Music Night at the Apollo by Lilian Pizzichini

Author:Lilian Pizzichini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

It got Cecilia, ‘a married woman old enough to know better’, said the Magistrate, wrapped round a lamp post with a policeman. Lisson Grove had become the Garden of Eden, and Cecilia was Eve in her undergarments, strolling around lamp posts that looked like trees dipped in black ink. She was transported, she told her sister, to a London where the walls weren’t collapsing, the plaster wasn’t peeling, the moon wasn’t weeping and a person wasn’t oppressed, choking on the miasma of a midsummer’s night. Quite a crowd gathered to cheer the constable as he adjusted the hooks and eyes of Cecilia’s gown. Once he had dressed her, Cecilia was ready to be escorted to Marylebone Magistrates’ Court. Off he marched her to more cheers. Cecilia was glowing with love and laughter. Rarely had she felt like this. But she had known since a child that she had the capacity. Her mother had shown her such strange sights that she would never lose the wonder of them. The straggling band of dusty, ragged followers egged her on. She stopped the constable, curtsied to her admirers, and threw her hat in the air for an urchin to catch. From the window of Diamond Kate’s garret, Herbert watched Cecilia being arrested. Kate beckoned him back in with a laugh – ‘I bets you wish you’d never seed me!’

That night, across Lisson Grove, the stench of human waste was given a rinsing by Kate’s stock of vapours. This, as she would argue, was the downside of supplying diethyl ether to her customers – the reek of it brought in the busies. But ether had outstanding selling points: small doses were needed for intoxication, it was easily obtained, and at a low price. What is more, Kate found she was profiting from an unexpected consequence of temperance campaigns. Swearing off alcohol was all well and good, but something had to replace it. The Salvation Army opened a shelter in Lisson Grove the year Emily-Elsie Smith was born. It was a one-stop shop for soup, soap and salvation. Every Sunday, Sally soldiers paraded the streets singing hymns and waving the Blood and Fire flag. Children danced in time to the beat of the drum.

Diamond Kate delivered Emily-Elsie in a tenement in Lisson Grove. The street on which this house teetered had been half swept away by the Great Central Railway. Navvies were employing the new construction method of ‘cut and cover’ to build tracks for the Metropolitan line. This would put Marylebone on the map. But for the poorer residents, the new roads and tunnels that cut through their courts and alleys forced them to crowd in even more.

The last house standing on Orcus Street was Emily-Elsie’s first home. A broken-down cab, baskets of poultry, dung heaps, and costers’ barrows were piled outside the front door, which was hanging off its frame. Emily-Maria Smith gave birth to her first child on the third floor. It was a quiet night so Diamond Kate came downstairs when she heard the telltale screams.

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