Mark Gatiss - The Vesuvius Club

«Good evening, Delilah,» I said, with just the slightest turn from the mirror.

«Hevening, sir,» said the drudge. She shuffled a little awkwardly, glanced at the table and cleared her throat.

«Heverything in horder, sir?»

I turned, cigarette between teeth, adjusting my white tie with both hands.

«Hmm? Oh yes. The burgundy was deadly and the partridge a trifle high. Other than that a most satisfactory evening.»

Delilah nodded her massive head. «And the hother gentleman, sir?»

«Will be leaving us now, thank you.»

Delilah thrust both mitt-like hands under the armpits of the Honourable Everard Supple and dragged the one-eyed corpse with apparent effortlessness towards the doors. I hopped athletically over the dead man’s legs, sweeping up my cloak and topper from a chair.

«How’s little Ida?» I asked, clapping the hat to my head.

«Very good, thankyou for hasking, sir. No doubt be seeing you soon, sir,» grunted Delilah.

«No doubt,» I replied. «Ta, ta.»

I stepped over the threshold of the mean little dwelling and out into the sultry evening. Thinking I deserved a little treat, I hailed a hansom.

«The Pomegranate Rooms,» I said to the driver. Work was over for the moment. Time to play.

Twenty minutes later, I was dropped a short distance from said night-spot and made my way towards its mouldering wedding-cake façade. The slattern on the door opened it a crack and treated me to a quick view of her form. Poured carelessly into a garish oriental gown she had the look of a pox-ravaged sultana — both the potentess and the dried fruit.

I slipped through the grimy doorway.

«Any riff-raff in tonight, my sweet?» I enquired.

«Plenty,» she gurgled, taking my hat and cloak as persons on doors are wont to do.

«Splendid!»

The Pomegranate Rooms were small, sweltering and poorly lit by gas sconces stained tobacco-yellow, lending the whole a colour not unlike the bitter pith of the titular fruit. Rickety wooden tables littered the crimson carpets; spilled champagne formed great fizzing puddles in every shadowed corner. Each table was occupied by rather more patrons than was good for it; the majority of the sweating men in evening dress, or the remains of it, with a quantity of backless white waistcoats slung over the chairs; the women, and there were many of them, less respectably dressed, some scarcely dressed at all. It was all quite ghastly and I was very fond of it.

Such establishments erupt on to the bloated body of the capital with the unerring regularity of a clap-rash but the Pomegranate Rooms were something of a special case. A hangover from the fever-dream that had been the Naughty Nineties, I had once, within its stuffy, cigar-fume-drenched walls, espied our present monarch being «attended to» by a French noblewoman of uncertain virtue.

I dropped into a chair at the only free table and ordered up some plonk. A fat bawd close by, rouged like an ingénue undertaker’s first case, began at once to make eyes at me. I examined my nails until she lost interest. I cannot abide the obese and in a whore it is surely tantamount to unprofessionalism. Her chums were not much better.

I ate something to take away the taste of the champagne and then smoked a cigarette to take away the taste of the food. I tried not to make it too obvious that I was on my lonesome. It is a terrible thing to dine alone. One stinks of desperation.

With as much nonchalance as I could affect, I examined the play of the light on my champagne glass whilst surreptitiously sneaking looks at the patrons in the hope of spotting something pretty.

And then, without any ado whatsoever, a young woman glided into the seat opposite me. In a white satin dress with pearls at her throat and rather gorgeous blonde hair piled high she looked like one of Sargent’s slightly elongated females. I felt a stir down below that could have been the beginnings of indigestion but probably had more to do with the way her dewy eyes were fixed on me.

I lifted the plonk bottle and my eyebrows enquiringly.

«You’re rather out of place here, my dear,» I said, as I poured her a glass. «I should say the Pomegranate Rooms rarely see the likes of you.»

She inclined her head slightly. «Got any fags?»

A little taken aback, I nodded and took out my cigarette case. It is flat and well-polished with my initials in Gothic script upon it, yet it has never been called upon to save my life by absorbing the impact of a bullet. That’s what servants are for.

«Armenian or Georgian?» I enquired.

She took out one of the long black specimens that cram the case’s right-hand side and struck a match off the heel of her elegant shoe, lighting the cigarette in one rapid movement.

Her brazen behaviour delighted me.

«Lor, I was dying for that,» said the vision, taking in great gulps of smoke. «Mind if I take one for later?»

I waved a hand. «Be my guest.»

She scooped up a dozen or so cigarettes and stuffed them inside her corset.

«You’re full of surprises,» I managed.

«Ain’t I, though?» She laughed and gave a hoarse cough. «You on your own?»

My performance had been penetrated. I poured myself another drink. «Alas.»

She looked me up and down with what I can only describe as sauciness. «That’s a shame. You’re a looker.»

I could not deny it.

«I like a tall gent,» she continued. «You a foreigner?»

I ran a hand through my long black hair. «My complexion owes much to my Franco-Slavic mama and little to my British papa. My waist is all my own work.»

«Hm. They must’ve been proud of having such a bonny babe.»

«A baroness once told me that she could cut her wrists on my cheek-bones.»

«Lot of girls died for you have they?»

«Only those who cannot live for me.»

She rested her chin on a gloved hand. «You got cold eyes, though. Blue as poison-bottles.»

«Really, you must desist or I shall consider running away with myself.» I placed my hand on hers. «What’s your name?»

She shook her head, blowing out a cloud of smoke and smiling. «I don’t like mine. I’d much rather hear yours.»

I fiddled lightly with my cuff-link. «Gabriel,» I said, adopting one of my noms de guerre . «Gabriel Ratchitt.»

The nameless lovely took this in. «That’s an angel’s name.»

«I know, my dear,» came my murmur. «And I fear I may be falling.»

BOTH the night and my blood were far too hot to waste time journeying home, so I got to grips with my new acquaintance in a slimy alley at the back of the Pomegranate Rooms. I have a vivid memory of her raised skirts brushing against my chin and the feel of her very lovely bosom beneath my fine, white hands (I’ve mentioned them). As I plunged on, my eye caught a bill pasted haphazardly to the wet brickwork. Nellie Best was playing at the Collins Music Hall. I might just have time between this coupling and my next appointment to make the second house.

Nellie was on fine form and so was I, hearing her belt out «Who Were You With Last Night?» as I strolled into the upstairs bar-room and topped myself up on hock. Groping for a seat and tripping irresponsibly over the fetching white ankles of a dozen young ladies, the hall became one great wonderful blur of gaseous colour and light. I felt as though I had tumbled head-first into one of Sickert’s delightfully déclassé canvases. The hollowed shadows enveloped me in grimy red plush, Nelly Best’s canary-yellow crinolines flaring before my grinning phiz like sunbursts.

After several choruses too many of «Oh What a Silly Place to Kiss a Girl», I tottered out into the balmy night and a cab.

«Piccadilly,» I cried, banging my cane rather unnecessarily against the roof.