They say that vinegar gets out bloodstains. Vinegar and cold water, that will do it. But there’s a variety of blood that comes from deep within, and this can’t be erased. Scrubbing until your arms ache, scarlet frothing from the brush – still it remains.
So it was with the matter that fell upon Mrs Metyard’s work. Ma and I lugged the bundles of cloth between us, trying not to slip on the oyster shells and dung littering the streets. It was full summer then, swarming with flies. Thick, white dust rose in clouds from the horses’ hooves to whiten the railings and whatever patches of grass had survived the heat. No use now, trying to shield our material from smuts. All was marbled in brown and yellow where the blood had dried, and I’d tried to wash it. It didn’t look like my father’s life force, staining those clothes. It looked like the contents of a chamber pot.
You’ll call me heartless for thinking such thoughts. Maybe I was: a cavity yawned in my ribs, where once I’d felt a heart beat back. We’d lost everything. Everyone. And as I stumbled down that road, calling out to Ma to avoid potholes and carts, I didn’t see that there was any future for us.
Mrs Metyard was our last creditor. Her claim was the only reason we’d been allowed to keep the ruined materials from the bailiffs. After we dealt with her, we would be cast adrift. No home to return to, no friends who wanted to associate with us after this disgrace.
‘Can’t we go and live with your parents, Ma?’ I whined. ‘I know they didn’t like Pa, but surely now …’
‘No,’ she replied stiffly. ‘I wrote many times after you were born, seeking reconciliation. Only one answer to all those letters! And the language they used, about your father … That I never can forgive.’ Her lip quivered, and when she spoke again her voice was rough. ‘Though perhaps they were right. They saw more clearly than I. For he has deserted us, hasn’t he? Left us all alone, like the scoundrel they called him. How could he?’
‘He wasn’t himself, Ma. It wasn’t Pa who pulled that trigger.’
‘Then who did, Ruth? Tell me that.’ Her milky eyes glared at me, demanding, even without their focus. ‘Who else ruined our family?’
It was me.
Little by little, the streets grew wider. Cobbles gave way to granite setts underfoot. Although the flavour of sweating horses lingered, there weren’t so many carts and wagons on the road. Here, I pulled Ma from the paths of omnibuses, with their brightly painted advertisements, and smart hansom cabs. Vendors didn’t sell oysters in this part of town, or pickled whelks. It was coffee and gingerbread. Even the pedestrians that stared as we straggled past were of a higher class: colourful, fine-napped dresses adorned the ladies while gentlemen swung gold watch-chains.
I bent my head down, trying to hide beneath the rim of my battered bonnet. No wonder Rosalind Oldacre had laughed at me. This was her world. They might be her lapdogs, trotting across the road in front of a harried lady’s maid.
‘Is this Cross Street?’ Ma asked me.
‘Yes.’
‘Then it’s up ahead. Just a bit farther, on the left.’
Metyard’s stood at the end of a row of shops, next to a barber’s. It sprawled larger and taller than its competitors, more like a genteel residence than a place of commerce. I saw its wooden sign, hanging limp in the heat, and beneath – diamonds. Not real diamonds, of course, but panes of clear glass sparkling in the sun. Despite the dust, Metyard’s bow windows were immaculate, displaying a tableau of headless figures. Silk flowers overflowed from birdcages hung between the models. A red gingham blanket and a picnic basket were spread on the false floor.
It was only when we drew near that I began to make out the fine detail on the gowns. I thought nothing would bring me joy, after all that had passed, but as I gazed upon the scalloped flounces and guipure lace in that window, it felt as if I’d never lived before. Such colour! An evening gown, off the shoulders, in pink watered tabby with a gloss like ice. Bishop sleeves on a cerulean carriage dress. Then the mint-green pelisse-robe with a series of silver ribbon knots that fastened it at the side. Nankeen gloves, dimity shawls. I yearned to touch, to possess, with an intensity that made my eyes water.
‘Round the back, Ruth.’
