recommending the introduction of some form of’ – she seemed to wince at the awful words – ‘rubber tubing into the marriage bed. She encourages the benighted and the shamelessly perverse to take their sordid pleasures with no thought to consequences, to couple together like hares in a field – and I should add, Mr Davidson, she claims divine sanction for her folly.’
‘No,’ I said, heatedly. ‘This is too bad. I have heard a great deal of Dr Stopes in the last few years, because my work leads me, as you know, into the realms of prostitution, where matters of sexual health are routinely discussed. But of her pretensions to religious endorsement, I was unaware.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Her Ladyship, vigorously nodding, ‘I heard it from my maid. The dreadful woman said in court somewhere that her zealotry in this murky business springs from a divine visitation she had one afternoon, under a yew tree in her garden in Leatherhead.’
‘My word,’ I said, stifling a guffaw. ‘A Home Counties Buddha – and a female to boot!’
‘Her disgusting sexual fantasies are bad enough,’ said Lady Fenella, ‘in encouraging loose girls and factory women to fornicate with men, free from concerns of pregnancy, let alone morality. But to claim that Our Lord recommended such a course of action, as it were privately, in the ear of an hysterical Surrey quack is just too much.’
‘I am almost accustomed to being shocked,’ I said. ‘Every day brings fresh news about the degradation of feeling and behaviour in modern life. That is why I wished to speak with you about –’
‘Immorality is all around us, Harold,’ said my old friend. ‘Have you seen the dimensions of the skirts worn by young girls in Knightsbridge today?’
‘I rarely venture to such select locations. My work keeps me confined to Piccadilly and Holborn. I rely on you, as in so many things, to keep me abreast of fashion.’
‘I’ve seen young women walking into Harrods, Harold, in a skirt that reveals their calves, sometimes almost to the knee,’ she said, her voice rising to a protesting squeak. ‘The other day, I was popping in to buy a crystal vase for Lobelia Graham’s wedding, and in front of me came this – this trollop in a long coat that opened to reveal a skirt so tight around the hips, it must have constricted her circulation. Were it not for a tiny flounce of fabric around the hem, it would have displayed the place where her hosiery ended! But I have shocked you, Harold, for your face has reddened alarmingly.’
‘Not at all,’ I said, applying a handkerchief to my brow. ‘Do continue.’
‘I thought she must be a tart, plying her trade in Brompton Road. But the doorman bowed with every sign of recognition, as if she were a regular customer.’
‘I can only hope,’ I said with feeling, ‘that such fashions, if that is the word for such immodesty, do not spread as far as my dear girls in Norfolk.’
We stood together, shaking our heads in a chorus of disapproval.
‘Fenella,’ I said, ‘my visit here today has a purpose beyond the delight of basking in your company.’
‘Oh?’ She rose from the sofa, smoothed her skirts and moved towards the window.
‘Not, I hasten to say, money,’ I reassured her, ‘for you are more than generous already to my young charges. I wish to ask you the favour of an introduction.’
‘Indeed. To whom?’
‘You have been good enough to bring my work to the attention of dignitaries from many walks of life,’ I said, ‘and I have forged several relationship that have been invaluable to my work. Words cannot express my gratitude for so many favours done in the past. Without the patronage of your cousin, Lord Strathclyde, there would be no Runaway Boys’ Retreat at Whitechapel. Without the intervention of your neighbour, Lady Kilfoyle, the Maidens in Distress Foundation at Bow would never have got off the ground. Had it not been for the generosity of Lord Staynes, and the Romany Rye Rehabilitation Unit, there would be a thousand homeless didicois on the streets of Sutton and Cheam. Were it not –’
‘Too kind, Harold,’ cut in Lady R-S, over her shoulder, as she peered through the glass to the view over the Strand. ‘Awfully glad to have been of help. But what you’re looking for now is …?’
I joined her at the window and, with slightly shocking directness, took her hand in mine. Did she flinch? Only for a second. Her long chilly fingers suffered the embrace of my insinuating touch (my hands are always warm) and seemed to thaw as I said, ‘Fenella, no man could wish for a finer benefactor than you, but that is not the point. For no man could wish, either, for a more sympathetic friend to turn to in the dark reaches of the night, a more understanding ally to draw close when all seems lost, a warmer image to summon up before him when one is surrounded by the cold winds of despair. Fenella –’
With (I admit) shocking presumption, I encircled her considerable waist with my arm, and turned her away from the window so that I was looking up into her eyes. It was, may God forgive my lack of gallantry, like turning a dreadnought battleship 180 degrees to port in the Solent, but it was worth it.
‘Fenella,’ I said, softly.
‘Yes, Harold?’ she whispered. It was a romantic moment, or would have been had she not towered a good eight inches above me. Her prodigious bosom, wrapped in some cantilevered phenomenon of whalebone and rustling red silk, protruded before me like a vast cushion. I looked up, like a besieger looking over a wobbling battlement, to her handsome, troubled face.
‘What you do, my dear Fenella, you do from many impulses – of noblesse oblige, of Samaritan generosity, of Christian decency. But I alone know that you do it from love.’
‘Oh, Harold,’ she breathed, ‘what do I know of love any more? Since Augustus died, I have been a stranger to the tender emotions. While all around me have danced through their middle years, and some have found other partners, I have kept faith with Gussie. My sister took me to a ball at Nancy Cunard’s, full of nigger minstrels and with a tiger from Sumatra and an ice statue of a swan whose beak some of the brazen flappers actually licked, and I was miserable throughout because there was no lovely Gus to lead me through the polka steps, and I went home early and cried into his dressing gown which stank of pipe tobacco, and I hugged it like a madwoman.’
‘My poor Fenella,’ I cooed into her bosom, startled to be allowed such intimacy. She laid her drooping head upon my neck and sobbed. Her cheek was hot against my skin.
We stood in an awkward embrace. I had, I confess, not the faintest idea what might happen next. I have known Fenella for years, ever since my work in London restarted after the war, and we have been through much together. Through night shelters in Pimlico and day-care homes in Stepney, I have introduced her to the needy and the profligate, to whom she has talked and proffered advice most helpfully over the years.
At first, the recipients of her advice did not find her engaging; she tended to address them like a duchess ticking off delinquent parlourmaids. She was always a little too intent on getting to the meat of their sufferings. Sometimes, it seemed she regarded them as turns in a burlesque show. ‘Are you an Alcoholic?’ she would ask. ‘Are you a Prostitute? Did you become a Prostitute in order to Feed a Baby Born Out of Wedlock? To what level of indignity did your employer abuse you?’ But I took her in hand, taught her to soften her voice, forsake her more intimidating hats, and learn to listen. It took a while.
Cynics might object to the enthusiasm with which she seeks out tales of sinfulness, and the relish
