The Dress Lodger Read online

  Sleet rattles on the roof and drums against the boards covering the windows. It is three o’clock in the morning, and the lodgers of 9 Mill Street have gone to bed. Some, like your heir, cramp fitfully in their straw; some, like Whilky downstairs in his cellar apartment, snore obliviously. The younger boys, only pretending to be asleep, are pushing their pelvises up against the younger girls, who are only pretending a need to stretch so that their backsides touch the hard quivering muscles behind them. The dirty old men’s hands move under their coats, the dirty old women’s fingers flurry. The hard workers sleep as dreamlessly as their babies, half of whom have had sleep guaranteed them by laudanum drops. An unemployed sailor gets up to pee in the cold fireplace.

  You have your own private room now, narrow and tight, but gloriously all yours. You rest comfortably with your sagging chin wrapped tightly and two cold coins on your eyes—no need to fear a sleepwalking boy will step on your arm in the night, or wake you with his bad dreams. How often did you and the thirty other lodgers start awake, sweating and paralyzed, at three in the morning merely because some troubled child screamed out, Stop! It’s eating me! It’s true, the wolf that was eating you was different from the alligator that was eating your neighbor, which in turn differed from the enormous rat that was eating the little boy, but crowded together how could you not all share the same terror? That’s the trouble with lodging houses: all of their nightmares eventually became your nightmares.

  Downstairs, though, the room is still, disturbed only by the occasional snap of methane hidden in an ember of coal and the hiss of sleet on the windowsill. Across from your wooden box, you are being watched by Whilky’s daughter Pink. She leans against the warm brick hearth and the heat from the dying fire cups her cheeks like a mother’s hands. Her heavy head drops to the side, bobs up, drops to the side, bobs up. She slits her eyes at you—yes, you are still dead—and then they close again. She and Eye were the only ones willing to sit up all night and make sure you didn’t accidentally come back to life. Don’t laugh; it’s been known to happen: young mothers have fallen into comas and been buried alive with their stillborn infants, grandmothers have groaned and rolled over just as the nails were about to be hammered in. Three days of watching and waking are sometimes still not enough. Just look at that pretty Italian girl in that play—Juliet—look what became of her. Pink knows how young mothers have been known to fall into comas and get buried with their stillborn infants. She dreams intermittently about the mother whom she barely remembers, who had kind eyes and a fluffy white tail peeping from under her skirt. Her mother walked upright on her hind legs and licked Pink’s face when she was sick. She barely remembers watching and waking her mother and baby brother those three long years ago. All she clearly remembers is the wedge of yellow cheese a neighbor brought her, and the smell it left on her fingers.

  At the foot of your box, the old fixture Eye sits on her stool where the blue dress, hanging on its pegs above her, caps her head like a frivolous ancien régime hairdo. The laudanum drops Gustine slipped into her coffee earlier tonight are beginning to take effect, and things are bit by bit losing their shape. Take Pink, for example, leaning against the hearth. To Eye, the figure of sleeping Pink seems to contain the shadowy outline of another little girl, one that Eye wants to forget. That girl sits above a hole, watching the chain that disappears down into it. Eye sees the chain jump, knows something heavy is hanging from the bottom of it. She sees a rat dart by, and the girl leap up to chase it. She sees the chain rush down the hole. The old woman snorts and blinks her one gray eye. Her lid has barnacles growing on it tonight and it is betraying her.

  Glow rat’s in the box.

  She sees you, the smudged firefly glister of your exposed face and hands against the piece of white cambric she helped Gustine wrap you in last night. Rat glows. Dead rat. But damn that shadow world again. Flickering beneath you, she sees a younger, prettier lady missing her arms and legs, wearing her chest open like a vest, sleeping with her chin thrown back. It is a disturbing shadow and Eye rolls her eye away. She looks up into the bell skirt of the dress above her, through the waist, all the way to the neck. She imagines squeezing through a tight underwater tunnel, clean and cold and blue. When she comes out the other side, she will be in that two-eyed younger place before the hole and the chain, before the rat. Eye stretches up, kicks her thick club feet, has almost reached the surface when a sound outside causes her to freeze, sputter, and back out. She rolls her stern gray eye to the door and trains it like a slingshot on the latch.

