The Cry from Street to Street

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘A coincidence indeed, Mr Brown,’ I said.

  ‘And to think,’ he said, ‘I had just reflected that you must be in Scotland by now.’

  Had he? I thought. I must have made a strong impression if he was still considering my movements. ‘I should be there,’ I returned, ‘but on arrival in London I met with an irresistible appeal from the husband of a sick friend to go and take care of her for a little while, and, of course, I was glad to do so. I was thinking about her as I walked, which is why I failed to recognize you at first.’

  ‘The friend is improving, I hope.’

  ‘She’ll be worse before she’s better, as I think they say,’ I replied, indicating that my imaginary friend was suffering a trying pregnancy.

  ‘So – while you’re at liberty, may I offer you some refreshment? Have you had lunch? I’ve been detained and have had none. I’m hungry for food, and company, too, for this morning it was my uncle’s funeral. Can I prevail on you to join me?’

  I had no easy way of refusing, although I was not very keen to go.

  ‘The Café Royal may suit us,’ he observed. ‘It’s very near.’

  So that was where we went, I offering condolences on his loss, he accepting them, and so on and so forth. We got a table in the café and took our seats.

  He looked at me with very large brown eyes. ‘And did you settle the business you came to do?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Then, since you are sick-nursing and I have had rather a trying morning, I think we should have some oysters to rally us.’ But I asked for soup and a cutlet of fish. The waiter brought a bottle of wine and, as Mr Brown carefully tasted it, I studied his mouth. There was something in its broad shape and, indeed, in the whole formation of his face which puzzled me.

  At that moment up came a fair, rosy-cheeked man of about thirty, the same age as Mr Brown, I guessed, in a dark suit with a red flower in his buttonhole. He carried a silver-topped cane.

  ‘Hullo, Marcus,’ he said, sounding a little surprised.

  ‘Cecil,’ responded Mr Brown, in a less than welcoming tone. ‘And how are you?’

  ‘Very well,’ said this Cecil. He paused. ‘I was going to call in at Montpelier Square –’

  ‘I’m playing truant from there for a brief moment,’ explained Brown, unashamed. When you come to think of it, wherever you go, high or low, a man who has just buried his uncle is usually expected to be on hand to pour a drink, produce a handkerchief or smelling salts when needed, open the door to callers and be ready to discuss the best side of the lamented. Yet here was Brown, ordering oysters lunching out with a lady, or so I’ll describe myself, while presumably expected at home to play his part.

  ‘Look in later if you like,’ said this cool character.

  ‘Well, condolences, anyway,’ the man called Cecil said. He was not being asked to sit down, I noted.

  ‘It was expected, of course,’ Brown said, not very gravely. Neither of the men seemed very upset or even prepared to pretend to be. Either Mr Brown’s late uncle was a man mourned by few, or the pair were hardened cynics; I couldn’t judge. Nevertheless, the arrival of his friend Cecil rather confirmed what I had begun to suspect about Mr Brown, which was that he was a bit of a wild one in a quiet way, his friend being somewhat more so, I guessed. On the voyage he had been a little subdued, but here in his native element his true character was more obvious, not, perhaps, to everyone, but certainly to me, a woman whose stock-in-trade was taking the measure of men.

  Brown introduced me to Cecil. ‘Cecil Curtis, an old friend – Mrs Frazer, a travelling companion on the voyage from New York.’ Curtis made a small bow, summing me up from the explanation as an acquaintance of Brown’s with no claim to any particular respect, and taking the introduction as an invitation to sit down.

  ‘Have you not had luncheon already?’ Brown asked in a cold tone.

  ‘A mere bite,’ Curtis said confidently. ‘I’m hungry as a hunter. You can order my luncheon. I believe you’re in a position to do so.’

  ‘I hope I am. It’s all in a tangle, Cecil,’ said Brown somewhat curtly.

  ‘Yes – well,’ Curtis replied disbelievingly.

  And so the waiter took Brown’s order, and I found myself sitting uncomfortably between two men who were virtual strangers to me in a restaurant, when what I had intended was a gentle stroll in the park.

