Sunday at the Cross Bones

There was no time to regret my lack of anniversary cards from the children. M, I fear, is preoccupied with our houseful of lame dogs, and the state of the boiler. I should have telephoned. By 10 a.m., I was patrolling Fleet Street – the sunlight blazing off the noble frontage of the law courts, a divine birthday gift.

In Somerset House, I endeavoured to find Elsie Teenan’s birth certificate, in the hope of locating her errant mama, but only an unmannerly crew of Teahans, Teemans and Teamonts appeared beneath my flicking fingers. Most frustrating.

I will not give up on poor Elsie. I will not have her spend one more night outside Waterloo Station among the taxis, flagging for custom in her grey Tipperary shawl. There is no sight in London more pathetic than a young harlot who has found no clients by 3 a.m. I wish she would cease her doomed attempts to sell her body (or to ‘find some young feller to go home with’ in her cluelessly romantic turn of phrase) and embrace a more virtuous life as, say, a maidservant, until she finds a passing Dublin construction worker who will recognise her potential, embrace her spindle-framed loveliness, sing to her from Moore’s Irish Melodies, stop her complaining mouth with appreciative kisses and bear her away to a fulfilled life of twins and St Patrick’s Day shamrock in the new suburban Eden of Tooting Common. I have seen it work. One can build a Jerusalem, of sorts, in London’s green and burgeoning suburbs.

At noon, I popped into St Paul’s where a funeral was in full swing. Nobody I knew, but I derived a cold comfort from the dignified obsequies, the profusion of flowers, the fume of expensive cathedral incense. I was cheered at this sad event by the sight of the dead man’s family. The widow was a handsome woman in her fifties, ‘piss-elegant Mayfair’ as Rose would have said. The lady’s dignified bearing softened by the swell of her bosom in a well-cut black crape gown, she extended an eloquent arm around the waist of her eldest daughter as the Bishop flapped the fuming censer around an expensive mahogany coffin. The daughter laid her head on her mother’s shoulder in a gesture both needy and sweetly supportive. I gazed at this charming tableau of womanhood, admiring their mutual support. I longed to go up and interpose my body between them, to extend caring arms about their waists and tell them they had nothing to fear, since the Life Eternal had embraced their husband and father – yet something stopped my impetuous impulse. So I remained at the end of the pew, singing the climactic hymn, ‘As We Walk the Paths of Sorrow to the Shores of Galilee’, remarking inwardly how similar is the tune to the chorus of ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’, a great favourite of mine.

I popped into the offices of the Church Times in Fleet Street, hoping to interest Mr Humphrey Goodman in the progress of our charitable work at the Runaway Boys’ Retreat in Whitechapel. I brought along a score of the new leaflets (a piteous tableau of a woman clutching her luckless infant, driven from her father’s door into a snowy field populated by expiring robins, above the legend ‘More To Be Pitied Than Scorned!’ – surely an image to melt the sternest heart) hoping to persuade him that one might be reproduced on the front page with a suitably affecting editorial. But Mr G, despite his Bunyanesque name, was ‘engaged’, they told me, ‘in writing up the Bishops’ Conference’ and could not spare ten minutes.

Luncheon at the Jolly Farmers with Vincent Doughty, whose clothing manufactory goes, he tells me, from strength to strength. He has started to take snuff! Every fifteen minutes, he punctuates our discussion by flourishing a tin box, extracting from it a ‘pinch’ of the brown powder in his sausagey fingers, and ramming it up his nose. ‘Fancy a go?’ he asked me several times. He is an oaf, a boor and a man of few spiritual leanings, yet he has undoubtedly been of assistance to the girls. They almost always leave his workplace for more elevated positions, sometimes for a dress shop in the provinces, sometimes for a career in catering. I have little opportunity to ask them about this gratifying advancement. Usually, I am brought the news of their departure by a third party. I am convinced that Vincent gives them a little ‘pep talk’ about their future prospects, and directs them towards more congenial employment.

‘That Erica,’ he said, as we smoked cigars after the veal-pie crumbs had been cleared away, ‘the young one from Swansea, she was a lively piece of work. A demon at pressing she were, pressing and folding, pressing and folding, like she was born to it. Lovely young thing. Had a bit of sass to her as well, talked back to the lads on the pressing machines, gave as good as she got. I got to hand it to you, Rector, you can pick ’em. Sad she had to go.’ He took another elaborate pinch of snuff, shedding much of it on his serge trousers. ‘She wasn’t open to all the opportunities on offer.’

