Labour set on unexpectedly, two months early, one wintry afternoon. It lasted all night. Quite normal with a first baby, barked the midwife. Sitting by the fire after his lonely cheese and pickle supper, listening to the yowls from upstairs, he daydreamed about lion-taming, the coming child somehow changed into a ravening beast cornering Nathalie and tearing her apart in its jaws. He fell asleep in his chair, woke cold and stiff to a crisping tumble of grey coals. At dawn, his sister-in-law Cara put her face round the door: a girl! What a little ’un! Strong as ever can be.
A little later, the doctor diagnosed Nathalie’s post-partum fever. Cara came down, a squirming white bundle in her arms. She spoke of finding a wet nurse. He turned aside and grunted. If he opened his mouth he would howl. The world would collapse. Anything could happen if Nathalie could be taken from him. Grief was a landslide of rocks, mud, rubble, wanting to choke him.
Cara provided the obvious solution. She gave up her nursemaid’s job, moved in, cared for Milly, took over the housekeeping. Fifteen years later, here she still was. Married to him, and now, aged thirty-five, the mother of three small children. How did women bear the agony of childbirth? Cara was stoic: you got something out of it; you got the baby at the end.
But we cannot afford any more children, my dear one, and nor should you be put through those travails again. Cara’s health was no longer good, and Joseph worried about her. He did his best to be a considerate husband, to limit his caresses to once a week at most, to withdraw in time. Cara refused to insert a sponge soaked in vinegar beforehand, or douche afterwards: against her religion, she insisted. She didn’t want Joseph to use a condom either. He didn’t like them much, in any case: they dulled sensation.
Recently, according to the hints of the doctor, who’d followed instructions on post-dysentery diet with advice on limiting families, Joseph had been considering separate bedrooms. If only they had the space. Milly now slept in what had been his mother’s room, and wouldn’t want to give up her privacy. If he had his own room, all to himself, he could stay up as late as he chose, do whatever he wanted. Put up a shelf to display his collection of stones, butterflies, shells. Save up to buy a telescope, sit at the window, study the night sky. Track the constellations. Touch the surface of the moon. The moon’s face turned away. Her dark cheek. Scented with lilies.
Prickle of coldness on his skin. The water was cooling rapidly. Joseph lifted his head from the edge of the bath, took his flannel in one hand, the soap in the other, began to wash his balls, his cock.
In the slums south of the river that he had begun to visit, the evidence of unrestrained male lust was everywhere. Those worn women he had passed earlier today, their litters of puny infants pulling at their skirts, squalling and dribbling: the sight of such misery had distressed him so much that on his way home, rather than call in on Mayhew at his office, he had gone for a drink in the River Queen, one of his favourite pubs on the Strand. He’d write up his notes at home tonight, finish his report some time tomorrow. That would do.
The crowded pub smelled of fresh sawdust and spilled beer, pipe tobacco, perspiring bodies. He found a seat next to the bow window. He read his newspaper and smoked.
Slipping through the throng came a slender girl in a blue jacket, a striped blue-and-white skirt puffed out over a crinoline; the pink frill of a furled parasol; the scent of violets. Tendrils of dark brown hair escaped from under a blue straw bonnet. The girl hovered for a moment, then gestured, pulled up a stool next to him: may I? She sat down, took out a small cloth-bound book from her pocket, began to read with steady concentration, the tip of her red tongue showing between her little white teeth. She reminded him of Nathalie, that way she’d had of retiring behind her magazine, shutting out the world. Tears gathered under his eyelids. He got out his handkerchief and blew his nose. The girl looked up.
They fell easily into conversation. She showed him her grammar book: goodness, it is hard! A quick smile, a wrinkle of her brow. Italian, she said she was, from an immigrant family lodging in Clerkenwell. Seeing his interest, she described their lives. Parents both in work. Able to pay their rent. No debts. They seemed a fine example of industrious poverty: law-abiding Catholics who kept their heads down, attended weekly Mass at one of the embassy chapels, tried to fit in. My papa taught me to play the violin, but I’m no good at it. To earn a living, he mends broken instruments, he frames pictures. My mother keeps house and minds the little ones, also she mends and cleans clothes for the second-hand dealer down the street. Spruces up, you say? On Sundays, when I go home to visit, I do the cooking, to give her a rest. The rest of the week, I lodge near here, in Surrey Street. It’s easier.