Not for us the wide, swept stone steps that led up between the bow windows. We turned to the side and pushed through a wooden gate that creaked on its hinges. This gave access to a plot of miserable ground fenced in by walls and stacks of chimneys. A crippled tree hunched in a square of mud. Six or seven feet in front of it was an iron disc set in the earth, with a ring to pull it open.
‘What do they keep underground?’ I asked Ma. ‘Under that hatch, there?’
It was pointless for Ma to look where I gestured, but she frowned and thought for a moment. ‘You must mean the coal hole. Mrs Metyard doesn’t want the boys and their sacks coming on to the premises. Too much dust threatening the fabric.’
The rest of the ground was paved over. There was a pump, but it was burnt so orange with rust that I doubted it would work.
For the customers, Metyard’s was arrayed like a paradise, but here on the underbelly, where the tradespeople entered, there was no glamour. We hadn’t paid for it.
My forehead was drenched with perspiration from the walk. Sweat had leaked through my glove and stained the bundle of material with an imprint of my hand. It hardly mattered, now.
‘Let me talk, Ruth,’ Ma said. ‘Whatever you do, don’t interrupt.’ Her arms were shaking. Her clouded eyes widened, dominating her face.
‘Why? What will you say?’
‘I … I will have to ask her for terms. Permission to pay back the fines in instalments.’
‘And if she refuses?’
‘She cannot. Not after all that has happened. She is a widow herself, she must …’
As she trailed off, prickles of apprehension ran up my spine. Ma still wanted to believe there were people with good hearts. I knew better.
Tentatively, Ma knocked on the door. Footsteps and low voices sounded behind. I clutched at my bundle, terrified by the prospect of a fashionable female answering and sneering at me. Nothing happened. Ma knocked again. We heard a shout, followed by the quick thud of boots. The door eased open a crack, revealing a tall girl with large, wary eyes. Her skin was as black as a peppercorn.
Foolishly, I smiled. The girl didn’t smile back.
‘I need to speak with your mistress, dear,’ Ma said. I couldn’t tell whether Ma recognised the girl, or if she was just speaking in the direction of the door. ‘Can you ask if Mrs Metyard will see us?’
‘She’s busy in the showroom.’ Her voice wasn’t precisely hostile, but defensive. As if we posed her some sort of threat.
‘Well, can you ask all the same? We’ll wait.’
The girl’s nostrils flared. Not a flare of pride, as I’d seen in the young ladies at school; more like a horse snorting when it’s frightened. She dithered for a moment before hanging her head. ‘You’d better step in.’
Rather than opening the door wider, she simply backed away and left us to follow.
The trade door led on to a small, whitewashed room with a tile floor. It smelt like mud and boots. A large sink, such as you see in a scullery, ran along the left wall, but that was the only ornament.
I helped Ma up the step. Our guide had already turned her back to us. She wore a gown the colour of caramel. It was too short for her, and tight across the shoulders.
‘Just a moment,’ I pleaded. ‘My mother has difficulty walking.’
Although she didn’t turn or acknowledge my words, the girl slowed her step, and held the next door open. I liked her the better for it.
We entered a kind of lumber room. Brass rails lined the walls and from them hung offcuts of fabric, perhaps out of fashion now or saving for the cooler weather. Hat stands sported broken bonnets. The girl moved a wicker basket full of cotton reels off a battered old chair and I placed Ma upon it.
‘Wait here,’ the girl said. As she opened another door, I caught a glimpse of her right hand. Flinched. One finger was missing: the smallest.
The door slammed behind her.
It was crowded in the lumber room, but at least it was cool. Ma and I dumped our bundles on to the floor. It was a relief to be free of them, although I hadn’t felt their weight as I thought I might. My arms seemed stronger, able to bear more.
‘I hope Mrs Metyard won’t be angry, being called from the showroom,’ Ma whispered. ‘I do not like to inconvenience her further. But Miss Kate can take over with the customers, can’t she?’
I hardly knew how to answer, for Mrs Metyard wasn’t being called from the showroom: underneath the door I could still see the feet of the girl. She was hovering there. Evidently, Mrs Metyard was not a woman to be interrupted.
Fifteen minutes passed. I amused myself by examining the offcuts, imagining what a corset I would have made if I’d had access to these materials. But Ma could only sit. She looked gradually paler, more frightened.
