The Petticoat Men (53 page)

Isabella Stacey saw the honour, if not the truth, in this. Elijah anyway would get his old position back. Now it was she who nodded, and put out her hand graciously. ‘Thank you, Mrs Gladstone,’ she said. ‘This is an encounter I will certainly remember always.’

‘I shall remember it also,’ said the wife of the Prime Minister of England. ‘May I keep the handkerchief?’

It had remained in her hand while they talked.

‘I’ll be glad to know that you have it,’ said Isabella Stacey.

53

Today they were in Whitehall at the home belonging to the discreet friend as his available time was very short.

They never spoke of Arthur. But she believed he had been in some way involved in the way the trial had ended so quietly and so quickly, with her brother spoken of so respectfully, and she had rewarded him for his kindness in this matter in the ways that she knew pleased him.

She had been holding back from telling him her news. She knew he would be out of London for most of August as absolutely everybody would be; this perhaps was the time to advise him of her condition, for it was now indeed advanced; she thought he might even have noticed. She waited till he was relaxed and mellow: a last cigar, his arm lightly resting on her breast before he returned to Marlborough House to prepare for the evening’s entertainment. The late-afternoon sun of high summer slanted across the borrowed bed that supported their noble forms.

‘Your Royal Highness.’ She stroked his royal face. ‘I shall miss you while you are gone, and I adore you as I have done since you were ten years old!’ He smiled lazily at this woman who had known him always, and moved his hand slightly across her breast.

‘Your Royal Highness. I have found that I am – with child.’

His relaxed, gentle, loving demeanour changed in one single, absolute instant. He removed his arm and sat up.

‘Go to Dr Clayton now.’

‘I will, sir, of course.’

His face was red with immediate anger. ‘This is most inconsiderate and inconvenient, Susan. You know that.’

‘Of course.’

‘How long have you known?’ For a moment he looked carefully, but already with distaste, at her body. ‘Is it advanced, and you did not tell me?’

‘I – I have not been certain.’

He angrily fastened his garments, gesturing to her to assist him. ‘Go to Dr Clayton and deal with it at once, this evening. – and do not under any circumstances come to Marlborough House. I do not know this. I have no knowledge of it. It is nothing at all to do with me. Only you and Dr Clayton will be involved – not one other person.’

She dealt with his buttons. ‘Of course.’

The cigar was already stamped out on the carpet on the floor of the discreet friend’s bedroom, a sign of terrible displeasure indeed.

‘I am going away,’ he said, averting his eyes from her still partially naked body. ‘It is your responsibility. I expect it to be dealt with.’

‘But – my dearest sir – just one warm word from you! We are such friends – you are always so kind.’

And it was true that he was kind, many said so, and he had been kind to her a hundred times.

But he was also the Prince of Wales and the heir to Queen Victoria. One day he would be King. Lady Susan could not have chosen a worse time to reveal her condition; she knew many of his secrets but she was not aware, as he was, that his private secretaries were already trying to deal with a dangerous blackmail attempt from his adventures in Europe. And now this. Public scandal was to be avoided at all cost.

The cost of this would, of course, be Susan.

‘Susan. The public humiliation of my being called in the Mordaunt divorce case last year cannot
under
any circumstances
be repeated. I was booed and shouted at, at the races, damn them! Booed by my own subjects! – my own one-day subjects if my mother ever leaves this earth, which is sometimes doubtful. Your idiotic, stupid, impecunious, sodomite brother is gone but not forgotten –
never
,
ever
can there be
any hint
of any scandalous connection between Arthur Clinton’s sister and myself! You have always known that, always!’

He saw her devastated, disbelieving face.

‘But – I am not my brother. I am not Harriet Mordaunt, Your Royal Highness. I am myself.’

He kissed her cheek very briefly. ‘I know. And you will deal with it, I know. You are not the daughter of the Duke of Newcastle for nothing. You are one of us.’

And he was gone.

Lady Susan Vane-Tempest emerged alone some time later from the premises in Whitehall. A carriage was waiting for the extremely pale – nay, trembling – lady. She sat back, hidden, as the carriage delivered her through the busy central London traffic, to her home in Chapel-street.

She knew it was now too late for anything to be safely arranged by the pomade-scented Dr Clayton or anybody else.

That is what she had done.

54

S
CRUBBING
THE
STEPS
in early autumn was still scrubbing, but the mornings were only crisp not cold, and sometimes a bit of cloudy sun still, and it wasn’t so hard for my hands like in dark winter when I had big chilblains and sores under the mittens Ma knitted me. And I always made our steps really really clean and we didn’t get no words like SODOMITE LOVERS writ the second time, so 13 Wakefield-street even if it couldn’t ever be quite respectable again, could be very, very clean.

And I was singing actually.

A jolly shoemaker, John Hobbs, John Hobbs

A jolly shoemaker was he

He’d married Jane Carter, no damsel looked smarter

But he’d caught a tartar, yes he’d caught a tartar…

I was singing because I was happy. Because Mr Tom Dent of Mr Lewis and Lewis obviously didn’t find 13 Wakefield-street like a bordello and didn’t seem to care that I limped and – he’s been
courting
me. And he’s so nice and so clever and so dear, and it is the loveliest feeling and we’ve even been reading
Moby Dick
to each other, what a hard book! But wonderful too and we talk about it as we read along. And Ma likes him and Tom and Billy talk about laws and voting and the Parliament, you should hear them! And Tom holds my hand.

