The Petticoat Men (22 page)

Maybe I was mad as well, one of the mad people. I’d been a bit mad to go to the Clerkenwell House of Detention in the middle of the night. The weather was mad certainly, it was so hot now I couldn’t sleep, or maybe it was thinking of Freddie and Ernest and how they had to listen to those – those medical details and Freddie’s kindness to me and his pale face.

Finally one night I got up and crept into Freddie and Ernest’s broken-locked room with my little lamp. I hadn’t touched it since everything happened, though Ma told me to: ‘We have to be able to rent it out, Mattie,’ but I told myself they’d be back, singing up the stairs and coming down in gowns and perfume. But the room stayed silent. And, really, I knew now they wouldn’t be back and singing.

When I went in, it was the saddest room you ever saw. I put the lamp on a table and it looked like a room that had belonged to someone who’d died. Things on the floor, spilled powder, hairpins everywhere, and a bottle half full of something called ‘Crème du Peche’
,
which I opened and breathed in. It smelled a bit peculiar. And a skirt left, and a waistcoat and a half-open portmanteau, some ‘Bloom of Roses’ on the bed, dust everywhere of course. The piano was dusty and silent, I played a few notes very quietly,
which is the fairest gem? Eileen Aroon
,
but the notes sounded lonely. There was a white petticoat, half showing out of the big cupboard, as if there might be somebody there, I stared at it and in the lamplight it didn’t move, just hung there like half a ghost.

I sat there for a while and thought,
cant I do something?
What I really needed to do was find where that Lord Arthur Clinton was, who had been so besotted with Ernest – he was the one who could say it wasn’t Freddie, all this trouble, that it was really all about Ernest. But I didn’t have any idea how to find Lord Arthur, maybe he was staying with his noble family and they were hiding him in an attic and taking him soup. So I had to do something else.

And then, sitting there with their left-over things, I thought of a Plan. I sat there in the shadowy dusty room working it out, thinking of fantastical falsehoods that I could embroider. Like hats. But in the end I decided to keep to the truth, but to tell it so it sounded different – I think I really must’ve seen myself like one of those heroic heroines in novels, those ones who run like the wind.

I picked up my lamp, I saw my own shadow move towards the door. But suddenly I turned back quick –
did something move?

I felt my heart beating. At last I moved to the wardrobe and pushed at the petticoat half showing out of the cupboard, hanging like half a person. Just in case.

Nobody. No ghost flew away. Just a petticoat.

Then I went back to bed. With my Plan.

Next morning very, very early I went in again and I cleaned that room from top to bottom, I got really hot in that mad weather, but I didn’t take any notice of being hot just went on cleaning and polishing, polished the poor silent piano, packed what was left of their things into the portmanteau, including the ghostly petticoat and some ‘Bloom of Roses’. Even the hairpins. I just kept one, a darker one, that Freddie would have used, I put it in my own hair. I arranged for a man down the road to fix the door that Mr Gibbings smashed.

I waited till Ma called out she was going to the market. Billy was long gone but it was still early. I left a note:
Gone to see if I can help Freddie, back soon, dont worry.

I had a wash and dressed in my best gown, and one of my best hats and my Burlington Arcade gloves, oh it was so
hot
,
then I went back to Bow-street, but to the offices round the end of the court.

I hate it when people look at me limping.

He stared at me, the policeman at the desk, but I took no notice.

‘I wish to speak to the Senior Master of the Court of Common Pleas. Mr Park.’

‘Do you indeed, miss. Well you wont find him here,’ and he directed me about and about to other buildings in other streets and I walked in, bold.

I said to the man on the desk, ‘I wish to speak to the Senior Master of the Court of Common Pleas. Please. Mr Park.’

He looked surprised. ‘I dont think he sees people, miss. Have you got some sort of appointment?’

‘No.’

‘Well I dont think it’s possible, miss.’

I’d planned everything of course.

‘I have a note for him that you should deliver. Please very specifically advise him it is about his son. I will wait.’

They knew of course, they all knew about Freddie, there was a certain rustling along the desk where other men were working but listening.

