In Darkest London · Chapter 6 (1/2)

VI

The Black Plush Coat

When I left the lodging house in Kennedy Court I had no money, and my sole stock-in-trade consisted of the two boxes of matches, which, soaked by the last night’s rain, were now dry. I got them off my hands at twopence each; it was too early in the day to get a better price⁠—men grow more generous as the evening approaches!

I craved for a cup of coffee, but I was stern with myself; I would not run the risk of spending half my capital. I therefore bought four more boxes of matches, and determined to effect a speedy sale. I was not content, however, to accept my failure to get employment as a cook as final. Good cooks are always in demand and, as I have said before⁠—l am an extremely good cook. I regard the production of a well-thought-out repast as a piece of creative work every bit as important as a chapter in a novel, let alone a triolet. Why, therefore, should I be debarred from practising my vocation? Surely this was an occasion when personality should be able to surmount the difficulties arising from the absence of what is known as a “character?”

I sold my matches well that day. I got fourpence for two and sixpence for two, and I bought myself a hunch of bread and cheese and a cup of coffee at a Lockhart’s. The food is very good in these establishments, much better and cheaper than at far more imposing places. It is a question, as Bernard Shaw said years ago, of whether you prefer nine-pennyworth of tablecloth and three-pennyworth of food for your shilling, or vice versa. The service is negligible at Lockhart’s, and the table implements are not at all refined, but your food and drink are both steaming hot, and the company has a rough and ready humour which gives salt to the poorest meal.

I had a conversation with the manageress as to the chances of engaging me as cook. There might, she thought, be a vacancy for a washer-up, but in the higher walks of domestic economy there was nothing doing; it was a matter of a reference once again.

It is a nice point⁠—this discrimination between the washing of dishes and their preparation. In the scullery, it would seem, absence of character does not matter: it is, I suppose, difficult to abstract a soup tureen or conceal a dish. But when it comes to the roasting of joints or the boiling of potatoes, custom steps in with a rigid hand. Alas! there was no admission for me into anybody’s kitchen, save as a hewer of wood or a drawer of water, and both these pursuits were too poorly paid for me to consider; I always went back to the match trade.

I thought it probable that I might find less rigid requirements in the foreign quarters of Soho, where little restaurants jostle small cafés in every street. In the course of my pilgrimage I visited many kitchens where succulent repasts are prepared. Dark underground places, where the temperature is like that of a hothouse and the air vibrates with dramatic directions in the French and Italian tongues. Here again I could have got work as a vegetable maid at ninepence an hour, but the employment would have been irregular, and, as I early experienced, I could make more than that in the fine art of matchselling.

I had already discovered that in Soho you can buy matches by the dozen at reduced rates, but I decided to continue my own methods. I felt that if I laid in a larger stock-in-trade my market would slump, for whether I concealed them about my person or brandished them in the face of heaven, the fact that I had matches in reserve would affect the psychology of the buyer. As a matter of form I called at various Labour Exchanges and registered as a cook. It was a hopeless quest, but I wanted to make sure of my facts. I could, I suppose, have got a situation had I written Annie Turner a reference in my own name. But that would have been loading the dice, and I wanted to go through my adventures on the level. Therefore, I went around characterless, and found every door shut. It is a curious proof of the distrust of their own judgment that neither the officials nor the individuals to whom I applied could persuade themselves that I was not a thief. You will often hear the expression that character is written in the face, but it is only the very few who believe in the value of such testimony. For this reason I was slowly but surely being forced into the permanent calling of street vendor, from which, only by the merest chance, I found an escape.

With what was left after my meal I replenished my stock of matches, and once again made a good harvest. In possession of three shillings, I decided to try an experiment. I would see what could be done in the bar of a public house. In the majority of West End bars, street sellers are not allowed: the advent of a woman with flowers, bootlaces, or any other trifle, always causes a hubbub. The barmaids shout at her, the commissionaire hustles her, the poor thing might be a walking pestilence to judge by the disturbance. This is not a sex question, however; the male itinerant vendor is equally taboo. The objection does not come from the customers, but from the proprietary, and I have never been able to understand the psychological reaction.

