The Streets Read online

  ‘Isn’t he adorable?!’ cried Kitty.

  It was the not the word I should have reached for. The creature bore a close resemblance to the associate of an Italian organ-grinder who often passed by Jo’s pitch on Chalton Street. This monkey, sitting atop the organ, would hold out a tin cup to solicit payments for his master’s music, and Jo (who loved animals) would delightedly pet the thing, as Kitty was doing now, and even carry it about on his shoulder. For myself, I could discern no charm in these impudent primates, and rather shrank from their jerky movements and horrid chattering.

  ‘This is David,’ Kitty was addressing the monkey. ‘Say “how do you do”, Ferdinand.’

  ‘Ferdinand? Is that really its name?’

  Kitty tutted in rebuke. ‘Its?! You mustn’t insult poor Ferdy. He is a white-headed capuchin, named after the friars – do you see that sweet little cowl on his head?’ She now began to dance the monkey vigorously around the room. ‘We love to waltz about the place, don’t we, Ferdy?’

  I sighed quietly. It was remarkable to me how a domestic pet could reduce a sound-minded person to imbecility. Keen not to be embroiled in their capering, I withdrew to the window seat. After a few more circuits of the room Kitty at last released him, and plumped down on the seat next to me. She was breathless from her exertions, and the colour that pinked her cheeks was, in spite of the idiot spectacle that caused it, rather fetching. The simian – ‘Ferdy’ – had perched on a side table, and was absently nibbling on a nut he had found in a silver bowl.

  ‘He’s awfully intelligent, you know,’ said Kitty, perhaps sensing my want of warmth towards her pet.

  ‘I dare say. Where did you find, er, him?’

  ‘Papa gave him to me,’ she replied. ‘He’s become rather interested in apes, you see, from reading Mr Darwin. He says they are making all kinds of advancements in the science of heredity and breeding and a lot of other things we don’t yet understand. Mr Sprule could probably explain it all – you met him, I think?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I’ve been meaning to read his book.’

  ‘Papa says he’s awfully clever – which I suppose would excuse his dreariness.’

  ‘He does jaw on rather.’

  ‘Hmm . . . and I can’t bear to look at his long ginger whiskers. Is that terribly unkind of me?’

  ‘Well, there’s no helping an instinctive dislike,’ I said, glancing again at Ferdinand. ‘I ran into Mr Sprule a few days ago, as a matter of fact. He seems to think the country is on the brink of revolution.’

  ‘Can that be true? I’ve not seen any barricades or flaming brands . . .’

  ‘I think one would have to look a little further than Kensington for evidence.’

  She permitted herself a sigh of philosophical complaisance and stood up to open a window. It offered a long prospect over Kensington Gardens to Hyde Park and the uneven horizon of Park Lane; down below could be heard the castanet clop of horses being exercised, and the languid threshing of treetops. My eye had drifted to a portrait on the opposite wall of a lady whose liquid gaze and sad smile recalled my young hostess.

  ‘Is that – your mother?’ I asked her.

  She turned, and nodded. ‘This was her favourite room. She died when I was five.’ She said this in a matter-of-fact tone that had – who knows? – taken years to master.

  ‘She looks very beautiful,’ I said, meaning it as a compliment to Kitty: their resemblance was unarguable.

  ‘Yes . . . though Papa always says she was even more beautiful in life. I can’t quite remember her so well.’

  I kept the silence of sympathy. It occurred to me that Kitty, without a mother’s example or the companionship of siblings, might have grown up to be a rather spoiled and wilful young lady. Yet she had eluded that fate. If cheerfulness were a mask she wore, it was one that had become inseparable from her face. Rising once again, she proposed a walk.

  ‘Come along, Ferdy,’ she called to the monkey, still hunched over the silver bowl, and when he failed to respond she gathered him into her arms. He let loose a burst of staccato squeals; whether in protest or pleasure was hard to tell. I followed monkey and mistress back down to the hall and through the house. We had stepped into the garden – scene of the night’s drama a month ago – when from the side of the house we heard the clatter of hooves and Sir Martin came into view astride a high-stepping hunter. By the time we had walked over he had dismounted and his groom had taken charge of the steaming horse. Sir Martin squinted at me as we approached, hands resting, teapot-like, on his hips.

