by David Waine
*
Their first port of call was Miller’s Court, a poky little bolt-hole off Dorset Street, reached through a black, sooty archway, barely wide enough to admit the pair of them side by side.
“I live in there,” explained Mary Jane, pointing to the murky hole in the blank wall of brick facing them. “I rent a room.” Her youth ensured that she had a more regular supply of punters than her older associates, so she could afford to rent a squalid little room on the ground floor, rather than be homeless and sell herself for the price of a flea-bitten bed in Malkin’s doss house, where the filth lay piled on the floor and every corner stank of piss.
Joseph Barnet could not imagine a less inviting place to call home. “In there?” In the ever-thickening mist it looked even more miserable and ominous than it usually did. A cut-throat could lounge in the archway and still not be seen.
“It’s not so bad,” she shrugged, “once you get inside. “I sweep it out quite regular.” She paused, biting her lip. “Thing is, though, when I told you I was short for me lodgings, I was telling you the truth. I am behind. Work’s getting hard to find just now and it don’t pay well. Landlady’s got it in for me. Beats me with a switch, she does, when I don’t pay regular and she says she’ll throw me out on the streets if I don’t cough up this week. I don’t want to ‘ave to doss at Malkin’s.”
Barnet nodded slowly, reading more into her words than she really intended. “I get yer,” he said.
“No, you don’t,” she said hurriedly, recognising his reaction with a small start of panic. “I’m not beggin’. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can. That devil’s swept the streets clear and there’s no livin’ left for girls like me. What else can I do? I’m in real trouble, Joseph.”
A pang of guilt dispelled the small surge of suspicion that she was attempting to use him. He placed an apologetic hand on her shoulder and looked her closely in the eyes. “You’re all right with me, Mary Jane,” he said softly. “I’ll look after yer. I got a spare room in me lodgin’s and you can ‘ave it for yourself. I’ll find you some proper work on the market. I work at Billingsgate and there's always jobs goin'. I’ll ‘elp yer get on yer feet and be respectable.”
Her eyes were wide in wonder. He fancied that he could see the whites surrounding the corneas in the darkness, the reflection of a distant street lamp flickering in the pupils. “You’d do that for me?” she gasped in amazement.
He looked long into her eyes and smiled. “Tell you what,” he said, taking both her hands in his. “Get what you need now and we'll go to my place. It’s not far. Brick Lane. In the mornin’ I’ll come back and pay yer arrears, so the old dragon’ll keep your room open and you can move back in once you can support yourself.”
Tears were starting in her eyes again, but these were tears of wonderment, not terror. “How can I ever repay you?” she croaked.
“By startin' again. By leadin' a good life. By being the woman you was supposed to be,” he said earnestly. “That’ll repay me with more interest than money ever could.” Although darkness clouded his face, she could sense the ingenuousness of his expression. A sudden wave of warmth swept through her.
Never had she been made such an offer. Men wanted only two things from her. Usually it was sex in whatever manner that their twisted fancies took them, sex with no more meaning than two animals pounding one another like slabs of meat. Less frequently, but still too often, it was to use her as a punch bag, mainly after having had their wicked way with her first. The more perverted the first action, the more likely the second. Men who resorted to such things in search of brief gratification were not usually inclined to be considerate afterwards. That was why she always insisted on payment in advance, like any other girl. Even then, she did not always keep it. Many a time she had hauled her battered body out of the gutter to find her purse had been rifled while she was down. For a man to want only to be kind to her, was beyond belief. Until that moment, she had not believed in her heart that such men existed any more. She hesitated in wonderment before throwing herself into his arms in the sort of hug that she had not given since she was a child, tears of gratitude streaming down both cheeks.
“Right then,” he said, holding her by both shoulders as they broke apart, “let’s get your stuff.”
“Quietly, though,” she admonished. “The old witch has ears like a bat. If she hears anything, she have the bobbies round here like rats, and they don’t ask too many questions of the likes of me.”
“Silent it is,” agreed Barnet. “She won’t have let your room, will she?”
“Nah,” Mary Jane shook her head. “I’ve got till Friday. I’m only a couple of weeks behind. There’s plenty nights I don’t come home, ‘cause I’m, well…”
He nodded. “Come on, then.”
Together they stole through the dark archway into the tiny court beyond, she fishing in her bag for her key. The court was almost as dark as the archway had been, hemmed in as it was by high walls on all sides. No lights showed, other than a glimmer of moonlight, diffused by the mist, in the rectangular patch of night sky visible beyond the high roofs. Someone had once tried to combat the inherent murk of the place by whitewashing the walls, to retain as much of the light that ever penetrated there for as long as possible. It may have had some marginal effect during the day, but it made no difference at night. It was dirty and peeling, flaking away in many places and festooned with grubby cobwebs. The whitewash had not been renewed in years.
