Walking in Pimlico (19 page)

Knowing now of John’s arrest, I longed to see the farrago, and
though I wanted to see him disgraced, I wanted more to see Helen brought down, for the degradation of the brother was also the humiliation of the sister! How smitten would Mr Newman be when he discovered that she was the sister of a suspected murderer? Even as the spits of rain now whipped my face, that charming industrialist might be at breakfast reading this very account and contemplating the cancellation of an evening’s game of whist with the now not-so-charming Miss Shovelton! And how much I should like to sit in the courtroom and hear John Shovelton’s respectability publicly rent apart, and with that bring down his superior mother in her Northamptonshire bed of disdain! For surely Shovelton could not escape the public accounting, much relished by prosecuting lawyers, of every lascivious misdemeanour, every adolescent fumbling he had ever enjoyed. It made me smile to contemplate his discomfort as his tumblings with every whore in London were itemized, and witnesses called who could testify to his violent outbursts. Indeed, there were many women who made a tidy living out of just such tales, embellished with a black eye or swollen lip (courtesy of their bully). And, of course, Yates was witness to his taste for ratting and dog-fights.

Yes, Yates.

He, too, might enjoy a seat in the public gallery of the Bailey. Or even in the stand. I was comforted by the thought of that young man.

But my walk back to the George was again interrupted by Gifford, emerging hurriedly from a narrow street, this time with two bags in her hand and a rug over her arm. Taking my elbow, she steered me in the opposite direction.

‘Don’t go back there, miss. The clerk’s on the lookout for you, and the manager has called the constable.’

I was horrified. ‘For an unpaid bill?’

She gave me a hard stare. ‘For goings-on, miss. I did tell you not to use the back stairs on account of the unfriendly staff, but you wouldn’t listen.’

It was true. In my effort to keep us in bread and tea, I had entertained gentlemen in the afternoons and had advised them to use the back stairs, which seemed to me the least public route. But unsympathetic servants, naïvely, I had not anticipated. Gifford shoved me along the back streets until, rather out of breath, we emerged at the far end of the town.

‘There’s a carrier goes into Buckton in half an hour. It will cost a shilling.’

There were only three shillings left in my purse and a handful of pennies. She read my mind.

‘It’s too far to walk.’

‘And the trunk?’ I had left it strapped and locked since James Yates’s last excursion.

‘I’ve had it taken to the carriers. They will hold it until you send word. Under my name. You owe me sixpence.’

‘You’ll have your sixpence when we get to London.’

Her face brightened. Gifford was no country-dweller, and apart from her excursions to Buckton (from which she often returned late and quite drunk) I thought she was probably very miserable. The city and city ways suited her and she was positively amiable when the carrier arrived, and joyful when we reached Buckton. But it was not an easy matter to buy a ticket to London with only two shillings. In fact it was impossible, and we faced the prospect of being stranded and penniless in a cold, bleak Midland town, populated only by factory hands and stray dogs.

As the sun disappeared, we stood shivering on the windy Market Place and were just considering which of the mean-looking public houses might accommodate two ladies for the night, when there was a ‘Halloo! Miss Marweather, I think? Halloo there!’ and a beaming Mr Treverrick peered out from a covered carriage drawn by two handsome horses.

‘My dear ladies,’ cried the Cornish pisky, darting from within and
hastening across the road, ‘what are you doing? Here? At this time of day? Alone? Unchaperoned? May I help you? Please, I beg of you.’

And so it went on. Questions, questions like a battery of friendly fire. I made an excuse about reaching an ailing relative in London with which Gifford quickly agreed and, indeed, embellished. With the anxious Treverrick fussing and offering us his carriage and driver and the hospitality of his houses in Buckton and Tavistock and Richmond (and others too numerous to mention), we arranged transport there and then. Within two hours we were warmly fed (at Mr Treverrick’s expense) and within three, though the hour was late, we were on our way, promising to send word about the condition of the invalid immediately. Was my conscience at all pricked when I gave him a false address in London? And, having eaten his food and allowed him to transport me, and promised him letters and return visits which I never intended to fulfil, did I not feel just a little guilty? Not at all, for he was rich and foolish and had nothing to do in the world but amuse himself. Whereas I had only two shillings in my purse and the wide world to struggle against.

