THE WHITE LILY

 

She saw him walking along Piccadilly with a white lily in one hand and a gold-headed Malacca stick in the other; some shiny pearls of rain on his green velvet jacket and some stains of tobacco like patches in his yellow kid gloves. 

He smiled back at every handsome boy who beamed at him. The clouds gathering above seemed to be perfectly aligned with his actual mood: they were lilac, his favourite colour. But a groundswell of loud protests, insults and laughs was the staple for his daily stroll around Piccadilly and Regent's Street. At times, someone hurled rotten eggs, soiling his brown breeches, or a conker, like a projectile, that got lodged in the tangle of his long mane. That was a staple too, plus some people from some balconies shouting out loud: "You ponce and sodomite!" or something even far beyond pale. But he never lost his snazzy aplomb. "The mind has its West End and its Whitechapel," he used to mutter to himself, a quote from The Green Carnation, while wincing ahead to Rupert Street. There he stopped, puffing up cigarette after cigarette, plumes of lazy smoke that smelt of liquorice and mint.

One of the handsome boys loitering, in a suit of blue serge and straw hat trimmed with a red and blue ribbon, approached him. He produced a silver cigarette case from a pocket, as if a magic trick. That was enough; that was the code. Everything was already said without a single word. The next stop would be simply getting pissed with champagne at the Crown pub and coupled under the sheets in a sordid hotel room in Soho. 

"What is your name, sunshine?" 

"Alphonse"

"What a pretty name you have! It's worthy of fiction."

"Maybe I am just that, Sir, a fictional 'cinaedus' from a Roman past."

"You really talk smart for being a Piccadilly renter."

"I was an Oxonian, Sir, and I know my bits of Greek and Latin." 

She saw them now heading for Soho and how he lodged the white lily, brimful of raindrops, into the red ribbon of Alphonse's.

hat. The rain, though a drizzle, was soaking his blue serge suit. 

"Let's go, sunshine! Priapus is calling."

She followed them, sheltered by a big red umbrella and the surging fog. Started to cry. Rather a nervous sob. "So it is true," she said, mumbling through the tears that streamed down her turquoise dress. "I am no more his Irish sylph of violet eyes and auburn hair who protects his soul from creditors and philistines." Finally, wiping her eyes with a lace handkerchief, diffusing a mix of vetiver and opoponax aroma, she regained the poise of female dignity and called for a hamson cab. The clouds gathering above seemed to be clashing with her present state of mind: she hated lilac. "We are not going to rule the world as he promised, I with my beauty, he with his wits," she murmured, rather like whispering sweet nothings, although she was crying, crying rivers of pure desolation inside the hamson cab. She also kept white lilies in a blue vase at home. Fresh lilies he gave her each morning. The cab rattled along the cobbled road, its wheels as trembling as her own hands.

©Guido Reni, David, 1605

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