Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles) Page 8

  So what? She tried to clear her muzzy head, but it wasn’t easy. All she could see was that face smiling at her and feel the warmth of his hand on hers, for he had reached forwards again to take possession of it, and smell the scent of him, lavender and tobacco and that something else familiar yet indefinable, which she knew she liked. All of it. And as he said, why not?

  7

  For the rest of her life she was to marvel at herself and the way she behaved during the next few months. Night after night she sat at the dinner table with Mama and, on the rare occasions when he was not dining at his club or with his City friends, with Papa and pick at her food, gleeful in the knowledge that later she would eat much more interesting victuals. She would listen to Papa’s interminable droning on about his business dealings, and feel none of the old frustration and misery that had been so integral a part of her life before. Afterwards she would see Mama up to her boudoir and Papa to his study – where the rows of red leather-bound books had no fear of ever being disturbed, for all he ever did was spread a newspaper before his face and sleep off his dinner until it was time to take his whisky nightcap and go heavily up to bed – and then would slip up to her own room and put on her jacket, skewer her hat to her hair, and tucking her Bible under her arm would go sallying down the stairs, head up and face suitably composed, to start living her new life. Her real life, at last.

  Freddy would stand at the door, his face carved solid with self control and she would say cheerfully, ‘You need not wait up. I shall see myself in and lock the front door. The last service of the evening is not over till past eleven,’ and would marvel at how gifted a liar she had become.

  Because all the time she was engaged in her Good Works, as the family had come to label her new and abounding interest in Father Jay’s East End Mission, she was enjoying activities that she would never have imagined possible.

  Sometimes she travelled to her destination alone, but on most evenings he was waiting for her at the end of Leinster Terrace, a cab beside him at the kerb, the horse snuffling peaceably into its nosebag, and would hold the door open in his usual punctilious fashion and help her in. And they would whirl away to the East End to have supper first in one of the steamy marble-tabled noisy little eating houses he frequented along Shoreditch High Street, and eat succulent steaks and crisp fried potatoes, or the freshest and most delightfully steamed halibut and a form of fried fish she had never before eaten but now found delectable, called gefilte fish, and then to do whatever it was he had decided was most interesting for her that evening.

  Sometimes he took her to the theatre. She had been once or twice to theatres in the West End, but they had been pallid dull affairs compared to the sort of places to which he now took her. Sometimes it was music halls and penny gaffs where singers and comics jostled with jugglers and animal trainers, peepshows and freaks, but mostly it was real theatres where real plays were performed. Her favourite was the old Britannia in Hoxton Street in the heart of Spitalfields. A great glittering cavern full of red plush and bright lights and the reek of oranges and cakes and the unwashed occupants of the gallery and the pit, it pulsed with life and excitement and that galvanized her. From the moment she first walked in to be ushered to the best seats in the house in the middle of the front row of the grand circle, she felt vivid life, and it was not entirely because of the infectious anticipation of the crowd around her. It was because of Kid Harris, for here, in his own setting he glittered and shone as he certainly had not done at Romano’s.

  People would come up to speak to him, mostly men in suits as fancifully designed as his own, and even more bedecked with gold rings and charms than he was, to shake him by the hand respectfully and wish him well and ask after his family and when the next fight was to be. Sometimes they would bring saucer-eyed small boys with them to touch the Kid’s hand ‘for good fortune’ or little girls, bashful in their frills, to kiss his blue cheeks, and Kid would bask in the glory of his fame and let his eyes slide sideways to her face to see if she was suitably impressed by the sort of obeisance these, his people, made to him.

