Behind the Sun Read online

  Below these hopefuls came the brothels to which any man with money in his pocket and an erection in his trousers had access. Some were clean, bright establishments; others less so. Then there were the groups of prostitutes who banded together, often sharing clothes and food costs, to rent rooms in houses around Covent Garden and operate unofficial brothels, until the watch broke them up or the girls moved on, more often than not with several months’ back-rent left unpaid. Weeks later they would find new premises and set up once again.

  Last and definitely least of the ‘indoors’ category were the women who worked out of their own homes, sometimes with their children unavoidably in attendance.

  There were child prostitutes — both boys and girls; mollyhouses where men could enjoy sex dressed in women’s finery; beautiful coffee-skinned whores from Jamaica and stunning girls from Africa with skin as black as Whitby jet; flogging brothels with all manner of whips and devices; discreet salons for ladies who preferred the smooth curves of female flesh; and in Holywell Street off the Strand were close to fifty shops selling dirty books. Friday herself had posed several times for illustrators of such publications — it paid quite well.

  Life as a streetwalker suited her. She didn’t occupy a particularly lofty position in London’s hierarchy of whores and didn’t care to. She didn’t have to pretend she was something she wasn’t, she worked when she wanted to and, if she didn’t like the way a man looked, she could walk away. She had a good wad of money put aside now — she wasn’t dependent the way a lot of whores were — and when she and Betsy worked the caper with the drunks there was always extra. And if sometimes she felt like sitting in the ordinary or the tavern drinking gin with her friends instead of walking the streets, she could. It wasn’t the life most mothers would have wanted for their daughters, but hers had been a prostitute herself, and a drunk, and she’d been dead seven years anyway.

  Friday swallowed the last of her bread and cheese. She sat for a moment, then shaved off a sliver of tobacco, tamped it into her pipe and lit it, drawing up the smoke and expelling it from the side of her mouth in short, regular puffs until the tobacco caught properly. As she coughed and reached for her ale, the sound of raised voices drew her attention.

  To her alarm, she saw a bilious-looking ‘John Smith’, a pair of trousers far too big for him hauled up over his bony shanks, standing near the ordinary’s doorway accompanied by a grim-faced constable.

  Her heart thudding with panic, she rose, grabbed her things and ran for the door at the end of the bar that opened onto a lane behind the ordinary.

  ‘That’s her!’ Mr Smith shouted. ‘With the red hair! Stop her!’

  Friday ran, but the constable was too quick and too strong. He darted across the room and grabbed her wrist as she lunged for the door latch.

  ‘I thought it might be you. God’s truth, girl, did you not learn your lesson last time?’ the constable said as he guided her firmly back towards Mr Smith.

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Friday muttered as she struggled to free her arm.

  Mr Smith, fizzing with righteous wrath, wrenched his walking stick out of Friday’s hand and hit her across her shoulder with it. ‘That’s my cane! Thief! Dirty, whoring thief!’

  The ordinary’s morning patrons let out an ‘aaah!’ of appreciation at this unexpected entertainment.

  Friday’s mouth fell open in astonishment. ‘Oi, you little shite, watch who you’re thumping!’ And she struck out with a closed fist and punched Mr Smith in the side of the head.

  The small crowd cheered lustily and someone threw a bread roll.

  Mr Smith staggered, then, his hand cupped protectively over his ringing ear, demanded of the constable, ‘Did you see that? Thievery and assault!’

  ‘Settle down now,’ the constable said to him wearily. ‘You’ll get your day in court.’

  ‘She’s a thieving whore! She took my watch and my money and my shoes!’ Mr Smith was almost spitting, he was so beside himself with indignation. ‘And my trousers!’

  Hoots of laughter from the breakfast crowd.

  ‘And there was another one, with dark hair. I insist she be apprehended as well!’

  The constable raised an eyebrow at Friday. ‘Who might that have been then?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Friday responded automatically. ‘I don’t even know what he’s talking about.’

