She reminded him of Doll. Yet another pretty young woman. Spirited. Intelligent. Ordinary. So many prostitutes looked completely ordinary. All right, there were extremes. Bejewelled courtesans at one end, gutter drabs at the other. As in Mayhew’s classification, dear Mrs Dulcimer. But in the middle was this vast group of women selling themselves as though they were simply pounds of butter, packets of chops, baskets of fruit. And if you didn’t know they were doing that, you’d take them just as normal human beings, trotting about their business, loving their little ones, performing the small acts of kindness that kept the world going. If only all prostitutes wore green lace capes, garish wigs, vulgar bonnets, he’d know where he was!
Well, he said: goodbye. Good luck.
She stared. You don’t want it?
Thank you, he said: for talking to me.
Getting up, he paused. I don’t suppose you’d tell me your name?
No, she said: I bloody wouldn’t.
At home, the hall smelled warm and stale. A thread of scent wound up from downstairs: a tang of mutton simmering. The children squealed to him from two floors above where, presumably, Milly was putting them to bed. Cara cried a greeting from the kitchen. Added something about the water for his bath being already upstairs. He groaned. He should have been here sooner, to help. He peeled off his coat, ran up to his bedroom.
Pouring the tepid water over his shoulders, he winced. Like being back at school, where duckings in the horse trough punished you into manliness and sometimes, to make extra sure of your capacity for endurance, you were held down, choking. Screaming when you came up for air, screaming when finally you were released, the bullies howling with amusement. Mummy’s boy! Mummy’s boy! After a year of being ducked and beaten he’d managed to get himself removed, by dint of falling ill. His mother wrapped the doorknocker in straw, so that people coming to the house wouldn’t disturb him. At the time he wasn’t aware of it. Later, when she told him about it, he felt her care. She’d wanted to wrap him in straw. Stop him being knocked. Being picked up and flung back and forth. She had tried.
He finished dressing and wandered downstairs. Cara, swathed in a white cotton apron, was setting out plates and cutlery in the dining-room. Her brown ringlets poked out from underneath a wide white bandeau. She swivelled to greet him with a hasty kiss.
He seated himself, patted the chair next to his. Sit down, love. Come and talk to me for a minute.
She began: oh, for heaven’s sake, there isn’t time. Then her smile answered his. She released her fistful of forks and spoons to stream across the cloth. She lowered herself onto his knee, settled herself, touched his cheek. Her hand smelled faintly of mutton and strongly of carbolic soap. He reached up, took her hand in his, held it in his lap. He stroked her fingers, one by one. An old game that they hadn’t played for a long time. He felt her calm, relax. The skin on her hand was rough and red. Tomorrow he’d buy her some lotion. Something really fancy, scented with carnation, with roses.
She leaned her head on his shoulder. She said: a girl turned up early this afternoon, wanting a place, saying you’d sent her. Thank you, Joseph. I didn’t think you’d manage to see to it, with all you have to do.
He squeezed her cushiony waist. Well, you were wrong, weren’t you?
Cara continued: she had proper references, she looks clean and sober, and so she’s coming back with her things this evening, to get settled in. Tomorrow I’ll start her off on the sideboard in here. It sadly needs polishing.
How could it be more polished than it already was? Red wood, all curlicues and inlays, like the crimson meat marbled with white fat he’d seen on that butcher’s stall this morning. Cara’s choice. Her pride and joy, she named it. He’d bought it for her as a wedding anniversary present. He thought it might be hideous, but he wasn’t sure.
He stroked her starched shoulder. Clean apron, smelling of ironing. Milly must have done some laundering today. He shifted, put both arms around Cara, held her contentedly, enjoying the plump feel of her. Ah, but that poor girl. He should have gone out into the street and bought her a sandwich. She’d probably be there herself now, earning the money to pay for it, plus her next glass of gin. He sighed. Cara patted his face. You’re tired, dearest. All that walking you do.
His stomach growled. Cara laughed, squirmed, levered herself up. I must see to my stew.
After supper, which he praised valiantly, bringing a pleased flush to Cara’s cheeks, Milly proposed leaving the washing-up for the new maid to attend to when she arrived. I’m having the night off! She made tea and brought it up, then played for them, stiff-backed, drilling conscientiously through a Scotch jig. Cara took out her mending-basket and began darning. Wrinkly grey wool travelled in and out of his grey sock. He smoked, gazed at the fire.