At last a bell tinkled to signal the customers leaving the shop. Movement sounded in the corridors. Ma clenched her hands together. I heard a sharp intake of breath, then the murmur of the girl.
A strident voice answered, ‘What, in there?’
I wondered where Ma usually spoke to Mrs Metyard, but I didn’t have time to ask before the door burst open and Ma scrabbled to her feet.
Mrs Metyard. If they find me innocent of my crime, and I live to be a hundred years old, I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget that first meeting with her. My dislike was instant, visceral. She had a square face marked with strong lines in the forehead and around the mouth. People would describe her features as handsome, but never pretty; they lacked the warmth necessary for beauty. Her spotted, silk gown had fashionable tight sleeves and gave her a military bearing. Later, I’d learn she acquired this stance from her dead husband, who was a captain in the army.
Outwardly, she was attractive enough for a woman in her fifties. But I think – and I know it sounds strange, coming from me – that sometimes you can just tell if a person is no good. You sense it as an animal does, and your hackles rise.
Ma cringed in a curtsey. ‘Mrs Metyard. Forgive me for interrupting you. This is my daughter, Ruth.’
I inclined my head.
‘I expected you to come,’ Mrs Metyard said carelessly. ‘I read about your husband in the paper.’
‘Yes.’
‘Shameful.’ She peered down her nose, which was long, directly at me.
‘I cannot make excuses for my husband,’ Ma said softly. ‘But as for myself …’ She opened her clasped hands, gestured at the bundles on the floor. ‘I have failed you, and come to apologise. There was … accidental damage to the work.’
As Mrs Metyard cast her baleful gaze upon the material, I saw how it must look through her eyes. Not just a filthy pile of cloth, but an affront to her shop and the beauty it stood for.
‘That’s not damage, woman; it’s blood. So the brute shot himself all over your work, did he? Heaven and earth! Did his selfishness know no bounds?’
Ma crumpled.
Here it came at last: my breathless, silent fury. I glared at Mrs Metyard and thought how exquisite it would feel to knock that square head straight from its shoulders.
‘I cannot—’
‘It’s of no matter,’ Mrs Metyard cut her off. ‘As you know, the work is long overdue. I had to give it out elsewhere, at great expense. But at least my orders are fulfilled. My reputation is safe – with no thanks to you.’
‘Please accept my apologies, Mrs Metyard.’
It’s a frightening sensation, watching your mother regress to a girl. I’d never seen her so meek. When Ma was young, she’d been Miss Jemima Trussell and ordered gowns from women like Mrs Metyard on credit. How far she’d sunk.
‘I do accept them. Now kindly pay what you owe and take your leave. I hardly need say that our business relationship is at an end. Even if I could trust you to deliver the work on time …’ Waving a contemptuous hand at our bundles, she added, ‘You purchased this material from me, so keep it. I have no use for anything in this state. You might.’
‘The – the payment,’ Ma said, to her feet. ‘I cannot, at present, pay it all.’
‘No? How much of it can you pay, Butterham?’
‘None of it. Not at the moment.’
‘Oh dear.’ Never had I heard those two words spoken with less warmth. ‘How unfortunate. I suppose I must notify the proper authorities.’
‘No!’ Ma started forward, stumbling on her skirts. ‘Please. I will find work and pay you back, Mrs Metyard, every penny. Only give me a little time, that’s all I ask.’
‘You, find work? Don’t delude yourself. Your eyes have gone, Butterham, and your sewing is sloppy. Do not think I have failed to notice. I was merely too kind to speak out. But we should have come to this pass in the end, even if your husband had possessed the decency to stay alive.’
‘I will find something!’ Ma flailed for Mrs Metyard’s hand. The dressmaker shrank back with distaste. ‘I’ll pay you something, I swear, even if it is only a little. But if you send me to the debtors’ prison, your money is gone forever.’
Debtors’ prison. Of course, that was what made Ma so afraid. The lumber room seemed to shrink around me, swathes of material pressing close, close.
