The Corset Read online

  Stacks of canvases leant against the walls. A full-length spaniel in oils faced us, watching me with doleful eyes. I picked my way across paint-spotted floorboards. Behind the easel in the centre of the room stood my father: a handsome, dishevelled man in shirtsleeves and a leather apron. His waistcoat was always buff-coloured, his cravat always loose.

  He peered around the side of his canvas. ‘Ah! Come to say goodnight, have we? I thought you’d be long abed.’ His moustache grew uniformly, but not the hair on his head. It was from him I inherited my fuzzy, unmanageable locks. Pa’s corkscrewed to the level of his chin. Even in the days we could afford pomade, it always sprang free from the grease.

  ‘Ruth wanted to show you something.’ Ma used the forced, jovial tone reserved for speaking about me. ‘She has been working hard this evening.’

  Miserably, I accepted the gloves from Ma and shuffled to Pa’s side. I held them aloft, careful to keep them away from his slick, dangerous brush.

  ‘Oh, you did that, did you? Capital. Very pretty.’ His gaze flicked back to his painting. I could see now that it was a city at night, the gas lights reflected in the river. ‘I like the … the butterflies.’

  Ma cleared her throat. ‘It’s as fine work as I’ve ever seen, let alone for a girl her age.’

  ‘And only – how long – at finishing school?’

  Ma nudged my shoulder. It hurt, but I said nothing.

  ‘Actually, Ruth has been having some trouble at school today.’

  I felt my cheeks flush. That was private, for Ma and me. I didn’t want Pa to know.

  ‘Trouble?’ he asked absently. ‘What sort of trouble?’

  ‘Some girls have been filling her head with wicked lies and upsetting her. Teasing her about her appearance. I expect their clothes are rather finer than the ones we can afford.’

  ‘Now look here, my girl.’ He pointed his brush at me. I hunched over the gloves, holding them protectively against my chest. ‘Those stuffed-up chits don’t know what they’re talking about. You have fine qualities, qualities those girls will never acquire.’

  ‘Like a good heart,’ Ma put in.

  I didn’t have that either, but Ma wasn’t to know.

  ‘Make them see you, Ruth. Your worth. This talent you have with your needle, it is an art. And your true self is in that art, do you see?’ He gestured at the gloves again, alarming me with a spray of black dots. I stepped back hastily; they splattered on the floorboards by my feet. ‘You are the butterflies, the flowers. Inside you possess everything the other girls lack. When they see that, they will have to admire you.’

  I let him talk, but his words ran against the tide of everything I knew. At school, this wasn’t what happened. If a girl saw another with a quality she lacked, she tore her limb from limb.

  ‘See, Ruth? Those girls talk a lot of rot. Come tomorrow they’ll forget all about it. Kiss Pa and then it’s time for your bed. I’m sure you’ll sleep better now.’

  I handed her the gloves and went to him. He took me in his arms, paint-freckled and smelling of whisky. His brown eyes ranged over me, and I think it finally dawned on him that his hair was my hair, his chin was my chin – that he’d inflicted this misery upon me. Features handsome on a man are not so on a woman. It does a girl no good to be the spit of her father.

  ‘Look,’ he whispered, ‘I keep my gun locked in the desk. If those jades give my girl any more trouble, you let me know, eh? Won’t I go after them?’ He winked at me.

  For the first time that night, I smiled.

  3

  Dorothea

  When I exited the prison, I made it my business to acquaint myself with the particulars of Ruth Butterham’s case.

  Tilda, my maid, was in the carriage where I had left her, huddled under her shawls. ‘Can we go home now, miss?’ she asked as I climbed in.

  ‘Soon. I have ordered Graymarsh to stop in town.’

  ‘Oh no, miss.’

  I flashed her my best smile. ‘Spring is coming on. I have a great fancy to see the botanical gardens – do not you?’

  Tilda knew as well as I that our immediate port of call would not be the botanical gardens. First we pulled up in a cobbled street where the smog was tinted a deep shade of brandy. Close by, a police lamp spread a spectral blue glow.

  ‘I hate going in there,’ Tilda grumbled. ‘Full of drunkards and villains, it is.’

