The Welfare of the Dead (11 page)

The clientele? Ah. The men affected pristine kid gloves and jewelled tie-pins, but I should say they were
largely the middling sort, clerks and the like, that seek out such fast entertainments. There were only a handful of true gentlemen, who had quit their clubs and homes for a night on the ‘spree'. They mostly hung back by the tables, smoking cigars, talking amongst themselves.

The women? I could see that many were
demimondaines
; they made no secret of it. Others, I found harder to place. Some were most likely shop-girls, who had already gone wrong, in thought if not in deed. A few were the daughters of tradesmen, perhaps; the sisters and cousins of the young men and their friends, who dragged them this way and that across the dance-floor.

You think so? I do not know. I suppose it is possible that some of them retained their virtue; that they had come in ignorance of the place's reputation. But I rather doubt it.

What then? Why, I saw her; I had been strolling around the balcony above the hall. A pretty thing. Dark-brown hair and deep hazel eyes, lace around her neck, and a gold locket that danced about as she danced. She was a graceful creature, though quite free with her favours; it was not long before I saw her kissing some pimple-faced shop-boy upon the cheek. Then, to my good fortune, her hair became loose and she had to withdraw and spend a minute or two fixing up the pins in her chignon. It was clear she was by herself; there was no beau, nor a particular table to which she retired. I went down and stood near by as the M.C. called up parties for the next set. Then, as we danced, I asked her her name, and if she cared to take a drink with me, so that we might talk.

What? Oh, I believe it was ‘Kate', or ‘Kath' or some such.

I have found it does not take much to win such a
woman's confidence, not one of that sort; in this case, a glass of champagne was quite sufficient. And I told her she had beautiful eyes; it is always best to say something of that nature. In any case, she was mine, if I wished it; we had but to agree a price. You see how easily virtue is bought and sold in this wretched city? But then the band struck up some wretched Prussian waltz, and she averred it was her favourite song, and ‘didn't I want another dance?'

I had the knife. I might have done it there, in that booth under the stairs. No-one would have noticed. But I bided my time and said I would see her again.

Really? The family said she was not loose? Yes, I do recall that; I thought it odd at the time. I mean to say, why was she there at all?

A
NNABEL
K
ROUT SITS
at the desk in her bedroom, her dressing-gown wrapped tightly around her. Having lit the brass oil-lamp that sits near by, she takes a notebook, pen, ink and blotting paper from the desk drawer. She opens the book and it is not long before the left-hand page is full of dense lines of neat handwriting, her words sloping strongly to the right, written in haste, as if eager to escape the confines of the page. Indeed, it is five or ten minutes before she stops, pausing for thought, touching the top of her lip with the tip of her pen.

A knock at the door interrupts her reverie. Before Annabel can contemplate uttering the words ‘come in', Melissa Woodrow lets herself into the room. Like Annabel, Mrs. Woodrow is still in her night clothes, though her dressing-gown, white silk embroidered with a lotus pattern of oriental flowers, is perhaps a little more striking than her cousin's somewhat plainer article.

‘Good morning, my dear,' says Mrs. Woodrow. ‘I saw your lamp . . .'

‘Oh!' exclaims Annabel. ‘Did I disturb you? I am so sorry. I tried to keep the light dim.'

‘Now, my dear, don't be so silly – we are not a penitentiary! I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Couldn't you sleep?'

‘No, I mean yes, I slept fine, thank you. I just thought I might write my journal, before breakfast.'

Mrs. Woodrow smiles indulgently. ‘Oh, your journal? Why, I quite forgot. Your mother told me about your writing – you had some little thing published, didn't you?'

‘Oh, that was nothing, cousin, really,' replies Annabel.

‘No, tell me, what was the magazine?'

‘The
New England Monthly Bazaar
,' replies Annabel, rather shyly.

‘Well, true, we don't take that here, but it was published all the same – how nice for you. You must tell Woodrow you are a “lady journalist”, it will quite thrill him, I am sure. You aren't writing about us, I hope!'

Annabel Krout blushes, unconsciously placing a hand over the pages of the book, smudging the ink.

‘No, just our visit to the Zoological Gardens,' she replies.

‘Good! I cannot imagine what the
New England Monthly Bazaar
would make of us!'

Annabel smiles politely.

‘Well,' continues Mrs. Woodrow, ‘I will see you at breakfast, and we can make our plans for the day. I am sorry I retired so early last night – Lucinda quite exhausts me at times.'

‘Mr. Woodrow was so late home, too.'

‘Yes, I'm afraid he was. Oh, now that is some news . . . I made a suggestion, and Woodrow has taken my advice, and we are to have a little dinner party. We can introduce you to all our friends! And I have told him he must invite Mr. Langley – he is such an agreeable gentleman – so there will at least be someone whom you know.'

‘Oh, really? That is very thoughtful of you,' replies Annabel.

‘As long as you promise not to put us all in your
little book,' replies Mrs. Woodrow. ‘Now, will I see you at breakfast?'

Annabel answers in the positive, and Mrs. Woodrow takes her leave, closing the door behind her. As soon as it is shut, Annabel turns hurriedly to her notebook, applying a sheet of blotting paper to the smudged ink. Her hands, however, are worse than the page. She goes to the wash-basin, and tries to remove the ink from her fingers, doing as best she can with the previous night's cold water and soap. It proves difficult and, resolving to wait for the morning's supply of hot water to complete the job, she tuts to herself, and dries her hands with a towel.

Outside, beyond Duncan Terrace, the trundling sound of morning traffic on the City Road can be heard in the distance. She walks over to the window. Pulling her gown close around her neck, she teases back the curtains, and peers into the gas-lit street below. It is not yet dawn, and the sky is itself an inky blue-black, hinting at daylight. Looking out along the street, on the opposite side of the road, she can make out a man, short and stocky in build, wearing a thick winter coat.