‘The money is already gone, Butterham. I know that to my sorrow. Come, I am not unreasonable. In other circumstances, I might have let you sew here until you had paid off your debt. But I cannot put out work like yours, even on undergarments. You see that, don’t you?’
I considered see a cruel choice of word.
For a moment, it looked as if Ma would break, but suddenly her brow cleared and she said, ‘Ruth.’
‘What, her? Can the girl sew?’
‘Oh yes! She can sew better than anyone; she flowered the gloves for the Lindsay bride. She could sew for me.’
I stared at Ma, horrified. It was like one of those nightmares where you’re powerless; I could only shake my head and croak, ‘No.’
‘Hmm. And she is … how old?’
‘She’ll be fourteen this November.’
Neither of them looked at me. I might as well have been a hat stand in the corner. Only the black girl shot timid glances in my direction, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
Mrs Metyard sighed. ‘Well, Butterham. It puts me out. I won’t lie to you – it’s wretchedly inconvenient on my part. But I could, out of the goodness of my heart, turn you a favour.’ Ma held her breath. ‘I’ve been considering another apprentice. Usually they would pay me for the chance but … Say I add the fee on, to what you owe? The child works here, wages withheld, until her earnings pay the debt?’
A single word wrestled its way out of my mouth. ‘Ma!’
She ignored me. Her decision had been made, swift as a blade cutting through cotton. ‘But Ruth could live here. Eat here. She’d be safe and warm?’
‘Bed and board would of course be deducted from the wages, before they settle your score. Undoubtedly, it will take a long time for her to repay. But your daughter won’t starve.’
‘Then you must do it, Ruth.’ At last, Ma turned her glassy eyes my way. ‘At least then I’ll know that you are well.’
I gripped her hands so tight that the very bones shifted. ‘No. You can’t …’ Excuses crowded to the tip of my tongue. I wanted to tell her that the thought of staying with Mrs Metyard was worse than the prospect of living on the streets; that I’d lost everyone dear and couldn’t lose my ma, too. But then I thought of the alternative.
For we wouldn’t be on the streets, would we? This bitch would have us locked away. I imagined Ma, slowly wasting in a dank cell. She had no money to bribe guards or buy food. She would be penned in squalor, an unprotected female. God only knew what horrors she would endure before death finally took her.
‘Don’t fret about me, Ruth. I will manage by myself.’ Even now, a lie. The bright, false tone she’d used throughout my childhood resurfaced. ‘I will write to you when I find a lodging.’
Write? She couldn’t see to write, even supposing she could afford pen and paper!
‘It is the only way, you know,’ Mrs Metyard said. She raised a hand to inspect her nails. A signal that she was bored of us, of our sordid little lives. ‘If you don’t, your mother will face gaol.’
‘For me, Ruth,’ Ma pleaded. ‘Do it for my sake.’
Conscience ambushed me. If my mother was blind and widowed, whose fault was that?
‘It’s agreed,’ Ma said abruptly. ‘If you give me a paper, I will sign it.’
‘Good. I trust you will not forget this kindness, Butterham.’
Mrs Metyard went to the living quarters to draw up the document, but she returned with surprising speed, as if she had such a paper ready-written in her desk. I recalled what she’d said about Ma’s sloppy stitches. What fools we were, not to notice before.
An embroiderer’s hand is as distinctive as a scribe’s. Mrs Metyard must have known there were two hands, not one, sewing over the last few months. She’d seen Ma’s stitches, and mine. Knew there was a daughter at home. She’d always planned to get me.
‘Come along then, witness the document,’ Mrs Metyard barked at the black girl, who’d waited there, as if expecting the duty.
The girl stepped forward, held the pen awkwardly in her left hand and made a cross where her mistress pointed.
I wasn’t asked for my signature. Gripping a brass rail for support, I watched the scene play out in silence.
The corset clutched at my torso, protective. I felt its dark power flare within me. Swallowed. My stitches had already taken the lives of two people. Now they would be unleashed upon the ladies of Oakgate.
I won’t recount the parting from my mother. I can’t. So much of it was blurred, unreal. Nothing could convince me she was actually leaving, repeating her ridiculous promise to write.
