"Look at her face!" a man exclaimed. "She"s bin given a right good hiding."
"Who did this to you, love?" the woman asked. "You nearly got yerself run over by that carriage! Maybe we should call a constable?"
The word "constable" was almost like having smelling salts held beneath her nose. Hope came round sufficiently to know she was lying on the ground; that the voices she"d heard belonged to a young man and woman, and that there were other people standing around looking down at her. But she couldn"t seem to open her eyes wide enough to see them properly.
"Don"t call a constable," she managed to croak out. "Just help me up!"
She felt them lifting her, but she swayed on her feet and the young woman held on to her. "Lawdy! You"re soaked through," she exclaimed. "You ain"t bin having a dip in the river, "ave you?"
Hope knew that the woman was teasing, and that at least suggested she was kindly. "I like my water drinkable," she replied, and tried very hard to smile.
"Lord love her," the woman exclaimed. "Well, whoever hit you ain"t quite dampened yer spirit, I"ll say that. Give us a "and, Gussie, let"s get "er in the church outa the rain."
The church was very dark, but it was much warmer than out on the street and smelled of candlewax rather than human and animal waste. Once Hope was sitting on a bench near the door, she tried to thank the couple, but she still couldn"t open her eyes enough to see them properly.
"I can"t see," she murmured.
"Shouldn"t think you could, both yer eyes are swollen over," the young man said. "Who done this?"
"My brother-in-law," Hope said.
"Yer sister let him do that to yer?" the woman asked indignantly.
"She wasn"t there," Hope said. "He threw me out the house. I walked half the night, and then came on here this morning."
"Have you got folks in Bristol?" the woman asked.
"No, and I don"t have any money either," Hope said. "Do you know anywhere I could get work?"
She felt rather than saw them exchange meaningful glances. a.s.suming they were doubtful about her being taken on by anyone because of how she looked, she pushed back her hood. "If you could just lend me a comb and show me somewhere I could wash my face, I"ll be all right. I"ve been a kitchenmaid for over three years, and I can cook very well."
When they remained silent, she took that to be disbelief and she finally broke down in tears. "I can do all kinds of work," she sobbed. "Please believe me!"
"Well, you ain"t gonna be able to get any sorta work with yer face that way," the young woman said, and to Hope"s surprise she drew her into her arms and rocked her. "Now, don"t cry, love. You"s just weary and hurt. I reckon we"ll take you home with us and patch you up. G.o.d knows, we can"t leave you here like this."
"You ain"t thinking straight, Betsy," Gussie said in a whisper, glancing over his shoulder at the girl asleep on the pile of sacks which pa.s.sed for a bed. "It"s hard enough lookin" out fer ourselves. We can"t keep her an" all."
Betsy had bathed the girl"s face, given her some small beer to drink, then helped her out of her wet clothes and covered her in a blanket. Now she was asleep.
The room was in Lewins Mead, a rabbit warren of fetid alleys and ancient dilapidated wooden-framed houses close to the docks. It housed what someone in Parliament had recently dubbed "The Dangerous and Perishing Cla.s.ses", a stratum of life well below the working cla.s.ses thieves, wh.o.r.es, crossing sweepers, street vendors, cripples, deserters, the most desperate of the city"s poor.
A hundred years earlier when Bristol had been the second biggest city next to London, and the docks as busy as London"s and Liverpool"s, Lewins Mead had been a good address. Great fortunes had been made during the slave trade, for it was Bristol ships that sailed to Africa to pick up slaves, then on to the West Indies to sell them, finally returning to England laden with mola.s.ses and tobacco. But as the shipping trade boomed, the wealthy merchants, ships" captains and professional men no longer wished to live close to the pestilence of the docks, and they moved to grand new houses up on the hills of Clifton and Kingsdown.
But the docks were no longer as busy as they had been a hundred years earlier. Exorbitant harbour dues, the tardiness of the Corporation in building the new floating harbour, and the fact that new, bigger ships were unable to get up and down the river Avon, meant that Bristol had lost out to Liverpool docks. The new railways meant that it had lost its place as the distribution centre for the whole of the West of England, Wales and the Midlands.
Once, Bristol had been proud of its many industries sugar refining, gla.s.s, iron foundries and soap manufacture but they were gone now, aside from four gla.s.s companies. That and the countrywide failing economy in recent years had created even more hardship in Bristol.
So now the old merchants" houses were let out by the room, and the tenants sublet floor s.p.a.ce to anyone who wanted it. Sometimes there were as many as twenty or thirty people sleeping in each room. The houses sagged and creaked with neglect; wind blew in through the cracks, and the upper windows which overhung the narrow alleyways were boarded up as the gla.s.s broke or fell out.
