Walking in Pimlico (2 page)

It sounded to me like Corney was down for five years’ hard labour. But no use arguing. Gov was so sure that his Constellation
was set to be the Canterbury Hall of the East End that he went deaf, and then went out and bought new duds and a shiny watch and chain, and started wearing gloves and all, and peeling them off and putting them on again till everyone got sick of seeing them. He believed he was the Big Man about Whitechapel now, and no mistake, and if he wasn’t fiddling with his gloves, he was whipping out his watch and chain (all going green of course), or waving his stick around.

He was quiet on the first evening, for there was only half a room full of locals, even though the bill-stickers had been hard at it for days, but after a very few weeks it was much better. And we were too, having grown accustomed to the business. Kitty and Lucy were mostly to the front, having the best figures and not shy, though it was me who did most of the speechifying, and that I gave with as much seriousness as I could muster, and tossed in a wheeze when I could, and would tip the audience a wink. After a few weeks, we were regular in the practice of Judge and Jurying. The Gov’nor would con the papers and come up with some new trial – how many there were, it was truly astonishing! – and we would quickly understand the meat of the argument and turn it into a jape in half an hour. After a few months we were a Judge and Jury what could hold their own, and the Gov said the ‘Great Baron Richardson’ had heard of us and meant to pay us a visit, which seemed to me unlikely, the ‘Great Baron’ having enough on with his own business. And, in truth, he never did come, though he was much looked for, if you know what I mean.

So after all this previousness, I have now arrived at the evening when my whole history, and that of others too, was stood upon its head.

Tuesday.

Not a packed room, but heavy enough with swells, who make a loud noise and cannot hold their drink. But they are heavy spenders
and the Gov, who knew the Fancy all around, had put the word about that our Judge and Jury was worth a visit, and so this out-of-town party, half a dozen swells who was pretty much in their cups, took my notice as I was conning the crowd. They was frisky and handling the girls, though not roughly yet. Now I look out for our girls, although without a doubt they can look out for themselves, Kitty in particular, who had travelled the country with her father’s boxing booth and has smacked a frisky swell more than once when he got over-playful. Not that the other girls were afraid of using elbows and knees when they was required, but it is a fact that swells turn powerful nasty of a sudden, unlike your working man who in general has a slower rise. So I had one eye upon our pack of swells, six or seven in number, who are noisy but not yet wild, and Gov is watching them too, though more concerned about his new tables and chairs, and the half-dozen mirrors he’s put up around the walls only that afternoon.

We commence. Here is our courtroom, presided over by yours truly, a Learned Judge, with my wig and gown. Hammer in one hand, glass in the other, I Address the Assembly, what is the girls, some in gowns and some in breeches, trying to look like blokes, but not intending to do a good job of it!

‘H-I shall co-mmence,’ I always began, and rap my hammer on the block. ‘Tonight we ’ave the case of Lord B and Lady C brought by Countess D who is much dis-tressed. Bring ’em on, Master Clerk.’ And here Bessie, who is wearing a wig what slips over her eye and a clerk’s gown over her down-belows, nips out to fetch Lady C and Countess D who are Kitty and Lucy, of course, dressed up like regular dames, only common, and showing a deal of leg and bosom. They parade up and down a bit and have the swells roaring so well that I have to bang about with my hammer again to get order.

‘Well, Yeronner,’ starts Kitty, trying to look aggrieved, ‘I am
much offended by the behaviour of my ’usband, Lord B. When we was married, ’e promised to keep me ’appy and attend to my every need. ’E said ’e would do anything ’e could to satisfy me.’ (Here she winks – which was my idea – and starts the crowd laughing again.) ‘’E brought me into society, and let me ’ave a go at everything.’ (Laughter.) ‘And I did.’ (More laughter.) ‘’E hintroduced me to Countess D.’ (Here Lucy starts curtseying and showing plenty off.) ‘She learned me a fing or two what I never knew before.’ (And Lucy does a bit more.) ‘And then, Yeronner, ’e took ’er off me.’

This always gets a good laugh, particularly when Kitty and Lucy embrace most passionately. It is here that I have to play the waiting game myself, using all my long experience to know just how long to let ’em embrace before I chime in. I have a long drink and light a pipe before I strike my hammer again and say, in my best Judge’s voice, ‘And what do you ’ave to say, Countess D? Is it true that ’er ’usband took you off ’er?’

Kitty looks about the room, and then gives Lucy one on the lips. Lucy appears much affected and is much inclined to attempt another embrace, but Kitty puts her off.

