A/N: Warnings: cursing, violence/assault (sexual and physical), mentions of death. General themes of the show, but I wanted to give a fair warning.
two
For a long while, I had known that some of the eldest girls did more than just pickpocket at the markets or work in the factory for Esther. Before she sent the girls off in the dead of night, before that pinkish warmth, Esther trained the girls to set out tables with napkins and proper cutlery which she stashed beneath the floorboards in the flat, never for us, never for proper use, but rather for these lessons in manners and etiquette. Esther bought uniforms with starched aprons, soft stockings and bonnets for the girls. She taught them all the correct phrases, fabricated entire stories for each girl.
I understood that the girls posed as maids. I just never understood more until I was dressed in this pair of soft stockings and this starched apron for myself. She had tamed all those frizzy strands from my hair, smoothed them into tight curls. I was taught words like madam and sir. I learnt the placement of the plate alongside each spoon and neatly-plied napkin. I was furnished with false references, because I had never had them before, I asked what they meant.
Esther was in a sour mood. She rolled her eyes toward me with a withered expression. "Christ, Willa, don't tell 'em that you're thick in the skull, all right? Pretend to be even a little bit smart, would ya, pretend you got an ounce of a brain, yeah? I should hope they don't ask you to fuckin' read or write nothin' for 'em. You cost me this job and I'll crack through that skull of yours, see if you can't read then, bloody dunce, fuckin' dimwit you are, Willa – …"
ii
Alfie followed me out of the factory; all the way from the backyard of the factory, right after the boys had been handed hefty envelopes, he followed me into Victoria Lane and outward toward Sanford Road. All those blocks we walked, and not once did he speak, not until we reached Brixton Street. He never slowed or stopped at all, never even glanced at me. He simply said, "'ow long will you be gone for, then?"
I continued alongside him, aware that our shoulders occasionally bumped together. Naturally hoarse, my words always came out in a light rasp, and I replied, "Couple of weeks, I think. Who told you that I was leaving, anyway?"
Something that I had learned about Alfie: he asked questions and expected answers for them, but rarely did he answer any questions for himself. "Right. I suppose that means I got no choice but to sit on that wall in Ivor Square by me-self and wait for ya. But don't be too long, eh? I'll be chewin' the ends o' me scarf from boredom if you go too long."
I smiled, my cheeks aflame. I dipped my chin toward my chest so that my long hair slipped from my shoulders and shrouded me behind a dark curtain. "I guess that means I'll have to make a lot more scarves for you, Alfie. I could make as many as you like, you know."
He nodded with this soft, warm hum resonating from his chest. He looked upward at the rotted slates of the roofs on Brixton Street, his lips pursed. "Been thinkin' 'bout some gloves too. Might need a cap while we're at it, eh? It's nippy out in the backyard, innit? Can't have me catchin' a cold, eh, whole factory might fall apart without me there to manage it. Yeah –…" at this, he drew in a sharp breath, blew out his lips in a raspberry and nodded – "… I reckon I'll need the whole kit, I will."
"Then I guess I have to come back to you, don't I?" I said. I glanced up at him, afflicted still by my shyness around him, my odd giddiness and eagerness to even look at him. It was nothing like me, but it felt – it felt nice, which sounded girlish and strange coming from me, but it was the truth, all the same.
"You do, Willa," he nodded, unsmiling. There were no jokes from him, no humour, for once. "You do."
iii
Along came Rosewood with its lavish shrubbery much like Charterhouse. It had acres upon acres of land and horses, sprawling fields with ponds. There was the house nestled within the trimmed hedges and there were the little yips of the dogs, small little dogs flitting around about our ankles and plodding alongside Mr William Yaxley whose hands had been gloved in leather after a morning chase around the fields, settled tall upon his stallion. I had curtsied before him like Esther had taught me.
I called myself Elizabeth; not chey, not Willa, not dummy, not dimwit, not dunce, none of those things anymore. Yaxley looked through me as if I was transparent – he looked beyond me, into the fields. He told me that I reminded him of an old friend, a dear old friend, because people like Yaxley talked like that, always with words like dear and quaint and terribly and awfully and dreadfully so.