Easier for what, my dear little miss?
Her brown eyes sparkled through her black lashes. Guess!
She chattered on, describing her three elder brothers, street entertainers, the dances she went to with them. Polkas I love the best. Waltzes? We do not try those. She pattered out her broken English with a pronounced accent that only added to her piquancy, her charm.
He said: I know the answer to my question. I’m sorry for it. I’m sorry for you. I wish you could find some other way to live.
She pouted, fingered a dark brown ringlet. Don’t be sorry. I’m doing very well, thank you.
When had she slid into prostitution? Why? What were her lodgings like? Should he ask her, then take notes? No: he wasn’t in south-east London now. He could leave the job behind. Just sit with her. Enjoy her company. Enjoy the moment. A sweet girl. Forget she’s a prostitute.
As a married man he’d remained faithful. For better, for worse. You made that promise, and you kept it. Except during that odd, brief period a year ago, when his self-control had broken. People said: I became beside myself with rage. Beside myself with sorrow. Hackneyed phrases whose truth he’d lived out. The grown-up Joseph ate, worked and talked as usual; next to him the child Joseph sobbed and fought. The small brown sickroom smelled of camphor and eucalyptus. He leaned over the bed, stroked his mother’s hand, murmured to her. Come on, old lady: come on. The pillows half obscured her face; her breath rasped. She opened her eyes a crack, closed them. Cara, red-faced, expostulated. Your mother’s dying, Joseph, can’t you see? Leave her alone now, just let her go! He had bolted from the house, flung himself into the darkness of the night streets, blundered towards the river, fetched up in Waterloo. A gaudy lantern hailed him: he went in, expecting a pub. Mother Busk soon set him right: she diagnosed his trouble, brought him a remedy. Hello, sir. My name’s Polly. Her loosened black hair tangled against him like seaweed. Diving inside her, he had been able to disappear, as into a cave brimming up at high tide with the incoming sea, and then gasping and crying he’d kicked out, towards the crests of green waves, surfaced, swum for shore, been borne back onto the beach. Half-winded, struggling up the shelf of shingle, returning to his changed life. He’d stumbled home, tearstained, at two in the morning, to a bewildered wife who’d chosen not to say a word.
He bought the Italian girl a brandy and soda. She thanked him gravely. She sipped daintily, all the time looking at him, with sharp blackbird eyes, over the rim of the glass. She leaned towards him and again he caught her violet scent. She whispered her invitation: shall we? You would like?
The gleam of a swift smile. She sounded so off-hand and friendly. He was trembling. He put his hands on his knees, to steady himself. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t.
At least a week since he’d been intimate with Cara. Once they’d climbed into bed at night, the curtains rattling on their rings, falls of clean faded chintz swept open, swept back, she’d peck his cheek, pull the sheet over her shoulder, turn away. He’d press his mouth to the back of her soap-scented neck, that inch of flesh between nightcap and nightgown, then remain restless, wide awake. Somehow like lying on gravel. His self-control was laudable, yes, dear doctor, but almost unbearable too. The doctor had specifically warned against self-abuse, which led to degeneration, thence to madness. What was Joseph supposed to do?
Why not? Nobody would ever know. Absolutely nothing to stop him. Just this once.
The girl stood up, sauntered past the bar. He followed her. She took him out to the yard at the back, into the wash-house, she made it all so easy, fitting the condom on him, gathering her swoop of skirts in one hand, unlatching her drawers with the other. He swung her up, nuzzled her ear, drank in her pungent violet scent, then lifted her up and down, squirted deep into her. Such pleasure: not having to be careful, withdraw before he came. The condom didn’t matter, could not dull this intensity, this ecstasy of letting go inside her. Thank you, he whispered: ah, you little darling.
He eased her off him, jumped her down. He held her in his arms, put his face against hers.
Deftly she re-fastened her underthings, checked the money he handed her, plunged it into her skirt pocket, darted away. He gave her a couple of minutes, then strolled back inside. There she was, ringlets smoothed and bonnet strings neatly re-tied in a bow under her chin, sidling up to the bar, managing to look so ladylike even as she ogled the men looming on either side of her.
