Honor's Kingdom (17 page)

“When a gent takes such an interest,” he said, “I suspects ’e wouldn’t take it amiss, was ’e to be introduced to Miss Perkins ’erself.”

I found myself stammering in surprise, for I had steeled myself for an ordeal of persuasion. But strategy proved unnecessary. The fellow only wanted half a shilling.

He led me through that rancid hall of skewed benches and scattered trash, between the curtains and past a stumpy crone with a mop and pail, muttering toward her labors. Behind the stage there was only a smoky corridor and a cramp of rooms. Lead me along, he did, between the clown, who smelled of a muchness of drink, and the fiddler, who eyed me with a simper as he pushed back his long hair.

Just ahead, a door opened. As if bidden.

Instead of Polly Perkins, a gentleman rushed out. Cursing. In language salty enough to cure a ham. The sight of me reduced him to a stagger. I might have been old Banquo’s ghost, come in to spoil the supper.

He made a sound like a wounded dog and began to shove his way by me, as if I were a cause of mortal terror. Refusing to meet my eyes, he thrust past roughly, then elbowed the fiddler, who cried, “You nasty
beast!
” He nearly knocked over the drunken clown, whose eyes were already insensate.

It was young Pomeroy, the rude lad from the Foreign Office. The one with Confederate sympathies.

He slammed a door behind himself, but his footsteps carried like thunder.

Of course, my impulse was to rush after him. But I restrained myself, determined to stick to my plan. An impulse had led me astray one time that evening, and I did not mean to make a second error.

“Polly must’ve let ’im see ’er temper,” my intermediary told me. “There’s certain times, if you knows what I mean, when ’er temper comes up unnatural. And some gents makes demands what are impertinent.”

Just then, the White Lily of Kent herself appeared in the doorway, lit from behind and gossamer in her loveliness.

“I bloody well want to know,” she shrieked, “I damned well want to know what soddin’ bum-boy let that bugger into my bleedin’ changing room?” She looked at my guide and companion. “Was it you, Artie? You sorry little bastard.”

Forgive my frank report of her speech. I fear she was distraught.

“Good evening, Miss Perkins,” I said, stepping forward. “I must say your performance was . . . extraordinary.”

“Artie, what, are you out of your bleedin’ skull?” she demanded, and not without a certain graceless tone. “Now you’re dragging in cripples and buggering dwarves.”

I am not a dwarf. I am not tall, but I am a man most regular. And I have served in a red coat and a blue, which says something.

“This one’s a payer,” my guide hissed, as if I should not hear. Or perhaps I was meant to hear it, after all.

“He don’t look like he got a pot to piss in,” the White Lily of Kent said. “With those Jew rags of his.” Yet, I was not discouraged entirely by her observations, for her voice had grown more subdued. She flared, though, when she spoke to the fellow who had delivered me to her. “That bastard you let in my changing
room? How’d you pick that one out, I’d like to know? Out of his bleedin’ senses he was. Making demands like he thought he was Lord Kiss-me-arse.”

She stamped her foot as a willful child does. “I don’t have to stand for it, I don’t. I’ll have old Beezil pack off the bleedin’ lot of you—or maybe
I
’ll be the one to go, and you can just be damned. You won’t see Polly Perkins again this side of Drury Lane, and won’t you be sorry? Just you wait and see who pays to look up
your
(and here I omit an astonishing vulgarity) knickers. See who brings you their bleedin’ pennies when I don’t give ’em a peek and send ’em home with both hands busy in their pockets.”

I found I lacked the words to interpose. She was a storm, and needed to rain out.

At last, her anger relented. “Oh, bugger it all,” she said. And then she spoke to me. “You might as well come in and speak your piece, and get it bleedin’ over with.”

I followed her into the golden light of her chamber.

Shutting the door behind us, despite the impropriety, she finally got a look at me in the light. Paler she went than any theatrical paint.

“Oh, Jesus Christ! It’s you! The bleeder from over the Dials! What are you, some useless, buggering peeler?”

“Now, now, Miss Perkins. There is no need to betray your better nature with such language. I am no policeman, no. But I would like to put a question to you.”

“I don’t know a thing.”

“I have not yet asked.”

“I tell you, I don’t know anything.”

I drew out a pound, then another, and laid the notes upon her table of paint pots, rags and scents.