All this came three weeks before he cornered me in the pantry and tried to push his hand up my skirt.
iv
The maids slept in the house in another section sealed off from Yaxley and his wife whose name was never quite said aloud. She was simply ma'am or missus or my lady and not much else. She allowed charities to be held at Rosewood Manor so that she might maintain inauthentic friendships with other ladies whose names had been ma'am or missus or my lady and not much else. I liked the older maids because they became quite motherly toward me, and I had always lived with women, always liked to be with women, felt more comfortable around them than I did men.
Their hearts had already been made soft by their own children, and that meant that these older maids smoothed out the crinkles in the bedsheets I had tried to pin against the mattress. They straightened the picture-frames after I dusted them. They made all those little touches which I may have missed because I was not a proper maid, but they only thought that I was new and nervous, therefore forgetful and sloppy.
There had been Cecilia and Nora, Elise and Mary – kindly ladies, whose hands had been roughened by the trade, whose attitudes and workmanship had been brisk and unafraid of tasks rattled out by ma'am or missus or my lady in the pinkish warmth of the mornings.
It was Cecilia who first hinted that I should never find myself alone with Mr Yaxley if possible. It was Nora who mentioned, hours afterward, that Yaxley liked stockings, but that he liked them on younger legs. He liked dark eyes, but his wife had pale eyes, always watering. It was Elise who had noted, quite blankly, that Yaxley had watched me from the yard that evening and that she would very much like to follow me into the kitchen later – for reasons unspecified, although I had been startled to discover Yaxley already there upon our arrival, as if she had expected it. She had expected it. She had protected me, even if I had not yet understood it.
Women are attuned to the ways of men, Mary told me one night between dustings, because God granted them this gift among many others. But that does not mean that always they can be protected – but it comes from the gut, this instinct, women sense things from the gut and it travels upward into the brain, so that all of the body understands it from that point onward.
She asked, do you feel that in your gut yet, Elizabeth? Has it yet reached your brain, so that all your body has understood it? If not, my girl, my sweet, then what I feel should surely pass to you – women are like that, too, they can speak to one another with just the eyes. Another gift from God.
v
In the pantry had been many sachets of dried-out seasonings and other jars half-full of ripe strawberries and raspberries and blackberries fleshly plucked at dawn, because there would be another charity-event in Rosewood Manor that evening. The dessert would be a French dish that I could hardly pronounce. I held a jar of blackberries all soft and ground into mush and then I turned toward the door and found Yaxley there. He had been tall and slim. His shirt had been untucked. I could not quite tell why that bothered me so much.
Like roots burrowing into the soil, my feet had planted themselves into the tiles of the pantry and I felt the slow crawl of branches all around my limbs, until seedlings sprung from my tongue and I said something like, is there something that you need, Mr Yaxley?
From my gut came that gift which had been granted to women by God, it spread around the roots and poured itself into my veins so that I hummed like a bumblebee from it, vibrated from it and felt it spill outward so that he could feel it, too. It made him stand straighter - that was how I knew he could feel it, that was how I knew that my roots had intertwined with his and that that was why he blocked the door with his shoulders and he blocked me from the rest of the house which thus seemed small and distant behind him, narrowed into a tunnel which had no end, that house which had never felt homely, never felt loved.
He came toward me, corralled me into the corner between those dried-out seasonings and those other jars half-full, held me there, he did. I could feel the heaviness of his breath and the heaviness of his intentions all at once. His hand went toward my skirt, held itself there, then shimmied upward. It trailed upward along the bare flesh of my thigh, that hand, as if it was not still attached to him, some tumorous leech on his person, it slithered upward toward parts unknown.
He called me kitten between his breathy huffs against my throat. His other hand pawed at my chest, his lips tasted like salt. He had been everywhere, so that I felt I could not escape him, that I had been contained in a jar of my own. His hand brushed my knickers, which until then only the other girls had seen – which until then, had been mine and only mine, but he was here, spoiling it, spoiling me, ruining me and he-…
I dropped the blackberries.
I dropped the blackberries and the sickly-sweet blackness of its contents spattered our legs in thick droplets which dripped downward onto his leather-shoes and my trembling stockings and I felt it dribble into my shoes, too, that sickly-sweetness, felt it pool there. He did not look away from me – and even if his eyes had been all bluish-light, I saw that blackness in him. Mary was behind him. He did not know it. His hand was beneath my chin, tipping it upward at him. I saw her behind him, she was there.
Mary said, "Mr Yaxley."
