Sunday at the Cross Bones

‘They call me lots of things round ’ere,’ she said. ‘But you can call me Barbara.’ She stretched out a hand. ‘Barbara Harris.’ Her cotton sleeve trailed across the table, soaking up tea spill and gravy puddle. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

‘Barbara,’ I said sternly, ‘as you can see, or should be able to surmise, I am not a man given to dallying with ladies of the street –’

‘All I can see,’ she retorted, ‘is, you’re a man, no different from any other, for all your long words.’

‘– and I wish only to befriend you. I would not dream of honouring your outrageous suggestion.’

Barbara took a swig from her beer glass. ‘You familiar with the music hall?’

‘Indeed I am,’ I said. ‘I used to perform on the public stage in my youth.’

‘You sound like one of them burlesque routines. D’you know the one I mean? The bloke’s tellin’ his pals – “She offered her honour. I honoured her offer. And all night long, I was on’er and off’ er.” D’you get it?’ She chuckled, a noise like perfumed bathwater escaping. ‘That’s all you really want, isn’t it?’

The grim waitress was back. ‘We’re closing,’ she said. ‘You want anything else?’

‘We’re just leaving,’ said Barbara, looking round for her jacket. Her self-assurance startled me. I could see in the fish-eyed glance of the slattern, how we must have looked. One well-fed lady of business and one middle-aged client, about to depart to consummate their lunch transaction. Her face was a mask of contempt.

‘Lamb chops three-an’-nine, veg platter sixpence, beer and tea one-aner and tea one-an’-six, that’s five-an’-ninepence, ta,’ said the waitress. ‘Sure I can’t get you anythin’ more?’ She rolled her eyes to heaven.

I paid the bill. Outside, the Edgware Road was bathed in strong sunlight. Motor cars puttered by with frightening celerity, myriad walkers bustled past, a man pathetically encased in a ‘sandwich board’ announced a sale of haberdashery at Selfridges, as we stood awkwardly on the pavement.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Miss Harris,’ I announced, as plainly as I could, ‘I am sorry our first meeting has ended in this awkward fashion. I would enjoy making your acquaintance, but in a less, ah, businesslike context. I would like, if you allow me, to take you under my wing and find you a more congenial occupation than your current one.’

‘Oh yes?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘So you want to be my pal. And what would be the point of that? What would be in it for you?’

‘I see in you a young woman who deserves a better life than you currently inhabit. A girl whose impulses towards decency have been fatally compromised by circumstance.’

‘What are you, some kind of sky pilot?’

‘I will tell you in due course. All you need know for now is that I wish you well, and will endeavour to improve your lot. I shall not accompany you home but, if you give me your address, I will call on you during the week to discuss your future.’

‘Number 14, Queen Street, Camden,’ she said. ‘Ground-floor flat. There’s lots of bells. Call any time. It’s pretty rare for me to entertain gentlemen callers after midnight, but you never know your luck.’

‘My luck?’ Once again, I was shocked almost beyond words. ‘I hope you do not imagine for one second that I –’

‘And while I’m partial to a little discussion, no praying, all right? Any suggestion we kneel down together, an’ I’ll kick you out. Got that?’ She smiled. ‘You can ’ave me kneel down in front of you, but that’s your lot.’

Mystified by her meaning, I made to search in my Stationery Pocket for pen and notebook, with which to inscribe her address. But the press of passers-by was so busy – and their looks so disapproving – that I stayed my hand. Anyone seeing this vivid strumpet by my side could only have their suspicions confirmed, were I to be seen taking down her address in the street. I committed it to memory, and we shook hands. A passing motor cab rattled dangerously close to the pavement, and I ushered her aside with a touch of my hand on her waist – a simple, Samaritan gesture that she greeted with a laugh, as though I were guiding her into a dance. Her lace-gloved hand came lightly down on my shoulder.

‘What you tryin’ to do?’ she asked. ‘Sweep me off my feet?’

‘I was merely trying to protect you from –’

‘OI, CAB!’ she cried, in the tone of a fishwife. The vehicle stopped dead, five yards away. ‘Got to go. Bye now,’ she said, looking at me with curiosity. ‘I get the feeling we’ll meet again soon, one way or the other.’

By the time I had divined her meaning, she had gathered her skirts into the motor cab and was gone.

