The Cry from Street to Street

by Hilary Bailey

  I did my best to keep the conversation going. It wasn’t easy for we did not live in the same world, Brown, Curtis and I, nor had either of these gentlemen any form of trade or profession to enquire about. Consequently the conversation was slowish, though I’m sure I looked very charming as I poured the tea. We spoke of shooting – Brown had shot himself a couple of buffalo in Wyoming, of which he was proud, though my own thoughts are that such a thing might be excellent fun in the USA, where the Indians are on reservations and well provided for, but it has bad repercussions in undeveloped spots like the Canadian prairies, where they are not. If the buffalo do not breed, the Indians starve, and go without clothing and all kinds of things, for the buffalo is all they have, and though they may be uncivilized and dirty they are still men. Nevertheless, I congratulated him. We also spoke of the opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the driving in of the last spike in the track. I had come up a mountain in November 1885 to attend this humble ceremony at Eagle Pass in the Rockies. My feelings were mixed since it represented the end of my connection with the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the enterprise on which I had founded Esmeralda’s. Nevertheless, even though it meant the end of a ready source of income, I was moved by the ceremony.

  We spoke of books and the theatre. On hearing about my visit to The Mikado Mr Curtis told me he would have enjoyed accompanying me, had he known I was going, while Mr Brown regretted that being in mourning he would not have been able to. I referred again to the independence of mind bred in the Dominions. We spoke again of shooting: I confessed with a blush that I had shot at a deer, and miraculously hit it. I had unmiraculously shot a starving female bear once, too, as it was trying to get in the kitchen door for food one spring. I suppose it had cubs. I did not mention this, assuming that bear-slaying women might in their circles be considered less than charming.

  At six thirty the gentlemen rose to leave. Mr Brown told me he was going to his house in the country that evening and, very much to my surprise, added that if my sick friend could spare me for a few days, he was sure it would do me good to spend some time in the fresh Kent air, and I would be most welcome to visit. I replied I should be pleased to do so, if my friend could spare me.

  ‘We will be a quiet little party,’ he assured me, ‘only my mother and sister and perhaps two old, close friends.’

  ‘So much nicer,’ said I, earning a smile. Of course, I had no idea of going there, not a bit of it. Marcus Brown had nice eyes, and a friendly way with him, but I had no interest in him, in holidays, or paying visits. I’d put my money in a safe bank, found Mary Claire, and got no pleasure of it. Now all I desired was to discover Mary Jane and be off back to Canada, with or without her. Marcus Brown squeezed my hand a little; so, oh ho, I thought, that’s the way of it.

  It must have been ten o’clock when I wrote to Dolly Halloran about the goods I had ordered and which were now awaiting shipping. This was in case the items arrived before I did. I instructed her where to put the pianola, addressed the letter and placed it on my mantelpiece.

  Not many days after that, I was lying quiet in linen sheets smelling of lavender, the mild air of a country midnight filling the room, when I awoke to hear the sound of a stout oak door opening on well-oiled hinges. A low voice enquired, ‘Mary?’

  ‘Marcus?’ I exclaimed, though softly for fear of waking the others in the house. ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘No – only that I want you,’ the voice came back, and with that my host, Marcus Brown, was by my bedside, and bending to kiss me.

  As he took me, in the complete darkness and quiet of a country night, I was on the verge, I know, of feeling desire. Startled, I scarcely noticed what happened until he, my host, was done, and when he had, I admit it, I wept and did not know why. This moved him. ‘You’ve no cause for shame or remorse,’ he told me. ‘You are a young woman, a widow. What you feel is natural. You are accustomed to relations with a husband. It is a hardship to men, and to some women too, to forego such things.’

