The Petticoat Men (6 page)

Not that it was his fault I suppose, Mr Gladstone, he was just caught up too, like we were (but all
his
caught-up-ness kept secret of course) and actually he was kind – well I thought he was kind in the way he thought kind, I know this sounds a bit peculiar but I felt – I dunno, I just felt a bit sorry for him when I met him, he seemed – it just felt for a moment when he stood there in the dark that there were deep things that he literally
couldn’t possibly
allow himself to think. So he didn’t.

Still, no one wrote SODOMITE LOVERS on the walls of 10 Downing Street did they?

Our Ma, with her wardrobe connections, had got me trained as a milliner when I was thirteen (in case no one married me, I used to think), which perhaps gives you an idea that I was not the prettiest young lady in London. All right I’ll just get it over with, I’m not ugly or anything but I’ve got something wrong with one of my feet. It doesn’t make me either backward or ugly, so dont think it does, in fact because I’m always looking in the glass to try my hats I know perfectly well I’m pretty – not like Ma used to be, well – well, she’s still beautiful even though she’s old, everyone says so, Freddie told me he thought she was beautiful, so I dont mean I’m like Ma, but I’m a bit pretty, the only thing is I cant run like the wind like heroines do, like Cathy in
Wuthering Heights
, like heroines do in almost all the novels I’ve ever read and I’ve read more novels than most people I’ve ever met once my Pa got me going. But my foot is all that’s wrong with me, got it? And it makes no difference to me, I walk everywhere, I walk and walk, just as well as everybody else, all the time. It dont even hurt most of the time, just maybe gets a little bit swollen and red if I dont stop walking for a bit. But that’s all, got it? and that’s all we’re hearing about my stupid leg. But that’s why I wasn’t just called a whore, but a crippled whore as well and that’s why I’m writing down who we
really
are.

Ernest and Freddie wore my hats sometimes (even paid me sometimes! well, Freddie usually paid for them both of course, and one time another man did, who was visiting). And I’ve got several good customers, they tell each other about me, and I work hard in the right light (Ma always saying to watch my eyes, and she knows because of being a wardrobe mistress). They both, Freddie and Ernest, used to come often and watch me in my room, stare at how I was sewing brims and feathers and flowers, and Hortense having my hats hung on her when they was part-finished.

Freddie and Ernest always said, ‘Greetings, Hortense dear!’ when they came in to try more hats.

‘Why should Mattie have all the fun?’ they said to Ma. ‘Why should
ladies
have all the fun? – all the beautiful, elegant gowns and bustles and bosoms and boots and hats that ladies have, and look at us in our tedious gentlemen’s attire! We were born too late to be dandies!’ and they would laugh and take my half-finished hats and parade in front of the glass – they did it even when they were dressed in their men’s clothes. Ernest in particular was so fascinated by himself – how he could change himself, how much he could look like a woman – he stood in front of the mirror wearing my different hats I was working on and preened himself, turning and posing and staring, fascinated. At himself.

Once, one night late I was still up sewing with Hortense when Ernest came in alone. I heard him fall in the door almost, and I went hurrying down into the hall. His gown was covered in mud and his chignon a bit battered and he did smell a lot of brandy.

‘What’s wrong, Ernest?’

‘I’ve been to the Holborn Casino,’ he said, staggering against the wall. ‘I lost.’

He looked at himself in the glass in the hall and for a moment he made those chirruping noises at himself, like street ladies make when they’re trying to catch attention, and then he fell on the floor. I helped him up the stairs.

‘Where’s Freddie?’

‘Dancing,’ said Ernest giggling. ‘I have no doubt my sister Fanny is dancing her head off!’ He was asleep, well, he passed out, before I got him properly on the bed.

By working really hard when I wasn’t cleaning the house and that, I earned £18/18/4d from my hats in the last year and although Ma panics sometimes because of the past, money
isn’t
one of our worries now, because Billy works at the Houses of Parliament on – listen to this – £90 a year now that he’s a clerk – and when he was promoted to be a clerk from a messenger I made him a silk top hat because clerks have to wear top hats and we laughed, Ma and me, at this new Billy. But he looked so splendid we also nearly cried with pride. And Mr Gladstone’s private secretary with an eye on him.