  We exchanged pleasantries, but, sitting in this quiet restaurant, where people spoke and laughed and china and cutlery clattered gently, my head flooded with memories of the last few days, dreadful images of rushings through dire streets, Mary Claire’s obdurate face as she told me, ‘We’ve no need of your assistance – we came to the parting of the ways many years ago.’ I recalled Jim Bristow’s hands on my face in the darkness, the story of that horrid murder in Bucks Row.

  I got through the lunch on nerve, speaking of this and that, of Canada, of gardens (the garden of Brown’s house in the country, recently inherited from his uncle, had, it appeared, gone to rack and ruin) and of travel (Cecil Curtis had recently returned from Biarritz and was just off to Scotland). All the while, I could not rid myself of a feeling of darkness, melancholy, a suspicion of threat, though all the time I was conscious of the effect of my looks on both men and relieved that my yellow bonnet, though simple, was a mite smarter and more becoming than those of the other ladies present. The woman’s mind is a curious thing. It can reflect on ten matters at the same time, if it has been sufficiently well educated in so doing. My education had taught me that, if not much more. So even as my mind dwelt on gloom and ruin, I was noting my own appearance just as if I had a mirror in front of me. I also received, during our harmless conversation, an impression that the two men resembled in certain ways the remittance men English families dispatched to our wild Canadian shores to get them out of the way. Especially, I thought of poor Joey Fitzgerald who had died frozen in his shack. Well, a madam such as I am learns more about men in a year than a respectable woman can in a lifetime, that’s for sure.

  Meanwhile, I felt very tired. As Cecil Curtis obligingly described the landscape and nature of life in Aberdeen, the city where, I alleged, the late Mr Frazer’s parents lived, and to which I was going, I found myself saying, ‘After so long in Canada I begin to wonder if I will ever feel completely at home in Great Britain again. I’m half minded to return to Canada.’

  The two men looked at me in some confusion, as well they might. They may have concluded I was declaring I did not fancy the life of an Aberdonian widow, or even look forward to the prospect of a Scottish remarriage.

  After a pause Marcus Brown observed, ‘I certainly noticed during my stay in America, Mrs Frazer, that there is more freedom for women there. The lives of the women in remote areas may sometimes be hard, by our standards, but perhaps because they are hard, they have more independence. In some ways, too, because of their value, they are more respected. Not as we respect our ladies, perhaps, but simply because of the vital part they play in life. They are rarer, too,’ he said with a smile to Cecil Curtis. ‘Even a squaw may in Canada sometimes marry a white man and if he improves his position, she may through him gain a substantial position. Her children may establish themselves as thoroughly respectable.’

  Cecil Curtis did not take to this remark, disbelieving the facts and finding them, even if true, thoroughly unpleasant. I also found Brown’s conclusions less than accurate. I recalled the Indians drifting into town, drinking themselves into the gutter, and those shacks on the outskirts of town where the Indian women lived, sometimes with white men, sometimes abandoned by them, gardening their little plots, rearing chickens and ragged half-breed children. Still, something of what Brown said was true. There were respectable marriages between some white men and Indian women. And in all probability, I thought, in a society where there is much to do and opportunities of all kinds for those who will seize them, it might be easier for a half-breed child from the saddest of conditions to make a decent life, than for a child born in the London
slums. This I said.

  ‘So it is a society in which women and half-breeds thrive,’ Curtis said, half joking, half contemptuously.

  ‘And the Irish,’ added Brown.

  ‘Well, thank God we still control such places,’ Curtis told him, ‘or anarchy would prevail.’

  I agreed with him, saying, ‘Safety lies in firm government from the top, I believe.’

  ‘Who does not?’ he said. ‘Yet I sympathize with your desire to return to a country where you were happy. But how could a lady alone in such a place manage for herself? What society will she have? Who would protect her?’

  I smiled at him. ‘A woman’s whim,’ I declared. ‘I am between two worlds, certain of neither.’

  The meal concluded and I prepared to leave. ‘I must leave you now. My friend is expecting me back. Thank you, Mr Brown, for a very pleasant lunch.’

  ‘Do stay for some coffee,’ he urged.

  ‘I dare not,’ I said, ‘but perhaps you will both visit me soon. At tea-time, perhaps? I’ve taken lodgings near the house of my friends. Their home is quite small, so I thought it better to live elsewhere rather than become a further burden on the household.’

