by Betty Burton
Nancy nodded and smiled. ‘Wouldn’t they just let you call there?’
‘Well, I’m not sure if we are speaking – not me and my friend, you couldn’t stop us speaking – but our families. There was a bit of a contretemps.’
‘It’ll blow over no doubt, miss. These things always do. But you’re wise to do a bit of a reconnoitre in the circumstances – before going in with both feet, like.’
Nancy interested Esther. She was not at all like any servant they had ever had. She was good-tempered and showed a great deal of concern for Mother. She was polite but not obsequious, and you knew somehow that she would not sneer at you behind your back.
‘You’ve always got your head in a book or newspaper, Nancy.’
‘It’s the best place to put it, miss. Don’t you like reading?’
‘Only average. What are you reading?’
Nancy held up a cheap news-sheet. ‘I don’t know as the mistress would approve of me showing you.’
‘Oh, Nancy!’ Scornfully.
‘It’s the Dreadnought my young man Wally sent me. It’s to do with votes for women and that kind of stuff.’
Esther’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Suffragettes! Mother would not mind, but you had better not let Father see that: he doesn’t approve of them breaking the law.’
Nancy smiled cheekily. ‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he, being a policeman and all? Don’t worry, miss, I knows how hot under the collar a lot of men gets – I mean, you’ve only got to ask a question about it and they want to lock you up.’
‘You know that my father is in the police force, then?’
‘Oh yes, miss. He’s a London detective, worked on that murder of the Haymarket prostitute. Anyway, it says Inspector in the Lists.’
Again Esther’s brows arched. ‘Not so loud, Nancy. I’m not supposed to know words like prostitute. The girl was a music-hall singer.’
Nancy grinned. ‘All right, miss. And don’t worry, I’ll see the mistress is well looked after while you’re out. There’s six younger than me, and I helped my ma with birthing some of the young ones. She’d probably have had more if my pa hadn’t fell down the side of a ship in the docks and drowned.’
The thought of Nancy helping with a birth occupied Esther Moth’s thoughts on the short walk to the Common where The Grand Hotel was situated.
Twice she walked the footpaths, keeping her eye on the hotel, but there was no sign of Otis. She thought she saw Jack at a distance, walking along the promenade, but she decided that she did not want his company just now, she preferred thinking about Nancy and what it must be like to birth a baby. Probably quite horrible.
WHAT THE BUTLER SAW – AND DID NOT SEE.
One is obliged to send one’s fellows a slightly risqué p.c. from the jolly old seaside. There are others available depicting even more pleasing ‘revelations’ but one does not wish to corrupt the Royal Mail. All will be revealed on return… Shall buy you a stick of peppermint rock. J. C. M.
Jack Moth flicked half a dozen identical postcards with their identical messages into the King’s Road pillar-box. He and his sister were as physically unalike as were their parents. Jack was over-sized and growing broad-bodied like their giant of a father. Esther Moth, like her faintly blue-blooded mother, had fair, crisp hair and a petiteness that gave her the misleading appearance of fragility. There was a likeness though in Jack and Esther’s straight noses, large eyes, fringed with thick lashes, and generous, sensuous mouths.
The music-hall song that went ‘…a’bossin’ of a feller who was six-foot-four and her only five-foot-two’ might have been written about Inspector and Mrs Moth. However, the lines following –
They hadn’t been married but a month nor more,
When underneath her thumb goes Jim.
Isn’t it a pity that the likes of her,
Should put upon the likes of him?
– were not apt. Nobody, least of all the happy-go-lucky and sweet-natured Anne Moth, put upon the likes of Detective-Inspector Moth. She did though, in her own way, usually get him to see things from her viewpoint. And so it was with Jack and his sister.
Once Jack had posted his cards, he sauntered around wondering how he was going to amuse himself for weeks in this place. It was an agreeable enough town with sufficient entertainment for a fortnight, but he would have to see whether he might escape from time to time and perhaps meet a fellow or two. His old school was Winchester, which was only an hour or so train journey, and he had addresses of old boys who had homes in Hampshire. But, standing in for Father, it was unlikely that he’d be able to get away for more than a morning now and then.