When we reached Abbotswelford, some twenty miles from London, I dismissed the driver and carriage, with the excuse that I was tired, would stay with friends and arrange my own forward transport to London. Gifford was none too pleased, of course, having a taste for what she prosaically termed ‘the high life’, but at the same time was eager to be back on her home ground. London was within a day’s reach, and one more night away might be tolerated. But I had no intention of reaching London within the day or the week, and Abbotswelford was no more a casual berth than Springwell might have appeared, for I had a quarry to locate here on behalf of my friend Yates! And I might as well sniff her out sooner rather than later.

Lucy, whose creamy skin set against the azure cloth was still a
potent memory, whose wild face and piercing cries still rang in my ears, was here, somewhere in this unremarkable town. She was easily discovered. In the guise of Lucy’s wealthy, Christian sister, I had sought out Mrs Pickuls, the wife of the proprietor at the Constellation, and she quickly revealed everything I needed to know. How women will chatter! And how freely, when their correspondent wears a decent sober gown and reeks of goodwill and good deeds. My story, invented as we sat in Mrs Pickuls’s crowded parlour, was that I wanted to offer a home, a respectable home, to my wayward sister. A home in the country, where church and charity would direct her inclinations, rather than gin and passion, and where the guidance of myself and my curate husband would ensure that Lucy was a woman of God rather than a woman of the streets.

Eager nods of assent from the severe Mrs Pickuls, and a fulsome account of her last conversation with Lucy, shot through with lurid detail and righteous indignation. A bad girl, but brought down lower by the appetites of wicked men! She had tried to set her on the right path, had suggested she left London and went to somewhere decent like Hull (her aunt lived in Hull and she had heard that it was a very refined place). But it was no use. The bad influences kept her bad, and after the murder – had I heard about it? In her very back yard, not feet away from where we were sitting! – she dropped even lower. She arrived at the Constellation one day to collect some few things she had left behind, and said she was going away but wouldn’t say where. Would send for letters (‘Who would write letters to a girl like that? I thought’). But her sister, Kitty, was more forthcoming when she called. Was going up north to fetch a baby from a farm, and was to bring it to Abbotswelford and Lucy. Abbotswelford, I repeated, and Mrs Pickuls affirmed, adding that Kitty was most anxious that she told no one, for Lucy would be mightily put out. And Mrs Pickuls had kept her word, only mentioning it to a very few.

So here was Lucy and here was I, to see after her and what she was about. Lack of coin was an immediate concern, but I had strong legs and back, and a stronger sense of business, and since Lucy had recommended this town which most people would pass through rather than settle in, whoring seemed an obvious course. Fine whoring pays well, but takes time to commence. Anyone with a decent gown and a ready smile can do business on a street corner, but there is no rushing a town to embrace a new, refined face. On the next fine evening I inspected the likely areas around the theatre and Corn Market, and sure enough there were girls doing business. But I was not a street corner whore and it took a few days for me to discover the dancing salon (in reality, little more than a platform but with pretensions to grandeur) and to gain some introductions. After that, and a brief argument with a woman who desired to be my ‘mother’ (and would take sixpence a day for that privilege), I became Mrs Collette, a lady lately arrived from France, who could speak that language and was adept in many of the more interesting French customs.

I found better rooms the following week, where gentlemen were tolerated (on payment) and I was not forced to wear out my shoes tramping the so-called ‘salon’. Every day, while waiting for callers, I could once again indulge my pastime of watching the comings and goings from my window which, if it was not as wide as that in Springwell and did not command such an attractive prospect, still offered the view of a busy street, and trees and seats. On this particular afternoon, quite mild and sunny, I was struck by a young woman with an infant in her arms. Indeed, it was the child I noticed first: a bonny, blooming child, with delicately pink cheeks and golden curls peeping from her bonnet. The tree under which they sat was beginning to shed its leaves, and the infant reached out for each golden leaf as it fell. Even as I watched, the tiny fingers yearned to grasp, clutching at the air as the leaf fluttered past. She
was a merry soul, and laughed with an abandon that turned the head of every passer-by. Mothers smiled indulgently, their daughters cooed, and for half an hour the child was the focus of adoring attention, until the warmth of the sun began to wane and she grew tired and fretful. Then the woman (her dress told that she was not a servant) wrapped her into a bundle of warm blankets and bore her off, and the street was deserted.

