Esther, Frm Sat my address will be: f/o Barker’s, Market Street, Islington London. I shall be v. cosy here. My landlady is a v. obliging person. We shall still be within visiting distance at weekends. Yrs affct, Otis
Otis Hewetson looked around her rented rooms with satisfaction. For this area of London they were quite luxurious; as well as having a living-room with a dresser and a minute iron range, it had a separate small bedroom. Her landlady had shown her how to get the range going, although as yet Otis did not know much about how to prepare food. In answer to her mother’s questions about how on earth she was to survive, Otis had given the assurance that, as her rooms were above a small restaurant, she would eat out. Barker’s Pie Shop, which ‘restaurant’ Otis never mentioned by name, sold baked potatoes and peas, in addition to a variety of meat or fruit pies. It had four small tables for diners at the rear. This facility, known by Lou the proprietor as The Parlour, might truthfully be described as a restaurant.
It was a Saturday and the first day in her own accommodation.
As she smoothed the counterpane Otis tentatively, gently, sniffed the air and smelt lavender bags, Mansion polish and the all-pervading aroma of the baked pies and potatoes from below. From Greywell to Market Street would have been a culture change that even Otis, with her determination to succeed, might, at one time, have found difficult, but the three years in accommodation with several of her sister students from Stockwell College had knocked the corners off her. There she learned to make toast and muffins and brew tea, to light a fire, clean a room and see to her own linen, all without the aid of the servants to which she had been accustomed since birth. Now, the smell of the clean room was her own achievement. She felt that she could survive in the world perfectly well without paid help.
I have earned myself a supper. She went downstairs and along the passage that led into Lou Barker’s shop.
‘Settled in then, duck?’ Lou Barker was the same age as Emily Hewetson and looked old enough to be Otis’s grandmother. Under her old-fashioned cook’s cap her hair was grey, but few people ever saw the hair, for she was in her working clothes to get the oven going at five o’clock, and still in them when washing down the tiles of The Parlour at eleven. In the six hours when she was not working in the shop she lived the rest of her life.
‘Yes, it looks a real treat, Lou.’ Nowadays, in addition to the English of the class into which she was born, Otis spoke two other dialects – the plain schoolteacherish pronunciation of the classroom, and slightly bent vowels when in Lou’s or local shops. ‘I’m famished. I don’t mind what it is so long as it’s food.’
Lou soon carried a plate of steaming meat pie and potatoes into The Parlour. ‘There y’are, dearie, get yer ribs round that. I’ll bring you some tea when it’s stewed a bit longer.’
Otis had to admit to herself that it was perhaps the way that tea was served in her adopted country that she found most difficult to like. Strong Indian blends, stewed until they were dark and bitter, then made rusty red with sweet condensed milk. The sweeter the tea, the sweeter the giver. Sweetness was the great sign of affection here. In good times food was lavishly sprinkled with it. On Saturday nights children were taken to the market and bought bags of sugar fish and humbugs. Otis was still shocked at the profligacy of parents who could not afford shoes in which to send children to school but blew sixpence on boiled sugar and saw it gone in an evening.
Lou put down a tray laden with teapot, cup and saucer and an opened tin of Fussells, Unfit For Babies, milk with a spoon standing in it. ‘You can help yourself to milk, I got plenty. You sit there as long as you like; there won’t be anybody in till the pubs turn out.’
The pie was good. Even so, she did for once momentarily long for one of the Hewetson’s Saturday evening, leisurely meals of light foods and iced puddings, with some of Pa’s phonograph music, shared with Uncle Hewey, or perhaps a client of Pa’s who might be interesting.
As she ate she thought of Esther and wondered whether she was well. Since the wedding, everything had conspired to keep them from one another. She knew from a letter about the pregnancy and about the possibility of her going to live in Lyme Regis and about Bindon being in France. It seemed ages since she had even remembered to wonder whether he might be safe.
From time to time as she ate at the little table for two, the shop bell rang, a bit of banter or gossip was exchanged and the bell rang again. Lou came in, took away the empty plate and brought in a slice of apple pie.
‘Goodness, Lou, I shall soon become much too plump if I continue taking my meals down here.’
Lou smoothed down her own round bosom and hips. ‘Tell me one man who likes bones? A bit of flesh is what they likes. “Cushions without feathers” my dear old Alby used to say skinny women was. You eat in Lou’s and you’ll get yourself a feller in no time.’
‘I can’t have a fellow, Lou, teachers aren’t allowed to be married.’
Lou laughed. ‘I never said nothing about getting married.’
The bell rang again and Lou went into the shop part. A deep voice percolated through to Otis. A man asking Lou questions, in a voice that Otis thought familiar. A school governor or education official? At last she gave in to her curiosity and leaned to one side so that she could see into the shop where, looking back in her direction was six foot three inches of Detective-Inspector George Moth.
