‘It’s not a brothel!’ Jamie objected. ‘It’s a house of pleasure.’
‘Pleasure!’ Lily gasped. ‘Who for? Not for ’poor lasses who work here it isn’t!’
‘They don’t have to come,’ he barked back. ‘They can stop out on ’streets if they want to, but they’d rather be here where it’s warm than out there in ’rain and cold. Ask her.’ He pointed to the girl on the bed. ‘Ask her where she’d rather be!’
The girl pulled herself up, her head against a greasy-looking pillow. ‘I’d rather be inside than out there.’ She waved a thumb towards the window. ‘But what I’d really like is my own little house and a husband to look after me.’
‘Huh!’ Lily said contemptuously. ‘Cry for the moon, you might as well. Surely there’s a better way to make a living?’
‘Show me it then,’ the girl pouted. ‘Cos I don’t know of one.’
Lily was silenced. She didn’t know of one either, not yet at any rate. But I don’t know the town; I don’t know what there is here. I’m a stranger, a countrywoman.
‘Do you want to stop tonight or not?’ Jamie asked her. ‘There’s plenty of room. We’ll talk tomorrow.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Then if you want to leave, you can.’ He gazed at her from sly blue eyes. ‘But don’t forget you owe me ten bob before you go.’
She took in a breath. ‘Where would I get that sort of money?’
‘I don’t know.’ His mouth lifted but he wasn’t smiling. ‘I paid out in good faith. Rescued you from that fellow you called a husband, so you owe me.’
He turned to go and this time he did smile as he reached the door. ‘Onny kidding, Lily.’ He gave her a wink. ‘But you and me, we could work well together. Think about it.’ He opened the door, nodded to the girl on the bed and left.
‘Scum!’ Lily muttered.
‘He is,’ the girl said. ‘And if you owe him he’ll want it back, never mind him saying he’s onny kidding. But on ’other hand, he’s not as bad as some. He’s never violent towards his girls – at least …’ She hesitated. ‘There were some rumours a while back, but I don’t know if they were true.’
She swung her legs off the bed. ‘His ma was on ’streets. Jamie used to find her customers—’
‘What?’ Lily said in disgust. ‘His own mother?’
The girl nodded. ‘He had grand plans for starting up a place like this and putting her in charge.’ She laughed. ‘But then his ma married one of her customers and went all respectable. A grocer’s wife she is now and Jamie’s banned from seeing her.’ She sighed. ‘I wish one of my customers would marry me.’
‘What’s your name?’ Lily asked.
‘Alice,’ she said. ‘I used to work here when ’other fellow and his madam had it!’ She screwed up her lips. ‘Now they were scum!’
‘His madam?’ Lily said. ‘What do you mean?’
Alice glanced at her and smiled; she was pretty, Lily thought, but very pale, with shadows beneath her blue eyes. ‘My, you are an innocent, aren’t you? Miss Emerald we had to call her, though it wasn’t her real name, o’ course. My, you should’ve seen her.’ She grinned. ‘Thick red hair, fancy clothes, and she allus wore an emerald round her neck. Don’t know if it was real. She ran ’place, kept ’customers sweet and looked after ’money. But he got into some kind of trouble and they had to leave town. I heard that Jamie offered to pay ’rent that was owed if he could take it over.’
‘And, erm, has Jamie got many girls living here?’ Lily asked.
‘Just me at ’minute.’ Alice stretched her arms above her head. ‘A couple of others have gone away, shall we say. But they’ll be back. They’ll be back when they need to eat or are cold working out on ’streets.’
‘I met some girls,’ Lily said slowly. ‘When I was at ’home for fallen women. It was a mistake,’ she added hastily when she saw Alice’s eyes widen. ‘I shouldn’t have been tekken there. I’d had a miscarriage, but it was my husband’s child. He abandoned me and my daughter. But these girls,’ she went on. ‘They were street girls. Cherie, one of them was called, and she was onny young—’
‘I know her,’ Alice said, ‘and her friend Lizzie. They’ll not stop there; them good folk think they’ll go home or get other jobs, but they won’t. Mark my words,’ she said seriously, ‘they’ll be back on ’streets afore you can say Jack Robinson. Anyway, I’ve got to get ready for work. But I’ll show you round first if you like. You can have ’pick of ’rooms if you’re stopping.’ She looked directly at Lily. ‘You don’t seem ’type, somehow. How is it that Jamie found you? Were you living rough?’
Lily heaved a breath. ‘Not exactly. My husband put me up for sale in ’Market Place. It was Jamie who bought me.’
Alice stared. ‘Was that ’ten bob Jamie was talking about? God! Is that all he thought you were worth? Your husband, I mean?’
‘It’s all he was offered. It seems wives are worthless.’
‘Women, you mean!’ Alice said sourly. ‘My da said I was worthless when he threw me out. Mind you, I was glad to go. I didn’t want to end up like my ma. Just a drudge, she was.’
Lily’s mind was ticking. ‘Do you reckon that Hope House has ’right idea? They mean well, those women who run it, I’m sure; but ’girls who go there seem to be just gathering their health and strength before they go back on ’streets again.’
‘Yeh. It’s not as if it’s their own place,’ Alice said. ‘They’re not comfortable there. They can’t call it home, can they? They’re under an obligation to keep on ’straight and narrow. I know there’s some as will welcome ’chance, but most will leave, like you say, and go back to work on ’streets again.’
