The Proposition (31 page)

She was saved from having to, then, when the conductor interrupted. "'Ay, lovebirds." She and Mick both looked around to see the man's head up over the top of the steps. "How far, mate?" he asked. A Cockney.
'Ow far, mite?

"Aldwych."

"Four P for two."
Far pee.

Mick leaned to dig four pence from his pocket as Winnie slid herself back onto the seat, a more ladylike location. Goodness, what had come over her? she thought. In front of anyone who wanted to look up on top of a bus. Could people know? Could they tell what had been under her backside? She thought she should be embarrassed. She
was
embarrassed, she told herself.

Still, she hummed tunelessly to herself as they headed east.

When she asked Mick at one point where they were going, he said, "My part of town."

At first, this quieted her. She worried he meant Whitechapel. She'd been there once with her father; they'd gone to listen to voices. The sounds in that district, of purest, richest Cockney, were wonderful, but the atmosphere of Whitechapel was frightening. At the heart of the East End, it was a hard place of ragtag children, poverty, and narrow, sunless streets. It had been a seedy part of town; then, three years after her visit with her father, Jack the Ripper had made it notorious.

As they lurched through traffic, though, she felt Mick's arm bump her shoulder blades—it was stretched out along the bench back behind her. After that, it didn't matter where he was taking them; she wanted to go. She felt oddly confident of him: If he thought he could guide them without danger, then she would believe that he could.

It was a pretty, midweek late afternoon. London was still bustling as shops prepared to close for the day, people out on the streets, in transit; coming or going. The light breeze on the top of the bus was beautiful; the view was excellent. They left behind the spire of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, then passed Covent Garden, like a tourist's ride. Then at Aldwych, they got off.

"We have to walk from here."

They shooed pink-footed pigeons out of the way as they cut through a small churchyard. The smell of flowers wafted from somewhere, as if from a whole market of them, then this changed abruptly into the pungent smells of a brewery. Then music. Distant, but jolly.

They followed the music into back streets, and Winnie became turned around. They were burrowing their way into what was not a bad area so much as working-class: close flats, children playing in front of an eel-and-pie shop, a heavy cart-horse slipping on wet cobbles where a sewer drained, stomping and jangling its trappings.

And all the while, Mick held her hand, leading her along. His part of town. His warm, embracing hand around hers. He could have led her to hell, and it would have been fine; pleasant, in fact.

Then she thought, How prescient. For he stopped, held out his arm, gesturing toward an overhead, swinging sign halfway down the block. The Bull and Tun. The music was coming from there. It was loud—a tinny piano played with a violin that sounded as though a gypsy worked it, along with some sort of percussion, perhaps a sack of tins. What the trio lacked in nuance they made up for in volume, as they played a lively, if slightly off-key rendition, of a cancan from
Orpheus in Hades.
Hell, indeed.

"Dancing," Mick said and smiled as if he offered a gift. "I can't guarantee what kind, but some of the people inside will dance before the night's over. Let's be two of them, Win."

Chapter 20

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T
he Bull and Tun was little more than a large room with a bar and foot rail at one end. Its furnishings were simple—wood tables and chairs, the walls covered with ale signs, certificates of inspection, a dart board, all proudly displayed along with a large photograph of the Queen and a smaller one of the Prince of Wales. The public house's wood floors hadn't seen wax in a very long time. The brass at its rails was dented but shining. Nonetheless, the place had an air of goodwill that was attractive. As Mick and Winnie came in, a dozen people greeted them. Several greeted him by name. He was a regular.

At the back, the musical trio caroused through the Offenbach rearranged to suit working-class tastes. A man with a bald spot on his head played the piano so hard his hands bounced off the keys. A swarthy man with baggy eyes sawed a bow back and forth on a violin. A rather talented young man rattled sticks across glasses and cans and anything else he could hit. If people got within reach, he'd play their buttons.

Patrons sat at long tables together, elbow to elbow, though there were still places available. On a small section of open floor, a dozen men and women did a fairly robust polka to the French music. Mick's dance. He wanted to join them. "We have to dance soon. It will be too crowded later."

First, though, he introduced her to a small, wiry fellow named Rezzo, then several other men whose names she hadn't heard before, and two women, Nancy and Marie. Marie liked him, Winnie knew immediately, though Mick didn't seem to be even faintly acquainted with the fact.

He was well-liked. And well-known—his friends wanted his jokes and philosophies, telling him, "No, no, do the voices, do the accents." They liked him to talk in dialects. It was odd, but during his introductions, she'd heard him attempt to sprinkle his speech with some of his old accent, to blend in, she supposed, but then he stopped. His friends teased him a little about the way his voice sounded these days; her, too, as if he and she had both been somewhere that flavored them differently, like pies in the larder set too close to the basil.

Accent or not, his friends wanted his reactions and ideas; they engaged him in conversation. If anyone knew what he did for a living, it wasn't a subject of interest. Here, Mick was the fellow who—someone let the fact out—danced well with all the ladies and spouted colorful stories with a clear-sighted outlook that everyone loved to hear.

She looked at him among them. He wasn't like them. His clothes were too smart, his speech and manner too polished. She looked at his hair, so dark and shining. It was well-cut. His eyes, oh, his beautiful eyes. Their steely green was so much finer than any other eyes here. Perhaps he never had been one of them, she thought, then laughed. Perhaps she was prejudiced. She thought him handsomer than any of the others. Cleverer. Taller, of course
…
kinder, friendlier, funnier…
The list went on.

After ten minutes of chatting with friends, with two men buying both him and Winnie drinks—Mick ale and Winnie lemonade—Mick wanted to dance. "In an hour, we won't be able to."

