The Urchin's Song (37 page)

The sunlight lit up the fairytale coach with dazzling beauty and the blue sky overhead, so everyone was saying, was a good omen for the new King’s reign.

‘Oh Josie, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.’ Gertie’s little face was brick-red with elation, and she and Constance and Ethel - who had linked arms and were standing just in front of Mrs Wilde and Josie - couldn’t keep still as the coach and fine plumed horses rolled by. ‘How Oliver could prefer to look from the windows at his club rather than be here with us, I don’t know. He’s missing the best part.’

Josie couldn’t have agreed more and although she wouldn’t have said so, not even to Gertie, she had been hurt and surprised at her husband’s refusal to join the rest of the household on the streets. She couldn’t help thinking that if this occasion had taken place when they had still been courting, Oliver would have been at her side. And then she brushed all thoughts of her husband out of her mind, and began to shout her head off with the rest of them.

They were all hoarse by the time they wandered into Hyde Park where many informal picnics, along with organised games for the children, clowns, jugglers, street magicians, Punch and Judy shows and other forms of entertainment, were in full swing.

Josie smiled as she watched her sister, along with Constance and Ethel - like three bairns let out of school for the day, she said to herself - deciding what memento of the day they were going to buy with the two half-crowns she had slipped each of them. The scattered stalls amongst the trees were selling everything from tiny male and female dolls in full state costume and small, beautifully painted wooden coaches, to fine framed pictures of the new King and Queen. But all the time, even as she enjoyed the day in the cold February sunshine with the others, Josie was keeping half an eye open for Lily. She couldn’t bear to think of the other woman scratching a living of sorts on the streets - if, indeed, it
had
been Lily Nellie had seen. But the few facts Mr Webb had gleaned thus far did point that way. According to the information he had been given, Lily had fallen down some stairs and hurt herself, ‘whilst under the influence of intoxicating liquor’, which had effectively finished her stage career, and after leaving the infirmary, having sold virtually all she had in the way of clothes and jewellery to meet her debts, she had disappeared. That had been over nine months ago and no one had seen hide nor hair of her since.

Oliver was waiting for them when they got home - ‘With a face like a wet weekend,’ Gertie whispered in an aside to her sister before she left Josie to face her husband alone and slipped off to the kitchen with the others. But instead of the lecture Josie had half expected on the foolishness of spending the whole day in the company of the servants, rather than returning home straight after the procession had finished, Oliver had merely maintained a cool and somewhat distant manner whilst Josie changed and got ready for the first of her evening performances. He drove her to the theatre as usual, escorting Gertie and herself to the dressing-room door, but then he said, ‘I shall not be home until very late tonight, my dear, so please don’t wait up for me.’

‘Oh?’ There was a question in her tone although she knew where he was going. He had cut down on his visits to the gambling houses he frequented when she had asked him to in their courting days, but he had made it plain that he couldn’t give up the ‘sport’, as he called it, completely. It was in his blood, he had told her quietly a few days after their engagement; he came from a long line of gamblers, although his great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather and grandfather had been very successful in their pursuit of the cards and so on. Unfortunately his father had been a foolhardy and irresponsible gambler and had lost everything his ancestors had obtained. However, his father’s example had served as a warning to his son, and although he liked to try his hand now and again, he could assure her his gambling was the only vice he would carry over into his married life.

Oliver had said this with a twinkle in his eye before he had pulled her into his arms and kissed her, and at the time a little dabbling at the gaming houses occasionally had seemed unimportant.

It still was unimportant, Josie assured herself now, watching her husband disappear down the corridor which led to the back door of the theatre. After all, what Oliver did with his private allowance was nothing to do with her.

As her agent, Oliver dealt with the financial side of her career and, as her husband, he did likewise with all the bills and accounts, except those directly concerning housekeeping which Josie, as mistress, settled herself with Mrs Wilde.

