The Golden Chain

by Margaret James

  ‘Jesse, I’ve decided I won’t go to a mission.’

  ‘Oh, Daisy darling, please don’t be so awkward!’ Jesse stopped and took her by the shoulders, gazing deep into her eyes. ‘It’s only for tonight. I’ll meet you at the Lyon’s Corner House, Trafalgar Square, at nine or half past nine tomorrow morning.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Yes, I promise.’ Jesse let her go. ‘I don’t like to ask, but could you let me have a bob or two?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Thank you, love. I’ll pay you back.’

  ‘You’d better,’ Daisy told him. ‘Let’s go and have a meal. I’m starving.’

  They found a dingy café near the station, shared a meal of pie and chips, then went to find the mission.

  ‘Actually, I’ve no’ had my supper,’ Sadie Lawrence told Ewan as they walked into the buffet.

  ‘What would you like?’ asked Ewan as a reflex, then cursed himself for being a courteous, nicely brought up boy. He felt the last few shillings in his pocket melt away.

  ‘A plate of stovies would be grand,’ said Sadie.

  ‘You’ll have oatcakes, too?’

  ‘Of course.’ Sadie took out a little leather purse and gave him a half crown. ‘I’ll treat you, Mr Fraser,’ she said kindly. ‘You can treat me back when you get paid.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s very nice of you,’ said Ewan, pleasantly surprised.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Sadie said, and smiled.

  ‘Who is in the company?’ asked Ewan, as they waited for their plates of stovies and he thought that maybe Sadie Lawrence was quite attractive, in an impish sort of way.

  ‘Well, it’s just the five of us – you and me and Mungo, and a couple of other fellows. I’m the only lassie, owing to the lack of female roles.’

  ‘I’d have thought there would be roles for lassies in experimental drama?’

  ‘You’d be very much mistaken, Mr Fraser.’ Sadie Lawrence grimaced. ‘Modern drama is full of roles for men. I’m often called upon to play a boy. When we do Shakespeare, female students from the drama school are sometimes drafted in to help us out.’

  ‘Do you do a lot of Shakespeare?’

  ‘Yes, indeed we do,’ said Sadie Lawrence. ‘Somehow, Mr Fraser, the company has to pay its way, and even make a profit, and this means getting audiences in. The honest burghers out in Partick will come and see Twelfth Night or Julius Caesar, but they’re no’ so keen to spend their hard-earned bawbees on a piece from Soviet Russia.’

  ‘You don’t have to call me Mr Fraser all the time,’ said Ewan, starting on his stovies.

  ‘Very well, then – Ewan.’ Sadie Lawrence bit into an oatcake and then she smiled flirtatiously at him. ‘I’m sure you’re going to fit in with the Comrades.’

  ‘You said I would be staying with – Mungo, is it?’ Ewan mopped up his gravy with some oatcake, and realised he was starting to feel better. As Mrs Morrison had always said, a stomach full of stovies was a sovereign cure for any ill. ‘Where would that be, in a boarding house?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Sadie. ‘It’s much better than a boarding house. You just wait and see.’

  Jesse and Daisy turned down Baker Street, then into George Street, and finally came out on Edgware Road.

  ‘This is it,’ said Jesse, stopping beside a tall, gaunt, soot-stained building. ‘Go on then, ring the bell. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  He kissed her briefly on the cheek, then strode off down the Edgware Road, leaving Daisy wondering if she’d ever set eyes on him again.

  Since she didn’t know where she was in London, or where else to go, she felt she had no option but to ring the mission bell.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Sadie, beaming.

  ‘It’s amazing.’ Ewan stared round the loft space, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light. The empty Glasgow warehouse was almost derelict on the outside, but it was much improved within.

  Sadie and the others had taken over the top storey. They had a stove and pots and pans and kindling, half a dozen kitchen chairs and a big kitchen table. Mattresses and bedding were spread across the floor.

  ‘Those are yours,’ said Sadie, pointing to a mattress and a pile of army blankets. ‘Make yourself at home.’

  ‘What does the owner think about you living here?’ asked Ewan.

