The Petticoat Men (5 page)

‘You’re right,’ said Ma, and she downed the red port. ‘I’m foolish,’ (and I saw she took a little look at me, she might be a bit deaf but she knows everything). ‘I was just upset because of our address writ in the paper, and fancy them calling Freddie and Ernest “filthy fellows” when I never knew such pleasant tenants. Well they’ll probably let them out tomorrow, dont fret, Mattie, have another port.’

And she held out the bottle to me and still she looked at me kind of old-fashioned, as if I wasn’t a grown woman. I was still thinking, outraged, of Freddie being called a
filthy fellow.

And Billy, thinking to calm us I suppose, went on to read us all the details of a woman who died after swallowing three sovereigns and a half while running round a kitchen table and when she died a doctor opened her up and said he couldn’t find the money, but everyone said the doctor had pocketed it himself. But I was only half listening. And by the way, dont think I dont know what they’re really talking about when they talk about felony and Freddie and Ernest, I’m not a child and I’m not a fool but I – oh – never mind.

When they first came to us Ernest and Freddie explained carefully to Ma that they already had rooms where they actually
lived
. They would rent a room sometimes for getting ready for work, they might stay overnight just occasionally. They straightway explained that they played women’s parts, so they would be bringing gowns to our house – there was no hiding what they were doing.

Ma, liking theatre people, and seeing they were real gentlemen, even if they were only lads Billy’s age, agreed. (They were a bit – sort of unmanly – specially Ernest who was almost pretty, but we were used to people like that, we’d lived in a theatre for years.) They paid a deposit for one week. And next day we was most impressed when we saw them carrying in their costumes from a hansom cab: gowns, satin and silk, bustles and wigs and boots and bracelets and lockets and ribbons and bows and ladies’ hats.

And they
were
sort-of actors – we have actually seen them acting, both playing women, as they had told – they asked us one night to a theatre show, me and Ma and Billy, we went all the way in a cab that a friend of theirs paid for who travelled with us, and he smoked about seven cigars and I was sick (I got out and spewed past Waterloo). It was in a little hall off Clapham High Street, not a real theatre
,
not really,
but they played sisters, and Ernest – ‘Stella’ he was called – was the Star.

He – she – had several songs he used to sing that the audiences called for again and again – he had a sweet voice and it was like a woman’s voice: ‘Fade Away’
was one song, it was sad, ‘and it’s a bit
mawkish
,’ I said to Ma and she laughed when I came up like that with some new interesting word I’d been reading. But I had a favourite of all Ernest’s songs: that lovely old Irish song, ‘Eileen Aroon’.
Ma and me had heard it sometimes, by St Pancras, sad little evening fires with poor Irish beggars around them, thin and starving, gone from their own country,
who is the fairest gem? Eileen Aroon
, their voices longing and sad, breaking with the words in that way the Irish have with their songs.
Ernest sang it just – simple. It was beautiful and I used to listen to that song and think about how it must be, to be the fairest gem, and be always remembered, like Eileen Aroon.

And Freddie, he was called ‘Fanny’ on stage, and well he did look like a woman too, but sort of not the main one, not with pretty Stella there singing away. Freddie’s face was funny and kind and I often thought he looked like a man
or
a woman, he just looked like Freddie, whatever he was wearing. They weren’t
real
actors, like at Drury Lane or the Haymarket, but their gowns swished and shimmered and Ma’s a good judge and she thought they did well and looked lovely, and me and Billy did too, what I mean is we didn’t think there was anything cheap, it was amateur but it wasn’t laughable on the little stage at Clapham, it was better than that.

And that night at Clapham was the first time we clapped our eyes on a particular man who turned out to be Lord Arthur Clinton. He was there with a very elegant, pretty lady and they clapped and laughed together and they both talked and laughed with Ernest afterwards, and later Ernest told us who the man was.

‘
Lord
Arthur Clinton,’ he had said, ‘and that was his sister with him,
Lady
Susan – and he introduced me!’ And Ernest looked under his eyelashes in that coy way he had, and smoothed his hair fussily, pleased as anything and sort of quivering with excitement as he leaned towards us confidentially.

‘She’s a widow, her husband was insane and now she is a mistress of the Prince of Wales actually.’ Smoothing his hair again and looking at us again from under his eyelashes, so pleased to think of himself as so nearly connected to Royalty.