  The constable knew very well that she did and he also knew he would never get her accomplice’s name out of her, because Friday Woolfe had a rare sense of honour among the canting crew — she had never been known to rat on a colleague. Her accomplice would no doubt get away with it, unlike Friday. Pretty, buxom, cheerful Friday Woolfe was headed for Newgate Gaol and then, like as not, this time the boat.

  Harrie Clarke rubbed the lustrous rust-coloured silk between her fingers, imagining she could feel the exceptional quality of each individual thread against her skin. Then, as she always did, she sighed hopelessly and let the fabric fall; never in her life would she be able to afford to buy anything like it, not on the pittance she was paid as an assistant sempstress to Mrs Lynch. If she could just manage to save enough to make two or three demonstration gowns, featuring her original lace and embroidery patterns to show customers how lovely they were, then she could take orders, buying the materials she would need with the deposits.

  A skilled ‘first hand’ in a dressmaking salon in Regent Street could earn up to sixty pounds a year — a fortune — personally measuring ladies for dresses and cutting patterns. Apprentices, who sewed sleeves and bodices, earned less, but still a lot more than the wage Mrs Lynch paid Harrie — and Harrie, all modesty aside, knew herself to be very good at what she did. But at least she hadn’t been reduced to skirt work, which was sent out to teams of piece-workers who lived in the garrets of Carnaby Street and worked all through the night during the Season, ruining their eyesight and their backs for as little sixpence per piece.

  But even though what she earned barely covered her family’s living expenses, Harrie dared not leave her position with Mrs Lynch. It was tedious and soul-destroying but her mother was ill constantly now, coughing up her lungs night and day, unable to earn an income but at the same time refusing to allow Harrie’s half-brother Robbie and half-sisters Sophie and Anna out to work. At eight and seven respectively Robbie and Sophie were old enough, but Ada couldn’t bear to see them ruined at such a young age; she had sworn it would be another year at least before she let Robbie look for employment in the city’s factories or markets.

  But Robbie was courting ruin anyway, out on the streets ducking and diving, stealing food and telling Ada it had come from a neighbour. It worried Harrie enormously. She agreed that the children should be kept out of the factories, but the prospect of another year as bread-winner filled her with misery: she just didn’t know if she could tolerate working for tight-fisted, slave-driving, mean-mouthed Mrs Lynch much longer. She was constantly on the lookout for something better, but jobs were scarce and she knew she was lucky to be employed at all. Some of her friends supplemented their incomes with casual prostitution, but she knew she could never do that, not even as a last resort. She just couldn’t.

  The linen-draper moved along his counter and conferred with his shop assistant. They both disappeared through a doorway into the back of the shop. Harrie drifted over to the counter and inspected some boxes of lace. Next to them were arranged half a dozen tapestry-covered compendiums containing spools of silk embroidery thread. One in particular caught her attention: a selection ranging from the palest blue to a startling turquoise to a deep, rich indigo — colours that would work into her latest embroidery pattern perfectly.

  The hairs on her arms lifted and her skin prickled with goose bumps. Did she dare? She’d never stolen anything in her life. A vision flashed through her mind of well-to-do ladies ordering dozens of copies of her demonstration gown — it would be rust silk with stunning blue embroidery on the bodice — while her mother, miraculously healthy again, wrote down
measurements in the order book. Inside her something seemed to swell almost to bursting, her hand reached out, and the compendium of gorgeous threads disappeared beneath the waistband of her skirt. Then, feeling as though she were walking in some sort of dream in which all the sound in the world was muffled by the thudding of her heart and the colours of everything were suddenly much, much brighter, she returned to the rust silk, slid the flat bolt up her skirt, clamped it against her thigh with her hand and walked out of the shop, the hot blood in her face surging in time with her pulse. She might get away with it, she really might; she had the sort of ordinary features and demeanour that allowed her to go about unnoticed so perhaps…

  Then someone shouted and she began to run: the bolt of fabric slipped down and tripped her, sending her sprawling face first onto the cobbles; she knew then she had just made the worst mistake of her life.

