The Apple (3 page)

‘Then what use would I be to you, sir?’

He leaned in closer to her, closer than he’d ever ventured before. A respectable, fashionable mother, passing at that moment with her infant daughter toddling along beside, shielded the child’s face and hurried her along the footpath, so shocking was this public display of intimacy. The sparse beard on Mr Heaton’s chin almost brushed the shoulder of Clara’s dress as he spoke low into her ear.

‘The sporting event I have in mind is pit ratting. A publican of my acquaintance hosts a rat pit in Southwark on the last Thursday of every month. The next one is next week.’

‘I don’t like rats, sir.’

‘You don’t have to like rats. They come to a bad end, anyway, and swiftly. Dogs dispatch them with lightning speed.’

‘I don’t like dogs neither, sir.’

He winced, and his expression became somewhat supplicatory.

‘Oh, don’t say that. There will be two dogs there on Thursday. One of them is my own. Robbie is his name. He’s the most beautiful dog; a handsomer dog never walked the earth. His coat is smoother than sable.’

‘I won’t have to do nothing with the dog, I hope, sir?’

‘You can admire his skill. Or not, as you please. Your business will be with me.’

‘And what business will that be, sir?’

‘Nothing you won’t have done before.’

‘I was a respectable woman until this year, sir. There’s many things I’ve never done.’

‘Even so …’ He inclined his head and smiled a weary smile, as if to imply that any whore worth a pinch of salt would have this particular trick in her repertoire.

An alarming thought entered Clara’s head.

‘I won’t have to …
do it
with you in front of the other people in the public house, will I?’

‘Of course not,’ he said, in gruff exasperation. ‘We will simply watch the rat-catching together. Fully clothed. The only thing I require of you is that you put your hand down the back of my trousers. No one will see it; I’ll wear a long overcoat that will preserve us from prying eyes. Not that there are likely to be any on us. The rat pit is a source of great excitement. You have no idea how wound up people can get.’

Clara stared him straight in the face, which was her usual technique (now that she was a harlot of some experience) with untrustworthy customers. She focused on his pock-marked nose, trying not to be swayed by the feverish, imploring eyes on either side. She made an effort to riffle through his most recent utterances in reverse order, to retrieve the one that concerned her.

‘Down the back of your trousers?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘When the … uh … performance is underway, you are to slip your hand into my clothing. I shan’t be wearing anything under my trousers. You will insert your middle finger into my rectum.’

‘Rectum, sir?’

‘My arse-hole.’

‘And then?’

‘There is no “And then”. That’s all.’ He paused. ‘Five shillings.’

Clara stared at his forehead. It was shiny and seemed to be throbbing, as if the flesh was desperate to sweat but too badly scarred to do so.

‘Blood makes me sick, sir.’

‘There’s scarcely any blood. It’s not like dogfights or cock-fights or bull-baiting. It’s efficient. It’s clean. It’s …’ He clenched his fists, frustrated by her lack of understanding. ‘It’s a privilege to behold it. Awe – that’s what it inspires. Awe. It’s a …’ He took a deep breath; the normal amount of air was not sufficient to convey the grandeur. ‘… an amazing demonstration of what happens when a superbly trained creature is pitted against a horde of vermin.’

She had never heard him sound so passionate. She didn’t care for it.

‘The thing is, next Thursday is quite a full sort of day for me, sir.’

He grabbed her gloved hands, there in the street, and squeezed them inside his own. His eyes were luminous with sincerity.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’ve given you a shilling a week, just to prepare for this. Don’t deny me. Everything depends on you. You’ll be finished in an hour.’

‘You frighten me, sir.’

‘Ten shillings, then.’

Clara swallowed hard.

‘All right,’ she said.

Since then, Clara had put a great deal of thought into how she might renege on her promise without suffering unpleasant consequences.

She considered spending Thursday entirely indoors, ironing her clothes, mending the seam in her camisole, and generally giving her body a rest. But there was no telling what the Rat Man might do if frustrated in this fashion. He might look for her every day afterwards.

She considered brazening it out, telling him she’d had second thoughts, and showing him a middle finger neatly clipped. If he got angry, she could simply call for assistance, couldn’t she? London was crawling with policemen lately, as well as do-gooders of all kinds. Surely one of them would come to her rescue? ‘This man is making indecent propositions to me,’ she could plead. But perhaps this was not a very wise idea after all. She was known by sight to several local policemen. If there was a complaint against her from a gentleman (however ugly or scarred he might be), they would cheerfully throw her in prison.