He knew, then. His hand left my chin, left it cold, left it hurt. His eyes flicked toward her.
"Mr Yaxley," Mary said, "I do believe that Mrs Yaxley has requested your presence in the foyer."
Off he went, his leather-shoes slick and squelching in sickly-sweet blackness and I stood there in blank numbness before I thanked God for this gift which came from the gut for women and I thanked Him, too, for Mary. I had never spoken to God before that moment in the pantry, but I knew that His name was written with a capital letter even if I could not write myself.
I looked at Mary. We spoke to one another with just our eyes. Our gift from God.
She scrubbed the blackberries from my stockings. She spared me a sliver of dessert from the charity event. I ate it in the kitchen between the flurry of waiters slipping around me like fish in a river. I went out into the field and spewed it back into the damp earth, spat out that sickly-blackness.
I let the soil consume it instead.
vi
I stole quite a lot of jewellery from the Yaxley family that same night. I could wait no longer. I dumped all that jewellery into a little pocket in my coat and tucked pearls into my shoes, plopped the earrings into the lining of my cuffs and pushed the bracelets into the hidden slits that Esther had made beneath my coat. I saw his shirts, steamed and pressed. I took a pair of scissors and snipped through them all. I did not rip the dresses of his wife nor did I ruin her shoes. I went into the pantry and found another jar of blackberries and brought them back into the bedroom. I smeared them into the folds of his shirt, smeared them all over the bedsheets.
Suddenly, the bedroom-door opened and there stood Mary. Her eyes trailed toward that pile of clothes, blackened and spoiled like I had been in the pantry. She saw me. I was not transparent for her. I suppose that she had known, without words, because of our gift from God, that I had stolen from the family. She stood there like I had stood in that damned pantry before she turned around and left. I stood still, too. I stood for the screams and shouts that would alert Yaxley and ma'am or missus or my lady out in the gardens for the charity event.
Nothing ever came. She never screamed, never shouted. She never sold me out. She spared me the beatings, she spared me the noose. Another gift from God, she had given me.
vii
Sitting in the kitchen of the flat alongside Esther, I watched her count the coins and notes which came from my spoils. Esther had brought the jewellery into an old shop on Brixton Street, because it was just about the only place which would take her wares anymore if they were not sent through Butcher. Ruth had been there, Daisy and Beth and Rosie and Nellie, too. I had made more than the other girls ever had, in that one night. Esther said, "Chey will need to stay in the flat for the next couple a weeks, keep her head low. But you made a fine job of it, you did, chey."
"I don't want to do that anymore," I mumbled.
"The maid job?" Nellie asked. "Easiest in the world, if you ask me."
Esther had been watching me closely. She asked, "Did he try to fuck ya, chey?"
"Should 'ave let 'im, Willa," Rosie said. "Could 'ave gotten more gifts as 'is mistress."
I looked away from her. "He made me – uncomfortable."
The girls glanced around at one another. Then came laughter – sudden, intense laughter all pointed at me, but Esther watched me without even the flicker of a smile, eyes full of sickly-sweet blackness. I awaited a slap, I awaited a punch or thump against me, but nothing more came than the snickers and snorts of the other girls.
"If that's all a man ever made me," Ruth snickered, "then I wouldn't be complainin', Willa."
"I don't want to do it anymore," I repeated.
"All right. No more, chey," Esther said.
It was the only time I could remember that Esther never went against her word nor tried to manipulate its meaning.
viii
The flat had become a womb. Curtains drawn, the bedroom was filled in feeble oranges and red from the candlelight. Charlotte roused me for card-games. Otherwise, I slept in the bedroom, slept in the mornings, slept in the evenings. It was still fresh, all that had happened in Rosewood. I dreamt of foreign hands pressed against my thighs, spread apart, trickling toward – toward the scratch of fingertips edging toward – and I could breathe the scent of blackberries, which threw me from sleep and forced me into a stuttered consciousness. I never told Charlotte about the dreams. Still, she slept alongside me like she always had, curled herself against the bumps of my spine and held herself between them.
"If you dream badly, Willa, only tell yourself that I am there with you," she whispered, pressed against the crook of my neck, her words soft and warm in the swirl of my eardrum, as if each syllable looped around and around my cochlea and settled there for comfort.
