The Petticoat Men Read Online Free PDF

everybody knew that. She had her glory days when our Pa was alive and they both worked in the theatre, this was before he got sick, and me and Billy were round theatres all the time, we even actually lived for a while in rooms right at the top of the Drury Lane Theatre and dropped plums on people going past way down below. (Billy was eight and I was three and I remember clearly that Billy told me that when the plums hit the hats they were going as fast as a train. Billy knew everything, even then.) Those were good days. Then the days weren’t so good, but finally Ma got 13 Wakefield-street from Mr Rowbottom who was sort of like our stepfather when our Pa died. And now we run this lodging-house, mostly salesmen from the North stay here.
    ‘But what are they actually charged for ?’ I asked Billy. ‘It cant be just dressing up!’
    ‘The felonious charge of conspiring to incite others to carry out an abominable offence,’ said Billy, reading it out. He looked at me.
    ‘All right, I know what that means, William Stacey, so there’s no need staring at me like I was a baby.’
    ‘Which, as I already said, since the death penalty was removed now carries a charge of ten years penal servitude or life imprisonment with hard labour. Which means the treadmill.’
    Ma and I looked at each other, really horrified. Freddie and Ernest on a treadmill ? Everyone knew what the treadmill was. A great big moving wheel going round and round for no reason and men were strapped to it and had to keep climbing its stairs to turn it and often in the end their backs broke.
    ‘But Freddie and Ernest couldn’t get life imprisonment with hard labour !’I said. ‘Dont be silly,’ but I heard my voice sounding all peculiar.
    ‘Oh God above!’ said Ma suddenly. ‘What’s this going to do for business, our address published and poor Mr Flamp paying no rent, this could send us to the workhouse!’
    Billy rolled his eyes at me and I rolled mine right back. ‘We’re all right, Ma,’ he said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘We’re all right!’ he repeated, firm, raising his voice a bit. ‘We’re nowhere near the blooming workhouse any more, you know that, Ma! Those days are over. We can perfectly well afford to look after Mr Flamp. It’s Ernest and Freddie who’s in trouble, not us.’
    For a moment she looked slightly doubtful. She was fond of them because they were – well it was fun when they were in the house, and it was so enjoyable to hear laughter and music floating down the stairs, and they used to sit and talk to Ma of fashion and costumes and quite seriously ask her advice about their gowns.
    Now Billy threw Reynolds News into a corner. ‘Ernest and Freddie aint done nothing, not really, Ma,’ he said, ‘not as far as we know. It’s not a crime to dress up as a woman that I’ve ever heard of and that’s all we’ve ever known them do, and they’ve stayed in our house for ages, off and on. Not one of the tenants ever complained, they applaud their gowns!’ He looked quite ferocious finally. Billy can be quite ferocious. Clergymen make him ferocious, and liars.
    ‘You’re right,’ said Ma, and she downed the red port. ‘I’m foolish,’ (and I saw she took a little look at me, she might be a bit deaf but she knows everything). ‘I was just upset because of our address writ in the paper, and fancy them calling Freddie and Ernest “filthy fellows” when I never knew such pleasant tenants. Well they’ll probably let them out tomorrow, dont fret, Mattie, have another port.’
    And she held out the bottle to me and still she looked at me kind of old-fashioned, as if I wasn’t a grown woman. I was still thinking, outraged, of Freddie being called a filthy fellow.
    And Billy, thinking to calm us I suppose, went on to read us all the details of a woman who died after swallowing three sovereigns and a half while running round a kitchen table and when she died a doctor opened her up and said he couldn’t find the money, but everyone