We didn’t hold out for very long.
One housekeeper said there was a vacancy in her scullery, cleaning the plates, cooking pans and chamber pots. She got us in, sat us down and said she would fetch her mistress so they could interrogate us together. Well. She clearly knew her mistress. The young lady came tearing down the steps to the kitchen, eyes agog, crying, ‘Are you really them?’
She didn’t want to know if we could scrub, or who would vouch for our honesty. Her questions were more tasteless. Tell me about a time she beat you. Did she ever … interfere with you? Did you know the Negro girl well? Did you not smell her body, under the house?
At least Mrs Metyard had madness as an excuse for her depravity. This lady was just downright heartless.
‘We’re not here to talk about that,’ I answered testily. ‘We want a place.’
But the lady would only employ us under one condition: that we would come upstairs whenever we were summoned and talk to her guests about Metyard’s. Tell them every gory detail. In short, cheapen our lives, cheapen Mim’s memory, so the gentry could get their thrills.
Nell held her chin in her hand; looked, for a moment, as if she might consider it.
‘Absolutely not.’ I stood, with as much dignity as I could manage, on my wobbly leg. ‘We might be poor, but we have some pride. Good day to you. Come on, Nell.’
I regretted it afterwards. For I didn’t have the pride I’d spoken of. Each day passed with no trace of Ma and ended in begging strangers for food. Nights were torments without sleep. And then the worst thing of all happened.
We were wandering aimlessly, as we did now, knocking on doors and looking for shops to ask about employment. Nell led the way, for she knew the streets better than I did. That particular morning, she took us through a shadowy court I’d never seen before. A great, hulking building rose up to our left. Vicious iron crowned the walls. It gave me a strange, unsettled feeling, like I’d seen it in a dream.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
Nell slowed her pace, followed my gaze. ‘Oh. It’s the debtors’ prison. We won’t find work there.’
My teeth began to chatter. Perhaps it was just the cool morning air, not yet warmed by the sun. I took another few steps, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
Have you ever seen a building that seems to gloat? I can’t say how it did that, exactly. But the barred windows were glinting at me, malicious, and the very bricks seemed to whisper, tempting me to share their dark secrets.
I came to a halt. ‘Can we ask, Nell? About my ma?’
She sighed, looking back over her shoulder. ‘If we don’t find a place to work soon …’
‘Please.’
The agony in my voice stopped her. Reluctantly, she nodded. ‘All right. I’m sorry. My ma ran off and left me, you see. I forget how much other people love theirs.’
Nerves gripped me as we approached a thick iron door. My knuckles trembled as I knocked, their raps swallowed by the metal. Of course, it was silly of me to get so nervous. Hadn’t Mrs Metyard promised not to call in Ma’s debt? I’d sold myself so she would never have to come near this chilling place. And yet …
A grate opened. A bloodshot eye stared through it. ‘What d’you want?’
‘I – I’d like some information.’ I sounded impossibly young. ‘Can you tell me if there is a Jemima Butterham within?’
‘Might be able to.’
‘Please,’ I begged. ‘It’s important. She’s my mother.’
He stared back, unmoved. ‘It’ll cost you.’
‘What, just to check a name?’ Nell pushed me out of the way and shouted at the man. ‘What if she’s not in there, and we’ve handed over our money? We’d get nothing for it.’
‘You’d know she ain’t here,’ the man behind the door leered.
I glanced at Nell. Uncertainty was nibbling away at my guts. ‘How much?’
‘Sixpence.’
I nearly fell into the door. The amount it cost for both of us to lodge for the night! Turning my face down, I tried not to let Nell see my distress. I couldn’t ask her to give up a night’s shelter.
‘She’s probably not in there anyway,’ I said, sniffing back my emotion. ‘Mrs Metyard said …’
But Nell was rummaging in her pocket, then pushing coins across her palm. She fixed anguished eyes upon me. ‘I have sixpence. But … that’s it. It’s the last of our money, Ruth.’
My head throbbed. An impossible choice. Give up on searching for my ma, or beggar my only friend? I needed somewhere to sit down. I needed to scream.
‘Haven’t got all day,’ the man barked from his grate.
I took a step away. I couldn’t ask it of Nell. Not after the way she’d obtained that money.
But I didn’t need to ask.
She made the decision for me, thrust her handful of coins at the grate. ‘Tell us,’ she insisted.
Ma was dead. I guess you knew that already. Mrs Metyard tricked her. They both signed a paper, and Mim witnessed it, but the amount shown on that document wasn’t Ma’s full debt.
That bitch slung my poor mother into debtors’ gaol for the remainder, despite all she’d said, and let her die there like a dog. So my suffering, every minute of it, had been for nothing. I might have left Metyard’s on the first night.
Nell and I sat by the river afterwards, speechless, looking down at the sludge. Gulls shrieked like lost souls. There was no moisture in my eyes. I was too sad to cry.
It smelt of ordure and iron, this landscape of mud. Compared to the reek of debtors’ prison, it was a bouquet of flowers.
I didn’t want to imagine the horrors poor Ma had suffered in that loathsome gaol, but I kept doing it, tormenting myself.
Miss Jemima Trussell. No one would dream that such a fine young lady could meet her end in gaol. She should be in some country church, resting in a family vault. But she wasn’t. The turnkey at the prison said they burnt the bodies if no one claimed them, to stop the spread of disease.
