Behind the Sun (38 page)

‘Is it grand then, your hotel?’ Friday asked.

‘I’ll be frank, dear: no, it isn’t, but there are far worse on the Rocks, I can assure you of that. We cater to a lot of sailors, but all sorts come in regularly and some of them are quite particular. I’ve come to know many of them well and I make a point of trying to provide them with something a little out of the ordinary.’

Friday decided to eat the last of her orange after all, studying Mrs Hislop’s face while she did. Mrs Hislop watched her back.

‘What will my duties be?’ Friday asked.

‘I’ll start you as a chambermaid. Changing linen in the guest rooms, sweeping floors, dusting, perhaps helping in the laundry. Can you cook?’

‘I’m not famous for it.’

‘Oh well.’

‘And after that?’

Mrs Hislop raised her eyebrows. ‘And after that what?’

‘I think you’re running a bawdyhouse, Mrs H. You’ve just about said as much. I don’t want to muck about sweeping floors, I want to make real money doing what I’m good at.’

The landau slowed and came to a halt. Mrs Hislop lifted the gauze shade and peered out of the window.

‘Only the toll gate. Jack will take care of it. You don’t mind if I keep the shades down? This southern sun is so harsh on the skin.’ She settled back in her seat. ‘Well, you certainly have the looks for it and I’m not saying you wouldn’t be an asset in my house. Though you could do with a bit of bicarbonate of soda on those tobacco stains on your bottom teeth. The prostitution laws are the same as in England, but you do realise that because of your convict status, if you’re caught you’ll be charged, and if you’re convicted you’ll do time in third class back in the Factory? Good. Never let it be said I encourage the girls assigned to me to prostitute themselves. That decision is always theirs to make.’

‘But I won’t be nabbed, will I? If the laws are the same it’s only illegal to operate a house, and I’d be working in yours and you haven’t been nabbed. Or have you?’

‘Not in New South Wales, I haven’t.’

‘There you go. And you’re not encouraging me. Whoring is my job. I’m good at it.’

‘Do you enjoy it?’ Mrs Hislop asked. ‘No man wants to pay for a sour-faced girl, no matter how buxom she is.’

‘I enjoy making money.’ Friday wasn’t about to admit that frequently she utterly loathed the men she had sex with. ‘That
always
makes me smile.’

Mrs Hislop rummaged about in her reticule again, this time extracting a bunch of grapes. ‘I’d expect you to sign a contract. Our current fees are five pounds for full, that’s per hour, the same for Greek, four pounds for thighs only, three pounds each for hand or mouth, a full night is eight pounds, anything else is negotiable and up to you. I don’t cater to men titillated by children — all my girls are seventeen and over. The split is forty–sixty in your favour, bed and board included for assignees naturally, two whole days off a week and, if your performance isn’t up to the high standards I require, you really will be sweeping floors and working in the laundry. Also I’ve heard a rumour lately about yet another new house starting up. There’s always the risk that some of my girls will imagine the grass will be greener somewhere else. It won’t be, because my terms are very generous, but I’m insisting they all sign contracts. If they want to leave they’ll have to give a month’s notice to give me time to find suitable replacements.’

Friday thought that was reasonable. ‘Are there a lot of brothels in Sydney?’

Mrs Hislop ate a grape. ‘At least twenty I know of, most of them around the Rocks, which is quite a number for a town of only fifteen thousand. And I’m not sure how many streetwalkers. It’s all the sailors. I don’t know anything about this new madam, but you might. Apparently she came over with your lot. Got herself married in about twenty minutes flat. Shand, her married name is. Stella Shand.’

Friday stared at Mrs Hislop. ‘You don’t mean
Bella
?!’

‘Bella, that was it. Grape?’

James Downey trotted downstairs to the King Hotel’s pokey front desk to ask if any mail for him had been delivered. He was leaving for England in a week, and he’d not had a letter from Emily lately. He was expecting quite a pile, as a ship had arrived from England the previous day.

The clerk handed over two letters tied together with a piece of ribbon and a quick scan revealed neither were from Emily, which was disappointing. James sat down in a slightly grubby wingback chair and opened the first, from Emily’s sister Beatrice.

James must have cried out because suddenly the clerk was hovering, asking if he could be of assistance.

James looked up at him blankly. His ears were ringing, he could no longer feel the chair beneath him, and it took a few seconds for the man’s words to register.

‘No. Thank you, no.’

The clerk waited a moment longer, regarding James anxiously, then retreated to his desk.

His heart thudding massively, and not really comprehending the words on the pale cream paper, he read on.

