on the other side of Paradise, up Bethnal Green way – and I saw her up to her usual tricks there too. I felt bad, but I thought I’d better mention it to Fitzy.
After that I didn’t see her no more.
Red wasn’t the only one. There were a couple of bum-fluff lads who worked as a team, plying their marks with beer and gin until they were able to strip him (or her) of anything of value as they sat there and stewed.
A tall, well-dressed gentleman had a very neat way with the lifting of small items. I watched him on several occasions as he deftly unscrewed the silver top of his cane to deposit the objects he’d stolen into a hollow space inside.
Then there were the bangtails – the sort unregulated by Lady Ginger – who frequented the shabby boxes at The Carnival. I’m no prude, but the tricks I saw them turn! I didn’t even know that a couple of them were anatomically possible until I had a very frank chat with Peggy one evening after a show. I was glad she generally came with me wherever I performed and I was glad she looked after my paint box too. There were stories doing the rounds of theatre girls who ended up a ruin when a jealous rival put ground glass or acid into their face powder. Plenty of the girls in Lady Ginger’s halls were as hard towards me as Jenny Pierce . . . and I can’t say as I blamed them.
And that brings me to Jenny. No one realised she’d gone missing at first. She’d been so tight wound about what she saw as my promotion that it seemed highly likely she’d flounced off in her feathers and war paint just to prove she still had it in her.
We all expected her to turn up any day, preening in a new bonnet or soaked in some fancy cologne. Even when she missed three shows on the trot, risking Fitzy’s anger and, most probably a fine, we still thought she was off somewhere licking her wounds like a vicious old she-cat. No, Jenny Pierce could take care of herself and none of us suspected that her absence was anything more than ill temper and a sore head.
Don’t mistake me, we was all frightened by the way the girls from the halls were disappearing, we knew something very wrong was happening, but no one spoke about it for fear of bringing trouble to their doorstep. Like I said, the theatre is a superstitious place at the best of times. We all went about our business as usual, but we’d begun to keep our wits as sharp as the knives a couple of girls hid in their purses.
It was the Wednesday, five days after my first show at The Gaudy, that word came from Jenny’s lodgings in Ropemaker’s Fields. Her landlady, Mrs Skanks, sent pock-faced Bessie Docket – another of the Gaudy girls who called that flea-infested doss-house down near the river home – along to the theatre with a final demand for Jenny’s rent.
Now, Ropemaker’s was a filthy place and Jenny was welcome to it. Mother Maxwell’s wasn’t what you’d call smart, but at least it was clean in every way. Mrs Skanks turned a blind eye to the business some of her girls got up to. Tell truth, she was so far gone on the gin most days she probably wouldn’t have noticed if an entire ship’s crew had walked through her door. But she come to quick enough when the rent wasn’t paid.
Jenny hadn’t been seen at Ropemaker’s Fields – or anywhere else for that matter – since the Friday previous and her landlady thought it only fair, apparently, that Fitzy should pay up for one of his girls. As Bessie told us, still quaking after her encounter with Fitzy, no one at Mrs Skanks’s would dare to skip a rent day – and thinking of that woman’s freckled meaty arms and fists the size of ham hocks, I believed her.
I didn’t like Jenny, but I didn’t wish evil on her. I felt guilty, as if her blood was on my hands. Out, out damned spot. That’s what she’d said in my dressing room that evening. She should have known better than to tempt fate like that. I thought back to that last time I’d seen her in the box with her gent.
After that I didn’t see her no more.
Red wasn’t the only one. There were a couple of bum-fluff lads who worked as a team, plying their marks with beer and gin until they were able to strip him (or her) of anything of value as they sat there and stewed.
A tall, well-dressed gentleman had a very neat way with the lifting of small items. I watched him on several occasions as he deftly unscrewed the silver top of his cane to deposit the objects he’d stolen into a hollow space inside.
Then there were the bangtails – the sort unregulated by Lady Ginger – who frequented the shabby boxes at The Carnival. I’m no prude, but the tricks I saw them turn! I didn’t even know that a couple of them were anatomically possible until I had a very frank chat with Peggy one evening after a show. I was glad she generally came with me wherever I performed and I was glad she looked after my paint box too. There were stories doing the rounds of theatre girls who ended up a ruin when a jealous rival put ground glass or acid into their face powder. Plenty of the girls in Lady Ginger’s halls were as hard towards me as Jenny Pierce . . . and I can’t say as I blamed them.
And that brings me to Jenny. No one realised she’d gone missing at first. She’d been so tight wound about what she saw as my promotion that it seemed highly likely she’d flounced off in her feathers and war paint just to prove she still had it in her.
We all expected her to turn up any day, preening in a new bonnet or soaked in some fancy cologne. Even when she missed three shows on the trot, risking Fitzy’s anger and, most probably a fine, we still thought she was off somewhere licking her wounds like a vicious old she-cat. No, Jenny Pierce could take care of herself and none of us suspected that her absence was anything more than ill temper and a sore head.
Don’t mistake me, we was all frightened by the way the girls from the halls were disappearing, we knew something very wrong was happening, but no one spoke about it for fear of bringing trouble to their doorstep. Like I said, the theatre is a superstitious place at the best of times. We all went about our business as usual, but we’d begun to keep our wits as sharp as the knives a couple of girls hid in their purses.
It was the Wednesday, five days after my first show at The Gaudy, that word came from Jenny’s lodgings in Ropemaker’s Fields. Her landlady, Mrs Skanks, sent pock-faced Bessie Docket – another of the Gaudy girls who called that flea-infested doss-house down near the river home – along to the theatre with a final demand for Jenny’s rent.
Now, Ropemaker’s was a filthy place and Jenny was welcome to it. Mother Maxwell’s wasn’t what you’d call smart, but at least it was clean in every way. Mrs Skanks turned a blind eye to the business some of her girls got up to. Tell truth, she was so far gone on the gin most days she probably wouldn’t have noticed if an entire ship’s crew had walked through her door. But she come to quick enough when the rent wasn’t paid.
Jenny hadn’t been seen at Ropemaker’s Fields – or anywhere else for that matter – since the Friday previous and her landlady thought it only fair, apparently, that Fitzy should pay up for one of his girls. As Bessie told us, still quaking after her encounter with Fitzy, no one at Mrs Skanks’s would dare to skip a rent day – and thinking of that woman’s freckled meaty arms and fists the size of ham hocks, I believed her.
I didn’t like Jenny, but I didn’t wish evil on her. I felt guilty, as if her blood was on my hands. Out, out damned spot. That’s what she’d said in my dressing room that evening. She should have known better than to tempt fate like that. I thought back to that last time I’d seen her in the box with her gent.
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