Belle - Lesley Pearse [229]
But so far the police had failed to catch the men, and every day Belle was growing more tense because of it. She knew it was perfectly possible that if Kent had heard she was back in England, he’d seek her out and kill her. She knew this was on Garth and Jimmy’s mind too, just by the vigilant way they locked up at night and insisted she was accompanied every time she went out.
Jimmy was kept busy most of the day and evenings, but when the bar closed, he and Belle would sit by the stove in the kitchen and talk. Bit by bit, Belle told him about New Orleans, Faldo, and going to Marseille. At first she censored it, telling him only the amusing parts, or related it as if she’d been a mere bystander. But gradually, as she realized he wasn’t easily shocked, she told it as it really was.
‘That lad’s got a wealth of understanding,’ Mog remarked on the day Jimmy had accompanied Belle to Bow Street police station to read and sign her statement. ‘I suppose working in the bar he’s got to hear all sorts – living around here you don’t stay innocent for long. But he don’t judge, I think that’s what I like about him the most.’
Belle could only agree. She even teased Jimmy that he would make a good priest.
‘I could do the listening in the confessional all right,’ he laughed. ‘But I couldn’t cope with all that praying and stuff.’
Belle wondered if by ‘stuff’ he meant being celibate. She knew he had walked out with a couple of young women while she was away, but she suspected he was still a virgin. His proposal lurked at the back of her mind, popping up at the oddest times. She thought it would be the easiest thing in the world to accept it; at a stroke she’d make everyone happy, even herself in many ways because as each day passed she liked him more. But while she was still thinking about Etienne and hoping against hope he’d come to claim her, it wasn’t fair on Jimmy to lead him on to think she might be coming round to it.
But there had been no letter from Etienne. She had been back in London for two weeks now, and although she told herself mail from France might take longer than that to arrive, in her heart she knew there was no letter on its way.
Garth didn’t allow women in his pub. His attitude wasn’t unusual; except in hotel bars, or saloons close by theatres, most landlords were the same. Mog occasionally helped serve at lunchtime, but never in the evening, and Garth referred to the women who sometimes tried to come in as ‘ladies of the night’ and refused them entry.
His euphemism wasn’t apt, for in Seven Dials they didn’t wait for night, they were out there on street corners from nine in the morning. They had been on the street corners all of Belle’s childhood, yet she had barely noticed them then. But she not only noticed them now, she felt deeply for them: dirty, raddled, some with wrinkled breasts barely covered, hair that hadn’t seen a wash for weeks, and thin because they chose to buy cheap gin instead of food for the oblivion that came with it.
So when Belle and Mog heard strident female voices coming from the bar one evening as they were sitting in the kitchen, Belle looked up from her sketchpad in surprise.
‘What’s going on in there?’ she asked.
Mog put her sewing down and looked out of the window. ‘Well, it’s not raining, that’s when they usually try to make Garth let them in. Something must’ve happened out on the street. I’ll go and see.’
She only went as far as opening the door through to the bar and peeped round it. ‘Jimmy!’ she called. ‘What’s going on?’
Belle couldn’t hear his reply,