Feeling oddly detached, as though he were watching someone who looked a lot like himself opening the morning post, he slit open the second letter; it was from his good friend Victor Handley, a surgeon with whom he’d served at sea. Victor had been invalided from the navy after badly breaking his leg, and was also a confidante of Emily.

James let Victor’s letter fall to his lap. The pain in his chest was monstrous and coupled with it was a great surge of guilt. For months now he hadn’t been able to remember the sound of Emily’s voice. He could recall her face, and her hair, and her mannerisms, but not her voice. Instead, in its place, was Harriet Clarke’s, entertaining him with stories of antics below deck on the
Isla
, and silly recollections of her family in London and, amusingly, her awful employer Mrs Lynch, steadily but surely buffing the sharpness off his own loneliness over the long weeks and months at sea, brightening his days.

In his heart he had not been entirely true to Emily, and he knew it. Was this horrible grinding guilt the price he now had to pay?

Sick to death of cleaning, Sarah leant on the counter flicking the feather duster listlessly across the smooth wooden surface. When the bell over the shop door chimed she opened her mouth to call for Adam, but shut it again when she recognised the customer.

‘Good morning, Mr Downey. How are you?’ Though she wasn’t sure she wanted an honest answer, because he looked like shite.

His face was distinctly pasty and it appeared he hadn’t brushed his hair in days; in fact he looked ten years older than when she’d last seen him, little more than a month earlier.

Mr Downey stared at her as though he couldn’t quite place her. Sarah wondered if he’d been on the jar.

‘It’s Sarah Morgan, from the
Isla
. Rachel Winter’s friend.’

‘Ah, yes, of course it is.’ He glanced around the store. ‘So this is where you’ve ended up?’

Sarah waited for the inevitable comment regarding the wisdom of letting a convicted felon loose in a jeweller’s shop, but it wasn’t forthcoming. She watched Mr Downey’s face. He seemed to be struggling with something momentous; she could almost see the internal mechanisms of his head whirling about.

‘That’s right, Harrie said you’d trained as a jeweller,’ he said finally.

Was that it? God, what was wrong with the man?

‘What can I do for you, sir?’ She wasn’t supposed to be serving in the shop yet — Esther had put her foot down about that, insisting Sarah couldn’t be trusted alone behind the counter — but this was only Mr Downey.

‘My wife passed away,’ he blurted. ‘In June. I only just received the news.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Mr Downey.’ And actually, she was. Fancy, all that time on the
Isla
when he was running around trying to fix everyone else, his own wife was dying and he hadn’t known. ‘Please accept my condolences.’ No wonder he looked such a shambles.

‘Thank you.’ He gestured vaguely at a display cabinet. ‘What can you show me?’

Sarah fetched the keys from their hiding place in the secret drawer she’d recently discovered, opened the cabinet and brought out a tray of rings.

‘These are gentlemen’s styles, ready made. A nice solid engraved gold shank, and a quality faceted rock crystal and just the plain gold bezel.’ She turned the ring to show him the underside. ‘See, you open the back and put in a lock of your beloved’s hair, or a portrait if you prefer, then snap it shut.’

‘I don’t have a lock of her hair. Or a portrait.’

Sarah showed him some styles that didn’t require the incorporation of a personal artefact, but he shook his head.

‘Perhaps you could try another jeweller,’ Sarah suggested. It wouldn’t do Adam Green any favours, but this was Mr Downey and he had been very kind to Rachel.

‘Really, I can’t be bothered. I only came in here because it’s just around the corner from my hotel. Could you not make something?’

Sarah thought about it. ‘Do you want stones?’

‘Not particularly. Just something elegant and dignified. Like…my wife.’

‘And her name?’

‘Emily.’

Thank God, Sarah thought — names like Ermintrude and Winifred are such a bugger to squeeze onto a ring.

She reached beneath the counter for a pencil and a scrap of paper and began quickly to sketch. Adam appeared in the doorway between the workroom and the shop, but Sarah barely noticed him.

A minute later she said, ‘Something along these lines, perhaps? A flat band in twenty-two-carat gold, with black enamel running around the middle here, except for Emily’s name set in gold on one side, and this pattern of forget-me-not flowers, engraved to make
them stand out better, on the other. You could wear whichever side up you felt like at the time — her name or the flowers.’

Mr Downey gazed at the sketch for so long Sarah convinced herself he didn’t care for it. Then he nodded. ‘I think Emily would have liked that. How long would it take to make?’

Sarah glanced at Adam: eyes twinkling, he gave her a grin of such open admiration and encouragement that for a second she felt the floor shift beneath her feet.

‘We could have it finished by Friday,’ he said.

‘And your fee?’ James Downey asked.

