The Petticoat Men (23 page)

‘I am so so
glad
you think there can – be a solution! And Freddie will tell you that I am a very trustworthy person, Mr Park,’ and I smiled and smiled at him, I think he must’ve known I meant it. ‘Perhaps I should go home now,’ I said, ‘as my mother and my brother will wonder if you have locked me up permanently seeing as I’ve been here nearly all of the day and I am awfully hungry!’ but I think he saw I was teasing him just a little for he gave a very, very small smile.

He opened the door of the funny stuffy hot little room then, and I went out without looking back,
of course
he could see clearly how I walked and would wonder what a gentleman like Freddie was doing holding a cripple in her room but I didn’t care. It was nearly dark and I was so hungry and so keen to tell Ma and Billy what had happened that I even caught an omnibus towards Wakefield-street even though it’s so hard to get up and down from the steps, specially when they’re crowded.

And all the way home I thought about Mr Park working in the courts and his son arrested for what they said was filthy and I thought how hard it must be for him but he had shared something with me, even if he hadn’t quite meant to: he must have lots of influential friends of course. It sounded so important: the Senior Master of the Court of Common Pleas, if he was a clerk like Freddie said he must be a very very big clerk.

‘I dont think there’s going to be a big trial!’ I had called on the stairs, before I even got to the downstairs kitchen. Billy was home, Ma was a bit frantic that I was so late as if I was a child and not a life-experienced person and she and Billy were looking deadly serious. ‘Freddie’s father told me! Well, sort of told me.’

‘Freddie’s
father
?’

‘I went to see him. I told him Freddie was my boy. I thought it might be useful.’

Ma and Billy stared at me. I poured myself water from a jug, I needed that, Ma had made a beef stew and it smelled so lovely I thought I would swoon but they had that look as if they had been talking very serious and me not there.

‘What did he say?’ said Ma quietly.

I faced her so she could hear clearly. ‘He said there are lots of lawyers working on the case, and he said he believed there wouldn’t be a trial in the Old Bailey! Could we eat,
please
, Ma? I haven’t eaten since this morning and I’m really hungry.’

We sat down then and Ma served out the stew and it was raptureful
to me and I ate and ate but I could see Ma and Billy were uneasy and a bit quiet and I noticed I ate more than them. ‘But aren’t you pleased?’ I said at last, still eating.

Ma looked at me. ‘Is that
exactly
what he said? He wouldn’t say something like that to you, Mattie.’

‘He didn’t mean to. But – I think it is what he believed.’

‘Jesus!’ said Ma. ‘If that’s true,’ she said to Billy, ‘surely your position will be safe.’

‘
What?
’ I put down my knife and fork then.

‘It’s all right,’ said Billy, calmly. ‘I will not let them take away my position. And Mattie, I meant to tell you, Freddie asked me to thank you for giving the evidence so well.’

‘You’ve seen him to properly talk to?’ Now I knocked my fork and it clattered on the floor. ‘You went and saw them and talked to them?’

‘I thought they might help me to find Lord Arthur but they had no idea where he was.’

‘Oh. Oh. I would give anything in the world to see Freddie by himself and make him know that no matter what evidence is said – I – I care for him and I am his friend.’

‘I think he knows that, Mattie,’ said Ma in her dry voice.

I suddenly felt fear at the bottom of my legs. ‘Is your position unsafe in the Parliament because of our name and address being in the newspapers about Freddie and Ernest? Oh Billy, is that what has happened? but Billy, listen, didn’t you hear me? you wont have to worry any more, I’ve told you, I think – I think it’s going to be all right, I think there isn’t going to be a big trial, course you wont lose your position, Freddie’s pa didn’t even mean to say it to me, I could tell,
but he did
, so he must know something we dont. You mustn’t worry, Billy.’

Billy looked at me as if I was a babbling nincompoop. And then he suddenly grinned and his face creased just like our Pa when he smiled or laughed. I love Billy.

‘We’re just getting a little bit too famous, Mattie!’ he said.

20

N
OTHING
MORE
HAPPENED
about Billy’s job, he still went to work every day and on the next Friday I said to Ma, quite cheerful: ‘We have to go back to the court, even though we think it might be all right in the end – and if it’s all right in the end then Billy wont lose his position. But we do have to go back to the court because otherwise Freddie and Ernest will think we are not their friends any more, that we’ve been shocked.’

‘Have you been shocked?’ asked Ma and I just looked at her.

‘I’m not stupid, Ma.’

‘I know you’re not stupid, Mattie,’ said Ma, gravely somehow. ‘That wasn’t what I was asking you. And we are not certain that it will “be all right” altogether.’

‘Mr Park
told
me.’

‘All right, Mattie.’

‘As long as we dont have to hear any more about – about their – private parts,’ I said, but still trying to be cheerful.

Soon as we got in I stared around for the Senior Master of the Court of Common Pleas now that I knew what he looked like. But he didn’t seem to be there. I wondered if they gave him a secret place at the back.

When they brought Freddie and Ernest in I could see that Freddie’s whiskers had grown more, even Ernest had a few.

But. They both looked – different in another way somehow, more despondent, and – I dont know what the right word is – puffed up in their pale faces, as if they were sick. As if they didn’t know anything about anything good at all. And I felt a big jumping feeling somewhere in my heart, had I misunderstood? his father would certainly have told Freddie if he thought there would be no trial, and Freddie simply looked ill.

‘Ma, they look
terrible.
Do you think – do you think I might have misunderstood Mr Park?’