Charlotte had fallen asleep and it was only then that I could let the words out at the sight of her parted lips and gentle exhales into the cool air of night – only then could I let myself be held.
"He never even saw me," I told her, one night. "I was not myself – just another jar in the pantry, he reached out for me, like another jar –…"
I was not there for him; it did not matter if I was there, only that I was there. I said it so much, so much in my own head that I had fumbled the words and it all came out backwards, spun itself around, so that it made no more sense to me than it would have made to Charlotte if I dared say it aloud. So, I would never say it again, I decided – no more. I would never speak of Yaxley. He would stay in the pantry and I would stay in the flat, separate from one another.
Charlotte had said that I could tell myself that she was there with me, but I never wanted her in that pantry, where he could touch her. I wanted her with me, safe and asleep and unaware of men like Yaxley, unaware of foreign hands on thighs, spread apart, trickling toward…
I stitched more slits into my coat, stitched them alongside all those others made for theft. I put them there for pocketknives.
ix
Knocking; there was a harsh, heavy knocking at the front-door of the flat and it rattled the furniture, upset the wallpaper, left the floorboards in a tremble until I drifted into the hall and watched a silhouette stood in the frost of the windowpanes, composed of black clothes and a slip of white around its neck, dipped onto its chest in thick lines, just two – a scarf of white, formed beneath the harsh growl of my sewing-machine. I stumbled toward the door in surprise because I knew that it was Alfie. I gripped the door-handle and tasted its metal in my mouth. I swallowed and let it slither downward into my throat – into me.
"Open the door, Willa," he said. "C'mon, darlin' – I been sittin' on that wall waitin' for ya – I've eaten me scarf, yeah, ain't got nothin' but me socks left, so you might need'ta crack on with sewin' or I'll be starkers outside your door, and what impression would that give to your neighbours, eh, confronted with my unsightly –…"
I pulled at the door-handle, found him stood there with one arm leaned against the brick-wall and the other looped around his belt. He looked the same and I felt different. I wondered if he could see it, could taste it like I could taste metal. He wore a hat which I had never seen on him, round and black. He tipped it toward me, straightened and looked right at me – at me, not through me.
Because Alfie always saw me. I wasn't transparent for him. He didn't look beyond me.
"I been sittin' on that wall, Willa, waitin' for ya, right," he repeated. "And your Charlotte comes 'round to tell me that you been back three days and you ain't come and found me? Wounded, I am, darlin', truly wounded."
"I was tired," I told him.
Somewhere behind him, I heard giggles and voices drifting toward us and knew that the girls were coming back from the factory and that Alfie had just made it ahead of them. I felt prickly from it, bothered that they would come while he was here and probably make assumptions from his presence.
"Tired from tryin' to nick some spoons and forks off some old fella?" Alfie snorted.
"Yes, Alfie, tired."
He studied me – that usual dart around me, from face to shoulders, down toward my boots, all around, always he studied me. "What 'appened to ya?"
"Nothing happened to me," I said.
"Well you could 'ave written me a fuckin' letter to tell me so, Willa, could 'ave-…"
There was laughter behind him, shrill and sudden and all around us. "You'd be waitin' a while for a letter from our Willa, Alfie."
It was Beth, stood with the other girls, flustered and thrilled by the sight of Alfie because it meant that there was some gossip for them. Alfie had been right that the neighbours might wonder, that it might spread in the tenements that a young lad had been spotted outside our flat without Esther there – it might be a brothel, the neighbours might wonder, a whore-house in Bell Road, when before that had only been at Fetter Road, and didn't one of their girls die on Fetter Road, their Elsie –...
I noticed Charlotte was there, her hands in a twitch from nerves, her eyes wide and lost in a wild spin between myself and Alfie and Beth and all the others, over and over.
Alfie turned, his shoulders hunched together. He had an awful danger about him, as if the sight of Beth stirred some dormant temper. "You gonna keep natterin' on, Beth, yeah, or are you gonna say what you really wanna say?" he drawled out, slow and deliberate.