  It was a kindly speech, though it had no bearing on my true situation. I could not tell him that what I had felt, or thought I’d felt, was to me far from natural. I believed the internal scarring caused by my complaint and the savage treatment of it had removed my womanhood. What I had felt indicated to me that my body might perhaps be restoring itself, in spite of what the doctor had told me – and that if it was, I was not sure I welcomed the restoration. Sexual passion puts a woman at a disadvantage. She has much to lose. Her face and body are her stock in trade; trade demands a cool head. A woman who truly yields gives too much and often gets too little in return. A cold woman can use her power to get what she wants; a hot-blooded one can lose all for a moment’s pleasure. In addition, I thought, even as Marcus dried my tears, if some internal recovery was taking place, might it not also lead to a pregnancy, taking me back into the world where a woman’s passion leads to conception? And that’s a bore and a blow to most women, not to mention a danger, unless the husband wants an heir, when it is a matter of the business side of matrimony. Even then, heir achieved, the matter can’t be stopped. I doubt if even the Queen of England truly wanted to bear ten children and certainly she’s said to have complained a great deal about the pain. For lesser mortals it’s all pain and worry and of course, with the confinement, fear for your life. Still, for the moment, I had no anxieties on that score for Mr Brown – Marcus – had, like a true gentleman, withdrawn in time to prevent his seed from entering me and once I had stopped crying and he had dried my face with his handkerchief he’d said sweetly, ‘There – are you better now? See – there’s nothing to worry about. All is well. You can trust me.’ So we lay talking for a little while and then he got up, kissed me and left, in order, as he said, in case he fell asleep and was discovered in my room by the maid next morning.

  After he had gone I reflected that his arrival in my room ought not to have surprised me so much, for all London is close to all the rest of London. The gossip in the pubs of Whitechapel often concerns the affairs of the mighty. Servants’ gossip trickling down is the source, I suppose. This talk always proves that those in high places act much the same as their inferiors in matters such as purloining items from each other’s houses, dipping into the till and adultery.

  So, small wonder Marcus, attracted by a lady who did not discourage him, and restless at night, decided to do a little corridor creeping. That should not have come as a shock, I thought, as I lay there after he had left, hearing only a little breeze from outside. The shock to my nerves came when I recognized that I had nearly responded to his lovemaking.

  It was events in London which had led me after all to accept Marcus Brown’s invitation. I’d spent Monday roaming the streets putting out word for my sister, with no result. By evening I was jaded and discouraged, choked by the dirty and unwholesome air of London in summer, where dust rose from every crack and smoke belched out continually from kitchen fires, ships in the river, trains, factories and workshops. The place was all smoke and smells, much worse in the East End of course, where there were close on a million people trying to live, especially worse in Whitechapel, which they’d crossed with railway lines to spare better parts of town. Even in the West End the nuisance was always there, if there was no wind to blow it away. That day there were sullen, heavy skies through which the sun sometimes broke, and a kind of brooding, stormy atmosphere. Eventually even the animation, bustle and entertainment of the city ceased to move me. I was in this mood when I ran into Jim Bristow eating some cockles out of a tin mug by a stall in Whitechapel Road. ‘Oy!’ he cried, grabbing my arm as I passed, ‘What about a trip to the music-hall? Make a nice change for you. I’ll bet you haven’t had a night out at the halls for years. Come on, I’ve got some gelt,’ and he patted his pockets.

  I was despondent. ‘You’re very flush these days.’ A woman carrying a crate bumped into me. Behind her, like a train, was a string of four or five children holding hands, the first clutching her skirt. ‘How the poor
have to live,’ Jim remarked dispassionately, following her with his eyes as she moved through the crowds with her string, glancing behind her anxiously from time to time. ‘Let’s hope no one snaps up one of her ducklings for dinner before she gets home. Anyway, thanks for your kind enquiry. I’m flush ’cos I’ve been playing fan tan down Limehouse with the Chinks.’

  I thought he was boasting. ‘That’s a very good way to get murdered,’ I said.

  ‘They’re all right, the Chinks,’ he claimed, ‘as long as you know how to treat them. And there’s a big Chinaman with a big knife on a stool by the door to prevent things getting out of hand.’

