by Peter Rimmer
“Can’t I pay for the penicillin?”
“No. I’m an old man with few needs. Gave up tobacco and drink. I was one of the lucky ones. My father was rich.”
“Why do you live in Soho?”
“Some people use young girls. Make them into whores. My pleasure is making them live to change their ways.”
“You’re a good man, Doctor.”
“There isn’t such a thing on this earth.”
“Thank you, anyway.”
Len was crying again when he closed the front door. The doctor had given him back the key.
All through the night he fed spoonfuls of soup to his cousin. He had thought of the spoon and borrowed it from the hotel kitchen. The children had eaten all the bread and meat and gone to sleep.
To keep his cousin warm, Len got into bed with her. She was skin and bone. When he wasn’t trying to feed her soup, he had his arms around Mildred. Whatever the doctor had done made her drowsy. Len didn’t think she knew who was holding her body.
In the morning a strange girl let herself into the room.
“Out you go, Milly. My turn.”
“She’s sick.”
“Who the ’ell are you?”
“Her cousin.”
“Well bugger off. I’m tired. She knows better than bring johns back here.”
“I’m her cousin, Len Merryl.”
“And I’m the Queen of England. Now bugger off.”
“She’s going to die.”
“So are we all. Now bugger off. I’m dog-tired. One bloody trick all bloody night. Being a whore ain’t what it used to be.”
Len got out of bed fully dressed.
“Which clothes belong to Mildred and Johnny?” he asked the whore.
“You are her cousin. Sorry. You takin’ her home?”
“Something like that. She’s got pneumonia. A doctor gave her penicillin. Can you pack for her? You can use that tablecloth.”
“Got any food left?” she had seen the thermos flask.
“There’s soup in the flask. Help yourself.”
“Blimey. It’s still ’ot. I’m starvin’.”
“Can you help?”
“Course I can… You are taking the kid? Funny that the kids don’t want to wake up.”
“I had them full last night.”
“That’ll be a first. You are a bloody angel, aren’t you? Milly never mentioned no relation. Never said where she came from.”
“I’m going to get a taxi. She can’t walk. Will you put the things in the tablecloth? I have to take the thermos flasks and spoon. They belong where I work. What’s your name?”
“What the fuckin’ hell does that matter… Go on then. Sooner you lot have gone, the sooner I can get some sleep. She ain’t paid this week’s rent, neither.”
“I bloody did,” said Mildred.
Len looked down on her in the bed. The girl had again closed her eyes.
When Len came back and carried her down to the waiting taxi with her few clothes in the tablecloth and little Johnny straggling behind. Mildred was delirious.
The Italian had brought back a thick vegetable soup the cook had made from leftovers on the plates. First, they bathed Mildred in the bathroom that served all the boarders in the Lambert house. Neither looked at her body as Len washed her clean. By the end her hair was matted but it was clean. He thought he knew how his sister Jenny felt nursing the officers during the war. He was unaware of the body, only the cleansing. Then they dunked young Johnny in the same water. The boy squealed with excitement, revived by the bread and half eaten chops and a good sleep.
Len put Mildred and little Johnny in his own bed. There were two beds in the room he shared with the Italian. Then he went to work. The cab driver had agreed not to charge them for the return journey. Len was five minutes early for work. Once he fell asleep face down in the washing-up water which brought him back to earth. Nothing had ever happened to him like this before.
For a week they fought for her life. The doctor came twice more all the way to Lambeth at his own expense.
All through the years of the rest of his life, Len Merryl took comfort from having met one good man in his life. In all he only saw the old doctor three times but the old man stayed in his mind forever.
“You’re going to marry that girl,” the old man had said on his last visit. This time he was smiling.
“I can’t. She’s my first cousin.”
“Change to the Church of Scotland. We marry first cousins, I wish you both a long and happy life… Merry Christmas.”
When Mildred was up and about everything changed again. The crisis was over. They had helped to save a human life. They had all felt good.
“You can’t go on taking food out of the kitchen. It was Christmas, and the girl was going to die. Now that is over. You work by the rules. Eat what you can of the leftovers behind my back but don’t take it home. Someone outside the kitchen finds out, I’ll get the sack. Tell her to get a bloody job.”
“She’s a whore.”
“Whore’s work. How they feed themselves. People help in emergencies. Not for the rest of their bloody life. This kitchen ain’t no charity. Watch yourself, Len. You’re twenty. Far from ’ome and done a good thing. But it is over. Back to normal. The rules. Don’t fuck around with the rules and fucking regulations.”
It had been a week since he fell asleep in the dirty washing-up water. The kitchen manager knew what he was talking about. The rules could only be bent in an emergency.
Little Johnny kept them awake at night now he was full of food and energy. The Italian had become short-tempered. Now Len had to find food for Mildred and Johnny out of the three pennies that were left to him from his pay after paying half the rent of the Lambert room… The man on the train had been right. Washing dishes in a good hotel filled the belly and nothing else… So far as Len could find out without asking too many questions of his fellow workers, the pay never changed from one year to the next. They fed from the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Scrap. Scrap that otherwise the rich would throw away in the ignorance of poverty.
