Walking in Pimlico (25 page)

‘The Pets of the Men’
SISTERS BELLWOOD
Lucy and Kitty
Dashing Duettists and Dancers
Great success at M
INTON’S
P
ALACE
and
G
REAT
T
URK
(Lower Marlpool-street)
Every evening from Monday next
‘Oh you Bhoys!!!’

‘Can you – will you – help me please? I don’t know you but I think you are a good man and would help a lady in desperate need. And I am desperate, sir. For there are people coming who want to take me. But here are friends’ – and she pointed at the piece of paper – ‘good friends, and they will make sure that I am safe. But I’m a stranger here, sir. A stranger.’ I believe she began to cry, though she turned away.

I looked at it, and then at her, and then at it again, for those names presented themselves like old friends, and I was inclined to say as much. Only I didn’t. For though she seemed respectable, I didn’t know this lady or why she should claim friendship with Lucy and Kitty. And, even stranger to me, was that she intended visiting Minton’s Palace and the Great Turk, for these places (the Great Turk in particular) were not elegant establishments. (And indeed I was disappointed that Lucy had not found a better shop, though I expect it was only for a few weeks.) So, I debated quickly what I should say, and elected to be unhelpful.

‘I can’t say where they are, miss, not being a native-like. I don’t know streets ’cept those around the circus where is my place of work.’

‘Please,’ she said. ‘I can pay you. Only take me to my friends. That is all I ask.’

Her eyes were pleading, and her face like an angel’s. And a catch in her voice that made your heart melt clean away. Besides, she did mention money.

But I told her I couldn’t take her there, and I was telling the truth, for I had to be back and doing my work in the ring. Besides, I said, they could have moved on and might be anywhere now. And I was still wondering how she knew Lucy, for it surely could not be that they were rubbing shoulders together, she being regularly ladylike and Lucy – not.

While I was thinking about this, the lady was shaking her head at me and saying yes, she was entirely sure that the Sisters Bellwood would still be there, for wasn’t this a recent card? Where were these places? Could she get a cart to take her? Oh, indeed, it was very important that she found them, for she had no other friends. No one at all on whom she might depend.

I replied, yes she could get a cart, but—

Then that was what she would do, and she started to get up, pushing away the rug and wiping her brow with a handkercher. And then she put her hand to her face and covered her eyes and sat down again and began to weep.

‘Look here, miss,’ says I, all at once (for I hate to see women cry), ‘it seems to me you’re not feeling tip-top. It seems to me you might be better placed to gather your strength and go tomorrow, when you can hire a cab and do it at your leisure. For if these
are
professional ladies’ – I nearly smiled when I said it, for at the Great Turk they mostly
was
professional ladies, if you know what I mean – ‘they will be having their cup of tea and bread and butter and a bit of shut-eye before their night’s work, and will not take kindly to being disturbed.’

The truth was, the more I sat with her, the more I felt she might
persuade me to take her to Lower Marlpool-street or, indeed, wherever she wanted to go. For she was powerful affecting with her pale face and her dark eyes. And yet. How can I describe it? I had a feeling about it. About her. That it was, she was, not quite the thing. Not quite right. You will understand when I explain more. But not yet.

I tried another tack.

‘You might fancy putting up here. Or at the Station Hotel. A much more genteel establishment.’

She shook her head, and I looked at the mud on her skirt, which was worn about the edges, and I wondered if money might be at the bottom of it, so I plunged on.

‘Well, I know a lodging house, miss, Mr Halls’s, where I feel certain there are rooms. Cleanish. Just for the night. While you get your strength back.’

Here, what brass Corney Sage has!
How
should she,
why
should she agree to such an offer? I might have been a murderer or some low nibbler who would take advantage of a lady (whether she’s respectable or not is a different matter) what is down on her luck. But it was getting late to start travelling around a strange city, and she was done in and no mistake, and looked as though another step might kill her. We must have thought similar. Or she had no sense at all. But she stopped crying and her shoulders sunk down like she had given up.

‘That would probably be a very sensible solution, Mr . . . ?’

‘Mr Corney Sage, at your service, miss – madam,’ I stuttered, for I did not know what to call her.

