about Frederick William Park. One of the Gentlemen in Female Attire. So I put my shawl around my nightdress and lit the lamp again and went back to sit by Hortense with her big painted eyes.

  When I spewed that time when the man smoked all those cigars in the carriage when we went to see them acting in Clapham, I was pregnant. I was seventeen by then, but should’ve known better, me, course I should’ve, because I’d tried and tried to get a baby when I was younger and I didn’t, so I thought I couldn’t. I have to keep explaining in case you’re getting the wrong picture, I’m not stupid, I’ve just got something wrong with my foot that’s all, that hasn’t stopped me having all sorts of adventures in my life. Neither however am I a crippled whore, and nor was our house at 13 Wakefield-street a bordello. And I hadn’t fallen pregnant when I’d so wanted to, so I thought I wasn’t going to fall pregnant at all in my life. Well then.

  Ronald Duggan had a room at 13 Wakefield-street. Ronald Duggan. He worked at the railways and kept odd hours because of bringing a train back from Liverpool or wherever. He actually drove a train, that was his work, and one day he took me all the way to Birmingham and back again, it was wonderful, you should’ve seen that engine with all the steam puffing out like big white clouds, and the coal to heap on to the fire to make the engine go blazing, and the chuffing huffing sound as we raced along – Ronald said sixty miles an hour, easy, well that was the fastest speed my body had ever, ever been – oh it was a lovely exciting adventure, rushing past the country. I wished I could have stayed on the train for ever, the bell ringing, people crowding on at all the different stations, other people waving from the roads and the fields. Ronald had put me in a first-class compartment (with the guard knowing), I wore gloves and one of my nicest hats, and waved to people all day, even Ma and Billy were impressed when I told them all about it, for when you live in the centre of London you dont have much call to go on a train, people come to London, but we’re already here, in our funny lovely old city.

  London’s where me and Billy was born and our Ma and Pa too, he was a stage carpenter and painter (and magician we called him), he built rooms and mountains and rooftops on stage and he painted big white clouds that he could make blow across from one side to the other. And he always had this one particular idea: always he wanted to make real doors and windows on stage, doors that opened and shut, not pretend painted ones. But the theatre managers always said the doors would only get stuck, something about the way the scenery was hung, so our beloved Pa was dead before proper doors got used on stage.

  But we have seen real doors now, Ma and me and Billy went to the Prince of Wales Royal Theatre to see this new play with ‘real doors’ – Ma knew the manager of the theatre and he specially gave us tickets to a performance because of knowing our Pa and we sat there in the audience and saw doors opening and shutting, and a blind going up and down at the window, and everyone clapped and clapped at it all being so lifelike. But then sure enough, after the interval, one of the doors did get stuck, with an actress trying to get out, she’d said goodbye to the others and she was rattling the doorknob over and over and the other actors who were on stage tried to pull it open or push it open and all the time making up lines, ‘Oh aren’t you leaving, Polly dear? Thought you were going! Here, Polly dear, let me help you!’ and they banged and pulled the door and finally a man had to come on stage with a big hammer to move it and everyone in the audience was laughing by now, big huge laughs and Ma and me and Billy was laughing loudly too, and thought of our dear Pa who thought of this first.

  It was Pa that got me and Billy educated, Ma’s not such a reader. And yet it’s funny, Billy and I often ponder on this: Ma knows more knowledge, and more people, than anyone else we’ve ever met. That’s being a Londoner for fifty years and working in Drury Lane Theatre I suppose, and later the Haymarket Theatre, everyone came there. But her knowledge isn’t out of books, and he just loved books our Pa, he had gone to the Mechanics Institute when he was a young man and eaten up education like a starving person. He read Oliver Twist to us when we were little, the first book I ever knew, and we all cried at the sad bits, and I love that book to this day.

  And he got us into a new elementary school by Covent Garden, me as well as Billy, ‘your leg dont hinder your handwriting, Mattie.’ And by the time I was about eight I was already coming home with Billy to Drury Lane from Mudies Lending
Library in New Oxford Street with high piles of books borrowed, clutched in our arms like treasure – by the time I was twelve I had read Jane Eyre and Frankenstein and Agnes Grey. So we’re good at reading and writing, well here I am, writing this and Billy always has his nose stuck in a book or a serious newspaper and like I say he now writes down lots of Parliament business.

