The Misadventures of Margaret Finch, page 21
For a brief moment Hughes looks up at her. Perhaps Margaret imagines it but she thinks there is the hint of a nod before she turns back to Harrisson, curtseys and leaves the room. ‘Indeed! Do you take sugar?’ he says, once the door is closed again.
‘No, thank you.’ She is really having to concentrate now, to remind herself that he is her superior.
He takes a report from a drawer in his desk and she sees it is her own. ‘So, Margaret, I wanted to tell you how impressed I am with your work on Davidson. Quite a coup to get such access to the most infamous man in Britain. And though, ordinarily, I might say that it goes slightly off brief – that it is focused rather more on him than on the public’s perception at times – I think it’s an important piece.’
‘Thank you.’
‘James is a big fan of yours, as I’m sure you know. He told me I should take a look at this and as soon as I read it, I was desperate to ask you more.’ He adds a little more milk to his tea. ‘The thing is, it is not at all what I expected.’
‘Oh?’
‘The purpose of research is to look for patterns, to predict behaviour, to find certainty in apparent chaos. I’d assumed they’d all enjoy such a bawdy story. Moral standards are demonstrably low amongst the working classes. I thought they would be cheering him on – especially in Blackpool. But, according to your report there was some unpleasantness. Some criticism? And your findings were that people were split on the subject of his guilt.’
‘Yes.’
‘I find that curious. You’ve gone to pains to understand their thought processes. All these notes in the margins, you could almost make a compelling case for his innocence, but do you really think anyone buys it?’ She wants to snatch the folder from his hands. ‘Are they really that gullible?’
‘Gullible is not the word I’d use.’ Though it is. It’s the word she hears inside her head, the word that has taunted her since she saw that photograph and realised how naïve she had been to trust him. ‘Davidson is a very interesting man,’ she says. ‘I can understand how people got drawn into his story.’ She understands that better than anyone. ‘There is a lot of evidence in his favour. The public don’t like to see injustice and no matter his guilt, the trial was not conducted fairly.’
‘You could be onto something there,’ Harrisson says, flicking through the pages of the report. ‘He is a symbol of something more. They choose to believe him.’
‘Perhaps. Though I get the impression it has less to do with their belief in him and more about their lack of belief in the system.’
‘Ah yes,’ he says. ‘People in less fortunate situations like to blame those with privilege. It’s always someone else’s fault. On the face of it, Davidson is very different from them, but he is critical of the Church, of the elite, and so they take his side. A much deeper level of critical thought than I would expect from them. And, may I say, a very insightful observation on your part. Was there anything that surprised you about your findings?’
This is a question she has not considered before. ‘I don’t know … I …’
‘I find it odd that a man like that could have got away with it for so long. He’s not exactly a Valentino is he?’
‘It was never a question of attraction,’ she says. ‘Not on the part of the women anyway. He had the money and the position to make their lives easier.’ The words are coming out now and she is too late to stop them. ‘In all my weeks of observation, barely a single person showed any concern for the prostitutes. I doubt anyone can even remember their names. While the newspapers have been reporting Davidson’s every move, not one of them has questioned what has become of the women he took advantage of.’
‘Or perhaps we might say the women who took advantage of him!’ he says, with a grin. ‘So, what are you suggesting, Miss Finch?’
‘That we should consider their view of things.’
‘Hmmm. I suppose you’re right.’ He pauses. ‘Society is like the sea, is it not? Most of it is uncharted by science. We should be diving down to explore the very depths to see what life-forms we find.’ Is this what she has been working for all this time? Is this the man she admired? ‘As you undoubtedly know,’ he says, ‘I am an anthropologist. I have studied the cannibals of Borneo, and now I am studying the cannibals of England.’
‘Cannibals?’
‘The working classes. Perhaps you could visit some of David-son’s old haunts tomorrow. Take some accounts on what the women there have to say about him.’ He looks at his watch. ‘You won’t have time to fit it in before your train. But I’m sure you wouldn’t object to another night in the hotel. Cast your net in Soho, Miss Finch,’ he says. ‘But be careful. God only knows what sort of deprivation these women are living in.’ He shivers, but not with disgust, she thinks. With delight.