They stopped in front of a shabby door, more bare wood than faded paint. There was a dirty window, obscured by a spider’s web, next to it. Mary Jane fitted her key into the lock and turned it. It opened with a soft click.
“Careful,” she whispered, “it creaks a bit.”
It did, but only slightly, and a moment later they were both across the threshold and the door had closed behind them. A musty odour reached his nose, dust and old clothes. He stood still in the darkness while she bustled about. A moment later, she had drawn a rough curtain across the window and lit a solitary candle on a table before it from a box of matches that she kept hard by.
As the candle flared, a soft golden light filled the room and Joseph Barnet beheld, for the first time, the world of Mary Jane Kelly. The room was small, twelve feet by eight at most. Much of it was taken up by her bed, visible beneath the rumpled pile of spare clothing and threadbare blankets. Besides the plain wooden table before the window and a small, rickety dining chair, there was no other furniture. Decoration consisted of a couple of cheap coloured prints that she had picked up for next to nothing on the market. One showed the baby Jesus with his mother, Mary, and the other a fresh-faced young girl smiling in a sunny country scene, the sort of vision that Mary Jane dreamed of every night, but never saw. There was no provision for cooking or washing in the room. All of her possessions, apart from the bed, the chair and the table, which were probably not hers anyway, would have fitted into one small bag.
Picking up a handful of grubby clothes from the bed, she turned to him and said, “Right, I’m ready,” whereupon she blew the candle out, reopened the curtain and made her way past him back into the court.
Following her out, he pulled the door to while she locked it. Immediately there was a sound from above.
A voice, like gravel sieved in icy water, threw itself at them from an upstairs window. “Mary Jane! Are you there? Is that you? Where are yer, yer dirty little whore?”
“Let’s go,” she hissed, “before the old witch sees us.”
It was too late. A window was thrown up above them and a candle held out of it. “Are you down there, you filthy slut? Where’s my rent?”
“I’m earnin’ it, yer old bat!” Mary Jane threw back at her from the middle of the court. “Can’t yer see I’m workin’? Yer’ll have it in the mornin’!” Turning again to Joseph Barnet, she whispered, “Run!”
They did not have far to run, for the old woman made no attempt to pursue them. Once through the dingy ar
chway, they both paused, suppressing guilty giggles, like naughty children who had just escaped a grown-up with a belt.
“Right then,” she laughed. Lord, how long it was since she had last laughed? “Here's the spare key,” she handed it over. “You'll need it if you're to come back and see the old cow. Where did you say you lived?”
“Brick Lane,” he replied, taking her arm. “This way.”
Although Brick Lane sounded as if it belonged even further down the social scale than Miller’s Court, the reverse was true. Whereas Mary Jane’s shabby room was in a squalid little square, Joseph Barnet’s street was a major thoroughfare, which hosted its own street market. Here doorsteps were scrubbed daily and window frames repainted regularly. The curtains across them usually matched and were properly hung, which was not the case in Miller’s Court.
They stopped in front of a black door and Joseph fished in his pocket for his key. Fitting it into the lock, he turned it and held the door open for her. Passing into the dark passageway beyond, she found herself facing a dim flight of bare wooden stairs.
“Entrance hall’s not too invitin', I live upstairs,” he explained. “First door on the right at the top. It’s better up there. Trust me.”
She did. She had been in much worse places than this with strange men, and lived. Together they climbed the staircase in the darkness. There were no candles or gas mantles to light their way. Like most East Enders, they were well used to groping their way around in the dark at night.
Opening his own door, he held it wide as she passed through into his lodgings, from which a soft, reddish glow emanated. She stopped and heard him follow her, shutting the door behind him. He did not lock it.
A soft hiss reached her ears and her nose detected a distinctive, sharp smell before the match scraped and the room suddenly flared with a greenish glow, which broadened into bright light as the gas mantle caught and grew.
“There, I got gas,” he announced, indicating his lodgings with a wave of his hand. “What do you think?”
Mary Jane stared round in amazement. The room was at least twice the size of hers, and although simply and cheaply furnished, it presented a level of comfort, even luxury, that she had not known since her fall into destitution. There was a proper table with two matching chairs, another chair and a sofa in front of the hearth, where a small fire crackled warmly. There were cupboards in the walls and two more doors suggested further rooms beyond.
