The Misadventures of Margaret Finch, page 7
STRANGE! BUT TRUE!
(in other words) the whole case against
THE RECTOR OF STIFFKEY!
was conducted in the strangest manner it is possible to conceive of & it is quite
TRUE when we say that everyone is puzzled by the very strange happenings!!
‘Designed it myself,’ he says, noticing a spilt dollop of jam on the tablecloth, wiping it up with his finger and licking it off. ‘I had copies printed. There are questions to be asked and the answers will be very illuminating.’ She studies a cartoon strip drawn rather crudely on the bottom. ‘My accuser – my sole accuser, Barbara Harris – being paid £1 7s 6d a week pocket money whilst the case was in progress,’ he says, tapping his teaspoon on the sketch of a stick man and stick woman shaking hands.
‘You think they bribed her?’
‘They backed her into a corner. If she refused to testify, she risked losing the help she was being given. In court they cast me as a predator when, in fact, my only role was protector. The young ladies I helped were in dire need of moral guidance. They did not have the strength of character to look after themselves. I ask you, did Our Lord Himself not extend the hand of kindness to Mary Magdalene? Did I not have a duty to follow His example?’
He continues in this way, answering questions which she has not posed. Margaret stares right at him, willing him to look up again. But he doesn’t. Instead he talks and eats and gestures around the room. She should be trying to memorise every detail but she can’t keep up with the sense of it. All she can think is that a guilty man would not go to so much trouble, or put himself through so much humiliation. Surely he would have gone quietly. As she understands it, he was given every opportunity but refused to step down.
‘My fellow clergymen proclaim to follow Christ’s example but when it comes to going into battle on His behalf they choose to stay in the safe havens of their parishes,’ he says, the words tumbling out between mouthfuls of cucumber sandwich. ‘The Church cast me out and we will make sure the world hears of it. And it will hear of the hidden and shameful lives that those young girls are forced to endure. A class of persons, numbering thousands, compelled to exist under degrading conditions, haunting the streets like painted vampires.’ He looks at her finally, to make this point, but it is no more than a glance this time. ‘Those are the very words I spoke in my first sermon after I was accused. I arrived to my parish to find the church packed to the rafters. They were standing six-deep at the back. Motor-coaches had brought parties from Wells. A contingent of the British Legion had marched from Blakeney. A newspaper man counted fifty cars parked near the church. I stood before them and posed a question that day: were they, I asked, taking their part in raising those whom life had dragged down?’
‘It must be a great source of regret that—’
‘Miss Finch, I cannot regret the circumstances in which I find myself. I can only rejoice that my suffering is bringing the plight of the forgotten and the neglected to the fore. I trust in God that the truth will out.’
With that he checks his watch, takes out his wallet and removes two ten-bob notes. ‘My treat,’ he says. ‘I have a tendency to ramble on but I hope you can extract something from it. Get a sense of the story.’
He winks at the waitress and makes a show of sliding the banknotes under his side plate, before getting to his feet.
‘One thing I wanted to ask you—’
‘Next time. Must dash. I do hope you will look in on me in the barrel sometime soon, Miss Finch. You can always wait for me backstage. Just ask for Uncle Harold. Oh, and you can keep the postcard. A gift from me.’
10
Smoke is rising from the chimney on the top of the barrel. Margaret has come to regard it as a signal to her alone. A message from Davidson, that he is still staging his protest, still resolute in proving his innocence. Logically, she knows he has no idea that she is there. But she feels a kind of responsibility to watch over him and, besides, she does not sleep well, dreaming as she does of crawling insects and disembodied feet. Venturing out to observe Davidson’s arrival most mornings gives her a reason to leave her boarding house before the others wake. Though, in reality, she needn’t hurry: she often finds herself waiting for ten, fifteen, even thirty minutes before she sees him dashing along the pavement, a hand planted on his top hat to stop it flying off his head.
In many ways, his confinement makes him the perfect subject. She can watch without having to hide. From that simple smoke signal she can decipher the exact time he steps into the barrel, the precise moment he leaves. As far as she can tell, there is barely a moment that he is not smoking a cigar. The only cessation is when he is forced to discard an old one and light a new.
