“Yes. I was given frilly new clothes and set to work as a prostitute in Hyde Park. I was sixteen by then. I cannot tell you how many men asked me to call them
“Was there any chance of escaping?”
“I thought so. Secretly, I believed myself indomitable, that no one could hold me forever. I was sure that since I had got the better of my uncle and my mother, I would now win my life back. I was so very naive and optimistic. That was something we always had in common, you and I. Not like Daniel. I think he was born knowing damnation, which is perhaps why he fell in love with me.”
At that moment, I felt the urge to confess how I’d betrayed him. I knew this was my chance, but when I tried to summon the right words, I found none.
“John, we do not have to speak of these things,” she said, sensing my discomfort.
“No, I wish to. More than anything. It’s what I’ve most wanted since my arrival.”
“Twice I tried to run. I was beaten so badly by my pimp that I could not walk for a week each time. The second time, he tied me down to my bed and invited men in to use me — chimney sweeps, dustmen …” She wrinkled her nose. “I will tell you a secret — I didn’t care so much that they were having their way with me, only that they left me crawling with vermin. After that, I stopped believing in the story I had told myself, of winning against the odds. I wrote a new one, in which triumph lay in making the best of my circumstances. Destiny had made me a whore. So for five years, until I was twenty-one, all I aimed for was to please the men of London. We each need a simple goal, I think. You know, an English general once told me I had a very soldierly attitude toward my work.” She gave a short, brittle laugh. “He meant it as a compliment, John,” she added, annoyed that I’d not found it amusing. “Poor sweet John, always trying to protect Violeta. Please, have no regrets on my account — I was good at my work. You know, it just occurs to me that I never once looked up into the night sky in all those years in England. I even came to wonder why I’d made such a fuss about my uncle. And why I’d dreamed of America.” She stood up. The candlelight cast an ominous shadow on the wall behind her, as though she were being followed. “No, being a woman was not what I’d thought it would be. But what ever is? And it was better than being a child — much better. You know, John, I can’t even say why I murdered him. That seems to me unforgivable. A murderess ought to have a very good reason, don’t you think?”
“Murdered who? I don’t understand.”
“I need some whiskey,” she said, licking her lips. “May I fetch you some?”
Once she had filled our drinking glasses, she sat curled over hers, sipping at it like a cat. I said nothing, waiting for her to speak. “Five years after I’d come to England,” she began again, “I woke to find a man lying beside me in bed.” She gazed down into her glass, then swirled the whiskey with her finger. “He had skin like milk. And fine blond hairs on his arms.” She licked her fingertip. “Many Englishmen are like that. But when I awoke beside him, I couldn’t remember anything about him or how he came to be there. I believed I was living in Porto and that my uncle had stolen into my room. I grabbed his walking stick. I hit him with it as he slept. I hit him too many times.” She raised her imaginary weapon over her head and brought it down with a whack of her hand to the table. “The blood trickled out of his mouth and I kept on hitting him, until his wife was a widow and his lads orphans. When I knew I had killed him, I did not regret it.”
“You thought it was Uncle Tomas and that he — ”
“No, no, when I saw his blood, I knew he was not my uncle. I remembered his name was Frederick, and that he had a wife and two sons. But I kept on beating him. His death was pleasing to me.”
She leaned back and gnawed at her thumbnail. “My pimp took me to Liverpool to escape investigation. I changed my name, and I worked for another two years there — mostly at the docks.” She jumped up to refill her glass and mine.
“How did you get away from him?” I asked.
Sitting back down, she said, “Patience, John. I’m just getting to that. One rainy day in early spring, an elegant young woman disembarked from a ship and asked me where she might hire a hackney cab. She spoke with an accent that I recognized, so I answered in Portuguese. We laughed at the coincidence and I ended up accompanying her to her hotel. Her name was Manuela Silveira Dias. She was exactly my age — twenty-three. Her husband was English and they had just moved back from America. He was already living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne with their two children. She’d been obliged to linger behind in Boston and now wanted to contract a governess. Before we separated that evening, she asked if I wanted the job, without even inquiring as to how I made my living.” Violeta looked at me incredulously. “Unforgivably irresponsible, don’t you think? What did I know of rearing children?”
“She sensed something in you — something kind and purposeful. It’s what we all sense.”
Violeta scoffed. “No, she just believed in the goodness of people — a bit like you, John. She was Jewish too, you know. Her ancestors had fled Lourenco Reis and his friends.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her I’d be her governess. She gave me her address. The next night I took a hackney from Liverpool all the way to Manchester. From there, I caught a series of coaches to Newcastle. With only the clothes on my back, I moved into Manuela’s home. My room was next to the children’s.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I had my own bed, and the sheets — Remember when Daniel moved into Senhora Beatriz’s home? ‘The sheets are smooth as moss!’ he told us.”
I reached out for her hand, but she pulled it away and sat up stiffly. “I was never found by either the police or my pimp, though I worried constantly they’d discover where I was. John, tell me this — where does remorse live in you?”
I believed she meant to ask me what my deepest regret was. “I wish I’d given solace to my father. It might have changed everything.”
“No,
“Do you still correspond with them? Have they visited you here?”
“I wrote letters, even though I was told not to. But I never received any reply. Manuela must have burned them.”
“Why would she do that?”
Violeta sighed. “When the children were older, Manuela sent them to boarding school. I might have stayed on in her home, but I risked confessing myself to her. We’d been like sisters. I did not tell her all I’ve told you, but I told her about how I’d earned my keep and intimated that I’d done other wicked things. When I was done, she told me I was to pack my things and leave her home immediately. I rushed to her husband for help, but he locked his door to me. I went down on my knees and begged, but he would not open it.”
“He must have been a hard man — to refuse you like that after all your service to his family.”
“Hard? He was only protecting his family from a whore and murderess.”
“You are much more than that.”
“Am I?” she shouted. “Am I really?”
“To me, you are.”
“You!” She spit her words at me. “You see me with eyes clouded by a past that is long gone. It is gone, John. And the girl I was is dead! See that clearly before it is too late for you.”
She rushed to the doorway to her garden, then turned back, her whole body shaking with urgency. “Do not dare try to comfort me!” She shook her fist at me. “Let me finish, John, so I never have to speak of these things again.” Running a hand through her hair, she regained a measure of calm. “Two months later,” she said, “while I was working at a brothel near the river in Newcastle, Manuela’s husband sent word that he’d arranged work for me as cook and housekeeper to an old American widower named Lemoyne. I could have the job only on the condition that I never seek out their children. Lemoyne owned a dozen apple farms north of New York, along the Hudson River.” She gestured around the room. “This was his town house. I worked for him for four years till he died, a little
