The Unmasking of a Lady. Emily May
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coachman.
She strolled with Polly for ten minutes and then exited the gardens. The carriage, with the Westcote coat of arms glinting within its widow’s lozenge, was nowhere in sight.
Polly hailed a hackney coach. ‘Rosemary Lane,’ she told the jarvey as they climbed inside.
Rosemary Lane was only a few miles from Kensington Gardens, but the slums of Whitechapel were as far from the grand squares of Mayfair as heaven was from hell. Arabella climbed down from the hackney and stepped over an open gutter, while Polly negotiated with the reluctant jarvey to return for them in an hour.
Their destination was just off Rosemary Lane, a narrow old-clothes shop with cracked and boarded-over windows. Hinges squealed as Arabella pushed the door open, a bell jangled harshly overhead, and the smell of musty, unwashed clothes invaded her nose. The scents of stale sweat, old perfume, spilled alcohol and tallow candles mingled sickeningly together. For a moment she had to pause, quelling the nausea that pushed up her throat.
The shop was dimly lit, full of mounds of used clothing. Coats hung from door mantels and hooks in the ceiling, their cuffs shiny with wear. Racks crowded the room: worn shirts and faded flannel waistcoats, stained trousers, frayed dresses and yellowing petticoats. Scuffed shoes and boots with cracked soles lay in piles on the floor.
Polly bustled in behind her and shut the door with another squeal of the hinges. ‘Sally,’ she called out. ‘It’s us.’
They changed in a small, cramped backroom, unbuttoning each other’s gowns and swiftly unlacing the short stays. Arabella hung her clothes—French muslin gown, linen chemise, cambric petticoat—carefully on hooks, and then stripped off her silk stockings and laid them over the back of a chair. The only item she didn’t remove was the pocket containing Lady Bicknell’s earrings, tied around her waist.
Having undressed, they dressed hurriedly again, in the clothes of the poor. Arabella pulled on a coarse chemise, a discoloured blue dress that was too large for her, rough woollen stockings, a battered pair of men’s lace-up boots, and a stained apron. She wrapped a ragged shawl around her head and shoulders. ‘Ready?’
Polly rolled up sleeves that were too long for her and reached for her own shawl. ‘Yes.’
They left the old-clothes shop through the back door, stepping into a dark, malodorous alley. Arabella linked her arm with Polly’s and set off briskly in the direction of Berner Street.
The scuttling rats, the stinking piles of refuse, the rivulets of foul water running down the middle of the streets, were familiar. They didn’t frighten her, but they brought back memories of the three years she’d lived in Whitechapel. The deeper they penetrated the warren of small, dark streets, the stronger the memories became. These were the sounds she remembered from her childhood: drunken shouts, the slurred singing of an inebriated woman, crying children, the yelp of a kicked dog.
‘Nice to be back,’ Polly said, tightening her grip on Arabella’s arm. ‘Ain’t it?’ She no longer spoke like a lady’s maid; her accent was pure Cockney.
Arabella glanced at her. Polly’s jaw was grimly clenched.
She felt a stab of shame. What had happened to Polly in these filthy streets was far worse than anything she’d experienced. She halted. ‘Polly, if you want to return to the shop—’
‘And let you walk by yourself?’ Polly snorted. ‘Not likely! And besides—’ she took a step, tugging Arabella with her ‘—I want to see me brother.’
Arabella bit her lip and allowed Polly to pull her along. No one paid them any attention, two women in ragged, shapeless clothes. She scanned the street, taking care not to catch anyone’s eyes. Her gaze slid over men’s faces, unshaven and defeated, over the sunken cheeks and despairing eyes of women. You can’t help them all, she repeated in her head. Not all of them.
But she could help some of them, and it was the children her eyes lingered on: grubby and half-naked, some running and shouting and playing with each other, others sitting listlessly on filthy doorsteps. I can help some of them. And her fingers strayed to her waist and the hidden rubies.
In Berner Street, with its soot-stained brick buildings crammed closely together, she glanced again at Polly. The grimness was gone from her maid’s face. Polly’s step quickened as they approached the third house from the corner and her knock on the battered door was loud and cheerful. ‘Harry?’ she called, pushing open the door. ‘It’s me, Polly.’
Arabella followed her into a narrow hallway and shut the door. She blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness, hearing a shout of ‘Pol!’ and the clatter of boots on a wooden floor.
Arabella grinned as a burly, broken-nosed man swept Polly up in a rib-cracking embrace and kissed her soundly on each cheek. More than fifteen years had passed since she’d made Harry’s acquaintance in a rat-infested alley off Dorset Street, but the boy he’d been was still stamped on his face. He had the same crooked nose and broad grin, the same shrewd eyes beneath a shock of unruly hair.
‘Bella’s here, too,’ Polly said, and it was Arabella’s turn for a hug that left her breathless.
‘I’m glad you’re ‘ere,’ Harry said. ‘I picked up a new girl t’day. You can meet ‘er, if you like.’
‘Please,’ Arabella said, and her fingers strayed to the hidden pocket again.
Harry shepherded them into the parlour, a small and sparsely furnished room, and stuck his head out into the hallway. ‘Tess!’ he bellowed. ‘Our Pol and Bella are ‘ere! They’d like to meet Aggie!’
Arabella sat on a lumpy sofa with frayed upholstery and splitting seams. Compared to her grandmother’s parlour in Mayfair the room was a hovel; compared to where Polly and Harry had grown up—a cramped room in the most dilapidated of Whitechapel’s rookeries—it was a palace. ‘I have some earrings,’ she told Harry. ‘Rubies.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I picked up two more girls last week, and I ‘ave me eye on another.’
The rush of gratitude was so strong that Arabella’s throat tightened and for a moment she couldn’t speak. She looked away from his broad, plain face and busied herself extracting the earrings from the hidden pocket, fumbling her fingers through the narrow slits in her gown and petticoat. ‘Here.’ She held them out to him.
In these surroundings the earrings didn’t look so garish. Harry held one up and examined it. ‘Needs cleanin’,’ he said. ‘But they’ll fetch a good price—’
He slid the earrings into a pocket as the door opened.
A young woman stood in the doorway, her belly rounded in pregnancy. Her smile showed two missing teeth, but her face was pretty and dimpled. Holding her hand was a scrawny, waif-like girl.
The girl’s gaze flicked from Harry’s face to Polly’s, and then to Arabella’s. For a long moment they stared at each other. Arabella saw a pale, too-thin face and wide, wary eyes beneath a crooked fringe of fair hair. She smiled at the girl. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, Aggie.’ She held out her hand. ‘Come and sit here beside me.’
Aggie hesitated, and then released Tess’s hand and crossed the room. Her dress was filthy, her bare feet almost black with dirt, but her face was clean.
‘Did Tess make you wash your face?’ Arabella asked, as the girl sat beside her on the sofa.
Aggie nodded. ‘And me ‘ands.’
Arabella looked down at the girl’s hands. Her nails were ragged and dirty, but the skin was clean. Dark bruises ringed Aggie’s left wrist. ‘How did you get those bruises?’
‘Me ma,’ the girl said.
Arabella glanced at Harry.
‘Trying to sell ‘er for a bottle o’ gin,’ he said with a grimace. ‘Weren’t she, Aggie?’
The girl nodded.