  ‘How d’ye do, sir,’ he said, offering me his gloved hand. There was about him something equine, too, perhaps in the long jawline and the pronounced tendons in his arms and neck. Even his teeth looked strong and horsey.

  ‘David and I are going to take a stroll in the Gardens, Papa,’ said Kitty.

  ‘And this is your chaperone, I suppose,’ he replied, nodding at Ferdinand, who crouched mutely between us.

  ‘Oh, I think we must leave Ferdy here. I have a distinct impression that he is not unanimously admired.’ I couldn’t mistake the pert look which accompanied this remark.

  ‘Bring him in, then,’ said Sir Martin, and we three followed him back inside the house. We passed through a suite of reception rooms on the other side of the hall before we reached a commodious study-cum-library, with an iron-framed gallery running around its walls. I had seen libraries before in which the books seemed to slumber on the shelves, perfectly undisturbed by their owner. Not this one; the atmosphere it inhabited was one of scholarly preoccupation. On a stacked trestle huge leather-tooled volumes lay open, and in one splayed text I caught sight of tiny pencilled marginalia, the evidence of close study. In one tottering cairn of books on Sir Martin’s desk I spied the gilt-lettered names of Darwin and Galton, and another that had recently become inescapable: The Inferior Race by Montgomery Sprule. I was at liberty to absorb this whilst Sir Martin searched his desk for the key to Ferdinand’s cage, situated in a far corner.

  ‘Ah . . . careless of me,’ he muttered, plucking a bunch of keys that depended from a lock in the wall. I couldn’t help noticing it was a safe.

  ‘Now David knows where the family jewels are kept!’ cried Kitty in mock alarm, and we laughed. The monkey was promptly conducted to his cage and secured therein. She proffered another nut through the bars, and the creature took it without comment. We were on the way out when Sir Martin called to his daughter.

  ‘Kitty, be back in good time. Remember we have Douglas and his family coming to dinner.’

  We made our exit along the lawn and through an ancient door almost hidden from view by the curtain of russet creepers on the garden wall. We emerged into the park just as the sun began to hide itself in the clouds, though the temperature was still mild. Kitty had fallen uncharacteristically silent, and I ventured a guess as to why.

  ‘Who’s Douglas, may I ask?’

  Colouring slightly, she gave me a sidelong look. ‘Oh, his family and mine have known one another for years. He was at the dinner you attended – you recall a fellow of about six-and-twenty, with a pinkish complexion and blond hair brushed back off his forehead?’

  I remembered him. It was the man who had aimed a violent kick at the poor devil we had run to ground in the Elder garden. ‘You are particular friends?’

  ‘Not exactly. He happens to be one of a small company of men Papa considers eligible.’

  ‘I see. And by what standards does he judge this . . . eligibility?’ I had a strong intuition that ‘personal charm’ would not count amongst them. Kitty sighed.

  ‘It’s mainly to do with family – breeding, I suppose. He has a dread of people marrying outside of their class.’

  ‘Ah . . .’

  Kitty perhaps heard a note of scepticism in that brief syllable, because she hurried on to explain. ‘He takes the science of it rather seriously, I’m afraid. There’s a word he uses – what is it? – hypergamy.’

  ‘What on earth is that?’

 
‘I think it essentially means “marrying above oneself”. Papa believes that the masses should wed only amongst their own, otherwise it will damage the integrity of the superior class.’

  I was starting to realise what an influence Sprule had had on her father. Theories of evolution were frequently in the news, and Darwin’s death last month had reawoken debates concerning Natural Selection. But then perhaps Sir Martin’s wariness admitted of a simpler explanation: a man of great wealth would naturally strive to protect his only daughter from fortune-hunters. I now recalled Kitty’s light-hearted complaint that the men she usually accompanied into dinner were wizened elders with gout. She associated with no one who might take advantage of her, in other words . . . though clearly the paternal protectiveness did not extend to me. Probably Sir Martin thought me a youth of such inconsequence that I did not represent a danger. I felt a question being begged, nevertheless.

