One of those big houses up at the Angel.

CHAPTER 5

1900

MARY JANE and Sebastian got hitched in Holborn

the year the red line of the Tuppenny Tube

was added to London’s subterranean railway,

and the Labour Party was launched for the working man,

and influenza killed thousands and the Great British Public

was asked to cough up for the second Boer War,

and pleasure steamers ploughed the Thames like Nile barges,

and the newlyweds honeymooned downriver to Kew

to see the banana palms and bamboos from the colonies

and the famous Pagoda and Amazonian Water Lily,

then back to the Embankment at twilight to hail

a penny-a-mile Hansom Cab to the Grand Café Royal

on Regent’s Street where pearl-throated ladies

swished inside wearing chiffon and lace, satin and crepe,

while they stood opposite, under the haze of a street lamp,

Mary Jane’s light green dress brushing the ground,

Sebastian, a foot shorter, in a black suit and trilby,

fingers lovingly entwined, on this – the most glamorous,

most hopeful, most à la carte day of their lives.

MARY JANE

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde.

I read it to Ma most nights, now she’s gone blind.

Her venomous tongue still darts out like a snake’s

even though Da passed on a few years since.

She won’t accept her Englishman son-in-law.

Same one who buys her books at W. & G. Foyle

on Charing Cross Road, though he can ill afford it.

Some shops are not for the likes of us:

Marshall & Snelgroves, John Lewis, Selfridges.

They turf you out. We’re market people:

Billingsate, Spitalfields, Berwick St. We hover outside

then Seb smooths down the front of the linen

suit I made at Madame Percherons – narrow trousers,

natty boater and struts inside, me all red-faced behind.

He strides up to the counter with his mighty little legs,

and adopts the most preposterous well-to-do accent,

ignoring the clerk’s smirk as he shoos us to an aisle

where I find the right book. (Seb can’t read.)

We sneak out the side door – like we’re thieves.

We sneak out the side door – and breathe.

The Angel, Islington, London, 1905 –

MARY JANE stitched food into her children’s mouths,

clothes onto their bodies. Peggy, the eldest, helped out.

Sebastian returned home from inhaling glass late,

chest rattling as he caught his breath on the landing.

In two rented rooms at No 20 Upper Street

eight children crawled like bugs over furniture

bought on the cheap from Arkwrights second-hand,

and Mary Jane bemoaned a toilet thirty flaming

stairs down, balancing infants and chamber pots

on her hips, a kitchen that wasn’t her own

and a mother who sat knitting and cursing her daughter

until the undertaker’s stretcher came for her.

Mary Jane blamed Sebastian for not being rich.

Should be living in a great house up at Highgate.

Nine bedrooms. Bathrooms. Drawing rooms. Nursery.

Nannies. Maids. Library. Conservatory. Cook.

High tea. Pearls. Parties. Rose garden. Rockery. Lawn.