The Petticoat Men (45 page)

She did not ask how he knew it had ‘been arranged’ but she suddenly stubbed out her cigarette and leaned quickly and lovingly towards him.

‘Your Royal Highness is always so kind and generous and thoughtful and I adore Him!’ She knew there would always be other mistresses; now it would not matter. ‘And I happen to know that, as well as being kind, you have also been
naughty
. It has come to my attention that you have been a very naughty Prince again.’

‘I have. Yes. Yes, yes, I have.’ And she moved across him in the old familiar way.

‘
Yes
.’

It was early days; there might even be some miscalculation on her part. She would mention the matter when the trial was over.

44

A fine May spring day; a smaller, well-behaved and somewhat noble crowd controlled (in a deferential manner) by police constables; an old regal court inside the famous Palace of Westminster.

Mattie Stacey could not attend until she was called as witness; one of Mrs Stacey’s soup-ladies was very ill and cried for Isabella to sit with her; Elijah and Billy were walking behind hearses. But Dodo Fortune was determined to attend the trial. ‘I shall take an omnibus and return to my old haunts,’ she said. ‘Where once I fed noble stomachs!’

‘My dear, it might be too far,’ said Elijah, anxious.

‘I’ll take you, Dodo,’ said Mackie, ‘on my way to Blackfriars.’

‘But you always walk, dear fellow,’ Dodo said, ‘I’m not sure that I could…’

‘I’ve never even seen the Palace of Westminster! I’ll take you on the omnibus.’

‘And I’ll collect you at the end of the day, Dodo,’ said Mrs Stacey. ‘If I have to hear Freddie and Ernest’s story all over again a whole year after it all began I’d rather hear it from you anyway, who at least can make me laugh, you can tell us it much better than
Reynolds News
and
The
Times
rolled into one!’ She whispered, ‘And don’t drink too much tea before you go.’

‘Don’t worry, dear, I know a place or two. I didn’t work in that building for twenty years for nothing!’ And they both laughed for although London provided conveniences for gentlemen, women were ill served, as if it were unseemly that they should be inconvenienced anywhere except in their own homes.

Today on the omnibus a young man offered Dodo a seat (not surprisingly after the way Mackie the fisherman loomed over him). They endured a crowded and somewhat rollicking ride because of the antics of one of the horses, which was skittish, or sick, or insane; they were grateful to arrive at all. There were people outside the Houses of Westminster certainly, but not the wild, roistering, unruly mobs of Bow-street, although the usual placarded gentleman stood on a corner:

THOU SHALT NOT LIE WITH MANKIND AS WITH WOMANKIND: IT IS AN ABOMINATION.

Leviticus 18:26

Mackie got Dodo to a special part inside Westminster Hall where the Court of the Queen’s Bench was sitting, away from the public who very often came from far and near to stare at the famous, high-curved wooden roof of the famous building.

‘How does it stay up without anything to hold it?’ marvelled visitors, fearful even, gazing upwards. ‘It might fall on our heads!’ And Mackie too had looked upwards carefully as they entered, thinking of how boats were built.

He placed Dodo on the end of a row of chairs. Dodo looked about her; people were mostly very well dressed, with lots of hats. She turned to thank Mackie for his kindness. And was struck suddenly at how he looked: his stillness as he stared across the court area. His cloak was a seaman’s cloak, not that of a city gentleman, and somehow it gave him a strange timeless look in this historic building. She watched him for several moments; she thought he looked like an old painting.

‘Do you by any chance know that man, Dodo?’ Mackie pointed out a particular young gentleman with wavy brown hair on the other side of the court. She looked carefully.

‘No, dear. Oh – but I do recognise the gentleman sitting right in front of him, who has turned to speak to the one you pointed out, look.’ She indicated a fine, white-haired gentleman in a clerical collar and a cassock, now talking to the young man behind him. ‘He’s one of the bishops from the House of Lords. He used to like my cakes when I was a housekeeper.’

