The Streets Page 10

  ‘I don’t understand why they’s moving us out,’ she said, her talk retracing its small agitated circle, like a fly on a windowpane. My efforts of consolation frustrated, I promised to call upon her again, and left.

  I had made a note of this encounter in my pocketbook and was on my way to the Brill when I saw, across the street, a woman moving at a struggle with an enormous wicker basket. Her face, vacant with concentration, was suddenly familiar to me, and I waited for a jingling horse and cart to pass before I skipped to the other side. She would have walked right by me if I had not called out ‘Roma’ – at which she looked up sharply, as if disturbed from a dream.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, refocusing her gaze. She shifted the basket, which I now saw was of assorted garments, to make herself more comfortable.

  ‘That’s quite a burden you’re carrying. Would you allow me –?’ I stepped forward to help, but she waved me away.

  ‘Nah, I can manage,’ she said neutrally.

  ‘May I not be of service to you? Please?’

  At that she gave a resigned sort of shrug, and heaved the load from her shoulders. She then proceeded to hand over half of them to me. They were mostly dresses, of silk and tulle and cotton, a few blouses and cloaks. Faint ghosts of powder and perfume rose from the massed material. Their slipperiness made them quite difficult to hold in a bundle, and I began to see why it might have been easier for her to carry them alone.

  ‘I’m on my way home with ’em,’ she said. ‘’Bout five minutes’ walk?’

  I nodded my readiness to proceed. In the light of day I saw something flawed in the iris of one of her eyes, and wondered if she were partially blind. She noticed me staring at her and said, ‘Something the matter?’

  ‘No, please – lead the way.’

  We began walking, neither of us speaking. Roma, I suspected, was not the type to start conversing for the sake of it, and she showed no curiosity in me. I looked down at the bundle in my arms.

  ‘You own a great many dresses,’ I joked.

  She didn’t laugh, but she did turn her head and snorted thinly in acknowledgement of my feeble sally. ‘I do repairs for a tailor on Ossulston Street. They’s sent him by ladies in the West End.’

  ‘So . . . a seamstress by day and a barmaid by night.’

  ‘You could say. I just do whatever pays.’

  ‘That should include your singing,’ I said, hoping to charm her. But she only did her little shrug again; she didn’t wish to be charmed. Some moments later we came to Clarendon Square, and her step slowed as we approached the Polygon, the curious circle of tenements that sat in the middle. I did not know of such an architectural composition anywhere else in London, with pairs of houses forming the external sides of the figure, like a cake cut into slices. Roma had taken out her latchkey and mounted the steps.

  ‘D’you know, I always wondered who lived in these houses,’ I said, looking up at the patchy stucco face with its iron-wrought balconies. ‘They must have been very grand once.’ I had spoken without thinking, and blushed at my rudeness – but Roma, perversely, found this amusing.

  ‘An’ look what sort o’ people lives here now!’ she said with a laugh.

  ‘I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean that.’

  Shaking her head, she opened her front door, a dexterous manoeuvre given the basket that was restricting her movement. As I hesitated on the bottom step she turned back to me. ‘Are you coming in?’

  We ascended four flights of uncarpeted stairs, past whitewashed walls that showed ancient grime and windows warped in their frames. Roma said nothing as our steps clacked against the floorboards; it had become obvious even in this brief time that she had none of Jo’s affability. Their lodgings turned out to consist of a large front parlour and two bedrooms, a more commodious arrangement than was usual in the neighbourhood. The furniture, though modest, was of a decent quality, whilst the swept hearth and air of tidiness indicated the supervision of a proud householder. Above the mantelpiece hung a crucifix, with a sampler and a small photographic portrait of a couple displayed on the facing wall. Roma, warming a kettle on the hob, had seen me looking at this last.

  ‘Joseph and Giulietta. Our mum and dad. Tea?’

  ‘Thank you, yes.’ I turned back to the photograph. ‘They look very young, your parents.’

  She nodded. ‘Died young, too.’