Adam named what Sarah thought was a very reasonable price, and he and Mr Downey shook hands before Adam disappeared back into the workroom, still smiling to himself.

‘You have a talent, Sarah,’ Mr Downey said as she measured his finger to ensure a correct fit. ‘Thank you.’

As he was about to depart, Sarah, buoyed by Adam’s approval and awash with generosity, said, ‘Sir, if you don’t mind me saying, well, your clothes.’

Mr Downey looked down at himself. ‘What about them?’

He looked as though he’d slept in them for a week and there were stains on his waistcoat and mud on his trousers, but that wasn’t what Sarah meant. ‘Should you be in mourning costume, sir?’

Mr Downey sighed, and the sound was laden with such misery and loneliness she felt genuinely sorry for him. It was a pity she wasn’t Harrie — she would have known what to say to make him feel better.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’d better find a tailor.’

Friday was annoyed and frustrated because Elizabeth Hislop really had started her off sweeping floors at the Siren’s Arms — and wiping the long tables in the bar and stripping beds and replacing oil in the lamps and other deathly dull jobs.

She soon discovered that all Mrs Hislop’s convict girls started off doing domestic work, including servicing the accommodation rooms upstairs, where a handful of the girls from the brothel boarded. After a month of careful observation Mrs Hislop knew who was likely to be receptive to the idea of working in the brothel, either as a domestic or an actual prostitute, and who would be best left to dust and polish in the hotel. However, a girl had left the brothel a few days before Friday had been collected from the Factory, and Mrs Hislop had been very taken with Friday’s looks and character, so, fairly confident of the nature of the girl she was dealing with, she’d been happy to discuss the matter openly then and there.

‘It’s only for a week,’ Mrs Hislop said when Friday complained. ‘I want you to get the feel of the Rocks. I want you to look around and see what kind of customer we cater to.’

‘What’s to see? There’s sailors, there’s the odd toff and there’s the respectable family men in the middle. I did them all in London. How different can they be here?’

‘It’s called, it’s called…’ Mrs Hislop made a face. ‘Bugger, there’s a word for it and I can’t think of it. Look, are you bored?’

‘Stiff. And I need the money.’

‘You’re not in debt
already
?’

Friday shook her head. ‘A sick friend, in the Factory. Me and my mates, we’re paying her way. You know how things work out there.’

Mrs Hislop regarded her. ‘Well, if you’re really champing at the bit I’ll start you on Friday. When was the last time you worked?’

‘On the town? The ship, but that all got shut down mid-voyage so not for about four months.’

‘And you don’t have the pox or the clap? Crabs?’

‘The first two, not as far as I know. I’ve got crabs.’

Mrs Hislop waved her hand airily. ‘Bit of per chloride of mercury and chloride of ammonium on the bush will fix that. Stings, though. I have a doctor check my girls regularly. If you’re sick and looking rough, you’re not to work until you’re right again. My customers pay for healthy, attractive girls and I wouldn’t offer them anything less. I run a class establishment. The bicarbonate of soda worked a treat on your teeth.’

‘Came up nice and white, didn’t they?’

Mrs Hislop opened the watch dangling from the crowded silver chatelaine around her solid waist. ‘I’ve got time. Come on, I’ll take you over there now.’

Lucky Sarah isn’t here, Friday thought — she’d have that whole thing off you in two seconds flat and you wouldn’t even notice until you went to look at the time again.

She followed Mrs Hislop out to the yard behind the hotel, waggling her fingers at Jimmy Johnson, only twelve years old and already a convict. He was rubbing down a customer’s horse before he led it into the stables, where he also slept, and gave her a cheeky grin.

Mrs Hislop crossed the yard, dodging piles of horseshit buzzing with flies, and stopped at a tall gate in the wooden fence that formed one boundary. Unlocking it with a key from her chatelaine
she ushered Friday through and locked the gate again behind them. The cobbled alleyway beyond it was so narrow Mrs Hislop’s skirts brushed both sides of the high brick walls, and at the far end it turned sharply and opened onto another yard, this one much smaller and clearly belonging to someone’s house.

The Siren’s Arms was on Harrington Street near Argyle Street and, while it was very obviously a pub with its big entrance doors and sign displaying a naked woman with long, ridiculously luxuriant hair sitting on a rock, presumably luring sailors to their deaths with her singing, this house was a tidy sandstone affair with multiple chimneys and sparkling windows, the latter prettily draped against prying eyes. From the street the two businesses appeared wholly unconnected but customers with a key to the gate at the hotel end of the alleyway could enter the house with the utmost discretion.

