Tipping the Velvet (48 page)

It did not, as it turned out, take me very long to find the right office. The man's memory was a good one, and Upper Street itself seemed wonderfully unchanged since his last visit there: the public-house and the tailor's were quite as he had described them, close together on the left-hand side of the street, just past the music hall. In between them were three or four doors, leading to the rooms and offices above; and upon one of these was screwed a little enamel plaque, which said:
Ponsonby's Model Dwelling Houses. Directress Miss J. A. D. Derby -
I remembered this very well now as the name of the lady with the mandolin. Beneath the plaque was a hand-written, rain-spattered note with an arrow pointing to a bell-pull at the side of the door.
Please Ring,
it said,
and Enter.
So, with some trepidation, I did both.

The passageway behind the door was very long and very gloomy. It led to a window, which looked out at a view of bricks and oozing drain-pipes; and from here there was only one way to proceed, and that was upwards, via a set of naked stairs. The banister was sticky, but I grasped it, and began to climb. Before I had reached the third or fourth step, a door at the top of the staircase had opened, a head had emerged in the gap, and a lady's voice called pleasantly: ‘Hallo down there! It's rather steep, but worth the effort. Do you need a light?'

I answered that I did not, and climbed faster. At the top, a little out of breath, I was led by the lady into a tiny chamber that held a desk, and a cabinet, and a set of mismatched chairs. When she gestured, I sat; she herself perched upon the edge of the desk, and folded her arms. From a room nearby came the fitful
crack-crack-crack
of a typewriting machine.

‘Well,' she said, ‘what can we do for you? I say, what an eye you have!' I had removed my hat, as if I were a man, and, as she studied my cheek - and then, more warily, my close-clipped head - I fiddled with the ribbon on the hatband, rather awkwardly. She said, ‘Have you an appointment with us?' and I answered that I hadn't come about a house, at all. I had come about a girl.

‘A girl?'

‘A woman, I should say. Her name is Florence, and she works here, for the charity.'

She gave a frown. ‘Florence,' she said; then ‘are you sure? There's really only Miss Derby, myself, and another lady.'

‘Miss Derby,' I said quickly, ‘knows who I mean. She definitely used to work here; for the last time I saw her she said - she said -'

‘She said ... ?' prompted the lady, more warily than ever - for my mouth had fallen open, and my hand had flown to my swollen cheek; and now I cursed, in a hopeless kind of miserable fury.

‘She said that she was leaving this post,' I said, ‘and moving to another. What a fool I've been! I had forgotten it till now. That means that Florence hasn't worked here for a year and a half, or more!'

The lady nodded. ‘Ah, well, you see, that was before my time. But, as you say, Miss Derby is sure to remember her.'

That, at least, was still true. I lifted my head. ‘Then, may I see her?'

‘You may - but not today; nor even tomorrow, I'm afraid. She won't be in now until Friday -'

‘Friday!' That was terrible. ‘But I must see Florence today, I really must! Surely you have a list, or a book, or something, that says where she has gone to. Surely somebody here must know.'

The lady seemed surprised. ‘Well,' she said slowly, ‘perhaps we do ... But I cannot really give that sort of detail out, you know, to strangers.' She thought for a moment. ‘Could you not write her a letter, and let us forward it ... ?' I shook my head, and felt my eyes begin to prick. She must have seen, and misunderstood, for she said then, rather gently: ‘Ah - perhaps you're not very handy with a pen ... ?'

I would have admitted to anything, for the sake of a kind word. I shook my head again: ‘Not very, no.'

She was silent for a moment. Perhaps she thought, that there could be nothing very sinister about my quest, if I could not even read or write. At any rate, she rose at last and said, ‘Wait here.' Then she left the room and entered another, across the hall. The sound of the typewriter grew louder for a second, then ceased altogether; in its place I heard the murmur of voices, the prolonged rustling of paper, and finally the slam of a cabinet drawer.

The lady reappeared, bearing a white page - a letter, by the look of it - in her hand. ‘Success! Thanks to Miss Derby's beautiful clerking system we have tracked your Florence - or, at least,
a
Florence - down; she left here just before both Miss Bennet and I began, in 1892. However' - she grew grave -‘we really do not think that we can give you her
own
address; but she left here to work at a home for friendless girls, and we can tell you where that is. It's a place called Freemantle House, on the Stratford Road.'

A home for friendless girls! The very idea of it made me tremble and grow weak. ‘That must be her,' I said. ‘But - Stratford ? So far?' I shifted my feet beneath my chair, and felt the leather slide against my bleeding heels. The boots themselves were thick with mud; my skirt had gained a frill of filth, six inches deep, at the hem. Against the window there came the spatter of rain. ‘Stratford,' I said again, so miserably that the woman drew near and put her hand upon my arm.

‘Have you not the fare?' she asked gently. I shook my head.

‘I have lost all my money. I have lost everything!' I placed a hand over my eyes, and leaned in utter weariness against the desk. As I did so, I saw what lay upon it. It was the letter. The lady had placed it there, face upwards, knowing - thinking - that I could not read it. It was very brief; it was signed by Florence herself - Florence Banner, I now saw her full name to be - and was addressed to Miss Derby.
Please accept notice of my resignation...
it ran. I didn't read that part. For at the top right-hand corner of the page there was a date, and an address - not that of Freemantle House but, clearly, the home address that I was not allowed to know. A number, followed by the name of a street:
Quilter Street, Bethnal Green, London E.
I memorised it at once.

Meanwhile, the woman talked kindly on. I had scarcely heard her, but now I raised my head and saw what she was about. She had taken a little key from her pocket and unlocked one of the drawers in the desk. She was saying,‘... not something we make a habit of doing, at all; but I can see that you are
very
weary. If you take a bus from here to Aldgate, you can pick up another there, I believe, that will take you along the Mile End Road, to Stratford.' She held out her hand. There were three pennies in it. ‘And perhaps you might get yourself a cup of tea, along the way?'