Josie and Oliver had agreed it was sensible they both had their own personal allowance which Oliver drew monthly from the bank, and Gertie too now had her own income which was paid to her by Oliver at the same time. Oliver had been a little vague about the amount the agency cleared each month, explaining that owing to the business he was in - one in which clients were in and out of work all the time - it could fluctuate wildly, but he had led Josie to believe it was considerable. And as she was now earning over forty pounds a week - which princely sum Oliver had assured her would rapidly rise in line with her popularity - she knew their bank balance must be extremely healthy.

Of course there were the maids’ and Mrs Wilde’s wages, but at £20 each a year for Constance and Ethel, and £80 for the housekeeper, these were not excessive. Oliver always went to great pains to point out that their domestics were fed and housed far better than most, but even so Josie didn’t think he was overly generous. It might be true that the standard of comfort for servants was poor and that in many of the larger stately homes three or four people were crammed into tiny attic rooms, and admittedly Mrs Wilde had her own, very pleasant room at the back of the house with Constance and Ethel sharing a smaller one next to it, but knowing that both Constance and Ethel came from large poor families she still wanted to pay the girls more. To that end she had got into the habit, since becoming mistress of Oliver’s home, of slipping each of the girls two large bags of groceries when they visited their families on their afternoons off once a week. She hadn’t attempted to keep this a secret and she suspected Oliver was well aware of the practice, but to date he had not challenged her on it.

However, he
had
mentioned, at fairly frequent intervals, the exorbitant costs involved in running the household. The rent alone was three hundred pounds a year, he’d declared more than once, and when added to rates and taxes, their personal allowances, wine, coal and light, the servants’ wages, washing, normal household bills, and garden and stable expenses, it meant they could not live extravagantly.

The last time he had spoken thus, Josie had suggested they should consider moving away from the town centre and into the suburbs. In the last decade Middlesex, Essex and Surrey had seen large population increases mainly consisting of middle-class families, according to the
Illustrated London News
, and in an inner suburb such as Edmonton or Clapham (called the ‘capital of Suburbia’ by one contemporary critic) a ten-roomed house, such as they were living in now, could be rented for less than £3 a week, perhaps no more than £2.

Oliver had been horrified at the proposal, and to Josie’s insistence that the suburbs brought cleaner air, more light, larger gardens and a healthier way of living, he had countered that a price couldn’t be put on a fashionable address such as his. Didn’t she understand that a move to one of the areas the growing class of white-collar workers inhabited would not benefit his business? Two ‘his’s and not one ‘theirs’, Josie reflected now.

‘You all right, lass?’

Josie turned from the silent empty corridor to see Gertie standing in the doorway to the dressing room. ‘I’m fine.’ She smiled brightly. ‘We had fun today, didn’t we?’

‘Aye, aye we did an’ all.’ Gertie hesitated. She wanted to ask again if Josie was all right, if she was happy, but she didn’t like to. It was none of her business, after all. Gertie did not admit to herself here that it was less a matter of tact and more that she felt she might not like a truthful answer which prompted her discretion. She was well aware that she had done everything in her power to promote Oliver’s course, and also that since his return from honeymoon he had begun to display . . . what exactly? A different side to his character, perhaps. One he had kept hidden through the courtship.

But he loved Josie, Gertie reassured herself silently, standing to one side for her sister to precede her into the noisy room which was a hive of half-clothed bodies, gaudy costumes, clouds of smoke from long ivory cigarette-holders and the cloying scent of Eau de Cologne. And as her husband as well as her agent, Oliver had an extra vested interest in getting Josie to the top. Top billing. Gertie frowned thoughtfully. It was the one thing everyone dreamed of in this business, whether they admitted it or not. Your own dressing room, everyone bowing and scraping . . .

And then she swung round and followed Josie, who was already sitting at her stool, into the room, closing the door behind her.

 

It was over six weeks before Josie received the news she had been hoping for as to Lily’s whereabouts, and by then she had almost given up hope of ever finding her old friend.

However, in the first week of April, Mr Webb called at the house in Park Place one morning when Oliver was out.

He was full of apologies after Constance had shown him into the morning room where Josie was sitting with Mrs Wilde sorting out the next week’s menus. ‘I know you told me to contact you at the theatre, Mrs Hogarth, but the stage manager informed me you have been indisposed?’

