‘But always, to gaze at the women and give them a start?’
Now I blinked two or three times. ‘I never thought to do it,’ I answered, ‘before I saw you.’ It was the plain truth; but she laughed at it, as if to say, Oh yes. The laugh, and the exchange which had provoked it, was unsettling. I studied her more closely. As I had seen on that first night, she was not what you might term a beauty. She was thick at the waist and almost stout, and her face was broad, her chin a firm one. Her teeth were even, but not perfectly white; her eyes were hazel, but the lashes not long; her hands, however, seemed graceful. Her hair was the kind of hair we had all been thankful, as girls, that we did not have - for though she had bound it into a bun at her neck, the curls kept springing from it and twisting about her face. With the lamp behind it, too, it had seemed auburn; but it would really be more truthful to say that it was brown.
I believe I liked it better that she was not more handsome. And though there was something wonderfully intriguing about her tranquillity at my strange behaviour - as if women donned gents’ trousers all the time; as if they made love to girls on balconies so often that she was used to it, and thought it merely naughty - I did not think I saw that trick in her, that furtive something, that I had recognised in other girls. Certainly nobody, gazing at her, would ever think to sneer and call out Tom! Again, though, I was glad of it. I had quit the business of hearts and kisses; I was in quite another trade altogether, these days!
And yet would it hurt me after all this time to have a - friend ?
I said, ‘Look here, will you come to the park with me? I was just on my way there when I saw you.’
She smiled, but shook her head: ‘I’m working, I couldn’t.’
‘It’s too hot for working.’
‘The work must still be done, you know. I have a visit to make at Old Street - a lady Miss Derby knows might have some rooms for us. I should be there now, really.’ And she frowned down at a little watch that hung from a ribbon at her breast like a medal.
‘Can’t you send to Miss Derby and make her go? It seems awfully hard on you. I bet she’s sitting in the office with her feet upon her desk, playing a tune on the mandolin; and here are you out in the sun doing all the tramping about. You need a bit of ice-cream, at the least; there’s an Italian lady in Kensington Gardens who sells the best ices in London, and she lets me have them at half-price...’
She smiled again. ‘I cannot. Else, what would happen to all our poor families?’
I didn’t care a button about the families; but I did care, suddenly at the thought that I might lose her. I said, ‘Well, then I shall have to see you when you come again to Green Street. When will that be?’
‘Ah well, you see,’ she said, ‘it won’t. I shall be leaving this post in a couple of days, and I am to help with the running of a hostel, at Stratford. It is better for me, since it’s nearer where I live, and I know the local people; but it means I shall be spending most of my days down East...’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘And shall you never be coming into town, at all, after that?’
She hesitated; then: ‘Well, I do sometimes come in, in the evenings. I go to the theatre, or to the lectures at the Athenaeum Hall. You might come with me, to one of those places ...’
I only went to the theatre, now, as a renter; I wouldn’t sit in a velvet seat before a stage again, even for her. I said, ‘The Athenaeum Hall? I know that place. But lectures - what do you mean? Church stuff?’
‘Political stuff. You know, the Class Question, the Irish Question...’
I felt my heart sink. ‘The Woman Question.’
‘Exactly. They have speakers, and readings, and afterwards debates. Look here.’ She reached into her satchel and drew forth a slim blue pamphlet. The Athenaeum Hall Society Lecture Series, it said; Women and Labour: An Address by Mr- and it gave a name I now forget, followed by a little piece of explanatory text, and a date that was for four or five days ahead.
I said, ‘Lord!’ in an ambiguous sort of way. She lifted her head, took the pamphlet back from me, and said: ‘Well, perhaps, after all, you would prefer the ice-cream cart in Kensington Gardens ...’ There was a hint of rustiness about the words, that I found I could not bear to hear. I said at once, ‘Good heavens, no: this looks a treat!’ But I added, that if they really didn’t sell ices in the hall, then I thought we ought to take some refreshment first. There was, I had heard, a little public-house at the King’s Cross corner of Judd Street with a ladies’ room at the back of it, where they did a very nice, very inexpensive supper. The lecture began at seven - would she meet me there beforehand? At, say, six o’clock? I said - because I thought it would please her - that I might need some instruction, in the ins and outs of the Woman Question.
