In the second round, Carter grew angrier. He was landing one blow to every two of Jack’s. Although his punches were heavier, Jack seemed to throw them off easily, though Laschmann’s face stiffened as each one landed. The crowd began to enjoy itself. ‘Hit him, Joe, or go home,’ someone yelled. ‘Put him out of his misery, Jack,’ someone else called out.
When that round was over, Lily wondered whether Jack had asked Gerry to indicate that the match would be over in the third.
Carter came out for that round attacking in earnest. In a clinch, he pummelled mercilessly at Jack’s back. As the referee pulled them apart, he managed to drive his glove hard into Jack’s stomach. The referee couldn’t see this but the spectators could. There were groans and shouts. Jack, winded, stepped back, his face still, his lips in a thin line. Though his breath had gone, his feet still served him. He managed to make Carter circle him, punching and missing, until the impact wore off. Then he closed, giving Carter a powerful right, then a left, to the jaw. As the other man reeled, trying to recover, Jack moved in again, drove his left elbow into Carter, just above his belt, then stepped back, closed in again and hit the other man with four short punches, each to the point of the jaw, right, left, right again and then left. Carter dropped to the ground. During this whole manoeuvre, which took no more than ten seconds, Jack’s body, feet and hands had moved in perfect rhythm, each step, each blow looking as if it had been choreographed. It had been, as the commentators later observed, a classic finish, even if an elbow had been involved.
The crowd was on its feet, cheering. Before Carter had been counted out, Jack was out of the ring, scarcely puffing, and at Lily’s side.
Grasping her hand, he began to pull her up the steps to the exit. They ran through the doors to Commercial Street, where the bare-chested boxer and Lily in her stage dress luckily found a passing cab. They dropped into it.
‘The Tivoli,’ cried Jack, and as they set off he was on her instantly, lying across her as she leaned back in the seat, kissing her wildly. Lily felt his warm lips and his warm bare chest. She threw her arms round him, pressed her lips to his. He pushed her back until she was lying along the seat with her feet off the floor of the cab, and he was lying right across her. The voice inside her asking, ‘What do you think you’re doing, Lily Strugnell?’ was soon silenced. Lily knew what she was doing. She was giving herself, body and soul, to Jack Finlay, a man she didn’t know, a man she had not even spoken to.
There was a full house that night, and Lily was nearly late. She ran on stage, with the manager cursing under his breath, and sang her heart out. Even her moves were better. For a while she could not see Jack in the audience. The lights were too bright. Then, to her astonishment, she caught sight of him in a box near the stage with a group of men in evening dress who seemed to know him. An opera cloak was thrown over his shoulders.
He was waiting for her at the stage door, as she knew he would be. She had frantically taken off her greasepaint and struggled into a street dress after the performance and, less than five minutes after that, she was running down the corridor to the stage door, barefoot, carrying her shoes. She had been too impatient to put on shoes and stockings.
Jack was leaning out of a cab. She pushed through the crowd outside the stage door. He pushed open the door and hauled her in. The cab set off. He began to kiss her again. ‘Where are we going?’ she gasped.
‘Not far. A house belonging to a friend of mine.’
They drew up in front of a huge and splendid house in Grosvenor Square. As their cab arrived, a carriage stopped outside the front door. A group of tall men in silk hats and opera cloaks descended. At the same moment the big double doors of the house opened.
Jack pulled Lily up the steps of the house ahead of the others. They entered a vast hall, tiled in marble. A staircase led upwards.
‘Kingman,’ said one of the men who had come in behind Jack and Lily, ‘show Mr and Mrs Finlay up to the blue room – quick as you can.’ There was a murmur, and the manservant who had opened the door to them moved ahead and began to lead the way. Jack followed him, pulling Lily behind.
‘See you at breakfast, Jack,’ called a voice from downstairs.
Jack and Lily followed the servant’s stiff, black back along a wide, red-carpeted corridor hung with paintings. There were chandeliers overhead. The servant stopped outside a high, gilded door, which he opened. ‘Your room, Mr and Mrs Finlay,’ he said. As they went in, he closed the door quietly after them.
