The Linnet Bird: A Novel (14 page)

Now, my back pressed painfully against the rough brick of a dark building in an alley off Paradise Street—and I knew there would soon be a trail of bruises dark as inky kisses up my spine from the pressure—the thick fingers of the fishmonger’s left hand searched high inside me while he shook and jiggled himself against my skirt with his right hand, trying to ready himself. I idly thought how fortunate that he was the last for the night. Surely another customer would object to the smell he was leaving on me.

It was no good. The fishmonger finally gave up, roughly pulling his fingers out of me, his elbow giving my hipbone a hard knock as he angrily buttoned his trousers.

“That’ll be sixpence, sir,” I said, straightening my skirt and kneading my fingers against my sore hip. “A tanner, please.” I held out my hand.

“You’ll get nowt. I got nothing and I’ll pay for nothing,” he said, walking away.

I sidestepped a puddle of streaky vomit glinting in the light from the street and caught him by the sleeve. “Now, sir,” I told him, my voice never losing its sweetness. “T’wasn’t my fault you weren’t at your best tonight. And you did find a bit of pleasure, I’m sure, judging by your familiarity of me.”

He stopped, looking down at my hand on the thick wool of his sleeve. “I’ll give you tuppence and not a penny more.” He dug in the pocket of his tight striped waistcoat, taking out a coin. As he handed it to me his eyes rested on the skin just above my bodice. “Could be that yer wrong. It
were
yer fault I weren’t at me best. That’s horrible, a right mess. Why don’t you cover yerself?”

I took the coin, holding it tightly in my fist. “And why should I? For weren’t it one very like yourself that caused it?”

The fishmonger mumbled something unintelligible and turned away, unbuttoning his trousers again and urinating loudly against the wall, steam rising in the cool air. I watched the puddle he created running along the veins between the cobbles.

I tucked the coin into the slit in the underside of my waistband, then carefully stepped over the filthy, uneven surface of the alley and out onto the nearly deserted street.

“Hoi! Linny!”

I peered down the dim street, trying to see through the shadows, then waved, waiting as the other girl hurried toward me.

“Did you have a good night, then, Linny?” Annabelle asked. She was chewing gingerly on a hard roll stuffed with greasy herring. Her cheekbone shone swollen.

“It hasn’t been too bad, except for the last one. He couldn’t bring his fine soldier to stand at attention and wouldn’t pay what I asked,” I told her.

Annabelle nodded. “Bugger the rotten sods and their limp cockstands. You should carry a cutter, as I do. A sturdy blade flashing against their jewels makes ’em cough up soon enough.”

I nodded, thinking of the folding knife I’d once used to threaten Ram Munt, and had call to bring out a few more times when I’d felt truly fearful. But I’d lost it last July when my untied straw bonnet had been blown off into the street in a sudden dry gust of gritty wind. I’d run to retrieve it before it was flattened by a horse’s hoof. But it had danced and twirled away from me, caught up in the persistent wind, and by the time I’d caught it and brushed off the dust and put it back on, I realized my knife was gone. I retraced my steps over and over, but the bone-handled knife had disappeared, snatched up, most likely, by a street urchin with a magpie’s eye. I hadn’t wanted to spend the money to buy another. Now I realized Annabelle was right. More and more I had to fight—either for my money or to defend myself. The customers were getting rougher and cheaper.

“Comin’ for a drink?” Annabelle asked.

“No.” I yawned, blinking as the chapel bells of St. Peter’s chimed five times. “I’m off to get a few hours’ sleep.”

Annabelle shrugged and went up the street and I made my way back to my old home, the dilapidated room on Jack Street. Now I shared it with Annabelle, Helen, and Dorie.

What I told Annabelle was true; I
was
tired. But the other reason I didn’t want to go to the Goat’s Head was that I didn’t want to spend even one extra penny of my money. I’d saved seven pounds. The fare advertised on the posters had risen from five to seven pounds over the last two years and was always dropping or rising a few shillings, depending on the season and the ship itself, but seven pounds was a safe bet. I planned to work one more month, just one—to save a little more so that I wouldn’t be penniless when I arrived in New York.

I would never be forced onto the street again.

As I silently let myself into the fetid room on Jack Street I saw two humped, motionless figures on the narrow mattress and was glad Annabelle didn’t come home. Only three of us could crowd onto the narrow flock pallet; Annabelle and I, had we come home together, would have had to pull straws to see who got the bed and who would sleep on the floor. There was a definite nip in the air, and if I’d pulled the short straw, with only my shawl and extra dress to cover me, it would be unpleasant on the cold floorboards without even a strip of drugget to keep away the draft. There was a tiny fireplace so badly clogged that we hated to light it because of the clouds of black smoke we had to endure. The walls, untouched by the whitewash brush in years, were furred a delicate green by the rising damp. Rain made the rotting beams creak monotonously, and the one loose window rattled painfully in even the slightest wind. The glass was so smudged with dirt and soot inside and out that during the day the room seemed to be in a never-ending twilight.

