The Crimson Petal and the White Read Online Free PDF Page B

knitted scarves around their necks show signs of recent washing; and the boots on their feet are sturdy and, if not exactly shiny, no worse than dull. The majority of these men are not long out of work, and most of them are married to women who’ve not yet despaired of them. Caroline’s presence here by no means offends or surprises them; you have a very long way to go before you set foot in the kind of establishment where only men are admitted.
    ‘’Ello, Caddie,’ says the publican, raising a hairy hand glistening with beer. ‘Cock wake you?’
    ‘Never, Eppie,’ says Caroline. ‘The smell of your pies and ale.’
    The exchange is a formality, as he’s already filling a mug for her, and motioning to his wife for the pie. Of all the customers, Caroline can eat and drink on credit, because she’s the only one he can trust to pay him later. What man, whose presence in a public house at this time of day trumpets his unemployed state, can claim that though he’s penniless now, he’ll have money tonight? Caroline, since losing her virtue, has gained respect where she needs it most.
    That’s not to say she’s wise with money. Like most prostitutes, she spends her pay as soon as she’s left alone with it. Apart from meals and rent, she buys fancy cakes, drinks, chocolates, clothes sometimes, hokey-pokey in the summer, visits to warm places in the winter – taverns, music halls, freak shows, pantomimes – anything to get her out of the cold, really. Oh yes, and she buys the ingredients for her douche, and firewood and candles, and every Sunday a penny sparkler, a firework she has loved since she was a child, and which she lights in her room late at night like a Papist lighting a votive candle. None of these vices costs very much – not compared with a man’s gambling or medicines for a child – yet Caroline never saves a shilling. A reach-me-down dress, a penny sparkler, a fancy cake, a sixpenny entertainment … how can such things use up so much money? There must be other expenses, but she’s damned if she can remember what they are. Never mind: her income is liquid, so she’s never hard up for long.
    Caroline devours her pie with an unselfconscious zest she would have found difficult to tolerate in others when she was a respectable Yorkshire wife. Fork and knife are not needed for the quivering assemblage of flour, sheep ankle, ox-tail and hot gravy she cups in her palm. She chews open-mouthed, to let the cooling air in. Within minutes she’s licking her own hand.
    ‘Thanks, Eppie, that was just what I needed.’ She finishes her beer, stands up and shakes pastry crumbs off her skirts. The publican’s wife will sweep up after her, sour-faced. Caroline mimes a goodbye kiss and leaves.
    Outside, the civilised world hasn’t quite woken up yet. The shop-keepers are still laying out their wares, while thieves, bill-stickers, beggars and delivery boys look on. There are no women about except two black-shrouded flower-sellers arguing quietly over territory. The loser trundles her barrow nearer to where the dray-horses stand, her swarthy back bent almost double over her stock of dubious posies.
    Caroline isn’t used to being on so early, and feels almost intimidated by the sheer quantity of day left to be lived through. She wonders if she should offer her body to someone, to pass the time, but she knows she probably won’t bother unless the opportunity leaps into her lap. The need isn’t urgent yet. She can buy candles at her leisure. Why worry about being penniless when she can earn more in twenty minutes than she used to earn in a day?
    She knows it’s pig-laziness and moral weakness that prevent her from saving money as she ought to. The earnings of her trade could, if she’d been frugal over the years, have filled her old bonnet to bursting with bank-notes, but she’s lost the knack of frugality. With no child or immortal soul left to save, the hoarding of coins in the hope of one day exchanging them