32
There is no rush. No panic to get there. No deadline to meet. She thinks she is safe to assume that prostitutes keep late hours; it is unlikely most of them will have woken yet, so she returns to the hotel to rid herself of the carpet bag and change her clothes. She did not have time to wash before leaving this morning. Her haste to make it to Harrisson’s house made her sweat, and even after she had finished her tea and Hughes had shown her back out of the front door and into the fresh air outside, her skin continued to itch with anxiety, as if she could feel the salt crystallising onto its surface. Explaining to the receptionist that she intends to stay for another night, Margaret is insistent that she would rather return to her unmade room than wait for housekeeping to prepare another for her. All she wants to do is climb into the bath and make herself clean.
It is after midday by the time she makes her way across central London, having spent an uncharacteristically long time styling her hair and checking her reflection in the mirror. She knows she is stalling, unsure what she will say to these women even if she can find them. Prostitutes aren’t going to want to waste their time speaking to a young woman, and miss out on the opportunity to engage in a contract with a man. The fact they are selling their bodies does not shock Margaret in the least. She wonders if perhaps it should. But it seems to her a much more honest way of approaching the transaction: the perameters clear, the rewards explicit before any bargain is made. In romantic arrangements the contracts are based on hope, on trust, on expectation, and, from what she has overheard, are very often broken.
She takes a route along Brompton Road, past Harrods, and picks up the path that cuts across the south-eastern corner of Hyde Park. There is quite a crowd of bathers at the Serpentine. Some swimming, others drying off in the sunshine on its banks, and a few who, she assumes, have no intention of getting their costumes wet and have merely come to ‘look the part’. She stops awhile, pleased to see women among them (just a few years ago they would have been fined for swimming there), and surprises herself with a brief desire to jump in herself. Already her dress is beginning to dampen and cling to her skin. With no sea breeze to cool her, the heat feels stifling.
Keen to stay under the shade of the trees, she takes a longer route through the park, emerging at Speakers’ Corner where a middle-aged woman addresses the crowd about the Daughter of God. Her passion is clear but her words can hardly be heard above the heckling crowd. Margaret doesn’t stop to listen. She is walking towards Marble Arch, the spot where Davidson first met Barbara. The details were given in court, they were reported in the newspapers, and he told her all about it himself, unembarrassed to relay the story of how he approached a young woman late at night. Proud of his charitable actions.
She heads east along Oxford Street, without slowing now. She does not pause to look in any windows, barely pays any attention when she turns off and passes the London Palladium. She could enjoy the riches that London has to offer, and delay her arrival in Soho a little longer. But she won’t. She wants to get there now. She wants to hear what the women have to say about him. She wants to hear that she was not the only one to be taken in by Davidson’s stories.
Fresh flowers are displayed outside the entrance to Liberty. The scent is familiar: the store Mother would bring her to twice a year as if it were a pilgrimage. They would make notes on the latest fashions; browse, but always buy second-hand elsewhere. She walks on and just a few streets behind it the world is transformed. The lanes become narrower, shop awnings on either side blocking out all but a thin strip of sky. They seem to trap the air below, heavy with the smell of exotic foods and the sounds of sellers who call to her to buy. Very suddenly she is navigating through market stalls, past piles of fruit she is unable to name and displays of spices the colours of clay and terracotta. She should stop and eat. A café on the corner advertises ‘two eggs and a rasher for 1/9’ but she can’t stop or she might lose her nerve. It is necessary to harness the energy inside her, which she knows to be anger. She wants to know it all now; gather every detail about Davidson to fill the space that had been taken up by his lies.
Men in caps and trilbies stand in small groups, smoking and laughing. They do not pay her any attention as she passes, too busy putting the world to rights. There’s a theatre on the next corner, advertising showgirls. Margaret sees a well-dressed couple studying the poster-sized photographs on display. The boy standing guard in front of the ticket office looks bored. He can’t be much older than ten or twelve years old, his usher’s hat slipping down over his eyes as he stoops to pick at his fingernails.
