There was mostly two sorts of men what come to the Black Horse to see us. The first was the sort what’d pay for an hour and stay not one minute more or less. The second sort would stay two hours or more, and they’d want other stuff besides the normal. I don’t mean they wanted all that deep-down dirty stuff. I mean they was wanting love, of the sort you don’t get by paying for it. When that sorta man come, I’d have to make a lot of soothing noises when he talked to me, and make it seem like I cared about all his problems and how lonely he was.
I wasn’t sure what sorta man I’d rather see. Sometimes, it was nice to get the second sort. All I’d gotta do was pretend to listen to him. I could let my thoughts wander this way and that, and it give me a rest from the work, what wasn’t nice work, when all was said and done. But then there was the other men, what just come in for an hour, one after another, and once you’d seen seven or eight of em, the night was done with and you could go to sleep, pleased with the money what’d be coming to you. And the hours passed by much quicker like that, in general, although it meant you’d sometimes got more cocks than was good for you, or good for anyone, come to that.
My hours of working was usually eight at night till four in the morning, but my busiest times was between eleven and three. It was rare to ever get an hour’s rest at them times, though often enough I’d get to finish an hour early. Once the night was over, me and the other girls used to meet up in the kitchen for tea – or brandy or gin, if we was feeling the need – and talk about the men we’d serviced. And, of course, it didn’t take a lot of weeks before Joanna said, ‘I sucked the cock of your reverend today, Miriam,’ and she put her fingers in her mouth and gagged, like the thought of him made her sick.
‘How can he afford you so often?’ I said. ‘He’s just a vicar.’
‘I told you. Fiddling the books. Selling babies.’
‘You don’t know that, Jo,’ Belle said.
‘Well, I don’t know it for certain, but I definitely know it. Everyone knows it. Where else does a vicar like him get money from? Or does he claim the Lord showers pennies on him? Because if he does, Belle, don’t listen to him. You’re too trusting for your own good. The reverend’s a liar. He’s got the whole world convinced he’s only one step away from being a saint, but anyone who’s ever been his jade knows better.’
Belle shrugged. Then she turned to me and said, ‘Did you know Hattie?’
‘Of course I knew Hattie,’ I said. ‘She lived with me, but she disappeared and no one ain’t heard nothing from her since.’
‘Well, I don’t know where she’s gone, but I can tell you why she left,’ Belle said.
‘Why?’
‘Because that Reverend Sutton was using her like a whore every night of her life and she got so fed up, she thought she was going to murder him. I don’t mean she was going to shout and scream and hit him about a bit. I mean she’d got real plans to kill the man. She came over here once and asked us about it, because she thought we all hated him too. Which we did, of course, but not enough to kill him. My advice to her was to run away – run fast and run far – and not to risk wrecking her life any more by getting hanged just for a man like Reverend Sutton. The next day, she ran, and that was the last we saw of her.’
Well, my eyes was wide as anything when I heard all this. I knew Hattie’d hated the reverend, even more than I’d done, but I didn’t know she’d thought about killing him.
‘But if Hattie had run away, how could she earn a living?’ I said.
‘She was a Gypsy,’ said Joanna. ‘Gypsies know how to trick people.’
I wasn’t taking that sorta talk. ‘I’m a Gypsy girl, too,’ I said. ‘And we don’t trick folk. We just have ways of doing things, what folk think are tricks, but they’re just mysteries and old Gypsy magic.’
Joanna give a sniff, like she wasn’t gonna believe that sorta tale.
‘You wait,’ I said. ‘I’ll get my tarot deck and read you a future, and I’ll read you a past, too, while I’m at it. You tell me if you think I’m tricking.’
I went off and got my cards and then I come back to read Joanna’s past, present and future. The other girls gathered round, too, to hear what I had to say. And what I had to say was this:
That her past had been a tough one, and full of secrets she didn’t want uncovering.
That her present was all right, but not what she’d been hoping for herself.
That in future, if she worked hard, she’d get what she wanted and her past wouldn’t never catch up with her, and so she could stop worrying about it.
Of course, I saw some bad stuff in her future, too, but I thought it best to keep such things to myself. I reckoned she might start paying me money for a reading if I promised her a kushti life this time.
*
So that was how my nights passed. I’d take myself off to my bed round five in the morning. I’d sleep a few hours before waking up and making the most of the time I’d got before the men come in again. Ma Dwyer said it was up to us how much we worked – though she wouldn’t have us doing less than five nights a week – but if we took a night off, we wouldn’t see no money for it. We’d got the choice of doing day shifts, too, if there was men what wanted em, and although Belle and Louisa both did em, I preferred a rest.
I used to spend a lot of time looking out my window – more time than was healthy, some might say – trying to see in the nursery, to catch a sight of the baby there. The baby was about three months old by now and I wondered what she’d be looking like, and if she was well again, after her sorry start in the world.
Eventually, one afternoon around three o’clock, I saw her. Rose come out the front door of the nursery, wheeling a baby carriage, and she walked up and down the street with it, from one end to the next, about four times, because I s’pose she was giving the baby inside some fresh air.
Well, before I even knew what I was doing, I threw open the window and waved and shouted down, ‘Rose! Rose!’
She looked round, to see where the voice was coming from, but it took a long time before she glanced up my way – I s’pose it didn’t cross her mind how anyone’d be shouting at her from a brothel – and when she did, her mouth dropped open a moment, then shut again. Her face went hard as rocks, and she looked away and hurried off, quick as she could.
Well, I was shocked at that. Of course, I knew Rose didn’t think all that well of me no more, but I wasn’t expecting her to stone-cold ignore me, especially not when she was wheeling round a baby what was more than likely the one I’d give birth to. It wasn’t polite, if you asked me.
So I come away and shut the window, and wondered if I could get over the road to visit the baby now and then, like what Rose did with Arabella in the orphanage.
But when I mentioned my idea to Ma Dwyer, she said, ‘You don’t want to be doing that, my love, if you can help it. It’ll only open up wounds. The less you see of her, the better, in my opinion. You can’t have her back, so why hurt yourself with visits, hey? And it’s dangerous – they’ll catch you and put you back in the Cascades. It’s not sensible, my love, not sensible at all.’
Well, it might not be sensible, but a lot of things in life wasn’t sensible and folk still went and did em, so I wasn’t gonna let that put me off and I spent my next four days working out ways of getting over to the nursery for a visit.