  At first she would pretend not to notice, sitting with her head bent over the programme he would put into her hands, or staring round at the house, or studiously reading the advertisements for tooth powder and corsets and macassar oil on the safety curtain, but as time went on, and she became more used to it, she succumbed to his need for her admiration. She would smile at him as he looked at her when yet another supplicant for his gracious greetings came along and nod her head, and he would grin back in such delight at his own splendour that she was filled with warm affection for him. It was very endearing, the way he strutted and sparkled, even when he did so at his most glittering for the ladies who paid him attention. There were some bold women who made no secret of their interest in the Kid, positively ogling him and fanning their sumptuous shoulders in their low-cut gowns as they peeped and fluttered at him, and clearly dismissing her, Mildred, as of no account whatsoever. She learned to pretend she did not notice these other women, but she was well aware of them, and deep inside, so deep she barely acknowledged it was there, she felt triumph. They might have bright dark eyes and swelling busts and glossy curls, but she was the one who sat beside the man they were staring at and over whom he fussed agreeably. And that was a knowledge that pleased her greatly, or at least it did in those early days.

  And the plays; they too pleased her greatly. Great rolling melodramas so full-blooded and riotously emotional that the audience would cheer and groan and weep and laugh in great waves of sound; plays with titles like The Worst Woman in London and A Disgrace to Her Sex and The Girl Who Took the Wrong Turning and The Girl Who Lost Her Character and, particularly outrageously, The Girl Who Wrecked His Home. Stirring stuff, all of it, and though at first she tried to be serious and sensible and not let herself be swept along on the tide of spurious emotion that battered the audience from the stage, she soon had to give in, and wept and laughed with the best of them, until her sallow cheeks flushed and her eyes shone and he would look at her in the semi-darkness, her face brightly illuminated by the stage in front of them, and beam his pleasure in her pleasure.

  Sometimes he took her to the gymnasium again, to see him fight, and sometimes, for more important prize fights, to a hall in Shoreditch High Street, and those evenings made her feel very odd indeed.

  It wasn’t so much she disapproved of what happened or found it disagreeable as that she found it made her feel so confused. The sight of men stripped to the waist, with legs bare from the knee and their heavily muscled bodies gleaming under the powerful lights that isolated the canvas and rope ring from the spectators, at first made her blush furiously, but she became accustomed to it, for it was so casual and so ordinary to the men themselves that to take exception to such half-nudity was to make herself look – and feel – stupid.

  Was it the actual fighting that had the effect on her that so puzzled her? At first she thought it must be; she would flinch as the flailing arms swung and the great leathered fists made contact with flesh in sickening crunches; this sort of boxing was very different from the rather timid, even mincing, version she had seen at the boys’ school when Basil had competed, but she soon realized that it was not that. The more she watched the fighting the more she became aware, albeit dimly, of the art of the boxer; of the way the men would weave in and out of each other’s reach, each foreseeing their opponent’s move and not only blocking it but turning it to his own advantage. There was real skill in it and not just brute beating of one man by another, so it was not that which disturbed her.

  Nor, she decided, was it the way the audience behaved, watching with eyes glazed with excitement and lips apart and very moist and shrieking for blood with cries of, ‘Kill ’im, the mumser –’ and, ‘Kick ’im in the kishkas!’ neither of which were phrases she fully understood though she was well able to comprehend the animal aggressiveness that was conveyed by the thick voices.

  It was, she realized at last, that it all exci
ted her as well as repelled her so much. The smell of it, the sour heavy sweatiness that she had first met in the basement in Flower and Dean Street, mixed with tobacco from cigars and cheap cigarettes, and heavy ale and sometimes whisky, and methylated spirits and oil from the lamps, and embrocation and witch hazel, all combined to make a powerful mixture that made her heart beat faster, even sometimes tripping in its rhythm so that her chest seemed to resound to an internal thump, and made her feel light-headed. She would watch the fights, unable to take her eyes from Kid Harris’s stocky body, with its solid legs with their dusting of dark hair, except down the backs of the calves, where his trousers had rubbed it all away, and the smooth heavy chest and rippling buttocks under the dark shorts, and feel extraordinary.