Cara put down her needle and drummed her thimble finger on the arm of her chair. Keep in time, Milly!
Joseph said: play us a song now, sweetheart.
Milly thumped the keys afresh and sang. I know where I’m going,/ and I know who’s going with me./ I know who I love,/ but the Lord knows who I’ll marry.
Not that old thing again, Cara grumbled.
Milly said: I like it anyway. You criticise everything I do! You can’t appreciate beautiful songs!
She took herself off to bed, banging the door behind her. Cara shook her head. She’s getting to be even more of a handful, that child.
All girls are a handful at her age, surely, Joseph returned: they’re growing up. Weren’t you ever like that?
Nathalie was suddenly hovering in the air between them. Cara pressed her lips together, gave him a glance he couldn’t read. She darted her needle through her darn; up and down. She had taught Milly to sew. And now Milly wanted to learn how to sew flesh, how to stitch up wounds. Probably she’d be very good at it. Women were so much less squeamish than men. Well, of course. If you could go through childbirth you could go through anything. Oh, Nathalie.
Cara put on a tinkling voice: ah, there’s nothing like an evening at home by the fire. Why don’t you fetch a book and read to me?
Because I’m not in the mood, my dearest one. Worried about Milly. Worried about my debts. Worried about how I’m going to explain my expenses to Mayhew.
Also, walled in by chairs and piano. Restless in his acreage of hearthrug. He stepped across to his wife’s chair. He leaned over her, traced her jawline with one finger, tipped her face up, kissed her. Let’s go to bed early ourselves, shall we, dearest?
Cara flinched. Her hands twisted the sock in her lap. Oh, Joseph, no. The new maid’s not arrived yet, I must wait up to let her in, and anyway I’m so tired. And remember what the doctor said.
She was flushed and nervous. He knew what it cost her to speak openly. She was brave, he’d give her that. Cara blurted it out. No more children. Not yet, anyway.
I’d be very careful, Joseph said: you know I would. Please, Cara.
She’d been brought up to obey: father, priest, husband, doctor. You can’t please all of us at once! Which one will it be? He knew, of course.
Cara bent her head, muttered. I don’t want to risk it. I’m sorry, Joseph.
He made his voice as light as he could. I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have asked you. Don’t upset yourself. I’m sorry. Everything’s all right.
He moved away from her, put his hands in his pockets. Two paces forward across the rug, two paces back. He turned, addressed Cara’s stabbing needle. It’s too hot in here. I’m stifling. I think I’ll go out, get some air. Don’t wait up. Leave the door for me. I’ll lock up when I get home.
Cara pressed her lips together again, continued darning.
EIGHT
Madeleine
Lamb’s Conduit Street in Holborn channels a flow of blue June weather, dust and pollen floating under the trees. Madeleine idles along between the flat-fronted, sash-windowed buildings set back from the pavement on both sides. When she steps on the edge of a broken paving-stone it tilts up, like a trapdoor entrance to the underworl
d. So just fall down into it.
An underground kitchen, dimly lit. Two aproned women toil, one scrubbing a saucepan, the other shaking out heavy-looking sheets. Irons heat on the range. Smell of burned onions. In a dark corner: a girl’s muffled sobs. The woman swilling the blackened pot swivels towards her, sighs. Be all right, Dorothy. I didn’t mean to shout. No, Mrs Benson, blubs the girl.
A man yells. Madeleine comes to. A passing bicyclist is berating a group of tourists blocking the middle of the street while they take photographs. Madeleine steps round the trip-up paving slab, wanders on.
On gable ends the ghosts of nineteenth-century signs, stencilled in faded black, advertise chocolates and hosiery in flowing script. Modern signs flourishing above the newly gentrified shops point Madeleine towards leather bags, French furnishings, organic vegetables, designer face cream and children’s clothes. At the top of the street, green branches above a white stuccoed wall mark the boundary of Coram’s Fields.