Beth stilled at his dark stare. She licked her lips – tasted metal too, perhaps. "T'was just a joke, is all, Alfie, on account of Willa not bein' able to write or nothin' – and besides, you'd be waitin' what with 'er new fella what liked 'er so much, old Yax-…"
I slammed the door shut.
x
Soaked in yellowish light, the courtyard was asleep, the dogs dozing in the doorways and the bedsheets fluttering in a tired breeze from laundry-lines strung between the railings. I marched toward Victoria Lane before all the other girls could even stir or mutter jokes about Alfie and jokes about Yaxley. The girls knew that Yaxley had hurt me, somehow. Only there had not been bruises. I could still stand; my mouth had not been made slack from him like Daisy, I never had to hop about like Ruth.
So, for the other girls, that meant that I was not hurt. It meant that the girls said, what girl has not been felt up by some fella on the maid job, what makes you so special that you can't do it again, Willa, you think you're better than us, is that it, because Esther calls you chey, you think that makes you special –…
There were no bruises. I could still stand. I could still speak – but the words never came out, remaining hardened lumps in my throat. I turned toward Princeton Avenue, hands stuffed into my pockets. In the past few days, I had spent more time out on the streets in order to avoid Alfie, but I had had trouble with stealing from pockets if those pockets were attached to the coats of men.
It had spread through me like some disease, what Yaxley had done or had not done or almost did or wanted to do. I was not afraid that I might be caught by men in the streets with a hand in some pocket, but rather afraid of what might happen after it – thrown into an alleyway, would there be sickly-sweet blackness?
I thought about how the girls had looked at me as if I was demented, as if I was being pompous and spoiled to be so upset over what had happened or almost happened or not happened with Yaxley. I thought: should it really be like that? Should I have let him? Is it supposed to be like that with men?
xi
It had infected my sewing-machine, this illness, it tangled the thread and bunched the material before I could catch it. I stood from the table, turned to toss the ruined fabric into the bin, only to find Alfie behind me in the emptiness of the room. His hat was not there, neither scarf nor coat. He was dressed in a shirt – its buttons were wonky, drifting toward the left, its right sleeve just an inch more in length than the left.
It was the shirt that I had made him weeks beforehand, that I thought he had thrown away because it had come out daft from my lack of experience. Only he wore it now, right in front of me. Somehow, it made me laugh. It made all that tension held tight in my stomach unwind like a rubber-band, snapped and unfurled, so that I could hardy stop my laughter and did not want it to stop either, because the shirt was daft and made him look daft.
"Oh, that's charmin', innit, mockin' the lad what's wearin' your craft, I'll remind ya, Willa," he said, and I only laughed harder. "Well, I thought I was wearin' the 'eight of fashion, me, thought I'd match all them posh lads up in Charter'ouse with me new kit –…"
"You kept the shirt," I replied, still giggling.
"I kept the shirt, yeah."
I heard some subtle shift in his tone, which stilled my laughter. I saw his eyes swell with that odd look, that I could not quite pin, but it was much like how Elsie had looked at me after Esther had bashed my skull against the countertop when I was a child and later how Charlotte had looked at me when she held me after my nightmares and – and I never thought that Alfie would look like that toward me. Not for me.
And he stepped forward while I stepped backward, so that we were never closer than we had been.
He said, "Willa, what 'appened out at Rosewood, eh? Why won't you tell me?"
He had asked that outside the flat, before the girls had come and spoiled it, ruined it – ruining me and he-… But he was not Yaxley, I told myself. Alfie was nothing like him – and I looked into that gift from God to be sure of it and felt only warmth toward him, pinkish warmth. He had never come near me with blackness in his eyes.
"What do you care about it?" I asked meanly, because my hands were trembling like those other hands trembled after a line of snow, but I had not taken any and never had, but it seemed as if it had gotten into me all the same. It angered him, my tone and my dismissal of him. It angered him. I saw it in how his chest heaved like it had in the backyard after that fight and I could see it in his eyes, blown wide.
"I care about it, all right. Cared enough to come 'round yours after Charlotte found me, cared enough to know that you weren't 'idin' yourself away in that flat just because Esther told ya to do it. You're doin' it because you're afraid o' somethin' and it wasn't somethin' you were afraid of before Rosewood and before this fuckin' Yaxley bloke. So, I care about it, or I wouldn't be fuckin' standin' 'ere in this poxy shirt what you made for me, wouldn't be 'opin' that despite what 'appened that you might still tell me, Willa!" His voice rose at the end, rose into a shout not like anything I had never heard from him.
"I don't know how to tell you," I said.
And there it was, the truth of it all.
