time you must keep your promise.’
‘I surely will, sir,’ she’d pledged.
Her promise proved damned difficult to keep. Although her former life as a lady’s maid was barely a year in the past, she seemed to have lost the knack of keeping in mind, during the routine activities of an average day, any responsibility that was not immediately obvious. Once upon a time, she’d been able to help her mistress plan a dinner party or sew a dress while not forgetting that at precisely five o’clock, she must remind her of some other thing. How extraordinary, to have been so disciplined! Nowadays, she could scarcely remember which services a customer had paid for, and often suspected that a man was helping himself to something extra.
As for this affair with the fingernail, it was torture. Ten, twenty times a day she would find the nail between her lips, just about to be gnawed off by her small white teeth. With a grunt of annoyance she would pull her hand away. Ten, twenty times a day, she would be vaguely, uneasily aware that one of her nails was ill-matched to the other nine, and wonder why. Oh yes: Mr Heaton.
Who would’ve thought that a slightly longer middle fingernail could be such a bother? It was nothing spectacular to look at, perhaps half an inch in extra length. Yet it caught on the fabric of her bodice, dug into the flesh of her neck when she was buttoning up her collar, scratched her cheek when she raised her hand to fiddle with the curls of her fringe. The normally snug fit of her glove was ruined. Half an inch of nail, and it might as well be a beastly talon!
After a day’s work (Clara preferred to do her business during the day and sleep at night) she would retire to her room in Mrs Porter’s lodging-house, and pay Mrs Porter’s maid-of-all-work to fill a bath, and then she would soak in the warm water until her hands went soft and dimpled. And the nail would become pliable, so pliable she could bend it against the tip of her finger. If she were to put it between her teeth, she knew it would tear away without the least resistance, and would taste of nothing at all, and she could swallow it, or spit it out if she wished. She sucked the nail, took it between her teeth the way some men took her nipple, but left it intact. God damn Mr Heaton! How much longer would he plague her?
Each week he came to her at the corner of Great White Lion and Dudley Street, noted approvingly the growth of the nail, and gave her a shilling. Each week she resolved to tell him that she wanted no more shillings from him, that the length of her nail was too inconvenient. Each week she lost her nerve. Mr Heaton was so manifestly pleased with her for obeying him, and Clara couldn’t help feeling a matchstick glow of childish pride at having met his expectations.
Men were not often pleased with Clara. She wasn’t likeable or charming or even especially polite. She offered her body with bad grace, stated her prices matter-of-factly, didn’t pretend to experience transports of joy when some red-faced fool was squirming against her. She scorned compliments; when one of her first customers told her she had the prettiest breasts he’d ever seen, she would probably have slapped him, had she not been attached to him at an awkward angle just then. The honeyed compliments of men always led to a slick of viscous liquid that would soil her clothing and need to be wiped away.
Mr Heaton, however, had not yet laid a hand on her. His shilling was by far the easiest earnings of her week; she got it in thirty seconds flat. Clara wondered if he was a eunuch. His limping gait, the scars on his face … perhaps these were signs of a more serious injury. Clara disliked sick animals and her instincts told her to keep well away from such things. But Jesus Christ almighty: a shilling in thirty seconds, without a hand laid on her! She couldn’t justify rejecting such an offer, especially when other customers wasted hours of her time, haggled over prices, inflicted bruises on her flesh, made her itch. Each time she felt annoyed with Mr Heaton, she reminded herself that she’d had one, two, three, four, five, six shillings from him, for doing nothing. If she kept this lark up for twelve weeks, her accrued capital (ignoring for a moment that she spent each shilling as soon as she got it) would be a pound. A pound just for resisting the impulse to chew a fingernail! That couldn’t be a bad thing, could it?
But then she discovered the catch. Last week, she’d found out something about her crippled benefactor that transformed him from ‘Mr Heaton’ into ‘the Rat Man’.
They met in the street as usual. Passersby squinted in bemusement and distaste as she ungloved her right hand and allowed him to inspect her middle finger. Her nail was ever-so-slightly chipped, where she’d caught it on a brick wall while servicing a customer in a hurry, but it was long, and Mr Heaton nodded in satisfaction.
‘Would you like to earn five shillings at a stroke?’ he asked her, as she was tugging her glove back on.
She regarded him suspiciously. Was he going to ask her to allow four more of her nails to grow? This seemed the most obvious next proposal.
Instead, he said:
‘I want you to accompany me to a sporting event.’
‘I don’t understand much about sport, sir,’ she’d replied.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ he assured her. ‘Nobody would expect anything of you. All eyes will be on the action.’
‘Yours too?’
‘Mine too.’
‘Then what use would I be to you, sir?’
He leaned in closer to her, closer than he’d ever ventured before. A respectable, fashionable mother, passing at that moment with her infant daughter toddling along beside, shielded the child’s face and hurried her along the footpath, so shocking was this public display of intimacy. The sparse beard on Mr Heaton’s chin almost brushed the shoulder of Clara’s dress as he spoke low into her ear.
‘The sporting event I have in mind is pit ratting. A publican of my acquaintance hosts a rat pit in Southwark on the last Thursday of every month. The next one is next week.’
‘I don’t like rats, sir.’
‘You don’t have to like rats. They come to a bad end, anyway, and swiftly. Dogs dispatch them with lightning speed.’
‘I don’t like dogs neither, sir.’
He winced, and his expression became somewhat supplicatory.
‘Oh, don’t say that. There will be two dogs there on Thursday. One of them is my own. Robbie is his name. He’s the most beautiful dog; a handsomer dog never walked the earth. His coat is smoother than sable.’
‘I won’t have to do nothing with the dog, I hope, sir?’
‘You can admire his skill. Or not, as you please. Your business will be with me.’
‘And what business will that be, sir?’
‘Nothing you won’t have done before.’
‘I was a respectable woman until this year, sir. There’s many things I’ve never done.’
‘Even so …’ He inclined his head and smiled a weary smile, as if to imply that any whore worth a pinch of salt would have this particular trick in her repertoire.
An alarming thought entered Clara’s head.
‘I won’t have to … do it with you in front of the other people in the public house, will I?’
‘Of course not,’ he said, in gruff exasperation. ‘We will simply watch the rat-catching
