Mr. Love and Justice (2 page)

Frankie got up to make two cups of tea, and now for the first time he had a chance of looking round about her room. He liked it. It wasn’t rich at all, no; yet as on a ship, nothing essential was missing. The sheets had been clean, and in the tins marked tea, and rice, and sugar, he saw there were actually these things, and plenty. It was, of course, a bit over-feminine, but then the girl was, after all, a woman. ‘Sugar?’ he said, looking round at her lying smoking on the bed.

‘Eight lumps,’ she answered. ‘I’m not naturally sweet.’

He came and sat beside her and fondled her abstractedly. ‘Thanks, girl,’ he said.

She smiled and said to him, ‘There’s not many, I can tell you, get a cup of tea as well.’

‘I dare say not,’ said Frankie.

‘
Or
leave as rich as they came in,’ she added.

Frankie frowned. ‘I’ve
never
paid for it,’ he said, ‘and never would, and never will.’

‘Oh, I was kidding.’ She sipped a bit, and said, ‘Not even those geisha girls, you wouldn’t?’

‘If a girl thinks she wants money from
me
, I’d rather go without.’

‘Well, dear, being as you are, I don’t expect you’ve often had to.’

Frankie smiled, then looked at her seriously. ‘You like the life?’ he said.

‘I don’t like or dislike, darling: I’m just used to it.’

‘Been at it long?’

‘Oh, ever since I can remember …’

‘Yeah – I see. You don’t mind if I ask: it doesn’t upset you?’

She laughed. ‘Upset me? Darling, you can believe me or not, but I just – don’t – notice.’

‘No? By the way: don’t call me “darling”, please. I told you my name’s Frankie.’

‘Yes. Frankie Love. You said so. And you’ve proved it.’

‘But listen. Stop me if I’m curious. When you go out: not knowing who it’s going to be. That doesn’t disturb you?’

‘No.’

‘Not at all?’

‘No. Only if they’re vicious or anything, or try to rob me …’

‘They try that? That’s not right!’

‘Sometimes they do … But you get to know the types – you’d be surprised.’

‘I suppose so.’ He took her hands, examined them, kissed them and said, ‘But listen. All those men. Maybe two or three a day. Don’t you find …’

‘Two or three? Are you kidding? What you take me for – a mystery?’

‘You’re mysterious, all right.’

‘Not
that
way, I’m not.’

‘Yeah. But what I mean is – doesn’t it disgust you any? One after another, dozens of them just like that?’

She sat up and fixed the pillows. ‘Well, Frankie,’ she said. ‘First ask yourself this question, please. If you go with me after all those dozens – doesn’t it disgust
you
?’

‘No. No – but I think that’s different.’

‘Men do.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Look, dear. If you’re going into this business at all, it’s best to have as many as you can, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?’

‘I dare say …’

‘This isn’t Mayfair, darling …’

‘… Frankie …’

‘… Sorry. Not Mayfair, but Stepney Green. Seamen and drunks. Thirty bob, a pound – even less, sometimes.’

‘But it all adds up.’

‘I’ll say it does. Pass me that bag.’

‘No.’

‘Go on!’

‘No, I don’t want to touch it. I don’t like women’s bags.’

She jerked her head at him, reached over, and spilt its contents on the bed.

‘What’s this?’ said Frankie. ‘Your life’s savings?’

‘Don’t be silly, boy. That’s just last night’s.’

‘You kidding
me
now?’

‘Why should I kid you?’

‘All that loot?’

‘Well, it’s not so much … I pay a Bengali eight a week for this little gaff …’

‘For
this
?’

‘Frankie, if you’re in business full-time, and your landlord’s not ignorant, you don’t get a gaff, even down here, for less. And if he
is
ignorant, believe me, it’s even worse: he might shop you, or throw you out unexpectedly.’

Frankie gazed at the notes and silver on the blanket. Like money you pick up in the streets, it seemed quite different from the contents of a pay-packet – like valuable stuff that just belonged to
any
body.

‘What else you spend it on?’ he said.

She looked at him intently, then said, ‘Oh, this and that – it soon goes, you know. Expenses are heavy: nylons, for instance. Look! You’re not the first who’s laddered the best part of a pound …’ She rubbed her leg and said, ‘But sometimes there’s a bit over and to spare …’

Frankie reflected. ‘Well, I suppose you get your due,’ he said. ‘It can’t be easy …’

‘It’s not, Frank, believe me.’

‘All the same. Excuse my saying so, but I think a man who
pays
for that’s no man at all.’

She got up. ‘Oh, I don’t think much of them either. But I’m glad there’s plenty of them around …’

‘You going?’

