Polly

POLLY

by

Anne Campbell

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2011 Anne Campbell

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Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

About the Author

POLLY

By Anne Campbell

CHAPTER ONE

Connorsville, New Mexico, 1927.

The old lady sits in her chair rocking gently, and sipping scotch whiskey from a blue tea cup. The very young man opposite her sits bolt upright, fountain pen poised over the notepad on his knee. He thinks, then writes, ‘Miss Parkins still maintains the English custom of taking afternoon tea’, not noticing the absence of milk, sugar or teapot.

Polly Parkins is also thinking: Seems like a nice young feller. Says‘is paper wants ‘im to do a story on the early days in Connorsville and I’m one of the only old-timers still ‘ere. I s’pose ‘e means I’m one of the few still alive. ‘E knows I come ’ere from England and that I ‘ad the ‘otel and livery stable but e doesn’t seem to know much more than that . . . I don’t know ‘ow much I want to tell ‘im.

Well, young man, what do you want to ask me?

I understand you were a successful business woman in your time, Miss Parkins-- in the early ranching and mining days. Is it true that you were famous throughout New Mexico Territory?

You could say that, you see there weren’t a lot of ladies out ‘ere then.

‘E don’t know the ‘alf of it! Before I ran the ‘otel and the stables I ran what they called ‘ouses if ill-repute’, that’s what I was famous for. My place ‘ad a pretty good reputation; ladylike girls ‘oo I treated well, nice food and furnishings and satisfied customers. And we ‘ad some fun too. Those were the days all right, before everyone got so mealy-mouthed and ‘olier than thou. Not that they don’t get up to all kinds of sinning now, they just keep it more ‘idden.

I’d always been in the trade--I knew early on, back ‘ome, that I’d go on the streets. Seemed to run in the family, my Mam ‘ad earned ‘er bread that way and before ‘er my Gran, for a while. What was different for me, unlike some of the girls ‘oo went on the town, was that we stayed together and tried to look after each other, my Gran and me, and my Mam until she died, so we was a real fam’ly.

I always said I am what I am and don’t pretend to be anything different. Which didn’t mean I weren’t aiming to ‘ave fancy clothes or live in a nice ‘ouse I got the chance. Not like some, poor old Essie, f’rinstance . . .

She leans back in the chair, her hair very white against the stained window shade that only partly blocks the August heat: "I c’n remember it all as if it were yesterday, what it was really like, if I were going to tell the truth. I can see it like scenes in these ‘moving pictures’ they show now, though a lot more colorful; real life’s not really black n’ white, is it?

. . . .

London, England, 1866.

She trots along the pavement, ‘flouncing about’ as her Gran would say, trying to avoid the puddles from last night’s rain, as she sets out to look for customers. Not really beautiful, she is shapely enough, with thick dark hair and a liveliness that seems to appeal to the men. With her hat tipped over her forehead she knows she looks ‘quite fetching’. She’s careful to lift her skirt just high enough to show her boots but only a glimpse of her ankles; Mustn’t look too tarty even if you are a a ‘sporting woman’ or ‘lady of the night’ as the gents like to say, when they’re being polite.

On her way to her usual beat she sees Essie leaning up against wall, wearing a light colored dress that stands out against the sooty brick. This time Essie has a split lip and the remains of a black eye that she has tried to cover up with some powder that’s too white and only makes it worse.

Essie, what’s the matter with you now? And why on earth you wearin’ that thin dress in this weather?

Well it’s me best dress, aint it? Since I sold that green velvit. And furvermore, if I stands ‘ere the wind blows it aginst me legs and even shows a bit of ankle, or ‘igher up—what they likes aint it? See a bit of what they don’t get at ‘ome with their la-di-da wives.

You’ll catch your death, you will. And ‘ow d’yer get yer your face like that?

Essie knows she can’t fool Polly.

Oh, my bloke—didn’t like my take last week, said I weren’t bringin’ in enough. Told ‘im business is down because of that killing in Marylebone— toffs don’t feel safe in this part of town no more. They think the ‘ole East End is dangerous. ‘Ow yer doing yerself?

Polly doesn’t want to tell Essie that it has been a good week for her—plenty of toffs looking for it once you got into the posher areas a little way west of here, just make her feel worse. She doesn’t want Essie offering to team up with her either.

