Gentleman, however, said he thought the style too fast for a country lady: he made me wash my hair till it was perfectly smooth, then had me divide it once— just the once— then pin it in a plain knot at the back of my head. He had Dainty wash her hair, too, and when I had combed and re-combed mine, and pinned and re-pinned it, until he was satisfied, he made me comb and pin hers in a matching style, as if hers was the lady's, Miss Lilly's. He fussed about us like a regular girl. When we had finished, Dainty and I looked that plain and bacon- faced, we might have been trying for places in a nunnery. John said if they would only put pictures of us in the dairies, it would be a new way of curdling milk.
When Dainty heard that she pulled the pins from her hair and threw them at the fire.
Some had hair still clinging to them, and the flames set it hissing.
'Can't you do anything to that girl of yours,' said Mr Ibbs to John, 'but make her cry?'
John laughed. 'I likes to see her cry,' he said. 'It makes her sweat the less.'
He was an evil boy, all right.
But he was quite caught up in Gentleman's plot, despite himself. We all were. For the first time I ever knew, Mr Ibbs kept the blind pulled down on his shop door and let his brazier go cold. When people came knocking with keys to be cut, he sent them away.
To the two or three thieves that brought poke, he shook his head.
'Can't do it, my son. Not to-day. Got a little something cooking.'
He only had Phil come, early in the morning. He sat him down and ran him through the points of a list that Gentleman had drawn up the night before; then Phil pulled his cap down over his eyes, and left. When he came back two hours later it was with a bag and a canvas-covered trunk, that he had got from a man he knew, who ran a crooked warehouse at the river.
The trunk was for me to take to the country. In the bag was a brown stuff dress, more or less my size; and a cloak, and shoes, and black silk stockings; and on top of it all, a heap of lady's real white underthings.
Mr Ibbs only undid the string at the neck of the bag, peeped in, and saw the linen; then he went and sat at the far side of the kitchen, where he had a Bramah lock he liked sometimes to take apart, and powder, and put back together. He made John go with him and hold the screws. Gentleman, however, took out the lady's items one by one, and placed them flat upon the table. Beside the table he set a kitchen chair.
22
'Now, Sue,' he said, 'suppose this chair's Miss Lilly. How shall you dress her? Let's say you start with the stockings and drawers.' 'The drawers?' I said. 'You don't mean, she's naked?'
Dainty put her hand to her mouth and tittered. She was sitting at Mrs Sucksby's feet, having her hair re-curled.
'Naked?' said Gentleman. 'Why, as a nail. What else? She must take off her clothes when they grow foul; she must take them off to bathe. It will be your job to receive them when she does. It will be your job to pass her her fresh ones.'
I had not thought of this. I wondered how it would be to have to stand and hand a pair of drawers to a strange bare girl. A strange bare girl had once run, shrieking, down Lant Street, with a policeman and a nurse behind her. Suppose Miss Lilly took fright like that, and I had to grab her? I blushed, and Gentleman saw. 'Come now,' he said, almost smiling. 'Don't say you're squeamish?'
I tossed my head, to show I wasn't. He nodded, then took up a pair of the stockings, and then a pair of drawers. He placed them, dangling, over the seat of the kitchen chair.
'What next?' he asked me.
I shrugged. 'Her shimmy, I suppose.'
'Her chemise, you must call it,' he said. 'And you must make sure to warm it, before she puts it on.'
He took the shimmy up and held it close to the kitchen fire. Then he put it carefully above the drawers, over the back of the chair, as if the chair was wearing it.
'Now, her corset,' he said next. 'She will want you to tie this for her, tight as you like.
Come on, let's see you do it.'
He put the corset about the shimmy, with the laces at the back; and while he leaned upon the chair to hold it fast, he made me pull
the laces and knot them in a bow. They left lines of red and white upon my palms, as if I had been whipped.
'Why don't she wear the kind of stays that fasten at the front, like a regular girl?' said Dainty, watching.
'Because then,' said Gentleman, 'she shouldn't need a maid. And if she didn't need a maid, she shouldn't know she was a lady. Hey?' He winked.
After the corset came a camisole, and after that a dicky; then came a nine- hoop crinoline, and then more petticoats, this time of silk. Then Gentleman had Dainty run upstairs for a bottle of Mrs Sucksby's scent, and he had me spray it where the splintered wood of the chair-back showed between the ribbons of the shimmy, that he said would be Miss Lilly's throat.
And all the time I must say:
'Will you raise your arms, miss, for me to straighten this frill?' and,
'Do you care for it, miss, with a ruffle or a flounce?' and,
'Are you ready for it now, miss?'
'Do you like it drawn tight?'
'Should you like it to be tighter?'-
'Oh! Forgive me if I pinch.'
23
At last, with all the bending and the fussing, I grew hot as a pig. Miss Lilly sat before us with her corset tied hard, her petticoats spread out about the floor, smelling fresh as a rose; but rather wanting, of course, about the shoulders and the neck.
John said, 'Don't say much, do she?' He had been sneaking glances at us all this time, while Mr Ibbs put the powder to his Bramah.
'She's a lady,' said Gentleman, stroking his beard, 'and naturally shy. But she'll pick up like anything, with Sue and me to teach her. Won't you, darling?'
He squatted at the side of the chair and smoothed his fingers over the bulging skirts; then he dipped his hand beneath them, reaching high into the layers of silk. He did it so neatly, it looked to me as if he knew his way, all right; and as he reached higher his cheek grew
pink, the silk gave a rustle, the crinoline bucked, the chair quivered hard upon the kitchen floor, the joints of its legs faintly shrieking. Then it was still.
'There, you sweet little bitch,' he said softly. He drew out his hand and held up a stocking. He passed it to me, and yawned. 'Now, let's say it's bed-time.'
John still watched us, saying nothing, only blinking and jiggling his leg. Dainty rubbed her eye, her hair half curled, smelling powerfully of toffee.
I began at the ribbons at the waist of the dickies, then let loose the laces of the corset and eased it free.
'Will you just lift your foot, miss, for me to take this from you?'
'Will you breathe a little softer, miss? and then it will come.'
He kept me working like that for an hour or more. Then he warmed up a flat- iron.
'Spit on this, will you, Dainty?' he said, holding it to her. She did; and when the spit gave a sizzle he took out a cigarette, and lit it on the iron's hot base. Then, while he stood by and smoked, Mrs Sucksby— who had once, long ago, in the days before she ever thought of farming infants, been a mangling-woman in a laundry— showed me how a lady's linen should be pressed and folded; and that, I should say, took about another hour.
Then Gentleman sent me upstairs, to put on the dress that Phil had got for me. It was a plain brown dress, more or less the colour of my hair; and the walls of our kitchen being also brown, when I came downstairs again I could hardly be seen. I should have rathered a blue gown, or a violet one; but Gentleman said it was the perfect dress for a sneak or for a servant— and so all the more perfect for me, who was going to Briar to be both.
We laughed at that; and then, when I had walked about the room to grow used to the skirt (which was narrow), and to let Dainty see where the cut was too large and needed stitching, he had me stand and try a curtsey. This was harder than it sounds.