  ‘He’s on the run from creditors,’ said Sadie. ‘It was in all the papers. He’s not been seen since last November. We moved in here a month ago, and now we have a commune.

  ‘We’re Communists,’ she added. ‘We don’t recognise the right of any individual to say, this place is mine. When the revolution comes, everything belonging to the people will be held in common. Listen, Ewan, property is theft, don’t you agree?’

  Daisy pressed the bell again, rather harder this time. She waited fifteen, twenty minutes until a black-robed, stern-faced nun finally came and opened the front door.

  ‘A policeman sent me here,’ said Daisy, wondering what the everlasting punishment for lying to nuns might be. Then she told her story in her best Dorset accent, and to her relief the nun decided to let her in.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ she said, as she led Daisy up a flight of bare stone stairs, her robes swishing behind her on the treads. ‘The casual ward has only one bed left. Otherwise, we’d have had to send you to the Salvation Army hostel, that’s in the Marylebone Road, and a little country girl like you would have found the hostel very rough.’

  Daisy looked around and wondered how much rougher the Salvation Army place could be.

  ‘This is where you leave your case,’ the nun said, pointing to a padlocked cage. ‘I’ll go and get you a ticket.’

  ‘But I’ll need my case,’ objected Daisy, clutching it.

  ‘Quite, so you can have it back tomorrow.’ The nun looked Daisy up and down. ‘You’re not in Dorset any more, my dear. This is the big, bad city. It’s full of wicked people who would cut your throat for half a crown. If you take your case up to the ward, it will be empty in the morning. Just take out your washing things tonight.’

  Daisy did as she was told, sneaking out her purse as well and slipping it in her pocket.

  She’d thought she was used to slums and ruins, but this was something else. The mission was a musty, fusty building that had water running down its pea-green painted walls. It smelled of cabbage soup and laundry, and there was an almost overpowering stink of gas.

  She thought she could hear reedy, plaintive crying. Or perhaps it was a cat? Did nuns keep pets?

  ‘Be very quiet now,’ said the nun, as they climbed and climbed, passing bare stone landings which led to double doors. ‘Try not to let your heels click on the stairs, or else you’ll wake the babies.’

  ‘Babies?’ whispered Daisy.

  ‘The babies and their mothers, poor foolish girls who let men take advantage,’ said the nun, severely.

  The ward to which the nun took Daisy was high up in the roof. It was unfurnished except for rows and rows of iron beds, on which a strange assortment of women, girls and hunched-up bundles snored or lay like corpses.

  Daisy used the cold, echoing washroom, then lay down fully clothed upon the bed. She pulled a hairy blanket over her, trying not to notice that it smelled of sweat.

  But although she didn’t think she’d sleep, she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the morning light was streaming through the windows, brightly illuminating all the squalor. She could hear London pigeons courting, chittering and squabbling on the roof.

  ‘Get up,’ said a dark-haired, dough-faced girl, who was sitting down on the next bed, and pinning up her hair. ‘You’ll miss your breakfast, else.’

  ‘They give us breakfast?’

  ‘Yes, of course they do, if you tells ’em you ain’t got no money.’ The girl grinned slyly
. ‘Sister Mary Agnes always noses through the stuff they got locked in the cage. So I ’ope you ’ad the sense to stick yer lolly down yer drawers?’

  Breakfast turned out to be a bowl of lukewarm, stiff, grey porridge, full of hairy lumps and gluey globules. ‘That’s the snot the nuns put into it, to mortify our flesh,’ observed the dough-faced girl.

  But Daisy was very hungry, so she choked the porridge down.

  ‘Good luck, my child,’ said the middle-aged sister who reunited Daisy with her case, and who made Daisy think of Mrs Hobson back in Dorset. ‘Before you go, tell me, my dear – why did you come to London?’

  ‘To look for live-in work,’ said Daisy.

  ‘If you don’t find any, what will you do then?’

  ‘I’ve got the addresses of all the domestic agencies, and so I hope I will,’ said Daisy, edging towards the stairs.