Poor old Essie. Twenty-five if she’s a day and most of her teeth knocked out. Never ‘ad no sense of style neither, always going for tatty bits of lace and velvet- in the day-time! You ‘ave to know ‘ow to dress to work the better areas and find a better class of client. Otherwise the bobbies’ll move you along.

Well, got to go now. See you later. Maybe I’ll drop in at the Bell & Grapes after I’m done.

Well if you don’t get done you don’t get no money fer drink do ya. Har har.

Polly can hear her chortling as she strolled away. Cheeky tart.

. . .

She must have been about seven when she started helping Gran with the laundry and by the time she’s was a skinny little eleven-year-old, going with Gran on her delivery route is part of her life. Gran has a cart, an old wooden box on wheels pulled by a rope, and she and Polly load it with bundles that they wrap in a clean sheet. They cover the pile of bundles with oilcloth when it looks like rain, which is most of the time, and trundle it along streets that are usually dark and wet. This is the best part of the job for Polly. She loves getting out and exploring different streets in different parts of town. In the basement where they do the laundry, and where they live, it’s always dark, and either cold and damp or hot and steamy.

They walk for about twenty minutes, until they’re in front of one of the dirty three-story houses of dark brick, somewhere in one of the narrow streets off the Whitechapel road. When Gran knocks at the door a bleary-eyed, blowsy woman opens it.

’ere’s yer wash, Missis, Gran says.

Oh, ta.. I ‘ope you got those sheets clean, one of the gents ‘ad a bit too much and threw up. Not very nice, but then it’s more money for the ‘ouse the more they drink, so we don’t discourage ’em.

Well tell yer Madam that if it ‘appens again there’ll be an extra charge, it takes a world a scrubbing to get that stain out, pertickly when it’s that red wine.

The next house is in Camberwell. Here, the steps are cleaner and the paint on the door fresher. The lace curtains at the windows look clean; they ought to, Polly and Gran washed, starched and ironed them a week ago, though with all the soot and fog they’ll be dirty again in a fortnight.

The maid here has a neater cap, and an apron that is clean though dingy. When she answers the door she looks down her nose at them and tells them to go down the area steps to the kitchen door next time.

We keep a ‘igh class ‘ouse ‘ere and Mrs. Jamison don’t like it if everything ain’t done proper, like in a regular ‘ouse what a family lives in, she grumbles.

Snooty baggage Gran says after the door closes.

Polly doesn’t care, she’s too busy peering through a gap in the window curtains. There are a number of frowsy women lounging on sofas or drinking from cups at a dining table, tea she thinks, but probably coffee. They all look sleepy although the day is already half over, and they’re wearing ball gowns or fancy nightgowns, all embroidery and lace! And there aren’t any men around, except for one in evening dress who rushes past them as he ran down the steps.

It’s much the same at all the other houses where they deliver clean laundry and pick up soiled clothes and sheets. Polly knows this is odd:

Gran, why ain’t there any Dads or Gran’pas in these ‘ouses—and why’re so many of the ladies wearin’ really fancy clothes?

Where Polly and Gran live, there are as many men as women, and the men are usually the bosses. (The women all look worn out, they are always cooking and cleaning or caring for the yearly babies, and they have plain, worn out clothes.) In these other houses it is usually an older woman, a Mother or a Missis, who seems to give the orders.

Gran just grumbles,

We don’t ‘ave time to worry about them. We got a lot a work to do, come on, look lively— and fold that again, yer creasing it.

Sometimes one of these lady bosses looks up from counting out the pennies, looks hard at Polly and asks Gran, how old is she then? By the time she is nearly twelve they add remarks like, she might look all right when she fills out. Keep our house in mind in a year or two. We can always use a fresh young’un, though, mind you I don’t take any girl younger than thirteen, it’s a proper crime how some’ll take girls who are only twelve, or even younger’n that.

I don’t know, Missis, Gran says, she’s so thin she ‘as to turn round twice to make a shadow, be a while before she puts any meat on ‘er bones.

Then she hurries Polly away.

The next day they are back to stirring the wash that bubbles up in the water heated by the fire under the big metal tub. Then they haul the heavy wet clothes or sheets out and rinse them in a second tub, squeezing them as dry as possible as they lift them out. Finally, they feed them into the mangle to get as much of the remaining water as possible, and hang them up to dry.

