Goodbye Piccadilly

by Betty Burton

  ‘I would have expected you to be married to some Honourable and living in one of the smart squares. I didn’t know but what you was in some trouble, or maybe didn’t want people round here to know you was from a posh family.’

  ‘You’re right, I don’t want them to know that. I have found what I want to do, and I think that one day I may be very good at it. Don’t laugh, but my ambition is to get a Master’s degree and become Head of a school.’

  ‘That’s a fine ambition.’

  ‘I have hardly told it to a soul.’

  ‘But your mother…? And your father, wasn’t he a solicitor? What I remember of Mrs Hewetson is that she was the sort to go doolally if her daughter didn’t find somebody pretty posh in the way of a husband. Whatever does she think of Market Street?’

  ‘She has never seen it, and I hope never will. I feel safe there. I have a dear of a landlady who leaves me alone, never asks where I’m going, but she watches over me and would go for anyone who might harm me. I have wondered what Lou would do if my ma turned up on the doorstep and demanded to be let into my rooms.’

  ‘You sound happy enough.’

  ‘I am very satisfied with my life in Islington. If I go home for a weekend, I can hardly wait for it to be over. I have been here a while and now that Ma has seen that I have not been raped or sold to white slave traffickers, I believe that she has given up the battle.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. A lady like her won’t ever give up. Is she still as beautiful?’

  ‘I suppose she is. Everyone says that she is one of London society’s beauties, but it is hard for me to see anybody but Ma.’

  ‘What about men friends? You’re a very lovely girl, I should have thought…’

  She was interrupted by a rattling door-handle. Their fifteen minutes’ break was up.

  ‘…that summer, I thought you was head over heels in love with Master Jack. You couldn’t take your eyes off him.’

  ‘He has recently enlisted in the army.’

  Her hand stalled on the bolt. ‘Never! Not another lovely man going to get flung into the bloodbath. God alive, we have got to do anything we can to try to get an end to it. My Wally and Jolly Jack gone together. It’s like lights going out one by one, thousands and thousands of them lit for a moment and then snuffed just as they start to make a flame.’

  —

  …I know that this is not the way. I cannot think what else I can do… forgive me.

  Esther thought that Bindon seemed to be a little more his old self. Since Easter, he had more colour in his cheeks and he had stopped talking as though he was not long for this world, which was surely a sign that his depressed state was lifting. He had started taking Baby on his knee and even come to watch her being bathed. She had asked him whether he would care to have a spell in London, and he said that he would, and that they might have a night at the opera. Opera was one of his passions.

  She wrote to her father ‘…I feel that he has turned the corner. A month in London, with a bit of gaiety and colour, may just do the trick. When Jack came down to visit soon after Bindon returned to Mere on sick leave, Jack said that he felt like killing ten Germans for every soldier who was suffering as Bindon was suffering. I love Jack for doing this. I only pray that he will not be caught in the bombardment of some foreign village as Bindon was. If you do not mind, we shall travel as soon as we have seen to the domestic arrangements here. Dearest Father, how Kitt and I look forward to being with you again at dear Windsor Villa. Bindon asks me to send you his regards and Baby sends you a kiss.’

  On the first night of their return to London, Bindon was miraculously cured of the impotence that had affected him since that day months ago when he was sitting in that medieval town in Flanders, writing an imaginary letter to Esther. When shells had burst all around him, when his leg had been crushed, his gas-mask stolen from his face, and his lungs burnt by a whiff of toxic gas.

  Although he did not know it then, his return to virility impregnated Esther. Esther knew. She lay on her back with her legs tightly together, her pelvis raised on her fists, helping the little tadpoles of the illustrations in Human Biology to swim onwards to the new baby who had been waiting there for months for its finishing touches.

  She decided that they should remain in London for a few weeks longer than planned so that she could consult the doctor who had attended her when she was carrying Stephanie. Then they would all return to Mere – Esther, Bindon, Stephanie, Kitt and Baby. There she and Bindon would spend the seven waiting months caring for one another. She visualized them walking The Cobb, Bindon playing with Kitt, herself with her protruding figure that Bindon would proudly ignore on their walks but at night would eagerly include in his caresses; pushing Stephanie in her bassinet; then, later, Stephanie toddling along the promenade, or stumbling on the shore holding Nursey’s hand, and herself wheeling the new baby in the sunshine.