It is two weeks since he arrived in town and the crowds are only just starting to thin. Margaret has not been formally assigned to write a report on his show, but James did suggest – no, insist – when Davidson first arrived that she should find out what the working classes made of such a man. So, she has made a point to come back every day since. And though she would not admit it (even if she had someone to admit it to), she would come anyway. She is determined to unravel the truth of his purported guilt. She is determined to solve him.
She suspects his popularity is the simplest trick of all, a sleight of hand. It is not really the Rector of Stiffkey that the crowds queue to see, it is his scandal. Not the man himself, but an idea invented by the newspapers. They don’t get to listen to the real Davidson, the one Margaret met, because they don’t want the truth. They want a spectacle. But she is different, he said so himself at the Metropole. He sensed that she would give him a fair hearing.
She makes a record of what other people think. There are the usual responses: spectators leave struck by the cramped conditions he sits in, or disappointed that he did not look up at them. The vast majority seem to buy one of his postcards, which they will send to ‘Auntie May’ or ‘Joan and Ronnie’. She knows he takes food in there because she heard a spectator wondering ‘what kind of butty he were eating’ but she has decided not to give too much thought to the arrangements for toileting (noting only that, at intervals, a shutter is pulled across the wire mesh at the front of the window). He is exhibited from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m., six days a week, and Margaret makes an effort to vary the times she comes. Sometimes at night, when the last in the queue are sent away disappointed, she has seen Davidson emerge from a side door of the building and go to various public houses. She has followed him, three times, as far as Bonny Street, a passageway barely noticeable from the main road, where the tiny houses are crammed so tightly that they appear to be holding each other up. On the first occasion she waited ten minutes to be sure Davidson had gone inside, then she turned down the narrow passageway herself. There she found the cobbles strewn with chip papers and smashed bottles; a series of mismatched windows lit by gas lamps, glass cracked, panes partly covered by grey net curtains. Behind them, rooms that made Maude’s boarding house look salubrious by comparison. And as she stood there, she pitied Davidson. In the past he had lived in a rural vicarage with a drawing room, a garden, a servant perhaps. And a wife and children. He definitely had those. Where are they now? she wonders. Presumably respectability is still important to them, even if it has ceased to have meaning to him.
He has no idea she has been following him, she has made sure of that. Only once did she fear he had spotted her, when he turned unexpectedly and looked in her direction. But she saw no flicker of recognition on his face. And was surprised to find that, once the initial wave of relief had retreated, it exposed something beneath. Something stranded, like flotsam. Something like disappointment.
She does not record these sightings of Davidson in her notebook, waiting instead until she gets back to her room, and writing them in her diary. Dates and times. Descriptions of people he speaks to and places he goes. He has found himself in court again since arriving in Blackpool. Margaret joined the crowd outside. Several hundred began to gather nearly two hours before the hearing, standing with little shelter from the heavy rain. When the doors opened, she watched them rushing pell mell up the stairs, and saw several slip and hurt themselves. Only the first few got a seat inside; the rest had to make do with a glimpse of Davidson as he arrived, greeting him with a cheer when he finally made an appearance (fifteen minutes late). The evening paper reported that he had been fined £1 16s for setting up a temporary structure without permission. And on the following morning, she discovered that his barrel had been moved inside a shopfront, where he could operate within the perimeters of the law. If anything, his appearance in court had caused the crowds to swell again. She has seen them turn nasty only once: a few agitators threatening to turn the barrel into the sea with Davidson inside; a woman shouting at people not to hand over their money to a man who has exploited vulnerable girls. Otherwise, the spectators are always excited to get a glimpse. What they wouldn’t give to meet him properly, as she has done. No doubt they’d think her mad not to have paid him a visit backstage, but the longer she waits, the more uncertain she is that he meant the invitation. That he wasn’t simply being polite. And she still cannot decipher what it is he expects from her. Perhaps she should call on him. Perhaps when her Golden Mile report is finished.