  ‘It shall only be for a moment.’

  She pulled her many wraps up around her shoulders. ‘Look at that pea-soup! How will I even find the door?’

  ‘The blue lamp will be your guardian angel,’ I teased, but she did not find it amusing. She shot me a very saucy look indeed before she jumped out and trotted, cursing, into the brown mist.

  Poor Tilda cannot help it, of course – it is the shape of her head. When standing behind her, I have noticed a decided protrusion on the right at the baseline of the crown. Self-Esteem, Self-Love, all the selfish sentiments. She was not formed to wait upon others.

  After ten minutes, she huffed back into the carriage. Soot clung to her hair.

  ‘Well?’

  She made a show of settling herself into the seat, blowing on her hands and drawing the hot brick near to her feet before she met my eye.

  ‘The botanical gardens,’ she said at last. ‘Half an hour.’

  I drew out my watch and marked the time. ‘Excellent. Drive on, Graymarsh.’

  Buds adorned the trees growing at the edge of the park where we stopped, close to the black iron railings. Everything was fresh and dewy here, with none of the town smog. Yellow crocuses pushed their heads above the soil. I let down the window to inhale. Greenery. Life.

  ‘I’ll get a cold in my head,’ Tilda warned.

  ‘Well, Tilda, I am sure you will make the most of it.’

  Young ladies were venturing out again, although they made straight for the temperate house. It would be a few weeks yet before nursemaids came with their delicate charges bundled in blankets. I longed to take a turn myself, latched on to David’s arm … But that could not be. Not yet.

  As a distant clock struck the hour, he appeared at the end of the road: a tall shape, made even taller by his hat, walking with hands joined behind his back. The sky became brighter, the air a little more fresh.

  Each arrival of his brings with it a an echo of our first meeting. The relief I felt to see that figure, running full pelt after the hateful beast who had snatched my reticule. I believe I loved him from that very moment; loved him all the more when he returned my belongings. My precious miniature of Mama was safe inside the bag and it felt as if – I know this is fanciful – he had returned a part of her to me.

  I pinched my cheeks. ‘Tilda, my bonnet. Straighten my bonnet.’

  By the time she had finished, David was nearly upon us. I heard his boots tap on the pavement and, a moment later, he appeared at the window.

  ‘I don’t have long,’ was the first thing he said.

  The poor soul looked done-up: shadowed eyes, dishevelled whiskers and hair that stuck out beneath his hat. I felt rather ashamed of my own leisurely morning.

  ‘You are ever gallant, Constable,’ I teased. ‘Fortunately, we do not require much of your time.’

  ‘It’s been busy,’ he explained, fiddling with the buttons on his blue coat. ‘I only just managed to get out. I’m not meant to be on patrol until this evening.’

  ‘Pardon me for disturbing you. It is only that I met a new prisoner today, a girl by the name of—’

  ‘Ruth Butterham.’ Unbuttoning his coat, he removed a parcel and thrust it through the window. ‘Already made the copies, didn’t I? Knew you’d be down here the minute they nabbed her.’

  I beamed. The parcel felt warm, delicious, and I hugged it to my chest. It carried his scent: wool and cedar wood. ‘You really are a dear heart.’

  He shook his head, but he could not hide the glow upon his face. ‘I can’t keep doing this, Dotty. Sneaking down to the archives, copying things out, coming to see you. They’ll catch me.’

  ‘Not you. You are too smart for them.’

  ‘They’re the police.’ He jerked his coat up over his shoulders and refastened the buttons. ‘They were made for catching people. I know it’s hard for you to understand, living as you do, but when you work for your bread, Dotty, you need to keep your wits about you.’

  While his eyes were cast down, I took the opportunity to admire him.

  This is what a real man does: puts himself at the front of the action, works hard to make the world a better place. Were I born of the stronger sex, I like to think that I would do the same. And yet I know my father, who sits on his rounded behind all day smoking and reading newspapers, would have the gall to sneer at David.

  ‘It is the last one,’ I promised.

  ‘You always say that.’

  I laughed. ‘Well, what do you want me to say?’

