Against The Odds

Chapter 7: The Child and the Star

Roselyn

I looked up from the gaping crack in the floorboard that I had been examining absent-mindedly for what felt like hours. Mr. Hartigan had been to visit several times since the night Papa had died and I now knew to dread those calls.

The thought of him now made me feel sick to the core as I pictured him choosing whichever girl took his fancy that evening and taking her upstairs.

I had been the victim the previous night. My shoulders were bruised and my ribs were throbbing. I could still feel his cold fingers on my skin.

I shivered.

Little star that shines so bright, come and peep at me tonight,

For I often think of you in the pretty sky so blue.

Little Star! O tell me, pray, where you hide yourself all day?

My mother’s voice drifted in and out through the empty window frame on the gently ebbing and flowing tide of the wind. I closed my eyes and the soft lilt of her accent engulfed me.

Have you got a home like me, and a father kind to see?

My exposed arms and feet were blue. I wrapped my thinning woollen sheet around my shoulders and brought my feet up onto the bed so that my toes were tucked under the stained yellow muslin of my dress. I could hear the other girls emerging from the refuge of their rooms to tread the unchartered, unpredictable ground of whatever awaited them in the reception room.

I got to my feet, not taking my eyes off the glassless window and the starless, foggy sky that lay beyond it until I was forced to turn away and pass through the door and past the damp, peeling walls towards the far end of the corridor.

Little Child, at you I peep, while you lie so fast asleep.

But when dawn begins to break, I my homeward journey take.

Most of the girls were already waiting when I arrived. They sat there, sprawled over the chaise lounges, their gaunt faces ashen in the mean sliver of light that entered the room in a piercing shard from the window. Their skirts were sullied and marred with God know what and their corsets rested awkwardly against their skeletal torsos.

One, who I recognised as Bea turned her narrow eyes on me as I entered. She had fox-like features that seemed to draw together in the middle of her face to form a pert little mouth and pointed nose.

“Roselyn! We thought you’d never come!”

She laughed callously, displaying her chipped, yellowing teeth. She twisted in her seat to face me with that foul-smelling breath of hers.

“You know Pippa ‘ad a right rummy old cove last night. All square-rigged until ‘e unrigged ‘er and then, yer know…” She craned her neck further to whisper in my ear.

“Gave ‘er a right nobbling, ‘e did. She’s all bruised up now and no good for nuffin’. Ha!”

The sound escaped her chapped lips like a dog’s bark – harsh, clipped and piercing.

It wasn’t long before men began to arrive.

Lushingtons, bunters and Lords passed through that place every evening and that night was no different. Dukes and Barons both old and young chose their regular girls and paid the handsomest prices. They liked slumming in places like St. Giles to avoid the prying eyes of their peers.

Girls stepped up to greet them as the money changed hands and the room emptied.

It hadn't taken me long to learn that keeping my eyes lowered and averting my gaze from potential customers didn’t please Madame. That didn’t earn any money.

For I've many friends on high, living with me in the sky,

The memory of my mother's lullaby filled my body with the kind of courage drunkards get from the bottle and addicts get from the opium pipe – fleeting yet powerful.

A group of young men approached Bea and I. They seemed in a merry mood with their dandy cravats and wine-flushed faces.

“I’ll have this one, if you don’t mind, gentlemen?”

The speaker, a tall individual with fair hair and cheery eyes presented me with a flourishing bow that resulted in an eruption of raucous laughter from his companions.

“Just give me the chink and we’ll get to it, what do you say, sir?”

He pushed a coin into my palm and I led him towards my room. Fortunately, he appeared to be sober enough that I wouldn’t end up like poor old Pippa by the end of the night.

“Right, my girl.”

His face, now so close to mine I could feel the waves of his breath on my face, was different from the others that I had the dubious honour of setting my eyes upon every night. There was something sincere and unguarded about it; something oddly familiar.

 And a loving Father, too, Who commands what I'm to do.

An age later, I was curled up alone on my bed, trembling, with the thin sheet wrapped around me like a strait-jacket to shield me from the cold. This time, however, I was not trembling from chill that lingered in the room, but from the realisation, the dawning of comprehension.

Echoes of children's laughter mingling with the cries of stall-holders at the market filled my ears and I inadvertently smiled at the memory. I remembered running around with my one and only friend, the little son of an impoverished, widowed naval officer who was living in the area to stay with his ailing mother.

That man was not just any old young blood looking for pleasure. That was the boy I’d grown up with on the streets of Whitechapel.

That was Gabriel Barrett.