"I wanted to – and I tried – but it comes out all wrong," I continued, "like my mouth can't figure it out, like it comes out backwards and wrong."
"Then let it come out backwards and wrong," he said, "so long as it comes out."
So, I told him. I told him, stuttered and slack and nervously wringing my hands. He listened. For once, I was speaking in a wild ramble and it was Alfie who listened, whether it came out backwards and wrong, so long as it came out. Afterward, it was my chest that heaved, my eyes that were blown wide, I was sat against the table and I looked at him. I asked him, "Alfie, is it supposed to be like that – with – with men, I mean, is it supposed to be –…?"
"No," he answered. "No, it's not supposed to be like that. Not supposed to be like that at all."
He was not looking at me. He would not look at me. "Alfie, are you – are you ashamed of me now?"
His eyes snapped toward me, his jaw ground so tightly that his words came out rasping. "Ashamed of ya? Why would ya ever think somethin' so stupid?"
Stupid, I thought. He's right, you bloody dunce, bloody fuckin' dimwit…
"Stop that," he said. "Stop thinkin' that stuff, stop thinkin' like that about yer-self."
I never said it aloud, but he heard it anyway – a gift that God had given Alfie, I suppose.
"Esther did that to ya, made ya think like that, didn' she? She put you in that fuckin' position too, didn' she, let you be where that fuckin' nonce could 'ave at ya like that – I bet she ain't said sorry for it neither, 'as she?"
"She said I wouldn't have to do it anymore," I muttered, feeling shifty and awkward in front of his blazing stare.
"No," he said. "You won't 'ave to do it anymore, Willa."
xii
In the earliest light of dawn, Alfie stood in the courtyard of Bell Road beneath the shelter of a canopy and scratched the dogs behind the ears while he waited for me. I was confused, asked him what he was there for, why he was there so early. He never answered. I had learned that about Alfie but asked him anyway.
He brought them small chunks of meat, folded in a bundle of cloth stuffed in his pockets, so that all the dogs had come to him with drooling mouths and eager snouts sniffing around him, surrounding him. He fed all of them, even the smallest strays scarpering toward him from the other tenements. Once finished, Alfie walked alongside me toward the factory and I glanced at him warily, unsure of what he was doing or what he wanted.
But that gift from God only ever told me to trust Alfie. So, I did. I trusted him and followed.
"Sit down, Willa."
I sat at my usual table and watched him pull another alongside me before he went toward the office – that sparked me through me like a lightning-bolt, especially once Alfie pulled out a small pin from his pocket and shoved it into the keyhole, fiddled around until the lock clicked. I wanted to tell him that Butcher would murder him, chop off his limbs and hang him from railings until all his blood had been drained, like animals in butcher-shops, but Alfie had already come back out with some pens and paper in hand. He fixed the lock and sat alongside me, slapping the paper onto the table.
He caught my stare and said, "Give over, Willa, you ain't gonna scold me for nickin' these when that's 'ow you make a livin', are ya?"
"I don't want Butcher to hurt you," I told him.
He did that funny thing that Alfie often does after I said certain things, when his eyes followed mine, followed my movements, inspected me and assessed me until he looked away, his stare distant and distracted. He took my hand – the touch startled me, made me flit toward thoughts of a pantry but soon I found comfort in the warmth, because this was not Yaxley, not the pantry. I trusted Alfie. He pushed a pen into my hand as if I could not figure out how to hold it myself.
Suddenly, I understood.
"No, Alfie –…"
"No, what? You don' wanna learn? Want Esther to keep you under 'er boot forever, is that it?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Alfie looked at me, deadpan. "Don't you think it's beneficial to Esther that you don' know 'ow to read or write yet?" – he ignored the splotches of red on my throat, my flighty eyes, unable to look directly at him anymore – "…you're one of 'er top earners, ain't ya, Willa? Well, Esther seems to think that she's got you good 'ere, don' she? You steal for 'er, make 'er aprons. She don't think you can do nothin' else, so she thinks that you 'ave to stay with 'er, yeah, that you ain't got a choice. She's wrong on that one. Show 'er that she's wrong, darlin'."
He had two sheets of paper, one for himself and another for me. He drew a squiggly line, attached it to another. He plopped down another, and another, until the whole sheet was filled. He wanted me to copy it, wanted me to follow him with the sounds even when I felt completely embarrassed in front of him.
