ANNABEL KROUT SITS at the desk in her bedroom, her dressing-gown wrapped tightly around her. Having lit the brass oil-lamp that sits near by, she takes a notebook, pen, ink and blotting paper from the desk drawer. She opens the book and it is not long before the left-hand page is full of dense lines of neat handwriting, her words sloping strongly to the right, written in haste, as if eager to escape the confines of the page. Indeed, it is five or ten minutes before she stops, pausing for thought, touching the top of her lip with the tip of her pen.
A knock at the door interrupts her reverie. Before Annabel can contemplate uttering the words ‘come in’, Melissa Woodrow lets herself into the room. Like Annabel, Mrs. Woodrow is still in her night clothes, though her dressing-gown, white silk embroidered with a lotus pattern of oriental flowers, is perhaps a little more striking than her cousin’s somewhat plainer article.
‘Good morning, my dear,’ says Mrs. Woodrow. ‘I saw your lamp . . .’
‘Oh!’ exclaims Annabel. ‘Did I disturb you? I am so sorry. I tried to keep the light dim.’
‘Now, my dear, don’t be so silly – we are not a penitentiary! I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘No, I mean yes, I slept fine, thank you. I just thought I might write my journal, before breakfast.’
Mrs. Woodrow smiles indulgently. ‘Oh, your journal? Why, I quite forgot. Your mother told me about your writing – you had some little thing published, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, that was nothing, cousin, really,’ replies Annabel.
‘No, tell me, what was the magazine?’
‘The New England Monthly Bazaar,’ replies Annabel, rather shyly.
‘Well, true, we don’t take that here, but it was published all the same – how nice for you. You must tell Woodrow you are a “lady journalist”, it will quite thrill him, I am sure. You aren’t writing about us, I hope!’
Annabel Krout blushes, unconsciously placing a hand over the pages of the book, smudging the ink.
‘No, just our visit to the Zoological Gardens,’ she replies.
‘Good! I cannot imagine what the New England Monthly Bazaar would make of us!’
Annabel smiles politely.
‘Well,’ continues Mrs. Woodrow, ‘I will see you at breakfast, and we can make our plans for the day. I am sorry I retired so early last night – Lucinda quite exhausts me at times.’
‘Mr. Woodrow was so late home, too.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid he was. Oh, now that is some news . . . I made a suggestion, and Woodrow has taken my advice, and we are to have a little dinner party. We can introduce you to all our friends! And I have told him he must invite Mr. Langley – he is such an agreeable gentleman – so there will at least be someone whom you know.’
‘Oh, really? That is very thoughtful of you,’ replies Annabel.
‘As long as you promise not to put us all in your little book,’ replies Mrs. Woodrow. ‘Now, will I see you at breakfast?’
Annabel answers in the positive, and Mrs. Woodrow takes her leave, closing the door behind her. As soon as it is shut, Annabel turns hurriedly to her notebook, applying a sheet of blotting paper to the smudged ink. Her hands, however, are worse than the page. She goes to the wash-basin, and tries to remove the ink from her fingers, doing as best she can with the previous night’s cold water and soap. It proves difficult and, resolving to wait for the morning’s supply of hot water to complete the job, she tuts to herself, and dries her hands with a towel.
Outside, beyond Duncan Terrace, the trundling sound of morning traffic on the City Road can be heard in the distance. She walks over to the window. Pulling her gown close around her neck, she teases back the curtains, and peers into the gas-lit street below. It is not yet dawn, and the sky is itself an inky blue-black, hinting at daylight. Looking out along the street, on the opposite side of the road, she can make out a man, short and stocky in build, wearing a thick winter coat.
He stops and stares up at her; it is not merely a glance, but a long inquisitive stare. Instinctively, she draws the curtains shut, but then she cannot resist opening them a inch or so, and peering through the gap.
The man in the street, however, has already moved on.