  ‘Jo told me that you raised him.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ she said, and I hid a smile, so exact a replica of Jo’s was that Yeah, well and the little shrug that followed.

  ‘That must have been hard for you.’

  A shadow of something crossed Roma’s face; she stopped what she was doing and stared at me. ‘Hard?’ she said, echoing the word sardonically. But then she seemed to recover herself. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

  ‘I’m sure I would,’ I replied, but she ignored this. She had returned to her preoccupied mood, and I felt once again that my company was of no more consequence to her than a burr that had stuck to her coat. With anyone else I would have taken the earliest opportunity to withdraw myself, but I found that Roma’s indifference only sharpened my eagerness to please her.

  She poured me a cup of tea, then turned to the dresses now pooled over a little couch and began sorting through them, one by one, pausing to insert a pin to mark each torn seam or frayed collar. There came a moment when, handling a close-cut purple gown, she stood and held it consideringly against the length of her body. She caught my eye as she did so.

  ‘Very becoming,’ I said.

  She was absorbed in it. ‘I’ve always wondered how it might be to wear such a thing.’

  ‘You should try it on,’ I said, looking over my teacup.

  She shook her head absently. ‘It’s silk. D’you know how much this’d cost?’

  ‘No. How much?’

  She made a sort of tsk noise, as if her question were not meant to be answered. Throwing the gown back onto the pile she continued her inventory. I thought then of the recent dinner at Sir Martin Elder’s and the sumptuous gowns I had seen that night. Why was it that those ladies should enjoy the privilege of wearing such raiment when they were no more deserving than any other? I sensed that the question had perhaps occurred to Roma, but that she would not care to debate it with a near-stranger. Which was all I was to her.

  As I sipped the tea, I said, ‘Have you seen the posters for the no-rent demonstration in Trafalgar Square next week?’

  Without looking up from the dresses, she said, ‘Yeah, I seen ’em.’

  ‘And may I hope to meet you there?’

  ‘Not likely,’ she said, and after a pause added, ‘I hear you didn’t get much support for it.’ Jo must have told her about my campaigning at the doorsteps.

  ‘There was some reluctance,’ I admitted.

  Now she did look at me. ‘You should try an’ understand why. People don’t want to fight with the rent man – it’ll only get ’em a reputation for troublemaking. And the next time they need a room the landlord’ll be sure not to bother with ’em.’

  ‘But if enough tenants refused to pay these exorbitant rents then the landlords would have no choice but to yield – we could force them to make repairs, to make houses safe and habitable.’

  ‘Fine for you to say. But a landlord can do as he pleases – if you don’t pay he’ll sling you out. You know what puts the fear up people? It’s not the damp or the filth, or the crowdin’. What frightens them is havin’ no home at all.’

  ‘But what use is a home that hasn’t a decent roof over it? With doors that have had every panel kicked out of them?’

  ‘It’s a home,’ she said, ‘an’ that’s better than nothing.’

  I looked out of the window at the shabby terrace of Clarendon Square opposite. Like everywhere else in the vicinity, it had seen better days, and I fell to wondering, as I so often did, about why houses really became slums. The negligence and profiteering of landlords had certainly contributed, but one wonder
ed at the character of tenants who allowed, and in some cases hastened, the spread of decay. ‘The sty makes the pig’ had always been my conviction, but was it inconceivable that sometimes it might be the other way about?

  ‘I was at a dinner the other night where the opinion was decidedly in favour of putting society’s unfortunates into the workhouse.’

  Roma curled her lip in scorn. ‘Nice company you keep. I’ve ’eard that before, from them as don’t know what “poor” means. They always talk of ’em as if they were criminals.’

  ‘D’you know, that’s exactly what I said to them.’

  ‘You did?’ For the first time she gave me a look of sincere interest. ‘What they say to that?’

  ‘They didn’t much like it. And they liked it even less, I fancy, when the wretch who was caught lurking in the garden turned out not to be a housebreaker after all. He and his boy had been collecting cigar ends.’

