Patrick George Callaghan

Episode Four…Competition

Like an ancient dowager The Peoples Palace had marked the passing of time; its walls were cracked and bitten by a thousand winter gales. Now the evening was an earthy brown that hid its open shabbiness and rickety gas lamps clung tightly to their own familiar street corners. Heavy faces loomed from open doorways and men of use stood on cobbled roads; idle and without direction. There was company in one another; there was only accusation, discontentment and lawlessness at home. The ale bar offered up its saintly dreams…if one had a silver shilling.

‘Now there’s a woman ‘wiv furs on ‘er back and a fancy ‘at from ‘arrods.’ There were mutterings of agreement. ‘I bet ‘er belly’s goanna be full of dinner tonight! Our’s can ache and rumble till the cows come ‘ome.’ The voice died away, lost to the small group of men that had gathered close to the entrance. Men had their way. They ruled the polity of a woman. In defiance of ‘who rules the coup?’ Least wise they were not men and their woman were not women.

‘Go on you lot! Away from the door. If you ‘ain’t got the price of a ticket clear ‘orf!’ The voice of Herbert Marks boomed authority over the group with an exacting finished enjoyment. ‘Clear ‘orf…and let the ladies through!’

They sidled and murmured, and mumbled, and moved their declarations further beyond his reach; to the eclipse of the gaslight shadows.

‘Herbert Marks, ladies. I’m the manager here. Ready and willing to offer you every consideration.’ The small man bowed slightly from a grim easing face and tubby circular waist, and waved away the cabby with a raised black bowler hat. He was one of those confidential easing sort that might enjoy the patronage of the wealthy…if ever given the chance. He looked back to the gaslight shadows. ‘There ‘ain’t any need to worry ladies. Them sort don’t know no different.’ He led Esme and Constance with some pride up the four short steps to the grand hall of crystal light and the pillared marble floor. Here; pretty young girls clung attentively to good-looking young men and sugary old dapper’s. When the poised and feathery, with glittering champagne filled glasses, began to move like a ghosting mass toward the door at the far end carefully labeled ‘Auditorium’. Herbert said thoughtfully; ‘No reason to rush ladies…won’t start for at least an hour!

Herbert’s eyes twinkled with a little wickedness and his thumbs pressed down firmly into two small pockets of a worn and greasy black waistcoat. In fact, he was clothed entirely in the colour black. Black boots, black tie, and thick black hair. He said later that God had blessed him with the only colour he could; for a man of such deep thinking.

‘Plenty of time to get ready’, he added, with an obvious nod to Esme. It was clear he was taken by her beauty and wished her escort had gone to the bar.

As for Esme; she thought him unusual in his role and clearly from a reduced background. But he was likeable, uncomplicated; a man to take life in helpful gulps.

‘I’ll show you the dressing room’ he announced with pride. ‘Built this place about the turn of the century, they did.’ But he did not say which century. He wiped a sweaty eyebrow with a short stubby finger and peered a blinkered look at Esme. ‘There’s about a dozen of you all told. Just walk up on the stage one at a time like, like you was mannequins, in a lively manner and answer me questions. Easy as falling of a log.’ He assured her.

Esme smiled at him and Constance winced, and fidgeted with her brown sable. ‘I take it my daughter is dressed well enough Mr. Marks?’ She looked at him quite unimpressed.

‘Yes,’ he replied quickly. ‘Very pleasant…Very pretty. No swimsuits here!  he added rather sheepishly. He looked once more at Esme in her blue chiffon dress that matched her blue flower raked eyes; a dress that folded like gossamer over her young pink breasts and his mouth watered a little with middle age.

‘She’s a credit to you.’ he said, and nodded his head in the direction of Constance.

The pastel glow of ebony light flickered to a blackness over crouching, creeping, huddled roofs. Below images moved with a colouring that came only with its blessing. Cabbies coughed and blew into cupped hands and rubbed their willing heads. From a wet dark; a deep conceiving echo rose up in rhythmic glory: ‘…who convinceth me of sin…he who lives by the sword shall yield by the sword…’ It sound cried away down waiting empty alleys and soul-less cobbled paths.  Money is about peace of mind; of going to bed with optimism for a new day. Most wallow in thick fog and wake to an uncertain future. Esme’s mind climbed steeply among darkening hills of reassuring thoughts as she waited silently beside the high green-gold tasseled drape curtain. She held tightly to the large white card that proclaimed she was number eleven, with a cold sweatiness searching up from her palm. She listened with a forcing instability to Herbert Marks staging voice and the never ending hubbub from an intoxicated audience. Constance postured herself at the side of the stage, close to her daughter. Her watchful, involving, and disapproving eye wished the matter to end; that her moon-raked offspring should be discounted with some unwragling and puny technicality; that she would be forced with self-effacing effrontery to have the urgent realization of a modest credibility in her studies and her home.