Wedged open, the door to the Lamb funnels in sunlight to spill along the bare, planked floor. Late morning, almost empty, just a couple of men leaning side by side nursing pints. Behind the bar, a woman wipes drips from a beer tap with a blue rag. She sells Madeleine a tomato juice. On your holidays, are you? Sort of, Madeleine says: I’ve just lost my job. The man standing next to her says: drowning your sorrows? Better make it a Bloody Mary, then.
Madeleine shakes her head at vodka, nods yes for ice, red pepper sauce. She says: I was working in a café in south-east London. It changed hands, the new owner wanted young people working for him, that was that. So now I’ve got plenty of free time.
She tucks herself into an alcove seat padded in green leather. Safely distant from Emm’s offering found earlier this morning. Getting up, hearing a sound in the hallway, she flung on her dressing-gown, went to check. Thorny dark stems thrust in through the flap of the letterbox, choking it. She opened the front door, wrenched free from the outside a bunch of dead roses. Shrivelled leaves and withered red blooms, petals dangling, accompanied by a scrap of paper scrawled with a message: My dear Madeleine, why haven’t you got back in touch? Much love – Emm.
The flowers looked like something he’d fished out of someone’s rubbish. She threw them into the brown garden-waste bin. She peered up and down the street. Quiet as usual. No one about.
The flat felt flimsily walled; a paper box. So find refuge elsewhere. She dressed, picked up her little rucksack, slammed the front door behind her, strode out of Apricot Place. She walked north, ended up in Holborn, in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Safer; anonymous amongst the crowds.
She and Toby had parted in Holborn, close to here, after they left Highgate. They caught the night bus down the hill; climbed to the upper deck, sat in the front seat. Toby, arms folded, eyes half closed, smiled to himself. A streak of tawny greasepaint above his eyebrow. Mouth still tinted red. The bus swerved around a corner, throwing them against each other. He murmured: that Francine. Guess what she did. Sleepy Madeleine said: goodness knows. So tell me.
Toby said: she crept up on us having sex in the grotto, and filmed us on her phone. She came over and told me just before the start of the play. But I told her: it’s too late to put me off my stroke! All I’ve got to do now is walk on stage and look languishing. So fuck off!
Madeleine said: she wanted her revenge. Oh, Toby.
Toby said: her idea was to post the clip on the internet. Shame her beloved Anthony for evermore.
The bus slowed, stopped, stuck in jammed traffic. Passengers behind them groaned, swore, growled into their phones. Blurred haloes of blue, yellow, orange lights swam in the dark glass windows.
Toby said: unfortunately for her, as I pointed out, neither of us was recognisable. Anthony was wearing a mask and I was in a long blonde wig and a veil. I told her to go ahead. Publish and be damned! In any case, it would all work as a brilliant souvenir of the production. Here we are, darlings, in the un-dress rehearsal! I don’t know what she did in the end. I didn’t bother checking.
Madeleine asked: you planning to see Anthony again?
Toby said: certainly.
Madeleine said: and Francine?
Toby shrugged. She’ll get over it. She’s a survivor, that one.
Madeleine leaves the pub, meanders eastwards from Lamb’s Conduit Street towards Gray’s Inn Road. Sandwich bars and solicitors’ offices front the soot-blackened Georgian buildings. She spends the afternoon nosing into side alleys, turning along every branching street she doesn’t know. She zigzags north, finds herself near the Angel. Here, in a charity shop, she buys a sleeveless dress in red broderie anglaise. Italian, well-cut, knee-length. Very pleased with her bargain, she keeps the dress on. She rings Toby, tells him about losing her job. He says: time you started claiming your state pension, surely. Madeleine says: that feels so weird, somehow. I don’t feel old enough inside. Toby sounds impatient. What does that matter? You’re owed it. He proposes an early evening drink. For once, he’s not working. See you at six, then.
In golden light, she walks back down into Bloomsbury, slants into Marchmont Street. Virginia Woolf slouches ahead. Loose duster coat over a long cardigan, shapeless blouse and skirt. She slipped out hours ago to buy a pencil and is still peacefully roaming. Just ahead of her stroll Charlotte Mew and Hilda Doolittle, arguing about poetry, making for a Corner House: cup of tea, poached egg on toast.
Toby’s wearing old blue jeans, a black leather jacket. Grey-blond curls encircle his head. He hugs her. Nice rag. Haven’t seen you in red before. Glass of red wine to match? Madeleine describes her route. Showing off about the distance she has tramped. Joking: would you say I’m a flâneur? A flâneuse?
