Goodbye Piccadilly

by Betty Burton

  ‘The nanny has taken Stephanie out in her perambulator to meet Master Kitt from kindergarten. I haven’t seen the little boy, but your baby is the very sweetest thing you ever saw. You are very fortunate to have her.’

  Esther made no reply but concentrated upon drinking her tea. Nancy – starting as she meant to go on – sat on an upright chair beside the window that overlooked a very pleasant garden. She had made up her mind to bring the sad and broken Mrs Blood back from the brink where the apparent blessedness of oblivion had enticed her. Nancy, remembering the very nice sort of girl that she had been that summer at Garden Cottage, wanted nothing better than to make her want to live again.

  ‘You’ve had a rough time, ma’am. What happened to you shouldn’t happen to a dog.’

  ‘You know about my husband?’

  ‘Yes, and losing your baby… and the poor man. Life must have been so terrible for him to have gone like that, and terrible for you to have lost his child. I sometimes has to wonder what sort of a God it is that does such things to us.’

  ‘Oh, Nancy, what a relief to hear someone acknowledge that. It is terrible to have your husband go mad, and it was a baby that I lost. I never imagined anything so terrible. And I do want to talk about them.’

  The stones that had rested upon her chest for so long moved a little, allowing her to inhale freely for the first time in a long time.

  ‘Now, ma’am, if you’ll tell me where you keep your stout walking shoes, we’ll be off.’

  And they were. Like a steam-roller, Nancy rolled over any of Esther’s objections to venturing out. In a very short space of time they were walking in the park.

  ‘If you want to hold my arm, that’s all right, but it would be nice if we could keep going for half an hour. We’ll have a rest then. Is there a little tea-house in this park?’

  ‘A kind of kiosk that serves trays, somewhere through the rose-garden.’

  ‘Right, that shall be our prize at the end, tea in the rose-garden.’

  They walked steadily, and after the first five minutes Esther tucked her fingers into Nancy’s elbow. Nancy, pulling the young, frail hand closer, held it firmly.

  ‘Just now you said, “the poor man” – about my husband, about Bindon. People behave as though he was a criminal. The war did cruel things to him. They would not give him a Christian grave, you know.’

  ‘Some people are bigoted and wouldn’t know an injured creature from a sack of beans if it fell at their feet. What do they think, that a person takes their own life on a whim? People have got too much to live for on this world to want to give it up easy. It must be hard to do that, and needs some guts if you’ll pardon the expression. There’s too many laws made by people who don’t know any better and they make criminals out of good people.’

  Esther stopped walking and looked at her paid companion/keeper. ‘Nancy, do you really think that? You’re not just saying it to raise my spirits.’

  ‘If you knew Nancy Dickenson a bit better, then you’d know that I don’t just say. I might come out with some half-cocked things at times, but I don’t never say anything I don’t mean.’

  ‘Oh Nancy! If only you knew how they all keep shutting me up when I want to say something… to explain. You do have to be brave, and a bit crazy, and it is so terrifying when you are doing it that it is only the craziness that keeps you going.’

  ‘Well, ma’am, I can’t say I ever felt that low. I’ve been very pulled down at times, but never quite that much.’

  ‘Do you mind talking like this?’

  ‘No, ma’am. Better out than in, if you ask me. I suppose nobody will let you talk about it.’

  ‘Father, and the doctor and nurses, they say that it is morbid and that I should turn my thoughts to the nice things that there are in the world, and I can see that. I can see that Kitt is a nice, funny little boy and that Baby is pretty and delightful…’ Her fingers were so tight that they were almost pinching as she held on to Nancy. ‘But it is as though I cannot get through into the world where Kitt and Baby are living. Can you understand that?’

  ‘Yes. I understand that very well, and it’s my belief that the way to break through into their world is to get rid of what is tying you to the world where you try to eat a whole boxful of aspirin.’

  Nancy felt her charge flinch and guessed that no one had said the thing outright.

  ‘May we sit down please, Nancy?’

