everybody seemed deeply embarrassed.
‘Sit down, do,’ Mrs Striker said. ‘That’s Lillian, and that’s Mary Kate.’ Lillian was plump, rather sleepy-looking, perhaps sixteen; Mary Kate was thinner, freckled. ‘This gentleman wants to know about Stella Minter, the girl who was murdered in the Minories. He’ll give you a shilling for being here and five shillings if you know something useful.’
The two girls looked at each other. They seemed still more embarrassed. Denton realized it was because of him — something about its being all right to sell themselves to a man like him but not all right to discuss their profession in front of him and another woman. Mary Kate put her feet flat on the wood floor and looked at her shoes; Lillian stared around as if she had never been in such a place before and then fanned herself with a hand and looked over Denton’s head. All at once, Mary Kate said, ‘Had a baby.’Three words, and he knew she was Irish.
Mrs Striker looked at Denton and then back at them and said, ‘Stella Minter? When?’
They looked at each other again. Lillian said, her voice so soft he could hardly hear it, ‘Wile ago.’ She glanced aside at Mary Kate and then murmured, ‘Waren’t married or nothin, she waren’t.’
‘What happened to the baby?’ Denton said. All three women turned towards him — they had been talking to each other — and frowned. Mrs Striker gave him a look and said that it was a good question, and did the girls know?
‘’Dopted,’ Lillian said.
‘She gave it up?’
Mary Kate studied her shoes but said, ‘She went to the Humphrey, an’ they kep’ it and all.’
Mrs Striker said aside to Denton, ‘The Humphrey is a home for unwed mothers.’ Then, to the other two, she said, ‘You’re sure? This is important information — you must be sure.’
‘Sure ’n’ I’m sure as sure,’ Mary Kate said, and Lillian giggled and got red.
‘Did she tell you?’
‘Sure, wasn’t she Lillian’s special pal, then? She was allus tellin’ you everthing, wasn’t she, Lil?’
‘Well, not
‘Was she afraid of something?’ Denton said, and they all looked at him again.
‘Maybe. But I dunno. I do know she tole me oncet about the ’Umphrey and the awfu’ time they give ’er. Workin’ girls to death.’ She looked up at Janet Striker.
‘Yes, I know, dear.’ She glanced at Denton. ‘It’s like an old-fashioned workhouse.’Then, turning back to the others, she said, ‘Is that all? There’s nothing else you remember?’
They looked at each other once more, then around the little space as if for escape, and Lillian murmured, ‘Ever so eddicated.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Stella was eddicated. Nuffin’ she din’t know. G’ography. Reading.’
‘She owned a book,’ Mary Kate said.
Denton didn’t remember a book among Stella Minter’s belongings. Was that significant?
‘Name weren’t Stella, neither,’ Lillian said so low he wasn’t sure he had heard right.
‘What?’
‘Her name weren’t Stella. We was standin’ down Aldgate, nobody comin’ along, nuffing! And we was both sad and tellin’ things and she says, “My real name’s not Stella.” Well, lots o’ the girls change their names, don’t they? So I said, “Wot is it, then?” and she says, “Ruth, like the Bible.”’
‘Ruth what?’
‘She wooden tell that, would she? Oney Ruth.’ Lillian’s eyes were almost closed; she might have been a medium, hauling up these titbits from a trance. ‘Her sister’s name was Becca. Becky, but she says Becca.
Denton leaned in. ‘Worried about what?’
‘So much younger, wasn’t she? Go the same way she done, I s’pose. She said something like, “Wind up like me.” And crying.’ Lillian looked at Mrs Striker. ‘We had such a good time at the hop-picking last summer, the three of us. Now she’s gone.’Tears shone in her eyes. ‘That’s all I know.’
Mrs Striker raced along the pavement, Denton striding to keep up with her. ‘You’re a fast walker,’ he said, meaning it as a compliment.
‘I shouldn’t have brought Sticks. She’s a vicious little brute. Did she offer herself to you?’
‘More or less.’
‘I’m trying to reach girls like her. I apologize for using your shilling to do it. Anyway, it didn’t work.’ She strode on as if late for her appointment, although there was more than an hour yet. ‘You needn’t accompany me.’I
‘I want to talk to you. About what they said and — other things.’
Perhaps she misunderstood; perhaps her own life was on her mind. Whatever the reason, she was silent, seemingly angry, and then she burst out, ‘I told you I spent four and a half years in an institution. Now I shall tell you why.’ She raised a finger to point to a turning to the right as they were entering the City. ‘My mother sold me to Frank Striker. It was called a marriage, but it was a sale. I was cheap goods — no dowry, no beauty. I was my mother’s only capital. She raised me to be marriageable, tried to teach me to please men, gave me all the useless capabilities — I could pour tea but I couldn’t boil water. When I was seventeen, she put me on the market.’
‘Edith Dombey,’ he said.
‘What? Oh, I suppose. Anyway, she found Frank Striker. He got me, and she got a yearly stipend and a flat in Harrogate.’ She fell silent again; he glanced aside at her and saw her face spottily reddened, her jaw set. Then she started talking again in a hard, half-strangled voice. ‘My husband liked two women at a time. That was my wedding night — a prostitute and me. I stood it for a year and then rebelled. He came for me one night with a belt and gave me three welts on my bare back, and then I tried to push him downstairs. He had me committed. Well, it’s perfectly logical, isn’t it? Any woman who’d raise her hand to her husband must be insane.’ She slowed, looked at her watch and strode on. ‘Four and a half years later, by whining and wheedling and saying I was a good girl now, I managed to get my release. He sent a servant for me. I jumped out of the cab and went straight to a woman lawyer I’d heard about in prison, and I started suit for divorce the same day. Two of his prostitutes testified for me — they were sorry for me. The prison doctor testified about my scars. We were going to win the case, and the night before the jury returned the verdict, he took his revenge — shot himself and left every penny to his Cambridge college.’ She laughed rather horribly. ‘My mother lost her stipend and her flat and tumbled on me to care for her. I sued to break his will, but I hadn’t a penny. Have you ever tried suing one of the colleges of our great universities? The nurseries of our great men, the treasuries of our best thought, the preserver of our highest traditions?’ She hooted.
‘What did you do?’
She laughed more quietly. ‘I did what women always do. I went on the street.’
He felt her look at him; he met her eyes and saw the challenge. ‘“Hard times will make a bulldog eat red pepper,” ’ he said lamely.
She laughed, this time a real laugh, almost a masculine one. ‘Wherever did that come from?’
‘My grandmother.’
‘Irish?’
‘Scotch.’
‘Scottish. Scotch is whisky.’
‘We say Scotch.’
She looked at him again, smiled, shrugged. More cheerfully then, as if it were all a kind of shared joke, she said, ‘I didn’t know a thing about going on the street. I knew only the words. So I went out on Regent Street. I didn’t know it was the French girls’ pitch. Two of them pushed me into a doorway and slapped me about and told me if I ever came on their territory again they’d cut my nose off. But it was rather pro forma; when they were done, one of them told me to try Westerley Street, where they might have a taste for a woman like me. I thought she meant prison-worn, but now I know she meant English and conventional. Anyway, that’s how I met Mrs Castle. I wasn’t much good to her as a prostitute, except for a few men who wanted to be able to say that they’d had the woman who killed Frank Striker, but she sent me on a bookkeeping course and I became her accountant and played the piano in the parlour for the gentlemen, and so I had a home and an income and a skill.’
