Goodbye Piccadilly

by Betty Burton

  Jack, smiling at Victoria said, ‘I’ll tell you where, Otis, and when. Where, Southsea. When, the day you came out in your grown-up finery…’

  And then she remembered. ‘Of course!’ She remembered Uncle Hewey and the parasol.

  ‘Blanche Ruby Bice… you remember.’

  ‘Lord! You so impressed me that for two years I copied your style of dress. I just hadn’t connected…’ Hadn’t connected Jack with such a politically involved person.

  Miss Ormorod smiled enigmatically and nodded.

  George Moth knew that he was excluded from something and that he had obviously been excluded at the time. He turned over the pages of his newspaper with apparent absorption.

  ‘Goodness, Miss Ormorod,’ Otis said. ‘How you fired my imagination that day.’

  ‘It is what I try to do. I hope that it lasted longer than the day.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘she is as independent as yourself, I can tell you that.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ Victoria said.

  By tacit agreement, perhaps prompted by the inspector’s restless pages, they began to talk of the passing scenery until they arrived at Exeter where Bindon was waiting for them with a motor-car.

  It was not easy disguising their shock at the changes that Bindon’s injuries had brought about in him. At his wedding he had been plump, smiling and erect in his dress uniform. His brown hair had been heavy and oiled, his complexion pink, his figure well-fed. Now, that same uniform would hang upon him as did his pale skin. His concave chest drew down his shoulders, and his limp hair was scattered with grey. Worst, were the bouts of a racking cough that left him weak and breathless. Each time he regained his breath he would say, ‘I am sorry. I do apologize. It catches me so unaware that I…’ And he would make an effort to appear his old self, acting the host, paying attention.

  Esther was almost shrill with the excitement of showing off their baby. It was a wonderful baby, outshining any other for miles around. When Bindon was attacked by a fit of breathlessness, she would at once halt what she was doing and watch him intently but helplessly.

  Little Kitt did not appear to have remembered Otis, but in no time at all took her on again as his friend when they all joined him for a run around on the grass before his bedtime.

  Although Otis was outwardly unperturbed by the unexplained presence of Victoria Ormorod, she longed for an opportunity of questioning Esther about her. Explanations came about when the three women were seated in the shelter of an arbour watching the three men roust around with Kitt.

  ‘It was very kind of you to let me join you this weekend, Mrs Blood. I thought that I should not come, as it was such a family occasion, but Jack wanted me to see Mere Meldrum.’

  ‘Oh, do let’s all use first names,’ Esther said. ‘It is not kind at all, we are pleased to have you. If Jack’s friends cannot come here, then who can?’ She almost let a look at Otis escape, but turned it away to Baby Stephanie at the last moment. ‘Did you remember having seen Victoria before, Otis?’

  Otis shook her head. ‘Yes, but not the circumstances, until Jack reminded me. May I pick up Baby?’

  The pretty little creature drew the eyes of all of them, and Otis was able to try to deal with the felling blow of jealousy without meeting anyone’s eyes.

  ‘Doesn’t it all seem such an age ago? Here I am a wife and mother and you with your degree and a classroom of children.’

  ‘You teach?’ Victoria Ormorod sounded surprised. ‘I am sorry, that sounded…’

  ‘You mustn’t let Otis’s elegance fool you, she’s more than a pretty dress and ear-rings,’ said Esther. ‘She has a London qualification.’

  ‘And do you work in London?’

  ‘Islington. I teach a class of five-year-olds.’

  ‘Islington? What a small world. I shall be spending a great deal of time in that area. We have some premises on Green Lanes.’

  Jiggling the baby and not meeting Victoria’s eyes, Otis answered politely. ‘I know Green Lanes, it is only minutes from where I live.’

  ‘I had assumed that you were neighbours of…’

  ‘The Moths? No, we have never been neighbours. My parents’ home is close to Clapham Common, but I have rooms in Islington. I should never get to school on time if I had to come in from Lavender Hill each morning.’