So Jack, being practical and uncomplaining about the unalterable, turned his mind to how to fill the eight weeks. A pity there weren’t still snipe to be had beyond Southsea Castle – it was all built up there now. He fired an imaginary shot-gun at a passing seagull which fired back, streaking one of the blue stripes of his cream jacket.
‘Damn you, bird!’ He raised his straw hat at a passing gentleman in apology for his language. The gentleman acknowledged and suggested quickly sponging the mess at the drinking fountain.
The fountain was a fine, cast-iron affair, with spurts for people and little troughs at the base for dogs. Holding his handkerchief over the spout, he pushed the plunger, which responded with a great gush down his fashionable trousers and into his light shoes. ‘Damn! Damn!’ quietly through gritted teeth.
He dabbed at his trousers until his handkerchief was sopping, he then applied it to the unwanted white stripe down his arm. He became aware that he was being watched. By a young lady sitting beneath a young holm oak only yards from where he floundered inelegantly. As though it mattered not a jot, he abandoned attending to his clothes.
‘Would you care to use this?’ The young lady held out a large, rolled-up towel. ‘It is only slightly used. I tested the sea, but it was rather cold.’ Her voice was clear and rather deep and heavy which, he decided when he thought of it later, sounded as though it was lubricated with cream and honey. A singer? A contralto perhaps?
She was very lovely, vibrant, elegant, desirable and altogether the type of woman Jack imagined himself escorting, dining, dancing with, strolling with. She was also older than Jack, and he especially liked older women – particularly beautiful ones. He raised his hat to her.
‘That is most obliging of you, but I’m afraid I should soil your towel.’
‘That doesn’t matter, it has to be laundered. Here, let me.’ And before he could protest she had moistened one corner of the towel at the fountain and, with light, pinching movements, removed the seagull mark.
‘There! If you give it a brush when it’s dry to bring up the nap, it will be like new.’
In the two minutes from the offer of the towel to the final smoothing down of his dampened sleeve, Jack Moth had fallen in love. Not only because she was elegant, desirable, et cetera, but because she had such an unaffected manner. Because she was bold. Jack loved the idea of a bold woman. Forward, would be the description his mother would have given. Modern, Esther would have said. She was all of these. Also, she was an older woman. His entire body twanged with the tension she had built up within him.
Jack Moth was smitten by a bold, modern woman. An older woman. Suddenly eight weeks seemed to be such a short period of time. He must waste none of it.
She began to roll up her towel.
‘Please.’ He took the towel from her. ‘You must allow me to…’
‘Nonsense, it will go to the hotel laundry.’ She took it back.
Jack too must be bold. ‘Please. It will give me an opportunity to see you again.’ He took the other end of the towel, which unrolled revealing its woven identification. He read aloud, ‘“Beach Mansions”. Beach Mansions?’
‘It is on South Parade. And you, do you live here?’
‘Oh, just a cottage for the summer, with my mother and young sister.’ Usually he ignored as much as possible his mother’s condition, but he felt that he could easil
y have mentioned it to this woman with whom he was linked by a length of Indian cotton.
‘And if I allow you to take it, who then would launder this great thing? You mother, your sister?’
‘We have a servant, and a washer-woman.’
She tugged at the towel. ‘Then there is no question of it. I shall take it back to the hotel.’ She looked at him boldly, maturely. ‘Unless you would care to accept a condition.’
A bold challenge. Jack’s heart leapt. He grew mature. Suave. A modern man, a man of this modern age. ‘I accept your condition.’ He tilted back his head and met her eye, smiling.
‘Well then, you undertake to launder it yourself.’
Not visibly shaken, he said, ‘Done!’
‘With absolutely no help from servant or washer-woman.’
‘Absolutely none.’ He rolled up his prize and tucked it under his arm. ‘And I shall return it to Beach Mansions tomorrow.’