Herbert Marks joshed lightly with his drunken onlookers and waited the benevolence of their favors. He introduced each young woman in a predetermined way and begged for a swirl to show off every evening gown. He asked their name, age and where they were from. He would then nod, wink unknowingly to his audience, and smile barefaced towards his three seated judges. Often he would add: ‘Your points out of ten please, gentlemen.’

There were wolf whistles and encouraging shouts from a small group of young men that had been let in for a shilling. Those with an extra thrup’ny bit in their pocket were allowed half a light ale at the bar and pushed into seats at the back. But they did not have the approval of the well-bred seats further down, and there was positive distaste from the balcony. Murmurs of repulsion and loathing, and calls to ‘Kick them out! rose up from all quarters like the break-up of a dissatisfied shareholders meeting. Herbert Marks raised his hands; addressing the men at the back: ‘Now gentlemen please! …remember where you are.’ He would be polite for the respect of his pedigree guests.

Then came Esme’s turn. She trampled forward at first; tottering on her transparent insolence. One leg crushingly pushed in step to the other; out into the golden flickering light. The thin strip of youths in the back seats suddenly erupted again with alcoholic approval. They stood, cheered, and whistled more loudly than before, stamped their feet, and threw caps in the air; mostly from unsuspecting bald-headed men that happened to be close at hand. They took no heed of Herbert’ and his waving hands!

‘Blimey, she’s as pretty as a picture in the Tate!’

‘You look just like a film star…wanna swap with my missus?’

‘Go on Luvs; tell us who yer are?’

The darkness beyond the lights became quiet. Its near-blackness seemed vast and unyielding. Incomprehensible shapes stared out to Esme from its edges and an unexpected fear stock-rooted her to the bare wooden floor of the stage. Their voices died in thick silence with her hesitation. They gazed inquiringly with absorbing eyes and leaning oleaginous ears. Well-bred seats puffed expectantly, and coughed on wet-ended cigars, and tiara-ed women reassured themselves in their ample bosoms. She was diminished. Stood in cold shut embarrassment. Scarlet patches rose from Esme’s cheeks, spreading an awkwardness over her face.

‘Go on, don’t be scared!’ The sudden voice was calm and just a few feet away from her. In that frozen second it had caused her to turn. Her animated eyes soaked evenly over the young man standing close to her. He grinned from a dark Saville suit and a round reddish face. His hair was rosy chestnut brown and in his hands he clutched a large folding camera.

‘I’m Charles’ he whispered. ‘Go on; you can do it. They won’t bite. It’s only a bit of fun.’

‘Come along my lovely. Don’t be nervous now! Lets all have a proper look at yer?’ Herbert Marks baritoned himself over the assembly like a well-versed ringmaster. Suddenly, she was quite magnificent. In a moment of kindness her flattened mind gave her the possessed peace of one who could afford indifference. Charles stood watching her with a growing, dancing delight in his eyes.

At first her legs would not behave. Then on her third, then forth step she strode with confidence, regal and upright, with the air of trailing footmen behind her. Her eyes were abruptly fired with deep red passion and her head jerked girlishly as she stood beside Herbert in an impressive lovely stubbornness. Her feet firmly planted in defined conservative soil. There was further hush when he asked her name. ‘Esme Stamp’ she replied. Her voice was even and clear, and swept almost instinctively across the warm smoky-blue darkness. Herbert looked for more.

‘…I live with my mother, near Primrose Hill,’ she added. There was a gentle, almost kind ‘oow’ from the back seats. Esme blushed decantile and fragile for a moment.

