Sunday at the Cross Bones

‘Well, that’s a new one,’ she said. ‘I get Miriam Hopkins sometimes, I get Esther Ralston from the really blind boys, but never Mary Bryan before.’

‘I assure you, the resemblance is uncanny. You could be sisters.’

‘Go on, you old charmer. You say that to all the girls, don’cha?’

‘Well,’ I conceded, ‘only the exceptionally pretty ones.’

‘How long you been standing there in your big coat,’ she asked. ‘Poor old duck, you look like you’re going to melt.’

‘I am a little warm. Do you happen to know where one can find a water ice? I am enfeebled with dehydration. I fear I may soon expire in this parching heat.’

‘Come with me this instant,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to ’ave your death on my hands.’ She linked my arm in a forthright manner, as impetuous modern girls will, and led me up Edgware Road, as if we were adventuring friends. ‘I’m saving your life,’ she said, looking at me as though I were some sort of domesticated pet. ‘You and me’re going for a little stroll and I’ll find you a cool billet out of the sun’s rays, and you’ll buy us both a lovely ice-cream sundae. OK with you?’ I could hardly refuse this comely girl’s kind offer, couched though it was in the tones of a young gold-digger looking for a victim. But we conversed amiably enough en route to the Alhambra tea rooms.

‘Nice,’ she said, looking around her, unbuttoning her linen jacket. Beneath it she wore a white cotton blouse with charming blue, heart-shaped buttons. It was evidently a garment purchased some time ago. The buttons, when she leaned forward, strained against her newly maturing figure. A heady whiff of scent enfumed the café air.

I summoned the waitress, a bored-looking slattern in an unflattering ochre tunic. ‘Bring me a long glass of iced tea, my dear, as deliciously cold as your facilities will allow. And for my young guest’ – I waved my hand in choose-anything-you-like largesse – ‘perhaps an ice-cream sundae …’

‘Nah,’ she said, suddenly businesslike. ‘You got any lamb chops? I’m starving. Two, no, make it three lamb chops, and spuds and some veg, and plenty of gravy if you don’t mind. Bread and butter on the side. And a glass of milk, no, make that a beer, you need something more thirst-quenching in this blinking heat, don’t you?’

‘That all?’ said the waitress, scribbling with a stub of HB pencil. ‘Don’t fancy a few dumplings an’ lardy cake as well, do you?’ Her tone was indefinably hostile. Perhaps she wasn’t used to receiving such commands from a customer young enough to be her granddaughter.

‘If anything else takes my fancy,’ said my new friend coolly, ‘I’ll be sure to let you know.’

The waitress raised her eyes heavenwards and left.

‘This place,’ said the girl, ‘used to be all right. They’d let you come in an’ have a little sit-down with tea and a penny bun for an hour, when you was tired. Now they fire you out of here if you’re not spending a whole quid.’ She shook her head – such nostalgia from a mere child of –

‘How old are you, exactly, my dear?’

Her upper lip curled. ‘I’m old enough,’ she said. ‘I’m sixteen.’

‘And what is it that brings you strolling in Oxford Street in your best frock at two o’clock in the afternoon?’ I asked, as neutrally as possible.

She picked up the à la carte menu, a redundant gesture since her sizeable repast had already been ordered. ‘Same as you, I expect. Looking for a bit of company to while the hours away.’

‘Mmmm,’ I said, unsure of my ground. It was inconceivable that this lively, shining-eyed young woman could be a professional sinner. Yet she had clearly outgrown any institutions of learning. The confidence of her bearing suggested employment at some thriving business. Had I learned that she presided over a superior hat shop in Bond Street, I would not have been surprised.

‘What kind of company do you seek out in your lunch hour?’ I asked. ‘Have you a passion for the conversation of strangers?’

She sat back and made a lattice of her fingers. Blue nail polish made lapis lazuli jewels of their extremities. ‘I can talk to anyone,’ she said, with a hint of pride. ‘I’m very … flexible. My old dad used to say it’s the most underrated virtue, flexibility.’

‘Indeed so. I admire your father’s wise counsel. “If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, / Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch …”’

‘Come again?’

‘Kipling,’ I said. ‘Surely a well-educated lady like you must know “If”?’

‘Oh yeah. Course. A bloke asked me about him one day in the park. “Do you like Kipling?” he says. “I dunno,” I says right back. “I don’t believe I ever Kippled.”’ She laughed. ‘I didn’t make it up, though. I got it off a seaside postcard down Southend.’

The waitress returned, sulkily, with the food and drink. My cold beverage was a far cry from the Long Island Iced Tea I have enjoyed on occasion at the Savoy. Tea, undoubtedly. Cold, up to a point. An enterprising soul in the kitchen had added two spoonfuls of sugar, as if for a workman, and a slice of lemon floated like a shipwreck victim in its caramel depths.

When I looked up, two of the three lamb chops had been stripped to the bone and the girl was wolfing down mashed potato in sweeping forkfuls.