But even though we’d seen them sort of on stage we’d always known, like I said, that they weren’t real actors in real
theatres like Ma and Pa worked in back in the olden golden days. And yes, we knew that they did parade about a bit sometimes, as women. But I thought it was just for the fun of it and not doing any harm.

From the very beginning of meeting them you could see: Freddie loved Ernest, really loved him. I dont mean like couples kissing – I mean real loving – they could kiss all day for all I care, but it wasn’t like that. Freddie always – well – well what he did was always look to see that Ernest was all right. Over time we all saw that Ernest – who was the ‘star’ of their act, no doubt about it – was really spoiled. Once, when Ernest was flouncing off down the stairs and sulking and looking from under his eyelashes at us and calling up the stairs to Freddie, ‘
I need some money NOW!
’ and slamming the front door – that was the time Ma said, ‘I’d like to meet that boy’s mother! I warrant she has a lot to answer for, he’s a blooming little minx, Ernest is.’

But later he came back and we heard them laughing and then his sweet voice drifting down to us:

Be it ever so humble

There’s no place like home

and even Ma could hear it, so clear and sweet it was as it came down the stairs, and she shook her head and smiled.

I suppose… well what do I suppose? I suppose – that Ernest must have been an exciting person to love: he was the star, he had the beautiful voice, he was – I suppose people would say – ‘enticing’ – you just couldn’t help but see he’s really pretty when he’s all dressed up, no wonder people fell for him. In fact when he was dressed as a man, people often thought he was a woman trying to look like a man! Now there’s a true conundrum! Ernest’s too pretty for a man. When they booked a room he would arrive from the barber and the hairdresser – always very polite – ‘Evening, Mrs Stacey, evening, Mattie, evening, Billy,’ and even occasionally: ‘How are you, Mattie?’ but not very often for Ernest was more interested in how’s himself than how we are! When I think about Ernest he reminds me of – I’m thinking now, trying to get exactly the right description. What I am trying to say is that Ernest is very pretty, but he reminds me sometimes of a beautiful cat, one of those ones stretched out in the sunshine – but it might suddenly scratch your eyes.

I noticed something about Ernest. He didn’t like to be touched, he always drew away if anybody put an arm on him, or an arm about him, in a friendly way. As if other people were – distasteful. I felt sorry for Freddie because it was often Freddie who put out an arm, and then drew it away again, or had it shrugged off. But I saw Ernest move away quickly from others too, not just Freddie. Ernest liked himself best.

And Freddie. Well – well he’s a young man who’s the same age as my brother, and who’s got a funny warm face whether he’s dressed as a man or a woman – well, to me he’s always Freddie whatever clothes he’s wearing, he’s a kind lovely man.

I dont think they were – well – look, I’ve already said, I’m not stupid and I know there’s all kinds of love and people who pretend not have got their eyes closed and how do I know if they loved each other like that, I dont know how it all works. It doesn’t matter. You meet all sorts in the theatre, my Ma and Pa knew some very strange people and we’ve had some very strange tenants in Wakefield-street, one man had a pet bumblebee, it was bright-striped, yellow and black, and he bought chocolate for it and talked to it and cried when it died in the bottle he kept it in, poor lonely man. But maybe, in the end, Freddie and Ernest were the strangest. And maybe once they had been – beloveds – for all I know or care or understand but all I know is Freddie loved Ernest.

I know Ernest actually lived, for some time anyway, with that Lord, that Lord Arthur Clinton. After that performance in Clapham where we’d seen him with his pretty sister, Lord Arthur used to visit our house occasionally (he was the first Lord I ever met, and a bit scrawny I thought). And Ernest couldn’t help it I suppose, he always said, ‘This is
Lord
Arthur Clinton,’ very proud and coy, he just couldn’t help stressing the title, ‘
Lord
Arthur Clinton,’ and do you know our Ma said to him one day, ‘Where’s your mother living now, Lord Arthur?’ and Lord Arthur gave her a really, really funny look and said very grandly and imperiously – as if she hadn’t the right to address him at all, even if he was inside our house – ‘My mother lives in Paris.’

And Ma said: ‘I met your mother many years ago, Lord Arthur. I worked at the Drury Lane Theatre. She came backstage one evening to meet one of the actresses. Your mother was a lovely and charming woman.’