The bedroom’s fire sank with a soft crash. Joseph yawned, stood up, began to towel his hair. The cold bathwater had grey scum around its edges, like old scrambled egg. He stepped out onto the mat in front of the hearthrug, began to mop his arms.
Leaving the pub, Joseph had stopped at the flower seller’s further along the Strand. Hunched on an upturned bucket, she sheltered under a blue umbrella. He bought a cactus, fleshy green leaves tipped with scarlet. Tomorrow he’d take it with him up to Highgate, put it on Nathalie’s grave. The flower seller twirled a bit of newspaper round his purchase. Coarse red hands, grimy fingernails. There you are, dear. He leaned forward, lifted out a dripping bunch of orange marigolds from a tin pot. I’ll take these too.
Walking on towards St Paul’s, cactus and flowers pressed together in the crook of one arm, Joseph swung his stick and beat at shadows and tried to return to himself. That brief adventure was in the past. The girl had slipped back into the black stream of her kind, one slippery fish among thousands. He’d known her for just half an hour. Press on, press on. The girl’s face kept surfacing. She refused to drown in the depths of his mind. Her lively eyes mocked him. She’d marked him. As though she’d thrown a can of paint at his back.
Somehow the encounter had to do with wearing the tweed cloak Mrs Dulcimer had thrust at him the previous night, all the while apologising for her thieving maid. He had gone out into the rain cursing them both. Somehow Mrs Dulcimer had nudged him off course. Call that episode just now her cloak’s fault. Wearing it had changed him. Turned him into someone else. On his return home yesterday, meeting him in the hall, Milly had thought so too. Goodness, Pa, who’d you swap clothes with? You mountebank! Just ready for the panto! He’d raised a playful hand and she’d dodged, smiling and shouting, and Cara had darted up from the kitchen, ready to fuss.
He’d fobbed them off with a story of taking his coat to the mender’s, to have a torn sleeve repaired, then borrowing the cloak from Mayhew. Cara had said: oh, Joseph, I could have stitched that for you, you’re always trying to save me trouble, bless you. Saucy Milly had said: I don’t think much of Mr Mayhew’s taste.
Sometimes you kept an experience to yourself. If you told someone else about it, you lost it. That was the point of secrets. Something that belonged to you alone, a golden, unnamed fruit that dropped into your hands, which you hid in your pocket, took out when you were alone. You held off as long as you could, then dived in, bit the fruit, its juices splashing all over you. The encounter with the girl tonight belonged to him, and certainly not to Mayhew, who would thunder his disapproval and probably show Joseph the door. So keep quiet about it. Same thing with the trip to Walworth. He had failed with the black lady. What exactly was she up to? He needed to go back, talk to her again.
Joseph stood barefoot on the cotton bath-mat, softness pressing up against his soles, and finished drying himself. Warmth all round him, cradling him. He let go his breath, stood and stretched, feeling restored, healthy, he was clean, and the coals’ heat played over his calves, his thighs. Suddenly he wanted to whistle and sing, but desisted, mindful of the little ones, whom Milly had presumably coaxed into sleep.
He took up a file, and began to smooth his nails. That girl in the Newington house, paring hers with a knife: how guileless she’d looked. Yet these girls let you do whatever you wanted. As long as you paid for it. Mayhew wasn’t so much interested in the acts that the girls performed as the histories that preceded them. He wanted the girls pumped for their streams of explanations. Confessions. How they came to swerve off the track. Whereas Joseph thought he’d also like to classify what the girls actually did. Compare their poses and gestures to those described in certain publications you could rummage for on the barrows along Farringdon Road, or in the shops in Holywell Street.
Books that smiled at you slyly, beckoned you discreetly. That guide for tourists, published years back, to the high-flying prostitutes of the West End. Street by street; woman by woman; names, appearances, ages, specialities. Joseph couldn’t afford to buy it. When he went back, to sample further chapters, the book had gone.
Black-hatted, black-overcoated men ringed the dank basement. They read silently, faces to the walls of volumes, concentrating and inward-turned, as though they were praying. At certain moments some of the books dropped into French, which was frustrating. Nathalie had taught him a few French words, endearments mostly, but the lessons never got very far. Hearing her speak French excited him too much. Tell me the French for buttons, for laces, for drawers. She whispered: joli garçon, toi.
