Walking in Pimlico by Ann Featherstone Read Free Book Online Page A

were still drinking, their flushed faces turned towards the performers, wearing expressions of fierce amusement. John Shovelton was quiet, intent upon the stage. He met my glance, but I think he did not see me.
    The show concluded and the performers left the stage, trooping off, after bows and curtseys, behind a green curtain where, I suppose, there were dressing rooms.
    ‘Let’s bring them back for one more!’ said someone, and it seemed a wonderful idea.
    ‘Pay up and they’ll come back!’ cried another. And suddenly the table was full of coins. I threw in a shilling, though I could barely afford it, and called, ‘More drama!’ A mistake on my part for I was immediately noticed by my earlier aggressor, who staggered over and began his assault once again.
    ‘Oh, the cock-linnet wants another eyeful!’ he roared.
    ‘Who wouldn’t want another eyeful of Bessie!’ I returned with drunken confidence, but the room was beginning to swim and tipnow, and I was alarmed when once again he loomed in front of me and pushed his face into mine.
    ‘Big words for a boy!’ he growled and reached out to touch my cheek.
    I backed away, and though I laughed and affected unconcern, I desperately wanted to push him over, to see him stagger back and crash on to the floor. In my dreams he does. Sometimes I hit him squarely on the jaw with a smack, sometimes I carelessly thrust him aside. I favour the punch as much for the looks of amazement and admiration on the faces of the onlookers – and the drunken fellow – as for the crashing, lurching, reeling figure, plunging backward and away from me. He lies there and I stand over him, mutely inviting him to stand up and take another.
    In my dreams, I say.
    For in fact I stayed in my chair and was relieved when the other fellows took him by the elbow and, once again, sat him down, and plied him with brandy and a cigar. But I felt foolish, and angry too, for though I might have appeared to be a regular fellow, could drink and pay my way, and laugh at the bawdy jests, I looked like a boy, and I could not defend myself. I seethed for a moment, and took a long drink of brandy. A voice was at my ear. Shovelton.
    ‘Don’t mind Tiverton too much,’ he slurred. ‘He gets wild when he’s had over the odds, and Bessie is a particular favourite of his.’
    As if to prove this, when the girls trooped out from behind the green curtain and clustered around us like pretty moths about a flame, Bessie sat on the fellow’s knee and allowed him such familiarities that I had to turn away, which she noticed and in which she seemed to take some pleasure. But they were not alone, for around them was a veritable orgy of lascivious behaviour, with all the fellows finding girls with whom to whisper and cavort.
    All except me.
    No one even approached me, and I was left sitting alone, feelingfoolish and suddenly excluded, as though, having reached the threshold, the door was shut firmly in my face. It was time to leave. But just as I got unsteadily to my feet, Tiverton staggered to his, thrusting Bessie away from him with such a terrible ferocity that she crashed to the floor.
    ‘You’re a whore and a thief!’ he cried, lashing out at her. ‘You’ve given me the clap, now you’re trying to steal my money!’
    Bessie shrieked her defence and tried to get up, but the floor was slippery and Tiverton was advancing.
    ‘The clap you can keep! I want the money you took from my pocket!’
    Bessie protested loudly.
    ‘Light-fingers and open legs!’
    He kicked out at her and she squealed in pain as his boot struck her leg hard. He was a man in a passion and, though all around him frowned with concern, no one was anxious to intervene, for they clearly knew him and what he was capable of. We all watched and waited as Bessie backed away, begging her giant pursuer to ‘Be kind, Charlie! Don’t hurt me again!’
    But here was, as they say in the theatre, the downer, for in the end there was no exciting denouement,