London 9 August 1930

THINGS TO DO:

1. Visit Arthur Trench, Holborn, about Ladies’ Academy, ask re Esther and Matilda as poss. vocational students?

2. Boots pharmacy: talcum powder for Madge P, bunion cream for Sally A, sal volatile for Joanna D, deodorant for Bridget C.

3. Runaway Boys’ Retreat – talk to Eddie and Howard re funding.

4. Previews of Coward’s Private Lives at the Phoenix start soon. Cheap tickets on sale, Friday a.m.

5. Call on Emily M, Café Royal. Lunch at Bradley’s?

6. Sermon: Galatians 5:22 – ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance …’

7. Lady Fenella R-Smith. Time for action re her rich Africa friends?

8. Somerset House for records of Lily Beane’s parents?

9. Sandra (Lyons C House) – speak to Marina re possible stage work?

10. Barbara Harris. 14 Queen Street, Camden.

Stiffkey 10 August 1930

Summer has filled the meadows with vivid primary colours, bright yellow oilseed rape, light green corn waving in abundance, red poinsettias blooming early, heady smell of jasmine. It is blissful to be out in the fresh air. Rose early and drove bike v fast to Sheringham in high spirits. Made 65mph around Weybourne. How speed invigorates a mind stupefied by London.

I have been looking at motor-bicycle catalogues, gazing with frank covetousness at the Brough Superior SS100, a wonderful machine with elegantly serpentine exhaust pipes curling sinuously all its length and doubling back. Its headlamps are a joy to behold. It is the Rolls-Royce of motorbikes. It is also £170, which I cannot afford. I shall go on riding my beloved 500cc Ariel Squarefour until something turns up!

Sermon well received. ‘Nice to find you in such a jolly, positive frame of mind,’ said Briony Jones. ‘It must be the weather.’

Mrs Willoughby hung back after 11 a.m. service to say how pleased she is to put into practice my ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ advice. When approached last Thursday by young pedlar from Gt Yarmouth on doorstep, selling dusters, tea cloths, kitchen paraphernalia, instead of sending him about his business with flea in ear, she invited him into kitchen, fed him tea and scones and enquired about his life. Discovered that he was student of philosophy, trying to raise enough cash to fund college studies for new term at Oxford. She bought frankly ill-advised number of clothes pegs, gave him £10 and kissed him goodbye on Welcome mat. Unfortunately, seen by troublesome neighbour, and soon her largesse was talk of village. Had he been a plausible crook, not Oxford chap at all? Husband not impressed, particularly by loss of £10, supposed to be put towards summer vacation to Hunstanton.

What could I say? Assured her she was on right track re spiritual impulses. 4.53 p.m., received telephone call from Emily Murray, in tearful state. Job at Café R not working out. ‘Horrible, horrible’ working conditions was all she would impart. Must visit her, get back on straight and narrow. Perhaps Friday? All she needs is a little fortitude.

London 15 August 1930

In Regent Street, looked in at the Café Royal to see what has become of Emily; she did not last long in the kitchens. I should have predicted this. I never liked the maître d’ here, a stern-faced bully who today looked at me with cold, jellied-eel eyes when I stated my business, listened with infinite ennui as I enquired after the poor girl, as though it could be no interest to him, then dismissed me with the words, ‘If there are no other relevant questions, I’m afraid you must excuse me.’ Relevant? As if the whereabouts of a suddenly penniless girl in London are of no moment when weighed against the vital importance of feeding Sir Ambrose This and Lord Benjamin That.

Asked in the kitchens, when MD’s back turned. Head shakes all round. No, we don’t know where she’s gone. She left on Wednesday, there were raised voices in the Hot Beverages area, a flung teapot, tears and shouts, a dented silver sugar bowl and a slammed door. No payment, sadly, because she was taken on as probationary. No forwarding address. I am aghast at the level of neglect in this once respectable establishment.

I decided to call on her, at her shared rooms in Maddox Street, where I saw her so recently – my birthday! – with Nellie Churchill.

Found Emily gone and Miss Churchill abed with fever.

‘Oh, it’s you, Reverend,’ she said. ‘I’m not well. Caught a chill from hanging about Vauxhall Gardens, and it went straight to my lungs. If it weren’t for the neighbours upstairs, I don’t know what I’da done.’ She coughed violently.

‘Where is Emily?’

