The Petticoat Men (13 page)

T
HAT
SAME
RUDE
policeman who took their gowns away and put a lock on the door came back again. He had a summons to the Treasury, and then to the Bow-street Magistrates’ Court, and, good, I was the only one home, Ma was at the market with her shopping list and her big basket and visiting who knows what lonely people and soup-ladies, and Billy was at work.

‘Where’s the man who owns the house?’ was the first thing the rude policeman said to me this time.

I fixed him with a very rude look back. ‘I’m one of the owners,’ I said. He looked at me, I was sweeping as it happens and I was blooming hot, the weather was suddenly boiling, and only May.

‘How could someone like you own a house?’ he said. ‘I dont own a house. How come you own a house?’

I just held on to my broom and stared at him.

‘You know it’s an offence to lie to the police,’ he said.

‘I am not lying. I am one of the owners of this house. I own it with my mother and my brother.’

‘Well where’s your brother?’

‘He’s at work. Wont be home till after midnight,’ (well that might be true, he might go observing his hero Mr Gladstone!)

‘Where’s the landlady?’

I made a Plan, very quick. ‘I’m the landlady,’ I said, very firm and sharp. ‘As you can see.’ I was still holding the broom.

‘You look a bit young to be the landlady,’ he said, sarcastic. ‘I expect you’re the maid.’

‘I may look young but I’m not,’ I said. ‘Besides my brother and my mother may own the house with me, but he works elsewhere and has nothing to do with the running of it, and she is very old and she may be the landlady in name, but she’s – well well Ma’s nearly seventy-five, she couldn’t possibly come to Bow-street,’ but I did have a quick look round to make sure Ma wasn’t anywhere near, she might’ve got very ruffled if she heard me say that, well – well she’s
quite
old, she’s turned fifty.

Lucky for me at that very instant one of our regulars Mr Connolly came up to the door with his battered old portmanteau full of different patterns of material for ladies’ gowns and with black smuts from the railway on his face. Mr Connolly always walked from the railway station, he said too many people got their belongings thieved if they parted from them, even for a moment, in an omnibus or a cab.

‘Morning, Mattie, just arrived at Euston. It’s a bit hot!’

‘Good morning, Mr Connolly.’

He took no notice at all of the policeman. ‘Got my room three nights, Mattie?’ he asked me.

‘Yes, I was expecting you, Mr Connolly,’ I said grandly. ‘Come in. The back room first floor, this week,’ and in Mr Connolly went and up to the first floor and I grinned at the policeman, cheeky I suppose.

‘You better watch your step, miss. We’ll close you down if it turns out this is a whorehouse!’

I was so surprised, so shocked, I held on to the broom for support, what if people like Mr Connolly heard them words, and before I could answer him he said: ‘Right, young lady, you’ll appear at the Bow-street Magistrates’ Court on Friday,’ and he handed me a paper. ‘And you’ll come with me right now and make a deposition at the Treasury.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Tell what you know so it can be writ down. It’s the law.’

‘What do you mean,
what I know
?’

‘About this matter of the men and their fancy frocks. Come along now.’

I pulled myself together. I knew I’d better go and see what I could find out so I took Mr Connolly’s money and locked it away, and gave him a room key, and I yelled to Mr Flamp, ‘Mind our house, Mr Flamp! Tell Ma I’ll be back soon!’ and I grabbed my hat and off I went with the surly policeman.

Mind you, Mr Flamp couldn’t save our house from a rat let alone an intruder but funny though it seems, our house was safe usually, too much coming and going for thieves and murderers.

When I got back, having answered all their stupid questions and told them Ernest and Freddie were gentlemen, and ordered to be in the Magistrates’ Court to tell the same, Ma wasn’t back yet and Billy wasn’t home yet.

I sat on our front steps in the warm evening, waiting for them again, like last week when the policeman rushed in and took their things and Mr Amos Gibbings smashed the lock (which was still smashed). I thought about dear, kind Freddie. I thought about what the policeman had said about ‘closing us down’ – this is our house, they cant do anything, well I’m nearly bleeding sure they cant close us down. I thought about what he had asked me and what I had answered. I thought about what I could say to help them. Ma laughs sometimes when she guesses I’m thinking over one of my Plans. I hope she’ll laugh this time, I might not tell her the ‘closing down our house’ bit.

When she came home looking hot I got up from the step and helped her inside with the big basket and gave her a big cup of cold water. ‘Sit down, Ma,’ I said, and then I told her what I’d done, my Plan, that I’d said I was the landlady. I thought she might stop me but she just looked at me, very careful, and then she just said, ‘Are you sure, Mattie?’ and I said, ‘Course I am! I’ve already given my statement to the Treasury, that’s what you have to do apparently, before you go to court. Actually Ma – I, well – well I told them you were a bit old and we had a relative who was like a maid.’

Ma looked very surprised. ‘Whatever did you do all that for? What’s the matter with you, Mattie? It’s foolish to lie to the police if they’re writing it all down.’

‘I wanted them to think I was the landlady and that we were exceedingly respectable, with maids and that.’

Ma laughed instead of ruffling. ‘I am indeed old, you are the landlady partly, and we
are
exceedingly respectable!’

‘The thing is –
I
wanted to give the evidence, Ma,’ I said. ‘I might be able to help Freddie,’ and she just looked at me funny again but she nodded.

‘You’ll hear the questions in court better than me,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be coming with you.’

‘No, I can do it by myself!’

‘I’ll be coming with you,’ said Ma.

I swallowed. ‘Well – well I actually said you were seventy-five so they’d believe I was the landlady.’ I could feel my face, looking ashamed, would she get mad now?

