Free Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter Page B

arrived legally entitled to beggar her posthumously and, if we had not already paid for her gravestone out of the petty cash –’
    ‘– we chose “Safe Harbour” for the epitaph –’
    ‘– he’d have seen to it that good, kind, decent woman returned to the earth out of which she had been formed without so much as a pebble to mark her passage.
    ‘He couldn’t stand the sight of us sitting there, eating food he thought belonged to him. He overturned the pork pies and spilled on the carpets all Ma Nelson’s vintage port that we had broken out. Announces he, our time is up; he gives us till nine o’clock next morning, such was the goodness of his heart, to pack ourselves up, bag and baggage, and make ourselves scarce. Leave the only home we knew and go out on the common. In this way, he planned to “cleanse the temple of the ungodly”, although he was kind enough to hint that his God might smile at any of us who cared to repent and stay on, because, with a singular poetic justice, he intended to make of his inheritance a hostel for fallen girls and he thought a repentant harlot or two would come in handy about the place, poacher turned gamekeeper, you might say.’
    ‘But not one of us would take up the wardress posts he offered. No, thank you!’
    ‘After he’d departed in a growler back to his manse in Deptford, we held a council amongst ourselves as to our futures, which we foresaw would no longer be held in common. Though we grieved that this should be, yet the necessity that first united us must now drive us apart and so we bowed to necessity, as all of us must do, although the invisible bonds of affection would always knit us wherever we roamed.
    ‘But the unexpected did not find our friends altogether unprepared. You will recall how Ma Nelson knew that the days of the grand old whorehouse were numbered and always urged the members of her academy to prepare themselves for a wider world.
    ‘Louisa and Emily had formed that kind of close attachment to one another as often reconciles women of the profession to its rigours and, long before Ma Nelson passed away, had decided between them to retire early, after having saved sufficient to set themselves up in a little boarding-house in Brighton. They’d long cherished the plan and often whiled away the hours of toil, while some dirty bugger poked away at them with his incompetent instrument, by planning whether their pillowcases should be left plain or edged with lace and what wallpaper to put in the dining-rooms. Although the sudden termination of our contracts forced these resourceful girls to start out on their adventure with somewhat less capital than they could have wished, they forthwith consulted their bankbooks and vowed: nothing ventured, nothing gained, and went upstairs to pack their trunks immediately, to leave next day for the South Coast and start their search for a suitable modest property.
    ‘Annie and Grace had also set by a little store between them and now elected to pool it in order to start up a small agency for typing and office work, for Grace could rattle away on those keys of hers like the best of castanets and Annie had such a head for figures she’d been keeping Ma Nelson’s accounts straight for years. So they, too, packed up their things, and next day, would move out to lodgings and set about finding suitable premises. I’m glad to say those girls have prospered, too, sir, by dint of hard work and good management.’
    ‘But, as for our Jenny, although she was the prettiest and best-hearted harlot as ever trod Piccadilly, she had no special talent to put to work for her and never saved a penny but give it all to beggars. Her sole capital was her skin alone and what with the funeral and the eviction notice and a drop too much of Ma Nelson’s port, she fell a-weeping “What will become of me?” For she’d no heart to go it alone, after the security and companionship of the Academy. As we were comforting her and drying her