Lord Arthur looked so surprised. But, for just a moment, pleased in a funny lonely way, or it seemed like that.

When Billy met him, another time he was at our house, Billy said: ‘Lord Arthur, weren’t you the Member of Parliament for Newark?’ straight up, the way Billy always is. ‘Before the last election I mean? I know you’re not there any more but I work in the Parliament and I used to see you sometimes.’

Billy’s a clerk at the Palace of Westminster, he got promoted from a messenger because he’s so clever, he’s been there since he was thirteen, he’s twenty-three now, knows all the Members, he reads absolutely everything to do with Parliament, he’s like a Parliament fiend, Ma and I tease him. Now Billy actually works sometimes in the Prime Minister’s office, calm as anything about it he is. When suddenly more clerks are briefly needed for some reason Mr Gladstone’s office – not Mr Gladstone himself of course, but his office – often calls for Billy.

‘I used to see you in the Parliament,’ said Billy again to Lord Arthur.

Lord Arthur looked again a bit thrown, not to say a bit annoyed, all this impertinent questioning from our family every time he crossed the threshold! – I suppose they’re more respectful in the upper echelons (I read
echelons
in a book lately and asked Billy what it meant) – and again Lord Arthur nodded rather regally (except like I said he wasn’t really a very regal-looking person, a bit small and bald me and Ma thought) but really, all he could do, Lord Arthur I mean, was moon and spoon over Ernest. He loved Ernest too, but in a quite different way, he was
smitten
,
anyone could see. He was
berserk with love!
was what me and Ma used to say. That naughty Ernest could wind Lord Arthur Pelham Clinton (that was his whole name) around his little finger, Ernest held all the cards, it was clear.

Except money.

Then after Lord Arthur was made bankrupt we never saw him in our house again. Ages ago. (And if anyone had told that me and Billy would see him again, would be shut up with him, just us, in a tiny secret room, we would have told them to go back to Bedlam with such an unlikely story.)

Ernest and Freddie and their visitors never made a really spectacular noise or anything disturbing, they laughed loud, and sang a lot but – well, well not raucous and rowdy. There’s a little piano in that upstairs room they usually took if it was free, that piano was there when we came and I learned to play it and dont ask me how it was got up to the first floor! I like to think of the previous owners huffing and puffing up and trying to carry it round corners on the narrow stairs, we couldn’t imagine we’d ever get it down again. Me and Ma and Billy really enjoyed all the singing and laughing wafting down the stairs, even if one of the tenants in the room below, Mr Crosby, a salesman from Manchester, got cross. But he died (Mr Crosby I mean) so that’s why he was cross I expect.

And then they’d go out, Ernest and Freddie, appearing in their gowns just like actresses going on stage, with maybe a gentleman escort waiting with a hansom or a cabriolet and they’d float out on a cloud of scents and powders (and gin, they had bottles in their room – sometimes brandy, sometimes gin), pulling on their gloves and patting their hair and adjusting their bracelets and necklaces – and always laughing and excited. I used to think the row of gowns hanging in their room made it like a theatre dressing room – a bit perspiration-smelling and a few grubby bits close up, and unwanted or dirty clothes just thrown careless into a portmanteau and just left there! but when they appeared all dressed up and perfumed they always looked lovely in the soft lamplight.

Ernest and Lord Arthur used to live together in various different places before Lord Arthur got bankrupt. I think Freddie still lives by himself in Bruton-street.

By himself.

I think.

All families have their own stories, but that’s their business. Even, so it turned out, the Prime Minister Mr Gladstone has got his own stories just like we have, that are his own business, that he’d prefer to keep to himself. The Stacey family of 13 Wakefield-street – us I mean, me and Ma and Billy – we would have gone along, our own lives our own business – if Freddie and Ernest hadn’t come to our house and made their story partly in our house, ‘the seedy headquarters of criminal activity: 13 Wakefield-street’. ‘Run by that prostitute,’ people said (meaning me). And can you believe people came and hung around our house and
stared
? we would see them outside as the story went on, and sometimes things got writ on our walls, how would you like that on your house that you loved? SODOMITE LOVERS they wrote, no one wrote on the walls of 10 Downing Street did they?