This time it was Declan who faltered. He looked doubtfully up at the house and said, ‘What do we do now?’
‘We go up to the door right away, and ply the door knocker and I ask can I see my cousin. What could be wrong about that?’
‘Nothing in the world,’ said Declan.
They were both hoping that Romilly would open the door to them, but she did not. Instead they were confronted by a rather large lady with a fleshy face and curves imperfectly concealed by a scarlet gown. There was a moment when neither of the boys knew what to say, then the lady gave a slow smile, patted her improbably auburn hair with a beringed hand, and said, ‘My my, two new gentlemen. Young ones, as well. Looks like my Christmas ’as come early this year. Come inside, dear, and get acquainted with the ladies of the house.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Colm. ‘It’s a bloody knocking shop.’
Of all the things they had been expecting, this was the very last. They sat awkwardly in a large downstairs room with overstuffed sofas and flock wallpaper, and their hostess introduced herself as Flossie Totteridge – ‘Mrs Totteridge, I’m a widow woman’. She pressed upon them a series of refreshments, starting with Madeira, which she said the house kept specifically for the older gentlemen who visited, to sherry, which they might say was more of an afternoon drink, all the way down to gin, which was what the girls usually favoured.
‘We won’t take anything, thank you,’ said Colm. ‘We just want to know about my cousin, Romilly Rourke. To see her if we can. Is she here? Because she wrote to me—’
‘She was here, but she ain’t here now, more’s the pity, because the gentlemen liked her.’
‘I see,’ said Colm, and although his voice was perfectly ordinary, Declan could feel that he was raw with pain at having learned Romilly had been a prostitute. He thought they were both raw with pain.
‘All to do with her being Irish,’ said Flossie Totteridge. ‘Goes down well, Irish.’ She sent an appraising look at the two boys, particularly lingering on Colm.
‘Where did she go?’ said Colm, and Declan heard, with apprehension, that Colm’s voice had taken on a softer note.
Flossie Totteridge heard it as well, and sat up a little straighter. ‘I couldn’t say,’ she said. ‘I did hear she’d taken a room somewhere, but I don’t remember where.’
‘Would you try?’ said Colm, and now there was no doubt about the tone of his voice.
‘It’s no good, it’s gone. I’m a poor hand at remembering. It might have been Canning Town, but then again it might not.’
This meant nothing. Canning Town might have been anywhere in the world.
Declan said, ‘Would any of the . . . the girls know?’
‘They might.’ A speculative gleam came into Mrs Totteridge’s eye. ‘’Course, their time’s very valuable to me. I have to think of that. Gentlemen pay to spend time with my girls.’
Neither Colm nor Declan had any idea what a prostitute would cost, but the knowledge that they barely had enough for a night’s lodging passed between them.
‘But we might come to an arrangement,’ said Flossie. ‘With you being Romilly’s family, as it were.’ She reached out a pudgy hand and laid it over Colm’s.
Colm sat very still and then, to Declan’s disbelief, took her hand and smiled into her eyes. ‘What kind of arrangement had you in mind?’ he said.
‘Bit o’ company, maybe. An hour or so. It gets lonely here at times for me, and I was always partial to a bit of Irish.’
Something flickered behind Colm’s eyes. ‘That sounds a very reasonable idea,’ he said. ‘We could come back tomorrow. Would that give you time to question the girls?’
‘Come in the afternoon,’ said Flossie. ‘Afternoons are the time I get lonely, if you take my meaning.’
‘I do,’ said Colm. ‘Afternoon it is.’
Somehow he and Declan got themselves out of the house, and back on to the street.
‘You can’t go back there,’ said Declan, as they walked towards the cluster of shops and the smaller houses where they might find a cheap night’s lodging. ‘Colm, you can’t.’
‘I must. That’s where Romilly was living when she wrote that letter about being frightened. It’s the only link I have to her.’
‘But that woman – those girls . . .’
‘You think I can’t cope with one or two whores?’
‘Of course I don’t think that.’
They walked along the wide London street, scanning all the windows for notices advertising lodgings, resignedly going past the uncompromising ones that said ‘No Irish’, both trying to come to terms with the knowledge of how Romilly had been living all these weeks.
As they finally picked out a modest but clean-looking house that announced itself as having ‘Clean, comfortable lodgings for single, working gentlemen’, Declan knew that Colm would stop at very little to find Romilly and put right whatever had gone so dreadfully wrong in her life.
He realized that he, too, would stop at very little when it came to Romilly Rourke.
TWELVE
The present