As luck would have it, she had another interruption, even while Lizzie was still visiting. Today of all days! Joseph knocked on the door, which annoyed her even more, for he well knew the door could easily be opened from the outside, since it was he who had lost the bloody key.
‘Hello, Mary, how are you keeping?’ he said, sidling round the door like a lost puppy.
Those earnest eyes, and that fair hair, sticking out in all directions and giving him an impish charm. He was handsome, even if he was starting to wrinkle a bit. His skin had darkened from working outdoors, and he had lost some fat from lack of nourishment. Joe could not keep a penny in his pocket when there was beer to be had.
‘I’m well, thank you, Joe. I wasn’t expecting to see you. Did you lose something?’
Mary said this to slice at the man. Joseph had lost her because of his inability to provide as he had promised, but she was no longer his and he could forget creeping round her, the bright-eyed sprite.
Lizzie Albrook sucked her teeth and pulled her shawl around her as if Joseph Barnett had dragged in the cold air with him. ‘Right, I’ll be off then,’ she said. She heaved her creaking bones up on her fists and pursed her lips at Joseph, like a cat’s arse.
Joe, for his part, stood on the threshold of what had once been his own home, holding his cap in his hands like a virgin holding his cock.
Mary ushered him in and he remained standing as Mary sat back on the bed, an ageing fossil of brass and screaming springs that threatened to sink to the floor. She let her legs fall apart and arched her back, held herself up by her locked elbows, head to one side, no bonnet, all blonde tendrils, round cheeks and open lips.
‘What is it you want, Joseph? If you have come to see what I’ve done with the place, it will be a short conversation.’
‘Don’t be like that, Mary, I only came to see how you’ve been getting on.’
‘Well, how have you been getting on?’
‘I wanted to see you. Can I sit? I see Sally’s coat came in useful.’ He nodded at the black coat that was now acting as a curtain over the window.
Mary sighed and walked over to the single wooden chair and set it down in the middle of the floor for Joe to sit on. He had meant for her to invite him to sit beside her, but she knew he would look for the moment to lean in and kiss her. He was obviously missing some comfort and regretting the firmness of his principles. He’d broken it off when Mary refused to disassociate from other prostitutes, women like Sally, who’d done a runner anyway.
This was what men did, she had found. Women tolerated so much, waiting for their menfolk to keep their promises, then when they’d suffered enough, their feelings expired. Men, on the other hand, acted the cavalier, fled too fast from any complaining, then remembered what life was like looking after themselves and crawled back. To men like Joe, women were home. It was the reason she held so much esteem for Robert. To him she was a person, not a useful implement or a comforting concept.
She patted the seat of the wooden chair and Joe sat in it while she returned to the saggy bed.
‘Like that, is it? I didn’t realise we weren’t friends, Mary.’
‘Friends don’t sit on beds together, else they end up as bedfellows.’
‘Why do you save such a tone for me? We were good once.’
She sighed again. This was an inconvenient obstacle. She had her instructions and didn’t have time to waste on Joseph. It was clear he was hankering for a reunion. She would have to be swift.
‘I’m sorry, Joe, it’s only that I’m very tired. Won’t you come back another time? Perhaps you might have found some work and I won’t be so weary. Real friends should take care to give each other their best. I simply don’t have it in me today.’
‘Right,’ said Joe. ‘I can come back tomorrow?’
‘Yes, tomorrow, when I’ve had a good night’s rest,’ she said, knowing only too well she wouldn’t be there.
He stood and took the two or three steps to reach the door. It was a poky little room, Number 13 Miller’s Court, with barely the space for one, yet they had lived together in those squalid surroundings, on top of each other, for some happy months. This was the Nichol, after all, where privacy was a luxury no one enjoyed.
‘Tomorrow then.’ Joe put his cap on and looked at the broken pane of glass in the window. ‘You should get that fixed, get another key for the door. It’s not safe like this – there’s a murderer.’
Mary laughed. It wasn’t the murderer that frightened her. But not wanting to seem flippant, she said, ‘He cuts them up on the streets – I’ll be safe inside here.’
‘Still, better to have it fixed,’ said Joe as he pulled the door to.
36
Dr Shivershev left me in the Chelsea house with two dead bodies – my husband’s and my housekeeper’s. I considered it fortunate that I had my time as a nurse and had been among the dead before. He came back in the evening with his assistant, Walter, the man with the ginger whiskers. They brought with them a private coach, a rickety old thing that did not inspire confidence and looked as if it might fall apart if run too rigorously over the cobbled streets.
We had packed Mrs Wiggs into an old trunk