I took off my boots and pulled off my dress so I could unhook the front stays of my corset, then, shivering, put my dress back on and wrapped my shawl around me and crowded onto the edge of the flattened stained pallet that filled the width of the closet that passed as a room. I had to shove Dorie with my hip, who in turn pressed closer to Helen, forcing her against the wall. Dorie moaned and grumbled sleepily, flinging her arm across my temple. But still, I was almost asleep by the time I turned onto my other side, facing into the dark room. With my eyes closed, I fingered the reassuring thickness of my waistband—my pendant and coins—all stuffed into the slit I made in the wide band that held my skirt to the bodice of my dress.

There was an identical opening in the waistband of my other dress, and nobody knew about my savings, not even the other girls in the room. I’d surreptitiously transfer the money and the pendant when I changed my dress each week. I’d try to wait until the other girls were gone, or, if that proved impossible, I would turn away, facing into the corner as I pulled off one dress and slipped the other over my head. I let whoever was in the room think it was because I was ashamed of my scarred torso.

The fruitwood box and the coins and books it had contained had been stolen over a year ago. The only reason my pendant had been spared was because Helen, without asking, had taken it and worn it that night. I’d been furious with her when I’d seen it around her neck when I ran into her on the street, and had demanded it back. But later, when I’d returned to Jack Street and found the room turned upside down, my box gone and even floorboards torn up, the thief finding all the money the girls and I hid under separate boards, the only thing I’d been grateful for was that Helen had decided to choose that night to borrow the pendant.

After that I’d kept it and my money with me at all times.

With sleep coming sweetly over me, I recited the rote prayer to try to keep away the nightmare, the overpowering crush of blood and hair and cold water and the plunging shears. When I was awakened by it, as was usual every third or fourth night, I’d sit up, bathed in sweat, my mouth stretched wide as I took deep, gulping gasps. The truth of that nightmare—the knowledge that I had killed a man, even though it had been to protect myself from the same fate—was like a slinking dark animal, something with sharp teeth and yellow eyes. It was always following me, sometimes close on my heels, at other times sitting some distance away, watching. Under bright gaslights or a candle’s soft glow the dark animal stayed low, pushed away by the warmth and the light. But it came back with a vengeance when I was in the dark. In the growing cold of this autumn it had grown even larger. There were times, now, that I felt it so close I’d whirl around in the darkness of the street, thinking I heard it breathing. And then I knew the nightmare would come that night.

Now it had come three nights in succession, without any days of grace in between, and I’d only managed a few hours of restless sleep each night. My body ached with exhaustion and I willed myself to dream ordinary thoughts this night. I felt my eyelids easing, knew the line between my brows was erasing. Just before I let myself go, I put one hand up in the old position over my ruined breast. It comforted me to protect it, although I don’t know why. And lately, I’d been moving my other hand from its usual spot, guarding my waistband. I moved it further down now, to my belly, cradling the child furled tightly there.

I
KNEW IT WAS A GIRL
and that I would call her Frances. I don’t know exactly when or how she was conceived; I’d always been careful with my prevention—using the bit of sponge, washed out every morning and then soaked in alum and sulphate of zinc and put in place before my first customer, and then, after my last, taking out the sponge and using my syringe wrapped in a rag dripping with the same witch’s brew, no matter how weary I was. It had been Blue who had taught me what to do, and I’d used the sponge and syringe faithfully as soon as my first bleeding began, only three months after I’d left Back Phoebe Anne Street for good. But of course all the girls get caught at one time or other. It had happened to me before, just at the end of my first year with Blue, only I hadn’t even been aware of it until it was almost over. It was Helen, come back to Jack Street for her cloak when a cold rain had started up, who had told me what was happening. She’d found me on the bed when I should have been out working, doubled in two with pain, my face waxen and wet with sweat, and after a few questions she slipped out and brought back two pints of ale. Helen had sat beside me, forcing me to drink both pints, telling me it would be over soon, and to be glad of it. This way, she told me, I wouldn’t have to pay to get rid of it.

All I’d felt, then, was relief when the cramping and clotted bleeding at last stopped. Nothing else.

But this second time had been different. For one thing, I’d realized, fairly early, that a baby had started. And I also knew it was the sign I’d been waiting for.

The trip to New York would take six weeks, longer if the weather proved poor. But that meant that if I left at the end of the month, I would arrive before the baby was due. She would be born there, in the great New World, and she would be an American. I would find a respectable job, for weren’t there all sorts of jobs to be had in America, especially in the place called New York? Nobody would know me and I would create a new life for my daughter. The little girl would never know about my life—this life—in Liverpool.

For the last few months, while I waited for each customer to finish, mindlessly murmuring rote praises and moaning as if delirious with pleasure to bring them on faster, I made up the stories I would tell little Frances about the fine gentleman who had been her father and what had happened to him and how I had come to the United States of America.

And then, early one morning as I had walked back to Jack Street, the rain falling in torrents and the inky sky occasionally bleached by the sheet lightning that flashed from far out over the Mersey, illuminating the weeping rooftops, I realized, with a sudden sharp pang, that maybe my mother had done the same thing.

For the first time, I wondered if perhaps I didn’t carry noble blood at all. My hand sought out the birthmark under my wet cuff, fingering the raised shape of the fish thoughtfully.