  ‘Perhaps I could persuade you to come and help out in our new bookshop.’

  Otis hesitated, cautious of making any commitment, especially to a woman who caused her pangs of jealousy. ‘I am quite busy.’

  ‘I am sure you are. The life of a teacher is not the easy one it might appear. But a professional woman is exactly the kind we need in our new bookshop.’

  Both women saw the expression of hurt that flashed across Esther’s face. It vanished when Victoria said, ‘This baby is so beautiful, she makes my heart leap just to look at her. May I hold her?’

  The third godparent, Bindon’s cousin, arrived. She was confident, pink and well-rounded, a female edition of Bindon’s earlier self. After dinner that evening when the women were taking their coffee in the ferny orangery, she asked Esther, ‘One doesn’t like to ask, but when does the doctor think that Bindon will get back into the fray?’

  Esther’s shock was obvious. ‘Get back, Maria? He can scarcely breathe and one foot is almost useless. You don’t imagine that he is ever going to get well again, do you?’

  ‘Well, I know he looks dicky at the moment, but we Bloods have always had good constitutions.’

  ‘I believe it would take more than a good constitution to get over having one’s lungs burnt by noxious gas,’ Esther said. ‘It is only because he was face down on the ground, and had been wearing a gas-mask during the worst of the attack, that he has any lungs at all.’

  ‘Good care, plenty of rest, and this fresh coastal air – he will heal in no time. I was thrown once, in the field you know, broke both ankles, this left wrist and got a clout on the head. Doctor told my parents that it was lights out for me. D’you know, I was back in the saddle again before you could say Jack Robinson.’

  The two other women saw that Esther was trying hard to be courteous to her guest. ‘He doesn’t sleep, he walks the house half the night. I don’t want him to go back.’

  ‘My dear, it is not a question of “want”. This country needs every man-jack of us if we are to finish off the Hun.’

  Otis, who thought that Esther looked as though she might burst into tears, said, ‘But it is not every man-jack of us who gets shelled and gassed. It is the men who suffer that.’

  Victoria, who had been sitting still and controlled, said quietly, ‘The hurt to a German or an American is no different; the loss to their families is no different from ours. It’s my opinion that nations must find a better way.’

  Esther said, ‘I hate all Germans for what they have done to Bindon.’

  ‘And they must be put down,’ said Maria.

  ‘Why not instead hate the system that puts two sets of men at one another’s throats. Why not put it down?’ Victoria said. ‘The hurt is going to go on and on unless somebody calls a halt.’ She rose and excused herself to Esther, ‘I am sorry, I should not get on my apple-box under your roof. My throat is a little dry. Perhaps I should fetch a lozenge.’

  After she had gone, the other three women sat in an awkward, chatter-filled silence which they were glad to have broken by the men coming to fetch them to play cards.

  * * *

  Otis lay awake, her brain afire, thinking especially of Victoria’s comment about the hurt going on. It had never occurred to her that it was possible to call a halt to wars. The darkness and quiet beyond the pretty leaded casements felt strange after the night-time noises and street-lights she was used to. She had read the same page several times, but could not keep her mind on the thread of its meaning.

  When she had gone to live above Lou Barker’s she had at once become accustomed to the comforting late-night sounds from below her room. Now, she got out of bed and went t
o stand at the window. If there was any moon, it was hidden. Her mind would keep imagining Jack with every kind of battlefield injury.

  Light flooded out on to the terrace from the ground-floor room where Bindon spent much of his days and nights since he had been convalescent. His cough cut through the house, the gas-light in her room hissed, water ran through the plumbing system and landing floorboards creaked. Alien, lonely sounds compared to the voices, traffic and Lou’s metal pans.

  She wished that she were back there where there was no wrecked soldier, back before she had felt the stab of jealousy about Victoria Ormorod taking precedence over herself in Jack’s company; back where her vision of Esther was not of a strained and jumpy woman but of a pretty mother nursing her pretty baby; back to before she knew that Jack had enlisted in the army and was to report to camp after Easter, and to the time before Victoria had set her thinking about how unintelligent it was to settle disputes by killing young and healthy men.