‘And where exactly did she go?’ I enquired.

‘Oh, Beckenham way, I believe.’ He seemed suddenly vague. ‘Got an aunt there, runs a flower shop or some such. Lovely girl, though. If you got any more like that, I hope you’ll send ’em over. There’s always room for more of your lively young folk, ’Arold. Always raises the morale in the factory, a bit of new blood.’

Heartened by this endorsement, I told him about Elsie Teenan and her efforts to find work. ‘A naive girl,’ I confided, ‘but strong and healthy, charmingly grateful to all who try to help her.’

‘That so?’ said Vincent. ‘Sounds ideal. Send her over for a little chat with me, soon as you like.’ What a good, solicitous fellow he is!

Evening. It is years since I celebrated my birthday with a dinner party, or any communal meal, unless in Stiffkey on the day itself, consuming mutton chops with Mimi. Settled instead on a visit to Maddox Street, to see Emily Murray and Nellie Churchill in their charming ‘bed-sitting room’. Nobody could accuse me of having favourites, but the presence of Miss Murray is always a delight.

‘Oh, Harold, how lovely,’ she breathed as she opened the door. ‘I’ve been longing for you to come by, so I could show you my new friends.’

She led me by the hand into a room in which the fume of cheap scent battled for the upper hand with the odour of fish and stale nicotine.

‘Close your eyes!’ she cried. ‘I must make them presentable to such a noble guest.’ I complied, and was led across an unappealingly sticky carpet to her bed. ‘You mustn’t look, Harold, or it will be too naughty of you. Dickens and Jones are all tumbled and listless, and I must smarten them up. Sit up, you bad boys. All right, Harold, you may open your eyes.’

I did, and saw upon the coverlet the familiar profusion of soft toys, lolling drunkenly over half its area. There must have been close on forty wool bears and rag dolls. In pride of place were her new acquisitions, a flop-eared rabbit and a cross-eyed giraffe, humorously arrayed so that one of the giraffe’s soft legs encircled the rabbit in fond camaraderie.

‘You see what friends they are!’ cried Emily. ‘I found them in Bermondsey Market, and adopted them and took them in, and now they have such larks together, I can scarcely bear to leave them to go to beastly work. Don’t you love them too, Harold?’

‘Delightful, Emily,’ I said. ‘Quite the nicest-looking fauna I have encountered outside Chessington Zoo.’

It was the wrong thing to say. ‘Oh, Harold, how can you? I couldn’t bear to think of my darling Dickens and Jones in a horrid zoo. The keepers might be cruel to them, they might be hungry and cold in the night.’ She made a show of pulling the counterpane over the wool creatures, as if to warm them. ‘No harm is going to come to them here, not if I must stay home and starve.’

‘Is Nellie not home this evening?’ I asked, keen to change the subject.

‘No, my dear, Nellie is off with one of her gentlemen friends,’ said Emily with a sweet smile. ‘One of the newer kind, which means she will be home later, rather than staying out all night. I fear she is grumpy with me, Harold. We never have a conversation when she returns home, as we used to.’

How delicately she spoke of her previous life of rampant prostitution. She behaves as a child but is twenty-three. When I met her, just four months ago – in Soho, outside a pub in Rupert Street – I remarked then on the sweet passivity of her nature, her simple acquiescence towards one whom she felt she could trust.

‘Hello, sir – Do you want me?’ were her opening words. They could have been the assistant in a hat shop saying, ‘Can I help you?’

I have learned that you must attend to what Emily says, however foolish, because her utterances come studded with information in code. So I asked, ‘Nellie is grumpy with you? In what way grumpy?’

‘She says she is too tired to speak, or to heed what I am saying, or kiss me goodnight. She sleeps until 3 p.m. on a Sunday, and scratches her arms until they are quite bleeding and welcomes gentlemen who come to the door with little messages contained in tiny envelopes.’

I glanced across the room to the other bed, in the dark corner. It was brutally utilitarian. Beside it, the wall was covered with notes and scraps of paper, addresses, times of appointments. Nothing gave a hint of character, or smacked of comfort or adornment.

‘I hoped you might be free tonight, Emily,’ I said. ‘I have two tickets to see Mister Cinders at the Adelphi. It is light as a soufflé, but full of appealing tunes that will lift your spirits.’

She impetuously kissed my cheek. ‘Harold! You know how I adore the theatre. Give me five minutes to get ready in my going-out frock and I – oh but wait. Perhaps I shouldn’t.’