She has been methodical in her study of the gawdy catchpenny stalls, the street sellers and the fairground games. And towards the end of every day, when her weary feet begin to complain more insistently, and she longs to leave the eddying crowd, she chooses one of the other sideshow acts to visit. This afternoon she joins the queue to see ‘The Headless Girl’. She has observed that those who advertise themselves as ‘unsuitable for children or ladies of a nervous disposition’ seem to draw the biggest numbers of both. Noting that she has waited for twenty-three minutes, and been warned no fewer than seventeen times that what she is about to see is not for the faint-hearted, she pays her shilling. Then, following the instruction to brace herself to witness ‘the harrowing and the grotesque’ (unsure whether the description is intended as a warning or a promise), she steps through the front door of what would once have been a house.
Discordant music plays from an unknown source, the parlour knocked through to the dining room to create one long gallery. Red curtains cover one wall, a thin man in a dinner suit using a cane to hold back the crowd as it pushes forward. ‘We keep these drawn to give you one last chance to change your mind,’ he says. ‘Many have thought themselves strong enough to stomach the sight and have never recovered.’
At this the crowd laughs a little too loudly. Friends draw closer to each other; a child buries her head in her mother’s skirt. The music stops and there is a moment’s pause before someone replaces the needle on a hidden gramophone. ‘Very well, if you are sure … I present to you a medical impossibility. A girl whom science says cannot exist. And yet she lives! Ladies and gentlemen, The Headless Girl!’
On his cue, the curtains are pulled back. On a dimly lit stage, raised a foot off the ground, Margaret sees it, and for a moment she forgets why she is here, her eyes no longer primed to study the reaction of the crowd. She cannot look away from the thing arranged on a chair. A collection of body parts that makes no sense. Two long legs, one crossed over the other, the seams on their stockings running like stitches down their length, disappearing into black patent heels at one end and a dark red pencil skirt the other. Sitting above them is a body encased in a flesh-coloured blouse that clings to every contour, large breasts shaped by the architecture of a brassiere. Arms are arranged neatly either side, elbows tucked in, one hand lying on the lap of the skirt, the other holding a lit cigarette. But there is no mouth to smoke it. Nothing where the head should be. No neck, no jaw, no hair or face; the void is marked by a metal scaffold that juts out from the neck and supports rubber pipes that spout towards the shoulders. It looks like a cage, without a bird inside. And then the body moves, the legs uncrossing then crossing again, and there is something obscene about the sight of it.
Margaret can picture exactly what sort of head the woman would have; knows her lipstick would be pillarbox red, her hair bleached and arranged into blonde curls. The image makes her think of Davidson. The girls. The accusations. She imagines this is how they looked. Girls like that always do. The men in the room know it too. She turns to see the knowing smiles they pass between them, the shared fantasy that their own wives would have the body of this girl. A body without a head to think or a mouth to scold them. But why is Margaret imagining what she would look like? It is simply an illusion. She just needs to work it out. Most of the sideshow ‘magic’ is so obvious that she can see through it in an instant. But occasionally it takes patience and determination to unlock the secret. And she prides herself on never failing. While others are content to stand and marvel at the spectacle, she works out how the artifice is achieved: the decoys and distractions, the stacked odds, the sleight of hand. While others are blinded to the mechanics of the deception, she alone can see the strings being pulled. She is not suggestible. Not like the rest of them.
‘The remarkable thing is that this girl is normal in every other respect,’ the spieler says. ‘She has been examined by eminent doctors who have confirmed that every other function is in perfect working order.’ The Headless Girl’s hand twitches and flicks the ash from the end of the cigarette. Margaret observes the spectators from the corner of the room. She notes the questions that they ask, the vast majority concerning the practicalities of surviving: the mechanics of eating and breathing. But when she returns to type up her findings later, Margaret will note that there was much whispered innuendo about other functions of the mouth. The experience leaves her feeling that a joke has been told, but she cannot quite understand the punchline.
