To the lips, ah, of others,

    Those lips have been prest,

And others, ere I was,

    Were clasped to that breast . . .

—matthew arnold, “Parting” (1853)

The hansom drew up at a house in a narrow side street east of the Tottenham Court Road. Stepping quickly out of the vehicle, the girl went straight up some steps to a door and let herself in. The hansom driver was an old, old man, so long encased in his many-caped driving coat and his deep-banded top hat that it was hard to imagine they had not grown onto his body. Setting his whip in the stand beside his seat and taking his cutty out of his mouth, he held his grimed hand down, cupped, for the money. Meanwhile he stared straight ahead to the end of the dark street, as if he could not bear to set eyes on Charles again. Charles was glad not to be looked at; and yet felt quite as unspeakable as this ancient cab driver seemed determined to make him feel. He had a moment of doubt. He could spring back in, for the girl had disappeared ... but then a black obstinacy made him pay.

Charles found the prostitute waiting in a poorly lit hall-way, her back to him. She did not look round, but moved up the stairs as soon as she heard him close the door. There was a smell of cooking, obscure voices from the back of the house.

They went up two stale flights of stairs. She opened a door and held it for him to pass through; and when he had done so, slid a bolt across. Then she went and turned up the gaslights over the fire. She poked that to life and put some more coal on it. Charles looked round. Everything in the room except the bed was shabby, but spotlessly clean. The bed was of iron and brass, the latter so well polished it seemed like gold. In the corner facing it there was a screen behind which he glimpsed a washstand. A few cheap orna-ments, some cheap prints on the walls. The frayed moreen curtains were drawn. Nothing in the room suggested the luxurious purpose for which it was used.

“Pardon me, sir. If you’d make yourself at ‘ome. I shan’t be a minute.”

She went through another door into a room at the back of the house. It was in darkness, and he noticed that she closed the door after her very gently. He went and stood with his back to the fire. Through the closed door he heard the faint mutter of an awakened child, a shushing, a few low words. The door opened again and the prostitute reappeared. She had taken off her shawl and her hat. She smiled nervously at him.

“It’s my little gel, sir. She won’t make no noise. She’s good as gold.” Sensing his disapproval, she hurried on. “There’s a chophouse just a step away, sir, if you’re ‘ungry.”

Charles was not; but nor did he now feel sexually hungry, either. He found it hard to look at her.

“Pray order for yourself what you want. I don’t ... that is ... some wine, perhaps, if it can be got.”

“French or German, sir?”

“A glass of hock—you like that?”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll send the lad out.”

And again she disappeared. He heard her call sharply, much less genteel, down the hall.

“’Arry!”

The murmur of voices, the front door slammed. When she

came back he asked if he should not have given her some money. But it seemed this service was included.

“Won’t you take the chair, sir?”

And she held out her hands for his hat and stick, which he still held. He handed them over, then parted the tails of his frock coat and sat by the fire. The coal she had put on seemed slow to burn. She knelt before it, and before him, and busied herself again with the poker.

“They’re best quality, they didn’t ought to be so slow catchin’. It’s the cellar. Damp as old ‘ouses.”

He watched her profile in the red light from the fire. It was not a pretty face, but sturdy, placid, unthinking. Her bust was well developed; her wrists and hands surprisingly delicate, almost fragile. They, and her abundant hair, mo-mentarily sparked off his desire. He almost put out his hand to touch her, but changed his mind. He would feel better when he had more wine. They remained so for a minute or more. At last she looked at him, and he smiled. For the first time that day he had a fleeting sense of peace.

She turned her eyes back to the fire then and murmured, “’E won’t be more’n a minute. It’s only two steps.”

And so they stayed in silence again. But such moments as these were very strange to a Victorian man; even between husband and wife the intimacy was largely governed by the iron laws of convention. Yet here Charles was, sitting at the fire of this woman he had not known existed an hour before, like ...

“The father of your little girl... ?”

“’E’s a sojjer, sir.”

“A soldier?”

She stared at the fire: memories.

“’E’s out in Hindia now.”

“Would he not marry you?”

She smiled at his innocence, then shook her head. “’E gave me money for when I was brought to bed.” By which she seemed to suggest that he had done all one could decent-ly expect.

“And could you not find any other means of livelihood?”

“There’s work. But it’s all day work. And then when I paid to look after little Mary . . .” she shrugged. “Once you been done wrong to, you been done wrong to. Can’t be mended, so you ‘ave to make out as best you can.”

“And you believe this the best way?”

“I don’t know no other no more, sir.”

But she spoke without much sign of shame or regret. Her fate was determined, and she lacked the imagination to see it.

There were feet on the stairs. She rose and went to the door and opened it before the knock. Charles glimpsed a boy of............