‘Is that right?’ said Mackie. ‘One of the bishops from the House of Lords.’ He looked carefully across the crowd. ‘Is that right?’ he said again very quietly.

And then, seeing she was comfortable, and that her shawl was about her shoulders, Mackie was gone from her sight. But when he got to the doorway he looked back at the two men he and Dodo had been discussing.

One of whom he recognised.

Of the newly-accused called in this trial, one was dead, two had disappeared, and frankly most people paid little attention to the other two who did appear: Mr Fiske and Mr Hurt. The American Embassy did pay attention because John Fiske was unfortunately their consul in Edinburgh; the higher echelons of the Post Office did pay attention because Mr Louis Hurt was unfortunately one of them – but otherwise everybody else was looking for Mr Frederick Park and – in particular – Mr Ernest Boulton, Star of the Strand.

It was noted by many familiar with the case that Mr Park’s appearance was somewhat changed. He had put on much weight and had grown much facial hair; he almost looked like a different person; he certainly did not have an effeminate appearance. Mr Boulton now had a small moustache but it did not change him very much. All the accused wore sober suits – although Mr Park and Mr Boulton each wore a flower in their lapel, but then so did the Prime Minister sometimes. The demeanour of all four gentlemen was solemn. Ernest Boulton (although he may have been sorely tempted) was under strict instructions, and did not wave to the crowd.

The Lord Chief Justice was, of course, under no such orders. With the theatrical aplomb for which he was well known, the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Alexander Cockburn – whom one newspaper had suggested earlier should do a somersault, and whom the Queen had refused a peerage on account of his immoral life – made his stately, bewigged way to his judge’s bench in the Queen’s Court. He was accompanied by the highest legal minds in the land; the case was to be prosecuted for the government by the Attorney-General himself, accompanied by the Solicitor-General. Four very famous defence barristers walked solemnly in their grandeur. (Who was paying for them all had, all week, been the subject of much debate among some of the more scurrilous newspapers.)

As it was not often that she got out and about any more, Dodo Fortune observed everything with extremely bright eyes. Apart from recognising the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, of course, from her time in the bowels of the Parliament, she was interested to see that various other Members of Parliament were attending; she looked carefully at the bishop and the other man that Mackie had pointed out. As they waited, the bishop occasionally exchanged a terse word with the younger man with the wavy hair directly behind him; the younger man fidgeted, looked about the court.

A jury of propertied gentlemen were sworn in, the charge was read, the prisoners one by one pleaded not guilty and the Attorney-General stood.

‘The conduct of a prosecution is at all times the most painful duty of my office, but when it is conducted against four gentlemen, and such they are, well educated and well connected – two of whom have borne a high character – it is with pain and sorrow that I feel constrained to accuse them of an odious crime. But I have no alternative.’

He summed up the histories of each of the defendants who were present, in particular stressing that although Ernest Boulton had once worked in a bank, he seemed to have had, since about 1867, no visible means of support.

‘A not altogether immaterial point,’ said the Attorney-General more than once, looking meaningfully at the judge. He regretted that several of the accused had disappeared; he reminded everybody that the secret and clandestine criminal headquarters of this criminal fraternity had been a boarding house at 13 Wakefield-street, Regent-Square, where they had kept an extensive wardrobe of female attire and female ornaments.

And then he sighed heavily. ‘Now, gentlemen. It is with the
utmost
reluctance that I feel myself bound to introduce the name of a defendant who is now dead. I am aware of the
great
pain this will necessarily inflict upon his relatives. I am deeply grieved at the fact that I have positively no choice in the matter. The public interest, which is concerned in the thorough investigation of things of this sort, must be paramount to any commiseration which can be entertained for private individuals and therefore I am compelled to state that I will discuss the relations between Boulton and Park and the late Lord Arthur Clinton.’ The Attorney-General sighed heavily once more and brought out a large white handkerchief.