Joseph flexed his fingers, pulled on his knuckles, cracking them. He examined his scrubbed nails, their white half-moons. Hands that had clasped the Italian girl’s whaleboned waist. Her hands were half the size of his. Soft, well-kept.
Mayhew was interested in prostitutes simply because they were criminals. He’d said to Joseph: you’ve a particular know-how to contribute, I suppose.
Working as a police clerk, Joseph had developed a certain forensic glance. When miscreants, caught in the act, were hauled in to the station by the constables, he would swivel from his stool in the corner, read the villains’ demeanour, study their physiognomies, the characters these revealed. The admission records, detailing the arrests, which he inscribed in his ledger, were necessarily factual and dry, lacking all emotion, but inside himself he invented a different account, made quick sketches in words. Here’s a sullen-seeming woman with thick curls sprouting above a shallow forehead, slits of deep-set eyes darting fiery glances right and left as she searches out possible aggressors, gets ready to run. Here’s a man with a hunched back, his head sunk between his shoulders, his collar turned up to try to hide the bruises on his neck. Here’s a man with his long nose in the air and his eyelids lowered; shooting his ragged cuffs, drawling, as he affects indifference. Here’s a half-bald girl sticking out her lip, her bosom, her foot; fists clenched.
So get on with the job. Begin again. Tomorrow he would go back south of the river, return to that Newington lodging-house. Find a way to make those girls talk to him, tell him the costs of renting beds, the costs of laundry. Doubtless offering them a drink would do it. Offer one to the landlady too.
Usually Joseph rummaged in the bedroom chest of drawers for fresh clothes. Tonight, clearly determined to display her starching and ironing skills, Milly had put out a clean shirt for him. A soft breastplate, it leaned against the buttoned back of the low chair. Calm as Mrs Dulcimer the previous night as she lolled on her gold satin cushions. The folded sleeves offered him a mute invitation to pull them apart. Seize them by the cuffs, crease them in his powerful fingers, let them wrap round him in an embrace. A lovely woman’s arms. Some unknown woman, very well dressed, with an intricately arranged coiffure, a mischievous glance.
Mayhew had interviewed one such a week back, in a house off the Haymarket, and shown Joseph his account. She claimed to be heroically sacrificing herself
, to save her children from destitution. Her out-of-work husband came to collect her late every afternoon, escort her home. Mayhew had winked. My dear Benson, so easily shocked.
Mayhew had not the slightest idea what Joseph already knew, had already experienced. Those few occasions in his youth. And then that time a year ago. Stumbling into Mother Busk’s green-painted saloon, hat clutched in one hand, coat soon unbuttoned and cast aside. He sat at the little gilded table and mopped his tears. Polly the black-haired girl tapped his shoulder: come on then. Purple-draped cubicle, looped with threads of silvery stars. Bottle of brandy. Two glasses, which winked in the lamplight. Winked at each other; conspirators. Yes, we know. Yes, we understand. The girl’s white thighs splayed apart, her black-fringed cunt, her rouged mouth. For a moment he forgot that he was paying her to pretend. She took him, held him, contained him, made him feel safe by calling time’s up! She pushed him out, patting his arm. There you go, dearie. He tried to kiss her but she twisted her head aside. Nah, don’t be daft. He went back a couple of times the following week, after his mother’s funeral, had to make do with other girls, less appealing. Polly’s laid up, one explained: she’s expecting, she’s feeling very sick.
The bedroom fire was burning down. Smell of coal and soap. Joseph stretched and yawned. He picked up the shirt, shook it out. A scorch mark decorated one of the tails. Oh, Milly. He wrestled on the burned garment and did it up. He took a fresh collar from the stand on the chest of drawers. He brushed his hair. As he did every evening, he opened the green leather jewellery case in which Cara kept his mother’s few pieces: a tarnished gilt brooch and bracelet, a ring set with green glass. The gewgaws she and Nathalie had inherited from an aunt lay alongside: amber earrings, a string of white beads, a jet clip.
The Walworth Beauty Page 6