Raising his eyebrows in surprise, he turned to Lou Barker. ‘I thought you said you had had no customers this afternoon.’
‘That lady’s not a customer in the regular way. She lives here.’
‘Lives here?’ Interest and perhaps amusement flickered in his face and went out. Turning to Lou, he said, ‘I still think that I should talk to the lady.’
Otis felt confused.
Lou said to the inspector, ‘You just wait here whilst I clear away and I’ll bring you a drink of tea in.’ To Otis she said confidentially, ‘He’s after that chap that was lassooing girls round their throats. His name’s Moth,’ she laughed, ‘not as you’d think so to look at him, would you? He’s been down this way a couple of times before this. He’s a plain-cloves copper but he’s not a bad chap once you get to know him. We had some trouble one time with a slasher. Old Moth copped him as soon as he was brought in on the job. Now he’s asking questions about…’
‘Thank you, Lou. I can do my own investigation.’ To Otis he said with an absolutely straight face, ‘Inspector George Moth of New Scotland Yard, miss. I’d just like to ask you one or two questions.’ In a tone too low for Lou to hear above the clatter of her baking pans, he said as he sat down in the chair facing her, ‘The first being: Do my eyes deceive me?’
‘Of course not. This is where I live and work.’
‘Well I’m damned! I beg your pardon, but when Esther said that you had gone to teach in a school and were living away from home, I imagined that you must be with one of those establishments like the one our Kitt will be attending soon – all shiny little boots and sailor suits in a pretty house with a green in front.’ He looked around the tiny room with its folding card tables, folding camping chairs and flaring gas lamp.
‘How is Kitt?’
‘Kitt? Oh he’s fine. I miss him of course, but he’s much better off in the country.’
‘Kitt in the country?’
‘With Esther. Didn’t you know that she has gone to live at Mere – the place Jack inherited from his uncle?’
‘Yes I did, but not about Kitt. The last time I received any news from her was to tell me about her expected child.’
‘I understood that she had written to you recently.’
‘Most of my letters go home, and I haven’t been back for a few weeks. I really must make the effort to go there.’
Pushing back his chair he said in a louder voice, ‘Well thank you, miss. I’ll let you finish your tea.’ And lower, ‘If I waited just along by the archway, would you walk with me for a few minutes? I should like to talk with you but don’t want to queer your pitch with Lou. Rozzers are not favourites in this area.’
It did not take her very long to say, ‘Very well. In say fifteen minutes?’
George Moth left, and Otis went back upstairs where she took off the everyday skirt and blouse in which she had been working, washed her face and hands and changed into a plain two-piece costume and a coat. Then she let herself out by the side door. Before she put the key into her pocket, she looked at it, smiled and squeezed it with pleasure. Independence!
She arrived at the archway and found no one. As she hesitated about what to do, an arm was slipped through hers and the bulky figure of George Moth was suddenly at her side.
‘I thought that it was only Sherlock Holmes who could melt into his surroundings.’
‘You are as easy to confuse as Dr Watson.’
‘Are you on duty?’ she asked.
He looked at his watch. ‘I suppose I am, but in my line of work there are no fixed hours. I am following a certain line of questioning on my own. It is the way that I often work.’
‘Why did you ask me to come out?’
He looked down at her. ‘I don’t really know, except that I was surprised to find that you were Lou Barker’s tenant and Lou doesn’t know that you know me, and habit makes me keep that bit of information to myself.’
‘Why shouldn’t Lou know?’
‘No reason… it wouldn’t matter, but I assumed from your disguise that you too are hoping to dissolve into the background.’
‘It is not a disguise, but I don’t want the children I teach or their parents to be put off because they think that I’m different from them.’
‘Otis… you are different from them. You cannot be otherwise with parents like yours, education like yours, background like yours.’
‘I am surprised to hear you say that.’
‘Why should you be?’
‘Because you married a lady who…’
‘Ah. You think that she dissolved into the background of the class she married into. She thought so too.’
‘It seemed to me that she did from what I saw of her. She was not at all superior and snobbish as people of old families are. At least, the ones I have met have been.’
He guided her through alleyways and down lanes that were new to her until they came to an open space with some grass and trees and a few wooden seats.
‘Will you sit for a few minutes? It isn’t closing time in the parks for an hour yet.’
They sat.
‘Anne was a Clermont when I met her, she was a Clermont when she died. Part of why I loved her was that difference from me and mine, and I believe that it was the same for her. Neither of us changed. We could not, and neither can you.’
Otis gave him a non-committal shrug of her shoulders.
‘You recognized my Aguila de Oro cigars, you must have noticed the portraits on the walls of Windsor Villa… and the Sèvres plates, the Florence glasswear? My wife had a romantic notion that she rejected the Clermont values for the sake of love. What happened was that she brought those ways with her into our home. Of course, she could do no other. She had always taken her tea from fine china cups, so she thought nothing of it, and when she bought me a present of cigars, then of course they were the brand that her father had smoked.’ He turned to look at her and laughed. ‘And I am a weak enough vessel not to resist.’
