‘Bloody hell. Who buys it? Who goes to these things?’
‘All sorts. Bank robbers and their girlfriends, debutantes and their boyfriends, rock and roll singers. Drag acts.’ This was the list Delia had reeled off to Tess when she had asked the same question the previous Sunday. ‘It’s quite glamorous, actually.’
A rattling noise interrupted their conversation. Someone was trying to open the studio door. Its handle didn’t work properly and usually took a few tries before it caught properly.
Startled into sudden alertness, Roger jumped to his feet, and headed for the easel of the first student in range, a young man working on a dull piece of abstract impressionism. By the time the door opened, Roger was wide awake and apparently engrossed in the process of advising this baffled student.
‘Bloody hell. What’s Garvey doing here?’ Jimmy muttered.
The head of department paused in the doorway and surveyed the room. Because of the eyepatch, she noticed, he had to turn his head to take everything in. The student Roger was advising kept flicking nervous glances towards the front of the studio, where Benedict Garvey waited to be acknowledged. Roger, however, pretended to be unaware of any of it.
Garvey was probably not fooled by this charade; nevertheless, he gave in to it, and coughed artificially a couple of times. Raising his head innocently above the student’s canvas, Roger said, ‘Oh, hello Benedict. Can I help you?’
‘Don’t let me get in the way Roger.’ Garvey opened a little black notebook and wrote something down. ‘It occurred to me this morning that I hadn’t been around the classes this year. Thought I’d have a look at what everyone’s up to. Please – continue with your teaching. I’ll do my best not to get in the way.’
‘Good to see you taking an interest, Ben,’ Roger said. ‘I think you’ll be impressed. There’s some precocious work going on in here.’
‘Precocious, eh?’ Garvey said, as if to signal that Roger had made some unspecified error in his choice of language.
The head of department made his way around the room, looking at students’ work, making occasional comments and writing notes in his little book. So far, Tess had only ever encountered him behind a desk or in a chair, static. Now she saw it wasn’t just his eye that was damaged: his left arm and leg seemed stiff and restricted; he moved as if on constant guard against the threat of pain. She’d heard a lot of stories about Garvey’s injuries: a car accident; a street fight; a kettle of boiling water hurled by an angry lover. Various wartime escapades involving all three of the services. Whatever it was, Tess thought, he had surely suffered other wounds too. Maybe there were old burns under his clothes – shiny red skin, tight as boiled bacon; fire-shrivelled nerve endings ready at any moment to be set howling by the memory of a terrible heat.
He stopped to ask Jimmy where he’d got his skulls and why he wasn’t painting the eye holes. Jimmy answered respectfully. Whatever he thought of Garvey, he was evidently pleased to have a chance to talk seriously about his work. Meanwhile, Tess hoped furiously that the head of department wouldn’t come and look at what she was doing. But of course he did.
‘Ah. The hitch-hiker,’ he said, leaning uncomfortably to scrutinise the paintings on the floor, then turning to the one on her easel. ‘What are these?’
‘Paintings,’ she said. A few moments passed before she realised that wasn’t an appropriate answer. ‘Of a woman I saw in Fenfield last weekend.’
‘Really? You’re quite the adventurer, Miss Green, aren’t you?’ He’d remembered her name, she thought. That must mean she had made some kind of impression on him. ‘I’ve not been in Fenfield for years. What were you doing in the East End?’
‘Visiting a friend.’
He seemed to approve. ‘A friend in Fenfield? Well this looks like a change of approach for you.’
‘They’re only rough ideas.’ Was he telling her he preferred these daubs to the work he’d seen previously? That she was finally developing into his idea of an artist? She really shouldn’t be hoping so.
‘Do you know Veronica Wilding?’ he asked.
She guessed he must mean some painter with a similar style to this. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Veronica runs a little gallery in Hampstead. Coincidentally, I was at her house the other week. Curious thing – she had a picture hanging in her hallway. Pleasant little drawing, quite competent. I thought I recognised it. Then I remembered I’d seen it in your portfolio. From what she told me, it sounded like you must have sold it to her yourself on the same day as your interview.’