  What visions Bindon had of the future he did not relate to her. There can have been no sea, or fat babies, or talkative little boys, no sunshine. No sunshine.

  For the second time in a few months, Bindon Blood was seared by a dreadful man-made chemical. If it was traditional that an officer and gentleman use his own weapon to end his life, then Bindon Blood perhaps did not see himself any longer in that role. When he swallowed the Lysol, it was at Wapping, a fair distance from the warmth and comfort of Windsor Villa.

  The stevedores who discovered his body would have liked to see what the envelope in the corpse’s pocket contained, but it was addressed to Inspector George Moth of New Scotland Yard. ‘I know that I should not do this. Ask Esther to forgive me. Music is lost for ever and I can think of no other way to be rid of thoughts of decomposition and filthy corruption.’

  George Moth knew, from his own experience of sudden and terrible death in the midst of renewed happiness, what havoc the grief and shock would wreak upon Esther’s life. Looking at the suicide’s distorted handwriting on Post Office purchased stationery, he felt crushed at the thought of having to face his daughter, who had said confidently that the worst was now over. He longed for the comfort of Anne’s lovely body and soft upper-class voice.

  As he often did, he went first for an hour or two’s comfort with Effee Tessalow. Discreet and safe but with the low accent and voice of the music-hall girl she had been. He shrank from going home to Esther with his tragic news until he had talked to a woman and, as always, Effee was the woman.

  —

  NOTICE TO MEMBERS

  THERE WILL BE A DANCE TONIGHT FOR SPECIAL FUNDS. MEMBERS ONLY.

  Victoria was glad that Nancy had persuaded Otis Hewetson to come to the fund-raising dance that evening. It was one of the ways to get new people committed. If one had danced and had a bit of fun with a group of people, then it was easier to ask them to undertake some task.

  Otis came early as she had said she would to help make sandwiches. There were terrible food shortages but somebody had managed to get a basket of eggs so there hung about the hall their sulphurous smell as they were boiled and shelled.

  Victoria, who was slicing up loaves of bread, looked pleased as she greeted Otis. ‘You did well today in the bookshop. Beautifully made-up account, we should have you for our treasurer.’

  Otis smiled at the compliment. ‘I was wondering about Nancy. Isn’t it asking for trouble to sell those leaflets openly? It is against the law, isn’t it?’

  ‘Her leaflets? One diagram of a woman and a cross-section illustration of a male member? Hardly The Decameron.’

  ‘But couldn’t we be in trouble for being concerned with obscene literature?’

  ‘Do you find it obscene?’

  ‘Not at all. In fact, I thought it rather staid and clinical.’

  ‘That is why we believe that an obscene publications’ case would be unlikely to stand up in court. I hope that it doesn’t worry you at all. We are not foolhardy, we have lawyers who support our cause and give us advice. But whatever the risk, poor people are as entitled to informatio
n as the rest.’

  ‘Oh yes, I am in favour of that argument.’

  ‘Then rest assured, it is worth any risk we take. Just think, if the poor have smaller families, where will Kitchener find his cannon fodder? Don’t worry, Otis. Now you go through into the hall and enjoy yourself.’

  A young man whom Otis had noticed a few times in Lou Barker’s came in and handed Victoria a package.

  ‘Ten. Good ones. Worth every penny. I’ve settled with him.’ He winked at Victoria and smiled at Otis.

  ‘Danny!’ She snatched the package and slipped it into her apron pocket. ‘You are too casual by half.’ She frowned at him.

  ‘Nonsense! It’s only when you go about with slanty eyes that they suspect you of being an anarchist with a bomb under your cloak. And we are all comrades here, aren’t we?’

  ‘Be serious.’

  ‘I will if you’ll tell me who this is.’

  ‘Otis, our new worker.’

  His eyes crinkled as he smiled. ‘When you said a teacher, I hedn’t expected…’

  ‘Danny Turner,’ Victoria waved her breadknife at him. ‘If you mention Otis’s looks, I shall belay you.’

