She shook her head ruefully. “Whatever happens, Solly, I believe I’ll never be proposed to by a better man.”
HUGH AND MAISIE TOOK THE PENNY RIDE on the pleasure steamer from Westminster Pier to Chelsea. It was a warm, light evening, and the muddy river was busy with cockle-boats, barges and ferries. They steamed upstream, under the new railway bridge for Victoria Station, passing Christopher Wren’s Chelsea Hospital on the north shore and, on the south, the flowers of Battersea Fields, London’s traditional dueling ground. Battersea Bridge was a ramshackle wooden structure that looked ready to fall down. At its south end were chemical factories, but on the opposite side pretty cottages clustered around Chelsea Old Church, and naked children splashed in the shallows.
Less than a mile beyond the bridge they disembarked and walked up the wharf to the magnificent gilded gateway of Cremorne Gardens. The Gardens consisted of twelve acres of groves and grottoes, flower beds and lawns, ferneries and copses between the river and the King’s Road. It was dusk when they arrived, and there were Chinese lanterns in the trees and gaslight along the winding paths. The place was packed: many of the younger people who had been at the races had decided to finish the day here. Everyone was dressed up to the nines, and they sauntered carefree through the gardens, laughing and flirting, the girls in pairs, the young men in larger groups, the couples arm-in-arm.
The weather had been fine all day, sunny and warm, but now it was becoming a hot, thundery night that threatened a storm. Hugh felt at once elated and nervous. He was thrilled to have Maisie on his arm, but he had the insecure sense that he did not know the rules of the game he was playing. What did she expect? Would she let him kiss her? Would she let him do anything he wanted? He longed to touch her body, but he did not know where to begin. Would she expect him to go all the way? He wanted to, but he had never done it before and he was afraid of making a fool of himself. The other clerks at Pilasters talked a lot about dollymops, and what they would and would not do, but Hugh suspected that much of what they said was boasting. Anyway, Maisie could not be treated as a dollymop. She was more complex than that.
He was also a little worried that he might be seen by someone he knew. His family would disapprove powerfully of what he was doing. Cremorne Gardens was not only a lower-class place, it was thought by Methodists to encourage immorality. If he were found out, Augusta would be sure to use it against him. It was one thing for Edward to take loose women to disreputable places: he was the son and heir. It was different for Hugh, penniless and poorly educated and expected to be a failure like his father: they would say that licentious pleasure gardens were his natural habitat, and he belonged with clerks and artisans and girls like Maisie.
Hugh was at a critical point in his career. He was on the point of getting promoted to correspondence clerk — at a salary of 150 pounds a year, more than double what he was getting now — and that could be jeopardized by a report of dissolute behavior.
He looked anxiously at the other men walking along the winding paths between the flower beds, fearful of recognizing someone. There was a sprinkling of upper-class men, some with girls on their arms; but they all carefully avoided Hugh’s eye, and he realized they too were apprehensive about being seen there. He decided that if he saw people he knew they would probably be as keen as he to keep it quiet; and he felt reassured.
He was proud of Maisie. She was wearing a blue-green gown with a low neckline and a bustle behind, and a sailor hat poised jauntily on her piled-up hair. She attracted a lot of admiring glances.
They passed a ballet theatre, an oriental circus, an American bowling green and several shooting galleries, then went into a restaurant to dine. This was a new experience for Hugh. Although restaurants were becoming more common, they were mostly used by the middle classes: upper-class people still did not like the idea of eating in public. Young men such as Edward and Micky ate out quite often, but they thought of themselves as slumming, and they only did it when they were either looking for or had already found dollymops to keep them company.
All through dinner Hugh tried not to think about Maisie’s breasts. The tops of them showed lusciously above the neckline of her gown, and they were very pale, with freckles. He had seen bare breasts, just once — at Nellie’s brothel a few weeks ago. But he had never touched one. Were they firm, like muscles, or limp? When a woman took off her corset, did her breasts move as she walked, or remain rigid? If you touched them, would they yield to pressure, or were they hard, like kneecaps? Would she let him touch them? He sometimes even thought about kissing them, the way the man in the brothel had kissed the whore’s breasts, but this was a secret desire that he felt ashamed of. In fact he was vaguely ashamed of all these feelings. It seemed brutish to sit with a woman and think all the time of her naked body, as if he cared nothing for her, but just wanted to use her. However, he could not help it, especially with Maisie, who was so alluring.
While they were eating there was a fireworks display in another part of the gardens. The bangs and flashes upset the lions and tigers in the menagerie, and they roared their disapproval. Hugh recalled that Maisie had worked in a circus, and he asked her what it was like.
“You get to know people very well when you live so close together,” she said thoughtfully. “It’s good in some ways, bad in others. People help each other all the time. There are love affairs, lots of quarrels, sometimes fights — there were two murders in the four years I was with the circus.”
“Good heavens.”
“And the money is unreliable.”
“Why?”
“When people need to economize, entertainment is the first thing they cut out.”
“I’d never thought of that. I must remember not to invest the bank’s money in any form of entertainment business.”
She smiled. “Do you think about finance all the time?”
No, Hugh thought, I think about your breasts all the time. He said: “You have to understand that I’m the son of the black sheep of the family. I know more about banking than the other young Pilasters, but I have to work doubly hard to prove my worth.”
“Why is it so important to prove yourself?”
