Sunday at the Cross Bones

‘I will tell you in due course. All you need know for now is that I wish you well, and will endeavour to improve your lot. I shall not accompany you home but, if you give me your address, I will call on you during the week to discuss your future.’

‘Number 14, Queen Street, Camden,’ she said. ‘Ground-floor flat. There’s lots of bells. Call any time. It’s pretty rare for me to entertain gentlemen callers after midnight, but you never know your luck.’

‘My luck?’ Once again, I was shocked almost beyond words. ‘I hope you do not imagine for one second that I –’

‘And while I’m partial to a little discussion, no praying, all right? Any suggestion we kneel down together, an’ I’ll kick you out. Got that?’ She smiled. ‘You can ’ave me kneel down in front of you, but that’s your lot.’

Mystified by her meaning, I made to search in my Stationery Pocket for pen and notebook, with which to inscribe her address. But the press of passers-by was so busy – and their looks so disapproving – that I stayed my hand. Anyone seeing this vivid strumpet by my side could only have their suspicions confirmed, were I to be seen taking down her address in the street. I committed it to memory, and we shook hands. A passing motor cab rattled dangerously close to the pavement, and I ushered her aside with a touch of my hand on her waist – a simple, Samaritan gesture that she greeted with a laugh, as though I were guiding her into a dance. Her lace-gloved hand came lightly down on my shoulder.

‘What you tryin’ to do?’ she asked. ‘Sweep me off my feet?’

‘I was merely trying to protect you from –’

‘OI, CAB!’ she cried, in the tone of a fishwife. The vehicle stopped dead, five yards away. ‘Got to go. Bye now,’ she said, looking at me with curiosity. ‘I get the feeling we’ll meet again soon, one way or the other.’

By the time I had divined her meaning, she had gathered her skirts into the motor cab and was gone.

London 9 August 1930

THINGS TO DO:

1. Visit Arthur Trench, Holborn, about Ladies’ Academy, ask re Esther and Matilda as poss. vocational students?

2. Boots pharmacy: talcum powder for Madge P, bunion cream for Sally A, sal volatile for Joanna D, deodorant for Bridget C.

3. Runaway Boys’ Retreat – talk to Eddie and Howard re funding.

4. Previews of Coward’s Private Lives at the Phoenix start soon. Cheap tickets on sale, Friday a.m.

5. Call on Emily M, Café Royal. Lunch at Bradley’s?

6. Sermon: Galatians 5:22 – ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance …’

7. Lady Fenella R-Smith. Time for action re her rich Africa friends?

8. Somerset House for records of Lily Beane’s parents?

9. Sandra (Lyons C House) – speak to Marina re possible stage work?

10. Barbara Harris. 14 Queen Street, Camden.

Stiffkey 10 August 1930

Summer has filled the meadows with vivid primary colours, bright yellow oilseed rape, light green corn waving in abundance, red poinsettias blooming early, heady smell of jasmine. It is blissful to be out in the fresh air. Rose early and drove bike v fast to Sheringham in high spirits. Made 65mph around Weybourne. How speed invigorates a mind stupefied by London.

I have been looking at motor-bicycle catalogues, gazing with frank covetousness at the Brough Superior SS100, a wonderful machine with elegantly serpentine exhaust pipes curling sinuously all its length and doubling back. Its headlamps are a joy to behold. It is the Rolls-Royce of motorbikes. It is also £170, which I cannot afford. I shall go on riding my beloved 500cc Ariel Squarefour until something turns up!

Sermon well received. ‘Nice to find you in such a jolly, positive frame of mind,’ said Briony Jones. ‘It must be the weather.’

Mrs Willoughby hung back after 11 a.m. service to say how pleased she is to put into practice my ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ advice. When approached last Thursday by young pedlar from Gt Yarmouth on doorstep, selling dusters, tea cloths, kitchen paraphernalia, instead of sending him about his business with flea in ear, she invited him into kitchen, fed him tea and scones and enquired about his life. Discovered that he was student of philosophy, trying to raise enough cash to fund college studies for new term at Oxford. She bought frankly ill-advised number of clothes pegs, gave him £10 and kissed him goodbye on Welcome mat. Unfortunately, seen by troublesome neighbour, and soon her largesse was talk of village. Had he been a plausible crook, not Oxford chap at all? Husband not impressed, particularly by loss of £10, supposed to be put towards summer vacation to Hunstanton.