There are, however, still a few Christian public houses off Shaftesbury Avenue where street vendors are admitted. I had spotted one of these, and about eight o’clock that evening I decided to stop active business, to buy myself a drink and to look round. The bar I chose was one of those cosy places where you sit on a high stool, close to the counter, which is flanked by a buffet, groaning with good things in the cheese and biscuit line, cold beef, ham and pickles, tomatoes and French mustard. I bought myself a glass of port, biscuit and cheese, borrowed an evening paper and waited events.

Presently a bunch of men came in, all in good spirits, after a day’s racing. Racing men are always kindly and most human, and I felt I was in for a good sale. I bided my time, and, when one of them started fumbling for a pipe, I intrigued the inevitable box towards him.

“Times are hard,” I said, with a sweet smile.

My victim, a tall, bearded creature with blue eyes, gave a sympathetic grin.

“That’s all right, my dear,” he said, and handed me a shilling.

Two of his friends followed suit to the same tune, and I was so pleased that I bought myself another port and some more biscuits.

“You’re doing well, miss,” said the barman. (There are no barmaids in this establishment). “Here, I’ll take a box. Will fourpence suit you?”

I gathered up the money with a rising pulse. For the first time I felt the joy of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest. I began to think there was a great deal in finance. Presently, a man came in selling pocket glasses and powder-puffs. I was not in a position to buy anything, so he waited till a prosperous looking man arrived, and landed him for ninepence. Meanwhile, an elderly woman seated at the other end of the counter left her stool and came towards me.

She was dressed in one of those black, plush coats which seem to go on for ages. Nothing is able to destroy them; fifty years after they are made they still flourish in undiminished vigour, though time depresses their one time glossy look. She wore a battered straw hat with a droopy feather, her complexion was leaden, but her eyes, were large and intelligent.

“You’ve done rather brightly with your matches,” said she.

“Yes,” I answered, “much better than in the street.”

“You’re clever at selling,” she went on, and I could feel her studying me closely. “Will you have a drink?” she asked, and, nothing daunted, I accepted yet another port and further biscuits.

You never refuse anything when you are destitute. It is a mistake not to eat because you are not hungry. As a wise woman once observed to me, “You may want it later.”

“I’ve been watching you,” she went on, sipping her port, “and it occurs to me that we might do business together.”

Here indeed was an adventure! I felt myself on the threshold of a great discovery. What sort of business could the lady of the plush coat have with me?

“You might sell on commission. I’d offer you quite good terms, and you’d find a ready market for the goods.”

She produced a brown paper parcel and showed me a collection of cigarette cases, matchboxes, pencil cases, all of them very neatly made in attractive-looking metal, brightly burnished. I discovered that this class of goods, made in Germany, can be bought wholesale at a very low figure.

“I’ll give you twenty-five percent commission on everything you sell according to my listed price, and fifty percent of all that you get over. You ought to get a good deal over,” she added, “as I say, you can sell well.”

I did a rapid mental calculation, and discovered that twenty-five percent meant threepence in the shilling. Most of the articles were marked at one and three to one and six, with sixpence for the pencil cases. With any degree of good fortune I ought to make more at this than at matches.

“It won’t be any good for you to offer these in the street, my dear; you’ll have to try public houses, and I can’t give you any tips what to do; you seem to have got the tricks of the trade already. You haven’t been at the business long,” she added.

“Not very,” I answered, but I didn’t tell her anything more, and she didn’t ask me. “Meet me tomorrow, outside here at half-past one, and I’ll give you a consignment of goods. If I’m not outside, look for me in the bar.”

I stared at her, a little astonished. “Will you want any deposit?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t do business that way. I chance my luck⁠—and it rarely fails me.”

Subsequently that woman handed over to my care a good few shillings worth of value. And she did not know me from Adam, and quite probably I might have come straight from gaol. But the homeless have their own fashion of determining who can and who can not be trusted. The lady of the plush coat had reckoned me up, and decided I was on the right side. Up to this point⁠—though her appearance was anything but prosperous⁠—I had decided that she was a person with a habitation, if only a top back room. The goods she carried about with her were worth ten shillings, and the fact that she was able to buy drinks without showing any anxiety, seemed to suggest she was used to, at any rate, small means. I still think my impression of her was correct; but it came out that she had no habitation, not even the poorest apology for a home. She turned to me quite casually and asked where I was going to sleep that night?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have some idea of going up to Camden Town.”

