The Apple (2 page)

‘I should’ve bought something to drink,’ she mutters. Next to the bed, there’s half a bottle of red wine left over from last night; too potent for a child who’s accustomed to diluted beer.

‘I don’t need nuffink,’ says Christopher, popping another roast potato into his mouth.

‘Here’s a card, too,’ says Sugar, and produces it. Observing that his fingers are otherwise occupied and greasy, she demonstrates the action of the paper angel’s wings by pulling on the tab. Christopher smiles broadly. She can’t recall ever seeing him smile before.

Outside in the street, a tuneless female voice begins to sing. It’s not ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ this time, nor even a festive song. Instead, this worthy woman, employing her considerable lungpower in the attempt to penetrate the walls and windows of Mrs Castaway’s, bawls:

For you upon this blessed morn
,

Of Virgin Mother undefiled
,

An Infant all Divine is born
,

And God becomes a little Child
.

Christopher’s smile broadens. He is almost unrecognisable, with deep creases in his cheeks, a twinkle in his eye, and a dark grease-smudge on his nose.

‘Have a sip of wine,’ says Sugar, handing him the bottle. ‘Not too much, though; it will turn your tongue grey.’

Christopher takes a swig from the bottle. Do not be scandalised: he’s had strong drink all his life, and wine is cleaner than water.

No palace hath He but a shed
,

No cradle but a manger mean:

Yet o’er that peerless Infant’s Head

A new and wondrous star is seen
…

‘Here, have a mouse,’ says Sugar, setting one of the sweet dough fancies on the floor in front of him. ‘They’re not very good. Scarcely fit for mice to eat.’

Christopher, having scoffed his Christmas meal, takes a cautious nibble at the confectionery.

‘Nuffink wrong wiv it,’ he pronounces, and bites the creature in half.

Sugar is relieved he likes it; she’d meant to give him some chocolates, but her own greed got the better of her, and she ate them all while waiting for the meal to be cooked. There is a limit to human generosity, even at Christmas.

‘That’s me finished,’ says Christopher suddenly. ‘Give me them pillercases.’

Sugar stares at him uncomprehending for a moment, then removes the pillow-slips from her pillows and hands them to the boy.

‘Forgot,’ he remarks. It’s not clear which of them he is blaming for the oversight.

Somewhat awkwardly, he walks to the door, hesitates, then ducks back to claim his angel card with the moving wings.

‘I’ll bring it back,’ he assures her.

Sugar yearns to tell him there is no need, it’s his, and that he should’ve had chocolates if she weren’t such a greedy, hard-hearted girl; that he should’ve had a pile of proper presents if his mother hadn’t been Amy; that he should’ve had a decent home and a father and nice clothes and schooling if the world weren’t such a pitiless and grubby place. She imagines herself embracing him, pressing him hard against her bosom, peppering his head with kisses – all the expressions of unfeigned affection she has read about in stories.

‘No need,’ she says hoarsely.

When Christopher has disappeared downstairs, Sugar lies back on her bed. The stripped pillows still smell of hair-oil and alcohol; only the passing of time will get rid of it. Outside, the evangelist has given up and moved on; thank God for small mercies. The snow has started again, tentatively, with the lightest possible flakes. All over London, these feathery wisps are settling on the rooftops of rich and poor alike, melting instantly where there is warmth, accumulating into a soft white blanket where there is none.

It is almost time to open your eyes; the twenty-first century is waiting for you, and you’ve been among prostitutes and strange children for too long. Come away now. Sugar is tired, even though it’s the middle of the day. Tonight her work will begin anew, so where’s the harm in taking a snooze while things are quiet? Half-asleep already, she leans in front of the looking-glass, wipes her face clean with a damp cloth, and sticks her tongue out.

Fancy that: her tongue is pink and healthy-looking. How quickly the human body recovers from its abuses! It’s a miracle, hallelujah. Merry Christmas now, and sweet dreams.

Clara and the Rat Man

C
lara had found the Rat Man repulsive from the outset, but, because she found
all
of her customers repulsive, this had seemed insufficient reason to spurn his advances. Looking back on it, she regretted her lack of discrimination, and blamed it on her inexperience as a prostitute. In the menagerie of maleness, two kinds of repulsive existed: repulsive-ugly and repulsive-peculiar. The Rat Man was repulsive-peculiar.

