Sunday at the Cross Bones. John Walsh

a little kiss?’

      ‘I –’ I was not sure where this line of enquiry would take us. ‘I would not discourage any show of affectionate gratitude, within, of course, the bounds of decency.’

      ‘But would you encourage it, when they say, “Oooh, Harold, you’re so good to me,”’ (she adopted a fey, mincing tone, as of a child who has been bought an ice cream in Hyde Park), ‘“here’s a big kiss for all you’ve done for me, and there’s plenty more where that came from if you was to take me to the Adelphi on Saturday night”?’

      I rose from the bed, aware that my hand on the counterpane was in close proximity to her unshielded breast.

      ‘I am a servant of Christ, Barbara. I am the rector of a flock who depend on me for guidance and enlightenment. It is no part of my morally directed strategy to solicit kisses from young women.’

      ‘But you do, don’t you?’ Her beautiful brown eyes were suddenly narrowed to unappealing slits.

      ‘I have a tactile nature. Many of these girls lack a father, or at least a father figure. I see no harm in enfolding them, occasionally, in the tender embrace of the Church, to reassure and soothe their flighty hearts, to offer them a solace that no other man of their rude acquaintance might bring.’

      ‘Aha! I knew it!’ she said. ‘The old harmless squeeze. We all know where that’s heading, don’t we?’

      ‘Not at all. My occasional embraces are paternal.’

      ‘So you don’t sleep with them?’

      ‘Certainly not.’

      ‘You just kiss them and hug them and leave it at that?’

      A small tintinnabulation in my head told me it was time to move on from this potentially compromising discourse.

      ‘I told you I had an urgent message to convey to you,’ I said in a bustling tone. ‘It is this. My friend Lady Fenella Royston-Smith, a long-standing benefactor and supporter of the charities I have set up to help fallen women and runaway boys in the metropolis, wishes to meet you. She has agreed to introduce me to a couple of noble philanthropists, but to convince them of the importance of my work they wish to meet an example of the, ah, ladies I seek to help.’

      ‘Okey-dokey,’ said Barbara. ‘But I still don’t see why she’s invited me. I don’t think I know anyone called Fenella.’ She frowned. ‘Plenty called Smith of course.’

      ‘Do you not see, my dear Miss Harris?’ I said, my voice dropping to a confiding whisper. ‘This is your chance to move from your unfortunate occupation to a better life. To leave behind the sordid stews of prostitution, and find a position more worthy …’

      Her eyes blazed. ‘I think it’s time you got one thing straight, Harold.’ She swept back the counterpane and stood before me, five foot nothing of child-woman self-righteousness. ‘I am not a bloody prostitute. Have you got that? Maybe I sleep with people, maybe I have sex with people I’ve just met, and maybe they might give me a little present now and again, to buy me a hat, but that’s it. I have boyfriends, lots of them, and they can stay here sometimes because they’re good to me and I like them. But I’m not flogging my body down alleys all night long, and I can’t be had just for money. And if your Lady Fifi What’s-’er-name wants to summon me round to some scabby hotel to show me off as a cheap tart, well, she can fuck right off, and so can you.’

      Our conversation ended shortly afterwards. I will not inscribe in these pages the language used by Miss Harris to dismiss me from her premises. It was a fruitless encounter. I was unable to launch my usual campaign of prayers and spiritual exercises to cleanse her spirit. I could do nothing but try to defend my modus vivendi against this brazen, argumentative young wanton. I have never met a more obdurate sinner, so iron-clad against every prompting of moral decorum. Hopeless. I shall certainly not waste my time like this ever again.

      

       London 17 September 1930

      The papers are full once more of the exploits of Miss Amy Johnson who, after her remarkable circumnavigation of the globe in May, and her extended sojourn in Australia, has appeared back in London, to loud huzzahs. Frankly, I have been sceptical about the number of women who have taken to the skies in the last few years. Lady Heath, Lady Bailey, the elderly but intrepid Duchess of Bedford – their exploits in flying alone to far-flung bits of the empire, from Cape Town to Zanzibar, have become so commonplace, they seem merely a variant of the phenomenon of titled ladies racing sports cars at Brooklands, exchanging their Fortuny evening frocks for the problematic livery of mannish shirts, trousers and hideously unflattering goggles.

      I have incorporated into my sermons the modern fascination of flight, and all the competitive, yearning spirit of women piloting their juddering crafts into hostile terrain, into Kalahari wastes and Nepalese foothills. I explained to the Stiffkey congregation on Sunday that all this aerial wanderlust is merely an emblem of mankind reaching for the heavens, trusting to the instruments on the dashboard, the ailerons and rudder, to steer them through the dangerous elements of wind, rain and gravity. Thus we all try to fly heavenwards on our journey of life, trusting to the guidance of Christ and the teaching of his apostles to carry us safely through the buffetings of corruption and sin. The less enlightened pilots may feel only a secular joy in flying above the territory of earth on which they once laboured, carried away by the exhilaration of freedom and amazed to feel they can land in Tartary or Samarkand in a matter of hours. But I know that their true impulse is not one of escape but of transcendence. They wish not to depart