Toby tips up his pint. These days everybody’s a flâneur. What they mean is, they’ve just popped out for a breath of air.
Madeleine says: I think women can be flâneurs, but no one notices. They think we’re just out shopping.
She smooths her red dress over her knees. Of course, sometimes we are.
Toby says: I never think of women as flâneurs. Only men. Nineteenth-century chaps like Baudelaire.
Madeleine says: men strolling alone were flâneurs, women strolling alone were street-walkers. Tarts. A complete double standard!
Toby pushes out his lip at her. Blah-blah-blah!
Madeleine says: I’m living in a nineteenth-century house, and I love it. I can imagine the lives of the housemaids, the cooks, from all the reading I’ve done, but I’ve no idea how it felt to be a London woman in those days, walking alone along a street like this one. I read Mayhew, but it’s his researcher giving his version of what women say. There’s Flora Tristan, but she’s an observer, like Mayhew. And in novels of the time women’s experience in the street is hardly ever mentioned. Only in passing.
So write some fiction, Toby says: imagine it. You don’t know what it’s like because you haven’t written it yet! If you invent it you’ll find out!
Madeleine fingers the cut-out pattern of her red dress, the ridges of red stitches surrounding the flower shapes. What would Toby make of the Emm business? Suppose it gets worse? Suddenly she wants to tell Toby about it, ask his advice. She looks at him, opens her mouth to speak. A phone cheeps. Toby claps his hand to his pocket. He gestures sorry at her, turns away to talk. Perhaps it’s Anthony. Madeleine stares at the red wine stain at the bottom of her glass. She leaves him to it, goes to buy another round.
Later, at home, she clears a space on her table cluttered with bank statements, tax forms. The envelope containing her council tax bill: payment demanded for street-cleaning, rubbish removal, bin emptying. Start with a description of a street. Here in Walworth? A front door. What’s behind it? Think of Nelly, her rush of tales. She was Nelly’s rapt audience. So go forward, up the steps, bang the doorknocker. She turns over the envelope, scribbles on its torn flap stained with coffee-cup rings. She turns over the rest of her mail, writes on the backs of all the envelopes. She transfers her words to her laptop, writes some more.
She stops when she feels hungry. She looks up at the black windowpane. Three hours have passed. She forgot herself. Result: happiness.
She dons the red dress on her mother’s birthday in early July. Anniversary needing to be marked. Go wandering again. Back up Lamb’s Conduit Street; through the green expanse of tree-filled Brunswick Square. She reaches a cul-de-sac; car-free shaded by planes. Under their rustling canopy a cluster of silvery metal tables and chairs, set in the dust, defines a café space, black iron railings on two sides, children shouting in the nearby playground. To one side, stone steps lead up to the eighteenth-century house sheltering the Foundling Museum.
She studies the displays of photographs, documents, registers. She reads the official accounts of impoverished women handing in their babies, leaving tokens with the children, in case later identification and removal should ever be possible. Nineteenth-century relics laid out on glass shelves in glass cases: a chipped mother-of-pearl button, a tiny punched-metal tag, a hooped gold earring strung with turquoise beads. A blackened hatpin. A fragment of jet.
She sits outside under the sweeping branches of the planes. She scribbles in her notebook, eats a plateful of spiced fish, tomatoes and beans. The Moroccan chef, white apron laced about his slender hips, offers her a glass of wine, as she’s his only lunchtime customer. People here only eat sandwiches! He tells her about his mother, who sends him home-made harissa in the post.
Madeleine gestures at the white gauze dressing taped to his forehead: what happened to you? He says: I got punched last night at a club in Hoxton. Some man didn’t like me looking at his girlfriend.
Would Rose describe herself as someone’s girlfriend? She acknowledges her new lover casually. Jerry. My friend. I’ve mentioned him, haven’t I? One of the artists up at the studios. Yeah, he’s OK.
Madeleine wears the red dress to go to the theatre with Toby a few weeks later, one evening in late July. He rings her: I’ve got a spare ticket for a show transferring for one night to the Great Hall in Bart’s. Day after tomorrow. Interested?
The Walworth Beauty Page 18