  ‘Well, all right, but not for too long.’

  ‘Nobody at all has mentioned the aspirin. They talked about somebody finding some “medication”, but they speak now as though I ate a box of contaminated chocolates and it was that which made me ill. Yet they know and I know about the aspirin. Father, of course, cannot say anything because of his position, and my physician cannot admit to having colluded in covering up the facts. I don’t know whether my father has paid him money or whether there is some other reason he has not reported my “illness”.’ She closed her eyes and turned her face in the direction of the sun like a worshipper. ‘Nancy, Nancy, you don’t know the relief to be saying these things.’

  Nancy smiled and thought of the way that she and Wally’s mum had torn the world to shreds about the way they and Wally had been treated. Nancy had cried and May had comforted. May had railed against the world and Nancy had supported her. Nancy knew that she had a good few tears yet to shed over Wally, but she knew that at May Archer’s she had a place in which she could shed them and in which she could get and give comfort.

  ‘Come on, Miss Esther, let’s see if we can get those legs of yours back in some sort of fit state to walk proper again.’ She smiled. She wanted to hug the poor little love-hungry woman.

  So why not hug? What were they but two women, each of whom had lost the man they had loved above all else and who had been loved in return. So Nancy Dickenson, in a brief but sincere clasp, gave Esther what she needed most at that moment, warm and spontaneous human contact. ‘To the rose-garden, ma’am? I believe it won’t be long before you are back on your feet again.’

  ‘You are right, Nancy. I believe your walking cure is going to work.’

  ‘Not “walking” cure, ma’am – “talking” cure. Let’s you and me have a pact to be open with each other. You needn’t worry that I shall step over the mark, I know better than that.’

  ‘My husband’s name was Bindon, do you think you could say it to me sometimes? If nobody ever says the name Bindon Blood, then it will be as though he never existed. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand. Have you still got some of his things? Maybe we could, I don’t know, go over them sometimes. It’s no bad thing to keep a jacket or pair of boots about in the place where they’ve always been.’

  ‘What is left of Bindon’s things are in Lyme. My father gave away everything he had brought here; he said that it was morbid to want to keep things… but do you know, I notice so much the empty spaces his things have left.’

  ‘If that’s where his things are, then maybe we should go to Lyme once you are on your feet again.’

  Esther smiled, something she had not done in a long time.

  —

  Victoria Ormorod stood in the bookshop and felt no usual lift of her spirits at the thought of what they had achieved in so short a time. Since Otis Hewetson had joined them, Victoria had had no need to give the running of the place a second thought. Nancy’s work with local mothers had been taken over by Annie, who never used a euphemism to them where a four-letter word would do better. Danny Turner had got the underground escape route well-organized. What was there left that Victoria could legitimately say required her presence? The public speaking? Recently she had felt that she had said her piece so many times that the fire was going out of it. It was not that she had lost any of her conviction – rather, the need for a negotiated peace was confirmed daily in the long lists of Dead and Missing columns.

  Recently too she had found herself thinking about Jack Moth, thinking and worrying about him. She had been right to reject his
idea of marriage, yet her liking and the physical attraction that he held for her had deepened in his absence. She told herself that it was only just that. The old adage: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. She decided that she would write to him, but first she had to obtain his latest address.

  Finding herself one morning in the vicinity of Scotland Yard, on the spur of the moment she went to enquire whether she could see Superintendent Moth. Local intelligence sources had informed her that there was now a large department devoting its energies to the suppression and confusion of the anti-war lobby, a situation that intrigued her no end.

  Superintendent Moth himself opened the door to her. ‘Miss Ormorod. To what do I owe…?’

  ‘Thank you for seeing me, I shall not take two minutes of your time, Superintendent.’

  He had noticed it at Mere: she did not come into a room, she made an entrance, a foible that both irritated and intrigued him. It had never occurred to him that he too was given to making entrances and keeping centre stage. His height and broadness as well as his fine hair and good looks usually guaranteed this; but any man could be outshone by a woman with feminine beauty, erect carriage and presence. This time he did not mind, for there was something in her that he found stimulating. It was that same challenging thing that he found in Otis Hewetson.

