Bruce Alexander - Watery Grave

Neither prediction, of course, proved out. Indeed there were, and still are, penitent prostitutes, for the Magdalene Home filled early and, though none of its residents stay for more than a year, remains lull to this day. It is not, as some call it to this day, a club for fallen women. Lady Fielding insisted there were those who, given the chance, would leave the life on the streets. If they had a trade, or other means of earning money, every effort would be made to place them in positions where they might earn their way; this was ever accomplished in a lew months time. If they had no trade, as most had not, then they were taught one and given a rough apprenticeship while resident at the Magdalene Home; there is, after all, little work done by women in this world that cannot be learned in a year.

It was hence to the Home, located in Westminster, that she would go on that morning. I brought the hacknej carriage round to Number 4 Bow Street. Then, with no help from the driver, I made to fill it with the great pile of dresses, skirts, and shifts I had hauled up from the cellar. There was bare enough space inside for Lady Fielding when at last she emerged, apologizing for her tardiness and showering me with praise for doing all without her assistance (which, in any case, I should have declined).

“I shall be gone a good part of the day,” said she.” I mean to inquire among the ladies in the Home for one to help out in the kitchen.”

“Mrs. Gredge may soon be able.”

“And again she may not.” She sighed.” Well, Jeremy, no need to tell Tom much about all this — simply that I shall return when I can do so. I’m sure you can keep him entertained.”

“I wiU do my best, of course.”

“And out of trouble.”

To that I made no promise but simply waved a goodbye as she mounted into the carriage, and the driver pulled away.

“You must tell me more of this place,” said Tom Durham.” A charitable home for young women, you say? Have I understood that aright?”

“I think I should not say more,” said I to him.

“Oh? And why not?”

“Because,” said I, “your mother wishes you to be kept ignorant of it.”

At that he let out a loud yelp of amusement, then continued walking in silence with me for a good long space.

It had been his notion, after all, that we go off on a ramble through Covent Garden. I did a bit of buying out of a list Lady Fielding had provided — vegetables for the stew she would make from what was left of the roast. But most of our time in the Garden had been spent wandering about in no particular pattern from one end of the grand piazza to the other. It contented him so.

As I had expected, his seaman’s duds caused quite a stir among the layabouts and lazy boys. They called after him; he smiled merely and waved a greeting. One stepped out before us and attempted to execute the steps of a hornpipe as a kind of jeering salute to Tom, who nimbly demonstrated in his turn how the dance was done proper. The women of the street, too, gave him note with calls, cries, snatches of song, and open invitations. To these he was quietly unresponsive. He did indeed cause quite a stir.

“Ah, Jeremy,” said he (following a warm solicitation by one of their number — black-haired and blue-eyed, she was), “I suppose what I should do is pick out the prettiest of the lot and get the awful deed done with. I’ve money enough for it. I’ve the appetite, God knows.”

Here was a disappointment. I had supposed Tom Durham to be well past me in carnal experience. I had hoped he might supply me with knowledge, even perhaps a bit of wisdom, in these difficult matters. Yet I was certainly sympathetic to his situation and attitude, so like my own they were.

Yet I gave him a matey reply to his complaint: “What is it prevents you then?”

“Lack of opportunity, I suppose.”

How could that be? Half the easy women in London seemed to have established themselves here in Covent Garden and the streets surrounding it.

“And the pox,” Tom added.” I may as well own up. I am frighted of the pox.”

“I share that same fear.” I confided it to him in little more than a whisper.

“Well, what do you do?” It was as if sixteen-year-old Tom were seeking advice from fourteen-year-old me.

His question was so direct that it left no room for equivocation or subterfuge. I had no choice but to fall back on the truth: “I’m afraid I abstain.”

“I’m afraid that’s what I have done, too. My messmates think me a freak. The ship’s surgeon insisted upon examining me. Hints were dropped from on high. And all this came as the result of my refusal to go with my mates on a sorrowful expedition to a Bombay brothel, from which three did, in fact, return poxy. Strange, don’t you think, that my mother means to keep me away from her home for young women and girls because she believes me to be like some ravening wolf who will prey upon her poor lambs?”

“Now there I believe you wrong her, ” said I.

“What then do you say?”

“They are not lambs, and well she knows it. Perhaps she fears they will prey upon you. You are, after all, her son. She wishes to keep you from harm — at all cost.”

“Well, with that last I agree,” said Tom, “at all cost, certainly.”

After much back-and-forth through the Garden, we had come to rest at the pillar, which then stood at the exact center of the piazza but now stands there no more. We leaned against its base as we conversed, and though impassioned by our frustration, we spoke in quiet tones. Indeed we spoke so quiet, our heads so close together, that there in the daylight, with the marketing crowd all about, we must have had the look of conspirators. For when Jimmie Bunkins spied us and approached, he hailed us thus:

“Here’s a rum sight for me peepers! Tom, the village hustler of yore, decked out natty in a sailor suit, selling me pal Jeremy into a life on the scamp!”

At that, Tom Durham let forth a guffaw, jumped down from the pillar base, and threw his arms open to Bunkins.

“Jimmie B.! The hornies ain’t got you yet? I figured you for a scholar on Duncan Campbell’s floating academy. Or worse. Your heaters kept you out of the clink, have they?”

I was doubly surprised: first, that the two were obviously well acquainted; second, that Tom should know Co vent Garden’s flash-talk so well, much less remember it, as he did, after an absence of near three years.

They embraced, as proper friends might. Tom, much the taller of the two, pulled poor Bunkins off his feet. There followed a bit of back pum-meling and hand shaking with shouts of “How beya?” “You’ve grown to man size, ” and so on.

Then Bunkins, the reformed thief, turned to me and again expressed his surprise at seeing Tom and me together. I explained, as best I could, our relation. Then Tom gave to me his history with the one he called Jimmie B.

“We were scamps together, ” said he.” My year in the Garden he was a proper chum. He taught me nap prigging, tick squeezing, and all the dark arts practiced in the precinct. Ain’t that so, Jimmie B.?”

‘Pon my life,” swore Bunkins, “and I never had no better student. Just listen how he learned the flash!” Bunkins stepped close and, with an eye toward Tom, spoke quietly to me: “In fact, had he stuck to napping, as I advised, he would not have gone bad with the Beak-runners.”

Then to Tom: “It was the Beak hisself saved you, was it?” (He referred, reader, to Sir John.)

“It was,” said Tom Durham.

“A rum cove,” said Bunkins.

“A rum cove,” Tom agreed.

“Where’s your mate Jonah? You two was shipped off together.”

“Well, keep a dubber mum, cause all who get a chance at the sea should jump at it, but pal Jonah crapped on the Malabar Coast.”