But Betsy and Gussie thought themselves fortunate to have this top-floor room in Lamb Lane. They might share it with four other people, but they were friends, not strangers. The roof didn"t leak too badly, they had gla.s.s in their small window and a fireplace too, and they"d stuffed up the holes in the walls with oiled rags. To them it was a home.
"She"ll bring us luck," Betsy insisted. "There"s something about her."
"Aye, there"s something about her! Something that makes a man smash her face in," Gussie said gloomily. "And she"s real sick. What if we catch it?"
"You can"t catch what ails her," Betsy said stoutly. She suspected the girl was carrying a child and her brother-in-law had been afraid she"d shame his family.
Betsy Archer was nineteen. She was five feet five and buxom, with long dark hair which she plaited and wound round her head like a crown, and her l.u.s.trous dark eyes and olive skin suggested she had Italian or Spanish blood. Although she was not a real beauty, people described her as "comely", for she had an exotic, proud look about her and a vibrancy that even the harshness of her life hadn"t erased.
Born in Liverpool, Betsy was eight when her father, a cooper by trade, brought the family to Bristol. Three months later, both her parents and Sadie, her younger sister, died when the lodging house they were staying in caught fire. Her father had lifted Betsy through the upstairs window and dropped her into a man"s arms. He didn"t have time to do the same for Sadie.
Sometimes Betsy wished she"d died in that fire too. She had survived by mingling with the hundreds of other orphaned or abandoned children who hung around the docks and learned begging, stealing and scavenging from them. Home was wherever she could squeeze in for the night, and she was grateful if she was given a blanket, even if it was crawling with lice.
By the time she was ten many of the children she"d got to know when she was first orphaned were in prison. Some had died. Almost all the older girls had become wh.o.r.es. Betsy didn"t want to end up in prison or dead, and she didn"t intend to become a wh.o.r.e either.
Even at that tender age she had already learned that her only a.s.set was her virginity. Twice she was foolish enough to be taken in by seemingly motherly women who offered her a home, new clothes and all the food she could eat. But she was lucky both times in being helped to escape before she was presented to a "gentleman" who had a penchant for children.
She never ruled out using that one a.s.set one day, providing she got big money for it. But until then she intended to stay alive and keep out of prison, so she kept her wits about her and didn"t take unnecessary risks.
The dank, stinking alleys and narrow lanes around the docks were her domain. She knew almost everyone who lived there and didn"t steal from them. She knew all the marine shops where she could get a few pennies for the wood, nails and metal she managed to scavenge. That paid the rent. When there was nothing left over for food, she would go up to the big houses in Clifton and find one where the cook had been foolish enough to leave the back door open while she was baking. It took only a few seconds to slip in and steal a pie or a cake once she grabbed a whole leg of lamb straight from the oven.
The docks were a source of many free gifts for anyone prepared to watch and wait, patiently armed with a basket and a pot or jar. Betsy would check every morning which ships were being unloaded, and loiter in the hopes that a dropped crate would spill open. She would pounce on the fruit, sugar or tea and be off with it, often even before the dockers became aware that they"d damaged the crate.
There were also the foreign sailors she could charm into giving her a sixpence to buy a new dress so she could meet them later.
She never bought clothes, just as she never kept those appointments with foreign sailors. But up in the High Street there were second-hand clothes shops where she could whip a petticoat, dress or hat while the shopkeeper was distracted.
Betsy met Gussie when she was thirteen and he was twelve, a small, freckle-faced, ginger-haired boy who"d tramped from Devon to Bristol to seek his fortune. He"d come up to her as she was hanging about waiting for a pie man to turn his back so she could s.n.a.t.c.h one of his wares, and he"d asked her where he could sleep for the night.
Betsy was so hungry that she said if he could distract the pie man"s attention she"d help him. He played a blinder by pretending to throw a fit in front of the stall, and she didn"t get just one pie, but three.
She was of course obliged to give Gussie one of the pies and to take him back to the flophouse she mostly stayed at.
Within a couple of days Betsy had decided Gussie was the perfect partner for her. He wasn"t tough, but he was wily and daring. Apart from the pretend fits, he could shin up a drainpipe and enter a house by an upper window in broad daylight. He could also make a sound which frightened horses. When they began to bolt, he"d grab the reins and calm the horse, for which the stunned owner would then reward him. He said he"d learned it from a man in a circus who had also taught him acrobatics and clowning.
It was the clowning that really won Betsy over. Gussie would do fantastic funny mimes, twisting his rubbery face to portray emotions and different kinds of people. One night he did a little act while people were queuing to get into the theatre in King Street and they roared with laughter, throwing nearly two shillings in pennies and halfpennies to him. Even his name, Augustus Pomfrey, made Betsy laugh; she said it would make an excellent name for a fat alderman, but was ridiculous on a small, skinny boy with hair the colour of carrots. But then, she found she laughed a great deal with Gussie, for despite his small stature she felt sort of protected and comfortable with him. He might not be able to fight off the many men who tried to have their way with her, but his presence deterred them. And in turn she protected him from the thugs and ruffians that she"d grown up with.
