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“Don’t be a bloody fool!” Vida spat back contemptuously. “You in’t ’Aymarket quality, an’ yer knows it. Nor’d they let yer jus’ wander up there an’ butt in, an’ yer knows that too.”
“Then I’ll ’ave ter stay ’ome an’ make do, won’t I?” Betty retaliated, her cheeks a dull pink.
Vida stared at the sleeping man in the corner, unutterable scorn in her face. “An’ ’e’s gonna feed yer kids, is ’e? Grow up, Betty. Yer’ll be out there again, rape or no rape, an’ yer knows it as well as I do. Answer Monk’s questions. We’re gonna get these sods. Work together an’ we can.”
Betty was too tired to argue. Just that moment, Vida was a worse threat than hunger or violence. She turned to Monk resignedly.
He asked her the same questions he had asked Nellie West, and received roughly the same answers. She had been out in the street to earn a little extra money. It had been a thin week for her husband—she referred to him loosely by that term. He had tried hard, but because of the weather there was nothing. Winters were always hard, especially at the fish market where he often picked up a little work. They had had a fight, over nothing in particular. He had hit her, blackening her eye and pulling out a handful of her hair. She had hit him over the head with an empty gin bottle, knocking him out. It had broken, and she had cut her hand picking up the pieces before the children could tread on them and cut their feet.
It was after that that she had gone to look for a spot of trade to make up the money. She had earned seventeen and sixpence, quite a tidy sum, and was look
ing to improve on it, when three men had approached her, two from in front, one from behind, and after no more than a few moments’ verbal abuse, one of them had held her while the other two had raped her, one after the other. She was left badly bruised, one shoulder wrenched and her knees and elbows grazed and bleeding. She had been too frightened to go out again for three weeks after that, or even to allow George anywhere near her. In fact, the thought of going out again made her nearly sick with fear—although hunger drove her past the door eventually.
Monk questioned her closely for anything she could remember of them. They had abused her verbally. What were their voices like?
“They spoke proper … like gents. Weren’t from around ’ere!” There was no doubt in her at all.
“Old or young?”
“Dunno. Din’t see. Can’t tell from a voice.”
“Clean shaven or bearded?”
“Clean … I think! Don’ remember no whiskers. Least … I don’ think so.”
“What kind of clothes?”
“Dunno.”
“Do you remember anything else? A smell, words, a name, anything at all?”
“Dunno.” Her eyes clouded. “Smell? Wot yer mean? They din’t smell o’ nuffink.”
“No drink?”
“Not as I can think of. No … din’t smell o’ nuffink at all.”
“Not soap?” Then instantly he wished he had not said it. He was putting the suggestion into her mind.
“Soap? Yeah, I s’pose so. Funny, like … diff’rent.”
Did she know what cleanliness smelled like? Perhaps it would be odd to her, an absence rather than a presence. It did not tell him anything more than Nellie West had, but it reinforced the same picture: two or three men coming into the area from somewhere else and becoming increasingly violent in their appetites. They apparently knew enough to pick on the women alone—not the professional prostitutes, who might have pimps to protect them, but the amateurs, the women who only took to the streets occasionally, in times of need.
It was dark when they left, and the snow was beginning to stick. The few unbroken street lamps reflected glittering shards of light on the running gutters. But Vida had no intention of stopping. This was when they would find the women at home, and apart from the fact that they might not speak in the company of their colleagues, she was not going to lose good work-time by asking the questions when they should be unpicking or cutting or stitching. The practicalities must be observed. Also it crossed Monk’s mind that perhaps Mr. Hopgood was not aware of her campaign, and that indirectly he was paying for it. He might very well not feel as personally about the issue as she did.
Monk caught up with her as she strode purposefully around the corner into another one of the multitudinous alleyways of Seven Dials, crossed a courtyard with a well and pump in it. A drunk lounged in one doorway, a couple kissed in another, the girl giggling happily, the youth whispering something inaudible to her. Monk wondered at their absorption in each other, that they seemed oblivious of the wind and the snow.
Behind a lighted window someone raised a jug of ale, and candlelight fell on a woman’s bright hair. The sound of laughter was quick and clear. Past them and across a main thoroughfare an old woman was selling sandwiches and a running patterer finished up his tale of lust and mayhem and began to jog along the pavement to another, warmer spot to entertain a new crowd with stories, news and general invention.
The next victim of violence was Clarrie Drover. She was almost sixteen, the eldest of a family whose parents were both missing or dead. She looked after six younger brothers and sisters, earning what she could one way or another. Monk did not enquire. They sat in one large room all together while she told Vida what had happened to her in a breathless voice which whistled through a broken front tooth. One sister, about a year and a half younger, nursed her left arm in front of her, as if her chest and stomach hurt her, and she listened to all Clarrie said, nodding her head now and then.
In the dim light of one candle, Vida’s face was a mask of fury and compassion, her wide mouth set, her eyes brilliant.
It was very much the same story. The two eldest girls had been out, earning a little extra money. It was obviously the way the next girl, now almost ten, would also feed and clothe herself and her younger siblings in a year or less. Now she was busy nursing a child of about two or three, rocking him back and forwards absently as she listened.
These two children were not visibly hurt as badly as the older women Monk had seen, but their fear was deeper, and perhaps their need of the money greater. There were seven to feed, and no one else to care. Monk found the anger so deep in his soul that, whether Vida Hopgood paid him or not, he had every intention of finding the men who had done this and seeing them dealt with as harshly as the law allowed. And if the law did not care, then there would be others who would.
He questioned them carefully and gently, but on every detail. What could they remember? Where did it happen? What time? Was anything said? What about voices? What were the men wearing? Feel of fabric, feel of skin, bearded or shaven? What did they smell like, drunken or sober, salt, tar, fish, rope, soot? The older girl looked blank. All her answers confirmed the previous stories but added nothing. All either of them clearly recalled now was the pain and the overriding terror, the smell of the wet street, the open gutter down the middle, the feel of cobbles hard in their backs, the red-hot pain, first inside their bodies, then outside, bruising, pummeling. Then afterwards they had lain in the dark as the cold ate into them, and at last there had been voices, they had been lifted, and there had been the slow return of sensation and more pain.
