Anonymous - Dara

Life can be sheer hell sometimes. The old man never left my side all day and when I went to bed he locked my bedroom door from the outside. I was virtually a prisoner in my own home. By the following evening I could stand the worry about Dara no longer and told my father I owed 'The Eight Bells' hotel for three weeks' board and lodging and it was urgent that I get to Covent Garden and settle the account.

'Put your mind at ease, James,' he said, 'I'll attend to your little problem,' and left the room before I could think of another excuse for getting out of the house. He was back within a few minutes to tell me he had sent a footman to pay my hotel account.

The footman returned in a little over half an hour to hand the money back to my father. 'What's all this?' my father asked, looking at the bag of sovereigns. 'Didn't I tell you to pay my son's account at “The Eight Bells”?'

'There was nothing to pay,' he answered. A young woman had already settled what was owing this afternoon, just before she left the hotel.'

'Gad! What young woman?' my father asked, turning to me for an answer.

I was just as surprised as he was and at a loss for words. The footman was smiling at me and, because I was playing for time and confused, I grinned nervously back at him.

My father gave me a quizzical glance and then, with a big smile on his face, thumped the desk top with his fist. 'You young scoundrel. Why didn't you tell me you had been staying at the hotel with a woman? By jove, you have become a proper ladies' man. You've got the taste for it, what!'

He stood up guffawing coarsely and slapped me heartily on the back. 'You young rascal,' he said, excited and full of good humour. 'Upon my soul I didn't believe a word of that story about the American actress but I do now.'

He suddenly went all solemn. Picking up the money the footman had returned, he handed it to me. 'You have made me a very happy man, James. Egad, I'm devilish sorry that I misjudged you. Now off you go and enjoy yourself, for tomorrow we journey to Aldershot.'

I couldn't get out of the house fast enough. At 'The Eight Bells' none of the staff were able to give me any information as to the whereabouts of Dara so I wandered the streets around Covent Garden until after midnight in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of her. I got very little sleep that night as I tossed and turned in a fever of anxiety as to what could have happened to her. In the weeks that followed I returned time and time again to the vicinity of Covent Garden but none of the enquiries regarding my wife ever came to anything. It seemed she had disappeared for good.

Tired out after our journey from Liverpool, I slept soundly throughout our first night at 'The Eight Bells' hotel. James was still asleep when I got out of bed, curious to see what was causing the continual roar in the street below. It was my first sight of bustling, thriving, noisy London. The street was filled with vehicles of every kind, costermongers' carts, lumbering market wagons filled to overflowing with vegetables. Their screeching iron-rimmed wheels on the cobbled surface added to the confusion and tumult of the bells of the barrow boys, the raucous shouting of men and women selling gingerbread, hot meat pies and other cooked food, whelks, watercress and a variety of wares. The pavements were strewn with cabbage leaves and litter of every description.

After breakfast James set off to call on some magazine editors and I sallied forth to explore the Covent Garden market. Stepping into the street I unwittingly became the cause of a dispute when two women, carrying baskets, converged on me.

One of them, an Irish woman, smoking a short clay pipe, shoved her basket at me, 'Gingerbread, lady? The best in London.'

The other woman, wearing a stiff gown tucked up with a large quilted petticoat, pushed Irish to one side with strong, brawny arms and thrust her red, bloated face towards mine. “Ere y'are, lady. Buy me spiced gingerbread, smo-o-king 'ot, fresh out'a the oven,' she demanded in a coarse cracked voice.

Irish, outraged at this intrusion, forced her basket into me and cursed the other woman with some Celtic oaths.

First one basket and then the other pushed me backwards towards the hotel entrance as they argued and screamed abuse at each other. I could see that it wouldn't be long before they would be coming to blows. Potboys and ragged dirty-faced children, attracted by the screams of anger, gathered around us, eager to see a fight. As I extracted two pennies from my purse, a pot-boy shouted encouragement to Irish: 'Put the kye-bosh on her, Mary.'

Dropping a penny in each of their baskets, I fled across the congested street, negotiating my way through a higgledy-piggledy confusion of vendors of fried fish, hot pies, muffins, caged linnets, almond toffee and costermongers' barrows loaded with fresh fruit and vegetables. The pandemonium and cries of 'Hi-i-i! Carrots, penny a bunch; pahnd o' grapes for thrupence; hot chestnuts; cherry ripe, round and sahnd, fivepence a pahnd; fish alive-O,' vibrated through my head and filled me with an excitement that was a welcome change after weeks of boredom on board ship.

Resisting the tempting smell of hot coffee wafting out of an eating house on the corner, I turned into Mart Street where, although the thoroughfare was narrow, my movements were less restricted because the traders' vehicles were confined to one side of the street. I hadn't got very far when a voice, rising above the other street cries, clammered for my attention.

'Oy! Oy! Oy! Hi there, lady. Turn abaht and look at these 'ere apples. Rosy red and juicy.'

It was a young man about my own age. He was dressed in the usual costermonger's clothing, a long cord waistcoat with shining brass buttons and trousers tightly fitting over the knees and billowing out over highly polished boots. Beneath a cloth cap pulled jauntily down to one side, his mischievous eyes invited me to examine a large apple that he held in a hand outstretched in my direction.

Eve tempted Adam with an apple. On this occasion it was Adam tempting a woman with the same fruit. For that was indeed his name as I was soon to find out. The apple was all he said it would be: tasty and juicy. Little did I know as my teeth crunched into Eve's fruit that Adam Sutton's friendly face would be my introduction to the foul obscenity of London's underworld.

There was always a hearty welcome for me when I purchased fruit at Adam's barrow. In the first half of the week he was not to be seen in Mart Street as those were the days he pushed his barrow into other parts of the city. Our acquaintanceship ripened very quickly into a flirtatious friendship that kept me amused for hours as I stood chattering with him and his customers. It didn't take me long to learn the prices of the fruit and vegetables on his barrow and I often helped out when he was very busy with a crowd of housewives demanding quick service.

There was nothing else for me to do as James was out nearly every day and attending theatrical performances most evenings. He struck up a friendship with John Sweetapple, a theatre critic, who was more successful than James at getting his work published in the magazines that were in circulation in those days. I spent two or three boring evenings with James at John's lodgings listening to him reading out loud extracts from some of the plays he had written. Try as I may, I couldn't arouse any interest in his plays and he obviously wasn't concerned about me as he addressed most of his conversation to James.

Apart from John Sweetapple and James, the only person I could talk to was my costermonger. Adam was one of those people who have the knack of getting you to open out and confide in them. It wasn't long before he knew all about my adventures in America and how I had met James and wed him in New York.