‘Ho,’ says Kitty, with much h-affectation, ‘Lord B h-only wanted a bit of company. ’E is a gent much troubled by ’is h-affairs.’ (Laughter.) ‘Fings get very ’ard for ’im, and ’e yearns for relief. What h-I give ’im.’ (Uproar.)

Lady C protests. ‘You – flibbertigiblet!’ (Laughter.) ‘What about what you promised me? What about them bonnets what I give you? And them stockin’s?’

I intervene. ‘Yes,’ says I, ‘where is them bonnets? And them stockin’s? Clerk. ’Ave these h-items been brung up as h-evidence?’

Bessie comes prancing in again, holding on her wig with one hand and carrying a small black bonnet and a pair of red stockings in the other.

‘I’ve brung ’em, m’lord,’ she squeaks. ‘Do you want a glim?’ (Not
very clever, I know, but, my word, what roars of laughter it produces!)

And so we go on, with more of the same and, depending upon how enthusiastic the crowd is, we make it short or long. The Chinns play us on and off, and provide an interlude, and it is, as the Gov predicted, a belter. And it is good-humoured, also, with only one gent having a mardy, and Minter, the Gov’s supporter, on hand to show him the way to the door. It is remarkable how poor the gentry are at holding their drink, though they have been brung up on it from the breast, as it were. But God’s creation, as my old father, Mr Figgis, would say, is wonderful in its variety.

So, here am I, fit to burst (having a weakness in the bladder) and hastening out of the side door to relieve myself by the wall. And there, in the passageway between the house and the concert room is a swell and one of our girls, Bessie. He has her agin the wall and is belabouring her good and hard. And she, bless her sweet heart, is dead to the world. I enjoy my moment and breathe in the damp air and contemplate the blank, black wall, putting out of earshot the rasps and gasps of Mr Cocksure, for certain it is no business of mine. But Bessie I am fond of. She is only sixteen (though she looks older on account of her hard life), and I wonder whether this swell will give her what she is due, for he has handled her roughly and I hear her head smack the wall once or twice.

So I says quietly and without looking at either party, ‘Wipe yourself off when you’ve done, Bessie, and get back sharpish,’ and I nod towards the door, and then, turning my eyes away from the swell but letting him know I am addressing him, I say – ‘Don’t be too rough with her, sir. She’s a good girl, and needs her looks.’

He is holding her by the shoulder, flat to the brickwork and her bare arms glow white in the darkness.

His lordship is aggravated by me. ‘What business is it of yours?’ he demands. ‘You her pimp?’

I shake my head and open the door back into the hall, and for a moment all the fug and smoke and noise billows out into the yard in one great grey cloud. ‘Not me, sir,’ says I. ‘But she’s a good girl, and looks well. And deserves her dues, sir.’

He has released Bessie and she is all of a heap, half standing, half crouching against the wall and crying, I think. Or laughing. It is hard to say.

I call out to her, ‘Bessie? You all right, gel?’ and in reply she starts to sing.

‘Here, Corney, listen to this:’

Johnny, John, what a lad
Lips as smooth as a baby
Hips so slim, cheeks so peachy
Wouldn’t you think he’s a lady!

I laugh, though it isn’t so witty. But it touches Bessie, who shrieks with laughter.

‘How much now then, my cocky? How much to keep Corney quiet when I’ve told him?’

‘Tell me what?’ I want to ask her, but her young swell is not amused, and kicks her hard when she cries out. I bite my tongue and debate what I should do, for though I do not like to stand by and see Bessie so ill-used, yet she
is
taunting him and riling him into a temper. Besides, I know that if I interfere and break the young devil’s jaw (as I have a mind to) I will come off the worst, for he will lose me my shop. We both will lose our shops. So I try to hush Bessie, who is crying out that he has broke her leg, and I say to my lord, ‘Since you have used her, sir, perhaps you should have a mind for her? She is a working girl and if you spoil her face, she must starve.’

But this touches a raw spot with him, and he makes a sudden rush at me, stumbling and lurching on the wet stones, and then
sinks to his knees, cursing me for a pimp, which I much resent but leave to the night air.

There is no point trying to reason with a swell in his cups. That is what I told myself. And so concerned was I for my shop – my skin he could have any day – that I left him on his knees, and I know now of course that he was not saying his prayers.