At the back of the court Mackie looked around at the high ornate building and the high ornate people. He thought of Lord Arthur Clinton in the egg lady’s cottage, and the body, left unclaimed to smell before the coffin-maker refused to countenance such disrespect any longer.

And then Mackie left Westminster Hall and walked to Blackfriars, where ferry passengers were waiting to be transported to Gravesend.

Having finished his sighing, the Attorney-General began his evidence.

Over an hour and a half later he was still standing and still talking, and Dodo, who was familiar with so much of it, felt by then how very nice it would be to have a cup of tea. It was all very sonorous and repetitive.

She looked at Ernest and Freddie, quiet and decorous, except for those flowers in their buttonholes; Ernest was pretty, even if he was described as a gentleman and she thought of Freddie with his hands very still on the piano that cold afternoon. She thought of her husband Elijah, working now in a funeral parlour and sometimes walking behind a hearse in the sunshine or the rain or the snow, somehow because of these men and Lord Arthur Clinton. She looked again at the bishop she had pointed out to Mackie. He was staring intently at Ernest, and at the very instant she watched, she saw that Ernest was aware of the bishop, and, delicately, fluttered his eyelashes. The bishop’s face turned very red. The younger man behind the bishop stared only at the Attorney-General, listening to his every word.

The Attorney-General was now reading letters found, and many of the letters he read out in his long speech were – ‘Mark!’ he said to the jury – letters to Lord Arthur Clinton about money, in Ernest Boulton’s handwriting:
Send money, Wretch
,
signed
Stella Clinton
and
If you have a little coin I could do with it
, signed
your loving Stella
, and one saying,
Dear Arthur, don’t tell Papa you have given me money, I don’t want him to know.

Other letters were read. Frederick Park’s letters to Lord Arthur Clinton, signed
from your loving sister-in-law, Fanny Winifred Park.
The loving letters from the United States consul in Edinburgh to
My darling Ernie
about those ancients,
Antinous and Lais
, and about marrying thirty thousand pounds a year, signed
with all my love in the world.
The United States consul in Edinburgh stared straight ahead, not looking at Ernest Boulton who had inspired these transports not so very long ago.

Finally, his voice rising, the Attorney-General told the jury that if they were led to the conclusion that the defendants were guilty, they would not hesitate:
‘
You will not hesitate
,’ he declaimed, ‘to stay a plague which, if it were to spread without let or hindrance, must prove a serious contamination of our national morals!’ At last he sat down heavily, spent, and mopped his brow somewhat theatrically with the large handkerchief. Dodo saw the bishop get up abruptly, mutter something to the young man behind him, and leave the courtroom.

Isabella Stacey came for Dodo as promised; kicked a young man into giving Dodo his seat on the omnibus that took them nearly all the way home. They walked down towards Wakefield-street very slowly, Dodo on Isabella’s arm. Dodo did not know that she made small sounds of pain as she walked. She was exhausted. ‘It was interesting, but it did go on, and – well – we know the story.’ Dodo sighed, holding on to Isabella. ‘And odd to be back there in that building that has been so much part of my life. And not to be part of it any more. Poor, dear Elijah.’

Isabella Stacey put her hand over Dodo’s bent one for a moment. Dodo never, ever complained.

‘That young man from the solicitor’s office, Mr Tom Dent, he didn’t mean to, but he said it would be a “show-off” trial. And it
was
– that Attorney-General actually “mopped his brow” with a big white handkerchief – it was just like in the novels I read!’

Isabella Stacey half laughed, half sighed, a strange, disquieting sound as they made their very slow journey. ‘Blooming hell, Dodo, you and me know perfectly well sodomy goes on, high and low, course we do, we’ve worked in theatres for years. I bet the Queen knows! I bet a lot of them in the Parliament and the Church were bleeding terrified when Ernest and Freddie was first picked up. Haven’t things turned out nicely?’ They came to the old churchyard at the end of Wakefield-street. Isabella stopped. ‘Rest here for a moment, Dodo. Not far now.’