Fanny and Stella (32 page)

The mere thought of nets and nooses gave him palpitations and made him feel faint. He had not been sleeping at all well – in truth, hardly at all – and he was at a loss to know what to do or where to go. Should he stay? After all, there was no reason why the police should ever pay a call upon Mr Charles Ferguson of Abbey Green: the respectable, retiring, irreproachable Mr Charles Ferguson of Abbey Green who travelled a great deal on business and who was hardly known by his neighbours except as a young man who kept himself very much to himself.

Or should he flee? Pack a valise with his clothes and his papers and abandon Abbey Green for ever. And go where? With the hue and cry raging in London, and the police sniffing the scent like bloodhounds in Edinburgh, the two places where he had friends and family were closed to him. But there were any number of other places he could go to. Out-of-the-way places, ordinary, very slightly dreary places, like the small town of Abbey Green (or the unpronounceable Lesmahagow, as the locals would have it), which he had chosen so carefully because no one, other than its denizens, had ever heard of it.

Or there were the cities. The best places to hide, he had been told, were the large cities, like Leeds and Manchester and Liverpool, cities where a solitary young man could settle himself quietly in a small hotel or in a suite of rooms; where his presence would be unremarkable and unremarked; where he might come and go as he pleased until the dogs were called off and he could think more clearly.

Or then again there was Paris. Arthur and Louis and Stella had so constantly sung its praises, had so constantly recounted their adventures there that he had a great longing to visit this city where the streets were paved with erotic gold. And what did it matter that his French was so poor? Love was a universal language, and he had always prided himself on having the gift of tongues.

Sometimes he would be on the point of going, his bags packed and at the door, and then he would hesitate. Something always held him back. He could not explain it. It was a strange combination of fear – fear of leaving, fear of starting afresh – and optimism: was there really any need to up sticks and travel to the ends of the earth – to Paris, at least – to escape a fate that was by no means certain? There was no reason to run. No one here knew him as anyone other than Charles Ferguson. The money from his father had always come by a highly circuitous route. It would be impossible to trace him that way. And even if the police found any of his letters, they would be hard-pushed to find him as he had always been so scrupulous about never writing down his address – though Fanny and Stella, and one or two others, of course, knew where to write to him. No, it would take a very skilled hunter to beard him in his lair.

This terrible business with Fanny and Stella and John and Louis had brought it all back. Everything he had tried to forget, everything he thought he had forgotten. All back with terrible, terrifying clarity. Asleep and awake. Every detail, every sensation played out again and again. Cold sweats. Heart pounding. Nausea in the pit of his stomach. The sensation of having been punched violently in the gut. He trembled at the very thought.

He was barely seventeen the first time it had happened, with that foolish Italian boy. He had naively fallen into the trap. It was all too good to be true and he was surprised when the boy demanded money, and kept demanding money. When he had no money left to give, the boy, true to his word, had gone to the police. Much to his shame and chagrin, he had been very publicly arrested in his father’s house in Wimpole Street, and every servant in the street had talked about it for a year and a day.

Fortunately, he had been acquitted. It was his word against the boy’s. The well-spoken word of a well-educated young gentleman, the son of a respected and respectable judge, against the accusations of a young Italian immigrant who had no business to be here and who seemed to be entangled in all sorts of dubious endeavours.

Mr Charles Ferguson loosened his cravat and poured himself a drink. He had been drinking rather heavily, more heavily than usual, since Fanny and Stella’s arrest, and it was not the first time these past weeks that he had breakfasted upon a glass of whisky or a brandy and soda. It calmed his nerves but clouded his judgement.

Drink had been the cause of his downfall eight years before in the early hours of April Fool’s Day. He was eighteen and had been drinking heavily all evening as he scoured the streets and the public houses of London looking for a man, with a signal lack of success. Sometimes it was like that. You could go for hours with nothing doing. Other times, it was there on a plate, just waiting to be eaten.

