London Triptych (13 page)

1895

Odd the way some
people froth with anger at the sight of a man in a woman’s clothes, as if some law of nature were being trespassed or the end of the world were on its fuckin’ way. I’ve never understood it myself, but then Taylor often swans about the house in a dress, and I’ve even worn a frock myself. To a drag ball. You can’t get in without one. The first time was strange, I’ll admit, but it was great fun. The costumes turn us into something more extreme—I hardly feel myself at all. To begin with it felt like sin, and I was embarrassed and awkward, not sure how to act, trying to be myself, but just feeling stupid. After a few drinks and a bit of hashish, this other character takes over, some fishwife or harlot. The drag creates a whole new state of being within me. With a bit of slap and a skirt, we all unleash a slattern.

We all have women’s names at these parties. Mine’s Penny Dreadful. The lengths that some people go to, making themselves elaborate gowns like Marie Antoinette or Anne of Cleves. We always look like a gaggle of scullery maids by comparison, decked in Taylor’s ratty cast-offs.

Last night, Taylor got wed at a drag ball to a handsome young fellow called Eddie. We call him Steady because he is one of the most unstable people you could ever wish to meet. He flies into a rage without any reason. I saw him bark at a total stranger in Oxford Street once, just because he thought the man had looked at him funny. His temper is worse than Pa’s. I’ve seen him threaten Taylor with a knife many times, and he’s always getting into fights, turning up with black eyes and a split lip. But Taylor’s in love, so they got married. Any excuse for a party.

Taylor was dressed in white and Steady wore a suit. He’s a good-looking chap, it has to be said. Burly and hairy, with dark eyes and thick eyebrows, and hung like a shire horse. He needs no excuse to whip it out and show it off, and I guess if I had that between my legs, I’d do the same. It’s just a shame he has the personality of a mad dog.

I was maid of honour.

Oscar wasn’t there. He’s still keeping out of our way owing to all the trouble with Bosie’s father, but he sent Taylor a huge bouquet and a bottle of champagne. Frederika Faithless, as Taylor called himself, played the part of the blushing bride perfectly, tossing her bouquet of paper flowers at the excited bridesmaids. I tried my best to grab it, but Lottie caught it and was giddy from the event all evening. Silly cow. Anyone would think she was the one getting hitched. One of the regulars who’s a real priest came dressed in his robes and did the ceremony before we showered the happy couple in a snow of torn paper pieces as they retired to one of the bedrooms upstairs. The wedding took place in a huge house in Victoria owned by one of Taylor’s better-class acquaintances, a duke known to us as the Duchess. Last night she was dressed like Queen Vic. “Don’t you fucking bleed on my clean sheets!” she screamed as Steady and Taylor made their way upstairs, standing with her hands on her hips at the foot of the stairs.

“Don’t worry, dear,” said the bearded man dressed as a shepherdess who had welcomed Oscar and me at the orgy that night, adjusting the bow under his chin. “She cracked her pot when Queen Vic was still sucking the milk out of a wet nurse’s tittie.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it past the godless whore to grow another plug just to spite me,” the Duchess snapped back before floating off across the room with her fan fluttering in front of her face.

George, a fat jolly blacksmith dressed like a scrubber, with thick black hair bursting from his bodice, bashed out filthy songs on the piano and we sang along. One or two of the guests who work on the stage put on a show and they were very good. The songs were all as crude as hell and they told dirty stories in between that had us falling over with laughing. We all drank and danced and flirted. Those queens are always viciously funny when they’re kanurd. At one point Nell Gwynn, with breasts made of two huge oranges, ran to the foot of the stairs and yelled up to the newlyweds, “Is it in yet?”

By the end of the party, most of the queens had either passed out from too much booze and opium or retired to a bedroom with one of the boys. Johnnycakes came up to me and pointed to a bulge at the front of his dress, saying with a smirk, “Do you want to help me get rid of this?” I certainly did. He led me to the kitchen, where we pulled off our frocks, naked as nature beneath, and set to covering each other in sweet sauces and creams from the pantry till we were sticky from head to toe, then like cubs we licked each other clean all over. By the time we’d finished we both shone from the spittle, grinning at each other like idiots. I know Taylor robs us blind, but it isn’t a bad life sometimes. I even forgot my rage over Sidney for a brief moment.

