A Place Called Freedom (14 page)

14

L
IZZIE
H
ALLIM AND HER MOTHER RATTLED NORTHWARD
through the city of London in a hackney carriage. Lizzie was excited and happy: they were going to meet Jay and look at a house.

“Sir George has certainly changed his attitude,” said Lady Hallim. “Bringing us to London, planning a lavish wedding, and now offering to pay the rent on a London house for the two of you to live in.”

“I think Lady Jamisson has talked him around,” Lizzie said. “But only in small matters. He still won’t give Jay the Barbados property.”

“Alicia is a clever woman,” Lady Hallim mused. “All the same, I’m surprised she can still persuade her husband, after that terrible row on Jay’s birthday.”

“Perhaps Sir George is the type who forgets a quarrel.”

“He never used to be—unless there was something in it for him. I wonder what his motive might be. There isn’t anything he wants from you, is there?”

Lizzie laughed. “What could I give him? Perhaps he just wants me to make his son happy.”

“Which I’m sure you will. Here we are.”

The carriage stopped in Chapel Street, a quietly elegant row of houses in Holborn—not as fashionable as Mayfair or Westminster, but less expensive. Lizzie got down from the carriage and looked at number twelve. She liked it right away. There were four stories and a basement, and the windows were tall and graceful. However, two of the windows were broken and the number 45 was crudely daubed on the gleaming black-painted front door. Lizzie was about to comment when another carriage drew up and Jay jumped out.

He was wearing a bright blue suit with gold buttons, and a blue bow in his fair hair: he looked good enough to eat. He kissed Lizzie’s lips. It was a rather restrained kiss, as they were in a public street, but she relished it and hoped for more later. Jay handed his mother down from the carriage then knocked on the door of the house. “The owner is a brandy importer who has gone to France for a year,” he said as they waited.

An elderly caretaker opened the door. “Who broke the windows?” Jay said immediately.

“The hatters, it was,” the man said as they stepped inside. Lizzie had read in the newspaper that the people who made hats were on strike, as were the tailors and grinders.

Jay said: “I don’t know what the damn fools think they’ll achieve by smashing respectable people’s windows.”

Lizzie said: “Why are they on strike?”

The caretaker replied: “They want better wages, miss, and who can blame them, with the price of a four-penny loaf gone up to eightpence farthing? How is a man to feed his family?”

“Not by painting ‘45’ on every door in London,” Jay said gruffly. “Show us the house, man.”

Lizzie wondered about the significance of the number 45, but she was more interested in the house. She went through the building excitedly throwing back curtains and opening windows. The furniture was new and expensive, and the drawing room was a wide, light room with three big windows at each end. The place had the musty smell of an uninhabited building, but it needed only a thorough cleaning, a lick of paint and a supply of linen to make it delightfully habitable.

She and Jay ran ahead of the two mothers and the old caretaker, and when they reached the attic floor they were alone. They stepped into one of several small bedrooms designed for servants. Lizzie put her arms around Jay and kissed him hungrily. They had only a minute or so. She took his hands and placed them on her breasts. He stroked them gently. “Squeeze harder,” she whispered between kisses. She wanted the pressure of his hands to linger after their embrace. Her nipples stiffened and his fingertips found them through the fabric of her dress. “Pinch them,” she said, and as he did so the pang of mingled pain and pleasure made her gasp. Then she heard footsteps on the landing and they broke apart, panting.

Lizzie turned and looked out of a little dormer window, catching her breath. There was a long back garden. The caretaker was showing the two mothers all the little bedrooms. “What’s the significance of the number forty-five?” she asked.

“It’s all to do with that traitor John Wilkes,” Jay replied. “He used to edit a journal called the
North Briton
, and the government charged him with seditious libel over issue number forty-five, in which he as good as called the king a liar. He ran away to Paris, but now he’s come back to stir up more trouble among ignorant common people.”

“Is it true they can’t afford bread?”

“There’s a shortage of grain all over Europe, so it’s inevitable that the price of bread should go up. And the unemployment is caused by the American boycott of British goods.”

She turned back to Jay. “I don’t suppose that’s much consolation to the hatters and tailors.”