  ‘And if the attraction runs the other way? That is – if the well-bred person should conceive a predilection for an inferior?’

  Kitty looked thoughtful. ‘Well . . . it would be sad if love were thwarted . . . But is an encounter between people of such different societies very likely?’

  ‘It is not unheard of,’ I said carefully. ‘The search for love can take strange directions. And it seems to me quite difficult enough without throwing the obstacle of breeding before it.’ She looked at me then with great solemnity, as if we were sharing in some profound truth, and I decided to laugh it off lest she turned the matter personal. ‘But why talk of this? We are neither of us about to plunge into the marital abyss, I think.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she replied, though I sensed an anxiety about that prospect still clouding her horizon. Perhaps this Douglas was recommending himself to her more insistently than I knew; there seemed nothing of the shrinking violet about him. We had walked as far as the Serpentine, where a few rowdy youths on the edge were daring one another to immerse themselves. Kitty paused to watch them splash about for a few moments, and chuckled in happy amusement.

  ‘Fun and games,’ I said, for want of something better.

  ‘Mm. Actually, that’s rather pertinent to what I’d like to discuss. You recall Mrs Abernathy from our dinner last month?’

  ‘I do indeed,’ I said, trying to reconcile the idea of ‘fun’ with the august personage she had named.

  ‘She and her husband are patrons of several charities, as you may know. Well, she has enlisted me in her latest venture, called the Social Protection League. It’s a kind of experiment, I suppose, to take the city poor on improving excursions to the country, where they may breathe fresh air and take their leisure in the open spaces. You see, I recall what you said at dinner – about the poor deserving to enjoy their lives rather than worrying about their subsistence. Even for just a day, this will surely be of benefit to them.’ She was looking at me earnestly. ‘Do you approve?’

  ‘If it is as you say, I could not possibly disapprove. But this charity must have considerable backing.’

  ‘Oh, it does. Mrs Abernathy’s as rich as a Jew, and I know that Papa has put up some of the money, too.’

  As she described it, this ‘experiment’ did appear to derive from a spirit of philanthropy. City-dwellers whose existence had been confined to mean, ill-ventilated tenements and close-packed streets would at last be enabled to sample the joys of open countryside, to inhale air that was clean instead of sooty. ‘It seems a capital idea. But – how may I be of assistance in this?’

  ‘Ah, that’s just it. The charity has decided to launch the scheme in Somers Town, it being one of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in London. And I thought that you, having worked there, might wish to observe the salubrious effects of rural recreation on the people. If all goes well, you could write about its progress for Henry’s paper.’

  That did not seem an outlandish proposition. Even if it did not accord with Marchmont’s laissez-faire sensibility, it would probably find an audience with Rennert. I asked her when they proposed to implement the scheme.

  ‘The plans are already afoot! There’s a list of sixty or seventy locals who have applied for the inaugural outing a few weeks hence. As I understand it, a train will take us from St Pancras Station to a meadow somewhere in Bedfordshire, where food and entertainment will be provided for the day. I would only need to tell Father Kay that we’d like to join them.’

  I might have known there would be a catch. ‘Father Kay?’

  ‘He runs a parish in Somers Town – I thought you might know him. He will be taking charge of the excursions.’

  ‘I see. Should we expect to be led in prayer?’

  Kitty took the question innocently. ‘I suppose we might . . . but it’s not a religious charity, if that’s what you’re thinking. He just happens to be on the board.’ She must have detected a slackening in my enthusiasm, for now she said, ‘It will be quite informal, of course. You could bring that friend of yours along – the one you’ve talked about?’

  ‘Jo? Unlikely, I think. He’s never been outside of London.’

  ‘What, never? Well then, all the more reason to invite him. And it will be on a Sunday, too, the day of rest.’

  I shook my head. ‘Sunday is Jo’s busiest time.’

  She digested this information, and said, ‘Someone else, then? I’m sure you have other friends who’d enjoy a day out.’ Even that modest estimation of my acquaintance was quite mistaken – in London I knew barely anyone to call a friend – but I was too proud to admit it. My hesitation seemed to alarm her, and she grasped my sleeve. ‘Please say you will come.’