What could I say? Assured her she was on right track re spiritual impulses. 4.53 p.m., received telephone call from Emily Murray, in tearful state. Job at Café R not working out. ‘Horrible, horrible’ working conditions was all she would impart. Must visit her, get back on straight and narrow. Perhaps Friday? All she needs is a little fortitude.

London 15 August 1930

In Regent Street, looked in at the Café Royal to see what has become of Emily; she did not last long in the kitchens. I should have predicted this. I never liked the maître d’ here, a stern-faced bully who today looked at me with cold, jellied-eel eyes when I stated my business, listened with infinite ennui as I enquired after the poor girl, as though it could be no interest to him, then dismissed me with the words, ‘If there are no other relevant questions, I’m afraid you must excuse me.’ Relevant? As if the whereabouts of a suddenly penniless girl in London are of no moment when weighed against the vital importance of feeding Sir Ambrose This and Lord Benjamin That.

Asked in the kitchens, when MD’s back turned. Head shakes all round. No, we don’t know where she’s gone. She left on Wednesday, there were raised voices in the Hot Beverages area, a flung teapot, tears and shouts, a dented silver sugar bowl and a slammed door. No payment, sadly, because she was taken on as probationary. No forwarding address. I am aghast at the level of neglect in this once respectable establishment.

I decided to call on her, at her shared rooms in Maddox Street, where I saw her so recently – my birthday! – with Nellie Churchill.

Found Emily gone and Miss Churchill abed with fever.

‘Oh, it’s you, Reverend,’ she said. ‘I’m not well. Caught a chill from hanging about Vauxhall Gardens, and it went straight to my lungs. If it weren’t for the neighbours upstairs, I don’t know what I’da done.’ She coughed violently.

‘Where is Emily?’

‘Emily? She’s gone. Somewhere up on the north side, she said she was headed. Maybe to her sister Flo, who’s got a little place she rents, I think it’s in one of those Guinness Estate blocks.’

‘Why is she no longer here?’ I had to fight internally, to keep dislike and suspicion of this human icicle out of my voice.

‘Why’d you think?,’ said Nellie with a sneer. ‘She wasn’t enjoying it. They were nasty to her at the café, like I told her they would be, she done a bunk, came back here crying about having no future, and next thing I know, she’s gone.’

‘Would it be the case,’ I asked, ‘that you sent her away by crowing, in your unpleasant way, over her inability to keep a legitimate job? Would that be it? I can hear it in your voice. I can imagine how you would have jeered at her, and told her of her folly in – Oh!’

I startled myself with a horrible thought.

‘Oh what?’ asked Nellie, coolly.

‘She has not gone back to a life on the street, has she, Nellie?’ I was becoming very severe, and she knew it. ‘Tell me that she has not returned to the embrace of prostitution, spurred on by your jeers and scorn?’

‘No she ain’t,’ said Nellie, with a flounce. ‘Whatever’s happened to her, it’s not my fault. If it’s anyone’s it’s yours.’

‘Mine?’ I almost shouted. ‘How can it be my fault? All my energies are spent in saving girls like Emily from vicious ways.’

‘If you wanna see vicious ways, Reverend,’ said Nellie grimly, ‘you shoulda seen the way they treated her in the sinkroom at the Café. She was miserable as sin. She tried to come the kid, doing all that little-girly wide-eyed routine, and it went down bad, Rector. It might work with a gentleman client, but not with the bitch skivvies. Someone must’ve blabbed about her past, for they started calling her Skittles, after that royal mistress, and the boys would slip their hands round her waist and fiddle with her chest as she stood with her arms in the sink, and instead of giving them a sound wallop, she’d just weep, which made them worse. So it wasn’t much of a favour what you done her.’

‘It was work, Nellie, honest work for an honest wage. Better by far than taking money for intimate liaisons forbidden by the state and by God.’

‘If I remember,’ replied the foolish girl, ‘the only intimate liaison that’s forbidden in the Commandments is adultery. Everything else that’s forbidden was added on afterwards by people like you. No screwing, no kissing, no dressing nice for gentlemen, it all came under the heading of adultery, didn’t it? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Nellie, you are a simpleton when it comes to scripture. I fear the delirium of fever may have rendered you more argumentative than you might wish.’

She seemed chastened. ‘You got anything for a bloody horrible cough? It keeps me awake all night.’

‘You must visit the physician in Glasshouse Street,’ I said. ‘He is called Dr Ledger and will help you. For your present needs, however, if you tell me where Emily has gone and where I can find her, I may have something here …’

I delved in my Pharmacy Pocket and from a mass of ampoules, pill packets and ointment tins extracted a tiny phial of tinct. Laudanum.