The Petticoat Men (14 page)

‘My name is Martha Stacey, I live at 13 Wakefield-street, Regent-Square. I live there with my mother and my brother. I am the landlady.’

‘Do you have any children, Mrs Stacey?’

That punched me. I couldn’t help it, I looked at Freddie. And even in his own troubles I saw his kind face straightway look back at me, as if he was saying,
I know, Mattie
, helping me to answer.

‘No children,’ I said.

‘How long have Mr Boulton and Mr Park rented a room from you?’

‘The gentlemen first took lodgings with us – oh – more than a year ago. Sometimes they kept the rooms for a good few days, and sometimes just a night.’

‘How were they dressed when they took the room?’

‘Of course they came dressed as gentlemen. They are gentlemen.’

‘Did you see them also dressed as females?’

‘Course, they explained they were actors, we knew they dressed up as women for the purpose of performance and I have seen them acting.’

‘You have seen them perform upon the stage?’

‘I have and they were very good!’

There was some clapping in the court much to my surprise and Mr Flowers banged on the bench but Ernest was smiling at the applause and bowing and even Freddie was smiling, looking down at his hands.

‘Did you understand they had lodgings elsewhere?’

‘Yes, they lived elsewhere.’

‘Did they receive visitors at Wakefield-street?’

‘Sometimes other gentlemen came. But always very respectable and quiet. Some friends of theirs also took rooms with us sometimes. Mr Amos Gibbings who broke down the door after your rude policeman put a padlock on it, he sometimes took a room too. Sometimes they all dressed as ladies before they left.’

‘Did Boulton and Park sometimes sleep the night at the house?’

‘Occasionally, if they came in late.’

‘But it was not their main place of abode?’

‘I
told
you that already.’

‘Were they ever troublesome?’

‘Course not. They were good tenants, pleasant. And’ – I wanted to look at Freddie again but I did not – ‘very kind. And they always behaved in our house with propriety.’ I took a breath. ‘The only troublesomeness in our house was when the policeman came and took their clothes and put a lock on the door of the room that I am supposed to keep clean!’

‘Thank you, Mrs Stacey,’ said the man politely. ‘That is all.’

It was only then as I turned to get down from the witness box that I properly realised the boiling hot dirty old Magistrates’ Court was crowded with very well-dressed people, society people, people from the theatre, all leaning forward and then talking among themselves, and then I nearly laughed because I saw – guess who? – that actress from the play where the door stuck! It was a bit hard to get down with my rotten leg and I was looking for Ma but I was quickly offered a seat, I squashed in on the end of a row near by, next to a rather beautiful fashionable lady who smiled at me and made room.

‘Good girl,’ she said, as if I was a child.

The magistrate was called Mr Flowers and he looked to be a kind man.

The man who had been with them when they were arrested who was given bail, Mr Hugh Mundell, told his story. He said he’d only met Ernest and Freddie recently. The first time he met them they were dressed as men, but he believed they were really women dressing up.

‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I gave them some hints about being more like men if they were going to dress up, using their arms more when they walked, like men do.’

There was very much laughter in court and Mr Flowers said dryly: ‘Thank you, Mr Mundell.’ And then Mr Flowers said, ‘Somebody earlier used the expression
going about in drag
. Can someone please explain that expression to me?’

One of the barristers said very gravely (because there was a mighty lot of twittering and tittering in court it seemed to me), ‘The term
drag
is a slang term employed in certain circles to mean men wearing women’s clothes.’

‘Why is that? I understood a drag to be a four-wheeled vehicle.’

‘I believe it is something to do with the brakes of such a vehicle, Mr Flowers, that is, the brakes slowing the vehicle, dragging things along, say like the train of a lady’s gown slowing a person’s movement, as it were.’

His language was very inelegant and he got very muddled-sounding and the court laughed at him, but Mr Flowers nodded and said, ‘Thank you, sir, for your elucidation,’ and the naughty crowd clapped and it seemed from all the whispering in the audience that Mr Flowers was about to give Ernest and Freddie bail at least, for they’d already been in custody for more than a week. I was suddenly so nervous for them I could hardly breathe even though I hadn’t been nervous when I was answering the questions. But a short man stood up urgently. This was Mr Poland, he was the main prosecutor.

‘Mr Flowers, I am afraid there is much,
much
worse to come. I would urge you still not, at this stage, to allow the prisoners bail.’

But there was immediately a sort of hiss in the court, as if all the fashionable people and the actors didn’t agree. I looked at Freddie then and I swear he went paler. Even Ernest looked thrown at last and I realised they had completely expected to be released today.

Mr Poland said: ‘It was not just female attire that was removed from the room in 13 Wakefield-street, and other rooms around London, Mr Flowers. There were also photographs. And, most importantly’ – and he sounded really blooming triumphant – ‘there were letters that are going to be extremely important evidence in this case.’

‘What do you mean, letters? What sort of letters?’

‘I mean letters to and from the prisoners that will make your hair stand upended.’

As Mr Flowers was bald there was some more laughter in the court but it was nervous laughter now. Then Mr Poland went and whispered to Mr Flowers. The court was very quiet. Whispering and whispering between those two and at one moment I thought they was looking at me.

