Chapter Text
A long road ahead.
The road young John Thornton came from, leaving Milton behind.
Whitechapel street, downtrodden and narrow, was the beginning and end of it all. It was the very passage of the abyss; enter through it once and one could see deprivation and devastation of all amounts, otherwise hidden from refined gentlemanly circles of England, that would make one’s stomach flip over and puke.
It had been four months since his father died. The only thing John, his mother and sister held on to anything that even vaguely connected them to the man was his name- Thornton . For the past four months, his brain had almost stopped clogging and storing memories- the last vivid one being the scene when the debtors were mentally putting a price tag on every single commodity in his home in Milton. His mother and sister were hunched up on a settee, eyes down on the floor. Fanny had no idea what was going on as she stood clinging to her doll.
But mother knew. She always knew.
The transition from Milton to Ardwick- Whitechapel, and from being a lad to a man overnight, was a smooth one, or so it seemed. It was simple, because John and his mother hardly spoke of the tragedy that befell upon them. To be honest, he was thankful for that. As for Fanny, she regarded it as just another tour to the countryside.
The room they rented was musty and damp, emanating a staunch smell in every nook and cranny. It was more like an attic. The cramped living quarters were similar to the shrunk minds of their own. The stench and heat was unbearable, and it would be only some time when Fanny would start to grapple and wail, just as the innumerable other babies in the region. The cold air stung bitterly and it made the bones wobble. The thin blankets did nothing to quell the shiver. No day passed by without hearing the neighbors arguing over less food and drink. The dirty, unclean water was the biggest foe of all. No amount of filter could alleviate the impurity and mild stench from it. Somewhere a man beat his wife and children, while in some other place, women fight over men and money.
They get to hear every disgusting insult, and they hear it in silence.
When one opens the battered door, anyone and everyone can peek inside. The neighbors gazed with imperturbable faces, mindful of the starving souls perched within each cramped closet. They lived in a place where nothing was private, not even their thoughts. Where boys and girls, men and women lived like automatons, mindless and rickety, interested in nothing but a plate of food, money, greed and most inevitably– bodies of the opposite sex. And god knows, John thought, if they will ever get out of this hellhole.
Exit the lodgings, and it was all but a dilapidated maze of hunger, greed, lust, and sloth. It was a terrible sight of poverty and misery. For someone who never ventured anywhere except Milton and Oxford, John was shown a crust of another side of earth. At first, it pulled a disgust on his handsomely refined face. His neighbors and the young men of his age would laugh and snigger. Now they hardly bothered him, as he was nothing different from them.
Whitechapel was not just home to the deprived English but also the Jewish, Russian, Irish, and the Germans. They were equally devastated as everyone and often John could hear stories of the world from them. He heard them talk of politics, governments, leaders, economy, and subjects fit to be talked in hushed groups. He gathered every insight cautiously. He pondered over how despite the existence of different nationalities and nations in the world, the struggle of survival was innately common and inevitable everywhere.
What infuriated John often was the absolute stone-like silence his mother expressed. Her indifference was more stifling to John than the claustrophobic existence in the garret they live in. He often wondered if she cried at all, for he knew well she was not a human used to displaying emotions of any kind- neither love nor fondness to her children or her husband. He questioned how a jovial, affectionate man like George Thornton loved his loveless wife. Part of his death was for the very sake of gaining his wife’s affection and drown he did in debt to buy her extraordinary jewels and stylish displays of wealth. It was idiocy at its peak, for his mother never cared for them but the man nevertheless went ahead to all extents of satisfying his wife and children. Why didn’t she, even once, tell him that she never wished for what he bought her? That would have saved a world of misery on both ends.
And despite it all, when John reached home after the day’s work, he told himself that she and Fanny did not deserve to live in such a precarious situation. His sister was still young but for his mother to stay firm despite the sorrows must be tougher. He was aware that it hurt his mother to see her son toil like a laborer, in ragged clothes. He denied a portion of stew his mother gave him, and kept it on Fanny’s plate. Her dirty face brightening in a grin was enough to subjugate any exhaustion and hunger he felt. The stale and cold tea was more than enough for him to stay vigilant of their conditions.
His first month as a draper's assistant for Mr. Arkwright was distinctly strenuous. It took him no time to mend his body for hard work. But it took him copious amounts of time and pride to overcome the ridicule and snark looks from people who saw men unsuitable for such a labor. It felt terribly out of place for him to stand amidst an extensive amount of feminine clothing at times. Men and women equally looked down upon those who offered their service for an almost exclusively female clientele. Nevertheless, the profession was capital and worthy for obtaining knowledge of goods. His employment connected him to the affluent merchants and laborers alike. He learnt the knacks of business and enterprise and found his interests growing vividly due to his observant and intrigued nature.