On one of their delivery days, one of the women who run the houses has been asking more questions than usual, Polly sees that Gran is frowning while she pushes the wet cloth between the rubber rollers of the mangle.

What are you thinking about, Gran? You got that worrited look?.

Gran looks up.

You know what those women do for a livin’ don’t yer?Well of course I do!

Yes, Gran. Charley told me. They go with men and let ‘em do whatever they wants to, and get paid for it.‘sleep with ‘em’ is what Charlie said, but ‘e told me what it really means. Don’t you worry Gran, I’m near grown up now, not a little kid any more.

She hasn’t actually done it for money herself, so far, only for the fun of it, and then only with Charley who’s a friend and who gives her presents when he has a good day, a fish snitched from a barrow in the market when the man looked the other way for a minute, a coral necklace he said he’d ‘found’— round someone’s neck most likely, or off another stall.

She doesn’t let Gran know this. Gran always says ,

Save it until you can get paid for it. And don’t start that too young if you can ‘elp it. Of course, I don’t know what yer’ll do when I’m gone—but then I’m not plannin’ on kicking the bucket any time soon.

Why not go on the street when yer young? What’s wrong with starting to earn money early?

Gran’s mouth sets in a line, then she says firmly, Don’t do it. I’ve known some ‘as started too young on the streets as could’ve waited. Toff’s ‘ll pay more for a real young’un, pertickly if you can pretend you aint never done if before, but you start at eleven or twelve, before ye’r grown, and you’ll be wore out by the time ye’r twenty.

Later she realizes that Gran had been right; look at Essie. If girls like Essie lived to be forty they ended up as bedraggled old ‘minders’, following the girls from the better class brothels to make sure they didn’t cheat the madams by keeping any of the money for themselves, or by running away with the expensive clothes they’d been given to wear.

Poor sods usually didn’t have much choice, no Gran or Mam to take care of them, or worse, a gran or mam who put them in the game at ten or eleven, made them go with anyone who paid and do anything the bloke wanted. Worn out, and probably sick with the clap, at twenty-five.

Gran continues:

"I suppose its about time I told you what’s what, make sure you know what you can expect outta life. Don’t want you messing things up the way yer ma did. I don’t see as ‘ow you’d do well in service—yer a good enough little worker, and strong and willing, but yer too cheeky to stick to ‘yes, ma’am’ and ‘no ma’am’. And if you were a shop girl you’d probably end up as a dollymop anyway; you’d ‘ave to get money by going with men to make ends meet. You’ll be on yer own after I’m gone and you can’t ‘ardly manage on the wages from standing be’ind a counter all day. I’ve been thinking, it’s prob’ly better if you go straight into sportin’ life—but you better do it right. I’ll ‘elp, as long as I’m alive and ‘ave me wits.

She gathers up the folds of damp cloth, piled up on the other side of the rollers, and puts them on the old wooden table ready to hang up to dry, but she isn’t paying attention and her bent and bony fingers cramp. One end of a table-cloth drops on the floor in the dust. She peers through the clouds of steam and bends to pick it up, wincing as she straightens up.

Drat, now I’ll ‘ave ter rinse it out again. Polly, put that kettle on, I’m dying for a cuppa tea. You can rinse this out for me while we wait for it to boil, me back’s killin’ me.

. . .

Before she is thirteen Polly is thinking how best to follow in her Mam’s line of work; it’s either that or starve on what the laundry brings in. She’s not planning to do washing forever, she thinks, as she works with Gran over the steaming tubs of water, thumping the clothes down with a wooden stick, trying not to get scalded. Her hands are red and raw sometimes, chapped by the lye soap they use. She helps Gran scrub out stains and dirt on the washboard, then wrings the sheets out and moves them, wet and heavy, to the rinse water tubs. Then she pushes them through the rollers of the mangle again. By this time, although scrawny, she has muscles in her arms from turning the handle on the mangle, trying to wring out as much water as possible: in the damp basement the laundry takes days to dry anyway, even with the fire stoked up. She is so tired at night she can hardly take off her clothes to go to bed and some days she just doesn’t bother; delivery days, when they traipse around London from dawn to dusk, are holidays.