‘Mrs Marsh.’

She looked hard at me with those dark-shadowed eyes in that pale face.

‘Mr Sage. I hold you to your honour as a gentleman
not
to betray me or do me harm.’

Out of the blue this came, but she said it with such earnestness,
and such a ring to her voice, and she was looking at me with a face like an angel. But it was one of Mr Doré’s that I once remarked in a book (and got scared of) a long time ago.

I will not tell how I first came upon Halls’s establishment (for there, as they say, lies another tale and one that would take much telling). It was in the back of a back-street neighbourhood of the town, not far from the canal and within a spit of the Cattle Market. I fancy it had been, in the springtime of its youth, an elegant gentleman’s residence, for its marble floors and twisty stairposts and handsome decorations could still be seen. But it had fallen upon hard times, and no mistake, and now there were cracked panes in the windows and weeds in the garden, and a houseful of Irish labourers next door. How Halls acquired it I cannot tell, but he’d been there a while, for his marks were all over it, mostly dirty marks along the walls where his hands and shoulders had rubbed, and around the keyholes where he pressed his eye (which consequently was always on the water). But for all its shabbiness, here were rooms with a single bed, not dormitories where you were closely acquainted with your fellow man and all
his
acquaintances. And here were curtains to draw, and doors to close (and support with a chair if you’d a mind to), and a washstand and a fire in the grate, if you bought your own coals. In cert, it had no comparison with my little cot at the Old Pitcher; there was no lapping river, nor quiet dark sky. But neither was there a murderer looking out for me.

And how we got to Halls’s Lodgings, Paradise-court, I won’t trouble to tell either (there being enough minuteness already). I delivered the canvas to our circus (Chittick was curious, and came out to have a look – my lady, Mrs Marsh, was sitting on a bale of straw and Mrs C had given her a cup of tea), and then we made for the lodgings. I had half a dozen words with Halls while she stood in the front, but after looking her over, he needed no more persuasion. Indeed, it was dreadful the way he carried on, fawning and creeping like he ran a
nobby establishment. He had a nice room for her, he said, first floor, but he hoped there weren’t too many steps. Would she have a cup of tea in his parlour? Should he make her up a fire? Open the window?

She was quiet and steady, of course. Yes, she would take the room and paid up in coins. No, she needed nothing more. When we’d stowed her trunk (which I’d brung on the handcart) and Halls had offered to open it up – ‘to get your stuff aired, missis’ – and which she had firmly refused, she shut the door, saying she wanted a lie down.

Halls was very struck by her. He stood outside the door for a while, and I wondered whether or not he was going to chance his eye at the keyhole. But he thought better of it, and came down the stairs like a shadow against the wall, for he was dreadful thin, and breathing hard, though whether through exertion or the weight of the coins in his pocket I could not say. He quizzed me about the lady within an inch of my life, but I had precious little to tell, and when he was satisfied he got the bottle out and two cups, and poked up a fire. We heard her moving about above.

‘She’s ripe, Corney,’ Halls said in a whisper. ‘Now then, how shall we manage her? Rush her? Or wait till she goes out?’

He had it all thought out and told me so, for he had a ‘quick mind’. And she was, after all, prime. A lady who could not shift for herself and pretty much at sea. With a decent trunk, heavy, and a purse, even if it was on the light side. He had three shillings in his pocket and there was more.

But even as he was wheezing on, and I was nodding to keep him sweet, I had one ear on my lady upstairs. The creaking floorboards made it impossible for her to move about without a sound, and I could hear her go to and fro, opening the window and so on. And the more I listened to the sound of her, the more I thought that there was something about her. And it wasn’t her pale skin and the way she spoke, which had impressed Halls mightily, and in certain
had drawn me at first. It wasn’t just that. It was the way she had with her. Like she was play-acting, but very good at it. The way she talked refined, quiet, beautiful-sounding, like she might break into a song, but all put on. And what lady, in her condition, I asked myself, would be travelling alone? And how come she tagged along with me, a stranger, so quickly? Why, I could have done her over, robbed her blind. She must have banked on – something – that I wouldn’t treat her so.