  I gave my address and we agreed that they would come to tea on Sunday in two days’ time. I could offer no less at that moment, but planned, after the tea, to lose them somewhow. Easily done. In any case, by that time I should probably have found Mary and be preparing for our return to Canada.

  I passed the afternoon in the park, listened to the soldiers’ band, had a light supper of scrambled eggs in a teashop and was more than ready, indeed, very excited, to join the crowds going into the Savoy Theatre for a performance of The Mikado. I had wondered whether to go to the play of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde at the Lyceum, but, tired and gloomy as I was, I needed nothing to freeze my blood, a cheery operetta was what I fancied.

  The ladies and gentlemen going into the stalls were an extraordinary sight for one fresh from Canada – the ladies’ silks and satins, their jewellery and hair decorations, the cut of the men’s evening clothes, all spoke of a condition of extraordinary prosperity in the nation. Being dressed in day clothes myself, I was up in the balcony, but I had a good seat and could see well. Lesser beings were even higher up, in the gallery. I much enjoyed the bright costumes and scenery, the silly, light-hearted plot and the music, coming out of the theatre into the London darkness quite carried away and excited and humming those pretty tunes, as far as I could remember them, ‘A wandering minstrel I’, and the melancholy ‘Titwillow’, and the jolly ‘Three little maids from school’, sung by three little Japanese maidens in silks, their faces painted in the oriental style.

  I was a bit late for the Ten Bells but thought Jim would wait for me. However, he had not. He’d said, the landlord repeated with satisfaction, ‘A man who’s any kind of a man don’t wait much more’n ten minutes for his tart to turn up.’ I was half relieved. After such a long day an uneasy encounter with Jim would have been hard to endure. I was disappointed not to have got any further with my search for Mary Jane but I reckoned that, if Jim had any information about her, he’d find me again. He’d probably do so even if he had no news, being secretly fascinated by me, my escape from him and my prosperity.

  So I returned to my lodgings, very weary, and went to bed, where I had a long sleep which, however, was not very refreshing, as it was again interrupted by dreams, this time of visions of the poor creature slumped against the stable gate, gutted, with Mary Jane’s face, mask-like and superimposed on her own. I saw again the mother and child, close to death in the basement of Donaldson’s Buildings. There was raucous, high-pitched singing:

  Three little maids from school are we,

  Pert as a schoolgirl well can be,

  Filled to the brim with girlish glee,

  Three little maids from school.

  The next day I spent like a bear in its winter lair, for I knew by now, after three days and nights in the city, my nerves were nearly destroyed and suspected that if I did not try to rest a little my body would soon follow suit. I had grown accustomed to the frontier, with its openness, its huge skies and long silences. There would come, of course, sudden eruptions of violence and drama – who would expect the peace of the convent in a brothel? There would be revelations of a landscape hostile to man, someone frozen to death, a family starved on a homestead, a child killed by a snake, a wolf or a bear. Yet, soon enough there was a return to the quiet domination of nature, the silence of prairie and forest. My return to this overladen city, old in crime, had affected me. It seemed to me that here not just the speech, but all the surroundings were laden with signals and messages, double meanings and obscurities. What did they say sardonically in Canada? ‘It’s only when you understand that anything said by an Englishman has two possible meanings that you can begin to concentrate on the third.’

  That day, I rested, letting the fog of events clear from my brain. Dora, bringing me a little piece of plaice for my dinner, began to tell me of the murdered woman, whose identity was now known. I assumed her employer, the tobacconist, had encouraged her to pass on the gossip she acquired at the kitchen door, but I cut her short. What difference did it make who she was, except to her? She wasn’t William Gladstone, or Henry Irving, was she? Just a woman, to begin with, and another East End tart, to make matters worse. She was a nine-day wonder. Who cared who she was? Her family, if she had one, would not long mourn their outcast. No policeman would lie biting his pillow all night, worrying about not having caught whoever killed her. I thought, she could just as easily have been the woman I’d met two days ago in the dosser in Flower and Dean Street. Poor Bess! I remembered her straggling hair, looking, in the dim light, like the hide of an old dog, the bad corset not disguising fallen breasts and a belly slackened by childbearing and the life she’d led. Some might think she’d hardly find it worth while to take her sore feet in old boots round the neighbourhood in search of trade, but some – not me – might be astonished at what kind of woman a man will be prepared to take, when need strikes. I know anything will do. More than that, some men get satisfaction from having an old whore up against a wall in an alley skinking of urine. They rejoice at the sudden heat and quick release, where no respect, love, consideration, or even joy is expected on either side, just a couple of coppers transferred from his hand to hers, and that’s that. After all, they’ve been told often enough that the sexual act is degrading to men and even more so to women, so naturally they believe the courtship, billing and cooing and all the rest are just window-dressing to enable decent women to participate in the crime. It’s a relief for your respectable grocer or Member of Parliament to get the filthy business done outside his own home and then go back to the nest, not obliged to offend his wife, bother his head with ‘my loves’ and ‘darlings’, or run the risk of adding to his burdens with another little mouth to feed.

