Mad Alice Lane

Chapter Ten

Alice

Although spacious, and dramatically more so than our home in Bedern, the house off Low Petergate was just as grime-filled as I had expected, and yet it was a welcome distraction from my new circumstances.

Thomas, my husband, was everything I knew him to be: overweight, lecherous and foul smelling. Despite the baby in my belly, he took his marital rights nightly, lying on top of me and thrusting away with grunts and sweat dripping off his forehead into my eyes. The comparison with Samuel was so strong it almost hurt.

Every morning I awoke sore and bruised as he rolled out from beneath the sheets that no amount of scrubbing in the copper tub in the kitchen had managed to bring back to their original colour. I determined to try again that day. The thought of spending one more night encased in their filth-ridden depths was more than I could bear. It brought bile to my mouth, and with Thomas lumbering downstairs in his nightshirt; I reached for the chamber pot and threw up. The sickness had started in earnest. I had hoped it would deter my husband, but not so.

A rich man in comparison to us, although nothing to the Tukes, he had an apprentice who let himself into the house early, stoked up the fires and made everything ready for his master. Most of downstairs was given over to the workshop, apart from the kitchen, out of necessity.

The smell of freshly tanned leather permeated every inch. I had once thought, sniffing the rich covers of a leather-bound book, that it was one I loved, but I soon discovered that newly tanned leather left a lot to be desired.

Both fortunately, and tragically, the smell in the house disappeared from my nostrils after I'd been there for a few weeks. I imagined I was beginning to leave a trail of stench just as my husband did. I came to fear leaving the house for the knowledge that upon entering it, with fresh air behind me, a wall of rank odour so thick would hit me, causing me to run for the nearest pot and gag.

Daily, I set the copper tub above the hearth and brought water to bubbling heat. All the fabric I could find in the house was plunged within, and utilising every trick my ma ever taught me, most abandoned until a few weeks ago, I scrubbed away with all my might.

Mid-summer, pegging everything outside saw it dry before night fell. Everything was put back in its place, and the whole process began a-new on the morrow. My hands were more cracked than ever, and each night, I rubbed fat into them before my husband's onslaught.

That day, I started my routine as usual, with the water bubbling away. I'd already managed to clean the house from attic to cellar but somehow it seemed to attract dirt. Nothing seemed to come clean enough. I supposed after Lawrence Street, it never would.

Rags in hand, I ascended the rickety wooden stairs and made the lead mullioned windows my first port of call. Considering the money he made, Thomas could well have afforded to get a woman in daily, but I was glad for his miserliness. I've always found cleaning to be soothing, of sorts. I used to think that wiping away the dirt to reveal the clean surface beneath had a symbolic quality, but I'm struggling to believe that in my life. There is too much filth that accumulates daily. You can never be wiped clean again, not wholly.

I tried to not think about Lawrence Street, but it was only natural to compare the two, or, in fact, the three, as my home in Bedern couldn't escape my thoughts either. To walk into the Tukes house was to walk into another world, even the servants' quarters were markedly better. I'd never much thought about the grandeur of the interior, apart from when I first saw it all, but then, as I slogged over grimy windows and greasy floorboards, I'd envision the whole house as complete as I could.

Visitors would enter the hall off the street magnificently paved in cream and black marble with pale blue walls to welcome them. Stuccoed doorways in brilliant white, dark oak and mahogany furniture, including an imposing grandfather clock, and a tantalising peek of a grand staircase beyond carpeted in thick red with metal runners, a sturdy wooden handrail and an intricate metalwork side would keep their eyes occupied as they were led into the morning room or library.