文章简介

《Barefoot on Baker Street》作者：Charlotte Anne Walters

Charlotte Anne Walters

Acknowledgements

This novel has been inspired by the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring characters and ideas recognisable from his original stories. I fully acknowledge this and have used endnotes to indicate where I have included direct examples.

I wish to thank my friends for not dismissing me as bonkers, Alex and Charlie for being all-round wonderful, my parents for their support and especially my husband Tim for always believing in me and being my world.

Lastly, to Rob Hess for taking a rambling, error-ridden document and helping to turn it into what it has become.

Prologue

Life in all its complexities is stranger than any fiction and full of so many intricate twists and turns that we sometimes lose track of ourselves, of who we really are.

I think that’s what happened to me. I sprinted into a whole new life and just kept on running; afraid to look back, fearing the memory of the person I used to be.

So, I decided to write it all down. Begin an account of my epic progression from child poverty and criminal endeavours to the person I became.

I thought it would be cathartic; a little project written essentially for my own reference and emotional well-being. A sort of homage to the person I used to be, however inappropriate that seems. It is my goodbye to her, a process of letting go.

This is a documentation of all those twists and turns, the things that shape us, that shaped me. Growing up as I had under the shadow of the Industrial Revolution, the time of empire and social change, experiencing both the very worst and best of the Victorian age.

Chapter One

I know very little about my parents save the few details which were passed on to me as a child in one of London’s most-wretched workhouses - Whitechapel and Spitalfields Union Workhouse.

I was told that they were simple country people before arriving in the city. My mother was a pretty woman with florid cheeks and red hair, my father a poor farmer who toiled on the land in the hope that it would yield enough to feed his family. I presume I had siblings, but do not know what became of them.

During the early 1870s, just before my birth, life was very difficult for rural folk like my parents. It is mere supposition I know, but I believe it was when my mother discovered she was pregnant with me that they made the decision to follow the drift of so many others and head to the bustling city of London.

They would have been seduced by tales of unlimited opportunity amid the huge explosion of industrial growth in the capital.

This was a period of intense urbanisation and the city of London had expanded at a rapid rate. The docklands welcomed goods shipped in from around the world, trade generated by the country’s imperial endeavours. Giant filthy factories belched smoke into the perpetually foggy air, the Thames was rancid with waste. Many people lived in desperate poverty, but my parents probably knew nothing of this and would have arrived full of hope.

My father became a labourer on the railways, the arteries of this ever-growing new organ, transporting the raw materials of industry all over the country. But the occupation was dangerous and my father was killed in an accident at work. My mother was now alone in the city and destitute.

The only assistance available to the poor at that time was to enter the workhouse where squalid shelter and basic food was on offer in return for labour. Conditions were harsh and the work arduous, menial and unpleasant. The house was like a prison, where residents were referred to as inmates and watched constantly by overseers. Families were torn apart as men, women and children all had to be contained separately. It truly was a place of last resort.

Heavily pregnant and with no means to support herself, my mother came to the workhouse in the desperate hope of assistance for herself and her unborn child. But instead she died during my birth in the workhouse infirmary which was administered by promoted inmates without any medical training. I was made an orphan, left completely at the mercy of the house.

The Whitechapel and Spitalfields Union Workhouse had been built in 1842 on the corner of Charles Street and Thomas Street. It was a huge purpose-built structure, with more than a thousand inmates, mainly widows, unmarried mothers, orphans, the old and infirm. There was an infirmary, infant nursery, a huge female block to the north and male area to the south. The Charles Street block was more than five storeys high with a foreboding entrance hall.

This poorly-ventilated, fever-ridden, filthy, grim building was the place of my birth and became my childhood home. I spent my early years in the Infant Nursery, a dormitory without ventilation, which I never left except for an occasional transfer to the workhouse infirmary if I surrendered to a particularly persistent fever. We children all slept four to a bed and fever regularly spread like fire through tinder. Even in the fever wards, we slept two to a bed, such was the overcrowding.