Breakfast with the Woodrows passes much as the day before. The same bacon, the same eggs, and the same supplementary cold cuts of ham and pork, elegantly laid out upon a silver platter. In fact, it strikes Annabel Krout that the cold meat on offer is precisely the same, to the very last scrap of fat. But if she wonders about this coincidence of household economy, she is too polite to mention it to her cousin.
Mr. Woodrow, in turn, retains the same taciturn manner, removing his gaze from the newspaper once to inquire on Annabel’s health, and a second time as to whether the Zoological Gardens were pleasant. He gives no great impression of listening to either reply; he merely nods at suitable intervals. Mrs. Woodrow, on the other hand, supplies any silence with what amounts to a litany of possibilities for travel and exploration in the great metropolis. If Annabel herself expresses a slight preference, it is again to see either of the grand churches, the Abbey or St. Paul’s. She finds it moderately surprising, therefore, that her cousin assures her that she ‘must’ first see Regent Street. And she cannot help but think that, given Melissa Woodrow’s elaborate descriptions of the quality and elegance of millinery and haberdashery on display in said thoroughfare, there is a certain degree of self-interest in Mrs. Woodrow’s eagerness to parade her cousin along the ‘finest street in London’. Moreover, Annabel suspects that, conjoined with the exhortation that she herself must acquire ‘a hat suitable to this season’, there also is something of a hat-shaped yearning in her cousin’s heart.
Nonetheless, she agrees graciously enough to the proposal, and so finds herself, an hour after breakfast, sitting in the Woodrows’ brougham, together with Melissa Woodrow, as it speeds down Pentonville Hill, towards King’s Cross station. Annabel peers eagerly through the vehicle’s windows, looking for landmarks she might recall from the previous day. Even though their carriage goes at a fast trot, she soon recognises the distinctive domed bell-tower of St. James’s church, Pentonville, as they hasten down the hill. Likewise, the sooty terraces of two- and three-storey shops and houses that line the lower reaches of the road, their rows of chimney pots, puffing smoke into the clear winter sky. The houses, however, rather offend Annabel’s conception of the great city; they seem far too small and packed close together. They appear so cramped and confined that she silently wonders if, each night, they do not impatiently nudge one against the other, and thus quietly descend the slope by a few inches.
She puts her disappointment with the homes of Pentonville to the back of her mind. For the great shed of St. Pancras station comes into full view, looming above the King’s Cross rooftops, like the beached, upturned hull of some enormous abandoned ship. As they draw closer to the station, and the Gothic extravagance of the Midland Grand Hotel, Annabel presses her face against the window of the brougham. But the window seems determined to make itself disagreeable, rattling with every bump in the road and clattering noisily in its frame. Annabel, therefore, reluctantly sits back in her seat, much to the relief of her cousin who talks ominously of ‘catching a chill’.
‘But it’s such a beautiful day,’ exclaims Annabel, regardless. ‘It’s so bright – I wasn’t sure you got such days here, after that terrible fog.’
‘Yes, my dear, but it will change just as quickly. And think of the wind – you must keep yourself warm. Your dear mother would never forgive me if I sent you home ill.’
Annabel reluctantly agrees, making a somewhat token rearrangement of her scarf. And, as Mrs. Woodrow enters into a discourse upon the dangers of the English climate, her American cousin quietly takes in the sights of the Euston Road. From the monumental Greek females adorning St. Pancras Church, to the discreet stone steps leading to Euston Square’s subterranean station, Annabel Krout finds something of interest on every corner. And if, as the brougham turns south, Gower Street’s tedious terraces offer little excitement, there is some satisfaction in the transitory glimpses of everyday life: a woman waving her umbrella frantically at a passing Brompton omnibus, failing to catch its driver’s attention; a boy, in the distinctive red coat and blue cap of the Shoeblack Brigade, who sits mournfully against a lamp-post.
Annabel contemplates writing an article for the New England Monthly Bazaar entitled ‘London Street Scenes’.
Melissa Woodrow gently taps her on the arm, as their carriage turns on to New Oxford Street.
‘There is the Warehouse, my dear, just down there. We might pay a visit on the way back.’
