“Not very,” I answered, but I didn’t tell her anything more, and she didn’t ask me. “Meet me tomorrow, outside here at half-past one, and I’ll give you a consignment of goods. If I’m not outside, look for me in the bar.”
I stared at her, a little astonished. “Will you want any deposit?” I asked.
“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t do business that way. I chance my luck—and it rarely fails me.”
Subsequently that woman handed over to my care a good few shillings worth of value. And she did not know me from Adam, and quite probably I might have come straight from gaol. But the homeless have their own fashion of determining who can and who can not be trusted. The lady of the plush coat had reckoned me up, and decided I was on the right side. Up to this point—though her appearance was anything but prosperous—I had decided that she was a person with a habitation, if only a top back room. The goods she carried about with her were worth ten shillings, and the fact that she was able to buy drinks without showing any anxiety, seemed to suggest she was used to, at any rate, small means. I still think my impression of her was correct; but it came out that she had no habitation, not even the poorest apology for a home. She turned to me quite casually and asked where I was going to sleep that night?
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have some idea of going up to Camden Town.”
“There’s no need to spend all that money,” she protested. “Come with me, and I’ll get you put up for a few pence. I know a place where they charge fourpence, but as you’re a friend of mine they will take you for half.”
It didn’t sound alluring, but I refused to be fainthearted. I was going to follow the stream and chance where it took me, even though it found its way into strange places. I told her I was much obliged, and would willingly go with her, and after a little more chat we left the bar and made our way across Piccadilly Circus, down the Embankment and across Waterloo Bridge.
She did not speak all the way. The habit of walking engenders silence; you get half doped with the unceasing exercise and have little energy for speech. I was frankly curious as to my companion’s history. But I never learned very much about her. She must have made enough to keep herself by selling her goods, but she belonged to no type of outcast in any settled place.
Some few are born like that—the inheritance, perhaps, of some far off gypsy blood—others acquire the fear of four walls and a roof, and no amount of suffering can dissipate it. My friend, I think, belonged to the latter category. I fancy that she must have spent some time in prison, for she had the habit of looking behind her with a sudden, furtive movement as though she expected the hand of the law to close upon her arm. There was also another reason for this apprehension. As I found later, she took drugs, and it may be that she added to her earnings by the sale of dope. It was a curious experience, that walk. I was sensitive to the atmosphere of mystery which surrounded her, and though we did not talk, we were not conscious of our silence.
She was obviously a woman of good mentality. Her speech was smooth, and her accent had a touch of distinction. I often look for my friend of the plush coat in or around Shaftesbury Avenue when I revisit the scenes of my adventures, but I have never caught a glimpse of her. Nor is this strange. Like moves to like, outcast gravitates to outcast, and until once more I strip myself of my comfortable home, and step across the boundary which divides security from starvation, I shall not look on her again.
We crossed Waterloo Bridge and turned towards the New Cut. I always feel a curious spiritual depression when I am on the south side of the river. Progress a little farther and the raucous vulgarity of Brixton, the muffled seriousness of Streatham, make their own atmosphere, but the immediate effect when you cross any of the bridges is as potent as anything you can experience in Bethnal Green or in Haggerston, that place of the distressed.
My spirits were not enlivened when we turned the corner of a narrow and evil-smelling alley. I kept close to my guide; for a moment my heart failed me, and I had a terrible temptation to run away. It was not so much the darkness, the feeling that the alley was ill-lit or even the sound of furtive feet that flitted about us; it was the close and heavy smell that emerged from the open doorways; that strong, sickly, acrid odour that emanates from humanity packed tightly close. It came with a big blast, that odour, when at last we stopped at an open door, and my guide knocked three times.
An old woman, with whom my companion exchanged a few words, shuffled along the passage. She bade me hand over twopence, and I followed her into a low-ceilinged room, dirty and dingy, and crowded with women, old, elderly and middle-aged, with one or two young things as the exception. A coke fire burnt in the grate, and the air was warm and horribly close. The kitchen at Kennedy Court was a palace compared to it; the benches were broken down, and many of the women sat on the floor, clasping evil-smelling bundles.
Here were no prostitutes, no office cleaners. The women were street vendors in the poorer parts; for in this walk of life, as in others, there are lights and shades among the ragged and
