Sunday at the Cross Bones. John Walsh

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СКАЧАТЬ life to many causes, and she has stuck to it. Kindliness and sympathy have been her watchwords, and her transactions of money into my charitable funds have been the happy public outcome. Without her, I would eat bread and beef-dripping sandwiches every day, like the hapless masses in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

      Was I wrong to embrace her thus, as she fretted over her dead husband? I am a tactile man. If it is a fault to translate emotional generosity into physical expression, then I own up to the fault unreservedly. The girls among whom I move in London are used to my gentle embraces, my occasional bestowings of chaste kisses. They know the innocent pressure of my arms around them, telling them not to fear. What harm can be done by offering the occasional close contact of the notional swain – the touch of love that we all secretly crave? And had our lips met yesterday, I would not have been surprised nor dismayed. There is a passion in the pursuit of virtue that must find an outlet sometimes, even in salivatory exchanges. I thought of my recent sermon: what would Jesus have done in similar circumstances? I have no doubt at all that he was a kisser. His relations with Mary must have involved a degree of embrace and osculation, I am sure. His visits to the house of Martha and Mary would have ended in a flurry of fleshy connections in the doorway. I allow myself the thought that, while the one busied herself with household chores and the other was devoted to prayer and virtue, Our Lord might have stolen a kiss from the former, while the latter had her eyes shut in supplication. I can imagine him encircling Martha’s aproned waist from behind, as her hands in the sudsy water paused in their cleansing digitations, and her lovely head (I see curly fair hair darkened by the sweat of her labours, white if irregular teeth, skin like a white Egyptian peach) turned round, her eyes half anxious, half incredulous that this could be happening, her Cupid’s-bow lips parting, as he bent forward …

      Lady Royston-Smith withdrew from my arms quite suddenly, with a forcefulness that suggested I had gone too far.

      ‘You were, I believe, about to enlist my help in an introduction, Mr Davidson?’ Suddenly, we were back on formal terms.

      ‘I know, Fenella, that you are a friend of Sir Arthur and Lady Bassenthwaite,’ I said, pulling my clerical jacket around me.

      ‘Arthur and Frederica? Of course. They are old friends. Frederica’s mother knew mine in Ashford. But I haven’t seen them for years. I believe they live in Africa.’

      ‘Indeed, they have spent the last three years in Kenya. But I notice from today’s Times they are sailing for England, to resume residence in Eaton Square. I would not trouble you to bring my work to their attention, except that Lady Bassenthwaite has for years worked for a charity bringing comfort to distressed gentlefolk of the region. Now she is back in London, she may be looking for a fresh outlet for her kind work …’

      ‘And you thought she might have some spare cash to steer towards your – ladies?’ A steely note had entered her voice.

      ‘All I ask, Fenella,’ I said, ‘is that I can meet them, with your help, and lay before them the size of the social problem that surrounds, for several miles, their comfortable Belgravia home.’

      ‘Well –’ she seemed fatigued by being asked for one more favour – ‘I’ll have to see. They’ll be acclimatising to their new life, and I don’t want to burden them with –’

      ‘If I could guarantee a bishop would accompany me to the meeting?’ I said. ‘Might that smooth things?’

      ‘Of course, Harold.’ (Suddenly we were back to Harold and Fenella; how Lady R-S loves the purple.) ‘You envisage a tea party? Here?’

      ‘That would be ideal.’

      ‘Perhaps. I’ll have to speak to Frederica when she has docked. But apart from the expatriates and the bishop, is there anything else that might enliven the occasion?’

      ‘I fancy,’ I said, neutrally, ‘I could bring a misfortunate girl – or two – to join our company, purely to demonstrate the scale of the problem.’

      She pondered the arrangement: teatime at the Charing Cross Hotel with one peeress of the realm, one rector, one bishop and at least one prostitute, possibly two.

      It was too good to turn down.

      ‘Shall we say Friday fortnight?’ And with that, she ushered me out the door, banished from the scene of our brief, romantic intermezzo. (Alas!)

       CHAPTER 7

      Journals of Harold Davidson

      London 15 September 1930

      Have finally made contact with Miss Harris! It has not been easy. The young lady, despite her iniquitous employment, seems to have a positive aversion to being At Home to callers. I have made the dismal trek to Queen Street, Camden, four times now, not counting the evening when I made the error of tapping on Barbara’s window and finding an intimidating face looking out. From my knowledge of the Profession, I am aware that mornings are slow (the girls invariably sleep in), lunchtime finds some vigorous activity under way, listless afternoons speed up – like cricket matches! – after the tea interval, then die down from what we have learned to call ‘the cocktail hour’ at 6 p.m. until the pubs start to empty around ten, which is the signal for a great unloosening of sin all over the city.

      I called three times in the early evening. Each visit was as fruitless at the last. I stood before the door of number 14, pressing the lowest bell, but heard only a distant inner jangling – like the twanging of my nerves as I awaited yet another hostile confrontation like the last. Resolving to give it up after this final attempt, I called yesterday in the mid-morning, pressed the bell, looked sadly at the drawn curtains and rapped my knuckles on the glass pane …

      The door flew open. A small girl stood before me, clad in a garment made of towelling material, off-white or cream. Her feet were bare. With her right hand she agitated a hand towel through curly brown locks and looked at me with her head in one side. I did not recognise her.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘Miss Barbara Harris?’

      ‘Might be. Who’re you? And what, more to the point, is your problem, banging on a girl’s door at this hour of the morning?’

      I examined my wristwatch. ‘It is ten thirty, Miss Harris. The world has risen and been about its business for three hours at least. I am Mr Harold Davidson. We met at Marble Arch some weeks ago. We had lunch in a café and I expressed a desire to call upon you to discuss …’ I faltered. What had we agreed to discuss? I blushed to recall our little colloquy.

      ‘Oh, I remember you,’ she said, ‘the gent sweating to death in your long coat. You bought me lunch and come on all innocent about the pudding.’ She laughed and towelled her curls. ‘Well, hello again. So you thought you’d give it a go, did you? After all your high earnest chat, you’ve spent a few weeks tossing and turning in your bed every morning and thinking, “Oooh, shall I? Shan’t I?” And here you are.’

      Her face, suddenly revealed amid all the towelling, was not as I remembered it. In the morning light, she was a quite different proposition from the poised and soignée strumpet climbing aboard an omnibus. Before me stood a child, five feet nothing, in a childish towel gown.

      ‘May I come in?’

      ‘You’re a bit eager, aren’t you? I don’t usually entertain СКАЧАТЬ