A frown crossed his face: he did not seem to like her sympathizing with the discontented. “I’m not sure you realize how dangerous all this talk of liberty is,” he said.

“I’m not sure I do.”

“For example, the rum distillers of Boston would like the freedom to buy their molasses anywhere. But the law says they must buy from British plantations, such as ours. Give them freedom and they’ll buy cheaper, from the French—and then we won’t be able to afford a house like this.”

“I see.” That did not make it right, she thought; but she decided not to say so.

“All sorts of riffraff might want freedom, from coal miners in Scotland to Negroes in Barbados. But God has set people like me in authority over common men.”

That was true, of course. “But do you ever wonder why?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Why God should have set you in authority over coal miners and Negroes.”

He shook his head irritably, and she realized she had overstepped the mark again. “I don’t think women can understand these things,” he said.

She took his arm. “I love this house, Jay,” she said, trying to mollify him. She could still feel her nipples where he had pinched them. She lowered her voice. “I can’t wait to move in here with you and sleep together every night.”

He smiled. “Nor can I.”

Lady Hallim and Lady Jamisson came into the room. Lizzie’s mother’s gaze dropped to Lizzie’s bosom, and Lizzie realized her nipples were showing through her dress. Mother obviously guessed what had been going on. She frowned with disapproval. Lizzie did not care. She would be married soon.

Alicia said: “Well, Lizzie, do you like the house?”

“I adore it!”

“Then you shall have it.”

Lizzie beamed and Jay squeezed her arm.

Lizzie’s mother said: “Sir George is so kind, I don’t know how to thank him.”

“Thank my mother,” Jay said. “She’s the one who’s made him behave decently.”

Alicia gave him a reproving look, but Lizzie could tell she did not really mind. She and Jay were very fond of one another, it was obvious. Lizzie felt a pang of jealousy, and told herself it was silly: anyone would be fond of Jay.

They left the room. The caretaker was hovering outside. Jay said to him: “I’ll see the owner’s attorney tomorrow and have the lease drawn up.”

“Very good, sir.”

As they went down the stairs, Lizzie remembered something. “Oh, I must show you this!” she said to Jay. She had picked up a handbill in the street and saved it for him. She took it from her pocket and gave it to him to read. It read:

A
T THE SIGN OF THE
P
ELICAN
N
EAR
S
HAD-WELL
G
ENTLEMEN AND
G
AMESTERS TAKE NOTE
A G
ENERAL DAY OF
S
PORT
A
MAD
B
ULL TO BE LET LOOSE WITH FIREWORKS ALL
OVER HIM, AND DOGS AFTER HIM
A M
ATCH FOUGHT OUT BETWEEN TWO
C
OCKS
OF
W
ESTMINSTER
,
AND TWO OF
E
AST
C
HEAP, FOR
F
IVE
P
OUNDS
A G
ENERAL
C
OMBAT WITH
C
UDGELS BETWEEN SEVEN
W
OMEN
AND
A F
IST
F
IGHT—FOR
T
WENTY
P
OUNDS!
R
EES
P
REECE, THE
W
ELSH
M
OUNTAIN
VERSUS
M
ACK
M
CASH, THE
K
ILLER
C
OLLIER
S
ATURDAY NEXT
B
EGINNING AT
T
HREE A
C
LOCK

“What do you think?” she said impatiently. “It must be Malachi McAsh from Heugh, mustn’t it?”

“So that’s what’s become of him,” said Jay. “He’s a prizefighter. He was better off working in my father’s coal pit.”

“I’ve never seen a prizefight,” Lizzie said wistfully.

Jay laughed. “I should think not! It’s no place for a lady.”

“Nor is a coal mine, but you took me there.”

“So I did, and you nearly got killed in an explosion.”

“I thought you’d jump at the chance of taking me on another adventure.”

Her mother overheard and said: “What’s this? What adventure?”

“I want Jay to take me to a prizefight,” Lizzie said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said her mother.

Lizzie was disappointed. Jay’s daring seemed to have deserted him momentarily. However, she would not let that stand in her way. If he would not take her she would go alone.