Not that he wasn’t ugly, too. His teeth were brown, his eyes were bloodshot, his beard was wispy and his nose was pock-marked. He walked with a limp, and the pinkish-grey skin of his forehead was strangely scarred, as if someone had poured a kettle of scalding water onto his brow when he was a baby. Altogether he would have been a pitiable case, if Clara had been the pitying kind. The world was too undeserving, however, for Clara to give pity away for nothing. Ugly, scarred men were none the less men, and thus despicable.

‘Call me Mr Heaton,’ he’d said, with a formal bow. It was almost comical, him standing there in Great White Lion Street, leaning on his cane, treating her as though she were a prospective pupil of the pianoforte, rather than a whore.

That was six weeks ago. Six weeks was a long time in her new life. Once-cherished illusions and inhibitions were dying almost daily, and, just when she imagined that they must surely all have perished, a few more would fall. Each month, she was unrecognisable as the person she’d been the month before, and the month before that. Even her way of speaking sounded less well-educated, more common now than when she was a servant in a cosy middle-class house, as though the grime of street life had soiled her tongue, coarsening her vowels, nibbling the consonants away. The effort of refraining from saying ‘ain’t’, or of avoiding double negatives, seemed too wearisome now that there was no-one to impress. Only twelve months backwards in time, dressed in stiff calico and clutching an impressive set of silvery keys, she had dealt with tradesmen and bakers’ boys at the back door of her mistress’s house, and had felt herself superior to them as soon as they opened their mouths. The smallest difference in intonation served to define her place above them on the ladder. But she had descended that ladder with dizzying speed.

Yet in another way, she was the stronger for her fall. Every day, she became more skilled and confident at taking the measure of a man in a single glance, and brushing him off if she suspected he was more trouble than he was worth. If the peculiar Mr Heaton had first accosted her yesterday instead of six weeks ago, she would have cold-shouldered him without hesitation. Yes, she was almost sure of that.

But a month and a half ago, she’d still been finding her feet in the profession, and fearful that her fastidious tastes might render her destitute. After all, she wasn’t a fancy woman, kept in a smart house in St John’s Wood. She was a common streetwalker, seeking to earn enough for lodgings and food. What would become of her if she said no to every ugly man who propositioned her?

Mr Heaton had not exactly propositioned her, in any case. He had merely asked her if, for a shilling, she would promise to let one of her fingernails grow.

‘Fingernails grow awful slow, sir,’ she’d said, once she’d got him to repeat the bizarre request. ‘Do you want to stand ’ere watching while it ’appens?’

‘No,’ he’d replied. ‘I’ll meet you here next week at the same time. If you’ve let the nail grow, I shall give you another shilling.’

It seemed absurdly easy money. He specified the nail she was to let grow (middle finger, right hand), she gave him her word, he gave her a shilling, and she watched him limp away. Morning turned to afternoon, afternoon turned to evening, and Clara’s life went along its course. She spent the coin, forgot all about Mr Heaton. She forgot about him so thoroughly that she was loitering in the same spot the following week – and was mortified to see him approaching her once more.

She hoped that she might, by sheer coincidence, have neglected to trim the nail they’d agreed upon. But, when she removed her glove at Mr Heaton’s request, the body part in question was down to the quick.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘I must’ve bit it.’

He looked melancholy, as if this identical circumstance had played itself out many times, with many other women.

‘I’ll give you another chance,’ he said. ‘And another shilling. But this time you must keep your promise.’

‘I surely will, sir,’ she’d pledged.

Her promise proved damned difficult to keep. Although her former life as a lady’s maid was barely a year in the past, she seemed to have lost the knack of keeping in mind, during the routine activities of an average day, any responsibility that was not immediately obvious. Once upon a time, she’d been able to help her mistress plan a dinner party or sew a dress while not forgetting that at precisely five o’clock, she must remind her of some other thing. How extraordinary, to have been so disciplined! Nowadays, she could scarcely remember which services a customer had paid for, and often suspected that a man was helping himself to something extra.