  In the cellar that might be accessed by a door beneath the front stoop, Whilky Robinson sleeps in an actual bed with a furry white ring nestled under his chin. The landlord’s apartment is a small, damp room that floods several times a winter, encouraging spores on the quilts and mud on the earthen floor. The seepage has left a child’s growth chart around the room, with different color lines of mildew marking each advancing year. Pink, when she’s not watching a dead lodger, sleeps next to the coal shoot in the low trundle bed her mother brought to the marriage along with the bedstead Whilky and Mike now sleep in. Whilky rarely dreams of his wife who died in this bed; he’s more likely to be caught dreaming of some Figure of Oppression: a Lord Londonderry, for instance, or a William Pitt, the Younger. It took Whilky a long time to fall asleep tonight. He ground the insults of that doctor between his teeth until he gave himself a nasty indigestion, and then his stomach troubles kept him up. It is difficult being a freedom fighter, more difficult than anyone sitting at home reading a book can imagine. To stand up to men wealthier and more powerful than yourself and send them flying from your house? It takes guts. And Whilky, if nothing else, has no deficiency of guts.

  Cholera in my house? he mumbles in his sleep. Cholera in my house? At last the minions of the Government have made a mistake. They should have picked as their patsy Jack Tanner up the block or credulous Tim Downs. You could have told either of those two that the Hindoo Hullabaloo was in town and they would have willingly spread the news, found symptoms in themselves, and dutifully died of it. Whilky rolls over and punches his pillow. Ask for the right to vote and just see how the Government answers: with doctors and poisons and frogs; with poor laws and anatomy acts and Thomas Malthus.

  The poor, because they are starving, will by necessity feel themselves on the verge of extinction, Malthus wrote. A species threatened with extinction procreates wildly to save itself. Exponentially (and Whilky is not quite sure he completely understands the word, except to know it is like a shaken fist in his face) the undesirable poor will reproduce, to the detriment of worthier citizens, spreading misery and sloth until every inch of the planet is contaminated. But what is to be done? Feed and clothe the wretched poor? No! Of course not—then they will have no incentive to work hard and prosper. Lock them away in poorhouses? Separate husbands and wives? Pass laws that give their bodies to surgeons if they are unable to afford burial? Now that sounds better. Wretchedness will always exist on this earth—the arithmetic says so; allow poverty to equal death and dissection and the poor will, out of common sense, choose prosperity.

  Pox on common sense, Whilky mutters. I only wish I’d gotten ten children on my wife before she died, instead of two. And only the daft daughter surviving. Who knows what torment to her father she is even now letting into his house? Do come in, she is saying to a reverend man in long black robes who knocks upon the door. Held in place by that strange gravity one is subject to in dreams, Whilky sits helplessly upon his stool as Pink escorts the gentleman through his house. Here is where my Da keeps his silver, she says, pointing out the loose floorboard beneath which Whilky secretes a pouch of tableware. Here is where he keeps his lodging and dress money. He had no idea Pink knew of the strongbox in the wall behind Wearmouth Bridge East View. Oh, look here! Here’s how he cheats His Majesty’s tax collectors, says the little girl, spreading her arms to include the windows. The stranger has the sour countenance of a schoolmaster as he strides deliberately to Whilky’s boarded shu
tters and, to the landlord’s amazement, with the strength of his white teeth alone tugs from them every single nail.

  Who are you? demands Whilky, transfixed upon his stool. What are you doing?

  Sunlight floods the dark corners of 9 Mill Street, exposing long black spider cracks in the plaster and caked dirt between the floorboards. Whilky sees that his daughter’s face is black with grime except where tears have washed two pink tracks down her cheeks. Come, I’ll show you where our lodgers and their babies live, she says, reaching up trustingly to the stern old man she’s let into the house, placing her small dirty hand in his broad dry palm. As he moves to follow her, Whilky sees peeping from his back pocket The Laws of Population.

  I know you, Thomas Malthus! shouts Whilky. Stay away from my daughter!