If I’d had time to think about it, I would have told Ma that I understood. Because I do, now. She thought she was saving me; she had no idea what was going to happen. And I would have held her a little tighter, impressed upon my memory the scent of her skin and the sound of her voice. But it’s too late for regrets.
The moment Ma left, Mrs Metyard seized me by the shoulder and steered me away from the lumber room.
‘Kate!’ she boomed. ‘Kate, where are you?’
‘I’m rolling the ribbons, Mother.’ The voice that answered was that of a young woman, slightly nasal. I recalled Ma mentioning Miss Kate, the daughter of the house.
‘Turn the sign to Closed,’ Mrs Metyard ordered.
We made our way through a corridor and up a short flight of stairs. Mrs Metyard’s grip didn’t let me turn my head, but I couldn’t hear footsteps behind us, so the girl must have gone.
There was no dust, here. The walls were newly painted, the air warmer. It felt like emerging above ground.
We came up short against a door. With her spare hand, Mrs Metyard turned a brass knob and revealed the showroom.
I’d been enchanted looking in from the street, but that was nothing compared to what I felt staring through that doorway. The space was twice as large as my old classroom; palatial, by my standards. A carpet of cream stretched out to where three circular tables stood, covered in lace doilies. Cheval mirrors reflected the pots of feathers and boxes inlaid with satin that sat on top. The walls were painted duck-egg blue. Here and there were alcoves displaying hats or an array of gloves and scent bottles. Glass chandeliers hung from a pure-white ceiling. My eyes ran past a dressmaker’s dummy, past the bolts of silk and velvet suspended in rolls upon the wall, to a glass counter on my left. It displayed ribbons, trims and buckles of all sorts. Behind it stood a young woman, winding a reel.
You won’t believe me, but it made my heart lift to look at her. It was like seeing a bird fly, or the sun setting over rooftops.
A bunch of dark curls fell over either ear. The face beneath was heart-shaped, gently pointed at the chin. Her small nose tilted up towards the end. What struck me most was her complexion: spotless and even, the hue of that scrap of peach sateen I had so treasured. Her eyes gleamed like spangles sewn on a gown.
Kate wore a high-necked dress, striped black and white. Even from this distance, I could see it was laced tight, no more than twenty inches at the waist.
In that moment, we could’ve been anything to each other. Our relationship was a bolt of cloth spread out wide, full of endless possibilities. The pattern hadn’t been chalked. I could have loved her. I could have taken the scissors and cut panels of friendship, sisterhood. But she made the first snip.
‘What is that?’ The sparkling eyes grabbed mine. Their expression wasn’t kind.
‘Lindsay gloves. Told you I would get her cheap.’
A grunt. Not the noise I expected from a young woman in her position. ‘Starting when?’
‘Now.’
‘Fine.’ Kate replaced her coil of red ribbon under the glass counter. I expected the daughter to seize me, as her mother had, but instead she pushed past me on the threshold and turned right.
Mrs Metyard chivvied me out and shut the door to the showroom. The corridors seemed dark, without the light of the bow windows. ‘Come on, then. What are you about?’
We didn’t mount the wide stairs, carpeted in claret, which led up into the light. I turned and followed Kate’s black and white skirt. Instinct told me I couldn’t walk by her side. I must trail her, watching the fabric of her gown swish and her tiny waist bob. Visually, she wasn’t hewn from the same stone as her mother, but I could tell from the way she carried herself, the way she lifted the hem of her skirt, that she was proud.
In this part of the house, there were no cream corridors. Paint peeled from the walls like patches of dry skin. Kate produced a key from her pocket and opened a door that looked like a cupboard.
Chill air reached across the threshold to touch my ankles. An ancient moss smell, close and stale, came with it. Peering forwards, I saw walls of rough grey stone. Wooden stairs yawned beneath.
‘Mind,’ Kate said. She lifted her humbug skirts another inch and descended.
Warily, I followed, my feet creaking on the wood. The third step was half-rotten, which I suppose was what Kate meant by her warning. I wobbled but didn’t fall, continuing slowly down, down into the grey depths. After my walk across town in the heat, I should’ve been glad to enter a space so cool and shadowy, but it was no relief at all. The skin on my arms crawled. My body knew something about that place that my mind didn’t – not yet.
