Inside the Half Moon and Seven Stars where Rafe hopes to buy a pie, or a serving of soup, a clean-smelling woman catches his attention. Unlike the others, she is quietly dressed. She approaches him in a light grey mantle, a black silk coat, and ample crinoline. Her eye is drawn to his full pocket when he pays for his food. The publican winks at her.
‘Young sir, forgive my boldness. Would you like to retire to a quiet and more orderly place to enjoy your meal?’
Rafe falls into her pretty smile and the glow of her yellow hair, and says yes, yes he would like that very much.
‘Please call me Priss, as all my friends do.’
She takes him around the corner to an accommodation house where, for five shillings a turn, she entertains her punters in a clean room, with fresh linen and a large bed. She chats away while he eats and when he is finished she grabs his crotch. He pulls away from her so violently that he knocks over the pitcher of water in a basin that was meant for further cleanliness afterwards. His face is terror-stricken. He must not impregnate a woman. In achingly embarrassing discussions his mother has hammered into his consciousness that it is irrecoverably dangerous to do so. He has developed a further theory that his semen either in or out of a woman should not be touched, just as he must not be touched when in fever. This is the secrets he keeps. No one must know he still suffers from the fevers – especially his mother.
Priss’s pretty smile transforms to a sneering, grotesque mask.
‘I shall have my money, boy. You came up of your own free will. You are not so stupid to think I wanted your company, or you were to have mine for no coin! Mine is a night-time economy and I will have my due.’
Just then a buxom woman with high, white hair bursts through the door. Mrs Dripper, proprietress of the house of accommodation, is in a frenzy of anger.
‘I have a hansom driver at the door insisting that the boy come down this instant. He is to take the cab home. What were you thinking, Priss? I shall raise your rate if you continue this bawdy nonsense.’
A man stands near the hansom. Rafe cannot see his face, but is sure he has seen him before. In the upset and confusion of the moment, and the dogged insistence of the driver to hurry Rafe into the cab, he takes no more notice of Benedikt. Even when the driver explains that he has his orders to deliver Rafe safely home, the boy does not seem to care to know the details.
The house on Bermondsey Street is brightly lit upon his return. His mother is engaged in a fuming disregard for his father who speaks to her in a low, reasonable voice. Rafe hears Finn defending Rafe’s right to ‘more freedom, and a life outside these walls’.
Clovis is so angry that when Rafe walks by her he thinks she may strike him.
‘Do not touch me,’ he warns, in a voice that contradicts his years.
In his room, he picks up a brush that lies in a row of drying brushes. He strokes his palm with it before dipping the tip in red. The canvas is primed and once more he conjures the sisters Fitzgerald into his room.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Bandyleg Walk is dangerously situated amongst the never-ending narrow courts and winding streets of The Mint. Dilapidated houses, a few without roofs, are havens to fugitives from the law, debtors, and those who are driven from the slums by the men who build roads and railways. Henrietta from the penitentiary is found in The Mint off Borough High Street where she has embraced an opportunity to stitch together a life far from the alleys and corners of Mayfair.
The kitchen work to which Henrietta was assigned while in the tench, just as that frightening Fowler had promised, proved to be a boon. For she discovered that she was capable of rolling a crust and turned a fine hand to it. So pleased was Matron, that Henrietta was promoted to assistant cook for the Millbank staff and held the coveted position until she received her ticket-of-leave.
Here in Bandyleg Walk, on the ground floor of three crumbling storeys, a lodging house has prime place on the dingy corner where all the buildings are blackened from smoke. Henrietta made wise and frugal use of the purse of coins Clovis Fowler had tossed at her. She has set up and operates a soup-house. And by God, she cooked an outrageous amount of soup in the tench.
Steam rises in a smelly mist on the windows where basins and ladles are in full display for those who cannot read a bill of fare. For tuppence, a punter enjoys a prime basin of soup and a slice of bread. Add another penny and Henrietta throws in a potato. She is tough but fair; there are no handouts. She is known to employ two staff, always convicts returned to the world, but suffers no thieves or cheats on her staff. A burly lodger upstairs is her booter-outer. A sharp knife hides always within her reach.
Busy all day and half the night, the quantities she sells are large enough to afford a dream of a new venture. One day soon, away from this slum, she will have dining rooms. She is good at chops.
The supper rush is over and so efficiently run that Henrietta’s frock is still fresh and unstained. She cannot say that she pines for her silk dresses and feathered and ribboned hats. Her plain, green wool suffices; though she could not resist sewing a neat row of small black velvet bows down the bodice.
Henrietta’s back is to the door when it opens and the night air enters whilst the odour of twelve hours of simmering