  The whore has another advantage, too, for some: to avoid disease and pregnancy, she prefers to be taken up the backside, and this is what many men prefer. Nevertheless, the lord who can’t perform with anyone but the lowest of the low, the man who’d prefer a boy but won’t admit it, the respectable fellow sparing the delicate feelings of his wife and avoiding any further additions to the family, and the market porter fancying a twopenny-halfpenny stand-up before he begins his long day all have one thing in common – they despise whores.

  So there’s no need for a whore to be desirable: it’s enough that she’s there like the man who empties your dustbins, or the maid who takes away your chamber pot in the morning. And nobody cares much if she dies. For sure, this affair did not bring the Police Commissioner or the Commissioner for the CID back from their holidays post-haste – they were both away then, and for the following month.

  It was hard to get rid of Dora. ‘They’re saying it was her pimp that done it,’ she said, lowering her eyes in mock modesty at the word.

  I had been reading and put down my book. ‘Dora,’ I instructed, ‘take your horrid tale and nast
y speculations back to the kitchen, where they belong, if you please.’

  She bit her lip and went off sulking. I knew perfectly well the dead woman could have had had no pimp. She drank, and her earnings were too small. There would have been no profit for a pimp, no chance to take well-dressed ease in pubs and coffee houses, pipe and newspaper in hand, no coins to jingle in the pockets. Even pimps have their pride. To take the earnings of a well-paid whore is a mark of rank; to take pennies from an old one degrades a pimp in his own eyes and in those of others of his calling.

  Meanwhile, Sunday came, and Mr Brown and Mr Curtis arrived in the afternoon for tea. I had arranged my things carefully, sent Dora out for the last, late roses of summer and made the room very charming. I wore a lace blouse, a blue silk skirt, kid boots and black silk stockings. I had on a lace petticoat, cream, with flounces which showed a little as I picked up my skirt to walk. Dora seemed much impressed by my appearance and two frock-coated guests.

  I poured the tea and handed bread and butter to the manner born. Poor Joey Fitzgerald had given us our etiquette lessons on dark winter afternoons at Esmeralda’s. How we’d laughed, as the Indian girls in their chemises with their plaited hair played at fine ladies going to the opera, with table-cloths hanging down behind them for trains and cloaks, or Dolly O’Halloran learned the court curtsy in her drawers and pantoufles. Oh, I could remember, as I rang the bell for Dora to bring up fresh tea, how Joey’d coughed and drunk and coughed again. I remembered us flinging more logs into the stove, while the snow came down through the darkness outside the window, and Joey said, ‘Remember, ladies, when you’re guests at the dinner table of the high-ups, you must never, in any circumstances, discuss politics, money, religion, the relations between the sexes or health – yours or that of others.’ At which he fell to coughing again and this time there was blood on the rag he clutched to his mouth, and he cried out, ‘Wind up the phonograph, for God’s sake, let’s have some music’ He would always want Carmen, which has some good tunes, you must admit, but was too doom-laden for a man in his condition. The girls, for the most part, favoured ballads about mothers and angels and little dying children, except the Indians – music was all Greek to them. I’d always attempt to play him something more cheerful, but it was Carmen he really loved and I can never hear that music without thinking of his short life and lonely death. It’s a hard world. Yet if he’d lived I couldn’t say what future he’d have had, for they wouldn’t have him at home in England and he’d never have found a place in a Canadian cattle-town. Anyway, it was from Joey I’d learned the skills of the genteel tea table with a roaring stove, whisky in the cups and a cowboy fondling a girl in the corner.