‘Emily? She’s gone. Somewhere up on the north side, she said she was headed. Maybe to her sister Flo, who’s got a little place she rents, I think it’s in one of those Guinness Estate blocks.’

‘Why is she no longer here?’ I had to fight internally, to keep dislike and suspicion of this human icicle out of my voice.

‘Why’d you think?,’ said Nellie with a sneer. ‘She wasn’t enjoying it. They were nasty to her at the café, like I told her they would be, she done a bunk, came back here crying about having no future, and next thing I know, she’s gone.’

‘Would it be the case,’ I asked, ‘that you sent her away by crowing, in your unpleasant way, over her inability to keep a legitimate job? Would that be it? I can hear it in your voice. I can imagine how you would have jeered at her, and told her of her folly in – Oh!’

I startled myself with a horrible thought.

‘Oh what?’ asked Nellie, coolly.

‘She has not gone back to a life on the street, has she, Nellie?’ I was becoming very severe, and she knew it. ‘Tell me that she has not returned to the embrace of prostitution, spurred on by your jeers and scorn?’

‘No she ain’t,’ said Nellie, with a flounce. ‘Whatever’s happened to her, it’s not my fault. If it’s anyone’s it’s yours.’

‘Mine?’ I almost shouted. ‘How can it be my fault? All my energies are spent in saving girls like Emily from vicious ways.’

‘If you wanna see vicious ways, Reverend,’ said Nellie grimly, ‘you shoulda seen the way they treated her in the sinkroom at the Café. She was miserable as sin. She tried to come the kid, doing all that little-girly wide-eyed routine, and it went down bad, Rector. It might work with a gentleman client, but not with the bitch skivvies. Someone must’ve blabbed about her past, for they started calling her Skittles, after that royal mistress, and the boys would slip their hands round her waist and fiddle with her chest as she stood with her arms in the sink, and instead of giving them a sound wallop, she’d just weep, which made them worse. So it wasn’t much of a favour what you done her.’

‘It was work, Nellie, honest work for an honest wage. Better by far than taking money for intimate liaisons forbidden by the state and by God.’

‘If I remember,’ replied the foolish girl, ‘the only intimate liaison that’s forbidden in the Commandments is adultery. Everything else that’s forbidden was added on afterwards by people like you. No screwing, no kissing, no dressing nice for gentlemen, it all came under the heading of adultery, didn’t it? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Nellie, you are a simpleton when it comes to scripture. I fear the delirium of fever may have rendered you more argumentative than you might wish.’

She seemed chastened. ‘You got anything for a bloody horrible cough? It keeps me awake all night.’

‘You must visit the physician in Glasshouse Street,’ I said. ‘He is called Dr Ledger and will help you. For your present needs, however, if you tell me where Emily has gone and where I can find her, I may have something here …’

I delved in my Pharmacy Pocket and from a mass of ampoules, pill packets and ointment tins extracted a tiny phial of tinct. Laudanum.

‘Boil a kettle, Miss Churchill, dissolve this in five parts water, and sip the result over thirty minutes. You will find it promotes refreshing sleep and interesting, sometimes inspiring, dreams.’

She looked pleased. ‘Well, thanks, Reverend. Good luck finding Emmy, if you can. And all right then, it’s true we had words and I regret what I said, about her being a hopeless tart and then a hopeless washer-upper, that was a bit mean and I didn’t expect her to flounce out, but Christ, she’s so stupid sometimes. Anyway, she’s somewhere in Islington or Highbury, I got an address somewhere, could hardly read her writing, something like Herbert Street, number 140 or 142. She said she’d be staying with friends of her sister Flo, and beyond that I don’t know nothing, OK? And now I’m a bit tired and I think you should go.’

‘Does this Florence work?’ I asked, cautiously, ambiguously. When asking pros about other pros, one has to be wary of giving offence. That word ‘work’ is itself capable of a dozen interpretations.

‘She’s a chanteuse in a Palace of Varieties,’ said Nellie, closing her eyes. ‘It’s not what you’re thinking, either. She makes proper money from her voice, and she’s given up the other, I mean the alternative employment.’

‘That is most encouraging,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you might yourself benefit from her example.’

‘I just don’t care, to tell you the truth, Harold,’ said Nellie. ‘I really couldn’t care less about anything any more.’