Len thought the Italian must have spoken to Mildred. When he came home on New Year’s Day, Mildred and little Johnny had gone. Len supposed Mildred would have written a note if she could have written. For the time she had stayed with them in the room, Mildred had slept in Len’s bed with Johnny. He had slept on the floor.
That night Len slept a dreamless sleep in his own bed. He never went back to Soho or the Elephant and Castle. He had done his best, he told himself. There was nothing more he could do. He tried to hope she had gone back to Neston. There was no point in writing to his mother to ask. Mrs Snell had to read his mother any letters. Mildred had been right. Mrs Snell was a bitch.
When he looked at girls, big breasts sticking out of blouses made him think of Mildred. Now there was no arousal. When he had washed the big breasts of the smell of Mildred’s room she shared with the whores, it was just a large envelope of skin that floated out on the scummy bathwater. Little Johnny had sucked it dry and empty in his desperation.
Len knew he should go and look for her but he didn’t. Even if he wished to be he did not have the wherewithal to be his cousin’s keeper. The old Scot doctor had been wrong. The idea of marrying Mildred had never entered his head. Being cousins was an excuse. Lust came and went. Len’s lust for Cousin Mildred had gone while he washed off the dirt into the bath. The war that had been over for more than two years had found another victim. Two victims… He wondered if the other two whores had let them back into the room in Soho. He wondered if she still leaned against the same lamp post of the Elephant and Castle.
Cousin Mildred was the first of many people who became for a while so central to his life. As the years went by he was to think of her less and less and always with sadness. Most people survived somehow through their lives.
If nothing else it made him think of the pitfalls of life. A wrong turn. Bad luck. The wrong friends. All could cost him
his life. Most of all, it taught him there had to be more to life than washing dishes or being a whore.
In the hope of finding work and a dream he was unable to see in the kitchen of the Park Lane hotel, Len Merryl took himself off to the London docks. The fog was thick over the estuary to the River Thames, the trade route to the capital from the time of the Romans. He was an Englishman which was better, he told himself, than being a lot of other less fortunate nationalities on the earth. He was British. The British had an empire. In the colonies he would find himself something better to do than washing dishes.
A month after Mildred walked out of his life, Len took a ship for Singapore. The boat was a tramp steamer that traded from port to port around Africa, down the west coast, the east coast, across to Bombay from the port of Mombasa in Kenya, round India to Singapore with a stop in Ceylon. Somewhere on the way he determined, he was going to find himself a better destiny. Mildred’s life had frightened the wits out of him.
He was twenty years old when the old tramp cut loose from Woolwich docks and edged out into the estuary of old father Thames. He was going to see the world. The fact that his job in the ship’s scullery was washing dishes just made him laugh.
He would miss the Italian who after so many weeks together seemed to speak a better English. The Italian said it was better. Len was not so sure. They had wished each other a good life for the future. Neither thought he would ever see the other again.
The fog swallowed up Len and the boat.
From inside the corner of a long shed that was packed high with bales of cotton destined for the mills of Manchester, Mildred watched him go. She had on a thick overcoat pulled tight across her thin body. Little Johnny had his hand tucked deep in Mildred’s right hand. When Mildred waved to the ghost-like ship, little Johnny waved with his free hand.
She had wanted to thank him. To say so much. She knew better than Len what washing a whore could do to a man’s sexuality. She knew he was a virgin. She had sensed that. She hoped his experience of her would not make him cold to other women. That first night in his arms. Filthy in the filthy sheets in the filthy bed had been the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her before. She had been ready to die, too tired to fight any more for little Johnny.
Then he had washed her clean of dirt and sin and put her in his own bed while he slept on the floor… As soon she was strong enough she had removed the burden from his life. She hoped that some day they would meet again in better circumstances. She doubted it. Their ships had passed in the night. Len and the old Scot doctor had given her back her life. It was now up to her.
Mildred had also seen the Salvation Army singing Christmas carols on the street. When a month ago she had walked from Lambeth with Johnny back to Soho, her luck had changed. She found them in Regent Street. The young girl that had shaken the poor box at Len heard her story to the end. The girl had taken them to a shelter where they gave her the coat.
Later, the girl had found out for her from the Park Lane hotel where Len washed dishes that Len was sailing on the steamer from Woolwich docks. She had wanted to see him off. To thank him. To tell him how she felt… She had seen him walk to the ship not twenty yards from where she stood just inside the shed. The fog had been her friend. She had hesitated for a moment, wondering if she was doing the right thing, fearful he would turn back to them out of guilt and not go forward on his journey.
It was the best thing she did to let him go. He would think of her as a whore for the rest of her life but it did not matter. Mentally, she called out to him God’s blessing. She was going to make a life for herself. They were teaching her to read and write. She was going to give herself an education if it meant reading in every spare moment for the rest of her life. She owed Len Merryl more than that.
