William Monk 16 - Execution Dock

forfeit Ruby's faith in her, and that burning admiration. “Thank you,” Claudine said again. “You are a loyal and excellent ally.”
    Ruby beamed with pleasure, but she was too thrilled to speak.
    Naturally Claudine did not go until it was dusk, when she had far greater chance of being unrecognized. Even so, she walked with herhead down, shuffling a little in unfamiliar and extremely uncomfortable boots. She must have looked dreadful. Her hair was greased with oil from the kitchen, the smell of which she found distasteful, like a stale pan. Her face was carefully smeared with grime, similarly her hands and as much of her neck as showed. She had an old shawl around her, and was glad to hold it tight, not for warmth, because the evening was mild, but to conceal as much of herself as she could. She carried a light tray that would be hung around her neck on a string, and a bag full of matchboxes to sell. She also had about one and sixpence worth of change, mostly in pennies and halfpennies. Ruby had told her that more would be suspicious.
    She began on the dockside beyond Wapping and walked slowly until she found a corner between a good tobacconist and a public house, then stood there with the tray resting just below her bosom and felt as conspicuous as a squashed fly on a white wall, and about as useful.
    She also felt afraid. As darkness settled she could see only the short stretches under the street lamps clearly, or wedges of broken pavement where light spilled out a window, or a suddenly opened door. There was noise all around. In the distance dogs were barking above the clatter of hooves from the traffic on the busy cross street seventy yards away. Closer to her people were shouting, and above it was the occasional burst of laughter.
    She was ridiculously grateful when someone bought matches, and actually spoke to her. Just that they had seen her and acknowledged her as a human being broke the loneliness that had hardened around her like imprisoning glass. She smiled, and then with a shock of shame remembered that Ruby had also blackened two of her teeth. She said they were beautiful, far too even and white for the sort of woman she was pretending to be.
    What was even stranger and more disconcerting was that the man did not even notice. He took her for exactly what she was pretending to be, a street woman too old and too plain to be a whore, but still needing to earn perhaps a shilling or two, standing alone in the night on a street corner selling matches, mild or freezing, wet or dry. Shewas relieved, but oddly
“puzzled
also. Was that really the only difference, clothes and a little dirt, the way she carried her head, whether she dared meet his eyes or not?
    She could stand here all night, and those who were sorry for her might buy matches, but she would learn nothing. She needed to move closer to the shops that sold books and periodicals, tobacco, the sort of things a man would buy without arousing any interest or comment. Ruby had told her where they were, and what they were like. Maybe she should be closer to Jericho Phillips's boat? She wanted to catch his trade in particular. Maybe it was like most other trades; people had their own areas. One did not trespass. Certainly she was growing cold and stiff here, and achieving nothing except a little practice.
    She began to walk back towards the river and the stretch half a mile or so to the south of Execution Dock. That was one of the places where Phillips had been known to moor his boat. Another was further south again, on the Limehouse Reach. There was another where the curve of the Isle of Dogs bends back to the Blackwall Reach, opposite the Bugsby Marshes. Too far for rich men to go for their pleasures, and certainly a less profitable place to sell books and pictures. Was she being intelligent? Or merely too stupid to know just how stupid she was? Wallace would have said the latter, if he were not too apoplectic with rage to say anything at all. She could not bear for him to be right; that would be almost as bad as letting Ruby down.
    She kept walking. It was late and completely dark now. How long did shops stay open? Buying pornographic photographs of little boys was surely not a daytime occupation? At this time of the year maybe they stayed open all night? Perhaps people went to such places after the theater? The most obvious of all would be after visiting Jericho Phillips's boat.
    That was her best chance, to go towards the river and the alleys