I put my hand in my pocket and felt the folded-up paper with the address on it, what I hadn’t told Halls about. And I let it be. For he was pursuing his own line.

‘Get her out of here tomorrer, and I’ll do over the trunk,’ Halls goes in his low voice. ‘Whatever, we’ll split it two ways,’ and he tapped the side of his nose, like one of your music hall funny men. ‘There’ll be jewellery – I’ll get rid of that. Books, too, by the weight of the trunk. You can have them, Corney.’

I let him know that books were no good to me, and that if anyone ought to have the stones it should be yours truly, seeing as how I found the party. He smiled at me, and spoke agreeably enough.

‘You drive a hard bargain. And I’m a poor man as you know. I can’t work ’cos of me lung.’

Now he told everyone he only had one lung. According to Halls, he was born like it, his mother having been scared by a hot-air balloon exploding in the pleasure gardens. Call me hard-hearted, but I think he told more lies than an egg, for I’ve heard him sprint upstairs like a child when he thought a lodger was trying to flit without paying. And with my own eyes I’ve seen him leg it down the road after a Chinee who walked in on spec and run out with a hat-stand! He could also water his plants better than any mummer, so I didn’t feel bad sticking him out, and, after a while, he shrugged and said maybe she wasn’t as flush as she appeared to be. And then he said what I’d been thinking.

‘Anyhow, what’s a respectable woman doing walking around fit to drop any moment? No ring on her finger.’ He scratched his chin and filled his cup – but not mine – and fell to musing again.

‘Happen she’s rich, a duchess from somewhere? On the run with the family jewels? She’d pay a bit to keep us quiet.’

I said I thought a duchess might have a bit more baggage about her. And why would a duchess run off when she’s up the spout? Anyway, I said, it was time for me to get to the circus and earn some
honest
money. Indeed, it was half past six and I had barely an hour to transform myself into Funny Foodle. But when I reached the door, there was the young woman herself, standing with her bonnet and coat on, for so set were Halls and I in our conversation that neither of us had heard her come downstairs, loose floorboards or not, and it did cross my mind to wonder how long she had been standing there, and whether she had heard what we’d been saying about her. But, whatever she might have overhead, she gave me a pleasant enough smile, and nodded over my shoulder to Mr Halls. I explained what I was about, that I was in a rush.

‘For,’ I said, ‘if I’m not in the circle sharpish at half past seven, then Mr Chittick will remind me with his stick across my back. He is not a forgiving man, is Mr Chittick.’

She nodded seriously. ‘I’m very grateful to you, Mr Sage, for your kindness, and for recommending this accommodation. I am sure I will be very comfortable here, but I do need to find my friends as soon as possible as they are expecting me. I have a mind to walk into the city now. I am happy to do so. Please don’t be concerned.’

No matter what had gone before, I was still bothered by this proposition, and I said so. It wasn’t the time of night to be walking out alone in streets where she was a stranger. And especially Lower Marlpool-street, which was most undesirable.

She looked sharpish at me. ‘Oh, but I understood you were unfamiliar with that neighbourhood, Mr Sage.’

She had caught me out, and knew it, and the flicker of a smile played around her lips for a moment until she possessed herself once again. I was silent as we walked along together, but had the feeling of Halls watching us down the street and, no doubt, putting on his coat and muffler and trailing us a little, one lung or no. She was chatty as we walked, enquiring now and then about churches and who lived here and there, and was there a concert room to this public house or no. She was pleasant company and a fine figure (although heavy), and though we drew curious glances along the way, she seemed not to notice and I pretended not to. When we got to the circus, she looked tired.

‘Here, miss,’ I said of a sudden, ‘why don’t I give you a free order to the show? You can sit down for a bit and’ – for she was shaking her head – ‘on my word of honour, I will find your friends tomorrow. If they are to be found,’ I added, just in case.

She took a little persuading, protesting that she must be about her business, looking for her friends. But I think her plates were bothering her, and certainly her face was pale as chalk, and her beautiful eyes were ringed with dark bruises.

Mrs Chittick took a look at her and without me saying a word passed her through and found her a seat by the end of a row.