“My father was Tobias Pilaster,” said Hugh. “How do you know the name?”
She recovered her composure quickly. “My father used to work for Tobias Pilaster and Co. As I child, I used to wonder who Co was.” They laughed, and the moment of tension passed. She added: “Would you lads like to sit down?”
There was a bottle of champagne on the table. Solly poured some for Miss Robinson and called for more glasses. “Well, this is a real reunion of old Windfield chums,” he said. “Guess who else is here: Tonio Silva.”
“Where?” said Micky quickly. He seemed displeased to hear that Tonio was around, and Hugh wondered why. At school Tonio had always been frightened of Micky, he remembered.
“He’s on the dance floor,” Solly said. “He’s with Miss Robinson’s friend, Miss April Tilsley.”
Miss Robinson said: “You could call me Maisie. I’m not a formal girl.” And she threw a lascivious wink at Solly.
A waiter brought a plate of lobster and set it in front of Solly. He tucked a napkin into his shirt collar and started to eat.
“I thought you Jewboys weren’t supposed to eat shellfish,” Micky said with lazy insolence.
Solly was as impervious as ever to such remarks. “I’m only kosher at home,” he said.
Maisie Robinson gave Micky a hostile glare. “We Jewgirls eat what we like,” she said, and took a morsel from Solly’s plate.
Hugh was surprised that she was Jewish: he always thought of Jews as having dark coloring. He studied her. She was quite short, but added about a foot to her height by piling her tawny hair into a high chignon and topping it with a huge hat decorated with artificial leaves and fruit. Underneath the hat was a small, impudent face with a wicked twinkle in the green eyes. The cut of her chestnut-colored gown revealed an astonishing acreage of freckled bosom. Freckles were not generally thought to be attractive, but Hugh could hardly take his eyes off them. After a while Maisie felt his stare and returned it. He turned away with an apologetic smile.
He took his mind off her bosom by looking around the group and noting how his old schoolmates had changed in the last seven years. Solly Greenbourne had matured. Although he was still fat, and had the same easygoing grin, he had acquired an air of authority in his middle twenties. Perhaps it came from being so rich — but Edward was rich and he had no such aura. Solly was already respected in the City; and while it was easy to earn respect when you were the heir to Greenbournes Bank, all the same a foolish young man in that position could rapidly become a laughingstock.
Edward had grown older but unlike Solly he had not matured. For him, as for a child, play was everything. He was not stupid, but he found it difficult to concentrate on his work at the bank because he would rather be elsewhere, dancing and drinking and gambling.
Micky had become a handsome devil, with dark eyes and black eyebrows and curly hair grown a little too long. His evening dress was correct but rather dashing: his jacket had a velvet collar and cuffs, and his shirt was frilled. He had already attracted admiring glances and inviting looks from several girls seated at nearby tables, Hugh had noticed. But Maisie Robinson had taken a dislike to him, and Hugh guessed that was not just because of the remark about Jewboys. There was something sinister about Micky. He was unnervingly quiet, watchful and self-contained. He was not frank, he rarely showed hesitation, uncertainty, or vulnerability, and he never revealed anything of his soul — if he had one. Hugh did not trust him.
The next dance ended and Tonio Silva came to the table with Miss April Tilsley. Hugh had run into Tonio several times since school, but even if he had not seen him for years he would have recognized him instantly by the shock of carrot-colored hair. They had been best friends until that awful day in 1866 when Hugh’s mother had come to tell him that his father was dead and to take him away from the school. They had been the bad boys of the lower fourth, always getting into scrapes, but they had enjoyed life, despite the floggings.
Hugh had often wondered, over the years, what had really happened that day at the swimming hole. He had never believed the newspaper story about Edward’s trying to rescue Peter Middleton: Edward would not have had the courage. But Tonio still would not speak of it, and the only other witness, Albert “Hump” Cammel, had gone to live in the Cape Colony.
Hugh studied Tonio’s face as he shook hands with Micky. Tonio still seemed somewhat in awe of Micky. “How are you, Miranda?” he said in a normal voice, but his expression showed a mixture of fear and admiration. It was the attitude a man might have toward a champion prizefighter famous for his quick temper.
Tonio’s companion, April, was a little older than her friend Maisie, Hugh judged, and there was a pinched, sharp look about her that made her less attractive; but Tonio was having a great time with her, touching her arm and whispering in her ear and making her laugh.
Hugh turned back to Maisie. She was talkative and vivacious, with a lilting voice that had a trace of the accent of northeast England, where Tobias Pilaster’s warehouses had been. Her expression was endlessly fascinating as she smiled, frowned, pouted, wrinkled her turned-up nose and rolled her eyes. She had fair eyelashes, he noticed, and there was a sprinkling of freckles on her nose. She was an unconventional beauty but no one would deny she was the prettiest woman in the room.
Hugh was obsessed by the thought that, since she was here at the Argyll Rooms, she was presumably willing to kiss, cuddle and perhaps even Go All The Way tonight with one of the men around the table. Hugh daydreamed about a sexual encounter with almost every girl he met — he was ashamed of how much and how often he thought about it — but normally it could only happen after courtship, engagement and marriage. Whereas Maisie might do it tonight!