Of course, if he had wanted to pay for it, there were any number of Mary-Anns on the pad in the warren of alleys around Leicester Square who would go with him for a few shillings – plump and prosperous Mary-Anns; hungry, desperate Mary-Anns with haggard and drawn faces; handsome, dangerous Mary-Anns who were not real Mary-Anns at all, but ruffians and blackmailers who would rob you as soon as look at you.

But he did not want Mary-Anns that night. He wanted real men, strong men. Soldiers, sailors, porters, working men. Men who smelt like men. Men who fucked women. Men who would treat him as a woman. Men who would make him gamahuche them until he choked. Men who would fuck him. Brutally. No quarter given. And none expected. Men who would make him pay for the privilege.

The night had been an unmitigated disaster. In the early hours of the morning, drunk and exhausted, he had finally admitted defeat and was on his way home to Wimpole Street when he noticed the policeman standing at the top of Weymouth Mews looking at him. Staring him out of countenance. Not another soul was abroad. He may have been drunk but not drunk enough to mistake what it was the policeman wanted. It was obvious. Obvious from the way he spoke to him, obvious from the way he so manifestly adjusted his crotch, obvious from the trembling intensity of his voice. There could be no doubt about it. He could feel it. He could smell it. It was like a great galvanic wave of electricity passing between them. Wordlessly they walked into the sheltering, darkness of Weymouth Mews.

S 
omewhere between three and four o’clock in the morning, Police Constable George White was, he said, walking his regular beat in Weymouth Street, just north of Oxford Circus, when a clean-shaven young man of ‘a rather effeminate appearance’ accosted him.

‘Policeman, I want to speak to you,’ he said.

‘I walked with him to the corner of Weymouth Mews,’ Constable White recalled, ‘which was only a few yards off, and went down.

‘I expected that the prisoner was going to give me some important information about a burglary,’ White continued. ‘Instead of doing so, however, he got his arm around my neck, kissed me, and pinned me against the wall with his left knee. Then he exposed his person and otherwise acted improperly.’

Constable White responded by charging the youth with ‘disgusting conduct’ and said he was going to take him into custody.

According to White’s testimony in court, the boy had looked as if he was about to faint. ‘Oh! pray don’t arrest me!’ he had exclaimed. ‘Have mercy on me; it nearly broke my father’s heart when a charge was made against me on a former occasion. I’m sure it will be the death of him now.’

The young man struggled ineffectually to escape, White claimed, but by now another policeman, Acting Sergeant Edwin Dibdin, had appeared to lend a hand. The young man tried another tack. ‘Come with me to my father’s house in Wimpole Street and he’ll give you twenty pounds apiece and my watch and chain,’ he said in a wheedling, pleading voice. But the bribe was refused – at least according to the testimonies of White and Dibdin – and the terrified boy, white as a sheet, trembling and sobbing, was marched to Marylebone Police Station where he gave his name as Charles Ferguson, aged nineteen, and was formally charged with ‘having indecently exposed himself and trying to incite a Police-Constable to commit an indecent offence’.

Charles Ferguson appeared before Mr Yardley, the magistrate, the next day, whereupon he shamefacedly admitted that his real name was Edward Henry Park, the son of Judge Alexander Park. ‘I am ashamed to say,’ he told Mr Yardley, ‘but I never was more drunk in all my life. I have no recollection of anything that passed.’

It was a clever defence. A young man, blind drunk, larking around, clumsy and stumbling, needs to empty his bladder urgently, exposes his person in front of a passing police constable and accidentally falls upon said police constable. A clever defence which was to fail dismally. Harry Park was committed for trial. With the evidence against him he could expect a hefty prison sentence. Bail was set at the enormous sum of six hundred pounds. But it was a price worth paying, Judge Alexander Park reasoned, if it meant his beloved son’s freedom.

