The Linnet Bird: A Novel (6 page)

The beatings I took from Ram when I came away empty-handed were, to me, slight in comparison to what I’d saved myself from.

But in spite of an unnerving evening here and there, the majority of the men were simple and unimaginative, wanting the most basic of releases from what they saw as their tortured state, and, like their desires, my actions were uncomplicated and often so repetitive they became mindless.

What I actually did to relieve the boredom and unpleasantness of most of these evening visits was to steal any small thing I could find that wouldn’t be immediately missed—a silver buttonhook, a tiny brass compass, or a teacup or small jug or miniature trinket tray in Liverpool’s favorite Fazackerley colors of gaudy red, together with blue, yellow, and green in designs of Chinese lattice fences and overdone flowers. It seemed an easy thing to slip the bit into a fold of my shawl or boot top, or even under my bonnet when the customer was busy with his clothing or any ablutions he might undertake before or after my performance. I always sold the objects at the crowded market on Great Charlotte Street on my way home from the bookbindery the next day. With a few of the coins I bought boiled sweets and cakes, which I ate before I got home so Ram wouldn’t find me out. I didn’t want him to know I was stealing from customers for two reasons—the immediate one being that I knew he would take the money from the sale of the items, with a wink and pat on the head. The second was less obvious but more meaningful: for him to have known of it would have robbed me of that small potency. Stealing from the men who took from me made me feel powerful in an adult way; not only was I deceiving the customers, but also Ram Munt. The objects themselves were of no importance to me. It was this new power that was the real treasure.

After buying my sweets I went straight to Armbruster’s Used Goods. The place itself seemed a graveyard—all these things that had once belonged to sailors and grandparents and mothers and fathers and their children. There was a nautical section of wood and brass compasses and quadrants and spyglasses and ships’ bowls of blue-and-white china, each painted with its ship’s picture. There were dusty shelves of iron coffee mills and discolored brass warming pans, bellows, stacks of printed tiles carefully prised from around fireplaces, and one chipped crude Delftware bowl, with “Success to ye Prussian Hero, 1769” in poorly executed black letters. There were stale-smelling blankets and stained Welsh flannel, wrinkled striped and corded black silk handkerchiefs, scraps of faded drugget and carpets with a worn track down the center, fringes torn and hanging askew.

And the glass! Row after row of black glass bottles, emptied of their whiskey or medicine, waited alongside rummers on their short thick stems and decanters of lead crystal with their bluish hue. There was no end of them, each piece more unusual than the next, created from the leftover glass. I pictured the boys from the glassworks with their weeping raw eyes permanently damaged by the fumes from the alkali mixing with lime and sand; here were some of their efforts, the efforts that sometimes blinded them, being sold for pennies in this low-ceilinged, damp shop with its black film partway up the walls. The place and all its belongings carried the odor of mold and despair.

I passed all these sad remains of other lives and went straight to the book section. On bowed shelves were hodgepodge stacks of books with damp-warped, foxed pages, their hinges cracked, spines leaning and darkened, and covers soiled and bubbled. But they sold for only a penny or two each, sometimes an entire collection by one author marked 5
d
. I bought book after book, hiding them in my bed, and when I had done reading them either resold or traded them for others. Unlike the sweets, which were simply a treat, the books were a necessity.

Before my mother died I read from my Pinnock’s at night for the pleasure of learning. But since Mr. Jacobs and the beginning of that life, no matter how exhausted my body was when I fell into my own bed afterward, my mind felt as if it were racing too quickly. Ugliness crammed my brain to the point, some nights, that I thought the top of my head might burst open in a painful, muffled explosion. I could envision all those images and sounds, all the evil smells and tastes I’d had to endure, flooding from my opened head over my pillow in a rush of foul liquid. Reading was like a quiet balm spread by a soft hand on the inside of my skull, and I depended on it to help me come back to myself long enough to fall asleep. I had to wait until the huffing snoring from across the room assured me I wouldn’t be found out and then I would light a tiny rushlight and read until I could feel my mind ready to drift. I read all manner of books—from Defoe and Swift to Ann Radcliffe and Elizabeth Hamilton, from adventures to polite romance to memoir.

So all of it—the thefts and the extras they allowed me, the delicious plans of torture and murder, and my charades at putting on a patrician voice and at playing a young lady in the luxurious bedrooms and lavish dining rooms—were devised, and served, to make life bearable.

I thought, every day, of my mother and her dreams for me. I thought of what she would think of me if she could see me now—whore, liar, thief. And I swore to her every Sunday, my hand on her listing cross at Our Lady and St. Nicholas, that I would be more than this. That I would be more than the Linny Munt I was now. That I would be even more than the simpering young women I saw emerging from carriages outside the theaters, wrapped in their furs and feathers or fussing under their parasols. I would be Linny Gow and make her proud. I swore.