Annabel cranes her neck to see Woodrow’s General Mourning Warehouse, but the building is far too distant, and the brougham far too quick, for her to make out anything whatsoever.
‘Ah,’ says Mrs. Woodrow, ‘now we are almost there. Oxford Street. We won’t stop here, mind.’
‘There are so many stores, though,’ replies Annabel.
‘Shops. Yes, but they are generally, well, not what one might call “select”,’ says Mrs. Woodrow, wrinkling her nose slightly, as if noticing an unwelcome aroma.
‘I see,’ says Annabel.
Indeed, there is some truth in Mrs. Woodrow’s comment, even to Annabel’s untrained eye. For every three-storey ‘Warehouse’ and ‘Establishment’, with a fine name painted in black upon the ground-floor cornice, or spelt in curlicues of iron-work, or etched in gold onto pristine plate glass, there is a shoddier, smaller relation not too far distant. For every giant of commerce proudly proclaiming its wares, from the seller of feather beds to the grandest Gentleman’s Outfitter, there is a dustier, bullion-glass window, behind which hides a crumpled Wholesale Stationer, or mildewed Wine Vaults. And every few hundred yards squats a public house, none of which resembles the fine timbered coaching inns and friendly taverns that form Annabel Krout’s impression of a proper English drinking-place. Thus, if Mrs. Woodrow does not think much of Oxford Street, her cousin is content to agree with her.
As they near Oxford Circus, progress in the brougham becomes rather slow. Mrs. Woodrow tuts at the snaking queue of omnibuses that prevents the vehicle making headway. Annabel, for her part, passes the time making a mental note of the different colour liveries and place names of the buses passing by on the other side, the faces of the passengers and the nimble conductors, who seem able to balance themselves precariously upon the iron step at the rear of their bus, at the slightest notice.
In fact, it is some ten or fifteen minutes before the Woodrows’ brougham can finally turn into Regent Street, drawing to a halt outside King and Sheath, Linen Drapers.
‘Of course, the eastern side of Regent Street is the fashionable side,’ says Mrs. Woodrow, as she leads her cousin from the interior of Barrett’s, Milliners. ‘It is the place to be seen.’
‘Why is that?’ asks Annabel, stepping out onto the busy pavement. ‘The other looks just as grand.’
‘Loungers, my dear. The west side attracts the worse sort of gentleman, if that is the word. They say it is the shade it gets in the summer.’
Annabel looks at the objectionable western side of the street. The classical façades of the shops are as tall as those of the east; the columns and entablature as pronounced; the plate-glass as transparent. She can, moreover, see no evidence of the worst or best sort of gentleman. There is simply a multitude of men and women, and a few children, some strolling, some pausing in front of shop windows. And what luxurious windows! Within one, elegant shawls sit draped over tilted display tables; in another rows of lace-fringed bonnets hang upon pegs; in the next, moiré and brocaded surah silk, ready to be fashioned into costumes by a talented dress-maker. Next a music-shop, in which colourful lithograph covers are presented like fans. Then a confectioner’s, with cakes and bon-bons and jellies, glistening in the light, framed by frosted barley-sugar. In fact, the only difference Annabel can make out between east and west, as she strolls beside her cousin, is that the eastern flag-stones attract larger carriages, parked by the kerb.
These, she is discreetly informed by Mrs. Woodrow, are Mayfair coaches, stately landaus that rarely trespass beyond the confines of the West End. Twice the size of a humble brougham, she notices that several bear a crest, emblazoned on to the carriage door. One even boasts a strong-calved footman, who, to all appearances, does nothing but perch at the rear of the vehicle, staring sternly into the middle distance. Any pedestrian activity is carried out by shopmen and women, who scurry between their business and the waiting carriages, arms laden with goods. A nod or smile from within the confines of the coach, and they return happy; a shake of the head, and they return crushed, muttering the words ‘carriage-trade’ bitterly under their breath. In either case, the comings and goings quite fascinate her. Mrs. Woodrow, in turn, slows her walking pace to a crawl, casting cautious glances into the interior of each vehicle.