My lovely ma was just ashes and bone. Discarded on the dust mounds.
I wondered what had happened to Ma’s old handkerchief, the one with the loose threads. I wanted to hold it between my fingers and think of her. I wanted to use it to smother Kate.
Before God, I swore I’d kill her. Not only for what she’d done, but for her mother’s deeds too. I would kill her if it was the last thing I ever did.
Billy wanted me to work as her maid, did he? Mend her gowns? Gladly. I’d create agonies for her in red silk, livid horrors in mauve cotton.
I turned to Nell. Gnats hovered in a haze around her. Poverty had taken its toll. Her beautiful hair was dull, her skin pale beneath the patches of dirt. I’d be damned if I let her die too.
‘We must do it.’ My voice came hard, determined. ‘Let’s go to work for Billy and Kate. There’s no other choice.’
She bowed her head. ‘I can’t believe it’s come to this. If I had a penny left, I’d scorn them, but … God, I’m famished, Ruth.’
‘I know.’
She took my hand in hers. The gulls kept up their lament. ‘I can get through it. It won’t be so bad for me in the kitchen. But being her personal maid … Are you sure? Are you really sure you can do it?’
I pictured the corset I’d made: the bone channels, the gussets reinforced with hate. Squeezing, pressing. Kate’s lips, dusted with peacock blue.
‘Oh yes.’ My mouth twisted. ‘I can do it. I think I was born for this.’
Dusk had thickened over the river by the time we stood and made our sorry way to Water Mews. Lamps flickered on the boats, casting halos on the oil-black surface of the water. It wasn’t hard to find Billy’s house again; we recognised the green door. Stared at it, as the temperature dropped.
It’s a fearful thing, knowing you must perform an action that your whole soul revolts from. I knew I’d have to pass through that door into her house, as surely as we all must pass into death. For a moment, the second option seemed preferable. Even Nell was eyeing the green paint strangely, as if it hid the portal to some secret hell.
‘Best go round the back and knock on the kitchen door,’ I suggested. ‘She’s less likely to answer that, don’t you think?’
Wordlessly, she nodded.
It would be a strange reverse, I thought, of all the times I’d let Billy into Metyard’s through the trade entrance.
I was wrong.
When the door swung open, it revealed a fire blazing beneath an assortment of small pots. A woman stood before us with a spoon held aloft. Smuts streaked the apron that covered her gown.
It was Kate.
The sight of her was like a physical blow. Tearing pain in my chest and in my throat. I’d thought I could put everything aside and concentrate on punishing her, but that had been a vain hope. To see her face, smiling at me, so soon after learning of my mother’s death! She was lucky I didn’t have enough strength to throttle her there and then.
‘Come in, girls.’ She stood back from the door, her smile wavering under our stony gazes. Curls had stuck to the sweat on her forehead. She pushed them back with her free hand. ‘Come in. Shut the door quickly. Don’t let any more flies inside, they’ll be drawn to the light.’
We shuffled across the threshold. Heat from the fire kissed our chilled faces. I didn’t know what she was cooking, but it smelled glorious.
Kate stirred her pots and lifted one from the flames. ‘You’re filthy,’ she observed.
‘Just as well we came in the back, then,’ Nell retorted. ‘Wouldn’t want to be ruining your fine house, Mrs Rooker.’
Kate turned back to the fire. ‘No indeed. You know my ways, Nelly. If you’ve come here to take the work, you’ll be having a bath before you leave the kitchen.’
Oh, we knew her ways all right. I was too angry to reply, but Nell spoke for me.
‘It’ll take a good scrub to get the dirt out. Especially the smell of the debtors’ gaol.’
Kate’s face blanched above the pots. Before she could muster a response, the door to the hallway opened and Billy appeared.
‘I thought I heard Nell’s voice!’ He beamed at us. ‘How grand it is to see you both. Have you come to be our maids at last?’
‘They’ve finally swallowed their pride,’ Kate affirmed.
From the way both our throats were working, I wouldn’t say we’d swallowed our pride. We were gagging on it.
‘Let’s get them fed and watered, Kate; there’s barely anything left of them.’
Kate passed him the spoon, brushed her hands on her apron. ‘In a moment. I’ve got something of yours, Ruth. I found it when … I found it after the wedding.’
After her mother had horsewhipped me and strung me up, she meant.
She opened a cupboard and rummaged within. What she produced made me shiver, like when you rub the pile of velvet the wrong way.
A garment of brown jean and peach sateen. Fraying where I had cut squares out from the bottom. On top of it, tangled in the laces, were the remains of Mim’s bone fish.
I thought they’d been lost, along with my little toe. I didn’t like to see Kate’s hands upon my precious things. Snatching them from her, I hugged them to my chest.
‘I found those in the road,’ she explained, without meeting my eye.
Perhaps she expected me to thank her. I didn’t. Couldn’t. The silence spun out between us.
‘Only right you should have your corset back,’ Billy chirped up from by the fire. ‘After that wonderful one you made Kate.’
I wondered what Billy saw, on those nights he visited her bed. If he caught a glimpse of my work, and admired it.
‘It’s the best piece you have done,’ Kate agreed, still awkward. ‘You’ve a real talent, Ruth. I’m looking forward to having you as my maid.’
If only she knew.