It is as if the street is divided. In the centre, it is daytime, the sun amplifying the pitch of every colour; but along the edges, underneath the awnings, it is twilight and it takes time for Margaret’s eyes to adjust. She sees them in the shadows. She sees them in doorways and in the passages that run between the buildings. Painted red lips. A head of hair so blonde that it is almost white. She sees eyes rimmed with dark make-up and others barely visible behind the netted veil of a hat. She had expected to find pathetic cases, undernourished bodies, ragged clothing. She had expected to find desperation and despair. But they look like film stars, wearing their femininity as self-consciously as a man might flaunt his wealth. They are arranged in angles: an elbow leaning against a wall, a head held to one side on an elongated neck. Their bodies are posing questions: Do you want to buy? What are you prepared to pay? Some call out to men as they pass by but others feign disinterest.
‘Excuse me.’ Margaret approaches a tall woman. It is still only lunchtime but she is dressed for an evening at the theatre: a rich plum-coloured dress which is cut on the bias and clings to the curves of her body. Her sunglasses are an incongruous addition to the outfit and, Margaret concludes, totally unnecessary in the gloom. She is not fine-featured enough to be called pretty, but she is attractive, or gives the impression of it, having augmented what nature has bestowed upon her. Margaret can smell her perfume, which must have been applied liberally, competing as it does with the haze of smoke that surrounds her. The woman smokes a cigarette in a short gold holder and takes a draw on it before she turns to Margaret and raises a single pencilled eyebrow.
‘I wondered if I might ask you some questions,’ Margaret says, both envious and intimidated by her poise and indifference. She has a self-assurance that is captivating; a woman who understands the power her body possesses and is not afraid to harness it.
‘Listen, darlin’…’ As soon as she speaks the fantasy is shattered. It was illogical, but Margaret had imagined she would hear the accent of an American actress, a woman as well-spoken as she is well-dressed. But her accent is East London: dropped consonants and confused vowels. The disconnect between appearance and reality only makes Margaret admire the illusion more. ‘You want my advice? Part-timers aren’t exactly welcome. We’ve worked hard to establish ourselves …’ Sunglasses Woman thinks she is asking for advice on how to work the streets? Margaret is shocked by the suggestion. But it is not moral indignation she feels, it is disbelief. She is not offended that she might be mistaken for the kind of woman who would use her body to extract money out of men, rather, she is amused by the thought that men would be prepared to pay. She can’t even compromise herself for free. Not even with a man like Davidson. The memory of her humiliation pricks at her, but her current situation is so ridiculous that she cannot help it: she finds she is grinning. ‘Forgive me,’ she says, composing herself, in case her amusement is mistaken for condescension. ‘I’m not … I wasn’t clear. I wondered if I might ask you about a man who used to visit here.’
‘Oh, I see,’ the woman says, her demeanour softening. ‘Look, I’m sorry if your fella has been going elsewhere.’ She touches her arm so gently that Margaret can barely feel it. ‘Take my advice. He’s not worth it. Very few of them are.’
‘No. He’s not mine,’ Margaret says. ‘Harold Davidson. Do you know him?’
It is Sunglasses Woman’s turn to smile. ‘The randy rector? We all do. Well, did. It’s been a while.’
‘Yes – he’s living up north now,’ Margaret says, encouraged that the conversation is on the right path. ‘Did you read about his trial?’
‘To start with, yes. A bit of it. But it was all nonsense after a while. The lengths men will go to, eh?’
‘All those lies to persuade everyone that he was innocent.’
‘To persuade them he was guilty!’ She is laughing now.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’
Sunglasses removes the stub of the cigarette from her holder and replaces it with a new one. She is taking her time. Enjoying holding Margaret’s attention. ‘Couldn’t get it up, could he?’ she says at last, lighting the cigarette. ‘Ask any of the girls round here. It was common knowledge. Was always hanging around but when it came to it, he couldn’t keep up his end of the bargain if you know what I mean. He just liked people to think he could.’
