• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Mrs Gallacher was one of the first to take the stage, wielding the cat o’‐nine-tails which had made her so popular in England. There were several Caribbean women from the island itself, as the audience consisted of cheering local men as well as the more bawdy wedding guests, who wasted no time in adapting to this curious foreign custom. About halfway through proceedings, Lisa-Beth put herself up for auction. She had a reputation on the island as a ‘White Tigress’, and she may have been deliberately playing on this image when she took to the stage with a sneer on her face and a complete disdain for the audience. Needless to say, she attracted high bids indeed.

The Cyprian Auction is worth mentioning for two reasons. First, because Juliette was one of those up for grabs. Not that she was in personal attendance, of course: this was another example of Scarlette’s bitterness. Towards the end of proceedings, the head of a mannequin was brought before the crowd. The head was dressed in a bright red wig, its face smeared with make-up probably intended to make it resemble a child prostitute. Though no body was attached, it sat on the shredded remains of a red dress (Juliette’s old wedding dress?) with its face shrouded by a thin veil of dyed-red muslin. Scarlette, who for the most part acted as Mistress of Ceremonies, announced that this particular Cyprian was ‘Mistress Rouge-Vierge, Purest Woman in London, whose integrity will be guaranteed to you for the price of a smoking-pipe’.

Needless to say, there were no takers. Indeed, as soon as Scarlette made her announcement the crowd began to boo and jeer, some even throwing their empty glasses at the stage. As Juliette’s ‘defection’ to Sabbath wasn’t public knowledge, one can only assume that Scarlette had primed the audience. It was, in a sense, another ritual. The ritual humiliation of Juliette, Juliette the traitor, even though the girl herself couldn’t have been there to see it.

This makes Scarlette sound harsh, perhaps, but Scarlette saw the ‘failure’ of Juliette as a very personal failure. She’d adopted the girl, as part of her own kin: when she ridiculed Juliette, she must have known that she was ridiculing herself. It’s not at all surprising that with Juliette gone, Scarlette might offer herself up as a proxy in the wedding ceremony (although, to be frank, she was closer to the Doctor than Juliette had been). Perhaps there was even a hint of jealousy in Scarlette’s vicious parody, Scarlette acknowledging that her wedding was only the result of someone else’s absence. There was a distinct air of self-hatred in the events of that night. Whenever a woman would be auctioned above ‘a respectable value’, Scarlette would down a glass of the local ale, much to the delight of the crowd who were cheering her on as much as they were cheering for the women on stage.

Is it really hard to believe that Scarlette should have had this self-destructive streak? As more than one commentator has pointed out, eighteenth-century courtesans were nothing like twentieth-century prostitutes. If anything, they were more like twentieth-century rock stars and actresses. The ‘pimp age’ would change all that.

But the second thing that has to be noted about the Auction is that Scarlette was by no means completely dispirited. The last individual up for offer was Scarlette herself, by this time so drunk that even the toughest men in the crowd were astonished she could stand. Bids began high, and rapidly got higher. Scarlette egged the audience on by pointing out that this was her last evening of ‘maidenhood’ before her wedding, and if anyone wanted a born-again virgin then this was their last chance. When the bidding reached the stage where men were offering bags of gold doubloons, it became clear that this was all a game: as she herself announced, ‘none of you can afford me and none of you are worthy of me’. The bidders then began making clearly ludicrous bids, including ‘the philosopher’s stone, given that one day I discover it’ and ’all the sunken treasure