No sooner was Harry released than he forfeited bail and disappeared from the face of the earth, and was to remain disappeared for eight long years.

I 
nspector Thompson permitted himself a rare smile of satisfaction, gazing out of the window of the train as it chugged northwards through a landscape of soot-blackened red-brick factories and chimneys belching forth giant clouds of mephitic vapours.

Thompson had every reason to be satisfied. He had four in the bag, which was not a bad day’s work, all things considered. He knew that dozens, perhaps even hundreds more had been arrested up and down the land, and those who had fled abroad or gone to ground would not dare to flaunt themselves in public again any time soon. He had, as yet, failed to apprehend Cumming and Thomas, but there was plenty of time to turn his attention to those young men. Only Lord Arthur Clinton, the biggest prize of them all, was beyond his reach after conveniently – rather too conveniently, he thought – dropping dead of the scarlet fever.

This one he was after now was by way of a bonus. An unexpected but nevertheless most satisfying catch who had cleverly evaded detection for eight long years. By tomorrow this slippery sod would be safely in custody and, if Inspector Thompson got his way, he would go to prison for a very long time.

Inspector Thompson turned his attention to his travelling companion, who was an altogether unprepossessing specimen. George White looked as if he was in his forties, but was probably younger. He was tall, burly and running to fat now. But eight years ago, when he would have been a little slimmer, a little more upright in his smart police uniform with gleaming buttons, the Margeries and the Mary-Anns must have seen him as a fine figure of a man.

Inspector Thompson did not know, and did not wish to know, exactly what it was that White had done. All he knew was that he had left the police force under a cloud. It must have been something bad because, even under the new broom, corruption was still rife and still tolerated. No doubt White had been stupid or greedy, or both, and got caught red-handed.

It was that one letter, one among many hundreds of letters, that had caught Inspector Thompson’s eye and led him to this forlorn and forgotten corner of Lanarkshire in vigorous pursuit of his prey. It was in a trunkful of papers belonging to Lord Arthur Clinton which the fearsome Miss Ann Empson, Lord Arthur’s splenetic former landlady, had commandeered until the rent was paid in full. Miss Empson was still spitting pins when she got in touch with him and said she had important information about those funny He-She Ladies (though, in
her
humble opinion, they were very far from being ladies).

That one letter had stood out from all the rest:

Dear Stella,

You can easily imagine how dull I am and disinclined to write. I hope you will have much fun tonight and both you and Dan must send me news as soon as is convenient. I left the two ladies a few moments after you departed but met them again at 12. Bob never turned up but Stenney came at 3 o’c. I forgot all about the photos and he never mentioned them – he saw me to the Station. I came from Holytown with George and James Tudthorpe.

Today is Glasgow Fast. I will positively write again soon but at this present I
cannot
,

Love to Fanny

Yours ever

Harry

PS: Of course I have as ever left a few little things behind such as the Glycerine –
that
don’t matter but I cannot find (oh horror!) those filthy photographs nor Louis’s likeness. I do hope they are not lying about your rooms.

No address, no date and signed only ‘Harry’. Inspector Thompson knew that any letter addressed to ‘Stella’ was most likely written by a fellow votary of the Hermaphrodite Clique. The postscript gave the game away: it was obvious what ‘Harry’ meant when he referred to ‘those filthy photographs’. ‘Oh horror!’ indeed. Inspector Thompson was only too painfully aware of the vast trade in indecent and obscene photographs that went on under the very noses of the police, including photographs of the most depraved and disgusting acts of sodomy between men.

Rather more recondite was the reference to ‘Glycerine’. At first sight it seemed innocuous enough, but to any policeman like himself, with a working knowledge of sodomy and sodomites, it spoke scarlet volumes. From plain old-fashioned spittle to cold cream, lard and butter, he knew they needed these lubricating agents in furtherance of their filthy games. Glycerine was the very latest thing, he had been told. It was quite the rage amongst them. He shuddered at the very thought.