And we had our tenants – we were almost always full. So poor sad old Mr Flamp not being able to pay his rent was never
going to put us in the workhouse! And though we were just one of hundreds of boarding houses round Kings Cross there was a group of cotton salesmen from the North came back to us over and over, said we were pleasant and clean and reliable. Course the salesmen were always telling us how to run our boarding house better, make more money – some of them had their eye on Ma and the business, that’s what me and Billy used to reckon. Even me, some of them tried.

One of the cotton salesmen, Mr Plunger he was called, used to pinch my bottom in the hallway if I couldn’t get out of his way quick, and one week he presented me with a pretty cotton shawl that I would quite like to have kept (as long as I didn’t have to have him as well). ‘Shall I wear it?’ I asked Ma.

‘What, that Mr Plunger’s shawl? Well’ – she felt it with her fingers – ‘it’s very nice cotton – as long as he doesn’t plunge anywhere near my daughter without her permission!’ and I saw she was glad when I laughed too, I hadn’t been laughing much for a while.

So I wore the shawl once but Mr Plunger thought that immediately meant he could come and sit with us, a bit too close to me, in our little back parlour and look about and comment rudely about our Pa’s Joshua tree and the chairs and why didn’t we have a maid?

‘You need a man to take over here,’ he said. Billy was blooming well right there in the room! and at once I saw Ma starting to ruffle, and then Mr Plunger sort of put his arm round me, you could smell beer and pies, really strong. Ma was wild, for Billy’s sake, and seeing me moving away carefully, trying not to be too rude, from Mr Plunger’s sort of embrace.

But Mr Plunger didn’t know Ma and he went on: ‘I dont mind marrying a cripple.’

I’m used to it, I dont care, who cares, but Ma cannot stand that word:
cripple.
She sat up very straight and made a kind of strangling sound like she does when she’s
really
angry (sometimes she reminds me of that turkey that lives on the other side of Regent-Square) and I looked at Billy and he winked at me very quickly.

‘If you think, Mr Plunger…’ and Ma sort of fluffed herself up, even more like that turkey. ‘If you think you would be lucky enough to marry my beloved daughter and somehow receive 13 Wakefield-street as some sort of
dowry
,
you have made an unfortunate mistake. We have a man in charge thank you and there is no way 13 Wakefield-street will ever have the word Plunger attached! Off you go!’

And off he went and me and Billy was laughing and in the end Ma recovered herself and she joined in too and that was the end of Mr Plunger. And you needn’t think just because there’s something wrong with my foot that I’m all virginal and innocent either, course I’m not, and I’ve been – well never mind about all that, I’ve had an interesting life and I know lots.

And we dont need a maid! We’ve always worked hard, we dont provide meals, just breakfast sometimes if they ask (and always something for Mr Flamp of course) and although we had acquired “Mrs Beeton” like everybody else in London we didn’t use it much, except if we got stomach-ache or something.

And anyway it was Ma herself who decided
not
to let Mr Flamp go. He had lodged with us for ages, permanent, he was a merchant’s clerk until he got too old and then one day after all those years living with us, he came to Ma and me and said, ‘Mrs Stacey, I have looked into my situation and I have planned for the future. I have come to say goodbye.’

And he had packed up all his things in only a little bag and he was wearing his best jacket that he kept neat in the cupboard for special occasions. All his belongings in the world in one small bag.

‘Where are you going, Mr Flamp?’ said Ma, surprised, and he said, very dignified, ‘I’m going to the Christian Mission sit-up, that will be my next home, it is a penny, and I thank you all for your kindness,’ and Ma straightway said, ‘Mr Flamp. You are not going to sit up all night for a penny in the Christian Mission or anywhere else. You’ve been here for years and you know everything about 13 Wakefield-street – we need you here, you are our watchman when we all happen to be away from the house. In fact the truth is, Mr Flamp – we cant manage without you. So you would do us a great favour by agreeing to stay, and your monthly payment, from us to you, is the room – plus five shillings, and I’ll hear no more about it!’

Mr Flamp had a strange look on his old face. We realised it was him trying not to cry. We made him big thick potato soup and put two sausages in it and I helped him hang up his best jacket again.