  Roma wore a pensive frown, and I imagined I could see in its contours the smallest readjustment of her view of me. Or perhaps it was the way in which she moved from the couch where she had been sorting the dresses to the chair opposite mine at the table. The light slanting through the window showed up the irregularity in her iris, and, as she concentrated on her sewing and darning, I was free to stare. Curiosity finally overmastered me.

  ‘Your eyes . . . are they different colours?’

  She nodded. ‘One blue, one green. Gave my parents a proper fright when I was small. My mum was that upset she took me to the quack, but ’e told her it was harmless. It’s some condition – used to bother me as a girl. People starin’ at me . . .’ Her emphasis was pointed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly. ‘It is only that they are so very – remarkable.’

  ‘What, like a circus freak?’

  ‘No, no . . . I mean, like – wonderful to behold.’

  She responded to this, typically, with a wry twist of her mouth, as if any compliment from me could not be taken quite seriously. I had finished the tea, and there was no reason – other than my own inclination – to linger. Then I saw how I should make myself useful.

  ‘These dresses – if they only require repair, perhaps I could be of assistance?’

  She glanced up from her work. ‘I don’t see how, unless you can sew.’

  ‘But I can sew,’ I replied, and took up a gown whose seam had split at the elbow. ‘May I?’ Turning it inside out I then threaded a needle and calmly closed the hole with a few stitches. I handed the garment over to her for inspection. She looked at this handiwork for some moments, then tilted her head slightly.

  ‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘Well, if you want to improve the shining hour . . .’ She stepped over to the couch and selected those dresses that required only simple repair. I had an inkling that she was impressed, though I didn’t anticipate any expression of warmth, and none came. So we sat there, in companionable silence, stitching away like a pair of Spitalfields tailors.

  ‘Where’d you learn to sew, then?’ she said presently.

  After a hesitation I said, ‘At school. We all learned.’

  This appeared to satisfy her, and then we talked about The Labouring Classes, and how I had come to work there. She was particularly interested in Mr Marchmont – many were, I found – though less because of his pioneering journalism than his reputation for high living. She had heard that he liked to ‘play large’ at the gaming tables.

  ‘He does enjoy a game of baccarat,’ I admitted.

  ‘And a lot more besides,’ said Roma. ‘’Sfar as I’ve ’eard, he’s not much of a gentleman. Don’t honour his debts, they say.’

  ‘I believe that was once the case,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘Oh,’ she replied, and paused. ‘Only I got this from a friend who works at a casino up west. ’Cordin’ to her, your guvnor’s there a lot, and he run outta credit a long time back.’

  A trosseno, I thought, recalling Jo’s word for a bad’un. Could this really be true? I had had the story from his erstwhile colleague Paget about Mr Marchmont sailing close to the wind financially, but that dated from years ago. It seemed highly improbable that he could afford the Montagu Square house if he were ‘cracked up’, as they said in Somers Town. I looked at the little clock on Roma’s mantelpiece, and rose to my feet.

  ‘Well . . . talking of the guvnor, I’d better be doing my rounds. I have some tenants to interview round the corner in Sidney Street.’

  Roma pulled a quizzical face. ‘You’d better be quick about it. There ain’t many left!’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Sidney Street? They pulled down ’alf of it last week.’ Seeing my look of utter surprise, she said, ‘There’s a load of houses with notices to quit – you must have seen ’em.’

  ‘Yes, but . . . I didn’t think they’d start immediately.’ I knew Sidney Street was one of the most poorly maintained in Somers Town, and that it had probably gone beyond the help of renovation. Yet its demolition felt precipitate. ‘And – the tenants?’

  Roma shrugged. ‘Same thing as always ’appens. They fend for themselves.’ As she explained it, there would be a scramble for the few rented rooms still available. The rest would seek shelter in dosshouses already packed to bursting, or else be homeless – which meant living on the street.

  ‘I wish you good day, then,’ I said somewhat absently, and Roma, putting aside her sewing, stood up too. She was straight-backed in posture, and her chin jutted to the smallest degree, as if in challenge.