  It was long after midnight when Esther tapped quietly and came into Otis’s room.

  ‘I saw the light showing under your door… you don’t mind?’ She came in and sat down beside the gas-fire. ‘I don’t want that woman to be Baby’s godmother, Otis.’

  ‘You don’t really have a choice, do you?’

  She shook her head in acquiescence. ‘I suppose I haven’t. Bindon has no other family.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Jack and I will always see to it that Stephanie is kept on the straight and narrow.’

  ‘Jack?’ She snorted derisively. ‘Don’t you see the casualty lists?’

  ‘Of course I do, but we must not be negative, we must be sure in our hearts that Jack’s name will never be in the lists.’

  Esther shook her head. ‘Victoria is right. In the end they will all be gone. I do not want Jack to go, yet I want some revenge for what has happened to my bridegroom. I know that Jack wants that too. Did you know that it was when Jack saw what had happened to Bindon that he went immediately to the enlisting office?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know. That doesn’t sound like Jack.’

  ‘I wish now that I had not said that he should go. I could not bear it if he…’

  Otis put her arms about the girlish shoulders of her friend, feeling almost guilty that she herself should be so robust, and at the same time feeling that she too could not bear it. ‘Jack’s a survivor, Esther, I feel it.’

  ‘But Victoria is wrong, isn’t she? We should not give up the war. Did you know that they call her Red Ruby in London?’

  ‘She has so many names.’

  ‘Do you think that Jack is in love with her?’

  ‘Hasn’t he said anything to you?’ Otis asked.

  ‘He has said nothing except that he hoped I would not mind, but he had invited her to spend Easter at Mere. I shall ask him tomorrow.’

  Otis made no comment, instead she asked, ‘How are you, Esther? How have you coped? First Bindon going to France, and then your confinement followed so soon with the news of Bindon’s injuries. You must have had an awfully hard time of it. I feel guilty that I have not been a better friend to you. But Dorset is so far…’

  ‘The confinement was no problem – there was the lovely prize at the end of it.’

  And your wedding-day prize was a man who looks now as though each breath might be his last. ‘Bindon is going to be well again, then you and he and Baby will soon make up for lost time.’

  ‘Is he? Will you guarantee it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, it was a trite comment. I long to say something to comfort you. Or perhaps it is that I feel too fortunate in a world that’s full of trouble.’

  ‘Fortunate? Oh Otis, how can you say that when you have not a man to care for you, and you do not have a child of your own. I know that Bindon is sick, and in my worst moments I know that he may not live, but I am fortunate. I have had days of such happiness with him that you cannot begin to understand. Perhaps that is why he may be taken away from me. I have wondered whether each of us is allocated a certain sum of happiness and if we spend it all at once, then there is nothing for later. And we were so happy.’

  ‘You will be happy again. And you must surely be happy when you look at your sweet little baby?’

  ‘Babies are always dying.’

  ‘Esther! I have never seen so bonny a child as Stephanie is. Where has this idea of doom come from?’

  Esther made a moue and shrugged. ‘It is why I did not want to have her christened yet. If I give her a name, she will become a person and… Oh, you don’t know how stupid it will sound if I put it into words.’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘I have it in my mind that whilst she is just “Baby”, then God will not notice her. And I would not have had her christened now had it not been that Bindon wanted it. And I have thought that he wants to see her safely christened because he has some idea of tying up loose ends before he dies.’

  ‘He’s not going to die. You don’t believe that, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know, perhaps I do. I believe that he has it fixed in his head. Do you know that there are tribes where a person may die simply from knowing that a curse is upon them. I believe that is how it is with Bindon and me.’