‘You never know who you might see, my dear,’ she whispers, confidingly to her cousin. ‘Now, where shall we go next? Allison’s, I think.’
Annabel smiles, but her outward good humour conceals an awkward hour and a half already spent in three milliners, at none of which a hat has been purchased. The prospect of immediately repeating the experience, watching her cousin vacillate between various grades of fabric and lace, does not fill her with enthusiasm.
‘May we not get something to eat, cousin?’ she suggests placidly.
‘Why yes, my dear, why didn’t you say if you were hungry? I know a delightful little confectioner’s in the Quadrant.’
It transpires that there is a bonnet-maker’s and a milliner’s upon Mrs. Woodrow’s route to Cooke and Stephenson, Quality Confectioners. In consequence, it is still a good hour before the two women repair to said establishment. Two hats have, at least, been purchased in the meantime, and delivery to Duncan Terrace arranged.
The interior of Cooke and Stephenson proves to be a welcome oasis of calm, beside the bustling street. It contains a dozen or more small tables, topped by lace cloths; these, in turn, face a long mahogany counter upon which sweetmeats and cakes are proudly displayed. Behind the counter, the wood panels along the walls are inlaid with mirrors, above each of which a small gas-light flickers. Meanwhile, two or three women sit at each table, chatting quietly, as a pinafored waitress ferries tea and coffee, and all manner of sugared eatables, about the room.
It takes a moment for a space to be found; but, at last, Annabel and her cousin are placed in a window seat, facing the traffic as it trundles down to Piccadilly Circus. Once an order for tea and scones is placed, however, Mrs. Woodrow delicately excuses herself to ‘rearrange her hair’, leaving her cousin to watch the world outside.
Annabel, for her part, is content to enjoy a few moments of solitude. She tries her best to store the details of Regent Street in her mind, the better to record them later: the men and women in smart morning dress, the dirt upon their boots; the sandwich-board man, weary in appearance, whose signboards proclaim ‘Westley’s Restorative Mixture’ and a dozen illegible testimonials to its efficacy. Then a crossing-sweep, who rushes by, a Hindoo boy by the look of him, whose face so intrigues her that she is half tempted to run after him, as he scurries along the street, pestering likely prospects for a penny. So engrossed does she become in the minutiae of the scene, as if in some panorama presented for her entertainment, that she does not notice the man standing beside her, until he leans down to address her. He is a fat, round-faced man, with a dark Mediterranean complexion, hidden only a little by the lapels of his coat, pulled tight up about his neck.
‘Miss Woodrow, I presume?’ he says, making Annabel jump with surprise.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ she replies, uncertain quite how to frame a polite reply to the stranger. ‘I am a friend of the family.’
‘Ah, I see, I am sorry to give you any trouble.’
‘No, you haven’t. If you wait a moment—’
But before Annabel can finish the sentence, the man has turned and left. She watches him in astonishment, as he walks briskly through the door, brushing past a woman coming in, and then across the street, disappearing into the crowd.
She stands up to see if she can still see him, further along the road, when Melissa Woodrow reappears at her side.
‘What’s wrong, my dear?’
‘A man just came in here and asked if I was “Miss Woodrow”, then just rushed out.’
‘Really? How odd – did he leave his card?’
Annabel shakes her head. ‘No – he was very peculiar. I think he might have been an Italian or—’
‘A foreigner? My dear, the man was trying to proposition you – and I thought this was a respectable place!’
The nearest waitress scowls at Mrs. Woodrow’s highly audible exclamation.
‘But how did he know your name?’ continues Annabel.
‘I should imagine he was walking behind us, overheard us talking. They have terrible cunning, my dear. You have had a lucky escape.’
‘Yes,’ mutters Annabel, looking over to where the man disappeared from view, a distracted look upon her face. It suddenly occurs to her that she has seen him before.
It takes her a moment to recall, then it comes to her. It is the face of the man from earlier in the day; the man who stood outside the Woodrows’ home in Duncan Terrace, looking up at her window.