She felt suddenly that she was in a trap. The drawing of the old man that couple had bought by the Thames. Of course it was.
‘That’s right,’ she said, trying to sound like the sort of person who sold pictures all the time.
‘How much did she get Graham to give you for it, if you don’t mind my asking?’
She wanted to say she did mind. ‘Fifteen pounds.’
‘Decent price. Very business-minded of you, very practical. Easier than lugging it all the way home too, I suppose.’
‘I suppose,’ she echoed.
‘Then again, you did have all the rest of your portfolio to carry. Unless you sold those too?’
‘Only that one. It was more luck than anything. I wasn’t trying to—’
‘It must have been terribly difficult, hitch-hiking all the way back to Yorkshire with that thing under your arm.’
‘It would have been,’ she said, impressed by her own adroitness. ‘Except I used some of the money from that drawing to buy myself a train ticket.’
‘Ah. Of course. How clever you are.’ Garvey glanced over at Roger, who was still advising the same student on his abstract. Panic seemed to have locked him where he was. ‘Mr Dunbar’s found an awful lot to say about that rather boring painting, hasn’t he? From here it looks duller than Mondrian and sloppier than Pollock – which is some kind of achievement, I suppose. I’ll go and give it a closer look, I think. Nice to have met you again, Miss Green.’
‘Fifteen quid,’ Jimmy said excitedly, once Garvey was out of earshot. ‘You never told me you’d sold one. Don’t you see? I bet this Wilding woman’s the mysterious art dealer on the exam panel. I wonder if all that’s got anything to do with her having bought your painting.’
Tess was barely listening. ‘He knows I didn’t hitch-hike,’ she said. ‘He knew all the time. But he offered me a place here anyway.’
9
At the Gaudi, Bill Shearsby sought Delia out.
‘That was embarrassing last week,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why Marius wanted to come here in the first place. And then he was such a fool. Sorry you got drawn in.’
‘I’d forgotten all about it,’ she told him, seeing no reason to mention anything about her having gone back to talk to those art students, or about the girl Tess’s visit to Fenfield. Anyway, Bill didn’t really want to talk about what had happened with Marius; his apology, it transpired, was just a way of leading up to other questions. He wanted to know if she was interested in coming on a march with him the following Sunday, in support of the blacks in South Africa. Delia didn’t know much about South Africa, but she was against ill-treatment of anyone, and as Shearsby explained, those South African blacks were being treated especially badly. She also realised these must be the blacks Finlay was so interested in hearing about, and that was information she might find useful in future.
When Bill saw she wasn’t saying no to joining the march, he moved on to his main purpose, which was to ask her to meet him an hour before it started.
‘What for?’ she asked.
‘So we can talk. Find out about each other. Maybe become friends.’
‘Aren’t we friends already? And we’re talking now.’
‘You’re at work here, Delia. It’s your job to entertain. To be friendly. To add atmosphere. We both know that. So why not meet me when it’s your day off, and you don’t have to pretend to be anyone other than yourself.’
Fat chance, s
he thought. But when he put a hand over hers she felt no inclination to pull away, though that was bound to get back to Finlay and to Stella. Anyway, it seemed to her that meeting Bill Shearsby on her day off, away from the Gaudi Club, might be something she wanted to do.
‘Will your girlfriend be there for the march?’
‘Girlfriend? Oh, Philippa you mean? That’s been over for weeks.’
‘Then I’ll come,’ she said. It was an instinctive agreement, uncomplicated by all the questions that would arise after she’d had time to think.
On Friday evening all the hoisters waited their turn to be paid. They sat in pairs and threes around the Lamplighters, watching for the signal from Itchy Pete, who was standing guard outside the snug.
It had been a good week. At the start of March the shops had launched their new lines: ‘Spring into Summer’ and so on. This was always a profitable season. There were plenty of thin fabrics, easy to roll up and drop into your bloomers, and plenty of troublesome customers to keep the staff distracted. Yesterday, at John Lewis on Oxford Street, Delia had picked up a half-dozen frocks and four pairs of capri trousers; at Harrods, a couple of thin cardigans; and from Dickins and Jones, some sun hats and an evening jacket.