‘Very well, Mr Poland. Very well.’

Mr Flowers thought for a while and took his watch from his waistcoat and his eyebrows were frowning and then he addressed the audience (well it seemed like an audience in a play).

‘I have been given information that makes me think that although this matter has been taking some time it would be best if I ruled that the prisoners be remanded further in custody, at least overnight, and I will call the court again tomorrow. I hereby recall Martha Stacey to return again then for further questioning. Return the prisoners.’

Just like that. And Mr Flowers went out a side door, and those policemen went and escorted Ernest and Freddie out, Ernest was waving and smiling at the fashionable people but Freddie passed me on the end of my row, and stopped and gave me a little smile, and shook my hand briefly and I put my hand over his, didn’t care who saw.

‘See you tomorrow then, Mattie,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I expect we’ll surely be released tomorrow,’ but I saw a queer little twitching under his right eye and he gave a sad little shrug of his shoulders, oh, I so wanted to give him a big hug.

When we all piled out of that hot dirty old room it seemed that there were blooming hundreds and hundreds more people outside and we saw Ernest and Freddie being put into a van and the driver got up and cracked his whip and they were driven away and people banged on the van and yelled and some of them yelled out, ‘Filthy fellows!’ And some of them cheered.

And Ma took my arm and said, ‘Well done, dearie, you did well, shame you have to go back tomorrow.’

‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I know how to do it now! I cant tell them anything else anyway. And surely they’ll get out tomorrow.’
And I’ll see Freddie again,
I thought.

Ma said, ‘Shall we take an omnibus?’ but I wanted to walk, and I knew so did she, after this peculiar day, and Freddie and Ernest taken off in a van like criminals.

‘Where are they being taken?’ I asked my Ma.

‘I expect they are going back to the House of Detention in Clerkenwell,’ she said and I thought how queer and cold that sounded. Ma keeping to my pace we walked in silence, arm in arm as the strange, warm evening fell and gaslights shone into the smoky dusk that is London.

‘Ma,’ I said at last, ‘that policeman said he could “close us down”.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘If we were a whorehouse, that’s what he said.’

And my Ma stopped sharp in the street and ruffled as big as any turkey ever seen in Regent-Square.

‘It is our house, Mattie. It
belongs
to us!’

‘Lucky we knew Mr Rowbottom, Ma.’

‘We’ve got the papers. It belongs to me and you and Billy. And it is not a whorehouse, and over my dead body will anyone say what we can or cannot do inside our own house, bleeding cheek!’

And then, just as quick, she ruffled down again and took my arm again and we walked on. Back to Billy who’d come home as early as he could and was boiling us some sausages and waiting to hear what had happened, and to 13 Wakefield-street our home, which suddenly was in all the newspapers.

12

While the business of the Gentlemen in Female Attire was proceeding, and reported in the newspapers, Mr Gladstone was confined to his bed in Carlton House Terrace with one of his rare bouts of complete nervous exhaustion. Normally a robust and healthy man, he had to be away from Parliament for several days on doctor’s orders.

He turned in his hot bed. He listened to the eternal passing of carriage wheels. And the voices of caring women, instead of the voices of ruling men.

These nervous turns came at moments of great stress in his life, and of course there were indeed many things to stress him. The Education Bill that meant so much to him and the planning of the best ways to instruct religion in the rate-provided schools. The immense and complicated difficulties of the Irish Land Bill. Presiding over the whole of the British Empire in the way he knew best; the colonies were, as he said so often, one of the best means of advancing and diffusing civilisation by creating so many happy Englands, where the Anglican Church at its highest, and the Anglo-Saxon race, could plant a society of Englishmen. Dealing with Her Majesty the Queen, the most difficult woman he had ever known in his life. Long hours of attendance in the House of Commons. Letters, meetings, dinners. And the diary he kept, briefly noting most – but not all – of his actions, his letter-writing, his state of health, his meetings: recorded for posterity.

But there were other matters on his mind also, when he briefly noted in the diary that he was confined to his bed by his doctor as the horses and carriages clattered by in the uncomfortably warm May darkness.

13

S
O
BACK
TO
the court I went next morning, Saturday, it was a lovely May day, spring that felt like summer and you could see the sunshine clean and clear for once, not all foggy and cloudy. There were flowers in strange places – bright yellow dandelions in the cracks of the pavements that looked as if they were smiling, like good omens, and I wondered if Freddie and Ernest could see a flower, well surely there was a little window in the House of Detention and they could see the sunshine at least. And today it would probably be over and they could see all the flowers and sunshine they wanted. Ma and me again pushed past all the waiting loud crowds with our piece of paper, Ma squeezing my arm before she melted into the audience (yes, yes, I know it isn’t an audience, but that’s what it
feels
like, up there in the box thing).

And there I was standing up there in the dark old stuffy court again, and there was Mr Flowers, and there were Freddie and Ernest in their place, and I could clearly see they both had not shaved again. Freddie was passing a note to his solicitor; he was a law clerk after all, and he probably knew very much about the law with all those legal people in his family that he’d told me of. I so hoped that today would be the end of all this and our life could go on as usual and Freddie and Ernest and their gowns and their music often in our house. I wanted it like it used to be.