Little Johnny began to fidget. She waved at the rolling fog now empty of the ship. Then she turned and walked briskly along the wet railway line to where a man at the gate had let her see off the boat. She was crying.
“Did you find him all right?” the man called as she walked through the gates that led out of the dock.
“Yes, I did. And thank you.”
“He’ll be back soon. His boy will miss him. Boys always miss their fathers.”
“Yes they do,” said Mildred. The tears began again. This time for Johnny Lake.
6
London, January 1921
Barnaby St Clair laughed out loud. It was easier than backing the only racehorse in a field of carthorses to win the Epsom Derby. The racehorse could still stumble or die before reaching the post. In four months he had turned the five hundred pounds extorted from his brother Merlin into five thousand pounds, enough to buy himself a country house in the new stockbroker belt that was spreading over the fields of Surrey.
The first hundred pounds had been invested in exquisite clothing. Perfectly tailored suits and evening dress from Savile Row. Handmade shirts from Jermyn Street with pucker-free hemlines and French seams. Handmade shoes. A cane to match Merlin’s with a thin sword at its heart should there ever be trouble. Hats. Gloves. An opera coat with a gorgeous maroon interior that flowed behind him manifesting his glory. Only the cufflinks and shirt studs were made from fake sapphires that looked the same as the real thing. Barnaby at just twenty-four was the quintessential man about town. The three years under the desert sun of Arabia that had scorched and dried his skin gave him the air of maturity. He never gave his age. He had even given himself the rank of captain. Major sounded too old. Captain the Honourable Barnaby St Clair was always at their service. Provided they were rich and gullible. The piercing blue eyes smiled at everything rich while the mind behind them calculated the worth of everything he saw… Best of all, which surprised Barnaby the most, every penny he made so easily on the London Stock Exchange was perfectly legal. All was fine as everyone was making money. There were no losers to squeal. How it was possible was beyond his mental means to understand. As it was with everyone else. The market was going up by the day. Money was made in large quantities without having to work for it. Barnaby just wished Tina Pringle was in London to see what he had done. He wanted to tell her what he was going to do. How rich he was going to be. He needed Tina to appreciate his cleverness.
First Barnaby had reserved his membership of the Army and Navy Club that only officers could join and women were allowed to enter through a side door between certain hours once a week. The women were allowed no further than the ladies’ cocktail lounge. They were not permitted to dine in the restaurant. Barnaby would have preferred the Cavalry Club at 127 Piccadilly, close to Buckingham Palace. Despite having ridden a camel it was not a horse. The second-rate regiment he had joined in Palestine was laughed at by the cavalry. Only cavalry officers could join the Cavalry Club. When anyone asked his regiment he replied with a knowing smile full of secrecy that he had been with Lawrence in the desert. The mysteries of Lawrence of Arabia were enough to shut up the inquisitive and the sceptical. He told them even his captaincy had been kept a secret just in case they looked him up in the army list and found his captaincy missing.
With the right calling card and the perfect clothes, Barnaby called on the two gentlemen he had met on the boat back from Africa. They had both given him their calling cards. The three of them were a perfect match. A young, good-looking, dashing ex-officer from a very old family with a minor title and the two unscrupulous investors who knew how to make a fortune out of the system.
When a company listed on the London Stock Exchange was due to announce its results, it was important to the two gentlemen to know those results before they were known by the public. As Barnaby worked his way through London society he listened for information, and passed it on to the two men for money. Being so simple it was all so beautiful.
“Vickers are due out soon. They’ll be down with the war over but we want to know by how much their profits are down. Then we’ll short the shares. Here is a list of their directors and managers. Rolls-Royce are also due. There is a rumour. They want to make engines
for aeroplanes. Probably a lot of nonsense if you ask me but it will kick their shares if the press get hold of it. If the story has any truth we can leak it to the press after we buy a block of their shares. We only have to settle with our stockbroker at the end of the month. By then we will be out with a profit and not put a penny on the table. Here is their list of directors. Remember their names.”
“I know one of the daughters. Ugly as sin.”
“Never mind. Tell her she’s pretty. Get her drunk. Pump the bitch… Of information, Barnaby.”
“She’s thirty or more.”
“Better still. She’ll be grateful for the attention.”
“Max, you sure this is legal?”
“You can ask your solicitor.”
“I will.”
“Nothing wrong with using good information.”
“No, of course not. Never thought of using women.” Barnaby was still smiling.
“Don’t be bloody daft, Barnaby. It seems to me you’ve been using women all your life without knowing it. Now run along and find out what you can. Don’t forget you are not our only source of information… Aren’t those cufflinks fake sapphires?”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. Change them. The rest is fine.”
“Thank you, Max.”
“Be careful. Never be too smart to learn. Always keep your wits about you. Reputations take a long time to build and one stupid error to go down the drain. This may look like easy money to you but it is not. Money can only be made, real money, by using your brains. Society will throw you out as easily as they welcomed you in… Does your father ever come up to London?”
“Never.”
“That’s good. Any other relations in town?”