At that she snorted, and gave me another knowing look; though what it was she thought she knew, I wasn’t sure. She did, however, agree to meet me - with a warning that I must not let her down. I said there was not a chance of it, held out my hand; and for a second felt her fingers, very firm and warm in their grey linen glove, clasp my own.
It was only after we had parted that I realised we had not exchanged names; but by then she had turned the corner of Green Street, and was gone. But I had, as a piece of secret knowledge from our earlier, darker encounter, her own romantic christian name, at least. And besides, I knew I should be seeing her again within the week.
Chapter 10
The days that week grew ever warmer, until at last even I began to tire of the heat. All London longed for a break in the weather; and on Thursday evening, when it finally came, crowds took to the streets of the city in sheer relief.
I was amongst them. For two days almost I had kept indoors in a kind of hot stupor, drinking endless cups of lemonade with Mrs Milne and Gracie in their darkened parlour, or dozing naked on my bed with the windows thrown open and the curtains pulled. Now the promise of a night of chilly liberty on the swarming, gaudy streets of the West End drew me like a magnet. My purse, too, was almost empty - and I was mindful of the supper I would have to take care of, with Florence, the following night. So I needed, I thought, to cut something of a dash. I washed, and combed my hair flat and brilliant with macassar; and when I dressed I put on my favourite costume - the guardsman’s uniform, with its brass buttons and its piping, its scarlet jacket and its neat little cap.
I hardly ever wore this outfit. The military pips and buckles meant nothing to me, but I had a vague terror that some real soldier might one day recognise them, and claim me for his regiment; or else that some emergency might occur - the Queen be assaulted while I was strolling by Buckingham Palace, for instance - and I would be called upon to play some impossible role in its resolution. But the suit was a lucky one, too. It had brought me the bold gentleman of the Burlington Arcade, whose kiss had proved such a fateful one; and it had tipped the wavering balance at my first interview at Mrs Milne’s. Tonight, I thought, I should be content enough if it would only net me a sovereign.
And there was a curious quality to the city that night, that seemed all of a piece with the costume I had chosen. The air was cool and unnaturally clear, so that colours - the red of a painted lip, the blue of a sandwich-man’s boards, the violet and the green and the yellow of a flower-girl’s tray - seemed to leap out of the gloom. It was just as if the city were a monstrous carpet to which a giant hand had applied the beater, to make all glow again. Infected by the mood I had sensed even in my Green Street chamber, people had, like me, put on their finest. Girls in gay dresses walked the pavements in long, intimidating lines, or spooned with their bowler-hatted beaux on steps and benches. Boys stood drinking at the doors of public-houses, their pomaded heads gleaming, in the gas-light, like silk. The moon hung low above the roofs of Soho, pink and bright and swollen as a Chinese lantern. One or two stars winked viciously alongside it.
And through it all sauntered I, in my suit of scarlet; and yet by eleven o’clock, when the streets were thinning, I had had no luck at all. A couple of gents had
seemed to like the look of me, and one rough-looking man had set himself to follow me, right the way from Piccadilly to Seven Dials and back again. But the gents, at the last, had been lured by other renters; and the rough man was not the type I cared for. I had given him the slip in a lavatory with two exits.
And then there had been yet another almost-encounter, later, while I was idling beside a lamp-post in St James’s Square. A brougham had driven slowly by, then stopped; and then, like me, it had lingered. No one had got out of it, no one had got in. The driver had had a high collar shadowing his face, and had never moved his gaze from his horse - but there had been a certain twitching of the lace at the dark carriage windows, that let me know that I was being observed, carefully, from within.