Poor Mr Park, I suddenly thought, everyone reading
Reynolds News
and terrible things about his son. Poor Mr Park.

I handed the man a sealed note and sat down in a leather chair in the hall that was obviously for judges and large gentlemen, my feet hardly touched the ground. I didn’t look at anybody. Out of my basket I took
Oliver Twist
by Mr Dickens, the one my dear Pa had read to us when we were children and I opened it at the beginning and I began to read:
Chapter One:
which treats of the place where Oliver Twist was born, and of the circumstances attending his birth.
There was no air in the big building but I didn’t care, in fact if I fainted all the better.

I read and read and read and I was kept waiting for hours and hours and hours. After a long time I heard my stomach making funny rumbles even though I had eaten some bread before I came. But I just kept on sitting in the leather chair that was too big for me and reading about Oliver Twist asking for more, I decided if anybody tried to move me I would just scream and scream and call for Mr Park. There were high-up windows and beams of hot grey sunlight started coming through them as the sun moved round London, the sunbeams only showed up all the dust swirling around in the stuffy air.

I was hungry
.
Men kept passing, you could tell the clerks from the proper law men, their suits were different and I thought about Billy’s suit, maybe it shows him to be a clerk too and I thought me and Ma should talk about this, Billy being so clever and sometimes seeing Mr Gladstone himself, maybe we should get him to have a very good suit made by a men’s tailor.

Finally after about a hundred years a man came and said, ‘Miss Martha Stacey,’ and I thought,
he’s read my letter, he knows my name
,
and I said, ‘Yes,’ and I looked up. A young man about Freddie’s age.

‘Come this way.’

He walked off and I had to somehow wriggle off the big chair and hurry after him, ungainly, I know, I know. He took me to a small room near by with one small high window and when I went in he closed and locked the door behind him which I found a bit peculiar, locking himself in with a young lady but I always carry hatpins and a sharp stone. But I suppose it was to be private. It was even hotter, even he ran a finger round his neck as if to loose his cravat. But he wasn’t Mr Park and I wasn’t going to talk to him.

‘Now look here,’ he said. ‘Is it money you want?’

He must’ve seen surprise on my face – I hadn’t even thought they would think that – because he said: ‘What are you writing to the Master for?’

‘I have nothing to say to you, Mr Whatever-your-name-is, because you haven’t even had the courtesy to introduce yourself. What I have to say regarding Mr Frederick Park is only to be said to his father.’

The clerk cleared his throat. ‘George Pearce at your service, miss. It would be quite impossible for you to speak to the Master.’

‘Then it will be quite impossible for me to leave this building, Mr George Pearce. Did he read my note?’

‘That I cannot say.’

‘Then I cannot say anything either so I will leave you if you will kindly unlock the door which is by the way no action of a gentleman with a young lady like myself and I may faint from lack of food and air. If the Senior Master of the Court of Common Pleas does not want to hear something which I think would be advantageous regarding his son, he is a bad father and you may tell him so, and so I will bid you good-day and I will wait until the Master shows himself and no, I do not want, or need, money.’

He didn’t unlock the door.

‘If you keep me locked in here I will scream very loudly, at which I am extremely talented.’

He did unlock it then, rather hurriedly. ‘Wait here and I will talk to the Master,’ he said but I could see he was angry. ‘Do not scream.’

And then the rotten man locked the door again, from the outside! All this seemed very illegal to me in what was supposed to be premises of legality. I considered my options including screaming the fact that I was locked in and starving. But at last I sat down under the small high window and began
Chapter XX: wherein Oliver is delivered over to Mr William Sykes.
I knew perfectly well what happens next but I love this book.

I got all the way to
Chapter XXXII:
of the happy life Oliver begins to lead with his kind friends.
That’s how long they made me wait that day. The sun had quite gone, it was a little bit cooler, not much, the dim light was hurting my eyes now and I knew Ma would be worried and probably Billy would be almost home by now, I must have been in the building all day. And I was
so hungry
.

