As the carriage approached the docklands, the stench got worse. Holding a handkerchief to her nose, Lavinia felt nauseated. She was terrified about what she might come upon. What kind of debauchery did Meredith Murphy live in? Was it possible the woman could be her mother—a creature so profoundly different from the imagined companion who had been her solace all these years?
Finally the coach pulled into a long street filled with terrace houses end to end. Unlike the rest of the sleeping city, however, the houses here were blazing with light. Over each door hung the sign of a brothel. The hansom cab driver gruffly informed her that this was the correct address, and then, after the tip of a florin
, reluctantly promised to wait for her.
Determined not to show her growing apprehension, Lavinia stepped down, skirts held high to avoid the thin stream of raw sewage that floated past. She ignored the wolf whistles from the street workers who clustered under the gaslights calling out for gin or rent money.
Lavinia pushed open the wrought-iron gate and climbed the steps to the door, which was painted a lurid green. A brass knocker cast in the shape of a lascivious mermaid hung in the centre beneath a brass plaque, scratched and defaced, which read: Meredith Murphy’s School for Wayward Young Ladies. We cater for the discerning gentleman. Underneath was nailed a piece of board with Ready Gilt. Tick Being No Go scrawled upon it.
Before Lavinia had a chance to use the brass knocker, the door swung open. A young boy of ten years or so, dressed incongruously in an oversized sailor’s tunic and trousers rolled to the knees to fit, squinted at her suspiciously then looked down at her expensive and now dung-splattered boots.
‘Our souls don’t need saving. Mrs Murphy reckons we’re all living in ’eaven here anyways,’ he declared before slamming the door shut.
Undaunted, Lavinia lifted the brass knocker and banged it against the heavy wood. A second later the boy opened the door again.
‘I am no evangelist, young man. I am here to see Mrs Meredith Murphy. I assume she still lives here?’
‘Lives ’ere? She owns the bleedin’ joint.’
Lavinia followed the boy into the hallway. Some of the doors along it were ajar, and a couple of prostitutes, flushed and with tousled hair, peered out to see the cause of the commotion. A well-dressed portly man in his sixties, sitting in a chair against a wall, immediately hid his embarrassed face behind a ha’penny rag upon seeing Lavinia.
Whistling, the boy escorted her to the foot of a narrow staircase that ascended steeply into darkness.
‘Mrs Murphy,’ he squawked, ‘you got a visitor! Well-heeled and all posh at the mouth!’
Behind Lavinia, one of the girls, no older than fifteen, half-naked, her blonde hair a frizzy dishevelled cloud, her eyes two black smudges above rouged cheeks, broke into a hacking cough. The low murmuring of a man’s voice responded. Shrugging with resignation, the prostitute turned back into the room.
The boy swung around. ‘Tuesday ain’t a good day for Mrs Murphy. Ghost day, she calls it—takes a lot of gin to exorcise them spirits, she reckons. Speakin’ of which, madam, would you care for a dram? We always offer our gentlemen customers one.’
Lavinia shook her head and again the boy shouted up the stairs. Finally, there came the slam of a distant door and the creaking of floorboards. A melodious voice sounded out from the dark. ‘A visitor, you say?’
Lavinia’s heart leapt; the accent was unmistakable.
‘Well, if he ain’t paying and he doesn’t want one of my girls, I don’t care how posh he might be, he can feck off back to Gleann Cholm Cille for all I care!’
‘I am not here for any business, Mrs Murphy, but I think you will want to meet with me,’ Lavinia called up, cautioning the boy with one gloved hand.
A walking cane emerged from the shadows, followed by the nebulous outline of a woman. A pile of hennaed hair swept up in a bouffant crowned a face whose past attractions appeared ravaged by drink and misery. The nose, once aquiline, now showed the bulbous tip of the alcoholic; the large dark blue eyes were besieged by wrinkles and the mouth hung slack. The woman appeared to be in her late forties, although Lavinia suspected she might be younger. Leaning heavily on the walking stick, the proprietress descended the stairs. Catching sight of Lavinia, she paused, staring hard.
‘Sweet Jesus.’
She dropped her walking cane, which clattered noisily down the stairs before her like an omen portending bad news. The boy rushed to hand it back, bowing obsequiously.
‘Mother?’ Lavinia murmured, looking into the eyes she recognised as her own. Feeling faint, she steadied herself against the wall.
‘Bartholomew!’ Meredith Murphy barked at the boy. ‘Unlock the front parlour and bring me a bottle of gin!’ Swinging back to Lavinia, she turned the corners of her mouth up into the semblance of a smile, revealing several missing teeth. ‘I believe we have an occasion.’
The parlour was a dingy, stuffy room holding a small velvet chaise longue that had seen better days and two armchairs. Bartholomew had stoked the fire until it was roaring. Lavinia, mindful of fleas, sat on the edge of her chair, an untouched grimy glass of gin sitting before her on an upturned travelling trunk (still marked Rosshare, Ireland) that served as a table.
‘’Tis a miracle—I look at you and I see myself. I wasn’t much younger than you when I gave birth.’ Sighing, Meredith Murphy lifted her second glass of gin and drained it.
‘If you’re imagining an apology or some such sentimental whimsy, you can forget it,’ a sudden cough broke the gravelly alto of her voice. ‘I left Anascaul and that sanctimonious misanthrope who begot you because I wanted to, and I have never felt the slightest regret. Oh, do not misunderstand me, I loved him—the cockeyed affection of a muddle-headed girl, but it were love. Then after you were born, the fighting began. The bloodiest fisticuffs that ever happened behind drawn curtains. Your father grew too ashamed even to give the Sunday sermon. Oh, it was a terrible time.’
‘I cannot believe my father struck you.’
Meredith Murphy burst into a fit of growling laughter that threw her back against the ancient cushions. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she straightened herself. ‘It weren’t him, darlin’, it were me! Temper of a banshee. I had to leave. There were times I believed I might have even harmed you, poor wee bairn that you were. You know that scar your father has, on his left cheek?’
Horrified, Lavinia nodded.