She considered murdering the Rat Man, just to remove him from her life. But she had to admit that this seemed an excessive response to her fear of embarrassment, more the sort of response one might expect from a man than a woman. Also, she had no means of killing anyone, not even a knife. Was she supposed to strangle Mr Heaton in the street? The whole notion was daft, and she didn’t know why she’d even thought of it, other than the thrill it offered.

She considered fleeing altogether, plying her trade in a different part of the city. Lord Jesus, one little nail grown half an inch, and here she was, planning to wrench herself away from St Giles just as she was getting the hang of it! But this, too, was mere fantasy. Her preferred lodgings were with Mrs Porter in Queen Street and there was a nice public house near the Broad Street junction where she had a growing reputation as a clean girl with not a mark on her. Also there was Dickie’s Chophouse in Seven Dials, where she could eat as much as she wanted, within reason, as long as she never spoke a word to Mr Dickie’s wife.

No, she must keep her appointment with the Rat Man.

Thursday came, and Clara rendezvoused with Mr Heaton in the usual place. Without further discussion, she fell into step with him as he limped briskly along Dudley Street. He was dressed in a voluminous, knee-length overcoat which made him look like an impresario. A down-at-heel impresario, perhaps: the coat was slightly moth-eaten. For the first time it occurred to Clara that her benefactor might not be especially wealthy. Could he ill afford the money he’d been giving her? She felt a twinge of conscience, and dealt with it the only way she knew.

‘I want my ten shillings now,’ she said.

He handed them to her even as they walked. As if he’d been expecting this moment and had the coins already enclosed in his palm.

How would they get to Southwark, she wondered? It must be quite far from here, as none of her prostitute friends knew of it. Did the Rat Man mean to take her on an exhausting march, or would they board an omnibus together, like husband and wife? She didn’t like the idea of hordes of strangers presuming that there must be an intimate relationship between herself and the Rat Man; she wished she’d fobbed him off with a simple fuck six weeks ago, instead of getting herself mixed up in this malarkey.

‘Is it far?’ she said.

His arm jerked into the air, and she flinched in fear of being struck, but he was only hailing a cab.

‘The Traveller’s Rest, Southwark,’ he said.

‘Very good, sir,’ said the cabbie. ‘Going for the
special keg
they keeps downstairs, are you sir?’

‘Indeed.’

‘I’m partial to a bit of that meself, sir. Very tasty.’

Clara and Mr Heaton climbed into the cabin. Mr Heaton seemed not at all surprised that the cabbie knew the reputation of The Traveller’s Rest. For a moment, Clara caught a glimpse of a London which was vastly richer in attractions than she and her cronies had any notion of, and which other folk made it their business to explore. It was not a picture she had any desire to see. Indeed, the Rat Man seemed to specialise in showing her glimpses of things she would prefer to remain ignorant of.

‘How will I get home when it’s over?’

The Rat Man smiled sadly. ‘I trust we’ll both agree when it’s over.’

‘But you don’t live where I live.’

‘I’ll take you home first.’

Clara nodded, unconvinced. If she’d learned anything since her fall into prostitution, it was not to rely on the courtesy and generosity of others. The cab seemed to be travelling a very long way, and every clack of the horse’s hooves on the cobbles emphasised that she was farther and farther from the streets she knew. The ten shillings stowed in the pocket of her dress would do her no good if she was robbed and left for dead in a dark unfamiliar neighbourhood. To prevent that happening, she was now under pressure to remain on good terms with the Rat Man, to please him or at least not quarrel with him. She didn’t know if it was possible for them to spend a whole afternoon together, especially one involving rats and dogs, without quarrelling.

‘I hope we have understood each other about the nail,’ he said, his face turned away from her in the shadowy cabin.

‘The nail, sir?’

‘You mustn’t be gentle with it, you understand? You must push it as deep inside as your finger will go.’

‘I’ll do me best, sir.’

‘You needn’t worry about hurting me.’

‘I won’t, sir.’

‘And don’t pull it out until …’ He turned even more sharply away from her, as though he had just spotted someone of his acquaintance passing by in the street. ‘Until it’s over.’

‘How can I be sure of that, sir?’

He turned to face her then. His mouth was set hard. The scarred flesh on his face was pale, while his cheeks were flushed and mottled.