Gran is getting older and can’t do as much as she used to, and more and more is left to Polly.

I just ‘ave to rest me dogs for a minute, before I start on the next lot, which’ll take a bit of time, all those petticoats need starching, she’ll say.

Then she sits and as often as not, she falls fast asleep. Polly grumbles to herself, but does the starching as well; and the ironing too if Gran isn’t up to it.

She’s determined that she isn’t going to lead this life forever—only until she’s grown up. Meanwhile she helps Gran add up the charges for the laundry, works out what they need for rent and food; when they’re short she pawns something, and sometimes she goes to the public house for a customer to take upstairs— or into a dark alley if the weather is good; it’s cheaper if she doesn’t have to rent a room.

Gran says that in the country, girls go into service. But you need references from someone respectable, who knows you, and no one they know would do. Anyway, being a maidservant isn’t much of a life:

You work all day every day fer next ter nothin’ and then the master or the son or nephew decides ‘e wants a bit of a tumble and yer in the family way and out on yer ear. Can’t never get another job for love nor money. No-one says ‘boo’ to the man what got you that way. Then all you can do is go on the streets, if you want ter eat and want to feed the poor little brat— if it lives.

Polly has a good idea that that’s what had happened to Gran. Gran still has a bit of a country accent, though she speaks more like a Londoner now, and she has always says that Polly’s Mam should have been cleverer and ought to have done well with the carriage trade, her father being an edjercated man from a good family, though not worth a brass farthing otherwise.

Service doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to Polly, anyway; always some old housekeeper or butler telling you what to do, run off your feet, given all the worst jobs when you’re a scullery maid or housemaid; and when you finally rise to the position of parlor maid or lady’s maid having to say, Yes, Ma’am and, Yes, Sir and, will that be all, Miss? and make believe that you think the mistress is the most elegant, nicest, kindest, knowingest lady even if she is the nastiest, silliest, bitch on earth. No better than the laundry, except you got food and clothes. But what horrible dowdy clothes! She wouldn’t be caught dead in those caps and black dresses, and she’d never be able to stand being bossed around like that. Better go on the streets and see if she can work up to being one of those fancy women, the stylishly dressed ones who were seen at the casinos and dance places and who had only a few well-paying regulars.

Sometimes Polly can get Gran to talk more about life ‘on the streets’, and about her mother.

What was me mam like, Gran? Was she pretty?

Oh she were a pretty one all right. Could of done well if she’d lived; would’ve got herself a ‘protector’ most likely. There are some as live like grand ladies if they got the looks and play the game right, nice rooms in Curzon Street or even a ‘ouse in St. John’s Wood and a carridge ‘n ‘orses. She sighs and looks sad then, ’oo knows where your mam might’ve ended up. ‘Er own ‘stablisment most likely, not in a ‘ouse with other women.

What’s wrong with a ’ouse with other women?

You wanter be careful with those places, Polly, after you start out. They can drive the girls really ‘ard; some of those ‘Mothers’ and ‘Aunties’ are worse that slave drivers—work a girl to death then throw ‘er out when she’s too worn out to bring in the shillings no more.

What about me mam? Did she work out of a ‘ouse?

She managed to be inderpend’nt most a the time. Did ‘ook up with a man for a while, ‘e run several girls down Shoreditch way. Lucky for ‘er, ‘e was killed, by one a the other girls they say. Your mam was sharp enough to see by then that she’d be best off on ‘er own, if she could manage it—not give mosta ‘er pay to a bloke then get kicked and cursed for it. Those ‘oo don’t wanter be inderpendent do better with a madam, as long as she runs a good ‘ouse, than with a fancy man.

If yer in a ‘ouse you gets clothes and food, Gran.

Gran had never worked out of a house, although she had ‘gone on the town’ sometimes, just enough to add to her shop-girl’s pay so she could support herself and Polly’s mother. Then she’d met a man who didn’t know anything about her except that she was a pretty young woman who said she was a widow. He met her when she worked behind the counter in a tobacconist shop— he never did find out about the other side of her life.

Working in the tobacconist’s shop had been hard: standing on her feet all day, always smiling and neat, even when her legs were killing her, waiting on customers from early morning until after dark, sometimes having to stay late to add up the take and get the stock ready for the next day.

"I’d be looking out of that dark