Chapter Four

T
HE LAST JOB
I
DID FOR
R
AM
M
UNT WAS SIX MONTHS AFTER MY
thirteenth birthday. It was a cold, wet February evening when he came home grinning, a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string tucked under his arm.

“It’s a top-paying job I’ve found for you, my girl,” he said, tossing the package onto an empty chair and motioning with his head toward the cauldron hanging over the fire. I silently filled his bowl with the turnip and carrot soup I’d made after coming home from work. I had carefully stirred in a palmful of mouse droppings I’d gathered from behind the settle. It pleased me to add a special ingredient into Ram’s food each night, after I’d eaten my own share. Some nights it was a tip from the chamber pot before I emptied it into the trickling gutter that ran down the middle of our court, sometimes it was a smear of pigeon mess I’d scraped off the window ledge, sometimes it was crushed cockroaches or other scurrying beetles that ran along the hallway of our house. In a pinch I spit into the cauldron.

I was more weary than usual this night. One of the little gatherers had fainted and I had had to do her job for the hour before she recovered, running up and down the stairs with armloads of stacks, still expected to have finished all my folding by shutting time. All I wanted to do was lie on my pallet, read for ten minutes, and then close my eyes, not thinking about the next day and what it would bring.

The idea of the evening’s work was overwhelming. I knew there was no point in telling Ram I was too tired. He would never hit me in the face, as a purple eye and swollen lip were not what my customers wanted to see. Instead, he would hurt me in other ways, small, sly ways—his knuckles grinding a deep bruise into the small of my back or holding a match against the underside of my arm long enough to cause a blister—nothing that would cost me a customer, just enough to make me miserable.

“We’re moving up in the world, yes, moving up,” he said, ignoring the spoon I set on the table and picking up the full bowl. “You’ll be working with some of Liverpool’s finest ladies.” His damp greatcoat steamed by the fire, sending off the smell of wet dog.

I stood across from him. “Ladies?” My voice held the faintest note of contempt.

Ram slurped noisily, then hooked a chunk of carrot out of the bowl with his fingers. “It’s a party, put on for some gentlemen visiting from away. I heard, down at the Flyhouse, that they was looking for a number of the best Liverpool had to offer, none of the sailor’s slags from down at the docks or even them from over at Paradise. So I had my say. Oh, I says, I have exactly what you’re looking for, I tells ’em. Just a girl and clean as a whistle, hair like silk. She has to be yellow-haired, the fellow says, only one with the palest of hair will do for the special job I have in mind. Well, you can’t get much fairer than my girl, I tells him. And she’ll do anything you please. She’s a good girl, is my own Linny, I tell the young gentlemen what appears to be in charge. I told him that, Linny, that you’d do anything, and that’s what he’s expecting. So don’t disappoint me, now. With what you’ll make tonight we might start thinking about moving out of here into better lodgings.” He glanced around the spotless room, then shook the piece of carrot at me. “If you do well, you’ll be asked for again. This could be the beginning of a new life for us.” He winked then, popping the carrot into his mouth. “Only the beginning,” he repeated, chewing, a piece of brilliant orange caught up between his two browning front teeth.

T
HE PACKAGE CONTAINED
a green dress of Spitalfields silk with an ecru-colored frill. It was used, bought at the clothes market on Fox Street, and smelled faintly of cold sweat. Before I put it on I inspected the seams for fleas. It was last year’s style; I had seen that none of the fashionable ladies on Lord Street wore this design any longer. But it clung softly, the fabric smooth against my skin. After I’d changed into it and stood before Ram, he nodded appreciatively. I had never before worn a dress with a low-cut bodice and when I looked down and saw the slight new swell of my breasts, I had to fight to stop from putting up my hands to cover myself.

“Brush out your hair. No plaits tonight. You have to look your best. Yes, tonight will be very special.”

I did as I was told, then, studying myself in the ormolu mirror from the fruitwood box. I took out the pendant and fastened the clasp around my neck. I admired how the gold shone against my skin, how the green stones complemented the green silk of the dress. But when I reached for my gray shawl, telling Ram I was ready, he took another look, then shook his head.

“Take off that cheap trinket,” he said, his eyes skittering from the pendant to my face and back to the pendant. “It spoils the look.” He licked his lips and turned away.

I closed my hand around the pendant. I knew it looked quite fine, but I also realized that seeing it would have brought the memory of my mother to Ram.
Could he actually feel guilty about what he’s forced me to become?
I returned the pendant to the fruitwood box, realizing, with a sudden sharp stab of what I knew to be my own guilt, that I should never have considered wearing it. What a disgrace, after all, to my mother’s memory, considering what I’d be doing within the hour.

I’ll only wear it when I can feel proud of who I am, I told myself, and closed the lid of the fruitwood box with a firm click.