‘I hope that you aren’t implying that you think I shall fail in my attempt to take on a similar identity to that of the people I live among? I shall not.’
He stretched out his long, solid legs and rested his arms along the back of the seat in an attitude of relaxation. Although he was not touching her, she felt the warmth of his body, remembered how it had felt to be enveloped by it, and stiffened her back away from chance of contact.
‘Have you ever gone hungry?’ he asked.
‘I could manage if that were ever my misfortune.’
‘Supposing that you were penniless and had a starving child, or you were married to a man who gave you no money but who would beat you if there was nothing on the table… could you creep down in the night and steal a pie from Lou?’
‘I think that you make the same mistake of many of our class in thinking that poverty equals dishonesty.’
‘Did I suggest that? I merely asked whether you could do it.’
‘The answer is “no” then, because I know how long and hard Lou works. In the circumstances you suggest, I would probably beg or borrow something.’
‘Lou would do it.’
‘Steal?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘That is because you have never had a starving child or been beaten by your man.’
‘And to become initiated into this class I must have such experiences?’
‘You will never become one of them, Otis.’
‘If I do not, then I shall never become the teacher that I want to be.’
His fingers tentatively touched her upper arm. ‘Teaching is too arid an occupation for such an exotic creature as you are. You should always be dressed in strange pink colours and long drop ear-rings as you were at Esther’s wedding. You do not suit plain grey flannel and rooms above pie shops.’
Her breath halted and her thighs contracted.
At that moment she felt a desire – to experience every muscle of his torso, every sinew of his legs, every hair on his body. The image of her virginal counterpane as she had left it teased her. I have only to offer to make tea for him and I could have the experience. The experience. The one we all talked about at Stockwell but few of us had.
If only he were Jack, I would do it.
She leapt to her feet. ‘I am sorry that you do not like my suit, Inspector Moth, I was rather pleased with it. I really must get back, I have so much to do.’
‘Don’t be so touchy, Otis.’
‘I am not at all touchy. But I do have work to prepare.’
‘I will walk with you then.’
‘There is no need.’ She held out her hand. ‘I enjoyed our walk. I am sorry that I have been no help in your investigations.’
‘There is no need. My enquiries are into a crime that…’
‘Other women in this area do not get police protection – I do not wish any privilege.’
‘Nevertheless, I shall walk with you. The women in this area do walk out with men you know. So stop being prickly and walk nicely.’
Otis did not carry the protest any further, but walked with a formal space between them. When they reached the dim archway, he halted and held her elbow. ‘I very much want to kiss you, Otis, but I should not take any such advantage of you as I did before.’
‘I am sorry, that was a mistake, I was carried away. I had some notion of wanting to comfort you.’
‘Otis! I am an old hand at tweaking out the truth, and I have experience of women. You responded to me as though you wanted nothing more than to be taken.’
‘To be taken? Oh no.’
‘Very well, if you say so. Then let me kiss you now?’
‘I… No. What would you say if it were my father asking Esther for a kiss?’
‘I should say that it was so entirely unsuitable as to be wrong. But you, Otis, are a creature with no age, you are Botticelli’s Venus, and have stepped into the world as a fully-formed woman. And in your presence a man is not aware of being a grandfather or a schoolboy, he is both youth and maturity.’
Not for the first time, Otis Hewetson understood why it was that Anne Moth had been so taken by this enigma. She did not know how to respond to so romantic a speech from a man who aroused her physically when in reality she wanted his son.
‘I forgot to ask… how is Jack?’
Presumably accepting her rejection of him, he walked on with her towards Lou Barker’s shop. ‘Jack? Well, I believe that Jack is thinking of answering the call to arms. He has been given several white feathers.’
‘Oh poor Jack. That is a terrible practice.’
‘And poor England if young men like Jack do not volunteer.’
‘You surely cannot want him in the army?’
‘Of course I don’t, but the army is in dire need of healthy young men, which is what Jack is… he is needed. Like yourself, he has been infected by the desire to become anonymous. He says that when he joins he will go as a common foot-soldier.’
‘I believe that our common foot-soldiers are being wasted. I cannot bear to think of Jack being used so uselessly.’
Now they were back in streets that were familiar to Otis. She held out her hand once more. ‘This time I shall go on alone. Please give Jack my regards. I will go home tomorrow to collect my letters and then write to Esther.’
He shook her hand and bowed briefly. ‘Thank you for your company. My investigations in this district are by no means ended; we shall perhaps see one another again.’
As she walked away he said, ‘Otis.’ She paused but did not turn around. ‘How many of your schoolchildren have parents who have letters awaiting them in some large villa in Clapham? How many of them receive any letters at all?’ Still without turning she raised her hand and said, ‘Touché.’