For him, it was simply a matter of dancing, of course. He was familiar with the way of the place, good on his feet, good at quick steps. Winnie was less able. It took a few attempts at each new rhythm to be graceful with it—though Mick exclaimed over and over how quickly she caught on and how good she was once she did. Still, she had good, if self-conscious, fun. He was always a pleasure to dance with.

Then a fast waltz played, and he leaped right into it.

With surprise and recognition, Winnie accused, "You knew how to waltz!"

He shrugged, smiled, and spun her to the music, left then right. "Not all the same steps and not the dignified way you do it, but yes." He laughed, then teased, "Still, you had so much fun telling me how, I was happy to cooperate."

"And what else could you do before I ever tried to teach it to you?" she teased him back. "Could you talk like a lord all along?"

He grinned crookedly and said nothing, as if it were possible.

She remembered all the difficulty they'd had getting him to this point. Still, there were moments when she could almost believe their struggle had never happened. The sounds coming from his mouth tonight were so clearly upper-class—even if his knowledge about Paris was sketchy. Oh, she laughed to think of that foolish woman at the teahouse, flirting with him when there was no point.

He was hers.

She began to think this: hers. As they danced among his friends, and the floor grew more crowded. He was the only Cornishman, but not the only one from remote places. There were gypsy and Irish and Jew. She could hear in the voices that they danced among the grandchildren of the potato famine, the children of European
pograms
, all come to England for haven. And though Winnie knew that just a few blocks further east,
it
wasn't very safe at all, here felt haven to her, too. Here was light and laughter and ale and song.

And music. With Mick dancing her around to it. A rare opportunity. She warmed to the unusual music and the quick tempos. She danced, having her own little ball in a pub on the west edge of the East End in London. She danced with Mick till they were bumping up against backs and shoulders, till they didn't have a square foot to move, till, when they wanted a drink to wet their throats, it took half an hour of wedging and working their way to get the fifteen feet to the bar. The room grew hot from the bodies alone. And still, people kept coming in. On a Wednesday night.

They brought tables from the back, filling the dance floor with them. The dancing was over, Winnie thought. Until the woman introduced as Nancy grabbed her arm and said, "Those of us who don't want to stop dancing, get up on the stage." She pointed.

The "stage" was three long wood tables put end to end. Several men, Mick one of them, helped maneuver the wood furniture into position. He saved Winnie and himself seats at the "stage." They pulled up chairs.

When the music started again, Nancy, her friend Marie, and two other women climbed up onto the three contiguous tabletops and began to move to the music. Though this dancing was different.

The girl, Nancy, swung her skirts, then kicked them up in back. She put her fists on her hips, still holding handfuls of skirt, and moved in a way that was provocative and sly, but rhythmic and beautiful to watch. The others showed their petticoats, too, laughing, dancing.

Winnie watched the four girls dance till they were all perspiring, then watched with utter
astoundment—
horrified, but fascinated—as each and every one of them, one by one, shrugged out of their blouses. Not that they didn't have a great deal on underneath; there was much corsetry and underlinens, all very lacy and pretty. They exposed nothing indecent, or not exactly. But removing their blouses left their arms bare.

She looked to see what Mick made of this. He wasn't even paying attention. His head was bent in cheerful conversation with the fellow next to him; Mick was uninterested, as if he'd seen it all before.

Winnie hadn't. She couldn't decide what to make of it.

"Would you like something to eat?" Mick called over the music. Before she could say, he was up and answering his own question. "I'll bring you something."

As he left, Nancy's friend, Marie, climbed down, using his chair. On her way past, she smiled at Winnie and said, "All the single women are allowed to dance up here. Come join us."

Winnie drew back.

The girl added, "If you want to."

"I don't," Winnie said quickly. She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

Oddly enough, though, she didn't disapprove exactly. Or yes, she did, a little, but she also admired the dancers. She admired the girls' boldness, their joie de vivre, their openhearted laughter and friendly manner.

"We're not whores," Marie called down to her, reaching over Winnie's head to accept a drink Nancy brought.

"Oh, no, I wasn't thinking that." Though, of course, the idea had been in the back of Winnie's mind.

"I work in a garment factory," Nancy said, "and Marie sells apples and flowers. We're good girls." She laughed. "But we love the fellows. And love to dance."

Yes. Winnie loved to dance, too. She tapped her feet to the music.

Other than toe-tapping, though, she had the presence of mind to sit, ladylike, and watch as Nancy, having swilled a half pint of ale in a single draft, stepped back up, from the floor to a chair to the tabletop again.

The piano went from a double-quick polka to a music-hall rendition of another of Offenbach's cancans, while underneath the table Winnie danced her toes in little steps.

On the tabletops, the girls broke into high kicks. Amazing. And bawdy. And slightly awe-inspiring. They bounced their knees into the air and circled their legs—their pretty, stockinged legs half-covered in lacy knickers. It made Winnie's heart pound to see it.

The oldest girl up there, she would guess, probably Nancy, was still at least five years younger than herself. They were all pretty girls, one dark, another petite, another slightly plump; Nancy herself was fair, slender, and shapely.

From nowhere, Winnie remembered her mother. In the six years she had known the woman, Helen Bollash had paid as little attention as she could to her daughter, and when her attention came, it was inevitably harsh. Winnie had understood intuitively before she could talk that her mother didn't like children. The Marchioness of Sissingly had been young when she'd had her only child, eighteen; twenty-four when she'd left; then dead at twenty-six.

Winnie had never heard the word applied to her mother, but she didn't doubt that some said it: Her mother had been
wild.
Or as Mick would call it: spontaneous with a strong sense of adventure.