  November 1828, Newgate Gaol

  Looming on the corner of Newgate and Old Bailey streets, just outside the former western wall, or ‘bailey’, of the city, Newgate had been home to London’s debtors and felons, and those awaiting trial or execution, for more than six centuries. It had burnt down twice, once during the Great Fire of London, and been demolished and rebuilt many more times in an attempt to obliterate the pestilence and disease that flourished within its high walls. This latest incarnation, completed fifty years earlier, incorporated a ‘common area’ for prisoners with no money and a ‘State area’ for those whose personal finances afforded them a superior standard of accommodation. Female prisoners, however, were all housed together in the same wing. No improvements had been made in those fifty years; facilities had not been maintained, and there had been no proper effort to clean the wards or rid them of vermin.

  It was common knowledge that many of Newgate’s wards stood deliberately empty because the governor liked to save money by crowding inmates into half the prison’s available space. Harrie’s ward was loathsome. Twenty-nine females were crammed into a space thirty feet by fifteen, with one barred, unglazed window too small to admit enough breeze to stir the damp, fetid air inside, but big enough to let in the biting cold. A perpetual chill crept through the ward’s oozing stone walls and floor, which were filmed with the accumulated slime and grime of fifty years, and seemed to permeate everything it touched. Everything dripped, everything remained continuously damp — clothes, blankets, hair and even skin wouldn’t dry. Rats scuttled across feet and sniffed around faces at night, and centipedes and slugs curled and writhed wetly under anything left on the flagged floor.

  The inmates slept on a barracks bed, a wide wooden platform built inches above the floor and lined with rope mats, each covered with a threadbare rug, though Harrie’s rug had been stolen. It didn’t much matter, however, as bodies were crammed so tightly together they drew warmth from each other. At times during the day they went out into the courtyard onto which all the ground-level women’s wards opened. Those who wanted to wash, and as far as Harrie could tell most didn’t, could do so at a pump in the yard. For calls of nature, there were two profoundly noisome water closets off the yard, and a bucket in each ward for use at night when the doors were locked.

  At the time of Harrie’s incarceration, there were about one hundred and fifty female prisoners in Newgate, from bright-eyed young girls of eleven or twelve to toothless crones bent almost double with age, all jammed into five wards. Some women had little ones with them and infants still on the breast; many of these children would remain with their mother for her entire sentence, perhaps years. There was no separation at all of inmates — tried were mixed in with untried, debtors with felons, minor offenders with murderers, the insane with those awaiting transportation.

  During her first six days in Newgate, Harrie had spoken to almost no one. Though a member of the class referred to as the labouring poor herself, she considered her station to be above the women with whom she was sharing a cell, albeit by only a couple of rungs, and she was shocked at their crude and rough behaviour and by the utter squalor of the environment. Her cellmates appeared almost accustomed to living in such horrible conditions; indeed she was discovering some of them had been inmates of, or in and out of, Newgate for years.

  This morning, crouched on her mouldy rope mat, she clamped her hands even more firmly over her ears. Mad Martha was in full flight: on and on it went, the old woman’s cackles and moans and off-key singing echoing off the cell walls, a constant irritant to all but Martha herself, who was oblivious to the agitation she was causing. The wardswoman had already belted her once and now Harrie felt an overwhelming urge to do the same.

  She poked her fingers so far into her ears it hurt, but it was hopeless. Someone would murder Martha soon, she was sure of it, and when it happened she wouldn’t be sorry at all.

  At a great rattling of keys Harrie stood and moved towards the door, desperate to escape out into the courtyard, but when it opened the turnkey wasn’t alone — beside her stood the big red-haired girl, whom Harrie hadn’t seen since she’d been taken away four days ago for kicking and swearing at a warder.

  ‘Morning all!’ the girl announced, her cheerful face glowing as though she’d been up with the lark and out for a morning perambulate around Hyde Park, followed by a hearty breakfast of pork sausage, fried potatoes and batter pudding.

  ‘Eeee!’ Martha shrieked, her filthy hands flying up in the air. ‘The red devil!’

  ‘Get your things, Martha,’ the turnkey said, her plain face wearing its perpetual scowl. ‘You’re being shifted.’