  ‘Much obliged to you,’ she said, gesturing at the repairs we had got through, and in a state of distraction I took the stairs back down to the street.

  Five minutes later I was surveying the evidence for myself. One side of Sidney Street lay in rubble, whilst the other was clad in scaffolding, preparatory to its destruction. Two workmen were loitering on the site, and I asked them by whose authority the street had been earmarked for clearance. They didn’t know. ‘We’s just ’ere to knock it dahn,’ said one of them, and I didn’t doubt their lack of curiosity. ‘A lot more of ’em to go,’ the man added.

  This was perplexing. Houses that had been neglected and left to rot for years were suddenly in a queue to be pulverised. From where had this initiative sprung? Surely not the vestry, whose incumbents had grown prosperous as slumlords. I decided to return to the Public Records Office on Euston Road, where my investigation of the rents had begun. The clerk at the desk presented me with the same heavy ledger I had inspected six weeks ago, and, settled at a corner table, I turned its wide brittle pages until I came to the list of leases in Somers Town. What stood out were the multiple corrections; when a property changed hands the form was to paste the name of the new leaseholder over the old. On my previous visit I had seen but few of these alterations. Now whole pages were overlaid with pasted slips, each freshly inked. The page for Hampden Street, once part of W. W. Moyles’s slum empire, was now mummified with strips bearing the same name, Condor Holdings. Recalling that the workmen had mentioned Medburn Street as their next port of call I looked in turn at that, and, again, most of the leases were bracketed under the company Condor Holdings. Moyles’s name had disappeared from the columns entirely. I had an inkling of some dodge afoot, though I could not for the life of me see what it was. Without shutting the ledger I carried it back to the clerk at the main desk. I asked him about the new names recorded as leaseholders in Somers Town, and he replied that all such changes were recorded within a month.

  ‘But – do you see? – whole streets have been taken on lease, even though they’re unfit for habitation.’

  ‘If that’s what it says,’ he replied with a shrug.

  ‘Does it not surprise you – all this property changing hands?’

  He looked at me in a bored way. ‘Where property is concerned, nothing ever surprises me.’

  Before I left the place I checked in a business directory for Condor Holdings, and took down an address in Bishopsgate, E.C.

  The journalist Paget, sitting oppo
site, drained the last from his pewter and consulted his pocket watch. The ale had left a thin fringe of foam around his beard. Up close his blotchy skin and piggy eyes were strangely hypnotising. One might stop short of describing him as ugly, but Nature had certainly not gone out of her way to bless him. He was, I gathered, a bachelor.

  ‘Twenty to three,’ he said. ‘Time to join the fray.’

  We were in a public house at the foot of St Martin’s Lane. Beyond the frosted window could be heard shouts and laughter and footfall, and the occasional trotting clop of a horse, all heading towards Trafalgar Square. We rose from our table and emerged via a side door into Chandos Street, and immediately I knew that this was to be no paltry show of protest. Shoaling from the direction of the Strand were scores of men, some in their Sunday togs, many carrying placards. PAY NO RENT TO ROBBER LANDLORDS distilled the message of the day. Some carried the flags of Fair Rent Leagues and of Tenants’ Protection Societies. An Italian ice-cream seller was doing brisk business with marchers wearied by their tramp from the east.

  The day was murky, and close, without a glimpse of sun. Hustling our way through the straggle of bodies, we decided to skirt the perimeter of the square and thus avoid being pulled into the vortex of the crowds massing around the National Gallery. We had gained the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields and were crossing the stone flags beneath its grand portico when, from the opposite direction, we came in view of a familiar swaggering figure. At his side was someone else I knew. An encounter between us was unfortunate, and unavoidable.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Marchmont, quickly recovering from his surprise at seeing me with his former associate. ‘I had a notion you might show up here.’ He was addressing Paget with the distant respect of enemy generals meeting before an action. ‘This is Montgomery Sprule,’ he continued, introducing his companion. ‘Clifford Paget from the Chronicle – and one of my staff, Mr Wildeblood.’