‘Yes, Frank, I have to. But you can stop here a bit, if you like, till I get back …’

‘You’d trust me alone in here?’

‘Yes, of course. What’s there to pinch? You don’t wear girl’s clothes – at least I hope not – and I’m taking this …’ And she flourished the square black bag.

Frankie got up too. ‘No, I’ll be off,’ he said.

‘Off to where?’

‘I’m staying down the Rowton.’

‘That sty? I hope it’s not given you crabs.’

‘Baby, I wash,’ he said.

‘Me too. Turn the other way, I’m going to before we leave.’

On his day off, Edward was sitting with his girl in the park at Little Venice, up by the Harrow Road. He was proud of his girl because though few men looked at her immediately, once they did so their attention was apt to become transfixed. Their initial disdain was perhaps to be explained by the fact that she wore spectacles, was plump and rather dowdy; but their interest became riveted when they grew aware that she had the tranquillity, the assurance, and the indifference that can denote sexual operators conscious of their powers: aware of them not merely as one woman in competition with all the others (which is only a quarter way to success), but aware of them in themselves absolutely.

He was telling her of his first weeks in the vice game: and these weeks had not been without their tribulations. In the first place, Edward had suffered the humiliation 
of being himself reported as a suspect by a colleague unaware (or
was
he?) of his real identity as a plain-clothes man. Perhaps this mishap was due to the extraordinary difficulty he found in
loitering
successfully, unobserved. Only a child can rival the absolute right a uniformed officer has, in the public eyes, to linger wherever he wishes. But in plain-clothes … well, what would
you
do if told to watch a house for a couple of hours in a thoroughly inconspicuous fashion? All sorts of stratagems will suggest themselves … but the real art is simply to learn how to loiter as a pastime in itself: just as you are, without disguises; and get away with it. Among adults, Edward noticed, only American servicemen seemed quite naturally to possess this skill.

Then there was the difficulty of moving in the dark. Of course, when in uniform there’d been the manoeuvre of lurking in shop doorways, or in mews turnings. But the whole point in the Force of a uniform had been that people
should
see it, and think twice. Now he’d had to learn to embrace the darkness, to become part of it and use it for himself.

He told some of this in confidence to his girl, but not too much of it because he believed firmly in an ultimate loyalty to the Force so far as its own secrets were concerned; and had learnt, in its hard and testing school, that a secret told to
any
one is no longer a secret in any real way at all. Also, he was feeling his way in the new job, and still doubtful and insecure.

‘But you like it on the whole,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes. Who wouldn’t.’

‘Well, dearest, I
don’t
. Oh, don’t get me wrong! I mean, only because I seem to see much less of you.’

She moved her head slowly and kissed him, which she did quite unfurtively, warmly and decidedly yet in a private, serious, almost holy way (he thought) that no one in the little park could possibly take except to. He felt together with this short, wonderful embrace, the slight scratch of her spectacles, which enchanted him because of memories.

‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry the duties make me see you less because, honest, this new job makes me feel quite a bit lonely.’

‘Well, naturally,’ she said. ‘Any new job does.’

‘Not only that.’ He hesitated how much to admit because he knew a man who betrays his weaknesses, even to the girl he loves, is giving her weapons for the tenderest blackmail. ‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘The story is all coppers are just civilians like anyone else, living among them, not in barracks like on the Continent, but you and I know that’s just a legend for mugs. We
are
cut off: we’re
not
like everyone else. Some civilians fear us and play up to us, some dislike us and keep out of our way but no one – well, very few indeed – accepts us as just
ordinary
like them. In one sense, dear, we’re like hostile troops occupying an enemy country. And say what you like, at times that makes us lonely.’

She squeezed his arm, said nothing.

‘Now in this job the new one, even more so. Because not only the civvies all mistrust you, but – this is what I’ve discovered – the uniformed men do, too. They’re
jealous, I dare say, and a bit scared: I’ve had a few very distant looks from former pals in the past few weeks, I can tell you, and it’s not so very pleasant.’

‘But there’s the satisfaction of your job,’ she said, because she knew this was a man’s great love by which, if she respected it, she could hold him all the more.

‘Oh, yes … there’s that, of course.’

The time was now approaching, as both knew, when they must have it out about the conflict of love and duty. After a silence made of gathering clouds, she broached the theme and said, ‘Did they ask you about me at all?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did you tell them?’