I mumbled, "Alfie, I don't want to do this – I feel – I feel stupid, I don't want to –… Mine are coming out all wonky and wrong, you see –…"
"So long as it comes out," he said. "So long as it comes out, Willa."
xiii
It became our routine to reach the factory before all the others. He brought paper, brought pens; we practiced my writing where the other girls could not see, practiced my reading too, he wrote sentences for me to read out in my slow, careful way – each sound, each syllable. I felt so stupid at first, but he never stopped me, never really did more than wait and correct me or encourage me to repeat a certain word, rewrite a certain letter until it looked more like his in comparison.
"Al-fie," I read once, "…is very han-…han-sum –…"
Handsome, I realised, my eyes shooting toward him. He smirked from his seat, bumped my shoulder with his, so that my cheeks burned, and my hands became clammy.
"Now who wrote that, eh? Blimey, I'm flattered, Willa, but I try to keep me-self 'umble, don' I –…"
Behind him came the groan of the factory-door squeaking open, wobbling on its rail. I heard the girls, heard giggles and shrieks and laughter. Quickly, I scooped the papers from the table, all the pens, stuffed them in the drawer of my own table and looked to find Alfie watching me, having not moved at all. It was private, my lessons with Alfie, just between us. He pushed his chair from the table and stood slowly, reluctantly.
Just before he left, he leaned close and said, "I'm not the one feelin' ashamed of you, Willa. I never was."
He left for the backyard and I watched him, my skin fiery and red from that same feeling of regret. I pulled open the desk of my drawer, looked at the papers and felt my heart thump. I read the next sentence, slowly, slowly – but I really read it by myself, read each word! My heart stopped its thumping, fell into my stomach, settled there like a stone which then burst into a hundred butterflies and swooped upward again once I had sounded it out, sorted the letters, understood it.
He had written: Willa is smarter than she thinks.
xiv
Another morning, I strolled out into the courtyard and expected us to continue onward toward the factory, but Alfie merely fed the dogs and stayed unusually quiet. He fed the dogs, scratched floppy ears, and I sat and watched him. Eventually, he slipped off the ledge that he sat on, stood and said, I want to show you something. Instead of walking out toward Victoria Lane, he went toward the staircase – the staircase which led upward into the tenements, which creaked beneath our boots, all the way toward the fifth floor where our flat was.
The row was angled in the shape of an 'L' – this meant that the staircase opened onto a small stretch of landing and then turned, so that there was a long row which had the doors of each flat dotted along it, six of them in total, and our flat was the fourth.
Alfie strode right by it and stopped in front of the sixth flat at the end of the row, with its peephole faced toward the row. He fished around his pocket. I heard a jangle and saw him fiddle with the keyhole. The door opened and I stared at him as he stepped into the flat. He glanced behind and said, "You comin' or what, Willa? Fuckin' freezin' out, it is, and you're there wastin' precious 'eat from my flat, you are –…"
I found my words, formed my mouth around them. "You live here?"
"Come inside, Willa." His response had been flat, his eyes glancing toward me, filled with an oddly pleading sheen. "Come inside, darlin', yeah?"
Coaxed toward him, I stepped into the hall and then into his front-room. There was not much in the way of homeliness here, for the furniture was coated in thickened sheets of dust. There were boxes laid about the flat, piled one upon the other, untouched. He held still in all that dust. Gingerly, I stepped around the room and tried not to disturb anything. Only there came a moment in which Alfie cleared his throat and I looked at him.
"Been tryin' to clear it out, ain' I? Was me Mum's flat. I jus' – I ain't been 'ere in a while, you know. That's how I got the job from Butcher, because Esther knew me fam'ly, back when we was livin' on Bell Road. Like I said, I ain't been 'ere for a long time and I – I got this letter from me brother, right, sayin' he's gettin' outta the big 'ouse in a couple weeks. I wanted 'im to 'ave somewhere nice to go, yeah, he's been in there a while now. I was thinkin' – and you know, I gotta get some o' this stuff shifted fast, but I –…"
Alfie continued along like this, mumbling and rambling while he picked up a book and placed it atop a table only to then return it to its place, fiddling with his uneven cuffs and shrugging his shoulders. I let him do it for a little while, because I felt myself flooding with this tenderness toward him, as if I was melting in sunlight, melting gladly, melting happily, for him.