  ‘You’ll need some bus fares,’ said the nun. ‘Do you have any money?’

  ‘I’ve got a little, thank you, sister.’ Daisy thought, I won’t accept more charity, even if it’s offered. I feel enough of a fraud already.

  ‘Then please leave your offering in the box,’ the nun said, nodding towards a crucifix on the wall which Daisy hadn’t previously noticed. On a shelf beneath the crucifix was a wooden box which had a slit in it.

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’ Daisy found her purse, and then in her confusion she slipped in half a crown, which she could certainly not afford.

  ‘It’s usual to kneel and say a prayer,’ went on the nun, pointing towards a threadbare velvet cushion on the floor. ‘If you’re any sort of Christian, even a Presbyterian or Methodist, you should know to bow before Our Lord.’

  ‘You survived, then,’ Jesse said, and grinned.

  ‘Yes, just about.’

  Daisy thought the smell of coffee was the scent of heaven. ‘What about you, where did you spend the night?’

  ‘Oh, I found a bar, got into conversation with a bloke, and he bought me some drinks. Then, after chucking out time, I walked the streets until the cafés opened in the early hours.’ Jesse yawned. ‘If I have another cup of coffee, I’ll be all right.’

  ‘Thank you for looking after me,’ said Daisy, who had almost cried with relief to see him sitting there.

  ‘It’s my pleasure.’ Jesse smiled a tired smile. ‘The mission, was it all right?’

  ‘It was a roof over my head.’

  ‘I’ve heard it’s grim,’ said Jesse. ‘I’m sorry it couldn’t be the Savoy.’

  He took the previous evening’s paper from his pocket. ‘I forgot to say, I hope you didn’t tell them you had any money? They’d have tried to get you to make a contribution to their funds. So now we have to find a room to let.’

  ‘Two rooms, Jesse.’

  ‘One room will be cheaper.’

  ‘I can’t share a room with you.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Jesse, opening the paper at the pages featuring rooms to let. ‘A common lodging house, I think. Somewhere south of the river will be much better value.’

  ‘What about theatrical digs?’

  ‘You’re joking.’ Jesse laughed, but mirthlessly. ‘We can’t afford theatrical digs in London.’

  They walked all day, looking at dingy lodging houses, dirty tenements and filthy basements.

  Finally, they found a place in Clapham, two so-called furnished attic rooms in a crumbling fire trap that smelled of cats and sewage, for which they had to pay a deposit of two pounds to a woman living in the basement.

  ‘So now we’re really on our uppers,’ said Jesse, who’d kept up his muttering about one room being better, cheaper and more sensible most of the day.

  ‘Let’s go and have some supper,’ Daisy said, to shut him up – he couldn’t talk and eat at the same time. ‘I saw a fish and chip shop on the corner.’

  As they walked back home again, Jesse put his arm round Daisy’s shoulders and hummed some catchy little tunes she didn’t recognise. They cheered her up but also made her feel rather melancholy, too.

  She was very tired, she was lonely, and she couldn’t help but feel how lovely it would be to stay with Jesse Trent tonight.

  But that was how so many girls got caught. She didn’t want to end up like her missing mother, having a baby in some place for girls who had no sense and let men take advantage, as the nun had put it, and having to hand her child over to a married stranger.

  Or, which was even worse, having to hurt herself with knitting needles, and then dispose of blood-soaked parcels.

  They let themselves into the gloomy hallway. ‘Goodnight,’ she said to Jesse, as they reached their attic rooms. ‘You must be really tired.’

  ‘I’m not too tired.’ Jesse bent to kiss her on the forehead. ‘Come in for minute?’

  ‘I don’t think I should.’

  ‘Daisy, don’t make me beg you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

  ‘You do look all in.’ Jesse sighed and yawned and stretched exaggeratedly. ‘So go and get your beauty sleep. You most probably need it, and I sure as hell need mine.’

  But Daisy couldn’t sleep. She locked her door, then took some paper from her case and wrote to Ewan. As she wrote, she felt how much she missed him, missed knowing he was always there, and always looking out for her, and always on her side.

