John Walsh - Sunday at the Cross Bones

‘Onions, Harold, they would serve onions in every dish that appeared before me. There was no escaping the pungent under-taste in every soup, every ragout and roast, every luncheon omelette and teatime savoury. I told them, time and again, “No onions, not in casserole nor mixed grill,” but they would persist in their sickening, Frenchified obsession. I told Mr Ross, the general manager, onions do not agree with me, that my nervous metabolism cannot digest the damned things, that they bring up the colonic flux and leave me prostrate for hours on the chaise longue. Yet would they heed my simple requirements?’

‘It must be very troublesome, Fenella,’ I concurred.

‘Troublesome! Nobody knows the torments I suffer. The other day, in St Bride’s – a memorial service for Lady Henchard’s late husband – I was so crippled with indigestion, I was forced to forsake the family pew and take a turn around the graveyard to regain my composure.’

Lady R – S is a handsome woman and a steady benefactor of my work, but she can sometimes offer too much insight for comfort into the workings of her intestines. She enjoys the aristocrat’s conviction that every detail of her personal circumstances must be of interest to her confidants. I am glad to be one of this fortunate band, but sometimes the reports of her gastric eructations leave me at a loss, conversationally. (What am I to reply? ‘A huge fart can be a marvellous liberation at such moments, Your Ladyship …’?)

Since her husband, the brigadier, died face down in the mud along with a platoon of doomed infantry somewhere near the Belgian border in 1917, she has devoted herself to good works. A philanthropic soul, she has taken an interest in my Runaway Boys charity for many years. She has a wide social acquaintance with more liquefiable cash than they know what to do with. Without her, and their, monthly disbursements and ad hoc stipends, I could not continue my work among the Fallen. All she wants in return is some elevated literary conversation, and some shared outrage about public immorality.

‘That madwoman Mrs Stopes has established yet another clinic in London where women of any class may procure contraceptive devices, and has now written a book flagrantly recommending the introduction of some form of’ – she seemed to wince at the awful words – ‘rubber tubing into the marriage bed. She encourages the benighted and the shamelessly perverse to take their sordid pleasures with no thought to consequences, to couple together like hares in a field – and I should add, Mr Davidson, she claims divine sanction for her folly.’

‘No,’ I said, heatedly. ‘This is too bad. I have heard a great deal of Dr Stopes in the last few years, because my work leads me, as you know, into the realms of prostitution, where matters of sexual health are routinely discussed. But of her pretensions to religious endorsement, I was unaware.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Her Ladyship, vigorously nodding, ‘I heard it from my maid. The dreadful woman said in court somewhere that her zealotry in this murky business springs from a divine visitation she had one afternoon, under a yew tree in her garden in Leatherhead.’

‘My word,’ I said, stifling a guffaw. ‘A Home Counties Buddha – and a female to boot!’

‘Her disgusting sexual fantasies are bad enough,’ said Lady Fenella, ‘in encouraging loose girls and factory women to fornicate with men, free from concerns of pregnancy, let alone morality. But to claim that Our Lord recommended such a course of action, as it were privately , in the ear of an hysterical Surrey quack is just too much.’

‘I am almost accustomed to being shocked,’ I said. ‘Every day brings fresh news about the degradation of feeling and behaviour in modern life. That is why I wished to speak with you about –’

‘Immorality is all around us, Harold,’ said my old friend. ‘Have you seen the dimensions of the skirts worn by young girls in Knightsbridge today?’

‘I rarely venture to such select locations. My work keeps me confined to Piccadilly and Holborn. I rely on you, as in so many things, to keep me abreast of fashion.’

‘I’ve seen young women walking into Harrods, Harold, in a skirt that reveals their calves, sometimes almost to the knee, ’ she said, her voice rising to a protesting squeak. ‘The other day, I was popping in to buy a crystal vase for Lobelia Graham’s wedding, and in front of me came this – this trollop in a long coat that opened to reveal a skirt so tight around the hips, it must have constricted her circulation. Were it not for a tiny flounce of fabric around the hem, it would have displayed the place where her hosiery ended! But I have shocked you, Harold, for your face has reddened alarmingly.’

‘Not at all,’ I said, applying a handkerchief to my brow. ‘Do continue.’

‘I thought she must be a tart, plying her trade in Brompton Road. But the doorman bowed with every sign of recognition, as if she were a regular customer.’

‘I can only hope,’ I said with feeling, ‘that such fashions, if that is the word for such immodesty, do not spread as far as my dear girls in Norfolk.’

We stood together, shaking our heads in a chorus of disapproval.

‘Fenella,’ I said, ‘my visit here today has a purpose beyond the delight of basking in your company.’

‘Oh?’ She rose from the sofa, smoothed her skirts and moved towards the window.

‘Not, I hasten to say, money,’ I reassured her, ‘for you are more than generous already to my young charges. I wish to ask you the favour of an introduction.’

‘Indeed. To whom?’

‘You have been good enough to bring my work to the attention of dignitaries from many walks of life,’ I said, ‘and I have forged several relationship that have been invaluable to my work. Words cannot express my gratitude for so many favours done in the past. Without the patronage of your cousin, Lord Strathclyde, there would be no Runaway Boys’ Retreat at Whitechapel. Without the intervention of your neighbour, Lady Kilfoyle, the Maidens in Distress Foundation at Bow would never have got off the ground. Had it not been for the generosity of Lord Staynes, and the Romany Rye Rehabilitation Unit, there would be a thousand homeless didicois on the streets of Sutton and Cheam. Were it not –’

‘Too kind, Harold,’ cut in Lady R-S, over her shoulder, as she peered through the glass to the view over the Strand. ‘Awfully glad to have been of help. But what you’re looking for now is …?’

I joined her at the window and, with slightly shocking directness, took her hand in mine. Did she flinch? Only for a second. Her long chilly fingers suffered the embrace of my insinuating touch (my hands are always warm) and seemed to thaw as I said, ‘Fenella, no man could wish for a finer benefactor than you, but that is not the point. For no man could wish, either, for a more sympathetic friend to turn to in the dark reaches of the night, a more understanding ally to draw close when all seems lost, a warmer image to summon up before him when one is surrounded by the cold winds of despair. Fenella –’

With (I admit) shocking presumption, I encircled her considerable waist with my arm, and turned her away from the window so that I was looking up into her eyes. It was, may God forgive my lack of gallantry, like turning a dreadnought battleship 180 degrees to port in the Solent, but it was worth it.

‘Fenella,’ I said, softly.

‘Yes, Harold?’ she whispered. It was a romantic moment, or would have been had she not towered a good eight inches above me. Her prodigious bosom, wrapped in some cantilevered phenomenon of whalebone and rustling red silk, protruded before me like a vast cushion. I looked up, like a besieger looking over a wobbling battlement, to her handsome, troubled face.