  ‘Shifted! Shifted! Shifted!’ Martha spun round, the rags of her dress flicking out around her scabby, bare legs. ‘No, I won’t be! I won’t be shifted! Martha likes it here!’

  The turnkey sighed. ‘Come on, Martha, you need some time in solitary. Before someone does you a proper injury.’

  ‘No!’ Martha thrust a dirt-encrusted finger at Friday. ‘She wants to steal me place.’ She turned again and pointed towards an empty corner. ‘And me fine things. The king give me that card table, you know!’

  ‘Right, Martha, that’s enough.’

  The turnkey moved towards Martha, who retaliated by whipping up her tattered skirts to display straggly grey pubic hair above the sagging, blue-veined skin of her emaciated thighs. A hideous rotting fish smell wafted from her, making Harrie gag.

  Grasping Martha’s arm, the turnkey yanked her towards the door. The old woman began to scream and kick, in the process knocking over the bucket they’d all been peeing in during the night.

  ‘You know she’s got the women’s cancer,’ someone said as Martha was dragged outside. ‘Be dead soon.’

  Someone less kind remarked, ‘Good riddance. Stinking old bag o’ bones.’

  Harrie waited until Martha and the warder had gone, then escaped out into the pale, cold sunlight, hugely relieved to exchange the fetid miasma of the ward for the sharp, smoke-tainted morning air. She crossed the yard to the pump, worked the handle and splashed freezing water over her face. Desperate for a proper wash but too embarrassed to undress, she held open the neck of her blouse, cupped water in her hand and had a go at her armpits, soaking herself in the process.

  ‘Poor old bat, thinks I’m the devil incarnate,’ a voice said.

  Harrie turned around; it was the girl with the copper-coloured hair, a small leather pouch clamped under her arm and a tin in her hand. Opening it, she took out a cake of tobacco and sliced off two slivers with a small knife, realised she didn’t have enough hands, swore, and crouched, setting everything on the ground.

  ‘I’m not,’ she went on, addressing the dirt, ‘despite what some people say.’ Crumbling the tobacco flakes until they’d achieved a satisfactory consistency, she poked them into the bowl of her clay pipe, then rummaged around in the pouch. ‘Bear with me. Won’t be a mo’.’

  Harrie watched, fascinated.

  Producing a tiny compendium, the girl stood, took out a Congreves match and struck it against the attached strip of sandpaper. The flame flared hugely, si
ngeing her hair. Managing to swear roundly and light her pipe at the same time, she drew on it and coughed until her eyes watered. She coughed again, then hoicked and spat.

  ‘Beg pardon. I’m Friday Woolfe. And you should cheer up, because it could be worse. And don’t bother with the bathing, love. Everyone in here stinks to high heaven.’

  ‘How could it be worse?’ Harrie said, a little more rudely than she meant to. What did this girl know about her situation? She was clearly all right herself, if she could afford to buy tobacco and proper matches.

  ‘Well, you could be swinging on the end of a rope.’

  Harrie looked at Friday Woolfe. She was a good four inches taller than Harrie, with strong, round arms, a neat waist and full breasts, pale, lightly freckled skin and glorious, wild, copper-coloured hair. ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say. And I don’t mean to be cheeky, but Friday’s quite an odd name.’

  Friday Woolfe looked contrite and uncomfortable, as though the first were an emotion she rarely bothered with. ‘Sorry. It’s my mouth. Sometimes it opens and things just come out. It is odd, my name, isn’t it? It’s after St Frideswide.’

  Harrie, absurdly relieved that someone was actually being civil to her, said in a rush, ‘I stole a bolt of cloth and some embroidery thread from a shop. Do you think I will swing?’

  Friday gave her a long, contemplative look. ‘You’ve not been up before, have you?’

  ‘Up where?’

  Friday rolled her eyes. ‘Well, that answers my question. Up in front of the judge.’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Then it’s hard to say what you’ll get. But you won’t go to the gallows — not for shoplifting. Not since about five years ago, anyway. What’s your name?’