  He cast a glance at Tilda, who pretended to be intent upon her knitting. I could see she was not concentrating – she had dropped three stitches.

  ‘You know what; I want you to set a date.’

  A corkscrew in my chest. ‘You know I shall. Only, not yet.’

  What it cost me to see his dear brow darken, the disappointment dulling his eyes. ‘It’s been a year. What is there to stop us now? I could get permission from work to marry. Jones did so, only last week. And I know your father won’t like it, but he can’t prevent you, you’re of age.’

  Tilda’s needles clacked.

  ‘Yet it would still make a terrible noise in society. I fear even your colleagues would frown upon it. It would be necessary to move away from here, my dearest, and how can we do so without saving first?’

  ‘I think you’re wrong. We could stay in Oakgate. It does a fellow credit t
o set up his own home with a wife. My superiors take the head of a household seriously, sometimes advance them. They already pay me a pound a week, and with your own money …’

  ‘I have money,’ I explained, ‘but only for my lifetime. There is such a formality in the legal papers … If I die before Papa, my income reverts to him, not my dependants.’

  ‘What of that?’ He glanced behind his shoulder to check no one was near. ‘Why should you die before your father?’

  I was obliged to avert my eyes and watch Tilda’s needles. ‘Wives do die, more frequently than spinsters. It is an occupational hazard.’

  Tilda lost another stitch.

  Comprehension dawned and, with it, a blush. ‘Yes. Of course. I didn’t consider that,’ David mumbled. ‘But who knows if God would even bless us with children?’

  ‘We must be prepared. I must save against such an outcome to ensure you and any family would be provided for. It is because I lost my own poor mother that I worry so. You do understand?’

  He nodded, slowly. What a perfectly shaped head his is, beneath the stovepipe police-hat! Everything in proportion: the subjective and the objective. You do not come across a specimen like that every day. Especially not combined with a handsome face and an open heart. I cannot afford to lose him. I will never see his like again.

  ‘I understand, but …’ He heaved a sigh. ‘It is difficult to wait so long. To keep putting off my mother, when she says I should walk out with a friend’s daughter. Sometimes I fear you are playing with me, Dotty. Dangling me.’

  This cut me.

  What a small modicum of patience the male sex possess! Soldiers and sailors have required their womenfolk to wait eternities for them, yet when the shoe is on the other foot, they chafe.

  ‘I worry, too,’ I replied with a tremor in my voice. ‘I worry that you will grow weary. That it will prove too complicated in the end, to marry a lady of my station, and you will make another selection.’

  He did not deny the possibility, but pressed my hand, briefly, before pushing away from the window. ‘I must be getting back.’ Damp air rushed inside – already the carriage felt colder. ‘People will notice me standing here.’

  ‘I will call upon you soon,’ I promised.

  He touched his hat to me, nodded at Tilda. ‘Soon,’ he repeated.

  Then he was gone.

  I have locked myself in my room under the pretence of writing letters. Papa would not approve of my reading material. Certainly, it is a frightful perusal. After the horrid detail of the coroner’s report, I have been forced to lie down and recover.

  The victim – the sole victim, as far as the police are concerned – was a young woman whom Ruth had known for years. A pretty thing, married, not yet a mother. The body was in a dreadfully emaciated state, yet the insides were undamaged, as if supernaturally preserved.

  Ruth held a trusted position in the household, I have learnt, even nursing the dying woman in her illness, all the while nursing a secret in her bosom, a black serpent twisting around her vital organs. Servants do kill their masters, of course. I see it often in the newspaper and eye Tilda askance for the next few days. But this … It seems so calculated. Day after day, the consistency of intent, to murder by hairbreadths. Somehow it would have been more comforting if Ruth had simply stabbed her mistress through the heart.

  What troubles me most, I admit, is the memory of Mama wasting away slowly, though from quite another cause. I recognise the descriptions of thinning hair, downy fuzz on the body. A cruel death. And to think someone might have brought it about on purpose … A mere child!

  Why?

  I would like to console myself with the idea that Ruth is innocent – that her mistress suffered from a disease similar to my mother’s. But there is her own confession, copied out before me. Her words at the prison. The very air around her, prickling with something dark.