I got a big surprise at the pair of feet that came up to me scrubbing this singing day, it’s funny seeing feet and judging who they belong to – these were neat and smallish and Ernest.

‘Hello, Mattie.’

Because almost
always
he’d been with Freddie (except that night coming home inebriated from the Holborn Casino) it was almost odd to see him by himself. ‘Hello, Ernest. Welcome to the Bordello of Wakefield-street,’ but I was smiling and just teasing.

He was still pretty, but was in gentlemen’s clothes of course and not even a cutaway jacket. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute?’ he said politely.

Getting up from scrubbing is that hard thing, because of the steps, I remembered Freddie helping me up once or twice. I remembered Mackie helping me up when he first arrived, and Tom Dent the very first time he came. But Ernest didn’t think like that, he waited for me to get up, looking about Wakefield-street, wondering if people were staring at him I suppose.

‘Ma’s not home.’

‘Then she will not rebuke me!’ He was only half joking.

‘Do you want tea?’ I said as we went into the hall.

‘No, no we dont need to go down there, let’s just sit in your little parlour. Who’s here? Where’s that man with the beard?’

‘He comes and he goes.’

He does too, Mackie, and he insists on paying rent still even though Ma doesn’t want him to pay anything at all. But he and Ma have the big front room downstairs now that Dodo and Elijah have gone, Mackie painted it blue like the sea.

Ernest came into the parlour, saw the piano at once, sat at the piano stool, ran his fingers over the keys. ‘Where’s that old lady who used to be in the music halls?’

‘They got their rooms back in the Parliament, Elijah, that was her husband, is the Head Doorkeeper again.’

‘Because of our acquittal.’

‘Maybe.’

He looked quite pleased and proud. Of course we knew it was because of Ma’s visit to Mrs Gladstone but I didn’t tell him that. Dodo and Elijah had worried we might not be able to manage if they left but we all laughed, ‘We always manage,’ we said and we helped them – even kind Billy came with us, came back at last, to his once beloved workplace, the Houses of Parliament – to settle them back into that dear dark little place under the scurrying floors of the government, the red was still on the walls, and we put up the red curtains me and Ma had made and the bedcover on the bed, and we scrubbed and scrubbed till the smell of the other people was gone and Billy and Mackie painted another big table from the market red and Elijah was welcomed back by so many people like a blooming hero! And Dodo told us she missed us, but she felt happy because she had got the real Elijah back.

And you know what? We knew a way to get into the Parliament now, if we sent Elijah a message first, through some dark alleys and a small door left unlocked, and down some corridors and sometimes we went and had cake and gossip and heard the rumbling of the drains in the basement. But we did miss them, although we all got a bit thinner.

‘Mattie,’ said Ernest now, ‘there were a few of our things left here I think. Maybe a gown or two?’

‘Oh – well, well I dont think there’s much, Ernest, well, you know the policeman took most, even your old ones. A few skirts maybe, and a petticoat and some hairpins and some “Bloom of Roses”. And a corset I think. I packed them up in one of your little bags. But that was – ages and ages ago!’ (And I had a sudden flash of memory of all the sad packed-up dresses the rude policeman took, laid out in the courtroom months and months later. Freddie’s discarded yellow dress covered in my blood.)

Then I realised what he was asking and looked at him in amazement. ‘Are you going to dress up again? You’re mad!’

Ernest tossed his head, that way he had. ‘I’m an actor. An actress. I’m famous – that’s what brings in audiences. I’m going on tour. I shall go about the country—’

‘With Freddie?’

‘No, not with Freddie. He is no longer interested he says. He was always best at character parts, and so now he is wearing his Matron’s costume—’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘He’s become all sombre and spends most of his time’ – here Ernest almost shuddered – ‘in
Isleworth
!’

‘With his family?’

‘With his unfortunate family certainly. His father is very ill. And his brother – poor dear Harry, who was
such
fun and deeply naughty, is also ill after his incarceration – mind you, a year on that treadmill and I should not have been merely ill, I should have died! Oh – he was simply made to be a nurse, Freddie!’ (And I saw him, half-carrying me, not minding the blood, that night.)

Ernest smoothed his hair. ‘However, as I say, I have decided to take to the boards again, there are plenty who will be glad to perform with me for I shall draw crowds and we shall make money. A girl has to live, Mattie!’ But I saw it was true: what else could Ernest Boulton do? ‘I have already advertised for a leading man and I have hopes of great success.’

‘Come upstairs,’ I said.

The portmanteau was in the back of a cupboard in my room where it had been for months and months.

‘Hello, Hortense!’ said Ernest and he took the half-finished hat from her head and twirled about my room for a moment, wearing it, looking at himself in the mirror. The portmanteau wasn’t locked, I dusted the top, I could feel Ernest was excited and hopeful, and then we opened it up, again a little echo from the sad clothes in the courtroom. We found that white petticoat, a man’s waistcoat, a rather dirty blue skirt, two opened boxes of ‘Bloom of Roses’, a tarnished bangle. A pair of boots. And there was a corset. And a pretty pink shawl.

Ernest held them up one by one, his head on one side. If he was disappointed he didn’t let it show.