  And ashamed, too, because the excitement she felt did not exist entirely in her head, as all previous experiences had told her excitement did. It affected her whole body, not just beating heart and over-working lungs, but all of it. She experienced sensations deep within her and in her most secret self that she would not, could not, have admitted to anyone. She could barely admit them to herself.

  Christmas came and turned sluggishly over to bring 1894, and still she went on serenely, lying through her days at Leinster Terrace and coming alive at night with Kid Harris. No one seemed to notice any difference in her, although she herself was well aware of some. She was plumper, for a start, for she ate with much more gusto now she had escaped from dependence on the awful cooking that was perpetrated in the kitchens deep in the basement of Leinster Terrace, a change which improved her appearance considerably; but more importantly, she was much more relaxed. She often took a nap in the afternoon when Mama was stretched out as usual on her sofa and the children were out with Nanny Chewson, walking in Hyde Park, or, in the case of Thomas and Wilfred, the older ones, at school, for that helped her to cope with the very short nights she spent in her own bed, since it was frequently well past midnight when she came creeping home. There had been times when she had managed to get in a bare few minutes before her father returned to be debouched sluggishly from the cab in which he had slept his brandied way home from his club or the City to drag himself in and lock the front door. Even he had not been able to persuade the lofty Freddy to wait up for him, and Mildred twice had good cause to be grateful for that for on two occasions Papa had been fortunately too befuddled to remember to lock the door and had gone to bed, leaving her to creep in after him, terrified that she might find herself locked out and forced to sleep below the steps in the area and to get into the house as best she might in the morning before the servants saw her.

  But so far all had gone well, and inside her new secret regime she blossomed. There was less need now to daydream, though sometimes she would find her mind sliding away on its old paths of ridiculous imaginings, but now it was with pleasure that she let it happen instead of dissatisfied yearnings. Now she had a friend, one of her very own. Not just an acquaintance like the silly Mrs Vance who had been Eugenie Frobisher or the vapid Charlotte Pringle, née Millar, but a real friend who would look at her sideways and laugh when someone said something that struck them both as funny, who would look at a new bonnet when she put it on and nod in approval rather than lift a lip in a sneer and who above all showed in every action that he liked and admired her.

  And respected her. She would sit sometimes with her sewing, working busily at it in order to keep up with her domestic tasks so that no one could make any objections to the time she spent on her newfound piety, but thinking her own thoughts as her needle flew, and marvel at that. Respect was something she had never really thought about. To be deferred to as a worthwhile person, to be regarded as sensible, even witty, to be looked up to as an arbiter of opinion, was not an experience she had previously enjoyed. Now Kid Harris gave it to her in full measure – except in one way and she could not help but smile a little as she thought of that.

  He had made up his mind to it, quite early in their friendship, that he was to address her by her given name. ‘Miss Amberly’s all right for other people,’ he had said on the second occasion he had taken her to the old Britannia Theatre. ‘But we’re friends and that means you’ve got to call me Kid, like I told you, and I got to call you – what am I to call you?’

  ‘I really do not think –’ she had begun primly but he had shaken his head vigorously in the dark corner of the cab so that she could see the passing street lights glint on his white teeth.

  ‘Too much thinkin’,’ he said roughly. ‘The thing of it is, I ain’t calling you Miss anything. So what is your name?’

  ‘Mildred,’ she said at length, unwillingly, and he had said heartily, ‘There! Very nice too. So, Millie it is from now on.’

  ‘No, it is not,’ she had said sharply. ‘I said Mildred. Surely I am to be permitted to insist that you use it in its full –’

  ‘That don’t sound friendly. And it’s all about being friendly that I’m interested in. So there it is. Now, tonight, ’ow about trying something different to eat? Like jellied eels?’

  ‘Like what?’ She had been distracted at once from the discussion of her name and had peered at him in the dimness. ‘That sounds very – well, not very agreeable.’