‘…And she’s a real primrose ladies and gentlemen! Pretty as a summer breeze. Herbert’s stiff potato-starch shirt collar crackled for a second under an engaging artfulness that had returned to his eyes and then was lost in the ensuing long drawn-out wolf-whistles and addition stomping of booted feet from the very back rows. Groups of red-faced young men leaned and swayed in a tide, and the well-bred seats nodded politely, clapped demurely, and agreed with Herbert! Her swirl’ of body brought satisfied ‘Ah’s from ageing homespun men and uneasy feline peeps’ from doubtful spouses, and she was soon prized and called an outright winner!

At the organ keys a boosting figure thumped and raised himself in time with the vector and flow of the enthused escorted gathering.

Charles took Esme’s picture, placed between two dimly-happy runners up. Herbert begged his kiss with a wink and a nod and handed her a huge bunch of ‘picked that day’ shiny pink flowers.

It was the pleasing face of Charles that quelled the hubbub of the auditorium for her. She poised nicely with demeanor conveyed of regal ball gowns and considered jewellery, and somehow…he was sweeping across her soul like the gracious wings of some golden handsome bird.

The hollers and banging of feet continued well into a number of seconds’ of thin dockside ale and champagne persons besieged the busy bar in the foyer overwhelming the tired staff there and demanding a final cap’ before bedtime. Women in the well-bred seats spilt drinks down warm bosoms and shawled rub-a-dubs drank away that week’s house-keeping money. Everyone was happier than a grasshopper in spring!

‘A well-deserved winner, I think! Another drink my dear?’

‘Cor, blimey; A real corker!’

‘She reminds me of Georgina. You remember…at Roedean? Very pretty girl.’

Esme plunged her pretty toes to the placidly flowing waters that gently raced the plateau of everyday mortality. That night she was started beyond the mere seedling of common place behaviour and a discipline that censored an emotion, a desire, which would only become partly successful. She took satisfaction in knowing the rebelliousness in her would feed an independent spirit.

Episode Three…Prize Money

Constance Stamp was a woman of pronounced views when it came to her offspring, and it was not difficult to understand her individual ascent for money and position. Something she had always instilled in her daughter. She was after all, now well placed largely through her own endeavors. It had not always been the case. She was the only daughter of a middle class family doctor with a practice settled to a woefully poor area of Leeds. The soul was often gratified whilst the stomach went hungry. Her life took on its meaning when she met and fell in love with a young army captain named George Stamp. She had gone on the invitation of a friend to a dance in the officers Mess at the nearby Victoria Barracks. Her friend had said romantically; they should go with the hope of meeting a dashing and handsome young officer.

George was nineteen, not very tall, but good looking with a wavy shock of snowy hair and the deepest blue eyes Constance had ever seen. His presence was hypnotic to her and she never took her eyes off him all evening. They were married in the following spring. She was completely devoted to him, and later, when he died on the Somme; she tried to kill herself with an overdose of aspirin behind the locked door of her now desolate bedroom.

Joshua Deans was surprisingly honest to his word and Esme was brought back to good health in the comfortable confines of a quiet and expensive nursing home not far from her mother in west London. When she was ready she had the benefit of a private tutor in the shape of the kindly Miss Ralms under whose approving and disapproving eye she flourished. The awful pain of the Samuel Deans incident ebbed with the unfolding of time and youth for Esme until the memory gradually melted away like a long dead ghost. When she was twenty one, she was given the last of the Deans money; a sum of five thousand pounds. By now she had grown into a rare beauty.

It was a gentle winter; that January evening of 1925 when a man stepped into her life once more and ultimately her world changed forever. That man was Charles Henry Hepworth.

To the north of Regents Park warm wholesome breezes lifted from the slopes of Primrose Hill and fell with a kiss upon the arboreal road of quiet worthy villas that edged to its green heaths. To the south The Thames shone with an effortless tranquility in the long, closing, lowering evening dusk. A dissolving glissade of pink drawn light peered through a tiny opening that remained in the thick collected claret curtains of an upstairs bedroom window at number 33 Queens Terrace. It fell hopelessly across the girl’s outstretched, bed reposed, reclining naked leg. The advancing glow from a table lamp took account of the girl’s satiated nudity with spreading hungry yellow fingers that caressed the very crevices of her flesh and touched the pages of a strewn-flat open copy of  “The London Illustrated”  Esme’s careful blue eyes read the announcement once again:

Young ladies of a pretty complexion should visit and give their details to the manager of The Peoples Palace in Mile End Road before the 15^th of this month to enter The London Illustrated Grand Prize Beauty Contest. The lucky winner will receive fifty pounds and a place in a top London chorus line.