As for this affair with the fingernail, it was torture. Ten, twenty times a day she would find the nail between her lips, just about to be gnawed off by her small white teeth. With a grunt of annoyance she would pull her hand away. Ten, twenty times a day, she would be vaguely, uneasily aware that one of her nails was ill-matched to the other nine, and wonder why. Oh yes: Mr Heaton.

Who would’ve thought that a slightly longer middle fingernail could be such a bother? It was nothing spectacular to look at, perhaps half an inch in extra length. Yet it caught on the fabric of her bodice, dug into the flesh of her neck when she was buttoning up her collar, scratched her cheek when she raised her hand to fiddle with the curls of her fringe. The normally snug fit of her glove was ruined. Half an inch of nail, and it might as well be a beastly talon!

After a day’s work (Clara preferred to do her business during the day and sleep at night) she would retire to her room in Mrs Porter’s lodging-house, and pay Mrs Porter’s maid-of-all-work to fill a bath, and then she would soak in the warm water until her hands went soft and dimpled. And the nail would become pliable, so pliable she could bend it against the tip of her finger. If she were to put it between her teeth, she knew it would tear away without the least resistance, and would taste of nothing at all, and she could swallow it, or spit it out if she wished. She sucked the nail, took it between her teeth the way some men took her nipple, but left it intact. God damn Mr Heaton! How much longer would he plague her?

Each week he came to her at the corner of Great White Lion and Dudley Street, noted approvingly the growth of the nail, and gave her a shilling. Each week she resolved to tell him that she wanted no more shillings from him, that the length of her nail was too inconvenient. Each week she lost her nerve. Mr Heaton was so manifestly pleased with her for obeying him, and Clara couldn’t help feeling a matchstick glow of childish pride at having met his expectations.

Men were not often pleased with Clara. She wasn’t likeable or charming or even especially polite. She offered her body with bad grace, stated her prices matter-of-factly, didn’t pretend to experience transports of joy when some red-faced fool was squirming against her. She scorned compliments; when one of her first customers told her she had the prettiest breasts he’d ever seen, she would probably have slapped him, had she not been attached to him at an awkward angle just then. The honeyed compliments of men always led to a slick of viscous liquid that would soil her clothing and need to be wiped away.

Mr Heaton, however, had not yet laid a hand on her. His shilling was by far the easiest earnings of her week; she got it in thirty seconds flat. Clara wondered if he was a eunuch. His limping gait, the scars on his face … perhaps these were signs of a more serious injury. Clara disliked sick animals and her instincts told her to keep well away from such things. But Jesus Christ almighty: a shilling in thirty seconds, without a hand laid on her! She couldn’t justify rejecting such an offer, especially when other customers wasted hours of her time, haggled over prices, inflicted bruises on her flesh, made her itch. Each time she felt annoyed with Mr Heaton, she reminded herself that she’d had one, two, three, four, five, six shillings from him, for doing nothing. If she kept this lark up for twelve weeks, her accrued capital (ignoring for a moment that she spent each shilling as soon as she got it) would be a pound. A pound just for resisting the impulse to chew a fingernail! That couldn’t be a bad thing, could it?

But then she discovered the catch. Last week, she’d found out something about her crippled benefactor that transformed him from ‘Mr Heaton’ into ‘the Rat Man’.

They met in the street as usual. Passersby squinted in bemusement and distaste as she ungloved her right hand and allowed him to inspect her middle finger. Her nail was ever-so-slightly chipped, where she’d caught it on a brick wall while servicing a customer in a hurry, but it was long, and Mr Heaton nodded in satisfaction.

‘Would you like to earn five shillings at a stroke?’ he asked her, as she was tugging her glove back on.

She regarded him suspiciously. Was he going to ask her to allow four more of her nails to grow? This seemed the most obvious next proposal.

Instead, he said:

‘I want you to accompany me to a sporting event.’

‘I don’t understand much about sport, sir,’ she’d replied.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ he assured her. ‘Nobody would expect anything of you. All eyes will be on the action.’

‘Yours too?’

‘Mine too.’