I left her to her thoughtless life and her laudanum dreams. My thoughts were for poor Emily, ensconced in squalid surroundings in north London, her apartment abandoned, her job aborted, her morale dismally low, her soft animals unlooked-after, her flatmate comatose with narcotics. How has it come to this, when all was so promising, barely a month ago?

Should I write a stern letter to the Café Royal, demanding to learn the details of her foreshortened employment? Should I have shaken Nellie, and told her to go and find her former pal and fetch her back? Should I give the whole thing up as a failure? But then I applied to myself the words, ‘What would Jesus do?’ and my course was clear. I will set out to find Emily Murray, and bring her safely home.

CHAPTER 4

Letter from Mrs Moyra Davidson

Stiffkey Rectory 15 August 1930

My dearest Oona,

Sometimes I think I’m going off my head here. I spent the morning searching for a screwdriver, because the lock on the bathroom door is half off and Mrs Maitland is coming to tea today to discuss the Home Management classes and there is nobody in the world more dainty than Mrs M when she puts a mind to it. I simply cannot have her sitting in there terrified someone’s going to come in and catch her with her best bloomers round her ankles. I asked the colonel if he’d perchance have an implement of that nature in his box of tricks, and he said, ‘My dear Mimi, you will recall I arrived here one day with a suitcase and two boys, and one day I will depart with a suitcase and, God willing, the same two boys, but at no time did I ever acquire a toolbox, I would be a strange house guest if I were to begin kitting myself out with a saw, a chisel and a set of nails, for you might reasonably wonder what could possibly be my intentions.’ (This is the way he goes on.) I asked Nugent, who was writing letters in the parlour, to run down to the shop and find me a screwdriver, so I may reattach the lock on the bathroom door, and he did as I asked after only, ooh, an hour or two because he’s writing to apply for a job in the Civil Service, very swagger I’m sure, he has the confidence of the devil, but then sure he’s only just out of the college and why wouldn’t he be bursting with energy and ambition after being pumped with learning for three whole years like a Strasbourg goose? I wish young Sheilagh would find proper employment for a young intelligent girl instead of (rainy days) floating round the house all day reading books or (fine days) riding Joshua Judges at point-to-point meetings in Holt and Wells. I keep urging her to go into nursing like her mother did, but she wrinkles her nose and tosses her hair and complains about having to manhandle the sick and dying all day, that she’d rather hang on for something on the stage. She’s had her hair ringletted like Helen Twelvetrees, that actress in the films who’s always weeping, but I can’t really see my darling S as an actress, she’s too earnest, she doesn’t have a fluent technique. I tell her nursing is a fine career for a girl looking to make a difference in the world, but she says well, why, in that case, Mother dear, did you yourself abandon nursing to go on the stage? And I haven’t an answer for that, except to say I was following a dream buried deep within me.

Anyway, Nugent came back after God knows how long and reported that he couldn’t find a hammer to buy anywhere, I could have boxed his ears, it was a screwdriver I wanted.

I’m tired of this stupid story. What’s really bothering me is the major. Did I tell you about the galloping Major Hammond? He was one of the nouveau grandees who came along twenty years back, when the land around these parts was sold at auction by the Townshends who used to own it and a yelping battalion of new squireens moved into the neighbourhood, ex-army types who fancied themselves as landowners because they’d bought the deeds to a few acres for a song. You could hear them in the Townshend Arms telling their mess pals, with their civvy suits and their suburban wives, ‘Oh yairs, I own all the fields around here as far as you can see to yonder copse.’ Jesus, yonder copse forsooth, they wouldn’t know a copse from a hole in the wall, but they give themselves such airs, it makes me sick – me who’s been here since King Edward was on the throne.

Anyway, the good major, ever since he bought the old hall at Morston, he’s been dropping hints left, right and centre about wanting the churchwarden’s job.

My friend Cathy Dineen is on the JP bench at Holkham, hearing cases of trespass and poaching and aggravated affray at Cromer on bank holiday weekends. She cannot stand the way the major runs the bench and tells everyone how to think. Take poor young Edward Fenny, a simple-minded lad who’s been caught fecking ripe pears from the orchard beside Blakeney Church, and selling them by the side of the road. Not a trace of compassion for the poor lad will you find in the major. ‘Speaking as the local magistrate,’ he says, making it sound like it’s Speaking As Your Commanding Officer, ‘I feel we must apply the full force of the law to this unwashed miscreant. There can be no pleas in mitigation. We must press for a conviction.’