When I got back inside, the Gov was in a rare old state, for our company of swells, having more coin than brains, had put a pile on the counter for another ‘trial’ and he was not inclined to refuse them. But Lucy had made herself scarce, Bessie also, and the Chinns were eating pork and cabbage across the way. So, as I was shutting the door behind me, and thinking of Bessie and her foolish song, Gov was upon me, plucking at my arm and smiling and demanding a favour of me – ‘though I know you is only committed to two trials a night, Corney, but I will see you favourably obliged’ – and, true to you, my wig was upon my head and my hammer in my hand before I could rightly tell him to go to heaven on a string. In fifteen minutes, we gave them Lady M who liked to dress as a boy, and the Mad Italian Countess and the Butler. It was a proper gaff-show, but as most of our audience was, as the hymn book says, beyond all comprehension, it was probably not of much account.

We finished sharpish – for we had been hard at the business some three hours, and even Mr Kean never went on that long – and once again my bladder was giving me a call, so I slipped out the side door and went to my usual post at the grating. The night was chill and damp, and when I put my hand upon the wall that peculiar London slime of soot and wet came off upon it like grease. It was a still night, too, even though we were situate almost direct upon the Whitechapel-road. But we might have been on Richmond Hill so still and silent was the air out the back. Like as if the walls held in the noise, and certain I was musing upon this after I had done relieving myself, when I was brung up with a start.

‘Corney! Corney?’

It was Lucy. I could hear her, but I could not see her, and I looked about me and then saw her shadow by the yard gate.

‘Lucy?’ I cried. ‘What you doin’ out there in the Row?’

And when I walked over I saw it wasn’t Lucy at all, but a gent also relieving himself (as I thought) by the wall, so I tipped my hat and asked his pardon and turned around.

‘I’m here, Corney. Over here!’

I saw her then, in the shadows of the stable, her pale face staring out at me and her beckoning me over. And as I made to cross the yard, it was then that I saw something. A black shape, hard to make out, lying on the ground. I started to go up to it, but Lucy called again.

‘No, Corney. Leave it. Come here. Quick.’

And in truth there was something rum about it that made me do as she said, and I skirted round the edge of the yard, keeping to the shadows, until Lucy grabbed my hand and pulled me into the stable. The smell of her body is what I remember, and how her lips, which were usually the sweetest part of her, were thin as poverty by the light of dark lantern.

I said, ‘Now then, Lucy, you were missed, girl. You shouldn’t nip off like that.’

I expected her to give me a mouthful, but she never, and I thundered on. ‘You out here with company?’

She just shook her head and then she clung to me, as hard as ever she had. But it wasn’t loving. Not at all. Here was a girl frightened.

‘Ah, Corney,’ she said, and her voice shook and her face was pale, like the moon. ‘I have seen such – Oh my! Corney! What have I seen!’

And she begins to weep like she will never stop, but silently and heaving with fear and passion. I don’t shake her hard or bend her ear, but hold her close to me, and continue to hold her until her tears have gone, when she looks up at me with lips trembling.

‘That’s Bessie dead, Corney. And I saw him what done it. The swell what was out here with her.’

She is breathing hard.

‘I saw him do it, Corney. He hit her hard, like this’ – and she raises her fists above her head and brings them down together – ‘on her face. And when she tried to run away and fell to the ground, he kicked her hard. Over and over.’

My mouth goes dry.

‘Corney, he was stamping on her. With the heel of his boot. He was stamping over and over.’

I have a lump in my throat as big as an egg as I look at that black heap lying across the yard, for I know I must go and see for myself. Not that I don’t believe Lucy (for she is as truthful as any working girl), but I must see it. I leave her in the shadows and creep slowly out into the yard. There is a thin wind, the sort that scuffs up the leaves and rattles them around. And it is stirring, now, the edges of the shape which I see more clearly the closer I get. Bessie’s hair, the poor threads of lace around her dress, moved by the cold wind.

I am standing over her and, as the moon comes out from behind the clouds it falls upon her face like a limelight. I push my fist into my mouth to stop myself crying out, and if I never sleep again it will be because I see that face, or no face, before me. So cruelly ruined, there are no eyes, nor cheeks, nor nose, but a terrible confusion of those features together, yet like a sad wheeze from a merry clown, they are framed about with her dark hair, which curls and tumbles like it was made to do. Even her poor hands have not escaped for they are broken and bloody too, and there are great wounds upon her arms and breast. When I feel that I will go mad if I gaze upon her any longer, I stumble back to Lucy, who has covered her face with her hands and started to cry again. I am trembling and feel a knot in my stomach to keep company with the lump in my throat.
But I put an arm about her shoulders and try to steer her back to the house, where a few lights are still burning.