  I was too touched by her supplication to refuse. ‘Yours to command. We shall be company enough for one another.’

  She beamed her gratitude. ‘I am greatly relieved! I don’t know whom I should have turned to if you’d declined.’

  I knew. ‘Ferdinand?’ – which earned me an outraged giggle and a schoolmarmish slap on the wrist.

  The following Friday was Jo’s birthday, and he was holding a little celebration, as custom demanded, upstairs at the Rainbow. In the weeks preceding the event I had been puzzling over what gift I should bring. The simplest course would have been to stop at the Home and Colonial Stores and buy sweetmeats or a bottle of gin and a screw of ‘baccy’, but I was minded to give him something of more lasting value. He didn’t read (I wasn’t sure how well he could read) so a book would be of no use, and, his beloved knife excepted, he was unsentimental about trinkets or silver, being more inclined to sell things on than keep hold of them. I had all but forsaken this quest when, the day before, I happened to turn off Upper Street into a quaint narrow lane of shops previously unknown to me. Outside one of them stood a rocking horse, as though tethered there, and I found myself staring into the window of a most wondrous old toy shop, of a sort I never thought to exist any more. I concede that the glassed display was strictly intended for a child, but I found myself transfixed by this Aladdin’s cave of jack-in-the-boxes, black-eyed dolls, mechanical gewgaws, dioramas, magic lanterns, intricate miniature galleons inside bulbous bottles, lead soldiers in the livery of redcoats and Roman legionaries, all illumined in the soft glow of the gaslight. But what captivated my gaze was an item perched high in one corner, its articulated form so enchanting – so strangely hilarious – that I knew instantly it was the gift I was meant to give Jo.

  I did have second thoughts, on the night, with that beribboned box resting in my lap as the ’bus bumped down the hill towards Euston Road. Would Jo really see the charm of what was, incontrovertibly, a toy? Perhaps my unease derived rather from consideration of the smart togs I wore. I could not exactly fathom why I should have dressed up for the occasion, but now that I was earning a weekly screw the price of a new suit of clothes seemed no longer prohibitive. The brown worsted which the tailor had made up for me still felt like someone else’s, someone smarter, and the boots with cork soles would not have disgraced Marchmont himself. I stepped off the ’bus at St Pancras to give my legs a bit of a s
tretch, and as I walked through the Brill the last of the stallholders were packing up for the day, the cobbles still green from their leavings. I recognised most of the costers, so often had I traipsed up and down these streets.

  My misgivings were well founded. No sooner had I entered the upper room of the Rainbow than I ran straight into Jo, who hooted with laughter. ‘It’s Champagne Charlie!’ he cried, looking me up and down. ‘Some old uncle took a blinder and leave yer ’is h’estate?’

  ‘No . . . It’s just a suit, one you’ve not seen –’ But Jo, deciding that I must have inherited a fortune, was singing over my defensive reply: ‘All round the town it is the same / By Pop! Pop! Pop! I rose to fame! / I’m the idol of the ba-a-a-armaids / And Champagne Charlie is me name.’

  Nell and Nora, his giggly familiars from the last time I was here, were at his shoulder, and the pianist, overhearing a popular soubriquet, obligingly tinkled out the notes to ‘Champagne Charlie’. And so the whole room joined in, and I kept my head bowed so as not to draw attention to myself as the object of Jo’s chaffing. He had now picked up a tray of half-and-halfs from the bar and, over the music, was signalling me to follow him. I edged through the scrum of Friday-night revellers to reach his table, where sat a whole company of people I’d never met before, all of them singing. Jo, depositing the drinks, turned and whispered in my ear: ‘They’re singin’ your song!’ I thought he was about to continue his teasing and introduce me as ‘Charlie’, but he took pity instead and called out, with his mitt on my shoulder, ‘This ’ere’s Davie.’ A beery chorus of greetings rose up. There was one amongst them, of course, I already knew, and she was watching me with her disconcerting feline stillness. ‘You go and sit by me sis,’ said Jo, and I needed no further prompt. Before I did so I handed Jo his box with a ‘happy birthday’.