It took his inexperienced, polished mind to realize that male drapers were often regarded with effeminate concerns and dandyish looks. Often at times, a few women would purposely ask him to explain the feminine wares and revel in laughter hearing him talk of fabrics and colors. Their looks evoked disgust in John, as if embering beyond the threadbare rags he wore and looking deep within his naked physiognomy. At times, women would use their bodies as mannequins to place fabrics and compare tastes, and if by chance their fingers brushed our bodies inappropriately, they managed to apologize. There was absolutely no point in whining about it either, because either John was told to be a man enough and revel in the few moments of lust or get used to it in the name of penury.
Part of his work was to unfold the fabrics for the customers to judge and refold it again and place them neatly from the shelves they were picked from. He had to measure, roll and block the fabrics based on a myriad of factors like color, size, and purpose. This required a concentrated effort as John’s employer was never happy if he found creases and folds. Anyone other than a draper would never know how tough it was to fold the silk and satin sheets which always went haywire, how one’s arms became numb for half a day after folding and packing heavy blankets. The hatred John had for those customers who made them unfold almost every fabric in the entire shop only to leave empty handed, leaving him and his peers to go home only after every fabric was neatly folded and placed, was immense.
Sometimes, his feet often took him to places he had no inclination to walk to in the first place. For quite some time, he thought that the taverns were the most insufferable part of the region. The sheer stench and disgust of ale, beer, and rotting meat completed the picture of misery pretty well. He shivered to even venture to that place, for once the drunken men tried to pull him by the rags he had worn and shove the filthy liquid down his throat.
“Ye dratted arse, get used to it, ale ain’t kickin’ enuff when ye stay all sobered up.”
He did make a clever escape, his lanky legs taking him as far as they could, away from the dungeon. But then, he only reached another- a more decayed pit of penury- the bawdy houses. That’s where the dollymops* lived.
While the men had several options to choose work from, either as porters, sellers, drapers, offloaders, the women had fewer options. They worked as seamstresses, washers, or weavers mostly. It hardly gave them the shillings to feed their childer, so out of sheer poverty, they turned to one of the world’s oldest occupations- prostitution. It became an everyday affair to hear a woman’s name being gossipped, who must have turned from a weaver into a prostitute.
This part of Whitechapel was deprived at its peak. It was an evil incarnate with all sorts of unmentionable crimes and salacity involved. John was not one who was well-versed in matters vulgar and lustful, but the sights of whores and men loitering around in unfitting poses and situations irked every last thread of composure in him. He didn’t know how but somehow he was being led astray from carnal and lustful desires, not meaning that he had no knowledge of them at all, for even the sophisticated rich circles of Oxford talked of it. He knew that it would be in the world as constant as man himself; in cultured and civilized places as well as the utterly undeveloped and miserable. Some of his own mates frequented this lane of Whitechapel. Just as the drunkards, these chaps would meddle and try dragging him to indulge in the erotic fantasies.
John was not entirely ignorant of such desires. His curiosity was piqued as always, more so now, due to the lack of actual learning, when it was his mind which asked questions as well as found its own answers. He often wondered about bodies of women, what changed them from their male counterparts, the excessive flesh in places as against the flatness and angularity in bodies of men. He often wondered of the dark and forbidden places between the legs of women and what possible pleasures they beheld.
And finally one day, his inquisitive mind took him to the very place he detested. The chaps hauled taunts and stunned looks when they saw him there. Their looks unnerved John and a sheer amount of disgust bubbled inside him to be equated as similar to them.
And it only dwindled further, when on that day, he lost something, never to be gained back again, and also gained something, never to lose it again.
As he entered the establishment, masking his lack of experience and trepidation, something inside him dropped. His mouth was agape from the lewd sights he was thrust upon.
In every room was a woman glued to a man, some unbothered to do their deeds in the privacy of locked doors. There were beautiful women, and through the creaks in walls and the curtains John could see that they wore no or little clothing to hide their flesh. A few laid in tumbled beds with creased sheets and gazed back at the men with giddy eyes. He was not able to figure out if they were doing it with as much interest as the men. Their legs were apart, with men in between. A few others were pinned to the walls or so it seemed, their bodies tumbling as they were filled with animal-like pleasure. Their mouths were in places John seldom fathomed before. It was excruciatingly vulgar, sadistic, and sordid.
He saw that the men in the place however, were not just the poor. No, a few were dressed like gentlemen, a few wore uniforms, a few wore rags like himself. It was then that he realized that money, class, and stature could differ amidst humans in the world, but desires, a certain amount of them especially, were equal and same in all.
And in no time, he had garnered the attention of the mistress of the establishment, who was an old hag. Perhaps, she was youthful in her days, John surmised. She motioned him to a dark, ill-lit room, asking him to wait. By the time his numb mind and legs evoked their sensation, a lady dressed seductively entered and closed the door. She was older than him, probably one and twenty. Her face was weary but bore a disposition of determination. To her, John was just another customer.
