William Monk 08 - The Silent Cry

she said. “In case yer don’ remember.”
    He did not remember, but it was plain she knew him from the past, before the accident. He was reminded of his vulnerability.
    “What is your difficulty, Mrs. Hopgood?” He indicated the large chair on the far side of the fire, and when she had made herself comfortable, he sat down opposite her.
    She glanced at the burning coals, then around at the very agreeable room with its landscape pictures, heavy curtains and old but good-quality furniture, all of it supplied by Monk’s patroness, Lady Callandra Daviot, from the surplus in her country house. But Vida Hopgood did not need to know that.
    “Done well fer yerself,” she said ungrudgingly. “Yer din’t never marry good, or yer wouldn’t be grubbin’ around wi’ other folks’ troubles. Besides, yer wasn’t the marryin’ sort. Too cussed. Only ever wanted the kind o’ wives as’d never ’ave yer. So I guess yer in’t lorst none o’ yer cleverness. That’s why I come. This’ll take it all, and then maybe more. But we gotter know. We gotter put a stop ter it.”
    “To what, Mrs. Hopgood?”
    “Me ’usband, Tom, ’e runs a fact’ry, makin’ shirts and the like …”
    Monk knew what the sweatshops of the East End were like,huge, airless places, suffocating in summer, bitterly cold in winter, where a hundred or more women might sit from before dawn until nearly midnight sewing shirts, gloves, handkerchiefs, petticoats, for barely enough to feed one of them, let alone the family which might depend on them. If someone had stolen from Tom Hopgood, Monk for one was not going to look for him.
    She saw his expression.
    “Wear nice shirts still, do yer?”
    He looked at her sharply.
    “ ’Course yer do!” She answered her own question with a surprising viciousness twisting her mouth. “And what do yer pay for ’em, eh? Wanner pay more? Wot d’yer think tailors and outfitters pay us for ’em, eh? If we put up our prices, we lose the business. An’ ’oo’ll that ’elp? Gents ’oo like smart shirts’ll buy ’em the cheapest they can get. Can’t pay more’n I can, can I?”
    He was stung. “I presume you aren’t looking for me to alter the tailoring economy?”
    Her face registered her scorn, but it was not personal, nor was it her principle emotion, far more urgent was the reason she had come. She chose not to quarrel with him. The reason she had come to him at all, defying the natural barrier between them, was a mark of how grave the matter was to her.
    Her eyes narrowed. “ ’Ere! W’os the matter wiv yer? Yer look diff’rent. Yer don’ remember me, do yer?”
    Would she believe a lie? And did it matter?
    She was staring at him. “W’y d’yer leave the rozzers, then? D’yer get caught doin’ summink as yer shouldn’t ’a?”
    “No. I quarreled with my supervisor.”
    She gave a sharp laugh. “So mebbe yer ’aven’t changed that much arter all! But yer don’t look like yer used ter … ’arder, but not so cocky. Come down a bit, ’aven’t yer.” It was a statement, not a question. “ ’In’t got the power yer used ter ’ave, not w’en yer was slingin’ yer weight around Seven Dials ’afore.”
    He said nothing.
    She looked at him even more closely, leaning a fractionforward. She was a very handsome woman. There was a vitality in her which was impossible to ignore.
    “W’y don’t yer remember me? Yer should.”
    “I had an accident. I don’t remember a lot of things.”
    “Jeez!” She let out her breath slowly. “In’t that the truth? Well, I never …” She was too angry even to swear. “That’s a turn up if yer like. So yer startin’ over from the bottom.” She gave a little laugh. “No better’n the rest o’ us, then. Well, I’ll pay yer, if yer earns it.”
    “I am better than the rest, Mrs. Hopgood,” he said, staring at her levelly. “I’ve forgotten a few things, a few people, but I haven’t lost my brains or my will. Why have you come to me?”
    “We can get by … most of us,” she replied levelly. “One way an’ another. Least we could, until this started ’appinin’.”
    “What started happening?”
    “Rape, Mr. Monk,” she answered, meeting his eyes unflinchingly and with an ice-hard anger.
    He was startled. Of all the possibilities which had flickered through his mind, that had not been one of them.
    “Rape?” He repeated the word with incredulity.
    “Some o’ our girls is gettin’ raped in the streets.”