Margaret has overheard enough conversations to understand. ‘You mean he didn’t actually …?’
‘Don’t get me wrong – he thought about it often enough,’ she says, savouring her latest cigarette as if she hasn’t had a smoke in days. ‘He was a pest.’ She calls to another woman who is standing a little further up the street. ‘You seen Claudette lately?’
‘Not for a while,’ she replies. ‘She’s moved. Took up that empty room on Old Compton.’
‘That’s right,’ Sunglasses says, turning back to Margaret. ‘Come on, it’s Claudette you want. Follow me.’ Margaret does as she is instructed. Keeping up as she weaves a path through stalls and sellers, she is greeted by people as they pass, in recognition of some imagined friendship. ‘It’s one of these.’ Sunglasses looks up at the window above a shop whose sign advertises ‘Algerian Coffee’. ‘Claud!’ She shouts so loudly and so unexpectedly that Margaret jumps, but no one else pays her any attention. ‘Claud. It’s Norma. You up there?’
Norma. So that’s her name. Margaret realises she hasn’t asked her: so used to identifying surveillance subjects only by their appearance or their behaviour. She’d been preoccupied with which word she would use to denote Norma’s occupation. She’d settled on ‘prostitute’, deciding that was the most official job title. But the word seems insufficient to describe her.
‘Claudette! For God’s sake! Someone here wants to speak to you. Could be worth your while.’ There are no signs of life from the rooms above. Norma turns back to Margaret. ‘She can’t say I didn’t try. Maybe you can come back later. I can’t afford to stand here waiting—’
They hear the creak of a window being lifted, and look up. ‘What is it?’ An irritable shout from a woman leaning out on the first floor. Her hair is unbrushed and she is wearing a light blue nightgown in a sheer fabric doing little to hide the shape of her body beneath it. ‘You woke me up,’ she complains, picking at her eyelashes to dislodge the dried remnants of sleep.
‘That’s gratitude,’ Norma calls back. ‘I took the time to bring this reporter to see you. Wants to ask you some questions about—’
‘Oh, I’m not a reporter,’ Margaret says.
‘Speak up! I can’t hear you,’ Claudette shouts. ‘You want to ask me some questions?’
‘Yes.’
‘Better be worth my while. Meet you next door in quarter of an hour.’ She slams the window shut without waiting for an answer, and disappears. Margaret turns back to Norma, whose sunglasses have slid down her nose, revealing a swollen eye, the inside corner dashed with a purple bruise. It makes Margaret think of the pieces of over-ripened fruit on the market stalls, hidden at the bottom of the display, turned to hide the softened parts.
‘That’s what you came for,’ Norma says, catching Margaret staring. ‘Makes sense now. Have a good look then.’
‘I … What do you mean?’
‘The sob story.’ She pushes her sunglasses back into place and walks away. ‘We’re either angels or demons. It’s always one thing or the other with you lot.’
33
She has to keep her wits about her, stand her ground, hold her position. She lists these phrases in her head as she stands and waits. The pavement is narrow and people are rushing past, not looking where they are going, eyes hidden by the peaks of caps and the brims of hats. Margaret is waiting for a stranger called Claudette with no idea of who she is or what she might be able to tell her about Davidson. But perhaps this will be an end to it. Perhaps she will get the answer; the answer that she wants. Because Norma had said that Davidson didn’t have sexual relations with the girls he was accused of taking advantage of. That he couldn’t. And that would mean there is a lack in him, not in her. That would explain why he pulled away and rejected her – not disgust with her but disappointment with himself.
She could go inside and wait but it is safer out here. By the time she realised that the ‘next door’ Claudette was referring to was The Admiral Duncan, it was too late to argue. She has not been inside a pub since the night she confronted Davidson. Even out here on the street she can hear the sound of glasses being laid on the wood of the bar. Her mouth moistens at the thought of taking her time to choose, watching the landlord prepare her drink, feeling the weight of the liquid in her hand. It’s the thrill of stepping close to the edge of a cliff; the possibility of losing her footing and falling.