  Oh damnation, that’s about London and our Pa and everything, all that’s a long time ago, I’m supposed to be telling about Ronald Duggan. So. Mr Ronald Duggan the train driver. He was nice, and he was good to me, good to Ma, paid the rent – away a lot mind, well that’s a railway man, we knew that. He liked me, we started walking out, and Ma was pleased to see me cheerful again, and then this happened. Me having a baby. Ronald knew, he didn’t seem to mind, and me, I was glad, even though I was so surprised, a baby. After all that trying before! And even Ma, after she’d checked to see if I really was happy, and after she got used to the idea of being a grandmother after all, was pleased, and called Ronald ‘Ronnie’ and if he was here on a Sunday he came and drank stout in the parlour while we drank our port and we played cards sometimes, and Freddie and Ernest had just started coming and going to our house (“those girls” Ronald used to call them, but only laughing) and sometimes we heard the singing drifting down the stairs and our house was so cosy. I was only a bit sorry that Ronald never read any books, only the penny papers.

  ‘Have you ever tried a book?’ I asked him one day. He laughed.

  ‘Mr Isambard Kingdom Brunel once said – and he was the cleverest man that ever lived, ask any railway man – well except for his father who built the Thames Tunnel. But Mr Isambard Kingdom Brunel, he said, “It is impossible that a man who indulges in reading should make a good engine driver.” Your Billy would be a disaster with a steam engine,’ and Ronald laughed more, and pulled me on his knee.

  But one summer evening I went into Ronald’s room with some yellow daisies in a little pretty vase, I always kept it nice for him, never knew when he’d be back. The key was in the door, he must have come home already and I – well I just gave my knock and went in, the way I always did.

  And there was nothing there.

  Not his railway clothes and boots, not his timetables he loved, not his timepiece, not his couple of bottles of stout he always kept on his table. And he paid his rent in advance so he didn’t owe us money. I suppose he didn’t owe us anything. I looked for a letter, or a note. No letter.

  It started to get dark but I didn’t light the lamp, I sat at his table for a while, just me and the yellow daisies in the little vase and the usual evening sounds and shouting from Wakefield-street as it got darker. I hadn’t really expected to get married of course, it didn’t matter, Ma didn’t marry Mr Rowbottom, after our Pa died, course not. Ronald was over thirty, and we all supposed he must’ve likely had a family at some time but he didn’t speak of them and so we didn’t ask and he never got letters or messages all the time he’d been here, months and months. And I had expected him to keep being here unless he told me different because he seemed very fond of me and I was fond of him and I think I dreamed we’d take our child on railway journeys with the steam and the clanking and the engine bell ringing, whatever else might happen, and I forgot my rotten leg altogether.

  Anyway, he was gone for good with no message.

  Ma and Billy said, ‘Never mind, Mattie, we’re a family, and we’ll be a family with an extra one, and never mind Rotten Ronald Duggan, we’ll be cosy like we always are,’ and although it wasn’t Sunday we all had a glass of port by the light of the moon, looking out towards Regent-Square where that turkey lived, there were couples there arm in arm I remember, and from upstairs we heard Ernest singing that song I loved:

  When like a diadem

  Buds blush around the stem

  Which is the fairest gem?

  Eileen Aroon.

  and the moon shone so bright and cold and that was the end of Ronald Duggan.

  Even though I was getting bigger I still cleaned the rooms easy, and made my hats, a very pretty one for this lady who always employs me in Mortimer-street, and I wasn’t heartbroken like you read in the novels, I was – a bit sad, course I was, but I wasn’t heartbroken, no I wasn’t, I’d got over all that sort of thing, we’d be a family for this baby, course we would. We wouldn’t be shorter of money either, I could still make hats, and the Houses of Parliament must know how lucky they were to have Billy, so he’d always be employed, and the rooms were all let, we always had the cotton fabric salesmen who came down each week from the North with their samples.

  Freddie and Ernest had this other actor-ish friend, Mr Amos Gibbings, and he sometimes took the railway man’s room now that it was empty and kept his gowns there at certain times and that was that. I was fine, and I was happy in a funny way and if it was a boy I certainly wasn’t calling it Ronald, and I had this nice thought that I might call it Freddie, for Freddie upstairs, who was always so kind and sometimes gave me and Billy books to read, once he gave me The Woman in White, and once I saw him helping Ma with the coal-hole which was stuck, even though he is a gentleman and had a nice suit on! We always liked him, Freddie.