I had strolled about a bit, and lit a cigarette. I didn’t, for obvious reasons, do carriage jobs. Gents on wheels, I knew from my friends at Leicester Square, were demanding. They paid well, but expected correspondingly large favours: bumwork, bed-work - nights, sometimes, in hotels. Even so, it never hurt to show off a bit: the gent inside might remember me on another, more pedestrian, occasion. I had ambled up and down the edges of the Square for a good ten minutes, occasionally reaching down to give a twitch to my groin - for, in the rather flamboyant spirit in which I had dressed that night, I had padded my drawers with a rolled silk cravat, instead of my usual kerchief or glove, and the material was slippery, and kept edging along my thigh. Still, I thought, such a gesture might not prove unpleasing to the distant eye of an interested gent ...
The carriage, however, with its taciturn driver and bashful occupant, had at last jerked into life and pulled away.
Since then my admirers had all, apparently, been as cautious as that last one; I had sensed a few interested glances slither my way, but had managed to hook none of them with my own more frankly searching one. By now it had grown very dark, and almost chill. It was time, I thought, to pick my slow way home. I felt disappointed. Not with my own performance, but with the evening itself, which had opened with such promise and had finished such a flop. I had not earned so much as a threepenny-bit: I should now have to borrow a little cash from Mrs Milne, and spend longer, more resolute, less choosy hours on the streets over the following week, until my luck turned. The thought did not cheer me: renting, which had seemed such a holiday at first, had come to seem, of late, a little tiresome.
It was in these spirits that I began to make my way back to Green Street - avoiding, now, the busier routes that I had trod for fun before, and taking back roads: Old Compton Street; Arthur Street; Great Russell Street, which took me by the pale, silent mass of the British Museum; and finally Guilford Street, which would lead me by the Foundling Hospital and on to the Gray’s Inn Road.
Even on these quieter routes, however, the traffic seemed unusually heavy - unusually, and puzzlingly, for though few carts and hansoms seemed actually to pass me, the low clatter of wheels and hooves formed a continuous accompaniment to my own slow footfalls. At last, at the entrance to a dim and silent mews, I understood why; for here I paused to tie my lace and, as I stooped, looked casually behind me. There was a carriage moving slowly towards me out of the gloom, a private carriage with a particular, well-greased rumble I now knew for the one that had pursued me all the way from Soho, and a hunched and muffled driver I thought I recognised. It was the brougham that had waited near me in St James’s Square. Its shy master, who had watched while I had posed beneath a lamp-post and strolled the pavement with my fingers at my crotch, evidently fancied another look.
My lace tied, I straightened up, but cautiously kept my place. The carriage slowed, then — its dark interior still hidden behind the heavy lace at its windows - it passed me by. Then, a little way on, it drew to a halt. I began, uncertainly, to walk towards it.
The driver; as before, was impassive and still: I could see only the curve of his shoulders and the rise of his hat; indeed, as I approached the rear of the vehicle he disappeared from my view completely. In the darkness the brougham seemed quite black, but where the light from a guttering street-lamp spilled on it, it gleamed a deep crimson, touched here and there with gold. The gent inside, I thought, must be a very rich one.
Well, he would be disappointed; he had followed me for nothing: I quickened my step, and made to move past, head down.
But as I drew level with the rear wheel I heard the soft click of a latch undone: the door swung silently open, blocking my path. From the shadows beyond the doorframe drifted a thread of blue tobacco smoke; I heard a breath, a rustle. Now I must either retrace my steps and cross behind the vehicle, or squeeze between the swinging door and the wall on my left - and catch a glimpse, perhaps, of its enigmatic occupant. I confess, I was intrigued. Any gent who could bring such a sense of drama to the staging of an encounter which, in the ordinary course of things, might be settled so unspectacularly - by a word, or a nod, or the fluttering of one spit-blacked lash - was clearly someone special. I was also, frankly, flattered; and having been flattered, generous. Since he had had to make do so far with admiring my bottom from a distance, I felt it only fair to give him the chance of a closer look — though he must, of course, be content only to look.
I advanced a little towards the open door. Within, all was dark; I saw only the vague outline of a shoulder, an arm, a knee, against the lighter square of the far window. Then briefly the end of a cigarette glowed bright in the blackness, and glimmered redly on a pale gloved hand, and a face. The hand was slender, and had rings upon it. The face was powdered: a woman’s face.