Six years on they were inseparable, an indomitable unit, but not lovers. Betsy had eventually traded her virginity to a sea captain for the princely sum of five guineas, but the experience had put her off men. Gussie, with his brotherly affection and total loyalty, was the only male she trusted completely.
"She"s quite a little lady," Betsy said thoughtfully. "Hurt as she is, she thanked us real nice. When those shiners have gone I bet she"ll be real bonny."
"You ain"t thinkin" of taking her down to Dolly"s!" Gussie exclaimed.
""Course not, whatcha take me for?" Betsy replied indignantly. Dolly owned a bawdy house in King Street.
"So what are we going to do with her?"
"We don"t have to do nothin" with her. I jest feel sorry fer her. It won"t kill us to take care of her for a day or two till she"s mended, will it?"
Gussie shrugged. He knew once Betsy"s mind was made up about something, nothing would change it. "I"d best light the fire then so we can dry her clothes, then I"ll go out and get us something to eat."
Betsy sat on the floor by the fire after Gussie left, but she kept glancing round at the sleeping girl. Her whole face was purple and black with bruising, swollen flesh completely covering her eyes. But as she"d helped her take off her sodden dress, the girl had clutched at her stomach, and Betsy guessed she"d been punched and kicked there too.
Men beating women was an everyday occurrence around here. It was equally common to see people weak with hunger. Young girls and boys flocked into Bristol every day in the hopes of finding work, and unless they had a character from a previous employer, almost all of them ended up dead, defeated or criminals.
Betsy didn"t normally help anyone. The one thing she"d learned right from the age of eight when she saw that house burn down with her mother, father and Sadie inside, was that it was a tough old world. You had to look after yourself, be quicker, more cunning, braver and smarter than anyone else, for if you just dropped your guard for a moment then someone would do you down.
So she couldn"t quite understand what it was about this this girl that had made her want to help her. girl that had made her want to help her.
Looking at her clothes drying round the fire, she could see they were well made. Plain cloth, but the st.i.tching was as small and neat as some she"d seen on gowns in the market that had once belonged to rich women. Her undergarments had impressed Betsy too, for apart from the mud splattered around the hems of her petticoats, they were very clean and dainty.
The girl"s face was too distorted and swollen to tell if it was a pretty one, but her hair was black and glossy, and where she wasn"t bruised, her skin was smooth and very white, not mottled and rough like so many women"s round here. Her hands were proof she"d spent years in a kitchen, for they were red and call used, but overall she looked as though she"d been cared for.
Was she carrying a child?
Round here no one could afford to get married, so if a girl got in the family way no one thought anything of it. But Betsy had enough recollection of life before her parents died to know that in more genteel circles b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were frowned on.
Betsy was just going to wriggle over closer to the girl and look to see if she had a swollen belly, when she began to stir. She moved to sit up, winced with pain and flopped down again.
"How"d yer feel now? Any better for a sleep?" Betsy asked.
The girl looked about her as if confused. "I can see a bit better now. But both my eyes hurt. Are they very swollen?"
"Let"s just say you won"t be getting no admirers for a bit," Betsy said with a chuckle.
"It was very kind of you and your husband to help me."
The sweetness of her voice touched Betsy, but it also reminded her to be careful. For all she knew the girl could be a magistrate"s daughter! "Gussie ain"t me husband; only a friend. I"ll tell youright now, we don"t normally help no one. So if you wants to stay tonight you"d better spill it out!"
"Spill what out?"
"Well, yer name, how old you are, and where you from, fer a start. We couldn"t get no sense out of yer while we was helping you "ere."
"Hope Renton, fifteen, and I come from a village beyond Bristol to the south. Did you say your name is Betsy?"
"That"s right. Betsy Archer and I"m n.o.body"s fool. So I"m gonna make a cup of tea. And then you"re gonna tell me how you ended up nearly getting yerself flattened under a carriage wheel. And when the baby"s due."
"I"m not having a baby," Hope said indignantly. "What made you think I was?"
"That"s the usual reason for girls running away." Betsy shrugged. "But if you say you ain"t, then that"s one problem out the way."
Hope watched as Betsy filled an old tin teapot with some water from a jug, and then put it on the fire to boil. She wondered why she hadn"t got a kettle.
Her memory of coming here was cloudy. She remembered Betsy and Gussie being with her in the church, then them holding her arms to support her and taking her through some very narrow alleys. But that was all she could remember.