Kathy had been called into the snug five minutes before. She should be out soon. Meanwhile, Delia listened to Rita boast about lifting baby clothing in Barkers of Kensington.
‘You can get a load of them in your knickers. Ten or fifteen easy, twenty, if you push it. And you wouldn’t believe the prices. I reckon anyone who’ll pay that kind of money for a bleeding Babygro must be off their head – but there’s plenty as will. You should take a look, Dee. Barkers is the easiest.’
It was bait. Everyone knew Delia wouldn’t go into Barkers now. What had happened with Maureen had jinxed the place for her. She changed the subject.
‘What’s this job Tommy’s got lined up?’ she asked.
‘Butcher shop in Ealing. He’s after a load of meat and whatever’s in the till. He’s promised me some pork chops.’
‘Romantic.’
‘I’ll take a bit of pork over a bunch of flowers any day. Don’t mention it to Stell, though. You know how she feels about the blokes working for themselves.’
‘Like she doesn’t already know everything he’s up to,’ Delia said.
Rita gave a sage nod. ‘Knowing and being told is two different things, though, ain’t they? There’s plenty Stella don’t mind, as long as nobody actually tells her.’
At last, Kathy reappeared, snapping her handbag shut and looking pleased with herself. As she walked out of the snug and headed for the bar, she whispered a name to Itchy Pete – not that you saw it happen: she neither looked in his direction nor paused, but he heard her all right. Enjoying the power at his disposal, he yawned ostentatiously. The way he rubbed the back of his head with the heel of a hand reminded Delia of a chimpanzee she’d once seen at Regent’s Park Zoo. He caught her eye, held it just for a moment.
‘My turn,’ she said.
She was smart, Stella. Hoisters got caught, muscle got caught. Stella was never caught. She had learnt her trade between the wars with Alice Diamond’s Forty Elephants gang, and she knew how to keep herself safe, to ensure that she, who always profited the most, was never the one the police put their hands on.
On pay day, she was especially cautious. Her particular concern was that some stick-up gang would get a sniff of the cash box and try robbing her. With a thing like that, the money was secondary, compared with the disruption it could cause; the attention it might bring her way. So Stella had a system. Every Friday between six and seven she sat in the snug at the Lamplighters and had the hoisters sent in one at a time, in what seemed a random order. Pete on the inside door, Teddy out the back, Tommy on the front.
She flapped a hand at Delia, telling her to sit. The Book was already open at the right page. Tracking down the left-hand column with a long red fingernail, Stella read each aloud, and decoded it.
‘Item 100 x 6 – that’s those dresses. Item 1003 x 4 – the capri trousers. Item 650 x 2 – them cardigans.’
It would be a while before Stella actually sold this stuff. None of it had been stolen to order, and there wouldn’t be another open sale at the Ferrara Club until the end of the month, but Stella paid her workers upfront, and she paid fair: a third of what she expected she’d get for each item, plus the hourly rate for any nights worked at the Gaudi. There was a minus column in The Book too, recorded in red ink. For Delia that was only the rent on her flat, which she made sure she cleared every week, whether she’d earned or not. Stella’s interest rates weren’t unreasonable, but they were compound, and half of the women in her debt only ever paid off the interest, never cleared the capital. They didn’t anticipate the future – that was their problem. Not anticipating the future usually meant you ended up trapped, assuming you survived into it.
‘Hrs We x1 – that’s Wednesday night at the Gaudi,’ Stella continued. ‘How’d it go there?’
This could be an innocent question. Neither Stella nor Finlay had been at the Gaudi on Wednesday. Even so, Delia knew word about Bill’s hands on hers would have been passed back to them, and she was going to have to say something about her arrangements for Sunday, much as she might prefer for now to keep that information to herself.
‘Bill Shearsby asked me out on a march against South Africa.’