Edward was ready, this time, with his answer. He could not, he’d decided, tell her what he’d told the Detective-Sergeant: that she was a copper-hater; for then she’d think that, maligning her to his other dearest love, the Force, he’d secretly wished to detach himself from her altogether. Women were so mistrustful! And when you want irreconcilables you have to lie at some point – there’s really no other possible solution. So this double betrayal of the Force and her was the price he must pay for the higher idea of love. And he’d made up his mind that he’d say to her what he said now, and that was, ‘Darling, I just told them I hadn’t got a girl at all.’

She looked him full in the eyes and her own shut, a moment, behind her spectacles; then she said, ‘That was probably best: probably the only thing to say.’

‘I didn’t like it, though.’

She pressed her shoulder closer to him. ‘There’s only one thing,’ she said. ‘If my dad should ever die: have you thought of that?’

‘No …’

She looked at him. ‘In that case, we
could
get married: I mean, there’d be no objection any longer, would there?’

He considered. ‘No, I don’t think so, but … Well, your old dad’s hale and hearty, isn’t he?’

‘Oh, yes. No. All I meant was we mustn’t rule out the possibility of marriage altogether.’

He put his arm round her shoulder. ‘I should think not! And there’s also this. When I get on in the CID, get influence and get to know the men up at the top, the whole position – about you, I mean – might be reconsidered. ’Specially if your dad goes on keeping out of trouble.’

‘Yes. Well, he has done, hasn’t he, for quite a while … I’ve seen to that …’

‘I do wish I could offer you marriage!’ he exclaimed. ‘Here and now! Right out in the open.’

‘Well, Ted, we’ve had that out a thousand times, and you know I’ve said I understand and it’s quite all right with me … It’s you I want, not your name. And my money’s good so we’ve no economic worries, and I’ll just put up with it and hope. It’s all thought out and decided … But there is just one thing: what if we had a baby?’

‘We won’t! You don’t mean that you’re …’

‘No, no. But what if we
did
? It can happen. And
honest, Ted, though you know I’d love and cherish it, I don’t want to make your son and mine illegitimate.’

He laughed nervously and a bit crudely. ‘Let’s face that problem,’ he said, ‘if it arises. And let’s hope it doesn’t arise at all.’

She hid her feelings about this (which were multiple, and would have amazed and alarmed Edward considerably) and only said to him, ‘I don’t mind being your mistress, Ted, but not having a baby makes me feel just a bit like a whore.’

‘Eh? Them? Don’t talk daft. Anyway, some of them have babies, I can tell you.’

‘On purpose? Do they mean to?’

‘Some do, I suppose … They’re women, after all …’

‘You’re seeing them, then, in your new job?’

Edward grew just a bit portentous. ‘Actually, yes,’ he said, ‘it is concerned with those matters – but more so with their ponces.’

‘Oh, yes. They’ve all got them, have they, these women?’

‘Not all: no, not by any means all. The older more experienced type of girl does without, but not the majority, I’d say. They seem to need them.’

‘And what are they like, those men?’

‘Which? The ponces? Well, that darling’s what I’m wising myself up on. It seems they’re
all
types. I’ve had one or two pointed out that between you and me, if the vice boys hadn’t assured me of it, I’d just have taken for – well, for anyone in this park.’ He gazed at the inoffensive ramblers. ‘But then, you see,’ he continued, ‘that’s one
of the very first things they teach you in the Force: that everyone – repeat,
every
one – however innocent-seeming, is a potential suspect.’

She gazed at the park population too. ‘And how do you catch them?’ she asked.

He looked round, lowered his voice and said, ‘Well, that’s tricky, it appears: you wouldn’t think so, but it’s very tricky. Because you’ve got to prove several quite different things. Number one, that the girl’s a known and habitual common prostitute. Number two, that she’s earned all her money – or the bulk of it – from prostitution. Number three – that the money she earns this way she hands over to him – and that
he
hasn’t got any other principal visible means of support.’

‘I see,’ she said.

‘It’s more than I do, believe me. There’s one thing they always slip up on, though, so I’m told. If you can get the
woman
to testify against him – then you’ve got him! And as women have all sorts of reasons for losing interest in their fancy-man – well, dear, I leave it to your imagination!’

She shook her head and said, without condemnation, ‘I think it’s horrible.’

He paused, then answered, ‘Well, as a matter of fact I think it is as well. Not, mind you, that I’m setting myself up as a judge: that’s not
our
part of the little business; and one of the very first things we learn is not to condemn and simply to detect. But after all: even allowing for that, these ponces are doing something
rather special that puts them in a class apart. I’d say they’re making money out of love – or out of sex, at any rate. And personally, darling, I consider love as sacred: the one and only really sacred thing that’s left: and if you make money out of
that
, then you’re destructive and should be destroyed.’