Johnnycakes asked me if I’d ever go through with a wedding, and I thought to myself that if Oscar asked me, I’d marry him, but I said, “Nah, that stuff is just for the queens.” We never considered ourselves to be queens, always pretended to be interested in girls, though I’d never been anywhere near one. Johnnycakes taught me to read men. He liked sleep and tobacco, and as he sat there on that kitchen floor with the sun coming up through the window behind him, I watched him roll a cigarette between yellow finger and thumb and wondered whether I’d ever know him or ever hear his life story. He never said much about himself, and none of us, not even Taylor, really knew anything about him. He’d been a merchant seaman and had jumped ship at Portsmouth and made his way to London, that was all he’d say. But once in a while he’d come out with these tiny fragments that spoke of a life beyond anything I could begin to imagine. “Know your men,” is something he always said. “Know your men.” And as he lit the cigarette and took the first pull, sitting there looking so handsome, he said, in that silky rich American drawl of his, “Sometimes the most important thing is that you don’t betray yourself.”

I wasn’t sure if this related to anything else we’d said to one another, but it clearly made sense to him and he assumed it would make sense to me on its own without further explanation. He leant back contemplating his own wisdom, judging by the look on his face, and I said nothing. I just reached across and plucked the cigarette from his rosy fat lips and brought it to my own, repeating his words to myself in my head, trying to make something of them. But then Taylor appeared in the doorway, dressed in his regular clothes, and said, “Come on, you two reprobates, get yer kecks on, we’re goin’ ’ome.”

We’d only just fallen into our beds when a fuckin’ gang of crushers stormed into the house and nibbed us all again. Sidney was still in full drag from the party, which caused a certain amount of confusion, I can tell you. They threw him in with the tarts at first till he lifted his skirts and flashed an officer his privates, and I wished they’d left him in there for I don’t want to clap eyes on him ever again. Since that night outside Kettner’s I’ve tried my best to avoid him. Not easy when we live together.

At first we all just thought it was a regular raid, like before. Occupational hazard. We were in the clink for hours before anyone even mentioned Oscar’s name. I was still filled with rage and confusion over last week’s betrayal when I heard it, and I flushed scarlet like a bride. What did he have to do with it? As far as I knew, he was prosecuting Bosie’s father, so what did it have to do with us? In time, piece by precious piece, the story came to us through some elaborate chain of hurried Chinese whispers from cell to cell.

It seems someone talked, some she-whore narked at the marked decline in her trade (same old story: arse preferred to cunt), and it turned her bitter. With her mouth puckered to the shape of a sour grape she spat out Taylor’s address like a pip, and lo and behold, the bluebottles descend and cart us off like stray dogs. When I’d pieced it all together I vomited, much to everyone else’s annoyance—as if it didn’t stink enough in here already. I couldn’t believe it was all out in the open, what we did for a living. How long before my mother knows? What will she think of me?

Just then a bobby came and dragged me off and I was taken to a room where a senior bobby and a man in a black suit were seated and a grizzle-chopped old man in tweed was pacing furiously, his face red and his manic eyes bulging, his head surrounded by a thick cloud of smoke from the pipe he was angrily sucking. So this is the old man, Bosie’s father, the mad marquess.

I was pushed into a chair, and the old man turned to me and screwed up his red-veined nose like he was suffering the presence of a bad odour.

“Master Rose,” said the man in the black suit, “you are in very grave trouble, and depending on how well you co-operate you will either get yourself out of trouble or sink yourself further in it. The outcome entirely depends on you.”

I hadn’t the first idea what he was talking about so I said nothing.

The old aristocrat was pacing back and forth by the window gnashing his teeth and chewing his pipe.

“Are you acquainted with Mr Oscar Wilde?” the bluebottle asked.

I said I was.

“Were you aware he’s a bugger?” snarled the marquess, pushing his fat red angry face down into mine and wrapping my head in a cloud of smoke as the words sprayed like spittle from his mouth. He was terrifying. Reminded me of Steady in one of his moods.

“This gentleman is the Marquess of Queensberry,” the man in the black suit said, “and I am his lawyer, Edward Carson. Mr Wilde is prosecuting my client for libel and, unhappily, stands a good chance of success. We, however, believe that the claim Lord Queensberry has made about Mr Wilde can be substantiated and we are seeking witnesses to give evidence. Do you understand what that means?”

I nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Now tell us, what is the nature of your acquaintance with Mr Wilde?”

I wasn’t sure what to say at this point, but before I could say anything the red-faced aristocrat screamed at me, “Has he sodded you, lad? Has he put it in your arse?”

“No, sir, he hasn’t,” I said, for that was the truth.

Carson then said, “Master Rose, you are in terrible trouble and stand to be convicted for practising an illicit profession. We know all about what goes on in Mr Taylor’s lodgings. There’s no use denying anything. The point is that you can get out of that trouble if you help us. Wilde is going down, there is no question of that. The question is, who does he take with him? Now, you can give evidence and be granted immunity—that means you can walk away a free man—or you can refuse to co-operate, in which case you will go to prison. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

So I told all. I didn’t need to think about it. My anger was still intense and I wanted to hurt him; I wanted him to suffer the way I was suffering. Yes, I told them, I had met him often, yes, he had given me gifts and money and yes, he touched me in an indecent manner, but no, I insisted, he never sodded me. Although plenty of others have, I added. I spared no details other than the details of my own suffering since seeing him walk out of that restaurant with Sidney last Wednesday night.

They lapped it up, and Queensberry, who paced around the room barking and muttering to himself as I spoke, slapped guineas down on the table in front of me till I was performing like a seal hungry for another fish, erasing from my memory the time I spent with Oscar, the things he showed me, the things he taught me. What took me months to learn took an hour to forget. I cannot deny it, though it shames me to say it. But I was angry at Oscar for not loving me and for loving instead that arrogant, self-centred, thoughtless little turd that had sprung from the loins of this insane chimpanzee chattering fish-eyed before me. I was angry at Taylor for interfering, and I was angry at Sidney for taking my place in Oscar’s shallow affections, but most of all I was angry at myself for ever getting involved in this stupid game in the first place.

Maybe, I thought to myself as I walked away with a thick column of gold coins like a stiff yard in my trouser pocket, maybe this is my way out, my way to a better life, a way to forget all about it. Forget about him. What do I care about the consequences of giving Queen’s evidence against an old queen? Particularly an old queen so rich, so famous, so important that he is above anything, certainly above the law. So, like the whore I am, I thought only of the money as the grizzled old Queensberry held out that fat fist of push so close I swear I could smell it.

I knew I couldn’t very well go back to Taylor’s, but nor did I feel I could return home, as I had no notion of how much news had reached my ma. For all I know she could have completely disowned me by now. So I hung around outside Bow Street Police Station until I saw Sidney come out. He was the last person I wanted to see, but all the same he might have news of what was going on, news of Taylor and the others, so I jumped down off the wall I’d been sitting on and called his name. He was happy to see me or at least acted that way, and I didn’t tell him I’d seen him with Oscar that night, so as far as he’s concerned everything between us is fine, I imagine. Don’t suppose he has a clue about my feelings for Oscar. He told me that they’d forced him to give a statement and I didn’t feel so bad about my own loose tongue, but then he told me that Taylor had refused to give evidence, even for immunity, and so had been arrested and would be put in the dock with Oscar. He’d heard no word of Charlie or Johnnycakes.

“What are you going to do now?” Sidney asked, and I said I didn’t know. I felt bad about being angry with him; after all, it isn’t his fault, he was just doing his job. So when he suggested that we walk together back to the house and decide what to do, I agreed. I hadn’t the courage to ask him if he too had been given a pile of ackers in case he hadn’t. I walked all the way with my hands in my pockets so the coins wouldn’t make a sound.

The lock on the door was busted, of course, and the house was empty. Ghostly quiet. We hadn’t been given any food at all in the clink and were starving. But neither of us knows how to cook, so we had some stale bread washed down with the dregs from a bottle of red wine we found in the pantry. It was strange being in the house without the others. It seemed so empty and joyless, and there was nothing we could do about the broken door so we were fearful, too, of strangers coming in while we slept. We decided to go to bed, and I jammed a chair under the door handle once we were in our room. We climbed into bed together and held each other and when he asked if everything would be all right I said it would, though I wasn’t at all sure. At one point he started to get fruity, his hands wandering to my privates, but I was not in the mood at all, and took pleasure in rejecting him.