She considers the scene from various angles. Tilts her head, stands on tiptoes. It is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Her best guess is that the woman’s head is hidden in some sort of mirrored box, built to reflect the onlookers’ fears and fantasies back at them. And suddenly she does not want to linger. Cannot bear to look.
11
As she makes her way towards Shetland Road, Margaret’s stomach reminds her that she has missed both lunch and dinner, her hunger prompting an uncharacteristic urge to step into a fish and chip shop. She finds herself waiting behind an elderly man who speaks so loudly that she can only assume he is deaf. She’d be surprised if any sound could penetrate the rampant growth of hairs that cover the route to his eardrums, and has to repress an urge to tell him to trim them.
By the time they reach the front of the queue she is convinced that the condition has affected the clarity of his speech as well as its volume. ‘Babbys’yead,’ he says, taking a small leather purse from his pocket and pushing the coins around with a poke of his forefinger.
The man taking the order confers with the man wrapping the food, who in turn confers with the man frying it. But all three are at a loss to understand what it is he wishes to eat.
‘Babbys’yead.’ The old man gestures, pretending to cradle a baby with one hand and tapping himself on the head with the other. ‘Babby’s ’ead!’ It’s a shame, thinks Margaret; old age has obviously addled him.
‘How about a nice steak and kidney pudding instead?’ says the man who is serving.
‘Tha’s what I said!’ The old man counts out the correct change on the countertop, turning to Margaret and rolling his eyes. Then making no attempt to lower his voice: ‘These jokers have obviously never been as far as Wigan!’ He shakes his head with a look of wonderment. ‘It’s another world in Blackpool!’
It is, thinks Margaret, then she realises she has forgotten to look up at the board and decide what to order herself. ‘A portion of chips please.’ She is still so distracted by the question of why anyone would want to eat something that resembled a baby’s head that when the server asks if she would like pea-wet with her order, she nods.
It is only as she starts to walk to HQ that it becomes apparent that the hot bundle she has been handed is starting to leak. Green liquid is soaking through the newspaper wrapping and onto the front of her dress. Pea-wet, she realises, must be the discharge that comes off the marrowfat peas that are boiled until they become mushy. It certainly smells like it.
By the time she gets to the front door, strips of sodden newspaper are sticking to her hands. There is a light on in James’s office but, even when she rings the bell for the sixth time, he does not come to let her in, so she bends down and lifts the gnome that stands sentry on the spare key. Though she would never come here after hours herself, she has suspicions that some of the male researchers use the empty building to further their study of the sexual morality of working-class women. Crossing the threshold, she rushes down the hallway with the chips held at arm’s length, keen to get them to the safety of the kitchen dustbin as soon as possible. What a mess! Gravy she can just about understand, and the peas themselves have nutritional value at least, but the water they’ve been boiling in?
She grabs a handful of cloths from underneath the sink and sets to work retracing her steps, cleaning up the trail of green liquid. Though it is not part of her job description, it has fallen to her to keep headquarters clean. It would not occur to any of the men to wash their own teacup or sweep up the sand that they walk in on their shoes. Yes, she hates herself, hates that it merely confirms their view of her, but she isn’t doing it for them, she is doing it for herself. She cannot not bear the chaos to reign and the dirt to fester. Would not be able to concentrate on her report knowing there were puddles of pea-wet on the hallway tiles. And so, on her hands and knees, she does what she always does: she restores order. She crawls across the black-and-white chequerboard, pausing when she reaches James’s office to stand up and turn off the light he has left on. In the dark, the souvenirs in the glass cabinets really do look like artefacts, light from the bulb in the hallway settling on the edges of ornaments and toys. She knows she shouldn’t, but she steps in. There are pieces of paper on every surface, open books lying spine-up on the floor. How can James work in such an environment? It makes her agitated just to look at it. She can’t resist replacing the top on his fountain pen to stop the ink from drying out but, the very moment her hand touches it, she hears a bang. A pulse of air in her ears. A breeze must have slammed the front door shut. She mustn’t have closed it properly when she dashed in.