  Why, you are a little bit of overpopulation, says the gentleman, looking softly down at the trusting girl. In nightmare time, Whilky feels his own chest contract as Pink’s heart stops beating and she drops to the floor.

  What have you done? he cries. What have you done? But that lawgiver of Population merely smiles a mouthful of nails.

  Mike has suffered Whilky’s thrashing with as much patience as a dutiful ferret may, but his sleep once too often has been rudely interrupted. In the dark underground room, the creature stretches and yawns widely, showing pink spotted gums and two rows of sharp teeth. He looks casually around. His enemy the frogs he has vanquished—not a croaking soul remains in the basement—but wait, what is this? An old familiar scent causes him to sit up and sniff the air. On four pink paws he pads across the bed and leaps to the floor. Sniff. Sniff. The fur on the back of his sinewy neck stirs. Sniff. It is coming from above. Mike takes the steps up to the front stoop and wedges his nose beneath the door. While Whilky sleeps, a low growl builds in the throat of his prized ferret. There is no mistake about it. Mike smells a rat.

  If Gustine has a dream it is this: that her baby will live. There is nothing complex or especially overweening about her dream: she does not wish for her child to become an altar boy or a businessman; she cares not whether he learns to read or write or play a sport. She is elementary in her singular desire. Life for her child. Would any parent call such a modest hope avarice?

  Baby, baby, baby, coos Gustine. Baby, baby. She is stretched out on her side with her unbundled baby before her. The lodgers’ fireplace is not lit, but with no exposed windowpanes to divert it, the heat from downstairs makes their room snug enough. She reaches out her fingers to the child and he grips them firmly. Pull, whispers Gustine, drawing him to a sitting position. His head lags behind, but at the last moment, he manages to drunkenly snap it forward. Good baby! Gustine laughs and the baby laughs, a gargling, gassy sort of wheeze, but a laugh nonetheless.

  Shush! a neighbor commands. There is the scratchy sound of bodies turning over in straw, a barnlike restlessness to the lodging house that Gustine hates. Across the room in Fos’s place, the new lodger tosses fitfully: The flames, he moans, the awful blue flames. One of the dirty old men grunts and sheepishly wipes his belly with his blanket. The sailor who got up to pee now can’t stop coughing. With thirty people in a tight room, and no more space between them than the width of your foot, there will be no such thing as a silent night. There are only the deeper sounds of unconsciousness after the more deliberate gossip and chatter and flirting have died out.

  Gustine pushes aside the straw and presses her eye to the gap between the floorboards. It is her secret—that the crack beside her bed puts the Eye in her direct line of vision. Now it’s my turn to watch you, you old monster, Gustine scowls. She cannot see Fos in her coffin from here, only Pink’s feet protruding from her faded gingham gown and the Eye on her stool. She presses the lightest kiss against her baby’s chest and he twines his fists in her loose blonde hair. At first Gustine had not even known she was pregnant. Hungry girls often skip their monthlies, and she’d looked on it as a blessing—not to have to bind herself with rags and miss nights of work. The lacer of the blue dress caught on, though; that canny Eye seemed to know it almost immediately. Gustine would catch her watching her belly like a cat at a mouse hole waiting to pounce on whatever peeked out. We might pity Gustine her ignorance, for you must remember, she was only fourteen years old when she conceived her child, she had no mamma to turn to, no aunt or sister to ask advice. So few customers ever asked her to strip that none who might have set her straight took notice of her condition, and even if they had, would only have considered themselves fortunate not to have to worry about withdrawing at that moment when men most love to stay put.

  But when the baby was born Gustine realized how foolish she had been. It was clear to her now what the old woman had been trying to accomplish with her constant staring; it was clear to her now that the Eye had intended to draw out from her baby’s body its very heart and leave the poor thing dead inside her. She pulled and tugged with all her might, and with her malevolency managed to call his heart to the outside, but Gustine’s miraculous child was too strong for the old woman. He survived, and breathed at birth, and wore his heart as a badge that good shall always triumph over evil. Gustine never told anyone what she believed, but she lived its truth. She gave up all extra money to buy her special child wholesome food; she purchased, though they were clearly beyond her means, fine woolen blankets and little booties, yarn to knit him jumpers when at last she would find the time to learn to knit. She kept her baby far away from the evil Eye so that she might not be able to finish what she had started. And every night, she went back onto the streets, hoping to find in some new part of Sunder-land the man who could help them. You might think she would have been looking for a husband, but no, having lain with so many men made her disinclined to become the property of any one.