I took the coins, and mumbled some word of thanks. As I did so a bell rang, close at hand, and we both gave a start. She glanced at a clock upon the wall. ‘My last clients of the day,' she said.

I took the hint, and rose and put on my hat. There were footsteps in the passageway below, now, and the sound of stumbling on the stairs. She ushered me to the door, and called to her visitors: ‘Come up, that's right. It's rather steep, I know, but worth the effort...' A young man, followed by a woman, emerged from the gloom. They were both rather swarthy - Italians, I guessed, or Greeks - and looked terribly pinched and poor. We all shuffled around in the doorway of the office for a moment, smiling and awkward; then at last the lady and the young couple were inside the room, and I was alone at the head of the staircase.

The lady raised her head, and caught my eye.

‘Good luck!' she called, a little distractedly. ‘I do so hope you find your friend.'

 

Having no intention at all, now, of travelling to Stratford, I did not, as the lady recommended, catch a bus. I did, however, buy myself a cup of tea, from a stall with an awning to it, on the High Street. And when I gave back my cup to the girl, I nodded. ‘Which way,' I asked, ‘to Bethnal Green?'

I had never been much further east before - alone, and on foot - than Clerkenwell. Now, limping down the City Road towards Old Street, I felt the beginnings of a new kind of nervousness. It had grown darker during my time in the office, and wet and foggy. The street-lamps had all been lit, and every carriage had a lantern swinging from it; City Road was not, however, like Soho, where light streamed upon the pavements from a thousand flares and windows. For every ten paces of my journey that were illuminated by a pool of gas-light, there were a further twenty that were cast in gloom.

The gloom lifted a little at Old Street itself, for here there were offices, and crowded bus stops and shops. As I walked towards the Hackney Road, however, it seemed only to deepen, and my surroundings to grow shabbier. The crossings at the Angel had been decent enough; here the roads were so clogged with manure that, every time a vehicle rumbled by, I was showered with filth. My fellow pedestrians, too - who, so far, had all been honest working-people, men and women in coats and hats as faded as my own - grew poorer. Their suits were not just dingy, but ragged. They had boots, but no stockings. The men wore scarves instead of collars, and caps rather than bowlers; the women wore shawls; the girls wore dirty aprons, or no apron at all. Everyone seemed to have some kind of burden - a basket, or a bundle, or a child upon their hip. The rain fell harder.

I had been told by the tea-girl at the Angel to head for Columbia Market; now, a little way along the Hackney Road, I found myself suddenly on the edge of its great, shadowy courtyard. I shivered. The huge granite hall, its towers and tracery as elaborate as those on a gothic cathedral, was quite dark and still. A few rough-looking fellows with cigarettes and bottles slouched in its arches, blowing on their hands to keep the cold off.

A sudden clamour in the clock tower made me start. Some complicated pealing of bells - as fussy and useless as the great abandoned market hall itself - was chiming out the hour: it was a quarter-past four. This was far too early to visit Florence's house, if Florence herself was at work all day: so I stood for another hour in one of the arches of the market where the wind was not so cutting and the rain was not so hard. Only when the bells had rung half-past five did I step again into the courtyard, and look about me: I was now almost numb. There was a little girl nearby, carrying a great tray about her neck, filled with bundles of watercresses. I went up to her, and asked how far it was to Quilter Street; and then, because she looked so sad and cold and damp - and also because I had a confused idea that I must not turn up on Florence's doorstep entirely empty-handed - I bought the biggest of her cress bouquets. It cost a ha'penny.

With this cradled awkwardly in the crook of my stiff arm I began the short walk to the street I wanted; soon I found myself at the end of a wide terrace of low, flat houses - not a squalid terrace, by any means, but not a very smart one either, for the glass in some of the street-lamps was cracked, or missing entirely, and the pavement was blocked, here and there, by piles of broken furniture, and by heaps of what the novels politely term
ashes.
I looked at the number of the nearest door: number 1. I started slowly down the street. Number 5 ... number 9 ... number 11 ... I felt weaker than ever... 15 ... 17...19...

Here I stopped, for now I could see the house I sought quite clearly. Its drapes were drawn against the dark, and luminous with lamplight; and seeing them, I felt suddenly quite sick with apprehension. I placed a hand against the wall, and tried to steady myself; a boy walked by me, whistling, and gave me a wink - I suppose he thought I had been drinking. When he had passed I looked about me at the unfamiliar houses in a kind of panic: I could remember the sense of purpose that had visited me in Green Street, but it seemed a piece of wildness, now, a piece of comedy - I would tell it to Florence, and she would laugh in my face.

But I had come so far; and there was nowhere to turn back to. So I crept to the rosy window, and then to the door; and then I knocked, and waited. I seemed to have presented myself at a thousand thresholds that day, and been cruelly disappointed or repulsed, at all of them. If there was no word of kindness for me here, I thought, I would die.

At last there came a murmur and a step, and the door was opened; and it was Florence herself who stood there - looking remarkably as she had when I had seen her first, peering into the darkness, framed against the light and with the same glorious halo of burning hair. I gave a sigh that was also a shudder - then I saw a movement at her hip, and saw what she carried there. It was a baby. I looked from the baby to the room behind, and here there was another figure: a man, seated in his shirt-sleeves before a blazing fire, his eyes raised from the paper at his knee to gaze at me in mild enquiry.

I looked from him back to Florence.

‘Yes?' she said. I saw that she didn't remember me at all. She didn't remember me and - worse - she had a husband, and a child.

I did not think that I could bear it. My head whirled, I closed my eyes - and sank upon her doorstep in a swoon.