“There’s no need to spend all that money,” she protested. “Come with me, and I’ll get you put up for a few pence. I know a place where they charge fourpence, but as you’re a friend of mine they will take you for half.”

It didn’t sound alluring, but I refused to be fainthearted. I was going to follow the stream and chance where it took me, even though it found its way into strange places. I told her I was much obliged, and would willingly go with her, and after a little more chat we left the bar and made our way across Piccadilly Circus, down the Embankment and across Waterloo Bridge.

She did not speak all the way. The habit of walking engenders silence; you get half doped with the unceasing exercise and have little energy for speech. I was frankly curious as to my companion’s history. But I never learned very much about her. She must have made enough to keep herself by selling her goods, but she belonged to no type of outcast in any settled place.

Some few are born like that⁠—the inheritance, perhaps, of some far off gypsy blood⁠—others acquire the fear of four walls and a roof, and no amount of suffering can dissipate it. My friend, I think, belonged to the latter category. I fancy that she must have spent some time in prison, for she had the habit of looking behind her with a sudden, furtive movement as though she expected the hand of the law to close upon her arm. There was also another reason for this apprehension. As I found later, she took drugs, and it may be that she added to her earnings by the sale of dope. It was a curious experience, that walk. I was sensitive to the atmosphere of mystery which surrounded her, and though we did not talk, we were not conscious of our silence.

She was obviously a woman of good mentality. Her speech was smooth, and her accent had a touch of distinction. I often look for my friend of the plush coat in or around Shaftesbury Avenue when I revisit the scenes of my adventures, but I have never caught a glimpse of her. Nor is this strange. Like moves to like, outcast gravitates to outcast, and until once more I strip myself of my comfortable home, and step across the boundary which divides security from starvation, I shall not look on her again.

We crossed Waterloo Bridge and turned towards the New Cut. I always feel a curious spiritual depression when I am on the south side of the river. Progress a little farther and the raucous vulgarity of Brixton, the muffled seriousness of Streatham, make their own atmosphere, but the immediate effect when you cross any of the bridges is as potent as anything you can experience in Bethnal Green or in Haggerston, that place of the distressed.

My spirits were not enlivened when we turned the corner of a narrow and evil-smelling alley. I kept close to my guide; for a moment my heart failed me, and I had a terrible temptation to run away. It was not so much the darkness, the feeling that the alley was ill-lit or even the sound of furtive feet that flitted about us; it was the close and heavy smell that emerged from the open doorways; that strong, sickly, acrid odour that emanates from humanity packed tightly close. It came with a big blast, that odour, when at last we stopped at an open door, and my guide knocked three times.

An old woman, with whom my companion exchanged a few words, shuffled along the passage. She bade me hand over twopence, and I followed her into a low-ceilinged room, dirty and dingy, and crowded with women, old, elderly and middle-aged, with one or two young things as the exception. A coke fire burnt in the grate, and the air was warm and horribly close. The kitchen at Kennedy Court was a palace compared to it; the benches were broken down, and many of the women sat on the floor, clasping evil-smelling bundles.

Here were no prostitutes, no office cleaners. The women were street vendors in the poorer parts; for in this walk of life, as in others, there are lights and shades among the ragged and forlorn, and few of the lodgers gathered together could have appeared at Piccadilly Circus or in Shaftesbury Avenue without being run in. There was one flower woman, young, among them. She did not belong to the noble army of flower girls with their admirable organisation and sturdy trade union principles. She had no recognised pitch, but made her pence by appeal to the charitable, who, judging by her hungry look, did not wholeheartedly respond. Like the rest, her feet were tragically ill-shod, in large and shapeless boots, originally meant for a man, held together by string instead of laces, with a hiatus between the upper and the sole, through which there showed a grimy foot. She wore one of those strange garments that go by the name of ulster; they appear to come into the world in a state of malnutrition and decay.

Some “lodgers” wore wisps of sad-looking fur⁠—“perfectly good mog,” as a cheery matchseller described it. I don’t know the origin of the name, but to me, it is an admirable synonym for an article of adornment highly cherished by the most destitute among my sex.