For a moment, I feared that I might have to reassure her that Dickens and Jones would not object to being left alone. But no.

‘Tomorrow I start work, thanks to you, my dear friend, at the Café Royal. Perhaps it would be better if I had an early night. I should not wish to disappoint my new employers by arriving late.’

It is very satisfying to me that she should respond so willingly to my placing her in a job at the kitchens of the distinguished Regent Street restaurant, away from her life of sin. I was moved to find how seriously she was taking it.

‘Your worries do you credit, Emily, but I was not planning on a late night. Decide what to wear tomorrow and put the clothes upon a chair. Set your alarm clock for 7 a.m. We shall go to the play, eat a light supper at Brown’s, I shall see you home and you will be tucked up in bed with, ah, Marshall and Snelgrove –’

‘Dickens and Jones, Harold. How can you tease me like this?’

‘– with your charming menagerie by eleven o’clock, and will awake refreshed to start your new employment and your new life.’

‘Oh, Harold –’ she clutched my arm – ‘I’ll get changed.’ I made a gesture towards the door. ‘There’s no need to go out into the horrid cold wind. You might look away, though, while a lady is dressing.’

I sat on Nellie’s unyielding bed, talking inconsequentially and listening to the noises behind me of rustle and snap, the tiny ladylike grunt that accompanied the fastening of hooks and eyes, the sigh of a lady’s arm sliding into a silken sleeve, all the sonic paraphernalia of a woman at her toilette. Some men might find the scene erotically promising, but I am inured to such things. Ten years of dealing with the sisterhood of vice have left me overfamiliar with the female boudoir. Odd to think I have been in hundreds of bedrooms over the last decade, but none has been that of a woman of decent moral address. Not one. What a curious state of affairs.

The door opened and Nellie came in. It was, frankly, awkward timing.

‘Oh,’ she said, seeing me first. ‘What are you doing here?’ I rose and glanced to Emily for guidance – to find her seated on a wooden chair, attaching the top of a silver stocking to the rubber flange of some item of corsetry. Her left leg – rather a beautiful sight! – was fully exposed.

‘Am I interrupting?’ In the doorway Nellie glanced from Emily’s leg to me, where I had half risen from the bed. ‘Shall I go?’

‘No, you silly thing,’ said Emily with a girlish laugh, ‘I was changing. Harold’s taking me to a play. You know lovely Harold, don’t you?’

‘We’ve met,’ she said shortly. ‘When was the last time? The Windmill Theatre, or the Carter woman’s cathouse in Drury Lane?’

‘I cannot recall,’ I said. ‘Perhaps the latter. How is life treating you, Miss Churchill?’

She didn’t reply, but crossed the room to her bed and began rooting around underneath it. Miss Churchill does not like me. Her presence casts a pall on every occasion. She seems to regard me with a suspicion I find frankly offensive. Of course, her experience of men is limited almost entirely to clients, clubland swells and prostitutes’ bullies. Show her a man intent only on the welfare of sinners, and she is puzzled, discomfited and keen to infer the worst.

‘I don’t know what you two are up to, but could you finish it and leave me in peace?’ she said. Her long face was blank with hostility. ‘There’s some things I need to do, and I could live without spectators, if that’s all right with you.’

Emily raised to me an enquiring eyebrow. How could I have communicated, in dumbshow, that her friend was looking for her supply of narcotics, her syringe, etc., without which she could not venture to Oxford Circus for an evening of drugged soliciting in alleys and cheap hotels?

‘Of course, Nellie,’ I said lightly. ‘Emily and I are just off to see Mister Cinders. I shall have her back here in bed early, because tomorrow she starts her exciting job at the Café Royal.’

Nellie’s face set in a sneer. ‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘She told me. Washin’ up for toffs. Hands in the sink from morning to night. Very exciting.’

‘It won’t be like that, Nellie, you beast,’ said Emily, in a hurt, schoolgirl voice. ‘I’ll probably be waiting on Ramsay MacDonald himself in the restaurant by Christmas. That’s what Harold says, anyway.’

‘It won’t be long,’ said Nellie, ‘before you’re dying to be back on the street. Or dying of boredom. Or dead on your feet. Go on and do it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

If I were a young woman, I would sooner share living quarters with Cassandra, or Medea, or Lady Macbeth and all three witches, than Nellie Churchill. It took all my powers of persuasion to convince Emily that her life would soon change for the better.