Page 29 of If Looks Could Kill
Time for salvation.
They weren’t all bad, the preachers.
There was Captain Paddy Campbell, who had misspent his teenage years boxing in pub basements. He was only a few years older than Pearl and me, but he’d crammed a lot of sin (his words) into his pre-Army years. He believed that what all these restless city lads needed was good, healthy exercise in the fresh air to steer them away from crime and liquor and toward God. There was something guileless about Paddy. He really wanted to help boys make something of themselves. He had a tender heart. Children climbed all over him, and he ate it up. A big barrel of love, yet handy to have around if fights broke out in the soup line. He could give you a black eye for Jesus’s sake without any irony, pick you up afterward, dust you off, embrace you like a brother, and slip a chocolate bar in your pocket as you left. He was a terror, all right.
He insisted on teaching all us ladies the proper technique for delivering a punch because it might save our lives in a dark alley someday. The horrified look on Amanda Dillinger’s face as Paddy barked at us to lock our wrists, wind up, step into it, punchright throughthe bugger, and slug ’em into next Tuesday is a sight I’ll still laugh about when I’m as old and arthritic as she is.
Captain Paddy. We could do worse.
Such as, for example—
But that would be unkind of me.
Officer Wilfrid Rugger, then. He was tall and willowy, and played the organ, not that we had one. His sermons were carefully written, quoting theologians and Old Testament prophets. He was harmless and put people to sleep, which was probably what they needed after a long, hard day. Officer Wilfrid didn’t bother me.
Then there was Officer Purse Laurier, who had thrown away his college education and his parents’ support to enlist in the cause. What he lacked in funds he made up for in self-satisfaction. Pearl deserved him.
He told his story, and women swooned. Others told their stories, and men felt understood. Jerusha Bean and other older women told their tales of abusive husbands and thankless children and how coming to Jesus changed it all, and the women in the audience threw themselves upon the floor, calling upon Jesus to chasten their families.
As for me, I did not preach. What was there to say? I’d lived a comfortable life in my father’s home, in the care of my maiden aunt. My sins were beige; my prospects and aspirations, beige. I read books, dabbled at oil painting, and had luck keeping potted ferns alive. Such I might be doing still, had I not happened upon an Army meeting one day out shopping with Aunt Lorraine, and the sight of young women my age, preaching and leading and traveling and scandalizing their parents, went to my head. Not the most stirring tale of conversion ever told.
I do have faith, in spite of all I say. I have something like faith. I want to do something good in the world for Christ, for the love he feels for others, one of them being me.
When it comes to salvation, that’s all I’ve got.
Spitalfields, East End, LondonJack’s Fifth(Thursday–Friday, November 8–9, 1888)
And then one night, back in town, he knows. The time is now. The weather works. The harvest is this night. After midnight, when the city holds its breath.
The young woman. He knows where she is. He knows where she will be. He located her easily in his slum-roving. A sixth sense tells him she won’t be far from home tonight.
He dresses differently. This time he must play a role. The role of a would-be client. He dons a coat he picked up at a used clothing stall and a dark hat worn low over his eyes.
There she is, on Commercial Street. He knows her shape and her red-gold hair.
He approaches. “Evening.”
“All right,” she says cheerfully, turning around. More seductively, she purrs, “What have we here?”
It’s her.
“How much?” he asks.
She glances around him at something in the distance.
“What are you looking at?”
“Don’t mind me,” she said. “Fellow there makes me nervy, is all. Won’t leave me alone.”
He mustn’t smile. No one should make her more nervous than he. His disguise seems to be working. She doesn’t recognize him.
“How much?” he repeats.
“A shilling. Got my own room, you know.”
Yes, he knows. It’s part of why she’s perfect. But he must remember his role. “A shilling? Never mind.”
Her eyes flash with anger. “If you want cheap, you can find it anywhere you look.”
