Mr. Love and Justice Read Free Page A

Well, isn’t it?’
    ‘I dare say …’
    ‘This isn’t Mayfair, darling …’
    ‘… Frankie …’
    ‘… Sorry. Not Mayfair, but Stepney Green. Seamen and drunks. Thirty bob, a pound – even less, sometimes.’
    ‘But it all adds up.’
    ‘I’ll say it does. Pass me that bag.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Go on!’
    ‘No, I don’t want to touch it. I don’t like women’s bags.’
    She jerked her head at him, reached over, and spilt its contents on the bed.
    ‘What’s this?’ said Frankie. ‘Your life’s savings?’
    ‘Don’t be silly, boy. That’s just last night’s.’
    ‘You kidding me now?’
    ‘Why should I kid you?’
    ‘All that loot?’
    ‘Well, it’s not so much … I pay a Bengali eight a week for this little gaff …’
    ‘For this ?’
    ‘Frankie, if you’re in business full-time, and your landlord’s not ignorant, you don’t get a gaff, even down here, for less. And if he is ignorant, believe me, it’s even worse: he might shop you, or throw you out unexpectedly.’
    Frankie gazed at the notes and silver on the blanket. Like money you pick up in the streets, it seemed quite different from the contents of a pay-packet – like valuable stuff that just belonged to any body.
    ‘What else you spend it on?’ he said.
    She looked at him intently, then said, ‘Oh, this and that – it soon goes, you know. Expenses are heavy: nylons, for instance. Look! You’re not the first who’s laddered the best part of a pound …’ She rubbed her leg and said, ‘But sometimes there’s a bit over and to spare …’
    Frankie reflected. ‘Well, I suppose you get your due,’ he said. ‘It can’t be easy …’
    ‘It’s not, Frank, believe me.’
    ‘All the same. Excuse my saying so, but I think a man who pays for that’s no man at all.’
    She got up. ‘Oh, I don’t think much of them either. But I’m glad there’s plenty of them around …’
    ‘You going?’
    ‘Yes, Frank, I have to. But you can stop here a bit, if you like, till I get back …’
    ‘You’d trust me alone in here?’
    ‘Yes, of course. What’s there to pinch? You don’t wear girl’s clothes – at least I hope not – and I’m taking this …’ And she flourished the square black bag.
    Frankie got up too. ‘No, I’ll be off,’ he said.
    ‘Off to where?’
    ‘I’m staying down the Rowton.’
    ‘That sty? I hope it’s not given you crabs.’
    ‘Baby, I wash,’ he said.
    ‘Me too. Turn the other way, I’m going to before we leave.’

MR JUSTICE
    On his day off, Edward was sitting with his girl in the park at Little Venice, up by the Harrow Road. He was proud of his girl because though few men looked at her immediately, once they did so their attention was apt to become transfixed. Their initial disdain was perhaps to be explained by the fact that she wore spectacles, was plump and rather dowdy; but their interest became riveted when they grew aware that she had the tranquillity, the assurance, and the indifference that can denote sexual operators conscious of their powers: aware of them not merely as one woman in competition with all the others (which is only a quarter way to success), but aware of them in themselves absolutely.
    He was telling her of his first weeks in the vice game: and these weeks had not been without their tribulations. In the first place, Edward had suffered the humiliation of being himself reported as a suspect by a colleague unaware (or was he?) of his real identity as a plain-clothes man. Perhaps this mishap was due to the extraordinary difficulty he found in loitering successfully, unobserved. Only a child can rival the absolute right a uniformed officer has, in the public eyes, to linger wherever he wishes. But in plain-clothes … well, what would you do if told to watch a house for a couple of hours in a thoroughly inconspicuous fashion? All sorts of stratagems will suggest themselves … but the real art is simply to learn how to loiter as a pastime in itself: just as you