He stops and stares up at her; it is not merely a glance, but a long inquisitive stare. Instinctively, she draws the curtains shut, but then she cannot resist opening them a inch or so, and peering through the gap.

The man in the street, however, has already moved on.

Breakfast with the Woodrows passes much as the day before. The same bacon, the same eggs, and the same supplementary cold cuts of ham and pork, elegantly laid out upon a silver platter. In fact, it strikes Annabel
Krout that the cold meat on offer is precisely the same, to the very last scrap of fat. But if she wonders about this coincidence of household economy, she is too polite to mention it to her cousin.

Mr. Woodrow, in turn, retains the same taciturn manner, removing his gaze from the newspaper once to inquire on Annabel's health, and a second time as to whether the Zoological Gardens were pleasant. He gives no great impression of listening to either reply; he merely nods at suitable intervals. Mrs. Woodrow, on the other hand, supplies any silence with what amounts to a litany of possibilities for travel and exploration in the great metropolis. If Annabel herself expresses a slight preference, it is again to see either of the grand churches, the Abbey or St. Paul's. She finds it moderately surprising, therefore, that her cousin assures her that she ‘must' first see Regent Street. And she cannot help but think that, given Melissa Woodrow's elaborate descriptions of the quality and elegance of millinery and haberdashery on display in said thoroughfare, there is a certain degree of self-interest in Mrs. Woodrow's eagerness to parade her cousin along the ‘finest street in London'. Moreover, Annabel suspects that, conjoined with the exhortation that she herself must acquire ‘a hat suitable to this season', there also is something of a hat-shaped yearning in her cousin's heart.

Nonetheless, she agrees graciously enough to the proposal, and so finds herself, an hour after breakfast, sitting in the Woodrows' brougham, together with Melissa Woodrow, as it speeds down Pentonville Hill, towards King's Cross station. Annabel peers eagerly through the vehicle's windows, looking for landmarks she might recall from the previous day. Even though their carriage goes at a fast trot, she soon recognises the distinctive domed bell-tower of St. James's church,
Pentonville, as they hasten down the hill. Likewise, the sooty terraces of two- and three-storey shops and houses that line the lower reaches of the road, their rows of chimney pots, puffing smoke into the clear winter sky. The houses, however, rather offend Annabel's conception of the great city; they seem far too small and packed close together. They appear so cramped and confined that she silently wonders if, each night, they do not impatiently nudge one against the other, and thus quietly descend the slope by a few inches.

She puts her disappointment with the homes of Pentonville to the back of her mind. For the great shed of St. Pancras station comes into full view, looming above the King's Cross rooftops, like the beached, upturned hull of some enormous abandoned ship. As they draw closer to the station, and the Gothic extravagance of the Midland Grand Hotel, Annabel presses her face against the window of the brougham. But the window seems determined to make itself disagreeable, rattling with every bump in the road and clattering noisily in its frame. Annabel, therefore, reluctantly sits back in her seat, much to the relief of her cousin who talks ominously of ‘catching a chill'.

‘But it's such a beautiful day,' exclaims Annabel, regardless. ‘It's so bright – I wasn't sure you got such days here, after that terrible fog.'

‘Yes, my dear, but it will change just as quickly. And think of the wind – you must keep yourself warm. Your dear mother would never forgive me if I sent you home ill.'

Annabel reluctantly agrees, making a somewhat token rearrangement of her scarf. And, as Mrs. Woodrow enters into a discourse upon the dangers of the English climate, her American cousin quietly takes in the sights of the Euston Road. From the
monumental Greek females adorning St. Pancras Church, to the discreet stone steps leading to Euston Square's subterranean station, Annabel Krout finds something of interest on every corner. And if, as the brougham turns south, Gower Street's tedious terraces offer little excitement, there is some satisfaction in the transitory glimpses of everyday life: a woman waving her umbrella frantically at a passing Brompton omnibus, failing to catch its driver's attention; a boy, in the distinctive red coat and blue cap of the Shoeblack Brigade, who sits mournfully against a lamp-post.

Annabel contemplates writing an article for the
New England Monthly Bazaar
entitled ‘London Street Scenes'.

Melissa Woodrow gently taps her on the arm, as their carriage turns on to New Oxford Street.

‘There is the Warehouse, my dear, just down there. We might pay a visit on the way back.'

Annabel cranes her neck to see Woodrow's General Mourning Warehouse, but the building is far too distant, and the brougham far too quick, for her to make out anything whatsoever.

‘Ah,' says Mrs. Woodrow, ‘now we are almost there. Oxford Street. We won't stop here, mind.'

‘There are so many stores, though,' replies Annabel.

‘Shops. Yes, but they are generally, well, not what one might call “select”,' says Mrs. Woodrow, wrinkling her nose slightly, as if noticing an unwelcome aroma.

‘I see,' says Annabel.

Indeed, there is some truth in Mrs. Woodrow's comment, even to Annabel's untrained eye. For every three-storey ‘Warehouse' and ‘Establishment', with a fine name painted in black upon the ground-floor cornice, or spelt in curlicues of iron-work, or etched in
gold onto pristine plate glass, there is a shoddier, smaller relation not too far distant. For every giant of commerce proudly proclaiming its wares, from the seller of feather beds to the grandest Gentleman's Outfitter, there is a dustier, bullion-glass window, behind which hides a crumpled Wholesale Stationer, or mildewed Wine Vaults. And every few hundred yards squats a public house, none of which resembles the fine timbered coaching inns and friendly taverns that form Annabel Krout's impression of a proper English drinking-place. Thus, if Mrs. Woodrow does not think much of Oxford Street, her cousin is content to agree with her.