The walls of the large, high-ceilinged room were pale blue. Heavy gold curtains hung at the windows. Chairs stood by a vast white marble fireplace. Against a wall was a great bed with a carved and gilded headboard. It was covered by a rose-coloured spread.
As soon as the door closed, Jack forced Lily back across the bed, spread-eagled himself across her and began to kiss her. ‘You’re mine,’ he muttered. ‘You’re mine. You’ll never be anyone else’s now.’
It was all too fast. Lily tried to struggle up. Jack prevented her. ‘You don’t want to get up. Don’t move. Don’t talk. Don’t say anything.’
With his lips on hers, he began to undress her. ‘Not so fast,’ Lily said. ‘Jack…’
He looked down at her. ‘Never done it before?’ he asked. She shook her head. ‘Then you are all mine,’ he told her. Lily’s body moved towards his. ‘Ah,’ said Jack Finlay. ‘My Lily.’
Chapter Nineteen
1903
‘Oh, you can’t,’ Emily Preston said to Elizabeth Armitage. ‘You can’t let them send you there. You haven’t even seen it. It sounds utterly, completely awful.’
The two girls sat in a little grassy hollow on the rough common opposite the school, the spot where they had often gone over the years to eat toffee, chat, read and laugh unobserved. On the other side of the rocks which formed part of the bowl, about five feet across, in which they were sitting, a party of junior girls were talking, out of sight. But inside the little hollow they were quite private. It was late afternoon, but the sun was still bright. A lark sang overhead.
Elizabeth stared helplessly at Emily. ‘I can’t do anything else,’ she said. ‘It’s all arranged. I can’t stay here and I can’t go home. What else can I do?’
Elizabeth, now sixteen, was due to leave school that term. Three days earlier Miss Tully had called her to her study to announce that, at the instigation of Harriet and Robert Warren, she had arranged a post for her as a pupil–teacher at Fallowfield, a school for girls near Peebles, on the Scottish borders. ‘They are very keen to have you at Fallowfield,’ Miss Tully had said, ‘And it’s an excellent school. I wish myself you could have stayed here longer and then proceeded to an institution of higher learning, a college or university. That of course would have given you a higher qualification, but I gather finance is a consideration, and that being the case, you could hardly do better than Fallowfield. I wrote an excellent recommendation for you, and gladly.’
She concealed her embarrassment as she looked at the tall and now beautiful girl sitting opposite her. There was much she could not say. The evening before, she’d spoken to Dorothy Hamilton-Gordon over tea in her sitting room. ‘That hair,’ she’d said despairingly. ‘Those extraordinary eyes – and her cleverness. I can’t imagine her wearing out her years as a teacher at Fallowfield. Not that it’s a bad school…’
Dorothy had said bluntly, ‘The girl should be going to a university. She has amazing dramatic gifts too. She has astonished everyone at the Mountview Play since she first arrived.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Tully. ‘But I’ve spoken to Mr Warren, as you know, and he insists there is insufficient money, that Elizabeth must begin to earn a living as soon as possible. When he asked me to find her a post at a school, I felt I had no choice.’
The two women stared at each other, understanding each other’s thoughts. They had met the Warrens on the two occasions when they, with Bella and their two daughters, had visited the school. They had noted Harriet Warren’s expensive clothes, the bou
ncy Frannie and Cora, Robert Warren’s contented and prosperous air, and Bella Armitage’s worn widow’s weeds and pale complexion. They had seen countless pupils and parents over the years, and the history of the Warren household was, to their experienced eyes, as plain as if it had been written on the school wall in letters three feet high. Elizabeth had been sent to school because she was not wanted at home, and now she was about to leave school the family wanted her in a residential post far away.
Miss Tully remarked bluntly, ‘It’s the old story of the wicked uncle. Do you suppose there’s money involved?’
And Dorothy responded, ‘It wouldn’t be surprising – there often is.’
‘Warren is Elizabeth’s guardian,’ Miss Tully said. ‘I can’t question his decisions. Only her mother can, and evidently she cannot or will not. Fallowfield is the best I can do.’
