Кейт Уотерхаус - Soho or Alex in Wonderland

At all events, he had kept cautious track of Christine over the weeks, familiarising himself with her movements, and finally accosting her in Greek Street where they had sat at an outdoor café table with untouched thimbles of coffee and, in his words, “had it out”.

Colin Yardley found his son unrepentant and unashamed, which made him angrier and even more disgusted than he was already. But it was when Christine, herself angry, hinted darkly that she had no doubt her father had secrets he wouldn’t want the world to know about that her fate was sealed. Did she know about his visits to Brewer Place? This was Soho, where everyone knew everything.

Christine’s father fondled the Swiss Army knife he always kept in his jacket pocket for carrying out small jewellery repairs. As Christine flounced off he rose and took himself down to the Wellington Arms for a much-needed half of Guinness. He knew what time she would be arriving at the Transylvania Club and what time she would be leaving. He knew where she lived in Hog Court, had often stood below her curtained window until the light went out. He was trembling with rage. It was time to get it over with.

Meeting James Flood in the French House, where he was magnanimously tossing little gobbets of intelligence to envious fellow reporters, Alex found the packed pub seething with the news. Christine had been a popular figure and there was universal satisfaction at the early arrest. Inevitably there was someone who had known her father: that weirdo who used the Wellington Arms. Drank halves of Guinness. Alex reflected that if there was ever anybody he wanted to murder — Selby, as it might be — he would commit the crime well away from Soho. The two flymen instigated a debate on the need for the return of capital punishment.

“Can’t understand why he didn’t do a runner, though,” said the first flyman.

“Nowhere to run to, and anyway he’s not the running type,” said James knowledgeably. “Besides, he wanted to stay around long enough to be sure she was buried as his son and not in a dress and fishnet stockings.”

While a Daily Express man tried to tease more information out of James, Alex made conversation with the two flymen. “Wonder if that old Else knows about Christine’s dad being taken in. I mean, considering it was Else who found her.” He had a vague notion that this gave her proprietorial rights in the case.

“Why don’t you ask her?” suggested the first flyman. “No time like the present.”

“But she can’t be in here, can she? I thought she’d be barred.”

“Oh, she is,” said the second flyman. “But they let her drink out in the street. They pass her a glass through the window.”

The first flyman edged his way across to the open window. There was a throng of drinkers on the pavement but, immediately below the window, one small empty patch that was occupied only by a little pool of water.

“She’s been,” reported the first flyman. “But she’s gone, God bless her.”

“Gone? Who’s gone, God bless her?”

This, in commanding, bossy tones, was from the small, sharp-featured woman who had just entered the French — now where had Alex seen her before, oh yes, woman that ran that blurry restaurant, Baldini’s was it called, who’d refused to serve him a steak and chips even though he was blurry starving? Her.

“Who are you saying has gone?” repeated Mrs Powolny. She spoke in the excited, breathless voice of one who has important tidings, and doesn’t want her thunder stolen.

“Old Else,” said the first flyman.

“Oh. Then you’re not talking about Mabel?”

“Which Mabel? Mabel who?”

“Mabel of the New Kismet. She’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Dead. Drowned.”

Someone persuaded Mrs Powolny to start at the beginning. Very well. She had just come up from Brighton, where she had been flat-hunting. Although this was by the way, she had put a deposit on a very nice second-floor apartment in Brunswick Square, overlooking the sea. Brunswick Square was, of course, more in Hove, actually. It was now no secret that she had sold the lease of the restaurant and would be retiring, and awkward customers such as Mr Brendan Barton could henceforth go and whistle. She couldn’t see Starbucks putting up with that kind of behaviour.

The bar manager suggested civilly that Mrs Powolny might care to get on with it. This she was happy to do, since the news was exclusive to her and in the hubbub it had not properly sunk in.

On her way back towards the station from Brunswick Square, she had walked along the front with the intention of having a bar snack at the Metropole Hotel, or perhaps the Grand. She had noticed a commotion, a crowd, out on the beach. There was an ambulance, police cars, black and yellow tape. A body had been brought in from the sea. Mabel.

Cervical cancer. Advanced. Inoperable. Mrs Powolny knew all about that but she didn’t know of Mabel’s determination to drown herself. She had simply strolled along the front, all the way from where that road from the station led down to the pier, then along the promenade to the point by the war memorial where she had calmly walked into the sea and kept on walking, or, as Mrs Powolny supposed, wading.

The curious thing was that masses of people had watched her but no one had tried to stop her. She had walked until she was submerged and then, with the tide coming in, had come back as a body. None of their business, was Mrs Powolny’s conclusion.

“Soho by the Sea,” said James Flood softly, making a note.

“Hove, actually,” said Mrs Powolny.

Over the mumblings of shock, disbelief, tribute and sorrow that buzzed around the crowded bar, the pragmatic voice of the first flyman was heard: “Will they be bringing her back here, at all?”

Mrs Powolny, having imparted her news, seemed to think this of small consideration; but the Soho pub archivist was present and he knew: “Got to, by law. She lived here, didn’t she? There’ll have to be an inquest but after that they have to bring her back here. Funeral at St Patrick’s, Soho Square. She was a Catholic, believe it or not.”

“In that case,” said the first flyman, “we’ll give her an even better send-off than we gave Old Jakie.”

“Only this time,” said the second flyman, “we’ll do it properly. We’ll take her round every pub and club in Soho. All except where she’d barred the guvnors from the New Kismet. She knew them all.”

“But not the wine bars,” said the first flyman. “She couldn’t be doing with wine bars.”

“She’ll be missed,” said the second flyman.

“She will,” said the first flyman. “Wonder who’ll get the New Kismet?”

And that would be that. Mabel would be relegated to a shrinking, distorted collection of anecdotes, and gradually forgotten. Alex could not claim to be saddened — he didn’t do sad. But a gloom had crept over him. First Christine and now Mabel. Couldn’t claim to know either of them, really, but what got to him was the realisation that behind all the froth and flamboyance and freak show, these Sohoites had lives same as everybody else. Lives and deaths, ups and downs, cancer, the lot. Prick them, did they not bleed, as Shakespeare had said somewhere in Alex’s A levels.

“Come on,” he said to James Flood. “I’ll buy you a last one in the Wellington Arms, then I’m gunna bugger off back to Leeds.” Northern line out to Edgware someone had told him, then hitch a lift up the M1.

But why not a last one here in the French House, which was comfortable enough? Because he had caught the Soho habit of moving on. Everyone in So-oh was forever going somewhere else.

“I’ll be with you in no time,” said James. “I’ve got to file this story on Mabel first. Good human stuff — they’ll like it. Does anyone know her surname?”