Maybe Stella knew that already, maybe not. Anyway, she acted as if she didn’t, asked a lot of questions and, once Delia had explained everything, went off to the back of the pub to telephone Finlay.
‘Thought so,’ she said when she returned. ‘If you go to this thing with Shearsby, Finlay says he’ll pay you double – what with it being a Sunday.’
‘What do I have to do?’ Delia asked.
‘Keep your eyes and ears open. Remember the names of people you meet and the things they say. Tell Finlay about it afterwards. Or, actually, you tell me, and I’ll tell Finlay.’
‘I don’t understand why Finlay needs to know all this,’ Delia said. ‘I mean, what use is it to him?’ She was sure now that he was especially interested in the South African blacks rather than the American ones, but there had to be some specific reason.
‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ Stella said, closing The Book to mark the end of the conversation. ‘Less you know, the less trouble you can get yourself in. Or anyone else.’
She’ll tell you more the Imps whispered. Push her a bit. So Delia persisted. ‘It’s hard to know what I have to listen for, Stell, if I’ve got no idea why I’m listening.’
Stella bought that, or seemed to. ‘All right. You might have a point, I suppose. You’ve heard about the Richardsons, haven’t you?’
Delia had. They were a gang operating out of some scrapyard in the south of the city who ran protection rackets on Finlay’s Soho clubs. ‘Why would the Richardsons be interested in Bill Shearsby?’
‘I don’t know the details. Finlay says it’s because they’ve got business friends out in Johannesburg. Shearsby wrote a letter that might hurt some of them.’
‘What sort of letter?’
‘No idea. And I don’t want to know. The Richardsons want an eye kept on Shearsby. They pay Finlay. He pays me. I pay you. As far as I’m concerned that’s all there is to it.’ Partial as this information was, Stella had given Delia something, and she wanted something in return. ‘You know,’ she continued delicately, ‘if this Shearsby bloke turns out to be interested in more than talking—’
So she had heard about his hand on Delia’s. It had been a mistake to allow it, she thought. She should have pulled away.
‘I ain’t going to sleep with him, Stell.’
‘No,’ Stella said, pretending to be hurt by the suggestion she would even consider such an idea. ‘Course not. That wasn’t what I was going to say. But just mind, Dee – if he does try anything like that on, you be sure and let me know about that too.’
There were some things Delia wouldn’t do f
or Stella, even under orders, and Stella knew that. But she might do them for herself. And if she did, that was none of Stella’s business.
The following Sunday Delia made her way up Regent Street, through a part of the city she’d never needed to visit before, along by the high hotels and embassies of Marylebone, past a burnt-out theatre and the BBC building, and towards the tower of All Souls Church, where Bill had said he’d wait for her. It was a peculiar building, not what she’d expected at all: two circular white stone tiers, the upper one half the size of the lower, and a tall, piercing spire above, like someone had shoved a spike up from underneath a wedding cake, right through and out the top.
Bill sat waiting for her on the bottom step. Though he was almost in silhouette, she could tell it was him from the way his head leant, as if it was slightly too heavy for him to carry. He saw her approach and waved. She increased her pace, because she didn’t like to think of him noticing such things about her.
He raised himself to his feet, stiffly and with a grunt of discomfort. ‘I wonder when I got too old for sitting on the ground. Good job we said one forty-five. It was seething here when I arrived. Congregation for the midday service. I’d forgotten about it being Sunday. They all went in quarter of an hour ago.’
As if on cue, a hymn started up inside the church. ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’
‘I nearly didn’t come,’ Delia said.
He looked away, just over her shoulder. ‘I’m pleased you changed your mind. Shall we take a walk, before all the duffel coats arrive?’ As they turned, he slid his arm briefly around her waist, squeezed her to his side then let go again before she had time to respond. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
She kissed him on the cheek. His clumsiness had intensified her softness towards him. It was the same feeling that had almost overwhelmed her a few hours ago, when sunlight through her window had warmed her out of sleep, and her first thought had been that she shouldn’t go.
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