“That one’s the kitchen,” he told her, pointing to the left-hand door, “and the other one leads to the bedroom. There’s a washstand in the corner by the bed. Proper bathroom is along the corridor, but we have to share with two other families. It’s all right. We wash our clothes in the washhouse down the back and the privy’s in the yard.”
She was dumbstruck. She simply stood where she was, staring in amazement. Besides the superior furnishings — superior to hers, that was — what really overwhelmed her was the fact that the place was clean. Not only did it look clean, it even smelt clean.
“Landlady’s daughter sweeps it out for me every morning,” he explained, “and she gives the walls a wash down once a week. All part of the service, in with the rent.”
Mary Jane silently compared that with her own landlady, who never cleaned anything and beat her mercilessly whenever she fell into arrears. Until that night she had counted herself lucky that she had a room to go back to, instead of sharing a fetid doss with whatever else nested there. Now she saw her little bolt hole for the rats’ pit that it was. Joseph Barnet was far from wealthy, but he was respectable and he enjoyed a standard of living forever denied to her. He lived among decent people who cared about him and offered a genuine service in exchange for his money. Less than an hour previously, she had been fleeing for her life. Now she stood in the home of a working man, a man who could afford a separate bedroom and gas mantles, and who had invited her to stay without the usual considerations. The worst hour of her life had just become the best, and it was all too much for her. She felt the raw emotion rising in her throat, and at the back of her eyes, and it was irresistible. She sank onto the nearest chair, her head hanging on her chest, and wept copiously.
He crouched beside her, his hand on her shoulder. He knew why she was overcome and he was filled with compassion. “There now,” he said gently, “you’ll get used to it. It ain’t so wonderful really, but it’s got to be better than Miller’s Court.” She nodded mutely. “Come on,” he went on, rising to his feet and crossing to the left hand door, the one that led to the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on. Nice cup of tea, that’s what you need.”
Ten minutes later, she sat in the same chair with a steaming mug of dark, strong tea clutched in both hands. He sat opposite her on the sofa, cradling his own mug. “You can have the bed,” he announced. “I can sleep in here on the sofa. Done it before when folks have come to stay. It’s comfortable enough and I got plenty of blankets. We’ll both be warm. That’s the main thing.”
She smiled at him through her tears. How long was it since she had experienced anything like this?
The hour was past two in the morning. Mary Jane Kelly, stripped down to only her shift, less than she had worn in weeks in spite of her profession, lay in his bed, fully awake, staring at the ceiling. Her eyes were wide and a quiet tear rolled down her cheek to the bolster. For her life to turn round as it had, and in such a short space of time, was simply beyond her capacity to understand. He had been as good as his word. He had fed her and given her this wonderful room with its own cosy bed, while he dossed down on the sofa. She could hear the creaking of its springs as he twisted and turned in a fruitless search for comfort.
Suddenly guilt crushed her. She could not let him thrash about in the next room while she lay warm. Somehow she had to repay him for his kindness, and there was only one way that she could. She had nothing else to give him but herself. She knew in her heart that he would not refuse her. All men had their needs. That was how Nature had made them, and that was why her sort existed. The difference between him and the others was that he was gentle with her. For the very first time an unthinkable thought crept into the back of her mind and lodged itself there, the notion that she might one day be known as ‘Mary Jane Barnet, respectable woman,’ fluttered briefly before her and ignited a tiny, glowing spark of hope in her soul.
Rising from the bed, she passed through to the parlour to find the squirming lump on the sofa still struggling for rest. He stopped as he saw her approach.
“Can’t you sleep?” he asked.
“I know you can’t,” she answered, crouching beside him and taking his hand in hers. “You’ve done too much for me already, Joseph. I hardly know yer and already you’ve given me a new life. How can I ever repay you?”
“Well, you can start by getting a good night’s sleep,” he responded gently.
“That’s just it, Joseph,” she smiled back at him, the fading firelight twinkling in her eyes, “it don’t seem fair, do it? A man should sleep in his bed, not on a sofa.”
Understanding her, he raised an admonitory hand. “I told you, Mary Jane, you don’t need to…”
“I know that,” she said, taking his hand and pressing it to her heart, “and that’s not what I’m doing. Not now. Not this time. You’re a wonderful man. Believe me, I don’t meet wonderful men every day. Most of the men I’ve ever been with weren’t nothing like wonderful. I will make this worth your while if it’s the last thing that I do. I’m givin’ myself to you, and you alone, freely out of my heart. Please come to bed.”
Without another word, she raised her shift over her head and discarded it in the floor. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pressed her lips softly to his.