She felt herself growing drowsy and attempted to rouse herself to go back downstairs, but she was too warm and comfortable to move.
The sound of feet on the stairs woke her with a start. She had no idea what the time was, but the fire was almost out, which suggested it was now evening and she’d been asleep a long time. Her stomach lurched with anxiety, for the rule that she was never to go upstairs after five was one of Annie’s strictest. Belle could still remember the beating she’d got at six years old for daring to disobey it.
It was just blind panic which made her jump up, straighten the covers and slip underneath the bed. Once there, she told herself that if Millie was alone she could explain why she was there and get her to smuggle her back to the kitchen without anyone else seeing her.
But her heart sank as the door opened and Millie came in, followed by a man. Millie turned up the gaslight and lit a couple of candles too. From her position beneath the bed, Belle could see no more than the lower half of Millie’s pale blue dress with its lace flounces, and the man’s dark brown trousers and side-buttoned boots.
‘Why did you pretend not to be here last week when I called?’ the man asked. His voice was gruff and he sounded cross.
‘I wasn’t here,’ Millie replied. ‘I had a night off and went to see my aunt.’
‘Well, I’ve paid for the whole night with you tonight,’ he said.
Belle’s first reaction was shock that he’d paid to share Millie’s room. But then her stomach lurched when she realized that meant she was trapped. How was she going to get out? She couldn’t possibly stay here, but then she couldn’t possibly come out from under the bed, apologize for intruding and then leave, either.
‘The whole night,’ Millie repeated, and it sounded as if she was as horrified by the idea as Belle was.
There was silence then, and Belle guessed they must be kissing as they were standing close together. She could hear heavy breathing and the rustling of clothes and all at once Millie’s dress was tossed to the floor just a few inches away from Belle. A petticoat fluttered down too, and then the man’s boots and trousers came off, and it finally dawned on Belle exactly what a whore was. Men paid whores so they could do that thing they were only supposed to do to their wives to have children. She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t worked that one out before. But now she had, it sickened her to think that Jimmy and other people she knew believed she was allowing men to do that to her too.
Millie was down to her chemise, stockings and white lace-trimmed drawers. The man had removed his jacket along with his trousers and boots, but he’d kept his shirt on and it came down almost to his knees, exposing very muscular, hairy legs.
‘Let me put some more coal on the fire, it’s nearly out,’ Millie said suddenly. As she bent over to put the shovel into the coal bucket, Belle thought of trying to signal to her so she’d get the man to leave the room, but before she could even attempt it, the man moved and grabbed Millie around the waist from behind, pulling her drawers off so roughly that they ripped.
Belle was so shocked that she felt her heart might stop beating. From her position she could still only see the couple from the waist down, but that was far too much. She didn’t want to see Millie’s plump, dimpled thighs and buttocks, or the man forcing her to bend over so he could push his cock into her. Belle had only seen a couple of cocks in her life, and they had belonged to small boys being cleaned up by their mothers under a street pump. But this man’s had to be seven or eight inches long and as firm as a barber’s pole. She could see by the whiteness of Millie’s knuckles as she supported herself on the fireplace that he was hurting her.
‘That’s better, my lovely,’ he said breathlessly as he hammered into her. ‘You love it, don’t you?’
Belle closed her eyes to shut out the sight but heard Millie reply that she loved it more than anything else in the world. This was clearly a lie, for when Belle opened her eyes again Millie had moved enough so she could see her face sideways on, and it was strained with pain.
Suddenly Belle understood why the girls so often looked sullen and dejected. She had been mystified by this for the parties sounded so much fun. But clearly they didn’t get a jolly time in the parlour for long. Instead they were whisked away to their rooms to be subjected to this kind of ordeal.
As the man bent down further over Millie’s back, Belle saw his face in profile. He had dark hair, slightly grey at the temples, and a thick, military-style moustache. His nose was quite prominent, with a slight hook. She thought he might be around thirty-two, though she always found it hard to guess men’s ages.
The couple moved on to the bed then, and the twanging sound of the springs just inches from her head, and the foul things he was saying to Millie, were horrible. Worse still, she could see them reflected in the mirror above the fireplace. Not their faces, just from their necks down to their knees. He had a hairy, very bony backside and he was holding on to Millie’s knees and seemed to be forcing them further apart so he could drive himself further into her.
It went on and on remorselessly, the slapping sound of flesh against flesh, squeaking springs, grunting, swearing and panting. From time to time Millie would cry out in pain – at one point she even urged him to stop – but he carried on regardless.
Belle realized that this was what ‘fucking’ was. She heard the word daily out on the streets where it was mostly a swear word – some men used it in every sentence they uttered – but she had heard it used in relation to men and women too, and now she understood this was its real meaning.
She hated being witness to it and was tempted to take a chance and crawl out from under the bed to the door. But common sense told her there would be hell to pay if she did, from the man and Annie too. She wondered as well why Mog hadn’t noticed she was missing and come looking for her.
Just when she thought Millie’s ordeal was never going to end, all at once the man appeared to be reaching some kind of crescendo, for he was panting furiously and moving even faster. Then it stopped abruptly and he rolled off Millie and sank on to the mattress beside her.