She caught his eye again, and he had that embarrassing feeling that Rachel Bodwin sometimes gave him, that she knew what he was thinking. He searched around desperately for something to say, and finally blurted out: “Have you always lived in London, Miss Robinson?”
“Only for three days,” she said.
It might be mundane, he thought, but at least they were talking. “So recently!” he said. “Where were you before?”
“Traveling,” she said, and turned away to speak to Solly.
“Ah,” Hugh said. That seemed to put an end to the conversation, and he felt disappointed. Maisie acted almost as if she had a grudge against him.
But April took pity on him and explained. “Maisie’s been with a circus for four years.”
“Heavens! Doing what?”
Maisie turned around again. “Bareback horse-riding,” she said. “Standing on the horses, jumping from one to another, all those tricks.”
April added: “In tights, of course.”
The thought of Maisie in tights was unbearably tantalizing. Hugh crossed his legs and said: “How did you get into that line of work?”
She hesitated, then seemed to make up her mind about something. She turned around in her chair to face Hugh directly, and a dangerous glint came into her eyes. “It was like this,” she said. “My father worked for Tobias Pilaster and Co. Your father cheated my father out of a week’s wages. At that time my mother was sick. Without that money, either I would starve or she would die. So I ran away from home. I was eleven years old at the time.”
Hugh felt his face flush. “I don’t believe my father cheated anyone,” he said. “And if you were eleven you can’t possibly have understood what happened.”
“I understood hunger and cold!”
“Perhaps your father was at fault,” Hugh persisted, though he knew it was unwise. “He shouldn’t have had children if he couldn’t afford to feed them.”
“He could feed them!” Maisie blazed. “He worked like a slave — and then you stole his money!”
“My father went bankrupt, but he never stole.”
“It’s the same thing when you’re the loser!”
“It’s not the same, and you’re foolish and insolent to pretend that it is.”
The others obviously felt he had gone too far, and several people began to speak at the same time. Tonio said: “Let’s not quarrel about something that happened so long ago.”
Hugh knew he should stop but he was still angry. “Ever since I was thirteen years old I’ve had to listen to the Pilaster family running my father down but I’m not going to take it from a circus performer.”
Maisie stood up, her eyes flashing like cut emeralds. For a moment Hugh thought she was going to slap him. Then she said: “Dance with me, Solly. Perhaps your rude friend will have gone when the music stops.”
HUGH’S QUARREL WITH MAISIE broke up the party. Solly and Maisie went off on their own, and the others decided to go ratting. Ratting was against the law, but there were half a dozen regular pits within five minutes of Piccadilly Circus, and Micky Miranda knew them all.
It was dark when they emerged from the Argyll into the district of London known as Babylon. Here, out of sight of the palaces of Mayfair, but conveniently close to the gentlemen’s clubs of St. James’s, was a warren of narrow streets dedicated to gambling, blood sports, opium smoking, pornography, and — most of all — prostitution. It was a hot, sweaty night, and the air was heavy with the smells of cooking, beer and drains. Micky and his friends moved slowly down the middle of the crowded street. Within the first minute an old man in a battered top hat offered to sell him a book of lewd verses, a young man with rouge on his cheeks winked at him, a well-dressed woman of his own age opened her jacket quickly and gave him a glimpse of two beautiful bare breasts, and a ragged older woman offered him sex with an angel-faced girl about ten years old. The buildings, mostly pubs, dance halls, brothels and cheap lodging houses, had grimy walls and small, filthy windows through which could occasionally be glimpsed a gas-lit revel. Passing along the street were white-waistcoated swells such as Micky, bowler-hatted clerks and shopkeepers, goggle-eyed farmers, soldiers in unbuttoned uniforms, sailors with their pockets temporarily full of money, and a surprising number of respectable-looking middle-class couples walking arm-in-arm.
Micky was enjoying himself. It was the first time in several weeks that he had managed to get away from Papa for an evening. They were waiting for Seth Pilaster to die so that they could close the deal for the rifles, but the old man was clinging to life like a limpet on a rock. Going to music halls and brothels was no fun with your father; and besides, Papa treated him more like a servant, sometimes even telling him to wait outside while he went with a whore. Tonight was a blessed relief.
He was glad to have run into Solly Greenbourne again. The Greenbournes were even richer than the Pilasters, and Solly might one day be useful.
He was not glad to have seen Tonio Silva. Tonio knew too much about the death of Peter Middleton seven years ago. In those days Tonio had been terrified of Micky. He was still wary, and he still looked up to Micky, but that was not the same as being frightened. Micky was worried about him but at the moment he did not know what he could do about it.
He turned off Windmill Street into a narrow alley. The eyes of cats blinked at him from piles of refuse. Checking that the others were in tow, he entered a dingy pub, walked through the bar and out of the back door, crossed a yard where a prostitute was kneeling in front of a client in the moonlight, and opened the door of a ramshackle wooden building like a stable.
A dirty-faced man in a long, greasy coat demanded fourpence as the price of admission. Edward paid and they went in.
The place was brightly lit and full of tobacco smoke, and there was a foul smell of blood and excrement. Forty or fifty men and a few women stood around a circular pit. The men were of all classes, some in the heavy wool suits and spotted neckerchiefs of well-off workers, others in frock coats or evening dress; but the women were all more or less disreputable types like April. Several of the men had dogs with them, carried in their arms or tied to chair legs.