The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman

that it appears from the outside a thoroughly condemned back alley rookery? We all know it is the inside that counts. Inside Whilky keeps a tip-top house. Mike the ferret is a championship ratter, and 9 Mill Street is one of the few boardinghouses in the East End completely (or as near to complete as an industrious ferret can make it) rat-free. It is, after its master’s taste, cheerfully and tastefully decorated. The main room sports a majestic gilt-framed Wearmouth Bridge (East View) over the long table against the right-hand wall. A pastoral likeness of Dick Turpin, cutpurse, hangs to the left of it; Sunderland’s own Jack Crawford, hero of Camperdown, hangs to the right. The fireplace takes up most of the back wall, where, lined up on its mantel in order of height, sit tasteful mementos of Mike’s exploits in the ratting ring, trophies for besting some of the most ferocious terriers in Sunderland, and a few more W’earmouth Bridges. Whilky has a second East View transferred onto a spittoon and a Wearmouth West View 2^-Year Commemorative stamped onto a milk pitcher. Beneath the mantel, he makes sure, the fire always roars. Our landlord is not cheap with his coal and, with no windows to open, the house is snug sometimes to the point of tropicality. The steaming laundry of his thirty tenants completes the interior decoration; stockings and soiled underwear dangle from pins and Mike the ferret enjoys nothing more when rat-killing is slow than to vault up a lodger’s plaid shawl and pad along the clothesline.
    But what gains such careful decoration if only to be spoiled by the strewn carcasses of frogs? Whilky has been sweeping up three dozen a day; mangled by Mike, stomped upon by Eye, gummed by his zealous daughter Pink. It is to drive us mad, thinks our landlord, leaning forward so as not to scorch his august back. Another facet in the Grand Plot that began with this summer’s “census,” during which the frog eggs were insinuated, and which will culminate in this so-called cholera morbus they’ve imported to eliminate us all. Did they honestly think we wouldn’t catch on?
    “Da? Coffee?”
    Whilky nods abstractedly to Pink as she wrestles the heavy coffeepot onto the fireplace trivet. The price of a cup is included in the night’s rent, but if the establishment occasionally forgets to put it on before the first lodgers are tramping downstairs, is it the establishment’s fault they don’t have time to drink it? The tin clock on the wall is striking four-thirty. It is Monday morning, most have to be at work by five, but spoiled by Sunday’s lolling, they barely leave themselves time to get there.
    Eye has heated a pan of water in the fireplace, and with careful sponging is making Gustine’s dress fit for tonight. She looks up from her work as the lodgers tramp down; the bottle workers first, for they have the longest to walk, then the keelmen. A bleary-eyed mother leads her two boys off to the quay to buy fish for their baskets. They’ll hawk it to the poor Irish down along Woodbine Street who haven’t the gumption to walk the half a mile themselves. With each guest’s descent, Whilky, not stirring from his stool by the fire, holds out a broad palm for the week’s rent, payable in advance. Woe betide the keelman or glass blower who blew his salary on Saturday night. Whilky shows no mercy. He makes them march upstairs, gather their meager possessions (the trip is usually unnecessary, as they wear upon their backs all that they own), and quit the house immediately. The others have left by the time Gustine makes her way down the rickety stairs, her face buried in a small woolen bundle. She always waits for her coffee, out of principle, even if it means she has to run the whole way to the pottery.
    What a difference a Monday morning makes in the appearance of our bold Gustine. Her hair, no longer apolloed and ringletted, loiters atop her head in a loose bun. Her daytime outfit, a fawn-colored shift threadbare