‘I shall look forward to receiving it. It is unlikely that I shall be there, but you may leave it with the porter.’
Jack’s face fell: his purpose had not been to effect an encounter with an hotel porter. ‘I should prefer to deliver it directly to you… to be sure that you get it.’
‘I am afraid that I really do not know my movements. My time is not my own. I am not in Southsea for pleasure… no, that is not true… pleasure or satisfaction is to do with it, but… oh well, never mind. I am likely to be eating a light lunch on South Parade Pier at about midday.’ And, picking up the canvas bag that had contained the towel, she began to take her leave of him.
‘Wait.’ He laid fingers on her arm. Soft, warm, firm within the sleeve of her plain white cotton blouse. A thrilling arm with a surprisingly hard muscle. The arm of a mature woman. The contact was intoxicating. ‘I don’t know your name.’
Clearly, frankly, boldly, proudly, she announced, ‘Victoria Ormorod,’ and held out her hand and shook Jack’s own firmly. ‘And yours?’
‘Moth. John. Clermont. Moth. Not double-barrelled – Clermont was Mother’s… I’m called Jack.’
‘Jack Moth. A nice, orderly name. It suits you.’ She smiled, and was briskly gone through the avenue of holm oak without a backward glance.
Victoria Ormorod. Miss Victoria Ormorod. That name had existed in the world since the time of his birth and Jack Moth had not known. That copper hair, that wonderful figure, the thrilling voice and the beautiful face had existed in the world and Jack Moth had, until minutes ago, no inkling of it.
Victoria Ormorod. A rallying name, not the name of a singer. Perhaps a model for Womanhood in symbolic marble statues. He imagined her sculpted as ‘Justice’, or ‘Victory’, her splendid figure revealed by a breeze blowing her diaphanous drapes. Victoria.
Victoria Moth? Oh, what a depletion of so splendid a name.
—
Nancy Dickenson had been born in Portsea, ten minutes’ walk away from Garden Cottage. A ten-minute walk but, for residents of elegant and wealthy Southsea, an unbridgeable distance. They knew that Portsea existed, of course – why should they not know, seeing that it existed within easy walking distance – but Southsea knew as little of Portsea as Vladivostok knew of Cincinnati.
Much the same applied to the Portsea families, who often spent most of their lives in the dockland area without so much as walking over the boundaries into Portsmouth or Southsea, the large stores and shops of which were only one mile distant. Portsea, Portsmouth and Southsea were, for most civic purposes, a single entity, with a tram service and railway station serving all. It was not, though, a single entity to the people of the Portsea dockland area; to those many long-established families, theirs was an entirely separate community. Generations having lived, worked, married and died within it, never needing or wishing to go outside.
Nancy Dickenson was different. Although she was born into one of those old dockland families, she now found that Portsea was becoming too tight, too restricting. She had dreams of going places and doing things. Nancy worked in Southsea and her Mum lived in Portsea. During the tourist season Nancy lived in. In recent years she had been quite lucky.
‘It’s a lot better doing holiday-let domestic. I always hated hotel work, hardly any money in it, if it wasn’t for tips. Fetching and carrying, clearing up and laying up from morning to night. Kids bringing in jellyfish and seaweed and hiding them in the po-cupboard till they stink rotten; people leaving sopping towels on the floor. Wouldn’t do for my mum, she’d whop your ear smartish. Lord! you should see some of the things I’ve seen, you would never credit it. They wouldn’t do it in their own homes – perhaps they would, though. This mistress is different, about the best I’ve ever had. People behave better in holiday lets than they do in hotels. I stopped being surprised at hotel guests donkey’s years ago.’
How many years ago? It could not have been too many, for by the time that she was doing cook-general work for the Moths, she was still only twenty-four years old. But she had left school at thirteen, so that she had eleven years’ service to look back on.
