CHAPTER ONE
'No,' said Sally-Anne McAllister dazedly.
'No, please, no,' and she struggled fiercely against the arms which held her -- a man's, she noted, and that was enough to start her struggling even harder.
She would not be held by a man ever again.
No, not at all, and then, even in her confused state, her mind shied away from the reasons for her distaste, and she found herself saying even through her pain and shock, 'I will not think about that, I will not,' and so saying she stopped struggling and sank back into oblivion once more .
The next time she returned to consciousness she discovered that the whole right side of her face was numb, and that was all she registered.
The memory of being held in a man's hard arms had disappeared.
Her eyes opened; she was on her back.
Above her she saw a ceiling, grey and white, a plaster rose from which depended a gas-light inside a glass globe, engraved with roses.
She heard voices which at first made little sense, could not, for the moment, think where she might be or even who she was.
'Mama,' she said, her voice a thread, speech strangely difficult.
'She's coming round at last.'
It was a man's voice, educated, a pleasant if cold baritone.
An earlier memory returned.
Was he the man who had held her?
She did not want him to hold her again.
She tried to sit up, but was pushed gently back, by a woman's hand this time.
'Oh, dear God, Dr Neil.
Thanks be to Him she's conscious again.
I thought she would never recover,' said a woman's voice this time.
'The second blow was a cruel one.'
'Stupid,' said the man's cold voice.
'It was stupid of her to try to intervene between Jem Higgins and his Poll.'
Sally-Anne opened her eyes, tried to sit up -- a mistake that, everything reeled around her again; but memory had returned and she knew why she was in this room...and even why she had reached there, but not how.
And how dared the man standing between herself and the light so that she could not see him clearly speak so harshly of what she had done?
It might indeed be stupid to try to stop a man from attacking a helpless woman...but...
'Someone,' she announced, her voice suddenly strong again, 'someone has to try to prevent poor women from being beaten by great strong brutes.'
'Oh, yes,' said the man drily, 'I could not agree with you more.
But not young girls who could barely defend themselves against a schoolboy, let alone the professional bruiser Jem Higgins once was.
How came you here, anyway?'
And from what she could see of him, which was not much, he was giving her the coldest of stares.
Her memory returned fully...
She remembered quite clearly what she had been doing scarce ten minutes ago.
Sally-Anne McAllister -- although that was not her real name -- walked along Vetch Street in London's East End late on a hot afternoon in the early summer of 1903.
Not that summer did anything for Vetch Street; dust motes hung in the warm air and the sunlight was pitiless, starkly revealing the cracks in the broken pavement, the decaying brickwork of the small terrace houses, and the larger tenements which stood among them, and the rottenness of the wood in the unpainted doors and window-frames.
Here and there a larger house stood, once the home of some magnate now long gone, broken and rotten, a warren where different families lived in every room.
In all her short life Sally-Anne had never before encountered the squalor which she had seen in the few days since she had arrived in these poor streets in the hinterland between London Docks and Stepney.
Although she was not aware of it she was, in her shabby white cotton blouse and her dark green skirt, with her blue-black and glossy curls drawn up and knotted simply on the top of her head, her face glowing and vital, the only touch of colour in the grimy street.
She carried a small basket in her hand containing food for her frugal evening meal, although the rancid smells around her were strong enough to diminish any desire to eat -- she had not yet grown sufficiently accustomed to them to ignore them.
Later she was to think how little she was prepared for the simple events which were to change her life completely -- indeed she would have said that so much had happened to her already that any further incidents must be minor, a judgement which could not have been more faulty.
She had been living in Crow Court off Vetch Street for nearly a week, and the narrow lives of the people among whom she found herself appalled her.
What perhaps struck her the most was that, despite all, many of them appeared to be happy, while she, Sally-Anne, who could if she wished command the most luxurious life a woman could dream of, was most desperately unhappy, and had no idea of how she might become otherwise.
Her thoughts, which as usual these days were depressing, were disturbed by the noise of a fight, a fracas on the corner where Vetch Street met Millstone Lane.
A man, a large man, was beating a woman, a little woman who seemed scarcely more than a child, and was trying to drag her into one of the tenements which lined the opposite side of the road.
A group of ragged children and some idle women were watching him with amusement rather than disapproval, half applauding him with their cruel laughter, and although one woman boldly cried, 'Shame,' most seemed to be enjoying the unequal struggle.