  Independent women. Strong. Arrogant. They had the presumption to try to change the established order to suit their own sex. Like Anne, they had set their faces against convention.

  ‘I have more than two minutes.’ He indicated a comfortable chair. ‘Please sit down. It is my time of day to take a cup of tea. I have a man who makes a very good brew.’ She accepted, sitting very erect yet seemingly at ease.

  ‘I came to ask after Jack.’

  ‘Mercifully, he is still whole.’

  ‘And to ask you for his present address.’

  ‘Ah. You haven’t got it?’

  I ‘No. Jack and I had decided against continuing our…’ She baulked at any definition of what their relationship had been – she scarcely knew herself.

  ‘Sons seldom confide in their fathers.’

  A young constable brought in a tray with a teapot and two cups, poured and offered one to Victoria, which she accepted.

  George Moth wrote down the address and brought it round to where Victoria was sitting. There he hooked his buttocks on to the edge of his desk and propped himself up on his long legs.

  She now saw herself disadvantaged because she either had to look up at him or to keep her eyes level and allow her gaze to fall upon the trousered part of his torso, or to look down. She had wondered, before today, whether men who took this stance were showing thoughtlessness, aggression, subjection of the other party, or plain exhibitionism. She had to admit that if the latter, then Jack’s father had a good figure to exhibit. Victoria Ormorod never let herself be bested when it came to the male showing who is master of the situation.

  She arose so that, when standing, she was now in the dominant position: her closeness to him would have meant that he must extricate himself rather than simply move away. She handed him her cup and saucer so that he now had two. ‘Thank you. You are right, the constable does know how to make a good brew of tea.’ She stretched the fingers of the gloves she was holding and began to ease one on to her long-fingered hands. ‘I wondered how Nancy is getting along. I know that she has given up her work to help in your household.’

  ‘She is getting along very well indeed, she has done my daughter a world of good.’

  ‘Your gain is our loss.’

  ‘It will not be for ever.’

  Because he showed no surprise that she should know Nancy, Victoria was now assured that he was au fait with the lives of the members of their group. But did he know that Otis was corresponding with Jack?

  He swivelled round to place the two cups on his desk, but still did not attempt to move his position where his feet almost touched the hem of Victoria’s skirt and where his eyes were almost level with hers.

  There was a brief moment of solid silence, during which she observed at close range his healthy, ruddy complexion. In his forties Jack would look like this. His long legs would grow more solid and lose their litheness, the girth of his thighs would increase slightly at the same time as his flat abdomen would become rounded and his breasts pappy and flecked with white hairs. Momentarily she visualized the comfort there might be from having such a man in one’s life in middle age. But Jack had wanted marriage. His profession was such that it would brook no scandal of an irregular liaison.

  In that same pause, George Moth noticed that hidden here and there in that great, provocative bundle of dark, coppery hair were one or two creamy-white hairs. At the outer edges of her eyes were fine lines, and in the skin beneath her lower, heavily-lashed lids there was a suggestion of crêpiness. In his view nothing made a woman appear so vulnerable as the work of age upon her eyes. His gaze travelled down from her fine, straight nose, over her lips made fuller by the small exaggeration of her upper teeth, to her beautiful neck and to where her bosom swelled out beneath the white blouse and cream-coloured jacket. Feeling her eyes upon him he raised his own and encountered her direct gaze.

  It was here in those brief moments of locked gaze that the two personalities clashed. Hers daring him to make one false move, his trying to force her to retreat.

  Old adversaries.

  On the female side, every wife who dared to stand up to her husband; every priestess who tried to steal back power; every bright girl who struck out against the tyranny of domesticity; every woman who, when religion became infiltrated by a harsh maleness, turned her back on it and returned to gentle witchery and older deities; every bride who secreted within her body a certain physick-soaked moss or sponge.