Lizzie adjusted her wig and hat and looked in the mirror. A young man looked back at her. The secret lay in the light smear of chimney soot that darkened her cheeks, her throat, her chin and her upper lip, mimicking the look of a man who had shaved.

The body was easy. A heavy waistcoat flattened her bosom, the tail of her coat concealed the rounded curves of her womanly bottom, and knee boots covered her calves. The hat and wig of male pattern completed the illusion.

She opened her bedroom door. She and her mother were staying in a small house in the grounds of Sir George’s mansion in Grosvenor Square. Mother was taking an afternoon nap. Lizzie listened for footsteps, in case any of Sir George’s servants were about the house, but she heard nothing. She ran light-footed down the stairs and slipped out the door into the lane at the back of the property.

It was a cold, sunny day at the end of winter. When she reached the street she reminded herself to walk like a man, taking up a lot of space, swinging her arms and putting on a swagger, as if she owned the pavement and were ready to jostle anyone who disputed her claim.

She could not swagger all the way to Shadwell, which was across town on the east side of London. She waved down a sedan chair, remembering to hold her arm up in command instead of fluttering her hand beseechingly like a woman. As the chair men stopped and set down the conveyance she cleared her throat, spat in the gutter and said in a deep croak: “Take me to the Pelican tavern, and look sharp about it.”

They carried her farther east than she had ever been in London, through streets of ever smaller and meaner houses, to a neighborhood of damp lanes and mud beaches, unsteady wharves and ramshackle boathouses, high-fenced timber yards and rickety warehouses with chained doors. They deposited her outside a big waterfront tavern with a crude painting of a pelican daubed on its wooden sign. The courtyard was full of noisy, excited people: workingmen in boots and neckerchiefs, waistcoated gentlemen, low-class women in shawls and clogs, and a few women with painted faces and exposed breasts who, Lizzie presumed, were prostitutes. There were no women of what her mother would have called “quality.”

Lizzie paid her entrance fee and elbowed her way into the shouting, jeering crowd. There was a powerful smell of sweaty, unwashed people. She felt excited and wicked. The female gladiators were in the middle of their combat. Several women had already retired from the fray: one sitting on a bench holding her head, another trying to stanch a bleeding leg wound, a third flat on her back and unconscious despite the efforts of her friends to revive her. The remaining four milled about in a rope ring, attacking one another with roughly carved wooden clubs three feet long. They were all naked to the waist and barefoot, with ragged skirts. Their faces and bodies were bruised and scarred. The crowd of a hundred or more spectators cheered their favorites, and several men were taking bets on the outcome. The women swung the clubs with all their might, hitting one another bone-crunching blows. Every time one landed a well-aimed buffet the men roared their approval. Lizzie watched with horrid fascination. Soon another woman took a heavy blow to the head and fell unconscious. The sight of her half-naked body lying senseless on the muddy ground sickened Lizzie, and she turned away.

She went into the tavern, banged on the counter with a fist, and said to the barman: “A pint of strong ale, Jack.” It was wonderful to address the world in such arrogant tones. If she did the same in women’s clothing, every man she spoke to would feel entitled to reprove her, even tavern keepers and sedan chair men. But a pair of breeches was a license to command.

The bar smelled of tobacco ash and spilled beer. She sat in a corner and sipped her ale, wondering why she had come here. It was a place of violence and cruelty, and she was playing a dangerous game. What would these brutal people do if they realized she was an upper-class lady dressed as a man?

She was here partly because her curiosity was an irresistible passion. She had always been fascinated by whatever was forbidden, even as a child. The sentence “It’s no place for a lady” was like a red rag to a bull. She could not help opening any door marked “No entry.” Her curiosity was as urgent as her sexuality, and to repress it was as difficult as to stop kissing Jay.

But the main reason was McAsh. He had always been interesting. Even as a small boy he had been different: independent-minded, disobedient, always questioning what he was told. In adulthood he was fulfilling his promise. He had defied the Jamissons, he had succeeded in escaping from Scotland—something few miners achieved—and he had made it all the way to London. Now he was a prizefighter. What would he do next?