I knew that Alfie was sharing something significant with me – something that meant a lot more to him than I had first understood when I stepped into the flat.
It occurred to me that I had never asked Alfie where he lived, never knew that he had a brother nor that his brother was in prison, never talked about his mother, never even tried to discover these things because I had been trying so hard to remain aloof and distant from him, afraid that the girls might mock me about him just like they mocked me for my illiteracy – which was slowly changing, changing because of him.
Gently, I interrupted him while he was still telling me that the paint could do with another coat, that he could clean the skirting-boards. It was somewhere between that and the part about the fireplace that I interrupted and said, "Maybe we could start with finding the things that you really want to keep, Alfie. Place them into a pile and put them in another room while we clean out the rest together. We can make it look really nice for your brother, I think. We'll do it all – skirting-boards and all."
He had listened to each word, his lips held tight together. He nodded. For once, he did not say anything. He picked up a book, tilted it toward me, and nodded again. I knew what he meant. I took it from him and placed it carefully on the sofa. He handed me another book. He was quiet all the time, until he found a red book beneath the others and he mumbled, "My Mum really liked this one."
I was reaching for it; my hand brushed his and this time there was no pulling away from one another, no pretending to be unaware of it. He let me rest my hand against his, let me stay there with him in the flat, until its dust had been swept clean, its books stacked, its skirting-boards cleaned.
Afterward, we walked to the factory. Somewhere along the line, my arm had started to loop around his. Somewhere along the line, I leaned against him; never mentioned, but there it was between us all the same.
xv
The Blacksmith was a bar on Brixton Street which had been full to the brim with drunken crowds spilling out from the doors on the night that I went there to meet Alfie. He never drank alcohol, but the bar was just about the only place that we could meet easily and without the other girls there to surround us and interrupt us.
Spinning around in wild dances and separating only for fights, the crowd swallowed me in its fold. I thought that I might never find him in this swell of people, pushing around one another with pints-in-hand, beer slopping onto others and starting more fights from the confusion. I slipped around them, looking for a familiar black hat and white scarf – the one that I had made for him, which he always wore, which stirred another bout of warmth in my stomach and cocooned me against the chill of the evening. I saw coppers outside The Blacksmith, so I ducked inside and tried there instead.
Alfie was behind me, out of the blue, turning me toward him and planting my hands on his arms. His breath was heavy against my ear whenever he leant close enough to tell me something against the loud noise of the crowds. It tickled and made me shiver against him, trying to wiggle away when he would only pull me closer toward him. He made us dance – made us, in his stubborn way, dip and shimmy and wobble around, and it only made me laugh from how silly it all was, his horrible singing and his terrible dancing, it made me laugh and laugh.
Alfie always liked to make me laugh.
He leaned close once more. I thought that he wanted to tell me something and I leaned toward him in response, automatically; his lips were pressed against mine, soft and gentle and slow, his lips kissed mine and it was – it was complete blankness in my brain, for just a brief moment, before I found his rhythm and followed it, before the shrieks and laughter around us became a bubble and I felt my hands grip his shirt and bring him closer, forever closer.
His mouth trailed along my throat, kissed it, softly, gently, slowly. He found my earlobe, nipped at it. He said, "It's supposed to be like this, Willa."
I pulled away from him, staring into his eyes. He smiled, and it was a proper smile from Alfie, not one of those coltish, sly, teasing smiles he often used instead of allowing himself to be genuine. I found I liked it far more, this proper smile, because it was made of the same softness and gentleness that had been in his kiss.
"Do it again," I said.
He did, over and over. He said, "I want you to write me letters, now that you can."
In this daze of kisses and being close against him, I tugged at his hair and realised that he liked it a lot when I did that, so I did it all the more. I had thought that he was joking with me, playing like he always did. "Why would I write you letters when you're with me in the factory, Alfie?" I asked.
"Write to me all the time, won't you, Willa, like I taught you," he said, his words breathed into the skin of my throat, etched there, eternal. "I want your letters, written by you, my girl, my Willa –…"
xvi
Some fella got shot over in Sar-jay-voo, Esther said the next morning. That was how I learned about the war. Some fella got shot, she said, and now all our fellas have to be shot along with him.
xvii
I understood what he meant by writing him letters, now.