It was at that moment, when she was half undressed, that John saw that she was indeed beautiful. He pushed the thought of the age difference behind his mind. She started to wriggle out of her attire when he saw a wedding ring on her finger. It puzzled him. He wasn’t able to hide his confusion and blurted out the question-
“Are you a married woman?”
She looked up with a questioning look on her face.
“Yes. Does my ring bother you? Well, never mind, I shall remove it.”
She removed it and placed it on a small teapoy beside the table. She continued undressing further till she was naked.
“Are you going to gawk till sunset or undress?”
While John had been curious of the act till he stepped inside the establishment, the actual reality petrified him to the core. He was close to becoming enlightened of every question his mind had conjured. He knew that it was common for men to seek pleasure wherever they ought but the very act to be done by him, to a married woman nonetheless, repulsed John more than he thought.
“I am sorry, I… I cannot...”
Now it was her turn to gawk at the raw-boned young man, almost ridiculing him just as the chaps did often.
“Why not? You did come here after all.”
“I don’t know. Yes, I did.”
“Do you wish for a virgin? I can ask the ma’am if you want—”
“No. I never ever had done this bef–”
He stopped his words before he exposed himself to further ridicule in front of a woman.
“Oh.”
“I am sorry, I cannot do it. Not to a virgin, not to a married one, not to anyone who’s not… who’s not– “
“Who’s not meant for you, you mean?”
“That’s one way of saying it. Yes.”
“Hmm. Do you wish to go away?”
“Yes.”
She stood silent before drifting off into the darkness to pick up her scattered clothing. John turned away, not knowing how or even why he led himself here in the first place.
Just then, he heard the wallowing cry of a baby from a distance. She heard it too. She immediately opened the window a little and peaked out, agitated.
“My baby.”
“You have a child?”
“Yes. Can you stay here for a while’? The ma’am will beat me if you exit as soon as you came, thinking something's wrong with me. She won't let me feed my child.”
“How did you end up here?” he asked.
She took some time to collect herself and began to speak.
“I am from Ireland. I belonged to the gentry but my husband was of low birth. My family threw me out. He found work here in his uncle’s business, we had a child, all went well, until he died of typhus. His uncle said I can take his place. For a few weeks, all went well, I had a roof over my head, and enough money to feed my child. But one day, the man brought me here. I didn’t understand what place it was, what happened here. He sold me and my baby girl to the ma’am you saw outside in return for money to clear his debts.”
To say that John was aghast was not enough. It was the most pitiable thing he had ever been forced to hear.
“I want it to end with me. I won’t let my child become what I was led to be.”
She whispered to herself, but with a firm resolve, like taking a vow.
They sat in silence for a while, he on the bed and she on the floor with her knees gathered to her chest. After a while, she stood and came towards John. She disheveled his hair and rumpled his clothes a little. She opened up a few buttons of his ragged jacket.
“Now, you can leave. Don’t utter a word to anyone.”
John pilfered his pockets for a few shillings and held it out to her. She saw them with an air of indifference. He wondered if she thought they were less but at that moment, it was all he had in his pocket.
“I think you need it more than I do. Besides, I was of no service to you.”
He stood nonplussed, tears accumulating in his eyes.
“You will be one good chap. No man ever left this place without bedding a woman. Don’t let that embarrass you. You will find some lucky woman for yourself some day.”
He didn’t leave. He couldn’t.
“Go. Just go. Don’t turn back here ever. May god be with you.”
All color left John’s face. He cast one last look on her bonny face and left, his head hung low. He was drastically unsettled, troubled and felt forsaken. Here was a woman, a mother, who was sold to fend for herself and her baby by offering her body to men, while he practically thought that his circumstances were dire than any other human. As he went down the stairs, the image of his mother with Fanny sprang up to his mind. He would sell even his last bit of clothing, and even his life to keep them away from such adversity. The very thought of it made his heart beat hard. How loathsome it was! He wondered how filthy the human heart could be. The feelings of remorse he had over his father died slowly and in its place, an intense, stabbing repulsion took hold over himself.
He walked along the dirty pavements on his way home. This time, the stench didn’t bother him, neither did the awful scenes of misery. He was walking by the tavern. This time, the drunkards who had previously mocked and abused him hardly bothered shoving the burning liquid down his mouth. For the first time, he did not find it difficult to walk unnoticed.
He was finally a mile away from home.
He looked at the long road ahead for one last time.
A sudden obstinate determination coursed through his veins. He vowed to bring himself and the family out of this dreadful poverty and back to where they rightfully belonged- Milton. He decided that it would be a race of survival and he shall pay whatever price it costs. He shall toil hard, abstain from every self-indulgence, and pay back every penny his father owed to his debtors, and make something out of himself. He shall one day quit this place from this very road and never once turn back.
Gazing at the darkness, he saw himself as a human of renewed will and purpose. His eyes stung of anguish, motivation, and zeal.