‘Wasn’t that splendid?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes, dear,’ Millie replied, her voice so weak and feeble it was hardly there at all.
‘So let’s have no more of this shilly-shallying,’ he said. ‘You’ll leave here tomorrow morning and come with me to Kent?’
‘I can’t,’ she said weakly. ‘Annie won’t let me go, she needs me here.’
‘Rubbish! Whores are ten a penny, and most far younger than you. And why did you lie to me about last week?’
His voice, which had never been tender with her, was now becoming positively menacing.
‘I didn’t lie to you,’ she said.
‘You did. You never have a night off from here and you have no aunt. You purposely avoided me last time I came. And you never intended to come and live with me.’
Millie denied it. Then a sharp crack punctuated by a cry revealed that he’d hit her. ‘That will show you what happens when I’m lied to,’ he hissed at her.
‘I avoided you because of this,’ she cried out. ‘Why do you hurt me when you say you want me to live with you?’
‘A whore must expect such things,’ he said, as if surprised by her protest. ‘Besides, you love me fucking you.’
All at once Millie jumped off the bed and Belle saw she was wearing nothing but a little lace-trimmed camisole, her big soft breasts billowing over the top, and her abundant pubic hair showing beneath. ‘I don’t love it at all. I pretend to because that’s what I’m supposed to do,’ she said defiantly.
Belle instinctively knew such a statement was not going to please this man, and that Millie might even be in danger from him. She willed her to run to the door and get out now while she could.
But before the girl could even think of fleeing, his arm reached out to grab her and he hauled her back to him on the bed.
‘You bitch,’ he snarled at her. ‘You led me on with your sweet talk, fed m
e lies and more lies. I’ve made plans for us, and now you say you were pretending!’
‘Us girls are told to be nice to our customers,’ Millie argued.
He hit her again and this time she yelped with pain and begged him to let her go.
‘I’ll let you go all right,’ he responded. ‘Straight to the devil where you belong.’
Just the crazed way he spoke suggested to Belle that he was going to kill Millie. She so much wanted to be brave, to get out from under the bed and whack him over the head with the chamberpot before alerting Annie to what was going on. But she was frozen with fear and unable to move a muscle.
‘No, please!’ Millie pleaded, and there was a sound of thrashing around as if she was trying to get away from him. But gradually the sound abated, and as Belle could hear heavy breathing above it she thought her fears had been groundless because he was kissing Millie again.
‘That’s better,’ he said softly as finally the struggling stopped. ‘Just give in to me. That’s how I like it.’
In her fear Belle had retreated to the centre of the bed, so she could no longer see them in the mirror. But the way the man spoke suggested that the nastiness was completely over and he was about to start fucking Millie again. Belle thought she would wait for the thumping, slapping sound to begin again and then she would creep out and make a run for the door.
But some little time passed and there was no thumping, just the heavy breathing, so she wriggled to the side of the bed so she could see their reflections in the mirror. What she saw was so shocking that she almost cried out.
The man was kneeling up on the bed, completely naked now and rubbing his cock while holding it to Millie’s face. Her chin was jutting upwards, exposing her white neck, but she wasn’t reacting to what he was doing. Her eyes seemed to be almost popping out of her head and she looked as though she was screaming, only there was no sound coming out of her open mouth.
Belle forgot her own terror in her fear for Millie. Silently she turned beneath the bed until she was facing the door, crawled down to the end of the bed, then gathered herself while still out of his line of vision for the last dash to the door.
In one swift movement she leapt to her feet and to the door to pull back the bolt. She heard the man roar out something, but by then she had the door open and she raced down the two flights of stairs two at a time.
‘A man is hurting Millie! Save her!’ she shouted as she got to the last landing and saw Annie coming out of her office.
For just the briefest second her mother’s expression was so fierce Belle thought she would strike her. But without saying a word she moved swiftly towards the parlour.
‘Jacob!’ she called out. ‘Come with me to check on Millie.’
The bald, burly man was a newcomer to the house, Belle had seen him just once about a fortnight earlier when he was putting a new washer on the tap in the scullery. Mog had said he’d been hired to do odd jobs, but also to make sure there was no rowdiness upstairs during the evenings. He looked smart tonight in a dark green jacket, and he responded swiftly to Annie’s order, racing up the stairs.
Annie followed, but she paused, looking down at Belle and pointing to the door to the basement. ‘Down there, and stay there. I’ll deal with you later,’ she barked.
Belle sat at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, wishing that Mog would come down because she knew she could explain how this had all come about much more easily to her.
The kitchen clock said it was ten past ten. Clearly she’d been asleep in Millie’s room for much longer than she’d imagined. But she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t been woken up by the girls getting ready for the evening, or why Mog hadn’t come upstairs to find her when she didn’t return from cleaning the room. Mog was like a mother hen; she normally got frantic if Belle was missing for just an hour, and they always had tea together around six, before Mog had to go upstairs to prepare for the evening ahead.
