Polly
“You always keep yourself clean and neat, . Clean and neat and smelling fresh like flowers and buttermilk.”
“Thank you.” I hoist up one of the heavy rolls of fabric and try to give a little curtsey. I think Mr. Bunson likes it when people treat him like he’s very important, and since we’d be out on the streets without his kindness, I suppose he’s most important to the children and me.
“Ooh!” A sharp little squeak jumps out of my lungs as the heavy roll crashes across my waist, Mr. Bunson on one side of it and me pinned to the wall on the other. “Mr. Bunson!”
“You’re sixteen, ?”
“Twenty!” I blink.
“I’ve been waiting too long. My brother said he wanted you, so fair and pretty, but he’s out playing Lord Muck in the country, and I’m tired of the second-best cuts.”
“I’ll go to the butcher’s, sir!” I squirm and push, but Mr. Bunson is far heavier and taller than I am.
“That’s why I thought you were so young, . Most girls your age would already have had a husband by now—or at least a few good going overs.”
“I’ve never met—” I stop. I don’t know anyone to marry, and I know I don’t want to do what Bunson seems intent on doing, his hand pawing at my dress. “Stop that!”
“Shut up, or I’ll put you out now. Tonight.”
Another rough grab at my waist.
I heave the fabric back with my hips and catch him off balance. He topples—and I run.
I slam into the storeroom door that really ought to have been repaired. It splinters, even under my slight weight. Bunson roars behind me, threatening that he’ll take the cost of a new door out of me before the night is through.
I don’t speak, don’t answer his threats, just run, skidding out the side door into the filthy alley, sending rats and cats shrieking ahead of me.
But what’s the point of running? He’ll catch me, and then what? If I run from him, I’ll never be allowed back. I’ll be put out on the street. I can scarcely write my own name. He’ll not give me a reference. Probably say horrible things about the work I’ve done for years and years without pay, and everyone will believe him, not me! What kind of situation can I find where they won’t treat me just like Bunson does?
The stories I’ve heard whispered about Ada, Kitty, Gertie, and the rest are enough to send tears streaming down my cheeks. One way or the other, girls like us end up under some man, losing something that ought to be ours to keep or give away on our terms.
“Please help, please...” My cries are faint, panicked half-pants as I keep running.
“Oof!”
My worn black shoes slide on the slick, broken cobbles.
When I look up, my voice freezes. I can't decide whether to scream or beg for help.
The face above me is cruel and cold, almost aristocratic, like the faces of the rich men who come into the home to hire the boys for their factories and country estates.
“Oooh. Just what I was looking for,” a low voice purrs. In the shadows, his pale face stands out, especially his dark eyes. They lock onto me— hypnotic, I think that’s the word educated people would use. But they don’t just stare. They burn. I don’t like them. They’re... They’re hard eyes. Mean.
He pushes me out of his lap, but his fingers fasten around my arm and won’t let go.
“Please, sir, I’m sorry, sir. I’m—I’ve got to go, my employer is... He wants... Let go!” I twist and tug, but it's nothing to him. He doesn’t even flex his fingers. I might as well have my arm in one of the cow crushes at the Smithfield yards.
“Oh, I’d far rather take you home with me and put you to a much better use.” The cruel eyes seem to relax a little into something amused.
“‘Ere! You let go of that! That’s not a common doxie, that’s my girl. Bought and paid for!”
I let out a wet, muffled cry at the lies, at the insult. I know dozens of girls who’ve been “bought and paid for,” but I worked all this time with no wages and never a word against him to avoid that life—and he’s saying that’s all I am! “It’s not true, sir. I’m a good girl, and I’ve never let him touch me. He’s not bought me. I work hard and get nothing but room and board.”
“And that’s too good for you, disobedient sow! Give ‘er ‘ere.” Bunson’s voice turns into a furious growl.
The man lets go of my arm, and for a second, I’m afraid he is going to force me into Mr. Bunson’s arms. Men stick together.
“She doesn’t seem to want to go to you,” the man says coolly. He has a long black stick in one hand, a fancy cane, and he swings it now, swishing his cloak around him to stand in front of me.
In front of me.
My heart flutters for a second. Hope. This stranger is pushing me behind him now, putting himself between Bunson and me.
He turns back to look over his shoulder, and his voice is a low snarl, the kind I wouldn’t dare argue with. “Don’t. Move. I’m taking you with me tonight. I can put you to far better use than this fat, slobbering cur can.”