The little woman suddenly broke away from him, ran across the ill-paved road towards her, tripped on the broken pavement, fell on to her knees before Sally-Anne, and, face wild, looked up at her imploringly, wailing, 'Help me, missis, please help me.
He'll kill me yet,' in a thin broken voice.
Sally-Anne, hampered by her basket, tried to pull herself free.
The woman stank of neglect, her clothes were torn and filthy, and tears had made twin furrows down her face.
Pity rose in her.
And anger -- anger at the man, at all men.
He had loomed up before her, had arrived to claim the woman again, pulling her away from Sally-Anne, his own face twisted with rage.
He cuffed the woman on the head, attempting to drag her back into the doorway.
Sally-Anne was almost choking between rage and fear.
She put her basket down on the pavement, held on to the woman with one arm, pulled on the man's huge arm with the other, said to him firmly, if more than a little fearfully, 'No, you are not to touch her again.
Leave her alone.'
This came out with more bravado than Sally-Anne really felt, and had she seen him more clearly before she intervened she might not have said anything at all.
The man was a bear, unshaven, face mottled purple, his eyes yellow and feral, his teeth broken, but his body, huge and strong, running to fat.
He paused to stare at Sally-Anne, face ugly.
'An' who might you be, to tell me what to do wi' mine?'
'Never mind who I might be,' said Sally-Anne firmly, trying to swallow her fear.
'Just stop what you're doing or I'll set the police on you.'
She might as well have saved her breath.
The feral eyes glared cruelly at her.
'Leave go, missis, or it'll be the worse for you.'
It was impossible for Sally-Anne to obey even if she had wished to.
The woman had sunk to the ground to avoid her tormentor, had clasped Sally-Anne around her knees, and was shrieking up at her, 'Oh, help me, help me, do.'
She cried and wailed into Sally-Anne's skirt so pitifully that Sally-Anne's own fear of the brute before her was lost in sympathy for his wretched victim.
The watchers were now bellowing encouragement to each of the players in a game which had taken a new turn.
They hallooed and shouted.
Windows were thrown open, heads appeared.
The unequal tug of war continued, and something kept the man from actually striking Sally-Anne, although he rained blows on the woman, who was now giving vent to a low, keening moan.
Emboldened, Sally-Anne cried to the watchers, 'Fetch a policeman.
He could arrest this man for assault.'
Guffaws greeted her.
'Not likely, missis; it's only Jem keeping his Poll in order.
No case for the Peelers.'
And their cruel laughter was that of any mindless mob finding entertainment in violence.
By now Jem had almost succeeded in prising Poll free from Sally-Anne, with the result that Poll's wailing went up an octave.
Almost dragged free, her hands had dropped around Sally-Anne's ankles, nearly bringing her, too, to the ground.
Looking up, eyes wild, Poll made one last supplication to Sally-Anne.
'Oh, don't let him take me, missis, please, don't let him take me.
He'll kill me this time, for sure.'
'No,' said Sally-Anne, breathless.
She fell on to her knees, held on to the woman, whose face was now on her shoulder.
She looked up at Jem bravely.
'No, I won't.
You, Jem, stop this at once.
Shame on you for hitting a woman.
I shall certainly set the police on you if you continue to go on as you are doing.'
This reasoned and ridiculous plea had no effect at all on Jem, other than to inflame him to further violence.
He bent down, thrust his unshaven face and stinking breath into Sally-Anne's, put his great hands under her armpits and hauled her to her feet by main force, Poll still clinging desperately to her.
'You will have it, then, damn you,' he growled, and he struck not Poll, but Sally-Anne, hard in the face.
She saw the blow coming, but hampered by Poll could take no avoiding action other than to turn her head slightly on receiving it.
All her senses stunned, she realised that he was about to strike her again, and this time, when he did so, oblivion took her, man, woman and jeering watchers all disappearing into the vacant dark...
And now, here she was, wherever here was, with a woman, short and comfortable, who possessed a kind face, and a man who was none of these things, judging by the coolly impersonal way in which he spoke to her.
She could see little of him, only his tall body, lean against the light.
'How did I get here?' she asked, looking around a shabby but pleasant room, feeling so frail that she might have been made of china, china broken into a thousand pieces.
She remembered Jem's first blow, but not his second.
'Dr Neil carried you in,' said the woman, who was now holding Sally-Anne's right hand with her own left hand, while gently wiping Sally-Anne's poor bruised face with a damp cloth held in her right.
zzz