Working for her present mistress suited Nancy just right, for the lady read books all day whilst resting her waterlogged legs, and so sent Nancy frequently to the library with a list. Nancy was surprised to discover that many on the list were romantic novels, which Nancy had always assumed only shop-girls and domestics read. Nancy had tried one or two and, though she had quite enjoyed them, had found them to be all much of a muchness, the girl always ending up getting married which, from Nancy’s observation, wasn’t much of a prize, even though she was really keen on Wally who drove a London tram and had courted her from a distance.
Nancy was concerned for her kindly mistress and her bloated condition. My mum had legs like that every time she was in the family way. It’s water that don’t get peed out properly. It goes away soon as the baby’s born. It was the midwife that told me about water in the legs: first time I helped my mum, and her waters broke, I thought that must be what it was, you know, water coming out of her legs – like a boil bursting.
Mrs Moth liked Nancy.
And even though Nancy was only twenty-four, Anne Moth felt quite secure with her. There were still several weeks before her confinement, which was to be in a London clinic, but should anything untoward occur, then Nancy was the kind of person one wanted around at such a time. There was not a lot of work to be done in the cottage. No fires because it was summer, no range or boiler – the old place had been thoroughly modernized, with gas laid on and good plumbing. Jack seemed to like eating out at what dubious places his mother did not know or want to. So cooking amounted to a breakfast of eggs and bacon, a light lunch for Mrs Moth and Esther, then supper for the three at six o’clock. All of which, plus the employment of a washer-woman and a weekly odd-job man, left Nancy with more time to read than she had ever had before. A kind of bond existed between servant and mistress, both of whom devoured books.
‘Your last choice of books was excellent, Nancy. I will leave it to you to select two more for me.’
Anne Moth thought how George would have drawn his mouth down at the idea of having one’s servant choose one’s reading material, and how Mama would have disapproved, and her sisters would have tut-tutted and reaffirmed the twice-told tale that Anne’s behaviour had always been extreme – witness her behaviour when it came to choosing a husband. But George was not here to comment on the easy-going relationship, nor Mama and the sisters.
‘Nothing too taxing, Nancy. Something a touch romantic. With a happy ending. Try to find one set in Paris… oh, how I loved Paris when I was a girl. How I loved everything when I was a girl.’
When she reached the library, Nancy came across a knot of people in hot discussion with a uniformed town hall doorman who, having realized that he had lost the battle, retreated into the protection of the grandiose public building. His parting shot, ‘Sweated labour! You lot wouldn’t know sweat if it hit you in the eye. Clear off or I’ll have the lor on you’, was drowned by a dozen female voices singing.<
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As would any servant encountering something interesting when out on an errand, Nancy sauntered to see what would happen.
A woman was issuing handbills to anyone who would accept them. Having read it, Nancy enquired whether they were members of the NUWSS.
‘We are!’ She spread her arms to encompass the other girls and women. ‘The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.’
‘Suffragettes.’
‘Not too much like them. Suffragist. Universal suffrage. We are for all women – the “have-nots” as well as the “haves”. Look, we are holding a meeting in Portsmouth, could you come? It’s in the evening. We like local women to act as stewards. Would you do it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’
‘Please. You wouldn’t be alone, there are other Portsmouth women helping. The NUWSS is not only fighting for the vote, at this meeting we are campaigning for better working conditions for the shirtmakers. You see naval officers everywhere in this town, but did you know that the girls who make their uniforms do so on starvation wages?’
‘Do I know? Better than most. I’ve lived all my whole life with them, I’d be one myself if I hadn’t got a bit of luck and got into hotel work.’
‘Perfect! The perfect steward. You must join us. You belong with us.’
From her reading of the Dreadnought and her association with Wally, she was not entirely ignorant of the women’s movement, but it was never wise to let everybody know everything about you first off. ‘I wouldn’t be no use in chaining myself up or knocking off copper’s hats. I’ve got my living to earn.’
‘Of course you couldn’t, neither could we. That’s the difference between the NUWSS and the Pankhursts: they can afford to pay fines and if they go to prison they have servants to see to their homes and families. I’m not saying that they are not brave, but they are in a position to choose to be. We believe that we can win our cause by public acclaim through rational argument and democracy.’