The Bohemian Girl

‘Do you dare to suggest that my son is a forger? You are pathetic as well as untruthful.’ The sadness fled; only the steel was left. ‘Leave me.’

‘He did ask me to inscribe books to him as Albert Cosgrove. Why did he call himself Albert Cosgrove?’

‘He did nothing of the sort.’ She looked away. ‘Although pseudonyms are not unknown among literary artists.’

Denton was still standing; he saw no hope of being asked to sit. ‘Your son is mentally unbalanced, Lady Emmeline.’

‘How dare you!’

‘He’s dangerous — what he did in Bethnal Green is one step shy of violence-’

‘You go too far, much too far-’

‘Against a woman-’

‘We shall sue you — there is no escape-’ She seemed to have heard what he had said, at last, for she hissed, ‘A woman! Do you mean the trollop who lured him to her squalid room? I warn you, Mr, Mr — ’ she made a gesture that rendered Denton’s name worthless — ‘we shall learn everything and we shall sue you and see you broken. Justice will be on our side. I had thought you had some spark of decency, that you had prevailed upon a baronet to write a letter so that you might confess your crimes, but you — you are contemptible.’

‘Lady Emmeline, your son is not sane!’

She somehow managed to sit still straighter. ‘You are speaking of the nephew of a duke!’ Her bizarre accent made it come out as ‘the nivioo of a juke’.

‘The dangerous “nivioo of a juke”, I think, ma’am.’

She stood. Her nostrils flared ever so slightly — as extreme a sign of passion as she allowed herself, he supposed — and she said, ‘Leave my house, you vulgar little man!’

He bowed. ‘Vulgar I am, ma’am. Little, I ain’t.’ He headed for the door. There seemed no point in staying.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘His mama implied that you had lured her poor boy to your room. I suppose she thinks you provided the red paint, too.’

Janet Striker made a face. ‘And Jarrold-known-as-Cosgrove has been sent off to Mama’s country house with two male nurses. Detective Sergeant Munro is keeping me up to date.’

Denton scowled. ‘Some house arrest — hard time in a stately home. Couple of medical men to look in weekly, presumably with lunch laid on. Hard on them, too.’

Janet Striker laughed. ‘No good being angry.’

‘He’s getting off as good as scot-free. I’d tan his hide for him.’

They were eating at Pinoli’s in Wardour Street. He was in ‘informal’ evening clothes — short black jacket with silk revers, white waistcoat, white tie — and she was in a new suit of a dark-green wool tailored to an almost masculine cut, the jacket thigh-length like a frock coat, the skirt box-pleated at the front and back to accommodate her long stride. ‘I like that dress,’ he said.

‘It isn’t a dress; it’s a suit. You look like a successful manufacturer. ’

‘Good a disguise as any.’

‘I thought you enjoyed being an outsider.’

‘It’s no good if you have to work at it. Working at it is Bohemian, isn’t it — the Slade kids in their rags?’

She laughed. ‘I’d never take you for a Bohemian.’

A week had gone by. The book’s end was in sight, if he could keep up the pace. She’d spent a night at his house; a meeting at her hotel had proved less happy — he’d taken a room overnight, had come to her room. It had seemed ‘sordid’, in her word. He had had to admit it had been pretty scatty. He said, ‘We have to make some better arrangement.’

‘We will.’ She had a small, ridiculous hat perched on her forehead; it looked like a soldier’s pillbox, except that instead of a chinstrap it had a ribbon that went around the back of her head. She said, ‘I keep feeling that that thing is falling off into my food.’

‘It’s perky.’

‘“Perky”! Mrs Cohan has an idea for a kind of homburg with a fancy band.’

‘Mrs Cohan. Wife to the Stepney Jew-Boy?’

‘They live in the same house as I did, two floors down. She sews — six days a week, making shirts to sell for three-and-six apiece, for which she gets fourpence each. He has no job, as you know. And they’re good people, Denton! She does magnificent embroidery — in Poland, she did wedding dresses and court gowns. She’s going to make me more dresses. We’re thinking along rather Janey-Morris-y lines.’

Denton looked blank.

‘William Morris’s bride. The original Pre-Raphaelite woman. No corset and her hair unbound. Ruth Castle told me about her when I was a beginner.’

‘You’ll be a sight on Oxford Street.’

‘I shan’t wear them on Oxford Street. I’ll wear them at home, and this sort of thing — ’ she pulled at one lapel of her jacket — ‘when I’m out.’

‘Now who’s planning to wear a disguise?’

‘Well-There’ll be a real me and a pretend me, and the real one will live at home — if ever I get a home again. I’m so sick of hotels!’

‘I don’t know much about women’s clothes.’

‘Do you know much about women? Yes, of course you do. I think you mean you don’t care about women’s clothes.’ She sipped wine.

‘I care about you.’

They stumbled along. Cohan finished getting the weeds and brambles out of the back garden. He and Atkins started to plan what they’d plant in the spring. Mrs Striker moved to another hotel. When Denton said to Cohan that he understood he was a priest descended from Aaron, Cohan said, ‘I am not beink a very good Jew.’ Nonetheless, when Denton told him what Fred Oldaston had said about Mrs Franken and her two whorehouses, Cohan had looked severe and said he didn’t need work that much.

Denton continued to write, the end now in sight. One day, Atkins reminded him that he was supposed to go to a party at his publishers — the launching of the book of ghost stories that Lang had told him about. He groaned, said he wouldn’t go, but he did go, because Janet Striker told him he should. And because he couldn’t be with her that evening.

At six on a blustery afternoon, he went up the creaking stairs that led to Gweneth and Burse and through ‘reception’, which was simply a part of the corridor that connected the offices. The party was in the room where they packaged the books, swept more or less clean and provided with a table where sherry and several platters of things in jelly stood. He looked around from the doorway, seeking somebody to kill the time with before he could decently leave. He was wearing an old morning coat, which Atkins had said ‘would do’ because it was still early and he wasn’t going on anywhere, but most of the other men — and they were mostly men — were in some form of evening dress.

Standing near the outer wall, where windows looked down into Bell Yard, was Henry James, who was undoubtedly going on to dinner somewhere, to judge by his formal evening clothes and the fact that he was an aggressive diner-out. As Denton looked his way, James raised his eyes, recognized him and nodded. James was tallish, rather heavy, with shrewd, hard eyes; only a few years older than Denton, also American, but he had sat out the American Civil War while Denton had fought it — a divide that was to separate their generation for the rest of their lives. Denton felt towards him the faint resentment the soldier feels for men who haven’t served, then a counter-balancing remorse for his own prejudice; James, on the other hand, seemed to feel something the reverse,