  And then one night I woke because everything was hurting and hurting. I was suddenly bent almost double with pain and bleeding and I tried to run out my bedroom door for Ma and almost bumped into Freddie, all by himself coming up the stairs in a yellow satin gown and a bright blue shawl, his chignon was a bit loose and he was trying to take it off and I remember his bracelets and bangles jangling like I was jangling and he saw me.

  ‘What is it? Mattie?’

  ‘I think I’m—’ and I couldn’t talk because of trying not to scream with the pain but he could see of course and you know what? Freddie didn’t care about his gown, he just ripped off his chignon and his hat and then he half carried me to the water closet, we had one inside the house and we were very proud of this for our tenants, and I was trying not to scream but I had to scream by then, and he held me and helped me and the blood was on me and on him and on the floor and still he held me and helped me and then Billy appeared and he saw, and he ran for Ma to wake her, and while they weren’t there but Freddie was there – it was over.

  We saw it. It was a little tiny real person, dead.

  When Ma came Freddie had already picked up the little white shape and wrapped it in his blue shawl and he and Ma went outside in the dark, you couldn’t leave it in the water closet, not for the other tenants to see, and Billy took me to my bed and Ma came and bathed me and sat with me and I fell asleep.

  For more than two weeks afterwards I kept the lamp lit on the big table in my room where I made my hats so I could see Hortense, and I kept the one on the chest of drawers lit, and the small one on the table by my bed lit, because I didn’t like the dark just then, because if it was dark – well if it was dark I saw it. I left the lights on and Hortense in the corner, well she was with me like a friend. Ma said to come down and sleep with her but I said ‘I’m fine’ and slept in my own room. Billy would always come in before he went to bed and talk to me for a bit and try and make me laugh, and I would try to laugh, and then he would go to bed. But I kept the lamps on all night.

  On one of those lamp-on nights Freddie and Ernest knocked on my door, past midnight, they’d been playing the piano earlier, but not loudly, and I suppose they saw my lights.

  ‘Greetings, dear Hortense!’ they called gaily, like they always did.

  They were dressed as gentlemen but – well – they still looked – like they looked. They had powder on, and no cravats, and cutaway jackets that showed their figures more I suppose. I hadn’t seen Freddie, or Ernest, since – well since what had happened to me when Freddie helped me – they didn’t say anything about it but they were very bright and gay and they had obviously decided to come and visit me and to be cheerful (even though it was so late and I was in bed but with all my lights on) and they sat on the edge of the big work-table very elegant in the lamplight with brandy breathing r
ound my room and they told me about going down to the fashionable Burlington Arcade the previous day and all the shops that were there, selling elegance and jewellery, and after a while Ernest was yawning (but very prettily with his hand over his mouth, all graceful, like a girl).

  ‘I better go home to you know who! But what use is he to me now, he was made a bankrupt months ago! And he’s losing more of his hair.’ Ernest shuddered slightly. ‘Goodnight, Mattie!’ and we heard him running so lightly down the stairs and gone into the night and I felt (though it might not have been true at all) that Freddie was a bit sad, listening to the footsteps fading away, and then the front door closing.

  ‘Did Lord Arthur Clinton go bankrupt?’

  ‘He did, poor man,’ (and I didn’t say, but I thought, I bet it was Ernest that made him bankrupt). ‘And he is no longer a Member of Parliament. But – he is – in the meantime at least – someone for Ernest to – go home to.’

  And again that odd sadness, it was in his voice, I heard it.

  ‘Well I better go home too,’ he said. ‘Are you all right, Mattie?’ and then I saw he looked at me carefully. ‘You’re shivering.’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  ‘You are shivering, Mattie.’

  And he came and sat on the bed and took my hands and rubbed them to make them warm and then after a few moments, not embarrassed at all, he moved the covers and took my feet including my mad foot and did the same. ‘They’re like ice,’ he said, and seemed not to notice my rotten foot as he warmed it.

  ‘I’m perfectly all right,’ I said, and I burst into tears like a blooming child, and Freddie held me and held me and I could smell brandy and “Bloom of Roses” and him but the arms were holding me, Freddie holding me. After a long time I stopped shivering and then I stopped crying and finally I said, ‘It was nearly a little person,’ and I felt rather than saw Freddie nod as he held me, because of course he had seen it too.

  And slowly he began talking to me about this and that while he was holding me, about his life. He’d had a grandfather who was a Judge – Freddie hadn’t known him but he was a ‘Sir’ Park. And Freddie’s father worked in something called the Court of Common Pleas whatever that was.