The following afternoon, a little sunnier than the previous day, found me again in my window seat, taking in the scene below. And again, I found myself entranced by the appearance of the woman and baby, which was today royally clad in a tartan dress and bonnet and grasping a miniature Union flag in her hand. Certainly the costume was a draw. And certainly the babe was not averse to the attention, for she laughed as a tiny poodle trotted past, and reached out hopefully for the whiskers of a cooing military man! Yes, a charming scene, with much variety and interest and, as Yates later remarked, with a familiar cast.

Yes.

It was not until the next day that, Gifford’s chatter at the grocer’s shop bearing fruit, she informed me, with great pride, that the young woman was something of a celebrity, and that afternoon she directed our steps towards the Orangery in the grandly named Botanical Gardens where, apparently, Lucy Fitch, wife of Captain Fitch of the Flintshire Rifles, and mother of Caroline Emma Victoria, aged two years, was often to be found. And sure enough, when we had picked our way between the palm trees and fruit vines to a little clearing of decorative seats, there she sat. The gospel according to Gifford was that her husband was a soldier serving abroad, lost for the past three months. All of Abbotswelford knew that she was ailing and had only a short time left, though quite what disease afflicted her was unclear. So much and so little was known of Mrs Fitch that when I first saw her, with the baby in her arms,
surrounded by ladies and gentlemen alike, I did not immediately recognize her.

Only when I had the leisure and distance to study her, did I realize that here was my quarry, presented to me like a surprising gift! Her powers of metamorphosis were clearly remarkable. Although her languorous beauty was evident at our first meeting, across the table in the Constellation (and certainly was fixed in my memory), now all the varieties of wholesome attraction and merriment, quite different to those I had seen before, seemed concentrated upon her, and she was disposed to share them with everyone. She laughed and smiled, listened attentively, bent her head and nodded as if every word said to her was of the utmost importance. From the highest landowner to the humblest servant, she treated them all to her extraordinary joy of life.

Why she should be so simply joyous was difficult to fathom. Her husband of only three years was missing, believed captured or dead; she and her sister were orphaned (or abandoned, but certainly parentless). The most touching tale, the one guaranteed to elicit tears from matron and clerk, was that her little daughter, who had never seen her father, would shortly be orphaned herself, for the delicate, the merry, the captivating Lucy Fitch was dying of consumption.

Tragedy clung to her slender figure, and that ever present melancholy made her merriment all the more poignant. But I suspected (rightly, as I discovered) that the tragic history was not all hers, or rather was not from her mouth. She never spoke of her illness. Or her dead parents. Her heroic husband was always in the present tense of ‘keeping well’, ‘fighting for the Empire’, ‘is such a brave fellow, that’s why I married him’. The truth was that people liked to believe in tragedy once-removed, and heartbreak close to one so beautiful simply added frisson. So her misfortunes were, ironically, her fortune, and as a consequence her every excursion, even to the Orangery, was a public event. For everyone knew her, and everyone wanted
to greet her, and press her hand. She was celebrated: her movements were published by word of mouth, and her engagements known in advance. I watched her pale face and tremulous hands, the lustrous hair (it was her fashion not to bind it up, but have it tumbling about her shoulders) and bright bird-like eyes, as soldier and merchant, great and small, paid their little homages. She was ever gracious, nodding, smiling radiantly, listening attentively. And then, appearing listless and weary, she would signal to her attendant, a dour and watchful woman, Mrs Strong, and they would slowly (even regally!) depart. Sometimes a carriage would be provided by a wealthy admirer (I think they
were
admirers, one and all), and she would ride in grand style, a tiny figure among the rugs and paraphernalia.