When Miss Tully broke the news to her, Elizabeth stared wide-eyed at her headmistress, saying, ‘Peebles? But I never said I wanted to go to Peebles.’
Miss Tully, shocked that the plan had not been revealed at all to Elizabeth, had only been able to say, ‘You must discuss this with your family, Elizabeth, but please remember that if you have any doubts or worries about your career in future, we will always be ready to help and advise as much as we can.’
Elizabeth sat dumbfounded. She had assumed she would leave school, return to London and find a teaching post there. She also assumed that the headmistress was solely responsible for sending her to Scotland. So, silently blaming Miss Tully, she repudiated the offer of help by rising and saying stiffly, ‘Thank you. I shall write to my uncle and ask him to help me find a post in London.’ At this point Miss Tully realised that Elizabeth did not know Robert Warren was the instigator of the plan. She suspected that Elizabeth’s appeal to him would fall on deaf ears, but there was little she could do or say.
Elizabeth wrote instantly to her mother, saying that a mistake had been made at the school. Miss Tully had found her a job in Scotland, but she did not want to take it and was sure she could find employment in London, where they could be together. She made the error of saying that when she had done her pupilship and was a qualified teacher, with perhaps a higher salary, they might be able to consider taking a little home together. Bella, of course, showed the letter to Harriet, Harriet showed it to Robert, and the result, by return of post, was a letter from Bella, mainly dictated by Robert, saying that she wanted Elizabeth to take the position in Scotland, to stand on her own feet and make a career for herself. That was when Elizabeth began to suspect that the job in Scotland was not a mistake made by Miss Tully, but in all probability the result of a request from her uncle.
Letters at Mountview arrived and were distributed before breakfast. As the school clattered into the refectory, Elizabeth was upstairs, writing a note of appeal to Bella: ‘Please, please, Mother, let me come home.’
When she received this letter, Bella’s suffering was indescribable. She first asked, then begged her brother to allow Elizabeth back. Robert Warren, standing before the drawing-room fireplace, simply repeated what he had said all along: ‘Elizabeth has her way to make in the world. She must stand on her own feet.’ Now he added, ‘The headmistress of Mountview has arranged a post at a very reputable school. She will get an excellent training.’ So Bella cried unavailingly. She was pressed into writing yet another letter to Elizabeth giving her uncle’s view. But, feeling very nervous, she also wrote a second letter, full of love and terror, and posted it secretly the next morning: ‘I so much want you here,’ she wrote, ‘but you know I cannot oppose your uncle, as we are both dependent on him. One day we will be able to be together, I know.’
As she was writing this furtive note, Robert and Harriet, in their bedroom, were discussing matters in lowered voices.
The problem was the old one. Number 53 Linden Grove belonged to Bella, who had been persuaded that in order for her to have the protection of her family, and so that she and Elizabeth would not starve, the Warrens should move in. Many years had passed since a law had been introduced to allow married women to retain control of their own money and property. Even before that change in the law, a widow had always inherited what her husband left her, but the general sense that women owned nothing and that men managed everything still prevailed with Bella Armitage. It had suited the Warrens to foster this helplessness, but Robert and Harriet knew that Elizabeth, evidently intelligent, growing older and about to go out into the world and earn her own living – and already suggesting taking Bella from under their roof – might begin to ask questions and find out the truth about the ownership of the house and the administration of her own and her mother’s funds. The results could be very uncomfortable, worse if Elizabeth revealed publicly what had been going on.
Robert Warren had become over the years at Linden Grove a respected figure in the neighbourhood, even the borough. He was a churchwarden of St John’s, a pillar of the local Conservative Association, and on the verge of becoming an alderman. It was not impossible that one day he might become Mayor of Kensington, even stand for Parliament. He had encouraged people to believe that he was supporting a widowed sister and her child. Although his family dealings were not criminal, revelations of what had been going on over the years could affect his reputation. The only way to prevent Elizabeth from finding out the truth was to keep her as far away as possible.
Now Harriet said to him cautiously, ‘I think in a year or so we might consider moving. Bella could come with us, or not, as she chose.’
