The Frightened Man

Chapter Thirteen

‘You’re late,’ Mrs Striker said. She was rushing towards him from her scarred door, thrusting a hatpin through a flat black hat that did nothing to flatter her. In the outer room, Denton was waiting with half a dozen women who, if they were prostitutes, gave him none of the smiles he might have expected.

‘I was working late,’ he said. In fact, he’d been to a cheap tailor on Whitechapel Road whose sign he had remembered — ‘We Press, You Wait.’ An ascetic-looking Eastern European had shaken his head over Denton’s suit and tut-tutted while he brushed off moss and sewed up tears; Denton had waited, trouserless and jacketless, in a sort of booth with a swinging door, until the tailor appeared and, helping him on with the jacket, had said, ‘A shame — a shame — such good cloth-’ But Denton had walked out looking more or less respectable again, the damage of the roof muted. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said now.

‘I’ve another appointment at eight.’ She made it sound as if he had already made her late, although it wasn’t quite five.

‘Which are the ones I’m supposed to meet?’ He looked around at the unsmiling women.

‘Oh, they wouldn’t meet you here!’ She gave him a little push towards the door. ‘We’re going up Aldgate High Street.’ When they were out on the pavement, she said, ‘We’ll walk,’ and strode away. Denton caught up, did a sort of dance to get on her left, and found her laughing at him.

‘Quite gentlemanly,’ she said.

‘Do you mind?’

‘It’s nothing to me either way.’They walked a few strides and she said more soberly, ‘These girls won’t go near my office. They think I’ll send for the police — as if I’d do such a thing! We’re meeting them in a public house, not a very nice one — they feel safe there.’ Another stride, and she had changed the subject — a habit he would eventually get used to. ‘I asked some of my nicer acquaintances about you. They said you were “entirely respectable”. Otherwise, I’d not have let you meet these girls.’ She smiled. ‘Did you ask about me?’

Denton thought of lying, didn’t. ‘One friend,’ he muttered.

‘A man? What did he tell you? That I’d killed my husband? ’

Startled, Denton jerked his head and made a sort of grunt.

‘It’s what they usually say,’ she murmured. Pointing ahead, she again shifted ground. ‘There’s the place where we’re meeting them. Let me speak for you, please. They’re like wild kittens.’ She walked faster and led him to the saloon door of a large pub with an electric-lighted front and several entrances. With her hand ready to push the door open, she said, a rather sly smile turning up her lips, ‘I didn’t kill my husband, in fact, no matter what your friend said.’ The smile turned wry. ‘Did he say I’d spent four and a half years in an institution for the criminally insane? Well, I did.’ And she pushed her way in.

The pub was huge, pounding with human noise, most of it coming from the other side of a wall to their right. The interior managed to be both muted and garish, dark green walls punctuated with the white, glaring electric globes. Part of a mahogany bar that must have served the whole house in a shape like a racetrack jutted from the wall in front of them, disappeared in a wall at their left; in that same wall, a door with frosted glass and ‘Private Rooms’ stood just beyond the bar’s curving end. Above the bar, coloured glass panes made a screen. The overall air was of activity and seediness, false elegance blurred by a fug of pipe smoke and coal.

‘In there,’ Mrs Striker said, again shoving him, this time towards the private rooms. ‘I’ll find the girls.’

Denton stopped. ‘I don’t really like to be pushed,’ he said.

‘Oh.’ She frowned. ‘I didn’t know I’d done it. Oh, I’m sorry.’ She muttered something about bad habits and, flustered, disappeared through a door marked ‘Ladies’ Bar’.

Denton waited. His suit smelled of the pressing — hot cloth, his own sweat. The memory of the roof made him sweat again. He was still rattled by it, not really able to focus well. He wished he could go home, have a hot bath, sit in the green armchair with a drink.

‘One, anyway,’ Mrs Striker said, coming through the door. She was pushing a thin girl in front of her with jabs between the shoulder blades. ‘Move along, Sticks.’

The girl whined something about a shilling; Mrs Striker explained that the only way she’d been able to get the girl to come was to promise her a shilling. ‘After,’ she said to her and gave her another jab.

‘Leave off!’

Mrs Striker rolled her eyes and indicated the private rooms, and Denton hurried to open the door. Inside was a row of half a dozen swinging doors, theirs the third one along. Denton pushed through, found a space a little bigger than a coffin with a narrow banquette on each side covered in greasy, almost napless brown velour. At the far end was the same coloured glass that stood above the long bar, and a hatch that he guessed was for service.

The child — eleven, Denton thought, emaciated, not pretty — fell into one of the banquettes and stuck her feet out. Mrs Striker said she was off to find the others; she turned back before she went out and said to the girl, ‘Mind your manners, Sticks. You know what I mean.’

When she was gone, the child said in the door’s direction, ‘Cow.’ She looked at Denton and said, as if on a dare, ‘Stupid old cow.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Hate her.’ It was like trying to understand another language; he had got ‘cow’ all right, but she ran her words together, and she had an accent he couldn’t follow. He sat down next to the door, finding himself embarrassed, not sure why.

‘JerwantaFrenchwye?’ the girl said.

‘What?’

‘Frenchwye, French wye! Yer deaf? French, I does’t betternor’ny. Ask any gemmun. Quick, I am. Bring yer off in lessnor minute.’

Denton stared at her. What struck him most was how entirely sexless she seemed. Yet he supposed that ‘French way’ meant the same as Harris’s a la bouche. ‘How old are you?’ he said.

‘Fourteen, wot bus’ness’t to you? Yeserno, you wannit ’fore the cow comes back? Shilling.’

Denton said no, and she flounced back against the greasy velvet and folded her thin arms. She had no breasts at all that he could see, nor any hips; if she was fourteen, nature hadn’t brought her any maturity yet.

‘Wantersee my place?’ she said. He felt himself flush. She smiled. ‘No hair on it. Tenpence.’ She reached down to grasp the hem of her skirt; the door pushed open, and Janet Striker came in.

‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘’E made a nindecent purposition ter me.’

Mrs Striker glanced at Denton and then at the girl. ‘You’re a terrible little liar, Sticks.’ She looked back at Denton. ‘I found the others outside the public bar; they’ll be right along.’ She sat on the same side as Denton, facing the girl, two adults apparently allied against her. ‘I know you better, Sticks. Drop it.’

The girl crossed her arms over her chest again and pouted her lips. ‘Where’s my shilling?’

‘After, I told you.’

‘Five shillings, you said!’

‘That’s if you had anything to tell us about Stella Minter. Well?’

‘Yerfinkiblab everyfink I know?’ She wiggled herself deeper into the banquette. ‘Fer five bloody shillin’? Make me larf.’

Janet Striker’s voice was tired. ‘She doesn’t know anything. I knew it was a mistake to spend time on her, but-Give her a shilling and I’ll send her on her way.’

‘I know wot I knows!’

‘Yes, nothing.’

Denton was trying to find a coin in his pocket, wondering if the tailor had taken his money. No, there it was-

‘I do know somethink, so there! Stella Minter tole me all her secrets!’

Mrs Striker took the coin and held it out. ‘Oh, Sticks — get out.’

The girl grabbed the coin and jumped up. ‘Stella Minter got the clap!’ she shouted and, giggling, ran out. She collided with two other girls, who shouted at her and she at them, and they came in red-faced. Both wore demure blouses and dark skirts and little round hats with brims. They looked at Denton and then at Mrs Striker and