Inside the house the furnishings were not excessively luxurious or ostentatious, but they did create an atmosphere that was very comfortable and inviting. Downstairs were a large parlour where the girls gathered, a smaller room for customers who preferred a higher degree of anonymity, Mrs Hislop’s office, and a small kitchen accessible from the back porch. Upstairs were the eight individual rooms where the girls worked, remodelled apparently from the house’s four original bedrooms, and a large cupboard used for linen storage. Each room contained a brass bed made up with good linen, an armchair, a bedside cupboard with a jug and bowl, and a dressing chest on which sat an inexpensive carriage clock.

‘What do you think?’ Mrs Hislop asked, back downstairs again.

‘Looks very nice, but I have to say I don’t know my arse from my elbow when it comes to whorehouses. I’m one for the streets myself. Have been for years.’

‘Why is that?’ Mrs Hislop sounded genuinely interested.

Friday met her gaze and held it. ‘I have my reasons.’

‘I’m sure you have. I won’t pry. But it is safer working in a house.
My
house, at least.’

‘I can take care of myself.’

‘Yes, well, no doubt you can, but I think, in your current situation, you’re far better off working for me. If you’re nabbed on the streets you’ll be —’

‘Straight back to the Factory. I know. Where is everyone today? The girls, I mean.’

‘It’s their day off. We never work on Mondays, and I give every girl one other day off each week. You need your breaks.’ Mrs Hislop opened the front door and they stepped out into Argyle Street.

As they walked around to the Siren’s Arms, only three doors along on Harrington Street, Friday said, ‘I’d like to find out where my friends are.’

‘Do you have addresses?’

‘Only names. Sarah went to some cove called Adam Green, a jeweller here in town somewhere. And Harrie went to someone called Overton, a grocer.’

‘Harry? That’s a funny name for a girl.’

‘Harri
et
.’

‘Oh. Well, I don’t know of Adam Green, but most of your jewellers will be up around George and Pitt streets. There’s plenty of them. And if you mean Henry Overton, I’ve known him for years. He’s in Cumberland Street, just up Argyle Street here: it’s the first cross street but you turn left.’

Friday’s heart leapt. ‘Really?’ She pointed excitedly. ‘Just up here?’

Mrs Hislop nodded. ‘In fact, I’m getting a bit low on my special tea. It’s called souchong.’ She handed Friday some coins. ‘Henry knows which one I like, anyway. And tell him Bette sends her love, but only if his wife isn’t listening.’

Friday was off up the street almost before she’d finished speaking. Mrs Hislop watched her go, shaking her head. But she was smiling; she knew what it was like to be separated from your friends after all that time in gaol and then on the ship out. She’d experienced it herself almost seventeen years earlier. Of course, things had been
rather different then, though she herself hadn’t changed much over the intervening years. She was older, fatter and definitely richer, but she liked to think she could still remember how it was to be a lass.

Almost trotting as she rounded the corner from Argyle into Cumberland Street, and puffing because of the hill, Friday barrelled straight into someone.

‘I beg your pardon,’ the man said, stooping to retrieve his hat. Then, when he looked at her properly, recognition sparked in his eyes and he took a precautionary step back.

‘You’re that cove,’ she said.

‘Yes. You had a go at me, that night on the ship.’

Friday recalled belting him rather viciously across the head and felt her cheeks turn very slightly pink. ‘Well, I thought it was you that had hurt her. Sorry. What was your name again?’ She’d forgotten it.

‘Cutler. Matthew Cutler.’ He offered his hand and, after a second’s hesitation, Friday shook it.

‘I didn’t think your sort lived on the Rocks.’

‘I’m boarding with a family on Princes Street. It’s quite smart actually.’ He said this with an exaggerated plum in his mouth, which made Friday laugh. ‘Er, the other girl with you, the pretty one, Harriet Clarke. You don’t happen to know where she is, do you?’

Friday thought about it for a moment. ‘Write down where you live and I’ll ask her if she wants you to know, how’s that? If she does, she can write to you.’

He hesitated.

‘Don’t worry, we won’t come and do your house over.’

‘I wasn’t thinking that.’ Mr Cutler looked offended. ‘I was thinking I don’t have anything to write on. No cards or anything. You’ll have to remember it instead.’ He recited the address and Friday did her best to commit it to memory. ‘And the little blonde girl, how’s she getting on?’

Friday scowled. ‘She’s still out at the Female Factory. She can’t work.’

‘Because of…what Keegan did?’

‘Yes. Also…’ She held her hand out in front of her belly.

A barely disguised expression of revulsion passed across Matthew Cutler’s face.

‘Don’t you dare blame her!’ Friday warned.

‘Oh God, I don’t!’

‘Good. Do you see him at all?’ She made the question sound casual.