The evenings were normally very tedious to Belle because she had to spend them alone. She would wash up the tea things, then read a newspaper if one of the gentlemen had left one upstairs on the previous evening. If there was no paper to read, she sewed or knitted. But she was usually in bed by half past eight because she couldn’t stand her own company any longer. Tonight, however, she wasn’t just lonely, she was terrified. Not for herself, though she was scared of what Annie would do to her, but for Millie. She could see her face so clearly in her mind’s eye, that silent scream, the way her head was tipped back and her eyes bulging. Had the man killed her?
There was no sound coming from the parlour upstairs, so maybe there had been no one but Jacob in there as she came down the stairs. That was understandable considering the snow, but she wondered where the girls and Mog were. Aside from Millie there were seven other girls, but even if they were all in their rooms, with or without a gentleman, surely some of them would have looked out when Annie and Jacob went running up the stairs?
Yet over and above her fear for Millie, and the possible repercussions of tonight’s events, were the shock and disgust she felt about what had been going on nightly above her head. How could she have been so stupid as not to know what was going on in the house she lived in?
How was she ever going to be able to hold her head up out on the streets now? How could she be friends with Jimmy without wondering if he’d want to do the same thing to her? No wonder Mog had said he wasn’t to take any liberties with her!
Belle heard a loud yell from out the back, quickly followed by banging and clattering, as if someone had knocked over the dustbins, then even more shouting from several different people. She ran into the scullery and towards the back door. She didn’t unlock it and go out, for she knew she was in enough trouble already, but she looked out of the window next to it.
There was nothing to see, just the snow covering all the old crates and boxes out there, and it was still coming down hard, the wind blowing it into drifts.
‘Belle!’
Belle wheeled round at her mother’s voice. She had come into the kitchen and was standing by the table, one hand on her hip.
‘I’m sorry, Ma, I fell asleep in Millie’s room. I didn’t mean to be up there.’
Annie always wore black in the evenings. But this long-sleeved silk dress had a wide swathe of ornate silver embroidery from her shoulders right around the low neckline. She had her hair fixed up with silver combs, and with diamond bobs in her ears she looked regal.
‘Come with me. I want you to quickly tell me exactly what you saw,’ she said hurriedly.
Belle thought it very strange when instead of shouting at her or accusing her of wrongdoing, Annie took her hand and led her into Belle’s tiny bedroom. She ruffled up the bed and indicated that Belle was to undress, put on her nightdress and get into it. She even helped Belle with the buttons on the back of her dress and slipped her nightdress over her head. It was only once she’d got her daughter beneath the covers that she sat down on the bed beside her.
‘Now tell me,’ she demanded.
Belle explained how it had come about that she was there when Millie came in with the man, and that in panic she’d hidden under the bed. She didn’t know how to tell Annie what the couple were doing, so she referred to it as kissing and cuddling. Annie waved her hand impatiently and asked that she move on to what the man had been saying to Millie.
Belle repeated everything she could remember and how he had struck Millie, then how it all went quiet and she looked out from under the bed. ‘He had his …’ Belle broke off to point at her belly. ‘It was in his hand, by her face. She wasn’t moving, and that’s when I ran for it. Is Millie all right?’
‘She’s dead,’ Annie said curtly. ‘It looks as if he strangled her.’
Belle stared at her mother in horror. She might have already wondered if the man had killed Millie, but it was something very different to have it confirmed. She felt her head might explode with the shock, for this was the worst kind of nightmare.
&nbs
p; ‘No! She can’t be dead.’ Belle’s voice was just a whisper. ‘He hurt her, but surely that wouldn’t kill her?’
‘Belle, you know me better than that, I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true,’ Annie said reproachfully. ‘But we haven’t got much time. The police will be here soon, I sent Jacob for them. You have to forget that you were in that room, Belle!’
Belle didn’t understand and could only stare at her mother blankly.
‘Look, I’m going to tell ’em that I found Millie. I’ll say I went up to her room because I heard a noise of someone climbing out the window,’ Annie explained. ‘You see, I don’t want them to question you. So I’m going to say you were in bed down here. So if they do ask to speak to you, that’s what you must say. You got into bed here at half past eight and you only woke up a little while ago because of a noise outside. Can you do that?’
Belle nodded. It was such a rare thing for her mother to speak to her in a kind and gentle fashion that she was prepared to say anything she asked. Of course she didn’t understand why she couldn’t tell the truth, but she supposed there had to be a good reason.
‘Good girl.’ Annie put her arm around Belle’s shoulders and squeezed them. ‘I know you’ve had a shock, you’ve seen things I never wanted you to see. But if you were to tell the police you were in that room and saw what happened it would turn into the worst nightmare you can imagine. You’d have to be a witness at the man’s trial and be interrogated. They would say all kind of vile things to you. You would be in the newspapers. And you could be in real danger from the man who did this to Millie. I couldn’t put you through all that.’
Having expected to be punished severely, only to find instead that her mother wanted to protect her from further harm, made Belle feel a little better.
‘Where’s Mog?’ she asked.
‘I let her go and see her friend in Endell Street as I knew it’d be quiet because of the snow,’ Annie said, pursing her lips. ‘A good thing, as it turned out. But she’ll be home soon. Now, just you mind you stick to the same story to her too.’