  My canary, Wilkie, begins to chirp. I prop myself up on one elbow and watch him flutter. His cage is far prettier than Ruth Butterham’s.

  What will she be doing now? Brooding? Her deadly fingers worrying at the oakum?

  I wonder if a girl like that can really be saved. God says yes. Even my mother, who died in a similar way to her victim, would have said yes. It is my duty to try and lead Ruth to repentance. And more than that. I have a phrenological theory of my own she can assist with.

  Ever since the pamphlets began to be mass-produced and the middle classes took to studying the crania, the moralists have become ticklish. They think our discoveries take away the notion of personal responsibility. For instance, if a person is born with protrusions all through the Torrid Zone, are they not a villain from the cradle? How can we then be justified in punishing them for something they cannot help?

  But I wish to plait my faith together with this science. I believe the infant skull grows to reflect the soul as it forms, shaped by every decision. If we can detect vice in a timely manner and point the child down another path, the shape of the head, as well as the texture of the spirit, may change.

  Should I be able to reform Ruth and prove this, my mind would rest much easier. I could even write to Mr Combe at the Edinburgh Phrenological Society with my findings. Imagine Papa’s face then, seeing the studies he has derided endorsed by a learned man!

  I recall the incredulous murmur Ruth made when I told her I did not visit the prison for my own amusement. She was right to doubt me. My motives are not entirely selfless.

  ‘Well,’ I say to Wilkie. ‘If I should find a sort of fascination in the lives of these people, if I should derive excitement from rubbing shoulders with depravity, where is the harm in that? It is no less beneficial to them.’

  He watches me, his eyes shiny like wet pebbles, and begins to sing.

  Lifting myself from the bed, I go to my dressing table and tidy my hair. ‘I shall continue visiting Ruth Butterham,’ I tell the girl in the mirror. I might find Ruth distasteful, and the memories of Mama’s death hard to bear, but there is fruit to be reaped. I can bring her to salvation, and she can … give me her skull.

  ‘Do not look at me like that,’ I scold Wilkie’s hopping reflection as I fasten the combs above my ears. ‘If I can prove this theory, think how many lives would be saved!’

  The gong sounds for dinner. A deep tremble runs through the house. I sit for a moment, feeling the vibrations beneath my skin. Wilkie scuttles to the sandpaper at the bottom of his cage, his feathers puffed out.

  He is afraid.

  4

  Ruth

  I didn’t talk to Ma about school after that. She was already weary, crumpled like an old bedsheet. I didn’t want her to rip. So I hid my torn dress and broken corset, and never told her about the bruises. I trotted off every morning in my battered bonnet and slunk home in the evening, choking on my sense of grievance. When I came in, she looked up, misty-eyed from her work, and asked how my day had been.

  I lied.

  I only told the truth to the gloves.

  I liked to work on the gloves. To feel the cool silk in my hands; to jab a needle through resistant threads.

  But one evening, a few weeks later, when we were sewing in the dusk, Ma took them gently from my lap. Even without the sunlight to shine on it, the silver thread gleamed like tears. ‘These are a work of art, Ruth. Tie off that thread, and I will take them along to Mrs Metyard’s when I go tomorrow. The bride will call for them soon.’

  I yearned to snatch them back. Only the delicate nature of the material stopped me. They were mine. My work, my labour. I hated the idea of another woman touching them. ‘They’re not ready yet.’

  ‘Yes they are, they’re perfect.’ There was a warmth, a pride in her voice I had never heard before. ‘I cannot wait to see the look on Mrs Metyard’s face when I show them to her. She should give me an extra shilling, in fairness, for work like that.’

  I’d never set eyes on Mrs Metyard, but I imagined a showy, middle-aged woman with a squint. How I yearned to fling the money back in her face. Take the gloves, use them to conceal my own calloused fingers and broken nails. Become someone else.

  But as Ma laid the gloves back on my lap, I saw how hopeless it was. A girl like me, in her mended and stained gowns, could never wear gloves of this quality. It was as Rosalind Oldacre said: I wasn’t a lady. To them, I would always be little more than a beast. I could never have what I wanted.