  ‘D’you smoke opium with them?’

  ‘Only to be sociable. When in Rome, do like the Romans do,’ he replied. ‘Anyway, there’s a good bill at the Cambridge, performing seals and all, so how about it? Your pretty face is like a wet weekend. It’ll cheer you up.’

  So we set off, Jim grasping my heavy handbag and offering to relieve me of the weight, me refusing, and we headed, in the end both holding on to my bag, up to the Cambridge in Commercial Road and caught the second house just as it was starting. We sat in the stalls, in the smoky, jolly atmosphere, plenty of orange peel flying, and watched the promised seals, also a dog ballet with the animals dressed up in gauzy dresses and a low comedian in a check jacket and a bowler hat. Then came Bella Bedford, the Little Cockney Nightingale. She might have been a Cockney, but she was no girl, just a very small, heavily rouged woman tricked out in a short skirt and pantalettes. There was a chorus, all spangles and tights, much cheered. Last on was Harry Upton, a respectable gent in a top hat and flashy waistcoat, who gave us ‘Work, boys, work, and be contented’. Sardonically or not, workers or not, the audience joined in enthusiastically. ‘For that man you may rely, Will be wealthy by and by, If he’ll only put his shoulder to the wheel.’

  He’d launched into an old favourite, ‘We don’t want to fight’, when I turned round and spotted, right at the back by the bar, behind the rail separating the bar area from the seats, my friend Rosie, in decolletage leaving nothing to the imagination, and a big purple hat covered in lace, arm in arm with a girl in scarlet. She’d already seen me. She pouted at Jim, now belting out ‘By Jingo if we do’, raised her eyebrows and gaped, miming amazement. Then a couple of men in top hats blocked my view and I turned back and gave it my best, bawling ‘We’ve fought the bear before And while we’re Britons true, the Russians shall not have Constantinople’. As the audience cheered and stamped, full of patriotic fervour, Jim, by dint of furtively squeezing my breast, attracted my attention, and tugged me up out of the stalls. We went into a pub a few doors down. Without asking me what I wanted he got me a glass of port. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Feel better now, don’t you?’ Well, truth to tell I did. ‘There’s nothing like a singsong,’ he went on. ‘That’s a gloomy one, isn’t it?’ He began to carol the Little Cockney Nightingale’s finale, ‘Only a violet I plucked from my dead mother’s grave as a boy’. A large man in a black suit said, ‘Shut up.’

  ‘It’s a real tonic, and no mistake,’ I said, to be obliging. ‘I thank you, Jim, but what I want to know is, where’s Mary?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do with that girl when you get her,’ was all he said.

  ‘Give her the chance to get out of here,’ I said. ‘Look at it. Trapped rats. Everybody’s after everybody else for their last crust. This place is like a bloody kettle, just waiting for the lid to blow off. I promised my mother before she died –‘

  ‘Stow it, Mary,’ he said. ‘“Only a violet I plucked from my dead mother’s grave as a boy”,’ he sang again.

  ‘You’ve got no feelings at all, have you, you bastard?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘No. No more than you have,’ he said. ‘There’s more to all this than you’re saying. I know it, you know I know it. Now – you tell me what’s up, I might help you.’

  This was the most I’d got out of him during our encounters.

  ‘Help yourself, more likely,’ I said.

  ‘Mary,’ he said reproachfully, ‘how can you say that? What could I hope to gain –‘

  Jim,’ I said, ‘if you know where she is, tell me, I’m imploring you.’

  He only said, ‘Ah,’ and looked at me mysteriously. I stood up and moved rapidly to the door. I didn’t want a brawl in the pub, the slappings, pullings about and swearing which were a kind of routine, ignored by most bystanders, between men and women in those parts, where a woman would wear a black eye to prove her husband loved her.