Cathy says, ‘Just a minute, Your Honour,’ and he won’t even look at her, like he’s heard some tiny sound in the courtroom but he can’t identify where it’s coming from. ‘All that’s been stolen here are a few dozen piece of ripe fruit that nobody’s breaking their necks to pick off the trees, and nobody’s livelihood is threatened by a bit of schoolboy scrumping. Why are we discussing this, and conspiring to send to jail a young simpleton who is only trying to make, what, three or four shillings to buy himself a pair of shoes?’

‘He Is A Thief,’ says the major with that awful slow politician voice he puts on in public, ‘a furtive trespasser on Church lands, a stealer of Church property. Would you, Mrs Dillon, be equally sanguine about his crime if he were to break into the church and abscond with the silver Communion chalice and the gold platter? Would you find that no matter for judicial inquiry? I rest my case.’

Well, it’s Mrs Dineen, as a matter of fact, not Dillon, and it’s not a chalice either, it’s called a ciborium, you dish out the communion wafers from it, and the plate for the breaking of bread, that’s a paten for God’s sake – platter indeed, he’s spent too much time in roadside hostelries being asked if he’d like the seafood platter, if they can interrupt his drinking, you know he drinks like a bloody fish. Poor Cathy, she’s sitting there like a fish herself, opening and closing her gob with amazement that anyone could be so unfair, but she says, nonetheless, ‘The pears are not holy objects. The fruit on the trees are not consecrated to God. Simony is not the issue here. Young Edward Fenny may have stolen the fruit, but it would have rotted on the branch. Rather than send him to rot in prison like one of the pears, we should applaud his enterprising spirit and encourage him to direct it into more legal and lucrative arenas.’

It was no good. The major directed the bench to find him guilty of theft and he was sentenced to three months banging metal panels in Norwich Prison. But while giving his summing-up, the major made a point of saying the purloining of property from Church premises must be discouraged in the parishes and he himself was the man to do it. Listen to him: ‘We need a tighter deployment of manpower to ensure no recrudescence of such casual felonies. If the church warden at Blakeney were doing his job, this unfortunate youth would not now be losing his liberty. The work of a churchwarden must not be undertaken lightly. I shall be looking into the current arrangements in all the outlying parishes of north Norfolk, and recommending changes.’ Which was pretty well saying, ‘ME! Me, I’ll be churchwarden around here. Just you try and stop me.’

What Mr Reynolds, our churchwarden these twenty-three years, will make of it, I cannot imagine. He and Mrs R have been our neighbours and best friends as long as we’ve been in the village. Mr Reynolds is a dear, good man, a devout churchgoer and helpful handyman. He is not equipped to fight the likes of the major, with his fearsome eye and the broken veins in his cross old face, and his blustering ambitions and his running the bench like some American lawman.

There will be a fight, mark my words. As I told you, there’s no love lost between him and H and I’m fearful of the outcome. In fact, Oona dear, I think I’ll go round to the Reynoldses right this minute, so had better close. Write and tell me all the news from Dublin. God, I miss the place something awful, these days, I get so lonesome with H away so much. But maybe at least Mr R will have a screwdriver to save Mrs Maitland’s blushes.

Your loving friend,

Mimi

Journals of Harold Davidson

London 19 August 1930

Set out this morning to find poor Emily. Took the omnibus from Waterloo Station north to Islington Green. Had only sketchy information from Nellie Churchill, whom I left slumbering. I asked many strangers for Herbert Street and was rewarded with directions to all four points of the compass.

New shops are springing up all along Upper Street – furniture and brass appliances, dresses and hats and bolts of silk and cotton, pie and sweetmeat emporia, ironware, stationery, wine and cigars. A gratifying sign of prosperity in these doldrum times. We may not be suffering a Depression as badly as has befallen our friends in the United States, but we are far from enjoying an Elation. A new world of things, though, an outbreak of colours, can be relied upon to raise the spirits. Who would have thought the eye could be so thrilled by the sunlight gleaming on a mass of brand-new copper piping in Balcombe’s Yard, or the heart so lifted by the sight of a paint lorry unloading vats of pigment, their lids leaking creamy half-moons of crimson, yellow and aquamarine?