All children received four hours of education a day at the workhouse school. We were instructed in reading, writing, maths, but mainly taught Christianity and usefulness, anything which would make us fit for service. Poverty was understood to be hereditary. It was believed that we couldn’t possibly possess any natural intelligence and the best we could hope for in our future lives was to be a factory worker or servant.

I longed to learn more than what this pitifully restricted curriculum offered. I was bright, quick-witted and a natural with figures. But instead I was taught to pick apart old tar ropes called oakum with my bare hands, needlework and laundry. I was made to pick away at those ropes for hours on end until the skin of my fingers was torn open and splinters of rope became permanently embedded in my skin.

Generally it was able-bodied men and boys, not girls, who were forced into the harsh physical work, but I was very strong and it was this strength that condemned me to more and more intense labour. I think it was simply forgotten that I was a girl - I certainly had no sense of it myself.

I spent my days in toil and was physically powerful despite having severe fever on two occasions and nearly dying of consumption. How I managed to avoid the dreadful cholera which was so prevalent at that time throughout the London poor, is a sheer miracle of God.

It was not customary for someone to stay for prolonged periods in the house and I was slung out many times over the years, each time full of childish hope but always ending up back there starving and desperate.

I endured spells at orphanages around the city which were always overcrowded and full of intense, overzealous religious discipline. I was wilful, strong and often violent so would always end up being thrown back out onto the streets of the East End to fend for myself. I was alone and poor, and would have no choice but to return to the place of my birth, the only real home I had ever known.

I did not grow up with any sense of the proper way for a young lady to act. I was without manners and grace, simply a raw and almost androgynous being, shaped by poverty and physical labour. This freed me from the conventions which ruled respectable society; the intense morals advocated by Queen Victoria and slavishly aped by the middle classes.

Spending so much of my early life in a workhouse taught me endurance. I gained mental strength beyond my years and my experiences gave me an inner steely toughness which fortified me like a rod of iron running through my very soul. I watched as other people became broken by the struggles and perpetual humiliation, shaking and weeping endlessly from the day they arrived. They were unable to accept the unpleasantness of their situation and struggled to cope with the demands of forced hard labour. But for those of us who had been born there, we bore our hardships with fortitude.

I did not see myself as a victim, or wallow in self pity, because I simply did not know of any other life.

By the time I reached puberty, my labours had provided me with a strong and powerful body, though I did remain short due to malnutrition. The skin of my hands was as hard as leather and my arms were defined and punctuated by an impressive muscle structure. My body was tight; my stomach hard as a board and every part of me was shapely and well defined.

I was very different to the other girls in my dormitory and their skinny fragile frames. But I did not consider myself in an aesthetic way and had no concern how I looked to others. Notions such as beauty were absent from my life. However, the increasing attention from the promoted male inmates and the lecherous school master became difficult to ignore. Equally difficult to ignore was the new swell of my breasts which our basic uniform did nothing to disguise.

Other attributes also started to set me apart as I became older. My facial features sharpened and my complexion was flawless despite being darkened by years of outdoor labours and street life. I had striking icy blue eyes, their colour a perfect contrast to my deep red hair. My cheek bones were high and my lips had developed into a perfect Cupid’s bow.

An abundance of deep mahogany red hair offered me true individuality and each time it was cut it grew back thicker and stronger. Our heads were regularly shaved to prevent the spread of lice and my hair would always be the first to grow back.

It hung in perfect curls, soft, tight and luxuriously thick. Inmates and supervisors referred to me as the “Red Girl” and over the years this changed to become just Red. And so it remained for the rest of my life. I have held on to it in defiance, because a name can suggest so much about a person and I have always wished to remain impossible to classify.

My name has given me individuality and growing up as I did in such a world of banality, individuality has remained a luxury to me.

Once the girls in the workhouse began to develop into young women, around twelve or thirteen, it was common practise for physical abuse and torment by those in charge of us to begin.