I was too surprised even to laugh - too startled, for a moment, to do anything but stand at the rim of gloom that seemed to spill out from the carriage, and gape at her; and in that moment, she spoke.
‘Can I offer you a ride?’
Her voice was rich and rather haughty, and somehow arresting. It made me stammer. I said: ‘That, that’s very kind of you, madam’ - I sounded like a mincing shop-boy refusing a tip - ‘but I’m not five minutes from home, and I shall get there all the quicker if you’ll let me say good-night, and pass on my way.’ I tilted my cap towards the dark place where the voice had come from, and, with a tight little smile, I made to move on.
But the lady spoke again.
‘It’s rather late,’ she said, ‘to be out on one’s own, in streets like these.’ She drew on her cigarette, and the tip glowed bright again in the shadows. ‘Won’t you let me drop you somewhere ? I have a very capable driver.’
I thought, I am sure you do: her man was still hunched forward in his seat, his back to me, his thoughts his own. I felt suddenly weary. I had heard stories in Soho about ladies like this — ladies who rode the darkened streets with well-paid servants, on the lookout for idle men or boys like me who’d give them a thrill for the price of a supper. Rich ladies with no husbands, or absent husbands, or even (so Sweet Alice claimed) husbands at home, warming the bed, with whom they shared their startled catches. I had never known quite whether to believe in such ladies; here, however, was one before me, haughty and scented and hot for a lark.
What a mistake she had made this time!
I put my hand on the carriage-door and made to swing it to. But again she spoke. ‘If you won’t,’ she said, ‘let me drive you home, then won’t you, as a favour, ride with me a while? As you see, I am quite alone; and I’ve rather a yearning for company, tonight.’ Her voice seemed to tremble - though whether with melancholy, or anticipation, or even laughter, I could not tell.
‘Look missis,’ I said then, into the gloom, ‘you’re on the wrong track. Let me pass, and get your driver to take you another turn around Piccadilly.’ Now I laughed: ‘Believe me, I haven’t got what you’re after.’
The carriage creaked; the red end of the cigarette bobbed and brightened and illuminated, once again, a cheek, a brow, a lip. The lip curled.
‘On the contrary, my dear. You have exactly what I’m after.’
Still I did not guess, but only thought, Blimey, she’s keen! I glanced about me. A
few carriages bowled along the Gray’s Inn Road, and two or three late pedestrians passed quickly from sight, behind them. A hansom had pulled up at the end of the mews, quite near us, and was letting its passengers dismount ; they disappeared into a doorway, and the hansom rolled by and away, and all was still again. I took a breath, and leaned into the dark interior of the coach.
‘Madam,’ I hissed, ‘I ain’t a boy at all. I’m -’ I hesitated. The end of the cigarette disappeared: she had thrown it out of the window. I heard her give one impatient sigh - and all at once I understood.
‘You little fool,’ she said. ‘Get in.’
Well, what should I have done? I had been weary, but I was not weary now. I had been disappointed, my expectations for the evening dashed; but with this one, unlooked-for invitation the glamour of the night seemed all restored. True, it was very late, and I was alone, and this woman was clearly a stranger of some determination, and with odd and secret tastes ... But her voice and manner were, as I have said, compelling ones. And she was rich. And my purse was empty. I hesitated for a moment; then she held out her hand and, where the lamplight fell upon her rings, I saw how large the stones were. It was that - only that, just then - which decided me. I took her hand, and climbed into the carriage.
We sat together in the gloom. The brougham lurched forward with a muted creak, and started on its smooth, quiet, expensive way. Through the heavy lace of its windows the streets seemed changed, quite insubstantial. This, I realised, was how the rich saw the city all the time.
I glanced at the woman at my side. She wore a dress or cloak of some sombre, heavy material, indistinguishable from the dark upholstery of the carriage’s interior; her face and gloved hands, illuminated by the regular gleam of passing street-lamps, their surface fantastically marbled by the shadow of the drapes, seemed to float, pale as water-lilies, in a pool of gloom. She was, as far as I could tell, handsome, and quite young - perhaps ten years older than myself.