‘You seem to be enjoying that,’ I said indulgently. ‘God bless your appetite.’ I forbore to confide that I always found a hearty appetite an attractive trait in a young woman. A hunger to devour … strange that it should make the gentle sex more appealing than alarming.

Three minutes of silence passed. I have seen stevedores at Tilbury Docks, onshore after months at sea, demolish their meagre ration of Cornish pasty and greens with more decorum. I watched as a hunk of crusty bread was ushered back and forth through the lees of gravy and the detritus of lamb fibre and popped between her fleshy, pouted lips.

‘I trust it was to your liking,’ I said. ‘Can I interest you in pudding?’

She wiped her greasy mouth with a paper napkin and, still masticating the last of her lunch, delivered herself of this remarkable speech.

‘For afters, I have it in mind that we could get better acquainted. I got a room only a cab ride away in Camden Town. Ten minutes from now, you can come up the stairs behind me, looking at my fleshy arse in my tight skirt, and when we get to my room you can lift it up and look at my black stockings and these really nice white knickers I got on today, with little teeny pink roses on the front, and you can undo these blue heart buttons on my chest that you been staring at for the past half an hour and suck my big tits, only not too hard ’cause they’re real sensitive, and you can lay me down on the divan in my sunny blue room and fuck me hard as you like until you’re done. It’s two quid for an hour, ’cause after that I’ll have to kick you out. And if you’re real sweet beforehand and bung me ten bob extra, I could give you a chew before we get down to business, only I don’t take it down the throat because I’m a nice girl, and anyway you really want to finish up buried to the bollocks in my furry quim, don’t you, that’s what you gentlemen want, isn’t that right?’

Well, well. A harlot, after all. In ten years of dealing with ladies of the night, I have met the gamut – every age, every colour, every disposition, every temperament (even every class!) and I am no longer shocked to discover the base occupation of seemingly decent girls. But in this case I felt a distinct disappointment. My initial suspicion, that she was a lady of uncertain moral direction, was proved correct. But the suspicion had been eclipsed by a growing appreciation of her strength of character, her forthrightness. It is easy to grow close to prostitutes as friends, to feel fond of them as substitute children who have strayed from the Path. One never, however, feels admiration. Knowing the moral dereliction that is their daily choice precludes any possibility of such private approbation. Yet I had begun to admire this young woman, in our brief acquaintance – and to feel that, because I admired her, she could not be one of the sisterhood.

‘What is your name?’ I asked, a little sadly.

‘They call me lots of things round ’ere,’ she said. ‘But you can call me Barbara.’ She stretched out a hand. ‘Barbara Harris.’ Her cotton sleeve trailed across the table, soaking up tea spill and gravy puddle. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

‘Barbara,’ I said sternly, ‘as you can see, or should be able to surmise, I am not a man given to dallying with ladies of the street –’

‘All I can see,’ she retorted, ‘is, you’re a man, no different from any other, for all your long words.’

‘– and I wish only to befriend you. I would not dream of honouring your outrageous suggestion.’

Barbara took a swig from her beer glass. ‘You familiar with the music hall?’

‘Indeed I am,’ I said. ‘I used to perform on the public stage in my youth.’

‘You sound like one of them burlesque routines. D’you know the one I mean? The bloke’s tellin’ his pals – “She offered her honour. I honoured her offer. And all night long, I was on’er and off’ er.” D’you get it?’ She chuckled, a noise like perfumed bathwater escaping. ‘That’s all you really want, isn’t it?’

The grim waitress was back. ‘We’re closing,’ she said. ‘You want anything else?’

‘We’re just leaving,’ said Barbara, looking round for her jacket. Her self-assurance startled me. I could see in the fish-eyed glance of the slattern, how we must have looked. One well-fed lady of business and one middle-aged client, about to depart to consummate their lunch transaction. Her face was a mask of contempt.

‘Lamb chops three-an’-nine, veg platter sixpence, beer and tea one-aner and tea one-an’-six, that’s five-an’-ninepence, ta,’ said the waitress. ‘Sure I can’t get you anythin’ more?’ She rolled her eyes to heaven.

I paid the bill. Outside, the Edgware Road was bathed in strong sunlight. Motor cars puttered by with frightening celerity, myriad walkers bustled past, a man pathetically encased in a ‘sandwich board’ announced a sale of haberdashery at Selfridges, as we stood awkwardly on the pavement.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Miss Harris,’ I announced, as plainly as I could, ‘I am sorry our first meeting has ended in this awkward fashion. I would enjoy making your acquaintance, but in a less, ah, businesslike context. I would like, if you allow me, to take you under my wing and find you a more congenial occupation than your current one.’

‘Oh yes?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘So you want to be my pal. And what would be the point of that? What would be in it for you?’

‘I see in you a young woman who deserves a better life than you currently inhabit. A girl whose impulses towards decency have been fatally compromised by circumstance.’

‘What are you, some kind of sky pilot?’