‘I think perhaps you might have,’ she said back, she was looking at Freddie too.

Then, a gentleman was called from the Royal College of Surgeons and my heart jumped again. He was
so
much more respectable-looking than that police surgeon with the greasy hair who said those disgusting things. Mr Flowers treated this medical person with great respect and you could tell he was a gentleman. But – oh well – well the surgeon still had to say things it must have been hard for Freddie and Ernest to listen to, if someone spoke publicly on and on about my private parts I cannot imagine how I would bear it because private parts are called private, and here were theirs being discussed again all over London.

‘I am a friend of the father of Ernest Boulton and I went to the House of Detention at his request,’ he said, ‘where I found the young men despondent and, I thought, almost unwell for the worry of this case. I examined Park’s private parts and his anus. I did not discover anything to indicate the presence of disease or the probability of anything having existed within two or three months past.’

I looked at poor, poor Freddie. Of course this was evidence
for
him, unlike the police surgeon. Freddie stared at the floor, unmoving and I thought,
this man held me tight when I needed him, I would hold him now if I could in front of all these people I would hold him and protect him and let them say what they liked.

‘I also examined Mr Boulton. I could not discover anything to suggest a suspicion that he had been guilty of an unnatural act.’

Ernest looked at Mr Flowers from under his eyelashes, that look of his, but Mr Flowers remained impassive as always.

‘I did not perceive that the anus was dilated. The muscle was intact and it had the natural function of retaining control of the bowel. Of course I speak theoretically rather than practically as my experience of such cases has been extremely limited. I only apply my general knowledge to this case.

‘However, I wish to make a particular and important point: I do not believe, as the police surgeon in his overzealous – so it seems to me – examination of the two defendants obviously does, that sodomy can be identified by physical examination.’

And this time the audience’s applause was respectful and loud. There was no shouting or laughing.

Ma whispered to me, ‘That’s their defence lawyers done this.’

I nodded. But what I was thinking was,
I hope I never have to hear anything about Freddie’s bottom ever again
.

No sign still of Lord Arthur Clinton. No sign of Mr Gibbings. Ma said in her dry way: ‘So much for noblemen.’

‘Is Mr Gibbings a
nobleman
?’

‘I’ve heard he has some vague connection.’

There were more witnesses called. I was still looking around for the Senior Master of the Court of Common Pleas while we heard about Ernest being in Scotland: tales told, all the men who seemed besotted by him, letters read out. Soppy letters to Ernest.

And then there were two more letters read out. They weren’t to Ernest. Or from Ernest.

These letters were from
Freddie
to Lord Arthur Clinton.

At first I actually thought there must have been some sort of mistake, they weren’t written by Freddie, they couldn’t have been, well they didn’t
sound
like Freddie, not the Freddie I knew and it made everything sound – different than I thought it was. And when Mr Poland read the letters out he had a snarky way with his voice, well his voice was already snarky and it got even worse when he was reading out letters. From Freddie.

My dearest Arthur,

How very kind of you to think of me on my birthday. I require no remembrance of my sister’s husband, as the many kindnesses he has bestowed upon me will make me remember him for many a year and the birthday present he is so kind as to promise will only be one addition to the heap of little favours I already treasure up. So many thanks for it dear old man. I cannot echo your wish that I should live to be a hundred, though I should like to live to a green old age. Green, did I say? O! ciel, the amount of paint that will be required to hide that very unbecoming tint. My campish undertakings are not at present meeting with the success they deserve. Whatever I do seems to get me into hot water somewhere; but n’importe, what’s the odds as long as your-rappy? Believe me, your affectionate sister-in-law, once more with many, many thanks,

Fanny Winifred Park

I could feel Ma looking at me but I didn’t look at her, as well as not looking at Freddie. Somehow the letter wasn’t the same as dressing up for a lark. And what came to me suddenly in that dusty old court was the glittering, excited – dangerous – look in Freddie’s eyes when he – when he rushed off somewhere. But Mr Poland raised his hand – there was a lot of talking excitedly in the court – and began to read the second one, I dont know blooming well
why
they had to read out more like that, and everyone went quiet again.

My dearest Arthur,

You must really excuse me from interfering in matrimonial squabbles (for I am sure the present is no more than that); and although I am, as you say, Stella’s confidante in most things, that which you wish to know she keeps locked up in her own breast. She may sometimes treat you brusquely; but, on the other hand, how she stands up for your dignity of position. As to all the things she said to you the other night, she may have been tight, and did not know all she was saying; so that by the time you get my answer you will both be laughing over the whole affair, as Stella and I did when we quarrelled and fought down here – don’t you remember, when I slapped her face? Do not think me unkind, dear, as really I have told you all I know, and have not an opinion worth having to offer you…

Ever yours,

Fan

‘I dont think Freddie could have written that,’ I whispered into Ma’s ear.

Ma looked at me with that exasperated look she has sometimes. But there must have been something in my face that stopped what she meant to say, and she said something else. ‘It seemed like a kind letter,’ said Ma to me. ‘He was trying to cheer Lord Arthur.’

I was having trouble saying words.

‘We – we only knew part of their lives, Ma.’

She looked at me so surprised. ‘Of course, Mattie!’ she said. ‘Did you never understand that?’

I hadn’t, not really, understood that. I thought 13 Wakefield-street was the important part.

When we came out of the court that day there was a poem fixed on to one of the walls near by:

There was an old person of Sark

Who buggered a pig in the dark

The swine in surprise