Good question, Hugh thought. He considered. After a minute he said: “I’ve always been that way, I suppose. At school I just had to be top of the class. And my father’s failure made it worse: everyone thinks I’m going to go the same way, and I have to show them they’re wrong.”
“In a way I feel the same, you know. I’m never going to live the way my mam did, always on the edge of destitution. I’m going to have money, I don’t care what I have to do.”
As gently as he could, Hugh said: “Is that why you go around with Solly?”
She frowned, and for a moment he thought she was going to be angry, but that passed and she smiled ironically. “I suppose that’s a fair question. If you want to know the truth, I’m not proud of my connection with Solly. I misled him with certain … expectations.”
Hugh was surprised. Did that mean she had not gone all the way with Solly? “He seems to like you.”
“And I like him. But comradeship isn’t what he wants, and it never was, and I always knew that.”
“I see what you mean.” Hugh decided she had not gone all the way with Solly, and that meant she might not be willing to do it with him. He felt both disappointed and relieved: disappointed because he was so hungry for her, relieved because he was so nervous about it.
“You seem pleased about something,” said Maisie.
“I suppose I’m glad to hear that you and Solly are only comrades.”
She looked a little sad, and he wondered if he had said the wrong thing.
He paid for their dinner. It was quite expensive but he had brought the money he had been saving for his next suit of clothes, nineteen shillings, so he had plenty of cash. When they left the restaurant the people in the gardens seemed more boisterous than they had earlier, no doubt because they had consumed a good deal of beer and gin in the interim.
They came upon a dance floor. Dancing was something Hugh felt confident about: it was the only subject that had been well taught at the Folkestone Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen.
He led Maisie onto the floor and took her in his arms for the first time. His fingertips tingled as he rested his right hand in the small of her back, just above her bustle. He could feel the warmth of her body through her clothing. With his left hand he held hers, and she gave it a squeeze: the sensation thrilled him.
At the end of the first dance he smiled at her, feeling pleased, and to his surprise she reached up and touched his mouth with a fingertip. “I like it when you grin,” she said. “You look boyish.”
“Boyish” was not exactly the impression he was trying to give, but at this point anything that pleased her was all right with him.
They danced again. They were good partners: although Maisie was short, Hugh was only a little taller, and they were both light on their feet. He had danced with dozens of girls, if not hundreds, but he had never enjoyed it this much. He felt as if he was only now discovering the delightful sensation of holding a woman close, moving and swaying with the music, and executing complicated steps in unison.
“Are you tired?” he asked her at the end of the dance.
“Certainly not!”
They danced again.
At society balls it was bad manners to dance with the same girl more than twice. You had to lead her off the floor and offer to fetch her some champagne or a sorbet. Hugh had always chafed at such regulations, and now he felt joyfully liberated to be an anonymous reveler at this public dance.
They stayed on the floor until midnight, when the music stopped.
All the couples left the dance floor and moved on to the garden paths. Hugh noticed that many of the men kept their arms around their partners, even though they were no longer dancing; so, with some trepidation, he did the same. Maisie did not seem to mind.
The festivities were becoming unruly. Beside the paths there were occasional small cabins, like boxes at the opera, where people could sit and dine and watch the crowds walk by. Some of the cabins had been rented by groups of undergraduates who were now drunk. A man walking in front of Hugh had his top hat playfully knocked off his head, and Hugh himself had to duck to avoid a flying loaf of bread. He held Maisie closer to him, protectively, and to his delight she wound her arm around his waist and gave him a squeeze.
There were numerous shadowy groves and bowers off the main footpath, and Hugh could dimly perceive couples on the wooden seats, although he could not be sure whether they were embracing or just sitting together. He was surprised when the couple walking in front of them stopped and kissed passionately in the middle of the path. He led Maisie around them, feeling awkward. But after a while he got over his embarrassment and began to feel excited. A few minutes later they passed another embracing couple. Hugh caught Maisie’s eye, and she smiled at him in a way that he felt sure was meant to be encouraging. But somehow he could not summon up the nerve to just go ahead and kiss her.
The gardens were becoming more rowdy. They had to detour around a scuffle involving six or seven young men, all shouting drunkenly, punching and knocking one another down. Hugh began to notice a number of unaccompanied women, and wondered if they were prostitutes. The atmosphere was turning threatening, and he felt the need to protect Maisie.
Then a group of thirty or forty young men came charging along, tipping people’s hats off, pushing women aside and throwing men to the ground. There was no escaping them: they spread out across the lawns on either side of the path. Hugh acted quickly. He stood in front of Maisie with his back to the onslaught, then took off his hat and put both arms around her, holding her tight. The mob swept by. A heavy shoulder hit Hugh in the back, and he staggered, still holding Maisie; but he managed to remain upright. On one side of him a girl was knocked over, and on the other a man was punched in the face. Then the hooligans were gone.
Hugh relaxed his grip and looked down at Maisie. She looked back at him expectantly. Hesitantly, he leaned down and kissed her lips. They were deliciously soft and mobile. He closed his eyes. He had waited years for this: it was his first kiss. And it was as delightful as he had dreamed. He breathed in the scent of her. Her lips moved delicately against his. He wanted never to stop.
She broke the kiss. She looked hard at him, then hugged him tight, pulling his body against hers. “You could spoil all my plans,” she said quietly.
He was not sure what she meant.