‘Only for the last two evenings, Mr Webb. A sore throat, nothing more, but the doctor advised prudence. I shall be singing again tonight.’ Josie smiled at the small man in front of her. She had liked him on sight, mainly, she supposed, because he reminded her so much of Frank. He was stockier than Betty’s husband had been, and slightly taller, but he had the same perfect ears for propping a cap on and the same kind eyes, and his whole face was remarkably like the late miner’s. He looked very tough too, which Josie had found reassuring, and he smoked a clay pipe which, the first time Josie had met him, looked as though it was burning the end of his nose.

‘You have some news for me?’ she asked once he was sitting, rather uncomfortably it seemed, on the very edge of a low divan facing her chair. Mrs Wilde immediately excused herself and bustled away to arrange a tea tray.

‘Indeed I have, Mrs Hogarth, indeed I have.’ But then he hesitated a moment or two before he said, ‘I trust you won’t be distressed by what I have to say, but I’m afraid Miss Atkinson is in rather a bad way.’

‘She’s in hospital somewhere?’ And then, even before Mr Webb spoke, Josie told herself that was a silly question. From what Nellie had seen, Lily didn’t have two farthings to rub together, so the only place that would take her would be the workhouse infirmary. Josie knew that Lily would rather be six foot under than set foot in one of those places. She remembered Lily waxing lyrical more than once about her old granny and grandda who had ended up in the workhouse back in Newcastle, and the misery Lily had seen when, as a small child, she had visited them there once a month with her mother. ‘Granny in the women’s section, looking like a walking corpse, and Grandda crying his eyes out in the men’s bit,’ Lily had said soberly. ‘Me ma had used to cry an’ all on the way home, but with twelve of us in a two-roomed cottage and the floors seeping sewerage and the walls running with water, she couldn’t have had them at home. But by, I tell you, I’d rather kill meself than go in there.’

‘No, no, she’s not in hospital, Mrs Hogarth.’ Mr Webb cleared his throat once or twice before easing his thick neck out of its white collar. How could he explain the circumstances in which he had found this lady’s friend? Mrs Hogarth was obviously a well-to-do lady; she probably had little idea of how the other half lived. ‘Frankly she would be vastly better off if she was. No, she’s living in a tailor’s house in the East End. Apparently this man’s wife took pity on your friend when she found her lying in the doorway of their house one night, but before that I understand Miss Atkinson was carrying the banner every night.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Carrying the banner describes those who are condemned to walk the streets all night,’ Mr Webb said hastily. ‘The poor unfortunates are quickly moved on by the police if they fall asleep in a public place so once the parks open their gates at about five in the morning they’re down on the benches and asleep whatever the weather. Of course there are those who never wake up again,’ Mr Webb continued quietly, ‘and without exception they are in poor health due to the lives they lead, but most of them prefer it to the workhouse. Your friend, it seems, had collapsed; but for Mrs Howard taking her in she wouldn’t have lasted much more than a night or two.’

Josie stared at him. ‘Does she know I have been looking for her?’

‘No, no, Mrs Hogarth, don’t worry on that score. I was very discreet so as not to frighten her away as you instructed. However . . .’ He cleared his throat again before continuing, his tone flat, ‘The area is not one with which you are familiar, I’m sure, and the conditions are - Well, not to put too fine a point on it, they are foul, Mrs Hogarth.’

Josie’s face was white now but she said, ‘Go on, Mr Webb, and before you say any more I’d just like to explain that I’m not unaccustomed to poverty however my present circumstances seem. I was born into it as it happens so don’t worry about shocking my finer sensibilities.’

Mr Webb made no comment on this but rubbed his hand hard over his mouth before saying, ‘The place is a sweatshop, Mrs Hogarth. There is a three-relay system in practice - each bed being shared by three workers who have the right to occupy it for an eight-hour shift so that the bed is never empty. Any children sleep in the spaces below the beds; they cannot do as much work as the adults, you understand?’