Her bright inquisitiveness roused itself upon its own white sharp speculation. The river soft prowl of her pretty silver throat now stone-arid dry. The folds of her pink pear-lips rocked moist from a pink plump tongue. A swallowing secretion of wakeful dew scaled the absorbing thoughts from her now open mind. She would go to The Peoples Palace, and give her name. She was quailing. Oh, but the fun of it! The simple daring of it! She would seek out the manager. She would not tell her mother.

It was her usual Tuesday visit to Oxford Street that gave her the opportunity to take a secret bus to Mile End Road. She stood quietly and thoughtfully for some moments, facing the grand old grey building of heroic colonnades above which great dull crusted brass letters proclaimed that she had arrived at THE PEOPLES PALACE. She counted the ordered and rigid passing of time, the notion of her mind and nerves, and stroked out her cobwebbed spirit. Then with a brisk decisive elegance; walked up and through its half open doorway and into a dimmed chandeliered lobby.

Those following weeks, she had kept that secret with a determination not to tell her mother until the very last moment, perhaps…as late as the evening before. Her mother would not be so beastly as to stop her then! Meanwhile, she would attend her routines: her weekly trip to Oxford Street; her afternoon piano lessons and her mother’s endlessly boring dinner parties from which tiny clusters of dim chatter tramped over her elfin ears like drops of pointless water. It was during a particular breakfast that Esme gave in her news. Over some yellow fish and green poured tea from the silver pot nicely heated to a peak and served by Emily in a tight black white fitting raiment and beautifully carved miniature breasts.

At first, her mother rumbled quake-like, then peered out at her daughter from a pink and red painted face with an unsurprising wince.

‘I beg your pardon!’ Constance stared at her deforming child with a creasing, flaking, dry-powder look. She pushed her sugar-less, water-cooked porridge to one side.

‘Are you mad? – Friday evening! How dare you go behind my back – and on your own – are you completely skull-less child? I will not allow it! Heaven knows you are becoming difficult!’ Her eyes were wild and she pulled firm her whitening knuckles.

Esme lifted herself from her steep cherry chair. It snorted backwards a little; then rested thankfully against her sound calves. The palms of her hands pushed flat and thick to the tenebrous table. Her face had the look of uncompromising indignation.

‘I’m going mother. Whether you like it or not!’ her nostrils suddenly flamed from a readiness, ‘and besides, there is a prize money of fifty pounds! That worth considering isn’t it!’ She flumped back into her chair with a choler grace; it beamed at the tight-buttock pleasure once more.

A spreading, valuing dust began to melt around Constance. It soaked her pores like a rinsing warming bath. ‘Fifty pounds, you say? But it’s such a working class thing to do darling. After all; you on the stage! She looked at her daughter retreatively. ‘No, I can’t allow it! Besides, my friends would be most upset to know that a daughter of mine had paraded herself in such a common way!’

‘I’m quite sure your friends would cheer me, anyway they are boring and stuffy. I don’t think they would much bother what I did.’ She bit her lip; regretting the words immediately.

‘Are you entirely clothed in ill-behaved manners? There is no need for your flippancy. My God! If your father could hear you now!’ With dramatic flurry she lifted a white chiffon handkerchief from a sleeping pale-green skirted pocket and wiped an imaginary tear with the sincerity of an inspired sob.

‘It’s your age…I know it is. I’ll put your conduct down to that!

She subsided; irresolute, uncomforted in her own indignation.

Episode Two…Settlement

Joshua Deans. Magistrate. Minister of the Esra Chapel on Bittacy Hill; sat in his black knee-length, gold-buttoned, small-pocketed coat. He warmed himself gently in front of a grey ash, red topped coal fire, lulling comfortably as his damp boots steamed to satisfaction. His chair creaked in time with his arching black narrow-trouser matchstick legs. He dozed in the heat rising rapidly along the closing rails of his slow-moving blood and bathed in the youthful sunshine of his eternal contemplation. There was duck to be served sharply at eight and from his housekeeper’s larder.

A watery eye opened peculiarly and peered carefully at the large pendulum clock that rested majestically from its corner, its ticks swinging melodiously like a bandleader’s arm. It was five o’clock; his son had not been seen since breakfast.