There was nothing that could be done to escape this inevitable fate. The workhouse had powers to detain orphans if it was agreed to be in their best interests and punishments for disobedience were harsh and violent.

So, routinely, girls would be dragged from their beds into the shadows at night and horrible, frantic screams would penetrate the musty air of the dormitories. Then they would be returned to their beds shaken and battered. Their fragile bodies would be littered with bruises incurred by their understandable attempts at resistance.

I watched all this occur wearily from a very young age accepting the inevitability of my own fate without really understanding what exactly it was the young girls were being forced to endure. I was such a strong and brave child, always believing that I would cope better than those around me in any situation. When my own turn came, it was a more decisive turning point than I had ever imagined.

I remember everything about the night it happened. I had fallen onto my shared mattress in the dormitory exhausted from my day spent spinning wool and winding Bengal raw silk, so tired that my whole body ached. Sleep consumed me immediately.

In my dreams I felt a floating sensation, a sense of being lifted. I woke suddenly and became aware that the sense of motion I felt was not a dream at all. I opened my eyes and panicked when I realised that I was being carried by the school master down a dimly lit corridor. He was holding me firmly and tightened his grip as he felt me start to struggle. He smelt terribly of sweat and alcohol.

Then a light began to illuminate the end of the corridor in front of us. The master stopped, panting from his exertions and anxiety.

Into the little circle of light stepped a pale and lanky young boy, carrying a lantern. He was at least a year younger than me but clearly of a weaker constitution. He was naked except for tattered shorts and his ribs protruded prominently from his meagre frame. I squinted through the gloom to see his skeletal face and recognised him from the school room.

I was a very solitary person in the house, trusting no-one, and existed without friends. I did not interfere in the business of others and certainly did not invite people to interfere in mine. One day, however, I had felt overwhelmingly compelled to intervene when the school master dragged a boy to the front of the school room, pulled up his shirt and flogged him violently with a birch stick until his skin cracked and blood poured over his back.

Though I had seen similar violence before and been a victim myself on several occasions, the fragility of the boy and his frightened face wet with tears made me rise from my bench at the back of the room in revulsion. To watch such a powerful, strong adult man abuse a boy in this way seemed to represent all the inequalities in our existence.

The rest of the class just watched, passive observers who had become used to such acts. Workhouse life, the routine and rules, all cast a spell of apathy over its inmates. But in those seconds I momentarily broke free. The boy’s huge frightened eyes caught my own, such a look of fear that I simply had to act.

I rushed at the master with the strength and courage of someone twice my age. Shocked gasps rose from the class behind me as I jumped onto him and grabbed his arm which was holding the stick.

He furiously tried to shake me off but I was determined. I sank my teeth into his arm so hard that I could taste his blood. He dropped his weapon screaming with pain and the young boy fled the room in fear.

The master was finally able to shake me off and I fell to the floor. In his humiliation and pain, he booted me in the stomach and disappeared from the room. The class dispersed amid shocked whispering voices, leaving me lying upon the stone floor.

Timidly, once everyone had gone, the little boy I had saved cautiously returned. He saw me lying there, holding my belly and rushed over to try to help me stand. He was still shaking, his bony little back covered in blood. I brushed him aside impatiently and got to my feet.

“Thank you,” he said, offering out his hand. “I’m Jude.”

Such warmth was alien to me and I was unsure how to respond.

“Red,” I replied curtly.

An awkward silence followed until I walked hurriedly from the room uneasy with such pleasantries.

Now, a year or so later, here stood the same child watching as I was held in the arms of the man who had beaten him so violently.

Jude dropped his lantern when he recognised us and the candle went out, plunging us into darkness. He rushed at the master, punching him and pleading with him to let me go.

“Stop it!” I cried down to him, “I don’t need your help.”

But my protests were in vain.

The master began to laugh and simply tightened his grip around me. He kicked Jude aside, though the determined little boy continued to fight.