Ma is the kindest person I know, no matter that she ruffles up sometimes. She’s always kept a little bag of pennies in her cloak, for as long as I can remember, and every time she passes an old lady begging she gives a penny. Always. No one else, well if you gave one penny to all the beggars in London you’d be a beggar yourself but Ma always says to me when she sees an old lady: ‘What was her life, I wonder, Mattie?’ She talks to them quite often and she’s always giving her shawl to someone.

We both clean our house, Ma and me, and do the washing, and I do the front steps and Ma does our cooking and I sew my hats by the window or under a good lamp, and when Billy comes home we all sit in our basement kitchen and tell of our day. Billy so likes his work at the Parliament, specially now that he does the clerical things, he often tells us such funny stories about the goings-on there, how Mr Gladstone speaks very loud, and gets secret letters inside other ordinary envelopes for instance!

‘Who from?’ we said.

‘Spies? Mistresses? I dont know!’ and we all laughed to think of the Prime Minister of England having one or the other.

‘Very nice handwriting, William!’ said Mr William Gladstone to my brother Billy years ago.

‘We’ll get maids when I’m old,’ Ma said firmly when we asked her if she might like to do less, and Billy and me looked at each other and rolled our eyes, she’s fifty now! She made Billy’s shirts too, and pretty gowns for me, and finally we purchased her greatest treasure: a Singer Sewing Machine! We like the clicking hum it makes when the treadle goes up and down – she sews in our little back parlour in the evening sometimes, and on Sundays, and the Singer Sewing Machine hums and clicks, and Billy reads us books or the newspapers, just like our Pa used to.

That’s enough. That’s all you need to know about our life.

Well – that was our life I mean up till that first Sunday in May when we first heard of the arrest of Freddie and Ernest, with Billy reading to us from the
Reynolds News
in our little back parlour.

‘You want to hear a bit about the case from
The
Times
?’
said Billy now to us.

‘We know it’ll sound different, course we do,’ said Ma, sipping her port, only today she wasn’t laughing, she sounded sarcastic.

Decent people may not willingly hear of these things, but a case presenting novel and extraordinary features is sure to be a subject of curiosity to hundreds of thousands, and acquires an importance which may demand some notice.

‘Hundreds of thousands of people?’ I repeated stupidly, not believing this. ‘Reading about Freddie and Ernest do they mean?’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Ma, and she looked quite angry.

In the present day it is impossible to prevent such a case from being discussed by the public at large, and particularly by people who unite a strong appetite for the morbid and sensational with a credulity beyond bounds concerning the malpractices of the classes above them.

‘Now that’s enough!’ said Ma and suddenly the turkey-ruffling started full-tilt. ‘
Credulity beyond bounds concerning the malpractices of the classes above them
indeed! They’re jumping up and down at
The Times
, I know one or two of them hypocrite journalists who work there,
they’re getting excited about Lord Arthur Clinton and who knows who else being involved, “Cant have that,” they’ll say at
The
Times
, I see they dont say his name, but
someone
knows and they’re getting exercised about it! Freddie and Ernest may be “gentlemen” in ladies’ gowns. But Lord Arthur is the Nobility – that’s what’s causing all the excitement, they wont care what happens to Freddie and Ernest, you’ll see,’ and she tightened her lips and she seemed suddenly really furious and do you know what she did then? she took
The
Times
from Billy and stalked down to our kitchen, us following her, and she wrapped bones and rubbish in it, got it all greasy.

‘I suppose Queen Victoria is reading this version, and shaking her royal tiara in horror, as if her children are little darlings – like the Prince of Wales!’ she said, wrapping angrily. ‘Ha! And dont think we’re going to be sitting here next Sunday drinking port and reading gossiping newspapers. Next Sunday we’re going to go and sit with Mrs Portmanteau.’

Billy and I rolled our eyes again but not too much because Ma was still ruffling. Ma loved Sundays in our parlour with our port and our newspapers just as much as we did, and always a lovely stew afterwards and we hadn’t even had it today yet. Mrs P was an old character actress Ma had known at Drury Lane and she was about a hundred years old and
three
omnibus rides away in a sad room in Stockwell.