  Easter Sunday dawned early with bright sun and clear skies. Victoria was dressed and taking a walk in the direction of some sparkling water she had seen from her room window. At home, she loved this time of year more than any other. Old habits die hard, and she could not resist going to where she thought there must be violets, and there were, the short sturdy variety with bluish stems and wonderful perfume, a few of which she picked and pinned to her blouse. There were hazel and willow catkins fully out and ready to release pollen, there was the scent of leaf-mould and crushed greenery that rose at every step, and there were wood-pigeons and a distant cuckoo.

  The evocative scents and sounds caused a sudden desire to be at home to flare up within her. Recently, Peace League speakers had each been addressing as many as five open-air meetings a day, as well as helping to organize others. There had not been time to think about home or herself. Or how she came to be entangled in the fibres of this family. She had been attracted by Jack – was still attracted by him. She liked the way he turned up from time to time, standing handsome, head and shoulders above the crowd. And would have liked to make love with him, to have an unserious, uncommitted liaison – as with Tankredi, with his passions, his ideals… his arranged marriage. But she knew such affaires left painful heartbreak that took a long time to heal.

  Jack Moth had volunteered to join the war, and soldiers going away had romantic notions of a wife at home. Cynically, Annie had said that it was not romance, but that men wanted to secure a woman for themselves so that no other man should have her, to tie her down with her own vows whilst he marched off singing to the nearest bordello. No, no, what was she thinking of coming here, playing at being part of their family? She didn’t want another family, there was none better than the one she already had.

  It was the violets that had led her to think clearly. They reminded her of home, and allowed her to think clearly: Why do I always choose such unsuitable men? She knew the answer to that. Because I am attracted by people like myself – the ones who don’t conform.

  She was at the lake-side before she realized that Otis Hewetson was there before her, seated on a fallen tree. They greeted one another politely. ‘I shall not disturb you, Otis, but it was such a morning. I thought that if I was going to be indulgent and idle my time away, I should at least enjoy it to the full.’

  ‘I shall not be disturbed,’ Otis said. ‘Share my patch of sun if you like.’

  ‘I will.’ Victoria sat down and hooked off her flat, canvas shoes. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘I must confess I find the country at night too quiet by half. Don’t you find that?’

  ‘I was brought up in the country, my home is still there – although I don’t get back very often at present. I was just thinking how I miss being there. The hedgerows will have lovely gree
n buds that you never see in town because of the dust.’

  Victoria caught the girl in a puzzled look: She thinks I’m fanciful.

  ‘I never took you for a… I mean, I imagined that you must be a city woman through and through.’

  ‘No. I am a bumpkin. I have straw in my hair. I am surprised that you should think that I’m not a rustic, I should have thought my complexion and the way I stride about would give me away.’

  ‘It is nothing to do with your appearance… I think it must be that one thinks of suffragettes as coming from towns.’

  ‘Goodness, what a misconception. That is the view of a city dweller.’ She laughed lightly. ‘You believe that only urban people have minds.’

  ‘I don’t know that I thought much about it at all. But you may be right, the only politicians that I have met have worn silk hats.’

  Victoria liked this girl, she was intelligent and open and full of life and humour. ‘A great deal of the impetus to change the old order has always come from the countryside, and when we bumpkins went to the industrial towns, we took our ideas and dreams with us. I come from a long line of farming women who were not content to put up with injustice and inequality.’

  ‘I am such an ignoramus on such matters.’

  ‘You should discover for yourself more of women’s history. I mean our true history.’

  ‘I think that I should like to. But where, how?’

  ‘Not in history books. Those are written by men about men and for them. The advent of popular education and women teachers ought to have meant the teaching of a more truthful version of history, but that has still to come.’ Victoria laughed, pleased that the girl did not shy away. She was already intrigued by having heard that such a flower of that class should have rooms in Islington.

  ‘You will have to learn not to judge women by the standards that men have laid down to suit themselves. How well would they fare if they were judged by standards laid down by women?’

  Otis chuckled. ‘I fear they would be quite second-class. Do you know, I spent three years discussing every subject under the sun with my fellow students, but we never once came near to these ideas. I think it is a wonderful thing to think about.’