  ‘Ruby! Heve y’ever heard me comment upon a female’s beauty?’

  ‘Yes, usually before you comment upon her worth.’

  ‘Let me have that before you damage my good looks.’ Which looks were of the devil-may-care handsomeness that Otis liked. He took the knife from Victoria. ‘Miss Hewetson, I care not a fig that you are the most stunningly beautiful woman I ever set eyes on, I welcome you as a comrade in the cause.’

  Otis liked him. He had a gaiety that was infectious.

  Victoria patted her pocket. ‘Well, I have to put these away, so you can take over my job and help Otis.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Isn’t she the sergeant-major, Otis?’ He winked and the corners of his eyes crinkled.

  ‘Somebody needs to keep you in line, Danny. Beware, Otis. He has a line of blarney that would charm an Irishman.’

  ‘I’ve seen you in Lou Barker’s shop.’

  ‘You have? How did I not see you? I would have remembered.’

  ‘I sometimes eat at the back of the shop: the bead curtain hides me.’ He smiled, his features seeming to fall naturally so. ‘I can’t place your accent, it isn’t quite…?’

  ‘Cockney, but I grew up in Australia – haven’t been back here very long.’

  He was broad and sturdy, obviously proud of his physique for, whenever she had seen him, she noticed that he always wore an open jacket and, instead of a conventional shirt, a garment rather like an under-vest with a bound neck. He had a soft complexion as delicate as a girl’s, his hair was a jet-black mop of wild curls, his nose straight and shapely. His eyes were intelligent, but this was not the first thing one noticed about them: it was their colour – bright blue and fringed with long black lashes.

  Like most young women whose eyes alighted on Danny Turner, once she had seen him, she was not likely to forget him.

  Dropping his knife into a box, he took Otis’s from her. ‘Come and dance, this can wait.’ And so saying he whisked her through and on to the rough boards of the hall floor. ‘Can you Rag?’

  Otis’s eyes lit up. ‘Can I? Can they play?’

  ‘Can a duck swim? Have you heard of Kanute, King of the Keys?’

  Otis shook her head.

  ‘Then you haven’t heard Ragtime.’ He leaned across the piano and said something to the black player, who grinned, clicked his fingers against his thumbs, and ran his fingers fast across the keys and nodded to the three other musicians. A cheer went up from some of the young people gathered round the walls. The jerky music seemed to release a brake on Otis’s movement as she tentatively flicked her heels out sideways. Her partner took her hands and at once they were in unison with each other and with the new rhythm.

  Danny raised his eyebrows and grinned. ‘You’re good,’ he said above the music.

  ‘So are you,’ she shouted back. ‘Did you learn this in Australia?’

  ‘Not likely. Picked it up on the boat coming home. Worked my passage as a waiter and learned from watching the toffs.’

  From time to time they momentarily came in close contact, and Otis could feel that his body was hard and lithe and well-exercised. Once when he held her about the waist and said, ‘Ah. Nice,’ she frowned at him, at which he laughed, open-mouthed. Lord, what perfect teeth and a mouth as pink as a cat’s. The music finished, and the young people who had been dancing groaned with disappointment.

  ‘Come outside and cool off.’

  Leaning against a tree at the side of the hall, Otis fanned herself with her handkerchief and laughed. ‘I’m dead, absolutely dead.’

  ‘You are out of condition. Too many of Lou’s pies and not enough walking in the parks.’

  ‘I know, my job, sitting for much of the day. I used to play Bumblepuppy to keep fit, but not for ages.’

  He roared with laughter. ‘Bumblepuppy? What’s Bumblepuppy when it’s at home?’

  ‘A ball tied to a pole – you thwack it with a paddle.’

  ‘Ah, top-drawer stuff like croquet. Requires a lawn the size of Hampstead Heath by the sound of it.’

  Otis’s face straightened and she did not reply. She hated to think that he was poking fun at her. She would never dream of ridiculing his peculiar accent.

  Peering at her he said, ‘I’ve put my foot in my mouth, heven’t I?’