He is some sort of rich gentleman! I’ll work for him rather than Bunson if he’ll have someone like me, someone with no proper training for a gentleman’s house, only for work in kitchens and sewing and minding children.
I squeeze my eyes shut and nod as his hand connects with my shoulder. I bite my lip so I don’t scream as he jams me behind a stack of broken lumber and orange boxes.
Bunson roars. “Who the hell do you think you are? You f—”
There is a lot of cursing and shouting. Then, Mr. Bunson is the one crying for help.
I don’t move.
The stranger must be giving him ever such a thrashing, but no one rushes to the alley to help. No one came for me. No one came for him. In this part of London, people don’t investigate cries in the night.
Mr. Bunson’s shouts stop all at once. Horrible, wet noises that make my stomach lurch fill the alley, so I put my hands over my ears and keep my eyes shut tight.
“Come along then.”
I gasp when a gloved hand lands on my elbow, pulling me away from the alley.
“Come with me. It’s the least you can do. I’ll treat you far better than he would have. There won’t be any pain, I promise.”
“Are you... a foreign gentleman, sir?” I dare to look behind him and see Mr. Bunson lying still on the ground. His shirt front glistens in the bit of moonlight that sifts its way to the street below.
Blood?
I don’t really care. The gentleman was offering me work, although how he went about finding a maid was certainly odd.
“I’m not from around here, no.”
“Sir, I...” I swallow as I catch sight of red streaks across his pale face. The police will come in the morning. I might be blamed. No, I will be blamed. Some of the children would have heard the commotion. Mr. Bunson—the other Mr. Bunson—will come, and they’ll tell about me screaming and running. They’ll say there was a fight outside—and I fought back. That I... I look down the alley one last time.
The figure doesn’t move. At all.
Someone will think I killed him.
“Is he dead?” I whisper.
“Most certainly.” The foreign gentleman smiles as if killing a man is nothing to him.
Maybe in his country, they protect innocent women. Maybe in his country, they won’t put a rope around your neck for fighting back.
I swallow my fear. I can’t go back inside. I may have to hide. I need a place to work, or I’ll starve.
“I do need a new position, sir. I’m very handy, and I aim to please.”
“Aren’t you lovely? Charming! Well, I’d like you to start tonight.” The hand on my arm tightens like an iron band.
Perhaps he’s just very strong.
“Tonight?” I blink and try to think what the clock chimed last. Nine or ten.
“Oh, I promise I won’t keep you up for long. You’ll be able to rest soon.” His voice is soothing.
And I’m so very tired suddenly. And desperate.
“I can begin straightaway tonight. My things—I’d rather leave without them, sir. I haven’t very much to begin with.”
“You won’t need much. I’ll provide everything for the tasks at hand.”
“Where do you live, sir?”
“Not far at all.” With a sudden jerk, I felt him lifting me, pulling me up in his arms like I’d carried dozens of ill children to bed.
“Sir, no! Please, I can walk.” I struggle to get down while clutching his shoulder for balance, a mixed-up thing that he’ll surely laugh at.
“You’re very tired. Just had a horrible escape.”
I frown. I escaped something horrible. But the escape wasn’t horrible. Was it? Did I misunderstand him, or is it because he’s speaking wrong, the way some foreigners do? Sometimes I feel so ignorant around others, and I haven’t had much schooling.
“It’ll be faster this way,” he whispers with a laugh, and then we're running—no, leaping, going up stairs and over rooftops like they are nothing.
My scream dies in my throat, and I bite my lip. If I scream, he might drop me.
I’ve seen chimney sweeps running from rooftop to rooftop, scaling walls like monkeys, pulling each other up by the ends of brushes. Maybe this man had been a chimney sweep once? Or maybe one of them fancy foreign tumblers?
Almost as soon as I finish that though—we stop. My new employer puts me down in a small, dim flat, and I realize—we came in through the window.
Not my place to question.
“I’ll make up the fire, sir.” There. That’s something I can do. Making a fire must be the same the world over, mustn’t it? And I can do it tonight, showing I’m worth employing. I shiver. March has been damp and cold, and tonight feels bleak.
I freeze for a moment, picturing the other two places I could be tonight—under Bunson or shivering as I walk alone in the dark, hoping to find a safe place for the night with no money and nothing in the world but what I’m wearing.
I wonder, just a little, if this man is an angel, and maybe that’s why he seems to fly.
“How shall I address you, sir?”
“Uh— Mr. Spring—ton. Springton. Mr. Jack Springton.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m .”
“. Pretty.”
“Thank you, sir.”