“My intentions are the best, I assure you, Miss Perkins. I only want a little of your time and—”

She made a sound like a horse with feed up its nose. “That’s what they all want. Ain’t it?”

“—to ask a few simple questions.”

“I said that I don’t know a thing.”

“Well, we will see. And I will risk your ignorance.”

“I ain’t ignorant.” She drew herself up most proudly. “I just said I don’t know anything.”

“You went to see Mrs. Hepburn, the pawn-mother and—”

“That bleedin’ cow. She doesn’t keep a promise, I can tell you.”

“What promise was that, Miss Perkins?” The room smelled of victuals left for days, and of night-pots.

“I don’t have to tell you a thing,” she said, with a glance at the two pounds lying on her table.

“Mrs. Hepburn is dead, you know.”

That got her attention. Paler still she went.

“Now, if you would be so kind as to tell me what she promised you?” I continued.

The White Lily drew back a step. She seemed much smaller up close than she looked on the stage. Almost a child in size she was, though clearly a woman elsewise. And wasn’t it the queerest thing? Her features could not have been finer if she had been born to a baroness. Life does not scruple about our expectations, but loves to confound.

“What did she promise you?” I repeated, when Miss Perkins failed to answer.

“I didn’t have nothing to do with it,” she told me. “I couldn’t have. I didn’t even know her.”

“But you said she made you a promise. And broke it.”

“It wasn’t her. I mean, it wasn’t her that
made
the promise. A fine gent has been coming round every night. Though now he’s gone off and no wonder. Likes to sit in that same chair he does, but I don’t know why he bothers. For he don’t take a proper interest in a lady, just sits and looks and patters. Then leaves a little gift for nothing at all. It’s a shame he isn’t after it decent like, for the bugger’s bleedin’ with money. But he just ain’t for it, I can tell you that.” She shook her head at the stubbornness of the world. “A girl can tell his type as soon as she sets her eyes on him. Not one for the ladies, if you take my meaning. But
fine as they come and speaking all high and frilly, the way they do.”

“Who?”

“Them.”

“And who is that?”

“Oh, you know. Lords and ladies, like. And poofs. He seemed a bit of both, to tell you the truth. Reedy tried to make up to him, but Lord Bugger-Bum wasn’t interested. He looked to me like the sort that likes a younger trade.”

“And who is Reedy?”

She shrugged, as if I should have figured that much out. “The fiddle-scraper. Don’t let him come in when you’re using the pot. Or something’ll go in where it should come out.”

“And this ‘fine gent’ made you a promise? In Mrs. Hepburn’s name?”

She looked at me as if in hard-learned canniness, but suspicion only made her more handsome. She was a pretty thing, though bound for ruin.

“Told me I belonged on a proper stage, he did, and said he was going to see me set up in the West End, in a proper theater, if I done him a little favor.”

“Which involved Mrs. Hepburn?”

She nodded bitterly. “Last night he came by and told me I was to go at noon, and not a minute before or after, to see this Mrs. Hepburn in the Dials. Well, that seemed buggered to begin with, didn’t it? I know the Dials well enough to keep my distance, I do, and his likes won’t be seen there for love nor money. It’s not a place for his sort of entertainments, if you take my meaning. The Irish are like to beat his sort to death. Though they ain’t above a bit of the other from the missus, once there’s brats enough to feed.”

She scowled most handsomely. “I thought maybe that was why he wanted me to go for him, the sorry bleeder. Anyway, ‘Go,’ he says to me, ‘there’s a package for you to deliver. Mrs. Hepburn will give you the address when she gives you the package.’ That’s all it was, wasn’t it? I was only to take up a package
from the old cow and deliver it, that was all. Mrs. Hepburn was to pay me ten guineas for my trouble.” Despair flitted over her face like the shade of a bird in flight. “And wasn’t I just fool enough to believe it? As if they’d ever pay up for a thing like that. And ten guineas! Coo, I ain’t never seen that much stumpy all at once in my whole bleedin’ life.”

“So you went?”

“As well you know yourself, for you saw me. And don’t you pretend you didn’t.”

“No, Miss Perkins, I saw you and do not pretend otherwise. The vision was not a thing to be forgotten.”

“Well, thank you, I’m sure.”

“And then?”