It was the telephone that roused him from his dewy-ness. It rattled, rather than rang, uncertain from his weighted desk of untidy papers and lackadaisical books. Languidly alert, he crossed the small room, sat down, and lifted the hand-piece from its candelabra cradle.

‘Joshua…is that you?’

He groaned a little that sounded like: ‘Yes, what do you want.’

The voice on the other end portrayed a concern that was rare in Dr Hughes. ‘You had better come up to the hall Joshua…right away! The magistrate grizzled further over the cursed time of evening and the disturbance to his demeanor, but his back stiffened and his eyes were awake at the talk of Samuel and a young lady from the school.

The boot-black trap and ebony pony waited by the fat, iron-riveted double-doors, of the gripped-stern walled chapel house, and drew back an indolent hoof over the uneven ground. The animal was bridled in a brass-bound hand by orphaned Edwin; stable boy, handy boy, garden boy and dependent. The collector of a few coins on a silver tray at every Sunday service and the energy behind each heaven flung note from the chapel’s bellowing, life-hobbling pipe organ. He stood, slow and fifteen. In brown leather shoes that were full and ripe, and occupied in disciplined peaceful vacancy. In full throttle the magistrate damned Edwin. Mainly out of absence of his roast duck, and the sudden evening air, and for any other reason he could think of! Seated, he cracked an insistent whip across the unsuspecting animal with the passion of a youthful lion-tamer and raised the spindly thin wheels of the trap into the narrow ruts of the darkening lane and edging bracket woods.

‘Madam, this is not a matter for the police. Pray, that would not be good for anyone concerned!’ Magistrate Deans had settled cross-legged on leather, studded, straight-backed chair, and now watched the two women sat in front of him with a gospel-ringing, raised right eye!

Miss Dyson had hurriedly returned from her brother’s lodgings in Hampstead, and Constance Stamp had been duly summoned from her comfortable home in St. John’s Wood. She sat weepy and reed-like, attractive at forty, with wristfuls of gold bracelets and tight apple breasts that pushed out from a cool dress of blue satin firmness thoughtfully covered with an ankle touching, grey cashmere coat. In their ears the hasty lit fire crackled virgin-like with licking new born flames over its dry old coals. Heavy brown and drawn curtains deadened their voices in an unnatural way and the hung globe of suspended yellow light turned their faces to puce! The small study sagged with its important arrivals and the large oak desk sighed respectfully under Miss Dyson’s authoritative elbows, her fine broad bottom easing over a satisfied chair.

‘How is the child?’ The voice of the preacher had a sardonic tone. ‘I understand she is resting comfortably under the watchful hand of Dr Hughes…and your matron.’ His head rose a little, as if in a motion to a room somewhere above them and his aquiline nose twitched with its own importance.

Miss Dyson narrowed her eyes over him. She flung her words with distaste. ‘Esme is damaged both physically and mentally, but will survive her ordeal! She says she was attacked by a man in Loxton woods. She also says that this man is your son, Mr Deans!’ She turned her head towards Constance Stamp who remained silent and wiped her soaking eyes with a sopping chiffon handkerchief. ‘She was found by her two friends who then fetched the caretaker from the convent. She had been sexually assaulted and badly beaten!’ She was watching his face once more; waiting for his sullen sunken excuse.

‘Pray madam, pray have a care. That sort of barbarous and fallacious charge has much repercussion about it! We have yet to listen to Samuel’s accountability!’ he wriggled in his uncomfortable-ness and the muscles in his dim grey face became taut and unrecognizable.

Miss Dyson lifted herself slowly in her olive-green tweediness’ and stared at Joshua Deans with the contempt one might give an unruly drinking man on a Sunday school outing. Her sizable bosom filled her outdoor jacket and heaved heavily within her dark red cardigan.

‘Where is your son Mr. Deans?’ she demanded.

‘I fear madam…he is occupied elsewhere. I’ve no doubt he will account for himself in due course and be in possession of an acceptable tally.’ The dryness in his crevice worn face showed evidence of annoyance to the point of dismissive-ness. He tucked long thinning silver hair firmly behind tight fitting ears with a bony comb-like finger, and pulled his preacher-black coat around a weasel stomach. He looked up at her from his sad chair with a devious readiness.