Robert sat up in bed. ‘I don’t know why you say that,’ he challenged in an angry tone. His wife turned from the dressing table. ‘This is our house now that I have taken care of it, repaired it, maintained it, improved it. I see no reason to move. Elizabeth has never been anything but a source of trouble and disruption in this house. Now she has managed to disturb Bella, filling her with childish excitement about their living together. As if a sixteen-year-old pupil–teacher could be in a position to support her mother.’
‘Bella has a little money of her own,’ murmured Harriet.
‘Be quiet, Harriet, I want to go to sleep,’ said Robert furiously, lying down again. ‘Elizabeth has a post in Scotland, that’s all we have to think about. There’s no need to start talking about moving. I’m damned if I’m going to allow a sixteen-year-old to affect our lives in any way. The thought is absurd.’
‘I can’t go home,’ Elizabeth told Emily in a mournful tone. She lay down on her back and looked up at the cloudless blue sky. Since her mother’s last desperate letter had arrived, she had been tearless. She knew the truth. Her uncle and aunt would do anything to keep her out of the house and away from her mother.
‘You must do something,’ urged Emily.
‘But what?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘No – it’s no good. I just have to go to Fallowfield. When I’m a fully qualified teacher, perhaps I can rent somewhere for my mother and me to live.’
‘You could come and live with me and my aunt in Surrey,’ Emily said. ‘They have schools in Surrey. Aunt Sarah likes you. She’d agree.’
‘My uncle wouldn’t. He’s my guardian until I’m twenty-one.’
‘But surely—’ Emily began, bewildered.
‘My uncle wants me as far away from home as possible. Surrey is too close. I’m sorry, Emily,’ Elizabeth said, ‘but someone like you can’t possibly imagine what he’s really like. When you meet him he seems all right – but he’s not. He’s my guardian; I’m a girl of sixteen with no money and nowhere to live.’
‘Oh – Elizabeth,’ wailed Emily.
Elizabeth shut her eyes. ‘Do be quiet,’ she said. ‘I just want to enjoy today. And I want to see if I can remember my part.’
Elizabeth was playing the lively Kate Hardcasde in She Stoops to Conquer, to be shown next day to the whole school and the evening after to invited guests – local dignitaries, the school governors, the staff, and parents of the pupils.
She was unaware that as she lay in the grass, giving herself
up to her fate, Dorothy Hamilton-Gordon was in the staff sitting room, making a terrible fuss about what was happening to her, or that from that fuss her salvation would come.
Tea cup in hand, the teacher was striding up and down the pleasant sitting room, declaiming, ‘It’s perfectly outrageous, as you’ve said yourself. So why not at least let the girl have a chance?’
‘Because,’ the headmistress said, ‘we have no right to override the wishes of the parents and guardians of the girls, much as we might wish to do so.’
‘You mean, you don’t want the other parents to find out we’ve done so.’
‘Exactly,’ said Miss Tully. ‘If they think that instead of educating their daughters we’re trying to influence their lives in ways the parents don’t like, they will take their girls away. Let me be blunt, Dorothy – I run this school, as you do not. It is my living. If Mountview collapses you can go and find another post. You are young. But I will not get another school. I cannot afford to upset the parents.’
A vase of roses stood on the polished table by the window. Swinging round, Dorothy Hamilton-Gordon jogged the table. The vase rocked and nearly fell over.
‘I’m extremely sorry for Elizabeth Armitage,’ Miss Tully continued steadily. ‘I wish there were some way of changing her guardian’s mind about her future. But I’ve written to him, he’s replied; his attitude is unaltered, and that’s as far as I can go.’
‘It’s just as well, then,’ said Dorothy Hamilton-Gordon calmly, ‘that I’ve taken it on myself to invite a friend from London, a theatrical manager, to come to see Elizabeth in She Stoops to Conquer. I’ve suggested to my friend that she might offer her a post with the company.’
Miss Tully was very startled. ‘On the stage?’
‘Yes. Elizabeth is very talented, as you know. My friend is Constance Albury, the daughter of the late Sir Hector Albury, the actor-manager. Miss Albury has a lease on the Imperial Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue and mounts her own productions.
Elizabeth and Lily Page 20