But Ma only shook her head and looked at me, still half laughing. ‘Sometimes I feel seventy-five having you as a daughter!’

Then Billy came home and we told him and he went very quiet. He’s often quiet, too busy thinking about his books we say but this was a funny quietness, and then later he said: ‘I’ll give the evidence of course, Mattie. If you’d like me to. It might be a better idea.’

‘I
want
to do it,’ I said. ‘I want it to be me, I’ve already told them Freddie and Ernest are gentlemen and excellent tenants. I might be able to help them!’ and they thought I didn’t see but Ma and Billy exchanged a little look, I saw it.

‘All right, Mattie,’ said Billy.

10

The evening was so hot, for May.

Mr Gladstone was unable to sleep.

He had already written earlier in the evening to his old school friend the Solicitor-General.

He wrote now, in the middle of the night, to Mr Frederick Ouvry, the lawyer for the Newcastle Estate.

Among his many official duties and long hours in the House of Commons that day, he had seen the Prince of Wales, who reiterated that he did not care to go to Ireland, although that was not the only subject they discussed. Mr Gladstone lay thinking in the warm night; sleep would not come.

Next day, during his long hours in the House of Commons where he made several speeches, and had the usual many gatherings with Members and bishops and businessmen, Mr Gladstone saw His Royal Highness again. There were several official meetings with his cabinet; he also found time to see, privately and unofficially, certain members of his cabinet with whom, like the Solicitor-General, he had been at school and university. There were dinners to be attended and letters to be written and important papers to be read and his diary to keep.

Again, that night, he could not sleep.

11

O
N
F
RIDAY
M
A
and me – it was hot and sticky, peculiar weather for May and I could feel my heart beating a bit fast – went off to the Bow-street Magistrates’ Court, dirty old place it is too, and the first horrible shock was seeing such an enormous, pushing, noisy crowd outside, all laughing and gossiping and eating and obviously they’d got a view of the ‘filthy fellows’ being brought back to court again from the House of Detention, and other witnesses already gone in. A policeman saw I had a witness paper and took my arm and helped me through and some of the crowd stared at me, limping in:
who’s that cripple?
and Ma just turned back and punched the man in the crowd who said that, much to his surprise, and I felt like punching ten people, I was that mad at all the gawping and gossiping. The policeman finally got me inside and Ma slipped in too by pretending she was a witness with me and I thought to go in with her and at least see Freddie and Ernest, but I was told I had to sit on a bench outside the courtroom until it was my turn, all hot and dark and gloomy.

And next to me on the bench, guess who? That big bullying fellow who had looked down my bosom, sweating in the same black and yellow uniform and funny black hat with a gold buckle – that blooming Beadle from Burlington Arcade, and he was so pleased with himself and full of himself (and taking up most of the bench of course) and he couldn’t stop talking and he didn’t remember me at all thank goodness. I sat half on the end of the bench and half on nothing, to get away from his spreading fat bottom.

‘I presume we get paid for coming,’ was the first thing he said to me and then he went on and on about Freddie and Ernest. ‘Course I know them, them two, course I do, I seen about them in the paper, so I went straight down to the police station, I know all them coppers, they’re all friends of mine, and I told them I had evidence to give. Those poncy boys come to the Arcade all done up in their ladies’ clothes trying to catch the passing gentlemen’s attention, vying they are, making trouble with the street
ladies
,’ and he put great emphasis on the word
ladies
to make sure I understood and he kept laughing at his own stories,
ha ha ha!

‘And several of the
real
ladies stroll about my Arcade with my permission, and I make a bit on the side, but not from them two, mind, they was mean as crows, them. Once they ran into a ladies’ stocking shop, they knew I wouldn’t follow there, but me I just waited outside and ejected them from the Arcade as soon as they came out. And another time one of them had the cheek to address me as “
O you sweet little dear
”. So I ejected them again, the dirty buggers. And I writ it down, them words, here they are,’ and he waved a little notebook, read them out slowly: “O You Sweet Little Dear,” which made me want to laugh even in this horrible heart-beating place, ‘and I shall give them in evidence! Not that I’m at the Arcade now, I got fired but I volunteered to come and give evidence in me old uniform, ha ha ha!’

He had two chins and the bottom one wobbled over the collar of his beadle’s jacket.

‘Why were you fired?’ I asked.

‘They say I took drink! Well that’s wrong, I took money, not drink! I bought the drink with the money, ha ha ha!’ and at that moment he was called in: GEORGE SMITH, GEORGE SMITH and I was left by myself on the bench outside. And I couldn’t really hear anything much from inside the court except a bit of laughter, and I did blooming hope it was about Ernest (I bet it
was
Ernest) calling that fat George Smith a sweet little dear.

And then it was me: MARTHA STACEY, MARTHA STACEY and I marched in (well limped in), and there they were at last. My heart really did turn over then – Freddie and Ernest in the dock as if they were criminals, and the most unshaven I’d ever seen them. (In their gentlemen’s clothes so Mr Gibbings must have got them to them eventually, though we hadn’t seen Mr Gibbings since.)

At once I saw that Ernest was enjoying it, he had that look, that special look of his, all coy, but knowing too, and he gave me a little wave and a smile. But Freddie looked grave, and he was pale and he held a pencil and a little notebook for taking notes and every now and then he’d pass one to his lawyer. He nodded very slightly at me and I smiled at him and I only half looked about the crowded hot court and thought,
they know nothing, all these people, specially about Freddie
, and I gave my name and I suddenly wasn’t nervous at all. A gentleman asked me questions quite politely and I tried to answer quite politely back.