  And opposing – every male who would prevent it happening; every priest and father and groom who was assured that he had a God-given right to supremacy.

  Such women need strong men to dominate them.

  It was the damned woman herself, with her assuredness and composure, who drew those thoughts from the dark part of his mind. He had a momentary vision of her, tousle-haired and heavy-lidded.

  These men who have an air of assurance about them: Jack, George Moth… Tankredi.

  The gaze unlocked and allowed their eyes to move to safety. Victoria, feeling that she had been holding her breath under water, drew in air. George Moth went to speak but found his voice-box momentarily cracked. He cleared his throat.

  She moved away, freeing him to cross to the window where he appeared to be casually looking down. ‘May I ask you something, Superintendent?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Is it true that you are the head of the special department which deals with people like myself – members of the International League?’

  She noticed his ears move and wanted to ask him whether he knew that this was a primitive ability that few people now had. Tell him that she too had that ability and that it denoted wariness. The ears relaxed.

  ‘I don’t know about people like yourself, Miss Ormorod, but I do have men under me whose work is to uphold the Defence of the Realm Act.’

  ‘Oh dear, how disappointing.’ She behaved as though fishing for a compliment. ‘I had always considered myself to be some kind of disturbance.’

  He turned, looked at her for a long moment, then said, ‘Victoria, I may tell you that you are certainly considered to be that.’

  ‘Thank you, Superintendent Moth. I should go. I have 320 signatures that must be collected for the Prime Minister.’ She smiled provocatively. ‘As I am sure you are aware.’

  On her way to catch the tram she replayed the ending of the scene. If Victoria Ormorod knew anything, she knew the strengths and weakness of her adversaries, she had observed them at meetings and played them on long lines. As far as the set-up in North London was concerned, George Moth’s strength was his power and authority; his weakness, she was convinced, was that he liked George Moth better than any other human being, and he
liked to indulge him.

  In regard to his sexual desires, he was probably like other dominating men she had known: he would always go after what was rare or taboo in his society, such as a woman of a much higher or much lower class, a black girl, a girl young enough to be his daughter or a woman old enough to be his mother, or a woman who was diametrically opposed to his views. He savoured a challenge.

  She scrunched up the paper on which Jack Moth’s address was written. It was a long time since a man had provoked her. For a good many months now she had been attracted only to strong women of her own kind… And to Jack Moth. But having seen beyond the police chief, beyond the father, and into George Moth the sensuous man, Victoria Ormorod realized the son was only the shadow whereas the man with forty years of experience of life was the substance.

  From his window, George Moth watched her make her way into the street. He felt stimulated and pleased. He smiled. She didn’t come for Jack’s address, she came to challenge me. She’s a woman who is not alive if she doesn’t have a challenge. He had liked Otis Hewetson’s brand of independent woman, but this woman… Otis faded beside her. But not Effee Tessalow. Recently he had spent more and more time at Effee’s. She too was a woman who was not afraid of him, who challenged his authority by refusing to be dependent upon him and, although she said that he came first, she would not give up the other men who came discreetly into her rooms.

  —

  Jack Moth was recovering from a bullet-wound in the chest.

  An inch or two one way, the bullet would have hit his heart and he would have made the Killed in Action list; an inch or two the other way and it would have been a simple flesh wound which, after attention at a dressing-station, would have enabled him to return at once to the fighting. As it was, the bullet nicked the left lobe of his lung, causing a ‘Blighty’ wound.

  He had done the journey by railway to Le Havre in a state of nervous exhaustion and high fever, which was only slightly improved on the sickening crossing to Southampton. Because he spent the first fortnight of his confinement to a hospital in Essex in a state of almost constant delirium, visitors had been forbidden. George Moth had made the journey and forcefully got himself on to the wards, but he had soon seen that the medical staff were right: Jack was just recovering from an operation and was in no state to cope with anything except staying alive. Not only that, Jack had not recognized his father or known his own name or where he was.