Constance Stamp wiped her dipped chestnut eyes once more, and for the last time. Then pushed the refined handkerchief under a bracelet of blue covered wrist and slender rosy-pink arm and stood up. She stood up, smoothed her wrinkled dress to a position well below her knees with palms loyal to her tight-driven thighs and buttoned her cashmere coat. She stepped out in front of the magistrate and brought a forceful avenging hand down across his face with an artful punishing pound of bone flesh on bone flesh!

‘That…!’ she roared with a broiling eloquence, withdrawing her stung, soft, bloodshot-hand from his needle-like, shocked to the core face. ‘…Is just in case we are unable to find your son Mr. Deans.’ She turned her head to the startled headmistress. ‘Now, Miss Dyson would you call the police!’

The magistrate’s hand fell about his scorching face. His eyes had watered with embarrassment and a further nervous finger petted a strand of wayward hair on his forehead. He looked at Constance Stamp like a scolded, difficult child, and sat stock-still, bolt upright, quiet as a mouse, painful as toothache, in his hard unfortunate chair. The tick-tock of the lazy mantle clock passed unnoticed in that dust aired beclouded room of three uneasy souls. Sheepishly and hesitantly, and forming his words with some reluctant care; the unlucky magistrate said,

‘Madam. You consider your child first. Of that, I have no doubt.’ He waited moments for her response, but there was none.

Constance Stamp watched him like an aware cat, her keen body rippled with her after-satisfaction and her bosom moved more calmly now.

His fingers nagged nervously on the worn devoiding elbow rests of his chair, then with a calculated deliberation, he added; ‘I have something to say, please hear me out.’ His head twisted and his narrowed, withholding eyes ran quickly over the two women. ‘I have a solution that would be better for all…yes, far better.’ He regaled with declassed assertion…his mind racing ‘…And of such benefit to you, Mrs. Stamp…and of course, your poor unfortunate daughter!’ He continued: ‘Should Samuel be guilty of this unfortunate act…has yet to be established! Please let me finish!’ he waved a fearful hand in the direction of Constance Stamp’s uncovering mouth. ‘That must be proven in a court of law! However, if such a course were proceeded upon. I’m quite sure, more than sure, that the resulting conclusions, innocent or otherwise in the eyes of others would greatly injure everyone concerned’ He went on: ‘My well-respected position in this community to which numbers look up to with account and the good name of this school that embodies many trusting parents would not profit from such a humiliation.’

His eyes watched Miss Dyson’s quiet listening face with a rat-tailed scrutiny. Then his head moved suddenly and in the direction of Esme’s mother. His lips curled with an almost rising, dancing pleasure. He was feeling on top again. His wizen mind had found a solution. ‘Your daughter’s prospect for a wealthy marital catch would be at pained…risky! He was watchful of her reaction. There was nothing to tell him not to continue. ‘Samuel’s chance for a solicitous position with a reputable banking house in the city would also be lost. All simply for no other reason…than revenge and a misguided sense of justice. No madam, surely you can see that no good would come from any sort of involvement from the police.’ He still furthered: ‘Allow me, if I may, to take the child under my wing, so to speak. To offer at this time and with your guidance of course, some comforts that you may deem are necessary to her spirit and limb. Without prejudice and a pointing finger and without an admission or displacement to anyone.’ His eyes were creasing; ‘I have money enough to pay for her wants!’ The words of his generosity liberated a ministerial tone. He watched the two women as he would a servile gathering of evening sinners.

Constance Stamp looked at him from a face of brooded, broiled distaste. A preciseness. An acute poisoned vein rested on this weasel-faced, whippet-nosed, whimpish heap of a man. She said nothing. Quiet with her detestation. Miss Dyson’s hand fingered the black hand-piece of the candle-like telephone.

‘What exactly are you saying, Deans!’ Constance’s voice suddenly broke from its ropes of contempt with a raging, biting, kicking, searing, scolding, beating, inquisitorial licking charm.

He looked at her slowly, watching her brown moving eyes and thin coral pink lips. He stumbled destructively over his words. ‘It would be my wish, and quite from my own pocket; that your daughter be removed to a private clinic, in order to receive first class medical attention and bed rest, and that when she is fully recovered; resume her education under a private governess of your choosing. I would further propose an endowment substantial in its content to offer her some independence when she is of age.’

