* * *
—
To gain entrance to the Amethyst you first had to negotiate the twin granite obelisks that were the doormen, a couple of former bare-knuckle street fighters who were proud to be Nellie’s guard dogs.
“Boys,” she said, acknowledging them with a nod of her head.
They barely moved their impassive features to greet her, although they were stirred by a sense of companionship. They had both been to prison on many occasions. Nellie was one of them now.
At the bottom of the stairs, Linwood greeted Nellie fawningly. “Mrs. Coker,” he said, “good to see you.” Nellie unnerved him with her gaze. Linwood had not been one of those who had stayed behind in the club yesterday morning to welcome Nellie. His absenteeism had been noted by Edith and Nellie in a mute exchange of bobbing eyebrows. He was, unfortunately, the keeper of several secrets, both Nellie’s and those of the guests of the club. It made him safe. For now, at any rate. He registered her cane. It seemed to threaten.
He drew back the black bombazine and bowed as if before minor royalty.
“Welcome home, Mrs. Coker.”
For it is my home, Nellie thought, forgiving Linwood his obsequiousness. The house in Hanover Terrace was where she lived, but the Amethyst was where she existed in all her glory.
“After you,” she said generously to Maud. “Try not to drip everywhere.”
The Spoils of Egypt
It was a pleasant evening, if rather chill, and the dying minutes of the spring sunset kissed the Portland stone of the capital’s buildings. Or perhaps “caressed”？ Ramsay dismissed this as too romantic, along with “kissed.” “Gleamed”？ No, pots and pans gleamed—in good households, anyway. By the time he had reached a word that satisfied （“brushed”）， the sun had long since gone to bed. He was perfectly capable of writing in his head, just not on paper, it seemed. He should carry a notebook with him to capture these moments. （Why didn’t he?） He should put the image in his novel.
Ramsay liked to think of himself as a flaneur. Like Baudelaire. He could perhaps become a poète maudit, drowning in decadence and absinthe. He didn’t want to write the actual poetry, though. There was no money in poetry, it was the waste land of literature. Yes, he had read The Waste Land and didn’t see what the fuss was about. He considered it to be pretentious stuff, just a ragbag of quotes and fragments of history, really.
Two women passed him, giggling and clutching onto each other as if everything were a great joke. They were dressed in varying shades of green from top to toe, including the obligatory green hats. Everything was green. Why was it so popular? Surely nothing to do with Michael Arlen’s dratted Green Hat? Perhaps it was absinthe, Ramsay loved absinthe. La fée verte. The green fairy. Or was it the colour of hope? The healing grass growing back over the mud and the dead in Flanders Fields. It was a good image. The Healing Grass. That would have made a good title if he hadn’t already found one. Didn’t sound like the title of a crime novel though, too Zola-esque. He had struggled reluctantly through Zola in translation in the Swiss sanatorium.
In Soho Square a small group of men—working men, Ramsay thought, excited by the idea—were holding some kind of demonstration. There was much talk in the air of a General Strike, and Ramsay amused himself with notions of manning the barricades in Oxford Street. He still harboured fond memories of the Bolshevists in Great Percy Street. Perhaps his next novel ought to be about working men.
The ones ahead of him seemed rough and sounded northern, and occasionally the ragged chorus shouted their familiar cry—“Not a minute off the day, not a penny off the pay!” Miners! Ramsay thought. But what were miners doing in Soho? Not much point in trying to make their case here, why weren’t they protesting in Westminster? Were they in need of direction? Perhaps if he talked to them they could provide authentic detail for his working-class novel. Men of Coal—he rather liked that title. It sounded noble.
Ramsay approached the men, open-faced and open-handed but unsure how to address them. （Men? Comrades?） Before he could choose, one of them turned a weary, grimy face to him and said, “Why don’t you fuck off, you fucking posh fucker.”
Ramsay slunk away, his tail between his legs. So much for the working man.
* * *
—
He reached the Sphinx still licking his wounds. Inside, a large plaster of Paris reproduction of the mask of Tutankhamun greeted him above an inner entrance. Were they inviting the curse by having it hanging there? He passed uneasily beneath the boy king’s sightless gaze and entered the long, narrow corridor that sloped down to the basement. Nellie had consulted an Egyptologist from the Ashmolean （her reach was far and spidery） and the corridor was meant to reproduce the tunnelled entry to a pharaonic tomb, although Ramsay thought it was more like entering a drift mine. Not that he had entered either a pyramid or a mine, but he had read about both. Ramsay was not comfortable with the Egyptian dead; when younger he had visited the British Museum and its gallery full of mummies. For weeks afterwards he had suffered a nightmare that he was locked in that room at night and the mummies had come back to life. Surely the dead should be buried, not put on display?