  ‘Jellied eels, I’m told, is a great delicacy. I can’t pretend I’ve had ’em meself on account of they don’t have scales the way fish is supposed to, so they’re tref and I can’t eat ’em, but that don’t mean I can’t take pleasure in giving my friends a bit o’ pleasure, does it? So we shall go to Tubby’s place and you shall try the eels and tell me your opinion and I shall have a nice bit of haddock. And then the old Brit and a bit of blood and thunder!’

  And so it had been. Despite her objections he called her Millie, always, even though he knew that she disliked it. It was the one area where he showed a stubborn lack of respect for her opinion, but otherwise, she had no complaints at all, and blossomed in the light of his warm approval of her.

  One night in January when there was a frosting of snow on the ground and very bright stars seemed to be so low in the sky that they had become tangled in the bare branches of the trees that overhung the Bayswater Road from Hyde Park, he collected her as usual, but sat in a far from usual silence as the cab went its now very familiar way Eastwards. She said nothing for some time but when they reached Holborn could keep silent no longer.

  ‘What is it, Kid? Why are you so gloomy this evening?’

  He roused himself and said, ‘Gloomy? I ain’t gloomy.’

  ‘Quiet, then.’

  ‘Ain’t – well, I suppose I am, at that.’ He brooded a little longer and then burst out, ‘The thing of it is, I got to take you to my Momma’s house. She said I got to take you.’

  ‘Oh!’ She was silent for a moment and then ventured, ‘Do you mean I am invited to meet her?’

  ‘Something like that,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘How do you mean, something like that? Either she invites me to meet her or –’

  ‘It’s more taking you to be looked at,’ he said roughly and then muttered something under his breath and she said, ‘What did you say?’ But he shook his head.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Look, it won’t be easy. She’s –’ He swallowed.

  ‘This ain’t easy.’

  ‘You’re making me feel that it is far from that,’ she said as lightly as she could. ‘Although I really cannot see what is so difficult. It is very kind of your Mama to invite me to her home and I will be very happy to accept.’

  ‘If it was like that, I’d be happy too. The thing of it is, people have been talking. If I get my hands on Ruby I’ll have the skin off his lousy back! Jealous, of course, that’s the thing. He used to hang around with me a lot, see, and now –’ He waved one hand irritably as though to banish an impertinent fly. ‘Anyway, he’s told my Momma that I’m going around with a shicksah and she –’

  ‘With a what?’

  ‘You see what I mean?’ He shouted it so that his voice thumped onto her head and then went reverberating
round the small cab interior. ‘You see? Already it’s making trouble in what was – what is a nice friendship between me and a lady of class and good taste. Already it’s making problems!’

  ‘If you don’t explain just what the problems are there isn’t much I can do to help you with them,’ she said and he reached forwards in the dark cab and touched her hand briefly.

  ‘Yeah, well –’ he began. ‘The thing of it is –’

  ‘When you keep on saying that I know you’re uncomfortable,’ she said. ‘Come along now, Kid. Just say it. No need to be uncomfortable with me.’

  ‘Saying what?’ he said, diverted for a moment.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just explain.’

  ‘You remember the day your brothers went on at me because I was a Jew. Despised me for it –’

  She was glad of the darkness of the cab as the flush filled her cheeks.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said. ‘Truly I am. They mean no harm. At least, I don’t think so. It’s just that they’re –’

  ‘They aren’t the point,’ he said. ‘The thing is – it’s just that my family are the same. Every damned one of them.’

  ‘The same?’ she said blankly, and then laughed, a rather silly little sound. ‘They despise you because –’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly!’ he cried. ‘It’s you! They despise you like they despise everyone who isn’t a Jew. They think you’re all the dregs, the worst kind of – to go around with a shicksah – a woman who isn’t Jewish – it’s just about the worst thing a man can do! My Momma wants to see you so that she can give you a bad time! She wants to make sure there ain’t no risk she’ll have to sit shivah for me on account of you –’