  I was in a cab and back to my lodgings, quickly. This was not the end of it. I was in bed and dozing when there came the noise of stones being thrown up at my window. I looked out – Jim was below. Rather than let him disturb Dora, who must have been in bed, I crept down and let him in. He followed me upstairs, pinching my bum and trying to get hold of me. When we got in the room he fell on one knee, crying dramatically, ‘Now, my darling, why did you disappear like that? I love you, Mary Kelly, my darling, I do.’ His arms were round my knees.

  ‘Jim, you bastard, leave me be,’ I said. He was pushing me towards the bedroom. We lurched into a table. I wanted no fuss, no Dora, no police, but I could see he wanted to take up where he’d left off, get back with me again, then let me provide for all his wants as I had all those years before. If I yielded, just the once, he’d see the act as my signature of our contract. But there could be no arrangement, spoken or unspoken, between us – not after that incident where the little girl had died, not after the abortion I had had and, particularly, not after my disease and the cure the doctor in New York had done on me. But being no longer capable of pleasure, nor of bearing a child, hardly a woman at all where it counted – mostly Jim’s doing, I might say – was a protection in some ways. Yet, as he forced me backwards, I had to consider that as long as he might have information which could lead me to Mary Jane, I couldn’t afford to fall out with him. This thought, as well as the wish to have no arguments or disturbance, made me yield to him, like it or not. And so, with a flurry of tapes and strings, and buttons popping all over the place, I was finally spreadeagled across my bed, Jim in his shirt on top, and so the deed was done. I got no joy from it of course, though I pretended to. That’s my trade after all, like an actress on the stage, and I don’t think he suspected my pleasure was feigned and my endearments false.

  I made him leave at six, before Dora got up and there were too many people in the street. ‘Oh Mary,’ he said from the pillow, ‘don’t turn me out.’

  ‘I don’t want to, my dear,’ I said lyingly, ‘but I have to keep a decent reputation. I’m seen as, a respectable widow, here to find my sister, and that’s the point.’ He’d told me nothing about her. When I asked, he made protestations of love. When I asked again he fell asleep, or pretended to.

  After he’d left I lay awake, feeling annoyed and uneasy. I had kept my part of the unspoken agreement I thought we had, meaning my compliance in return for his information, but though I’d complied, he had told me nothing about Mary Jane. Perhaps he had nothing to tell. Perhaps he did know something of her life or whereabouts, but was hanging on for a better bargain, this night of love being only the opening shot in his campaign. As he’d left, he’d turned his head to the mantelpiece. I thought from across the room he’d read the name and address on the envelope of my letter to Dolly Halloran. He had good eyesight and read well, though God knows how he’d picked up the skill for he’d hardly been to school. That letter would have aroused his curiosity. At all events, he had gone leaving me uneasy in my mind; and even though I knew one of his chief weapons in life was the creation of bewilderment and disorder in women, the fact was, he had employed it and it had worked. Meanwhile, I was no closer to Mary Jane and guessed I would have to find her without Jim’s help. Even if he could assist me, I had an idea the price might be higher than I would want to pay.

  After Jim left I got up and stood in my nightdress at the open sitting-room window, looking out over the dark roofs
and smoking chimneys. I breathed in the clouded, muggy London air, heard the singing in the music-hall in my head, saw the pushing and shoving crowds, the flickering gas over the stalls in Whitechapel Road. I could almost smell the frying potatoes, the unwashed bodies in old clothes, the faint aroma of some cracked, overflowing drain somewhere – there always was one, the smell was always there – and I reflected that Jim had had me, and having had me, even as we lay in bed, had begun to take on proprietorial airs. He enquired gravely about my life and fortune, propped up on my pillows, mimicking the air of a reliable man of business. He had even put it to me that a woman on her own needed to be married. Possibly, he’d suggested, a hint of coldness in my manner was attributable to my relations with the late Mr Frazer. ‘Doubtless he didn’t treat you quite right in that particular department. Many men are like that, but it discourages and disappoints a woman,’ he’d sympathized. He’d even had the cheek to propose lighting his pipe in bed.