‘The last rat will be dead,’ he said.

The Traveller’s Rest was on the other side of the world. The cab had to cross the Thames to get there, past Waterloo, where Clara had been once or twice with her mistress, and then farther still. The pub itself, when they finally reached it, hardly seemed to warrant the length of the journey. It impressed Clara as a low sort of establishment, the kind where shiftless men drank with serious intent. The atmosphere was brewed thick with pipe smoke and alcohol fumes, and the regulars hunched low as if to take the occasional breath of oxygen from somewhere under the tables. A patch of floor where the floorboards had rotted away was crudely mended with planks of a different colour, the jagged edges covered over with tar. The fireplace was choked with ash and amber embers. Several of the gaslights were turned off or had ceased to function, and the scarcity of glass in the room meant that it wholly lacked the mirrored conviviality of the pubs Clara frequented. Instead, dark brown wood stole the light and refused to give it back.

‘I don’t like it here,’ she whispered to her companion.

‘This isn’t what we’ve come for,’ he whispered back. ‘What we’ve come for is downstairs.’

Clara couldn’t see any stairs. She craned her head around a pillar, and saw only more half-sozzled men staring back at her from their drinking stations. She had expected a bright, theatrical-looking banner hung up to generate excitement about the impending rat fight, but there was nothing of the sort. Indeed there was scant decoration on the walls – just a few curling handbills advertising recently bygone entertainments in more salubrious-sounding establishments than The Traveller’s Rest. There was also a hand-lettered notice saying ‘BEWARE OF SODS’.

Mr Heaton walked up to the publican. They nodded at each other without a word, shook hands … or perhaps a coin was being passed from one man to the other. Then the publican, Mr Heaton and Clara passed through the room to the very rear, where the publican pulled open a trap-door in the floor. A flight of stairs was revealed, illuminated by a light of unclear origin. The tobacco vapours of the room below met those of the room above, and swirled into each other.

The cellar, when Clara had allowed herself to be led down the stairs, was really not such a dismal place. In fact, it suited her better. Despite its subterranean location, it seemed less claustrophobic than the drinking den upstairs, and was much better lit, with a dozen oil lamps at strategic points. The rough stone walls were painted white, to enhance the illumination.

The cellar was mainly given over to the rat pit. There were several rows of wooden seats pushed against the rough stone walls, but no-one was sitting in them. All the spectators – some twenty in all – stood around the edge of the pit, which was more like a raised wooden tub. It was octagonal, waist-high, and about nine feet in diameter. The publican made his way over to a barrel almost as tall as himself, a barrel made for flour rather than wine or beer, to whose lid he laid his ear. Not quite satisfied, he peered into one of several holes drilled in the lid, squinting clownishly.

‘Seventy-five of the best in there,’ said a man wearing a top hat without any top on it.

‘We could use a hundred,’ said the publican.

‘A nundred of these beauties takes more than one man to catch.’

‘You used to catch a hundred for us.’

‘That was before himprovements in sanitation.’

‘Well, I hope these are big ones.’

‘Big? Comb their fur a different way and they could pass as ferrets.’

Mr Heaton laid a finger against Clara’s upper arm to get her attention.

‘I’m going to fetch Robbie now,’ he murmured near her ear. ‘Things will move fast from here on in. Remember what I’ve asked of you.’

She nodded.

‘Take your glove off, then,’ he reminded her.

She looked down at her hands, self-conscious at the idea of removing her gloves in a public place: everyone would instantly assume she was a woman of low breeding. But then she realised she was the sole female in the cellar, and that each man must surely already have judged her to be a whore. She pulled off her gloves, finger by finger, and no-one took a blind bit of notice. She could have thrown her skirts over her head, and still the assembled spectators might have kept their attention squarely on the business at hand. Some of the men were already leaning their elbows on the rim of the rat-pit, jostling shoulder-to-shoulder. Clara wondered how it was decided who should lean on the rim of the pit and who should goggle over their shoulders; did it depend on how much they’d paid for admission? Several of the customers were rather handsomely dressed, with shiny buttons on their coats, immaculate hats, fashionable cravats that cost fifty times more than the grubby cotton scarf worn by the rat-catcher. Clara doubted these gentlemen would ever set foot in a place like The Traveller’s Rest, were it not for the scuffling, squeaking contents of the keg.