THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

She was a moon-blossom.  Impossible to imagine what she might have been in gentler surroundings.  As it was she was too cruelly beautiful for human nature’s daily food.  Her face had not the pure and perfect beauty such as you may find in the well-kept inmates of an Ealing High School.  But above that face was a crown of thunderous hair, shot with an elfish sheen, which burned the heart out of any man creature who spotted her.  She was small, but ripe-breasted, and moved like a cat.  The very lines of her limbs were an ecstasy, and she had, too, an odd, wide laugh – and knew how to use it.

*

Hearts are broken by Blackwall Gardens.  The pity and terror and wonder of first love burn in the blood and limbs of those who serve behind the counters of East India Dock Road or load up cargo boats at the landing-stages.  Love-mad hands have buried knives in little white bosoms in Commercial Road, and songs are written by the moon across many a happy garret-window in Cable Street.

Burke/Limehouse, 1919