  At first, she wrote a lot of nonsense, about how she and Jesse had found some decent digs, and how they were going to see some agents, how they were sure they’d get themselves fixed up with something soon.

  But then, as tears blurred her vision, and the asthmatic clicking of the meter warned her the electricity would soon be running out, and she knew she didn’t have a sixpence, she added, I’m missing you already, and I wish you could be here.

  She wound the golden chain he’d given her round and round her fingers, held it tight, and thought of him. Then she took it off and slipped it down between the lining and the casing of her leather handbag, hiding it from Jesse Trent.

  Ewan’s Sunday had gone very well.

  Mungo Campbell and the other actors said they’d been afraid the manager would engage some feeble English bastard. So they were delighted to find that Ewan was a fellow Scot.

  He’d been to Glasgow only once or twice before, just passing through, so being shown around the city by Sadie and the others was a revelation.

  Mrs Fraser had always hated Glasgow. She said it was an awful, common place, and full of awful, common people. But Ewan soon decided that he loved it – loved its buzz and huge vitality, loved the wonderful, exuberant Victorian architecture which was so very different from the muted elegance of Edinburgh’s pretty Charlotte Square. If Edinburgh was a quiet, decorous maiden lady, Glasgow was a lively girl who liked to have some fun.

  Daisy would have loved it too, he thought. But where was Daisy now? He hoped she was all right, that the bastard Trent was looking after her, and she’d do well in London.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When the electricity ran out, Daisy had gone to bed. But she couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned and fidgeted, unable to get comfortable on the flock-filled mattress which was full of lumps and bumps.

  All night long, cockroaches and big black beetles ran across the cracked linoleum, while other, larger creatures rustled and scrabbled beneath the floorboards, and in the roof space high above her head.

  She’d grown up in India, so she was used to birds and rats and insects coming uninvited into people’s homes, and she didn’t mind them. But the antics of their British counterparts still kept her awake.

  The actual bed was full of wildlife, too. She woke up from a fitful doze to find that she was being bitten to bits, and in the morning her skin was blotchy, red and itching. I must try not to scratch the bites, she thought, I don’t want them to get in
fected.

  When she met Jesse on the landing, it was obvious he hadn’t slept. ‘I’m going to have a shave,’ he said, dipping a chipped enamel mug into the bucket of cold water which someone had brought up and left for them.

  They had mentioned washing, and the landlady had told them there would be arrangements. It seemed as if the half full bucket was what she had arranged.

  ‘You could try and do something with your hair,’ said Jesse, as turned to go back to his room. ‘You should wash your fringe, at any rate. It’s looking very greasy.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Daisy, and wished he hadn’t noticed. Men weren’t supposed to notice things like that, or not to comment, anyway.

  They’d spent most of Sunday wandering round, hunting for digs and gazing wistfully at all the West End theatres. While they snacked off food from vendors’ stalls, they saw their own names up in lights, and imagined dining at the Ritz or Café Royal.

  But now, on Monday morning, after sharing bacon and fried eggs in a somewhat seedy workmen’s café, they walked to the West End again, where they bought a copy of The Stage.

  Then they spent all morning in two adjacent telephone kiosks making calls to agents, getting nowhere. Every part was filled, and every agent’s books were closed. Nobody was interested in their great reviews in Stoke-on-Trent, or their notices in Macclesfield. They were just two more provincial players, come to London to join thousands who were also unemployed.

  In the afternoon, they traipsed round Soho, where management after management refused point blank to see them. Secretaries shooed them out of offices already full of hopefuls lounging against discoloured walls or sitting on hard chairs.

  One or two agents had a list on which they were told they could leave names and details, so they did, but without much hope of being called.

  They didn’t have a telephone, anyway.

  Soon their feet were blistered, and by nightfall they were cold and starving. Daisy still had some money left over, but they knew they should try not to use that, at least not yet. After rummaging in all their pockets, they scraped together one and fivepence. As they made their way back home, they noticed girls of Daisy’s age or younger, loitering in shop doorways, grinning desperately at passing men.