‘But if they were somewhere where they were with folks they could trust and be comfortable with,’ Lily said slowly as an idea formed, ‘and if ’men they met were vetted first so that they were not afraid of being hurt—’
‘Look, I’ll have to go,’ Alice interrupted, pulling on a grubby skirt. ‘All ’best spots will have gone. I’ll show you where everything is. There’s a privy out at ’back. We share it with ’houses on either side. On ’top floor there’s an attic with a tin bath if you want to haul water up there, and, as I said, tek your pick of ’rooms. They’re all a bit scruffy, not been cleaned in years, and there’s bedding in a cupboard.’
She seemed to be in a hurry so Lily told her that she would find her own way round the house. It was taken for granted that she would stay the night. Where else would I go? she thought. At least I’ll have a bed to sleep in. And then I’ll think of what to do tomorrow.
To her eyes the house was enormous. There were three rooms downstairs which had been turned into bedrooms, a fourth which held a large wooden table and cupboards, and then a very dirty kitchen with a stone sink and an ancient cooking range. All the rooms had oil lamps in them and the kitchen had candlesticks and holders on every surface – all of which were also covered in thick candle wax.
Upstairs on the first floor were a further three bedrooms, with washstands and free-standing cupboards, which when Lily opened them were found to contain grubby finery, gowns and shawls, and off-white petticoats. All the rooms smelt strongly of stale perfume.
On the attic floor were two more rooms. One had been used as a store room and was piled with broken chairs, old cushions and pillows with the feathers spilling out of the ticking; the other had a tin bath half full of scummy water standing in the middle of the floor, with a heap of grey sheets or towels beside it.
Lily shook her head. ‘This could be a palace,’ she murmured. ‘It must have been somebody’s home at one time, and now it’s come to this.’ She went across to a window which faced on to the square and looked down. There were a lot of people loitering about, both men and women. Some of the women were sitting on the steps of the houses and many of them were barefoot and bare-legged and sitting in what Lily thought a provocative manner with their skirts pulled up to their knees.
As she watched, she saw men approach them and some of them were invited into the houses. Others linked arms with the women and walked away, laughing and shouting to their companions. Some of the men looked like seamen, dressed in wide trousers and short reefer jackets, and many of them had a dark foreign look about them.
‘It’s a brothel quarter,’ Lily muttered. ‘However did I get to be here? First thing in ’morning I’m leaving!’
She chose what she thought was the cleanest room on the first floor and looked in a cupboard on the landing to see if she could find clean bedding. She was a fastidious woman even though she had always been poor, and didn’t at all relish the idea of sleeping in someone else’s sheets. ‘Especially when I know what they’ve been up to,’ she muttered darkly. She fished about in the cupboard and brought out several blankets which appeared to be clean though they smelt and felt damp.
‘Well, beggars can’t be choosers,’ she told herself, spreading the blankets across the bed. ‘And I’ll be glad to put my head down and my feet up.’
She fell almost immediately into an exhausted sleep, which was punctuated by dreams of chasing Billy Fowler with a rope. Once she called out Daisy’s name and sat up, unable to recall where she had left her, and then as she remembered that she was with Mr Walker she lay down and fell asleep again.
In the middle of the night she heard shouts and screams and loud laughter and turned over, putting her head beneath the blanket. ‘Damned whores,’ she murmured. ‘How am I supposed to sleep with that racket going on?’
She was drifting off again when she heard a loud thudding; she groaned and slid further under the bedclothes. ‘No place for a respectable body,’ she groaned, hunching her shoulders up to her ears as the banging continued. Then she sat up in bed, exasperated. ‘For God’s sake,’ she shouted. ‘It’s ’middle of ’night!’
‘Lily!’ She could hear her name being called. ‘Lily!’
Am I hearing things? Who knows my name? I’m dreaming. I must be. But no, there it was again, and again came the banging.
‘It’s somebody at ’door! Who is it? Nobody knows I’m here.’
She slipped out of bed and into her shoes, dragging a blanket round her shoulders and carefully easing her way downstairs. It was pitch dark and she kept hold of the stair rail until she reached the hallway. The banging had dropped to a steady dull thump on the door.
‘Who is it?’ she called. ‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s me.’ The voice was no more than a croak. ‘Alice. Let me in, for God’s sake!’
‘Where’s ’key?’ Lily called back. The door was locked but there was no key in the lock. ‘Where’s it kept?’
‘Hanging on ’wall to ’left of ’door. About halfway up. Be quick, Lily, please.’
Lily slid her hands up and down the wall and then felt the nail and a key hanging on it. ‘Just a minute. It’s so damned dark I can’t see a thing.’ She fumbled about trying to fit the key into the hole, then in it went and she turned it. The mechanism needed oiling, but as it creaked she pushed against it until she heard the satisfying click.
She cautiously opened the door. ‘Don’t you have your own key?’ she began, but stopped when she saw Alice slumped on the step. ‘What’s happened,’ she said, bending down to her. ‘Have you fallen?’
‘Help me in, will you?’ Alice looked up at her. One eye was closed, the other bruised and bloody; her lips were swollen and there was a cut across her face.
‘Whatever’s happened?’ Lily helped her up and brought her inside. ‘Who did this to you?’
Alice gave a soft groan. ‘It’s one of ’hazards of this game,’ she muttered through her distended lips. ‘But I never thought it’d happen to me. What am I to do?’ She started to cry. ‘I daren’t go out there again. I’m scared that I’ll die.’