Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕

fortnight,” the woman informed him. Michael asked where she was living now.

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said the landlady, and as she was already slowly and very unpleasantly closing the door, Michael came away a little disconsolate. These abrupt dematerializations of the underworld were really very difficult to grapple with. It gave him a sense of the futility of his search for Lily (though lately he had prosecuted it somewhat lazily) when girls, who a month ago offered what was presumably a permanent address, could have vanished completely a fortnight later. Perhaps Daisy would be at the Orange. He would take Barnes with him this evening and ask his opinion of her and Dolly and Hungarian Dave.

The beerhall downstairs looked exactly the same as when he had visited it a month ago. Michael could sympathize with the affection such places roused in the hearts of their frequenters. There was a great deal to be said for an institution that could present, day in, day out, a steady aspect to a society whose life was spent in such extremes of elation and despair, of prosperity and wretchedness, and whose actual lodging was liable to be changed at any moment for better or worse.

“Not a bad place, is it?” said Barnes, looking round in critical approval at the prostitutes and bullies hoarded round the tables puddly with the overflow of mineral waters and froth of beer.

“You really like it?” Michael asked.

“Oh, it’s cheerful,” said Barnes. “And that’s something nowadays.”

Michael perceived Daisy before they were halfway across the room. He greeted her with particular friendliness as an individual among these hard-eyed constellations.

“Hulloa!” she cried. “Wherever have you been all this time?”

“I called at Guilford Street, but you were gone.”

“Oh, yes. I left there. I couldn’t stand the woman there any longer. Sit down. Who’s your friend?”

Michael brought Barnes into the conversation, and suggested moving into one of the alcoves where it was easier to talk.

“No, come on, sit down here. Fritz won’t like it, if we move.”

Michael looked round for the protector, and she laughed.

“You silly thing! Fritz is the waiter.”

Michael presently grew accustomed to being jogged in the back by everyone who passed, and so powerful was the personality of the Orange that very soon he, like the rest of the crowd, was able to discuss private affairs without paying any heed to the solitary smoking listeners around.

“Where’s Dolly?” he asked.

“Oh, I had to get rid of her very sharp,” said Daisy. “She served me a very nasty trick after I’d been so good to her. Besides, I’ve taken up with a fellow. Bert Saunders. He does the boxing for Crime Illustrated.”

“You told me I was like him,” Michael reminded her.

“That’s right. I remember now. I’m living down off Judd Street in a flat. Why don’t you come round and see me there?”

“I will,” Michael promised.

“Wasn’t Bert Saunders the fellow who was keeping Kitty Metcalfe?” asked Barnes.

“That’s right. Only he gave her the push after she hit Maudie Clive over the head with a port-wine glass in the Half Moon upstairs.”

“I knew Kitty,” said Barnes, shaking his head to imply that acquaintance with Kitty had involved a wider experience than fell to most men. “What’s happened to her?”

“Oh, Gard, don’t ask me,” said Daisy. “She’s got in with a fellow who kept a fried-fish place in the Caledonian Road, and I’ve never even seen her since.”

“And what’s happened to Dolly?” asked Michael.

“Oh, good job if that love-boy of hers does punch into her. Silly cow! She ought to know better. Fancy going off as soft as you like with that big-mouthed five-to-two, and after I’d just given her six of my new handkerchiefs.”

Michael wished he could have an opportunity of explaining to Barnes that on account of Daisy’s friendship for Dolly, he and she and the cast-off had spent a night in the police-cells. He thought it would have amused him.

“Where’s the Half Moon?” he asked instead.

Daisy said it was a place in Glasshouse Street for which she had no very great affection. However, Michael was anxious to see it; and soon they left the Orange to visit the Half Moon.

It was a public-house with nothing that was demirep in its exterior; but upstairs there was a room frequented after eleven o’clock by ladies of the town. They walked up a narrow twisting staircase carpeted with bright red felt and lit by a red-shaded lamp, and found themselves in a room even more densely fumed with tobacco smoke than downstairs at the Orange. In a corner was an electric organ which was fed with a stream of pennies and blared forth its repertory of ten tunes with maddening persistence. One of these tunes was gay enough to make the girls wish to dance, and always with its recurrence there was a certain amount of cake-walking which was immediately stopped by a commissionaire who stood in the doorway and shouted “Order, please! Quiet, please! No dancing, ladies!” To the nearest couple he always whispered that the police were outside.

Daisy, having stigmatized the Half Moon as the rottenest hole within a mile of the Dilly, proceeded to become more cheerful with every penny dropped into the slot; and finally she invited Michael to come back with her to Judd Street, as her boy had gone down to Margate to see Young Sancy, a prospective lightweight champion, who was training there.

“Anyway, you can see me home,” she said. “Even if you don’t come in. Besides, my flat’s all right. It is, really. You know. Comfortable. He’s very good to me, is Bert, though he’s a bit soppified. He dresses very nice, and he earns good money. Well, three pound a week. That’s not so bad, is it?”

“That’s all right,” said Barnes. “With what you earn as well.”

“There’s a nerve,” said Daisy. “Well, I can’t stay moping indoors all the evening, can I? But he’s most shocking jealous is Bert. And he calls me his pussycat. Puss, puss! There’s a scream. He’s really a bit