  ‘I should go in. I came here to help.’

  ‘Victoria won’t mind. I’ve done a good deed today, I shall be the apple of her eye.’

  He tucked a loose tendril of hair behind her ear. A gesture of familiarity that belied the fact that they had met less than half an hour ago.

  ‘I am sorry. What did I say about top drawer that hit that particular nerve?’

  ‘I cannot help my origins.’

  ‘Of course you can’t. No one says that you should try. Annie doesn’t.’

  ‘But Annie comes from the acceptable class.’

  ‘Because she was a mill-girl? Don’t be so idiotic, Annie’s acceptable because she believes in what we do here.’

  ‘And so do I.’

  ‘Good. Then you are acceptable. I don’t mind if you come from Mayfair, so long as you are one of us.’

  ‘I am. I really am. It’s only that sometimes I say things without thinking.’ She paused.

  He grinned. ‘Like playing Bumblepuppy?’

  The grin was infectious. ‘Yes… Bumblepuppy.’ Her shoulders moved with held-back laughter. ‘Isn’t it a ridiculous name for a game? I never even thought of it before.’

  ‘No worse than Tic-tac-toe… and thet’s played in the gutter, and I won’t get huffy if you laugh.’

  She held her head down, feeling somewhat ashamed of her previous petulance, but he raised it, holding her chin with finger and thumb.

  ‘I take a chance that you tell on me to Ruby – she’ll snap off the head of any man who doesn’t appreciate a woman’s mind more than he appreciates her face and figure – but I think that you are the most attractive woman I ever had the good fortune to see.’

  Whether it was as Victoria had said that his blarney could charm the Irish, Otis felt lighthearted at his compliment. How much more enjoyable this rough and disorganized evening was compared to the highly stylish dances she attended in her other life where, instead of tea and egg sandwiches, wine-cup and water ices were served.

  ‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much for a long time,’ she said.

  ‘They’re a good lot.’

  ‘I don’t yet know much about the politics of it all, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You don’t need to. Only whether a thing’s right or wrong, that’s how I look at it. Good or bad, fair or unfair, people have always got a choice. It all comes down to doing the right thing.’

  ‘You make it sound simple.’

  ‘It is. If you take this war, it’s just a case of asking yourself “right or wrong?” If your answer’s “
wrong” then you’re agin it.’

  ‘Don’t you think that there is sometimes a “right” war?’

  ‘I once heard somebody say that war is a bayonet, and at one end is a working man – and at the other end is a working man.’

  ‘I suppose that’s so.’

  ‘It is – and I refuse to be the worker at either end.’

  ‘Are you a conscientious objector?’

  ‘Only in spirit. Because I’ve lived in Australia since I was a kid, there’s no record of Danny Turner. I’ve got papers that say I’m a seaman.’

  ‘Tell me about the men who are on the run.’

  ‘They rely on us. People like Ruby and Annie, and you, I hope?’

  Otis nodded, feeling herself being drawn steadily, willingly, into a world whose existence would have shocked her mother, who would have become hysterical at the knowledge that Otis was becoming involved. Simply by being there, she was committing herself. She had seen the handing over of some sort of illegally-obtained documents. Forgeries? Stolen? Certainly money had changed hands for them. What else went on here besides the handing out of subversive literature telling women how to limit their families; seditious tracts appealing to men ‘Don’t be a Soldier’? And the funds that this innocent ‘hop’ was raising, they were for the ‘Underground’. And you, I hope?

  ‘Yes. You can rely on me. But how can you be sure of that? I might report what goes on here, you don’t know that I won’t.’

  ‘Of course we don’t, but then who can be sure of anything? It’s all a question of trust and judgement. We aren’t fools. We check what it is possible to check. You have friends who are our enemies – well, one friend. Moth.’

  Otis raised her eyebrows questioningly. ‘Inspector Moth?’

  ‘Superintendent. He’s about to be elevated.’ He grinned at her. ‘We too have our spies. The police force has its dissidents.’

  ‘So I’ve learned.’

  ‘The Moth connection isn’t important. Ruby knows them too, of course.’

  ‘Well, thank you for that. So what is important?’