“Then off I went, and paying my own clinkers for a cab all the way to St. Giles, where you have to pay the driver extra to go, and asking my way from every slut and sod in the Seven Dials until I found the old cow. With screaming brats on every side, no less. And in goes little Polly, more the fool. And wasn’t it just the queerest place, this hocker of hers, with not a thing in it besides that fat old bitch? And I can tell you how that one lost the hair on her head, don’t think I can’t. And she sits me down, she does, just like we was all known and on intimate terms. And she starts passing the time, la-de-da.

“‘I’ve come for the package,’ I tell her, ‘and for my ten guineas.’ But she only smiles and goes on passing the time. ‘I’m here for my ten guineas and the package,’ I tell her again. But she just goes on about her bleedin’ ailments and pokes at her embroidering. But when I get myself up to go, all out of patience with her snorting like a pig, doesn’t she grab me by the arm and pull me right back down? Fat that one may have been, but she was a quick one. There’s men like that, too. Anyways, that cow won’t let me go, and there I sit wondering, ‘Polly, what have you got yourself into this time, girl?’ When in runs the dirtiest little slut of a thing from the street, all out of breath like, and crying ‘They’re on their way, they’re on their way!’

“All in an instant, the great cow lets go of me and tells me, ‘Get out, you tramp. I’ve nothing for you. Get out.’ And didn’t I go, as fast as my legs could carry me? I was angry enough to take her up by the hair, if she would’ve had any.” The White Lily paused. “Not that I did, acourse, for she would’ve broke my neck. I didn’t do her any harm in the least, and couldn’t have, for she must’ve been there when you two gents went up.”

Oh, I was thinking now.

“The girl who ran in. The one who said, ‘They’re on their way.’ Can you describe her?”

Miss Perkins assumed an indifferent expression. “Just a street bit. Like all that sort. Chestnut hair and dirty, every inch of her. Maybe fourteen. Won’t have her teeth come twenty. Nor anything else worth having.”

I recalled the girl who had squatted so shamelessly in the passage when Wilkie and I entered the close on our fool’s errand. Quick of wit the child had been, when she failed to get away before our coming. Clever enough she had been to wield our own embarrassment against us.

“Miss Perkins, this is all quite helpful. Now, just a few more questions, if you would?”

“I think,” she said, with a pout, “that I ought to have another pound for my troubles.”

“Ten shillings.”

She grimaced. “Ain’t you all the same, the bleedin’ lot of you? Ten shillings, then.”

I dispensed the money. “Did this gentleman . . . the one who sent you to the Dials and promised you payment in return . . . did he happen to mention a watch?”

A moment of honest confusion wrinkled her brow. “Lord Bugger-Bum? He had a golden ticker he kept in his waistcoat, fancy as la-de-da. He always pulled it out just before he got up to go. Gave a little chime it did, when he opened it. Is that the watch you mean, then?”

“No. Not his watch. Did he say anything about another watch? In the package you were to receive from Mrs. Hepburn, perhaps?”

“Not a bleedin’ word.”

Now I would not applaud all aspects of her character. But I believed the girl and all she said. Had she seen profit in lying, she doubtless would have seized the opportunity to tell me tales. But I do not believe she did, though you may only think that I was smitten. Which I was not.

I was thinking—or trying to think—in a fog of new confusions and baffling clarities. Fair leaping from one view of matters to another I was, but I failed to think with the completeness that was wanted.

I stood up as if called to attention. For Miss Perkins had begun to disrobe before me. Likely, she wished to absent herself from her workplace and return to her mother and father for the night.

“Just one more question, please: The boy who left in a fury. The one you followed after, as I was coming in. What do you know about him? Was he involved with this . . . this high gentleman who had been calling on you?”

“The one what just went out? Him? I never laid peepers on that one ’til five minutes before you came strolling in yourself. All full of demands he was. Didn’t even treat me like a lady. And when I didn’t give him his satisfaction, off he went, with language that a lady oughtn’t to hear. Without a by-your-leave, like I was dirt.”

The young woman dropped an entire layer of clothing before my startled eyes. Before I could absent myself with propriety, she turned her bare shoulders and showed me the laces of her corset.

“Would you like to help a girl out?” she asked.

I suppose Miss Perkins was pleased with the payment she had of me, for she only laughed when I made a swift departure.

“Come back when you ain’t so fearful of a lady,” she called after me.