He stroked a single strand of hair from his forehead and added; ‘you madam, would also benefit financially from such a course of action.’ His mouth curled out from the dry of his throat, from the length of his judgment, from the slipperiness of his timbre.

Constance Stamp turned on him almost instinctively. ‘You seemed to have engaged yourself in a great deal of thought at such a short notice Parson! Tell me; did you draw upon this idea on your way here this evening?’ Her voice had a mistrustful sneer. She glanced at the quiet seated Miss Dyson, and then turned once more to him.

‘I must confess the matter had crossed my mind somewhat earlier.’There was an almost conquest cry in his tone. ‘I am not one,’ he added, ‘to allow the grass to grow beneath my feet. I would not be where I am today if I did! Further Madam; I am not a parson, but a minister!’ His voice rose with sudden indignation.

‘I don’t care what you call yourself!’ She spat the words out at him with the vengeance of bad meat. ‘It seems you won’t allow anyone to stand in your way of things!’

‘The lord is my companion! It is his claim that directs me in my action. No other presence will dictate to me!’

‘Your beliefs are of no concern to me.’ She threw out his declared unity as one might dispel a bolstering parlor maid. Then very calmly said; ‘So, you want to buy us off?’

‘Pray madam…not the words I would use.’ He shifted uneasy once more, waiting on her aggressiveness. There was none.

‘You may pray Mr. Deans. I will take your money, and I will tell you why. I too, doubt the outcome of any legal matter. There is not a court in the country that would convict your son without an independent witness! Women today have a very poor say in many matters, yet your son should be brought to account for his actions. But my thoughts are for my daughter and for her future. A future no less dominated by self-interested males like yourself. Therefore my concerns are for her. Yes! I will take your blood money! And without hesitation, because that will be my sweet revenge on you and your son. I have no pity for either of you. Only contempt for your existence. But rest assured; if this matter should ever be aired to anyone…anyone at all: I will come upon you and your son with the public disgrace you so rightly deserve!’

His abstract head dislocated in his potato-starch shirt collar and crackled pointlessly with the acquiring victory. Outside the coldness of that April room…willow leaves flickered ireful and shut their ears to a descending dusk.

Miss Dyson rose silently, fumbling for the switch on her small irksome table lamp and looked at Constance Stamp uncomfortably. She brushed a loose blob of brown hair that had disobediently dropped across her forehead, and said with a certain feebleness; ‘There is the doctor of course.’

Joshua Deans looked at her from the acuteness of his narrow faced. A sudden irritation had returned to it. ‘The doctor and I, have known each other for many years.’ he groaned the words almost uninterestedly. ‘You can be assured the doctor will only have the utmost consideration for the girl’s health and future well being. He is no radical, Miss Dyson.’

‘Radical is not the word I would have chosen Mr. Deans. There is such a thing as respect for what is right and wrong.’ She paused thoughtfully at his once more soundlessness, then added; ‘Perhaps you are right. Perhaps, it would be better not to drag Esme through the distress of a fruitless and bruising trial.’ Her eyelids lifted a little. ‘Your offer may be best for her!’

‘The best for everyone!’ he declared, ‘like the rising wind from the womb of the earth creeping through briars and whipping the hills of the sloping grey-green grassy, still-cold pagan woods of deep dark desperations that measure the soul of the sinning sinner’ he added

Miss Dyson moved head toward the quiet listening woman. ‘I’m sure Mrs. Stamp would not differ?’

‘I love my daughter very much and of course I would want only what is best for her. You are a cunning and conniving man, Mr. Deans…regretfully, you are right in your assumptions.’ Constance looked at the magistrate with the closing indignation of that preserved, last given, show of dislike.

He bristled as if quickly thrown into energy. ‘Well, Mrs. Stamp,’ he said in his newly-dressed, halo soaking benevolence. ‘All that remains for us is to settle the details!’

She sat within the glow of the coals, their red heat penetrated the pores of her skin and warmed the white of her bones. She stared long and hard into the glass of whisky as if it were full of a thousand nettles, and finding no reason to swallow the liquid her mind moved over matters best with the gradient carefulness of an undertaker’s assistant… A deleted scene from ‘The Shriving of Miss Esme Stamp’ by Patrick GEORGE Callaghan.