Open Writing

Time does not stand still, Beth thought. Too blooming true. For two pins, she would accept Ebby Burke's offer and take the railway to London. She had to take action, soon, if she was serious about a career.

She stood by the window of her rooms and stared out at the night. A camp fire was burning by the caravan of the family of jugglers who were appearing at The Shed and lamps had been lit in buildings on the other side of Tumbler's Field. They were fighting already in The Wheatsheaf from where spilled dim pools of light and a complaining figure.

"Come on youse," shouted the figure from the gutter, in an Irish accent. A donkey attached to a cart stepped back to make room for him.

"Bugger off," was the reply.

A crutch came out of the door and landed alongside the man. He got slowly to his feet on one leg and picked up his crutch. Peg Leggie causing trouble again. He hobbled to the cart, threw his crutch in the back and hauled himself upon it.

"Oy'll fight any ten of youse," he shouted at the night, and picked up the reins and slapped them on the back of the donkey. The beast walked forward and Peg Leggie fell backwards into his cart and did not reappear. Bess would see him home.

Beth had seen it all before. Peg Leggie would sleep until Bess arrived at the stable they shared in O'Connor's Yard in the heart of the Irish quarter. He would remove her harness whilst still in acoholic trance and they would sleep together until dawn when they would be out again, with Peg Leggie in good humour, calling door to door to collect rags in exchange for earthenware pots. The rags would go to the shoddy mills and Peg Leggie would earn enough for his nightly anaesthetic.

Time does not stand still. Peg Leggie had been following the same routine since she moved into these rooms and would continue with the same routine until he became too infirm or simply did not wake up one morning. This was Peg Leggie's life. Was her own very much different?

Robert Dyce had brought about wonderful changes for her family in the short time he’d been back. Her mother was relieved that the future was assured and her father, simple man that he was, was delighted at the stature he’d attained by association with their benefactor.

Gertie was gaining assurance as her own woman. Without the immediate worry of her parents and with the added attraction of a business, shecould be judged as something of a matrimonial catch. Not that she would rush into anything. Gertie would never rush into anything.

Which left Beth, still performing songs, dances and tumbles at Burke's Music Hall, but without the extras that had once been so necessary.

Beth turned from the window and flopped on the bed. That old goat Ferguson had taken her childhood innocence but there was no point harbouring regrets. Was innocence such a fine commodity anyway? Perhaps she should have thanked him for removing what could have been an encumbrance. If she’d escaped his clutches with her innocence preserved, it might have acquired false significance.

To safeguard it, she could easily have become a drudge in a mill and, by now, be broken in spirit and health, and probably without the damned thing, to boot. Innocence didn’t last long in the mills, especially not for the pretty ones. Thank goodness Aunt Mary had taken her under her wing and given her a chance. She had first sung in public at The Old Acquaintance. She stared at the ceiling and the shadows cast by the lamp. Shadows like countries, like dreams, like other lives.

The first occasion she had succumbed to a gentleman's blandishments in a curtained box and pocketed his money, she’d been unsure of what she was expected to do and had taken refuge in her stage role as an ingenue. The gentleman had approved greatly and taken pleasure in directing her efforts.

It hadn’t been too disturbing and was over quickly and she had found her role, for role it was, and had continued to play it until Robert returned and removed its necessity.

Beth worried about what Robert thought of her recent career as a demi-mondaine. He had never asked her the extent of her alternative occupation. She laughed at the shadows.

Prostitution was what it was, and no mistake. Whoring. The same as what Doxy Doris did round the back of The Shed for the price of a glass of gin. Well, not quite.

Not that the class of customer made any difference. The blokes that Doris had were probably a damn site more honest and trustworthy than the gentlemen she had serviced. But Beth had had one strict rule: she never kissed a customer. Kissing was too personal. Kissing was for lovers.

Would Robert ever kiss her? Would he ever want to, knowing what she had been?

At least, she thought defiantly, she had been a stickler for hygiene and had taken discreet medical advice to which she had adhered and which had kept her free of pregnancy and pox. When she thought of it in those terms, it was almost as if she had been a nurse on a ward of contagious disease.

It had been a job and she had fulfilled it with laughter and frivolity and a lightness of spirit that pretended it was something else, that pretended it was a bit of fun, a game in which she was always the winner and the men were always defeated, deflated and out of pocket.

Beth closed her eyes and felt that tears were close but she would not succumb to them. She knew it was not a frivolous game but neither was it as debasing as long hours tending looms with no meal breaks and walking home hungry to sleep on a sack before the next shift. If she had to do it again, she wouldn’t hesitate. Thank God, she wouldn’t have to do it again. Unless she went to London? Perhaps it would be expected in London?

Ebby had been coaching her in acting. Another string to her bow. He’d already written songs that were hers alone, such as Willing For A Shilling. You need your own material, he’d said. By all means pad out the repertoire with standards (and steal a few) but it was essential to have a clutch that were identifiably her's alone.

They had started to perform sketches and short one and two act comedies. Nothing too clever, but it added variety and a hint of sophistication to the bill. He roped in other resident performers, and whoever else was appearing that week, to fill the cast list.

He had the ambition to write his own plays but they had started with a couple he’d brought from London and had been rehearsing How To Settle Accounts With Your Laundress, whose centre piece was a lavish supper of lobster, kidneys, roast fowl and sausages and champagne.

"They'll love it whether it's funny or not," Ebby said. "They'll love the thought of all that grub they can't afford. The food counters will do some business."

Beth had a flair for acting. She knew it. She acted on stage and off and could act all the way to London. Be confident, Ebby said, and the world will believe you. A very gullible place, the world.

"Play your cards right, and you could be the next Jenny Lind," he’d said.

"I'm not that sort of Jenny," she’d said.

"I'm not talking act, I'm talking money."

Miss Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, had performed at The Philosophical Hall in the town two years before. The cheapest seats had been 10s 6d.

Could she be such an attraction? If she did go to the capital, there would be nothing to stop her taking a tilt at an earl for good measure. Nothing at all. Certainly not Robert Dyce.

Robert's return had given her hope, knowing that someone from the valley had travelled so far and done so well. They’d become as close as conspirators and he treated her as an equal, confiding in her his plans and his stratagems. He told her everything about what he wished to achieve through investments and nothing about what was happening in his heart.

When they first met, they’d been distant enough for her to mock his childhood love of Jane, but now they knew each other so well, mockery was out of place. She knew he was in pain but couldn't see how he hoped to ease that pain. He hadn't even seen Jane, since that fleeting glimpse on the day of his return, and the only way he could claim her was if she became a widow.

Good God, but the man was a ninny. For all he knew, his lost love might be as happy as a sandbird, being married to Harry Frederick Simms. Or was Jane an excuse? Was Robert's love really as pure as he claimed? A doubt tugged her mind, for his hatred of his brother was so complete that, she suspected, if Harry had a champion conker he would envy it.

Despite everything, Beth loved him and he loved her, but only as a brother might love a sister. Did he think less of her for what she’d been and what she’d done? Brotherly love forgave such sins of necessity. But was it a barrier to him loving her as a man might love a woman?

**

To b uy a Kindle edition of this novel for 86 pencwe please click on
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005966G30