She shuddered as she looked about the small, gloomy room. It was clearly at the top of the house for the ceiling sloped sharply towards the tiny window, and it had no furniture, only a few wooden crates and piles of sacks which clearly served as beds. On one of the crates there were several cracked cups and a large tin box. A bucket stood in the corner by the door, presumably for slops, and on another crate was a tin basin.
Hope knew people who were very much poorer than her own family, but even they had some sort of furniture, a few trinkets and bits of china. Betsy must be desperately poor, but she didn"t look it for she had gold hoops in her ears, and her red dress was stylish, even if it was shabby, dirty and a bit vulgar with such a low neck.
"It"s quiet here," Hope said. "Is that because you are the only people living here?"
Betsy gave a kind of strangled snort. "Your eyes must"ve been bad when we brought you in here," she said. "It"s like a bleedin" ants" nest, so many people coming and going you can"t count them all. It"s quiet now cos most are out, but come this evening it"ll be a different story. Now, that brings me round to your"n. Come on, tell me!"
Hope thought fast. She was very grateful to Betsy, but she wasn"t sure it was sensible to tell her the whole truth, not until she knew she could trust her. So she gave her a safer, shortened version, that Albert resented her living with him and her sister, and while Nell was away he"d hit her and told her to get out.
"Why didn"t you go up to the big house and tell them what he"d done?" Betsy asked.
"Because he would have taken it out on Nell when she got back," Hope said. "I couldn"t do anything to Albert without it coming back on Nell."
Betsy seemed satisfied with that. The water was boiling in the teapot now, and she lifted it off the fire and put it on the crate, then opening the tin she took out a packet of tea and spooned some into the water.
"We gotta keep any food stuff in this tin cos of the mice and rats," Betsy said, getting out a small bag of sugar. "There"s a bit of bread if you want it. Gussie"s gone to get us some pies, but it"ll keep you going until then."
With the cup of sweet black tea in one hand and a lump of bread in the other, Hope felt a little better, though it was hard to eat and drink with her cut lips. "I"ll pay you back for my keep as soon as I get a position," she said.
"You got a character?" Betsy asked.
"No, I couldn"t, could I? Albert threw me out too fast."
"Then you"ll be lucky to get anything," Betsy said curtly. "Whatcha want to be a servant for anyways?"
Hope said it was all she knew, but she wouldn"t mind working in a shop.
"You has to be able to figure, writing it down and that," Betsy said.
"I can do that," Hope replied. "I know all the stuff about linen and household things too. And I know about farming and animals."
"You"re a bit of a know-all, ain"tcha?" Betsy said sarcastically.
Hope was embarra.s.sed then and hung her head. "I didn"t mean to be, I was only telling you what I could do because I thought it might give you ideas for places I could go to look for work."
Betsy didn"t know anyone who could read and write, and she was in fact impressed. It struck her that if her own parents had lived, she might have learned such skills. But there was something more about this girl, maybe it was her name, G.o.d knows, hope hope was the only thing that kept her going sometimes. Or maybe it was because if her sister hadn"t died, she"d be the same age. Yet whatever the reason, she felt drawn to the girl, like it was a kind of fate. was the only thing that kept her going sometimes. Or maybe it was because if her sister hadn"t died, she"d be the same age. Yet whatever the reason, she felt drawn to the girl, like it was a kind of fate.
"You can"t go now here till yer face is mended," she said, more kindly. "So jest rest up fer now. Tell us about what you done in the big house. I ain"t bin in one, leastways not to stop, if yer know what I mean."
A week later, Hope studied her face in a small mirror Gussie had brought home for her.
"You look pretty now," he said, his pale brown eyes crinkling up as he smiled at her. "We didn"t want you to see how bad you looked when we found you."
Hope"s eyes p.r.i.c.kled with tears of grat.i.tude. Not for the mirror she would sooner have remained in ignorance about how she looked, for once the swelling had gone down on her face she had imagined she would look normal again. But the bruising was still purple and at no stretch of the imagination did she look pretty. Yet it was another act of kindness, of which Gussie and Betsy had showered so many on her. They"d let her stay, they"d fed her and comforted her, all when they had so little themselves.
"Gus might be sweet-talking when he says you look pretty, but you don"t look like a monster no more," Betsy said with laughter in her voice. "It"ll be a couple more weeks before them bruises fade, but you look good enough for the Grapes tonight."
Gussie and Betsy went out drinking every night; it seemed that the only thing which made life bearable for everyone in Lewins Mead was cheap gin or rum. Up till now Hope had declined to go with them, using her injuries as an excuse, but it was clear they thought the time had come for her to venture out.
"I can"t," Hope said in alarm. "I"m not ready for that. I"ll be all right here on my own."
"I didn"t take you for a coward," Betsy retorted, putting her hands on her hips and glowering at the younger girl. "No one will take no notice of a few bruises, they"s as common as fleas down the Grapes."