  Gustine watches the Eye’s eye for any movement, for the slightest twitch to give away Henry’s arrival. He believes he can save us, she murmurs, kissing the baby again. How that salvation will be manifested is as murky to her as the image of the saviour formerly had been. Perhaps he will hollow out a little area so that the heart might be tucked back in; or maybe he will build a bower of bone above it. Gustine does not pretend to know how the human machine works, but surely Henry knows what to do.

  Downstairs, Eye’s eye cuts to the latch, and Gustine rolls onto her back, lifting her baby high overhead. Fly, little baby, fly. His arms and legs flap happily, his blue eyes catch fire in their sockets. He swoops down to kiss his mamma, and then he’s off again—back up into the air, soaring above his mamma’s head, squealing with delight. Shush! hisses a neighbor, but Gustine still holds him aloft. Fly, fly! No one present at his birth doubted that this baby was born merely to soar straight back to Heaven, to molt away his deformed flesh and speed like a liberated bluebird from his mother’s hands. But the fates who spun him so short a thread did not reckon on Gustine for a mother. The only thing she regrets is having had to surrender poor Fos; and if she’d known who Judas was, she’d be feeling thoroughly Judas-like right now. But what must be done, must be done. Give us a kiss, little baby. Gustine brings his lips even with her own. Body by body, your mamma is mortgaging a life for you.

  But what do all these dreams signify to you, coin-lidded Fos? What do you care for the Eye’s shadowy visions, or the enmity of Thomas Malthus, or the future of a baby whom you will never see again? Is it not an annoyance having the dreams of the living crowd the great storehouse of the Unconscious, making you and the rest of the cramped dead wish for nothing more than morning? Come, Fos, you have earned a little selfishness. Why should you have to concern yourself with anything in this house tonight beyond that soft creak of the floorboards coming toward you.

  A careful footfall usually announces one of two types of men: lovers and thieves. You’ve had your lover, don’t deny it, back when you worked on your cousin’s farm in Hartelpool, sleeping in the hayloft during the summer months. You were part of a giggling heap of sweaty breasts and legs back in those days, teasing along with the rest of the girls about babies and how t
o come by them, taking turns on the outside so that your chosen favorites might visit. But on the night of your turn outside, Ned Turner came so softly upon you, you almost didn’t hear him. He was like an unexpected apparition in the moonlight, a spirit to summon rapture in a stunned devotee before disappearing back into Heaven. The next day he smiled at you in the field, no more, but that acknowledgment has been good enough to live on these thirty-two years hence.

  But what if, on the other hand, this is no lover’s footfall at all? What if the creak is a thief? Will not Pink jerk awake and shriek? Can you not depend on the vigilant Eye to leap up from her stool and drive him from the house? Think first to tear Whilky’s daughter away from the furry white lap of her ferret mother, where she has finally fallen into a rare and peaceful sleep. Think then to pierce the drug-induced fog confounding the frustrated, blinking old woman. Never having taken laudanum (or had it visited upon you), you cannot appreciate the profound inertia it insists upon. Eye is no more capable of leaping up to drive away a thief than she is of wrapping the gray shawl that’s slipped to her waist back around her shoulders. She stares angrily at the shadow creeping across the floor, unable to move, conscious of only one thing—if it comes too near the dress, she will find the strength somewhere to hurl her limp body and pin it to the ground.

  Unlucky for you, Fos, the creak-shadow stops far shy of the dress. It hesitates before the Eye, wavering and uncertain, then makes a quick wide circle between Pink and your box. The wind blows a sheet of sleet against the house, and the floor trembles. Pink’s cold feet twitch under her faded gingham dress. The shadow stands over your private box for what feels like a very long time before a hand reaches under your back and another slips beneath your knees.

  Why am I being taken from this house?