Then I heard the door being unlocked. I was so mad I just sat there reading (well pretending to read). There was a pompous loud
Ahem!
if you can imagine that sound being done pompous. I looked up. Course it was Freddie’s pa, I nearly dropped the book because I could see some of Freddie in him and he was in a very good gentleman’s suit and collar. He closed the door but didn’t lock it. I closed the book and didn’t stand (I didn’t want him to see me ungainly).

He looked at me and I looked at him. His face was like Freddie’s only – different. At first I only saw he was angry at me and I thought I wouldn’t like him to be in charge of my Common Plea (whatever that actually was).

‘What’s this?’ He waved my note.

‘What does it say?’

‘Do not speak like that to me, girl, I know what it says! I want to know why you have come here with it, bothering me.’

Just as well I loved Freddie so much, in fact I loved him even more when I saw the angry face of his father and Freddie so gentle and kind, and sad sometimes. I sat with my hands clasped on
Oliver Twist
.

‘The note says, Mr Park, that Freddie held me in my bed and it is signed
Yours sincerely, Martha Stacey.
I should think you would be pleased to receive a note of that nature, in the circumstances.’

‘How dare you! How dare a – a—’ (he was trying to find the right word to say to me) ‘a chit of a girl from the lower orders speak to me like that! How dare you call my son Frederick
Freddie
!’ His face was red as anything.

‘Mr Park, Freddie calls himself Freddie and as he appears at my house quite often, so do I call him Freddie. It is more useful at this point, surely, than calling him Fanny.’

I thought he might actually hit me then; I saw him restraining himself and his face was even more red and I quickly went on while he was so speechless.

‘I have sat, Mr Park, in these inhospitable premises for almost the whole of this day and I hope your clerk advised you that I do not come for money. I do not need money, Mr Park. I know Freddie intimately’ – I let that word hang there a bit, ha – ‘because my mother and I are the landladies of 13 Wakefield-street where if you have been following your son’s trial you will know he and Ernest Boulton lodged sometimes, and two more pleasant lodgers we have never known. If you visit your imprisoned son, Mr Park – as long as you show him my note first – you may discuss me if you wish. I make no claims on him, upon you, or upon any of your family and I reiterate once more I do not want money. But I believe my intervention in this matter could help your son’s – reputation – in a way, and at a time, that he may most need it.’ (Oh, it was good I’d been reading Mr Dickens all day, I had the swirl of the words, just like him!)

‘Good-day to you, Mr Park.’ And then I did stand up, too bad if he saw.

‘Wait.’ His face was calculating things, I could see. ‘I—’ He cleared his throat in that pompous loud manner again. ‘There has been a gross misunderstanding of my son’s behaviour of course.’

‘Of course.’

And it was then that I at last looked at him more carefully. And then I saw how strained he was, he had that same tic under his eye that I’d seen on Freddie’s face. Of course I didn’t know everything then, but I did feel suddenly sorry, because I understood his face.

‘There are – many lawyers working on his case at this very moment.’

‘I am glad, Mr Park.’

The next words burst out, I dont believe he meant to say them to me.

‘This case will
never
be brought to a trial at the Criminal Court.’

‘Really?’ I sort of gasped in surprise. ‘I’m so glad, Mr Park, to hear you say that.’

He tried to collect himself. But he suddenly looked so frail that I moved the chair I had been sitting on near to him and he did sit down. ‘No, no, by that I mean – there are ways – it will not…’ and then I could see that he recollected that he was talking to a chit of a girl from the lower classes. ‘Thank you, Miss Stacey,’ he forced himself to say, ‘but your “intervention” will not be needed,’ and he stood up again.

‘Oh I am so glad, Mr Park, to know that you feel all will be well,’ and he gave me a funny sharp look to see if I was being rude but of course he could see I wasn’t, I was
glad
, so glad, if he thought there was to be no big trial, wait till I told Ma and Billy. He still stood there, poor old thing, and he looked a little bit more like Freddie. I limped to the door, him looking at me, I know.

He stopped me. ‘In fact, Miss Stacey, I would prefer that you did not say any more to anybody about our conversation today. Or about my son, ever, unless you have to,’ and it couldn’t help sounding as if it was because I was a limping lower-class chit of a girl but I didn’t care.