Damp crept through the floor. At the base of the steps, four mushrooms grew.
‘This one’s you,’ Kate said.
Her voice drew my attention away from the mushrooms. I looked up, felt my stomach plunge when I noticed that there were straw pallets arranged against the wall. Somewhere, water dripped.
‘To … sleep?’
The look she gave me could wither the leaves off a tree. Rather than answering, she kicked the pallet, second from the left. ‘You share. Her on the left, you on the right.’
On the right of the pallet lay a neatly folded grey nightgown. Waiting in expectation, as if it knew that I would come.
Kate put her hands upon her hips. They were slight, like the rest of her. ‘I’m in charge here. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. But—’
‘What?’
I fumbled. ‘But what shall I do? Do I work in the showroom, or—’
‘No. Not today. Today you sleep.’
I stared at her. It sounded like a gesture of kindness, yet there was nothing kind in her face. ‘Sleep? But it’s only four o’clock and Mrs Metyard said—’
‘Never mind that, what did I just say?’
Resentment swelled in my chest. She wouldn’t let me finish a sentence. She had to stick out her leg and trip me up at every step.
‘You said … you said that you’re in charge.’
‘Right. And I’m telling you to sleep.’ She fixed me with a cold, hard look. ‘Trust me, you’re going to need it.’
When all’s said and done, this prison cell is comfortable. It didn’t scare me half as much coming here to New Oakgate Prison as it did to be locked up in that dreadful cellar.
I lay flat on the straw pallet. It might as well have been stuffed with glass. Only the reinforcement of my corset stopped it from scratching the skin on my back to pieces. Somewhere out there, another person was sleeping on my old mattress, which the bailiffs had taken. I’d whined about that mattress. Now, by comparison, it seemed like a cloud.
My new bedroom was loud, too. Muffled sounds came from above. Some were in the house, others in the street; wheels rolling, the tap of determined footsteps. A narrow strip of glass on the wall above my head admitted a leprous, diseased light. Through it I saw a flurry of movement. No one could look down and see me; only if they lay flat on the pavement, their bellies in the dust.
My treacherous mind tried to creep back into the past, but what use was that? It had gone. I’d stitched the shroud for my family’s old life, and this was my punishment. A dank cellar and the snipes of Miss Kate.
It was freezing. Colder than a summer should ever be. Above my head, the sky burnt blue and pedestrians sweated in the heat. But beneath the ground, I trembled. The blood in my veins became ice. My heart rusted in its cage and somehow, amidst the stench of wet straw, I managed to fall asleep.
Only once in the night did I wake. Darkness pressed on my face like a hand. I heard shuffling feet, sighs, and then there was a real hand, beneath my shoulder, shoving me to the right.
I nearly forgot. I nearly cried out for Ma. But the pallet squeaked and sagged, and then the whole sorry day came back to me. Flashes of gowns, ribbon, Ma crying. I heard Kate’s cut-glass voice. Her on the left, you on the right. I didn’t sleep alone.
The girl sharing my bed had a scent to her – not unpleasant, but foreign, a skin I didn’t know. I wondered what she’d do if I started up in the night with one of my terrible flashes of blood. From what I’d seen that day, I didn’t expect any sympathy.
Gradually, the air warmed. Female breath, female snores. Half a dozen, perhaps? It was hard to tell. All nameless, faceless girls. I could think kindly of them, in the dark.
The girl beside me didn’t snore. She didn’t seem to move. All I heard was a gentle click, regular, repetitive, as if she was grinding her teeth in her sleep.
Carefully, I shifted my shoulders and lay as I’d begun, flat on my back. From the corner of my eye I made out her figure, lying there like an effigy: hands at her breast, gaze on the ceiling. The whites of her eyes shone.
Click, click. What was it? Her shadowy fingers moved, turning the same object again and again. Not a coin. It was white, even in the dark. Not round. I couldn’t make out the shape, but I thought I recognised the substance as it flashed between her fingers quickly, deftly.
Bone.