‘Occasionally. Around here now and then, and my office isn’t far from his.’

‘Do you talk to him?’

‘Never.’ The word was almost spat out.

‘Does he go in the pubs?’

‘Around here he does, and no doubt the brothels.’ Mr Cutler’s face reddened, probably recalling what Friday did for a living.

‘No doubt,’ she agreed. ‘Nice talking to you, Mr Cutler.’

‘And you, Miss Woolfe. It’s Friday, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t forget to mention me to Miss Clarke, will you?’

‘I won’t.’

She waited until he’d crossed the street and turned a corner before she hurried off along Cumberland Street. Fancy that. Did Harrie have a suitor? Had she even noticed on the ship? Probably not — Harrie was so modest and unsure of herself she thought she was invisible. Mind you, lately she’d come out of her shell a fair bit. The more Rachel needed their help, the stronger Harrie seemed to become, which was good for everyone, really, Harrie included.

Outside Overton’s grocery she stopped and peered in through the windows. Harrie wasn’t in the shop, but she wouldn’t be if she was supposed to be looking after the family’s kids. She entered, stepping over a white bulldog lying in the doorway, and approached
the counter, where a girl of about ten was tipping boiled sweets into a tall glass jar.

‘May I help you?’ she asked, a dozen of the sweets clattering across the counter. She swept them up with her hands and dumped them in the jar.

‘Hello, love,’ Friday said. ‘I’m after some tea. It’s called…’ But it was no good, the name had fallen out of her head.

The girl recited, ‘We’ve got gunpowder, hyson, bing, imperial, congou, pekoe, bohea, souchong —’

‘That’s it, that last one.’

‘How much would you like?’

Friday stared at her. ‘I don’t know, love. It’s an errand, for Mrs Elizabeth Hislop.’

‘It’s all right, I know what she gets.’ The girl came out from behind the counter and crossed to a row of tea chests. She scooped out a measure of loose tea, weighed it on a scale, decanted the leaves onto a sheet of newspaper, rolled it deftly into a sausage and twisted both ends.

Friday gave her the money. ‘I’m also looking for a girl called Harrie Clarke. Is she here?’

The girl retreated behind the counter, deposited the money in the cash drawer, stuck her head through a doorway and bellowed, ‘
Da!
’

They waited, Friday and the girl looking at each other. The girl smiled; Friday decided she was pretty. Presently, her father arrived huffing and puffing, carrying a huge bag of flour. He lowered it to the floor and wiped his hands on his apron.

‘Da, this lady’s looking for Harrie Clarke.’

‘Oh, aye?’ Mr Overton said. ‘And why would that be?’

Friday gazed at him through her eyelashes and ever so slightly shifted her weight to one hip. ‘She’s a friend. I heard she was working here and I’d very much like to see her, sir, if it isn’t too much trouble. Just for a few minutes. Oh, and Bette sends her love.’

Mr Overton looked uncomfortable. He glanced quickly at his daughter, then nodded his assent. ‘Not long, mind. She’s busy — breaking something, no doubt.’ He pointed at the ceiling. ‘Just go up.’

That sounded promising. As Friday went up the stairs she heard the girl say, ‘Da, who’s Bette?’

The Overtons’ parlour looked as though a whirlwind had gone through it. Children’s toys littered the floor; a mountain of clean laundry waiting to be ironed and folded had avalanched from a chair; some sort of food was squashed into the pale carpet in the middle of the room; a box of old kitchen implements had been upended and strewn about; and an empty vase lay in a pool of water beside the sofa, a trail of bedraggled carnations leading from it into the next room. A little girl sat in a chair calmly turning the pages of a picture book, while a toddler lay on the floor, simultaneously picking his nose and eating a biscuit.

Friday smiled to herself. The little girl looked up.

‘Hello, love, is Harrie here?’

The girl nodded.

‘Harrie, it’s me!’ Friday called.

She appeared a moment later, carrying a baby with a red face.

‘Friday!’ She looked both shocked and delighted. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to see you, haven’t I?’ Friday thought Harrie, who was wearing a boring light grey dress and a silly house cap, looked healthy but a bit flustered.

She passed the baby to the girl on the sofa. ‘Lydia, hold Johanna for a moment, please.’

‘She stinks.’

‘I know, I’m about to change her.’

Lydia took Johanna, propped her up beside her and went back to her book, a hand over her nose and mouth.

Harrie gave Friday a fierce hug and stepped back. ‘How did you find me?’

‘It turns out my boss knows your boss. I’m just around the corner in Harrington Street at the Siren’s Arms.’ She held up the packet of tea. ‘I’m on an errand.’